"Don’t come to Atlanta trying to be a rapper"

Amtrak blues and MARTA meetings from the city too busy to hate

Meridian, Mississippi
Somehow, on Wednesday morning, I managed to make the news in Mississippi! (Okay it was just their digital Facebook page, but still kind of exciting.) You can watch the short video below. I know I have at least 20 times. ;)

How did this happen?

In my last post I mentioned the lovely woman Sandy, mother to publican Bill Arlinghaus of Brickhaus Brewtique. Sandy connected me via text with her friend Jacque Harms, general manager at WTOK TV. Jacque invited me in to WTOK the next morning at 10am to show me their beautiful studio, just minutes from where I was staying. I headed there, a bit dusty, after my unintentional karaoke Tuesday the night before. First I interviewed Jacque.

Jacque is a storm chaser from Nebraska. She just moved to Mississippi four years ago. She’s a foodie and listed restaurants and food trucks galore in our interview. The trees were the first thing that Jacque noticed when she arrived down South, and she loves the diversity in Mississippi.

”For me to truly experience diversity, it’s in the South,” she told me. “I was woefully lacking in the first 50 some odd years of my life, was a true understanding of what the South was really all about and its role in history and the flavor and the soul that it gives this country.”

The local controversy is the police force, she said. Safety is an important issue everywhere you go, and she’s concerned about the city not being able to fund a police departments the way it should and not having enough officers on staff.

”All people want to feel safe and secure; I think that’s a basic human right,” she told me.

Like Laura from MAX Museum, Jacque had poetic things to say about this part of the world.

”Folks in the South have such a tremendous soul and a big heart and will give you anything you ask for. Their struggle is real; their success is real. There’s such a rich music history because folks just sing and tell stories from their heart like no one else will,” she told me.

She wishes more Americans would leave their towns and travel, maybe the way I do it. She was interested to learn how I’d managed to pull this trip off.

After our interview, Jacque introduced me to all her lovely staff including the entertaining Ross McLeod, who put me on the Facebook Live.

I had an hour after WTOK to eat lunch before catching the train. I went into another local restaurant called Jean’s. Here I met Steve the waiter who was working hard. It was busy, but I managed to grab a quick video of him. Steve told me what it was like to be a queer black man from Texas, living in Mississippi.

In this video, Steve mentions his contribution to fighting house bill 1523.

To my knowledge, this bill, which allows businesses to discriminate against gay couples and more, is currently in place. According to Wikipedia, this bill ”provides protections for persons, religious organizations, and private associations who choose to provide or withhold services discriminatorily in accordance to the three "deeply held religious beliefs or moral convictions" which are specifically outlined in the bill.^[2] These protected beliefs are 1) that marriage is and should be an exclusively heterosexual union, 2) sex should not occur outside of marriage, and 3) that biologically-assigned sex is objective and immutably linked to gender.”

I also learned that as a result of this bill in Mississippi, other state and local government travel bans came about for the state: California, New York, Philadelphia, Portland and many more. These bans bar government employees from nonessential publicly funded travel to Mississippi.

And hey, whadya know, Steve was on WTOK news and in the Meridan Star to fight this back in 2017!

Despite staying up late the night before discussing cops, crime and then learning of Mississippi’s regressive religious freedom laws on my way out, I still felt net positive about this little city. People were just so damn kind, even when discussing injustice and tragedy.

Everything felt authentic, from the “veggie” plates to pride in place. I should put that in a country song. Twenty four hours in Meridian had me on a high. I’m thinking about applying for a few jobs here, but don’t tell my friends in Newcastle.

A blog post for another time is one examining the cultural differences between small towns and bigger cities (universally) and the pros and cons unique to both.

I headed for the train station feeling differently than I did when leaving New Orleans the day before. I was hyped. I had more faith in humanity. I was low-key famous.

The Amtrak ride from Meridian to Atlanta was one of my longer stints. I left at 1:37pm and I was scheduled to arrive in Atlanta at 11pm.

Like the day before, the train ride was chill. I had a seat to myself and spent a lot of the time writing on my laptop. Eventually I struck up a conversation with two people next to me, Agnes and Thomas. The two had never met before this trip but appeared to have been riding side by side for quite some time.

