Last Train to Alapaha: The Making of Carl Dixon Paperback – October 28, 2025

Eleven-year-old orphan Carl Dixon stepped off the train in Alapaha, Georgia, in 1920 with a brown paper bag stuffed with the few possessions he had. His parents had succumbed to cancer and the Spanish flu epidemic. A serendipitous encounter with Alapaha store proprietor Oscar Hughes at the Bainbridge depot sealed the driven young man's fate.Sixty years later Carl had amassed seed, chemical, fertilizer, and propane businesses with livestock, row crops, and land as far as the eye could see.Carl didn’t forget where he came from and helped the downtrodden by donating to the Lions Club, hosting neighborhood barbecues, and looking the other way when a customer couldn't pay their bill on time. He offered a shoulder to cry on tinged with plain-spoken advice. "I can't" or "I quit" were foreign concepts.He also didn’t brag about his brushes with bank robbers, knife fights, six-gun heroes of the silver screen, fatal lightning strikes, tractor accidents, tipsy bus drivers, haunted houses, catastrophic tornadoes, politics, golf, Atlanta Braves, hogs, pecans, cancer, and Christianity.Carl's eldest son Joe [1938-2025] worked on the family farm and established Dixon Seed & Chemical two years after his father's passing. Having survived a murder attempt, Joe served as Alapaha's mayor, coordinated finances for the non-profit Alapaha Station Celebration, and donated his time and talents to the Alapaha Easter Passion Play.Joe didn’t want his grandchildren, younger friends, and customers to lose sight of Carl’s amazing journey, so he began writing in 2018. Seven years and 78,000 words, 126 chapters, and 200 color and black and white images later, climb aboard the Last Train to Alapaha. Read more