Macon, Ga

By Dustin Waters

As with all great beginnings, we’ll start at home – Macon, Ga.

Positioned in the heart of the Peach State, where the rolling hills of the Piedmont Plateau give way to flat plains, the rivers there run fast and everything remains just off-kilter.

Perhaps for good reason, Macon has been referred to as the “Little Detroit of the South.” My grandmother once told me to ignore stop signs because teenagers had started throwing cinderblocks through the windshields of waiting cars. This means that she weighed the dangers of speeding through every intersection in town and decided that was less of a risk than occasionally stopping and having adolescents hurl concrete into the car.

To better demonstrate the city’s unique charms, I offer up the YouTube channel of the local paper of record, the Macon Telegraph, which by accident has perfectly showcased the grim absurdity of the city.

Apart from the steady stream of sports videos, you’ll find titles that read like a mix of writing prompts for a Southern Gothic writers workshop and drunken, late-night tweets that won’t make sense the next morning. These include “Road safety advocate hit by car,” “Despite her heart, kidney problems, she says, ‘God is so good,’” and “This Is A Test Im Learning Videolicious.”

In case you’re wondering, “This Is A Test Im Learning Videolicious” depicts a sign being installed at a new hotdog restaurant, while a partially audible voice in the background describes – I don’t know – something, I guess. As with most videos on the channel, zero context is provided, but this is probably for the best.

Like a small-town version of Mondo Cane or compilations of Russian dashcam footage, these videos work best when viewed simply as brief windows into a world that never tried to make sense. This is a place where snippets titled “Man says cops told him to decapitate dog or go to jail” exist alongside “Lynyrd Skynyrd bought Greg Allman flowers,” and it’s business as usual. As a public service, I’ve combed through the best that the Macon Telegraph YouTube channel has to offer. Here is what I found.

The Enigma of Ben and Smokey

Many videos on the Macon Telegraph channel come across as what someone with a head wound would see as they briefly lapsed in and out of consciousness. As an example, I present “Ben and Smokey play fetch.”

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylzSE-pTIKk&t

Clocking in at one minute and 12 seconds and earning around a dozen views – most of which are me – “Ben and Smokey play fetch” showcases what appears to be a young boy in the grips of mono playing with a house cat. The couchridden young man, inexplicably wrapped in a Philadelphia Phillies blanket, lays on his side with an unwakable dog resting at the crook of his leg. He repeatedly tosses a small piece of fabric, which is fetched by an eager cat.

A disinterested adult – their face just out of frame – sits nearby with a laptop. No explanation is provided. The young man – who briefly checks his phone with the concern of a dead man winding his watch – is never named, but hopefully he is the titular Ben. Otherwise, we have just glimpsed inside the home of a family who named their son “Smokey” and their cat “Ben.” This is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Regardless, this video could be titled “This is what you wake up to after oversleeping at your friend’s slumber party” and it would make just as much sense.

The Pigs are Missing

Like a fire safety announcement written by Flannery O’Connor, our next video is titled “Pigs may have kicked over heat lamps.”

A true masterclass in suspense, the first thing you notice when the video begins is that the aforementioned pigs and heat lamps are nowhere to be seen. Instead, they’ve been replaced with Middle Georgia Fire Chief Lee Parker explaining that there was a late-night blaze at the Future Farmers of America pig barn. He delivers the news while standing in front of a completely demolished structure.

http://https://youtu.be/IcMt6pXr3r0

The footage then fades into a shot of Parker and his fellow inspectors surveying the remains of the pig barn. As if staged by Alfred Hitchcock in his prime, we still don’t know about the fate of the pigs, raised and cared for by a group of diligent future farmers. Surely the world wouldn’t be so cruel as to derail them on their way to show.

“Jesus Christ, what happened to the pigs?” you scream at the monitor, each second bringing you further and further away from the prospect of a happy ending. “Are the pigs OK?”

No. They are not.

The fire chief, his comments trailing off as the audio fades out, says that representatives from the Board of Education came in after the fire was doused to deal with the dead pigs. So ends the most expertly paced porcine tragedy ever committed to film.

Hell is Hot and Full of People

As temperatures rose in the summer of 2016, one supremely unimaginative Macon Telegraph reporter decided to stalk the downtown streets, accosting locals with one unnecessary question. So goes the premise of “Hot enough for ya?”

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o88adO97An0

For more than a minute and a half, the nameless newsman confronts everyone in his path with this sole questions, which he asks with an almost sadistic glee. His first victim responds with a friendly smile. This man is just happy to be able to wear shorts on his day off. Others were not so keen on such simple pleasures.

As the video continues, the responses go from curt yeses to honest admissions that it has now become too hot. Eagle-eyed viewers may notice the Macon Telegraph headquarters in the background of some shots, revealing the sole link between a number of the channel’s videos: Often the reporters simply step outside of their office and film whatever they see.

Drunk off the suffering of his fellow man, the unnamed reporter fears wandering too far from the safety of his newsroom. Fortunately for him, there is always enough human misery within sight to slake his thirst.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

“Bandit steals human hair, leaves cash” depicts a post-apocalyptic reality where traditional currency has given way to extensions. Or a city where most of the banks have been transformed into drive-thru liquor stores. Either scenario is accurate.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhMROyFOPwo

In the video, we hear from Lt. Randy Gonzalez as he stands outside the active crime scene that is the All Virgin Strands Glam Bar. Sandwiched between a pawn shop and a Chuck E. Cheese’s, the Glam Bar was subject to an attack from a masked burglar who had enough foresight to recognize that all empires crumble and with them, their official currency. The only constant is vanity and humanity’s endless pursuit for those virgin strands.

An ‘A’ for Apathy

With the city’s smartest pigs dead, temperatures rising, and money replaced by hair, the Macon Telegraph best captured the sense of hopeless in the community with a bit of pre-election coverage. Speaking solely with residents of Hillary Place and Donald Avenue, the Telegraph first found Sheila Merriweather. With her eyes spread wide and her mail in hand, the 59-year-old confidently stated that no one on Donald Avenue would be voting for “Donald Trunk.”

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dpSXUd2Sis

We then meet Deborah Wynn, also 59, who feared the backslide that America would experience if Trump was elected president. Judging from voice alone, this video was also filmed by the same reporter who brought us “Hot enough for ya?” His dogged pursuit for the truth knows no bounds.

Moving beyond any issues that may be in some way deemed “political” or “related to anything of significance,” the reporter asks Wynn if she recognizes the potential irony of she – a resident of Donald Avenue – casting her vote for Hillary Clinton. Wynn then shares a poignant story of being accosted at the doctor’s office by a Trump supporter who demanded she remove the Hillary pin she wears every day.

Looking up from her puzzle book, Wynn stood firm against the fellow patient until the stranger was forced to back down by others in the waiting room. “Lady please,” is right, Mrs. Wynn.

Over on Hillary Place, we meet Carey Bridges, age 30. Asked what he thinks of Clinton, Bridges shares his honest and incredibly sexist opinion. He doesn’t believe a woman can serve as president. But what of the alternative?

Nodding to himself, a smile peels across Bridges’ face when he is asked for his thoughts on Trump.

“Bag of shhhh,” he says, stopping himself from swearing on camera. “Bag of poop.”

But then Bridges reveals his true feelings about the election – and about the world in which he lives. This is a place where exhausted children are filmed as they play with cats, prize pigs burn in the winter, and each year is hotter than the last. For Bridges and many others, this is a hopeless place. And he is merely an observer.

“It don’t matter who make it,” Bridges says, “It won’t make a difference, man.”