Saturday, November 15, 2008

Bowden Junction

There is a spot around here that is one stop light, a feed and seed store and the smallest post office in Georgia (I haven't seen one smaller, and I get around.) I'm telling you, if you and your dog walk into the Bowden Junction post office, one of you will have to step out in order to turn around. There is a weekend flea market just down the road a bit -- I'm sure their postal address is likely Bowden Junction....but it might be Carrollton. So, we're talking MIDDLE OF NO WHERE. I mean western NO WHERE!

I have Liam with me and we're returning from Carrollton where we've been at Jumpin' Joey's a place that wears kids out by letting them run like maniacs and play all over these air-filled room-sized slides and climbing plastic toys. He made me promise to take him to McDonald's for lunch and what are Grammy's for except for indulgences like this? Anyway, we're driving up highway 27 and there at the flea market are..........camels. Yes, you saw that correctly. Camels. One dromedary and two bactrian camels. (That's what happens with teachers, we know the damn names of the one hump versus two hump camels.) This required an immediate U-turn. We went back to the flea market (and I guarantee there were fleas there that day) and parked. We got the boy jacketed up, and holding grammy's hand. We walked toward a collection of animals in what they deemed a petting zoo. I wouldn't let Liam near them for love nor money. These were not extremely happy animals --- goats of all descriptions, including one laying happily in the water trough. White goats, billy goats, kids.....and three camels.

I don't know...maybe they're gearing up for appearances with the Three Wise Men next month. FAR western Georgia -- flea market -- camels. Sure. That's a natural. We stared like any sincerely dumb struck rednecks. I mean.....camels! They also had a pony ride and Liam got to take the shortest pony ride I'd ever seen. We'll have to see if I'm smart enough to load up the film of it. Or, if I was actually able to capture it like I thought I did.


I've been teasing Liam that I'm going to start calling

him "Booger." You can see why.

Camels above and pony ride below. Yes, I can do the video right sometimes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To answer your thoughts about the Bowdon Junction or Carrollton address is to tell you just how small-town Bowdon Junction is. It's not even a town, just a community really. The flea market has a Carrollton address because... get this... you can only have a Bowdon Junction address if you have a post office box in Bowdon Junction. They do not have a mail route! Carrollton and Mt. Zion handle that for them, depending on where the address is.

It's almost as small as the little Alabama town where my grandmother was postmaster for more than a decade - they still had "Rural Route 99, Box 1" until about 8 years ago. They had NO post office boxes until the mid-90s. Oh, and their public library is still in a single-wide trailer.

Love this life in the country, eh?