Anonymous asked: I love your blog! I was raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and lived there all of my life until we moved to Atlanta in August of 1996. I thought that I was moving to the deep south, but soon learned that Atlanta is no longer Margaret Mitchell's Atlanta. We lived in a subdivision outside the 285 loop and we were one of two true southern families in our community of 86 homes! Thank you so much for blogging these truisms about our beloved heritage & flooding my mind with memories of my youth!
Wow. Atlanta isn’t the South the way it used to be. I think it’s a result of exponential growth (which I attribute in no small part to the invention of air conditioning) and the phenomenon of ex-burbs. If you’re what Atlantans (especially native Atlantans) call OTP (outside the Perimiter aka 285) there’s a good chance you’re not a Southerner at all, as you mention.
There’s something anti-Southern in the way these sprawling suburbs work. The gated communities without sidewalks, the strip malls and chain stores that could be anywhere…
I think it’s a shame. And a real problem. Your solution, though, would be to move into a (much smaller, more expensive) house in an older neighborhood like Druid Hills or Morningside if you can because that’s where the Southerners are in Atlanta! They still exist! I promise!
