It’s A Slow Read

When I moved to Madison, Georgia, I signed up for cable television, primarily because there was only one television station that I could pick up with an antenna. That station happened to be a Spanish-speaking UHF station out of Athens, and I do not speak Spanish. [The one thing I noticed about that television station is that every program, whether it be the news, the weather, a game show, a sitcom, a drama, whatever, featured at least one scantily clad, buxom young lass.] After subscribing to cable for a couple of months, I decided that I would be better off without television. At that point, reading became my number one hobby.

It quickly became apparent that my reading speed was terribly slow. I believe my reading speed peaked while I was in high school, and began a slow decline thereafter. One cannot spend decades reading scientific papers without suffering a decline in reading speed. It simply isn’t possible to read scientific papers very quickly. To be honest, I’m surprised my lips don’t move when I read. Still, given that the television set was off, I had several hours every night to devote to reading, and I managed to read a lot of books. For a couple of years I averaged reading one book per week, which is a pretty good clip for a slow reader.

This is the month of September, the ninth month, and I have managed to read exactly eight books thus far this year. If I can manage to finish the one I am currently working on, A History of Georgia (Kenneth Coleman, Editor, 1977), within the next two weeks, I will be zooming along at the pace of one book per month. And to make matters worse, two of the books I read this year were actually books I’d read earlier.

The book on Georgia history is taking a very, very long time to read, because I am easily distracted. Back during the summer, while working on the Beaufort, SC house, I was reading the portions of the book that dealt with the Trustee and the Royal Province periods of Georgia history, and I was surprised to see the town of Beaufort, SC show up prominently in Georgia’s early history. I soon focused on Fort Frederick, the fort where Oglethorpe and his band of settlers stopped before making their way to what is today Savannah. Fort Frederick, I soon discovered, was transferred by the United States to the State of South Carolina, which has it listed as a heritage site. There it sits, on the river (well, partly in the river), between Beaufort and Port Royal, and I had to go see the place.

Problem: it isn’t open to the general public. I spent a couple of days trying to figure out how to get to the fort without trespassing on private property or getting arrested by the Navy. (It appears that the easiest access to the fort can be had if I slip over the fence and the concertina wire surrounding the US Navy hospital there.) So I still haven’t seen Fort Frederick, and the two days I spent trying to get there certainly slowed my reading speed considerably.

Last month it was Fort Frederick. Yesterday afternoon it was Penfield, Georgia. I am now up to the immediate antebellum days in Georgia’s history, and the book is reviewing the state of higher education in Georgia just prior to the war. I knew, of course, that Emory University, now in Atlanta, began as Oxford College just outside Covington. I did not know that Oglethorpe University, now in Brookhaven, used to be located just south of Milledgeville, but that does not come as a total surprise, given that Milledgeville was once the state capitol. But I was shocked to learn that Mercer University began life in the little community of Penfield, Georgia, located some 26 miles from my house, over in Greene County.

As far as I can tell, Penfield never had a city charter, and has always been a farming community.

According to Google maps, there is a place in the community that either makes yarn or sells yarn to the public (Google maps isn’t all that clear). And that is it. Google maps show no other businesses, not even a gasoline station. It is a funny place for a university.

Like my alma mater, Mercer University began life as a Baptist college. (My alma mater is no longer associated with the North Carolina Baptist Convention. I am not sure about Mercer’s relationship today with the Georgia Baptist Association.) Josiah Penfield donated some land for the college in 1833, and hence the school was located in the community of Penfield. This lasted only a few years. In 1871, Mercer moved to Macon, and the school’s Penfield properties were donated. The Penfield Baptist Church received the school’s chapel, and the academic building became the Penfield public school building.

So, yesterday afternoon, in the middle of part three of the book, I drove to Penfield to see the remains of history for myself. It took a mere two hours to get through page 176. My reading speed is terrible.