Cassville Tour Guide: Abridged Version

When you think of touring the state of Georgia, for sightseeing, historical or vacation purposes, you always think of the obvious: Savannah and the barrier islands, Atlanta, Ellijay and the mountains, a rafting trip down a river in north or south Georgia, Warm Springs, Andersonville...you know, the classics. Get a t-shirt from Six Flags, take a picture at Stone Mountain, buy a green Masters visor (the alpha and omega of originality), get a caramel apple from a man in overalls at the Apple Festival and break your arm rafting down the Ogeechee River.....and you are golden. You've done Georgia in a nutshell.

Unfortunately, Cassville was not part of that nutshell. Other than a few Civil War monuments and a cemetery, we don't have a ton to offer. In fact, we were not on a state map for years until somebody designated us a "historical area" and boom....we're back on there, with such illustrious places as Pine Log, Kingston, and Acworth. I remember Billy saying, "Aw, hell, now Atlanter is gonna swallow us whole...here we go." Nope. We did get an influx of visitors after we appeared on the map again. Whether it be a weary I-75 traveler, a wayward biker, sightseers or just curiosity...all of them ended up at Cass Grocery at some point. It was always entertaining to watch them approach us, as if any minute we would snap and Ned Beatty one of them behind the store. (+1 for Deliverance reference) That dang movie damaged the reputation of small town Southerners everywhere, especially those of us at Cass Grocery. The gas station in Deliverance was full service, like us. We often had someone with a physical deformity hanging around (usually missing fingers from chainsaws, or in the case of one man, a bull that sawed his fingers off with a tight rope during a rodeo). We had old men with funny hats standing around scowling at them. Matt played a banjo. (just playin'....or am I?) In any event, looking back, maybe they were justified.

When they realized we were not into such things, and we had encountered modern humanity before, they would relax. Most wanted to know the age of the store, how long we owned it, who caught the giant bass over the beer cooler (my Granddad) and whether my Dad would be interested in selling any of his Coke signs (H-E-double hockey sticks, no). Of course, they would get a God-forsaken ice cream during this line of questioning. The women would remark at how "cute" the store was. After laboring over the frozen spawn of Lucifer himself, I would be asked the inevitable question: "so, what else is there to do around here?" Answering them honestly, I would tell them about the cemetery, the old post office and the hill where the old colleges were located before Sherman burned them. Not very riveting if you ask me, maybe a fifteen minute total tour. Cassville has so much more to offer than fifteen minutes of monument reading and silent reverence over 150 year old gravestones.

So, in the interest of promoting the endless possibilities that exist in Cassville, I have devised a driving tour for the novice Cassville visitor. The tour would start and end at the store, be conducted in a caravan of 1986 T-Top Camaros (primer gray, of course and no mufflers) and before it would begin, the following recording would be played:

"Greetings and welcome to Cassville, Georgia: home of laying drag, toothless hags, limp dishrags and illegally purchased deer tags. We are proud to call this home and we ask you not to litter or otherwise sully the pristine condition of our pot-holed roads, trailer parks, and especially, our beloved store. There are a few things you need to remember along the way. Number One: You must not interact with the natives, especially those beyond the Cedar Creek dumpsters. If they choose to interact with you, ask them for a cigarette and then run. Number Two: Please keep your hands in the vehicle at all times. Feet are optional, as most female residents prop their bare right foot on the sideview mirror anyway. Number Three: Do not, under any circumstances, mention the following names: Jeff Gordon, Honda, Toyo, Komatsu, or Barack Obama. You will bring possible harm to the entire group. If you can remember those rules, and deal with massive exhaust inhalation, you will enjoy our tour. Now, take your respective "Dale Earnhardt 1951-2001" t-shirts, your John Deere hat, your Justin Ropers and light up that complimentary Marlboro. Thank You and Get On it!!!"

With that, the drivers (only those of Cassville birth are allowed) will lay a serious drag and take off down Cassville Road into this...

