Teacher Volunteers

Trump wants some chosen teachers to bring their guns to school.  He said a shooter might think twice before he (or she) terrorize a school shooting people if he knew some one on the inside has a gun and will shoot and ask questions afterwards.

There has been a lot of outcry from teachers and others about such a proposal.  Part of the outcry has been about getting enough volunteers for such a responsibility. 

I think I found one.  A teacher in Whitfield County, Georgia (Dalton),  today locked himself in his classroom and fired his gun and the authorities have not yet found out why.

On This Date in History, Feb 28th Vaudeville is Born

Feb 28, 1888 1st US vaudeville theater opens (Boston, Mass)

Shocking!

Robert Crumb always knows how to draw shocking comicbook covers.

James Caudell's Memorial

James Caudell was one of the few that faithfully read my blog every day.    He called me fairly often when a blog post reminded him of our formative years.  I'm going to miss those calls from my old friend.

There will be a memorial for James, appropriately,  at the Beer Barrel, 1294 Roswell Rd., Marietta, on March 10th, 2018.  There will be a tent for refreshments and memories.  Also, if the parking lot fills up there is a parking lot at a closed store behind them

What time?

Read carefully:

At Ben Robertson Community Center, at Adams Park, 2753 Watts Dr, Kennesaw, a memorial James Caudell Procession will leave at 11:00 and proceed to the Beer Barrel. 

If you have a "hot-rod", in James' honor drive it.

Whoosh!

Memo to me:  Do not stand under a bathroom exhaust fan and take the cover off to vacuum it again.    I did it and...

whoosh!

suddenly I was wearing powder.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! GANEFS!

We  are still fooling with the first issue of MAD Comicbook.  

Today we have the 3rd story, GANEFS!

The story is by editor Harvey Kurtzman and the illustration is by my favorite MAD artist, Will Elder.  With this story Elder was a pace setter for their imitators  to follow for many years.  And that is the little minute details that usually have nothing to do with the story.  Elder called his little lunacy bits "Chicken-fat".

"Chicken-fat"?    Hmmm. That sounds like a good name for a blog!

James Caudell, R.I.P

Our long time friend James Caudell died today.

The Super Panel

Michael, Anthony, "Moe", and Mo

The Marietta Museum of History today had a panel discussion on Public Housing in Marietta in the 1940s.  There were four chairs placed to face the hordes of people who would come to listen. 

I was asked to give my view of living in the Clay Homes during that period.  Which would probably be limited because we moved the summer after I finished the first grade.

In the lobby before it started was my first cousins Anthony Rollins and Susie Petty Kirkendall, and her husband Ronnie Kirkendall.  Anthony said he probably would know more than anybody there about the Clay Homes because as a kid he lived in four different apartments.  I suggested he take my place on the panel.  He was willing.  I looked up Christa, the one running the show and told her that Anthony and I were trading places.  She said why didn't she just to get another chair and we would together.

As it worked out, the narrator Michael Thompson, Anthony, and I were the only panel did not show up.   The other two or three were no-shows.  Michael did most the talking, breaking down the community at the times and how they handled it all.  I'm glad he was there.

They had an assortment of cookies and water on a table for refreshments.  Afterwards, I was talking to an ex-resident of the Clay Homes, by the refreshment table, and while she was talking I reach down and swooped up two cookies and started eating one.  "My pay" I said.

Ronnie Kirkendall, and my two first cousins Susie Petty Kirkendall, and Anthony Rollins

Anthony and Laura, high schoolmates

Clifford Clayton, about 2 or 3 years younger, lived two doors door from us in the Clay Homes

L to R:  Marietta Journal photographer and  reporter (I think), Jim Morris, and Phillip Goldstein's son (I think)

Jane Glover, of Glover Machinery  and Phillip Goldstein

This guy asked a lot of intelligent questions for his age..  After it was over I asked him who he was and howcome he knew so much about Marietta.  He said he was working on his thesis.

Michael Thomas

I An't Gonna Work On Logan's Farm No More

About a dozen years ago we would go to the Acworth Opry one night a month held in a old barn on Logan's Farm.  It was always interesting and many bluegrass artists gathered.  They jammed all around on the outside of the barn and inside the barn was a stage with bluegrass musicians groups play.  They kept to a prearranged schedule.

One group that played there often consisted of  a daughter, in her 20s or early 30s, her pa,  wo was very unpretentious, and the little brother, probably a late teenager, who wasn't little at all.  We called him "Joe".  We called him Joe because he looked a lot like Joe, our neighbors' son.

