One county, taken
as seriously as a capital
Still revising
Because I’m not done yet.
And neither are you.
Welcome to the story.
The Cook Book is where I explore Cook County — my home, where I was born in room 28 of Adel Memorial Hospital to my 28-year-old mother on October 28. My blood is in this soul although I never knew how much or how deep until 2024, when it became evident while producing a Ghost Tour in our oldest and largest cemetery. The pioneers chosen began to become familiar since I was also building my family tree.
This adventure began with the discovery, on a full-moon spotlighted night in Woodlawn Cemetery in Adel, of a lichen-covered white marble statue of a 4-year-old boy, Myron Griggs Hinson. I captured the photo with the moon basking lazily above the boy, watching over him, it seemed.
That year, 2013–2014, I had the opportunity to live in my great-grandmother Dora Agnes Parrish Petteway Wright’s house on the corner of Fourth and Gordon, the house that is the center of the Cook Book, and it was a magical and haunting time I will never forget. Finding Myron that night set a chain of events in motion that continues to unfold.
And I cannot wait to tell you about it.
Next, we will uncover the mystery of Myron Griggs Hinson and what caused his untimely death in 1913. I look forward to seeing you around here daily so you won’t miss a thing.
R
I spent thirty years going everywhere else to find the story. It was here.— Robin Postell
What Came Out of It
The book is set down. These are not.
The Parrish Line
Early 1873, J.T. Wilkes’ store, Puddleville, Georgia. A Parrish covers eight letters on the word Philadelphia and a town gets its name. Buffalo Bill, Rosalyn, Dora Agnes, and a man who ran a hundred yards with a broken arm and carried the ball for the rest of his life.
Enter → 02 / Live · ExhibitThe Hornet Gazette
Cook County High, Class B state champions, 1949. The clippings, the lineups, the train ride home, and the Hornets who brought the title back to Adel — Alan Parrish among them.
Enter → 03 / Live · Parts One & TwoThe Wiregrass People
Forty-seven pages of foundation: the wiregrass ecology, Native dispossession, the Georgia land lotteries, the Coffee Road migration, the founding families, the 1836 Indian Wars, the making of Cook County in 1918, and the Otranto.
Enter → 04 / Live · ReprintThe Double Life of Bart Adam Young
A Learjet came down out of Detroit for a boy from Adel who had never heard of Kid Rock. Two years later he told the whole thing from a bottom bunk in the Cook County Jail. My Razor feature, reprinted whole, with the night at Rick’s laid back out in camera time.
Enter →Storyteller Cook County
Two hundred and twenty questions about the ground you are standing on. Minnie Shaw’s history, Brushy Creek, Puddleville, the 9th and 10th land districts — put back into the hands of the people living on top of it.
Publishing soonDead Man Coming
The unfinished investigative work of my father, Charles Postell — award-winning reporter, and my first editor. Carried forward, with its own reporting and its own reckoning.
Site comingEverything I Know
I learned on a porch
A screen door is the most honest thing in a Southern house. It lets the air through and it keeps the flies out. You can see who is coming and they can see you seeing them. It never once pretended to be a wall.
It is also the only door in the house that announces you. It slaps shut behind every child who ever ran out of a kitchen. That sound is the reason I am writing any of this down.