We were on the road a little past dawn, headed straight into my past.
I spent the first part of my life in Sowega, and you’d have to be from there to know what it means. Southwest Georgia. So now you’re a native. I also spent a great deal of time working on roads and bridges, so I know places no one else does. Sikes Mill was a quiet place, the Orange Spider Massacre happened there. Wolf Creek was nearby, and I spent a day there once, preparing for an in-house exam.
The turn on County Line Road in Thomas County was where I took to go to a friend’s house, and I’ve never been to Whigham’s main attraction.
I have reached Climax, which is nearby, and sang an Elton John song on Alice Street in Bainbridge.
Heading north from Bainbridge, I saw the house, once a nice house in a nice yard, and now the house is abandoned and the yard a sea of weeds. I met a woman who wanted a ride home so I took her there, we spent some time together, and then none. I remember a lot of weird things in Colquitt, like the man who got a DUI on a riding mower right in front of our paving crew. We had seen him riding past before, and once he turned it over in a ditch so we helped him out. He didn’t spill any of his beer.
A man had a mountain in his yard there, and someone offered to move it and couldn’t.
Steve, a guy I worked with, lost a sheet of paper by the road one day, work related paperwork, and asked me to help him look for it a week later. We went out, stopped, and he walked three feet and found it.
The cypress stump, seven feet across that guarded a well is gone now, the new road ate it.
The guy that lived in a trailer near the road was killed with his brother and three other people in a car wreck in 1980. The trailer is gone now. The hotel I took a woman to in 1982 is still there, and I remember how nervous she was to be in a hotel. She and I were both young, and she had never had sex except in the back of a car or two.
The golf course is a hay field again, and the country club closed, apparently.
New road work done long after I was gone confused the landscape, got rid of a lot of dirt roads, and obliterated landmarks, like the old building where a hamburger place stood. We went there when I was a little kid.
There’s a bypass, and I don’t have to drive through Blakely, where ghosts line up like roadkill on every corner. I don’t have to drive by the house I always thought of as a prison. I don’t have to travel this road but once or twice more in my life, and eventually, I, too, will be forgotten.
Take Care,
Mike
The actress Miriam Hopkins (1902 – 1972) was raised in Bainbridge and is buried there. A friend of mine has many family in and around Blakely.
Hummus, it is a small world. I randomly met a woman in the gym I go to whose father once dated my sister, back in the late 1900’s.
I may have mentioned this before but we used to go to Climax to practice rapelling in what we thought was a big sinkhole – on one of those trips some dude popped out of the ground while we were climbing and we found out that it was the entrance to a very large cave system… we explored several miles of that cave up to a point where we got to an underground river where we initially thought the cave ended but on a later trip; once again; someone popped up out of the river who had been exploring ‘the other side’ of the cavern… I never went further in that cave as I moved out of the area but some of the people I was with remained and explored quite a bit further…
I found some photos online from others that have explored that same cave system;
https://www.hairofthedawg.net/thread-244.html
Keith,
there was an entrance to that cave system in Cairo and we all thought it would lead to the opening in Climax, but the landowner is Cairo put a set of bars up to keep people out. When I was younger I was crazy enough and limber enough to go for it.
Okay, Mike, I’ll bite.
Or two?… 😉
Scoacat, back in the day, particularly before I was old enough to rent a hotel room, cars or the ground was the only places we had. My father’s car or her parents’ car were the only options until I turned eighteen. I was nervous as hell renting a room for the first time, and we both were nervous as hell being there. That was back when everyone used cash, and no one could really keep up with you because there were no cell phones. It was an odd transformation from being a high schooler to being an adult to have sex in a rented room rather than the front seat of a car. Cars these days? Yeah, no, there isn’t enough room.
the odd thing about cars being too small for that now is how they are sumultaneously so much larger…
i have been driving toyota trucks (basically what is now the tacoma) since 1985. i am currently on my 3rd with over 600,000 miles across those 3 vehicles (the first was the hilux which predates the rebranding but it is basically the same vehicle.
occasionally i run across someone still driving one of those old 1980s era toyota trucks and they seem so small, in my memories mine seemed so much larger, i am 6’3 and slept in that truck on many road trips. despite being a lot bigger overall it feels more cramped inside. granted i am fatter but the old truck had bench style seats and a lot more leg room. i could also recline the seats fully so sleeping was easy.
Keith, those damn consoles, I swear.
Mike, while you may not be remembered in your old stomping grounds, you are known and will not be forgotten in other areas of the country and world.
It is interesting how many stories and ghosts appear when you return to where you grew up. If someone asks you for directions, you have to catch yourself before saying, “turn right just past where the Smith house used to be…”.
Tim,
the part that hurts is how many dirt roads through the woods are now paved with a lot of traffic. Places only a few of us knew about are now forgotten completely because there’s no stopping, building a bonfire, and hanging out. Ghosts are all I have left now. Memories of times that few people remember in places that no longer exist. Someone said you’re old when you know more dead people than living.