Agnes is an artist from Southern California who was headed to New York. She took the train because she didn’t want to fly. She started in LA and this was her 3rd day on the train. A local controversy in San Diego is elephant seals taking over public beaches including the bathrooms. It’s swimmers rights vs animal rights!

Thomas is a writer like me! He’s from a small town in New Jersey where he and his family were the only African Americans around. Now he lives in San Antonio, Texas. He served in the military for 26 years, travelling the world and the US. Later he became a school teacher. He’s married with three children and five grandchildren.

He spoke to me in great detail about San Antonio and the difference between the Texas people and the military people. San Antonio is a largely Hispanic town, but the wealth is in the hands of white people, so that creates conflict. Thomas is clearly a writer as he told me story after story. I think of all the people I interviewed so far, Thomas’ was the longest coming in right around 30 minutes.

Thomas writes a lot on Facebook, but he doesn’t yet have any books. He was a bit dismissive about getting published or having readers. He said something that stayed with me:

“People read what you have to say after you pass away.”

I am now Facebook friends with Thomas, where he publicly shares his poetry and musings. I’m enjoying his beautiful, living, breathing, words.

The sun was setting as the train made its way into Georgia. My Aunt’s boyfriend Tom had agreed to pick me up from the train station, even though I was going to be in late. I checked the map, and I was just 15 minutes away from my arrival at 11pm. I texted him to tell him. He was already waiting for me at the station.

After such a great experience with Amtrak the day before, and also during my impromptu trip from Charlotte, I was feelin good about my arrival time. My great southern trip was coming to a close and this would be a nice wrap up.

Sadly readers, I was wrong. As the train pulled into Atlanta, less than three miles away from where Tom was waiting, it stopped unexpectedly.

”Fuck,” I thought.

I waited and waited. We were stalled maybe 20 minutes. I texted Tom telling him I didn’t know what was going on, but I was now going to be late. I felt so bad that he was just sitting in his car waiting for me.

I asked one of the Amtrak staff how long is it going to be until we got to Atlanta.

“I don’t know. It depends on if we stop again.”

WHAT? Again? What did she know that I didn’t?

Her hesitance led me to believe that, despite the short distance to our destination, more trouble was ahead.

The train was moving now and I called Tom, hope in my voice, that he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

But then after maybe five minute of movement, we stalled again. Passengers were starting to get mad. The conductor had come over the loud speaker earlier in the evening saying it was now quiet time and there would be no further announcements, but I would have loved an update. I was feeling panicky. It is one thing to know you are going to be late, but it is another when someone is waiting on you in the dark streets of Atlanta when he could be peacefully sleeping. I was inconveniencing someone, and I could not stand it.

Suddenly all the passengers received an email from Amtrak.

Freight interference, what does that even mean? I looked out the window and took deep breaths and tried to practice patience and think about how soon this would all be over. At last, at 12:30 at night, we finally pulled into the Amtrak station.

I read into it. According to Amtrak’s website, freight trains are the largest cause of delays for passengers, and freight railroads are required by law to provide Amtrak with “preference” to run passenger trains ahead of freight trains. However, many freight railroads ignore the law because it is extremely difficult for Amtrak to enforce it. New legislation has been introduced to protect passengers rights, so that’s one positive.

It made me wonder how many more delays like that were on the way from Atlanta to New York.

Atlanta, Georgia
I apologized profusely to Tom as he drove us back to my Aunt’s house. I was glad to be with my loved ones at last.

The next two days were mostly family time with my Aunt Sharon in the John’s Creek area, like I’ve done many, many times before. John’s Creek is a wealthy, northeastern suburb of Atlanta in Fulton County. Sharon and I did our annual shopping, cocktail drinking, yoga going etc.. I got a few interviews in with local people too.

I met Laura at Senor Patron’s Mexican Restaurant. Laura loves the parks and the woods in the area; she grew up in Colombia where it was harder to find accessible nature. She wishes public transportation was better in Atlanta; she doesn’t have a car. She borrows her dad’s car and takes Ubers which can be expensive.

