It is a hot, lazy Sunday afternoon. Too hot to do any serious outdoor walking. Earlier in the week we'd done our antique shops circuit and mall walking so we didn't have a lot of options as far as getting out of the house goes. What we did was hop into the car, backed out of the driveway and just took off, with no destination in mind. We ended up in Chickamauga, which is not really surprising as it is one of our two favorite small towns in the area, the other being Ringgold.
Chickamauga is what could be called a bedroom community for Chattanooga, and to a lesser extent for Fort Oglethorpe. It has lots of newer subdivisions with nice homes, a large modern high school, an historic pre-civil war mansion open for tours on Saturday, and that's about it. For restaurants there is a Mexican restaurant, two pizza joints, and an ice cream shop that also sells hot dogs. For shopping it has...pretty much nada, and zero manufacturing.
Main street is about two blocks long and, like many small towns, half of the buildings are vacant. But the town has a friendly feel to it, and a park bench in the shade in front of one of those vacant buildings was just the ticket for us this afternoon.
We talked a bit about the history of Chickamauga, and then narrowed our focus to three buildings across the street. This is not the first time we've talked about those buildings. Both Maribel and me are fascinated with their age, appearance, and what we imagine to be their past. Of the three only the middle one is in use, as a dentist's office. The other two are vacant.
It is the building on the right that intrigues us. We wonder what purposes it served in the past, and what it would have been like to live on the second floor. And we speculate on what we would/could do with that building. To me it reminds me of one of the old time saloons we saw in Virginia City, Nevada. I can almost hear a honky-tonk piano and the sound of cards being shuffled. I can see the 'scarlet ladies' on the balcony waving handkerchiefs and shouting taunts to the men on the street. Maribel sees it differently.
She envisions a restaurant - her own, called Mary's Place. She is sure that with attractive ambiance, good food at a good price and exceptional service that the Mexican restaurant and pizza joints would soon be history. And that's not all. These buildings are lengthy, nearly running to the street behind them. There would be plenty of room for a Peruvian gift shop, stocked with inexpensive items that she and her fellow Peruvian Americans would bring back from their annual trips to Peru.
We would sell our present home and move into the second floor. The only drawback we can see is that active railroad tracks are only a few feet from the building and it appears that switching railroad cars takes place very nearby.
Of course these plans are dependent on a thorough inspection by a competent building inspector. And finding out who owns the building and if they are interested in selling. And us being able to afford the building, and whatever remodeling is needed, and the equipment to equip a fully functioning restaurant.
In the end, Mary's Place has about as much a chance of happening as that 200 seat theater in Ringgold that I drew up plans for. But hey...life is not always about reality, and dreaming dreams on a park bench on a lazy Sunday afternoon is a perfectly valid way to spend quality time.
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