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May 2006
Courteous drivers? Here?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A few days back I read that a road rage survey found metro Atlanta among the cities with the most courteous drivers.
“Good for us. Our mamas taught us right,� I thought.
Then I drove home.
During the years I’ve lived in Snellville, I’ve logged a variety of commutes: from Snellville to downtown Atlanta, from Snellville to Lawrenceville, from Snellville to Conyers, from Snellville to Jonesboro and more. My current path takes me from Snellville to Norcross.
For the most part, I agree with the survey. While traffic may stink, the majority of drivers tend to be reasonable. (This excludes travel during Christmas shopping season or major motoring calamities.)
Even with the tricky suicide lanes on U.S. 78, the scene is generally one of good behavior.
Not on my commute home. The ugly bug comes out to play in the flood of drivers traveling from Norcross to Snellville during the evening rush hour.
You’ve experienced it. You sit, waiting in a line of traffic poised to turn right. Every so often you advance a few places, then sit again.
You feel him before you even see him. He cruises up on the left and, just as your line of traffic starts to advance, pokes his front right fender in between two cars, forcing his way into prime position.
He’s not to be confused with a driver who’s lost his way, finding himself in the wrong lane. You can identify those folks and let them in. This aggressor deems himself more important than anyone waiting in line, his time more valuable.
You clench your jaw, grind your teeth. You seethe.
Just as you loosen up and shake off the offending party after contemplating the essence of eternal damnation, another invader whizzes by and inserts herself in front of a hesitant pickup.
This time your ire is not only for the perpetrator but for those so distracted as to allow a few inches for the infiltration.
Sound familiar?
There are variations of this tale – drivers who ride the emergency lane and then force themselves into traffic or move into a right-turn lane and then bully their way back in, etc. The MO is the same.
On my commute home, there are three spots where this is a daily occurrence: two on Brook Hollow Parkway and one on Club Drive. It is a remarkable day when I can get through these spots with a good mood intact.
To some degree, these occurrences are the function of traffic volume vs. road design. But they also are a reflection of human psychology that – while infuriating – is at the same time fascinating. How do these drivers‘ minds work? How far do they take their superiority? Do they run roughshod over their co-workers? Their family? Or is it contained to the anonymity of driving?
And why does it bother us so much? Is it just the violation of fair play? Is it the arrogance?
I’ve never seen anyone ticketed for this behavior. I’ve seen hand gestures, I’ve heard horns blow, but in the end, the invaders win and move ahead to repeat their tactics.
And the rest of us continue to sit and inch forward and follow the rules.
Doesn’t sound very courteous to me.
I know there are other traffic hot spots – not just congested areas of gridlock, but sites that encourage rude drivers to strut their stuff and test the composure of everyday motorists. Killian Hill Road has a couple. Stone Mountain Freeway near West Park Place has one.
Where are your worst cut-off corridors? How do you react?
Permalink | Comments (113) | Categories: Susan Gast
How will we react to homeless, panhandlers?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I saw a hitchhiker on North Road in Snellville last week — thumb out, backpack on, seeking a ride along that residential thoroughfare of suburban ranch homes.
On Tuesday, a young man with a red gasoline tank approached me at a QT gas station in Gwinnett, asking for money. He and his wife were stranded, he said, and wanted to get back home to White County. I doubted the story, but I gave him some change.
Three times recently, I have been panhandled when I ran out for lunch near Jimmy Carter Boulevard — twice in a shopping center parking lot and once at Wendy’s.
A couple of months ago, I was holed up in a Loganville coin laundry, washing an overload of comforters and blankets. A middle-aged man came in from the cold and rain to warm up and dry off. He had no laundry.
A house painter from Monroe, he said he was. He had come west to get work, but his truck had broken down. He had stayed at the Whitt’s Inn in Loganville, but it was too expensive for a longer stay. He’d made some mistakes in his life, he said. With God’s help, he was trying to bounce back.