My Aunt encouraged me to interview a local couple named Nick and Corliss who wash her car. They do a great job, and also my Aunt just really likes them. It was fascinating to chat with them, although I couldn’t grab a photo. (Corliss wasn’t photo ready.) They’ve been running their Diamond Glow Carwash for two years now, and they have great reviews.

The two are raising six kids, and for them, home is where the heart is. They love living in John’s Creek. They’ve been through a lot together, including homelessness. She’s 33 and he’s 31. They both believe Atlanta has potential, and they notice more and more people moving here. She’s originally from Mississippi, and Nick is born and raised in Atlanta.

”Don’t come to Atlanta trying to be a rapper. Stand out on your own and I promise you a lot more will happen for you,” Nick told me. “People will respect you more.”

Corliss worries about Atlanta losing its southern hospitality. She worries about children walking around with guns downtown. She and her family are pretty private, they spend time in nature and avoid the city. I appreciated their off-the-cuff honesty with me in the interview below. (Press play to listen.)

Also, as per usual, they did a great job washing my Aunt’s car. (The photo above is NOT my Aunt’s car, I pulled it off their Google business photos.)

For my last night in Atlanta my Aunt, Tom and I went to see the local live music in the park. We sat in lawn chairs with a happy crowd and saw a new age band called Divided by 5. It was a warm, relaxed night out.

The indescribable sadness was coming on, the knowledge that this wild journey was coming to an end, and also I had over 48 hours of exhausting transit ahead of me. Part of me really didn’t want to leave.

After the show one of the band member’s agreed to be interviewed! Julian’s the drummer. He was born and bred in Georgia; he grew up just 45 minutes away from where we were. He joked you don’t meet too many natives around here anymore.

He likes raising his family here, and that you can eat at a different restaurant every day of the year. Like most people I talked to, he said traffic is terrible in Atlanta.

Like Nick, he talked about the opportunity here.

”There’s opportunity, but you have to make it. It’s not going to be handed out,” he told me. “There’s so many avenues, music to arts to teaching school to starting your own business.”

Julian, his wife Jasmine and their adorable kids.

After the show, Tom, Sharon and I went out for dinner, where I interviewed them both about living here and Tom’s career in Atlanta working for the CDC. We also talked about the Cop City controversy, and it was interesting as Tom’s take of the situation sounded very different to me compared to other versions I had heard.

As the US enters presidential election season, things are about to get increasingly political and hostile. I worry about people shunning each other and dividing into silos and echo chambers. This concern is for a different Substack, but it’s heavy on my mind.

(While I am digressing, a reminder that this Weekly Write is a bit of a blueprint and draft for other better stories to come, I hope. Thank you to any reader who makes it this far into the weeds. I know that attention is currency in 2023, and I’m taking my time.)

Sadly, Saturday morning was the day I flew away. Sharon dropped me at the Atlanta Metro, the MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority). My final public transport story is here, where I met my new friend Stan, who has now been enjoying a bottle of wine to get through my weekly ramblings, lol! Thanks again for reading, Stan.

Before I met Stan, I had had many uneventful-yet-successful trips on Atlanta’s simple but good train line.

That Saturday I thought I could go straight to the airport from the station, but as it turns out, the train lines were doing funny things on the weekend. Stan pointed me in the right direction and agreed to be interviewed.

He’s a volunteer for the Riders Advisory Council of Marta. He moved from San Francisco to Atlanta in 1992, and he tries to ride Marta every day and believes it’s his civic duty to ride public transit. You can listen to our entire interview below, complete with train sounds! First we talked about the train and then we talked about life and culture in Atlanta. Towards the end Stan touches Atlanta race relations and being a middle man between the black and white communities. He had lots of interesting things to say, and I’m excited to keep in touch with another public transit advocate. (I’ve been acquiring quite the collection since this trip began.)

Stan and I went our separate ways, and I had one final experience on my last train to the Atlanta airport, but that will be for next week. Next Monday I’ll wrap up the chronological blow-by-blows and try to figure out where the heck I go from here, literally and metaphorically.

I have a lot to be grateful for and a long list of people to thank, including you, dear reader, who has followed along. More to come, always. Stay tuned.