The idea of “world recognition” is usually seen as a good thing. The Super Bowl winners are proclaimed as “World Champions” as is the winner of the World Series (although it really is only a North American Series, baseball being played in quite a few other nations). The ultimate prize in boxing is to be the “Champion of the World!”
So, it is with great enthusiasm that our own Peachtree City, Ga., has achieved world status. The community has been named as “One of the Four Most Bizarre Small Towns in the World.” Huzzah!
Peachtree City is right up there with the likes of Whittier, Alaska, which came in at Number 4, Green Bank, West Virginia, listed as Number 3, and Hogewey Village in Weesp, Netherlands which captured the top spot. Whittier is thought to be bizarre because, for the most part, it is an entire town housed in one building.
Whittier has some 200 residents, almost all of which live in one 14-story apartment building. Also in the building is ”the local police headquarters and the local post office. All local government operates out of the building, including the mayor’s office.
“There’s a laundromat, a grocery store, and a video store. If you’re looking to get baptized, look no further than the church in the basement where the town pastor will dunk your head in a holy inflatable pool.
“If a resident wants to go on a relaxing stay-cation, they could stay at the bed and breakfast on the top floor and soak in all the exotic sights and sounds of being in the same place only slightly higher. There’s also a health clinic …” and the elementary school is across the street.
Green Bank, W.V., is known as the “town without tech.” Most modern technology has actually been banned by the local authorities and the town even has an anti-tech police force of one.
All this is to protect The Green Bank Telescope which can be thrown off its game by errant electrical signals such as the type emitted by cell phones. There is one microwave in the town and it is in a vault. Spark plugs cause the telescope to have headaches as well so only diesel powered cars are permitted. And there is no radio station.
Hogeway Village is a town where every resident has dementia. The town was specifically designed to take care of dementia patients and, although it apparently looks just like a normal town, it is, is essence, a nursing home facility. The 250 workers in the town are healthcare providers dressed to look like clerks, neighbors, friends, etc. No one wears scrubs. The goal is to trick the 152 residents into thinking they live in a normal small town.
And why did Peachtree City weigh in as the 2nd Most Bizarre Small Town in the World? Two words — golf carts.
According to the article, “Peachtree City is only 23.9 square miles, yet it has two 18-hole golf courses and one 27-hole course. For perspective, Manhattan is 22.8 square miles. So imagine two full-size and one mega-size golf courses spread around New York. Peachtree loves their golf. They love it so much that residents have adopted the most fun part of golf into their daily lives: driving golf carts. Peachtree City is the golf cart capital of the world.
“Over 9,000 households in Peachtree City own a golf cart. That’s more than any other place on Earth by a long shot. Why would so many people need so many golf carts? I can’t speak to whether they all just love golf that much, but I’m going to guess it has something to do with the 90+ miles of golf cart paths the town has packed into its 23.9 square miles of land. Golf carts are a way of life. The entire town has conformed to the golf cart lifestyle like someone lied to them and told them everything is fine and life is one big resort vacation. People can go anywhere in town on a golf cart. Children too? Yup!
“Once a kid hits 12 in Peachtree City they can legally drive a golf cart as long as they’re accompanied by a guardian. At 15 they can cart … around town without supervision. Golf carts are to high-schoolers in Peachtree what hot rods and dragsters were to kids in the 1950s. On any given day, hundreds of carts can be seen driving people around with hardly a full-sized car in sight. The local police department has a special golf cart patrol unit, and plenty of local businesses have golf cart parking spaces. At least one high school would prefer if their students drove to school in golf carts due to limited parking.”
This dubious award comes to these four towns courtesy of Cracked.com a humor site that is the survivor of the now-defunct Cracked Magazine, which once was a competitor of Mad Magazine.
Hopefully, the good folks in the four small towns will exercise some humor and laugh along with the people who read the article. After all, not everyone gets to be in the top four in the world!
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U.S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
