Have you ever tried to pull a practical joke and have it backfire—on you?
That’s what happened to Winterville City Councilman Ron Adams about 30 years ago. I remember
Winterville, population 1133, is the smallest city in Clarke County, which is the smallest county in Georgia. And when Clarke County and Athens consolidated in 1991, Winterville said, “No, thanks.” It was and still is happy to do its own thing. And if you haven’t driven around the tiny town lately, you should. Restored historic homes surround manicured green spaces, and civic pride speaks—loudly—without saying a word. Mayberry is fictional, but Winterville is for real.
That’s why Ron and his wife, Mary, chose Winterville in the early 1980s, settling on Georgia Avenue, which stretches parallel to Main Street. Before long, Ron was scratching the political itch that runs in his family. Ronald Adams, his late father, was once a state senator and later a state court judge in Brunswick. Ron’s aunt, Mrs. Jean Adams Walker, was married to Randall Walker, who once served as mayor of Jesup.
Ron was elected to the Winterville City Council during Mayor Wesley Whitehead’s tenure. “Mayor Whitehead called Councilman Don Bower and me Gold Dust One and Gold Dust Two,” Ron said, when I called him last week.
In 1989, Ron resigned from C&S bank in Athens and moved to Glynn County. He needed to be closer to his ailing mother. I met Ron in Brunswick. He was a loan officer at American National bank, and I was on the board of directors. And that’s when I first heard about the Winterville political hijinks.
When I told Ron that I had unfurled my 100-foot measuring tape to document the evidence of his gone-awry joke, he started laughing. I laughed listening to him laugh.
Here’s how it goes. When the railroad decided to take up the tracks that ran between Main Street and Georgia Avenue, that left a long, grassy stretch on the west side of Winterville. Motorists had to go “too far” to cross over from Main to Georgia and vice versa.
