Corn Beef and Cabbage, Beer, and Bingo.

When I was in the Boy Scouts I belonged to Troop 132.  Troop 132 was sponsored by Saint Joseph's Catholic Church, which at that time was on Church Street at Kennesaw Avenue , Marietta.

Most o f the time there were no happenings that made it look Catholic.  I remember one time we had to go as a group and stand up in a church ceremony and most of the kids in the troop did not know or do the right moves, like "Hail Merry" and draw an air Cross in front of you.

Another time on Campbell Hill Street on the future sight of the new Saint Joseph's Church we, as the church's Scout was requested to attend the event - I do not know what the Catholic event was.  A few of us adolescent rednecks were amazed at a young priest smoking and drinking beer. 

Then there was the Scouts Corn Beef and Cabbage Dinner.  It was a money raising thing for the Scouts.  We sold tickets and had a raffle for a shotgun.  It was held at the gym in the middle of Marietta Place.  I never had seen so much openly drinking by adults.  The only drinking I knew of was my grandfather Frank Paris Hunter and my uncle W.C. Hunter, and took nips out of a paper bag and passed it around.  But openly?  Na!

Again the  young priest was guzzling beer, smoking, playing bingo (gambling), and  in general being a party animal. 

 Other people got tipsy and us honorable Boy Scouts had to sneak our smokes and beer in a back mop and broom closet we found.

We also got to eat the meal of the evening:  Steamed Corn Beef and Cabbage ...... in fact, we each probably had several plates of it.  They cooked more than they need.  We love it. 

When I hear of corn beef and cabbage I  salivate and think of my Boy Scout day at the  Catholic Scout dinner.

OM Don Wallace

Don Wallace at the Bell Reunion September, 2008.

Don Wallace was another one in the same scout troop (132) as I was. But I think he did everything right like he was suppose to and we didn't have a bad influence on him at all.

County Extension Building

This building was on the corner of Waddell and Lawrence Streets, about where one of the vast buildings of the Cobb Complex is now. It was behind the Sheriff's office and within a stone's throw the granite city jail. The building had character. Now, what it is its place? I don't know, all those county buildings look alike now.

I think the personnel in the building provided rural services and advice. It you had a large farm you would know the people in this building well - also, they could advise you on what kind of material to buy for what, take a soil sample and advise what would grow, cooking tips, etc... it was like having a team of Martha Stewarts.

One of our boys in our scout troop, Jimmy Pat Presley, thrived on vandalism. He made it a routine going through the offices that were unlocked and do mischievous things to them.

In the basement of this building is where we attended Boy Scout meetings, Troop 132, Saint Joseph's Church, for a while, until they told our scout master to find someplace else. That happened a lot.

Jimmy Pat died a few years ago. He bent over to pickup his dog and instantly died.

Redneck Interns

Here are three of us fine Boy Scouts camping. The guy on the left is Charles S., I think he is a contractor; the guy in the middle is James B., he was a worker for Ford Motor Co., in Hapeville, Georgia, until it closed up a couple of years ago; and the good looking guy on the right is me…a long long time ago.

I think the camp was near Macland Road, SW of Marietta.

Zoom, Zoom

This morning I was walking Willow as I do all mornings. I try to get her at least 30 to 45 minutes daily, and sometimes go that extra mile (literally). This morning was one where we were going for 60 minutes. We just talked to the traffic guard in front of a grammar school. Her son and our sons were in the Weebelos Cub Scouts together. She, holding her Stop sign, walked Willow and me across the Ebenezer Road at the corner of Beaverhsop Road.

I was carrying a sack of dog shit with me which she had let go of less than 10 minutes ago. On Beavershop Road we went over the rise of hill and were on our way down the slope on the other side when suddenly her pronged chain training collar just fell off. I was holding a leash with an empty collar. As soon as I noticed it so did Willow. She took off running.

And she is a very fast runner. Her breed, as far as racing and speed go, is up there with greyhounds.

I know from experience not to let her know you are trying to get a hold of her. If she senses that, she thinks it is a game and plays “keep away” from you. I didn’t know what to do.

She ran around and around me, maybe at no shorter than 20 feet from me. I sat down on the side walk thinking that would be the most tempting for her to come up and get a petting… also, if I reached for her while she was standing she is more likely to jump back.

On each of her circumference runs around me the far end of the loop crossed Beavershop Road, which she crossed it twice on each lap. Luckily Beaverhshop Road is not a very busy road. Only a couple of cars came by when she was putting on her show and slowed down for her.

