I went to Atlanta for a long weekend recently. Pictures are over there on the right somewhere if you're so inclined. Anyway, it just dawned on me that I hadn't written anything about it. I can think of a bunch of reasons why: I've been so damned busy, I've had a black cloud of bad luck hanging around lately that I've had to deal with, and honestly I did not want to make this trip. You see, I wasn't going to Blogtoberfest (you'll have to scroll down a bit on his page - he's a prolific writer) to have fun with all those other folks (including other gen-yoo-whine Yankees). I missed that by a mile and a full week. Nope. I actually have never had any desire to see Atlanta. And I absolutely hate flying, which was necessary because of the short duration of the trip. I was going because SoCo asked me to (and paid for it), and it was his last weekend here on United States soil for six months, and because I was to make the acquaintance of a woman who I most definitely did not want to make the acquaintance of. A scary, scary creature from what I'd heard. A woman who was notorious (to me, anyway) for not liking Yankees. So I was pretty sure that she would not like me, a most Yankee-ish specimen if ever there was one. So I didn't like her in advance. Her name, according to her birth certificate, is Sarah. But according to SoCo, it's "Mother."
I survived. You can skip to the end of this post if you're in desperate need of knowing the outcome. In the meantime, I'd like to make a couple of observations about Atlanta.
- The city itself surprised me. I liked it. The architecture is beautiful. It's not too high. And they haven't chopped down every tree on every block - it's actually quite a green city.
- I got to drive around in a Mitsubishi Spyder convertible. Very cool. Unfortunately, I fell in love with this car at a time when my own poor Honda is laid up in the shop and I'm feeling very adulterous in wanting to buy a brand new Spyder.
- The people in Atlanta (and probably everywhere else "down there") are indeed very friendly. In NJ, people ask "How are you" as a matter of course, but they don't want an answer. It's just a routine greeting. "Down there," they ask it a bit differently. "How're ya doin' today?" or "You doin' OK today?" And they look at your face while they actually await a response. Amazing.
- Everything in Atlanta and its surroundings is named Peachtree something or other. There's Peachtree Street (or Boulevard or Road or whatever) and Peachtree Village, and Peachtree Auto Parts, and Peachtree Beauty Parlor, and Peachtree Video and Peachtree Cafe, and Peachtree Fashions and Peachtree Grocery and, well, Peachtree everything.
- I lied about everything being named Peachtree. They have a Pizza chain "down there" that's called (gulp) WEDGIES. This was very hard on me. Here in NJ, we have Cluck U chicken places, and I have no problem patronizing them. It's a very NJ-tough thing to do. "Mom, what are we having for dinner?" "Cluck U, kids. Cluck U." But WEDGIES? I couldn't bring myself to even think about entering one, let alone eating a slice. Still, It shows a sense of humor, I suppose.
- I lied again. There are 47,932 Waffle Houses. They have so many Waffle Houses that it is not unusual to see them across the street from each other. Miraculously, I didn't eat at a single Waffle House. I had nightmares about them chasing me down Peachtree Street, but I didn't eat at any. I escaped the Waffle Houses.
- The very scary woman actually lives in Gainesville, about an hour from Atlanta. So we had to go to Gainesville. It seems Gainesville used to have a lot of chickens. A really lot. So they have a chicken monument in Gainesville. I took a picture of it. You can see it if you want to on the right. You might have to search through 40 other pictures to find it, but it's worth it because it is THE GAINESVILLE CHICKEN AND THEY ARE MIGHTY PROUD OF IT.
- Atlanta (and Gainesville) has more pickup trucks than the entire population of the United States could drive if everyone owned four. I know that doesn't make sense, but I swear it's true.
- I saw Stone Mountain. If you don't know what that is, it is a huge carved thing originally concepted by the same guy that did Mount Rushmore. Which is the weirdest thing in the United States if you ask me. I rest my case.
- Kudzu is real. Kudzu is taking over the country. Kudzu is scary. But not as scary as the woman whose acquaintance I was to make.
So to get back to my point. I finally met her. She was indeed terrifying. At least four feet five inches tall. With a very quiet voice. Southern voice. She had a living room with NO noise in it except three tense people trying to make stilted conversation and a very loud ticking clock. The first hour was excrutiating. I got up after that amount of time and asked to use the "powder room" which I figured was an acceptable term for a brash red-headed hussy from NJ to use in front of a very scary lady. She pointed me down the hall and I went, and as I did, I passed her bedroom. It was then that I saw it.
The red hat. A gorgeous, felt, feathered red hat, perched on a stand right next to her bed. It was obviously not just a decoration, for it was the only red thing in the room. It was her hat. And it was red. And it meant she was a member of The Red Hat Society. I knew it instantly. I knew that she was aware of the Jenny Joseph Poem that starts "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, with a red hat which doesn't suit me . . ." which has been a favorite of mine since I don't know when.
In that moment, I knew she was cool. Even if she didn't like Yankees. In fact, at that moment, I thought she was so cool, I almost didn't like Yankees myself. But I came back to my senses shortly thereafter.
To bring you quickly to the end, it gave me a topic to come back from the "powder room" with. It broke the ice a little. And my heart absolutely swelled when she took us to dinner to meet her friend Claribel (yes, Claribel), and the two of them were wearing purple. These were two beautiful, funny, intelligent, vivacious women, probably in their late 80's or early 90's, and full of giggles and whispers and planning trips and just plain having fun. I nearly cried.
I left Atlanta with no clue about whether Sarah was impressed with me, my knowledge of the poem, or that I knew what the hat meant. The Jersey Girl in me says I shouldn't give a sh*t. But I do give a sh*t. Because I sure was impressed with her.
(Hey Mary - you got a red hat yet? We're gettin' closer!)
Wow, you were in Gainesville. That's only about a half hour from Helen, where the Blogtoberfest was. Too bad your trip couldn't have been last week, so you could have joined in the debauchery.
On Saturday morning in Helen, I actually saw a clutch of red hat ladies storming Helen. I thought they looked cool. I laughed, however, because Velociman http://www.velociworld.com/ once wrote a post that was critical of the red hat ladies, and word of it must have gotten around, because he was bombed with angry comments and e-mails from Red Hatters. I remember thinking on Saturday (before the Georgia "wine") that these ladies must have come to Helen to kick Velociman's ass.
Glad it seemed to work out well with the mom-meeting. They can be pretty tense.
Posted by: Jim | Thursday, October 21, 2004 at 01:32 AM