Stewart's Pure Station

 This is Base Camp Restaurant at the foot of Kennesaw Mountain. Before it was Mountain Biscuits. We had breakfast there this morning after a doctor’s visit. This building was a Pure Service Station. When we were in our preteen years Van Callaway, Sam Carsley and myself walked to and up to the top of Kennesaw Mountain as we did sometimes. Afterwards we stopped at this Pure For refreshments. A country store was inside. Behind the counter was our math teacher Dallas Stewart. He told us his parents owned the store. Dallas and his wife, also a teacher, lived in the basement. Years later I was talking to my mother-in-law’s friend, Babara Tilley, who lived in our neighborhood, and she told me she and Dallas were siblings. She has since died. It’s a small world.

Sight Seeing

 

I took this picture of the United Nations in the early 1970s. We got to tour the world famous center and its chambers and all, which includes their post office. We thought it would be unique to mail UN postcards with UN postal stamps from there. We made our selections of stamps and cards and got in line to the postal clerks’ windows. As I remember there were about 3 or 4 people ahead of us in line.

The lady ahead of the line dealing with the postal clerk was having a hard time trying to decide which stamps to go on which card. She was a perfectionist at our expense.

Finally a man in line hollered out something like, “Jeeez! We don’t have all day lady!” The lady told him (and us) that it was her right to pick what she wants. Then he shouted even louder that the rest of us have things to do today. The postal clerk’s face was non-committal.

Our expression was not so unexpressive. We ate it up. We saw a typical New York resident shout at a stranger and kept on unforgiving shouting. All very typical NYC people. Authentic realism!

It was almost as good as the “UNTO THESE HILLS” play at the Cherokee Indian Reservation in the Smokies, North Carolina

Woodstock

 

WE WERE IN WOODSTOCK 50 YEARS AGO!! It is true, we were there. Man, it was so crowded you could hardly move. But that is the way it was on Sundays after church at the Pine Crest Inn Buffet in Woodstock. All you could eat! That is Woodstock, Ga., 30188.(art by Jack Davis (MAD)). OOPS! CORRECTION: Pine Crest in was not in Woodstock, Ga. at all, it was up the road several miles in the Holly Springs, Canton area. Nothing like cold hard facts to ruin a good joke.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! MAD Magazine #25 looks at BASEBALL

 This is just a little off course, maybe just a few weeks.

Torn from the pages of MAD Magazine #25, written by editor Harvey Kurtzman and illustrated by Atlanta's own Jack Davis.

Remember to click on each page to make it bigger and hopefully understandable  and funny..

Paper Airplanes and the Dam

 

Here are two airborne true adventures:

I'll tell you the time we went to Allatoona Dam and airborned several paper airplanes. I told this story before, so if it seems you have heard it before, you probably have. They year was about 1960. My friend Sam Carsley's (1941 - 2013) was a freshman at Georgia Tech.

One day Sam came to my house with a cardboard box with no top. In the box was a neat stack of plain paper. Sam did every thing extremely neat and well organized.

In class he had learned some about aero dynamics and wanted to experiment. We drove to Allatoona Dam and walked up the steep cement steps to the top. On the edge of the damn, or the Eowah River side Sam neatly made paper airplanes we tossed them over the side. Which, I suppose we could have been arrested for littering if caught, but we didn't think about that.

Sam knew what would happen but wanted to see it. The west wind coming down the Etowah River Valley would swoosh up when it hit the dam. And when it swooshed up it would catch the paper airplanes we had just contributed to it and carry it high up in the air, sometimes almost out of sight. Some planes hitched rides with other high winds and went to points unknown and some fell back down only to be caught b another westward wind swooshing up the damn and be carried back up, over and over.

I don't know if they are still rising and falling or not.

We should have put messages on the paper airplanes that sailed off to points unknown.

Another time at Tech Sam learned about Einstein's Theory of Relativity, E=MC(2). He said in its simplest form one might understand. He said if you are riding on a bus standing in the aisle and say you put a big X on the floor that you are standing on. And while the bus is moving you jump up and come back down. You should come down on the X. Because you are moving forward at the same rate of speed as the bus.

So, with that in mind, if you are in a convertible and throw a beer can up in the air and stop suddenly the beer can is traveling the same speed as the car, and if the car stopped it will land in front of the car. Sam had a 1956 Chevrolet convertible he had just bought from Anderson Motor Company. We went to Paulding County, on the dirt deserted roads behind the drive-in theater and the Dallas Drag Strip, which I knew the roads well from slipping in both at different times.

We chose the far out deserted place because nothing seemed more terrible to Sam as being caught breaking the rules.

