Cairo, Georgia

The beauty of traveling at a walking pace down Georgia country roads is that you get plenty of time to enjoy the small towns that you pass through. If you draw a straight line on the map between St. Marks and Springer Mountain, you pass through quite a number of them. Cairo, Camilla, Leesburg, Baconville, and Americus are directly on the route. Others are just to the east or west : Macon, Colquitt, Thomasville. Cairo, the "Hospitality City" is a real gem on the route and lives up to the slogan.

My experience in Cairo (pronounced Kay-ro) started when I was walking down the main street. There was a group of people gathered around the historical museum and they were all excited about something.
One woman approached me and explained that they had just found a bobcat locked in the upstairs rooms of the museum. A bobcat in the middle of town? Yes, it really was a bobcat and the animal shelter had just taken it away for relocation. And those people gathered around for the excitement? They were the Mayor, City Manager, the newspaper reporter and museum volunteers.

For my good fortune, I had just met Mama Kay. She's the current leading force behind the museum and manages it with devotion and determination to bring the county history to life. She's also married to the City Manager. Her involvement in the community has been strong throughout her life. She's held every possible volunteer position in the school district. That's where she earned her nickname. Kids who she's known from birth to middle school gave here the endearment, Mama Kay.

Knowing that Rod would be ending his walking day in this town, I wanted to find a place to park the RV. I asked Mama Kay if she knew a place where we could park. Well there's no RV campgrounds in town, she said. I told here we were self contained and we wouldn't be a bother. "I'll just make a phone call to the City Manager", she said. When she returned she said that we could park behind City Hall. And she said she asked her husband to tell the Mayor and the Police Chief that we would be there. And if anyone bothers us, she said, you just tell them that Mama Kay said it was OK. Well, what a blessing to run into such hospitality!

After the parking business was taken care of, I got a personal guided tour through the museum. The museum houses artifacts displaying the economic and social history of Grady County. The oldest artifact was a rock with the year 1704 crudely carved into it. It had an arrow pointing to a symbol for a meeting place. One room is a barbershop that was fully functioning until the barber's retirement in 2010. In it you can still smell the aroma of hair tonic and can almost see the generations of people sitting to get their hair cut and their shoes shined. Another room contains simple tools used to plant and harvest cotton, to make cane syrup and to make turpentine. On the wall is a big mural depicting workers harvesting cotton and making turpentine. Another room honors the veterans of the Civil War, WWI and WWII. The exhibits all sensitively preserved and interpreted the past for future generations.

Mama Kay was also excited about the preparations for the weekend activities. Since Jackie Robinson was born in the area, they will be naming the Boys and Girls Club in his honor. An impressive list of celebrities will be at the event; Evander Hollyfield and hometown Olympian basketball star Theresa Edwards to name two. Mama Kay was proud to be involved in the preparations for the Friday night banquet.

I must say that I am grateful to that bobcat that gave me a moment to pause on the main street of Cairo. If it wasn't for that, I might have missed a gem of Southern Georgia.