Editor’s note: This is part 1 in a series.

Another world entirely hides along lesser-traveled roads. Do yourself a favor – look for it. 
The day after Christmas I drove to Tignall, Georgia, to explore places I’d not seen and find Jackson Crossroads Amethyst Mine. 
I didn’t go on a whim. 
My Granddad Walker, just 14, was plowing a field when the mule reared up. “Heave-ho, mule.” 
Up shot an amethyst cluster. I think that cluster was in the vein that runs through Jackson Crossroads. Granddad’s plow and Jackson Crossroads are in the same neck of the woods, as the older set would say. 
And Tignall? As a girl, my mom’s social life involved events in Tignall. Memories and amethyst were about to lead me to an old home place, church, and homestead, but I’d never make it to the mine.
Up Highway 79 I drove, turning left onto Delhi Road, a strange name for a walled city in India. Delhi Road runs southeast to Tignall, a town for which nothing explains its name. 
Along Delhi I saw a self-made tribute to country stores you see here and there. A fellow plasters old Nehi, Royal Crown Cola, and Gulf Oil signs all over a black clapboard structure and from afar you think, “Ah, an old country store.” 
What I saw next pulled me over to a grassy shoulder drenched by 2 days’ rains. A home of the old days sat amid fallen trees. 
Like fiddlesticks, 5 large oaks had fallen in different directions as if divine intervention had spared the spider-web-covered home. And it was divine, for an old pew on the porch gave the old house a Sunday come-to-meeting air. 
Walking toward the pew I spied a doll of the old days, made from rubber, with the left leg missing. Amputated. A grieving iron bed leaned over the doll’s feet. Fallen leaves the color of dried blood spilt around the doll cementing the effect. I’d stumbled onto a murder.
Peering through a window I saw an old fireplace old folks whitewashed with kaolin come Saturdays. 
To the right, a tattered blue recliner offered a comfy spot for the owner’s ghost to sit and reflect. 
Broken window panes and stringy spider webs spoke of desolation. Despite spiders, suspicions of ghosts, and a murdered doll, the scene from the highway served up beauty and a vivid reminder that we sojourners leave homes, beds, dolls, and other memorials in our wake. 
As I said, another world entirely, an ancient one, hides along lesser-traveled roads. Seek it.