"Where are you from?"
"Dade County, Georgia..."
"Where???"
Anyone from Trenton, GA knows exactly how this conversation always goes. Someone asks where you come from and you want to take the easy route and just say, "Chattanooga" but for some reason we don't. That, dear small-town friends, is the love we have for our tiny community coming out of you. Any person who has spent any amount of their life living in Trenton knows that there's something special and different about our 2,000 population small town that you can't help but love. Community, nostalgia, neighbors, secret hideaways, beautiful scenery, love for one another and most of all, our pride make us what we are: unique.
One thing that makes Dade County so special is its location. It seems like no matter where you are in the county, you can always make it to Tennessee or Alabama within 10 minutes. People from out of town will call you crazy when you try to describe where all your relatives live, because chances are they are scattered all over the tri-state. The only thing crazy about it is the fact you have to drive anywhere but Trenton to see a movie or have a fancy meal. (We ain't real caught up on them fancy recreation activities.) Granted, there is plenty that we get to do here that we take for granted such as hiking, fishing, creek swimming, road running, hang gliding, and basically anything that has any correlation to the word "redneck."
"Oh.. you must be from Dade." What about it? How'd you know? Was it my boots with basketball shorts, or my rebel flag flying from the bed of my truck?
Boy, do we know how to grow 'em. The people here in the great "State of Dade" are like no other. It doesn't seem to matter how wealthy or uppity you may think you are, you still have a little hick in you. Whether you catch yourself getting a little too rowdy towards the ref at a high school football game, being the eighth person to drop off a pan of mac n cheese at a church potluck or you can't help but get a little excited inside when you hear a big, "Yee Yee," come across a parking lot, you are a product of Dade County raisin'.
Your sports coach is also your history teacher, and your English teacher graduated with your mama. Homecoming tailgates are actually a pretty big deal, and you have been driving some kind of vehicle since you were tall enough to reach the gas pedal. You graduated high school with the same kids you started pre-k with, and most of all, you know everyone. It is not an exaggeration to say that no matter where in Trenton you go or what time it is, you WILL see someone you know. So, be very wary of that "bad hair day" run to Ingles, because you're gonna be seen.
Along with the infamy of knowing everyone, it isn't always a bad thing. The sense of community here in Dade is so "Mayberry"-like that it's almost insane. Take, for example, April 27, 2011. Everyone knows the day. Tornadoes took down our town, but not our community. We came together like a well-oiled machine and helped each other rebuild stronger than we were before. It didn't matter who you were, or what beef you had with anyone, we all needed each other because that's all we had. I could go on and on describing times when our town came together like no other town could, but I think we all get the point. No matter how bad it gets, we can still depend on each other.
I could continue a gigantic list of attributes that make Dade County, GA great, but you would have to just see it yourself to believe it. We have something that can often be discounted as "too small," "too out-dated," and "too old-fashioned," but we wouldn't have it any other way. This town made us who we are and we are proud of it. Dade teaches you life lessons that you can't get anywhere else. No matter how far you may run away or roam, you will always find yourself coming back. It may be a small town, but it's anything but inferior.
(Oh and by the way, we aren't bitter about the fact we aren't on the Georgia quarter anymore... It's kinda cool.)
