The Changing Face of Blue Ridge

The City of Blue Ridge has changed since I first started going to north Georgia in 1989. Blue Ridge back then was a tired country town with a feed store, an old time hardware store, and a few Mom and Pop businesses. Now it boasts antique shops, art galleries, upscale restaurants, coffee shops, and several boutiques. A lot of people from Florida and elsewhere have retired into the area or are buying second homes there with the intention of retiring there eventually. This has caused resentment among some of the locals as evidenced by comments on chat boards.

I can remember being the only adult male wearing shorts in the grocery store. All the other men were wearing long pants. Those old boys would look at me and wonder whether I was on the happy side. Now you not only see men in shorts, but I’ve even spotted a few wearing sandals. 

 

You still see a lot of pickup trucks and old cars in the parking lots, but there are also a good number of hybrids and luxury cars. A lot of them have Florida license plates. 

 

I even saw a Chevy Volt recently in a supermarket parking lot in Blue Ridge. That surprised me. I didn’t think that an electric car was practical on the hilly roads of Fannin County. For one thing, there is no room for an Easy Rider gun rack. It was probably owned by some poor schmuck who got lost coming out of Atlanta. He was probably resting it up so it could make it up the next hill.

 

Fannin County used to be a dry county. I remember ordering pizza and a beer at the Pizza Hut and being told that they don’t serve beer. What’s the point in ordering pizza if you can’t have a beer to wash it down? Now Blue Ridge has its own craft beer brewery, and very recently passed a law allowing restaurants to serve hard liquor cocktails. But you still cannot buy hard stuff by the bottle. Alcohol is a controversial subject in a county where small Baptist churches out number stoplights, as witnessed by this 2010 discussion thread on the internet:

Blue Boring: we need bigger businesses in blueridge and the only way were gonna get them is with liqour stores and liquor by the drink

Jason: Go back To Floriduh or Asslanta theres already liquor stores there.

Blue Boring: ok dumba*s where is one at then

Yes: ellijay, where everything else is.

Blue Boring: well that's not blueridge like my original post said

Git R Done: It takes away from shine runners!!! Moon shine is better anyway.

It’s comforting to know that some traditions, like moonshine, still hold sway.

 

I’m not sure how I feel about the changing face of Fannin County. Blue Ridge feels less country now and more, well, yuppie. Some of the places convey the impression they are trying to imitate country rather than actually being country. It’s the difference between a Cracker Barrel restaurant and a real country restaurant, the difference between a good fake and the genuine article.

 

I guess the growth and change is better for Meredith and me. We will have more convenient access to things and be less isolated. On the other hand, I like the idea of moving to a place that is genuinely country, a place with a real feed store and a real old fashioned hardware store. I suppose I have this romantic desire to live in a place like Mayberry or Smallville, but then it dawns on me that Mayberry and Smallville are not real, but rather the figments of writers’ imaginations. Regardless, I hope Blue Ridge and Fannin County don’t change too much.