The old store that once anchored James still stands, a sentinel of a different time. It was built in the 1890s, when the trains were still steaming through on a regular basis, and was Kingman’s Store back then. Robert H. Kingman (1876-1957) went on to become a prominent grocer in Macon. As Balkcom’s, it was open until the early mid-1980s. James Cicero Balkcom was an unusual character in small-town Georgia. He once owned a theatre in Gray and allowed African-Americans access. Apparently, not even their resignation to the balcony was acceptable, but Balkcom was unmoved. When he continued the practice, a group of young men drove by and shot into the side of his store, which was also the James post office, as a cowardly act of intimidation,. This was a federal offense, but Aubrey Newby says that no local effort to track down the perpetrators was made, or if so, it wasn’t successful. Just an interesting aside and a profile in courage of Mr. Balkcom, for sure. The post office remained open until 1969.
As to local color, Aubrey Newby writes: …There were two old spinster sisters Miss Alice and Miss Hattie James who lived in the Wood-Robinson house, Miss Alice drove a model T ford and you had better just get out of the way if you saw her coming. People moved away, the store closed and eventually the train stopped running. All that was left were scattered old houses, pieces of a train track and memories of what had once been a bustling town. My children still call it the railroad, we still talk about the store and I believe as long as we do, those people and those stories live. Davis and Dolly, Alice and Hattie, Libbie and T, most of them I barely knew if ever at all and yet I recall them as if they just left yesterday...
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 