History in the balance

In the shadow of the Big Peach, a giant canvas fruit towering above Interstate 75, lie two Middle Georgia towns separated by 11 miles of asphalt and the politics of red and blue.

Fort Valley’s population of 8,000 is almost 75 percent black. The mantra there is Barack Obama’s campaign chant: “Yes, we can.”

Byron, population 4,000, is almost 77 percent white and, as John McCain supporters put it: “This is Nobama Country.”

Along the Main Streets of both places, expressions of hope take on a fervor fueled by times of crisis. The same is true elsewhere in the Peach State in advance of Tuesday’s presidential election.

From Cumming to Camilla, voters interviewed recently say they have never staked so much on a presidential candidate. And never before have they feared that the American dream may be hanging in the balance.

Where the peach is king

Byron blossomed amid peach orchards and pecan groves. Folks are proud of what’s left of the town’s antebellum splendor along historic thoroughfares that connect with Main Street. Many are also proud to be conservative and Christian.

Under the big peach off I-75, John Harley is taking inventory at the antiques center he bought and reopened six weeks ago. The sour economy has meant brisk business: Harley has 28,000 square feet of second-hand steals that people thirst for when they have no money and no credit.

“We’ve led the entire world into a recession,” he said, “because of our style of capitalism.”

Two years ago, Harley, 41, reinvented himself in Peach County. After a divorce, he abandoned his Midtown Atlanta condo, Land Rover and all-black wardrobe for a modest house, pickup truck and jeans.

The next president, he hopes, will reinvent America.

“I would say we need to constantly re-create ourselves to stay ahead of the curve. We need to become more entrepreneurial. That’s what we built this nation on.”

He worries that McCain, the Republican nominee, won’t bring enough change, but he’s sticking to his right-of-center roots and voting GOP.

“I want the best for the country,” Harley said.

So does Tracy McCollister, who has stopped by to visit a friend at the Byron welcome center on Main Street.

McCollister, 69, launched a local newspaper called The Patriot a year ago. He’s a retired Air Force man, Republican to his core. He thinks America has laid down a solid foundation, but he’s not sure how folks in Middle Georgia will weather financial upheaval.

“Here I am in the waning years of my life and I’m concerned about whether my wife and I will have enough to live comfortably.”

McCollister has a long list of people and places to blame for America’s woes: welfare programs, illegal immigrants, China, Islamic terrorists. He hopes McCain will set the country back on track, to what the Founding Fathers intended.

In the meantime, he is pondering a food garden in his back yard so he can live off his own soil.

Home to historic college

The boombox is thumping, but the chairs are empty at Custom Images barbershop in downtown Fort Valley.

Weekly regulars now show only once every three weeks to save money. On Mondays, the price for a cut drops to $5 to attract penny-pinchers as well as students at historically black Fort Valley State University.

“We need relief in the ‘hood,” said Carl Johnson, 34, a master barber who now works six days a week to pay his bills.

Fort Valley is close to Byron in distance only. If Byron is “Nobama Country,” Fort Valley is the opposite.

What people here remember is that during the tense days of integration, several downtown businesses shuttered rather than open doors to black people. That until 1990, the high school prom was segregated.

The men and women who run the meat-and-three restaurants, harvest the farms or paint school buses at the Blue Bird Corp. are counting on Obama to lift them out of acute distress.

On this afternoon, Nikki Fowler, 32, brings her two sons into Custom Images for a trim and plants herself in front of an Obama poster. She admits she might be the only African-American in Fort Valley who is still undecided.

She went for President Bush in 2004 but grew disenchanted.

“He didn’t listen to the people. I hope he does,” she said looking at the poster of Obama. “I hope he hears them crying out for help.”

A recording of “God Bless America” blares from loudspeakers posted throughout downtown. That’s how people know it’s noon here, and a hungry crowd saunters over to Sharpe’s Kuntry Kitchen on Main Street. On today’s menu: meatloaf, smoked chops, candied yams, turnip greens.

Margaret McCormick can’t finish her heaping portion and walks out with a to-go box. She graduated from Fort Valley State four decades ago and now, at 85, serves as a campus minister. She’s voting for Obama.

She sees despair at the college —- “It’s so discouraging that young people are so concerned about their futures” —- and at her second job as a volunteer at Grace House, a charity where she’s noticed more and more people in line for food.

She hopes the new administration will prioritize the financial crisis.

“It’s not going to get better overnight,” she said. “My pessimism is over what we, as a people, are expecting of the next president. There’s no magic wand.”

Relishing red

Carole Moran’s fiery red lipstick matches the ground she treads this autumn day at Cumming’s Courthouse Square.

