Ivanell Roper's Mother Died

Ivanell Roper's mother, Imogene Adams McGaha died today.  Ivanell's father died just five days ago.  I suppose they have lived t their lives  so long together, in a way,  they have  died together too.   

We wish for the best for  Ivanell, Paul, and their family and other  surviving family members we don't know about.

SUNDAY FUNNIES: WONDER WART HOG AND SUPER PATRIOT

During this period of time TV is bombarded with political commercials, and  the roadside signs are the same.  The signs and the commercials should their candidate is the best.  They shout patriotism.   It seems we can't get enough patriotism - which brings up this Sunday's story, of Wonder Warthog Meets  Super Patriot.

The story and art is by Gilbert Shelton.  

click on image to make it bigger and readable, but not necessarily prettier. 

Reliving the Civil War

We went to the Marietta Museum of Historylast night  to hear David W.  Vaughn show and talk about his collection of Confederate Soldiers portraits made on tintypes /daguerreotypes .  In the museum he has an exhibition that will be on display through August the 30th.... hey!  That's today!

Davie gave a very well versed educational lecture.  He will buy a picture from usually a dealer and research the person in the picture.  He looks for clues in the picture, which tells more of the story.   I think it would be a very interesting and awarding hobby,  and looking for clues is exactly what I do in my genealogy research.  He had a slide show of 40 of his daguerreotypes and the behind the scenes research that went into them and what various things in the picture might tell you.  David Vaughn has surely become an expert of Civil War battles and troop movements with all the research he has done.

Not only that but they had refreshments!

And I saw my high school science teacher Clara Howell.  We run into each other at all things like this. 

William D. Petty (my g-grandfather's brother)

Here is another one in my collection.  Evidently, it is of a young couple.  The handsome young man  was a dashing officer.  You can tell he was a good officer because of his alertness and wry look -  he was a handsome brute, in any time period.  They had this picture taken at a portrait studio in Helen, Georgia.  Afterwards, the dashing handsome officer  reported to the unit he was to be over.  But, as Sherman said, "War is Hell" and when he reported he heard  about the statistic that more young good looking dashing officers are shot in the back by their own men than in front from enemy fire.  He dashed right back to the arms of his wife.  

Willow 's Got Her Ass Whipped

Today at the dog park a dog attacked Willow.  At the gate of the dog park there is a little fence area you first walk in that has two other gates.  One for the  small dogs area and one for large dogs.  In that little space is where I take Willow's lease off and open the large dog gate.  Usually, if there are a bunch of dogs there, the bulk of them will run up to meet the new arrival, to check it out, smell its  butt and look at his balls,  and so on.    I suppose the dogs , in the own way, are hollering "Fresh meat!" the same as inmates in prison might when somebody new arrives. 

This time  as soon as I opened the gate about  three or four bounded out at Willow and they were led by a Pitt Bull looking dog that was growling, breathing insanely, and snapping.  She went for Willow's throat with her teeth.  I thought, "Jugular vein!!" and tried to separate it from Willow but wasn't succeeding.  Then I with my fists started beating the dog on its side with my fists.  About that time the dog's owner made it to our fighting area and pulled it off by the collar.

Luckily, Willow's skin was not broken or ripped.

After that Willow was timid going inside, but I talked her into it.  During the next 15 minutes or so I kept an eye on the snapping pit bull looking creature.  Several times it ran up to Willow in a friendly way like it wanted to play.  Each time it got near I stood up and had my eye on a heavy stick, if I needed it.   The dog's owner never spoke a word.  

Keeping Memories o Our Neighbors Alive

I went to my neighbor's funeral yesterday.  She was 89 years old.  Near the end of the service the officiating pastor said he knew that the deceased effected us, as you effected her.  Whatever she did that we were exposed to changed our lives some and whatever we did in her presence change her or altered her life some.  

Maybe he is right, everybody effects everybody that he or she comes in contact with.

He went on to say in the next couple of days think about the deceased some and think of what memories you have of her.

It is like as long as you remember things about her you are keeping her spirit alive.  When you and everybody else quits is when her spirit disappears.  Poof!   I am just speculating that is what he was saying, maybe not.

