Weird Georgia

the long version

We don't want to argue with all of our state's motto (wisdom, justice, moderation), only with the moderation part. This is a state where one guy's home is a tree house with an airplane stuck through it for his bedroom. We've got a twenty-foot-tall rabbit sculpture holding an Olympic torch and a tombstone that's a seven-foot-long marble elephant. And there's a flower garden in Toccoa where a forty-pound iceberg somehow landed. This is great stuff, and nothing moderate about any of it. Who better to chronicle the weirdness in Georgia than Jim Miles, a man whose fascination with the bizarre is anything but moderate. So with the three P's for sustenance - pecans, peanuts, and peaches, of course - and a camera and notepad in hand, Jim set out on an extensive tour in search of the odd and the offbeat. He tracked down impossible-to-believe tales, only to discover odd grains of truth that give the stories just enough credibility to make one feel slightly uneasy. Check out Atlanta's own White House; look for the mutant turtle of Berkeley Lake; stroll by the Tomb of the Unknown Shopper; gaze at Georgia's very own Statue of Liberty; remember Elvis: warts, toenail, and all; hunt down the Beast of Pond Road; watch your car roll up Booger Hill; terrify yourself at abandoned Hawkinsville Hospital; have a chat with the Moon-eyed people; hear the cries for help in Ebenezer's Swamp, and take care not to fall into the Deveil's Hopper near Quitman. It's all here. It's all ours. It's all so immoderate.