An Evening With Roy Barnes

Yesterday evening Governor Roy Barnes gave a talk at the Marietta Museum of History.    He talked about his grandfather Barnes moving the family from Gilmer County to Cobb County and the family business in Mableton.  The family business was, it sounded like a general store  that catered to the farming community which later changed itself to a hardware store.  He passed around pictures, the kind of pictures that a family researcher would be proud of.

 

For about 60 minutes Roy recollected Mableton history, Cobb County History, family and family business stories and antidotes. Each paragraph ended in a punch line with Roy bursting out with an energetic horselaugh which the audience then followed with the same. The video has a few samples.

The audience and he himself wanted the talk to continue. It is like the slapstick comedian saying, “Wait! I got a million of ‘em!”

I think he would love to continue his stories and so would the audience and the museum. This could be part of a solution to the museum’s money crisis.

When the speech was over people came up and spoke to him and he happily shook their hands and shared something with them one on one.  He is a people person no doubt.  I had to do it too.  As we shook hands I told him in the ealry 70s we lived across the street from the Barnes property.  He asked on Floyd Road and I said no, on Fisher Drive, and I added a black family lived there then.  He lit up and said that was the original Barnes property.  He told me that was the Taylor Phillips family – the repeated the name to me  to make sure I got it.   My first thought was Taylor Phillips was also the name of a Braves baseball player in the 60s.

I heard Roy described before as coming off as a crafty witty country lawyer.  Indeed he does.