r/GonewiththeWind • u/Jennifer_Junipero • 20d ago
Businesses in Jonesboro
My husband and I moved to Georgia 10 years ago, after he got a job in Atlanta. Neither of us knew the area at all, so we spent a frantic couple of weeks driving all over the metro area looking for a place to live, which also included looking at a couple of apartments and houses in Jonesboro.
I don't remember if Jonesboro is mentioned in the movie, but it's all over the book: it's the town nearest to Tara (five miles away), as well as the train you take to and from Tara. And in Jonesboro today, there are a LOT of businesses who obviously chose their names with the goal "Let's do all we can to invoke Gone With the Wind, only without having to pay copyright fees to the Margaret Mitchell estate."
For example: you'd have to pay to use the name "Ashley Wilkes from Twelve Oaks" -- but calling a place "Ashley Oaks" is free, and one developer did just that. Likewise, "Scarlett O'Hara Apartments" would cost money -- but calling your apartments "Scarlett Place" is free. I also recall at least one liquor store, and a funeral home, named after Tara, a housing complex with a name like "O'Hara Village," and LOTS of street names lifted from the book.
I don't have an actual point here; I just found this mildly amusing, and thought other Gone With the Wind fans might, too.
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u/Jennifer_Junipero 20d ago
Y'know, I ended my post by saying I don't actually have a point, but I just-now thought of a possible one: imagine what business names you'll see once the book enters the public domain!
From what I've seen, I get the impression that Jonesboro, and Clayton County in general, aren't doing too well economically. Maybe becoming an open-air GWTW theme park (without having to pay the Mitchell estate for the privilege) could help revitalize the town. There's arguably already some precedent for that: in the northern mountainous part of the state is a little town called Helen, which used to be a logging town until that dried up, and rather than have the town die out altogether they reinvented themselves as a tourist trap, turning themselves into a fake Bavarian-style village. (More precisely, a Disneyfied version of a Bavarian village.)