LYONS — Amid the rolling farmland and the country towns below I-16, along the U.S. highway that links Savannah and Columbus, a larger-than-life creation anchored atop the Toombs County courthouse serves as an architecture-meets-agriculture icon of eye-watering proportions.
A 9-foot-wide, 10-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture of an onion — an homage to Georgia’s official state vegetable and this region’s sweet-tasting calling card — has been turning heads for a couple of years now.
In 2022, when officials here in Vidalia onion country were looking for something — a cherry on top, you might say — to make their under-construction government center and courthouse stand out, they turned to a local metalworker and artist.
The original plan called for a flagpole to adorn the structure’s focal-point dome. Then someone suggested something more ornamental, a finial: an onion. Not unlike one that adorns the amphitheater in the neighboring city of Vidalia…