Went With The Wind

 

The Graham-Simms House. Photo by me, November 2025.

My true reason for stopping in Covington last weekend was not to see the original Boar's Nest on Flat Rock Road, which still exists today as a church, but was to attend an estate sale and do book research. 

The house hosting the sale was located in one of the historic districts and was built in 1839. It was located on Floyd Street and is known as the Graham-Simms House. The house was built by Dr. William P. Graham. During his ownership, the house was the site of the first meeting of the board of trustees of Emory College (Emory University now) located in nearby Oxford.

James P. Simms

It was also the boyhood home of Confederate General and state legislator James P. Simms. His father, Judge Richard Lee Simms, purchased the house in 1850. The Simms family owned the house until 1919 and it has since changed hands numerous times over the last century. 

The house in August 1969. Photo from the state archives. 

 

In the 1920s the original large portico on the front of the house was replaced by a smaller columned porch as seen today. The grandeur of the house continued to fade and during the 1960s and 70s the house like many large old homes of the time was divided into apartments (the Ginn Apartments) before being converted back to a single family residence. According to newspaper archives the Ginn Family lived on the first floor and rented out the second.

The estate sale was impressive with many museum quality pieces from bronzes, paintings, porcelains and furniture. I enjoyed touring the house more than I did looking at the price tags which were inflated even with a discount on the third day of the sale. The house drew a crowd with cars lining both sides of Floyd Street and with so many people inside it was difficult to move around the halls, rooms and stairs. I saw lots of looking, but not much in the way of buying, though many of the most collectible items were already marked as sold.

A striking quadriptych hung near the top of the stairs. In older homes, I have noticed more triptych paintings and mirrors than quads. Photo by me, November 2025.

Photo by me, November 2025.

The house had fortunately kept many of its original features including several stained glass windows and a wonderful circular staircase rising from the main entry hall. Since the house had been divided into apartments many years before it was surprising to see the original lathe and plaster ceilings and walls in place.

Photo by me, November 2025.

I found the drapes Carol Burnett used as inspiration for her legendary Went with the Wind! sketch for her 1976 CBS TV show.

Standing in one of the downstairs rooms a teenage boy, without a phone in his hand, asked us if we were collectors. We said no, but that we have been involved enough in antiques that we knew enough about pricing and certain makers and styles. The boy said that it was the most beautiful house he had ever been into. I replied that it was pretty extraordinary and a bit over the top for my tastes. I was glad that someone had thought enough to bring the boy to the sale and the he had some appreciation for it instead of being bored out of his mind like many teenagers would have been.

In the rear of the house was a courtyard garden which was private from the other nearby houses. It reminded me of the gardens found at homes in compact Savannah or Charleston.

Not once was I bitten on the neck, put under a spell, involved in a crime spree, offered moonshine or compelled to yell "yeehaw" as I ran from the cops. Covington is really not Hazzard County, Mystic Falls or Sparta. It would be too easy to stereotype the town as some southern relic of time stood still, though it makes a good backdrop for those cliches to play out on the big screen. We are fortunate to have many of the older towns in the eastern part of Georgia that were settled before Atlanta architecturally preserved.

A busy Madison on a Saturday afternoon on W. Jefferson Street. Photo by me, November 2025.

After the sale, we headed further east to browse antiques in Madison. It was crowded and the shops were decked out for Christmas.

The abandoned Nolan Mansion between Madison and Bostwick. Photo by me, November 2025.

Heading north through Morgan County we passed the Nolan Mansion still standing and rotting away.

A cotton pickin' good time. Photo by me, November 2025.

On the way to Athens we went through the cotton fields of Oconee County. The cotton is always so pretty and looks like snow this time of year.

Every town has the old train station and few have passengers. Photo by me, November 2025.

Later we passed the old train station in Winder. The closest passenger stops near here are Atlanta, Gainesville and Toccoa.

That was my fall Saturday in the south.

