The Things I’ve Seen

“I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed.” - Marco Polo on his deathbed, 1324, apparently? Uncharted said so.

“I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.” Pierre de Fermat, though that was about maths.

Recently I got the opportunity to go to Hawkins Fest, a celebration of the town Hawkins from Stranger Things. Those passingly familiar may wonder if it’s really in Indiana. Like many things in television and the movies, it’s actually a collection of places that optimize for the feel of the show. A lot of these exterior locations are actually shot in Georgia, including the Hawkins National Lab building which is apparently on Emory’s campus. Downtown Hawkins (and a few other locations) are shot in and around Jackson, GA, and the town holds a festival to capitalize on the show’s popularity. It was a fun day, and I saw a few pretty cool things I figured I’d share in this newsletter about things I’ve seen.

Butting in

Jackson, GA is in Butts County. This is where I have to tell you that I am indeed serious, and am not making some kind of joke at your expense. It was named in honor of Captain Samuel Butts. While I’m not ribbing you, I am going to take the opportunity to chase down a quick tangent.

Captain Samuel Butts died in 1814, during the Creek War, during which interesting allies of convenience were forged. They were soon forgotten, as the Creek as well as other nations lost their land in treaties that were not honored by the United States. One such treaty, the Treaty of 1825, known by several names such as the Second Treaty of Indian Springs, was signed at the Indian Springs Hotel. This hotel is still present in Butts County. The Treaty was signed in February, which I believe is before the County received its name but would be around the time Georgia was discussing it.

Anyway, it’s unclear to me if he left a wife or children behind, but he did have a pretty sizable family. A descendant somewhere in the family tree went on to become a college football player and coach who spent most of his coaching career at the University of Georgia (UGA). James Wallace Butts Jr., or Wally Butts, died in 1973 and is buried today in Oconee Hill Cemetery, across East Campus Road from Sanford Stadium. He was accused of fixing a football game by the Saturday Evening Post, and in response he sued for libel. The case, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, went all the way to the Supreme Court which eventually found in his favor and adjusted the shape of libel. It’s apparently considered a factor in its failure. Thanks, Wikipedia!

Anyway, a building was named after him at UGA. No, it’s not the Butts building. He shares the honor with his predecessor, coach Mehre. Now, a Mehre-Butts building would be pretty funny. Hey, what are you looking at over there? Mehre-Butts, my good sir! Mehre-Butts. Sadly, that is not the world we live in.

Something I don’t get to say too often, we actually live in the better universe of possible outcomes.

The building is named Butts-Mehre. And yes, locals know to run that pronunciation together. I have no opinions on the namesakes involved, just in the humor around the unfortunate building name. Please forgive my childish indulgence here, but this feels like it was really important. It’s been one heck of a journey to get to Hawkins, Indiana in Jackson, Georgia, but…well, sometimes life gives you these gifts. It’s best not to refuse them.

Jackson as Hawkins

Hawkins Fest delivered! I think everything flows from the Hawkins HQ, so we’ll start there. On the Northeast corner of the downtown square, Hawkins HQ does its level best to fold Stranger Things fandom into a love for 80s nostalgia, being sure to keep to the high points like how cool arcade games seemed and staying away from the ever-present sticky yellow haze of the former tar-filled smoker’s paradise. The people working there seemed pleasant and genuinely excited to share their love for their town and how it is transformed, one last time now as I understand, into somewhere, somewhen, else. A Surfer Boy Pizza truck sits outside, and is available for photos.

The North block of the town square seems to be where all the action happens: Melvald’s General Store is there, as is the Hawkins’ Radio Shack which is in our world an escape room! They have multiple Stranger Things themed rooms. If you get the chance to take a walk around, even outside of Hawkins Fest, you’ll still be able to tell what gets transformed by looking at your feet—the town has put in QR code plaques in the sidewalk to give you further details, really handy if you’re not in the middle of Hawkins Fest.

Stranger Things is filmed all over the place, and the town square really only encompasses downtown Hawkins shots. You’ll have to get in the car and vroom around a bit to see it all, or go on a tour. Given the nature of filming though, there are lots of opportunistic shots. The Hawkins Theater is on the Northwest corner of the town square, and behind it, an alley. I meant to watch this but I’m far enough behind on this issue so you’ll have to fill in any blanks here. In Season 1, Episode 6, Jonathan and Steve fight in an alley. This is that alley! On the North side of the building you’ll see a whole marquee painted to commemorate the place, which otherwise, you could (probably?) easily miss if you were on your own tour.