Joe did not actually sing or play.  He just stood there holding his guitar and gazed at the audience.   I guess he was just filling a visual need.

Very soon I may know exactly how Joe felt back then.  I am to be on a panel at the Marietta Museum of History discussing public housing in the 1940s.

Graceful as a Gazelle

There is an area that Willow and I walk in the mornings sometime.  It is a park.  An woodsy area and 4 young people's baseball diamonds.  Its near the dog park.

I walk mostly in solitude except for an occasional dog walker.  
Yesterday morning I saw an elderly lady running.  She wasn't running, she was galloping.  As she got closer in her face she looked in her 80s, but she ran with great speed, not bent over shuffling like many people probably younger than her.

About 20 or so minutes after I first saw, in another place on the edge of a school's back parking lot I saw her coming my way again.  She was leaping over (in high leaps) cement poles that blocked a drive.  

She reminded me of a graceful gazelle leaping.

When she got within hearing distance I said, "I'm impressed!"

She smiled and did a graceful curtsy

 topped by another leap, gazelle style.

Hard Hearted Hannah

About a week ago we got a telephone call, it was a recording, that said, "Hello, I am Hannah with Atlanta Hearing Association."  and quieness.
Hannah's recording malfauncted. 
About two days later Hannah called again.  And again, one sentence and it got quiet.  Then over a few days Hannah called back twice with the same m.o.
Then today she called.  She added a sentnce.  She asked "How are you?"
I went on a rant telling the computerized recorded message that how she has been calling and just saying the one message and no more.
I think the computer has been fixed to sense sounds, and patiently wait until a sentence or paragraph break.
It said, "I see.  According to our records someone in this household  is hearing impared and qualify for free care."
I said, "Nope. Maybe it is you.  Maybe you can hear but just do not listen."
Andl hung up.
How come I am trying to put down a computer anyway?

Frank PARIS Hunter, and Paris, Texas

According to Uncle John's Bathroom Page-A-Day Calendar, 2018, Tuesday, Feb 20, 2018:  Paris, Texas, was founded in 1844, when a farmer, storekeeper, and postmaster, donated 50 acres of land to establish the town.  The town was named after the general store, the busiest store in town.  Why the owner named the store Paris, no one knows.

There is a 70 foot Eiffel Tower replica wearing a cowboy hat in town.

Also, that is believed to be where our grandfather Frank Paris Hunter was born in 1879.  Also, 1879 is the year Frank's family left Texas to move back East.  I think they had plans of moving back to Franklin, North Carolina, Frank's father William A. Hunter's hometown, but had second thought, maybe because he was wanted for murder in Franklin, and instead moved to the Woodstock, Georgia, area, where William recuperated from a knee wound where he was shot during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.  Frank was probably named after where they were leaving and where they thought they were going.

Up Up And Away!

Billy Graham died today at age 99.

Kroger Shopping Adventures

Shopping at Krogers today: For the past few months I have noticed that no matter what day of the week we go there we see a certain young man dressed the same way, dressed in what looks to me to be nice clothes, walking aimlessly. I haven't seen him speak to anybody, or even look at anybody. He just walks around in a a daze.

I think he is probably homeless with no place to go, but just likes to be under a roof instead of the weather elements.

I was thinking he would probably freak out if I came up to him leading him to believe I thought I was speaking to a fellow walker. Like ask him what kind of walking shoes has he found to be the best; what kind of stretching exercise does he do before he starts walking; did he like to bring ear phones and listen to music and what kind of music did he like.

But I didn't.

Instead I told a friend, who is a Jews-for Christ Rabbi, who was in the store shopping with his grandchildren, that the wandering man appears to be homeless, thinking he might know how to help the poor guy. By the way he changed the subject I think he was saying, "Lets mind our own business."

While shopping I bought two colorful cans of beer. One was Michelob and forgot what the other is. They were in the 10 for $10 display box. I am building up a good collection of $1 cans of beer. Because we were buying beer she asked for my I.D. (it's the law).

I told the cashier that I didn't drink, I just liked the complement of having to show my I.D..

The cashier looked at me like I was some kind of nut.

Today is LOVE YOUR PET DAY

I would show you my pet, but he is busy with the camera.

/ s/ Willow

Cruses for the High Adventured-Type Familes

Do you like to party?  Do you like to brawl, old fashion style?  Do you like to go on luxury cruise ships?

