Just spent a couple of days in Atlanta due to a death in the family. Sad time with the sudden loss of a good man. But that's our little world and we'll deal with it.
Aside from that, I noticed again that every time I go to that area, I love it more and more. Now, would I move there from sleepy little Dothan? Oh hell no! I like being able to get from point A to point B, 6 miles away, in less than 3 1/2 hours. Here's the thing about traffic like that. You have 4-5 lanes, sometimes 6, and every one of them slam full with people going 80 m.p.h. and darting in and out like murder hornets. That doesn't bother me at all. As long as traffic is flowing and I know what exit I'm supposed to take in 2 miles, I'm golden. But one fender bender up ahead and you better have a lunch packed.
On the way there, I was on 285 with 4 lanes ripping along. Just ahead of me in the outside lane, a little car comes half way over into my lane and checks up. I have to hit the brakes and just as I do, he guns his Nissan Sentra and shoots over in front of me, then the 18 wheeler just to my right and he checks up again, clearly trying to get off at the exit he's already missed. The truck lays on his horn and I tense up for what I'm about to see. The Sentra disappears and I hear the loud bang of metal on metal. Apparently he had gotten over just enough to avoid a skrate up rear end and certain death, but when the truck cleared there was Latravious in his now beat to hell and back Sentra, limping to a stop on the shoulder. The semi kept on trucking. So did I after an audible chuckle. Dumb ass!
But enough about ATL traffic. My brother lives in the Sandy Springs/Dunwoody area. In driving around, my jaw drops every quarter mile as a new, bigger mansion of some sort appears. My in laws used to live in Ackworth and it was the same thing when you'd drive around the area. All I can think of is, "How can so many people have this much money?" About a half mile from his house, I pass these two white mansions side by side on a huge hill with one driveway running in between. I slowed for a WTF moment, but found out later, these houses were built, or used last year, for a reality show called Labor of Love. One lady wants to make a baby. She lives in one mansion. 15 guys are competing to be the one to put the baby in her vagina. They all live in the mansion next door. Cameras roll. Shenanigans follow. Good times.
On the same road, less than a mile from there, I go past a gated drive. Several hundred yards in the distance is what a real mansion looks like. This is a bit more than, "Damn, these folk gots a lot of Benjamins". Make my inquiry and yep, they do. It's P-Diddy's...or Puffy's....or Puff Daddy or...Shaun Puffy Combs' crib. Whatever the hell he goes by. He's done quite well for himself.
One of the things you don't expect to see in these rolling hills full of million dollar homes, are deer. Seems people are building on every square foot and the deer would be forced out, but not the case. They're in my brother's back yard about every day. I'm driving along and there's a doe and an 8-point buck in velvet, right by the road, munching away on someone's green, well-manicured lawn.
I know none of this is exactly riveting reading. But, I'm from Dothan. All of that is eye-opening amazement to someone who lives in a town where the highlights are the National Peanut Festival and a 30 foot pig made out of metal scraps that gets painted in Auburn or Alabama colors depending on the Iron Bowl outcome. That pig looks damn fine in orange and blue.
We don't see a lot of this down here:
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