High-End Hobos
Atlanta, GA
October 24, 2020
Like Lewis and Clark leaving the Mandan Village, David and I pushed on early last week, and left familiar terrain.
After bumming a couple of their homes the previous two weeks, we thanked George and Molly, and migrated a few miles south. There, like a couple high-end hobos, we settled into our latest camp.
We pitched tent at the Twelve Hotel in the Atlantic Station section of Atlanta. The rooms are modern, with a stark, industrial motif. Nothing glamorous, and not my style. But two bedrooms, two baths, and a balcony overlooking Midtown provided a comfortable base from which to watch David’s online classes, join my Zoom calls, and endure Braves playoff games.
We started the journey four weeks ago. A week in Michigan evolved into another in Buckhead, and then a third at Atlantic Station.
We arrived there a week ago Monday, and ditched the car. All we needed was within walking distance.
Our first stop was the grocery store, where we stocked our full kitchen for four days. The weather was beautiful, typical of Atlanta in October. Each evening, after David’s school and my work, we wandered extensively.
Seven months (!) into our ongoing dystopia, we still saw depressingly few pedestrians on the sidewalks, or cars on the streets. We strolled a couple afternoons through Atlantic Station, and another along Peachtree Street, thru the heart of Midtown, past the High Museum.
In this once bustling area…at five o’clock on a Wednesday…several cafés, coffee shops, and bars were closed, many for the day, some forever.
Those shops and restaurants that were open were mostly empty, except for the chilling floor-stickers keeping customers an authoritatively arbitrary six feet apart. Most people, based on the vacant venues we saw, are staying much further away than that.
Below the few pairs of eyes we did see, masks were ubiquitous indoors, intermittent outside, and worn half-heartedly most everywhere. People seemed to be going with the flow to not make waves.
As with security theater since 9/11, the curtain is up on a new health kabuki. Given the psychology that produced and was reinforced by this performance, we wonder if the show will ever close. If our obdurate airport vaudeville is any indication, we should brace ourselves for a long run.
Still, in this stultifying, confining year, being mobile is therapeutic. Traveling each week from one place to another at least provides new perspective and a refreshing change of scenery.
We reached a point where, even when interminably tethered to Zoom, sitting in new places and seeing different backgrounds is somewhat soothing. After months stuck within the confines of the same walls, we seemed…like bees bouncing between spring blossoms…to engender vibrancy merely by moving.
We spent one afternoon buzzing around Georgia Tech. I last studied there a couple decades ago. David expressed interest in doing so a couple years from now. So we decided to take another look.
Aside from the area around the football stadium or basketball arena, we hadn’t recently seen much of the campus. It has changed significantly the last several years and, with considerable construction still underway, it continues to evolve.
We walked amid many modern facilities, and past several outdoor patios speckled with caffeinated students. But the place was relatively quiet. Perhaps…as at Auburn…despite students being welcomed to campus, most are being kept from their classrooms. If so, many are probably abiding in their dorm, or hunkering at home.
But if the scene was somewhat surreal, it was also serene. David and I brought a football, which we tossed while watching the smattering of students stroll around and across the grassy expanse beside the Kessler Campanile. We grabbed lunch from a sidewalk stand, then returned to the hotel.
With college in mind, Wednesday morning David was scheduled to take the PSAT. He needed to arrive early at his school, where he’d not set foot since March.
Naturally, the one day he needed to be there, we were twenty miles away. Fortunately, despite breaking our legs, our recent restrictions gave us a crutch by reducing traffic. We arrived with time to spare, and David took his test.
After I dropped him off, I decided to stop by the house. Having spent so much time with her father, Rita preferred David and I keep our distance in event she was carrying the virus. Somehow, she never was.
On this morning, she had planned to be back in the hospital with her dad. I could work from home while David was in school. I also planned to grab a few things David and I could take with us to Tampa, the next stop on our extended journey.
I arrived at the house before Rita left, and was with her when the call came that her father died. After the initial shock and a few tears, she went to the hospital. I picked up David after his test, and shared the sad news. He and I returned to the hotel, but would obviously not go to Tampa.
I cherished these three weeks traveling with my son. They reinforced the validity of the aphorism that when we have kids, we are not raising children. We are raising adults. I could not be more proud of the one David is becoming, nor more ambivalent about how quickly it is happening.
But he needed his mother, and I missed my wife. And, particularly at this time, we all needed to be together. We waited for Rita to re-confirm she remained devoid of the virus. Then, after three weeks on the road, we went back where we belong.
We tied our bindles, threw them over our shoulders, and headed home.
JD
