COLUMN: Postcards from a summer day
I once kept a framed quote by John le Carre in my newspaper office.
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.’’
I placed those words within arm’s reach as a reminder. Don’t write from a distance. A computer screen should not be your window to the universe. Do your job. Go out and stretch your sense of wonder. Observe.
It also became the foundation for what has been a summer tradition on these pages. It began one June morning, when facing a slow news day and with a deadline staring me down, I grabbed my car keys and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” an editor asked.
“To find some postcards,’’ I said.
I wandered down side streets and cruised back roads. I meandered through parking lots, across baseball fields and along riverbanks.
I had no itinerary, no tour guide, no points of interest plugged into my GPS. (Heck, I didn’t even have a GPS.) I was a genuine rolling stone, an idea anthropologist collecting slices of life.
I did not intrude. I observed. Children playing in a sprinkler in the yard, flowers growing in a field and ducks crossing the road might not seem like front-line journalism but they are tiny patches on a giant quilt.
So, I went incognito again this past week for another episode of “Postcards from a Summer Day.’’
I walked 6 miles and put another 87 on the odometer traveling across Bibb County. I swept the dew of the early morning, trudged through the afternoon heat and dodged raindrops at suppertime.
Along the way, I saw a few folks I knew and several others I might have recognized had they not been wearing masks. My adventure carried me downtown, midtown, across the river, out to the ‘burbs and spilled over into some of my old stomping grounds.
I saw a man doing a brisk business selling watermelons and cantaloupes from his truck in front of Rose’s at Northeast Plaza.
I watched a woman holding a little girl’s hand next to the fountain at Tattnall Square Park as two women sat on a nearby bench, eating Dickey’s peach ice cream at the Mulberry Market.
On Sugarloaf Drive, I saw a young boy run down his driveway to greet the mailman. (That will warm your heart on a warm day.)
Outside the Goodwill Donation Center on Zebulon Road, I observed a volunteer sorting through items that had been dropped off. On the back of his vest was “Goodwill Ambassador.’’
At the corner of College and Bond streets, I saw a woman walking a large dog. (Or maybe the large dog was walking her.)
I left the comfort of my air-conditioned car to check out a young man practicing his serves on the tennis courts at Middle Georgia State University.
Along the reversible three-lane stretch of Vineville Avenue, sometimes known as “Torpedo Alley,’’ I chuckled out loud at the clever marquee beneath the Fairway Mortgage and Nationwide Insurance sign. It read: “Crushing pop cans is soda pressing.’’
I stopped to admire a spectacularly patriotic mailbox on Nottingham Drive, decorated in red, white and blue.
In the same Fourth of July spirit, I dropped by to take notes at Jake’s Fireworks on Mercer University Drive, where the sign by the door wisely instructs: “No Smoking: 50 Feet.’’
I pulled over to speak to a nice lady and her granddaughter near the gate to the Mulberry Street Outreach Garden, which will be celebrating its 10th anniversary next month.
I watched construction workers laying bricks behind the former Alexander IV Elementary. The old school is being renovated for a senior living center and memory care facility.
As I passed Minton Lawn and Garden on Pio Nono Avenue, I waved at the famous Elvis statue that has made an appearance in the parking lot under the watchful wingspan of a giant rooster for more than 20 years.
In the dining room at Your Pie in the new North Macon Plaza, I saw folks standing in line beneath a cool mural by local artist Jim Adams. The colorful artwork is a musical Macon history lesson, featuring the old WNEX radio tower, Little Richard, Otis Redding, Gregg Allman and Jason Aldean.
At a stoplight on Anthony Road, my eyes noticed a young man trying to cross the street while balancing his drink and carryout meal from Saleem’s Fish Supreme, which has been on that same busy corner for more than 40 years.
At Amerson River Park, I watched a woman at a picnic table as she was being summoned by her daughter to join her on the canopied playground.
I followed behind a young man wearing a purple T-shirt as he was riding a bicycle down the hill on Poplar Street. He was holding his arms high in the air, as if to boast, “Look, Ma, no hands!” In the shadow of church steeples, I silently prayed he didn’t hit a bump. Or a pothole.
I circled back to smile at a man tending to a flower bed in a front yard on Clairmont Avenue. For many folks, working in the yard can be a labor of love.
I drove to Luther Williams Field, where there was a flurry of activity to get ready for the Macon Bacon’s home opener. Two men stood on a ladder inside the front gates, straightening a sign on the brick façade of the second-oldest minor league baseball park in the country.
I dropped by the sheds at the Farmer’s Market on Eisenhower Parkway and watched a woman, in an impressive display of strength, lift a 50-pound bag of raw peanuts into the back of an SUV.
I sat in the shade at Riverside United Methodist Church as a UPS driver made a delivery. (I will admit that tracking my own UPS packages is one of my hobbies.)
On what might have been a perfect afternoon to watch an afternoon matinee in a cool theatre with a box of popcorn, I orbited the empty parking lot at AmStar Cinema 16, still not open at midweek because of the pandemic.
In the evening, I saw dozens of fireflies – I still call them lightning bugs – putting on a light show in the back yard.
All may not be right with the world, but plenty is still working. It’s nice to be reminded of amazing things, no matter how small or ordinary.
Hope you enjoyed your postcards.
Wish you could have been there.
Maybe you were.
Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.