We talked about where he might find a job. I told him about extended stay motels. He didn’t ask for anything, except for help reading a classified advertisement.
For years, I’ve worked in downtown Atlanta where people make the streets their homes.
Downtown, the frequency with which you are approached is cyclical, depending on political pressures and law enforcement. At times, a one-block walk has meant at least four or five requests for change.
Sometimes I give. Sometimes I don’t.
Downtown, I expect it. I have even sought it, volunteering at a homeless ministry and soup kitchen near the Capitol.
And though I’ve helped out at food co-ops here in Gwinnett, it still catches me off guard when panhandling happens just around the corner, when you are getting out of your car, when you are filling up your tank, when you’re at the neighborhood eatery.
I am not ignorant of the problems in Gwinnett. There is poverty. There are drugs, alcohol, mental illness, health problems, job loss and the multitude of other difficulties that can land folks in dire straits. I know there have long been homeless in Gwinnett. This newspaper has written about them, local ministries have reached out to them.
Ellen Gerstein, executive director of the Gwinnett Coalition for Health and Human Services said about 1,100 beds are needed for homeless families in this county any given night. And that estimate doesn’t include the many families in extended-stay hotels.
She said Gwinnett’s school system picks up 1,000 children from extended stay hotels in Gwinnett. And last year, there were 20,000 evictions in the county — most of which involved families, not individuals.
And, the truth is, the homeless and the panhandlers are not always the same people.
But it seems that only recently have these people become more visible in Gwinnett — first at interstate exit ramps, then in parking lots and at gas stations. A colleague estimates the change began about two years ago. I’ve only noticed it the last six months. The hidden needy are no longer hiding. Or maybe I’m just paying more attention.
I’m wondering how we will respond. Not so much the organizations and programs that try to help. I know they are committed. But how will individuals — folks in Snellville, Loganville and Norcross react? What about government and law enforcement and the business community?
I’ve heard debates about the appropriate response to downtown panhandlers, the most effective way to help the poor or homeless.
Some say they always give. Some boast they never do. Others say they don’t, but they feel guilty about it. A few give time and resources to organized homeless ministries.
I do most of the above — whatever my gut tells me at the time.
Now, it seems, the discussion is no longer just about Atlanta. It has come home.
Will we react any differently?
Permalink | Comments (83) | Categories: Susan Gast
When does a city become your home?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I went home last weekend for Mother’s Day — home to Columbus - the “Fountain City.”
Columbus is best known as a pit stop on the way to Panama City Beach, but it also claims a bit of fame for Fort Benning, the Columbus Stockade Blues, Rosehill Seafood and the suffocating humidity that is a trial to anyone in the Chattahoochee valley.
Enough about Columbus, though. “Home” is the key word here.
I have lived in Snellville for 20 years. Two of my three children were born in Snellville hospitals. I watched all three board their first school bus for Britt Elementary. My church is in Snellville, my doctors, my dentists. I have great neighbors and wonderful friends here.
So why do I still consider Columbus - instead of Snellville - as my “home?” I haven’t held back in trying to connect. I’ve immersed myself in all things Snellvillian. I’ve built floats for the Snellville Days parade. I’ve been co-president for two PTAs.
I’ve posed my kids at the city welcome sign and sent the photos out with Christmas cards. I have a fondness for the “Snellville Oak” tree and have eaten many a breakfast at A&J Tasty Pig Barbecue. I’ve been room mom, team mom and an South Gwinnett Athletic Association cheerleading coach.
Still, Snellville is where I live. Columbus is my home.
I’ve contemplated this a bit, and have concluded that the problem is not with Snellville. True, the city’s name and its traffic aren’t boasting points, but it’s a fine place to live and raise a family.
If it’s not an inadequacy of the city, that means it’s a reflection on me.
Natives to this area obviously do not have this problem. Because we are largely a community of transplants, however, I wonder if others feel this way. And I question if, and when, it will ever change?
