Mark’s Notes On The Go

I read something similar to this about a year ago when I moved to Alpharetta. Although I have an Alpharetta address, I technically live in unicorporated Fulton County. It’s kind of funny. I grew up inside the city limits of Montezuma, GA. My entire life before this I never lived in the “country.” Of course, there’s nothing very country about where I live. A block away are two shopping centers, little strip malls, restaurants, a couple of fast food places, etc. There’s more on that corner than in my home town. However, when I first moved here, I was intrigued by the signs that welcome one into the “Ocee Community.” And I found a little info. about it on the web, only to have that web site vanish later. So, I found this today and figured it was worth copying into my journal just in case.

To give adequate credit, this comes from the Ocee Elementary School website:

The Ocee Community

During the 1800’s several small communities were close together, which made it easy for the people who lived there to travel a short distance to shop. Originally this community was called New York, but the Post Office refused to deliver mail to New York, Georgia. Therefore, the community decided to call itself Mazeppa. Later, the community changed the name to Ocee after they had forgotten why they had chosen Mazeppa! Indian origin is often speculated when compared to true Indian names like “Ocoee” and “Oconee”. Some say the name came from the vantage point because of the high elevation and the cotton fields landscape of the nineteenth century.

For many years, Ocee consisted of three stores, two of which contained gas pumps, a Justice of the Peace office, a blacksmith, and several churches. Mr. O.C. Shirley founded one of the bigger stores, hence, some believe, the name for the community. Being bounded by Big Creek, Johns Creek, and the Chattahoochee River, most of the community roads were named for the people who built the ferries and bridges over these waterways. John Kimball was an early settler of the area, for example, even before the Cherokee were removed.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Ocee was a very large community. Henry Brooks operated a blacksmith shop. O.C. Shirley, the Turner family, and the Barnett family operated stores around the Congregational Church, which was located on the Circle K property at the intersection of Kimball Bridge and Jones Bridge Roads. They even had a small Justice of the Peace office where county work was done. Saturdays were often spent around Mr. Brook’s front porch after the Saturday shopping in the various stores was completed. Sundays were spent in the community’s four churches. Today, you can see road signs that say you are entering the Ocee community!

Nothing much happenned this weekend. I managed to do some small amount of housework and almost put the living room back together afterwards. I guess I’ll do some more the next few nights since I got so little done otherwise. I spent a lot of time outside the past two days. I cleaned out some dead evergreens out front, started leveling out a low spot in the yard and de-thatched the lawn. I put in a couple of new shrubs, but I resisted buying anything else plant-wise. Shrubs I feel safe about but any other plants could still get whacked if we have another cold snap like last week’s. I also put down some more mulch where my scuppernong vines are since I didn’t manage to get much around them before they had filled in last summer. Late today I put together the hammock I got while I was last home. Ahh… wished it had been a warmer weekend and that I’d gotten that put up earlier… Could have been nice. Maybe next weekend will be warm and I’ll curl up in it with some comics or a nice book.

Week three of training for my new job - at least the formal training. I’m certain the on-the-job variety will continue for awhile. I’m kind of glad that the formal variety is nearly over. Then again, I don’t think I’d be nearly so tired today if I hadn’t had such a long day. I went home for the weekend and did some painting at my parent’s house. I was still working on it late yesterday and decided to try driving up here today instead of getting back LATE last night. I’m not sure which would have been easier, but that’s the route I went this time. I got up at 4am and drove up here stopping by my house to change and drop the cats off before work. When my brain catches up, I’ll let you know what I’ll do in the future if this comes up again.

Been an eventful couple of months. I got a new position at Equifax, where I’ve worked the past three years. I just changed departments. In some ways, I’m starting over, but going there with the knowledge I have, it’s not a total new start. And yet, I get a position that’s more to my liking and I feel like I’m still somehow moving forward, which is important to me. As of last week, my new job title is Business Solutions Consultant. All this really means is that when Sales has sold a customer on using us to approve you for a credit offer of some sort (auto loan, credit card) or maybe you’re trying to get a rental car, etc., we’re the service that customer wants to use, and my job is to get them set up for it. I write the criteria specs and submit them to programming and handle whatever other issues need handling to make sure Customer X is a happy camper. I’m looking forward to this new challenge, even though if you’d told me 5 years ago that I would ever be trying to keep a customer happy one day, I’d have laughed at you. Never saw myself in such a position, but this is soooo much different than retail.

On the home front, the last couple of weeks have been spring cleaning. I spent the past weekend reorganizing my comic collection, literally for the first time in almost a decade. Partly this was a result of moving around during grad school and even here in Atlanta before I bought my home. I never felt rooted before I bought my house, even tho I still lived in my last apartment longer than my townhouse. So, the whole collection was never in one place. Whew, what an ordeal! I still have a tiny piece of it outstanding, but it may wait for another weekend. I want to finish my other cleaning this week so that when I bring my kitties back this weekend, the house will be prepared for them to trash!