My mother’s father, Calvin Sego, moved to the little town of Gough in 1919. The village was itself less than a decade old.  Little more than a boy, Calvin was armed only with the mechanical training he received at the Catholic boy’s trade school near his parents’ home on Green Street in Augusta, Georgia. To escape the drudgery of employment in the cotton mills, and hopefully to avoid catching the Spanish Flu that persisted there, he chose to leave his Augusta family. He boarded the short-line train for the small town of Gough some thirty miles away.

Sego’s Garage anchored a very small business district in Gough. Notice the hand pump and brick basin built for watering mules. The doors are large to admit big-wheeled tractors used in cotton cultivation. When I last visited in the late 1980’s it had fallen in. Photo by Joe Kitchens.

     Only weeks after arriving, Calvin bought a shop from a local blacksmith whose line of work was dying along with him. Calvin was the son and grandson of blacksmiths. It was a time of slow transition from horses and mules to motorized cars and tractors.  At his road-side forge, Calvin did some blacksmithing and honed his new occupation as a mechanic which would provide his livelihood for the next fifty years. He retained the old forge and its 100-pound anvil (cast in England in 1837) and added a modern acetylene welding torch. For a time, he held what must have been the smallest Gulf Oil and Goodyear Tire distributorships, selling gas and tires for tractors and occasionally automobiles. He would keep the growing number tractors in this farm community in repair.

     Calvin married a local girl, Carrie, the daughter, Mintie Wright, a widow with several children; over the  decades, he would provide for Carrie’s aging mother and her family  as well.  To this young couple, my mother Mamie was born. It was perhaps the worst of times to be born there -the bitter end of winter, 1921. It was during the depths of an agricultural depression, “bad times,” for most everyone who lived in the “black belt” of Georgia. * This was cotton country and cotton was king in the World War I years. Then tragedy struck.

In 1920, the market price of ginned cotton fell precipitously from nearly forty cents to only a nickel per pound. Cotton prices recovered, but inflation rose faster and killed the profit in growing cotton. Land values collapsed. People left for the cities -even to cities as distant as Detroit- to find work.

     Mamie lived to see the thriving crossroads town in which she grew up become a virtual “ghost town.” Her father’s garage literally collapsed. She outlived the world of neighborhood churches and schools, of close family and enduing friendships that had made her small town a sanctuary. She once abided here with tender and loving parents, took her first ride in an automobile, bought her first ice cream cone at the “Planters Store,” kissed her first boy, was crowned “Miss Burke County,” married the handsome son of the town’s failed banker and gave birth to me, her first child.

      My mother witnessed so many remarkable and terrible things; and yet, she recalled to the end of her life of 92 years the closeness and affection that grew among people who attended the same small churches and schools, who married each other, who admired their parents and welcomed their siblings and their families to holiday gathering where an old piano clamored above the voices as Christmas carols were tearfully but joyfully sung. As a child I recall we never arrived at my grandparents for holiday reunions without everyone shedding tears of joy -and tears of sadness- as we drove away from loved ones left behind in God’s smallest place.

Mamie Sego Kitchens (c) with her mother Carrie and brother Calvin Sego Jr. Never once did I ever hear my mother speak of the difficult times of the 1920’s, or even of the years of the Great Depression in the 1930’s. Hardship and misfortune were common to virtually everyone she knew. Hard times did not inevitably destroy the sense of community in small towns. Photo from the author’s collection.

When Mamie died, she was buried near where she was born. Though she had been away for decades, nearly a hundred people attended her funeral, including her favorite high school teacher.

    Afterword:  Only the Second World War in the early 1940’s restored a measure of prosperity in the deep south.  Still, prosperity is tenuous and relative. Good times never really returned to many of the small cotton towns. Through the 1970’s, they continued to lose population.

  For those of us who still like to drive the “blue highways,” it is sad to see that the downtown stores of these “short-line” towns are all but devoid of businesses. Remarkable architecture is falling to ruin. The dime stores and movie theaters are closed. Often, so are the local newspapers and banks; and, in some counties, even the churches and public schools stand empty. State statistics tell us the population in these counties is older, more reliant on Social Security and welfare and medical services are only available in the nearest large town -if then. Surprisingly, cotton has made a great comeback, reaching levels of harvest equal to the halcyon days of World War I and the ante bellum years. There is irony in this.

Many of my of my postings have been about life in “God’s smallest places,” and specifically about Gough Georgia, where my mother, father and I were all born, delivered by the same physician. You may enjoy checking them out by visiting the directory on my home page at longleafjournal.com. There you can subscribe to my website and received fresh aricles as they are posted. The article link below (depicting my grandfather, Cyrus White Kitchens’ Bank of Gough) suggests why the search for your family’s story may be more difficult than simply subscribing to ancestry.com.

Finding Your Family in All That History