Camden's "rich" history of warding off good paying jobs.

Well, it goes way back - further than I knew. I took one of my allowable days off from student teaching to get my van serviced and go up to the courthouse in Woodbine to file my homestead exemption and real property tax return. While I was in the waiting room at Lilliston Ford, I struck up a conversation with a guy who had retired from the paper mill after 40 years. The conversation turned to the do nothing JDA. He told me a tale I had never heard before. It seems that back when Willie Smith (Bill's daddy) was sheriff, the county was owned and operated by him, an attorney named Martin, old man McCarthy (the same one Bill catered to until he died a few years ago, and some chief magistrate whose name escapes me (before Joe Strickland). Well, it seems that when Anheuser-Busch was looking to locate a brewery in this part of the country, their FIRST CHOICE was Woodbine, GA. However, the above named individuals who ran the county decided against it because they feared that the changes it would bring might endanger their status as the ruling king fishes in a small pond. So, they instructed their lackey's on the county commission to let them know that the good people of Camden were not interested and would appreciate their taking their brewery and their good jobs elsewhere. And they did, - right down to Jacksonville where it employs hundreds at high wages and pays a huge amount of property tax to this very day.