However,  while sitting there it got me thinking of her and her late husband.  She was sort of a recluse - she stayed in all the time.  And her husband was always out working in the yard.

Which was my problem.  I dreaded to work in the yard because I knew that he would come over and see what I was doing and try to help me when I prefer to work alone, it is my therapy. 

One time he came over with his equipment and wanted to change  headlights on my truck because he said he saw me ride by and a headlight was out.  I  had seen the truck with the light out too,  it wasn't my truck but one that was the same color in the neighborhood.   I showed him the headlights worked and he said that just meant it had a short in them.  I still would not let him look under the hood, he always made things worse.

One time he saw my garbage cans on the side of the street and rolled them down where he thought they belonged.  We were not home so I did not know they were not at the street, so the garbage pickup company  rode on by, I suppose.  I had to carry our garbage to the county dump.  Later he told me he some kids must have rolled my garbage can up by the street but he rolled them back down.  I told him it was garbage pickup day the reason I put them on the street.  I couldn't get mad at him because he thought he was doing me a favor.

I remembered he and my riding lawnmower.  One time I loaded my lawnmower into my pickup truck and was about to take it to a mechanic.  Jim came over and asked me why do that when he can fix it.  I said the battery and the starter were not making a connection.  For about a day he banged on it and told me he fixed it, but now I would have to put a screw driver down to serve as electric conductor from my battery to the starter.... I got shocked several times trying to get the blame thing started after that.

I decided the only way to slip the lawnmower out of the neighborhood without him seeing it was to have my son come over to help me load the lawnmower in the truck on the opposite side of the house  in the evening when I knew my neighbor would be settling down for the evening.   We got the lawnmower on the back of the truck and I backed the truck up in the carport. 

The next morning I drove off with the lawnmower before daylight and left it in a shop to be repaired.  I used the push mower while it was gone.  I don't think my neighbor ever caught on.

Sure Things In Life: Death and Taxes

My friend Ivanell Roper's father died today.  He has been sick a long time, so it was not a surprise.   We hate to see people we care about die, but sometimes I think it is a relief for all concerned.  Death is the natural order of all living things.    

DNA Results

A few weeks ago I sent in my DNA sample to Ancestry.com.  The DNA sample was  just plain saliva; spit.   I spit in a little tube and sent it off.   Today I got the results.  Here is what they  said was in my saliva:

47% Coffee

33% Kit Kats

10% Chicken-fat

05% Gummy Bears

03% Pulled Pork

02% Unknown

Just joking!

What it really reported:

Ireland 40%

Great Britain 34%

Iberian Peninsula 11%

Scandinavia  10%

Europe West 5%

Ancestry.com also provided me with a list of names with very first similar DNAs that they estimated what relationship they are to me.   The first two were just as they predicted:  which are my first cousins, which I knew anyway.   

But the rest of the names, about  25 or so might provide me with a lot of information. 

HOWEVER!  The DNA report threw a monkey wrench into my findings:  It said my heritage is 100% European. 

From research my ancestor was full blooded Cherokee Indian.  She drowned between 1850 and 1860 in the Little Tennessee River while tending to her fish traps.  My line from her:

Polly's daughter Rebecca Trammell would be one half Cherokee.

Rebecca's son William A. Hunter would be one quarter Cherokee.

William's son Frank Paris Hunter would be one eight  Cherokee.

Frank's son, and my father Ed Hunter would be one sixteenth  Cherokee

And I would be one thirty-second Cherokee.

Yuppies Invade Downtown Marietta

Here are some Square / Glover Park Scenes of last Friday night  at the concert.   They are not all that stupendous scenes, but they were there.  

Click on any image to make it look bigger -  and better than it really is.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! MAD's Last Comic Book Story

This is the last story of MAD Comicbook, which is issue number 23.  MAD number 24 was the first MAD Magazine issue.

Now, I am trying to decide whether to proceed  in order and the next time have a story from MAD Magazine number 24 or revert back and start with MAD #1.... I think I skipped over about the first 5 issues of MAD comic book.

