Two Thoughts from a Trip
I spent the day in Middle Georgia yesterday doing a site inspection for a new case (yes both partners from the big firm were there – see previous post).
I took the “direct” route there which resulted in a drive through the country – four and two lane paved roads that don’t go too straight, punctuated by towns that got smaller the farther I got from Atlanta.
I’ve had this thought before on drives like this. What do all these people in the nice houses I saw every quarter mile or so do to make a living? The little towns all had businesses in them, some more than others. There were farms here and there but not much in the way of industry.
Most of the country, outside of the Atlanta’s, Chicago’s and Nashville’s is just like this. And after making a living for the day, what do they do? I’ve always lived in a city. Beyond the question of making a living, I’d go nuts out in the country. I know there are charms to be found in nature, I saw them yesterday, a horse, a cow, some hawks swooping around. But every day?
When I reached the destination, the lawyers and clients took a tour through the back seventy. At the start, there was an old logging trail to follow; but, we veered from it to take a look at a stream, then some wetlands, another stream. I had another thought that I’ve had before. I wouldn’t have made a very good explorer/frontiersman.
Big Tony and I had a conversation a few years back after flying from Atlanta to Vegas. What were those people thinking when they left say Texas and got to the desert southwest? We saw it from the air and agreed we’d have promptly turned around, returned to St. Louis and opened a “last chance” bar for the travelers.
As I was carefully making my way through the woods yesterday, occasionally putting a foot into a hole, I again thought, the whole country was like this a couple of hundred years ago and people kept walking. Thousands of miles, not knowing just what they’d find or when they’d find it.
Stronger stock, as they say.
3 comments:
Stronger Stock? Yes. But weren’t they all back then? I think they went out of a sense of curiosity and or desperation. Where they were wasn’t so good so maybe out there would be better. We don’t have to go to California to know what its like. Those people were gamblers of the highest quality – they gambled with their lives and most of them won.
A bunch of years back I had a business trip that took me to Denver, and in the evening, my co-workers and I took a jaunt up to Boulder for dinner. If you have never seen Boulder, then you need to know that Boulder is a very cute little college town nestled right up against the base of the Rocky Mountains, that loom above it. Any further west, and you are in for one hell of a hike.
One of my co-workers commented at the time that the people who started Boulder must have been the laziest adventurers around...
"Hmmm, we've come pretty far already. And if we go any further, I'm gonna have to haul that there chifferobe up over top of these mountains.... Hey, Ma! Whaddya say we just settle here?"
I have always wondered the same thing about what do these people do for a living. My sister lived in Georgia for several years in some of those teeney tiny towns. She raised horses and her children, and her husband drove an hour or more to a city where he would work.
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