Having lived away for so long, I didn’t get to witness the slow churn of progress. When I would come back to visit from Montgomery or Milwaukee, which was rare, it all just caught me by surprise. I still can’t get over when I first moved back here and walked into a Dollar General in Fort Payne and saw beer for the first time.
For many years, when I would tell folks about Sylvania, I would say, “We have three caution lights, and two of them are at the school.” But Sylvania has moved up in the world and now has a red light at the crossing. That still seems so odd to me. I have to go that way a lot going to my sister’s house, and it takes that doggone light a while to change so I can finally cross Highway 75.
I want to say that my sister lives close to Sylvania Lake, but apparently, that doesn’t exist anymore, even if I can’t stop saying it. According to the signs, it’s now DeKalb County Lake. I don’t even know when that happened or why it happened. I’m sure there’s a story behind it, but I don’t know it.
I still catch myself giving directions to Beason’s Gap and telling folks to go to the first red light in town at Hurley’s Market and turn left. Then, it dawns on me that it isn’t the first red light anymore. Now, the first light is at the North Y across from Krystals. And, of course, it isn’t Hurley’s Market anymore; it’s the IGA. Luckily, it’s still called Hurley’s Square, so I don’t sound like a total basket case.
It’s the same at the other end of town; as I often tell people, the first red light is where you turn onto Airport Road. One person said, “At Walmart?” I corrected myself and said the second red light. They said, “At Walgreens?” At that point, I gave up and told them to stop asking me and just use their GPS.
And I have to be careful giving directions to my place now when people are coming into town on I-59 from the north. I still catch myself saying I’m at the first Fort Payne exit. But, alas, that is no longer the case. Now, there’s the 49th Street exit, which is clearly the first exit as you come into town from Chattanooga.
Too many things have changed around here for my poor brain to process it. As a joke, I often tell people I live by the Fort Payne International Airport. But the way things are progressing in our little neck of the woods, that might not always be a joke.
Neal Wooten is a columnist in the Mountain Valley News and North Jackson Press newspapers. He is a published author of more than three dozen books. He can be reached at moc.loaobfsctd@netoowlaen.