Anyway, that is something for me to ponder over.

Back to routine business:

Today's story is SCENES WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE.  It is a "seeing through movie plots" that Harvey Kurtzman got a kick out of and continued the same concept in one form or another in the other satirical he was over.  Art by Jack Davis.

Note, click on image to make larger so you can read the balloons. 

PS As a bonus you first get to read letters to the editor.

Alice Has Left Us

My beautiful red headed first cousin Alice "Rusty" Hunter Sternagle died today with a brain aneurism.   She will be greatly missed by all that were lucky enough to know her.

Reeling and a Rocking at the EM Club

Last evening in a discussion I reminded myself of the time I Rock & Rolled and brought down the house.   I had a date with a girl named Billy Jean.  We doubled dated with Ed and Sue.  Ed was and is a life time friend and Sue was a co-worker that I lined up for him.  (they got married not long after that).

We went to E-M the  CLUB  at NAS Atlanta.   At the club we had dinner and a band came on.   And I got a little tipsy drinking.    I got silly drunk enough to make fun of the movements some of the people dancing were making.  Billy Jean dared me to take her out on the dance floor and do those actions there.  Being the show-off I am, I took her up on her dare.  We got out and she and I got carried away dancing, doing all the dancing moves in a Charlie Chaplin mimicking  kind of way.  We really went wild and like a wave, people around us suddenly stopped dancing just to watch us and more and more and then we were  the only ones dancing. People were clapping in order hand-slaps to keep us moving.

We were doing things that became movements much later on.... we were being very creative....  I  remember dancing like I was chasing her around the perimeter of the room and trying to lasso her, all to the beat of the band's music of course.  And finally I lassoed her and pulled her in and then we both got on imaginary horses and galloped around the room .  You would have to have been there to fully appreciate it.

Billy Jean married Johnny Pasoce and opened up a nursing home similar to the one her parents owned in Newnan , Georgia..    In time she and Johnny divorced and she died of cancer.

Book Report WHITE SEED, about ROANOKE the Lost Colony.

The book WHITE SEED, subtitled The untold Story of the Last Colony of Roanoke by Paul Clayton.

The book takes a lot of real people,  Europeans and Indians and jumbles them up and gave them a new life  and the story took on a plot of its own.  All author Paul Clayton had to do was time travel to the late 1500s, hide behind a bush and take notes.

The ship brought the new colony off what would be the North Carolina coast, what further would be Dare County, and they settled in with a little self-running government.  Occasionally they had to teach one of the local "savages" a "lesson". 

Then the ship carried some of the settlers back to England for supplies and making some deals.  They had planned to return within a few months but the war with Spain on the high seas interrupted their plans.  It took years for them to return, and when they did there was no colony.  The people vanished.

What happened to the people  is any one's guess or speculation.   Throwing my two cents in I think it had a lot to do with the colonists and the local Native Americans at odds with each other.

The real fact s are the kindling of a good story of "what might have happened"... and so it was written.

By the way if you are interested in the time table of American's colonization, Roanoke was the first until it suddenly wasn't anything.  They founded Roanoke in 1584 and Jamestown was not founded until about 23 years later in 1607.

I feel I learned a little more historical facts and thought it was a good read.  Paul Clayton has written several historical novel.  I might  read another one.     

The Day I Made Franklin Garrett Earn His Pay

Yesterday  I reviewed my Oakland Cemetery photographs.  I came across the above tombstone of Franklin Miller Garrett (1906 - 2000) and I thought of the time I talked to Mr. Garrett on the telephone.

Between 1975 and 1990 I found out  what CSA unit  one of my ancestors was in during the Civil War.  I had no idea what action or where  at  this Confederate Unit my ancestor  belonged to.  This was before Google and on-line research.      I did the next easiest  thing, I called  The Atlanta History Center.  I told the lady that answered  the phone that  I wanted to know the movements of a certain Confederate unit in the War.

She connected me to Franklin Garrett, the official historian of The Atlanta History Center.  I told Franklin what I was looking for and he took notes and told me just a moment, it might take a few minutes to find it.  Then I heard him put down the phone and steps, like walking up bare wooden steps.

