Winds of Change in Waycross

To tell you the truth, one of the main reasons we came to Waycross was because of my own childhood memories of this place. I remember it fondly.

I remember touring the swamp on a boat with my family, riding the train through the swamp, and staying in a motel here in Waycross. I don't know how accurate the memories are, of course, but I remember them as happy times.

I specifically remember someone sleeping on a rollaway bed. It is brought back to mind afresh even now as my oldest daughter sleeps on one at my feet right now.

Someone once said, "you can't go home again." You also can't go anywhere and expect it to be the same.

That boat ride now cost $125 for my family - we had planned to forgo it.  The hotel that I remember had once been a Howard Johnson's.  By the time we stayed there Hwy 1 had already been by-passed as a major thoroughfare, and the franchise had been long lost. It was then called Johnson's Motor Lodge (that way all they had to do was paint over Howard on the sign).

All these years later I was surprised to find part of the building still standing.

Today it is offices for the Georgia Department of Corrections and the Georgia Highway Patrol. The front building was the office and the resturant. Regular guest rooms were the offices in the background.

Nothing is the same, and you wouldn't want it to be. The winds of change are, by and large, a healthy thing. My memories are what they are whether the buildings and traditions remain in tact or not.

We want the things we don't like to change and the things we do like to hold fast.  Alas, change doesn't come that way - it must all change. The most productive among us then set out to make the changes positive.

Consider this.  Just before I took this photo our family ate at Chick-fil-a. I saw an exchange between an old white gentleman and the young black gentleman who had waited on us just moments before.  They engaged in short conversation and they laughed out loud.  The older man slapped the young man on the back - obviously longtime friends. When the motel in the picture was build it would have been very unlikely that such a public scene would have ever taken place or that any black person would have been welcome in such an establishment at all.

It took change - and painful change - against the strong will of many, to bring us from the way it was to the way it is.

Now I realize that not all change is good. Some of it should be opposed and we should fight it with all we have, sometimes even to the death.  As for me though, I often oppose it all - and so do you. I hope that we can learn to embrace the lion share of change that comes our way; for if we cannot we are well on our way to becoming bitter old people.