A Rambling Tale of People and Searching

   On our way home from Arkansas the other day, we made a couple of stops to add to our county courthouse collection. These two places did not fall on our route to anywhere, but we were in the area and wanted to check them off our list.

   Crossing back over into Georgia from Alabama, we turned south on state route 39 toward the town of Fort Gaines, the county seat of Clay County. Fort Gaines, once an outpost on the frontier, is a town of around 1100 people, in a county of 3300, with a town center of about 2 acres (according to the web site), so how hard could it be to find the courthouse?

   Bur as we rode into town, we did not see it. So I stopped to ask a woman cleaning the windows of a Radio Shack store on the main street. She gave me directions, and off we went. Not seeing the sought location, we stopped at a Chevron station and asked another. After finding out that he was from somewhere else and was just there delivering chickens to the fast food store located with the gas station, we listened to a man that he had summoned, who pointed us back north on that same street for a couple of blocks. Passing back down that way we found a building that housed the tax assessors office, but no courthouse sign or monument, staples of Georgia courthouses all over the state.

   So I stopped to ask again. As I pulled to the curb, I noticed a little shop with the door open. Seeing a woman in the place, I quietly knocked so as not to scare her as she worked. Telling her what I was looking for, she smiled and told me to go back toward the Chevron, and I would find it on the left just before the station. After telling her what I was doing there and expressing some concern about finding my target, she walked out to the street and pointed the way, saying that I could not miss it. I jokingly told her she should just go with us and point it out when we got there, but she explained that I could not fail to see it this time. As I got back into the car and turned around, she began walking up the sidewalk to the corner, and when I spotted the courthouse and got out to take a picture, I saw her standing in the middle of the street, watching me. We waved to each other and went our separate ways.

   As I stood on the sidewalk to get a picture, a truck drove up and stopped and the window rolled down. The sheriff had stopped to find out what I was up to. After explaining my quest, he gave me a little brief history and went on his way. After taking a few shots, I wandered in the building. I saw no one, and all the doors to the offices in that hallway were closed. Knowing from the sign outside that this courthouse had been built in 1873, and calculating that it had been in continuous use for 140 years, I knew that I needed to see more. A stairway led to the second floor, and as I creaked up it, I wondered what I would find. At the top a double doorway, unlocked conveniently, let me into the courtroom, where I just stood drinking it all in. I thought of all the things that had gone on in that room, and all the people that had passed through that spot in their various situations of life in that area. I saw the juror's chairs on the side of the room, looking like they had just been vacated at the end of another trial, and I wondered about those people that had occupied those seats, for that last trial, and all those others that had gone on before.

    Deciding that I had better rescue my wife, who had been patiently waiting in the car, I clomped back down those squeaky wooded stairs only to find three people in the hallway below watching me suspiciously. Thinking that maybe I was not supposed to be up there on the second floor, I explained my purpose, and told them that I was impressed with the building and with the courtroom in particular. They seemed satisfied, and I felt  relief, even as I noticed the sheriff coming in the back door heading my way. Thanking everyone, I beat a retreat out the front, back to the car, and back on the road, no doubt leaving a whole town wondering what idiot would be poking around old courthouses and just shaking their collective heads at the whole episode.

   As I walked this morning, in the absolute quiet of an early Saturday morning, I wondered about those folks in that little town, in an out-of-the way spot of southwest Georgia. The Radio Shack cleaner lady, the chicken deliverer, the wrong information man, the lady in the alteration shop that wanted to make sure I got where I wanted to go, the sheriff, checking up on a stranger, the courthouse employees wondering about the noise from upstairs, and the many people who had come to that courtroom in so many capacities. All those different people, living their own particular stories.

   My life intersected with theirs, at least the living ones that I met, not the courtroom ones from 100 years back, and was it for more than just to give them something to talk about that afternoon? Was it more for me, too?

   Was there also more for me in that part of our state that I missed from being in such a hurry to get home that day? Maybe I ought to go back one day, but will I?

   Perhaps, but at least I got to think about it all again this morning, and wonder.

   They may still be wondering, too.