Dear Atlanta, you’re in the South, too

By By Leada Gore, Editor
I grew up in a big city, at least our state’s version of a big city. I could – and mostly still can – navigate around Birmingham with relative ease, even through the maze that is downtown.
I’ve always liked going to Nashville, too. It’s a
And then there’s Atlanta. Atlanta is a large city and one that’s also in the South, though I think they often forget that fact. While Birmingham and Nashville seem warm and inviting, Atlanta always seems scary.
Greg and I had a chance to visit Atlanta last weekend. His son’s college was playing Georgia Tech Saturday and we used the opportunity to visit with Derek. Our trip to the stadium that morning highlighted one of my Atlanta problems.
A quick scroll through our GPS revealed 15 Peach streets and that’s just downtown. It would be like our town having “Main Street” and “Main Blossom Street,” and then “Main Tree Street.”
We eventually found our destination, arriving two hours before the football game. If you did that at a game in this state, you might make it to the stadium by half time. In Atlanta, however, there is so much going on that no one really pays attention to something as silly as a football game.
We parked easily, walked around a while then walked into the stadium about five minutes before the game. We sat quietly with the rest of the fans who did manage to cheer a little when their Yellow Jackets narrowly defeated the heavy underdogs of Gardner-Webb.
No, this was Atlanta. They were all just filing out to their cars, making their way out of the campus as easily as if they were taking a Sunday drive.
We made our way back to the hotel, only to be greeted by a throng of Chicago Bear fans who were in town for a professional football game.
I agreed.