Chapter 6 - ATLANTA: Pantaloon Corners
Cleavages Anew
I arrived in Atlanta during a thunderstorm that threatened to flatten everything in sight, and would have exited the airport terminal sooner, if not for wandering unbidden into a demonstration for a device that spiritually scans you and pronounces you “saved” or “not saved” after you exit, as if I were a computer file checked for emotional viruses. After being offered electronic salvation, the church promoting this device asked me to sign a petition renaming Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, after Jesus Christ or Georgia’s senior senator, Brunswick Syllabub. I declined, citing my lack of Georgia residency.
The air was crackling with humidity and edginess as I lit out for this off-the-digitized-map quarter of the South’s erstwhile capital, like a younger, gayer, male Miss Daisy, if she was being driven to Bonnaroo, and if it were taking place in an organic, sustainable, rooftop pumpkin patch. Once a post-reconstruction center of prostitution, known as Cleavage Corners (and some other “c” words), Pantaloon Corners later became an industrial center, churning out furniture, and a locally-made cola, the latter later swallowed up by you-know-what-company. After that, industrial decline, riots, and a general disinterest in the area, sent the Corners tumbling downhill from a neighborhood of 9,000-plus to 34, give or take. Enter rooftop gardens, graveled restaurant floors, artisanal soda pop, and the Slow Furniture Movement, to the rescue. Exiting at the Hogshead MARTA Station, I excitedly grabbed a bus up Old Maudlinville Road with a sense of anticipation.
The big news hereabouts is that a national reconciliation center for the Civil War at the recently restored Chattersworthy Complex (Chattersworthy Mansion &Plantation, Historic Site, Charter School, Community Center, Artisanal Café, Folk Workshop, Digital Media Center and Battlefield, 7 New Chattersworthy Road) had finally opened. It had also abruptly closed, I found out. Several lawsuits targeting high-fat, high carbohydrate foods in the cafeteria, a poorly conceived battle re-enactment, a mural featuring the stars and bars, some questions of scholarship regarding research on the house, along with a ban on cursing, had tied up the place in post-bellum knots.
Momentarily disappointed, I went to check in at Victorian-era Clawfoot Cottage, (342 Swale St.)a delightful bed and breakfast that has been restored to within an inch of its 167-year-old life by two friends, Alma Godswill, and Glynn Laurens, from nearby Mountebank County. Wanting to create something new in the big city, they had rubbed the floors and furniture with lemon oil, three kinds of organic shellac and artisanal furniture wax made at the only factory of its kind in north Georgia. Breakfast was hand-churned butter, and homemade bread, along with Dancin’ John—a dish for which I never ascertained the exact ingredients, but sounded authentically Southern. Soap is made with a bicycle contraption that Alma was riding on while checking me in.
“It’s an incredible work-out, and we sell the rest at Polly Wanna Cracker” (567 Garter Street, check Twitter), the shabby chic store run by Polly Screven, the Pantaloon Corners interior designer, explained Alma.
The Corners has a long, complicated—and as indicated—somewhat naughty history. After the big decline, many of the buildings fell into “ruination, debasement and decrepitude” as a handy and evocative online slide-show put together by the Chattersworthy Complex shows. The entire neighborhood was once known as Six-and-A-Half-Corners—which really was a mouthful--the corners are formed by the intersection of New Chattersworthy Road, Persnickety Avenue, Old Maudlinville Road, Garter Street, Calvary Highway and Little Big Rushing Creek Boulevard. The fraction results from how New Chattersworthy Road ends just up from the main intersection—don’t let it bug you. I didn’t and enjoyed my trip.
Hardscrabble , (5 Persnickety Place, see website to contact), is causing quite a stir. The owner’s original proposal for an authentic dirt floor was nixed by the city authorities, so they’ve made do with wood floors strewn with gravel and some sand. The menu of meat on the bone, seasonal vegetables from their garden out back, and down near Macon, along with sugary homemade desserts guaranteed to send you to the dentist, is a winning one. A washboard band plays on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
The new mortar holding together the pecans of gentrification in this urban pie are the hard-working men and women, now restoring the so-called horse cottages of Pantaloon Corners, an architectural style of the 1870s, that described a multi-family dwelling with a very high and long hallway that ran the length of the house—tall and straight enough for a horse and rider to navigate it (though whether one would remains a source of some debate among historians), providing interior hallways for the two or three apartments within.(A Course of Horse, Cottage Tours, 800-555-1872, tours begin at 316 Old Maudlinville Road).
