Finding Atlanta, Part 1

As you may have already guessed, things are beginning to normalize. We just finished moving in the rest of the furniture to our new place this past weekend, a cute little house in Midtown Atlanta. From our street you can see downtown, which is beautiful at night.

Apparently, the previous owner's name was Hattie, who was a prominent member of one of the local Baptist churches (in the basement, our landlord found a plaque of some kind given to Hattie in honor of her service to the church). Hattie's old deep freeze, dryer and Frigidaire stove still work perfectly (and go perfectly with our yellow Formica table).

So as of now, things have calmed down. I started work last Monday, tech writing for a software company and Heather has picked up a job at a bakery within walking distance of the house.

To be honest, I'm still getting used to stability. This move was very nearly a complete disaster.

I should backtrack. Starting in November, Heather and I started living in my parents' summer home in Pennsylvania, a farm house built back in the 1850's and modernized in makeshift patches by my grandfather. The home was not insulated, the shower and bathroom were outside and within the first week, we had 10 inches of snow on the ground. The snow never seemed to leave.

I was working at a small newspaper in the area part time. I drove about nine hours a week to work, spending about $80 a week on gas. If the roads were bad (which they frequently were), my drive time was increased significantly.

At home we were stuck with dial up internet, a $300 heat bill per month, and since the shower was outside and the temperature rarely rose about 10 degrees in the morning, we were often forced to bathe in the sink because the shower's pipes were frozen solid.

We had an outhouse, about 200 feet from the house, just a ways down the driveway. Stepping outside to pee is not a big deal, even if it is well below freezing, but working up the grit to take the long walk to the outhouse was sometimes a bit daunting. When you're visiting for a few weeks, it's quaint; when you deal with it day in and day out, it's not.

I think I slept up there more than anything. The continued snow has a strange psychological effect on you when you're so far from a genuine community. I felt completely cut off from everything. Frostburg is at a similar elevation with similar weather, but it's still a town, with relative ease of access to activity.

Garbage piled up in our basement because the local collector wasn't sure that his "big truck" would make it down our dirt road in the winter. Heather worked out a deal to drop off the trash down the road, where the neighbor's trash was picked up. When she went out at 7 am to do so one morning, our neighbor was waiting in the woods for her decked out in camo with his three German Shepherds and a camera. He would not let her leave the trash cans in front of his property, all the time insisting that he did not "bear her ill will". As she threw our trash back in the car to drive home he waved a friendly little wave and said "God bless."

This was a common occurrence. We fought for everything up there, even basic services that we take for granted in the city. I'm okay with limits, I can get over it, but we were treated as outsiders, completely and utterly, in a place I have been visiting for almost 30 years now.

After Heather told me about it (and I raged for a bit), I remembered a documentary I watched on the settlers of Appalachia and how, because they were so far from civilization, they governed themselves. Then I quickly dismissed it. This guy was just a xenophobic asshole.

It never got better. Toward the middle of February, we were doing all we could to get out of the area. Heather applied for every position she came across from our lovely dial up connection. It took the majority of a day just to use Monster.

I wrecked my car twice, both on the same stretch of road, roughly a mile apart; once in the first week I was there, once in the last week I was there. The first wreck shattered my right headlight and dislodged the bumper; the second ripped the rest of the bumper off and nearly ruined our plans to move.

I got the call confirming my hire within days of the accident. The guy in front of me braked sharply on the newly fallen snow, and I slid, swerving off the road to avoid smashing into the back of his truck. Emergency vehicles swarmed the road. Apparently, just up the road another vehicle had wrecked. I wasn't the only one.

It took three hours for emergency crews to get both cars back on the road. The truck ran up on the guard rail, and one of the wheels hung limply as the tow truck removed it. My car was unscathed, luckily. It was packed with snow in every crevice, which probably saved me from hurting myself and saved the engine from collapse. The mechanic I brought it to blew the snow from it and said he saw nothing wrong. It wasn't even out of alignment.

So that was the three months in PA, in a nutshell. I'm not whining about it, and if it sounds like I am, I'm sorry. I didn't write this for catharsis, and I hope everyone who reads it gets a bit of a laugh. During the worst of it, I know I did. None of this is exaggerated, and this is not a treatise of regret. I learned a hell of a lot while I was up there, mostly about who I am and what I want.

The comedy doesn't end here, by the way, but for brevity's sake, I'll get to the two days from hell, from Pennsylvania to Atlanta, tomorrow.