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RedditAbout Atlanta, people say just the opposite of what they say about New York City: It's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there.
Especially in the summer.
Atlantans regard enthusiastic vacationers with dismay. We'll scramble some salty eggs for their breakfast and lay a pat of butter on their grits to get them started. We'll set the translucent plastic gallon-jug of Publix sweet iced tea sweating on the table among the coffee mugs. After that, they're on their own.
"What are we doing today?" our first-time guests from Oregon ask expectantly on the first Sunday morning after their arrival.
We regard them balefully.
"Don't you mean, what are you doing today? Because we're not going anywhere."
"Weren't we going to climb Stone Mountain?" they ask, with a hint of reproach. They don't want to have to remind us of the glorious hiking trips we once made together in the Cascade Mountains, through valleys of wildflowers, toward glacial peaks.
"It's 98 degrees out," we mention.
"At nine in the morning?"
"And humid," we add.
If you have to be in Atlanta in the summer, you'll want to spend the day standing near an air-conditioning unit, with the vents aimed at your face. By August, walking to your mailbox leaves you flushed and perspiring. Atlanta in the summer is like the steam from a pot of boiling water. People say, "It's so hot the mosquitoes are sticking together."
I was born in Macon, Georgia, and lived in Savannah, Athens and Rome, Georgia (and Dayton, Ohio), before moving to Atlanta in 1982. When my husband and I were first married and lived in Rome (Georgia), we couldn't afford an air conditioner. So we lived as my parents and grandparents had lived in Macon in the pre-home-air-conditioning era: we went to a lot of air-conditioned movies and we opened all the windows at night, to welcome the occasional cool breeze, and then closed them again before dawn. We spent a lot of time strolling slowly, slowly, up and down the freezer aisles of the local Piggly Wiggly grocery; we set up a bowl of ice in front of an oscillating fan; and we finally, on a summer night of supreme misery, sat in our living room with our bare feet resting in a cooler filled with ice water.
Too hot in Atlanta in the summers to do anything. That's why I am moving!
Posted by sam jones on July 11,2008 | 01:25PM
I think Atlanta is perfect! Four seasons and each one is the right length. I lived in the metro Atlanta area before moving to northern Germany, and after reading this article (albeit a few years after its publication) I am really homesick. Atlanta is the perfect European city in the southern US. What more could anyone want?
Posted by Susan Lerdo on June 17,2009 | 04:48AM
Georgia summers are a test of endurance--but the rest of the year is worth it!
Delighted at your references to early life enduring Northwest Georgia's heat without AC. (That is the world in which most of us Georgia Boomers grew up!)
You express well the beauty of our capitol city and its fasinating ethnic diversity. The Woodruff Arts Center and Midtown, epicenter of the arts community, is the place of choice for most of my visits to Hot-lanta.
When asked, recently, by a group of fifth graders what I considered to be the greatest invention of the 20th Century...my ready reply was, "Air conditioning..." The heat of summer is one of only a few things I don't like about the South.
Posted by Susan Ridley on July 2,2009 | 08:15AM