Tastes best in outside air
As I peck away at this note to you I’m sitting on a rock, a big, big rock in Dog River. This is not an everyday thing but I thought that since it is my last cup of the day I might as well enjoy it with a dash of ceremony.
Into an insulated cup it went and down the hill we trudged.
I wonder if it is the outside air or the atmosphere of the running water but it seems to taste better, albeit from a plastic vessel rather than a ceramic one.
Dog River resembles a mountain stream without the mountain.
There are rapids just upstream from my rock, it flattens out downstream starting at what the old community swimming/baptizing hole.
My father said he learned to swim in Dog River but the river isn’t wide enough for much swimming.
The “swimming hole” is deep enough for shallow diving but there are huge granite rocks to avoid.
Across the river from my perch my grandfather built a water-powered mill, Phillips Mill.
There isn’t anything left of it. The mill, race and dam were built during a 1920s drought by a local jack-ofall-trades, Mr. Cansler.
The mill mostly ground scratch feed for chickens, corn meal and grits since there was little wheat grown locally. It operated through the next two decades but in the 1950s was rarely used.
Then, it wasn’t used at all except on special occasions. Uncle Guy Phillips kept the family supplied in coarse-ground grits, chewy and full of flavor.
In its prime the mill pond was a gathering place for picnics and family camping on weekends.
The local paper carried stories of Atlanta visitors who came out to Phillips Mill. It was an attraction, in a small way.
The dam eventually gave up, the mill race rotted, the sluice gates floated away, the pond dried up and that was the end of swell times along Dog River.
Uncle Guy Phillips sold “the works,” — the mill, millstones, water wheel and axle — to a man in Fairburn, Georgia, and that was the end of Phillips Mill.
Almost.
In the late 1950s someone with a low threshold for boredom set the building afire. The only reminder of the mill is on the signs identifying “Phillips Mill Rd.”
On afternoons when I just can’t face another chore I come to this spot with a cane pole and some worms.
There are fish here if you can coax them to bite. Some days they do.
Joe Phillips writes his “Dear me” columns for several small newspapers. He can be reached at joenphillips@hotmail.com.