COLUMN: If you don’t say nuthin’, don’t complain

How gratifying to have friends to include you in their celebrations!

During all of the get togethers, the subject of local goings on of one sort or another arose.

A very dear and longtime friend remarked that he didn’t understand the significance of the Granite Hotel and why some of us are so determined to see it restored. Once he learned a few facts about the hotel and its history, he was intrigued.

“When people understand the history of the hotel, I think they’ll want to get involved,” he remarked. “Folks have just gotten so used to somebody else making the decisions for them that they don’t even think about voicing their opinions.”

He went on to tell me that he believes the community will want to be involved in what happens in Winder, as well as throughout Barrow County, if they realize they can make a difference in the outcome. However, he cautioned, they tend to just wait until the project is finished and then complain because it didn’t get done the way they thought it ought to have been. His last caution was not to be discouraged because folks don’t show up for meetings; they have so many things pulling for their time and attention, they just don’t have time.

Well, honey, you are preachin’ to the choir on that last one, but there are some of us who recognize that if we don’t do it, we’ll just end up bulldozing everything over ten years old and rebuilding something that looks like six other towns within a one hour drive of here. We’ll just be another cookie cutter town.

So here’s the down and dirty: The Granite Hotel stands on the site of the original Jug Tavern.

The Granite Hotel is the oldest (1899) masonry building in Winder, built by local craftsmen with granite from Bush’s Flat Rock Quarry located just east of the intersection of Highway 81 and Lee Street behind the recycling plant.

The Granite Hotel predates the oldest of our downtown church buildings and was the site of several Winder society weddings between 1899 and 1902.

The Granite Hotel played host to several large house parties and was home to some of the area’s most noted citizens who either lived there after first locating to the area or, in the case of Robert Hill, boarded there for $5 per week. At that time, Mrs. Collier was the innkeeper, so the young Mr. Hill stayed with the Collier family so the youngster from the country could attend school at the old Winder School on the corner of Athens and Church Streets.

The intersection of Broad and Athens Streets is what one could call our “signature corner” not just for Winder, but for Barrow County as a whole. In that one cross street is represented our earliest days as part of three counties, an anomaly no matter how you look at it. We see that happening today as cities are sprawling into neighboring counties, but to have one spring up on the junction of three existing counties was most unusual.

The Granite Hotel was our first attempt at becoming a more sophisticated, industrialized community serving the needs of the more global community by growing, harvesting, processing, and transporting our own crops.

Whether products left Winder straight from the field or as canned produce, a pair of work pants, a box of shirts, or refined cotton to be used for manufacture elsewhere, they left here stamped “Made in Winder, Georgia”. We were a proud people and rightly so.

One man came here, bought a bunch of land, and built a town from it. The Granite Hotel was the beginning. The original Barrow County Courthouse across the street shows just how far we came in less than twenty years. Together they can be something to be proud of once again.

If you don’t let folks know what you think and what you’d like to see, you have no room to complain. Check us out on Facebook: The Granite Hotel. Come join us on Thursdays, under the trees on the courthouse lawn, 7:00 pm for about an hour. Bring a lawn chair, your ideas and be ready to raise your hand to help however you can.

Helen Person is a columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at helenperson@windstream.net.