1) On your right....you will see the vacant house with plywood windows. That house was the site of many a Cassville legend. It holds the record for the most times raided by SWAT teams and the only recorded instance that someone was awakened by a wharf rat biting their lower lip. A bastion for meth use, it was responsible for more Fudge Round/Yoohoo purchases than little league baseball. To top it all off, two of its former residents fought off twelve would-be attackers with baseball bats after refusing to allow one of the attackers to date his sister, who was pregnant with another man's child.

2) Another legendary household stands on the right. If you will look past the red Chevy on blocks, you will see on outbuilding where one resident tried to kill his son with a hatchet. The son holds a Cassville record for most cigarettes smoked before the age of ten and is the only person who has had  a .38 Special pointed at his head in the store parking lot. Currently serving a prison sentence for burglary, sadly, he is unavailable for pictures.

3) As we make our way south, you will see the first of many trailer parks. It's been renamed several times over the years, but I like the name bestowed upon it by a sheriff's deputy in the early 90's......"the cess pool of Cassville." This illustrious neighborhood requires a felony conviction, an illegitimate child, a drug problem and unemployment to live here. Upwardly mobile citizens need not apply.

4) The trip back up Highway 41 would be highlighted by a stop by the old middle/high school (where we had a dirt track, not a paved one), a stop by the house of one of my old classmates who punched a teacher in the face on a field trip, ran into the woods and wasn't found for six hours, and the Cedar Creek dumpsters. Everyone needs to get a picture next to the "No Dumpster Diving" sign and witness the trash compactor break down after yet another person threw a car battery in it. This is where it can get a little rough. Some of the biggest characters and morally casual people that I have ever known inhabit this area. You know, the kind of people who still smoke with an iron lung, may have spent time in prison, have nicknames that nobody can explain, and tattooes they don't remember getting. (For those of you who remember....Yoda lived down this road)

5) Moving onward, we stop by the Eternal Light Baptist Holiness Temple of Judah Mount Zion Antioch Ebenezer Bread of Life Messianic Church. (12 members strong, plus 3 water moccasins) An abandoned house that once had $425,000 worth of marijuana growing behind it. (Big day in Cassville, two helicopters landed in a pasture and 30 GBI agents swarmed this place like a TI-83 calculator giveaway at Georgia Tech.) Go down the road where I grew up. (Everyone must pay homage to the old homeplace. Nowhere in the world means more to me.) Take pictures of the porch where the Cassville Skateboard Club began. (2 members: Matt and yours truly) And another picture of the field where my Dad shot a Chow running full speed, after it killed one of my grandmother's ducks. (with an AR-15 no less)

6) No visit to Cassville is complete without a stop by the most notorious of trailer parks, which was behind my grandmother's house. The Sheriff's Office might as well have had a precinct in there. If the other place is a cess pool, then this one is the trash ring out in the South Pacific. This place provided us with such characters as Junior (never knew his last name), who once peed his pants at the counter because he was so hammered. One family that seemed to always have a money jar on the counter with a sick child's name/picture on it, although we had never actually seen this child. Of course, somebody would end up "stealing" the jar after it got full. Another family, who apparently must have at least one member housed in the Georgia Department of Corrections at all times. You also had the man who shot his wife in the head with a .25 pistol, but she survived and they stay married for several more years. Another man, whose entire tricep was torn off when he punched out the window of his wife's boyfriend's car. Of course, the boyfriend caught his arm and drove about half a mile with him hanging out of the window.

7) Coming back toward the store, I'll show you were my good friend got drunk and chainsawed a giant oak tree down across Cassville Road, knocking our power out for hours and resulting in his arrest. Another guy who sells beer out of his house on Sundays, the spot where my brother chased BRAG (Bike Ride Across Georgia) members with a garden hoe (barefoot of course), and the house of the man who did ten years in prison for cutting another man's throat during a card game. The same man also had the words "sweet" and "sour" tattooed over his nipples (he never wore a shirt) and his ex-wife's name "x'ed" out and his girlfriend's name tattooed under it.

