About Points of Beginning

There’s a term in land surveying that appears on nearly all deeds and plats: the ubiquitous “point of beginning” dictates where a survey begins and, naturally, to where it always returns. Without the coda, a survey of a parcel has no measure. The same could be said for life.

Generations of my father’s family spent careers documenting the property that lay between these points, attesting to boundaries on plats rolled up and saved to be retrieved as they always are — because after decades or generations of changes in vegetation and habitation, erosion and decay, those imaginary lines endure.

Life downtown, where I grew up in my other grandparents’ first home, once held an industrious cadence, merchants eagerly perched as the hopeful hum of morning’s scurried greetings roused a chattering commerce that exhausted only with evening’s porch-light peace. That hum has hushed in the years since I left, until only the echoes of its memory can break the resigned stillness.

I’m Alabama-raised with an inherited knack for storytelling about history and home — I hope with a heaping dose of humor and humanity. These stories triangulate from two points of my beginning: the commercial district of Jackson, where my grandfather McDonald aimed to succeed in business, and the county beat north of town, where the McVay side planted lasting roots.

Through this site, I hope to return to my own points of beginning to give a writer’s survey of a place and its people, understanding our ancestors’ struggles, triumphs and missteps, and where we might direct those paths they cleared for us. It’s through retracing their lines that I take my bearings.

Welcome to Points of Beginning, a storytelling blog with a sense of place.

About the author

Richard McVay is an Alabama-born former newspaper journalist whose years away from the South — and the regrettable loss of his accent — taught him to recognize the stoic, particular beauty and often humorous history of his childhood surroundings. When he isn’t working or writing about the South, he’s likely photographing old storefronts, chasing rabbits through dim corridors of archives, or wondering where pedestrians are headed. He lives in Mobile, Alabama.

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