If you said yes to all three book now and when you pack don't forget your brass-knuckles!

The destination is not important because you might not make it that far.

Fighting family of 23 were put off the  cruise ship before the cruise was up.

Today is PRESIDENTS DAY!

HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY!

Today will be greatest Presidents Day ever!

Benjamin & Rocky Came By Today

Benjamin and Rocky dropped by todayi:

SUNDAY FUNNIES: MAD's BLOBS.

click on each page to bring the words and art to an understanding level 

The other day while driving I got behind a garbage truck on a hilly curvy road.  I knew it would be making frequent stops to pick up garbage at the curb.  I didn't want to take the chance of going around it.  I might as well enjoy the scenery.  

MAN!  I saw some automation I have never seen before.  No one was hanging on the back of the truck to hop off at each top and grab a waiting garbage can and dump and contents and quickly put the garbage can back where he grabbed it from and hop back hanging on the back of the truck for the next stop.

It wasn't like that.

I was amazed to see a long metalic arm reach outward, then downward, picked up the garbage can and turned it upside down and emptied the contents, put it back and move on.

Automation is putting and end to manual labor.  Of course the garbage company will gain in no more calling in sick or having to hand out pay checks. But the poor manual laborers will even be poorer.
Automation is taking over our lives.  Doing physical chores will be less and less.

Which reminds me of a story in the first MAD Comic book,  issue #1, in the early 1950s, by Harvey Kurtzman and art by Wally Wood.

Memo To Me

Memo  To Self:  Work this in sometime.

"In October 1957, in Australia, Little Richard mistook Sputnik's launch for a great ball of fire signaling the apocalypse.  He threw an $8,000 ring into Sydney Harbour; renounced his homosexuality; signed up as a Seventh-Day Adventist; and quit the Devil's music."

From ONCE UPON A TIME: THE LIVES OF BOB DYLAN by Ian Bell.

YEEOOOOWWWW!

It is not unusual for me to go into a room with a purpose in mind and then when I get there  suddenly have no idea what I was going to do.   As I get older it is getting more frequently
.
Tonight we watched the ice skating events of the Olympics.  A male skater who I think has a cheering following did all kinds of graceful skills on the ice.  We saw him leap and go into a spin and landed with what looked like a piece of cake with his talent.

He also did several splits high up in the air.  Splits are when one leaps off the ice up in mid-air, then spread his legs wide apart, then bring the legs back in to continue skating mode by the time he or she comes back down.

What if I tried that and had one of my lapse memory moments just as I started going back down?

YYEOOWWWW!!!

What we Gave Up For Lent

This looks something like the big wad of lint I pulled off the dryer's lint filter today after we washed and dried a stack of towels we just bought.

You  might say we gave it up the lent for lint.

Throwback Thursday: WHAM!

Throwback Thursday.  This is a little private drive in Marietta  going from the back a row of long standing  buildings on Atlanta Street into Waddell Street.

In front of drive on Waddell Street, in my time, as Steel's Store.  We lived directly across the street, the first apartment in the Clay Homes.  The green vacant lot in the picture is where the Clay Homes used to be.  This picture was taken several years ago.  Now, Yuppie-like townhouses are there.

A week from Friday, February the 23rd, at 10:30 in the morning the Marietta Museum of History is having a "Public Housing" in their "Remember When" Series.  It should be interesting to us that were "there" in the various Marietta projects.

Getting back to looking down the down hill drive leading to Waddell Street:  When I was preschool age I had a tricycle.  I discovered how fun gravity could be.  I found if I push my tricycle up the hill in the drive, when I got to the top, turn it around to fade down the hill, sit down on the seat, raise my legs and feet so not to interfere with the peddles going around and around I could coast down the hill and build up to a high speed in just a moment.  I must have tried it once or twice and did not get hurt.

However, the last time I sped down the hill and the next thing I remembered I was lying on our couch in the living room with a bunch of people looking at me..  A lady in a car hit me as I shot out right in front of her. Apparently, it knocked me out.

Later the Sears store and the auto parts store next door became Marietta Lighting.  Then for the past few years I don't think any thing was there, but recently it was announced a brewery company with an outside beer garden will be there.

The Sears Store:  One day is December my mother was ironing and listening to WFOM Radio Station.  Santa was on the air at Sears and kids were telling him what they wanted for Christmas.  Then she heard a kid that sounded like me.  The looked out front and I wasn't there.  She looked at the back door and I wasn't there either.  You know where I was.  Maybe I asked Santa for a tricycle.

