Atlanta Air

Yesterday's near-record pollen count was brought to you by the City of Trees, Atlanta.

An area's pollen count is a measure of the number of grains of pollen in a cubic meter of air. The higher the number, the more sneezing and wheezing.

Here's a measure of pollen count by category:
* Low: 0-30
* Moderate: 31-60
* High: 61-120
* Extremely High: 120+

Yesterday's pollen count for America's Asthma Capital was 5,733. Today's anticipated rains should help clear the air.

The conventional wisdom is that if you don't have allergies when you move to Atlanta, you will soon acquire them. And if you already have allergies when you move here, you will die.

Extreme Karting

Ember Saturday in Lent

I was talking to my buddy Jeff one day about how when I was a kid we lived four years in Tunnel Hill, GA. I haven't been there in years, so I can't say what it's like today, but at the time it was the kind of place that gave southerners a bad name. For example, the county almost shut down when Elvis died. Smokey and the Bandit and Convoy were perennial conversation topics. A kid could say, "My daddy can beat up your daddy!" -- and then he would.

The town is named for a train tunnel, long-since closed, that -- at 1477' in length -- was the engineering marvel of its day. It was the site of skirmishing between Confederate and Union troops during the American Civil War at the beginning of the Atlanta Campaign.

Tunnel Hill's Tunnel

Jeff is about as Georgian as a fellow gets, of the good and generous sort. We met when I was changing a flat tire -- Jeff didn't know me from Adam, but when he saw me in the parking lot with the tire iron, he walked up and gave me a hand. Some time later I was able to do him a courtesy in turn. He protested my offer, but I explained, "You have yourself to blame Jeff -- I was just there changing my tire when you came up out of nowhere and lent me a hand. Don't blame me that we ended up friends." I'm now Godfather to two of his kids.

Given that most people are surprised to learn I'm southern -- I don't have much of an accent, a fact I attribute to my folks being from other parts of the country -- that unreconstructed Tunnel Hill was in my background surprised Jeff to no end. "Sean, I don't even go to Tunnel Hill," he told me in disbelief.

One survival tale from those days involved an older neighborhood kid named Steve, a strong-willed contrarian who befriended my brother and I perhaps because all the other kids around the block routinely abused us* for our non-southern vocabulary (e.g. mom and dad wouldn't allow us to say "ain't," though we sometimes used it under duress as a means of self-preservation) and the fact that we attended the city school in nearby Dalton rather than the local school just down the road. Taking us under his wing was perhaps a way for Steve to differentiate himself from the rest of the redneck rabble.

Steve owned a go-cart. I still remember how you would crank it like a lawn-mower by pulling the start cord, the rattle of the little engine, the smell of gas fumes. For fun Steve would take us around on the back of his cart -- it had only one seat, so a passenger was obliged to stand on the rear bar and hold on to the driver's shoulders for dear life when he floored the thing.

One fine afternoon as we were touring the neighborhood we came upon a picket line of local kids spanning the road: they'd formed a blockade, arms joined, across the entire street.

"Watch this!" Steve shouted, and he put the pedal to the metal.

Now, "watch this" are famous last words of a great many good 'ole boys.

Steve gunned the go-cart, aiming it right at the kid in the middle of the line. It became a game of chicken, and at the last moment the kid jumped clear of Steve's screaming cart.

Well, not quite all of him jumped clear: the kid's foot was just a smidge too slow.

Which is how I got kicked in the face, zipping along at 30 MPH. The effect was, well, disorienting.

Not surprisingly, I lost my grip on Steve's shoulder. For a moment I flailed about, trying to regain my balance, but to no avail. Worse, I managed to smack the driver in the head, who became disoriented in turn. He over-compensated by turning the wheel too sharply to one side, throwing me free while he went in a circle.

Which is how I got run over by the go-cart I'd just been standing on.

I landed on my back, and Steve rode the cart right over the top of me. The tires ripped my shirt and my jeans, and I had sooty black tread marks on my chest and thighs.

The kids ran away. Steve -- who was the mercurial sort -- yelled at me for hitting him in the head, then drove me home at a modest pace.

"What happened to you this time?" mom asked when I walked in the door.

It had been just another day in the neighborhood.

* Mom told me that within the past few years she'd heard from the mother of one of the neighborhood bullies, now in his early 40s, who to this day feels bad about the way he and the other kids treated my brother and I. It's good to know he developed a conscience.