My plan worked. She finally saw I was not going to play and she came back and I grabbed her by the collar in a gentle way without scolding her. I petted her, thanking her for coming back.

I hooked the leash to her other collar and carried her home. Then, I put her into the truck and we went to the dog park near by. She ran and played chase with other dogs to her heart’s content. Finally, she came up to me like saying, “I’m tired, I wanna go home and lie down – can we go now?”

A Changing Family

Me on the left and Tony H. on our first scout camping trip.

Yesterday I mentioned Mike. Mike was the one that fell through a floor at the construction First Methodist Annex and somehow got a nail or some kind of metal rod through his foot.

Mike was part of an interesting family. He was the oldest of three children. He had a brother named George that was about a year younger, and a sister named M who was about four or five years younger.

They lived in a old house next to the First Methodist Annex that was being built. They had recently moved there from Macon. They were sort of outsiders. They were Catholic which was not a very popular religion in Marietta, Georgia, in the early to mid 1940s.

They belonged to Saint Joseph Catholic Church.

My oldest sister was the same age a Mike and George was just about a year older than I, so we played a lot together and later when we graduated from playing we hung-out around a lot together.

When I was 7 we moved from living a block from them to Manget Street across from Larry Bell Park. Within a year the family of Mike and George moved to Glover Street, around the corner from us – still being about the same distance from us a before.

Their family was very religious. They did not believe in going to the movie on Sunday. One time Mike was about to hit George with the Bible in our living room and suddenly they realized what the weapon was and they did all kinds of crosses across the chest and I’m sure the priest heard about it the next time they were confessing.

The whole family had black hair. The father worked at Lockheed. I watched him transformed from a black headed man to a salt and pepper headed man to a white haired man. Sometime during the hair transformation he bought a horse. They kept it across the street, down a little dirt drive, about where the Cobb County Board of Education is now on Glover Street. We rode the horse a lot. Shortly after the horse the father bought a big tractor. After the horse and after the tractor I think the old man thought he needed some acreage to put his toys on. He bought a 100 acres in West Cobb, someplace near Macland Road, if I remember correctly.

They had a barn in the back of their yard. For a while they kept the horse in it until they made arrangements to rent the pasture. The barn was just a few feet from the fence on the side of their yard. And on the other side of the fence was a Baptist Church which was facing Manget Street - the get down and roll and holler kind of church. For a while on Sunday nights in the summer we enjoyed climbing up on the barn and sit on the roof, slanting down, where we had almost a birds eye view of the Church services and their activities. We got a big kick out of watching them and I got to see my uncle and his wife do some gospel singing.

Mike never joined the scouts but George did. He joined Troop 132, which was Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church’s troop. A year or so later I joined the same troop.

On a Boy Scout camping trip out to his family’s land in West Cobb George, one of the “old salts” of the troop by then, took my sleeping bag and hoisted it up on the flag pole and shot it full of shotgun buckshot – I just remembered that, with a grimace.

I'm 3rd from the left. I think the pole between me and Tony H. is the pole my sleeping bag was sent up and shot full of holes.

Their mother caught their father having an affair with a woman he worked with. She kicked him out of the house. But as strongly religious as they were, they didn’t get a divorce, he and the woman just lived in sin in a trailer on the property hr bought out in the country, with nothing but woods, not even running water.

As years past we all changed.

Mike owned an antique shop and had male friend that lived with him. Presently there is some secrecy about his health and even if he is alive or dead.

Their sweet innocent little sister M became a Playboy Bunny waitress at the Playboy Club in Atlanta. The last I heard (two years ago) she was a cashier at a convenience store.

George became a deputy sheriff. One day while on jury duty I saw him transporting a prisoner from the county jail to a courtroom outside between the buildings. We stopped and talked a few minutes and caught each other up. The prisoner asked George did he mind if he smoked and George told him go ahead and continued talking. George had gained weight and his hair was white – he looked like a clone of his father.

When George died my sister went to pay her respects at the funeral home. She asked how Mike was doing and somebody in George’s family said, “We don’t speak.”

That is a shame. They were very close brothers as pre-teens. Time marches on.


Charles, who is a contractor now, James who worked for Ford Motor Co and probably got laid off (the plant was closed last year), and the Invisible Man.

Boy Scouts, Apple Pie, and the 2nd of July

How's that for being an American, Mr. Commie?