See? Much more interesting than Union troop movements, empty home foundations and a quiet graveyard. Of course, airbrushed T-shirts would be sold at the end of the tour. Your options:

1) A Chow barking over a canyon with Dale Earnhardt's car driving through it; or

2) A John Deere Gator laying drag with "I Got On it in Cassville!" in cursive beneath it.

Disclaimer: This was only meant for laughter. I am in no way condemning my neighbors or trying to cast a negative light on them. They were and still are good people (for the most part) and never failed to make me laugh or teach me a life lesson, most importantly, never get a woman's name tattooed on your body and move out of your house if a wharf rat bites you on the face.

Auld Lang Syne Your Name Across My Heart....

(+3 for a Terence Trent D'Arby reference, and welding two classic songs together..that's huge in my book)

I love those songs. One ushers in a New Year, the other ushers in reminscence of tightrolled Jordache jeans, British Knights high tops and Bugle Boy (or maybe even Ocean Pacific). I wish Bugle Boy would make a comeback, along with acid washed jeans. I would "Zack Morris" this town quicker than you can say "B-b-b-b-beat....Go Bayside!" (90's kids....search your heart, you know I'm right.) I am not afraid to jam out to "Wishing Well" while sporting a slap bracelet, and you should not be either.

Anyhow, I spent another New Year in the hustle and bustle of New York City. Once again, the City that Never Sleeps (or eats Paleo) did not let me down. This time, the family came along and I was able to show my folks how it's done in NYC. Laura and I are seasoned veterans of the subways, cabs, avenues and streets, so as a pseudo tour guide, I think I did a pretty good job. The weather was great, except for high wind from the South (for which I blame the Dawgs, they "sucked" in every possible way...more on that later). The food was beyond excellent and the nightlife was livelier than a free Dale Earnardt t-shirt giveaway at Cass Grocery in 1987. (which is consequently the same year "Sign Your Name" and "Wishing Well" debuted...see? A comeback is needed.)

This recap is brought to you by Milk Stout beer, the intersection of Broome Street and Watts Street in Soho, Joe Bonamassa, Kangol hats and the 7 Train. (Hey, John Rocker, I'm still alive...amazing, huh?)

So, we get up at the crack of dawn and head to Hartsfield. My Dad elects to drive, so we are as sure to be on time as Mike Bobo will call a sprint draw on a 3rd and long. That GMC Sierra melted the 85 South sign as we merged off the connector, or as the great Charlie Daniels put it, "Mario Andretti would have sure been proud." We get to the airport and board with no consequence, which is a first for me. We usually fly Delta, which means numerous delays, cancellations, gate changes and unfriendly service. All capped off with the ever-so-maddening "I'm sorry, sir, we are doing all we can." That statement has about as much usefulness as pay phones, the SciFi channel, border grass, the continued toll at Georgia 400 and water towers not used for graffiti. It means nothing.  They have no competition in Atlanta to speak of, so they can treat people like yesterday's trash. We used AirTran this time and I have to say that the staff was nicer, the plane was cleaner and the boarding process was faster. However, once the plane left the jetway, we circled the runway twelve times before we took off. It was like NASCAR, only we turned right every time and nobody asked me if I needed any wedge taken out. (+1 for Days of Thunder reference) I got to see College Park, a dead opossum, and a graffiti covered wall that said "Big Diddy" twelve times each. However, I did finish four levels on Angry Birds before we took off, so I got that going for me, which is nice. (+1 for Caddyshack reference)

When we finally landed at LaGuardia, we cabbed it into Manhattan. I was all ready to say "Take us to Queens at once" but I didn't figure Rahjeesh would get the joke, so I kept my mouth shut. (+1 for Coming to America reference) I always notice the cab driver's name for some reason, I guess to make sure I didn't see him on Unsolved Mysteries or worse, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." Since we had circled the runway in Atlanta so many times, we were going to be late to lunch, so I told Rahjeesh to step on it. That was like telling a Cassville native that Greg "The Hammer" Valentine was signing autographs with Jake "The Snake" Roberts at the Waffle House on Highway 411. We blew through Queens faster than Charlie Weis blows through a Krispy Kreme when the "Hot n Now" sign comes on. After hitting 88 miles per hour, going back to 1955 and back to 2011 again, we arrived at Park Avenue (+1 for Back to the Future reference).

