Cobbtown

  There are a lot of small towns, where the residents are suspicious of outsiders.  It shouldn't be that way, but it is just a fact of life.  One such place is Cobbtown, GA., population around 300.  So, everybody knows everybody else in that town.  It is located not too far from Savannah, and usually strangers don't stop to visit it.  That is until one Saturday morning.

 My friend, Del Bazemore, had relatives buried in a church cemetery in Cobbtown.  We had left Atlanta that morning and decided to take a detour to let Del visit with his ancestors in the graveyard.  Chris Sanders was driving.  It wasn't hard finding the church, as there weren't many around.  We walked around looking for the graves and found who Del wanted to see.  As we were paying our respects, a police car pulled up.  The officer got out and asked us what we were doing.  We explained why we were there.  At the time, Del and Chris had longer hair than me, so we were afraid that the cliche question would come out of the policeman's mouth:  "You boys aren't from around here, ere y'all?".  Well, we weren't disappointed, but then his next words were:  "Why don't y'all come to my house for lunch?".  We didn't know if we were being arrested for trespassing, but we knew we had to accept his invitation, so we followed the police car to the officer's home.  He lived with his mother, and she fixed us a nice meal.  We found out that he was the only officer in the town.  

 After we finished eating, he guided us to the outskirts of town and showed us the road we needed to take to get back to South Carolina.  When we got to another small town in South Carolina called North, Chris was slowing down as per the speed limit signs.  He saw 35mph.  All of a sudden, a police car was behind us with his siren on.  Chris pulled to the side, and the car pulled up behind him.  We knew he wasn't speeding, but the officer told him that the speed limit was 25mph.  Chris told him that he didn't see that sign, so the officer pointed it out to him.  It was on the side of a building behind a tree.  Can we say, "speed trap"?  The fine was $150.  Chris took a picture of the so-called sign and went to court.  The judge knocked the fine down to half and no points.  Some small townspeople can be nice, like Cobbtown.  Some not so much, like North.  By the way, North is twice as big as Cobbtown, and half as nice.