by Dean Poling
Adapting to the flatland and high temperatures of South Georgia was no easy feat after a lifetime living in the hills and mountains of West Virginia.
Twenty years ago, discovering the Great Hahira Pick-In gave me an unexpected taste of my old mountain home here in my new Georgia home.
Growing up, bluegrass or hill music could be heard at various festivals. On the grounds of the West Virginia Capitol, musicians often played bluegrass music down in the valley with a ring of mountains creating a horizon.
The Pick-In provided plenty of bluegrass music in the great outdoors. As the day of music turned to a night of songs, I could easily imagine the silhouettes of mountains rising in the darkness behind the lighted Spanish moss. The Pick-In cast a spell that took me back to my native home, while providing plenty of adventure in my new home as well as a glimpse into my future.
It was at a Pick-In that a friend wanted to introduce her sister to me. I had already been camping at the Pick-In for a couple of days in the same clothes. Hair and beard swirled under the wide brim of my hat. I had imbibed a wee bit as my attitude demonstrated.
Meeting, my friend’s sister turned her nose up to me. She rightly thought me a smelly, drunken brute. I thought she was a stuck-up snob. We wouldn’t speak again for another year and a half.
That’s how I first met the woman who would become my wife at the Great Hahira Pick-In.
From 1980 to 1995, the Great Hahira Pick-In was about the music, but with so many festivals year after year, it became an event of lifetime memories.
With the Pick-In being revived just one more time after more than a 14-year absence, those memories are resurfacing for many folks.
In the coming months, the Pick-In site will become home to a new Harvey’s grocery store in Hahira. To commemorate the site, the developers and Harvey’s have scheduled one last Pick-In on Nov. 7 for the old mountain stage in the field off Highway 122. One last chance to make Pick-In memories.
Wilby Coleman and Andy Patterson have many Pick-In memories. The Pick-In land belonged to Wilby’s wife, Gloria Coleman. Wilby and Andy were among the people who organized the event. Ask them about the Pick-In and the stories keep coming.
— Wilby Coleman and Sandy Odom enjoyed playing bluegrass music. They enjoyed bluegrass festivals. They decided to create a South Georgia festival for bluegrass music.
— During the first Pick-In, attempts to sell and collect tickets became impossible as people kept coming and walking onto the field. Keeping track of who had or hadn’t purchased a ticket became nearly impossible. In that respect, the first Pick-In was like Woodstock, Andy Patterson says. It unintentionally became a free event for many in the audience.
— Stan Hall, Hoyt Hurt, Don Pettigrew, and Tom Bailey joined Wilby and Sandy Odom in creating the first Pick-In. Through the years, some would stay for all of the Pick-Ins. Some would leave and new organizers joined. Later, Andy Patterson, and two of Wilby’s sons, Chris and Justin Coleman, and Tom Odom became organizers.
— One Hahira doctor was certain the Pick-In would inspire trouble, Wilby recalls. The doctor manned his office all day and into the evening on a Saturday. The doctor waited for nothing. The Pick-In spawned no violence.
— Sandy Odom suggested the bluegrass festival. Gloria Coleman had inherited large tracts of family land in Hahira on both sides of Highway 122. Wilby tells of approaching her to use the land for a bluegrass festival. She answered that a farmer regularly paid her $45 to plant soybeans on the desired patch of her land. Wilby jokes that he convinced Gloria that he could come up with the necessary $45.
— Erecting a fence around the Pick-In grounds, organizers had better success charging audiences. Through the years, organizers used stickers, stamps, and finally tags, which visitors could attach by twisting the tag’s metal twine around a belt loop. Still, Wilby and Andy remember one year when a young man leapt over the fence, ran in front of the stage, crossed the field and leapt over the fence on the other side. “He proved,” Wilby says, “that if you really wanted to get in without paying, you still could, but you had to keep moving to do so.”
— Wilby and Sandy first looked at a nearby log cabin to rebuild as a stage on Gloria’s land. They would have to dismantle the log cabin, mark each piece of wood, and reassemble it on the planned festival site. It would be a costly process, brought to a halt before starting, when they discovered rot in the logs.
— Several teenagers in Atlanta heard of the first Pick-In and drove to the second one. These teens were drivers-license age, Wilby says. They came to the Pick-In during its second year and continued coming for the next decade and a half. They started coming as kids just learning to drive, Wilby says, and by the time it ended they were men in their early 30s. Jeff Hayes was one of those teens. He still lives in Atlanta. He called The Valdosta Daily Times offices in October wanting to confirm the Pick-In’s on for one last go-round. Hayes and others of that old crew plan to return for the 2009 Pick-In.
— On another piece of Gloria’s property, someone had built a house many years earlier. Long abandoned, the Colemans didn’t know who built the house. Squatters had possibly built the little shotgun house. It was a “quaint” structure. Wilby and Sandy moved the house to the Pick-In site to create the Mountain Stage.
