I was born and raised in the Deep South, specifically in Fairburn, Georgia, a small town approximately 25 miles southwest of Atlanta. During the time I was growing up, Fairburn was your stereotypical sleepy small Southern town, so sleepy, in fact, it was at times pretty close to comatose. Not much in the way of excitement ever happened in Fairburn, well, that was except for the old man (he shall go unnamed for propriety’s sake) who used to wear a tattered tan raincoat in all kinds of weather and occasionally flash the Ladies’ Auxiliary as it held its monthly gabfest down at the Fairburn Public Library. The ladies, however, grew so accustomed to seeing him—and how little he had to offer—they pretty much ignored his appearances and hardly missed a beat in conversation whenever he threw open the front of that tattered raincoat.

I am proud to be a Southerner, and I’m also proud to call Fairburn my hometown, even if it’s no longer the same town I knew when I was coming of age. Not that it’s any bigger than it was then. The main changes are that there are now four traffic lights instead of one; the Southern Crescent no longer stops at the depot (in fact, the depot is no longer a depot at all but a museum of sorts instead); and most of the stores and shops—where everyone knew your name—have either closed or been replaced by other hopeful businesses. Most of the noticeable changes occurred around Fairburn proper, changes in the form of the South Fulton Parkway, which was slashed through the formerly pristine countryside to open it up for development, and the development that naturally ensured, mainly subdivisions, stacked one upon the other like building blocks tossed about by a child in the throes of a temper tantrum.

The last time I went home, which was four years ago, I could not believe how much the area had changed. The fields and woods around where I used to live and where I walked in the woods with my dogs; picked muscadines and wild strawberries; played in the creeks with my siblings; fished in the old lake down the road from the house; and, as a teenager, rode dirt bikes with my brother and his friends—those fields and woods are all gone. They are now covered with mile upon mile of paved streets and square foot upon square foot of housing, some of the houses quite palatial. You won’t believe this, but Oprah Winfrey—yes, the rich-and-famous talk-show hostess/business entrepreneur—is currently building “up-scale” (as in 500 thousand to a million dollars per house) housing developments on land where I used to ride horses for hours and never see another living soul, that was, except for herds of deer, flocks of wild turkeys, and an occasional black bear. Oh, well, but such is progress, right? And like the old saying goes, “You can’t go home again.” Well, you can, in a sense, I guess. The problem, however, is that once you get there, you no longer recognize the place at all.