Spitball Army

Driving eastbound on I-20, I was seduced to an offramp by a brown historical marker sign that read

LAUREL & HARDY MUSEUM

and found myself driving five or six miles to the town of Harlem, Georgia.  At the outskirts of the town, stood this sign:

On my first pass through town, I didn’t see the museum, and when I re-entered farmland on the other side, I realized that I had passed through the entire town (it’s not big).  I turned around in this driveway

although it really was too beautiful and not urban enough to call a driveway.  It was really more of a carriageway.  It looks like an engraving from a volume of fairy tales or from a 19th century British or German novel.  While standing in the road, it looked just as it does in the photo above.  I nearly expected to see Fagin and The Artful Dodger skipping arm in arm down the path, or Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow, or a pair of dingledodies.

This is the long view from the main road:

Check out that handsome and attractive dumpster.  Mmmm, lunch!

I made a U-turn back into town, leaving three barking dogs in my wake.

Passing back through Harlem, I ran into Bojangles…oops, wrong Harlem!

Passing back through Harlem, I kept a lookout for the museum.  I stopped at the traffic light in the center of town.  Ahead of me, on the right, I could see that there were still Christmas garlands hanging on the side of the police station.  One of the taller brick buildings – two stories – had a graffiti-style collage of Stan and Ollie painted on its entire southern side.  Three pairs of grinning faces kept watch over a fenced-in used car lot.

I thought that I had completely missed the museum until, almost back to the north side of town, I spotted it – a square,  hardly noticeable cinder-block building smaller than an average-sized McDonald’s restaurant.  The sides were painted black, and there was minimal signage indicating what was inside.

Since it was too early in the morning for them to be open,  I continued driving back to I-20.