My Little Corner of the World

About two years ago, I moved to Sander­sville (that is in sort of East Cen­tral Geor­gia if you are not from around here). It is a kind of sto­ry­book place — espe­cially as you look a lit­tle closer. It has unique indus­tries and rail­road noises (like all fairy­tale places should have) that you can hear around the clock. It has a town square with a bell that chimes the hours (five min­utes early accord­ing to my watch). You can walk to most of what you need. There are times when my car will sit a day or two (a bless­ing with four dol­lar per gal­lon gaso­line). The food is good. The peo­ple are friendly. There are enough juicy sto­ries to fill sev­eral epic-size nov­els.
My lit­tle cor­ner of the world is blessed by not hav­ing an Inter­state high­way nearby, but it is within pretty easy dri­ving dis­tance of Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, and Savan­nah. To my knowl­edge, there has never been a seri­ous ter­ror­ist threat here (though peo­ple talk of a bear that once saun­tered through down­town). This town has been voted as one of the clean­est towns in Geor­gia a time or two — maybe more. It is busy at times but never hec­tic. Rush hour is fif­teen min­utes twice each day.
If you need some reflec­tion time, you can park in down­town Ten­nille (a cou­ple of miles south) and watch the trains. I pre­fer between six and eight PM on week­nights — espe­cially in Autumn. A five minute drive can take you to all that is here. Many of the res­i­dents live in rural county soli­tude. Beyond a five minute drive the traf­fic sounds dis­ap­pear. There are many tal­ented peo­ple in this town, and they are hum­ble enough that you some­times have to dig it out of them. There seems to be a con­cen­tra­tion of banks — fair sized ones at that. That is not a bad sign by any means.
On late night strolls, with my minia­ture Daschund that I refer to as “Killer” when it is after 9:00 PM, the soul of the town res­onates. His­to­ries before the Civil War echo from the ground. The older build­ings have watched a lot of peo­ple come and go over the decades. They seem to do a bet­ter than aver­age job of exud­ing stately still­ness in the still South­ern night air.
So, for any­one look­ing for me, this is my lit­tle cor­ner of the world. The human body only occu­pies a few square feet and car­ries its own world with it. “Where” has a nice feel to it, but “Who” has to do with Spirit. Your lit­tle cor­ner of the world is what you make of it.