Marietta Back Then

 

Old Marietta (O.M.) created this Remember When article of how things were a long long trme ago in Marietta.  I simply threw in my two cents by copying and pasting and altering drawn from my own memory of “Back Then”.

Old Marietta (O.M.)

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Remembering when...! Mr. Bill Kinney and others:

And now, we head back down “Memory Lane.” Remember not so long ago …

 

Speaking of Bill Kinney and his wife Alberta Shouse Kinney:  In the 5^th grade at Waterman Street School, during recess, lining up at the fire escape to back to our classroom a friend pushed me against the fire escape which was metal put a big gash in my forehead.  That was before 911, my father was called.  Until he got there Miss Shouse had me put my head in her lap and she held a towel with ice against it.  It was the first time I appreciated the soft firm hips of a woman.  Later that same year Miss Shouse told me she had a pigeon in her room at the boarding house that got inside somehow and she put it in a box.  Would I like to have it?  Yes.  After school I walked with her to her room at a boarding house for teachers on North Avenue.  I remember in particular walking by the drunks in front of the Old Courthouse and some of them whistling.   Within a year she married Bill Kinney.  My daddy was the Chief of the Cobb County Police and one time they raided what was at that time the largest still in Georgia.  It was just off the 4-Lane (Cobb Parkway, S.), just south of Dobbins AFB, where Wallmart is now.  As a reporter Bill Kinney went along.  He got intoxicated on the fumes.

When $2 worth of gasoline would last nearly a week? And the gas wars!  Sometimes gas was less than 20 cents a gallon.

When certain sections of Marietta had their own nicknames, such as “Roosevelt”, “Whitlock Heights”, “Lick Skillet,” “Louisville,” “Baptist Town,” “Jonesville” and “Butler Town”?

My father and his bothers were the Lords of Butlertown.  I was told countless stores of the brothers, and unfortunately I have a bad retention.

When Miss Whitehead, the principal at Waterman Street School, gathered all the students around the flagpole to lower the flag to half-mast after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died?  Miss Whitehead’s doing half-mast was two years before my 1^st grade debut at Waterman Street School.  Miss Whitehead couldn’t wait to get her hands on me, symbolically,  more than once she bent down in my face and said my Daddy and his brothers gave her hard time and it is stopping here.  One time when a bat I caught and accidentally let loose in halls before school started had her screaming at me, red faced.  Kids were screaming as the poor bat flew up and down the halls with Cliff he janitor chasing it trying to knock it down with a broom.

 

When the kids with Marietta Daily Journal paper routes would gather in an alley off Winters Street to roll or fold their papers before delivering them?  J knew a bunch of them and we would meet and walk our routes partially together, I was delivering the Atlanta Journal.

When the Greyhound bus station was at the northeast corner of Atlanta and Anderson Streets, across from the old First Methodist Church? The lot in front of the station had enough room for about one bus and it couldn’t turn around.

Us kids used to play on the dirt mounds as the new Greyhound Bu station at Anderson, Roswell, and Green Streets was built.  And after that was finished we played at the construction site of the 1^st Methodist Annex Building.  At both construction sites two of us got seriously hurt.

When school children marched around the Square and on to the Confederate Cemetery on Southern Memorial Day? Most of the kids carried flowers, usually hydrangea, for the graves? (The parade was led by Mrs. Regina Rambo Benson, who taught the kids to sing “Dixie” as it should be sung.)  I remember walking to the Confederate Cemetery with my Waterman Street School Class.  My first march I was only 6.  Our mother knew I was a wanderer, she had a fear of me just wandering off at the cemetery to who knows where and gave my older sister to keep an eye on me and bring me home.  At the cemetery, after we were “dismissed!” Frances could not find me.  She looked high and low and I wasn’t there.  She walked home wording how she was going to tell Mama she lost me.  When she got home she saw me playing in the front yard.

When kids were playing baseball or football all around town with nary a grown-up in sight?

When it took a half-day to go to Atlanta and back — more if any shopping was to be done?

When steam-powered trains stopped to fill up at the water tank behind Romeo Hudgins Welding shop and near the City Cemetery?  Romeo Hudgins was the Little League coach for Southern Discount team.  I was on his team for two years.  His assistant coach was Pepper Martin, who had an evening show on WFOM named “Dinner Light Music with Pepper Martin”.  Pepper’s sons and at least one grandson became heavily involved in music.