In The Heat of the Hazzard Vampire Darlings

The courthouse in Covington, Georgia. Photo by me, November 2025.

Is it Hazzard County or Mystic Falls or Sparta? This town was all three fictional places about moonshine, rebel flags, Daisy Duke cutoffs, Archie Bunker as a cop and teenage vampires in television shows, but the real place is Covington, Georgia; a town of fourteen thousand residents and filled with fine homes east of Atlanta in Newton County.

 

Get that selfie bro! People wait outside a tour company. Photo by me, November 2025.

The few times I have stopped in Covington and not simply passed through on the back roads to elsewhere I have been surprised at how busy the downtown is with sightseers. I had no idea people were that interested in taking tours of places where television shows and movies were filmed. I was unaware this many people were deeply connected to television shows and that they would track down the real life filming locations and pay for tours. Is it an odd psychological quirk for a hobby I suppose. I might could understand if it were Hollywood, but Covington? I might not understand, but maybe there is good reason for this.

Covington thrives on this piggyback tourist industry and there is even a museum about these television shows and films. Meanwhile, actual filming in Georgia for movies and television has taken a downturn as production companies flock to cheaper locations. The local film business has slowed so much that some of the studio buildings and land on the bypass were purchased in October by the city and will be converted for municipal uses.

One of the more popular shows filmed here was The Vampire Diaries from 2009 to 2017. Covington was the fictional town of Mystic Falls, which sounds like the name of a cheap wine or car air freshener with a musky scent. I can smell it now coming from a Tesla.

Someone I am kind of related to and was an actor was on the show several times as an extra. I have never seen an episode and do not recognize the names of any of the actors. I assume it must be about vampires writing their secrets in little notebooks that they hide under their coffin pillows. 

 

As I walked I was near one of the major filming locations for the series. Teenage girls with heads down stared at themselves on their phones. They blocked the sidewalk and I patiently waited until finally I had to say excuse me like an adult should. The girls were the dreaded phone zombies and not vampires in broad daylight at the corner of College Avenue and East Street. Not to pick on teenagers, but people of all ages too often have lost the basic courtesy that when in public you have to share it with others, that the world does not revolve around you and the faux image of yourself that you present via a smart phone. Real life in public is not your personal television show, a TikTok post or a YouTube channel.

The filming location of Lockwood Mansion. Photo by me, November 2025.

The filming location of Lockwood Mansion. Photo by me, November 2025.

This is Lockwood Mansion, the television den of the Lockwood family of vampires. People were creepily possessive about their spot outside the gates to get their perfect and amazing photos. As is my style, I walked through them, took a few cell phone photos and stayed ten seconds. I felt rather silly about the whole moment, but it was a nice house. 

The county courthouse in Covington as seen in the opening credits of the tv show In The Heat of the Night.

In the 1980s my mother watched In The Heat of the Night so I saw many episodes of that show. Covington served as Sparta, Mississippi. I was not exactly the target demographic for the show, it was okay. Carroll O'Connor was a big name actor, but I never said to myself that one day I was going to track down the shooting locations and take a selfie. And so I did not in 2025.

The General Lee and the Duke Boys being chased around the courthouse square in Covington.

I did watch The Dukes of Hazzard when it premiered in 1979 and for a couple of seasons after until I lost interest. My closest friend at the time, a boy I have written about in my books as the character Robin, could do a perfect “yeehaw” just like Bo Duke. I was jealous. I was six years old so what did I know? How many car chases with a couple of good ole' boys can one watch? Sing it Waylon. Most of my classmates were obsessed with the show, had model versions of the General Lee car, tee shirts, bedroom posters and talked about the show into high school. This was about the same time that Cooter, actor Ben Jones, became a Georgia Congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988. Among the more impressionable minds of some of my classmates, some are still die hard fans as they refuse to outgrow their childhood tastes well into middle age.

