1st Day of School 1947

This picture was taken in early September 1947 in our front yard on the corner of Wayland and Waddell Streets in the Clay Homes. We are suppose to be looking gloomy because it is the first day of school.
It was my very first day of school. I went to the first grade that year.

Left to right: Jeane Steele, Billy Somebody (who later moved to Gramling Street), Eddie Hunter (that's me), Frances Hunter, and Helen Steele.
After that school year, the next summer we moved in my grandfather, but we still went to the same school (Waterman Street School).

Ryman Auditorium

These pictures were taken December 2018.

The early part of  1963 a group of us went to Nashville to see the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium.

We went in my old new Volvo.  The brakes were bad so we changed them.  On our trip on the state two- lane highway just north of Chattanooga on a steep incline going down a mountain my new brakes failed, down we sped, with one of us screaming.  Thank God for truck run-a-ramps.  It probably saved our lives.  I don't know how we fixed the brakes but one of us did,.  They probably just needed an adjustment.  

In Nashville we got a room in a hotel next door to the Ryman Auditorium and went to Woolworths to eat dinner.  Our table was in the window.  While eating an old man with a dirty coat and a guitar on his shoulder stood and watched us eat.  We motioned for him to join us and we would buy him a dinner.  He quickly joined us and ordered.  He told us he and Cowboy Copas grew up together and were good friends.  Cowboy told him if he ever got to Nashville come to the Opry and he would give him a job singing.  We wished him well.

The Ryman Auditorium was built in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle.  Rev. Sam Jones of Cartersville. Georgia, was the main evangelist that preached there.  In 1943 the Grand Ole Opry took it over. 

That night we got  sat on a church pew in the balcony.  Cowboy Cobas was the M.C.  We saw many famous country and western singers.  The only one I one I can remember is Patsy Cline.  I also remember the giant cereal box on stage and the constant plug of WSM Radio broadcasting live.

During the show I saw Cowboy Copas's friend on the main level walking up the aisle with his  guitar.  I nudge my friends and we eagerly watched him.  Almost to the stage two or three men intercepted him.  They drug him away with him trying to explain his relationship to Cowboy and Cowboy did not miss a beat or even blink during the ruckus, he just played on.

Afterwards we went to  The Jungle Club Lounge.   The waitress flirted with us but warned us she had a husband and four kids waiting on her not miles north of there in Kentucky.  

Very soon after that night, Cowboy Copas and Patsy Cline died in a plain crash, March 5, 1963.

Throwback Thursday: Ice Storm, March 1961

Throwback Thursday: Our current weather condition reminds me of the Ice Storm of March 1961.  When the storm came it was during the night.  In March 1961, we woke up to a frozen white Winter Wonder Land.  I worked in Atlanta at the time and it was too dangerous to try to drive to work.  So, I called in.  So did all my friends that were not away at college.  We went out to play on the frozen  slippery terrain.

Larry  got a near worthless used car from his father's used car lot and we rode around and learned a lot about the physics of driving on slippery ice.  We went to Town & Country Shopping Center, which was empty of customers' cars because of the weather and used the wide open spaced parking lot as a training ground.  We would spin, get speed up and slam on the brakes en enjoy the slide.  Later we tried climbing a steep hill and I forgot what happened but it put an end  to our riding that car. 

The steep hill was leading off Powder Springs Street across from Garrison Road.  We were just a block or two from the Marietta Country Club.  We got the idea of going up to the golf course and sliding down the big hill there on the green.  When we walked up to the  Country Club we realized we were not the first ones to think of sliding down the hill on the golf course.  Many kids were there sliding.  They had serving trays they were using that they slipped in and got from the dining or kitchen area of the club.  Other kids had flattened big cardboard boxed, and even one group of kids brought a car hood they rode on.  I tried a serving tray, a cardboard flattened, but finally got the not so bright idea of riding down on a round red Coke sign, which the face of it was facing the ice.  I started down the hill, picked up speed, and for some reason the Coke sign started to spin, or I should say  the Coke sign and I started to spin faster and faster.

The Coke sign became a runaway out of control Coke sign.   I couldn't get off or guild it.  At the bottom of the hill is normally a pretty little pond.  That day it was partially frozen .  I  hit the pond, it may have skidded to put me more in the middle, then sunk. 

It was almost thigh deep in cold icy water.  I walked out.  The fun was over.

I needed dry pants.  My pants were sloshing  and about to get stiff with ice.  I was walking.  I lived on Richard Street which was about 2 or miles away, one block from the 4-Lane, across the highway from the future White Water Amusement Park.

