Nothing Up My Sleeve
Viola! Georgia suddenly reappears! We reported in December that A large number of communities in Georgis had suddenly disappeared. After less than a month, the Georgia Transportation Department has suddenly found those 500 communities! Sherlock Holmes would be so proud of their investigative skills.
ATLANTA - Po Biddy Crossroads will be back on the map. So will Hopeulikit and Doctortown, and hundreds of others that were erased.
From Abbottsford to Zetella, the 488 communities wiped from this year's version of the state highway map will be restored, the Georgia Department of Transportation said Wednesday.
The towns were erased from the map after the transportation department decided it wanted a clearer, more legible version of the map to hand out for free at visitors centers and tourism hotspots. But small-town officials were infuriated, and said it was an insult to rural residents.
Vicki Gavalas, the department's spokeswoman, said she regrets that any rural residents felt slighted. "That certainly was not our intent," she said. "Indeed, our only intent was to make the official state map a more easily read resource."
Free translation: "We didn't think they'd be able to get this much press attention. We'll erase them in smaller numbers next time, starting with the ones that screamed the loudest this time." Not that we're cynical around here or anything. We suspect this is the solution to the problem that the transportation people will eventually arrive at.
By Jack Gunter, Jr., Friday, 5 January , 2007 @ 9:00 am
I lost a cousin in Georgia once.
They can keep him if they can find him.