Only the first five episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard were filmed in Covington, Conyers and Atlanta in the fall of 1978. The show thereafter was filmed in California and it never looked the same as the real locations in Georgia. The red clay dirt, dense woods and rural landscapes just cannot be replaced by dusty California. During its seven seasons on CBS, the show was in the top ten for three seasons and peaked at number two in 1980 to 1981. I can still remember how big that show was and how it seemed for a time the show that every kid talked about on the school bus and playground.

A stuntman lands a plane on the courthouse square of Covington as locals watched as extras in a Hal Needham directed film.

A film that seemed to be in perpetual repeat on HBO in the early 1980s was The Cannonball Run (1981). I saw it in the theater and then had it on in the background many times as a kid while I played with my Hotwheels. I did not know it at the time nor would I have cared then either, but parts of the movie were filmed in Covington. In the scene above a stuntman lands a plane that is supposed to be piloted by Burt Reynolds on the courthouse square. The reason for the unexpected landing was that Burt and Dom DeLuise had run out of beer. 

The film is a comedy car chase that would certainly be less humorous if made today. The Rod McKuen joke, which was quite funny, would not be understood today by younger generations as you had to be alive in that period to fully understand and much of the other humor might also be unappreciated. The bloopers that ran at the end of the film were great. I miss Dom DeLuise's laugh. I miss Burt Reynolds too. 

I remember the late 1970s and early 80s as a very loose, humorous time. Some of my belief resides in the fact I was a kid, but you also see it reflected in the entertainment of the era. It is easy to be misled by people with ulterior motives into believing, especially if you were not there, that the past was some miserable experience. Nor was it perfect either, but people were far less hung up, concerned and socially neutered with bullshit. Compared to the blunt and adversarial categorizations of today, people's sense of place in the world and how to relate to others was more nuanced and also more sophisticated. If you transported anyone under the age of forty today back to 1981 they would be utterly lost as to how to behave, communicate or function; even pumping gas, using a telephone or getting along with people would be problems. People did actually try to get along in public back then at least where I came from. The two greatest losses in my lifetime might be the loss of authentic humor and observing coping skills be supplanted by entitlement. Both of those losses are cross generational.

Twenty minutes east of Covington between there and Madison is Hard Labor Creek State Park. The park was the primary filming location (a few scenes were shot in Atlanta) for the 1980 Paramount Pictures film Little Darlings. The film starred Tatum O'Neal, Kristi McNichol and Matt Dillon. The movie is set at a summer camp and is about two girls, one from a wealthy family and the other from the wrong side of the tracks, who bet to see which one can be the first to lose their virginity. Gasp! Imagine a film like that in 2025, it would offend the sensibilities of the left and the right and would be a box office smash hit as everyone went in secret to watch it.

Top Left: The title sequence. The character who Tatum O'Neal played was supposed to live at The Swan House in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. Top Right: The kids are loading up on a parking deck outside the old AJC newspaper HQ in Downtown Atlanta. Second Left: McNichol arrives in Downtown Atlanta. Second Right: Actor Nicolas Coster stands with the now demolished Omni Coliseum behind him and the Omni International which would become the world HQ of CNN known as CNN Center from 1985 until 2023. Bottom: McNichol in Downtown Atlanta. 

I must have watched this film a few dozen times on HBO on repeat as a child. I knew I shared something with McNichol, but I was not sure what at the time. She did some of her best acting in this film.

Camp Little Wolf at Hard Labor Creek State Park. Little Darlings 1980.

There was trouble caused by McNichol during filming of Little Darlings which might have been a glimpse of things ahead for her later in life. 

People Magazine cover March 31, 1980.

In a profile of McNichol in People Magazine during the promotion of the film it was revealed what had happened.

