Walking at night in Milledgeville, Georgia
A tough day from the very beginning. The stove doesn't work--something wrong with the propane--so there isn't any coffee. There being no coffee is the worst thing that can happen, like waking up without a heart and thinking you'll have to go around the whole day without one: it's so bad not even Otis Redding singing "Try a Little Tenderness" can convince you of your own feelings, much less that they're worthy. There's nothing to be done but to pack up camp and hit the road.
There being no coffee there's no real breakfast, there being no little cafe's anymore in the small towns on the backroads anymore: all the cafe's, such as they are, are now built along the main roads, the interstates, and don't offer real breakfasts, offering instead imitation breakfast's made of a imitation egg and a slice of imitation cheese placed between a bread product imitating a real southen biscuit made from scratch.
There being no real breakfast, by the time you drive into Unadilla you're starved, at least I am, and stop at a restaurant in the countryside in the early afternoon for a Ten Commanments sandwich and a beverage or, as they call a carbonated soft drink here, 'a pop.' A large picture of Jesus as a white man hangs on the wall. The motif of the place is of worn-through formica, which is quite beautiful, and the humidity of a whole chicken being fried in a fryer full of Crisco, a kind of perfection achieved only through millenia and millenia of hard work, righteousness, and patience. The people who run the restaurant are real nice, the kind of people who take your order at the counter and don't expect you to pay unless you're happy with your sandwich, small town Christian people, Free Will Baptist I imagine but I could be mistaken.
I banter with them about the weather--hot--and the glorious water they serve. I say, "this is some of the best water I've ever tasted, and I know water." "It's just city water," the man behind the counter says, modestly. I tell him that I'm a water aficianado, that I've tasted the most exquisite waters of five different continents, and that this water, the water of Unadilla, Georgia is the best I've ever tasted. Most people in the countryside drill their own wells, he responds.
We'd both like to continue the conversation--his wife has come out of the kitchen to join us, having been to California and having overheard I'm a California--but before he gets to quoting Scripture it's time for both of us to move on.
By 5 pm I've reached Milledgeville, national headquarters of The Flannery O'Connor Peacock Society and Symposium. My traveling partner, the lovely Lea Ann McGee of Meeteetsee, Wyoming, and I find a high-quality RV park just outside town, hose down the RV and ourselves, take a nap, get dressed in our best t-shirts and find a nice restaurant downtown. I order a ribeye steak smothered in mushrooms and onions and cheese, and a vodka martini, my first martini in almost 2 weeks. Carly the young waitress has heard of Flannery O'Connor but has never been to Andalusia, the farm estate owned by O'Connor's mother that's been turned into a kind of musuem, nor does Carly seem at all curious.
After dinner we walk the town. All Milledgeville's really good parts, the parts the town fathers want you to see, are concentrated in little squares of no more than 3 or 4 city blocks that you can't get lost in: it's a brilliant town plan, there should have been many more like it. And if there's any greater freedom than walking around a southern town of genius that's brand new to you on a weeknight at about 9:30 pm accompanied by your best friend and a balmy light breeze, I can't imagine what it might be: the conditions for anonymity are ideal
I don't want anyone else to know me: that's my project, at least for tonight.
Episcopal Church, downtown Milledgeville, Ga. June 4, 2019. General Sherman stabled his horses in this church on his way to Atlanta, or so they say. Photo by author.