Back in the early 1970s, probably around 1973, I saw Gone With the Wind at the cinema. I remember the cinema well as it was the only one in our city and it was part of the Jerry Lewis cinema chain. I don’t know of any others in the chain but there must have been. I think that was the last year it was shown in the cinema and before I knew it, the movie was screening on network tv every once in a while. It is quite possible that most cinemas had stopped screening it years earlier. But I lived in Forest Park, Georgia, which was very close to the approximate location of the fictional Tara Plantation just south of Atlanta. It was probably more like a cult favorite in the area well past the time when it was shown in other parts of the country.

My family had a copy of the book on our bookshelves but I never though to read it. I was a bit young for it when I saw the film and it never really occurred to me to attempt to read that thick volume when I got older. Besides, in my mind, many of those older books were quite boring. This was ignoring the fact the book is one of the most read in the English-speaking world. It was a bit like my preconceived notion of Pride and Prejudice as one of those old stuffy books of old…only to discover in the past ten years that it’s an amazingly funny book.

I recently acquired an iPad 2 which I’ve found even better for reading ebooks than the iPod Touch I got a couple years ago. I was browsing through the books available there and discovered Gone with the Wind was one of their collection. They had a sample of the book available for download and and tried it out and really enjoyed it. Now I’ve gotten the full book so I can continue the saga without lugging a bit book around. What I’ve found incredibly interesting are the references to towns located near Forest Park. Towns like Jonesboro were part of my growing up years.

Forest Park won’t rate a mention in the book because it didn’t exist at that time. While reading the book, I wondered what the origins of my childhood home were. I must admit I didn’t find much information but apparently it was originally a stop on the railway line to and from Atlanta and called Forest Station. What particularly attracted my attention was the fact it had once had the nickname of Stumptown.

In December 1976 we moved from Forest Park in Georgia to Matthews, North Carolina, just outside Charlotte. The city has an annual festival called Stumptown Festival, which celebrates the original name of Matthews, NC. So last night I discovered that the two places I lived during my childhood both had been called Stumptown, either officially or unofficially, at one time. I think it’s a pretty cool coincidence.

And while doing my online searches on this topic, I came across a blog called Stumptown, which relates to Forest Park, and relates some details of the area over the years. I have known for many years that the demographic of our old neighorhood is totally different to the white, middle class one where I grew up. I think there was a drastic shift that occurred within fifteen to twenty years or so and now it’s mostly low-income “minority” groups in the area. Family and friends have told me it’s very run down in the area now. The blog I mention often blames the encroachment of the Atlanta airport and with it so near, I suppose that could be a significant factor.

I went looking at our old house on Google maps and it looked rather different to how I remembered it. Some of the trees block the view of the house and it’s been painted a different color. But when I shifted the view to the other houses around it, they didn’t look so different to me. Lots of memories flooded back of the people who once lived on the street with us. In some ways, it didn’t look so different to the way I remember it. There were still lots of beautiful trees in bloom in front of many of the homes. I’ve been told it’s quite run down in that area now but I wonder if maybe this little area might be in better shape than some if these images are anything to go by. I found out the house hasn’t been sold since 1998, which I also found interesting.

Still I don’t know if I’d want to go back and see it now as I’ve wished to do for so long. I think it might just make me sad to see the area in such bad shape. And it’s likely that I’d have pretty limited recognition of any landmarks at this point. One of the main reasons I had wanted to revisit was to see the old woods near our house. It was full of trails created by local kids and there were some large boulders that many of us have climbed over the years. I have some really fond memories of riding my bicycle there and meeting up with friends. And I also have a memory of being sent to buy something for my mom and getting lost in there once. I was last there when I was eleven and it seemed such a massive maze of trails but I wanted to see if it was really as big as I remember. A few years ago I discovered the woods were finally knocked down and now there are residential streets in its place. It wasn’t that surprising but still weird to think that was gone now.

I did see that the library there still stands and found photos showing it’s much as I remember it. Funnily enough, it’s not a place we had been that many times but I had some distinct memories of it for being a two story building which I thought was kind of neat. Seems it was only opened in 1969, so it must have been fairly shiny and new at the time we visited.

All sorts of memories have emerged from the closed vaults of my brain. I really must start writing this down as it’s getting harder and harder to recall things over time and I like the idea of creating a personal history for my records…maybe even have something to share with my kids should they ever show any interest.