"The movie's crew, as it happened, preferred Tatum's quiet but polite reserve to Kristy's more impatient and sometimes disdainful moods. In one moment of boredom, Kristy gunned her car into nearby Madison, Ga. and, jumping the curb, tore a large "donut" into the grass on the town green. Confronted by angry police, the embarrassed production company later apologized (as did Kristy personally). "I'm just relieved that if my daughter has to be a rebel, she's ruining grass instead of taking drugs," says Carollyn." A Pad of Her Own in People Magazine March 31, 1980 by Karen G. Jakovich 

 

In 1979, when the movie was filmed, I can believe that a seventeen-year-old McNichol could have gotten away without trouble for doing doughnuts in the middle of sleepy Madison. She was rich and famous, American culture was less celebrity obsessed and not as connected with twenty-four hour news and the inescapable internet. Today, Madison caters to an upscale clientele and news of any sort spreads within minutes on social media and there would be videos from twenty different angles. A mention of the incident in 1980 in People Magazine did not even raise an eyebrow at the time.

McNichol, most known at the time for her role as Buddy in the 1970s television series Family, was no stranger to Georgia. She filmed the 1978 made-for-TV movie, Summer of My German Soldier in Crawfordville and Madison. Her 1981 film costarring Dennis Quaid and Mark Hamill, The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia was shot on location in northwest Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

Jimmy Carter as Georgia Governor in the 1970s.

It also probably did not hurt that Georgia was beginning to emerge as a welcome place for filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s. Burt Reynolds deserved some of the credit behind the push to film movies in the state. He had starred in Deliverance (1972) filmed in the Georgia mountains and advocated for more movies to be made here. Credit also belongs to then Governor Jimmy Carter who had the foresight to create the Georgia Film Office in 1973. 

During this time, Georgia was used for Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Sharky's Machine (1981), The Cannonball Run (1981), Swamp Girl (1971), Together For Days (1972), The Greatest Gift (1974), Buster & Billie starring a very hot Jan-Michael Vincent (1974), The Longest Yard (1974), Conrack (1974), Cockfighter (1974), Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), Return to Macon County (1975), Moonrunners (1975), Squirm (1976), Gator (1976), Greased Lightning (1977), The Farmer (1977), Scalpel (1977), The Great Bank Hoax (1978), Our Winning Season (1978), John Huston's Wise Blood (1979), Moon In Taurus (1980), City of the Living Dead (1980), The Long Riders (1980), Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), Cannibal Apocalypse (1980), Breaking Away the television series starring the adorable Shaun Cassidy filmed in Athens (1980), Madhouse (1981), The Four Seasons (1981), Coward of the County (1981), Six Pack which was partly filmed where I grew up in Georgia (1982), The Sender (1982), The Slayer (1982), Murder In Coweta County (1983), The Slugger's Wife (1985), Summer Rental (1985), A Killing Affair (1986), As Summers Die (1986), Manhunter (1986), Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), The Mosquito Coast starring Harrison Ford and River Phoenix and partially filmed near where I grew up (1986), Foxfire (1987), Made in Heaven (1987), Funland (1987), From A Whisper to a Scream (1987), Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Your Mother Wears Combat Boots (1989), Driving Miss Daisy (1989) among others.

 

Movies and television shows would continue to be made in Georgia in the 1990s. It would be after 2000 when production exploded that Georgia became the Hollywood of the South. In 2016 Georgia had more feature films made here than California. Though Georgia's entertainment industry has begun to wane again in recent years.

Kristi McNichol canoes with Matt Dillon in Little Darlings.

I doubt Little Darlings is part of the film location tour circuit, but the park and its lake where Camp Little Wolf was located still exists. You can get a selfie by the lake, maybe hotwire a bus and sing along to One Way or Another by Blondie.

Alchemy of the Sky

 

Suwanee, Georgia. Photo by me, November 2025.

A storm approached, diving south from the Great Lakes, on Sunday at sunset. 

