My great-uncle Guy Bell’s store in Fortsonia, Georgia as it appears today – courtesy of Frank Fortson

Elbert Country Stores, an article I wrote, is in the November issue of Georgia Magazine, the publication for the Georgia Electric Membership Corporation. I am quite happy to have my work in this widely read publication. Covering all the customers of the EMCs in Georgia, its circulation is over half a million. Not too shabby. I wish to take a moment to thank their editorial staff, especially Victoria DeCastro for picking up this essay and for being so great to work with. An online version will be available soon, I will provide the link when it is on their site.

This article basically takes a walk down memory lane of what life was like as a child in small town Georgia in the middle of cotton country visiting the many old general stores that once inhabited the
country side. My father often took me along on his rounds of these stores. Every time we would visit the store belonging to my great uncle, Guy Bell, I would get ice cream. To this day I can’t think of Uncle Guy without images of any number of types of Pet brand ice cream leaping immediately to mind. Many of these old stores are disappearing now. There is a great picture book of such stores in North Carolina by Tony Craig. Tony set out to document these stores before they disappeared in his book. I chose to do much the same thing in my own small way through this article.