Amber and I visited Fitzgerald, Georgia this past weekend. We were told about 800 wild Burmese chickens have taken up residence there as a result of a DHR program in the 1960s. It’s quite a sight to see chickens walking around on nearly every block in a settled area. The locals hold a festival every year to celebrate them, which we unfortunately just missed this year.
Be on the lookout for a chicken-related episode of Mostly ITP in the next couple of weeks. We’ve already talked to the director of tourism in Fitzgerald, where we go into more detail about the chickens. We plan to talk to The Chicken Whisperer and some folks at the Oakhurst Community Garden soon as well about urban gardening and raising chickens in urban areas.
The folks in Fitzgerald hold a slightly different view of raising chickens in urban areas than I expect the others will, which has helped me think of what I hope are some decent questions to ask on the remaining interviews.
I’m just going to reprint my comment from Decatur Metro about the City of Decatur’s Virtual Decatur proposal here, as I have yet to weigh in on it on this here blog:
On the whole I think Decatur’s government is one of the more competent city governments in the state. I have enjoyed my stay here, and will miss it when I move to East Atlanta in a couple of months.
I am clearly pro-technology, given my profession and other extracurricular activities. I do generally admire Decatur’s willingness to experiment with ideas, technology-related and otherwise, before other governments are willing to.
But I can’t get behind this one. I don’t understand who the audience is. I don’t understand how the benefit could possibly outweigh the cost of development. I don’t understand why people can’t just walk to the damn meetings if they’re interested, given the relatively small area the city occupies. And I don’t understand why this is a priority when it’s been demonstrated that Decatur isn’t immune to the uptick in crime which has affected the rest of metro Atlanta.
It’s another solution looking for a problem. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, there’s literature here (PDF).
The original Waffle House opened in Avondale Estates, Georgia on College Avenue in 1955. It was later sold and converted into a Chinese restaurant, and has since been purchased back and restored as a museum with furnishings very close to what the original restaurant looked like.
It usually isn’t open to the public, but was open today. We were told it will soon be open to the public two days per week.
We learned some other tidbits, like that this sign they have out front isn’t the same design as the original sign:
It’s actually a late 50s or early 60s design. The letters are supposed to look like dripping syrup. The original sign design isn’t up to current DeKalb County code, and they’re working on getting permission to use the original (or a sign with the same design as the original). The original is currently stored in a warehouse.
Also:
Filet mignon was served instead of T-bones originally. The urban legend goes that the switch to T-bones was made after a Waffle House location ran out of filet mignon and bought some T-bones from an A&P, which proved to be very popular.
Other menu ideas — such as the code words for hash brown toppings — permeate up to be corporate standards from flourishes of particular Waffle House locations.
Originally, everything was made fresh on location except for saltine crackers, Coca Cola and Heinz ketchup.
The founder Joe Rogers was (and still is) obsessed with not wasting movements, space or materials. At the original location, when they were finished with a paper cash register roll, they’d put it back in the register the opposite way and print on the back. Now, this translates into constant efficiency studies that attempt to cut down on the movements that Waffle House employees make.
