Around the Neighborhood
Our stories define us. Stories live beyond us, like seeds. I painted this picture to tell the Story of the White Tiger, to preserve the history of the place and the people and the culture and everything else beyond words about this place in space and time. Here is how it begins…
Athens, Georgia began its rise to fame around 1801, as a little town next to a fledgling university. The University of Georgia, along with cotton textiles and railroad industries, supplanted the previous inhabitants: the Creek and Cherokee. (You can still feel their presence today in the surrounding woods, but that’s another story). Over more than two centuries, Athens and the U grew alongside each other like siblings, both symbiotically and independently. There was cooperation and conflict. But that, too, is another story.
Along the way, many of Athens early buildings, and some entire neighborhoods (but that’s even another story) were destroyed by acts of “progress.” The remaining early edifices are among Athens most precious and endearing features, relics containing the palpable spirit of the past and suggesting a quieter pace of life.
Athens expanded around the turn of the 20th century. Pertinent here is the development of the Boulevard Neighborhood, originally a suburb connected to downtown by a trolley that ran down the center of the oak-lined extra-wide main street ending in a Trolley Barn at the western edge of the neighborhood. Northwest of Boulevard, across railroad tracks, Southern Manufacturing Company opened in 1902, surrounded by mill houses built for the workers.
The mill village, called Happy Top, included a general store, JR Davis Grocery, a one story clapboard building on Hiawassee avenue (nod to the Natives here) circa 1905, serving as a central part of the Happy Top community. The interior boasts bead board walls, 14 foot ceilings, and windows way up top around the building to let the heat out in the sweltering summer. JR ran the grocery for 56 years, until his death in 1961. The building remained the property of three generations of the Davis family until 2016, many of whom lived in adjacent houses all that time.
In 1974, Bob and Mary Thrasher leased the building and took over the store, and added the kitchen to the the left of the building, with a serve window cut into the adjoining wall where food was passed to the counter staff, and through which you, the customer, standing at the long heart pine counter that separated you from the staff, could glimpse hair-netted women in the rustic kitchen prepping food by a huge iron grill. A Victorian era cash register ringing up transactions sat on the counter, next to refrigerated glass cases holding glistening steaks, Bob’s legendary thick homemade sausages, ground meat, and other offerings. Hoop cheese on a round platter topped the meat case. Out of the kitchen came enormous meat, egg and cheese biscuits with gravy wrapped in warm greasy waxed paper and rich sugar-laden freshly baked desserts. Heart pine floor sagged and squeaked, sighing over all the footsteps it had endured.
By 1981, when I first visited Thrashers, the grocery section had piddled down to a few curious random dust-covered items like one jar of mustard and one stick of deodorant (probably occasionally used) scattered along the far wall, but it was booming as THE place for Saturday morning breakfast. Hippies and hip hungover music personalities mixed with construction and mill workers. One of the few remaining authentic old Athens businesses, you could still buy lard by the pound.
After Thrasher’s closed in 1993, (Bob was unable to come to the store for several years due to declining health and Mary was robbed at knifepoint, the last straw) the building hosted a series of earnest unique but short lived food enterprises. Fortunately, nobody gussied up the premises or messed it up with attempts at renovation. Even the original vintage meat scale remained. In 2007, Ken Manring, on a shoestring budget, and from a love of the culinary craft, opened the White Tiger, adding a smoker grill outside. The White Tiger began offering BBQ, soups, grilled veggies, and banana puddin’, all made fresh on the premises. Handmade chocolates and Tiger T-shirts were showcased in the former meat cases. In the kitchen, wearing a black apron with a skeleton printed on it, Chef Jasey Jones flipped burgers on the ancient grill, stirred veggies, and assembled sandwiches in a graceful fluid dance. Another chef Luke, sporting a huge handlebar mustache, rode a unicycle to work. The atmosphere felt like home. Motto: “Good Food without the ‘Tude”
And it worked. The Tiger quickly grew to be a popular part of the Athens community, just like its predecessors, hosting art shows and celebrations and musical events on a tree covered lawn furnished with picnic tables and toys for the kiddies. Children drew hopscotch and charming animal drawings on the sidewalk. Grown up artists painted dynamic graphics on the picket fence. Ken and his wife/partner Melinda recently perked up the interior with a signature electric pink and green, adding disco balls. But other than that (and air conditioning) the interior remains true to its historic roots. Today, you sense the spirit of the past merge with the energy of the present.
On Friday nights, a consistently changing convivial group of locals show up for happy hour and dinner. Everyone is welcome! So stop in, perch on the picnic tables or bring a lawn chair, byob, order some food, join the celebration and become part of the story!