Ok, so I told you how Bric and I met. What I haven’t told you about is the big move. It is quite a feat to move a whole house of stuff from one side of the country to another. It was decided near the end of February that Bric was going to move to Georgia. And would be here the first week of April. So, that gave us one month basically to make all of the arrangements. I had to find a larger house. He had to find some California Movers . I had to find another vehicle (who in San Diego drives?). He had to get a plane ticket. I had to start helping him to find a job. He had to seriously look for a job.
It was a constant back and forth of all the things that needed to be done and be done quickly. All the while everyone in our families think we have totally lost our minds and us beginning to agree at times. Thank goodness I wasn’t Moving To California, it would have been much worse. I don’t think I could have mentally handled it at all and then Bric would not only have had a whole new family to deal with but he would have been committing me to an asylum.
See, the thing with California Moving Companies is that only a few of them go cross country. So after searching through all of the California International Movers – we finally find one that will transport everything across the country to GA. So, I leave it all up to Bric to make sure everything in his apartment is packed and ready to go. The movers arrive and get everything loaded up, Bric then goes to the airport and catches a plane to GA. Fast Forward a few weeks. We are all happily living in our cute little house living life to the fullest and then it happens. The moving truck arrives.
Yep, the moving truck arrives. They open the doors and I see it. He brought EVERYTHING. Now, when I say everything…I mean EVERYTHING. Bric is a pack-rat. I had specifically asked him to make sure he went through everything and tossed all the junk, the gazillion boxes of papers, etc. You know what he did? He paid the moving guys to help him just toss everything in even more boxes and throw it on the truck. At the last minute. SO now, we have paid these guys to bring half a truckload of furniture and treasured belongings and half a truckload of landfill material. And it most of it wasn’t even packed. Just tossed into the truck which had become unstable, throwing all the stuff around in the drive over.
We paid people to take a huge load of garbage from one coast to another just to be thrown away. Seriously. And because of the way it was loaded into the truck it all ended up just being unloaded into the front yard until it could be determined what it was, where it went and all that jazz. Talk about a HUGE mess.
The moral? NEVER, ever leave it to a pack-rat to move by himself. NEVER, ever leave it to an unorganized man to move by himself. If you do, then it will truly look like you are a redneck because you will have stuff littered all over your yard for weeks.
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Ok, I am going to come clean here. I met my husband online. Many years ago when it wasn’t quite the norm. My Mom thought for sure that I was going to meet a serial killer the first time I went out to San Diego. See, I wouldn’t let him come to Hicktown. Small town, everyone knows your name and your business…can you just imagine what it would have been like? Mom really would have croaked if she had know his online screen name. It was PsychoKiller. Yes, seriously. He was/is a big gamer and that was his gaming name.
I went out to San Diego all on my own. It was kinda scary, but I knew it was what I needed to do…I knew it was right. But, a little ol’ country girl in a big city…well, the two don’t mix all that well. First off, there were some crazy people, no sweet tea to be found and everything to eat looked like chic food. No disrespect meant toward chic food, it just isn’t the norm around these parts. And the driving. Oh my word. I only thought that Atlanta was bad. When Bric put me behind the wheel and made me drive on the Interstate insanity and panic set in and it was a thousand wonders we didn’t need a San Diego auto repair to come to the rescue.
Thank goodness it was a smaller car and not some Ford F-150 that most guys drive out here in the country because there is no way in heck I could have maneuvered through that traffic in anything different. I have never had a panic attack, but that day I seriously came close. Then as I am cussin Bric like there is no tomorrow for making me drive…the check engine light comes on and I really freak out. How in the heck do these people live with that kind of stress everyday? I seriously could not live there. We go to visit Bric’s family occasionally, but that is more than enough for me. Before we married and he moved out to the mountains of Georgia he tried to convince me to move there…that was the deal breaker for me. It was either you move here or we are over, I wouldn’t survive a year.
After the crazy man on the street tried to accost me and Bric had to step in to save my life because I just knew the crazy man was gonna get me, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my place was where everyone knows your name and your business. I knew that my place was where I can drive down a 2-lane road to get to the auto shop and the police department and anywhere else I want to go for that matter.
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THE WRIGHT HOTEL
I have never been inside the Old Wright Hotel. I drive by it almost daily and I have never made the time to go inside. Isn’t it funny how we all live in towns with historical buildings and landmarks and just pass them by? I will just have to rectify that one day soon and make arrangements to stop in since it is by appointment only or only open on special holidays and events.
In planning the building of his hotel in the new town of Chatsworth, Thomas Wright cut heart-pine lumber from his farm and let it dry for a year. While the lumber cured, he rented a brick plant for a year to make the soft rose-colored bricks to build his hotel. This was not to be just another hotel-Wright was creating a structure that would also serve as home for his family of eight.
The three-story hotel had 17 rooms. Walls were wooden lath covered with plaster. Floors were heart-pine tongue-in-groove. Wright built a separate building just northeast of the hotel to house the people who worked at the hotel. The water pump for the hotel was also located in this building.
The new hotel opened in 1910 and, because of its close proximity to the new courthouse, eventually served as home-away-from-home for visiting judges, politicians, attorneys, and witnesses as well as a place to house jurors when needed. The hotel’s dining room was highly rated.
For one year (1915), while Mrs. Wright was very ill, the Wrights leased the hotel to Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Spencer.
After Mr. Wright’s death in 1925, Mrs. Wright continued to operate the hotel until the mid-1940s. After she died in 1948, the hotel was leased to Lester Quarles, then later to the Keeter Family. Under new management the hotel’s name was changed to Chatsworth Hotel.
In 1969 one of the Wright’s daughters, Kate Raine, returned to Chatsworth and made her own changes to the hotel. She also added numerous Indian items that she had acquired while serving for many years as a nurse in the southwestern United States. She continued to rent rooms.
After obtaining a promise from the Whitfield-Murray County Historical Society to preserve and maintain the Wright Hotel as close as possible to its original condition, Mrs. Raine willed the property to the Society. She died in 1986.
Visiting the Wright Hotel today is like taking a step backward in time. Many of the original furnishings remain. Hotel registers from the earlier days are displayed, along with Mrs. Raine’s accumulation of Indian baskets, pottery, and other artifacts.
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This is the Oldest Public-Use Building in Murray County.
The Old Spring Place Methodist Church began as an Indian Mission in the early 1830’s. It later evolved into a Methodist church when the Cherokee Indians were forcibly removed from Murray County in 1838. The Cherokee Indians were Free People in this area and were a very prominent part of our society and many of our historical sites are attributed to them.
The original building was a brick structure on Elm Street in Spring Place. After this building burned, the congregates built a wood replacement on the same foundation-around 1875. This building served the Methodist congregation for 100 years. In 1976 they built a new church on Cleveland Highway north of the Vann House.
Today the Old Spring Place Methodist Church has preserved the old sanctuary and the building houses much Murray County memorabilia, including numerous items of specific historical interest related to Spring Place. Although the building doesn’t have scheduled operating hours you can arrange a visit by contacting the Whitfield-Murray County Historical Society.
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