Moran, 65, furiously waves her pompom and McCain-Palin sign to passers-by in the reddest part of Georgia —- and we’re not talking clay here. Drivers in cars, pickups, even 18-wheelers reciprocate, honking as they drive by.

In 2004, George W. Bush won 83 percent of the vote in Forsyth County, the highest percentage in the state.

“My heart is so much into this race,” Moran said, signaling a thumbs up to McCain supporters. “We need someone to keep our country safe. I don’t sleep at night sometimes.

“We’re living in a different time. This is not 1950 or 1960,” she said, referring to the threat of terrorism on American soil. “My hope is that my grandson will grow up in a safe America.”

Justin is in the fourth grade. His mother (Moran’s daughter), Kimberly Salerno, 47, wears a button that says: “I Love Justin.” “I need to protect Justin’s freedom,” Salerno said. “The economy is not important to me. If a terrorist comes over to this country, it doesn’t matter what happens to our money.”

It bothers Moran that more Americans don’t display flags on their front porches and lawns, like they did after Sept. 11. It bothers her that foreigners move into her subdivision —- Cumming’s population grew by a whopping 59 percent in the past eight years —- and fly the colors of their native lands. “But it’s going to get better,” she said, if McCain occupies the White House. “It really is.”

Bursting blue

Forty-eight miles down a highway can vastly change a political landscape in Georgia. Red turns to deep blue in downtown Decatur. Here, in the metro area’s bluest ZIP code, the votes for Obama could be as high as the totals for McCain in Cumming.

At this courthouse square, Dan and Cindy Jackey, both 37, are enjoying an afternoon outdoors with their 10-month-old daughter, Eva. They worry about Eva’s future just as much as Carole Moran does about her grandson Justin’s.

The Jackeys bask in the sun and contemplate a metaphorical black cloud over America.

“We’re not respected as a nation. We’re seen around the world as bullies,” said Cindy Jackey, a stay-at-home mom.

“Right,” said her husband, a commercial pilot. “We need to lead by example, not by force.”

They hope the next president will engage in global dialogue and talk with the Ahmadinejads and Chavezes of the world. They don’t view that as a sign of weakness.

“Right now our attitude is either you’re with us or you’re against us,” Dan said. “I don’t agree with that. Bush squandered the goodwill toward America after 9/11 with the invasion of Iraq.”

It bothers the Jackeys that America has become so polarized; that it’s a struggle to take political debate beyond red and blue.

A bellwether county

Ray Mitchell achieved a version of the American dream.

He graduated from the University of Georgia and made a life for his family in Camilla, where he moved in 1970 to run the library. Now 74 and a widower, Mitchell is thankful for the Internet and cable television, essentials to survival in a sleepy town that hasn’t seen much change since the 1980s when Wal-Mart and Pizza Hut arrived.

Voters in Mitchell County seem to know something about picking winners. They’ve chosen the right man in every presidential election since 1988.

Ray Mitchell, however, won’t reveal his vote. He said it doesn’t matter whether it’s Obama or McCain: There will be no change.

“We’re in a complete trap. I realize I sound a lot like Archie Bunker.”

Mitchell said his only hope for this election is that things don’t get worse. “That’s not much of a hope, is it?”

If Ray Mitchell is running out of hope, what’s left for hired hands who process 22,000 chickens a day at an enormous factory or pick the cotton and peanuts of Mitchell County?

At this time of year, Ga. 97 out of Camilla is blanketed by peanuts that have fallen off the tractors that carry fresh harvests to shelling plants. You can feel them crunch under tires.

Golden Peanut Co. has an office on the highway, next to a general store and gas station in an unincorporated town that’s so small that a Google Earth image shows only greenery and a farm.

In these parts, Ray Mitchell said, people vote not by political persuasion but along demographic lines. What he means is the white farmers vote Republican and the black workers vote Democratic.

McCain fliers are scattered across the peanut company counter, where farmers proudly proclaim they’d rather risk hell than vote for a Democrat.

The Obama supporters are the women frying chicken in the general store’s restaurant.

Outside, Willie Little Walker sits on a rickety wooden bench and waits for a friend. At 57, Walker makes $6 an hour as a farmhand. Some days, there’s work. Other days, he frets.

But this is a place that refuses to betray its name: Hopeful.

Walker hasn’t given up on the American dream. Not just yet.

“I know it’s going to come one day, on the day when change comes,” he said.

Maybe on Election Day.

Data analyst John Perry contributed to this article.

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 SHANNON PEAVY / Staff
Map of Georgia locates Fort Valley, Camilla, Byron, Cumming, Decatur and Atlanta.