The Little Hamlet of Chamblee

At the end of December, we finally sold our house that owned for a little over 2 years in Chamblee, GA. For those of you unfamiliar, Chamblee is a town/suburb of Atlanta. Looking back, the house was a bit of an impulse buy. The overwhelming desire to purchase a home in Atlanta was infectious, and we were easily swayed. I think we were told too many times that owning a home is the ultimate investment. I often wonder how it is that people like me and Biscuit are so quick to catch the fever. Thankfully, the Scientologists haven't captured us yet.
Anyway, this isn't a blog about the house. It's more about how we decided to move to Chamblee and, in our own weird way, thought we were bringing on the Renaissance in Unincorporated DeKalb County. Maybe we do smoke a little too much cheeba. So, in July 2004, we moved into a nice brick ranch house with way too much landscaping and foolishly decided to re-do the whole place in groovy colors, even the ceilings. Oh, and we decided to cover up the hideous fire-place. All great for re-sale value. Bisq and I didn't exactly blend right into Huntley Hills (our subdivision), and we might have turned a few heads with our bodacious highlights (that's another blog in and of itself). Our lawn was one of the only ones that didn't have a Bush/Cheney 2004 sign and our cars had no Support Our Troops stickers. We grew lonely out there, waiting for cafes and other signs of civilization to show up. Our gay realtor, Ben Leaptrott, assured us that Chamblee was really on the up and up. Any day now, there would be groovy shops and other amenities to suit the tastes of all of the hip professionals moving into the new condos near the MARTA station. Then, we'd pat ourselves on the back for our wise investment and make out like bandits on the resale. Again, cheeba.
We didn't know too many of our neighbors, but we knew Bill who lived across the street. He didn't care much for hippies, but he liked smoking weed, making pot cookies with M&Ms, making beef jerky (no weed in the ingredients) and getting wasted on Miller Light. He loved Nascar, the USA, Rottweilers and all of the things that make one feel right at home in the Peach state. But Bill wasn't one dimensional, as these descriptions might have led you to believe. He had some Jewish friends and got along with gays. My friends who all lived in decent cities rarely visited, so Bill became our friend. He'd usually see us pulling into the driveway around 7 or 8 PM when he'd already begun tying one on. He'd run across the street with a giant martini in a plastic tumbler and see if we were up to hanging out a while. We said yes most of the time, and the visits were usually pretty much the same. He was delighted that we'd sometimes puff on a joint with him, but pretty disappointed in how little alcohol I drank. The fact that Bisq didn't drink at all didn't go over too well, either. He'd dominate the discussions, but not in an unpleasant way. I'm usually in the mood for my guests to put on a performance. However, like most heavy drinkers, he repeated the same stories about the good old days. In Bill's opinion, Huntley Hills was an undiscovered paradise. He even thought that we had the best tasting tap water of anywhere in Atlanta. The bars along Peachtree Industrial Blvd. were fabulous, according to Bill - and he couldn't dehydrate enough beef jerky to keep up with the demand.
There were other colorful characters in Huntley Hills, like my former 19 year old secretary, Karrin, and her blind parents. There was a cute black lady named Doreen from Puerto Rico who couldn't believe a good man such as George W. Bush could let so many people suffer during Katrina. She also thought that the flood water would leave New Orleans cleaner than ever. We always meant to try a West African restaurant with her but never got around to it. It's worth mentioning that there was a Huntley Hills prayer group, too.
Anyway, it was an interesting experiment moving out there after having lived in Santa Fe, NM. You do things for reasons you don't quite understand. In the end, we learned about a decent barbeque joint called Pig 'N Chick, that Chic-Fil-A is closed on Sundays and that the only way to keep your lawn looking good is to use gene-altering agents like Round-Up.

Maybe everyone should give the suburbs a fair shake. Get yo'self a membership to the neighborhood pool and wave hello to all the other fat ladies while you power walk.