Dad's people lives in and around Toccoa. Mom's people are centered more in Dalton. I hadn't been able to visit last Christmas, which meant the last time I'd seen any of them was the summer before JET, when all of us were up in Gatlinburg. I'd been thinking about stopping in for a visit, and Mom was up for it, so we decided to drop in.
On the way out, though, we stopped in Atlanta for an early lunch at The Varsity. I've never much cared for the food, but it's a tradition in the Atlanta area, and I wanted to take some pictures, having just taught my students a restaurant lesson. I thoroughly enjoyed my slaw dog and burger.We decided not to call and let anyone know we were coming. (Looks like I get that trait honestly.) We pulled up to my great-aunt and -uncle's house, only to find they were gone. My cousin was raking leaves for my aunt, and we asked him where everyone was. My uncle Robert has Alzheimer's, and they'd been preparing for a while to put him in a nursing home. Betty and Robert were up at one of those homes, and we asked my cousin for directions there.
What followed was one of the most confusing sets of directions I've ever been given. I'm generally pretty good about landmarks, but only when I'm familiar with the area. I've been to Dalton twice in the past four years, and those have been the only times I've actually driven in the city. It's my fault for not coming to visit more often; if I had, I would've understood better. Mom didn't do much better.
Mom probably would have had no problem if the landmarks he gave were from when she was little, but parts of Dalton have apparently changed a lot. That left us both at a loss and forced us to use basic terms like road names and highway numbers. My cousin, a lifelong local, kept referring to things like "the bypass" and "the [name of newly-built restaurant]." Rather than take the time to get him to spell it out for us, we listened, interpreted what we could, and decided to wing it.
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