A little hint at life in the other Georgia
Christina Davidson, on the road writing for The Atlantic, has a somber piece on the effects of the recession on the people of Millen, Ga., a little town between Augusta and Savannah.
Jobs are disappearing, people are disappearing. The town is drying up. Vera Williams, owner of Vera’s Cafe, faces the prospect of having to close her business.
“Vera feels that God is not only testing her, but testing the whole world. “Love of money–that’s what got us in the state we’re in.” From her perspective, the world has earned the trials and tribulations unleashed by the global economy, but will learn valuable lessons through the experience. “Even though this is a bad time, this is a good time too. Now you learn what you really need.”
It’s worth a read.
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240 comments Add your comment
Goober
June 29th, 2009
4:08 pm
I think most of us can truthfully say that we have more than we need.
I Report :-) You Whine :-(
June 29th, 2009
4:09 pm
Yeah, it’s just the creme del la creme to be unemployed, be serious.
You’re gonna miss capitalism when it’s gone.
Well, maybe not in the state run propaganda business.
Frederick Douglass
June 29th, 2009
4:14 pm
How did things get so bad since Jan.20,2009?
Normal
June 29th, 2009
4:17 pm
Yeah, small towns are doomed. Big business has killed the mon and pop businesses, which was not only the bread and butter of small towns, but their personality, or flavor, if you will…This is the result of capitalism run amok.
GOP is gone
June 29th, 2009
4:17 pm
Ted Haggard is on Oprah in rerun now. What a sham.
RealityKing
June 29th, 2009
4:17 pm
Get ready for Obama’s energy efficient government run healthcare units.., like the ones tens of thousands of elderly Europeans died in a few years back.
Normal
June 29th, 2009
4:20 pm
Frederick, The town I did alot of growing up in, the last time I was there, had two thirds of the towns homes empty, and nearly all of the business, too. That in 2005 when things were still concidered good.
Small towns have been dying for a long, long time…
GOP is gone
June 29th, 2009
4:21 pm
Ted Haggard on his lie about his Meth problem ” now you see how conflicted I was” , no Ted I just see a big fat liar.
Bosch
June 29th, 2009
4:21 pm
Oh RealityKing do tell.
Redneck Convert
June 29th, 2009
4:23 pm
Well, funny how this Obama run the economy into the ground in just six months or so. Things were pretty good under My President. Now I run into little kids trying to sell old used up golf balls on the course I play. Some even try to sell broke-off golf tees. The only thing doing good up my way is the boiled peanut business. No matter where you go in GA somebody’s got a sign up advertizing boiled peanuts. Or the We Bare All places that try to sucker truckers to stop for a few hours.
Anyhow, you libruls voted for this Obama and now you’re getting your comeuppance. Have a good night everybody.
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:25 pm
Scanned the article…likened those leaving to the Joads. Oy! Something tells me my rural Southern ire has been roused. We’re such a stolid lot, you know…
Pogo
June 29th, 2009
4:25 pm
Yea Normal, it’s all capitalism’s fault. You are about to see what a delight it is to live in a socialistic society unfettered by the “constraints” of the free market. Of course, you and DB and Amvet are the type that will fit in well because you appear to be people who will readily sell your liberty and your freedom for a government nanny state. Since you spend so much time on this blog you are made to order for socialism. Sit in your little room, the government gives you three squares and a roof over your head and you can tap away on your keyboard on this meaningless blog all day long and you are happy as little mindless liberal clams.
Ga. tech Dad
June 29th, 2009
4:30 pm
Jay, How about your thoughts on the attacks taking place around the Ga. Tech campus? My kids will be walking to and from class before dark and will be carrying protection. What do you think hard working middle class kids should do to protect themselves from street thugs who are basically terrorists?
RealityKing
June 29th, 2009
4:31 pm
More than 37,451 Europeans died in August, 2003. A month in which many people, including government ministers and physicians, are on holiday. Many bodies were not claimed for weeks because relatives were out of town. On 3 September 2003, fifty-seven bodies still left unclaimed in the Paris area were buried.
That shortcomings of the nation’s health system could allow such a death toll is stil a matter of controversy. Many of the editorials(Pepe le Jays) blamed the administration. Many blamed Health Minister for failing to return from vacation when the heat wave became serious, and for blocking emergency measures in public hospitals such as the recalling of physicians. Head of the union of emergency physicians blamed the administration for ignoring warnings from health and emergency professionals and trying to minimize the crisis. But America’s elderly will have no one but themselves to blame..
pat
June 29th, 2009
4:33 pm
Boy that stimulus did a lot of good, didn’t it. Let’s evaulte what it did for the economy. It…, well, then it…., crap, it did nothing. Wow! I could have spent 787 Billion dollars better than that!
