Portraits of Terminus.
Friday, January 10th, 2020
©2016-2020, John Christopher Burns
I’m not really sure why the founders of what became Atlanta thought ‘Terminus’ would be a great name. I mean, I get it, it has throughout its history been the place where a lot of rail lines come together. They crisscross. Some even terminate! But that name: it has a certain finality that sounds like a novelist needed to conjure a place where folks assembled to spend their final hours. Or maybe just zombies.
So when the time (quickly) came to change it, it’s not at all surprising they picked something brighter: Marthasville! Feel the Marthaness!
And, well, sorry, Martha Atalantica Lumpkin, daughter of a governor…your notoriety didn’t last. Your name…uh, some of the letters in your name, urr, sort of, well, part of the middle if you said it with a southern accent…aw, face it, it’s Atlanta.
