Satan's Little Acre
by Janice Daugharty
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Janice Daugharty
If you’re looking for a cheap, remote vacation get-away, with prospects for becoming commercially valuable property, look no further. I’ve got just the place for you. I call it Satan’s Little Acre. It’s smack-dab in the middle of prime farm and timberland, in Southeast Georgia, surrounded by a forty-acre tract left to my husband by his deceased parents. Somehow that single acre got deeded to a brother, whose inherited land adjoins ours. So, he sold it to us for $500, about the same amount as the property taxes on that little dab of dirt a year or so ago.
This year the taxes on Satan’s Little Acre went up to $4,000, because of its "future potential."
We’ve never been "in there," my husband and I. But I’m pretty sure we could get you in on a crawler tractor. I don’t think we could get there on our four-wheeler or even in our four-wheel drive Jeep.
The dog fennels are higher than your head, and the cat-claw briars are so thick that a rabbit couldn’t scoot through. A hawk might fly over to get to the acre, if he had reason to. About the only creatures that would be attracted to Satan’s Little Acre are moccasins.
Yes, it’s a moccasin pit. Pure swamp. Dirt fit only for holding the rest of the earth together. There are a few bays and cypresses—we’ve seen their tops from one of our tower-type deer stands, due north of Satan’s Little Acre where the railroad tracks run past an ancient cemetery. Maybe twice a day slow freight trains pass with a steady low rumble and clackety-clack. The closest community is the Quaker-like village of Howell, to the northwest, where my husband was born and raised, and where the last of the old-timers he remembers are the only residents. For now, they visit on each other’s front porches and check their mail and go to church on Sundays and to town, Valdosta, 18 miles to the west, on an average of once a month.