What's Next?

   We have had so much fun and spent so many hours of travel on our Courthouse project, and to realize that we have done it, sitting here with all the photographs in front of me on the computer, prompts the question "What's Next?"

   If you missed the reason for all the travel and pictures you can refresh yourself here:

http://walkinganewpath-pilgrim.blogspot.com/2015/01/four-years-five-months-five-daysmore-or.html

   All through the years of fun on this, folks have asked, "What are you going to do with all of this?" And we have asked ourselves the same question. A lot of the people who had seen some of the pictures of these courthouses told us that they should be in a book of some kind.

   That is a pretty expensive proposition, but we kept our options open.

   A few weeks back, sitting in a meeting of our Condo Association, someone brought up what Mayre and I were doing, and one of our directors, a lawyer from Atlanta, spoke up and said that he had just received a copy of a new coffee table book that I might like to look at. He brought me that book a few days ago.

   Back in January, in Clayton, the county seat of Rabun County, while visiting in the local paper's office, a man had showed me same book.

   This 350 page book has a picture of each and every courthouse in Georgia. On the facing page for each one is a short blurb about the county and its official building. It is slick and well done. The pictures are by a professional and taken when the light was soft and right. He puts a lot of my efforts to shame.

   But I like my pictures, and I have enjoyed meeting the people of the various places we have visited. I enjoyed coming into a small town, on a two lane road, and looking ahead, seeing the clock tower of the old building rising above the landscape. I looked forward to those courthouse squares and the stores spread around that big building.

   I read a blurb on the internet the other day referring to the courthouse in Sparta, Hancock County, that burned in 2014. This grand old building was referenced as "Her Majesty", and I thought that was fitting.

   So many times on our travels we felt the majesty of the buildings that were the seat of government for those counties. Those old buildings reflected the pride of the people, and they stand as memorials to the industry of its citizens. Some as still busy and some silent, but they still cast a shadow over each town. Some clocks in the old towers still have the correct time, and some are resting, but they have all marked the passing of time for people who met their schedules by those chimes.

   By my unofficial count there are 70 courthouses still functioning over 100 years old, and there are at least 19 more buildings that have served in this way that are still standing, most being used for something else.

   We came to look on those old courthouses as friends, and I'm glad we got to meet all of them.

   But the question still begs: "What's Next?"

   More courthouses in more states?

   My son asked me this question when he heard we had finished, and I responded that next time we were doing Rhode Island, they only had 5 counties, not 159.

   Any ideas?

   Perhaps a one-page book on Campbell County, GA, the one county courthouse that that new book did not have.

   Even if that county no longer exists...