The Corners has, in part, been revived, as expected, by Atlanta’s large gay community. They've been busy pruning, trimming, waxing, scrubbing—and sometimes even taking a break from personal grooming, to open restaurants and restore homes. Pantaloon Corners is also attracting the attention of gay scholars, too, as research has unearthed evidence of same sex houses of prostitution during both the Civil War, and afterwards. Emory Professor of Proudly Queer Studies, Skipper Gallant, offers LGBT-themed tours of Pantaloon Corners, noting that “it was called The Corners back when, but it was a different “C” word than Cleavage, used to describe it. It was a rough and tumble time in the sex-worker business here.” I emailed for a tour reservation, and downloaded Gallant’s latest tome, Strange Bedfellows: A Confederacy of Queers.
Today, much like its once-forgotten environs and some of the more aged hookers that once graced its byways, both The Corners and Chattersworthy House are being sanded, re-painted, re-wired, flatteringly lighted, dusted, cleaned and otherwise gentrified to a high-gloss required of an historic area and building that serves as the centerpiece for neighborhood restoration—and reconciliation efforts.
The South is famous for its sweet desserts—and sweet soda pop. Once upon a time the Corners had its own soda concentrate factory. Bought off years ago by the Pause That Refreshes, the brand has been bought back, and is now being revived by a hipper, younger scion of the original owners, who has a small trust fund, a big imagination, and a medium sized ear-labret-thingie. He has re-opened Hatton-DipsyCola Company (654 Hatton Ave.), creating artisanal soda, including a peppery cola that’s got tout-Atlanta in a sugar-fueled tizzy. I made my way over to the plant to meet Rumsford Hatton VI, the 31-year-old skateboard-riding CEO, with an iPhone on his hip, and custom metal and glass straws in his breast-pocket for tasting the product.
Marvell Phipps, head of PR, showed me around the waiting area, in the center of which was a huge oak round-table, topped by a giant sterling silver, engraved punchbowl. Hatton himself appeared in the doorway, and did a loop around the room on his board.
“That’s quite a dish,” I observed.
“We all crush on Rummy; he’s a hottie,” replied Marvell.
“No, I was talking about the punchbowl,” I responded. Well, I wasn’t talking about the punchbowl, actually. But, travel writers need to maintain some level of decorum even at the risk of buzz-kill. And, with that Hatton, skidded to a stop, and launched into a story about the cherished chalice opposite.
“My granddad used to spike that thing at parties. It was given to us by the local authorities, when we’d sold our 10 millionth bottle, back in 1902. Now we just keep it around for ceremonial purposes, but we don’t stand on ceremony much anymore, so there it sits, and here we are, and Dipsy-Cola is back from the dead,” pronounced Hatton, as he and Marvell high-fived and elbow-bumped, for good measure.
Hatton finished the tour by explaining that workers harvesting the sugar-cane get free health care, a gym membership and a subscription to cloud-based home-management software, while the sugar itself comes from a strain once used to make rum for Britain's Napoleonic Wars-era soldiers.
"If we're going to rot your teeth, we want to do it with some concern for the workers, and for history," he commente
d.
The railroad marshaling yard next to the plant is being turned into an outdoor railroad museum, and the signal tower is being converted into a media center featuring the industrial history of the neighborhood, now rushed into opening after the Chattersworthy Complex shut down. I headed for this railroad-centric take on The Corners.
Let me be the first to unroll the yoga mat for you,” offered Maddy Roswell, as I entered; she wasn’t joking—there’s no furniture yet, so you have to watch their movie sitting on mats on the floor.
“I’m still working on the introduction – this is not an official historic site yet, but we’ve been granted provisional status by the state of Georgia. “I’d like to show you a short film,” she announced.
Roswell used a remote to start the show, and the room darkened. Images flickered on the opposite wall, sounds of Atlanta filled the room, and I prepared to take a trip down memory lane. Even the smells of the room heightened, with whiffs of pine smoke, burning wood, candlewax, molasses, and, of course, that particular, not unpleasant aroma of wet autumnal earth, in and around old clapboard houses, no longer assertively landscaped, surrounded by iron-work fences and stone retaining walls.
There was sepia-toned footage of trams, of people in big hats and long skirts, walking quickly and jerkily along sidewalks. Soon, a railroad train came into view, puffing into a station that looked like The Corners. Then, a couple walking past what looked like the building we were in. A speech was made, a funeral procession, logs floating down a river, migrant workers; Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech, an early baseball game. Negro League ball-players waving to the camera, a Sunday picnic, a bible-thumping preacher and people eating hot-dogs at a summer fair.” The lights came up. I had glimpsed a bit of The Corners’ charming, troubled, workaday past.
