Atlanta Times
In 1995, my friend Haley came to visit me from England. After a wonderful visit, I dropped her off at the Atlanta airport and got in my beloved red 1985 Toyota Celica to return to Savannah where I was living at the time. Less than ten miles away from the airport as I drove through a light drizzle, my car hydroplaned on the interstate and spun wildly out of control. Concrete, sparks, and eighteen wheels of a tractor trailor truck blurred before my eyes. My car slid to a stop against the concrete barrier that separates eastbound traffic from westbound traffic. Miraculously I was unhurt. I blinked and realized I was facing oncoming traffic in a very precarious place in the road. If anyone came along in the fast lane, they could clip my car and kill me. I turned the key to the ignition, and several lights on the dashboard that had never lit up before began blinking. My car was in serious pain. The engine reluctantly turned, and I gave it gas to keep it alive. When there was a brief lull in traffic, and I revved the engine and turned a hard left to begin crossing the five lanes of traffic. The rain was coming down hard now, leaking through my displaced windshield and sunroof. I could hear metal scraping concrete as my car slowly crossed one lane, two lanes… By the third lane I was completely perpendicular to oncoming traffic - anyone coming around the curve would not see my blinkers or have time to steer around me. Slowly trudging along, my poor little car crossed the fourth lane, then the fifth, and puttered to the safe part of the shoulder of the road, as far away from the moving traffic as possible. Two days later my dad and granddad rented a flatbed towtruck, and couldn’t figure out how I had steered myself to safety, since the rear axil was broken, and the engine was locked up. Even wenching the car onto the trailer was a feat, they told me, because the wheels didn’t want to turn. God damn Atlanta.
Less than a year later I loaded everything I owned into my junky silver 1980 Honda Civic to move from Savannah back to Nashville. The car was filled from floor to ceiling, so much I couldn’t even see out the back windshield. Night fell as I approached Atlanta, and I noticed that my headlights were dim - the lights on my dashboard were barely lit at all. The interstate was under construction (as is always the case in Atlanta, am I right?) and four lanes of traffic were narrowed down to a single lane. Instead of orange cones, they used concrete walls to keep people in this single lane, and there was no shoulder. And that’s when my car began to stall. My headlights dwindled down to nothing, and trying to get the car was a struggle - the engine didn’t want to turn. Miraculously I was close to an exit ramp, and I was able to get my car to start enough times to slowly climb the exit ramp and coast into a gas station. I called my parents and my dad explained that the alternator must have died. My headlights had drained my battery and the car wasn’t able to sustain the electrical charge it needed to run. This took place about five hundred feet away from my hydroplaning incedent.
My parents came to my rescue the next day. Dad looked at the car to confirm his suspicions about the alternator. He suspected that we could jumpstart it and it would run okay as long as I drove during the daylight and didn’t use the headlights. This was our plan, and I was going to follow them back to Nashville. My car began to sputter on the interstate, and I was unable to signal them before taking the first exit ramp. This was before cell phones had taken over America, and I had no way to get in touch with them. I left my car on the side of some deserted back road on the perimeter of the airport, and began walking to find signs of civilization. God damn Atlanta.
A few years later I was in Atlanta with Daniel and Brian. On a whim we had decided to jaunt down for some naughty Friday night fun at Swingin’ Richards. I remember being there about thirty minutes, and starting on my second gin and tonic. After that things get blurry, and there are eight hours that I cannot remember at all. I woke up in the cab of a pick-up truck with no idea where I was or how I got there. Groggily I took an assessment of my physical state. I was still dressed in the clothes from the night before, and I could tell from the sweaty, gross way they were clinging to my body that I had been wearing them all night. My glasses were gone and I had no cash, but I still had my wallet. There was a cigarette burn on my left middle finger (I don’t smoke) and bits of tobacco in my shirt pocket. No phone and no way to get in touch with my friends, and no idea where the hotel was. I wandered around the warehouse district for about two hours before stumbling across a Red Carpet Inn where, miraculously, Brian spotted me in the parking lot.
I felt like I’d come back from the dead. God damn Atlanta.
Today I drove my little shitty car to Atlanta where Brian and I are going to go to Swinging Richards, and spend all day tomorrow work on a spec script to enter into the Disney Writers’ Fellowship. It seems that, in some Burmuda Triangle sort of way, Atlanta marks some of the major turning points in my outlook of life and living. Why wouldn’t I come down here before moving across the country to San Francisco?