Reunion in Toccoa?

On foreclosure day, I was slated to return to Stephens County for the first time since I was a young lawyer, associated with a law firm in Toccoa. My association lasted only briefly (about eight months) and I left there in the Fall of 1982 to take a position as a law clerk for a judge in the Flint Circuit. This leaving was decided on a less than mutual basis, probably determined by my inability to assimiliate into the life of Toccoa, as a young single man from Metropolitan Atlanta might find difficulties under those circumstances.

Nevertheless, as I drove through North Georgia, crying the losses of hearth and home for citizens in various counties, I found myself driving northeastward from Athens, where I had attended law school, toward my old place of residence in Toccoa. As I drove, it occurred to me that I was returning to Toccoa exactly twenty five years after I left. I wondered if there might be any changes in the town when I returned. I also wondered if I might find any of the lawyers and people who I associated with when I was a young lawyer. It never really occurred to me that twenty five years might post some obstacles between me and my reunion.

The mountains through which I drove were suffering from the drought which has taken many trees throughout this year. So many trees lay bear or showed dead leaves. The colors had been muted to greys and muddy browns from the greens of Summer and the pretty colors of Autumn. The present state of the economy of the state of Georgia had also taken a lot of the hopeful prosperity formerly found in the little mountain hollows. I saw indications of the loss of jobs and opportunities in the empty structures and for sale signs along the roadside.

The first thing that I noticed as I drove up from Athens was the handiwork of the Georgia Department of Transportation. In an effort to bring prosperity and ready transportation to the mountains of North Georgia and beyond, the DOT had widened, reconfigured and slashed the roads and countryside through which I drove. Nothing seemed that familiar. It seemed to me that every road had been widened and pushed through the forests and pastureland to make it easier to get from point 'a' to point 'b.' As they reconfigured these passages through the mountains, a lot of new buildings and fast food restaurants and convenience stores sprouted up, lived their lives and then died along the new roads. Only the areas close to the intersections of the mountain roads and the interstate highways survived.

The roads from the interstate and from Cornelia and Clarksville were reset and the route seemed longer than twenty five years ago. Of course, that might have been an illusion created by the advent of time and I realized that even as I followed pickup trucks from Gwinnett County headed for new homes in the mountains and tourists from Florida on their way to Highlands and Cashiers. The roads I had once used as a young attorney to drive from Toccoa to the various towns and villages in North Georgia were rerouted to allow for easier travel from the interstate and the discount malls and the major cities noticed on their signs to other locals deemed desirable for travel from these locations. At the same time, many formerly sizeable towns were bypassed and left to rot on the vine like so much unpicked fruit. Some of these quaint little villages in North Georgia, like Baldwin and Demorest, were like this.

Unfortunately, Toccoa seemed to be one as well. US 441/Georgia 17 was once a major thoroughfare from Athens through Toccoa and on up to Clayton and Franklin, North Carolina. Now I found it rerouted to bypass Toccoa on the west, cutting a four lane path through the mountains, but ignoring the old route through town. Coming up from Cornelia, the former apple capital of North Georgia, home of the "Big Apple", I crossed over the new four lane, past a new convenience store/gas station, and headed up into the little mountain pillow protecting and preserving Toccoa.

When I drove into town, I noticed that a former Dairy Queen at which I had once bought biscuits for my breakfast was closed up and shuttered. A number of businesses on the route into town were now abandoned. When I arrived in the center of town, most of the downtown area seemed abandoned and suffering from the loss of industry and a reason for coming to live in Toccoa. There were storefronts begging for tenants; there were open areas where buildings had once stood. The county and the city had taken over old business locations to feed the hungry or otherwise serve the needy. Cars and trucks were parked in the downtown parking, but I could see no place where the owners might be working.

The old courthouse where I was sworn in as an attorney in the presence of my family and fellow lawyers, was under some type of reconstruction. You couldn't tell what they intended to use the structure for. A new government building stood at the foot of the hill from which the original courthouse towered over the town. I walked over to the government building and entered the clerk's office. No one working in the office looked familiar to me. I inquired as to the location of the spot from which foreclosure sales were read and was directed to a spot in front of the new building.

As I read the foreclosure notice, no one came near to hear what I might be offering. I had hoped that one of the attorneys who had practiced in Toccoa might show up, but no one remotely looking like an attorney showed. Several rough looking residents buying tags for their pickups and late model cars came and went without even looking at me. After reading the notice and tendering a bid on the house, I knocked the house off to some bank in California or elsewhere, and decided to walk around the courthouse square one time before I left.

Was this the same place in which I had tried cases and searched title and represented the needy? Where were the busy citizens I had briefly served back in 1982? Everything looked familiar, but tarnished and crumbling. No one familiar showed themselves as I walked a circuit around the courthouse. This had once, briefly been my home. Now, nothing like home was there.

As I drove up 441 toward a spot to turn around and head back down toward my last stop in Dawsonville and home, I thought about the sadness of my leaving back in 1982. I thought about how distressed I had been when I left Toccoa to come back home and on to Barnesville. At the time I thought that I had suffered a great loss. Now I wonder.

I considered the changes I had seen in Toccoa and the changes I have seen in Griffin over the years. Overall, I was ultimately glad I had left Toccoa and come down to Spalding County. The textile industry which had fed both towns is dying a slow death, and both cities are struggling to replace the jobs and business they have lost over the years. But all in all, I am glad now that I left Toccoa in late 1982. It was a brief respite from which I hope I learned some lessons. Perhaps I am still learning lessons.