 |
| A homecoming of sorts for me. Photo by me, February 2026. |
I may have never been to me (hat tip to Charlene and The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert), but I can now say that I have been to Gay.
I would be lying if I did not admit that I had a good laugh as a gay man when I entered the town of Gay, Georgia. You cannot go through life without a sense of humor and if one does not possess one then it must be a miserable existence. On a mild winter day driving south on Georgia Highway 85 through Meriwether County I laughed a few times passing through Gay. It does not take long, maybe five minutes if you get stopped by the town's single traffic light, to pass through the town of Gay but I was born into a lifetime of gay life and happily so. As a Georgia native and a minor geography/history nut, I had known about Gay most of my life, but I had never had the opportunity to pay my respects.
 |
| Main Street Gay USA. Photo by me, February 2026. |
On seeing the town, I realized Gay was bigger than I expected. I was expecting a tiny community with one or two buildings, but instead it had a small strip of commercial buildings on its main street. It would appear that Gay was long ago a vibrant little town. Its highest population was according to the 1920 census when it had 290 residents. Since that height it has lost roughly two-thirds of its population.
 |
| The single Gay traffic light. Photo by me, February 2026. |
 |
| Might make for a good YMCA and make my dream from when I was a little boy in the late 1970s of being welcomed by The Village People come true. Photo by me, February 2026. |
Gay has not dried up and blown away in the last one hundred and five years despite the population loss. Though on a nice Thursday in the middle of the afternoon it was dead with no one around except the occasional car passing through.
Today, Gay has two gas stations, a post office, brewery, an antique shop, city hall, fire station and a fancy ass restaurant/farm/accommodation run by a Michelin starred chef. Perhaps due to the name of the town it has been seen in the Netflix version of Queer Eye, season three of another show I have never seen on Netflix called Barbecue Showdown and some of the 2022 film, that I also have never seen, called Till was shot there. For a town of 110 people according to the 2020 census that seems like a lot. Also, twice yearly is the Cotton Pickin' Fair, which for Meriwether County seems like an odd fit since very little cotton is grown there as the county ranks eighty-six among the ninety-two counties in Georgia that grow cotton.
 |
| Imagine a rainbow mural by the doorway. Photo by me, February 2026. |
 |
|
Not all roads lead to Gay, but some do. Photo by me, February 2026. |
That is Gay, Georgia, a small place with a happy name along the back roads of the American south. Taking the road less traveled does make all the difference.
Posts
