Saturday afternoon I had some spare time so I fired up the K2 and ran a few stations in the Iowa QSO Party. 40m was in decent shape although there was some slow rolling QSB taking place. I tried calling 7049 for about 10 minutes and wasn't getting any bites so I moved down to 7034. Threw out a few CQs and got a 599 callback from John WZ9I from way down in Winder Georgia. John was running a TS590GS into a dipole up about 40 feet at 50w. I was running 5w from the K2 into my antic dipole that is apparently aimed due southeast.
John and his family moved to Georgia a couple months ago from Wisconsin, he told me they had to move because he broke his snow blower and he was looking forward to no more 20 below zero temperatures. He's retired and has been a ham since 1960 according to his QRZ biography page. It was hotter here in Indy than it was in Georgia today.
Winder is an interesting town, it started out in the mid 1700's as a Creek Nation trading outpost called Snoden. By the 1790's settlers and farmers had moved in and changed the name to The Jug...then later Jug Tavern...population 37, About that time the Humphrey Brothers built Ft Yugo and sold it and 167 acres to the county for $127.00 - the cool thing about Jug Tavern, it was the intersection of three counties. Gwinnett, Walton, and Jackson counties all met in the middle of main street.
Soon afterwards the railroad came through and Jug Tavern became a main stopping spot on the way to Atlanta parts further south. In 1893 they changed the name to Winder, named after the general manager of the Seaboard Railway, John H. Winder.
Being situated in three counties caused continuous legal problems and governance confusion for the residents and businesses of Winder. It required almost 75 years, following many aborted efforts, for Barrow County to be established. Finally, on July 7, 1914, the Georgia General Assembly carved territory from Gwinnett, Jackson and Walton counties to create the new county, with Winder as the county seat. Each of these counties utilized a river as the line which would separate the donated land in the former counties from the future Barrow County. The new county was named for the Chancellor of the University of Georgia, David Crenshaw Barrow. A new courthouse, designed by James J. Baldwin, was completed in 1920 at a cost of $133,400; the building is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Other towns brought in with the establishment of Barrow County included Auburn, Bethlehem, Carl and Statham.
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| Barrow County Courthouse. |
Thanks to Wikipedia for the info on Winder Georgia. John and I closed out the QSO after about 28 minutes, so he will be issued CW Ragchewer Award #2 from KB9BVN. Great fist, good copy, and I hope to work him again.
73 de KB9BVN
fun read!
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