The Backroads Traveler: LaFayette, Georgia

 The 1836 Marsh-Warthen House, LaFayette.

 LaFayette is a small city in, and the county seat of, Walker County in the extreme northwest corner of Georgia. It's also the Georgia small town with which I am most familiar, because I lived in Walker County for 33 years.

Founded as Chattooga in 1835, as the Cherokee nation was struggling unsuccessfully to hold on to their homeland, the town was renamed LaFayette in 1836, in honor of the French Marquis who fought with the American forces in the Revolutionary War. Current population is about 7,000.

The surrounding county has a fair amount of industry, including the Roper Corporation, which makes GE appliances. Much of the area is given over to farming, with many beef and dairy operations.

LaFayette, by the way, is pronounced "LaFAYette," not the conventional "LaFayETTE." However, the downtown square is pronounced "LaFayETTE" Square. Go figure. 

The Marsh House, also known as the Marsh-Warthen House, was built in 1836 by Spencer Stewart Marsh, a prominent businessman who founded a major cotton mill in Trion. The house was owned by his descendants for 150 years.

During the Civil War, Union cavalrymen stabled their horses in the house. Bullet holes from the Battle of LaFayette are still visible in the walls. Check their website for the tour schedule, because it varies considerably according to the time of year. http://marshhouseoflafayette.org/. 423-994-8485. 

The Chattooga Academy.

The  Chattooga Academy was built in 1836 of bricks made at Rock Spring, a few miles north of LaFayette. Believed to be the oldest brick schoolhouse in Georgia, it cost $815 to build and has one large room on each floor with a chimney at each end. The Presbyterians used it as their meeting house until their church was built in 1848.

 

 The LaFayette First Presbyterian Church.

Just north of the town square is the First Presbyterian Church. Erected in 1848 in the Greek Revival architectural style so popular in the early and middle 19th century, it is still an active church. It served as a hospital for both Confederate and Union wounded after the Battle of LaFayette in June of 1864.

 A TRIBUTE TO A TIME THAT WAS.

Breakfast at Susie’s on the square. A LaFayette tradition for many years.

The name of Susie’s Café on the square in LaFayette was officially Susie’s Sunset Café. But I always thought it should have been named Susie’s Sunrise Café, because the early morning sun streamed in through the plate-glass front and illuminated everything all the way to the back wall.

Susie’s had booths down each side for those who preferred a feeling of relative privacy, but it also had a couple of long tables down the center where lawyers, businessmen, farmers, factory workers, and gas station attendants ate their breakfasts together and chewed the fat (no reflection on the bacon) in peaceable equanimity.

Susie's is gone now, and places like it in other small towns are a dwindling species.  Increasingly, you will find the old timers' morning coffee club at a Hardy's or McDonald's. A sad sign of the times.

The photos: The Marsh House was photographed with a Fuji X-T20 and the Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens. For the Chattooga Academy photo, I used an Olympus E-M5 with the Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 14-140mm lens, and for the church, the same camera with a Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 12-32mm lens. The photograph in Susie's Café was made with a small, quiet, Olympus SPn rangefinder camera loaded with color negative film.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    digital photography     travel     Fuji X-T20 camera      Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens     Olympus E-M5 camera    Walker County, Georgia     Marsh-Warthen House     Chattooga Academy     Panasonic Lumis G-Vario 12-32mm lens     Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 12-32mm lens     film photography     Olympus SPn rangefinder camera

The Photographer's Eye

 Demented spider. GA. Highway 193, Walker County.

 (Adapted and expanded from a post on September 15, 2021.)

 What does it mean to have a photographer's eye?

I think the indispensable ability is the ability to notice things. Most of us bumble through life half-aware of our surroundings. And then we pick up a camera and expect to start seeing interesting things. It doesn't work that way. We have to develop the habit of being aware of the world around us at all times, not just on demand. That's the difference between photographers who regularly produce good pictures and those who, infrequently or never, have a lucky accident.

Ford 8N tractor in shed, U.S. Highway 19, Lumpkin County, Georgia.

After the ability to notice things comes a sense of light. Very often, it's the light itself that makes a subject noticeable. Learn to study light -- observe how it falls at different times of the day and different seasons of the year until you can almost feel the way it works with your subject. This is a lifelong learning process and I'm still working at it.

Bottoms up! Diving swans on Berry College campus, Rome, Georgia.

