-4382 to 0 miles

Touch down in Atlanta, a taxi rank of wheelchairs and drivers waiting at our gate to shuttle their 300lb cargos back into the land of choice and convenience.
The first person to greet us is an officious looking man wanting to know where we are going. Not wanting to begin our trip dishonestly we decide to answer him as truthfully as possible; from Atlanta we are heading to the Georgia coast, down into Florida and across to its pan handle. Zig zagging between Florida and southern Alabama we will be heading to the Mississippi delta, taking in all of Louisiana and then will try and make a dent of exploration into East Texas, rising up its pan handle into Oklahoma and cruising into Kansas. From Kansas we will turn East and head down through Missouri, dip our toes into Arkansas and then stitch a line between 'Tennessee, North Mississippi and Alabama all the way back into North Georgia and eventually Atlanta.
If at this point he’d followed protocol and asked us the purpose of our visit we would have replied that we were in his land to excavate for our own personal phonographic pharaohs, private pressings onto vinyl by amateur musicians who in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s found themselves inhabiting a unique epoch in which they could press their own records, an era in music that saw everyone from midgets to torsos and parrot orchestras to blind whistlers stand in front of a studio mic. As it was the line of wheelchairs was congesting like an overworked artery behind us and he simply waved us on as if to prove honesty is sometimes the best option.
In our car we join the 7 lanes of traffic that circle Atlanta like tracks on a permanently stuck LP. At the city limits we stop and an International House of Pancakes for coffee before stepping forward into the wild interior of the American South. The woman in front of us with thighs as wide as domestic boiler tanks asks to be seated at a table because she “can’t fit into a booth”.
Infiltrating this culture will obviously require us to eat five regular meals a day. Goodbye feet, hello enlightenment.


'When brother Esmond Patterson started at WAOK Gospel Caravan in the old '81 Theatre in Atlanta, almost everyone thought it would be successful. Whoever heard of gospel singing in a movie house? However brother Patterson is not familiar with failure.'