A visit to Atlanta

Carrie and I surveyed the vast expanse of Atlantan urban desert, and decided not to walk. There are some landscapes that need to be driven through, we decided. We drove through downtown, passing few pedestrians and no homeless street-campers. Driving and driving, we missed a number of signs that might have pointed to places of interest. We stopped and parked when we reached a park where a hundred men were playing chess. Out of the car, we walked by the chess players and looked for the Ebenezer Baptist Church on our map. A street preacher was condemning lust and short skirts and not sitting pretty. A girl in a short skirt with thigh exposed crossed legs was taking notes. Thirsty, we got up and walked around looking for a cafe and found an entrance to an underground shopping mall to which you descend via a very long escalator. Downstairs, we walked past all the Barack Obama paraphernalia until we got to an Orange Julius stand. It was dark and hard to see the shops in the gloom, but there were lots of shoppers there, which was strange because the mall was as dingy and and dull as Hades. Also the Orange Julius wasn't very good, a ghost of what it was in my memory of the Orange Juliuses from the stand on 110th and Broadway in the seventies. Then we got into the car again to find the Martin Luther King historical district. We drove a long way through more quiet streets. At the church and the monument, we turned around because it was blazing hot and treeless location with not a single person in sight. Carrie, who doesn't like museums, suggested we skip the art center and go to Target instead, where she bought bath products and I had an Atlanta Coke.

At the Amtrak station waiting for my 8:15, I shook my head in wonder: Hundreds of people were milling about in expectation of the Northbound Crescent--the train that runs from New Orleans to Chicago with stops that include Charlotte NC, Washington DC, Newark NJ, and New York City. Were they refugees? I was sad to leave Carrie there, but I bet there are a lot of wonderful things in Atlanta that are reserved for Atlantans. If there are, she will probably miss them, being too busy practicing law in the Decatur legal aid office to seek out the secrets of the new South.