Taylor: “Kilroy was here.” (And so was Faulkner.)

Once a stagecoach stop, Taylor was also a favorite haunt of William Faulkner’s—he liked to ride horses and hike up Old Taylor Road; its train depot figured in several of his novels. Today, the town has become a thriving artists colony, home to photographers, potters and sculptors like Bill Beckwith whose bronze of Faulkner stands in downtown Oxford. Writers like to visit here, too, and eat fried catfish at the Old Taylor Grocery, where the wide plank walls are scrawled with the messages and signatures of writers who have come before. Faulkner said art was man’s way of “scribbling ‘Kilroy was here’ on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”

If that sounds like a tall order, just leave your Kilroy on the walls of Taylor Grocery before you start north, heading straight for the heart of Faulkner Country.