A Good Do-Gooder is Hard to Find

It's curious to observe the sad efforts of well-meaning northern liberals to improve and modernize the American south.

Estranged from reality by their illusory notions of human nature and purpose, their shallow, sentimental secularism results in their failure to come to terms with the spiritual confusion, race tensions, poverty, and Protestant fundamentalism in the south of the past century.

It's Spelled "Potlikker"

Sometimes called collard liquor or green brew, potlikker is the liquid left in the pot after you've boiled greens (collard, turnip, etc). It has lots of good vitamins in it, though it tastes best when a bit of salt and pork is added to it for flavor; you can also crumble in your cracklin' bread.

In 1982 then-Lieutenant Governor of Georgia Zell Miller (he later became Governor and then Senator in turn) wrote a piece for the New York Times explaining the proper spelling of the concoction. With his characteristic enthusiasm and more than one jab at Yankees, he described that it's not "pot liquor," it's "potlikker."

Aside: Miller is also a Democrat on record as criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court because it "removed prayer from our public schools...legalized the barbaric killing of unborn babies, and it is ready to discard like an outdated hula hoop the universal institution of marriage between a man and a woman." Get 'em Zell.

A while back I grabbed lunch from the local farmer's market/whole foods: barbecued pork, mac and cheese, collard greens, and corn bread. I was in high cotton.

A short time later I developed a terrible itching in my eyes; I washed them out, but then the itching spread to my hands and feet, then up my arms and legs; next I started to feel a pain in my chest, and the skin over my entire body turned a bright red. I decided to take an aspirin and lie down -- but I had trouble swallowing the tablets: my throat was swollen.

I knew I was in trouble -- I suspected it was something I'd eaten -- and I got myself over to the ER at the hospital across the street.

When I arrived at the desk to the ER, the receptionist gave me a stack of papers to fill out.

Word to the wise: if you ever need to get yourself quickly admitted to a hospital, just bark out one of these magic words:
(1) Heart attack
(2) Stroke
(3) Shock

The last is what applied to me: I was in anaphylactic shock. I was admitted sans paperwork, got a checkup from the doctor who treated the symptoms, and was told to talk to an allergist.

The allergist confirmed that I had developed a food allergy. After testing the various ingredients of the foods I'd eaten the day I went into shock, he concluded that I was allergic to collard greens. I can never eat them again.

It makes a southern boy weep.

Cat Head Biscuits

I used to know a fellow from a poor farming family named Brookens. He sometimes talked about growing up on the farm. One story he liked was about the cat head biscuits his mother used to make.

"A cat head biscuit is as big as a cat's head," Brookens said. "You'd take your thumb and mush it down on top, making a big hole in the center. Then while it was still hot you'd pour in maple syrup so that it filled the hole and oozed out all over the biscuit and onto the plate. That's the proper way to eat a cathead biscuit."

Poverty can have an effect on one's perceptions, however.

"We had the cat head biscuits, and the fresh bacon from the slaughtered hogs, and the eggs gathered every morning from the hen house," Brookens said. "But what we all really wanted was the storbought food that the rich kids ate: we wanted Cheerios."

Cat Head Biscuit

Atlanta'a Auxiliary Bishop

The Archdiocese of Atlanta is getting an auxiliary bishop: Msgr Luis Zarama has been selected for the duty.

Nearly 800,000 Catholics (excluding unregistered folks from south of the border) call Atlanta home these days, an increase of over 500% in the past 20 years. This growth necessitated the new auxiliary Bishop role.

Not Yet 2:00

"I did my best for you, son. I gave you all I had. More than anything I wanted to pass on to you the one heritage of the men of our family, a certain quality of spirit, a sense of duty, a nobility worn lightly, a sweetness, a gentleness with women -- the only good things the South ever had and the only things that really matter in this life..."
-The Moviegoer, p. 224; Walker Percy

Southerners are gifted at imagining what might have been. It is a melancholic quality, I think, they share with the Irish.

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
- The Ballad of the White Horse, Book 2; G.K. Chesterton

Regionalizing the Atlanta Airport Experience

On a trip through the Atlanta airport one day I was listening to the train recording that announces at which terminal the train is stopping. You know the drill – “Now approaching terminal:
* A as in Alpha…
* B as in Bravo…
* C as in Charlie, etc."

Then I thought: Atlanta is a southern city; if the examples had a southern flavor, they might come out like this:
* A as in Ain’t
* B as in Barbeque
* C as in Catawampus
* D as in Dang!
* E as in Elvis
* T as in Tea