You’d think I would learn.

Every time I drive to Doyal’s for a sack of chicken feed and a quart of local unfooled-around-with local honey, I forget that Wilson street is now a one-way.

I say “now.” It’s been a one-way for… what… 20 years? But it never fails: after I donate a few paperbacks to the free lending library box at Evan’s BBQ, I head to Doyals and realize at the last minute that I can’t turn right past the old Post Office building.

My Rhode Island Reds, the queens of brown egg layers, demand lots of chicken feed. They don’t appreciate the source of those laying pellets, but clambering up the brick steps and walking into Doyal’s is a treat for me.

Villa Rica is filling with newcomers. They should visit Doyal’s to experience a time when the town wasn’t cluttered with fast food restaurants and chain stores.

Unlike all the whirling round-abouts, confused drivers trying to slither through those round-abouts, and that big fat new Publix, Doyal’s has served VIlla Rica for a hundred years. The wooden floors, the shelves, the smell of sacks of feed and seed – it’s a time portal to the “old” Villa Rica.

The silver lining to the one-way street is that I must continue past the old storefronts to loop around at the traffic light and reach the loading zone at Doyal’s. A detour through the “old part of town” offers a glimpse of some Villa Rica historical markers.

The one that always catches my attention is the Villa Rica Explosion marker. My dad and grandfather arrived on the scene before the smoke had cleared; they appear in several historic photographs of that deadly day in 1957.

I should tour all the Villa Rica historical markers just to refresh my memory of local history.

Written by: Richard Argo