Jerks

Three teenaged idiots tried to break down my back door last Saturday afternoon.  Fortunately, my renter was in the house at the time.  He heard the noise from upstairs, though it was me, and walked down to check things out.  The kids, standing on my deck wearing bandanas over their faces while attempting to kick down a door (which is 90% glass, yet they were trying to break the deadbolt rather than smashing the glass), saw him and ran. 

Most excellently, one of them apparently busted his ass during the flight.  I hope it hurt.

Scott (the renter) immediately called 911 and then me (I was in middle Georgia shooting cemeteries – more on that later).  From what I’m told, three sets of cops were out the house within about 90 seconds.  No sign of the punks, though.  I’m guessing that they saw my laptop sitting on my living room table and figured they could accomplish a smash-and-grab manoeuvre; but I guess nobody ever told them that glass breaks easier than wood and metal does.  The did manage to crack the core of the door, which pisses me off. 

Not as much as the fact that they were in my back yard to start with, mind you, but it does piss me off.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I’ve lived in this hellhole of a metropolis for the last 20 years and this is the first time anybody’s tried to make me the victim of a home invasion.  Some loser did indeed break into my car about 15 years ago, though.  Did $300 worth of damage in order to steal a $10 equalizer.

Lesson learned.  Laptops now stay upstairs in my room – as do my wallet and keys.  But enough about all that.  As I said, I spent most of Saturday driving around middle Georgia shooting cemeteries and trying to fill requests for FindAGrave.com.  Betsy and I hit something like 9 graveyards between 7AM and 5PM and managed to get some pretty decent shots in spite of a couple hours of rain and an inability to find a couple of the smaller cemeteries we were looking for.  I also go to see Griswoldville, GA, for the first (and probably last) time.  If G’ville is famous for anything, it’s the fact that, during Sherman’s march from Atlanta to Savannah during the Civil War, a bunch of GA “militia” attempted to engage some of the union troops there.  After Sherman’s guys basically destroyed the rebs at Griswoldville, they were rather shocked to learn that this “militia” was comprised entirely of very old men and very young boys.  It was a clear sign that the confederacy was running out of soldiers.  This link gives a bit more background, though from a decidedly pro-southern point of view.

After driving through parts of Jones and Twiggs Counties, shooting at 5 or so cemeteries, we went to Macon and spent some time at the Old City Cemetery, the Jones Chapel Cemetery (a truly bizarre experience) and Evergreen Baptist Cemetery.   The Old Cemetery, located pretty close to downtown Macon, was in use from 1825-1840.  It has a rather odd feel to it, because it’s basically a raised hunk of land – about one city block square – surrounded on all sides by industry.  I’m not sure if it was never very popular or if headstones have just been stolen from it, but it’s mainly just a large open field, containing few graves.  In fact, the entire listing of the cemetery can be read here.  Still, it’s a pretty place.

After seeing the old cemetery, we went looking for the Jones Chapel Cemetery because Betsy had a couple of names from there on her FindAGrave list.  I said above that this place was bizarre, and I’m betting that whatever pictures of it that I include here cannot convey just how strange it was.  For starters, the Jones Chapel in question – the church to which this cemetery was presumably once attached – is no longer there.  As I understand it, it was moved several miles away.  On the spot where the church stood, there is now an abandoned house which – to me at least – looked as if it were being used as a crack house. 

The cemetery itself is so overgrown that we very nearly missed it, in spite of knowing exactly where it was and driving around three sides of it looking at it.  After parking the car (in what amounted to an alley across the road from section 8 housing), we made our way across a weed/briar barrier into what was basically a jungle.  Kudzu, vines, thorns, trees, trash….and every now and then, we’d stumble across a gravestone or a decrepit old wrought-iron fence surrounding what one must assume must’ve been a family plot at some point.

And I’m not saying that this was an OLD cemetery.  The latest graves there, I’m told, are from the 1970s.  The graveyard is in the shape that it is simply because the city of Macon turned its back on it.  We ran into a man and his son who were doing their best to clear the brush and clean things up, and they weren’t at all pleased with the lack of service the city was providing – things like sending a truck to pick up the piles of trash and debris that those two people had collected.   The son, probably about 13 years old, turned out to be somewhat of a genealogy buff who is an active member on FindAGrave.com. He knew exactly where one of the graves that we were seeking was.

On the Sunday following the cemetery tour, I spent a few hours at the 5 Seasons Brewpub near Buckhead watching “Mercury Orkestar,” a Balkan-style band that, honestly, I don’t much care for.  Several of my friends play in it, however, and I like hanging out with them and, potentially, networking.  Just because I don’t like *listening* to something doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to *play* it, after all.

And now, in spite of really not putting much of interest down, I think I’ve spent enough time writing in this for today.  I do actually have some real work to do.  I’ll try to get another entry added pretty quickly to catch you up on the wee BEFORE the idiotic moron loser jerks tried to smash my door down.

TWD