Friday, September 11, 2009

Back to the Big City

While we do dearly love many things about living in Coker Creek, we’re mighty glad that we’re within two hours of three major metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Knoxville and Chattanooga. In these parts, tastes in food and faith tend toward the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Ethnic foods are at least an hour’s drive from us, whether at a grocery store or a restaurant. Access to emergency medical services is reliant on personal transportation for a considerable distance, ambulances, and helicopter air lift. Controversy is discouraged, as is attention-getting behavior. How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve lived in New Orleans?

With the choice of three cities from which to choose our extension of hometown, it was a no-brainer for us to choose Atlanta. I had lived for ten years in the greater Atlanta area, and still have several very good friends there. My daughter and her family live, work, and go to school in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta. And Atlanta is a multi-cultural city with many choices for music, theatre, grocery stores, and restaurants.

Richard gets his post-transplant care from Emory and his medications from the V.A., within a couple of miles of each other in the Atlanta area. We enjoy combining these visits for medical care with socializing. This week, we went to dinner and a play with Holly and Don. The dinner was very tasty at Simpatico on the Marietta Square, and the play The Savannah Disputation was worth a trip in itself.

Coming from very Roman Catholic New Orleans, and living now in the heart of the Bible Belt, I’ve struggled mightily with how to come to peace with the disconnect between my upbringing and my surroundings. The play was a humorous look at how little sense, and how much damage so much of the religious controversy makes. It was a good way to reframe my discomfort.

I have to be honest; Coker Creek is pretty progressive about their Christianity. There are eleven churches in this little hamlet of less than one thousand people. All but one of the pastors is a part-time preacher, with some preaching at more than one church to more than one denomination on a given Sunday. When I asked Mamie about this, she replied, “Well, it’s all one Bible.”

After about twenty-four hours in the city, we were ready to head home. You know you’re not in Atlanta anymore when you get to Pickens County, Georgia whose claim to fame is that it’s the “Marble Capital of Georgia”. Next, you’ll hit Gilmer County, the Apple Capital. We see a lot of chicken trucks coming out of Ellijay, but I think Gainesville, Georgia is the official chicken capital.

Also on the way back from Georgia, you pass Priest Recycling – What do they turn priests into? And don’t miss Wildseed Stone Casting where you can procure you very own life-sized concrete (or is it cement?) hog. It’s after we exit the many lane highways onto two-lane roads in Tennessee that we really see the best sights, the flowers and the forest. Even though only two days have passed since my last trip from Atlanta, the predominant bloom had changed from thistle to goldenrod.