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Many Christmas tour visitors are new neighbors
For that reason, the tour and dinner were a busy time for Deborah Rainey, owner of Georgia Realty Sales. “A lot of my customers were here for the weekend,” she said. “I arranged the tour and dinner for 18 of the folks that I’d sold homes to, or who were new in town.” The opportunity to tour restored old homes and meet the people who had bought them and fixed them up was a big draw. “Some of these families have just bought historic homes here that need renovating,” Rainey said, “and they wanted to take the tour to get ideas and talk to folks who had done the same thing.” Falling in love with Wilkes County at Christmas tour time is contagious, real estate broker Jim Griggs said. “I met folks on the tour who have bought property here in the last year – and love it here – and they were showing some of their friends around, and now those friends are interested in looking around for a place here.”
And then there are the folks who are just now falling in love with the area. Doug and Anne Bolton, of Illinois by way of Atlanta, were visiting Christmas at Callaway, and told other visitors that they were so impressed with the reception they’d felt since arriving in Washington that they really wanted to look at moving here when they retire next year. “We’ve felt so welcome, and people are so nice,” she said. “I was admiring a smilax planting at one of the homes, and the owner just gave me a big cutting of it – insisted I take it. So we’re going to talk to a real estate agent, and soon.”
With all the preparations for hosting the tour and dinner in Holly Court Inn, Phil said he neglected to schedule volunteers to help show the house Saturday. When he realized he was in trouble, “I put out a last-minute SOS and by Friday afternoon I had enough friends and neighbors volunteer to help me take care of it,” he said.
For New Jersey native Rothman, it just confirmed again the smalltown Southern thing that is making the area so attractive to folks. “You know, I’ve always felt welcomed with open arms here, but it’s experiences like these that make me feel like I’ve really become a neighbor. It’s really nice.”
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