Spelunking at Salt Peter

Not long ago, I suggested to a fellow blogger who lives in the area that she should visit Saltpeter Cave just outside of Cartersville, Georgia.

I have been there several times and had adventures each time that I will remember the rest of life. After I told her about the never-ending cave I did a Google search to maybe give her some good directions and found out that just about every southern state has a cave named Salt Peter. However, when I made Salt Peter one word: SaltPeter Google narrowed the possibilities down and I found it.

Unfortunately, the Saltpeter website said it was on private property and visitors were not welcome. I thought it was just outside of Cartersville – well it is, but it is in Kingston, Georgia. I should have thought of that.

Back as teenager, probably about 14 years of age, I was in the Explorer Scouts. Our troop (or whatever the group calls themselves) went to Saltpeter Cave on a weekend and camped out outside the main entrance.

It had two entrances. The big entrance is huge, King Kong could have tossed huge new houses through the opening with plenty of room to spare. The other entrance is around the hill’s corner and high up.

The cave had never ending rooms, one after another. I was surprised at the pitched black of absolutely nothing when we all turned out our flashlights.

There seemed to be big rooms at first and got a little smaller as you went back. In one of the first big rooms was either two or three rectangle holes in the earth, about six feet deep. Were these graves? Another scout troop there were from nearby, one of the boys said he heard they were Indian graves.

Also, somewhere we heard they mined salt peter in these caves in the Civil War. I heard salt peter was an ingredient the military gave its enlisted men to keep down their sex drive. I doubt if that is true. It seemed that the fighting men would need all the raging hormones they could pull up. I also heart that salt peter was used in gun power, that seems plausible.

This cave had plenty of stalactites and stalagmites. In one room there one of each, one on top of the other, almost like a mirror image. Another one, which ever is the one that is on the floor was the size of a teepee and had a crawl entrance. I entered it and climbed down and down, maybe 20 to 25 feet, and it stopped, so did I and climbed back out.

One crawl tunnel empted out in the first room of the big opening. It opened up with maybe 8 feet below you into the room. Before you had a chance to figure out how to maneuver yourself out and down the steep wall the oozing bat shit solved the problem for you and gave you no choice. You could only side one way, down – sliding.

As the rooms got smaller one time we were wading and heard running water ahead. We were not brave enough to move more in that direction.

In little small tunnel that I had to squeeze through and opened into a larger room, I clung on to edge, because darkness was below me I came across something smooth and round. Had I found an egg of a mysterious extinct cave dwelling animal? I put it in my coat pocket for closer examination when I got into the day light.

It was a used flash bulb.

We went back there in just a few weeks but this time it was a day trip. We didn’t camp out.

In a couple of years when my friends and I became old enough to drive and enjoyed rambling on the old country roads in Georgia we went back a few times and went in the cave.

The last time I went I think I was about 17 or 18 on a Sunday. It was with Larry S., cousin Jesse, and a friend or two more. They were fascinated by the cave.

After we went into the innards of it and came back out Larry took a rope out of his trunk and went over the big mouth of the cave and tied the rope to a tree there and it dangled down over the opening.

As I type this I am wonder if this was the same rope that I hung on and vomited while lowering down the cliff above Dahlonega, Georgia (remember that blog?). Roughly same time period and same car that held the rope, same friends.

It is possible, but if so, it would have to be after the Dahlonega event because the rope was much shorter.

One at a time us boys took times grabbing the rope and swinging out into the mouth of the cave and swinging back.

The mouth of the cave, once you enter it on foot you have to be careful descending down a steep loose rock incline. The incline went so far then there is a drop off of about 15 feet. On foot, you would need to go near the outer end of the cliff where the incline continues.

Of course if you are swinging out on a rope your primary concern is not to fall.

I fell off the rope. Once airborne, swinging out in the huge mouth of the cave my hands started sliding at a rapid rate. I held harder, which burned the flesh off my hands.

I slid right off the rope and fell on the steep inclined and rolled and tumbled at a fast rate of speed towards the drop off. A out-jutting big stone stopped me.

I wished I was dead to get rid of the pain. Both hands on the inside were burning like hell, no skin, just raw red hands that blisters were forming. My bones were in pain also.

But, again, I slipped by death by a hair. I could not walk well. My friends and a couple of strangers helped me out of the mouth.

We went home, me completely absorbed in my pain and burns.

I knew the moment I realized I was in pain, that would be my last visit to Saltpeter Cave.