A little more than a year ago I decided to just ride around after attending a memorial service for my college friend Todd Rock after his unexpected death. A ride down memory lane so to speak. It was pouring rain, so it wasn’t a good day to loafer, as we called it when I was a kid. I had driven down to Demorest for the service and decided afterward to check out Baldwin and Cornelia before making my way over to Toccoa to hit Harbor Freight.
I spent my undergraduate college years at Piedmont College, long before it became a big time, full-blown “university.” I’m happy that it has grown, but I barely recognized anything while rambling through campus. I headed on down to Baldwin. It was always almost a ghost town. It can’t even be called that now. It’s gone. Of course, a Dollar General sprouted up at the corner of Hwy 441, likely the death knell for whatever businesses remained. Luckily, the Stew and Que is still around. It looks like the owners are doing a thorough remodel. I love that place and have eaten many meals there in the last 50 years. Heck, for a couple of years a back booth served as an unofficial satellite office for me during my representation of several employees of the nearby Fieldale plant who were going through hard times.
Seeing the Stew and Que brought back some memories. When I was a little boy, we usually didn’t have much money. That said, we always ate well when Daddy had steady work. During the mid-to-late 1970s, he helped build a subdivision for the Murrell family somewhere around Baldwin. I guess that was when he discovered the Stew and Que. For a year or so we made the trip to downtown Baldwin on many weekend nights to eat supper. It was a big trip for me and was the longest trip we made to eat.
Once the hot lap of Baldwin was complete I traveled back into Cornelia from the south side. Other than the iconic Steak House being long gone, everything looked about the same, although the south end was significantly run down. As always, I looked around trying to figure out the former location of the White Spot. Mama always referred to it in her stories about running around Cornelia and Clarkesville during the 1950s. I’ve never figured out its location, or exactly what the business was for that matter. I think it was located on the site where an abandoned grocery store now sits. Driving into town I remembered other great businesses that are gone and will pass from memory with my generation. I’ve always been obsessed with old movie theaters. I remember being over the moon when the theater in Cornelia was renovated back in the early 1990s. It was short-lived. Unknown to me at the time, I was there for the final showing just a short time later.
Across the street was the former location of Johnny Gunn’s Barber Shop. I had several haircuts there while I attended Piedmont. Mr. Gunn was quite the character, as was Mr. Ken Martin in Demorest. Now that I think about it, most of the old barber shops had great characters.
Next up came Mount Airy. I’ve seen several photographs of the town back in its heyday. The grand hotels and restaurants were gorgeous. By the time I began attending Piedmont in 1990 the beautiful old hotels were gone for a couple of generations, replaced by package stores, beer joints, and pawn shops. I’m a Hopkins from Rabun County. I’ve seen my share of rough beer joints, often going into them looking for uncles to see if they were able to work with us the following day. The beer joints in Mount Airy were known to be rough on a whole different level, with even my uncles warning me to keep my ass out of them. For better or worse, it looks like even the Mount Airy places are shut down.
Next was a ride down what is now known as Dick’s Hill Parkway. I’ve climbed that “hill” too many times to count on bicycle rides back in the day. My grandparents lived close by on Rock Road. What was once a neat old, abandoned store owned by the Irvin family sat crumbling into the earth at the intersection of the two roads. At the bottom of the mountain, I headed into Toccoa. We did much of our out-of-town shopping there when I was a kid. Mama’s daddy and stepmother lived close to Toccoa and we often went down to see them on Sunday afternoons. We’d go into town and have gourmet seafood at Long John Silver’s. It was fine dining for us. I’d order the Peg Legs with “extra crinkles,” as I called them. I thought those crunchy bits tasted better than the actual chicken. Still do…
After getting our bellies full, we’d go shopping. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s Toccoa was a hopping place. Some towns still had “blue laws” and most stores were closed on Sundays, but not Toccoa. There were numerous places to go back then. JC Penney, Kmart, and Sky City; Toccoa had them all. After making the rounds, usually just looking, as Mama and Daddy were too tight to spend money, we’d visit with my grandparents a little longer and head back to Clayton. It’s sad to see how Toccoa has died off during my lifetime. So many places have gone away. I especially miss Sam Sosebee’s restaurant downtown in the plaza. He made the best hotdogs ever. A relative of his opened the joint back up for a bit fifteen or twenty years ago, but it only lasted a short time. And then there was Ed’s Barbeque on the road back towards Hollywood. We sometimes rode down there to eat on Friday nights. I can’t remember anything about the food. I do remember he had a couple of kid-sized picnic tables up front. I always sat at one of them while Mama and Daddy sat further back. Good times.
Most of the old, native-owned stores and restaurants are long gone now, replaced by trendy upscale places owned by “move-ins”. I have to admit, some of these places are pretty neat, but they always seen to come and go. The owners just aren’t invested in our community long-term and move on to the next best place within a few years. While a few dwindling places remain as they’ve always been, about all that’s left are the memories, and even those have begun to fade.