I'm making progress on www.Sweet-tea-travels.com
But like many construction sites, it'll get messy before it's going to look like there's progress. Visit when you have time
Monday, June 30, 2008
Hometown Roswell, Georgia
My hometown, Roswell, is a suburb of Atlanta, but when I moved here 22 (!) years ago it was a small Southern town, complete with a gazebo-crowned square and haunted buildings.
As it’s grown to something like 85,000 inhabitants, it’s kept the old square and even the ghosts.
In the 80s, the old part of town was largely vacant, but now there are antique shops, art galleries, restaurants, and boutiques to browse, mostly along Canton Street, north of the square.
The Fickle Pickle is one of my favorite lunch spots. It’s in a renovated house, at 1085 Canton Street. Its specialty is fried pickles, but the green tomato sandwich is great, too.
Heaven Blue Rose art gallery features ever-changing exhibits by local artists.
Go With the Flow offers everything you need for canoeing or kayaking on nearby Chattahoochee River. One of these days I’m going to rent a kayak and spend a peaceful day meandering through the shallows of the river along the Chattahoochee Nature Center.
For cyclists, bike paths and trails abound. The mayor even leads a ride every Thursday afternoon.
The Chattahoochee, north of Highway 400, was rated a few years ago as one of the top fly-fishing rivers in the Southeast. (That’s another thing I’ve got to try one day.)
As it’s grown to something like 85,000 inhabitants, it’s kept the old square and even the ghosts.
In the 80s, the old part of town was largely vacant, but now there are antique shops, art galleries, restaurants, and boutiques to browse, mostly along Canton Street, north of the square.
The Fickle Pickle is one of my favorite lunch spots. It’s in a renovated house, at 1085 Canton Street. Its specialty is fried pickles, but the green tomato sandwich is great, too.
Heaven Blue Rose art gallery features ever-changing exhibits by local artists.
Go With the Flow offers everything you need for canoeing or kayaking on nearby Chattahoochee River. One of these days I’m going to rent a kayak and spend a peaceful day meandering through the shallows of the river along the Chattahoochee Nature Center.
For cyclists, bike paths and trails abound. The mayor even leads a ride every Thursday afternoon.
The Chattahoochee, north of Highway 400, was rated a few years ago as one of the top fly-fishing rivers in the Southeast. (That’s another thing I’ve got to try one day.)
Time Travel
In an episode of “The Twilight Zone” a car is driving through the dark and somehow passes into the past. I always feel that way when we’re driving to the beach.
We hustle to leave home and get on the road — to “beat” the traffic. (If you live in Atlanta you know what a joke that idea is! Traffic is always snarled.)
Within minutes of pulling out of the driveway, we’re in stop-and-go, 8-lane highway traffic. The radio’s on, the day’s events fill the car with sound. My teenage daughter’s cellphone rings “Singing in the Rain” — her chosen ringtone. Mine rings a techo-pop mix of notes. Lots of sound.
After about an hour, maybe two if traffic’s heavy, the highway calms down. From 8 lanes to 6, from 6 lanes to 4.
Grass gone to seed waves from the shoulder. Barbeque restaurant signs flash by. We open the thermos of coffee, continue listening to news on the radio, crunch on pretzels.
Nearing the Georgia-Alabama border, exits grow sparse.
Beyond Montgomery, the landscape starts to look like my childhood memories. Fields float by. Now and then a farmhouse beckons with warm, yellow-lit windows in the twilight. An old gas station, a barn, a fruit stand used to be here. They’re only kudzu-covered bumps in the dark now.
Stars grow overhead.
The darkness deepens as we turn onto 2-lane roads south of Troy, Alabama. My teens fall asleep as we drive. Outside the car there are no streetlights, few houses, cats on porches. Sometimes a concrete-block church breaks the darkness, its white paint glowing as the moon rises.
Finally we reach the Florida line, and the road turns south. We delve further back in time. Forests of spindly pines line the road nearly all the last hour. Wispy fog-ghosts hover over the rain-damp streets.
