On This Day in History, May 31:

1678 Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets of  Conventry protesting taxes.  

This is really Lady Godiva.  Really!  (this is one of the pictures when I Googled Lady Godiva)

And on the exact same day and place Peeping Tom also became a household word.

According to Wikipedia:

Peeping Tom is a nickname commonly given to voyeurs, particularly males. It originated with the legend of Lady Godiva, when a man named Tom watched her during her nude ride and was struck blind or dead.

Larry Is Coming Home!

We understand that Larry Miller is being released from the hospital after having a lung transplant. I think the medical staff was amazed how quickly he rebounded. I’m sure Larry and those close to him were not surprised at all.

However, the medical bills added up and he is not out of the woods yet on that part. If you would like to help please read below.

click on the below to read it.

 

Old Selma, Alabama, Post Card

Main Street, Selma, Alabama.  This is the city that the authorities had a confrontation with Afro-Americans who wanted to register to vote in 1965.

Of course this post card is much earlier.  It was probably before automobiles.  See that post in the middle of the street?  What do you suppose that is?  Have you ever heard of a "whipping post"?

Billy Beane and Alfred E. Newman

We rented the movie POWERBALL with Brad Pitt.  It was not bad, educational, and interesting on how professional baseball players are selected.  I thought it was fast pace or rapid type of decisions made like literally snapping your fingers kind of movie.

The movie is based on true facts of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletes managing career and his sudden shift to look at players’ statistics and even computerizing the statistics that accurately predicting what any player will likely to do next.

Thus, he had to face-off with his scouts and mangers the gut-feeling  of the old and the new scientific statistical base method.  His job was on the line and  he won.  His team broke winning records.

This movie reminded me of story in MAD Magazine issue #25, that was published in 1955.  It is strange that MAD was writing about it in 1955 and the movie took place in 2002, forty-seven years later and both similar.    Al Jaffee got credit for writing the story and Jack Davis drew it.

 (psstt!  click on each image below to read it.)



Memorial Day at Marietta National Cemetery

The above marker is a memorial marker.  The sailor was lost at sea.  Norman Carlsey is the father of a friend I grew up with.

Click on each picture to make it larger.

Saturday before Memorial Day the local Boy Scouts placed an American Flag at each grave and saluted the marker.  We came along a few hours later with a camera.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! FRONTLINE's GETTYSBURG

This is Memorial Day weekend.  Memorial Day is the day we sat aside to honor those Americans who gave their lives defending their homeland - even if they were fighting other Americans as in Gettysburg, March 1, 1863.

This story was originally in EC Publishing Company's  FRONTLINE COMBAT #2, 1951.  It was probably written by its editor Harvey Kurtzman and illustrated by Wallace Wood.

Good Music, Bad Ass-Hole

In Glover Park last night they had the big band sound of the Still Swinging Band.


Here is a few bits and pieces of the music. Before intermission they played the Armed Forces Salute.. you know, when they call out the branch of serve and play their tune all members of the audience that was in that branch stand up and be proud that you help defend this country.

I had it all planned what I was going to do.  Then, then some guy walked by who knew the man and woman sitting next to us.  The guy talked loud and persistent.   Listen near the end, you can hear his loud voice.   He would  never shut up, although at times he had to talk loud to drown out the music of the band.  He ruined my whole plan…. Like I drove the seven miles there just hear him.  Ass Hole!

Whoops!

Do you remember in Disney movie FANTASIA the Sorcerer’s Helper segment? Roughly, it went something like this: the Sorcerer had to leave and he gave the apprentice (Mickey Mouse) orders to mop while he was gone.

The apprentice, being the goof off he was, used his hocus-pocus trickery to order the broom to fetch a pail of water and dump the water on the floor and mop it. Then, as the broom started to work the Apprentice took a nap.



The apprentice forgot to tell the enchanted mop when to stop. He woke up when he found himself floating in water. While he was asleep the broom kept multiplying itself and it became an army of hundreds of brooms, all carrying pails, all dumping water.


That is, in a way, the kind of situation I found myself in. My blog, up until recently, blocked my spams – which were mostly unsolicited advertisements. They got through rarely, but when one did get through, I could easily give orders to have it delete itself, which I always did. Now, the spans on my comments section of a blog are coming in by the dozen and each time I press the selection to get to the section to delete it, it instead of giving me the choice of deleting it, has a letter from a Petty Descendent who wrote and asked me something last week. What did I do wrong this time? Oh me.




In case you don’t know what in the world I am talking about when I talk about the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the brooms – the below Disney video will explain it all.

On This Date in History, May 25:

1864:  the Battle of New Hope Church, about 25 miles west of here.   Our neice bought a house that the wooded New Hope Battle Park is right behind them.  She said you can hear gunshots from that direction a lot.  I hope the wonder if the noises are from reenactors or ghosts redoing the past?

1927:  Henry Ford stopped production on Model T's and began production on Model A's.  Efficient, no?

1937: The first airmail letter left New York, circled the globe and returned to New York (really).  I guess it was also the first airmail letter that was “returned to sender”.

A House Is Not a Home If the Spat Scars Are Covered Up

This house was built by Hunters near Blairsville, Union County, Georgia, in the mid 1800s. It was built by William Johnson Hunter (1813-1899), son of my g-g-g grandfather John Hunter.

