Talk of the Town - Forest + supermarket = toothpicks November 13 2003

Three deer lingered in my yard this morning — a doe and her young. The dew-drenched sight, before coffee had even brewed, caused me to wonder if last night’s pizza (OK, so pepperoni and anchovies don’t mix) had hallucinogenic properties.

I had never seen such outsized fauna on my tiny estate before, and paused to contemplate the sylvan scene. It’s a gift, really, living in an area where one can live in harmony with woodland creat ...

BRRRZZZ ... KER-CRAAAACK ... BA-BANG!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to play greater Atlanta’s favorite game of chance (cue for audience response): Wheel ... of ... Destruction! That’s right, folks. Each day, it gobbles 40 acres of local woodland for development — and today it’s spinning our way.

Now I can say I gave at the home office. So can the deer. Clearly, they’re in need of new accommodations — and a bit of breakfast now that strip-mall mavens are mulching a huge tract of land hereabouts. As in, reducing the woods formerly known as trees into a collection of tiny javelins suitable for spearing pigs-in-blankets at the subdivision holiday party.

You’ve got to admire local developers for their chutzpah. They’re not like multinational corporations, which are under so much scrutiny they have to pretend to care about the environment. (“At Shmobil, we believe that protecting coral reefs under our oil rigs is just as important as jacking up the price of gas right before Labor Day weekend.”)

No, our guys, flying under the radar of almost any standard of decency up to and including the Geneva Convention, are graduates of the Attila the Hun Rape and Pillage School of Social Engineering. There hasn’t been this much clear-cutting since Kaiser Wilhelm lobbed Big Berthas into the French countryside during World War I.

The action in my neighborhood focuses on construction of a new Publix supermarket. Let me explain that this Publix should not be confused with the Publix three miles west of the new site. Or the other Publix three miles north. Or the trio of Kroger supermarkets within a similar radius.

You see, there had to be a third Publix, because there are three Krogers. And once that third Publix goes in, it will be the signal for a fourth Kroger. To be followed by a fourth ... Well, you get the idea. Home Depot and Lowe’s are involved in the same face-slapping contest. So are Staples and Office Depot.

Britain and Germany engaged in a similar duel before the Great War. Each edgy empire built an ever-larger navy, with battleships supplanted by a bigger class of vessel known as dreadnoughts — and dreadnoughts replaced by super-dreadnoughts.

By the time war broke out, both sides were so muscle-bound with sea power they hesitated to risk all that ironclad treasure in battle. The upshot of it all was that both navies pretty much kept to themselves, leaving the poor blighters on land to get clobbered.

In the here and now, local citizens are the blightees as great corporate fleets maneuver for power and position, stomping though neighborhoods with super-dreadnought-sized stores — whether we want/need/can accommodate them — even after they’ve abandoned ship due to fortunes of retail war.

And researchers wonder why Americans are fat. They’re surrounded by huge structures stuffed with food. Shoot, we are huge structures filled with food.

What irritates me more than anything? Even amid a demented building frenzy, even with trees falling over faster than the Atlanta Falcons on game day, my neighborhood can’t score a luxury mall. The kind of mall with a stylish restaurant whose maitre’d wouldn’t make eye contact with me if his wine list depended on it. The kind of mall where you need a mortgage broker just to finance a suit of clothes.

Sure, there’s a new commercial strip coming, but even before the concrete is poured I know what will be in it. The nail place. The parcel post store. The Chinese restaurant that boils beef with broccoli into a glutinous mass resembling neither. The nutrition joint selling capsules of herbal extracts. A mall like 10 other malls around here.

Is it too much to ask for a shopping outlet that I can’t afford? It would brace up property values, even if I’m not a customer.

But no. It’ll be stale egg rolls and garlic capsules all over again. More pre-emptive eyesores — ugly right out of the box.

It takes us back again to World War I, when once the carnage was well and truly under way, someone asked the German chancellor why it had all started in the first place.

“Ah,” he famously replied, “if we only knew.”

Words to whisper while feeding garlic capsules to the deer.

glen.slattery@creativeloafing.com

Glen Slattery serves aboard the HMS Alpharetta.