But, I was wrong: “Those were actually some images of Houston and Memphis from around 1900; we’re still trying to convince one of the local residents to part with her copy of the only film of The Corners from before World War II, so we have to show that in the meantime. She wants a little bit of money for it – you’re welcome to put some change into the office kitty, if you want. And, I’ll write you a receipt. ”
Moving on, I headed for the epicenter of the Slow Furniture Movement, Six And Half Corners Workshops and Live/Work Environment, just up the tracks apace (75 Hatton St.). The last furniture maker, Chatta-Hoochee Furniture Manufacturing, left decades ago. But Jory Tarleton has revived the company as part of the slow furniture movement—hand-crafted wares are “done when they’re done,” as Tarleton told me. In some ways, this philosophy synchs with the Chatta-Hoochee tradition, which always valued lack of speed over delivery. One order, put in on Aug. 4, 1961, was completed on November 11, 1977 – the longest furniture order ever.
A fine example—if the house is open—is in Chattersworthy House itself. The original owner, Croesus Syllabub, had a custom headboard made by the Chatta-Hoochee’s predecessor company; it was one of the largest headboards ever made for one of the highest beds every constructed. In the summer months the bed was elevated by a special crank, so that it could catch more of the breezes. A winding staircase on wheels and a piano crane were then positioned so that Croesus and his wife could get in and out of bed.
Maudlinville, in nearby Mountebank County, is often mentioned by people in Atlanta as a “you must go,” sort of day-trip, but when you get to Maudlinville, there isn’t a blessed thing to do, and so you turn around, and head back to Atlanta. That’s a mistake, because the county is known for its rich, creamy, ice-cream, from local cows munching on the local turf. The Regnant Theatre (27 Margaret Mitchell Way) has been restored as a theater and ice-cream parlor. It’s a place for “The Music Man,” so if you’re looking for “Rent,” maybe look somewhere else.
Rumpus Creek is another fun day-trip, if you like tubing and drinking beer. It is north of Millageville, in suburban Valorem County, which for my money, isn’t much of a bargain: the town is an antiques center for people who mostly buy back the stuff some other family member gave away or sold the previous year.
Gay Pantaloon Corners is a hoot, especially if you’re gay. If you’re not gay, then maybe it’s not so much fun—but still worth a peek, eh? Club Ruckus (34 Old Maudlinville Rd.) is an old-school men’s bar. Lighted-up like a ninety-year old cosmetic-surgery patient, it shimmers under twenty coats of paint, and offers cage-dancers—in fact, dancers on everything but the floor itself. Swell (876 Garter St.) is a men’s and women’s video bar that cleans up the experience, a little; it used be to be called Tube, and before that it was also Swell. Its Sunday tea-dance is legendary. The Vault (561 New Chattersworthy Rd.) is in a former bank that never had a vault, as it’s a fomer credit union; it used to be a sex-club, and was then closed down and is now just a regular pick-up joint. The famed female impersonator, Bananas Foster, performed at the Old Hogheads Inn, 44 Aphid Ave., which is now boarded up; word has it, though, that entrepreneurs have bought it, and are turning it into a gay-friendly bed and breakfast.
“That really salts my chicken,” remarked Glynn, of Clawfoot Cottage. “I mean, we’re gay-friendly, and one of us is a lesbian—but because we’re not a couple, we don’t get the press on this.”
Speaking of which, the Chicken Valdosta at Plantain (53 Hatton St., no phone) is reminiscent of a “Great Depression Easter pot-luck, when sawdust, backyard dandelion greens, a pigeon or two, and pan-scrappings, created something marvelous and real”, according to the Pantaloonist blog. Try it and see.
“It was time to visit one of The Corners’ vegan restaurants , right next to Colonel Sourby Chancel Park, locally known as “Bless You Park,” after the Sneezing Epidemic of 1875. And Three (561 Persnickety Ave.) serves delicious vegan cuisine; the name hails from that Southern mealtime staple of ‘meat and three,’ for the meat entrée and three side dishes—in this case, the restaurant had no choice but to drop the meat part, and keep the three sides. There are many dishes, from peanut casserole to ‘papple,’ which was described to me as the vegan version of scrapple, minus the pigs ears—or pig’s anything.
“We just take the peels, cuttings, cores, you name it, and stew it up and serve it as a kind of meal soup—it’s surprisingly good, but the taste varies, depending upon what we’ve thrown in. Or not, but you know, lots of people around the world are eating dirt, so this is a step up, when you think about it.”
I tried not to think about it, but I did munch my way through a lentil loaf, and peach-soy smoothie pretty quickly.
Afterwards, I headed into the park. (Colonel Sourby Chancel Park, Persnickety Ave, and Azalea Rd.). The trouble began when Anna Conaway, a cook in the household of a lumber merchant, put some pies out to cool on a window ledge at the house where she worked on nearby Décolletage Place. Coming back a few minutes later, she sniffed the pies to see if they were still cool, and immediately launched into a massive sneezing fit. Her employer came home and she pointed at the pies, he began sneezing too. The household repaired to nearby Col. Chancel Park, trying to shake the source of the sneezing. Soon everyone in the park, and indeed, in Pantaloon Corners, was evacuating their nasal passages with gusto. The police were called, as were the workers from a nearby sanitarium, but the sneezing had spread to a great number of people, and it lasted the better part of five days.
