Monday Musings-Draketown

The piece below was published as one of my newspaper columns about six years ago. But I'd actually written it almost ten years prior. Not a lot has changed even now in the area around Draketown. Brand new subdivisions have not sprouted noticeably, unless they are well off State Route 120, which is entirely possible. I expect that portion of Haralson County adjoining Paulding and other rural Georgia counties is too far from the Interstate highways for many urban refugees to be comfortable - yet. I'm sure some who value the privacy and solitude have built large homes in the tall pine woods. On my last visit we didn't make it to the little country cemetery where our dad's parents rest, not far from Draketown. Maybe next time. I hope so as I've now lived some years past the time most of my forebears left this mortal coil. But I'm still thankfully able to get around fine, do most things I want to do, (and feel comfortable to decline doing what I don't want to do) which is an accomplishment for me! And still chasing my dreams.

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Draketown, Georgia is the original 'little town that time forgot.' In the forties and fifties State Route 113 meandered through the pint-sized metropolis before joining State Route 120 and continuing north.
    It was a tiny town then, and as a town, is even tinier now, as far as retail commerce is concerned. Then again, maybe not. Two convenience stores, which also sell gasoline, and a small restaurant serve the same functions as the three general merchandise stores which flourished on its single block in my childhood.
    Mr. Ike's store was full of all kinds of wonderful junk, the country version of our Dollar Stores today. It held down one end of the street. Reeves's Store stood at the other end. Between them was the Reeves's residence and Stevens's store, which housed the Oddfellows Hall on the second floor.
    Customers helped themselves to ice cold Coca Colas, RCs, Pepsis and Orange or Grape Nehis from.a big floor cooler just inside Reeves's Store. Outside, next to the unpaved street, was an old-fashioned gas pump. The top two feet or so of the pump was made of glass through which the reddish gas was visible.
    A white marble monument about twelve feet tall stood across the street. The legend on its base said that it honored a woman killed by the bootleggers. An elementary school, a doctors office located in his home, a church, and a few frame homes completed the town which was surrounded on all sides by farmland.
    The doctor died, the school was consolidated to the county seat, and one by one the old stores closed. Route 113 was relocated and merged with Route 120, by then an  asphalt highway, three or four hundred yards north of the town proper. And a growing tide of refugees from the city of Atlanta fill the area with new contemporary homes, prosperity, and the usual concerns of a more urban population.
    A while back I turned onto the old town street once more. Reeves's store building is falling down, the other two already gone. But the marble monument to a woman's untimely death remains as does the church, larger and freshly painted. The little town lives on for its few long-time citizens. And for those like me who look back through time and distance, remembering trips to town and penny candy from Mr. Ike's store.

   

Monday Musings-Mamaw & Papaw tribute

People who willingly raise and cherish children who have no family to care for them, through death or otherwise, are special. My Mamaw and Papaw Brown were those people. I think Daddy didn't really appreciate them until he had rebelled a little, marrying far too young against their wishes, and then fully realized what a heavy responsibility marriage and family could be. I wrote the below piece a number of years after they had gone to their well-deserved rest. Without them in my life and my siblings' lives, I doubt we would be the people we are today.

'Alabamer' Time 

The concept of time intrigues me. I worked as a long distance operator for the telephone company for years. Minutes and seconds were the stuff of my job. Those were the days when that 'voice with a smile,' a live operator, came in on a long distance call after sixty seconds with, "You've talked one minute." Accurate timers told us when to do so, but after a while, we hardly needed them. To this day, I am able to estimate the passage of time with a good deal of accuracy.
     My fascination with time may have been birthed in the fact that my grandparents kept their clocks set on 'Alabamer' time, as we called Central Standard Time. They lived in rural Haralson County, Georgia, which was (and is) in the Eastern Standard Time zone. After Daylight Savings Time was introduced in the late 'forties, their clocks were right at least half the year, since they would never 'spring forward' or 'fall back.' Why they chose to live on Central Standard Time is a mystery, at least to me. If Daddy knew the reason, he kept it to himself.
     Mamaw and Papaw lived their entire lives in the state of Georgia, never even crossing the line to Alabama, or any other neighboring state. In his many job changes, Daddy did move his family to Alabama and back to Georgia three times before I was ten years old. Possibly my grandparents felt closer to him, their only son, and us grandchildren, if their time matched ours and that's when they started keeping their clocks set slower than the prevailing hour around them. Such sentimentality seems a little out of character for a hard-working couple who farmed all of their lives, rooted and grounded in Georgia's rich, red dirt. But deeply caring parents that they were, it's possible.
     In time my grandparents retired from farming and Daddy moved them to an apartment in town. By then I had married, moved to Tennessee, and begun my unique operator's bond with the ticking clocks of life. I'm sure they continued their custom and died a few years later, as they had lived, on 'Alabamer' time.
     sylnick@gmail.com

And the beat goes on ....

Seems a long long time ago this picture of six young girl cousins was snapped and yet it doesn't. Some are many miles away from where it was taken, including me. I rarely see the ones who are not my siblings. I hope they're doing well and as happy as they can be. I may have missed a chance to see one just a week ago!