Georgia Stories and Songs

Scenes From An Ordinary Life

Stories about people, family, friends and strangers, living and dead. Stories about places, towns, countryside, and the long roads that connect them. And stories about things that happened, some large, most common-place day-to-day, lived through or seen in passing in decades of living in the South.

Essays

  • The Things You Remember

    In the early morning hours of January 31,1968 we were awakened by the sound of incoming mortar and automatic weapon fire. This was not unusual.  We were accustomed to the… Read more ⇢

  • Love You Baby Boy

    In the kitchen with Mama one morning before school eating breakfast when we hear the front door open and Spencer walks through the door.  “I could smell that bacon when… Read more ⇢

  • Something to Talk About

    For 140 years Woodville grew alongside a branch line of the Georgia Railroad, running from Athens to Union Point, the tracks first laid in 1839.  Just up the line is… Read more ⇢

  • Pilgrims on the Move

    Wake up at 5am to the Chuck Wagon Gang and you’re awake.  It was my good fortune to share a barracks at Fort Dix, New Jersey with a fellow who… Read more ⇢

  • Highway 280

    US Highway 280 runs across the middle of Georgia, Columbus to Blitchton, where it intersects Hwy 80 and stops.  Two-hundred and forty miles, crossing rivers, passing farms and fields, miles… Read more ⇢

  • Honeysuckles

    I will be happy to observe my birthday next month if February doesn’t do me in.  This has been an unusually cold winter.  Thirty degrees and overcast this afternoon, too… Read more ⇢

  • Same Old Roads

    I once read a music critic declare that he experienced his greatest pleasure listening to classical music while driving.  The sound coming from an AM signal through the small speakers… Read more ⇢

  • Harness Under Strain

    Old man Sims was the last person in the Black Creek section of the county that still did his plowing with a mule.  He did my grandfather’s garden every spring. … Read more ⇢

  • Traveling Salesman

    When Roy had a job it was most often as a traveling salesman working small towns in South Georgia.  He sold different things over the years to housewives, home owners,… Read more ⇢

  • A Marriage

    A Marriage The piano stood beside an open window that looked down to the dam and the lake.  The house was on a ridge, the music falling down the hill… Read more ⇢

  • El Camino

    El Camino I don’t recall Gene leaving Pembroke, excepting the occasional drive out to Butlers for a bottle.  He didn’t hang around to drink.  Not a social drinker, he would… Read more ⇢

  • Jesse

    Jesse My Aunt Jesse died long before I was born.  She is now a name and dates on a tombstone in the cemetery at Black Creek Baptist Church, Bryan County.         … Read more ⇢

Read more: The Things You Remember