Sometimes I can be resourceful when it comes to surviving.  I sloshed and crinkled my way across town, about halfway home to Colonial Circle, where Mrs. Latimer lived.  

My friend Gene "Jenky" Latimer was killed in a drag race the previous May or early June.  I knocked on  Mrs. Latimer's door.  She was happy to see an old friend of Jenky's.  I told her my pants were wet, could I borrow a pair of Gene's pants.  She gladly gave me a pair, which I went to the back and changed into.  Then Mrs. Latimer baked us some banana-nut bread, which we had with hot apple cider. 

Still, each time I ride by Colonial Circle off Fairground Street, or  eat banana bread I think of that day. 

Throwback Thursday, Thanksgiving

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2013

MY THANKSGIVING STORIES

Copied and pasted from my Blog November 2013:

My 2nd Thanksgiving Story, which is more memorable:  Back in the early late 1950s or early 1960s a group of friends and I decided to go hunting early on Thanksgiving morning.  Larry Southern knew of a place in White, Georgia, near Cartersville of endless dirt roads.  Our plan was to take turns with two of us riding on the fenders and when we saw a rabbit shoot it.  We have been out on dirt country roads countless times and rabbits would run out in front of us.    Maybe we arrived at the destination about 2am, and proceeded to ride the dirt roads, taking turns at fender duty.  We did not see any rabbits.   We gave up and came upon an abandoned  country unpainted shack.  We built a fire in the fireplace and sat around and talked about life and gossiped.   We were not getting much accomplished , we decided to drive back to Marietta.  Out on the highway going to Cartersville we had a flat tire.  We were driving one of Larry's father's old  junk car somebody traded him for a better car (hopefully).  The old heap had  no spare.  We sat in the car and talked and gossiped some more.   Daylight began to slowly shift in.  When it got light enough that we could see some things around us we saw we were parked across  the road from a house.  Beside the house was a pasture and behind the house was a little hill.  Near the top of the hill was an outhouse, maybe 50 feet from the house.

Larry said he was going to use that outhouse.   We knew he meant it.  He loved to use outhouses.   Monty and Johnny tried to talk him out of it.  He wouldn't listen their reasoning.  He got out of the car and walked beside the house and up the hill.

Something you need to know about Larry:  He was then a shy person.  He would do sneaky things but hoped he would never get caught, it was too embarrassing.   When he did get caught he scratched his forehead  so his hand would cover his face.  We have seen him scratch his forehead more than once.

Larry went into the outhouse and shut the door.  The rest of us  sat there and talked and speculated what would happen if he got caught.

Then I saw a little grey headed matron looking lady walking up hill with some newspapers in her hands.  I told my friends and we were having laughing fits watching each step the lady took.

She opened the door and  dropped her papers..  Out bounded Larry trying to pull up his pants with one hand and scratching his forehead with the other.

He ran down the hill, jumped in the car , started the engine and  we rode off, flat or no flat.

We got down the road a very shot distance but around a bend and out of sight and gave out of gas.  This time we were in front of a service station that sold tires  and gas.  We started to pool our money  to discovered that every one of us was broke.

Somehow I got elected to go to Larry's house, or his parents' house, get his car and his money was hidden in his car, and drive back to White, Georgia.

I hitchhiked back to Marietta.  I lived with my family close to the 41 Hwy, or 4-Lane, as we called it locally.  My last ride carried me as close as two blocks for our house.  I walked into our house.  My family was having Thanksgiving dinner.  Invited  down from Chattanooga was my mother's brother Tom Petty and his wife Mary Jo.  I hurriedly ate, standing up - I was on a mission.  I took my car and drove over to Larry's house and got his car.  Luckily, his parents were not there - I would look awful guilty trying to explain everything to them.  I left my car at Larry's parents and took Larry's car and drove back up the 4-Lane to Cartersville.  That was before the I-75 was built. 

Right after the first street turning off into Cartersville, I gave out of gas.

Back then we ran out of gas a lot.  We did that a lot and just dealt with it as it happen.  It was also a way of life to park on hills with the front aiming down in case we had to push our car off.

I was out of gas with the mission incomplete.   The only thing I knew to do was to start hitchhiking towards White and worry about Larry's car later.  After all, they need the money to get gas and a tire for the heap.   As I was walking backwards on the northbound lane of the US41 with my thumb out I looked over to the southbound lane and there was my four friends walking backwards with their thumbs out.  I hollered and we joined up.

I do not remember the details of what happened next.  We got Larry's car, put gas in it and went back to white and had to walk to the owner of the service station's house to get him to open on Thanksgiving to sell us a tire and some gas.  I think he sold us a used tire for $5 and sold us gas. 

It was something I think I will remember until I can't remember no more.