Lifelong McDonough resident Dan Bledsoe said his hometown has undergone numerous changes over the years. With additional transformations on the way, he appears to be readying himself for what lies ahead.

  “Progress is progress, and I know it’s coming,” said Bledsoe. “I probably would have liked for it to stay the way it was for 100 years, but that’s not reality.”

  Bledsoe is among those reacting to the news that two old barns, recently uncovered in the Ola area, will soon be torn down to make way for a new Publix supermarket.

  Upon considering the area’s history, Bledsoe recalled being with his late grandfather, Lawrence Turner, the day Ola’s old cotton gin burned down. Bledsoe was just three years old at the time, but the memory remains with him to this day.

  Now, however, the building that once housed cotton is one of the barns set to be removed. Bledsoe acknowledged that residents of the area, in recent days, have taken to social media to voice their opposition to the barns’ removal. For his part, he said the barns’ impending demise represent “a sign of the times.”

  “Most of the folks around here didn’t know the barns were there until the trees were cut down,” he said. “I’ve been knowing all that since I was old enough to think about it. Whatever the property owner wants to do with them, the property owner has the right.”

  Others, said Bledsoe, have approached him directly regarding changes in the area.

  “My property is right across the road,” he said. “I’ve already had people calling me and asking if I want to sell it.”

  Richard Barham lives in the Ola area of McDonough, near where he grew up. To this day, he said, he has a lot of fond memories of the area’s past.

  For instance, Barham recalled the days when his home featured a garden, long before the paving of Ga. Highway 81.

  “We moved there when I was about five years old,” said Barham. “My biggest memory was the baseball field. Baseball was a big thing in that area in the fifties. The activity was in the baseball field and the gin house. Directly across from Ola store, there was a two-story structure. In the bottom was an automobile repair shop. In the top was a masonic lodge.”

  The Ola community, he said, included a tin warehouse which was used for fertilizer in the spring, and for storing bales of cotton in the fall. 

Barham said the owner of the other barn at the time, Lon Norman, used the facility for storing lumber.

  “He probably had about 20 farmhouses in that area, said Barham. “He owned about 1,000 acres. About 70 yards to the west, there was a cotton gin and an office where the business took place. The farmers would register and come in get their cotton ginned, and they’d have to get lined up according. You might be there all day getting your cotton ginned. The whole ball field would be covered with wagons loaded with cotton.”

  “I remember when the paved part ended where City Hall is now,” he continued. “In the fall, that area was used for the gin house. In the summer, it was used as a baseball field. The country store up there was the nucleus for Ola. I probably went to that gin house first when i was about seven years old. That was 80 years ago.”

  Despite the changes that have taken place in his hometown over the years, Barham isn’t sad about the barns being torn down. However, he said, the passage of time saddens him for a different reason.

  “What’s sad to me is seeing the state of disrepair that all of that area has become,” said Barham.  “I would prefer to remember it as it was, rather than what it is now.”