Tate City is a small town in north east Georgia with a population of about 30. The unincorporated city is in the far eastern corner of Towns County. The only way to get to Tate City is to travel through Rabun County. (You can get to it while staying in Towns County, but it requires a large truck with four wheel drive.) Unfortunately, Tate City falls within my jurisdiction. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s not easy or quick to get to. It’s about a 30 mile trip, 6 of which are on a single lane dirt road. It takes up to an hour to get there, so if the call is a real emergency, the Rabun County Sheriff’s Office responds as well to assist us. (Fun Fact: The children of Tate City attend Rabun County schools. The Towns County Board of Education pays their tuition.)

In the picture below, you’ll notice that half of the trip to Tate City involves driving through another county.

We don’t have to respond to Tate City often. Since I’ve been with this department, I’ve only been there twice. Both times were regarding guns. We recently responded to Tate City when a man purposefully shot his brother in the arm.

The worse part about responding to Tate City, is that there is no cell phone or radio service there. On a good day, dispatch might be able to hear static when you try to speak on the radio. If you need help, too bad. Also, depending on how many are working at the time, when an officer responds to Tate City, it might leave the rest of the county to be covered by one officer.

I’m not complaining about Tate City. I’m just constantly amazed at how remote some places still are, and I wanted to share it. I grew up in Hiawassee and I never even knew where Tate City was. If you had told me about Tate City when I was working for Cobb County Police, I probably would have laughed and been in awe. Now, when I’m told I have to go to Tate City, I just cry a little inside.

Here’s a great article from the BBC about a 13-year-old giving up his iPod for a week to use the original Sony Walkman. I’m not sure that I would want to go back to using cassette tapes. I use my iPhone to listen to music on a daily basis, whether around the house or at work. I carry all 1,059 songs that I have collected through the years with me at all times.

From the article:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm

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A lot has been happening lately. Michelle and I have been remodeling rooms in our house since we moved back to Hiawassee. We’ve almost completed the kitchen, and we’re very proud of it. When we finally complete it, I’ll write about it in detail and post pictures of it on my journal.

Also, I was involved in a serious accident while at work yesterday. I hydroplaned and struck a stopped vehicle at 60 miles per hour. I’m incredibly sore, but no one was seriously injured. I’ll also write more about this incident and post pictures of the vehicle once I get approval from my department.

Michelle and I have been living in Hiawassee for over a month now. We moved from Kennesaw on March 27, and I started with the Towns County Sheriff’s Office on March 30. I started out riding with another officer on day shift (6:00 am to 6:00 pm). Once they figured out that I knew what I was doing, they put me out on my own. I stayed on day shift for a couple of weeks until an incident occurred on night shift that left two officers on administrative leave. Once the GBI completes their investigation I’ll be able to say more. In the mean time, I’m working night shift to help cover the beats.

It’s nice though. I use to get terrible headaches everyday and I lived on migraine medicine. Since moving back to Hiawassee, I haven’t had any bad headaches. That either means that the headaches were stress induced, or the tumor that was causing them miraculously disappeared. It’s also been greet to be able to stop at home and eat with Michelle or stop at my parent’s house for coffee.

There are some drawbacks to moving back to Hiawassee though. I took a 50% pay cut. This blow was softened with a take home car, a county cell phone, and a free house (provided by Michelle’s grandmother, not the county). It’s also difficult to police in the town you grew up in. I’ve had to arrest a former classmate, and I know most people I pull over. If I don’t know the people I come across at work, then they either know me or my family. I’ll be talking to someone, and they’ll suddenly say, “Are you Stephen Smith’s son? He taught me algebra when I was in high school. He was the best teacher I ever had, and the best thing to happen to the school.” It’s hard to write a ticket to someone after they say something like that, but I manage anyway.

A thunderstorm rolled through Marietta on February 18th. I happened to be sitting in the parking lot of Holy Family Catholic Church working on a report. When the sky started to fill with clouds and lightning, I pulled out my Sony Cyber-shot H9. I hoped to get pictures of the lightning itself, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I changed the shutter speed to 30 seconds and sat the camera on the roof of my car. Here’s three of the pictures that came out well. Holy Family has a great cross in the front of the parking lot that made for a great focal point.

I responded to a report of an accident with injuries one afternoon. When I arrived, I found this Honda wrapped around a telephone poll. The teenage driver was miraculously not injured. The telephone poll snapped in half, and the top half came to rest feet from the car, still standing. It took the EMC hours to fix the problem.