Memories and lessons

We have received more news concerning the young woman who was abducted along the trail up Blood Mountain in Union County, then killed, apparently in Dawson County, her personal items and dog scattered along a trail back to Dekalb County, and her body left to rot in the hills of Dawson County. Listening to the reports, my thoughts caused me to remember where I was on the day after her abduction on New Year's Day, 2008.

On January 2, 2008, I was driving through North Georgia, conducting foreclosure sales throughout the region. I had started with my back against the brick wall of the Rockdale County Courthouse, trying to avoid the January wind whipping through me, crying a foreclosure notice to no one but myself. Having completed the task, I drove on to Winder in Barrow County, where the old courthouse had a few people standing in the cold and wind waiting for a cry-out. Having completed the ritual there, I headed on to Gainesville.

At the spot appointed for cry-outs in Gainesville, there were several people dressed in coats, hats, gloves and balaclavas. I skipped over ice collected on the sidewalks to get to the steps, and wished I had listened to my wife and wore my topcoat, hat and gloves. I had three cry-outs in Hall County, and I was cold and hungry. Fortunately, the people congregated for the sale were pleasant. Nevertheless, I persevered and finished the cry-outs without incident.

With that, I walked gingerly back to my car and headed the car out and around the streets of Gainesville, trying to find the route which would take me to Blairsville and Union County.

As I maneuvered around the streets in Gainesville, I finally found signs pointing me toward Blairsville. I drove on north up the appointed highway toward Union County. As I drove, I crossed over fingers of the dwindling waters of Lake Lanier. Boathouses and pleasure boats had been moved down from their original moorings to spots to which the waters had receded.

Once past Lake Lanier, I drove through White County and its county seat of Cleveland. As soon as I entered White County, I began to see the remnants of snow from the night before. Wherever I saw trees and hills providing protection from the rising sun, I found the remaining frosting of the Winter precipitation. I encountered some traffic as I approached the square in Cleveland, and I wondered where everyone was going on the day after New Years. Most everywhere else I had been seemed partially deserted with the holidays. I puttered toward the town center of Cleveland and I passed the sign for 'Babyland General', where the cabbage patch babies are born, and the old-fashioned, original White County courthouse on the square in the center of town. Its red brick was still decorated for the Christmas holidays.

Pressing past the square, I drove on up through northern White County and into Union County. I knew these roads quite well, having traveled them as a young attorney in Toccoa and having driven them recently two summers ago when Cindy, Kate and I stayed in the Days' cabin just north of Vogel State Park. As I drove up toward Blood Mountain and down the hill past Vogel State Park and on toward Blairsville, it occurred to me that the route was quite different from my previous trip in the summer of 2005. Back then, Friday and Saturday had found us maneuvering through a late summer rain shower to and from the cabin. Everything was quite green and the temperature was around 75 in the cooler mountains. We really enjoyed that trip and the Days' cabin, and we even spent some time in Vogel State Park looking around on Saturday. On Sunday, Kate and I took advantage of the sunny weather and hiked up Blood Mountain to the stone shelter at the top of the mountain, which had been built by the CCC in the Thirties. On a trip ordinarily slated for around six hours, up and back down, Kate and I completed the trip in three. At the time, we had thought that we had trudged up and down the mountain at a reasonably slow rate, but as it turned out, we had halved the trip from the normal time.

As I drove around the curvy mountain road, I looked at the thermometer in the car, registering the outside temperature. At one point it read fifteen degrees. That was to be the lowest temperature I would notice on my journey, but it would never rise above the freezing point. The roads were covered with gravel left by the Department of Transportation to dry out the ice and snow which had fallen the previous evening. There were some cars on the road, but most of my time was spent trying to avoid any ice and slush I might encounter on the road. I drove on past the entrance to the trail up Blood Mountain and remembered how pleasant it had been when Kate and I had hiked up the mountain in the summer of 2005.

I drove down past Vogel State Park and tried to look down to the lake and the cabins set along the evergreens along the western shore of the lake. I remember thinking it would be nice to rent a cabin and stay for a weekend at Vogel with a fireplace to provide comfort against the cold Winter evening. With the temperature, I figured the availability of such cabins might be pretty high. Back in the summer of 2005, all the cabins had been taken.

I finally made it to Blairsville, skidding down one street on ice and slush, as I searched for the Union County courthouse. Finally finding the courthouse on a hill north of the town center, I looked for the clerk's office to gain information on where the sales were to be cried out at the courthouse. A young man was very helpful in directing me to the front of the courthouse. His mountain accent was downright lyrical and quite unusual from the southern dialect I am used to.