Will I be in the grocery check out line one day and it just hit me? When my kids move away and I have time to look back on all our years here, will Snellville move a notch up in my soul’s rankings?
What does it take to replace the bonds to your hometown with bonds to your new town?
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Susan Gast
How do you weather Friday night dining lines?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are few things more provoking than the crawl of snarled traffic on Ga. 124 in Snellville – that mayhem of travel that spills its venom onto North Road, U.S. 78 and any other artery that risks getting near our beloved “Scenic Highway.�
But running a close second, and sharing quite a few similarities, has to be the crawl of snarled traffic at Snellville restaurants on Friday evenings. Surely you know the scene — Ahhh, Friday night! Work week’s over. School week is done. Time to relax, go out to eat.
You and your spouse pile into the car, perhaps with kids, perhaps not, and out you go.
We used to try and get a consensus among the car occupants on where to go. Not any more.
Even if we could agree (which we can’t because an adult’s first choice is rarely Cici’s, the pizza paradise for sports teams, birthday celebrants and eating contest participants), our exercise in democracy takes a dive at the sight of “The Lines.�
The Lines are not really lines at all, but assemblages of the weary and forlorn perched on benches, planter walls or cars lucky enough to get good parking spots. Children settle for the sidewalks with their little heads leaned against the wall, their eyes rolled skyward, looking too much like they are in their fifth hour of C-Span.
We start at Chain Restaurant No. 1 (almost all of Snellville’s eateries are of the chain variety) and work our way down, driving by, checking the lines against our patience level and trying to guess the waiting time. Sometimes we do a little research: “Sue, hop out and see how long.� Sometimes we just sigh and move on to Chain Restaurant No. 5.
How this came to be I’m not sure. Reservations are no longer favored as a promise of business, a sign of planning, an agreement between restaurateur and customer. “First come, first served,� is the name of the game, so that dining out requires the same fierce determination as getting through Main Street when First Baptist lets out on Sundays.
Timing, I’m sure, is important although I have yet to identify a Friday night slot when Snellville restaurants are not packed.
You can save a few minutes by having an advance man — someone who jumps out before you park. That person crawls and elbows his way through the crowd to find the Keeper of the List and adds your name.
Once the name is safely on the list, The Wait begins. The problem with waiting is that you aren’t just waiting, you are watching. You see a vacant table and wonder why you can’t have that one. You count how many are in the party that came in after you and bristle and mutter if they get a table first. You eyeball your competition and stare at people who are eating, silently urging them to forego the dessert and get on with it, man, so we can sit down.
Some restaurants say they have a “Call Ahead� list – which is like reservations, but not really. By calling the restaurant and telling them you are on your way, theoretically you will get a higher spot on The List. It has never worked that way for me.
If you persevere, however, you can finally get a table, order and settle in for a meal. Then you notice the people hovering at the door, staring.
We’ve about given up on Friday night dining in Snellville. But as I head home from work I still see The Lines. Surely those people are stronger than me, I think.
What is their secret?
How do you cope? I’d like any helpful hints.
I’m tired of my own cooking.
Permalink | Comments (58) | Categories: Susan Gast
Meet Susan Gast
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Susan Gast lives in Snellville with her husband, three children, three cats, two dogs and a tankful of fish.
Born and reared in Columbus, Ga., she moved to the South Gwinnett district (Go Comets!) in 1986, a time when she mistakenly thought the area was already developed to its limit.
She worked for the now defunct Gwinnett Daily News until 1992, when she joined the AJC.
She has served as Gwinnett bureau chief and deputy metro editor and now oversees the suburban opinion pages for the newspaper.
You can email her at sgast@ajc.com.
Permalink | | Categories: Susan Gast
What was best about Snellville Days?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This weekend’s 33rd year of the festival included Diana DeGarmo, live music, vendors, food, rides, a car show and parade with marching bands.
What was your favorite event at Snellville Days this year? What was most fun for you and your family?
Permalink | | Categories: Town Question
