Cousin Charley

This is my 3rd cousin, once removed, Charles Milford Hunter.  Charley is the son of  William Jess and Sadie Ray Collins Hunter.  In this picture he is standing on his porch in the Choestoe District of Union County, Georgia, on property he was born on, and so was his father Jess.

Once at a Hunter Reunion in Blairsville when I first met Charlie we were making the world smaller, he found out  he live in Marietta and he said he was stationed at Marietta at Dobbins Air Force Base.  He said the bank kept confusing him with another Charlie Hunter in Marietta who owned a laundry.  I don't remember how we zeroed in on his Air Force friend "Smokey" Stover who also  is from Marietta and still lived there until he died recently.  Smokey was at the time my in-laws handyman.  Small world.

The old John Hunter Cabin which I have shown pictures of many times on facebook and my blog  was sitting on property sold to someone who arranged for it to be demolished.  It was the oldest standing dwelling in Union County.  Charley stepped up and purchased it and paid to have each board and rock and bricks removed, numbered, and cataloged to later reassemble  at a history museum that was being planned for the Choestoe District at an old school house.  I haven't heard anything of that lately.

Charley used to call me two or three times a week. 

A few years ago we were in Union County and in the back country, looking for old cemeteries we rode by the street I remember Charley lived on, Hunter Circle.  We pulled onto the graveled street.  There was only one house on it.  It had to be Charley's house. 

He came to the door.  We woke him up, he was taking a nap.  He invited us in and we sat down and talked a while about the area, his immediate family and so on.

After a while I felt he was just putting up with us so I told him we had to go.

He saw us out to the front porch and as I was taking this picture, he said,  "I hate to ask you this, but who are you?"

Charley will be 91 this coming October.