People and Places

My sister and her husband recently moved to Georgia settling in the Augusta area.

My sister grew up in Macon, attended college at Young Harris in the mountains of North Georgia and at Valdosta State amongst the pine trees and gnats of South Georgia.

For many years she practiced the art and science of teaching children with behavior disorders. She retired a couple of years ago. She is 14 years older than I so for my formative years she was more like an assistant mother than a sibling.

In fact, I sometimes will introduce her as my mother just to irritate her and remind her of the difference in our ages. Having me for a younger sibling possibly trained her for dealing with children with behavior disorders.

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My brother-in-law is a native of Milwaukee. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and became an officer in the United States Army. He met my sister while he was stationed in Atlanta and she taught in Cobb County.

They lived for a while in Germany, Colorado Springs and Indianapolis. He left the Army after attaining the rank of Captain and became a systems analyst with the Ford Motor Company.

He and my sister settled in Plymouth, a suburb of Detroit and lived there over 25 years. The deal that the two of them had was that upon retirement they would move South which makes them little different than a couple of million other Northerners.

After all, have any of us ever heard anyone from the South retiring and moving to the North. So it was that my brother-in-law retired a couple of weeks ago and he and my sister moved South.

They arrived in Augusta on one of those recent days that saw the mercury on the thermometer crack a hundred degrees. I spent a couple of years in Augusta early in my ministry and I remember that Augusta always seemed to be a couple of degrees hotter than other cities in Georgia when I looked at the television weather reports. Some say Augusta is situated over one of the vents of hell but I don’t quite hold that theory.

I’m sure my sister remembers a few hundred plus days from growing up in Georgia but I doubt there were very many of those for my brother-in-law to encounter during his Milwaukee youth.

While it could be warm up in Michigan I’m pretty sure neither had encountered heat in the Mid-West like they did on their first day in Georgia.

I went over for a visit this past week. My brother-in-law mentioned that didn’t own very many pairs of shorts and that since he had moved to Georgia he should probably get some more. I didn’t say so but I thought to myself, I don’t own a snow shovel and I hope I don’t live anywhere to have to buy one.

So it is that they have moved South, with our heat, humidity and the occasional gnat. Yet, they have also moved into our milder winters, sweet tea, pecan pies, and vastly superior college football.

In the end, there are things to love about all the places in our great nation. I visited my sister and brother-in law a couple of times in Michigan and they lived with some nice folks and there were many things to appreciate about the place they lived.

In fact, I’ve observed that in most places I’ve seen in our country. I’m sure they will also discover that, just as there are many things to love about living in the South.

The truth is that with a good attitude one can make any place a good place to live. It’s people that make places not places that make people.

That gives us more reason to appreciate where we live. We are blessed not only with a beautiful community of rolling hills and towering forests and stately old homes but there are some pretty good folks living in among those hills forests and homes.

That’s what makes our community special.