BLAKELY – When I was in high school, The Atlanta Constitution ran a series of stories about the disparity in education across the state of Georgia.
The series included stories about schools in affluent counties, inner-city schools, schools in smaller cities and schools in rural areas. For the stories on rural schools, a reporter and photographer visited Early County High School.
I still remember the lead of the story focusing on the fact that a cow pasture was right next door to the high schools, as if having cows munching on grass nearby somehow affected my ability to learn American history.
It was probably my first time I realized people from the big city don’t understand the country way of life.
Big-city folk love to make fun of small-town folk. “Hicks,” they like to call us. But small-town folk don’t have to worry about traffic or pollution. We have fields of peanuts and corn instead of skyscrapers and potholes. We have pastures next to our high schools instead of shopping centers. If that’s bad, I’ll take it.
OK, maybe small towns don’t have all the amenities of a big city, but we can drive 35 miles – albeit to another state – to find whatever we need.
And small-town folks still have the Southern hospitality we’re all supposed to be famous for. They are never too busy or too stressed to be nice.
That hospitality was on display this weekend at the annual Peanut Proud festival on the courthouse square in my hometown. Peanut Proud is a day of fun designed to celebrate everything about the peanut.
Don't judge. The nation's capital has a celebration of the cherry blossom, which is little more than a flower that lasts just a few days – or until the first good wind or thunderstorm rolls through. Enterprise, Alabama, celebrates the boll weevil. To each his own, I say.
Anyway, the Peanut Proud event started a few years ago in the wake of the peanut butter salmonella scandal. You may remember that it was a processing plant in my hometown that was at the root of that scandal.
Trying times like that bring small towns together in ways you don't often see in the big city. We rally together. We love each other.
Small towns have it tough today. They don't offer many job opportunities, so many young people have little choice but to head to the city to find jobs. It happened to me. There are no daily newspapers in Blakely, so I left.
But the people who remain are fiercely proud of where they live and the life they lead. I find myself missing those times.
During peanut season – late summer – it wasn't unusual at all to come home and find a large mound of peanut plants piled at the end of the driveway. My brother and I would pick the peanuts off the plants and Mama would wash them and put them up in the freezer, too.
It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. We take our peanuts seriously down here in Southwest Georgia. Early County, where Blakely is located, is the Peanut Capital of the World, and we have a granite monument to the peanut on the square to prove it.
In fact, thanks in large part to the farmers of Early County, Georgia produces more peanuts than peaches each year.
So realistically, your license plate should have a picture of Mr. Peanut on it.
