Crying in the rain in Talbotton, Georgia

I am relating this at the behest of my wife, who heard the story orally and decided it needed to be told.

Today was foreclosure day in Georgia on the first Tuesday in March. Ordinarily, in March in Georgia you can expect the temperature to be a little warmer and the ground to be the receptacle of the early buds of Daffodils and Crocus. However, today there was snow over about half of Georgia, anywhere from a flurry melting on the windshield of your car to three inches up in the high mountains of North Georgia.

I had previously sent my daughter Kate and my part-time bookkeeper, Patti, to the more frozen environs to the north. After calling the Judge's office in McDonough to determine the status of a court calendar, I decided to head down US 19 toward the turn off toward Talbotton, the county seat of Talbot County.

Talbotton is a small, mostly forgotten town hidden in the piney woods between Macon and Columbus. I was told once by one of its denizens that it lies about thirteen miles east of Columbus. I have since come to understand that Talbotton was once a rather influential location in the early settlement of West Georgia. Several governors lived there. The Supreme Court of Georgia held its first sessions there, for some reason. The original Episcopal Church, modeled after Tudor churches in England still stands, around the corner from the buildings which once housed a Female College and a substantial Methodist Church.

Immediately prior to the Civil War, a young Jewish couple from Prussia, settled there, planted a family and opened a general store. About the time the Civil War began, they had moved to Columbus, where they supplied the Confederate Army and Navy, which were both found in abundance in the area. At the time, Columbus was a river port on the Chattahoochee, just up from Apalachicola, which was a major gulf seaport of its time.

After the war, the Strauss family emigrated from Columbus, Georgia to New York where one brother bought a little pottery concern and turned it into Macy's Department Store. After making his fortune, he left considerable money to Harvard, endowing a building or two, then travelled on a cruise to Europe with his wife to see the sites. Unfortunately, he and his wife decided to come back home on a brand new cruise ship, freshly manufactured in Belfast, Northern Ireland. About three quarters way back to New York, their cruise ship struck an iceberg and the couple went down with the ship, The Titanic.

Another brother served in President Roosevelt's cabinet. The whole family was quite influential and prosperous, for a group which found its original American start in a tiny town in West Georgia.

Unfortunately, Talbotton has fallen by the wayside through the years and, rather difficult to find, seems to suffer heavily from the loss of its former glory. I guess you could say it is just thirteen miles from the present. Several decades from the future.

At any rate, I drove down US 19 and turned west on the unmarked country road, a former Indian trail, which leads from South Upson County to Talbotton. The road runs predominantly through dense woods and abandoned cotton farms. You drive forever before you finally find the outskirts of the town of Talbotton. When I arrived, I headed my car up to the courthouse building on the square, only to find the courthouse surrounded by construction trailers, equipment and all of the sidewalks torn up with the work I assumed was going on inside. I passed the courthouse and its disarray and pulled into a convenience store down the street. I bought myself an iced tea and asked the clerk if she knew where they held court in the county.

She replied matter of factly that she knew they didn't use the old courthouse. That seemed a rather obvious conclusion. With a noticable lack of confidence, she pointed back behind me toward a white wooden building, the top of which I could see through the windows on the front of the store, and told me she thought they held court there.

I knew that counties often used such buildings as temporary court buildings while they renovated the old courthouse or built a knew one, so I exited the convenience store and reentered my car for the short trip to the white building.

As I passed the old Zion Episcopal Church building, I pulled alongside the white building, only to realize that there were no cars parked around the old building. There was a historical marker in front, but no living people. This obviously wasn't the place where they were holding court.

At this point, I decided to call directory assistance on my cellphone. After struggling to make the operator understand that I wanted a number in Talbotton, Georgia, and that I further needed the number for the Talbott County Superior Court Clerk, with a few seconds wait, I was suddenly connected with someone in the clerk's office. I wish I could remember her name.

A female voice answered my call, "Talbott County Clerk of Superior Court?"

She said her name, but I don't remember the name.

"Can you tell me where you are?"

"At my desk."

"Ok. Where is your desk?"

"In the clerk's office."

"Can you tell me where the clerk's office is located?"

"In the off-white building across from the courthouse."

"Can you tell me where the courthouse is located?"

"Where it has always been located."

"Even with all the trailers and such?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Can you tell me where you cry out foreclosure sales?"

"On the courthouse steps of the old courthouse."

"Really?"

"Yes, unfortunately."

"Now, where at the courthouse do you cry out the sales."

"In the same place they always do them."

"And where would that be?"

"Do you know where the statue is?"

I was about a block away from the courthouse, "No."

"Do you know where the flagpole is?"

I pulled up alongside the courthouse and saw the flagpole, "Yes."

"On those steps beside the flagpole."

"Really."

"Really."

There was a long pause on my part. I looked at the grounds in front of the steps. The sidewalks were torn up. There were puddles and mud everywhere. Everything was a mess, "Its awful muddy."

"You can take your shoes off and squish the mud between your toes like you did when you were young."

I considered the suggestion.

"Im 53. I think I'll pass."

"That's your choice."

"Well, thank you."

"You're welcome."

I exited the car and stepped across the street to the muddy grounds in front of my destination. I considered the best possible path. There was none.

"Oh well," I said to no one.

I began to step gingerly across the grounds. At several points my feet almost removed themselves from my shoes to become a permanent part of the muddy grounds. I tightened my toes within my shoes. I finally gave up my journey and read my cryout page under the shelter of my umbrella. I looked around at the empty grounds, the empty town, the absence of cars passing the courthouse. I listened for a moment to the construction workers inside. I knocked the sale off to the only player in this theatrical with any real interest, the absent lender who I represented with my lonely presence.

Afterward, I stepped again across the yard and made my way back to the car. My shoes were covered with mud which was the deep red hue of all mud in Central Georgia. I tucked the foreclosure instruction papers under my arm, opened the door to the car, folded my umbrella into the car and drove back through the piney woods of West Georgia, back to civilization, or what goes for civilization in comparison, somewhere north of Perry.

That was as interesting as it could possibly get.