Doc Speer's Place

Green paint on the outside brick wall of Doc Speer's Place, LaGrange, Georgia (14 April 2012)

Today's post is co-hosted by my other blog, WilliamsWrite. 

Like many small towns, LaGrange is full of interesting photo opportunities. The Hillside neighborhood, in the southwest part of town, is particularly interesting. Over the last decade, DASH for LaGrange has rehabilitated several dozen old "mill houses," saving them from destruction while revitalizing a shrinking community. Doc Speer's Place, the wall of which is pictured above, is among the buildings DASH has salvaged.

The green paint still clings to Doc's brick wall, decades after the last business vacated the premises. The floor and roof of the old store rotted and fell years ago; by the time DASH came along, six-inch-thick magnolia trees grew through the foundation and up the inside walls. But the basic structure was in decent shape, and it was a shame to tear down one of the last old-fashioned store buildings in LaGrange.

So the DASH team and community leaders decided to transform Doc Speer's Place into a sort of open-air meeting place. The vines still grow up the walls, along with privet hedge saplings nearly 20 feet high, but now they hang over picnic tables and chairs set about the 1,500 s.f. space. It's a strangely peaceful place to have a bake sale or street fair.

More photos of Doc Speer's to come, after I post final grades next week.

Daffodils up front?

Truck hauling chicken manure north on U.S. Highway 27, Carroll County
(trust me, it was chicken poop)

On a drizzly February morning, this roadside in southern Carroll County doesn't look special. The six-inch-high stubble tells me the D.O.T. mowed this shoulder in early fall; the privet and wild blackberry brambles haven't had time to break dormancy.

But the D.O.T. mows roadsides all over the state. So what?

When a place is no more

What's it like to drive past a place you knew for many years—and then discover it's gone? 
Perhaps I shouldn't say place. Perhaps building, or what used to stand at that place. The site, the location, is still there. It's not going anywhere. Its appearance, though...

Well, shoot. This is probably all a matter of semantics. And you probably understand what I'm talking about, anyway.

In my family, our longtime Labor Day weekend tradition is to spend a day at the Powers' Crossroads Festival. I pick up my Mom at her house in the cool hours of the morning, and we drive the 26 miles to the Festival grounds on the Heard-Coweta County border. To get there, we take Georgia Highway 34 through Franklin. This route intersects Bevis Road, which in turn winds past my old elementary school.

We take the same route every year. Nothing different—well, until 2010.

The old Heard Elementary on Bevis Road, early to mid-1980s
(courtesy of Heard County Elementary School)

The hand-lettered sign at the intersection caught my eye. "Salvage sale at Heard Elementary this weekend?! What the—"

Weathered boards and daffodils

As I mentioned in my last post, roadside daffodils don't get there by themselves. It's not as if they march over to wherever they want and dig themselves in with a little bone meal sprinkled about. No, roadside daffodils are there because someone planted them in front of what used to be a house.

Looking northbound

Looking southbound

Daffodils mean "home"

Living in a small town often means commuting a long distance to work somewhere else. In my case, I commute 45 miles one way. I've done this for nearly ten years; it's the price I pay for the relatively slow pace of life in west central Georgia. While the drive sometimes gets old, the scenery does not.