As I left Blairsville, I headed west toward Blue Ridge on the Southern Highlands Parkway. Coming in to the old town of Blue Ridge, one town in those mountains which I had never visited before this day, the check engine light came on, and I wondered where the nearest garage providing car service might be found. At the same time, I realized that I was short cash for such an expenditure, should the car need repair. I pulled in front of the courthouse and cried my last foreclosure sale of the day and then pulled out to drive around town, looking for a garage.

In the center of town, which was perched along and above the railroad tracks and an old wooden train station, now used for other purposes, I found a BP station. I read a sign saying they did repairs on vehicles, so I pulled around and into the station. Hopping out of my car, I went into the office to encounter several people discussing the cold weather, the snow and other things which might be ordinarily discussed in a service station. Several canvas chairs were set out for the use of the waiting patrons.

I told the attendant that my 'check engine' light had come on and that I had little money to pay for repairs. I also informed him that I was from Griffin and that I could contact my wife if money was needed for repairs. The attendant assured me that we could work something out if that proved necessary. As he went out to work on an oil change on another car, I sat down in one of the cloth chairs and began a conversation with a local patron of the service station. He assured me that he had known the guys who worked there since they were born. We also discussed the weather and the temperature and he told me about a recent trip to Vogel with his family when the temperature had dropped precipitously and they had had to make do in the cold late November weather.

One of the mechanics arrived from lunch at this point and he took an electrical gauge over to my car and began plugging same into my car. After several minutes of watching the gauge, he pulled the wires from the car and returned to the warmth of the office. Smiling benevolently, he informed me that the thermostat was stuck with the cold and that it needed to be replaced. I asked him if I could drive home with the thermostat in the state it was in. He informed me that I could. I then asked him how much his services would cost. He told me not to worry about it. I voiced my appreciation and told him that I had never been to Blue Ridge, but that I sure appreciated their hospitality.

Leaving Blue Ridge, my ride back to Griffin was warmed by the memories of the area, the sweetness of their mountain accents and the hospitality I had found at every stop. I finally made it back to Griffin around 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon, filled with the pleasantness of my travels, despite the gloominess of my errands.

At that point in the day, it was unknown to me that as I drove up, into and through the mountains, past Blood Mountain and Vogel State Park, a frantic search was already taking place for a young woman from Buford, a recent graduate of the University of Georgia. This young lady had hiked up Blood Mountain on New Year's Day with her dog as her only companion. Unfortunately, as it has now become apparent, she encountered an older man, walking his dog on the trail, whose intent was far from honorable.

As I think on it now, I can assume that my journey up to Blairsville took me right past the scene of the abduction of this young woman and possibly past the white van holding the abductor and his prey, as he drove south along that highway from the scene of the crime. He apparently took her down to Dawson County, just south of Blood Mountain and ultimately took her life. Her life ended on a wooded trail somewhere in Dawson County, three days later.

There is a further coincidence involved in this story. Apparently the abductor lived in his van in a parking lot near the ball fields where I spent my youth at Murphy Candler Park in Dekalb County. He apparently was homeless, other than his van, and spent his days near the parents and the kids who frequented the park and the baseball and football fields situated there. The thought of such an abductor living in such proximity to the innocent youths is frightening.

It is ironic that when you least expect evil, and where you least expect it to occur, it rears its head from the darkness and strikes. Now my thoughts of the beauty and peacefulness of the mountains in that area are forever scarred with the thought of that young woman and that evil man taking her, holding her against her will, and taking her life in those soft, green mountains. Those same mountains had always been the receptacle of such peace and happiness in the past.

It does remind me of James Dickey's "Deliverance" and the evil which the main characters in the book encountered up in the mountains of North Georgia. In the book, the businessmen from Atlanta went up into those mountains to find the rest and peace and beauty of the mountains before the beauties of the area were destroyed by the plans of the state of Georgia to build a hydro-electric plant. While they indeed found that beauty, they also found the evil inherent to mankind, which has no boundaries.

My dad took my brother and me to see that movie back when it came out in the 1970's. Afterward, he told us he didn't want to see any other such movies. I always thought that he, perhaps, didn't want to be reminded of the evil which can hide in even the most beautiful of places. I thought that he wanted the mountains of the Southern Appalachians to remain a place of pristine beauty and innocence. I don't know. We never really talked about it afterward.

The lesson? There are thorns on the stem of every rose. We must always remember that.