Snake Alley

3 miles from my cul de sac, very suburban home in the Arbors subdivision, within a cluster of subdivisions called Towne Lake, there appears to be a rural outpost of Woodstock's civilization called Snake Alley.All the"streets" are named after snakes, and that's appropriate since I didn't even get out of the car ( thank goodness), and I saw a couple of snakes in the dirt- not gravel - driveway, where I dropped off Alfredo, so he could pick up his vehicle( another story). Uh, I can look at a snake behind glass at the zoo, or from my car, but I am creeped out by them , and basically I am adverse to anything about them.In fact, reptiles are pretty much anathema to me. In any case, here was a country setting that was anything but bucolic or pastoral. I felt hostile towards the road signs: Rattler Lane (Such a welcoming name, don't you think?), Copperhead St.,Diamondback Drive,etc. Now, venomous and nonvenomous snakes are found all over Georgia, but I'm not going to get up close and personal to any of them. (My dear friends, Mary and Amy, both science teachers, as well as my goddaughter Lexxi would be laughing and mocking me about this). Snake related words and creatures aren't the only reasons that Snake Alley is so horribly compelling for me. The little area I saw seemed right out of a Hatfields and McCoys story setting- no paved drives, discarded appliances in some yards, lots of beat up looking pickup trucks, houses needing some paint and repairs. The visual extremes between Towne Lake and Snake Alley are not lost on me; here are two completely different domestic worlds within walking distance of each other, and although I've lived in the same house for twenty years,I didn't even know about Snake Alley until today.