We just returned from Charlotte and the weekend wedding of a dear friend. We went up via way of Gainesville. It was a beautiful drive through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I love the North Georgia Mountains. There is a peace and tranquility there that I have found nowhere else in my limited travels. Not at the beach, although I do love the Gulf. Not in the rolling farmlands of East Georgia and certainly not in the city.
As I have grown older, I have come to a conclusion that I once never dreamed I would even think, let alone say and most assuredly never write. I could leave Atlanta tomorrow and never look back. The beautiful city that I once loved, cherished and was proud to call home is gone forever, swallowed up by it’s own growth and sprawl.
I know all of the old adages. “Don’t let the door hit you in the [gluteus maximus] on the way out.” “75 and 85 head north and south and 20 heads east and west.” And let’s not forget, “Delta is ready when you are.” I know them all. I’ve said them all. But I realize now that it’s not always that easy, particularly when you are an aging Boomer working due to health insurance and living in a house that is mortgage free.
But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love to chuck it all, move to a little house nestled somewhere in the mountains and happily spend the rest of my days writing and painting. Jackie says that I would never survive in North Georgia because I am too cold-natured, but it’s a chance I would be willing to take.
Driving anywhere in the metro Atlanta area is ridiculous. There is no window at all anymore between the morning and evening rush hours and traffic is worse on weekends than during the week. On top of that, people drive like absolute maniacs. There are invariably the idiots who drive ninety miles an hour in traffic. They appear out of nowhere on your rear bumper, cut across three lanes, fly by a car or two and then cut back across three lanes, almost taking the front ends of three normal drivers along with them. This happens all the time on a daily basis. That’s why there are so many wrecks now. Then there are those who run up to the front of a long line of traffic, try to force their way in and start cursing you for refusing to let them do so. The aggressiveness and the road rage grow more each day. The City Too Busy To Hate seems to have become The City Too Busy To Give A Damn About Anybody Other Than Themselves. I refuse to even discuss the knuckleheads on crotch rockets and hogs that insist on racing twenty at a time at one hundred twenty miles per hour on I-20 on a Sunday afternoon.
The sprawl is killing the towns and communities that once surrounded the city. My family is from Auburn and Carl, two small towns east of Atlanta and northwest of Athens. My grandparents grew up there. When I was a kid, Auburn and Carl were way out in the country. I never dreamed that one day they would be part of the Metro Area and people would commute from there.
My mother was from Texas and I spent a lot of time in Dallas when I was growing up. I have always considered Dallas and Atlanta to be sister cities. They mirror one another in growth, culture and are the two largest cities in the South. My cousin was in Atlanta a while back on business and shared my lament on the metamorphosis of Atlanta to the ATL. He told me Dallas was the same way. Traffic is an absolute nightmare and places that were once little towns out on the prairie are now part of the Metroplex.
The sprawl is slowly creeping its way north as more and more Boomers retire and flee the city for the peace, tranquility and safety of North Georgia. We drove past the Hwy 53 exit on I-985 and Jackie commented on how much the area had grown. My memory went back to when we would drive up Hwy. 53 from Road Atlanta to Lake Lanier. I-985 was Hwy. 365 then and the only thing at the intersection was a Chevron station, where we would stop for gas and ice cream sandwiches.
One thing that has always been said about Atlanta and her beauty is the trees. I once read that as you approached the city, it appeared to be rising out of the forest. Eventually the trees will be gone as the sprawl consumes the land and the big box stores and strip malls move in, only to move out after a few years, leaving the empty buildings, store fronts and parking lots behind.
Call me old. Call me cranky. Tell me to hit the road if that is how I feel, but I have lived in Atlanta my whole life and I hate what our city has become. Native Atlantans are outnumbered now three to one, and that’s just including the non-natives you can count. One thing that I find amusing is the fact that northern transplants love to point out how we Southerners don’t know how to drive in the snow and ice. If that were the case, traffic would flow along smoothly when the ice storms hit, due to the fact that they all are so familiar in dealing with the combination of black ice and hills.
I wonder when and if the growth will ever stop and enough will be enough. I know that will never be the case, not as long as time and the greed of politicians march on. What is going to happen as the next generation of X’s, Y’s and eventually Millenials retire and flee the city? I fear that the sprawl will eventually reach the Alabama line to the west, the Tennessee line to the north and approach Augusta to the east. Atlanta will become the next Los Angeles and North Georgia the next Southern California. And that breaks my heart. Maybe I won’t be around to see it, but it still breaks my heart.