Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Taste of Mareitta? - Too Much Taste!


Remember - click on the pictures to make them more impressive than they really are.

Now that it is getting warm there will be a lot of activity in Glover Park, which is the Square within the Square in the center of downtown Marietta.

There will be concerts, arts & crafts festivals, and whatever else they can think of to attract the big spenders from out in the county. I think the first item to kick off the warm months fun is “A Taste Of Marietta”, which last year was very crowded. Too crowded.

Also last year, The Taste of Marietta coincided with the Confederate Memorial Day March. The parade was down the Marietta Parkway, aka, Powder Springs Street, to the Confederate Cemetery. The march did not go through the center of town, which are normally what parades in Marietta do. Why? I suppose because they couldn’t get a parade permit because of the crowds at Taste of Marietta.

It almost makes me wish the days of old were back with us. Back in the 40s and 50s on Saturdays when we walked through Glover Park after a matinĂ©e the park had a few drunks on park benches drinking out of brown paper bags – the county was dry then. The fountain in the center first was a fountain surrounded by a fish pond with huge carp-gold fish with white splotches lazily just resting. There was usually a preacher preaching to a handful of drunks on one of the benches. Often you would see a drunk in the bushes or facing a tree excusing himself. The playground was kept simple. It had a slide, a see-saw, swings, and squeaking hand push merry-go-round –, a sandbox. and, oh yeah, a 55 gallon raised and on its side, with sand in it - I never tried that one. Now, they have a big almost life size train engine. The ground is some kind of rubberized material, so if a kid falls they will just bounce and a series of things to climb on.

In between the raggedy shrubs was sand. There were no bushes was well sculptured and hardly any grass. The sidewalk was plain and simple. There are four of them, that all meet at the center where then the fish were, and cross each other and continue to the opposite corner. Now, they have very fancy brick work and well sculptured greenery.

The drunks with the brown paper sacks have been replaced with yuppies with chilled ice buckets and the finest wines.

We just don’t get tired of trying to impress one another do we?

Below is a similar picture as the one above, taken a step or two to the left and on a less crowded day.

2 comments:

Deborah Wilson said...

I think it will be fun - if the cool weather holds off! The Taste of Marietta is on Sunday, April 27th and Georgia's Confederate Memorial Day is Monday, April 28th so they will probably be on the same day again this year - but I haven't heard definately about the Confederate March - if you happen across it, will you post it?

I don't remember too much about the way the square use to be - I know it's pretty now!

I like the concert series too..:)

Eddie said...

Deborah,
If I find out I'll post it.
We may see you at the concert series. Only thing, we may look directly at each other and not know it.