Quitman, Georgia

Circa 2018

Population under 5,000

17 miles from Valdosta

Pursuant to Sec. 8-1 of the Municipal Code of Quitman, Georgia it is illegal for a chicken to cross the road. *  

Spring 2018, the New Life Assembly of God church had a message on its worship schedule in its front yard:  “Because the Tomb is empty, the church should be full.”  Someone stapled a red wooden cross with white-stenciled, spray-painted lettering Jesus Saves on the telephone pole.  So it definitely was March and I was in the South.    I found myself in a little town called Quitman, Georgia, for a lecture, workshop, and volunteer work.   I took a few extra days to spend time with friends and step off the giant Hamster wheel of New York City.   When I looked up, I saw a stretched out sky that didn’t stop.  In the evening, even the rain was gentle; it fell straight down without blowing inside open windows.  I could barely see the neighbors’ homes hidden by oak trees with wizened limbs and gnarled twigs scratching their Spanish Moss beards as empty dating swings creaked, pushed by nostalgic breezes.  These were trees whose parents knew slavery and they themselves heard of civil rights.  Their little saplings wave little sticks about mattering.  Downtown Quitman was small and charming in an old south sort of way and Quitman felt like an everybody-knows-everybody kind of place.  Rural flirted with suburbs.  They did a picnic date by a lake, and eventually they had a child named Quitman.

I enjoyed a comforting southern lunch at Sister’s Place - no website, no online menu. The options were: Bucket of Chicken, Crab Leg Meal, Sea Food Dinner, and Buffet.  I stopped at Buffet; the other two options didn’t interest me.  Besides I just wanted to experience the words under their sign: “Down Home Cooking”.  After hot greens, grandma-did-it fried chicken, corn bread for the corn fed, mac and cheese and beans, I waddled out without hurting my wallet, but I did put a hurting on the food.  I duck-shuffled in a food stupor by a white rocking chair under two signs; the first one read Sister’s Place.  I flopped in it like an awkward duck on eggs.  I couldn’t make it to the caravan.  I was more tired than a Quitman chicken muttering:  “Would you stop asking me why?” as he is pulled over for questioning after road crossing.   I settled into the chair and looked around and behind me.  The second sign decreed: “Jesus Christ is Lord of All… No Loitering.”

I resumed the volunteer outreach work, visiting neighbors with my friends who I now called family after the heavy southern meal and light conversation.  We chatted and compared our lives as we drove out of the one McDonald’s town into more of where suburbs left town and made its way to the country.  I mentioned the project that I was working on, writing a children’s book “Talk About The Monster”, to help children start the conversation to face fear.  Sophia*, who was about 11 or 12 at the time liked the idea.  I asked: “Sophia, so you do understand what the monster is…in a symbolic way, right?”  Yes she nodded: “It’s your fears.”  I was curious, in this bucolic, down home gentle ville:  “Sophia, what is your monster?  What are you afraid of?”  I quickly inserted:  “If you feel comfortable sharing…”  She said: “I don’t mind.”   We were an hour away from lunch and we had all snagged our random renewal coffee beverage from McDonald’s as a pick me up.   My brain started firing – 11 years old, good family of team working parents, country girl, older brother, little shy, loves to read.  I figured it out.   Bats, maybe a crazy rooster named Elvis, scary movies, thunderstorms, or the cadaverous oak trees at night lurking outside the house.  I saw a scarecrow in the field, getting less than 90 on a test, Math, because she liked to read, or maybe even a bully, let’s name him Grrrr-ady and he’s a little chubby.   Sophia, her eyes fixed outside on the open green pasture said:  “Active Shooter.”

“Talk About The Monster” the children’s story and app will be released during May 2021, Mental Health Wellness Month.  It is a whimsical little story for children to face anxiety and fear before they have to face fear.  When you talk about the Monster, you bring him down to size.

*Name has been changed