Winter howled and then bit early on Monday with afternoon highs in the upper thirties and wind of forty miles per hour. Occasional snow flurries fell through the afternoon on the strong northwest wind and I watched from the windows like an excited child. It was one of the earliest times I can remember snow this far south outside of the Georgia mountains. In the early 1990s there was a Thanksgiving with snow showers the entire day that left a dusting, but snow on November 10^th is quite exceptional in the Piedmont region. More significant and accumulating snow was common in the mountains including Brasstown Bald at 4,784 feet which had a Tuesday morning low of eleven degrees and a high for the second day in a row in the upper 20s. It was not quite so cold here at 1,000 feet with a morning low of twenty-six degrees. The first frost was at the beginning of the month and now the first freeze is out of the way too.

 

It was cold enough for quilt weather. I pulled out a quilt made by my grandmother in the early 1970s. I think of my grandparent's 1800's Victorian house and I remember how cold it was in winter in that bedroom I sometimes slept in during the 1970s. The disorder of the quilt is comforting to me.

 

****** 

 

Rimbaud as a man and boy.

Yesterday was the also the anniversary of the death of gay poet and miscreant Arthur Rimbaud. He died of bone cancer in Marseilles one hundred and thirty-four years ago at the age of thirty-seven. I did not remember the occasion, but he had crossed my mind while retrieving the Christmas tree from storage in the garage. Unbeknownst to me it was the day he died. Sometimes life is strange that way. 

I do not fully understand Rimbaud leaving Europe and never writing again for a life in exile in Yemen at twenty-six when he had such a gift. He was part poet, lover and explorer. It sounds romantic, but his life was not easy and his death was a miserable one. I suspect there was some self hatred, plenty of disenchantment and perhaps he was a misanthrope, but who is to know for sure? There are likely abundant numbers of modern mind readers who would like to pathologize him instead of simply enjoying his art. I am content with not knowing everything in his heart and letting his exile be a mystery.

“For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.

What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children’s books, old operas, silly old songs, the nave rhythms of country rimes.

I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents: I used to believe in every kind of magic.”

Season In Hell, Delirum II, Alchemy of the Word - Arthur Rimbaud

 

Or I do understand him.

 

 

Alchemy of the Word (Altered Video Version) (video, 16 min, color, sound, 1987) 

This video above reminds me of something that would have been shown on Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes MTV show during the same period in the 1980s.



I would love to see the original version of this film from 1975.

Standard Time

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Radiohead's Daydreaming from A Moon Shaped Pool played as we headed west out of Dawsonville, Georgia en-route to Ellijay. We were on a mission to buy apples and cider doughnuts, look at the mountain foliage and maybe, if the weather held, enjoy a hike. I craved the trails and the smell of fall. It was not looking good for the weather, light rain was on the radar to the west and clouds were banking up against the Appalachians. The weather models had said not to worry that the weather would hold until evening, but reality was not looking so favorable. The trees were putting on their best show, much better than last weekend when we were up here and the leaves were weak with color that looked like dried pea soup.

I was digging my head out of reading David Foster Wallace essays. People have made so many moral judgments about him since his suicide in 2008 and one-sided details of his personal life were revealed that his writing has fallen out of favor. People put others on pedestals and realize that they should not have done so and topple them. Or could it be they learned that people are complicated and imperfect? The time had changed or fallen back one hour. Standard time arrived and it is my preferred time with early sunsets and longer nights when daylight no longer needs to be saved. Standard time should be permanent time.

Decks Dark played.

Radiohead has been one of my favorite bands since the magical period of music in the early 1990s. I first saw Thom Yorke on MTV in Creep with his short, bleached hair and looking oddly sexy. He smoldered. My desire for him was like Cobain in that I could never tell if I only found him attractive from certain angles or if my attraction was fooled by the hairstyle. Yorke's physical beauty has not aged well since and “sexy” would not be a word I would apply to him in his late fifties. He is five years older than me, but I never had sexiness to lose and I was also never a rockstar.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

The countryside unfurled on the twisty Georgia Highway 52 that is married to the southern border of the Chattahoochee National Forest. The first raindrops smacked the windshield as we passed the sunflower farm that we visited five years ago when COVID-19 was still the threat du jour and people were masked outdoors. It felt silly even then to be outdoors in a mask, but I was pragmatic, responsible as adults should be and fearful. I would not even eat inside a restaurant until the summer of 2022. It feels so much longer than only three years ago.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Clouds rolled over the mountains. We passed the turn to Mt. Oglethorpe. I was still hopeful about the weather. Three years ago in a mask felt more distant than the clouds atop the mountain and the early 90s. Getting older and standard time is the past disordered, out of sync, scattered memories mixed up on the floor and leaves on the ground. Life is a straight line, but the human mind is nonlinear.

