By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

Even the mosquitoes in Peachtree City are elitists. They seem to be carriers of a communicable virus that strikes almost every person who moves into town before the engine on their SUV gets cold.

You've heard of Jungle Fever? Our town is infected with Grumble Fever; that is, we complain about anyone who moves into town after we did, like we wanted the town to shut the gate after our arrival. Along with the Jon Benet Ramsey case or which NBC “Friend” is hottest, complaining about our concern for Peachtree City's overcrowding is always at the top of our conversation list.

As a matter of fact, all it takes to be a founding father of Peachtree City is to find someone who has lived here for less time than you. It would not be unrealistic to witness a person talking to another who had moved here just one day later and be saying, “Oh, let me tell you, things have changed so much since I have moved here. Before you got here this was a nice city. Then it just got so congested and lost its small town appeal.”

In defense of Peachtree City, it is the same all over. I travel a lot and I hear the same complaints everywhere. It's like everyone thinks they are the original settlers of their town and can't stand to see the “filth” move in and ruin Xanadu.

I was in one of the worst parts of Los Angeles recently at one of those Plexiglassed, bulletproof Taco Bells. This is the part of town where they have recycle containers for spent bullet casings. I heard some guys ahead of me talking and in broken English one of them was saying things were just not the same anymore with all these new people moving in and ruining the place. In my mind I was thinking what he meant was, the new drive-by shooters were taking the easy path because in his day it was execution-style or nothing.

Do you think career homeless people watch new arrivals walk by and say, “Jeesh, there goes the neighborhood”?

It's sorta like what Yogi Berra once said about a overflowing, popular restaurant, “No wonder no one comes here anymore, it's too crowded.”

In reality, we are all just trying to protect our territory. Like a bunch of tom cats we go around trying to mark our domain. “This is my booth at Shadows.” “That end parking spot at the post office is mine!” “Hey, quit swimming in the fountains at City Hall, I claimed it as MY Jacuzzi.” Okay, so the mayor does have his privileges, but still....

Since I have long ago lost “my” city, I have to resort to staking my claim on a smaller scale. And since my favorite restaurant, Partner's Pizza, has long been conquered by squatters before my time, I have landed my flag at The Italian Oven on the north (or is it east?) end of town.

Unlike half of the service-handicapped, cookie-cutter, sit-down food chains in Peachtree City, you can tell them at the Italian Oven where you want to sit. And this place has much more to offer than just crimson-haired cuties who can write upside-down; food's great, atmosphere is great, price is great. Just please, don't go there. I have found my sanctuary and I'm sick of people ruining my good thing. Okay, go there for dinner, I just eat there at lunch.

It's inevitable that people are going to continue to move to the south side of Atlanta; the traffic is better and it does have less sprawl than the Northside. So, we all need to take a chill pill, be gracious and simply direct interested parties... to real estate agents in Coweta County.

[E-mail Billy Murphy at Billy@gretsch.com; check out his Internet site at http://billymurphy.homepage.com.]

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