In my last sojourn, I described my trip into Atlanta to observe the 2008 election returns at Manuel’s Tavern and a few of my doings while there. Now I’ll pick up the story the next day and describe the sights, scenes, streets and smells of the return journey.

Wednesday morning at roughly noon I awoke to banging on my motel room door. “Housekeeping!” the lady hollered. I quickly dressed and packed everything back in my Dodge van, returned the plastic “key” to management, and headed off to eat.

After an Ort-ean twist and turn or two, I arrived at The Galaxy Diner on Henderson Mill Road. For once, I didn’t note what I ordered for lunch, but whatever it was, it was good… and it came with a cup of split pea soup thick enough to rival any fog that ever socked in a New England port. In retrospect, it was almost so dense that I could have stood a chainsaw up in it. (Okay, so I exaggerate a wee bit!)

A conversation with the lady at the next table netted me an interesting tidbit of information that may eventually merit a column. She told me that her father asphyxiated himself in a car in the old parking lot that used to exist behind Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Prince Avenue! “He was 31,” she recalled. “I’m one of four children, and we were all small… I think I was three at the time. You might be able to turn it up online.” This has been a ghost story around Emmanuel for as long as I can remember, and I am glad to verify the truth of the legend.

After eating, I decided to take the slow route back to Athens and headed out Buford Highway. “I wonder what I’ll find in thrift stores along this road,” I thought. The trip was rendered even slower by my purchase of gas for a paltry $2.05 a gallon in Norcross from a station that turned out to have the s-l-o-w-e-s-t gas pump I’ve ever met. I must’ve been there for 15 minutes watching traffic go by as fuel slowly seeped into the van.

My route led on to Duluth, Suwanee, Sugar Hill, Buford and Rest Haven. I noted several closed-for-the-day thrift stores as I oozed by, but by now having had enough of slow traffic, I turned onto Friendship Road to I-985. It was a quick gallop from there to the Ga. 60 exit and thence into downtown Gainesville, where I careened around the square (it was badly wrecked in the terrible 1936 tornado - you’d never know it now!), zigged and zagged, and veered into The Potter’s House Thrift Store parking lot.

“You’ve redecorated!” I exclaimed to the puzzled clerks. “It’s been like this since I’ve worked here,” one drawled. “You must not come by very often.” I allowed that I didn’t, being from Athens and all, but I knew what to look for and was off like a rocket.

I bypassed the bins of LPs for the moment to concentrate on books. After helping a lady find something she wanted, I spied a worn-spined paperback: The Buy Back Blues by Ralph Dennis. Before my visit was over, I had scored eight volumes of the 12-volume “Hardman” series by Atlanta’s own Dennis - he worked for years at Oxford Too Books. These volumes are all set in Atlanta; the central character runs his quarries down along such familiar streets as Peachtree, Ponce de Leon, Piedmont, North Highland, and in one case an easily-identifiable Tift Avenue in the Adair Park area of southwest Atlanta! While I own a near-complete set of these books, I will now reread the ones I have acquired and trade away my better copies… all I really care about is having them to read, anyway. Other books also struck my fancy, including one by Allen Tate published by Allan Swallow and an early, obscure feminist tome from a New England women’s publishing house. By now, I needed to hurry through the records, because (oops - I hadn’t mentioned this yet!) I wanted to make it back to Athens for cask ale night at Copper Creek Brewing!

Several mono Dave Brubeck LPs caught my eye, as did a few classical pieces and a pop artifact or two. So what if their condition wasn’t perfect? For 50 cents, who’s got room to gripe? I hefted my merchandise to the checkout in one trip (amazing!), lugged it oofingly to my already-groaning van, and soon was en route to Athens.

Having tired of too-familiar U.S. 129 light years ago, I decided to go home through Lula just for the heck of it. Along the way, I passed the homey-looking (and most investigatible!) Rabbittown Café on Old Cornelia Road, which I need to check out on a return visit. As light was beginning to fail o’er the river (as the poem goes), I witnessed the splendor of autumnal colors along my chosen way, old U.S. 23.

In the near-darkness, I missed the Ga. 52 turn toward Gillsville, so I continued on into Lula proper and Y-ed onto Athens Road, which quickly led me to County Line Road, which headed straight along the old Gainesville Midland Railroad line to Gillsville, where I tardily picked up the waiting Ga. 52. That road led to Maysville (where its number morphs into Ga. 98) and continued on into Commerce.

At the north edge of Commerce, I passed a shopping center containing a Quality Foods store: “NOW I know where THAT is!” I exclaimed. (This small foodstore chain [they also have Winder and Royston locations] is my source for my favorite vinegar-based barbecue sauce, Scott’s from Goldsboro, NC.)

The radio was playing skywave skippage from one of my favorite nighttime catches, WCRK in Morristown, TN, as I headed on toward Athens, by now on U.S. 441. “I sure hope there’s some cask ale left when I get there!” I exclaimed out loud as I slowed down for Nicholson. It was almost 7 p.m.

Shortly I was back in Athens-Clarke and momentarily thereafter arrived in downtown Athens. I parked the van and hustled down to Copper Creek, where a draught of Matt’s amazing woody cask-conditioned India Pale Ale was set before me. I had taken the return trip slowly because of my night vision difficulties, but there was still plenty left. “Better my safety than any cask ale,” I wrote.

And home I was, after quite a fun trip. It was good to be back, just as it is immeasurably good to have my words return to me and be back in Flagpole. Prosit! (30.)

William Orten Carlton