This is where I grew up, where my daydreams took me places with which I never thought I would actually connect, and made me always ponder what was beyond the horizon.
It is now a place where I recall faces and circumstances of yesteryear but have no relationship with anyone, anymore, in this town of 3,362 except for a couple of younger Bulldog fans.
My parents no longer tend an expansive garden which yielded abundant vegetables which they prepared for winter in a big chest type freezer. My hard-working father thought that size accommodated more frozen packets of peas and butterbeans, which he shared with his offspring.
When I visited the farm, a two-hour trip south of my home in Athens, I knew that I would return with frozen vegetables to enjoy—especially this time of the year when the temperatures began trending downward on the thermometer.
What I would give to be able to stop by for lunch at their modest spread in an area known as “Buckeye.” Peas, butterbeans, corn and thin cornbread were mealtime staples as far back as I can remember.
I have always enjoyed cornbread, but nobody ever prepared it in a skillet like my mother. She made cornbread like she did hoecakes—if you are fortunate to know what that is; medallions of batter about the size of a saucer, fried, salty and tasty. It was the greatest rural hors d’oeuvre I ever had. Given a choice of my mother’s thin cornbread and an award-winning sundae, I would take her cornbread every time. I’m sure the angels took a liking to her thin cornbread when she arrived.
On the weekends, when I was a budding teenager, I worked at my uncle’s gas station, which we called “filling station.” I would pump gas for Georgia fans driving to Athens to see the Bulldogs play. I often wondered what that was like and read about the big games drawing 45,000 fans. I figured Sanford Stadium was bigger than Macon, the largest city I had ever seen.
My uncle was a Georgia graduate. He saw Charley Trippi play. I was overwhelmed when he talked about what it was like to watch the Bulldogs play an afternoon game between hedges.
“Someday,” I told my brother, who was four years younger, “I’m going to find out what that is like.” I just wanted to see one game, not once thinking that I would someday reach a point where I could boast that I have missed but two Georgia games, home and away, since being discharged from the Coast Guard in the fall of 1962.
I thought about the many times I have passed through Wrightsville on the way to the Georgia-Florida game, joining the caravanning of fans I once held in awe for their good fortune to follow the team of the state university, which I knew little about.
There was a time when I would organize my trip so that I could enjoy lunch at Nanna’s Kitchen on Elm Street with my best friend, Hodges Rowland, who practiced law. He, too, matriculated in Athens and considered it a highlight of his summer when I would mail him a copy of the Georgia football media guide in early August.
Hodges could have made it with a prestigious law firm in Atlanta or elsewhere, but he chose to return home and enjoy the good life of small-town living. There were quail and dove to shoot, fish to catch; golf and poker with his friends—local pastimes which were diversions from the rigors of his work routine.
On occasion, I have taken time to ride by the football field where we practiced and played our games which was a Neanderthal competition compared to what it is today. That old field gave way to consolidation of the school system by the time Herschel Walker came along forty-plus years ago.
I miss those days because I now know why they are so important. It was a selfless environment. Everybody tended to their own knitting. Earthquakes, floods and disasters took place far away. Every man expected to work for his daily bread. A man’s word was his bond. There was no need to lock our doors. You get in trouble at school, you had a higher authority to answer to when you got home.
The good neighbor policy was entrenched. We worked five days a week and a half-day on Saturday. We never missed church on Sunday. We respected the flag.
Life was simpler then.