Why the Road to Gainesville Smells Like Fried Chicken
In Gainesville, Georgia—Poultry Capital of the World, thank you very much—we don’t have potholes. We have “grease craters.” They’re the shiny black memorials left behind when a chicken truck hits a bump, a cage door pops open like a bad piñata, and a dozen future McNuggets decide to test the laws of aerodynamics.
It happens so often the locals don’t even swerve anymore. We just sigh, turn up the radio, and let the tires do what tires do.
Take last Tuesday. I’m cruising down Jesse Jewell Parkway in my ’98 Civic that’s more Bondo than car, when a Perdue truck in front of me hits the same railroad crossing that’s been trying to launch satellites since 1973. The whole trailer jumps. One whole side of cages does that slow-motion horror-movie lean, and then—WHOOMPH—white feathers explode into the air like the world’s saddest pillow fight.
Chickens rain down. Not metaphorically. Literally. Fat white broilers bouncing off asphalt like feathered Super Balls. One lands on my hood with a wet thwap, stares me dead in the eye through the windshield, and I swear it mouthed “tell my wife I loved her” before sliding off into traffic.
Behind me, Brenda Kay in her lifted F-150 doesn’t even tap the brakes. She just plows through the flock like a combine harvester in a snowstorm. Plup-plup-plup-CRUNCH. Feathers everywhere. The road instantly looks like it’s been TP’d by angels on a bender.
Brenda rolls down her window, chewing on a toothpick the size of a pool cue, and hollers, “You want I should scrape you off some drumsticks for supper, hon?”
I decline. Mostly because I’m trying not to gag, because the smell that rises up when forty pounds of chicken meet four Goodyear tires at 55 mph is something between KFC and a war crime.
By the time I get to the red light at Limestone, the carnage is complete. There’s a perfect oval grease spot the size of a kiddie pool, shimmering in the sun like black ice made of regret. A single feather is stuck straight up in the middle like a surrender flag.
And that, kids, is how we get our famous “Gainesville Gloss.” Tourists think it’s just wet pavement. Locals know better. That shine? That’s a thousand tiny chicken souls screaming for justice while we all pretend it’s normal.
The city even tried to fix it once. Put up those polite little signs: “Caution: Falling Poultry.” Didn’t help. Chickens can’t read. Truck drivers can, but they’re paid by the load, not by the pound, and apparently “dead on the roadway” still counts as “delivered.”
So now we just live with it. Drive around the fresh spots. Park on the old ones (free non-stick coating for your tires). My cousin Daryl swears the grease makes his truck faster—like racing slicks, but with more salmonella.
Every once in a while Animal Control shows up with a Shop-Vac and a dream, but mostly they just take pictures for their group chat titled “Reasons I Drink.”
Me? I keep a spare towel in the passenger seat and a bottle of Dawn in the trunk. Because in Gainesville, you’re either cleaning chicken grease off your windshield or you’re lying about living here.
And if you ever see a shiny patch on the road with one perfect feather standing tall in the middle… tap your brakes, say a quick prayer to Colonel Sanders, and whatever you do, don’t look directly at it.
Some stains you just can’t unsee.