It could be 2007 or it could be 1967. Everything looks the same. I start to remember the beach when I was a kid — miles of white sand backed with dunes instead of condos. Pulling blue crab and huge flounder out of the Inlet just west of Panama City Beach.
Icy-cold Cokes made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. Doughnuts for breakfast (and no one worrying about the fat or sugar!)
Spending the mornings and late afternoons sprawled on an air raft in the Gulf. Waiting out the mid-day heat curled up with a book in a palm tree’s shade.
Someone else buying the groceries, cooking the meals, and doing the driving.
Sigh.
And then it’s back to 2007.
We reach the beach. A narrow ribbon of about 3 blocks lines the Gulf with house upon house upon hotel upon restaurant upon strip center. Lights, action, and thousands of cars with Atlanta tags.
Oh well. At least I can float on the Gulf’s gentle waves, close my eyes, and pretend.
We hustle to leave home and get on the road — to “beat” the traffic. (If you live in Atlanta you know what a joke that idea is! Traffic is always snarled.)
Within minutes of pulling out of the driveway, we’re in stop-and-go, 8-lane highway traffic. The radio’s on, the day’s events fill the car with sound. My teenage daughter’s cellphone rings “Singing in the Rain” — her chosen ringtone. Mine rings a techo-pop mix of notes. Lots of sound.
After about an hour, maybe two if traffic’s heavy, the highway calms down. From 8 lanes to 6, from 6 lanes to 4.
Grass gone to seed waves from the shoulder. Barbeque restaurant signs flash by. We open the thermos of coffee, continue listening to news on the radio, crunch on pretzels.
Nearing the Georgia-Alabama border, exits grow sparse.
Beyond Montgomery, the landscape starts to look like my childhood memories. Fields float by. Now and then a farmhouse beckons with warm, yellow-lit windows in the twilight. An old gas station, a barn, a fruit stand used to be here. They’re only kudzu-covered bumps in the dark now.
Stars grow overhead.
The darkness deepens as we turn onto 2-lane roads south of Troy, Alabama. My teens fall asleep as we drive. Outside the car there are no streetlights, few houses, cats on porches. Sometimes a concrete-block church breaks the darkness, its white paint glowing as the moon rises.
Finally we reach the Florida line, and the road turns south. We delve further back in time. Forests of spindly pines line the road nearly all the last hour. Wispy fog-ghosts hover over the rain-damp streets.
It could be 2007 or it could be 1967. Everything looks the same. I start to remember the beach when I was a kid — miles of white sand backed with dunes instead of condos. Pulling blue crab and huge flounder out of the Inlet just west of Panama City Beach.
Icy-cold Cokes made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. Doughnuts for breakfast (and no one worrying about the fat or sugar!)
Spending the mornings and late afternoons sprawled on an air raft in the Gulf. Waiting out the mid-day heat curled up with a book in a palm tree’s shade.
Someone else buying the groceries, cooking the meals, and doing the driving.
Sigh.
And then it’s back to 2007.
We reach the beach. A narrow ribbon of about 3 blocks lines the Gulf with house upon house upon hotel upon restaurant upon strip center. Lights, action, and thousands of cars with Atlanta tags.
Oh well. At least I can float on the Gulf’s gentle waves, close my eyes, and pretend.
A travel guide to the Southeastern United States
I'm beginning a travel planning website -- an online guidebook of sorts -- at www.Sweet-Tea-Travels.com
I must be crazy.
I'm not only teaching myself FrontPage to construct the site, I'm using only my own writing and photographs. This site may occupy the rest of my life and never be "finished."
But it makes me happy, and hopefully in the long run it will provide some income and help establish me in the travel field.
Let's just hope gasoline prices don't get any higher. But, even if they do, I'd hope people would still travel. To me it's as important as breathing.
I must be crazy.
I'm not only teaching myself FrontPage to construct the site, I'm using only my own writing and photographs. This site may occupy the rest of my life and never be "finished."
But it makes me happy, and hopefully in the long run it will provide some income and help establish me in the travel field.
Let's just hope gasoline prices don't get any higher. But, even if they do, I'd hope people would still travel. To me it's as important as breathing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
