Why It's Called Resaca

Have you ever wondered why it's called Resaca? I like to tell everyone it's supposed to be because an old man ordered a mail order bride, back in the day, and when he saw how ugly she was he said, "Re-sack 'er boys, and send 'er back." But the truth of the matter is that Resaca is Spanish for "hangover" or "a dry river bed".

According to history the town was named after the Mexican-American war when the veterans came back home to north Georgia from the Battle of Resaca de las Palmas (Dry River Bed of the Palms) near Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico in 1846.

Resaca has always been prone to flooding so it does look like the community is on a dry riverbed that rises to alarming levels when we get too much rain at once. Sometimes it looks like our house is setting in the middle of a river bed when it starts flooding around here. We have to put a pump underneath the house to pump out the excess rain. We have to get new guttering for the house but that will only help divert the water away from the foundation. It won't do anything to stop the river flowing over the septic tank and field line out back. That doesn't help.

Resaca has plenty of drunks, too. We live right on the highway so we have access to plenty of interesting sights. One day I watched some old guy go walking down the highway on the shoulder of the road. He was staggering down the road and every now and then he would stagger into the lanes. I was sure he would get creamed by a car or truck coming down the road. He staggered a couple of houses down from ours and veered into the driveway and fell down flat on his face in the yard. Someone drove down the road and saw him and picked him up. They put him in the back of their little pickup truck. I watched them drive down the road, nearly to the curve, and then the truck stopped abruptly. I don't know if the drunk man fell out of the truck or maybe they decided to throw him out after he puked all over them but after a few seconds the little truck drove off. 

Resaca is a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I hate the inconvenience when it rains and the ground is saturated but the drunks are entertaining and if you keep your eyes open there's no telling what you might see. Like today, I cranked up the old Buick and didn't give it time to warm up. I pulled out in the highway and the piece of crap quit on me. I saw a car coming from behind me and was hoping I could get it cranked or at the very least turn on the damn emergency lights when I realized I couldn't get them on and my only hope was that the car had enough momentum to turn into the south driveway even when it was dead. I forced the wheel to turn, which is not easy when the motor's not running. Don't believe me? Try it sometime. It takes some muscle. Anyway, I got the car turned into our south driveway and thankfully got out of the road. I used to have to throw my old Camaro in neutral when it went dead when I was young so it was like 'deja vu' all over again.

I have my own theories about why we always get too much rain sometimes and it doesn't seem to want to stop. I think that when all the church people were praying around the United States every week during the droughts that stretched deep across the south for several years that those prayers got backed up and when the blessings start to pour, they pour and pour and pour. That's the same way we have droughts. People start praying for the rains to stop after everything is flooding and there doesn't appear to be an end in sight and those prayers get backed up a few years and then we have a drought again. Does that make sense? Or is it just the cycles in life, and that means I am getting really old and noticing things that I never noticed for years?

You know, I spend way too much time thinking about these things.

Check out everything you ever wanted to know on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resaca_Georgia. It tells about the history of Resaca and Resaca is definitely rich in history. We are historically located at the Battle of Resaca near the Chitwood Farm where the Battle of Resaca is held annually in May to commemorate the battle of 1864. It is a time for reflection and contemplation about the people who were alive during that time who lived where we live today.

The first Confederate Cemetery in Georgia was founded after Mary J. Green asked her father for a plot of land to bury the dead soldiers who had been buried wherever they died. She gathered up all the dead soldiers and re-interred them in a little plot of ground near a stream. The cemetery is close to our house. It is nice to go down to the cemetery and see all the tiny white markers. She made sure they all had a decent burial. The first Memorial was held in 1866.

Resaca is also part of Gordon County where the last Cherokee Indian Nation was before they were forcibly removed from their native lands and removed west to Oklahoma in one of the most tragic histories in America, the shame of the Trail of Tears. Sequoyah created the Cherokee Indian alphabet, the first written Indian language at New Echota which is near Interstate 75. 

New Echota was founded in 1825 by the Cherokee people, and they were rounded up and forcibly removed after the discovery of gold in Dahlonega Georgia in 1838. President Andrew Jackson illegally ordered their forcible removal. Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall had sided with the Indians.

Go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Echota for more information about the history of the American Indians who lived in this area before Europeans came to America.

PIO

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