05.30.06
Roadside Attractions, Corporate Propaganda, and Delicious Bacon

For Memorial Day weekend Matt and I drove down to Alpharetta to visit my sister.

Thursday

First stop: Dillon, SC and South of the Border, which is a Mexican Stereotype-themed roadside attraction, founded in the 1950's to sell fireworks to North Carolinians (The "border" that is referred to is the NC/SC one). When you pull off of the highway, you are greeted by a giant illuminated sombrero on top of a water tower and the 100 foot tall visage of Pedro, the mascot:

Attractions contained within include: Fort Pedro, Pedro's Leather Shop, Pedro's African Imports Shop, Pedros Pleasure Dome and Honeymoon Suites, Pedro's Hot Dog Stand, Pedro's Ice Cream Parlor, Pedro's Concrete Bazaar, Pedroland Amusement Park, Pedro's Sombrero Room Mexican Restaurant, and Pedro's Hats of the World.

Fort Pedro and Pedro's Ice Cream Parlor

Pedro's Concrete Bazaar (lawn ornaments) and Pedroland, plus the pedestrian walkway across the highway.

Pedro's Pleasure Dome and Honeymoon Suites. The Honeymoon Suites are Bates Motel-style cabins, made all the more terrifying by the fact that they have no windows. They look like storage lockers or gas chambers. "Complete Privacy Assured!" promises Pedro in the promotional brochure.

The giant fiberglass daschund outside of Pedro's Hot Dog Stand. It was pretty much a bawdy sight gag just waiting to happen.

Me and one of the many giant fiberglass Pedros.

Friday

I've wanted to go to Mary Mac's Tearoom since I was 8 years old and my father got a copy of Jane and Michael Stern's Square Meals from the Book of the Month Club. On Saturday, I finally did!

We showed up in the early afternoon, having not eaten yet. This where we made the mistake of trying to eat all of the Great Cuisines of the South in one meal.

Fruit punch, pot likker and cracklin' cornbread, and The Bread Basket.

Also included in our lunch: Fried green tomatoes, fried crawdads with roumalade sauce, fried oysters, pork barbeque, brunswick stew, sweet potato soufflé, cornbread dressing, chicken and dumplings, pecan pie, peach cobbler and bread pudding with wine sauce. Mary Mac's lived up to its reputation. And nobody felt like eating anything for the rest of the weekend.

The next stop on Friday was the Coca-Cola Ministry of Corporate Propaganda:

Start your tour with the officially sanctioned documentary film on the history of Coca-Cola. The only thing that would make it more amazing is if 1. it was narrated by Troy McClure and 2. if they played Klezmer music in the background every time the company came under new ownership. The cases of memorabilia were fun, although the 1950's advertising mascot creeped Matt out (every time it turned around it was leering at him from some corner):

I liked the failed advertising campaigns the best, like the "Get Fit For Summer With Diet Coke" Diet, which seemed to consist of a can of Diet Coke and all the baguettes you can carry.

Even better was the "Coke and the African-American Experience" exhibit. My favorite poster was a family of Black Panthers who urged you to "Go Half-Quartin'!" (with a 16 oz. bottle of Coke).

There was a crazy musical montage film on Coca-Cola Experience World-Wide, thus proving that people everywhere enjoy drinking Coke. (My favorite: the German businessman who keeps his girlfriend waiting hours at the Coca-Cola kiosk outside of the train station, then chucks her under the chin and takes her home for an evening of efficient German sex.) (Well, that's what I saw happening.)

And finally, there was this:

Remember back to when you were 5 years old and think about how you would have felt if your parents had told you that somewhere in Atlanta there was a room with 50 different kinds of soda from around the world and you were allowed to drink as much as you want!

The downside of the tasting room was that it was sticky and full of little kids hepped up like maniacs on sugar.

(I also do not recommend the Beverly Bitter Aperitif soda from Italy: it tastes like tonic water going down, but has a horrible bilious aftertaste that sticks around all day, and no matter how much other soda you drink or how many sticks of gum you chew, it still tastes like throw-up in your mouth.)

Saturday

Keep remembering back to when you were 5. Remember getting your first Cabbage Patch Kid? Remember sending away for his official Birth Certificate at Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia? Well, it's a real place and far, far more bizarre than you could ever imagine:

How Cabbage Patch Kids are born: flying bunnies pollinate an enchanted tree with magic crystals, and a giant cabbage gives birth to a soft-sculpture doll. No kidding.

Cleveland is about an hour north of Atlanta, in Georgia's Appalachian mountains. Babyland General Hospital seems to be what is making Cleveland's economy go.

It's housed in a WWII-era hospital, and a nursery full of incubators full of Cabbage Patch Kids is pretty much the most normal thing you'll see there. (Ra-Ette says I look as comfortable holding a baby as I would holding a ticking time bomb.)

Here the doctor is performing a sonogram on the giant cabbage, which we have been informed is "Ten leaves dilated". He calls for the nurse to give the Mother Cabbage a shot of "Imagacillian".

(Picture Molly, Jenny and Matt standing there slack-jawed is disbelief: Are we really watching a Community Theater guy in scrubs give an epidural to a giant cabbage?)

Me, touching one of the creepy bodiless heads that sprout from the base of the giant tree.

From the schoolhouse exhibit, where the kids are having a fit of religious ecstasy over their plastic cafeteria lunches.

Matt and I trying to blend in with the Cabbage Patch Kids. Obviously, I was better at it.

My sister and I bid farewell to Babyland General Hospital.

It is totally worth the hour drive to experience the 5 minutes of Bizarre that is watching a giant cabbage give birth