Heart of a Barefoot Girl
When I was a little girl and Daddy announced that he was taking the family to town, he usually meant Draketown, Georgia, the original ‘little town that time forgot.’ From Temple, the slightly larger town to the West, State Route 113 bisected the pint-sized metropolis for one block, its only street, before joining State Route 120 and
continuing north. Draketown was a tiny town when I was growing up, in the forties and fifties, and, as a town, is even tinier now, as far as retail commerce is concerned. But maybe not. A small restaurant and two convenience stores offering groceries and gasoline serve the town’s residents in much the same way as the three businesses it
boasted then.
For the times, Draketown deserved the designation of town. Three general merchandise stores flourished on its single block. Mr. Ike’s Store anchored one end of the block. Reeves’s Grocery stood at the other end, with the Reeves’s residence and Stevens’ Hardware between them. The Odd Fellows Hall was housed on the second floor of the hardware store and across the street was the doctor’s home and office.
Mr. Ike lived above his store, which was full of all kinds of wonderful junk, the country version of the ‘five and dime’ in bigger towns. Or our Dollar Stores today. The building caught fire one day, so Mr. Ike moved his home and store to a two-story former residence on the other end of town, across from Reeves’ Store, all of a hundred
yards probably from his original location.
Only Reeves’ Store sold gasoline. The top two feet or so of pumps then were made of clear glass. The reddish gas it contained was visible as John or Pearl filled a customer’s tank for probably fifteen cents a gallon. They also stocked such things as salmon and vienna sausages in cans, bags of flour and cornmeal, and other additions to
the normal country diet of fresh and canned vegetables from gardens. A large floor cooler kept full of ice, with the same Coca Cola logo on its side that we see today, sat in the front of the store. On hot days customers raised the heavy lid of the cooler and pulled out ice cold Coca Colas, RCs, Pepsis and Orange or Grape Nehis.
A slim round monument about twelve feet tall, topped with a ball, stood across the street from the store. A sentence etched into the white marble told any who walked close enough to read that it honored the memory of a woman who was shot by the bootleggers. I don’t recall ever hearing the full story of the monument, or the circumstances of the woman’s death.
An elementary school, a church, and a few frame homes completed the town. It was surrounded on all sides by farms and pine woods. Among the changes fifty years have brought are fewer farms and woods and many more homes, frame and brick.
The doctor died, the elementary school was consolidated to the county seat, and one by one the old stores closed. Young John built a new store, with newer gas pumps, over on State Highway 120. The intersection of Route 120 with Route 113, both blacktopped roads by then, was relocated three or four hundred yards south, bypassing the town.
Just up from the ‘new’ store is a restaurant, which has changed ownership several times in the twenty years or so of its existence. In a more modern claim to fame for the town, several years ago a young man was found shot to death inside his car in the restaurant parking lot. The county sheriff quickly apprehended his murderer since they
were known to be enemies. No monument has been erected for the boy however.
No doubt other tragedies have occurred in this small place through the years. And more will likely take place, as the growing tide of refugees from the city of Atlanta fill the area with new contemporary homes, prosperity, and the usual concerns of a more urban population.
A while back I drove along the old town street. Reeves’s store building is now gone. The shell of Mr. Ike’s original building surrounds full grown trees. The marble monument to a woman’s untimely death remains as does the church, now larger and freshly painted.
Time may have forgotten and almost erased Draketown. But the tiny town lives on in the memory of one who remains, at heart, the barefoot country girl who walked its one block street.
©2004 Sylvia Nickels
