Heavenly hiatus

The Sautee Store has been there forever. It is busy all day long and one imagines it has been thus for a long time; a thriving store on a crucial road junction of the Nacoochee Valley.

It is picture postcard quaint. There are rocking chairs on the porch in the grand old southern style; people passing time in the heat, chewing the fat,

watching the world go by. Rockers on the porch have always been big in the languid, steamy-hot deep south. There’s no hurry here. Sit awhile, folks.

The rusting tin advertisements on the weather-worn wood-clad walls tell of ancient cures and long-gone products. You can’t buy them inside - but you can see them. The front part of the store has been preserved as a museum, just the way it was in

the old days. There’s an old Wurlitzer there too, if one wants to recreate some atmospheric yesteryear music and tap one’s foot on the time-worn wooden floor.

The rest of the store opens up into a modern world of American candy: barrels of salt water taffy; boiled sweets; caramels; and beyond that a wealth of souvenir goodies, clothing and local foods. Of all things I am not looking for, I find some shoes.

They are colourful and pretty and make me feel as sure-footed as a mountain goat. They become my favourite walking shoes.

Next door is a rustic-style ice cream parlour and cafe. It serves Mayfield ice cream. Mayfield is my granddaughter Rosie’s middle name. I have to try the ice cream in her honour. Well, that’s my story. I choose peach in honour of Georgia, the peach state. Oh me. It does both the name and the state proud.

The Sautee Store is just a stone’s throw from the farm. There are several other little businesses around the junction including the very busy local post office. It is one of those centre-of-the-universe places with intelligent and helpful staff, Melissa and Tony, who have devoted quite a bit of time to helping me post parcels back home during this three-week break from the driving.

Prairie Trails is operated by Fred, a trader in American Indian artefacts. He’s a gruff old grey-bearded chap wearing almost his body weight in Indian turquoise.

I have bought all my stone fetishes here over the years and popped in on this trip to see what he had. What he had was strange information. The Bible says that next year, Israel will bomb Iran, he confides. And, if an owl calls your name, it is curtains for you. Oh, yes, and Trump’s amazing business skills will get the USA out of debt. Hmm.

No politics at the Gourd Place. Just gourds. Artist interpreted gourds. It’s a gorgeous gourdgeous gallery. Gourd heavens, they have gourd-given inspiration, the things they do with

gourds. It is always worth a wander.

Gourds grow and dangle outside the gallery. They bedeck the walls in an array of international uses for the gourd, from musical instrument to mask. Then there are their own inventions, some, like the little gourd fridge people, simply capricious. Others, seriously beautiful and useful. It is hard not to buy their gourd-impression pottery. I ponder shipping back a dinner service...

Just a few miles away is one of the oddest towns in the USA, Helen.

Just say the name to the locals and they go into an elaborate cringe. It is a faux Alpine Village nestled in the lush mountains. It is American kitsch on a grand scale. Of course, I love kitsch so I rather love cornball over-the-top Helen.

The locals find this confusing. Quite a few have been baffled by the word kitsch. Ironic, really, since America is the world’s great exponent of kitsch. And there is nothing kitschier than Helen, on the banks of the Chattahoochee River where tubers go squealing down the shallow rocky

waters in huge colourful inflated rings.

One of my favourite things is to look down upon the passing tubers from the comfort of the International Cafe while drinking iced tea and eating wonderful Reuben sandwiches. This visit the International had gone

right off. The food was lousy and the staff scruffy and, in one case, offputtingly grimy. A Helen cafe to write off, I’d say. We later found Mully’s Nacoochee Grill as the restaurant of the moment. I pop reviews dutifully up on Yelp and Tripadvisor as we go.

Helen gets hysterically crowded in

the summer holiday months. It is a wildly successful tourist trap. It has lots of ticky-tack shops with Alpine themes and people dress up in dirndls and lederhosen to add to the atmosphere. Yes, you can even buy lederhosen and dress up yourself. I found some faux dirndl t-shirts for my grandies, just for fun.

One of Helen’s great attractions is Helen Cellar. It is the local booze shop. We think the name is an hysterical pun, but the locals don’t think it is funny at all. Only my sister-in-law, Ginger, seems to get the joke. When I reported that on our gin and tonic buying expedition, I’d found the the assistant in Helen Cellar particularly rude in not acknowledging my cheerful hello-howzit-going-lovely-day, Ginger told me not to take offence. Of course qualifications at Helen Cellar was, if not to be deaf mute, at least to act like it.

