Goodbye Georgia

We're done.  (We think.)  We closed our old home on Friday and buried my father (all the way on the other side of Atlanta) on Saturday.  Now it's Sunday and I just figured out we need a reservation at the new  church we'd like to attend. (COVID spacing.)  So I have a free morning and thought I'd try to collect my thoughts that have been scattered by all this chaos.  I'll start with my goodbyes to Georgia and see where we go from there.

First, I've lived in Georgia almost my entire life and it was really hard to give it up.  Over the 50+ years I've lived there, I've been to almost every corner of it -- from Brunswick to Rising Fawn.  I used to call Macon home but I've lived somewhere around at Atlanta for 40 years now.   Why leave?

It all started with steps.  I wanted to retire to the mountains of Western North Carolina.  But that was 12 years ago now.  The Great Recession and getting old changed our plans.  While we were busy helping our children cope with the recession our knees started giving out. My wife replaced one, then I replaced one (with a year-long complication) and then my wife shattered the kneecap on her other knee.  That's a year-long recovery (in case you ever need to know). Our old house was full of steps.  A minimum of 8 just to get into the house.  We knew it was time to move.

"Do you want to live in Pike County?"  Uh....No. Pike County is beautiful.  It is quiet.  But there is no hospital and no widely-available broadband (yet). One we need and the other we want.  "Do you want to move to Griffin?"  (One county over and where our beloved Saint George's Church is located.)  No.  Griffin has never found its footing since the cotton mills closed.  It is muddling through at the moment (it has its promoters and detractors) but the Great Recession and this pandemic have slowed its progress.  Besides, I really, really want to live in/near the mountains.

The logical choice would be North Georgia.  We looked.  Jasper, Blue Ridge and Blairsville.  Even Gainesville.  Once you get away from the tourist parts, they aren't much more than Pike County with better scenery. I could live with that (I'm big on scenery) but my wife can't.  I didn't mention the kidney stones did I?  She's had one after another.  Seriously, she's had about a dozen procedures just for kidney stones.  If you look for a place that performs lithotripsy you come to realize that healthcare in Georgia means being near a city.

Funny thing that. Healthcare policy choices matter when it comes to your life. Rural hospitals have been closing for years and the pandemic didn't change that.  It's easy to tell you've made the wrong policy choice when during the height of a pandemic -- when you're running out of hospitals beds -- you have rural hospitals that are closing because they're broke.  Don't let the two Democratic Senators in Georgia fool you, this is still the South we're talking about.  And we don't need no stinkin' Obamacare down here.

If you want mountains (I do) and you need doctors (we do) and you don't want to live in the cold and snow (she doesn't) then your options start narrowing down in a hurry.  Asheville, Chattanooga and Huntsville.  Huntsville won.  Asheville burbs: Price per square foot -- $250.  Huntsville burbs? $150. And, I'm sorry but, Chattanooga was just ugly.  Admittedly a cool town.  Everybody we talked to loved living there. But it's ugly. (More on that at a later time.)

So here we are in Huntsville.  But why did Georgia lose?  To Alabama?  (That hurts.)  Mostly -- for me -- it came down to the fact that Atlanta ate North Georgia.  Life isn't Black & White -- even if the South tries to make its politics so.  Don't get me wrong, I know in the rest of Georgia that Atlanta is a code word for Black.  That isn't what I'm talking about here.  I'm talking about traffic and endless suburbia. As I mention earlier, I had to travel from Griffin to Northlake.  50 miles.  A 1 hour trip.  It took at least an hour and a half.  Closer to two.  And we left in a hurry to "beat" the traffic.  When we left for Huntsville, we had to go from Northeast Atlanta, around the Perimeter (I-285) to I-75 North.  We were in slowdowns off and on until well past the 75N/575 split.  On a Saturday at 3PM.  I don't want to fight that all the time.

But I'm retired.  If the truth be known, I could dodge almost all of the Atlanta traffic almost all of the time.  To live where?  Roswell? Woodstock? Suwanee?  Those used to be real towns with unique characteristics but now they're just Atlanta suburbs with the carbon-copy Target, Publix, Home Depot and Applebee's.  And when you can't take it anymore, and you just have to get away, you have to slog it out with the Atlanta traffic again to get to the Atlanta airport all the way on the other side of town.

I've always thought Atlanta saved Georgia from being Alabama (or Mississippi) but who (or what) is going to save Georgia from Atlanta?  I don't have to worry about it anymore.  But somebody should because if I left Georgia (and two Democratic Senators) to move to Alabama (with Me-Maw and Mo Brooks) then something isn't exactly right.  Georgia's mountains are prettier.  Y'all might want to figure out how to protect them.  Before Atlanta eats them too.

By the way, as we drove through Huntsville last night to retrieve our dog from our friend's house, we found ourselves on the major interchange in Huntsville -- I-565/US431/US231 about an hour before sunset.  There wasn't another car within 100 feet of us. I think we are going to like it here.

Don Brown
May 23, 2021