My apartment was packed like sardines in a tin can this weekend.
Six of my closest friends drove down to Bainbridge. One is from Louisville, Georgia. Another just graduated from Georgia Law School. One came all the way down from Nashville, Tennessee. Two are from Atlanta. The sixth guy just finished his second year teaching at a school in Charlotte, North Carolina.
We are all spread pretty far apart in the Southeastern U.S. All of us speak to each other daily, but everyone decided to put in the effort to get together for Memorial Day Weekend.
I was thrilled that our rendezvous was right here in the First Port City.
All of them filtered in a couple at a time last Friday night.
We spent the evening rigging up fishing poles to take to St. George Island the next day. We laughed, we told stories and we barely slept. In the wee hours of the night, someone asked if there was a Waffle House in town.
“No Waffle House,” I said. “But we have Yesterday’s Diner.”
Off we go to gobble down a late-night meal. The next morning, a couple of us wake up earlier than the rest. They had one thing in mind: coffee. So I drive them to the Bean for a cup of joe, followed by a stop for two dozen donuts at The Donut Shop.
“Not a lot of town squares look like this anymore,” my law-school graduate friend said as we drove past Willis Park, The Farmers’ Market bustling with local vendors.
We went to St. George and caught barely anything. Oh well. We return to Bainbridge that night and wake up the next day to go fishing on the river. Again, we caught next to nothing, but relaxing by the water with a rod and my best friends was all I needed.
None of these guys had even heard of Bainbridge before I moved down here almost two years ago.
But they saw it with their own eyes—experiencing the local food, the river. I’m glad they got to see the great things this city has to offer.
Will they come back? I sure hope so. They still haven’t fully experienced the wonderful gnat population.