Travels in the South

Welcome back friends to another edition of Travels in the South.  We have been talking about our visit with our great friends Bill and Jean from Canadian Cats.  If you have missed the previous editions, please check them out here:  Red Lobster; Fogo de Chao; Stately Oaks; Spa Day. World of Coca-Cola Part I, World of Coca-Cola Part II. World of Coca-Cola Part III, The Varsity, Gone With the Wind Part I.

Last week we started the Gone with the Wind tour in Jonesboro, Georgia.  We spoke of the Patrick Cleburne Memorial Cemetery.  The above picture was taken by Bill.  What an awesome picture, you think?  Today we continue our tour.  There was one thing that I forgot to mention last week that I think you might find fascinating.

In this picture, you see the front entrance to the Road to Tara Museum where the Gone with the Wind tour starts and drops off.  This building is important – not on historically but movie wise.  Have I intrigued your interest now?

 You see, Georgia is like little Hollywood and there are lots of movies made here.  Heck not too far from us in Atlanta, they filmed the movie The Walking Dead.  That explains all of the zombies downtown – snorts with piggy laughter.

But back to this Road to Tara Museum.  Do you know what famous movie actually took place in downtown Jonesboro?  In fact, there was a scene in the movie that was filmed right behind this building.    That’s right – Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds.  Notice the building now in this picture – this is the back of the building.  In the movie, Jonesboro was turned into Texarkana.  Cool huh?  So you see we have our own little bit of Hollywood right here in the south 🙂

There are lots of other important places in Jonesboro.  There’s actually the R.K. Holliday Office Building.  R.K. Holliday was the cousin of Margaret Mitchell and the father of the woman who served as inspiration to Mitchell’s character Melanie Hamilton.  Then there is the Carnes Homes that was built in 1850’s by Stephen Carnes.  Carnes was a casket maker and after the war he was hired to re-inter the Confederate soldiers that had been buried around the city into the Patrick Cleburne Memorial Cemetery that we spoke about last week.

The tour also brings you by the 1898 Clayton County Courthouse.  Margaret Mitchell visited this courthouse to research local records during her writing of Gone with the Wind.

 Our next stop on the tour was the Courthouse/Masonic Lodge.  From 1858 until the first County Courthouse was completed on this site in 1861, Clayton County Court met in the Masonic Hall.   This courthouse was used until 1898 when the new courthouse was built.  Now inside of this building it houses all kinds of history along the ways in Clayton County.  It had original policeman uniforms, jails, Gone With the Wind pictures of Scarlett and Rhett to ghosts.  Yep I said ghosts.  Our tour guide says that psychics have been to this building and spoke to ghosts from years past.  Interesting huh?

I’m sure you recognize this movie poster from Gone With the Wind but can you read it?

And do you know what happens to people on the tour that can’t behave? Go ahead guess.  I bet you can’t guess. Stay tuned next week my friends for the continuing tour.

 

Travels in the South

Welcome back friends to another edition of Travels in the South.  We have been talking about our visit with our great friends Bill and Jean from Canadian Cats.  If you have missed the previous editions, please check them out here:  Red Lobster; Fogo de Chao; Stately Oaks; Spa Day. World of Coca-Cola Part I, World of Coca-Cola Part II. World of Coca-Cola Part III, The Varsity, CNN Center.

 Today we are going to start sharing another tour that we went on that was called Gone With the Wind Tour.  The funny thing is that this tour has been in downtown historical Jonesboro for as long as I can remember and mom/dad have never went on it.  Now, they have been to some of the places that the tour visits but never the ‘official’ tour that shares all kinds of information.  And well Jean is such a fan of Gone With the Wind that everyone *had* to take this tour.  This posting will definitely have to be in several postings to share all of the highlights that we saw and the pictures we took.  So are you ready?  Here we go.

The tour picks up at the Road to Tara Museum which is a 1867 Train Depot.  Back in the day at the peak of railroad travel, both passengers and freight passed through downtown Jonesboro day and night.

It was once made of wood and stood near the Confederate Cemetery (which we will get to soon).  But that building burned down in 1864 during the Civil War’s Battle of Jonesboro.  After the building burned down, they built this building of granite and placed it more in the center of the town.  You bought the tickets for the tour in this museum and also could shop for all kinds of gifts and trinkets.

In fact inside of the museum, they had all kinds of items for Gone with the Wind including this picture, paintings, books, pens, bells – you name it and they had it.  I can assure you that mom and Jean walked out with more than the hub units wanted – snorts with piggy laughter.

Mom said she could have spent hours inside of the store just looking at everything – it was like walking on a movie set.

This beautiful house is called The Warren House and it was built in 1860 by Guy Warren.  Guy Warren was an agent for the Macon & Western Railroad and one of Jonesboro’s first town commissioners.  On the tour, you go by the house but currently it has new owners so you can’t go in to explore.  It was on and around this house where the majority of the Battle of Jonesboro took place.  The house at that time was used as a field hospital and was headquarters to the Confederate Troops until the Union Army took possession of the house for the same use.  The tour guide told us that in some of the walls in the downstairs parlor, you can still see signatures of the soldiers that were recuperating at the house during the war.  They left messages and signed the wall for all to see in the years to come.  Cool huh?

The next stop on our tour was the Patrick Cleburne Memorial Cemetery.  Now there are some graves that are marked with the names.  But this cemetery also holds the remains of over 1,000 soldiers that died during the Battle of Jonesboro who were buried in unmarked graves.  The unmarked headstones are laid out in the shape of a Confederate battle flag that can be seen from the air when you are overlooking the cemetery.

AND, in all the years mom has grown up in the area she has heard plenty of stories about this cemetery.  Mom knew of a friend that grew up in a house across the street.  One night her parents had gone out and she stayed home alone.  It was dark and rainy with a heavy fog in the area.  She looked out her front door and saw the image of a Confederate soldier walking down the street.  Just the thought of that makes my hair stand up on end – shivers.

Well friends, I hope you enjoyed the first installment of the tour of Gone With the Wind.  Come back next week for more in the Travels of the South with my mom/dad and Bill and Jean from Canada 🙂 ❤