Home

The Goat Man

   "The mysterious, magical Goat Man, with his small covered wagon pulled by goats and followed by a caravan of more goats, came through Jonesboro twice a year. His visits always caused great excitement. He and his goats traveled on the highways, coming from Florida to pass through Georgia, then going on to Tennessee and Kentucky. In the winter, the Goat Man traveled south with his goats to Florida to give them a warmer climate and to have grass for them to graze. In the spring, he started traveling north with his goats to the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky for a cooler climate..." --  quote from Separate Fountains, page 124.

   "You take a fellow who looks like a goat, travels around with goats, eats with goats, lies down among goats and smells like a goat, and it won't be long before people will be calling him the Goat Man.
    Which was pretty much what Charles McCartney had in mind during the Depression when he pulled up his Iowa stakes, put on his goatskins, hitched up his goat wagon and hit the road for what turned out to be a three-decade odyssey as one of the United States' most endearing eccentrics and by far its most pungent roadside attraction.
    Whatever the scope of his travels, Mr. McCartney, who averaged 7 miles a day and had a regular route between Iowa and Georgia, spent most of his time creating traffic jams throughout the South, primarily along the Old Dixie Highway through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida.
    As many who grew up in the South in the 1940s, '50s and '60s could attest, it was an event when the Goat Man came to town. Word circulated quickly when someone spotted him and his 30 or so goats coming down the highway, his wagon piled high with interesting junk. Pretty soon, parents would be driving children out to meet him, those familiar with the drill taking the precaution of staying upwind of the Goat Man". 

The Palm Beach Post, November 27, 1998, page 11-c.

1985 -- Enjoying his retirement years, the Goat Man lived in a school bus on his property in Jeffersonville, Georgia. After losing two toes to frostbite in February 1987, he moved to Eastview Nursing Home in Macon. He lived there until he died at age 97 in November 1998.

"A parting thought -- be kind to your neighbors, and your kindness will be returned many fold."

Goat Man

_____________contact@pattiwilsonbyars.com_______________

Designed and Maintained by Laura Ciociola

Patti Wilson Byars © 2004