A long day on the northside

Yesterday came a few hours earlier than normal as I had a hearing on an eviction in Walker County at 9:30 yesterday morning. For those of you who are geographically-challenged, Walker County is on the south edge of Lookout Mountain, bumping up against the southern boundary of Tennessee. It took almost three hours to drive there in a driving rain. I was a little bit early and was hungry after my early 5:00 o'clock breakfast, so I drove over to a Sonic, which was the only chain fast food store serving breakfast in La Fayette on a Tuesday morning. I had to roll my window down to talk to the electric box (no clown) and the server immediately put me on hold, so I rolled my window back up and left a bit of space to allow me to hear when she came back on and to conveniently allow the rain to continue to fall into the interior of my car.

I reached back to a blanket in the back seat and wiped most of the rain water off my upholstery on the door and waited. Finally, she came back on and I ordered as fast as I could to minimize the amount of rainfall into the car. After I received my package of fat and sugar, I drove back to the courthouse annex and tried to find a parking space which was in the same county with the government buildings. This turned out to be a semi-fruitless task, so I parked in the Baptist Church parking and put my hat on in order to tread through the flowing waters of North Georgia to the annex.

When I got to the Magistrate Court, they directed me to the court room and I took a seat until the bailiff asked to run his metal detector over my best suit. They didn't find anything so they left me to wait for the opening of court. People started milling into the courtroom and everyone else seemed to know each other. Everyone was asking about family members and personal matters to which your ordinary stranger wouldn't be privy. It appeared that the citizens of La Fayette bear more connection to the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, as a lot of talk about Chattanooga was bantered back and forth.

Finally, the judge arrived and he allegedly called the 9:30 calendar and then began to call the 10:00 calendar. I was a little puzzled since he didn't call my case. After he perused the 10:00 calendar, I announced that he hadn't called my case. He looked down the list of cases and then went to page two, where, lo and behold, my case was found. I introduced myself for the court and the judge asked me if I had discussed the case with the Defendant. I informed him that I didn't know who the defendant was and he pointed to someone in the courtroom and told me he was right there.

Great. Obviously, the judge knew the guy already.

So I worked a deal out with the defendant and headed back out into the rain and the gloom of Foreclosure Tuesday in January.

Because I was already in North Georgia, I took the northern counties for foreclosure, and headed down US 27 from La Fayette to Rome. I started driving from county to county, braving the traffic on the north side of Atlanta. If I could have managed country roads for most of the route, I wouldn't have had that many problems. But by the time 4:00 o'clock rolled around, I had driven from Griffin to La Fayette to Rome to Cartersville to Canton to Winder to Cleveland.

As I began reading the foreclosure notice to the street running in front of the courthouse in Cleveland, a man came bursting out of the courthouse and began speaking in tongues, or more accurately, talking to me like an auctioneer. I turned around in wonder and he smiled at me and informed me that he was an attorney and auctioneer. After discussing the relative merits of the house being foreclosed upon, he went back into the courthouse and I half expected him to come back with a bid on the property. But, alas, he didn't return. Some people talk a good game just for the sake of filling up the afternoon.

By the end of the day, the rain had dwindled down to a small intermittent shower and the roads were relatively clear. Oddly, driving home to hearth and home was tougher on me than driving from home to the borders of Tennessee and beyond.

As the Toyota dragged my sorry carcass back to Griffin, I could feel the stress on my legs and buttocks. As soon as I got home, I took off my suit and reclothed myself in my pajamas.

That was a clear statement of intent. The bed felt good last night.