Joe Kovac

Macon bus driver Vernon Franklin sat in the cold, predawn darkness.

In late fall each year for the past half-century, beneath 100-yard-long, metal-roofed sheds at the Macon State Farmers Market, a propped-up forest of fresh-cut Christmas trees has burgeoned and gradually, by mid-December, vanished before Greg Slaughter’s eyes.

The sight itself is spooky and beyond kooky: A bloody-faced, coverall-clad skeleton suspended in midair on a post jutting from the rear of a pickup truck. It's been turning heads around Macon, Ga., for years at Halloween.

It was early 2015. Jay Towns was unemployed. He had recently been fired from his job at a tree-removal service near his hometown 75 miles southeast of Macon.

The spelling — in hand-painted, ripe-tomato-red letters — is shakier than the ramshackle plywood fruit stand they advertise: “P-E-C-H-E-S.”