My love affair with Athens began long before I had a clue what it meant to breakfast at Mama’s Boy or stand between the hedges in a sea of red and black. While my parents’ roots were firmly planted just outside of the city’s border, our home was Clarkesville, a blink in the landscape of small hamlets in the North Georgia Mountains. My knowledge of what lay outside this small mountain town was limited to my parent’s family visits to their siblings, otherwise known as the Sunday afternoon drive.