Chapter 2: "The Town"

Magnolia back then was a tiny, insignificant, depressing town that was at least a hundred miles away from every major city in Georgia. It was well known by anyone who visited Magnolia that the town was so dreary that it seemed to have a numbing effect on all hapless travelers that were misfortunate enough to enter its influence.

Most people that either visited the place or were former inhabitants lucky enough to escape said that after a while, the town would slowly lull them into a state of melancholy which grew stronger the longer they were there.

All this, of course, made the second leading cause of death amongst town's folk suicide, a close second only to alcoholism! It was so bad that people from the neighboring towns used to laugh every time they were asked for directions to the place saying, "Magnolia? It's a few more miles down the road a spell. Just look for the sign that say's Hell and then keep going south a bit. You can't miss it!"

That was part of the problem with Magnolia; it was so insignificant that you couldn't even find it on a map. And if you did, it was probably an oversight of the map maker, for had he ever been to the place, he wouldn't have wanted to remember it let alone tell anyone where it was!

Downtown Magnolia itself consisted of a town square and four large streets. Each street ran in some way parallel to the square and if there was a business in town, it could be found somewhere on one of those streets. Every street in the downtown area was lined with massive magnolia trees for which the town had been given its name over two hundred years ago by its founder, Jeremiah Harris, old Doc Harris's great grand father.

At the center of the square was city hall, a building that from the looks of it must have been constructed some time just after the Civil War, or as some of the older townsfolk called it, "The Great War Of Northern Aggression", and next to that was the County Courthouse.

Every major building from the town hall to the post office looked like something out of a 'B' version of Gone With The Wind, old, cheap, and badly maintained!

There was one general store, one drug store, one doctor's office, one auto parts store, the local finance company, and one feed store, all of which were owned by Joshua 'Doc' Harris or one or more of the members of his family.

Without a doubt Doc Harris was the wealthiest man in town for he also owned not only the town's one grocery store, but also the drug store and the town's only farm supply-general-hardware store. Hell, he even had half ownership in the town's only restaurant, the other half being owned by his brother.

But even though his family owned just about everything, there had been times when it looked as if he was in danger of loosing control over it.

About a year before, some of the locals had quite vocally started complaining to the town council about their inability to attract new business to the dying little community.

Everyone was surprised when he showed up one day at and demanded the council reform and become more active in trying to attract new business to "our poor economically depressed, but quite beautiful little community" as he so eloquently put it.