By KATIE GOOGE – Guest Writer
A Clarke Central High School junior has grown up gathering memories in the now-endangered Jittery Joe’s Roaster.
For me, the Jittery Joe’s Coffee Roaster is a place full of fond memories. I remember the year that the floor of the warehouse in the back was painted to look like a giant chess board and some artist had made a giant chess set out of metal that you could use to play. My little sister and I were so excited when my family went down one night, because we got to take the place of pieces in the game, in a nerdy, but endlessly entertaining imitation of Harry Potter.
Photo courtesy of Katie Googe
I remember the night that the roaster was turned into a performance space for Rose of Athens Theatre’s first production, “The Bible: the Complete Word of God (Abridged).” It was December and 17° in a building that had no heat so I sat on the coffee bags with my parents under a blanket.
The rest of the audience, also provided blankets, huddled as close as possible to the heat lamps. The coldest people in the room, though, were the actors who had to reenact the Garden of Eden scene, clad only in fake fig leaves, before donning the marginally warmer slacks and t-shirts that they wore the rest of the play.
I remember having a birthday party there one year, eating pizza and joking around with my friends.
When I was younger, I would play a game with my sister in the back rooms, hopping from coffee bag to coffee bag trying to see how far we could jump.
My memories of the roaster are so many and so varied and so precious. I have grown to love the smell of roasting coffee, the endless piles of burlap sacks, the old bicycles on the walls, the rosemary bush out front and the hand-carved wood fixtures.
Whether I am hanging out back in the warehouse, or sitting in the café or on the porch, the roaster is unquestionably one of my favorite places in Athens.
All these memories mean that when I heard the news that there are plans to tear it down and build a Wal-Mart, I was both saddened and enraged. This could be the end of the roaster that I know and love. I have had so many good times in the roaster: playing, watching plays, having parties or just sitting in the café and sipping a hot drink that I can hardly imagine an Athens without it.
There are pros and cons to the new development in Athens, but, for me, it means above all else, the destruction of a place that houses some of my fondest memories.