When downtown stores had pneumatic tubes from sales areas to central cashiers?

When parts of present-day South Marietta Parkway were known simply as Clay Street?

When the Marietta Police Department consisted of four officers and one patrol car?

When the local funeral homes operated the only emergency ambulances in town?

When City Hall, the Fire Department and the Teen-age Canteen were all in the same building on Atlanta Street?  In the 7^th grade a bunch of us wanted to be teenagers so bad, we would go to the TAC (Teen Age Canteen) and usually the husband and wife managers would run us out, but we came back.

When young boys pushed ice cream carts, cooled with dry ice, all over town, selling Eskimo Pies, Popsicles, Fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches and hunkies?

When the old guard house at the end of Fairground Street was converted into a restaurant called the Drive In and Eat? There was another guardhouse near the underpass on the Access Highway/South Cobb Drive.

When there was a fair held on Fairground Street each year (actually a carnival)? It was on the present site of Perry Parham Field. On the Sunday morning after the fair left town, lots of kids from Marietta Place would rake through the sawdust left behind in search of coins dropped from pockets of those riding the most daring rides, i.e. the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Bullet, etc.  One time a carnival lady  at a trailer handed me a bucket and told me she would give me a quarter when I bought it back full of water.  I found a water spicket near the Bell Auditorium I lugged the pale of water from there to the Perry Parham Little League area, however, it was a long way, and about a quarter of water sloshed out.  The lady said I spilled so much it was not worth a quarter.  She gave a dime.  She handed me  another bucket and told me to try again.  I put the bucket down and walked away.

After the carnival part of the fair left, usually late Saturday night we kids would prowl over the area the rides were and pick up a few dollars in change.  One time I found several jars of pickled snake heads.  Big rattle snakes’ heads and more.  I brought them home and hid them in our chicken house, I knew my mother would not allow me to keep those snakes and I also knew she was not likely go into the chicken house.  Wrong. She found them.

 

When the corner of Sessions and Rose Lane Streets was the site of Holeproof Hosiery, one of the town’s major employers, not upscale loft apartments and condominiums?

When the powers-that-be thought a hogwire fence would prevent adventurous young boys from crawling all over and through the old B-29 bomber parked on the East side of Bell Center on Fairground Street?

The B-29 was in front of the Hood family home.  Mr. Hood was the maintenance grounds keeper and I suppose since he was always on call, they furnished him and his family a house in the park.  The plane was about in front of the Aquatic Center.  We were playing in it one time and I fell out of what was probably the bombing bay.  I thought I broke my leg and limped around a few days but evidently it was just bruised.

 

 

When neighborhood grocery stores around town flourished? I remember Pete Steele’s on the corner of S. Waddell and Wayland Streets,  Our apartment in the Clay Homes was the end apartment on the corner of Waddell and Wayland Streets, the closest to Pete Steele’s store.  Pete and his wife and three daughters became lifetime friends.

 

Mr. Yancey’s on the corner of E. Waterman Street and South Avenue,

Yancy’s Store was on my paper route.  They sold malt balls, 2 for a penny.  I dropped by there almost every day and bought about a quarter’s worth; 50.  Then I took my malt balls in a sack down the street one block at the corner of South Avenue and Fraser Street.  The man who lived there own a restaurant on the 4-Lane (Cobb Parkway).  He kept a monkey on a chain in his front yard.  I sat down on his front step and shared the malt balls with the monkey.

 

Mr. Garrison’s Country Store in Marietta Place, Mr. McConnell’s on Roswell and Fairground Streets, Joiner’s Market on Cherokee Street, Kirk’s on Powder Springs Stree.  Kirks’ Market was first on Roswell Street across from Dodd Street.  I think Adrian and Mark Kirk were the owners.  I worked there as a sacker and carry out clerk for a year or two. and others on Maple Avenue, Sessions and Campbell Hill Streets, Butlers Crossing, Paige Street and Allgood Road.

 

When we looked forward to the Rat Skats of Marietta High holding their initiations each year? You would witness some very strange sights around town and some very embarrassed young men afterward.  The final climax of the initiation was to run 3 miles down Stylesborough Road dressed in a bra and panties and let the members drive by and whack you with a paddle.

When the Westside mothers wouldn’t let their daughters go near the Bell Center area (around the current Cobb Civic Center) due to the roughnecks that hung out in that vicinity? When we had three public swimming pools in Marietta, open seven days a week in the summertime?  Once at Larry Bell’s pro-wrestling I was showing off for a cute little girl and fell off the blenchers and broke my arm.