Ful Stop played.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

We stopped at the first apple place we saw. It was comically painted red, white and blue. It was photogenic in the drizzle and temperatures in the upper forties. Gray weather and gray times. In the gravel lot in my Columbia fleece, Mexican made Levi's jeans and American made Brooks running shoes I tried to connect apples to the American flag theme. No signal in my head and I shrugged it off. The rain kept the crowds low or back closer to Atlanta in the exposed bulb lit food halls selling craft beer and noodles. We went inside for apples. This was not our regular place that we visit every fall, but new things were needed. Piles of apples looked at us and the disappointment was simultaneous between us. We were of one mind and turned and left without apples. We would buy them down the road. 

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

The sky sagged. It was loaded with rain. A model failure and the rain unleashed on us. Knobs were adjusted to warm the car. Rain streaked windows and the hope for a hike drained. The cold and dim world closed in around our capsule of warmth. At least the leaves were pretty and we had apples. The Cartecay River appeared out of the trees next to the car. Someone told me once it had the cleanest water in the state, but I do not know if that is true. What is the truth from a stranger's mouth and what is false? It is okay to not know everything and it is okay not to believe everything too.

The Numbers played.

When will the next Radiohead album be released? A Moon Shaped Pool came out in 2016. It is not that fans will forget the band or that I imagine the band being worried that they need to release an album to stay relevant, but I would like to hear some new music from them. They challenge my ears, stimulate me, sometimes depress me and they never have bored me.

They are the only rock band that I do not mind maintaining an active, albeit slower, career into their older years. I do not see them as an embarrassment to still be on stage on a tour around the world. The band is not a cashing in, nostalgia act like the Rolling Stones or those other bands from the sixties, seventies and eighties. Radiohead's music always seems to stay new and maybe that is because the music has been ahead of everyone else their entire career and we still have not caught up.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Present Tense played.

Internet rumors are out there that a new album is coming, sometime, possibly in 2026. The band is beginning a limited European tour this month going into December. The shows are sold out. I am ready for new music from the band who is possibly the only band who would excite me to hear a new album. Nine years in my mixed-up memories have passed since the band's last album. I was younger, still not sexy, was spending a lot of time in Grant Park, hiking, swimming, dancing and buying apples in the mountains.

Ellijay, cradled by the ridges, sat in the pouring rain. We circled downtown. Tourists dashed for doors and warm tables. We debated whether to eat or leave in the early mountain darkness. I said something about the 80s and coming through here when it was nothing. I noticed that I am saying stuff like that too often the older I get. “When it was nothing” or “when it was cheaper” or “when it was different” and sometimes “when it was better.” My mother smiled in my mind around 1990 and took a bite of an apple behind her big sunglasses. I held the camera into 1991. Tom Cochrane's Life is a Highway was fun with the windows down.  My mother was funny, easy to be around and I missed her. The present or the past, the carousel of memories was the same on standard time. We retraced our miles home down the highway in the falling leaves.

 

True Love Waits played. 

Me in the fall of 1990 around Ellijay. I am glad I gave up on the mustache.

More Seasoned

 

A painting by gay painter Glyn Philpot of his friend and sometimes model Jan Erland in 1933. This painting fits my autumnal mood as it drizzles outside and I am tucked away upstairs in my office with lamps glowing on the corners of my desk. I enjoy Jan's serious gaze, the hand gripping the barrel of the rifle and the dangling booted foot of the crossed leg. The model is obviously gay too, but there is plenty of dangerous masculine potential like the rifle.

