I just had a strange dream. When I couldn't watch my normal Sunday morning news shows because of the wind, I lay back down.
At one point His Majesty came in and Meowed up at me, as if to say
but he was on the floor and I was still attempting to watch TV at that point.
He left, I got disgusted with the TV and turned it off.
Just as I was dozing off, I heard (I'm sure of this) a short "Yeow" which worried me, so I went to the door and looked out but saw no signs of a Hawk.
So In My Dream, Sir Thomas and I were back in Claxton, as the downtown used to be before the great "4 lane rape".
(Like many if not most small towns in Georgia, Claxton was first built around the Train Depot, as all shipping back in 1907 was done via rail.
As a result, the town was bifurcated by the RR, with streets on both sides, Ours had Main St on the North, and RR Ave on the south side of the tracks.
Some BYL (Bright Young Lad) got the idea that you could MOVE the tracks completely outside the city, and free up the space so that those two streets would become the West bound (main st) and East bound (RR Ave) lanes of a single 4 lane street.
So construction and destruction began, long before it became obvious that it would be too costly to relocate those tracks.
The result was the loss of many businesses that were already struggling and the closing of others.
There are now 4 lanes, the RR remains in place, and to make room, lots of history is gone.😢
Over on the RR Avenue side, where that block of buildings that had Styles 5&10¢, "Lipsitzs" and other stores, Tommy and I were sight seeing.
We went into a dept store, that I think really used to be over there, browsed around, then went into the back.
There were dozens of faces from my past amongst those back there as they attempted to get the Burglar Alarm to set.
Everyone was impatiently waiting in the hallway. I went into one of those backrooms, and saw some interesting things, almost knocked over some bottles, stopped to admire myself in a small mirror (I still had my long hair).
Then when I turned around to check, the hallway and front of the store were dark and deserted. Everyone had left us!
by
Jerry E Smith
©11/27/2022
The two old images from my home town were taken by Brian Brown
Brian Brown is a documentary photographer and historian from Fitzgerald, Georgia, who currently resides in Coastal Georgia
His first passion, supported enthusiastically by his parents and numerous mentors, was the natural world, especially birds and native plants. Milton N. Hopkins, Jr., author of In One Place: The Natural History of a Georgia Farmer, was an early influence. He facilitated Brown’s first published work at age 16, observations on the birdlife of southern Georgia in The Oriole, the state’s ornithological journal. He fondly recalls time spent in the field with Roger Tory Peterson, author of A Field Guide to the Birds, in Monroe County in 1986. An essay on roadside wildflowers also appeared in the state botanical magazine, Tipularia.
While working on his high school newspaper (thanks to his advisor, Brenda Whitley) he interviewed Erskine Caldwell, legendary author of Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre, spending an hour with him at a concrete picnic table under the long leaf pines at Fitzgerald’s Blue & Gray Park. It may be among Caldwell’s last interviews.
Which were posted on the Website Vanishing Georgia/Claxton