BAM!

We have a PO box. I go to the post office daily to get our mail. The entrance of the post office has glass doors that opens by movement sensors. I noticed lately the doors have been acting strangely.
Today while approaching the glass doors a man, big and bully looking, coming from a different direction, stopped and motioned for me to go ahead of him. I suppose he yielded because I am older.

But I insisted for him go first because he deserved it, he arrived slightly ahead of me, besides I could tell he was in a hurry. He looked pleased.
He walked up and the two glass doors opened for him. Then they quickly closed, causing him to walk hard right into them.
He made my day.

Message From Benjamin's Heart

Noonday Creek Trail, Bells Ferry Rd to Kennesaw Mountain

This is not me biking.  However I have pedaled from the Noonday Creek Trail parking lot and huffed and puffed and got halfway through the office park before you get to Cobb parkway.  I think Jay Davee made this excellent video

I wondered what streets in the office park would take you to Cobb Parkway, and now I know without doing all that work huffing and puffing.  The ride didn't stop at Cobb Parkway, like I thought, but I enjoyed the ride all the way to the Kennesaw Museum parking lot.
Great ride!

HAPPY FAT TUESDAY!

SHOW ME YOUR TA TAs !

Happy FAT TUESDAY!

Sam's (1941-2013) Birthday

Sam, my best man at our wedding

My friend Sam Carslely would have been 77 today.  But he took his own life April Fool's Day, in  2013. 

From his experiences with his mother's decline with Altymizer disease he knew he had it and he did not want to put his wife Lita through the same hardship.

Sam and I knew each other since baby-hood.  We lived down the street from him in the Clay Homes and were lifetime close friends.  His father, Norman Carsley, born in Great Britian, joined the Navy when we got into War World II, and was killed on a ship by a Japanese Kamikaze plane.  My father tried to give special attention to Sam as we grew up, he knew every growing  kid needed a father.
Sam, although well educated and well salaried, lived a humble life.   He bought our house when shortly after Rocky was born and we needed a bigger house.  I don't think he made one change of the house, up until the day he died. 

He compulsively felt "don't have it if you don't need it".  He one time went to great lengths looking for a phone that did not have a dial on it.  The house we sold him, he used one room as an exercise room, he wanted a phone in that room in case he got a call while exercising, but he saw no reason the phone should have a dialer because he wouldn't be calling anybody from that room.

He was an expert photographer, which he introduced me to.  He was an aquired comic book collector and connesieur as well as science fiction books... which gave me an insight on my literature taste.
I could go  on and on and almost fill a book of Sam's compulsive behavior  quirkiness, kind heartedness, perfectionism,  and so on.

I  want to tell of two of our nerdy adventures when he was Georgia Tech student studying physical engineering.

Sam figured out that if you throw a paper air plain off the Allatona Dam on the Etowah Valley side a constant west wind that is always coming down the valley will like it always does, swoop up the high dam and if you so-happened to throw a hand-folded paper airplane off the dam on that side it will be launched upward.  We brought a stack of notebook paper to the dam and started making them and throwing them off and watching fly upward then downward, until it hit the updraft and it would sore upward again.  We did about 20 paper air planes and it was a crazy sight.  It looked like the planes were having cat fights, bumping into each other,  and all.  They showed no signs of landing when we suddenly left after we saw the sign not to throw anything off.

Another time he learned about inertia motion or energy which also has a simple version of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  He used as a example standing in the aisle of a bus with the bus traveling.  If the bus suddenly stopped the person standing in aisle would feel a motion trying to thrust him forward.  Because you are moving at the same speed the bus is.  If you would jump up in the air when the bus suddenly stop you would keep moving, maybe ramming the dash of the bus.  Along that same time Sam had just  bought a used 56 green and white Chevrolet convertible in very good shape.  He wanted to prove the movement theory.  It was a nice night to ride around in a convertible with the top down anyway.  For some reason I don't remember we went to Paulding County, on a dirt road near the Dallas Drag Strip to do our experiment.  We were to get up speed, then when Sam said NOW! I was to throw a beer can I was holding straight up and at the same moment he was to stop.

NOW!  I threw the can up. The car stopped.

WHAM!  It landed on the car's  hood and left a bad looking mark.

My parents' 50th, Ed West, Mama, Sam (front row)

back row Barbara and Larry White

Sam and Lita Carsley