Week 2: Georgia


When I crossed the border of South Carolina into Georgia, I wanted to stop for a second and collect some canned goods. I stopped in a little town right across the state line called Toccoa. It reminded me of my home town from High School, but a little more country.  After driving through each of the main streets in town in less than 10 minutes, I parked my truck in a church parking lot that was right on the edge of a neighborhood. I only had a couple hours of daylight left. I was just asking myself if I had enough battery left on my laptop to check and see if this town had a soup kitchen, when I saw another truck pull into the church. I got out and approached the gentleman stepping out of his dark green Chevy. I introduced myself and asked him if he knew where the soup kitchen was. He said "don't you? You're parked right in front of it," and waived toward the white house on the other side of Bubba. I laughed and asked him if he thought I could leave a donation on their porch with a note to have them call me. He nodded and then started with all the questions and then skeptisizm. I cut the conversation short after I got permission to park in the lot.
After 40 cans, it was dark out and I didn't have my glasses on. I had cheated and cut across the street instead of following my normal pattern, and I had gotten turned around somehow or another. I couldn't help but smile while I thought about how stupid a person has to be to get lost on foot in a neigborhood. I flipped back through what I call my 'porch pictures', or pictures that I take while I'm waiting on people's porches for them to sift through the cans in their pantries for that lost can of green beans. You can tell a lot about people by their porch. The pictures, I was hoping, would tell me where I had turned, and would allow me to skip that two blocks of extra exercise. I figured it out and was cutting across a bank parking lot when I heard someone call my name.
It's strange to hear someone call your name when you know you are in an environment where no one really knows you. As I looked around, I saw light shining through an open front door across the street. A man was leaning out the door, waving, and calling my name. I stopped and thought about it before I answered. I remembered him. He told me that he had read the flyer that I pass out as I go around the block, and that he liked my theory on kharma. He said he wasn't a weirdo, he pointed at the two little girls eyeing me through the window, and said that they'd love to have me in for dinner.
I ate the hot, home-cooked grilled chicken and thought about Don, and Vern from South Carolina. I wondered how many more amazing people I was going to meet, but I tried to stay focused and answer all the little girls' questions, while finding out as much as I could about their lives. The younger of the two girls was particularly sharp, and she was telling me stories about the man she saw shaving at the park. She laughed, and said that she thought it was so weird that he would shave while sitting on the park bench. But realized she had never really thought about WHY the man must shave on the park bench.
Even kids understand that people wouldn't act so crazy if they weren't so desperate. We have to meet people's physical needs before we can meet their emotional, mental or spiritual needs.

The snow and the ice was worse in Atlanta than I originally anticipated. Honestly, I had thought South was synonymous with warm weather, and it had never occurred to me that it would be under ten degrees in Georgia. I never thought there would be 4 inches of solid ice on the roads either. I must have been hoping to leave that behind me in the north.
In the evening I was trying to get to my friend's house. He lives in a suburb called Austell, about 30 minutes from downtown Atlanta. I hadn't seen the ice yet, most of the roads in downtown Atlanta had been clear. I hadn't run into any problems all day. The moment that I took the turn onto the lane that would take me to his house, I slid 60 feet down a hill and almost went off the road. I apologized to Bubba for not driving slower, and after a few minutes I kept on down the road. It wasn't even a whole block later and I could see the road in front of me become a solid sheet of ice, stretching out as far as I could see into the darkness. I knew his house was over a mile away. I wondered if there was an alternate route to his house, so I tried turning around to go back out the way I came. When I tried to go up the hill, Bubba started sliding backwards. I couldn't control the wheel and I could feel my back tire slipping off the road. I straightened him out only seconds before his whole rear-end was in the ditch.
I had to determine what would be the best and safest decision for me and my truck. I looked at my options. Keep trying, maybe get out and get to a Wal-Mart to park my truck and sleep outside in the cold. Park my truck right here, on the side of the road, and try to sleep in the cold and guard my stuff. I'll be honest, I didn't want to sleep in the cold, or risk ditching my truck, and I wanted to see the friends that were waiting a mile up the road.  I decided to park him for the night, and walk the rest of the way to my friends house. Before I left I said a little prayer of blessing for Bubba and for the people who lived in the house where he was parked.
When I walked back up the hill the next morning to get Bubba, I was so relieved to see him there that I took a picture. I left an early morning letter on the door step of the house I was parked in front of before I pulled out of their yard. And this time, when I tried to drive up the ice covered hill, we made it.
There have been a few times when I have to make a choice, and I'm not sure which one to make. This day, I was deciding to climb a mountain, or collect canned goods. You can see by my photos from Georgia which decision I made. I have always wanted to climb to the top of a mountain, and climbing Stone Mountain, right after listening to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, 2 days before his birthday, was a moving experience. If you never noticed, he mentions this mountain at the end. It was an incredible view. I felt as though this climb was metaphoric for me, and that this view is a gift to all those individuals who helped me get to where I could see it. Thank you, and I hope and pray that the photos that I take will inspire your heart and allow you to appreciate life today even more than yesterday, and tomorrow more than today.
Ask me about the story of Michael from Savannah. This boy changed my life forever, and has permanantly altered my perception of life on the streets. This is part of my favorite story on the road so far, and it is easily the one that I ALWAYS tell whenever people have time to hear it, or they ask what my favorite experience has been up to this point. I decided not to write it here, on the website, because it will be in the book. However, I'm not one to be stingy with my stories. If the curiosity is killing you, shoot me an email request to hear the story of Michael to ShayannEKelley@live.com, and I will email it to you. It will change your life too, I promise. Pictured on the 'Photos' section of the website you'll see part of the most inspirational story ending, at a beautiful place designed by the light and artistic touch of God, and given as a gift to a struggling soul, finally reaching his hands toward the promise of mercy.