“The town of Sweet Gum Head still exists, but it has no train station, no bus stop, no grocery store. Aside from a church and Ard’s Cricket Ranch, the town is hardly there, and hardly ever was. Though it exists mostly as a hazy recollection of a loose family of farms that dates back less than a century, it serves as a reminder that the queer history of America presents itself everywhere, even in the quiet, empty quarters of the South…” (“Underneath the Sweet Gum Tree,”Oxford American, Summer 2020. Photo courtesy Susan Raines)