Much Ado About Macon, Georgia
Macon, Georgia is the type of place that is so chock full of colorful legends, stories, and family lore, a place where a tall tale is just as likely to be served as warm as shrimp and grits or fried green tomatoes to anyone with a still beating pulse willing to lend an ear. But beware, just when you think you’ve heard the tallest tale ever in the history of the world, someone very politely says, “Yes, ma’am,” while you get smacked along side the head with hard facts bearing out that tale’s abject truth. It is a place where one is never far from history, music, impressively preserved architecture, and sustaining Southern fare served with polite, good cheer. Yet nearby, just around the corner in fact, is change, and its kissing cousin, optimistic hope, that comes calling for an even brighter future.
One trivial historical fact about Macon is that it was the birthplace of the kazoo. One modern fact is that Macon is now known as the “center of the pickleverse,” as it now has the world’s largest indoor pickleball center with two levels and 32 courts.
Of course, one can never speak of Macon, without taking a deep dive into the magic of Otis Redding’s music and his sad, untimely, and tragic death at age 26 in a Madison, Wisconsin 1967 plane crash. Nor can one talk of Macon without speaking of the Allman Brothers Band and their enormous contributions to rock and roll, not to mention that for a few of my teenaged summers visiting my long-resident grandparents, I could be deemed to be “cool,” as I was in ABB proximity.
A Complicated Relationship
My relationship with Macon is, like one’s most important relationships in life, complicated. At 12 years-old, the teenager who would one day become my father, his parents, and siblings arrived to Macon in late 1938 as stateless refugees after a long, terror-filled, harrowing journey from Nazi-occupied Austria that commenced in September 1938, precisely five weeks before Kristallnacht transpired, and which of course portended the end of much of Europe’s Jewish population.
They arrived in New York on lottery visas miraculously obtained by my grandmother’s third cousin, a Warner Robins, GA attorney (a man she had neither met, nor ever spoken to), then took the train to Atlanta and then Macon to start a new life, in a country they knew little about, and in a state and town they knew virtually nothing about. What my eighth-generation Viennese grandfather then hoped he knew was that in Macon they would be free. In a sad twist of fate, the attorney who had generously helped them died three weeks after their arrival in NY; sadder still that my grandparents didn’t even have the opportunity to adequately thank him in person for literally saving their lives. Without him, I wouldn’t even be a pipe dream, much less a twinkle in anyone’s eye, and the Kessler family story would have abruptly ended, as so many others did.
After my father came of age and served in the U.S. Army, he then met my mother in a fluke encounter outside the building where my mother was temporarily working at a foreign consulate in Atlanta. They married and immediately left for parts west and never once returned. Things were different for me. At four-years-old, I took my first solo flight across the country to Atlanta, where my grandparents waited to drive me to Macon for the first of several long, steamy summers.
Though I loved my grandparents – the only ones I had – it was hard. An only child coming from the Californian and then Hawaiian summers to hang out far away with grandparents in sweltering humidity, left me like a fish needing water. Though my grandparents had a pool in which I duly remained daily until my grandmother bellowed the wrinkles would be permanent if I didn’t exit, all while nearly drowning in iced, cherry Kool-Aid, those summers were long, hot, and fairly lonely, except for a elderly neighbor who, probably much to her relief, timed her similarly-aged South Carolinian granddaughter’s summer visits to dovetail with mine.
Award-winning Downtown District & Dining
Returning to Macon twice as a young adult, and once with my college-aged daughter a decade ago, Macon seemed to have remained somewhat unchanged, other than my well-known family’s name on Mulberry Street’s Oldham building storefront had been erased after 50 years. As Father Time had marched on, headway has been made to Macon’s downtown so much so that its corridor was named last year a “Great American Main Street,” now with a plethora of good restaurants, cafés, bars, and trendy lofts.
There’s the famous H&H Soul Food serving soul food enjoyed by the Allman Brothers where I dined on fried chicken, collard greens, and peach cobbler. Another evening The Rookery provided without doubt, the world’s best onion rings and a Jimmy Carter milkshake with banana pudding ice cream, peanut butter, and a slice of bacon, that my affable waiter convinced me to morph with Kahlua, thus appropriately dubbing it instead the ‘Billy Carter.’ It was an utterly delicious, arterial clogging equivalent of a multiple Michelin-starred, cardiologist pension plan fund. Regardless, there are places nearby such as Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park to work off these delectable caloric coronary indulgences.
Sweet Eleanor’s Divine Desserts is the place for comfortable couches, strong morning coffees, and mouth-watering baked goods like decadent, warm cinnamon buns. Here charming proprietor Scott Mitchell regales with stories of his beloved grandmother – a large mural of whom graces the wall – including her word that she’d wait to depart for the heavenly promised land until he opened the eatery. Ever true to her word, sweet Eleanor passed on November 1, 2023, precisely one day after the grand opening of her namesake.
