Separate Fountains, a book by Patti Wilson Byars (ISBN: 1-57736-132-6)

Patti Wilson Byars

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Jonesboro

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Murals

       JONESBORO, GEORGIA MURALS REFLECT TOWN'S HISTORY
     As one drives north to enter Jonesboro from the south on Main Street (Georgia State Route 41), one sees four large paintings on a long brick wall of Arts Clayton Gallery. The paintings grab your attention and call for a closer look.
    The four brightly colored panels -- 12 feet square murals --  show four different scenes from the historical novel, Separate Fountains, by Jonesboro native Patti Wilson Byars. The $47,000 mural project reflects four scenes from the town's past:   1950s Main Street with the author (at age 12) and her 5 year old brother standing in front of the drug store,  a gypsy woman at the gypsy camp, the legendary nomadic "Goat Man" who traveled all over the South, and a portrait of Lillian and Eula Arnold, two black women who taught at the 1940s-50s Jonesboro Colored School.
    With matching funds from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Georgia Endowment of the Arts -- and contributions from private donors -- the Arts Clayton Gallery commissioned Georgia artist, Shannon Lake, to paint the murals.  Linda Summerlin, Executive Director of Arts Clayton Gallery, and her Board Members gave the artist a copy of Separate Fountains to read and instructed him to decide what parts of the story he wanted to illustrate to reflect the town and its past.
     To read more about the mural project and artist Shannon Lake, please view the following website: www.artsclayton.org   "Click" in this order: Art Gallery (top of web page), then Mural Project, View the Mural Project

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Katie Jane and Josh standing on 1950s Main Street, Jonesboro

Making sure no one is looking, mischievous Katie Jane and Josh are ready to slip in the drug store although Mama has warned it is off-limits. However, the children know excitement is about to begin at 3:00 p.m. when the Greyhound bus makes its routine stop at the store's front door. The passengers enter the store to take a break and often order a soda or cup of coffee. The two children plan to pool their chore money together and buy a banana split. (Separate Fountains, page 69)

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The Gypsy Woman at the Gypsy Camp
Every year, usually in late summer and always in the middle of the night, the gypsies came to Jonesboro in a convoy of horse-drawn wagons. Brightly painted in hues of red and orange, the coach's windows and door were trimmed in gold paint. All the wagons in the convoy were decorated alike to identify the family of gypsies to which the group belonged. (Separate Fountains, page 110).

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The Goat Man (Charles McCartney)
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. (Separate Fountains, page 124)

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Teachers in classroom -- Jonesboro Colored School
A portrait of two sisters, Lillian and Eula Arnold, who devoted their lives to teaching Jonesboro's black children at the segregated "Colored School" in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Colored School was on Smith Street. When I got older, I asked Daddy about the Colored School. Daddy said it was where Jonesboro's black children went and got shortchanged on an education. He said the Clayton County School Board would not provide new textbooks for the Colored School. The black children used the old, outdated text books discarded by the white schools.
(Separate Fountains, page 22)

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