I do wish that the farmers would label their fields in big
enough signs so motorists can read them: Tomatoes, onions, red beans, rice,
sausage – you get the point. Very helpful for the ignorant traveler, i.e.: me.
Camouflage is a neutral color. I saw brown camouflage mid-calf
pants worn with an expensive looking white knit sweater-set. The top was edged
in crocheted lace. The woman was easily in her late 50s, early 60s, her long
silvery-white hair pulled back in a black barrette, makeup applied exquisitely
to her beautiful face. Another man wore his Real-tree with a red Cardinals t-shirt,
another wore green Vietnam-style camo with a Pittsburg Steelers shirt. Did you
know that Deseret storm camo goes with a pink tank top? I could go on and on,
but the consensus is that camouflage, whether worn by men or women goes with
everything.
Next observation: In Moorehaven I saw a car. One. Everyone
else had a pick-up truck, Jeep, or some sort of 4-wheel drive. Outside the
Moorehaven Country Store was a humongous deer strung up ready for butchering. A
man proudly stood next to the deer with his bow and arrows front and center, chest
pushed out, camera ready. Across the street the local feed store pronounced on
a hand-lettered sign that bags of deer corn are available. Guess it worked.
In the middle of no-where, a house, front porch filled with
rocking chairs, perched amidst rolling cotton fields. A good 100 yards from the
house, five-feet from the road was a covered wood-plank stand with honey lined
up in various amber hues, a sign read: Honey, honor system. Take your honey,
leave money in box.
I passed a yard full of every imaginable kind of appliance
in various forms of rusted and broken-down manner that could be found. The
front yard was not visible. A sign painted in red with at least a four-inch
brush proudly announced “broken appliances for sale: cheap.”
Some of the towns held their pride high with clean streets,
washed store fronts, and old southern houses painted and beautiful. Others
looked like they were going to erode back into the red clay and never be seen
again. I felt really sad for the last ones – they are on the way out, and
unless someone in those towns decides to take a hand and spruce them up, they’ll
be swallowed back into the antediluvian forest and forgotten.
I stayed off the major highways – rode the streets less
traveled, drumming my own way across Georgia, singing rather-off tune to
whatever song my I-pod threw at me. The air was clean – no industrialization,
no smoke from vast lines of cars. With the sun-roof back when it wasn’t
raining, I could smell fresh-turned earth, scent green-growing things breaking
free of the soil and reaching to the sky. Sometimes I knew when the cattle
areas were nearing, but it was the clean scent of critters out in the fields,
munching grass and lipping water from small ponds.
Rushing to go someplace leaves out so much of the pleasure.
Getting there, to me, is at least half the fun, and hands-clenched-tight-on-Interstate-traffic-packed-roads
is not my idea of fun. It is hard to imagine that I drove twelve hours since
Friday night, and pulled into my driveway at 3:30pm on Sunday refreshed and
ready to write.
Both Baggins and I had a lovely time: going, visiting, and
coming home. Seems we also brought back a trunk full of inspiration. Thank you
to the state of Georgia, thanks Nicole for planning such a fun party, and thank
you, Kathy for being my friend and for being older than me.
Imagining the possibilities,
Peggy
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