Rabbits, Jake, Empty Beer Cans

 

Pardon me while I ramble about a time period in my formative years:

I think I was about 9 or 10.  To get home sometimes walking from downtown Marietta one of my short cuts was from Clay Street up Sycamore Street hill, down the hill to East Dixie Avenue then through a few backyards then to our backyard.

When I walked pass the house facing Clay Street but the driveway was on Sycamore sometimes there was an old man sitting in a wheelchair on the front porch.  The old man spoke one time and from then on we carried on a two sentences at a time conversation.  He knew my Hunter uncles.  I don’t think I knew it at the time but my uncle W.C. Hunter was born on Clay Street, across from the house they lived in.

The lady of the house would wave at me whenever she saw me.  One time the guy in the wheelchair saw me coming and hollered for the woman.  She came out to the porch to speak to me when I got closer.

She asked me how would I like to help her out and do some manual labor for her one full day and in return she would give me a pet rabbit.

She had plenty of rabbits in cages.

I helped her move cages around and shoveled some manure in her garden.

When the day was over she told me to pick out a rabbit, which I did.

I did not tell my parents about my deal, thinking they might disapproved. 

I carried the rabbit home and hid it in my room.  When bedtime came I lifted the hare up in bed with me.

The next morning when Mama woke me up for breakfast she saw me sleeping in bed with the rabbit surrounded by rabbit pellets.  She did not like that at all.

I am not sure but I think that was the time I decided to raise rabbits.  A friend of mine also had a rabbit so we had the two rabbits spend the night together.

This must have been the same time period we went to visit my cousin Faye Hunter Rogers and her husband Frank Rogers.  Frank owned a service station on Roswell Road.  They lived on Bells Ferry Road, almost across the road from Bells Ferry Elementary School.  They also had a rabbit farm.

Then we got there they were not home.  We saw them down the street at Jake Medford’s Store.  At the store Frank was dressed in long-handled underwear coming out the store, Faye was in their car laughing.  Frank was paying off an election bet.

Speaking of Jake Medford, one time the KKK burned a cross in front of his business, I have no idea why.

Our rabbit had the babies and they died.

A few years later when we were driving age Jake Medford was where we bought beer on the way to the lake.

We jokingly said Jake had a very strict age requirement for buying beer:  You had to be tall enough to slide your money across the counter.

I did not know it then but Jake Medford is a relative, through the Tyson Family.

When we bought beer at Medford’s store we popped  open as we left the parking lot. From there we always went to Victoria Landing at Lake Allatoona.

We finished the first can up Bells Ferry Road a few miles  We tossed the empty cans out the window about the same area, well, exactly the same yard each time.

One day the owner was hiding in the yard and when we tossed the cans he stepped out from behind a tree with a gun, took aim and shot.  And missed.

We quit throwing beer cans out of windows after that.

Again, I did not know it until I got into genealogy, the family that lived there, and still do I think are Hunter in-laws.  A daughter from that family married a Hunter cousin, 3 times removed.

That was when we were young and foolish.  We don’t do that anymore.