I first visited the house in the late 1970s. Austin Hunter Wallis, a direct descendent of William Johnson Hunter invited me to see it. She showed my uncle Doug Hunter and I around. She pointed out a few scars on the house that each had its own story. For instance: She pointed out a few bullet holes in the front room. The tale for the bullet holes was that the Hunters had a family ruckus that got ugly. Nobody was killed.
Years later Austin told me they are restoring the house to make it look like it first did. Austin died in 2006.

Last year I visited her brother who lives on top of the bill behind the old house. Before I visited him I drove down to look at the house. There were still building tools around. I asked him about them and he told me the restoring is still coming along, slowly.


Somehow I discovered that the restorer covered up the bullet holes. Damn!




 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADAM!!

Young Adam looked up at the old salt and thought to himself, “ Yo-Ho!  Yo-Ho!  I’m going to own and be  captain of a boat someday too!  Arrgggg!!”

Book Report: Billy the Farmer

Book Report on IN THE GARDEN WITH BILLY,  LESSONS OF LIFE, LOVE, AND TOMATOES.

This is a non-fiction book.  It is about Renea Winchester who moved to Georgia, with her family, and made friends with a man twice her age:  Billy, a non-pretentious farmer.  It was/is  a platonic relationship.  She found Billy to be a unique  individual who lived alone.  He had so many farming projects going on he was constant busy and she thought she would give him a helping  hand.  She gave the helping hand and he gave her his wisdom.  I think she was awe-struck by Billy and his old timey farming methods.    It should be mentioned that Billy was a widower.  He lost his wife about six months before they met.  Renea was so impressed with the positive vibes Billy radiated out she wrote a book to share him.

I was impressed with Billy because I know the area he was/is a farmer in.  The place used to be laced with old farms. Now, as progress would dictate, it is an area of big yards that used to be pastures, and some white fences with horses, and some huge houses and other subdivisions of McMansions. Billy is not about to change to go with the flow or sell out and go to a retirement village. He has things to do.

Billy sells his own produce and sometimes faces an unjustly demanding customer. He handles them gently with a smile. Billy doesn’t fly off the handle.

Billy is a religious man and Renea is religious woman which is mentioned throughout the book.   Also, another repeating theme is her relationship with her parents who live in North Carolina.  Her mother has cancer but is not about to let it get in her way.  Renea is also a very witty woman. 

Also I learned a great deal about goats, bean vines, corn-sex, goat fertilizer for the tomatoes, chickens, egg incubation, and a lot of other useful things.

I’m glad my wife Anna talked me into reading it.

This Day in History, May 21.

On this date, May 21, 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition began. And of course we all know what the Lewis and Clark Expedition was about. It was about looking over the western part of this continent to determine if it was worth anything. It led to the Louisiana Purchase.

But what happened to Lewis and Clark afterwards? I don’t know of anything out of the ordinary for William Clark except that his first wife died and he married the second time around to his first cousin. Meriwether Lewis is a different story.

Lewis went and got himself killed.
 
 

President Thomas Jefferson appointed Meriwether Lewis governor of  the Upper  Louisiana Territory.    In September 1809 Lewis went to Washington DC to  present the War Department with his expense account, which he expected a reimbursement.  He was turned down and headed back home.  He was on Natchez Trace, which was sort of a highway between Natchez, Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee.  He stopped to stay overnight at an Inn called Grinder’s Stand.  Before sunrise on October 11, 1809, shots were heard from his room.  The servants found Meriwether shot with multi-gunshot wounds, several in his body and one in his head.  It is believed Meriwether Lewis committed suicide.  Suicide with multi-gunshot wounds – is that possible?    I get lost in the details but it appears that the innkeeper’s wife Priscilla Grinder gave at least five conflicting statements in her testimony during the inquest.

It's All Greek to Me!

The Greek Festival, May 18, 2012, on Trickum Road, Marietta, Georgia.

We first went on a tour of the inside ot the church.  The male singer in the above video is the guy who gave us the tour.  He was  demostrating how well the acoustics worked.

There were long lines to buy Greek foods.  I overheard someone say if they sent the money from this to Greece, Greece's  financial crisis would be solved.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! - Frontline Combat, 0 Hour!

This story takes place in WWI, The Big War, as some called it.  It was first in EC's FRONTLINE COMBAT in 1951, probably written by the editor Harvey Kurtzman; art by John Severin and Will Elder.  This is a story with an unhappy ending, as many war stories are. 

Officers Down

Thursday evening after we attended the Roy Barnes lecture we walked a block away to Glover Park, the center of downtown. We heard law enforcers were paying a tribute at the park to their own that had been in killed on duty over the years.




It was a salute to  fallen officers. It was a memorial loaded with protocol.

And if you notice the camera shaking, besides my regular palsy, I had to deal with holding the camera with one hand while saluting.  It seems that if my hands were naturally trembling and my camera hand was trembling trying to keep the camera balanced the two trembling might cancel each other out, but it doesn't work like that.

One of the fallen listed on the handout is Officer John Hood. He died June 25, 1960. I remember that date and the next couple of days well. John Hood lived on Roswell Road, about where the Marietta Parkway would be built and go over it years later. Gene Latimer, my friend Larry, and I were hanging out at Varner’s. The time was getting late and I thought it was time for me to leave and turn in. I had to go to be at work early the next morning at the Big Apple grocery store. I left.




After I left Gene and Larry got involved in a drag race going down Roswell Road. At about the same time they were traveling at racing speed approaching the bottom of the hill where Marietta Parkway would be built, John Hood was pulling out his driveway. He went home for dinner. He pulled out onto Roswell Road. Apparently he forgot to turn on his headlights. He and Gene were killed instantly in a head-on collision.