CARLTON FLETCHER: Remembering an Albany past that’s all but disappeared

Nothing but the dead and the dying back in my little town.

— Paul Simon

I know, everybody says the same thing – “There’s nothing to do here” – whether they live in a small community like TyTy or a metropolitan area like Atlanta.

But that old saw was actually the case growing up in Ocilla. The movie theater shut down before I was even a teenager, and any scheduled dance or musical performance was a rarity. Except for Colonial Village, they really did roll up the sidewalks around 6 p.m.

We sought fun in nearby places like Tifton and Fitzgerald, and on certain occasions we’d make the 60-mile trip to Albany. A few of these trips stand out:

1. Gary Owens and I came over for a day of just goofing off. (Gary was a girl, by the way.) We had lunch, found a specific tennis racket she’d been looking for and I bought the Charlie Daniels “Fire on the Mountain” album that I hadn’t been able to find at any of the (few) record outlets in our area. Gary also cut all my (then very long) hair off after I ducked my head in the Alapaha River. Fun day.
2. New movies didn’t make it to Fitzgerald and Tifton until they’d enjoyed bigger runs in larger cities, so my two best friends, Dwayne Josie and Mike Shuman (RIP, guys), and I drove over to Albany to see “The Exorcist” when it first came out. Scared the bejesus out of us, but well worth the trip.
3. Coming to Albany to eat at the Red Lobster with Wesley Griffin so he could show off his new Corvette. About the only memory I have of the trip is the ear-splitting loudness of his sound system in the closed-in vehicle (I’ve never seen the appeal) and of the meal was an on-air guy I saw regularly on the only local TV station we could get at our house in Ocilla making out – to the embarrassment of others waiting in line – shamelessly with his date.

I was thinking about those good-ole-days memories in juxtaposition with Albany today, decades later. The starkness of the comparison was like a slap in the face.

The back-then-thriving Good Life City was something of a wonderland paradise for small-town folks like us from Ocilla and surrounding communities like Dawson, Leesburg, Newton, Sylvester, Camilla and other nearby hamlets. It really was a big deal to come here … Albany had things we’d only heard about on that one TV station or read about in our home-delivered Albany Heralds.

Albany today has grown old. Businesses that have been here for decades have grown shabby as owners hold onto their money and refuse to do regular updates. And many of the businesses that made Albany great have shut down, most of the buildings they occupied now sitting vacant and slowly deteriorating.

A litany of businesses that drew workers to the city has closed up shop and moved on: Bobs Candies, Cooper Tire, Merck Chemicals, Firestone, Commercial Shuttle Service, Stonebridge Country Club, Flint River Textile …

Oddly enough, as Albany’s population has declined – more than 12,000 people gone in the past decade – its crime rate has risen. Gangs are rampant, and they’ve taken their deadly infighting away from their neighborhoods into other parts of the city in general. An undermanned police force does everything in its power to combat the growing violent crime rate, but its efforts have been mostly futile.

Once a city that came to diversity gradually but did so eventually, Albany now is as divided racially as the nation is politically. It’s rare that race doesn’t become a factor in any local event, government action or community activity.

The thing about communities like Albany is that they have to bottom out before they start to get better. The Good Life City has all but reached rock bottom, and – good news – there is a growing number of young professionals who are starting to bring their enthusiasm and fresh ideas to the city, grudgingly, but steadily, chasing out old ideas and attitudes that are primarily responsible for the city’s decline.

Here’s hoping those who cling to those old ignorances of racism, factionism and fanaticism are unceremoniously sent to oblivion so that new concepts that move the city forward can take root and, eventually, flourish.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].