Spring Time in Georgia

It’s azaleas, dogwoods, jonquils, and magnolias. It’s the reappearance of redbirds and yellow jackets after a cold winter’s hiatus. It’s the smell of grass greening, and the feel of breezes warming for the approach of summer. It’s spring time in Georgia.

Georgia is one of the most beautiful places on earth in the spring. From late March through May every year the good Lord blesses this writer’s home state with an early view of the splendor of heaven’s vestibule. If one spot on earth can be this pretty once a year, one imagines the eternal vistas that must await on the other side.

Spring time in Georgia also brings other things to the surface. Things like exposed flesh, testosterone, and swarms of duly infected “insects” of the human, male variety. Older Georgia men refer to this as the time when the, “sap goes to rising.” Whatever the process actually entails, one thing is for sure - all the young and budding, “Georgia Peaches,” become as vigorously hunted and intensely pursued in the spring as are Georgia white tail buck in the fall.

This was surely the case with one particular fourteen year old, freckle-faced, Georgia male. During his life’s first hormonal epiphany, he slowly began to realize and appreciate the superb creative work that the Lord had been doing since Eve. That appreciation was never greater than during those precious few minutes each day when a neighborhood female passed by his old home place.

Her name escapes remembrance. Her younger sister’s name was Karen. Karen was a high-school contemporary of this writer. There were three daughters in their family. They lived just around the corner in our little community of Riverside.

She was blonde, fair skinned, built like a, “brick outhouse with the corners knocked off,” and loved to go bare-footed during the warm months of Georgia springs and summers. During those unforgettable days, with the grace of a swaying pine in a Georgia breeze, she made her daily pilgrimage through this writer’s old neighborhood bound for Gary’s Store.

Mr. C.J. Gary had an old two story brick grocery store on the corner of Bolton Road and Main Street in northweat Atlanta. Bolton Road was a main thoroughfare from Atlanta to all points west. Her chosen route to Gary’s Store kept her away from the busy traffic of Bolton Road, and in the process brought her right past the front door of 2579 Forrest Avenue.

Thank you, Lord.

Mr. Gary had the coldest 16 ounce Cokes, in those classic, greenish-tinted, glass bottles with the name of the city of their origin on the bottom, that have ever been sold to mankind. So cold were they that a soft layer of ice would often form on the inside near the top - just below the bottle cap. Thankfully, Mr. Gary always had a case full of these carbonated beauties on hand at .15 cents a pop.

She evidently loved those drinks. Every day, she walked to Gary’s Store and came back with her beautiful lips wrapped around the mouth of one of those icy bottles. And every day, a certain young man felt as though he could kiss old man Gary right in the mouth for being such a savvy merchant.

One of the great challenges of Georgia, spring time, female watching is stealth. Young boys are as clumsy and obvious in their movings about as any bull in any china shop ever was. In their minds, all young men are as clever and undetectable as agent “007” when it comes to checking out a passing female…In reality, they are as obvious and comical as the late Peter Sellers’ character, “Inspector Clouseau.”

The lure as she walked by was to get close enough to see the dirty bottoms of her wonderful bare feet, while appearing to be merely checking the mailbox for the day’s mail - again...Never mind that you just checked the stupid thing barely twenty minutes earlier when she walked by the first time.

To make certain the voyeuristic intent of this charade was well camouflaged, the “smart” thing was to stick one’s head ALL the way INTO the mailbox. To this day, it somehow still seems reasonable and justifiable that a young man would go to such absurd lengths in order to behold the bottom of someone else’s dirty feet.

But, ahhhh….those perfect feet.

The other great hurdle was to not appear to be “stalking” her as you carefully paced every square inch of the road frontage of your parent’s property - picking up pine cones like it was your life’s calling. If you happened to run broadside into a large sweet gum tree, this faux pax was best blamed on, “those pesky sweet gum balls!” Either way, the pretense of yard work and landscaping became a sweet mission indeed whenever this glorious creature made her daily trip to and from Gary’s store.

Her name may escape remembrance but her body does not – a veritable masterpiece of anatomical perfection. As fellow Georgia native Travis Tritt sings, “…she had a body that was made for sin…”

Amen, brother.

Many other aspects of this beautiful specimen of womanhood have endured in one Georgia boy’s mind through the passing of time.

Things such as her coy smile, which said that she saw right through the pathetically obvious attempts to hide the real purpose behind yet another visit to the mailbox…Those wet, blonde, freshly washed curls falling all around her neck - gently swinging back and forth with the motion of her shoulders…Her wonderfully scant cut-off shorts and sheer white t-shirt as they supplely draped her perfect form…The rhythm of that slow, sensuous “strut” that she proudly paraded down that old neighborhood street…And, again, the vivid picture of her lusciously perfect lips caressing the frosty opening of that Coke bottle….

Mmmmmm…Mmmmmm….Kodak moments – every one.

These “precious memories” resurface with every blooming of azaleas and dogwoods and magnolias – and they have now for almost forty years.

Along with one other highly vivid recollection from that same time…

The shrill sound of a mother’s brazen, Parris-Island-trained, drill-instructor voice…loudly echoing from just inside the front screen door…barking out those unforgettable words…

“George David!...You had better quit standing out there with your head in that mailbox!…You don't need to be out there lusting after that heifer a-walking the streets like she does!…You better git your lazy butt in here and mop this kitchen floor like I told you to do thirty minutes ago!…Before I get me a switch and tear your sorry hide out of the frame, young man!…Do you hear me???!!!”

Ah, yes, spring time in Georgia.