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Authors: Anne Rivers Siddons
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man and his slave during the siege of the city to the south, “out yonder so the damn Yankees won’t get it.”
It was an auspicious omen. Buckhead has always been known, proudly, as the wealthiest unincorporated suburb in America, whether or not the appellation was true. It remained unincorporated only because a stubborn little town also named Buckhead, in Morgan County, refused to surrender its charter and let Buckhead have the name officially, else it would have, early on, been a town proper. It has always considered itself apart both in spirit and in fact from the pushy giant directly to the south, and fought annexation tooth and nail. I remember that when I was ten, the community trounced one attempt and staged a mock funeral, featuring three caskets labeled Mayor Hartsfield, the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution , and bore them proudly down the middle of Peachtree Road to the strains of Finland-ia played falteringly by the North Fulton High marching band. It wasn’t until 1950 that the city got us, and it remains to many Buckheaders still alive a catastrophe of only slightly less magnitude than the one wrought by General Sherman.
Well. I run out of the beneficence of central Buckhead, then, and back into the dark, pounding south on Peachtree Road. In that earlier country, a dying straggle of stores and businesses stood on either side, and directly beyond them on my left, the subdivision of
50 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
Garden Hills: firmly middle-class, agreeable and substantial, but another world entirely from the kingdom on the other side of Peachtree Road. It was not until I began high school at North Fulton High, off to my left down Delmont, that I came to know anybody who lived in Garden Hills, and though we children were not, that I remember, snobs in particular—at least not about where people lived—it was as if, in my early childhood, Peachtree Road was as impenetrable and decisive a dividing line as Hadrian’s Wall. Later on, I got to know and like many of my schoolmates who lived Over the Line, and one, A. J. Kemp, became, after Charlie Gentry, perhaps my best friend. But in that first country of childhood, none of us crossed—or wished to—the Rubicon.
On down Peachtree Road I run, past North Fulton High and Garden Hills Elementary, both out of sight on my left; past, on my right, Saint Philip’s Church, where we went in perfunctory piety each Sunday when it was still a small parish church; past Second Ponce de Leon (Baptist and just a bit below the salt) and the Cathedral of Christ the King (Catholic and resoundingly so); past the last commercial lights and down into the dark of, now, only sleeping houses. Big houses in a line on my right, like the ones on the cloistered streets behind them; houses that could and did shelter princelings and sit out, for an incredible number of years, the siege of the city to the south. Mostly mellow, rosy brick, these few Peachtree Road houses were, two-and three-storied and black-or green-trimmed, some with columns and some with Adam fanlights and fine Georgian facades. Safe, sleeping there in the dark. Safe and dignified and beautiful.
And the last before you reached Muscogee Avenue and the safest and most dignified and, to me, always the most beautiful…my own: 2500 Peachtree Road.
Looking back, it might seem that, in light of my PEACHTREE ROAD / 51
hungry and strictured childhood in that house, my passion for it borders on self-destructiveness. The sane thing to do, for anyone with the slightest bent for survival, would have been to draw in his head and deny in spirit the walls that starved and imprisoned him until the earliest possible opportunity for escape presented itself, and then to leave them behind with no regrets and a singing heart. But those stout, sheltering brick walls were never oppressive to me in themselves; indeed, they were sanctuary and solace whenever my eye or mind fell upon them. And though I did leave them at an early
It was an auspicious omen. Buckhead has always been known, proudly, as the wealthiest unincorporated suburb in America, whether or not the appellation was true. It remained unincorporated only because a stubborn little town also named Buckhead, in Morgan County, refused to surrender its charter and let Buckhead have the name officially, else it would have, early on, been a town proper. It has always considered itself apart both in spirit and in fact from the pushy giant directly to the south, and fought annexation tooth and nail. I remember that when I was ten, the community trounced one attempt and staged a mock funeral, featuring three caskets labeled Mayor Hartsfield, the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution , and bore them proudly down the middle of Peachtree Road to the strains of Finland-ia played falteringly by the North Fulton High marching band. It wasn’t until 1950 that the city got us, and it remains to many Buckheaders still alive a catastrophe of only slightly less magnitude than the one wrought by General Sherman.
Well. I run out of the beneficence of central Buckhead, then, and back into the dark, pounding south on Peachtree Road. In that earlier country, a dying straggle of stores and businesses stood on either side, and directly beyond them on my left, the subdivision of
50 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
Garden Hills: firmly middle-class, agreeable and substantial, but another world entirely from the kingdom on the other side of Peachtree Road. It was not until I began high school at North Fulton High, off to my left down Delmont, that I came to know anybody who lived in Garden Hills, and though we children were not, that I remember, snobs in particular—at least not about where people lived—it was as if, in my early childhood, Peachtree Road was as impenetrable and decisive a dividing line as Hadrian’s Wall. Later on, I got to know and like many of my schoolmates who lived Over the Line, and one, A. J. Kemp, became, after Charlie Gentry, perhaps my best friend. But in that first country of childhood, none of us crossed—or wished to—the Rubicon.
On down Peachtree Road I run, past North Fulton High and Garden Hills Elementary, both out of sight on my left; past, on my right, Saint Philip’s Church, where we went in perfunctory piety each Sunday when it was still a small parish church; past Second Ponce de Leon (Baptist and just a bit below the salt) and the Cathedral of Christ the King (Catholic and resoundingly so); past the last commercial lights and down into the dark of, now, only sleeping houses. Big houses in a line on my right, like the ones on the cloistered streets behind them; houses that could and did shelter princelings and sit out, for an incredible number of years, the siege of the city to the south. Mostly mellow, rosy brick, these few Peachtree Road houses were, two-and three-storied and black-or green-trimmed, some with columns and some with Adam fanlights and fine Georgian facades. Safe, sleeping there in the dark. Safe and dignified and beautiful.
And the last before you reached Muscogee Avenue and the safest and most dignified and, to me, always the most beautiful…my own: 2500 Peachtree Road.
Looking back, it might seem that, in light of my PEACHTREE ROAD / 51
hungry and strictured childhood in that house, my passion for it borders on self-destructiveness. The sane thing to do, for anyone with the slightest bent for survival, would have been to draw in his head and deny in spirit the walls that starved and imprisoned him until the earliest possible opportunity for escape presented itself, and then to leave them behind with no regrets and a singing heart. But those stout, sheltering brick walls were never oppressive to me in themselves; indeed, they were sanctuary and solace whenever my eye or mind fell upon them. And though I did leave them at an early
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