Off the Man Road

   We have driven Highway 82 West many times over the past few years. This is our route to Arkansas where our daughter and family live. This is also the route to Waycross, the home of Ware State Prison, where I have spent many Kairos weekends with the inmates in that institution.

   We drove it again yesterday afternoon after church. Not to get to some final destination, but just to see a couple of places that lie just off that main US highway.

   Schlatterville. I had seen the sign denoting the town many times while driving this road, but had never ventured off the main highway. Piqued by a photograph I found on the web, we turned south at the sign and found this church. High Bluff Primitive Baptist Church.

   A plain wooden, board and batten construction, church with no electricity, unpainted, situated in the midst of a big cemetery, out in the countryside.

   Opening the unlocked door and stepping inside; a simple, no frills, sanctuary ready for worship.

   According to some information on the Internet, this church is still active, and I wondered about its congregation. There was no signage anywhere around, and I guess you would have to just know it was there. The church is said to have begun in Raybon, GA in 1819 and moved to the Schlatterville area sometime around 1822. The only modernization I could see was the installation of storm windows on the inside of the wooden ones.

   Driving a little east of Schlatterville, on down Highway 82, we turned off and followed a dirt road to another church. Smyrna Primitive Baptist Church, in Lulaton, GA. Again no signs, and we had to ask a boy at a nearby grocery how to find it. "No problem, just turn north at the sign to the Brantley County Landfill, take that dirt road and go till you find it". Easy enough, and there it was, right at the landfill.

   Same type of construction, same lack of electricity, same type of cemetery around it, but this one looked to be not in operation anymore. Indeed, as I found on the Internet, this church was built in 1890, but disbanded in 1990.

   Were the folks in these old churches off the main road in more ways than one? What was their influence in their day, and now in this day? Has the world passed them by and, if so, is that a good thing?

   How about all those folks buried in those cemeteries? What were their lives like? What is their heritage?

   Did you ever wonder?

   I do......