The best travel stories on the internet.

Powered By Travel Channel

• Home»
• Features»
• Tom Swick»
• Postcard from Georgia

Postcard from Georgia

06.11.09 | 10:54 AM ET

The sign welcoming me to Georgia also expressed happiness that I had Georgia on my mind.

Georgia. When we think of states with melodious names we think of Mississippi or Oklahoma or Elizabeth Bishop’s favorite—the one I had just left—Florida. The multi-syllabic. Yet the state I was now driving in is the only one with a perfectly alliterative name: Geor-gia.

It is also the only one (I’m assuming) with a Sam Nunn Boulevard, which I took a while later into Perry. The New Perry Hotel rose up behind the old courthouse and across the street from a tractor dealership, its new models forming an impressive front line. There is something about a row of spotless tractors that grips the eye tighter than a row of gleaming cars. The Swan Motel sat on the south side, hoisting a sign of homespun haiku:

Free HBO Cable
Micro Fridge
In Room
God Bless America

I checked into the New Perry—high-backed chairs and a piano in the lobby—and headed out into the late afternoon sun. Music from the Presbyterian church wafted over the empty streets. I have a great affection for small towns, but it comes at a price. As a travel writer, you go into the wilderness and you disappear. You visit a city and you blend in. You enter a small town and you stand out. Everybody knows everybody (and their business) and nobody knows you. And you’re not the typical Interstate dropout; you poke around, stop and read notices, reach for your pen. You know you’re suspicious, drawing watchful eyes. And if anyone dared ask, you couldn’t even tell them you’re writing a travel story. For who would believe it?

I turned onto Carroll Street and walked past the Christian bookstore, Beauty for Ashes, and the barbershop offering $12 haircuts. I didn’t pass a soul, though occasionally I’d glimpse one through some shop windows. At the obelisk on the old courthouse lawn I read: “To Our Confederate Dead: May this shaft ever call to memory the story of the glory of the men who wore the grey.” I figured at least eight people saw me writing.

Back at the hotel, Sam Nunn stared out from a magazine on a table in the corridor. I took it to the second-floor parlor and read the interview with Perry’s favorite son. He noted that if you grow up in a small town you can later learn the ways of a big city, while it’s rare for the same thing to happen in reverse.

The hotel restaurant had been my main reason for stopping in Perry—guidebooks write warmly of the fried chicken and biscuits—but at 6 o’clock only one table was occupied. And eating alone in an uncrowded restaurant only magnifies the travel writer’s outsider status. So I headed back to Carroll Street and found that the crowds were at The Swanson, where waitresses carried trays of chicken and onion rings—fleet Monuments to Frying—across a creaking wood floor.

A table opened up on the porch, with a clear view across the street to Beauty for Ashes. I ordered the baked ham because 1) it had been a long time since I’d seen ham on a dinner menu and 2) it had been even longer since I’d seen an entrée for under $7. It came with two sides—I chose coleslaw and cornbread stuffing—and two mini biscuits. To wash it all down I asked for sweet tea.

After dinner I strolled down leafy residential streets. On Ball Street a police car passed, the officer’s head turning, forcefully, to size me up through the open side window.

An attractive woman with a handsome dog walked into the garden of the New Perry Hotel. “He’s part Boston Terrier,” she said when I asked, “and part Jack Russell Terrier.” Inside The Tavery, she sat with friends who, to get his attention, called the dog “Dan Rather.”

“Is his name really Dan Rather?” I asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Because his hair is perfect.”

They were part of a film crew, doing a remake of the 1973 film “The Crazies.”

“Is this your first horror film?” I asked one of the young men when he came to the bar for another beer.

“It’s all I do,” he said. “They always make money. Who doesn’t want to see a horror movie?”

He lived in Valdosta, he said, but was moving soon to Athens.

The man sitting next to me had moved to Perry from Pensacola, which he missed. “The service here in Middle Georgia is awful,” he said. “I went to McDonald’s once and it took me 30 minutes to get my meal.” He also complained about the dearth of entertainment. I asked if he ever went to Macon. He said rarely, the place was riddled with crime.

“And it’s not because of the economy. It’s just out of meanness.”

The name “Dan Rather” rang through the room. “My kids wouldn’t get that,” the bartender said. “We were somewhere and we saw a T-shirt that said: ‘I hear a banjo—run!’ They didn’t get that either.”

My neighbor departed, and was replaced by a middle-aged woman out with her husband. She and the bartender started talking about a young man who’d recently gotten into trouble.

“In our day,” the woman said, “you did something wrong, it wasn’t a big deal. The police caught you drinking, they’d follow to make sure you got home safely. Driving. You got in a fight—you got in a fight. Now they haul you in for assault.”

I went to bed wondering: What would travel writers do without bars?

In the morning I drove up to Macon. It was a hilly, red-brick town with soaring steeples and stately houses and a muted, forgotten air. Biscuit and eggs at Jeneane’s came to $2.65.

The Georgia Music Hall of Fame sat at the eastern edge of downtown. A man waited patiently at the ticket counter, until the woman from the gift shop scurried over.

“I thought it was free,” the man said jokingly.

“The only thing free is salvation,” the woman said smiling.

Inside, various “houses”—jazz and swing, rhythm and blues, gospel, country, rock—played songs and showed pictures of inductees. All had some connection to Georgia; the ones actually raised in the place made up a mighty contingent by themselves: Johnny Mercer, Harry James, Mattiwilda Dobbs, Thomas A. Dorsey, Jerry Reed, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Fletcher Henderson, Blind Willie McTell, Dave Prater, Alan Jackson, Ray Stevens, Trisha Yearwood, Travis Tritt, the Indigo Girls, R.E.M., Jermaine Dupri, Gladys Knight, Jessye Norman, James Brown, Little Richard, Otis Redding.

It seems improbable that one state could produce so many musical talents until you consider that they all grew up hearing and saying “Georgia.”

Travel Blog

Photos Courtesy:  REUTERS  |  iStockPhoto  |  flickr  

©2026 World Hum, All Rights Reserved

• About Us
• Submissions
• For Advertisers
• Visitor Agreement
• Privacy Policy