 

On Monday I pulled out an umbrella and walked to the end of the driveway to the mailbox. Oak leaves were scattered on the grass and I had to get out in the rain instead of only watching it through the windows. We have had so little rain since August. During my short walk under the tapping raindrops with temperatures in the forties I turned over in my mind a topic I have been thinking of for the last couple of months. I have been thinking about camping and it resurfaced when I was in the mountains of Rabun County last weekend. 

The teacher who founded Foxfire. Image from a 1974 documentary produced by McGraw-Hill.

 

I passed by Foxfire on Black Rock Mountain too and it reminded me of what happened to its founder at the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School and the scandal in the early 1990s that time has forgot, but that is a story for another day.

 

My camping gear has sat stowed away on a shelf in the garage for the last four years without being used. I have been too busy with the house, I have been too busy writing, I have been traveling, I have allowed life to get in the way. It hit me, it is very likely I will not go camping again in my lifetime. For most people that would be okay, but it made me sad. It was part of a more significant realization too.

My brother, my grandfather and me at Lake Allatoona in the late 1970s.

I camped as a child in the seventies at Lake Allatoona, then camped in my tree house at home and camped in a tent in the woods behind my house in the eighties. I camped as an adult in various places in the mountains. I loved sleeping outdoors to the sounds of nature and a crackling fire and that smoky, rustic scent that only a campfire emits. Now getting older or more seasoned by time, I realize that my body would be less enthusiastic and agreeable about sleeping on the ground or a cot. I could still do it, but I would probably not enjoy it. I realize my limitations that have begun to settle in over the last year. With aging, I am in my early fifties; it is natural that there are activities and places that you will never do or see again. It is not from a lack of desire but more of a result of practicality. Aging has not bothered me too much, but never going camping again bothers me.

 

I do not want to camp in an RV, that is not camping but driving an ugly, gas guzzling motel room on wheels. True camping involves a tent or a tarp or just a sleeping bag. It means not sliding between Egyptian cotton sheets and not using electricity to keep yourself from becoming bored or to make a pot of coffee. It means using a fire to cook meals, heat water, to see after nightfall and to keep warm. Camping means putting the modern noise away and to stop existing as an overstimulated human zombie.

 

My tent and one of my bikes when camping in the Bankhead National Forest in Alabama. Photo by me, 2010.

Also I consider the decline of society as civil norms breakdown and I read of horror stories of how camping has changed. Consideration and respect for others in public has been stomped out under heel like a dying fire and unfortunately that is not exclusive to camping. The experience of camping is not the same with people using camping as an excuse to get drunk and party, bring loud untrained pets, drag along loud electrical generators and impinge on the solitude and peacefulness of nature. What's the point of going into the woods if it is louder and more disturbing sleeping near rude and messy strangers than staying at home?

The only viable option I could see is hiking in for miles and doing back country camping. The likelihood of that also remains low. My camping gear will stare at me in my garage tempting me for some time longer and for as long as I can I will continue day hiking and sleeping at home.

 

Photo by me, September 2025.

Happy Halloween from Lula, Georgia and in the spirit of the time, Camille Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre.

 

The Georgia Drought October 2025

 

An October Monday in the Georgia woods. Photo by me, October 2025.

It was a fantastic day in the woods on Monday with my favorite smell of dead leaves filling the air and the sound of the crunching under my feet. Yet, there is a serious problem. In the photo above there is normally a flowing a creek on the left. All there is now are a few puddles between the banks.

A skinny doe with ribs visible emerges from the woods near Suwanee, Ga.. Photo by me, October 2025.

You cannot argue that the weather has not been ideal for outdoor activities for the last several weeks with low humidity, comfortable afternoon highs and cool nights. I took a five a half mile walk on Sunday and six miles on Monday. I have been pruning trees and catching up on maintenance, since the grass is going dormant, that was shelved over the worst of summer. The deer have been foraging in the woods and have been in my front yard at night scrounging for something to eat. It is so very dry here.