We also got to meet Aidan Fisher, the guitar double for Eddie from Season 4 of Stranger Things. He was super cool! It put into perspective something that felt like it was missing: any cast or folks related to the show. I believe Aidan was the only one to make an appearance, since he lived in near-enough-by Atlanta. Fans are certainly not entitled to actors’ time, though as I understand it filming was actively happening in the area. It would’ve been a nice touch if folks could’ve popped in if they were indeed in town - what’s the likelihood actors will be in town and available during future Hawkins Fests, especially with this being the last season and so the last round of filming. I could be wrong, though, and creating is hard work, perhaps the show didn’t have a day of budget for this. Given the fact that Netflix is so far in its own head on “The Numbers”, though, I doubt they’d approve of such a field trip. We can’t even get more than one season/20 episodes of Inside Job, there’s probably no in-app metric to measure the happiness of fans making a pilgrimage to one of the show’s holy sites. As we all know, if you can’t measure it by observing interactions in an app, it’s not real.

Anyway, the point is, Aidan was cool and he plays shows in the Atlanta area regularly. Maybe that will be a future thing I’ve seen!

A cool safe!

The original town courthouse, which I believe is now offices for Clerks of Court, doubles as Hawkins’ library. It also has its own little museum about the history of the courthouse. Jackson has a population of around 5,000, and as the seat of Butts County¹ it serves a population of 25,000. One important function of a Georgia county is to host the courthouse, which offers not only justice functions but also usually holds things like vital records. In smaller counties it makes a lot of sense to focus the clerks on multiple tasks and these are natural ones to combine. Vital records are…well, it says it right in the name. Records. They’re also Vital.

A whole life, from birth, through death, and all the legal events in-between must be kept by someone. There’s court records, land/real property records, vital records, and more. There’s also a long history of lighting by candle, heating by fireplace, you know, a lot of fire going around. Fire and records are bad. Fire and buildings can become bad pretty quickly—the ability to extinguish fire has historically been a losing battle, once they got going. There were also concerns around forgery and other data integrity concerns. Protecting these records was a real challenge! One layer of protection was the venerable safe. There were a few records safes of various sizes in the courthouse, and one is on display as a bit of local history!

Check out how thick those doors were! This Clerk’s Safe has a stepped door. This avoids a gap in between the doors that could be exploited by someone determined to get in, though it also provided a rudimentary way of giving the contents a bit of fire protection. Safes are built with a better understanding of fire spread and improved materials and techniques today, but even still a fireproof safe has a time rating. Common fireproof safes today are rated to keep their contents at 350 Fahrenheit or below during a fire for some amount of time, usually an hour or two. This is below the ignition point of paper² which is what you want to accomplish if you are protecting vital documents at the time.

That’s not to say safes had no fire resistant value — The term “fireproof safe” goes back as far as the 1820s, well after the Great (Big not Good) Fire of London in 1666, but well before this safe was invented. Until the 20th century, though, claims were very broad and were not tested as thoroughly as the claims made by fireproof safe ratings today. Of course, we live in a world where vital records are often digitized and sold or given away to the highest any bidder, and more robust backups are readily available. Documents must still be handled properly to assure their integrity, and while digitization makes a lot more techniques for data recovery possible, it’s not free and it’s not a panacea: South Korea recently lost nearly a petabyte of data in a data center fire³ . It’s supposed to be working data, not vital records, but it was a massive setback to government operations. Turns out, fire (and the attendant firefighting) is not only bad for paper, but also for computers.

That’s enough for now

Thanks! I hope you had a good time with this one. It’s really more digression than core content, but sometimes you get a series of little gifts like this. When given something to enjoy, you enjoy it. Full stop. Don’t squander gifts, even the small ones. You don’t know when the next one will turn up. There will be plenty of time to not have these little nuggets to enjoy, so don’t worry about that. Until next time, see you on the Internet!

References

• Hawkins Fest

• Stranger Tours

• Aidan Fisher Music

Thanks for joining me, where I’m one of today’s lucky 10,000! I hope you enjoyed it. Here’s all the beehiiv stuff that is required to be here.

— Lou

1  OK I may not be kidding you, but I am milking this where I can.

2  A lot more complicated than just saying 451 degrees Farenheit, as different paper in different conditions will vary, but close enough that we can roll with it.

3  This was news when I started writing, but you know how life can get in the way. Oh, you don’t? Ah, that must be because I’m flighty and just dropped this for a while.