Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Flannery O'Connor's Milledgeville

I am writing an article about Flannery O'Connor for the print world, as if a good enough excuse were needed to visit some of the landmarks of her life.


Flannery O'Connor lived out the last years of her all-too-short life and wrote many of her stories in this farmhouse. She called the farm Andalusia. It is located on U.S. Highway 441 North, about four miles north of historic Milledgeville, a quarter-mile north of the Wal-Mart.


At the kitchen table, morning coffee was served from a thermos. Regina Cline O'Connor, Flannery's mother, made the coffee each night to serve the next day.


Flannery O'Connor wrote every morning in her bedroom, with her back to the window and her desk and typewriter walled behind the clothes chest.


Regina O'Connor operated Andalusia as a working dairy farm, with tenant labor. Today Andalusia is maintained by the underfunded Flannery O'Connor Foundation and is open to the public.


Peacocks, absent from Andalusia for some years, recently have been re-introduced.


The barn has a loft, a challenge to climb with a wooden leg, a dangerous descent hard to explain, without it.

Copyright 2009 by William C. Cotter

3 comments:

Tina said...

Nice pictures! I will have to drive over there one day. My Moore family is originally from Milledgeville. Cousin Floride taught at Georgia College, originally Georgia State College for Women, and probably would have some tales to tell.

Todd said...

Great job! Anything to do with my favorite author is awright with me!

Todd Sentell
Alpharetta
Author of Toonamint of Champions

Cotter Pen said...

Atlanta author Todd Sentell, an admirer of Flannery O'Connor, wrote the golf novel TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS, which is to be avoided at all costs if you can not take a joke. I have posted on my sidebar a link to his letter to Flannery O'Connor, "The Intersection of Pick-Up Trucks and Holy Water."

 

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