A CNN story informs us that Georgia’s Department of Transportation has issued a new official map that’s been sadly simplified:
Poetry Tulip has vanished. So have Due West and Po Biddy Crossroads. Cloudland and Roosterville are gone, too…
Gone are such places as Dewy Rose, Hemp, Experiment, Retreat, Wooster, Sharp Top and Chattoogaville, a spot in far northwestern Georgia that consists of little more than a two-truck volunteer fire department, a few farmhouses and a country store where locals fill up their gas tanks.
“We’re not under obligation to show every single community,” department spokeswoman Karlene Barron said. “While we want to, there’s a balancing act. And the map was getting illegible.”
What you call illegible, I call a linguistic feast, dammit!
The Georgia DOT may well find itself having to back down. This is not a popular decision.
A map that just simply leaves out a hamlet consisting of “a two-truck volunteer fire department, a few farmhouses and a country store where locals fill up their gas tanks” is unusable as a practical regional map in my, er, atlas.