The last significant rainfall at my house was on August twenty-first and since then there have only been a couple of days of brief showers and nothing significant. We need rain and lots of it to relieve this severe drought in Georgia. Unfortunately, if the long range models are to be believed, there is one chance of very light rain this coming Sunday and that is it through the rest of October. 

 

A Sunday walk in the woods. Photo by me, October 2025.

The weather reminds me of Southern California with cool nights, warm days and little rain. California weather is nice in California, but the trees, shrubs, flowers and animals in Georgia are accustomed to much more rain. Also, like California, the risk of wildfires is high and increasing every day with the trees shedding dry leaves onto a bone dry landscape.

The persistent trough in the western United States and the ridge in the central and eastern portions of the country are the culprits. Until this pattern breaks there is little chance for rain here. Eventually the weather will balance itself and the pattern will reverse, but it is unknown when and it needs to be sooner instead of later. In the meantime, people need to find some common sense.

A nearby house sets a tree on fire from their carelessness. Photo by me, September 2025.

Last month, a neighbor set a pine tree on fire with sparks from their backyard fire pit. Thanks to the local fire station for a quick response otherwise this could have easily spread. Some people are so disconnected from the natural environment around them that they seem to have no idea how dry it is and how dangerous outdoor fires are now. I heard fireworks in the distance an hour ago as I wrote this. If we had an effective state government that was not beholden to private business all fireworks sales would be suspended until the drought was over, but there has been no meaningful guidance from the state during this drought. The only mention I have been able to find is this AJC article from October 2. Someone from the state needs to step up to the cameras and microphones and tell the citizens to stop being clueless idiots.

The Old Gay Heart

 

Gay Pride marchers on Peachtree Street in the Atlanta Gay Pride parade in 2013. Photo by me, October 2013.

Little did I know that Atlanta Gay Pride was this weekend. I knew it was coming up this month, but it sneaked up on me. Every year since the 90s the question has been, will I go or not? Since the festivities were moved to October, from the traditional June several years ago, I have attended the festival and parade fewer times.

The last time I went to Pride other than to celebrate in a club or bar was twelve years ago. Not since 2013 have I stood at the corner of Tenth and Peachtree Streets, my once usual spot, and watched the parade of rainbow flags, corporate floats and “the community” make the turn. I have not even done the bar celebration tour since 2016.

Aging out of the scene at forty-three years old, combined with everyone I regularly hung out with having moved to the far corners of the world, seemed like the perfect time to exit. Hangovers and squeezing into Heretic and Blake's until three in the morning are not indulgences to be proud of at fifty-two. Let others have it and have their fun.

A gay pride logo or the Today Show?

This year's slogan, according to the official organizers, is “Rooted In Resistance.” The companion logo is another raised fist again this year and it has the added bonus of what appears to be long green fingernails overlaying a rising sun or the NBC Today Show logo. What would Bryant Gumble, Jane Pauley and Willard Scott say about that? Oh sorry, wrong decade.

I cannot identify with the slogan or the logo that is stamped on a community event by the official organization. The messaging and image has a violence to it that does not resonate with me. Where is the rainbow? Pride seems to no longer officially represent me as being part of the community. So many letters have been added to the community that the G for gay has gone from being shoved to the side to being shoved over the cliff.

A truly terrible photo of me at Atlanta Gay Pride in Piedmont Park in 1998 when it meant something to me.  One of too many film photos in my lifetime with my eyes closed. 

If Gay Pride was born in anything, it was in being proud of who we were, who we loved and not being ashamed of it. “Rooted” and “resistance” are meaningless words of the modern activist lexicon that leaves this red-blooded, rainbow-beating gay heart cold. Gay Pride needs to bring back the G, the original rainbow flag and the celebration of love in a world sorely needing it.