Johnny liked to talk. I’d already passed him a couple of times on my way to and from stores and coffee shops. <\/p>\n
“Hey darlin’. We pass again. Are you from around here?”<\/em><\/p>\n It was harmless. Johnny was about 60 years old and I’m pretty sure he spent his days talking to the various people that passed him on the street. He seemed a bit like a street profit. But I asked my typical “tell me a story” question. <\/p>\n “I’ll only come to chat if you promise to tell me a story about this place.”<\/p>\n “Here? Of course. I can tell you lots of good stories. Old stories too. Ones that no one knows anything about anymore because no one cares about the old stories.”<\/em><\/p>\n It started with Little Five Points.<\/p>\n “This place is better now. It was really good many decades ago. You could sleep with your door open at night. <\/p>\n But then it got bad. The people got into drugs and the streets got bad. People started mouthing off when they got into the drugs and they would fight each other. Brothers and sisters fighting each other because of the drugs. The buildings looked bad. <\/p>\n It’s improved over the last few years. It’s ok to walk on the streets now. People want to come here.”<\/em><\/p>\n Then the conversation turned to slavery.<\/p>\n “Waaay over behind Ponce de Lyon is the Old Mill. It’s a bad place. That’s the place where the slave auctions used to happen. You know that Georgia was one of the first places that slaves came into this country. This was the original slave state.<\/p>\n Not many people know this but under the Mill and under the streets are the old tunnels that they used to bring the slaves to the auctioning block. They’re broken up and span a great distance. They’re now closed off but I’ve seen them. They’re still there. I know about it because I’m old and I know people. Those things may have happened a long time ago, but they still affect the people. It makes people here different.”<\/em><\/p>\n He continued for a long time about the people in Atlanta. The pace in which they move, the things they do, and their various idiosyncrasies. He talked about how we’ve lost one common language. How the people are divided and his respect for Indigenous Americans. <\/p>\n He told me ghost stories and about two places in Atlanta that were dangerous because of spirits. <\/p>\n “So many supernatural things happen in these places and the buildings around them. They’ve put churches atop both of them to protect people and those churches can never come down.”<\/em><\/p>\n And, to think, all this started with a “tell me a story” question. Upon parting, he invited me back for another chat. I might just take him up on that offer the next time I’m in town…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"