Or, the one where I introduce my parents to car seat covers.
Visited: Porterdale, Starrsville, Hayston, Mansfield, Newborn, Shady Dale, Monticello, Juliette, Flovilla, Indian Springs, High Falls
Weather: Sunny, hot. Really hot.
Camera: Samsung Galaxy S6 mobile phone.
Notes: Another hot, hot summer day, clear skies and relentless sun. I’d planned to start in Porterdale, a textile mill town I’ve been fond of for years, and to continue along the railroad for a while. Railroads string together little towns like pearls, and I’m seeing that some follow a common trajectory - particularly when the railroads withdraw. This trip, I followed a 30+ mile route between Porterdale, Covington, and Machen, which is more junction than town.
In the typical complicated and twisted lineage of transportation family trees, the line was built by the Middle Georgia & Atlantic Railway Co (MGA) in 1894; was sold to the Central of Georgia Railway (CGA) in 1896, which extended it to Porterdale in 1899 and ended passenger service in the 1950s; was taken over by the Southern Railway (SR) in 1963, and merged with other acquisitions to form the Central of Georgia Railroad Company (a new one with a near-identical name); was taken over again in 1982, this time by Norfolk-Southern Railroad (NS); was leased by NS to the Great Walton Railroad (GRWR) in 1989. In 2009, freight service (mostly lumber) was ended, and the line was officially closed in 2010. Some of the tracks are gone altogether, and in some places, they’re in place but blocked off. Crossbucks remain at long-dormant grade crossings, warning passersby of trains that haven’t run for years in rights-of-way covered by grass and wildflowers.
Porterdale is a three-mill town. One is blockaded, silent for decades, while another still runs and yet a third - the most scenic - has been converted to loft apartments. During my short wander, I saw a man magnet fishing the yellow river, and took a short walk on the town’s riverside hiking trail. In July, this is apparently a terrible idea, and I was pushed back by an onslaught of hungry mosquitoes and black flies. Starrsville and Hayston were hardly there, but for a former general store and a clearly-delineated strip of grass running through the trees - once the railroad.
In Newborn, the tracks re-appeared. As a souvenir, I picked up a railroad spike and put it in my back pocket. While walking, I somehow forgot it was there, and upon hopping back into the car I was borrowing from my parents for this excursion, heard an unfortunate ripping sound. The top of the spike, with its projecting metal lip, had punctured the driver’s seat of their car. Guilt washed over me before I snapped back to reality and pressed on. I’m lucky to have very forgiving parents who were very accepting of store-bought seat covers.
I couldn’t find Machen, partly because it wasn’t really there anymore. All that’s left is the junction of the railroads, and one of those doesn’t even exist anymore. I was driving slow, looking for roads or signs of the town, and was pulled over by a very concerned police officer who told me he suspected that I was driving high. Pretty quickly he realized that I wasn’t under the influence, but that I was instead kind of lost and clueless, and he drove off irritably and unwilling to help me figure out where I was.
Monticello has a nice downtown square with a dark contrast. The town is oriented around a central monument to its Confederate dead, complete with florid rebel sentiment that still held when it was erected in 1910. “The triumphs of might are transient,” it says; “they pass and are forgotten. The sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicle of nations.” Yet across the square sits a bookstore operated by the Nuwabian Nation of Moors, a group classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group that “mixes black supremacist ideas with worship of the Egyptians and their pyramids, a belief in UFOs and various conspiracies related to the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers.” I stopped in the downtown drugstore for some water and sunscreen, a much less morally weighty experience, and complete with the typical legendary Southern hospitality.
I’d been through Juliette before, and this time, I focused on the mill and dodged the Fried Green Tomatoes fans peeking through store windows downtown. There were mills on each side of the river once, and only one remains. But the river was hopping. Teenagers and young adults were swimming and sunbathing and fishing from the shoals. I held my breath as a boy with a fishing pole walked across the ledge of the mill dam - not a tall dam, but rocky and jagged on the other side. He wasn’t as worried, obviously, and made it just fine.
From there, it was a race against the sun, and I took off for small towns and state parks. After blowing through Indian Springs and Flovilla, I reached High Falls as the sun was setting through an approaching thunderstorm. The light cast was pale and yellow, and mixed warmly with the bright red rocks and earth along the river. After parking and scurrying down a trail for a good vantage point of the falls and pools in the exposed rocky river bottom, I stopped for a few moments and let the approaching thunder and disappearing sunlight wash over me for the final photo. The rain let loose right after I got back to the car, and I left it behind, with a good day of travel, as I sped back to Atlanta.