It is of course these kinds of stories that make smaller destination cities like Macon shine as they weave their way into one’s urban heart. They can likewise be found in Loom Comfort Kitchen headed by James Beard nominee Jason Reynolds at the centrally located Hotel 45 Macon, a Tribute Portfolio hotel, created out of a former bank and insurance building. Here I hung my hat, enjoying the comfortable modern facilities, in-room Illy coffee maker, Steg refrigerator, hospitable employees, and Hightales Rooftop Bar, which as the name suggests, was chock full of stories.
At Loom, my kind waiter upon learning I hailed from out-of-state, free associated with fervor that it was absolutely critical for me to stop at Lane Southern Orchard in Byron, “just a bit South a spell,” on my way to my next stop, to try the world’s best peach ice cream. He was definitely not wrong.
At Kinjo’s Kitchen, I delighted in the best Asian fusion food east of Honolulu, tender Bibimbap, perfect kimchi, and a divine cheesecake with chocolate liqueur lovingly laced with umami black sesame whipped cream.
There’s Churchills on Cherry a cigar bar for aficionados, and the Hummingbird Stage & Tap Room if one has a penchant for brews and darts. The historic Grant’s Lounge is considered home of Southern Rock, once giving a stage to the Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, and others. The Black Cat Liquor & Libations, below Kinjo’s, is an underground bar with jazz and Victorian decor.
Music on my Mind
The Otis Redding Museum with mementos from his wife Zelma’s personal collection, including condolence telegrams from James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and other music icons is a few feet from Hotel 45. Zelma and her children stayed in Macon after Otis’ death and have been steadfast in carrying on his legacy, including the impressive Otis Redding Foundation providing musical education to area youth.
At Capricorn Records Museum, in a building originally bought by Otis Redding, its first offering was the titular Allman Brothers release, and today still records music in a beautifully preserved space. Upstairs there’s an impressive history of Frank Fenter and Phil Walden, the powerhouse duo behind some of the most important Southern rock musicians.
For several years, many of the Allman clan lived at 2321 Vineville Avenue in “The Big House,” which was unbelievably close to my grandparents’ home. Had I known that back in the day, it would have then made me even cooler among my west coast friends. Today, in this gorgeously preserved 6,000 square foot English Tudor residence is a marvelous museum curated by the uber-talented Richard Brent paying homage to the Allman Brother’s enormous contribution to Southern rock. There’s even the billiard table that was in the Macon home Cher once shared with Gregg.
Finally Resting at Macon’s Rose Hills Cemetery
After paying heartfelt respects to my amazing grandparents at Rose Hill – where the Allman Brothers often went to write several of their first songs and carouse – I went down the hill to thank Gregg and his bandmates for unknowingly keeping me company for many a night many moons ago – not to mention helping me survive the tumultuous teenage years. In an enclosed area, Gregg rests near Duane Allman who died at 24 in a motorcycle accident one day after he returned to Macon in 1971, and which happened to be my birthday. And in a tragic anniversary one year and a few days later, bandmate Berry Oakley crashed his motorcycle and died just three blocks from where Duane’s accident occurred. Berry is buried next to Duane.
Returning to my rental SUV in 99-degree heat exploding with my own overheated nostalgia spanning several decades and hundreds of thousands of global miles, the car simply refused to budge. Dead stop. Alighting to ensure no rocks were beneath the tires, it turned and turned over, though immovable. Plugging in my nearly dead cell phone to place an incinerating call for help, I then realized the SUV’s teeny emergency brake button near the USB port had been inadvertently activated when I plugged in the phone cable before exiting. And there it was, the blessing/curse of modern technology forcing me once again to contemplate the often-absurd literal starts and stops of one’s existence along the sometimes-bumpy road of life.
The Allman Brothers sang about many things, though often sung about personal struggles, the human condition, and the leitmotif of freedom and escape. While the struggles they sang of were of course different than those of my family of origin, their messages were universal truths applicable to all mere mortals, hence their music’s everlasting appeal.
My grandparents lived well in Macon for 50 years. Not a single day went by that they weren’t eternally grateful that their once shattered, broken lives had been saved by a kind, unknown distant cousin and to the place that granted them the freedom to live their lives without fear, allowing them the privilege to generously contribute to the community they then called home. Their story, and by progeny mine, became the very essence of a truly American story that was born in what was for them, the very Mecca of Macon.
Julie L. Kessler is an attorney, journalist, and the author of the award-winning memoir: “Fifty-Fifty, The Clarity of Hindsight.” Her journalism work has appeared in major publications around the world, including The L.A. Times, The S.F. Examiner, The Asia Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Vancouver Courier, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and The Daily Journal, among many others. She can be reached at Julie@VagabondLawyer.com
