B.P. “Doc” Reeves said rural areas like McDonough, in its earlier days, didn’t have many of the conveniences of today, including electricity.

  “You had the lamps – kerosene, just like this one,” he said, pointing at one in his living room. “It was probably worse for people who lived in town because farmers could grow food – which we did. We had gardens that grew every kind of tomatoes, squash, okra and everything.”

  “If you get out and ride here now, you see houses everywhere,” continued Reeves, 94. “Back in those days, you’d see a house here, then three or four hundred acres out there, and then you’d go on down the road to the next one.”

  Reeves, a former member of the McDonough City Council, was born Valentine’s Day 1926, and grew up in Milner, Ga., near Griffin. He recently recounted a litany of memories gleaned from the city he calls home.

  Reeves served for two years as a medic in the Navy and the Marines, where he garnered the nickname “Doc” that would stay with him for the rest of his life. After his honorable discharge from the military in July of 1946, Reeves attended Middle Georgia College in Cochran, Ga., for two years before going to the University of Georgia. It was during his college years that he met Martha Ann Clay, who lived in McDonough.

  The pair married in 1949 and moved to McDonough. The couple had four children – Linda, Kathy, Jeff and Scott.

  Reeves served a total of 22 years on the McDonough City Council, beginning with a two-year term from 1955-56. At the time, said Reeves, McDonough’s population was approximately 1,800 people, and City Hall was a small building on Hampton Street.

  He acknowledged that McDonough has changed considerably from when he first came to the area.

  “When I moved to McDonough, there was a saying,” said Reeves. “If you left McDonough on the highway, you either went south to Locust Grove or you went north to Stockbridge, because the rest of the roads were not paved at that time.”

  Decatur Road, where he lives near the McDonough Square, was among those unpaved roads. Reeves said when he moved to McDonough, court was held twice a year – once in the spring and again in the fall.

  A small jail near the county courthouse contain a maximum of 12 people, said Reeves.

  “We had one policeman,” he said. “He didn’t even have a car.”

  Reeves said when he first came to McDonough, the area featured a number of dairy farms, seven grocery stores and two cotton gins. Still, he said the city would “shut down” every Wednesday afternoon.

  “Then, on Sunday, nothing was open but one service station,” he said.

  Reeves said he sees value in the “simplicity” of McDonough’s past. Still, when asked whether he longs for the old days, he quickly responded with an emphatic “no.”

  “I like the way it is now,” he said. “When you build houses, you’ve got them heated and everything. Back then, if you built a new house, you’d go outside and have to chop wood and bring it in. By the time you’d get settled down, if it started burning down, you’d have to go do some more. And you didn’t have running water. That was the life back then.”

  As he listened to his father, Jeff Reeves initially said he would have liked to experience McDonough’s agricultural history for himself.

  Doc Reeves, however, quickly disagreed with his son’s assessment.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Doc Reeves said. “You’d be busy, out working in the garden. You didn’t just sit around when you got home from school. You’d put your books down, and you went to do your chores. You’d get your studying done with a lamp.”

  For his part, Jeff Reeves fondly recalled days of yesteryear in McDonough. Certain traditions, he said, highlighted the area’s slower pace, while others emphasized the bond between families and friends.

  “On Saturday nights, we used to ride around because that’s all there was to do,” said Jeff Reeves. “But you had to make sure you had gas in your car on Saturday night. If not, you weren’t going anywhere on Sunday.

  “Back then, I can remember a lot of families visiting their relatives on Sunday afternoons after Sunday School and church,” added Jeff Reeves. Then you’d come home and there’d be a dinner for you that your mother or whoever would make. Then either relatives would come visit you or you’d go and visit them, and that’s why all the houses used to have those big porches and everything.”

  Jeff Reeves, a columnist for The Henry County Times, reflected on his younger days to illustrate how time and circumstances have changed his perspective. To do this, he recalled an earlier conversation with his father.

  “I remember, when I was in high school, all of a sudden it was cool to wear overalls,” said Jeff Reeves. “So I got me a pair like everybody else did, and I remember coming home one day and saying to him, ‘Have you ever had a pair of overalls?’ He says, ‘Have I ever? I wore those things so long, I promised if I ever got out of them, I’d never get back in a pair.’ I got to thinking, ‘Good Lord, he had to wear those things every day of his life.’”

  “I think about him and other people his age, and how they had to have that on,” said Jeff Reeves. “I must admit, if I was forced to use that when I was born, and that was the only way I had to read or study until I got [older], maybe they’d be like those overalls. Maybe I didn’t think they were so great after all. It was just a different time, but they all got through it.”