Category Archives: General

A few shots at the bar

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I mentioned in an earlier post that Leah and I have visited a few bars on Broad Street in downtown Rome lately, which is a new thing for us. One we visited is the Dark Side of the Moon, which is associated with a cafe called Harvest Moon. They have a regular Tuesday night jazz session. Last Tuesday was our third visit to that bar.

This shows a little of Broad Street, plus the bar.

on_the_street

The people at the right of the image in a sidewalk seating area are facing the jazz band.

This is the band.

theband

The saxophonist is good, but then so are the rest. This band is known as Pollard Greens. Here’s a YouTube video of the group. We think they sound better in person; we are certain that they are louder in person.

One of the bar tenders said the same group performs every Tuesday, but not necessarily all of them show up every time.

On our first visit we sat at the end of the bar near the band. This time we were near the opposite end, but the sound was still so loud we couldn’t hear each other talk. This is a shot down the bar towards the band.

downthebar

Can you see the band? Neither could we.

The bar swaps a set of 12 regional beers every week. Leah’s beer is the dark one, Burnt Hickory Big Shanty. (The brewery is in the town of Kennesaw, which at one time was known as Big Shanty. It is probably best known for two things. The first was the Great Locomotive Chase during the Southern War to Preserve Slavery. The second was when the town passed an ordinance requiring every resident to have a firearm.)

My beer is the closer one, but I can’t remember the name. On our first visit, I got a mild beer that suited my taste reasonably well. That experience has not been repeated.

This is a bar, so, of course, they offer a variety of drinks.

thebottles

One thing I have learned, or at least have had reinforced, is that there really aren’t too many beers that I actually like. Maybe there’s someone else who feels kind of like me at XKCD:

Of course there are a few beers that I do like, but I just can’t get into bitter.

 

Peach State

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Once upon a time, long, long ago, my parents took me and my brother to a peach orchard. I don’t remember where it was, only that it was not far from home. I do remember  the heat of an open-sided processing shed on a sunny day, and I remember biting into a peach. I remember the sticky juice that ran down my chin and over my hand, the itchy peach fuzz, and, most of all, the incredibly peachy sweetness of a ripe peach just plucked from the tree.

That was back in the time when Georgia was known as the Peach State. Today Georgia is third in peach production in the US, behind California (far, far behind), and not all that far behind South Carolina. There are no peach orchards in Floyd County, or in any of the neighboring counties. The closest orchard that offers peaches directly to the public is about a two hour drive on the other side of Atlanta. There are more roadside (or interstate-side) stands or stores down in south Georgia, below the fall line, but those are even further away from us.

That leaves grocery stores as our only practical source of peaches, or what passes for peaches today in the average grocery store in the Peach State. We have tried to eat peaches from Walmart, the closest grocery store to us. They look incredibly realistic, but they are as hard as baseballs, and taste about like what I imagine a baseball might taste like. We tried putting these peach-like objects into a paper bag to let them ripen, with results that ranged from unacceptable to somewhat decent. They were nothing at all like the peach from my past, and that’s not just because of rose-tinted memories of my childhood.

I suspect that peaches are harvested way before they ripen so they can be shipped to warehouses and then to grocery stores without bruising or spoiling. So they end up looking good, but with no taste.

Several years ago when a large tract of property at the end of Lavender Trail was being auctioned I met the man who subdivided and sold the lots where we now live. He said that there was once an orchard up here on the mountain. At that time I used to take our last doberman Zeus on long walks through the woods. I found a number of old, overgrown roads, but no sign of an orchard.

A few weeks ago I found this peach tree at one end of Lavender Trail.

peachtree

I doubt that this peach tree has anything to do with the mythical Lavender Mountain peach orchard. It’s probably the accidental offspring of a peach that was eaten nearby. I had been up to this turnaround many, many times but had never noticed this tree. It was around 10 feet tall.

The tree held about two dozen hard, green peaches, a little larger than ping-pong balls. I went home planning to check back on this tree and maybe, just maybe, get a decent, if small, peach. I didn’t hold out much hope, though. This turnaround, like the one at the other end of Lavender Trail, is frequented by tourists and other ne’er-do-wells (one of which might be the source of the tree itself).

I went back a couple of weeks later. The peaches were closer to ripe, but only about half of them remained. When I went back a week or so after that, they were all gone.

We hear some bar bands

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We have been eating out a lot since we moved into the new house, mainly because we don’t have a kitchen. We usually don’t get out much, and when we do, it’s almost always just a quick meal and a visit to Wal-Mart. But last week we decided to try a few places on Broad Street in downtown Rome that have live bands.

Most of the stores Leah and I grew up with on Broad Street have gone out of business or moved away. Over the last few years, downtown has found a new identity, which consists largely of trendy restaurants. Broad Street looks as busy as it ever did, at least on Friday and Saturday nights. Of course almost everyone there is a lot younger than us, which, I suppose, is a good thing for Rome.

Friday night we went to a grill run by one of Leah’s old high school classmates for a late beer and some local music.

schroeders_arf

The band members are a little blurred; it was darker than it looks here. It was a benefit for the Animal Rescue Foundation. The beer was OK, and so was the band. I don’t expect to see them on TV, but they were good for a local group.

Sunday night is blues night at another grill.

brewhouse

We ate here. This building was a Five & Dime many years ago (so long ago that the restaurant only nostalgically mentions the drugstore that replaced it.) We were both disappointed with the food, but we probably should have ordered bar food instead of an actual restaurant meal. This band sounded good, but they could have done without the amps and speakers. It would have been a good venue for acoustic instruments. We requested Soul Man, but they didn’t know that one.

Our kitchen cabinets won’t be installed until Thursday, so we may try another restaurant in downtown. They have a regular jazz performance on Tuesdays, and Leah likes jazz. We’ll probably have bar food there.

Emily’s bear

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We got some pictures of some of Emily’s most recent artwork.

leland bear

According to our information, she is currently calling the bear Leland.

The front is nice. I like the back, too.

leland back

Pretty cool, right?

I’m sure this bear is a nice bear, but bears do have teeth.

leland teeth

There is a bit of a color cast to this image that I couldn’t get rid of.

Just remember, he’s keeping an eye on you.

leland eye

I’m looking forward to a visit to the artist’s studio.

Handcycles to the gap

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The top of Fouche Gap was the finish line for a handcycle race Friday.

bike finish line

They started a few miles away down in Texas Valley and climbed up what I call the back of the mountain. It’s as steep as the front.

These guys impressed me.

handcyclists

What impressed me is not just that they have the upper body strength to crank their way up the mountain, but that they have the endurance in their arm muscles to do it. Legs are adapted to long, heavy work, but arms usually aren’t. These guys’ arms certainly are.

The race was one stage of the Clocktower Classic, which, according to the Website, is the only timed stage race in the world specifically for handcycles. They had done a 26-mile race the day before. That was two laps around Rocky Mountain, which divides Little Texas Valley and Big Texas Valley. I have ridden one lap from our house, down the mountain, around the loop and back up. They are riding another stage Sunday, the day this post is scheduled to post. I’m also impressed that they can do this kind of racing for multiple days.