Our first stop was a French restaurant called Artisanal. To merely say I was hungry is like saying the Red Sox pitching staff likes to drink alcohol occasionally. Four bottles of wine, a seafood tower, fondue and a steak with fries later and the owner wants to rename the restaurant after us. They also sold gourmet cheese with mile-long names that nobody can pronounce. With the French language, I've learned to just say the first syllable and then make a noise like you are gagging yourself after drinking too much hunch punch at a party during freshman year and it seems to work. The manager was a peculiarly dressed Frenchman, but that man absolutely would not let your wine glass go empty. Seriously, he saw my glass go down to one sip and he wedge-busted three waiters to get to my table. It was an awesome lunch to say the least, and I was full for at least two hours.

After showing my folks a few sights and walking around Midtown, we got ready for dinner, or as I called it "Experiment #1." The place we picked is called "Sushi Samba." It is a Peruvian-Japanese fusion restaurant that mixes sushi rolls with traditional Peruvian food/spices. Unique does not do justice to this menu, since Japan and Peru go together like Vandy and winning, skinny jeans and Kirstie Alley or Kenny Chesney and anything resembling manhood. I had been there before but I was worried my folks would not like the food. Lucky for me, this experiment went as well as the introduction of Natural Light to the beer cooler at Cass Grocery. They annihilated the jalapeno/sea bass sashimi. They even tried sake. They served us a lobster taco dish that made me get up and slap the couple at the table next to us. Our waiter was from Mobile, Alabama originally and was more than happy to accomodate some fellow Southerners. It was an excellent dinner and if anybody gets a chance to eat Japanese/Peruvian fusion, do it. I would lobby for such a restaurant in Cassville, however, it would probably go over like Jeff Gordon Appreciation Day. Not gonna happen and it would probably just lead to a few fistfights.

We meandered to the Upper West Side the next day. The Beacon Theater was the destination, where so many great artists have darkened the doors, including an annual month long tour by the Allman Brothers. This was the site of one of the most boneheaded moves of my life back in 2009, where I was being cheap and did not buy tickets online and tried to scalp. I waited until the show started and went to the nearest scalper and he said "$750 a piece." Dumbfounded, I said, "you gotta be kidding." The man looked me in the eye and said, "Eric Clapton just walked on stage, he's playing with them all night." I could have had them for $200 a piece on Ticketmaster. A Clapton/ABB collaboration has not happened before or since. Now, excuse me while I slam my forehead through this plate glass window. For a true rock fan, it does not get any better, unless Duane suddenly rose from the dead along with Jimi and Jim Morrison and they played a 47 minute combination of "Riders on the Storm/Hey Joe/Whipping Post." If that happened, the Dawgs could lose every game from now until the end of time and I would still die happy.

One of the best times ever was had on this night. By recommendation, we went to a bar called "Beauty and Essex." Strange name and even stranger facade, however, it was one of the classiest and most fun bars I've ever seen. First and foremost, to enter the bar, you walk into a pawn shop first. My first thought was, "oh damn, the cab driver drove us to Acworth." Nope. It was still New York. Still, I thought any minute now a gaggle of Glade Road citizens would come in and rob the place. You tell the cashier that you are there to eat and drink and she opens this huge door behind the desk. It's two stories of tables, chandeliers, bartenders and one of the best DJ's in NYC. I impressed my mom with my verbatim (almost) rap of "Electric Relaxation" as it blared over the speakers, mixed with "Off the Wall" by Michael Jackson and "Girls and Boys" by Prince. He even played some jams by De La Soul. You would've thought some Cassville people would stick out like a sore thumb but we didn't. Nobody does in New York. That's the beauty of it, nobody is concerned with what you look like, where you are from or who your daddy is. We left the bar, had dinner (Inoteca - an Italian place that is awesome, serves Nutella toast as a dessert....needless to say, I slapped my second couple of the trip there), got a second wind and went back to Beauty and Essex.

