A post in which we head for Atlanta

We both slept in a bit this morning, but for Mom and me, sleeping in isn’t terribly late. I was thinking she would be in a hurry to get on the road, but we had plenty of time. We decided to go over to the Pickens flea market. On the way there, though, I realized that it was Thursday, not Wednesday. My days were off because I was off Monday for Labor Day. But that was fine. It was about time for things to open anyway, so we stopped at a little chi-chi coffee place in Easley and had a light breakfast, then checked out some thrift stores and the big antique store in out there. I got a nut dish that I recognized from the thrift store, but the prices at that antique store are too rich for my blood, beautiful building though it is. It used to be the downtown hotel in Easley back when folks traveled by rail – its right at the railroad tracks.

After that little adventure, we stopped off to look for fabric for curtains mother wants to make for her living room, but didn't find anything she really liked except one remnant. There wasn't enough of that to make the curtains.

We then headed on back to my place, got everything together, and hit the road for real. We stopped in Commerce, GA for lunch and nosed around in an antique store there. I found the middle bowl for my set of Fire King mixing bowl set I’ve been collecting. I’m sure I paid every penny of book value for it, but since the only size I ever see is the big one, I wanted it. Surprisingly, I saw another Diamond Block jelly today, this one in green, and also with a tooth missing. I didn’t buy it, but I was tempted. It’s odd how you won’t see a pattern for months, and then run across a couple of pieces in a row. It was a nice, relaxing morning, just going about as we wished, and enjoying each other's company.

Fire King 8 3/8" medium sized mixing bowl in Sapphire Blue, circa 1942-1950s

We headed on in to Atlanta and checked in to our hotel, and decided to do a bit more shopping. Russ had told me that Lenox Square (which was my favorite place to shop back in the day) had gone downhill, but I decided to check it out for myself. Unfortunately the GPS had other ideas. It kept taking me to the U-Haul dealership on Peachtree, for some reason known only to its little diodes. Eventually, we just decided to ride on down Peachtree, since I remember it being there, and if it wasn’t there was plenty of other stuff. We found Phipps Plaza. I had never been in there, but Russ said he used to love to shop there when he lived in Atlanta. Apparently he had a lot more money then. The place was posh. Marble dripping from everything, fancy stores, and a $250k Bentley convertible on display in the middle of the (I hesitate to call it) mall. I did see some shorts I would have liked to have, but they didn’t have them in my size. When I asked the Belk’s attendant if they had a Big ‘n Fat Tall section, she looked at me as if I was covered in dog shit. “No.” was her monosyllabic reply. Mom and I figured we were out of our depth, and beat a chastened retreat.

I went down Peachtree, basically looking for some place to turn around, and stumbled across Lenox Square. It looked good, and the clientele didn’t look scary to me. We went on in. But by this time it was about 6:30 or so, and we were both getting hungry again. There wasn’t anything but fast food at the mall, so we decided to head on out, eat some supper, and go back to Lenox when we had more time.

We went on to Ru San’s, one of my very favorite places to get sushi, and my favorite in Atlanta. This was a different one than I had been to before. Unusually, we had a bit of attitude from the hostess. She was a lovely, heavily made up gypsy-Cher looking girl in a beautiful handkerchief hem dress. With this her incongruously heavy legs were clad in clunky Uggh-like boots. I got the impression that she didn't think we were quite hip enough to be there, and we didn't get a great table. I'm afraid that her impression was confirmed when we didn't order drinks, and when I asked for a fork for Mom. The waiter was a bit underwhelmed, I could tell. But my food was spectacular, as usual. Mom is trying to get out of her thing where she eats fried rice everywhere we go, and had some shrimp skewers which she said were very good.

Thoroughly sated and parking validated, we strolled over to a World Market that was across the street, where Mom got a fancy imported candy bar for dessert. We decided to head on back to the hotel, and made it an early night. Tomorrow is the Georgia Aquarium!