In a few minutes I heard footsteps again, like coming down the stairs the phone making a noise, and he told me the information  I had asked him for.

But!  The information he gave me opened the door for more questions, which I promptly asked.

Franklin said, "Just a minute"  And I could here the phone being put down, steps, then heavier steps stepping up the wood steps.

Because this time  he probably  knew where to look, he was back quicker and gave the information.   I wrote it down and thanked him and said something like, "Since I have you on the phone, I want to ask about another ancestor's unit..."

I told him what else I would like to know and in a polite gentle way he asked me did I have any more questions,  that he could get while he was up there... gently he  said walking up and down the stairs was wearing him out.

Later I found out Mr. Franklin Garrett was not born in Atlanta but grew up in Atlanta, and was an expert on the history of Atlanta and had written several books on Atlanta.  I see by his cemetery stone that he was born in 1906.  He was probably between 69 and 75 or 76 when I gave him a good stairs workout.

Whew!  It wears me out just thinking of it.

Franklin Miller Garrett

Tuba Skinny - SHORT DRESS

TUBA SKINNY plays "SHORT DRESS".   SHORT DRESS was recorded in the French Quarters in March, 2014. Speaking of SHORT DRESS, where's Erika Lewis?

Sheryl, The Friendly Ghost

This weekend on  Garrison Keillor 's  PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION radio  show on the GUY NOIR, PRIVATE EYE segment I was reminded of our late neighbor Sheryl.    In the segment Guy's client, a female  public relations director, was swept off her feet by the ghost of Elvis.  And poof!  she disappeared - Elvis took her away.

The  lonely lady Sheryl that lived in behind us was, one might think, taken away with the Ghost of Elvis.  Sheryl was married to an ambitious husband who stayed gone all the time tending to his businesses.  She drunk a lot and took a lot of prescribed  drugs.

Sheryl claimed that one time at Eckard's in the pharmacy department she was waiting on her prescription and Elvis walked in and leaned over and said something like, "Baby, where have you been all my life?  I am going to come back and  take you away in my Cadillac."  Then, I don't know if he left or she left or what. 

A few days later  she died of an overdose and a new Cadillac was  spotted slowly cruising the neighborhood. 

    She was dead in the house for several days before her husband or one of her two children.  She kept the house's temperature so low it slowed down her body's  decaying.

Wait!  That is not all.

Her husband sold the house.  Three owners later one night the husband was  having trouble sleeping.  He opened his eyes and a blond*  headed woman was over him rubbing his head.  It scared him and she vanished.  It happened a several other times.  She was always friendly towards the husband and avoid the wife.

The wife decided to have an Exorcist come.   She invited me and other neighbors to come over for exorcism.    The wife had healthy snacks, fruit, and tea.   It looked more like a Yuppie's tea party.   The Exorcist Priest was a Episcopalian Priestess.

The priestess had a little metallic ball on a chain that gave out some kind of holy incense.   After the social.  We listened to her pray we then followed her around the house swinging the incense ball and chanting or singing.   That is about it.

The wife told me that the night after the exorcism a dead rat was dropped on her husband face while sleeping.

And after that, no more ghostly problems.

*Sheryl was blond and was always in the same color gown the mystery spirit wore.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! TRUMP Does CANDID CAMERA

This  past week CANDID CAMERA was on every night.  The host is Peter Funt, the son of the original creator Allen Funt.   Interesting, Friday,  Peter ran a "Talking Mailbox" scene that was  very popular when his father did the show.

I remember the "Talking Mailbox", not from  watching CANDID CAMERA but from reading TRUMP Magazine, edited by Harvey Kurtzman, so here is Harvey's lampoon of CANDID CAMERA  illustrated by Wallace Wood.

click on image to enlarge to read it.

Eddie Hunter and His Magical Saturday

My son Rocky asked what I wanted for my birthday.  When he asked, it just so happened that I saw a sign advertising helicopter rides over Marietta for $40.  So that is what we told him, a helicopter ride.  And  that is what I received - today.