The third element is composition -- the ability to arrange the subject in the camera's viewfinder so that whatever it is that caught your eye stands forth most clearly. If necessary, zoom your lens or move, so that your frame is clean and uncluttered, including only the essential elements that tell the story.

Good street photographers such as Elliott Erwitt and Henri Cartier-Bresson have an almost magical ability to simultaneously notice both a subject and the light and compose a photograph in an instant. Others, myself included, are not so fast. But not all kinds of photography demand such quick reflexes. Jay Maisel notices and photographs an incredible number of interesting subjects. Some of them do demand quick reflexes, but many of them are just sitting there, as it were, waiting for someone to notice and photograph them.

As Robert Louis Stevenson said,

                "The world is so full of a number of things                                                                     I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

Photos: The spider: Canon EOS A2, 28-105mm RF lens, Fujichrome 100 film. The tractor: Canon EOS 5D Classic, 24-85mm EF lens. The swans: Olympus OM2n, Zuiko 85mm lens, Kodachrome 64 film.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    photography techniques     film photography     Canon EOS A2 film camera      Canon 28-105mm EF lens     Fujichrome 100 film    Walker County, Georgia     digital photography     Canon EOS 5D Classic     Canon 24-85mm EF lens     Olympus OM2n film camera     Zuiko 85mm lens     Kodachrome 64 film

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: IV

Max looks on as Louise pets a heifer. 

 In April, 1992, a black dog appearing to be a spaniel/labrador mix wandered into Deer Run Farm while we were in the process of bringing in a larger mobile home. (Don was in Iraq and Kim, his wife, had come to live with us.)

A similar dog, but female, had been adopted by our good neighbors the Parris's about a week before. They named her Maria, and at first I thought this dog was Maria. Then I noticed he was a male, friendly, and with a jaunty air. I thought, this fellow is a maximum dog. So he became Mr. Maximum Dog, but Max to his friends. And he was our friend for the next twelve years. 

Which makes it all the more upsetting to me that this is the best photo I can find of him without going to the garage and digging through boxes of prints from the '90s.

Gladys and Max watch as Louise pets Freckles.

In those years we briefly had two other dogs -- Gladys, a small, collie-type, and Brigit, a border collie. Gladys was a nice dog, but she disappeared. We believe our other neighbor killed her for running his cattle. We think Brigit ran away, although we have never known for sure.

Max had demodetic mange, but thanks to Louise's loving care, lived a long, happy life. With sadness, we had him put to sleep when his life became burdensome to him.

I actually credit Max for saving our marriage. We finally sold our old house and were able to build on the farm in 1993 and '94. We had much difficulty with the contractor, and sometimes the tensions in our home were so great we could hardly speak to each other. So it became, "Max, tell your mother. . ." or Max, tell your father. . ."

Truly a maximum dog. I'll keep looking for a better picture.

More to come. 

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     family history   dogs

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: Part III

 Buffalo. A chow who was his own dog.

In December, 1987 we thought our house was sold, so we moved into a refurbished, 12x40-foot mobile home on our property in MacLemore Cove, intending to live in it until our new house was built. (The sale of our old house fell through, leaving us without enough money to build at that time. But that's another story.)

We brought with us to the Cove Harley and Schnoodles, and also our son Don's chow, Buffalo, since Don was in the Army by that time. Buffalo was a great dog, but very independent. He was happy with us, but he was his own dog. He disappeared after some months and we never saw him again. We don't believe he wandered off -- we have always believed our neighbor killed him.

Not long after we moved to the farm, I accidentally ran over Harley with the front wheel of my compact pickup truck. Incredibly, he lived. He had broken ribs and punctured lungs, but the vet put him in a sort of compression jacket and he recovered fully.

Sometime in 1989, we went into town for a few hours. When we returned we found both Harley and Schnoodles dead in our back yard. We believe they got into coyote poison that someone had put out. We mourned them, but were happy they both went together, so that one would not mourn for the other. They lived long, good lives -- 13 years for Schnoodles and 12 for Harley, and were a joy to us.  

Bear. My best buddy.

Later that year, some friends of Don, who was by this time at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, gave us a young chow, whom we named Bear. (As you can see, lots of imagination in our naming system.) Bear had a lot of personality and soon became my best buddy. Unfortunately, he was hit and killed by a car in 1991. Having pets is a life of love and loss, but very much worth it. We have been blessed by the dogs that have owned us.

To be continued.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     family history   dogs