Velociworld

I Miss Atlanta

Back when I lived in Atlanta, which would be circa 1979 to 1982 by the Papist Christian calendar we are all forced to lick upon, one could still, even as a law student, beat a fucking yuppie senseless with a riding crop in a public venue. Heady days, those. But even as you delivered the firm tang of punishment upon a wholly deserving BMW jockey you knew the times were a-changing, and naught for good.

Regardez: three insulated, and completely unrelated, but cosmically fused incidents. Which changed the face of the ATL forever. And, for no logical reason, yuppies blossomed like cowturd mushrooms in the aftermath. Something to do with power vacuums. But I am the dead, reckoning.

Firstly: the cold-blooded murder of PB. I won't use her name, because her family may Google her upon occasion, and running across Velociworld would be cruel beyond mine own imaginings. But she was a legal secretary, with perhaps the most powerful law firm in Atlanta, and as she strolled outside for lunch one day a lunatic, literally just released from the asylum, busted a cap in her head, just to see her die. Random victim on a downtown street. Psychotic fucker. Put the Grate Feare of Gawd in the Entire Populace, it did. Lunatics Walk Amongst Us? With handguns? Now was not the time to go wobbly, however. Fuck gun control. Let us put some bipolar psychos to death, goddamit. And I wholeheartedly concurred.

Secondly: The Foot Stomper. AKA George Mitchell. This screwhead would find women wearing high heels, and viciously stomp their insteps. Now this might seem like an innocuous habit to some, but these women were crippled for life. Fuck! John Waters incorporated the foot stomper in one of his films, and at the time I laughed, but in retrospect I can only wonder I did not vomit every time I watched a Waters flick. Edie Wants An Egg. If that phrase doesn't make the bile rise in your throat you are fortunate, indeed, to have missed the Waters ouvre.

Thirdly, and finally, the Atlanta Child Murderer. Wayne Williams does the time for the 23-odd murders of young black boys, but I'm pretty certain that was a sweep under the old parlor rug. I figure Wayne only did 7 or 8 (and he was only convicted of 3, or 4). Regardless, at the time I was living in a house I'd bought in an all-black neighborhood, being poorer than anemia, and one of the victims, Lubie Jeeter, mowed my grass. Try convincing your black neighbors, who at the time were swilling the pimp juice that it was racist Roscoe Rules white cops in search of tight male ten-year-old black tail that you were not part of the conspiracy, and one can sense my discomfiture.

By the way: I have to be the only blogger on earth who can claim a prior address that includes the words "Memorial Drive" in it. Racist? Not moi.

So where does this take us? I have no idea, other than should I be trapped in a Kafkaesque trial, it would be hard to dispute the fact that after I left town the sidewalk assassinations, foot-stompings, and child murders ceased. And somewhere there is a lawyer filing an appeal on behalf of some fuckwit, averring that Velociman did it! With the fucking spoon. In the lavatory.