 

When the old bowling alley in the basement of Larry Bell Center had eight lanes, four duckpins and four tenpins, all with manual pinsetters? The main objective of the duckpin bowlers wasn’t to score high, but to bounce a pin off the back wall and then off the pinboy’s head. Needless to say, those boys, all in their early teens, became very adroit at dodging the flying pins.

Once I went to see the manager of the Larry Bell Park Bowling Alley for a job as a pin-boy.  The manager practically said yes, but first he needed some land cleared that he just purchased near Austell.  Jimmy McEntire, Billy Joe and Jack Royal went as a crew.  I forgot how much he was going to pay us.  We cut and put all the brush in a big pile, and he poured gasoline on it and it.  It caused a big fire also catching our hopefully new boss on fire.  We rolled him and put him out but he was badly burned.  That was before 911 so we put him in the the car and rushed him to the hospital to the ER.  That is the last we heard of him or our jobs.

Down the hall from the Bowling Alley in the basement of the Larry Bell Park Auditorium was the pool room.  I got to know the manager Pop Smith well.  He lived near me on East Dixie Avenue.  I wanted to play pool but Pop wouldn’t let me.  He said I had to be 18.

When there was an earlier bowling alley behind McClellan’s 5 and 10 cents store off Winters Street, but that was even before my time?

Speaking of McClellan’s 5 and 10 Cents store.  I don’t remember what was there before McClellan’s but I remember the night before they opened.  My Daddy, a Marietta Policeman was friends with the manager, a young man.  He and his wife gave our family a tour of the store the night before they opened.  I remember only low lights were on, because if it was well lit people woold think it was opened, and Daddy saw a boy, about my size standing on a merchandize table and he said something like, “Eddie!  Get down now!”  And it wasn’t me, it was a boy mannequin. 

When the jailhouse was behind the courthouse on the Square and the inmates would look out the barred windows and yell at people walking on Washington Avenue?

After the Saturday morning cowboy or Bowery Boys or ? show was over at the Strand Theater was over we would go by the granite calaboose next to the Sheriff’s office to pick up cigarette packs and either take them or throw them back and the barred windows.  Girlfriends of the inmates would somehow get sample cigarette packs and throw them in the window.  They were easier to throw and more likely make it through the bars.

 

When Miss Tib Sibley was the librarian at the Carnagie Library on the corner of Church and Lemon Streets and you could hear her talking throughout both floors of the building? She was just a little on the deaf side and had to talk loudly to hear what she was saying. 

Miss Sibley had a very much southern drawl accent and when she talked of the joys of reading I could not wait to read some of the books she pushed.

 

Another lady who visited the grammar schools several times a year was Miss Ogden, the music teacher.  She always handed colored wooden dowels and some of us sang and some of us kept the beat with those color dowels and some jabbed each other with those color dowels.

 

When Keeler Woods was just that and not a subdivision? All the young boys on the west side of town spent many a happy day tromping through those woods.

Then while Keeler Woods was being built Cobb County was a dry county, no whiskey was allowed.  My uncle “Peanut” kept his moonshine hid in a wooded area in that soon to be subdivision.

 

Remember Florence's, JoAnn Shop, Mr. Murray's Shoe Store, Saul's, Leiters, Mill End Fabric Store?

Remember Fletcher's on the Square, where you could get Mrs. Fletcher to help you with jewelry at street level & Mr. Fletcher would take family portraits downstairs?

Remember the unique window displays at Fletcher's during Christmas like the gold miniature ferris wheel with Santa?

Remember every fall before school started going to Coggins to get a new pair of Bass Weejuns?

Remember when all Dunaway drug stores & Atherton's had food counters that served breakfast, lunch and a cherry coke any time?  Larry Bradford and I got thrown out of Athertons’s lunch counter one time for throwing French fries at each other.

The Goat Man, The Hook Man on Blackjack Mountain?

White kids crashing the party at Bomber City?

Pick basketball games at “The Blacktop” ?

Baker the Taylor – sewing up your new suit?

I remember a little bald  man tailor named Hazel he Tailor who had a shop on the ground floor of the Kennesaw House.  He was good and cheap pegging boy’s Levis  pants.

New Keds from Coggins, Gold Cup socks, Dobbs hats, Arrow shirts and Countess Mara ties from Johnny Walkers?