Hanging Art

This past Sunday I posted a series of pictures mostly looking out at the streets around the Square while I was wandering around Glover Park before a concert of the Cobb Symphony.

What I remembered later while looking over those pictures but unfortunately didn’t remember then, or I would have take a some pictures of some storefront canvas awnings that for a while became one of our pastimes as teenagers (with nothing better to do).

Outside McClellan’s 5¢ & 10¢ Store was a long canvas awning. Almost every store front had an awning. They would have just looked like a plain block shape building without their awnings. Different stores had different colors, some were striped, some were lightly color and others were dark in color. Each awning help give each store a personality.

One time a group of us boys stepped out of McClellan’s and were standing under the awning discussing what to do next when Jimmy Pat, our little evil resident friend, sucked up some snot from his throat and HOCK-TUIEE!! He propelled a wad of snot up in the air and it splattered on the bottom side of the awning.

We all looked at it. It’s weight caused it to stretch downward, but the membrane-like material it was made of held on. It got about a quarter inch down and stopped. Oh well.

The next day about the same time and place one of us remembered the wad of snot propelled by Jimmy Pat and looked up and it was still there. Like a little stalactite.

A new fad was born. We named the new hanging substance a “hang”.

Soon every awning around the Square had “Hangs” hanging.

Through experimental testing we found out what we need to have in our mouth at the time of the sucking up the snot to give the hang more character. Chocolate candy had great effects, not to mention the color effect…. Milk Duds seemed to have the properties to stretch hangs downward the longest. Milky-Ways help create stronger hangs that would swing in the wind and yet would “hang” on.

Strawberry milkshakes gave a pink hang, which was a pleasure to the eye but changed color in time. We found that blue jaw-breaker candy was needed for blue hangs.


Suddenly there were hangs outside of just about any doorway going outside on Marietta High School’s campus, in hallways, in the boy’s bathrooms, and just about all over campus. I don’t know about the girl’s bathroom.

Coke or any carbonated soft-drink seemed to weaken the density of the snot, and just splattered instead of hanging.

We should have found the right combo to make the right artistic hang and bottled it and sold it…. Another opportunity slipped away.