Up The Creek Without A Paddle
The states of North Georgia and South Georgia
by Terry Toole

I read a column recently that really makes a lot of sense in some areas. It was written by a former columnist in the Liberal for a long time. We seldom agreed on everything, but he got too Atlanta-oriented, so I dropped him.

Bill Shipp recently wrote an article suggesting that South Georgia should be the nation's 51st state.

The jest of the article was that Atlanta, the other Georgia would soon take our water and suck South Georgia dry.

This is said in jest, but we all know that if Atlanta needs our water, they have the power to take it.

Back in the late 60s and 70s, when I was a county commissioner, we would go to the state road commissioner's officeand beg for funds to pave Miller County roads as did other rural counties. I never remember a time we asked that we didn't get a few crumbs. I would tell the state road commissioner that we saw more roads being demolished as we came into Atlanta than Miller County had gotten in past 20 years. It worked!

It's worked with Virginia and West Virginia, North and South Carolina, North Dakota and South Dakota. If you split us, we would still be larger in size than some of the northern states.

Someone has said that when Atlanta puts that second by-pass around them, two-thirds of the population of Georgia will be inside that circle.

I would not be a good one to be on the committee to divide the state. I've been for it since the 50's when I lived in Atlanta for a short time. Our daughter Tammy was born up there. I liked it so good, we moved back home when she was 10 days old. Never have cared about going back, but I do to see my baby daughter and my grandson maybe once a year.

We could let Atlanta have just above the gnat line up and call it Georgia and the rest be South Georgia. They never have cared anything about the rest anyway except the taxes we have to send up there and beg for a few cents back.

I would even consider trucking water to the north to keep them from drying up since my daughter and grandson live up there.

If we can get the legislation passed, I really don't think they will miss us down here in South Georgia. The governor never has thought enough of us to visit too much, and he is from down here.

As Shipp said in his column, when Georgia Trend picked the 100 most influential people in Georgia, only one South Georgian was chosen, Sen. Saxby Chambliss. The other 99 were from guess where?

Shipp suggested several sites that might be good for the new capital of South Georgia such as Tifton. Since he is from above the gnat-line, I think we might be able to select our own capital of South Georgia.

I wonder if North Georgia might like to swap Athens for Albany along with the University of Georgia. We have some areas in South Georgia that would do away with the parking problem of a Georgia football game. Just a thought. We would even consider moving it closer to Colquitt. Think about it, football fans. Great parking and much closer to the beaches.

This is really something we South Georgians should ponder, but not too long. It won't be too long before the folks in the Gold Dome will figure that it will be easier to take our ample water supply to Atlanta rather than fight with Alabama and Florida for water. Atlanta must take someone's water since they have already polluted the supply that they might have used, and de-salting ocean water is too expensive, unless they have to fight for it.

As Bill said, North Georgia and South Georgia don't have too much in common. A split would be easy if we can get over some of the small hurdles like money, taxes and water. That is about all that the Other Georgia wants with us anyway.

We had better not ponder too long, since they have hit the mountains growing north. Atlanta doesn't have anywhere else to grow except south.

It does have a real good sound, the State of South Georgia. Wonder if our only influential citizen might introduce the legislation to split.