The Brooklyn Bridge is usually a fun sightseeing tour but not on New Year's Eve. European tourists are right above hicks on Nextels and the fat lady who walks slow on the moving sidewalk in the airport as being the most annoying people ever. They literally stop in the middle of everything and take group pictures, without regard for anybody or anything around them. I'm not sure of the origin of any of them, but they weren't Spanish, English, Scottish, Irish or Italian. Needless to say, if you want to bump into 3,478 people and listen to incessant blabbering in a foreign language, the Brooklyn Bridge is your place.

It was still a great day though. The Broome Street Bar and Grill is a dive bar that had an internet jukebox to end all internet jukeboxes. My parents and I livened the place up with Marshall Tucker, the Outlaws, Little Feat, Earth, Wind & Fire, Lynyrd Skynyrd and I just had to play "Flirtin With Disaster" by Molly Hatchet. Every time I hear that song, I want to jump into an orange 1986 Camaro T-top, light a Marlboro Red and lay drag until the fire alarm goes off. Unfortunately, Camaros are not plentiful in Manhattan (go figure), I can't smoke and I would probably crash the car into a pole anyway. In any event, we spent the evening at the 21 Club, sitting next to the table where Humphrey Bogart proposed to Lauren Bacall and another where the Rat Pack used to party back in the 40's. All the old New York Yankees, Giants, the Brooklyn Dodgers, you name it, they used to hang at the 21. Very nostalgic and it made for an awesome ending to the trip. I love New York.

Oh yeah......Terence Trent D'Arby...born and raised in Manhattan. Booyah. I'm bushhogging his comeback trail as we speak.

Highlights/Lowlights of the rest of the holiday:

1) The Dawgs absolutely freaking blew it. I have no words. We were like Billy Madison in high school and MSU came by our table, poured soup on our head and said "O'Doyle rules." Other than Brandon Boykin and Alec Ogletree/most of the defense, the team should be forced to walk the Brooklyn Bridge in full pads for 48 straight hours and take every European group picture standing on their head. I saw guys laughing on the sideline at the 7:30 mark in the 3rd quarter. We lost a clean sweep for the SEC, lost to a Big Ten team and looked like hell on national TV....at least Tech lost.

2) Florida pulverized THE Ohio State Urban Meyers. If there is a team I could pick as my "most disliked beside Tech," then Ohio State is it. Nothing against their fans, it's ESPN and their lovefest with them. Since Notre Dame is less relevant than a Walkman now, I guess they needed a Northern school to pick up their slack. One thing of note, Deonte Thompson played his last game as a Gator. I swear Deonte Thompson has been on Florida's team since 1976. Every team has one of those guys....Wes Byrum played at Auburn for 30 years, I'm sure of it. Shaun Chapas was our fullback when Herschel ran over Bill Bates, just ask Casey Clausen, because he was holding a clipboard on Tennessee's sideline that day. (with one arm tied behind his back, of course)

3) I saw the movie War Horse, with all hopes and aspirations that it would be a good one. Wrong. Other than the camera work, this movie was so Disney that I wanted to vomit. It made the Lion King look like "Requiem for a Dream" or "Apocalypse Now." It made the "Blind Side" look like "Boyz in the Hood." Sometimes, a movie can take inspirational scenes to the extreme and cross over to the dreaded "jumping the shark" zone. Well, this War Horse movie jumped the shark, rode the refrigerator (+1 for Indiana Jones and the Kingdon of the Crystal Skull reference) and Ripleyed me (sorry, the Alien franchise died after the second one) into sarcastic laughter and a sprint to the door when the credits rolled. Laura lost movie selection privileges for a month over this one and will be forced to watch Predator, Platoon, Rocky and Rambo to make up for it.