RealityKing
June 29th, 2009
4:34 pm
Cap and Trade, 80% CO2 reduction, what a wonderful idea. It’ll only cost an extra $175 per person..
Tricky D
June 29th, 2009
4:35 pm
Yeah Pogo, like your ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ wasn’t sold off after 9/11. Trying using liberty to get through TSA, or freedom to drive through a roadblock this weekend. You don’t even have the freedom to make a phone call without it being recorded. Wake up.
godless heathen
June 29th, 2009
4:36 pm
Read the piece. Same story in a lot of small towns. Few or no opportunities unless a big foreign owned car company (non-union) locates nearby. We have always had victims of changing times and the global economy is nothing but changing times.
And all those billions of economic stimulus – won’t a single penny reach Millen, Gerogia.
Normal
June 29th, 2009
4:37 pm
Ga. tech Dad
June 29th, 2009
4:30 pm
———
I recommend a nice 12GA shotgun in stainless steel. Don’t need to learn how to do anything but point and pull the trigger. Be sure to use double aught tho, ’cause it will take out any bystander in the way…
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:37 pm
Read the article folks. A waste of words.
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:42 pm
godless heathen–yeah, same story, different verse. Outside the Carpetbagger/Scalawag enclaves Uncle Sam’s Oldest Colony is still mired in a pattern of economic exploitation of its natural resources (in this case human resources) to the benefit of the imperialist overlords and once that resource is used up, to hell with them. G-d send the jacquerie!
Normal
June 29th, 2009
4:43 pm
POGO: you and DB and Amvet are the type that will fit in well because you appear to be people who will readily sell your liberty and your freedom for a government nanny state.
—————–
Tell me what freedoms am I losing?
—————-
If the Free Market was really the answer, then where is the level playing field for the Mom’s And Pop’s versus the Walmarts, say?
It took away their right to own a viable business and make a decent living, did it not?
————–
Oh, and just so’s you know, I have a job and I do it so well, I can
come in and out of this blog whenever I want.
ByteMe
June 29th, 2009
4:43 pm
Why is it that every little town in the South has a restaurant named after the woman who runs it? Peggy’s, Vera’s, etc.
And the main course is always fried-whatever-couldn’t-move-fast-enough?
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:43 pm
Normal–a switchblade does nicely.
Dusty
June 29th, 2009
4:45 pm
Don’t worry about Millen, GA, Jay. Southerners have learned long ago how to pull themselves out of hard times. It may take a daily diet of collards, cornbread and black eyed peas but they will make it.
Now all those folks sitting around Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago who are waiting on the government to rescue them might be in for a bit of trouble. They will end up with clean air, free medical care, no taxes, no income, no jobs and the opportunity to buy a car real cheap. Good thing about the car. They might have to live in it.
But dear Christina’s great story MUST take place in the South. Notice her list. Not one place above the Mason Dixon Line.
So, Jay, how’s the economy and life in the other Pennsylvania, say around Pittsburg? Everything peachy keen?
OH, everybody’s moving South? The big secret is OUT! That’s the smartest move anyone can make. U betcha!
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:45 pm
ByteMe: Why? “Tradition! Without our traditions out lives would be as shakey as…as a fiddler on the roof.” –Tevye
RealityKing
June 29th, 2009
4:45 pm
As of last Friday, add 12 more Altanta families to Obama’s victim list. I’m not even sure about my own job anymore. What a dismal weekend.., and lead up to America’s independence day. Personally, I blame Jay and his drunken band of clueless liberals..
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:46 pm
DUSTY–the last thing we need is more colonists!
@@
June 29th, 2009
4:50 pm
Location, location, location.
Millen sounds like a place where I’d like to pitch my tent — just millin’ around.
RealityKing
June 29th, 2009
4:53 pm
Good thing squirrels and alligators are plentiful these days..
getalife
June 29th, 2009
4:54 pm
There goes that empathy again Jay.
cons lack that DNA.
Just sayin.
ByteMe
June 29th, 2009
4:56 pm
josef: I spent a solid month years ago living with that tradition for lunch. Yuck! Three choices in the town: Peggy’s, Wendy’s (yes, the real one), and DQ. DQ had more flies inside than outside; Peggy’s was fried everything and oozing oil. And now you understand why I can’t even walk into a Wendy’s without getting nauseous. Ate it too many days in a row.
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:56 pm
RealityKing–
Good thing squirrels and alligators are plentiful these days..
Yeah, and I’m glad to know that I can go out in the woods and come back with supper.
