Acworth Memories

Anna and I went to Collins Funeral Home in Acworth to pay our respects Yesterday.  I cannot ride through Acworth without  having memories on almost every block.   In the funeral home I saw one lady I haven't seen in many years.  She was Rev Moore's secretary.   As we were being introduced I said we were in school together, we  both graduated from Marietta High School in 1960.  She said that is right!  I said she used to be red headed.  She said that was right!  I said we both had Mrs Victery as a teacher our senior year,  in math or whatever.  she said yes.  She agreed, I knew all that about her but she couldn't remember me.  That figures.

Next door to Collins Funeral Home is the post office.  I spent a week in training there in 1987 when I went into window training.  The whole training was two weeks.  One week was on the j ob training.  The technician training me was very high strung and would fly off the handle and have a temper tantrum.    I once told him the world wasn't going to end because I gave a lady 15 cents too much back in change.

Also, just down the street a block beside the funeral home was where my aunt Octavia "Tade" Tyson Carr lived.  She had a nice big home with a big porch.  Before I was driving age I would hitch a ride to Acworth Beach with a friend of somebody I knew and when I wanted to come home I would walk up to Aunt Tade's house and call home and daddy or Frances would pick me up.  And Frances did the same, I think, before she was old enough to drive.

Back in 1955, next to the beach was a little cove.  On the other side of the cove was a rowboat reantal place.  Milton Martin and I rode with Frances on Easter Sunday.  While she lied on the beach we rented a boat, rowed it across the lake and explored the swampy side where creeks and well, swampy stuff were around.  It was very enjoyble, exploring down little wterways with trees hanging over us, and all.  What we didn't know at the time we were baking.  We wore our bathin suits and when it was time to go home we were red.  The net morning at school I was red as a logbster.  I was very sore.  In time the skin pealed and left an embedded tan.  Until just recently I had that embedded sun that left the outline of my bathin suit.  Milton Martin joined the Airforce and I don't know what ever happened to him.   There was a Milton Martin car dealership in Gainesville and I often wondered if that was Milton.

Speaking of Acworth Beach one night a bunch o f us boys went there to a dance.  We went in and all the local boys gave us the bad-eye.  We went back to the car to drink a beer.   We were drinking and I remember like it was yesterday,  we were by a big grassy mound or bank on the edge of the parking lot and in the dark I saw a flash light bobble down the hill and with it I heard the jingle of keys.  It was a cop.  He caught us drinking.  He asked us our names and he wrote them down as we told him.  One of us was Billy Joe Royal, who was getting a reputation as a singer at local functions.  I think the cop said something to the effect that he knew Billy Joe's name.  When I told him my name he said, "Are you Ed Hunter's boy?"  I told him I was.   He then told us to leave and not come back with alcohol.   So we drove on the other side of the lake where a road went into the lake, and finished our beer.

Also  yesterday we drove over the bridge/dam on Highway 92.  I looked down at the place I was thinking about.  About 1989, on a Saturday morning the Acworth police found the body of a man clutching Rosary beads and a gun was in the seat with him.  A whole was in his head.   It appeared that the man committed suicide.  The car was registered to Vince Desantes and the body had  a wallet with an I.D. of Vince Desantes.  Vince Desantes was a co-worker of mine.  We worked side by side as window clerks at the Sprayberry Post Office.

However, some of us doubt if the body was Vince.   Here are a few facts.   Vince was a small frame thin man.  I doubt if he weighed over 140 pounds.  The body was described in the report as weighing over 200 pounds.   The night before  the incident Vince's ATM card was used to withdraw all of his money out of the bank.  The body on had a small amount of bills, ten or twelve dollars.

Here is another thing.  Vince was embezzling money from some postal accounts. the companies that had business reply accounts.  The inspectors knew it, and they set up.  The day the body that claimed to be Vince Desantes was found was the day the Postal Inspectors had plans to arrest him.  Did he sense they were closing in and he  picked up a drunk and shot him and put his i.d. on him and parked the car where it would likely be found?

A few other facts about Vince completely unrelated:  He was a gruff sounding retired Marine.  He was from Boston.  He had a rich aunt who lived in Boston that he was trying to get  to move to Marietta so he could "take care of her.";  He and I are the exact same age, or within hours.  He was born the same date as I.  He like to call his friends something that sounded like "GoomBah!"  About ten months after his supposedly death, a friend and co-worker received a postcard from the Keys.  It simply said, "Goombah!"