I received an e-mail today...

...from a friend who lives in Georgia. It was a cute little thing that you would have to be from here (or very familiar with the traffic around here) to appreciate. Since most of you aren’t, I’ll try to explain some of the wild and crazy things that make up the Atlanta traffic experience. I’ve already told you that Atlanta has some hideous drivers. I can’t really blame it on the natives...there’s no way to learn how to drive if there’s no normal traffic around. All they have is the insane roads of this area so they can’t possibly know how badly they drive.

First of all, if you drive the speed limit on the highways here, you will die. That’s all there is to that...it is fatal to drive 55 when the speed limit tells you to because everyone else is going 80. The drivers cut in front of you with no signals...they just see a spot that appears to be large enough for their car to fit into and they do their best to fit into it.

They don’t seem to realize that turning left on a green light is legal...for some reason they believe that you need more than a green light, like a green arrow or something inviting them to turn left. They got the right on red thing down pretty well, they just don’t seem to think that you are allowed to turn left when the light is just a round green light bulb. I have driven around the right side of cars who sit there waiting for the green circle to turn into a green arrow.

Then, they have a huge circle around the city of Atlanta that they call “The Perimeter”. It is a circle but it has signs that give directions like north or south. I drove to the airport once on 285 south. So, when I went to go home, I decided that I should get onto 285 north. I was wrong. I should have taken 285 west. I didn’t even know that was an option. I drove the entire circumference of that damn circle to get back to where I started from. I stayed lost quite a bit back when I first moved here...I wasn’t aware of the Waffle House’s and their importance in the navigational training required to drive here. Any set of directions going anywhere in this area will begin with, “You pass the Waffle House and then...”

Now, if you live in the town that I live in...they have an additional landmark. That is the Big Chicken. The Big Chicken is a one story chicken restaurant with a three story chicken on top of it. At one point the town considered razing the Big Chicken but the people were up in arms over that. They protested and eventually won. The Big Chicken is safe. And thank the Lord for that because no one would be able to find a damn thing around here if you couldn’t say, “You turn left at the Big Chicken...”

Apparently, that stupid chicken is more important than just a navigational aide. One day I was stopped at the red light at the chicken when I noticed that one of it’s two spinning eyes had stopped spinning. I didn’t think much of it and most likely would never have given it another thought if it weren’t for the fact that when I got home...the news was on. I was stunned to hear the anchorman say, “In Marietta today, the left eye of the Big Chicken stopped spinning...”

I didn’t travel very far when I first arrived in Georgia because I kept getting lost. I’m used to Chicago driving...it’s all on a grid system and if you can see the Sears Tower, you know which way is east and therefore, you know which way you’re going. Not here. Here, the roads go in all different directions and there is no way to know which way is east unless you get blinded by the sun early in the morning. As if it isn’t bad enough that the roads go in different directions...they’re all named Peachtree.

One town here actually had to make a law that there would be no more streets named Peachtree.

Unlike men, I do stop and ask directions. But...I don’t speak southern so it doesn’t always help. One day I was trying to find a guitar shop because I needed guitar strings. I drove up and down the only decent sized road that I knew of...Cobb Parkway...trying to find a guitar shop.

When I eventually got bored of that, I stopped at a little shop and asked a woman if she knew where there was a guitar shop. She said, “Sure!”.
She started giving me directions and I was paying close attention to her until I noticed a man standing nearby looking rather perplexed. The woman kept talking and the man just started looking more and more perplexed as she went on. I became a tad unnerved myself. Finally the man asked the woman, “Where are you sending her?”

The woman replied, “Good Year.”

“Good Year?” the man asked.

“Yes”, the woman responded, “She needs a good TAR shop.”

I politely said to the woman, “Perhaps I should rephrase that....GEE-TAR shop.”

“Oh.” she said to me...“No, I don’t know where there is a GEE-TAR shop.”

Eventually, I found a guitar shop. But, I have yet to figure out how to get around safely in a town with circular roads that have signs with normal directions on them and people who don’t know how to read the numbers on speed limit signs. If I had my way...once the sun came up, I would be sure that it was on my left and I’d drive to Florida to visit my father. In the meantime, I’m gonna go to bed.

See ya,

Meg

http://www.dcltribute.com/bigchicken/ History of the Big Chicken...the eyes DO indeed spin, they must have fixed them after this was written.

I googled Waffle House Driving Directions to see if I could find an article about using the Waffle House as a landmark and all I got was a bunch of actual directions...that included turning at, passing or pulling into a Waffle House.

The Big Chicken made me miss the Mill Mountain Star...a huge star that sits atop a mountain that is entirely in the city limits of Roanoke Virginia. I used to think it was one tacky monstrosity...until I saw that damn Big Chicken. Here is a picture of the mountain with the star on it, you can barely see it during the day. I couldn't find a picture of the mountain at night.

This is the Star lit up. You can see it from all over the valley. When I was a little girl, it would be lit up in red if anyone had been killed in a car accident in the Roanoke Vally that day. If not, it was white. Then, in 1976, they had it lit up in red, white and blue for the Bicentennial. I've heard that ever since 9/11, it has been red, white and blue again.