October 14, 2010 - Showing Her the Hood

It's funny how places look so different through eyes that have lived there, laughed there, cried there, learned there and loved there. I look upon a city called Helen, Georgia, through eyes that hated the place growing up. I lived nearby and worked in the town from age 16 through college. It is a town that relies almost entirely on tourist dollars for survival and the tourists do come. I still don't entirely know why, but again, that's looking at it through my jaded eyes, eyes that saw a lot of pain-in-the-butt people on vacation over the years.

So during our time in Georgia, my husband mentioned he wanted to walk through town. And with Helen being a town that strains to re-create Germany here in the good ole U-S-of-A, it's Oktoberfest there. I must admit I balked at first, but we ended up in town. And I guess it's good to take Georgia through one of the places that helped shape me and make me who I am today.

So off we went.

And to prove it touristy tackiness, in the middle of the fudge shops and blown glass shops and "stuff from Germany" shops and "can you believe we put that on a T-shirt" shops, there's a photo booth smack dab in the middle of downtown.

My husband, for some still unknown reason, gravitates toward photo booths - this one no exception.

It took horrible pictures of the three of us as we tried to cram three people into a seat big enough for one.

But I must admit, there are some beautiful parts of this town that I guess get erased from my younger day memories. They must have been pushed out by the memories of rip-roaring drunk old men yelling at me as I tried to kick them off the go-karts or women in the 40's/50's walking around the tourist trap shops in clothes meant for 20-year-olds. But yes, there is beauty here, and as I'm sure we'll come back here through the years, it's that beauty I'll point out to my daughter.