If I Could Be From Somewhere Else...

...I like saying I'm from Dahlonega, Georgia.  Mainly because folks who hear it over the phone can't spell it, and those who see it in print can't say it.  Oh, they try. 

"Mr. Berry, you're from?"

"Dahlonega."

"And you spell that..."  After which they will mangle the spelling of my hometown in any number of ways.  None of them right.

Or, if they're reading it to me, they'll mispronounce it.  Terribly.

"That's Daa-lo-nee-gah?"

Absolutlely.

I grew up in Barnesville, just south of Griffin, which was close to Experiment and Gay.  Thank God I wasn't from Gay.

Georgia town names are all over the map.

There's Plum Nelly, "plum" out of Tennessee and "nelly" out of Georgia.

Some of my wife's people are from Willacoochie, on US 84 between Waycross and Jesup.  Her daddy's from Hahira, near Adel and Sparks.  (How do you know you're near Hell in Adel?  You can see Sparks from there.)

I live about twenty miles north of Cumming, and almost a state away from Climax, which is just east of Bainbridge.  Just think what would happen if Cumming and Climax were closer together.

Ball Ground is just down the road from us, just west of Frogtown.

We lived in Moultrie once.  There was a little community between there and Quitman named Berlin.  Easy to pronounce, right?  Wrong, with a capital "R".  I said it wrong the very first time.  The emphasis is on the last syllable, Ber-LIN, as sort of a protest against the Germans for WW II.

I think I'd like to say I'm from Flippen, though.  It's in Henry County, south of Atlanta (the town formerly known as Marthasville, Terminus, and Canebrake).

Can you imagine a greater place to be from than Flippen?  Oh, the questions.

Where do you live?  Flippen, Georgia.  (Read it out loud.)

Oh, you're one of them Flippen Berrys?  Yep.  Mama was a Flippen Free.

Where did you go to school?  Flippen High School.  Our team was the "Outs".  Mama worked for the Flippen Post Office.  Daddy was a Flippen mechanic.

Got pulled over by the Flippen Police.  Took me to the Flippen jail.  Had to pay a Flippen fine.

Dated a Flippen girl.  Got married in Flippen Church of God.

The list goes on.  Or just stops now, to end the agony.

Compared to the places I could be from, Dahlonega is pretty tame.

Could be worse.  Could be from Enigma, which is nowhere near Ideal.