Saturday in a Small Town

When I was young, between third and eighth grade, my family lived in Atlanta, Georgia. My dad worked for a paint company with a production plant outside the city, in a little town called Morrow. There wasn't much in Morrow, as I remember. Dad told me that the stage front for Tara was put up there for filming during the making of "Gone With the Wind". I remember thinking that the false front was still there somewhere, falling apart on some windswept hillside, just waiting for me to find it. I imagined holding tea parties on the front porch, recapturing the lost glory of the South.

I had a rather overactive imagination as a child.

Now that I'm looking at the map, Morrow isn't so far outside of Atlanta and is just off I-75 south of town. It probably really was in the path of Sherman's march, but north of Jonesboro. More like around Hood's lines.

God, I'm a dork.

I remember going there a few times--to my dad's plant. He didn't go in on the weekends very often. Sometimes he'd take me. This was always a big event. We'd stop and get breakfast. We'd drive to the plant. I'd get to walk around in the facility, look into the big paint vats, smell the chemicals, peer through the glass into the labs. One time, we took home plates to take samples and grow them--sugar water and blood. I remember taking samples near the cat's litter box. Whoo, Mom did not like the look of what grew on that plate.

Occasionally, Dad would take the long way, down semi-rural roads and by-ways. I imagine those pastoral towns are long gone, swallowed up into suburban Atlanta sprawl by now. It is a different city now than it was then. Anyway, we drove through small town after small town, little crossroads in the middle of nowhere with a post office on one corner and a general store on the other. Good places to grow up. Places people were proud to call home.

It was summer, or late spring. We had the windows open and the leaves were on the trees. I was really young, probably third grade. I recall sitting in the front seat of Dad's old car, the one we called "the Scab" because the leather top was peeling in the Georgia sun. We slowed, approaching one of those crossroads with a gathering of buildings, indicating a town. There was a fair amount of traffic, for a Saturday. And there was a traffic light for the two-lane highway. We stopped.

Someone came up to the car window. They were collecting money. You'll see them on summer weekend mornings, collecting for the Lions or the Jaycees or some other charitable organization. I wasn't particularly shocked or scared to have been approached. This was something that happened in small towns. Support your local fire department or put a new roof on the church.

But this man? Didn't have a bib on indicating what charity he belonged to. He didn't have a fez. He might have had a sign on the bucket he held, but I don't think I saw it. If I did, I can't recall.

He was wearing a white robe. And a white pointy hat. His face wasn't covered. He wasn't looking at me through eyeholes. He wasn't trying to hide himself. He was proud of what he was doing. I didn't know, until years later, exactly what he was and what he stood for. All I knew was that he scared me. And he made my father angry.

I have no idea what my father said to him. I know he didn't give him money. I think he rolled up the window. And we were quiet the rest of the way to his office.

I think of that intersection from time to time. Whenever I'm stopped in a small town to donate money to a worthy cause. I wonder if Klan members still beg for change in that town in order to support whatever supposed good works they claim to do. I wonder if we live in a world where such things are still possible. I think the answer to that question, unfortunately, is yes.