To hear that my small hometown is “dying” is heartbreaking.
You see, I come from a small industrial town in middle Georgia. It’s one of those towns where when I grew up everyone knew everyone {and everyone’s business}. There were cotton mills throughout the town and if you were quiet and still you could hear the hum of the machines day in and day out. It’s a town where dogwoods bloomed in the spring and skeeters {that’s mosquitos for all you city-folk} would eat you alive in the summer. The fall was full of high school football, and if we were lucky enough we’d get a dusting of snow {but mostly ice} in the winter.
There was no hustle and bustle of the big city, but there were mom and pop shops, diners, and churches on just about every street corner. And then there was the Silvertown Ball Park, where I spent most of my younger days eating snow cones and watching my brother play baseball.
It was a town with ice cream socials at church on Sunday afternoons, and parades through the town square for just about any occasion.
There was floating the Flint River with all your friends, dinners at the local Piggy Park, first dates to the Ritz Theater, and Friday after school gatherings at Big Chic.
People came together, and laughed, and gathered, and was one big happy family.
Picture it:
1981 – A little red-headed girl sitting at a base ball park watching baseball with red snow cone dripping down her chin.
1988 – A stadium filled with fans throughout the town dressed in black and gold cheering for the R.E. Lee Rebels who just won the high school state championship.
1991 – This same red-headed girl {with maybe a little more brown now} who had the perfect 90’s bangs getting ready with her friends to go hang out at the local “teen club” The Hanger.
1995 – K-mart parking lot…the local hang-out for kids
That little girl is all grown up and gone now.
After leaving I always loved {and still do} coming “home”. Coming up Highway 19 and turning onto R street {yes, that’s the name of the street on which I grew up} feels so good. My heart is happy and skips a beat when I come into town.
When I became a mama I dreamed of the day I could bring my kids to come and visit this great town in which I grew up. I looked forward to showing them what small town living is all about…the goodness, the pureness, the love.
I’ve been gone for over 10 years now and it saddens me to my core as to how much this town has changed. The humming of the cotton mill machines have long since stopped. In fact what’s left of any of the mills are just sad, dilapidated buildings. The mom and pop shops have mostly closed, and the town is hanging on by strings.
And then to hear that some people within the town don’t want to change it, don’t want to make it better, just breaks my heart. I know people don’t like change, but people change is good. I’m not saying the town has to become a Peachtree City or the next Atlanta, but what’s wrong with bringing back it’s greatness. Who says there can’t be a Mayberry of 2013. Personally I think that would be pretty cool.
Let’s get our faces out from behind our iPhones, get out on the streets and have a big old parade just because it’s summer, and come fall show up at Matthew’s Field on Friday nights to support those high school boys. Why should we, you ask? Because it’s who “we” are; because it’s Thomaston and that’s what we do!
Yes, the dogwoods will bloom in the spring, the skeeters with eat the stuffin’ out of you in the summer, and I would love nothing more but to bring my children back to my hometown to experience “being southern” at it’s finest.
With all my love to my great hometown!
S~
