Vanishing Georgia

The University of Georgia has a collection of photos entitled “Vanishing Georgia”.  Recently, as  a friend and I drove through back roads in northeastern Georgia, I was reminded once again of how much of our rural state is vanishing beneath the ravishes of both time and rural sprawl.  I saw some lovely Victorian homes, with their intricate carpentry embellishment in gables, eaves and porches, sinking slowing into the ground, abandoned next to automobile dealerships or railroad tracks.  I saw humble farm homes, the outline of the original log cabin still obvious, melting back into the earth.

Each time I pass a solitary chimney, or see a patch of daffodils blooming in the middle of nowhere, I wonder about the farm family who once lived in a house on that patch of earth.  I think of the pride of the husband and sons as they completed the dwelling, the hours the ladies spent over the wash pot fire in the rear yard, the hog killings in the fall, children with watermelon juice dripping from their fingers as they relished the sweet fruit on hot summer afternoons, the oh-so-important Sunday meetings at the churches, found in the smallest communities, where the family thanked God for their blessings, together.

I mourn my passing Georgia, which is why I write about her.