It’s Dangerous and not to be ventured at night. I remember the few years I lived in Memphis(last few years of my dad time in the navy), seeing on the news another homicide. I’d much rather live in San Antonio than Memphis or any big high crime city.

Where you from? I grew up on South Buford Hwy….wouldn’t go there after dark now. Norcross is also pretty sketchy now, BTW.

of the Atlanta City Limits, suburban life was almost idyllic. Seems the rot has spread out into Dekalb and even some of Cobb these days. I don’t know much about South Atlanta as anything more than an area to drive through. Of course, it was a much smaller city and metro area back then, half a million or so in ATL proper and about 3 million in the metro area.

My then-wife’s family did the American Dream off Briarcliff Rd. in a subdivision comprised mostly of corporate managers from the North who came to ATL in the fifties and early sixties. By the ’80s as they retired and moved on or had their lifestyles greatly reduced by the impact of inflation on their retirement and savings, the neighborhood began to decline sharply. I lived for awhile in Doraville, which now appears unfit for human habitation. I also lived awhile in Brookhaven, which was quite nice back then but I don’t know anymore.

My hometown is about 180 miles southeast of ATL, about halfway between Macon and Savannah. Until I-16 went in, it was a long drive on the two-lanes to ATL, so you had to have a good reason to go. Lots of people still took the train until the mid-sixties. The Central of Georgia’s Nancy Hanks passenger train from Savannah to Macon and Atlanta often ran shopping specials and specials for big events in ATL. Into the ’60s a trip to Atlanta was a real treat and the ultimate snob appeal in rural Georgia was shopping for your clothes at Rich’s downtown, a beautiful, ornate old-time full line department store that reflected local tastes and style. By the time I left, the downtown store was practically a ghost store and last I heard it was now owned by the City. By the early ’70s crime was epidemic and for a few years there, ATL was the murder capital of the Country. Nowhere downtown was safe at night except Underground and the stadium and they only because half the off-duty cops in ATL were working security there at any given time. Nowhere south of Auburn Ave. was safe at any time of day of you were white. Between the awful economy and the fact that I was really, really tired of carrying a gun all the time, ATL started to look like a good place to be from, far from, so I left in the summer of ’74.

I was the top recruit to UGA for their orienteering team but got lost and ended up at GT