A
few days after an unprecedented March ice storm pummeled the area, the
ground crunched underfoot. The season reminded Earnest Edwards of the
days when he went to school here, and how he used to stand out from the
other children due to his patched pant knees, torn T-shirts, and the
fact that he sometimes walked to school barefoot, even in winter.
“We
were just low-class people, come from a — I don't really know how to
put it into words, to be honest with ya,” Edwards said on an
unseasonably bitter day here in America's Deep South. “Like I said, our
clothes were a little different because they had patches sewn on them,
but they were clean. We didn't have the finest shoes to wear.”
Teachers
at Effingham County High School in Springfield, Georgia, felt sorry for
him and his family. In the 1960s the entire county, comprising some 482
square miles, went to the one high school, which for Earnest's class of
1964 had about 160 graduating students. More damning than the clothes
or the isolation that comes with being part of a small community in a
spread-out rural area were the unfettered rumors about Earnest's family.
The
Edwardses live in Tiger Ridge, a community of Effingham County
withdrawn into seclusion by topography and by choice. About forty family
members live in this far-removed corner of the state. There are
longstanding rumors throughout Georgia about the people of Tiger Ridge;
as with plenty of other backcountry towns, they mostly have to do with
inbreeding. Ask a resident of Savannah, Atlanta or Athens about Tiger
Ridge, and more often than not they’ll bring up “kissin’ cousins,” with
some folks swearing up and down that the residents here are all married
to their brother, sister, father or mother, and that the enclave is full
of one-eyed yokels with gruesome deformities.
For
much of their lives, those who lived in Tiger Ridge faced ridicule for
something they were not. They were taunted, and on several occasions
drew their firearms in defense, standing guard outside the property to
scare away reckless passersby who ventured to see something that was not
there. Thanks in part to a yearly holiday light show, that has since
changed.
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