Hitching Posts for the Trail of Life: History, Theology, and Life

Almost universally people have lived their lives under the influence of various events they encountered in life. Many found no significant meaning in such happenings at all and turned to a philosophy of nihilism.

In Hitching Posts for the Trail of Life, William Allen Poe recalled his youthful life lived out during the Great Depression. He reflected on these experiences with a deep conviction that the providence of God had been active in his life in a telling manner. Recalling a youthful fondness for riding horses with a friend, he reminisced about a favorite spot where they hitched their horses and drank from a wonderful spring of water. It is his thesis that God provides hitching posts for life's pilgrimage where renewal and a greater clarity on life's direction is given. Each hitching post enlivened the author's spirituality, which facilitated him in living life to the fullest in service to others. It was a service rendered through the roles of pastor, missionary, and college professor and in the locales of Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nigeria, Ghana, and Liberia.

Hitching Posts for the Trail of Life is an autobiographical interpretation by an octogenarian minister as seen through the lens of history, religion, and life itself.

About the Author

William Allen Poe began life in 1926 in Bessemer, AL and grew up in Tuscaloosa County on a farm. At seventeen he entered Howard College (Samford). Following their graduation he married his college sweetheart, Beth Kelley, and proceeded to Louisville, Kentucky for seminary training. There he received the Bachelor of Divinity followed by a PhD in History from the University of Alabama. Further studies followed at Oxford, Manchester, and a Ford Foundation Research Grant to Africa. He has published Green W. Hartsfield: A Biography, and in more than three dozen academic journals. He and his wife have a son, a doctor in Kansas City, and a daughter, a teacher in Louisiana.