— Then there’s the story of the black Naugahyde couch. A bunch of guys brought the couch and placed it in the field to listen to the music. Each year, they returned with the couch. “Wilby always joked that there were two marriages and three divorces as a result of that couch,” Andy says.
— Turning the quaint house into the Mountain Stage took much work. Pick-In organizers did the work themselves. They built the stage into the house. Wilby recalls placing the banjo atop the stage as a bluegrass weather vane. His son, Justin, then a teenager, climbed up the roof to affix the banjo. He spit tobacco juice on his bare feet to offset the heat from the tin roof.
— One group of Pick-In campers brought a red picnic table each year. On the Pick-In’s last night, they used the picnic table as firewood. One year, they got a little carried away, and burned the table a night early. They went out and bought another picnic table for the last day and night.
— The early Pick-Ins were held on Mother’s Day weekend. Then in the last years, it moved to the last weekend of April.
— One year, a scheduled musician didn’t show. The Pick-In always kept to a strict schedule. If organizers said a group would play at such-and-such time that’s when the group played. With the no-show, organizers approached the musician Lance Lazonby to fill the hole in the schedule. Lazonby got his guitar from his car. Joined by his wife, Lazonby performed an impromptu full hour of music.
— Originally, the Pick-In was a combination of professional acts and a contest featuring amateurs. The idea was the professional musicians would judge the amateurs. The contest quickly encountered problems. Amateurs didn’t want to compete for a non-cash prize of a trophy. Professional musicians felt they were paid to play not sit, listening to a bunch of amateurs. The contest soon ended.
— Back then, the camping area of the Pick-In grounds opened the Monday prior to the weekend of shows. Some folks traditionally arrived each year and established camp on Monday. As the week progressed, more arrived to stake their claim for a camping spot.
— In the Pick-In’s later years, a man dressed as Elvis made an annual visit. If memory serves, he changed his wardrobe throughout the day to reflect different periods in Elvis’ career. By evening, he wore the bell-bottomed Elvis jumpsuits. He looked like Elvis, moved like Elvis, but this Elvis could not sing. He might join a band on the Mountain Stage but he never sung a word.
— One year, rain dealt the Pick-In a brutal blow. The Pick-In lost $11,000 due to the weather. Andy says it only rained that one year, but the threat of rain could hurt the Pick-In, too. If a weather forecast early in the week called for a rainy weekend, many folks stayed home expecting rain even if it never rained a drop.
— Briefly, the Pick-In lasted three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sunday performances were eventually dropped. Saturday night’s official performances always ended with a round-robin jam session performing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” That marked the end of the official shows, but not the end of the Pick-In. Campers, organizers, musicians and hangers-on played and socialized way into the wee hours around bonfires. The main after-party picking typically took place in the clearing behind the Mountain Stage.
— “Oh, will the circle be unbroken / By and by, Lord, by and by / There’s a better home awaiting / In the sky, Lord, in the sky.”
For this Pick-In, Wilby Coleman and Andy Patterson don’t have to worry about organizing the event. That’s being handled by Avery Walden and others.
They will be playing as part of the Hahira Bluegrass Band, and Andy will also perform with the bluegrass band Thin Ice.
Though they don’t have to worry about the non-stop planning sessions and days of continuous work as they did with past Pick-Ins, they are overwhelmed by Harvey’s decision to sponsor one last Great Hahira Pick-In, as well as by the response to the Pick-In’s return.
They would have liked to never had to end the Pick-In in 1995. Expenses and uncertainty over continued public interest led to organizers ending the Pick-In. Then, bluegrass wasn’t as well known as today. Since the Pick-In’s demise, bluegrass has surged as a genre. They have wondered if the Pick-In would have been more successful these days given this mainstream knowledge of bluegrass.
They have missed it, too.
“I especially miss it when it rolls around to that time of year,” Andy says. “When the pecan trees are blooming, I think isn’t it time for some bluegrass.”
This Pick-In comes several months later than those of the past, but when it’s all said and done, the Hahira Bluegrass Band will take the Mountain Stage one last time late in the evening of Nov. 7. They will conclude what apparently will be the last ever Great Hahira Pick-In with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
The Pick-In may be done but its memories will linger.
SHOWTIME
The Great Hahira Pick-In,
Nov. 7, Pick-In Park, Hahira.
Admission: Free and open to the public.
The scheduled line-up: 10 a.m. welcome and introductions; 10:15 a.m. plaque presentation and groundbreaking ceremony; 10:45 a.m. music starts with Red & Chris Henry; 11:45 a.m. Thin Ice; 12:45 p.m. Cross Creek Cloggers; 1:15 p.m. Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike; 2:15 p.m. Marty Raybon; 3:15 p.m. Volume Five; 4:15 p.m. Hahira Bluegrass Band; 5:15 p.m. Thin Ice; 6:15 p.m. Volume Five; 7:15 p.m. Cross Creek Cloggers; 7:45 p.m. Red & Chris Henry; 8:45 p.m. Marty Raybon; 9:45 p.m. Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike; 10:45 p.m. Hahira Bluegrass Band plays “Will the Circle be Unbroken.”