The plan this morning was to  ride in the helicopter over Marietta.  It is between a 5 and 10 minute ride.  They were to be there between 10am and 3pm.  We are always early.  It is in our DNA.   When we pulled up we saw three men sitting at a table under a umbrella.  I got out and walked over to the table to ask them about the details, and so on.   They asked me my name and I told them and paid them.  One young man stood and said, "Let's go!"  I had to run back to the car to get my camera.

I learned a few things for my next trip, if there is one.  Number one is that as soon as you are in the air you are looking down on things you should be photographing, like the courthouse, The Square, and Glover Park.

After the flight we went to the Farmer's Market on the Square and bought some things such as local honey, big fresh tomatoes, and a chicken pot pie.

I saw former Mayor Bill Dunaway handing out pamphlets and other information at a Visitors Information table.  I told him I just flew over Marietta in a helicopter.  He said,

"Helicopter rides today?"

I told him it was and reach down and pulled out another poster, "HELICOPTER RIDES TODAY."  and it gave directions.

There were several street musicians making their homemade music  (for dollar bills in their hat on the ground) for homegrown produce.

Happy Birthday PR!

Today at 1:54 pm the Earth will become still.  Don't worry, it will be only be momentarily.  Then, it will start back in its usual spinning and rotating.    It will do so in honor of Paul Roper, who will turn 72 at that minute.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL!

If you want to you can email your heartfelt thanks to Paul for being Paul at

pbriv1724@gmail.com

A Slice of History

The cobble stoned  or brick street is Depot Street.  It leads to what used to be the Depot but is now the Visitors Information Center,  Kennesaw House, and the railroad tracks. - but those places were behind me when I took this picture.  In front of the camera is the park with the statue of Senator Alexander Stephens Clay in the center of the picture.

On the right of Root Street facing West Park Square and Glover park is Hemingway's Bar and Grill.  Depot Street is part of their establishment (see the tables?).

We have eaten at Hemingway's at least once.  I remember having to use the restroom and was directed down a flight of stairs.

 I went down the stairs I came into a pool room lounge.   There were some people playing pool.  There was also a window looking out at sidewalk level.  You could see people's lower part of people's  legs walk by.

The window was a tall window, but it went down.  You get to see a cutaway of the City's progress..  It had a level of small rocks, a layer or red dirt, a level of cement, maybe a brick layer, bigger rocks, and so on.   Interesting.   I did not have my camera.  I am going have to revisit that basement for a picture of the cutaway, just like an ant farm.

Blind Charlie Saw All

Bus, Daddy, and W.C Hunter

Dick and Stanley Hunter

My daddy would have  turned 103 years old yesterday, if he was still around.

When I was growing up from age 7 to age 15 I lived in the same house that he lived in with his family as a boy.  It was on Manget Street, on the edge what is now Larry Bell Park.  Then, I think it was the country work farm .

There was an old blind man named Charley who lived around the corner on Glover Street, right behind Glover Machine  Works.  He and his elderly sister lived in the old rackety unpainted  shack, I think, until they died. There was a clothes line that led from the back porch to their outhouse.  Not only did clothes hang on the line but it was also a hand guide to get Charlie to the outhouse.

Charley knew the Hunter boys well, Daddy and his seven brothers.  Whenever I could  I would drop by and visit Charley and his sister.  He always had a funny story to tell of Daddy and his brothers mischievous antics and pranks.   

I remember one time Charlie got a job as a taxi company dispatcher.  I think he was meant for that job, he knew the Marietta streets like the palm of his hand and had excellent diction.  However, he didn't last in it long, he died.

Charlie was buried in what is called a Potters Field, A.K.A.  paupers' cemetery, which was off of Barnes Mill Road.  I think the I-75 came over the area  of the graves, and well, bye bye remains.   ...Probably.

I wish I had taken notes on the things  Charley told me about the Hunter Boys.  Now, I don't remember a damn thing. 

c1918, Daddy, aka, Ed Hunter and his brother Jack

c1921 Daddy and older brother W.C., Unknown, and the Hunter family Cow