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
4:58 pm
ByteMe–didn’t nobody tell you that even WE don’t eat it all the time!
Normal
June 29th, 2009
5:00 pm
DUSTY: OH, everybody’s moving South? The big secret is OUT! That’s the smartest move anyone can make. U betcha!
————–
I remember a bumper sticker that said: Welcome to the south. Now go home! Time again, I think…
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
5:01 pm
NORMAL–Flannery O’Connor–”Good Country People,” “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
5:02 pm
Bumper stickers, one I saw in Louisiana’s oil patch, “Let the Bast*rds freeze to death in the dark!”
Paul
June 29th, 2009
5:03 pm
Just another effect. People live good lives, work hard, treat others decently – then a bunch of immoral, self centered greedy crooks who tell themselves “I didn’t do anything against the law” hose down the economy and the effects are felt in some little town.
Well, one of those bums just got sentenced to 150 years. Shame is, a bunch of the Wall Street guys got bonuses and multimillion dollar severance packages. (and these are the guys who’re gonna run the market trading cap n trade credits? BOHICA).
And some poor woman in a little town’s about to lose her livelihood, with no real prospects in sight.
It’s a shame -
Dusty
June 29th, 2009
5:05 pm
joseph nix,
I like your lines. Did not see them until I had posted. “A little ire aroused” you say? STOLID! Southerners? Shut yo’ mouth, SIR!!
AmVet
June 29th, 2009
5:06 pm
Damn! That little lurking, drive by, never-served, never-will troglodyte says I’m selling my liberty and freedom?
To whom? And for how much? At least I’d like to know.
Harrumph…
At least he put me in good company…
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
5:09 pm
Vignette from the 1970s–the area around the Mobile River had recently been opened up for oil exploitation (previously G-d Allm-ghty had foreseen the geopolitical divisions of the USofA and the oil had stopped at the Louisiana-Mississippi line.) Well a Yankee journalist had come down to do a write up on “the sudden wealth” coming into the area. It was illustrated with a photo of a local country woman with five little piglets in her arms, telling the reporter how “glad they wuz they wouldn’t be et this winter.” My uncle had a hunting cabin in the area and knew the lady. She was a registered nurse, owned a good chunk of the land and its mineral rights and had a brother with his law degree from Duke working to see to it that locals didn’t get entirely screwed. Did any of that make it into the article? Ha!
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
5:10 pm
DUSTY–no, I had not seen your line. Me and you both come up with it? Tells you something, doesn’t it?
Normal
June 29th, 2009
5:11 pm
AM VET: To the likes of POGO, we are the Axis of Evil…Just sayin’
booger
June 29th, 2009
5:12 pm
I agree with Dusty. People in these small southern towns will weather this just fine. I grew up in a small Ga. town a long time ago, but still have family there. I assure you the last thing these people want or need is govt. help, and God forbid a Govt. program.
And Normal, people in small towns love Wal-Mart. In the town where I grew up many years ago, there was one store to buy clothes, mens and womens. Needless to say, in my school a lot of people dressed alike.
Paul
June 29th, 2009
5:13 pm
Hey Normal
thanks for the Ketchup history. Illuminating.
josef nix
June 29th, 2009
5:15 pm
Paul–It’s a shame -
You’re too kind. It’s a crime, a sin and a disgrace. We say we support capitalism, well isn’t that what the Veras of the world are all about? We want corporatism, and since I’m under the fear of being considered hyperbolic if I call it by name…let’s just say this is precisely the line of thought, action and deed that brought the best fed, best educated, and possessor of the world’s largest gold reserves to its knees in the Cono del Sur in the 1950s.
Dusty
June 29th, 2009
5:16 pm
NORMAL,
I have not seen a bumper sticker that said “Welcome to the South, Now go home.”
Where can I get one?
and NORMAL, for goodness sakes, DO NOT READ Flannery O’Connor. If ever there was one with a lose connection in the upper wiring system, she’s it!
College professors love her! Other crazies crave her words. (Sorry , joseph.)
On second thought, you might like her tangled tales of the weird. There’s something for all kinds I suppose.
Paul
June 29th, 2009
5:19 pm
josef
I’m too tired thinking about those bums to even swear at them. So I settled for “immoral, self centered greedy crooks .” Considering what they did and the lives they ruined, you are correct. I am being too nice.
Normal
June 29th, 2009
5:20 pm
PAUL, You’re welcome, but now you see why they have all that katsup at Mickey D’s…
Dusty: Too late! And She’s like a drug. I try to give it up, but I keep going back…
Bosch
June 29th, 2009
5:20 pm
RealityKing,
Got comparative stats on how many people died in the US in August 2003? Good lord, what’s wrong with you?