Cleveland is a proper North Georgia town. It has a neat red brick courthouse right in its middle. Literally. It is an island around which the traffic flows with the shops and businesses on the outer side of the square.

This proud little courthouse never misses a mention as one drives through, especially as there tends to be a bit of traffic backup. It was built by Bruce’s great great grandfather, with the help of his slaves.

This is the trip in which I have gained a deeper understanding of the history of slavery in this country. Even this far on, there are still disapproving whispers about certain farmers who treated their slaves poorly. Slave history is a reality and people black and white are interested in exploring it and there is a lot of guilt and compassion. It is still a touchy subject. From the African American standpoint, this is the era of important, big-budget black museums and even what one might call slave tourism otherwise known as the “black journey”. Between the gun-totin’, Trump votin’, Christian conservative redneck locals, the old family gentry, and the genteel African Americans who come up exploring their history in these parts, it makes an intriguing and complex contemporary picture here in this beautiful mountainous deep south.

Cleveland is am old-school sensible country town, er, if you don’t count Babyland General Hospital. More kitsch. It is the home of the Cabbage Patch Doll. They are actually born there. Yes. They have midwives and nurses and birth certificates. We skip Babyland.

We go to Ingles instead. It is the local supermarket. There used to be a Piggly Wiggly which I adored just because of its name. But Ingles is a splendid, vast, handsome regional supermarket with a resident Starbucks, a terrific salad bar and hot food section, and a place to sit and eat while shopping. Hot soups turn out to be stunning. And the old-fashioned Southern hot food - corn bread and collard greens.

Ingles is also a big employer of seniors. In fact seniors are in employment all over the place, and they seem to be thriving. Check out chicks are old hat. Check out grannies are the go, with grandpas packing the shopping and helping one take it to the car. Truly.

And the helping to the car is emphatically a courtesy offered by the store. Big signs indicate that tipping for this assistance is not appropriate. Pure class.

Oh, and let us not forget the supermarket rest room. Hah. Woolies and Coles in Australia will send you out into the street looking for public facilities in Australia. Not in the USA. It is understood that people have natural urges and all supermarkets provide rest rooms. In Ingles, the ladies' room even has fresh red roses to decorate it.

We don’t do all our shopping at the supermarket.

There are marvellous farm stands. This is peach country.

It is also corn country. All of America, it turns out, is corn country. Crops from one end to another. We have watched their progress as we moved east. From tiny to tall, tall, tall. From elephant’s toe to elephant’s eye and, if you ask me, elephant’s head.

Very tall elephant at that, looking at the corn I found growing in the back streets of Helen.

Now is the time, at long last, to be eating corn. Oh, how I have dreamt of this. Hereabouts they have Silver Queen white corn, the most delicate and delicious of them all. We buy up. Also Candy Corn, which is yellow and white mixed.

We not only eat corn on the cob for lovely

lunches on the screened porch but also we have it as grits for breakfast every day. We buy our grits where they are milled.

Nora Mill is as old as the area. It is a water-driven mill on the Chattahoochee River . The corn pours into an ancient stone grinder just as it has done for ever. It is stone-ground on the spot. While you wait, almost.

The place is scented with fresh corn bread which is made right there to be sampled and to make the customer drool.

The farm stands also sell boiled peanuts, plain or spicy. They are very more-ish.

And the most wonderful, proper tomatoes. The way tomatoes should be.

Then there is okra, which is very popular in southern cuisine.

And a fruit which is new to me.

Scuppernongs.

Yes. Scuppernongs.

I did not make this up. It is the real and proper name of a little green grape-like fruit. They have tough outer skins. One nips off the top with the teeth and squeezes the centre into the mouth. Sensational. Not like anything else. Perhaps a little like tart, fresh grape soda flavour.

Muscadines are the purple sibling to Scuppernong. They are popular for sweet local wines. Some people prefer them to scuppernongs as a fresh treat. Not me.

The farm stands are very characterful and each one is famous for something. Fred brags his boiled peanuts, but I have had better. His peanut brittle, however, is peerless. And so are his spicy pork rinds.

Oh, and the family says that, for all my enthusiastic and shameless consumption of grits and spoon bread, corn on the cob, crispy bacon, pork rinds and scuppernongs, I am now a qualified southerner. I am also looking worryingly at the waistline.

No wonder people are chubby in this country.