The Alarming News from Six and a Half Corners!
Nasal Seizures Nightmare Reported! Sternutation Ensues
Many Taken Ill
Six-and-One-Half Corners, Atlanta—May 7, 1875. Our correspondent reports: Utterly without provocation or reason, authorities near Six and a Half Corners are attempting to salve the late results of a sternutative outbreak that has left three under the care of medical staff at a military watch-post, and fourteen persons insensible from lack of breath and air to the lungs and brain.
The state legislator representing the area, Saxonby Chancel, declared that the cause of the mass bodily writhings and head flexations is Satan. The only hope of the populace, he told th
is writer, is that the departure of Satan and his seizures will be officiated over, when federal troops terminate their occupation in February next "
I tried one more time to see if I could gain entrance to the Chattersworthy Complex, while court cases tied up the place, and I met one of the board members at the gates.
Board member Lawson Evergood, a top software entrepreneur, had decided to restore the house where he was born in Pantaloon Corners on Hat Pin Lane. He had been recently been celebrated by a regional business magazine as one of "40 Over 30 With 15 And 5," the magazine’s clever, elaborate, shorthand for one of 40 black entrepreneurs, over the age of 30, changing the face of Atlanta, with 15 or more employees and more than $5 million in sales. The company was headquartered north of the Perimeter, and Evergood lives with his family in the suburb of Tucker. But, one of the things he did with his first million was to buy the house where he had been raised, hoping that one day he could help turn Pantaloon Corners around.
“This was a vibrant neighborhood in its day, and by vibrant, I don’t mean shooting up heroin or jacking cars. I mean, there were street musicians and all kinds of little stores. That all went away after the riots in the 1960s,” said Evergood, as we walked around the Chatterswothy perimeter.
“I thought, ‘hey, let’s change things up a bit—and choose re-enactors by lottery, that way everyone gets a chance to be on different sides, Union and Confederate. I introduced tail-gating on the Union side. But then people started changing sides and ordering Indian take-out, and it all went to hell. Anyways, for those reasons and a whole bunch of others, we’re in a hot water right now. Nobody really took to my ideas.
The plantation is also the site of the Information Creates Knowledge Charter Academy, but the students were away on a field trip visiting President Obama’s birthplace in Hawaii, so I was unable to tour the facilities.
“We’re just hitting re-set, and hoping for the best,” offered Evergood.
Indeed, that sentiment could have applied to The Corners itself, for like the leavings of a great Southern Feast left out on the table too long, the dishes had been put down on the floor for the dogs, the serving containers had been been cleared, the table wiped down and polished, and the chairs put back in their rightful places. And, so it was with The Corners. War, famine, oppression, pestilence, seizures, tragedies, romances, riots, lust, inventiveness, economic triumph and financial ruin, the table had been cleared, wiped down and new place-settings of tolerance, alternative music, plucky small businesses, creativity and joie de vivre—the menu of a typical rising urban neighborhood—had now been set. And I was experiencing this new seating.
Meanwhile, at the edge of the neighborhood, the Little Mega Church at Little Big Rushing Creek Mall—now no longer a mall after business went up the creek in the Great Recession—was preparing to share space there with a mosque, which had leased space once occupied by another anchor department store. Things were changing in The Corners, for sure. I put in an order for a coffee table at the Workshops and was given a delivery date in the next decade. While munching on something called “Sweet Cracklins” (basically a hunk of potato bread dipped in turbinado sugar from a specific township in Barbados and then fried in peanut oil) at Hardscrabble, I struck up a conversation—because, you know, these things happen to you all the time, in the middle of the day, when you’re a travel writer—with a drag queen, who was planning on a revival of the legendary Bananas Foster revue, “Cat Got Your Tongue?” at Vault.
Lacretia Luckie, the famed Savannah-based performer, talked about her plans, as well as a city permit she had filed to run a heritage chicken-breeding operation in Bless You Park, to supply artisanal chicken-fingers to gay club events. The revival, she averred, was, “going to be very fine, and seriously competitive. I’m talking a whole new meaning to the term ‘Southern Drag Racing’”.
“You would have to go to a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City, maybe, to find a more spectacular and historically-correct drag show, I kid you not, chicken.”
With another thunderstorm moving through, I headed back to Clawfoot, and grabbed a cold Dipsy-Cola out of their guest fridge, took a sip, and reconciled myself to returning to the area someday, hopefully to see what the next chapter of The Corners would hold for the average, and not so average, visitor.
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