Out on the dirt road in the night time we built up a speed of maybe 35 or about mph, and I tossed a half can of beer straight up at the same time Sam slammed on the brakes.

WHOMP!!! The half can of beer hit his hood and put a little dent in it.

That was the end of our Mr. Wizard-style experiments

Paper Route Business

 

Art by Jack David (MAD) TOUR OF PART OF MY PAPER ROUTE. II know that area fairly well. Also on South Avenue my cousin Anthony Rollins and his mother and our grandmother lived on South Avenue. Anthony retired from the Cobb County Sheriff Dept as a Lt. head of the crime lab. Also Jack and Neal Barfield and the Wallace Brothers (all cousins) lived on South Avenue, I did not know them from my paper route but from Little League.

On down South Avenue on the corner of Frazer Street was a man who owned a restaurant on th 4-Lane close to Hodge Brothers Army Surplus store. He kept a spider monkey in his front yard on a chain. I used to buy candy at Yancy's Store one block away and toss them to the monkey. He ate up most of my profit. Cati-corner from him was Jackie Davidson, who was a majorette in high school, about a year or two ahead of us. Her father was head of the water department.. Next door to the Davidson's was a man in a wheelchair named Grady. I took the route over from Raymond "Snookey" Partain. Snookey left Grady a free paper every day. Between him and the monkey I was being bled dry. Finally I cut out his free paper. But I didn't cut off the monkey's candy. Across the street from Grady was a 4 apartment building. It didn't take me long to figure out that a part time sports writer for the Marietta Journal was having an affair with a lady living in one of the apartments on the second floor.

Back at the corner of Frazer and Alexander Streets the second house up Robert Brooks and his wife Jo Ann White lived there. Jo Ann and I are almost related, we have common relatives. (she is Larry White's sister). In a few years Robert and I would be co-workers at the Marietta Post Office.

About three houses up Betty Guthrie and her family lived. The lived at the corner of Frazer and Grover Street. The 2nd house down my friend Johnny Pascoe lived. On down the hills on Grover Street on the right Lawton Evans land his family lived. Lawton and I were on the same Little League team, Southern Discount. I remember he took his sport seriously and would pitch a fit and cry when we lost.

Back on Frazer Street, going back the other way: After we cross over South Avenue there were some more apartments. same floor plan as the ones on South Avenue. I remember one cold and windy day at one of these apartment buildings on the ground floor I was collecting. Then the weekly subscription rate was 47 cents and I hoped they would give me two quarters and tell me to keep the change. Anyway, as I was saying, I knocked on the door of an apartment on the ground floor. The door to the apartment was next to the door going outside, which for whatever reason was opened. I knocked on the door and the lady came to the door. She had a housecoat on. I told her "Collecting for the Atlanta Journal and she went back, got her wallet, and came back. As she was paying me a big gush of wind blasted through the opened outside door and lifted her housecoat up past her waist. She had no panties on. It was the first time I saw the female anatomy. GOOD GOD!!

Over the next few days I told all my neighborhood friends that I thought would be interested.

The next collection day four or five of my friends met me and walked with me on my collection rounds.

At the apartment door where the lady's housecoat flew up I think looked surprised with a bunch of preteen boys looking eagerly at her.

Boys will be boys

Petty Family Pictures, Taken the same Day I think

 vFirst picture: This is the our Petty family at their farm in the "Red Hills", aka near Cohutta, in Murray County, Ga., c1937. Left to right: In front: Sarah and Leonard Petty

Second Row: Janie Petty (and maybe Hunter), Viola Ridley Petty (Mother or mother-in-law to all there), Roy Petty, Opal Petty, and Osmo Petty.

In back: Mary Jo Johns and Tom Petty (the only married couple in the picture). Missing are Georgia Petty Grant and Wallace Petty.

The second picture was apparently taken the same day, by the same clothes. The people are the same the addition of Wallace in the top right corner.

William A. Trammell, William A. Hunter, Same Person

 

William A. Trammell and William A. Hunter, same person.

My sister Frances and I had the unique pleasure of living with our grandfather Frank Paris Hunter for almost 2 years, along with our parents. Of course. During that time he taught me how to stay balanced on a bike, and other adolescent skills. He kept his “hooch” under the house. One time when he was loaded he told me he did not know our real last name, because his father was adopted and took the name of his adopted family

I remembered that. About 25 years later when Rocky, my oldest son was born, I decided to get into genealogy to find our real surname and our heritage

I knew already my grandfather William’s name on his Tombstone was William A. Hunter and born in 1842. And somehow it was common family knowledge that he was born in Franklin, Macon County, North Carolina.

The Georgia Room of the Cobb County Library had census microfilms. Censuses are taken every ten years, like the last census was 2020 and the next one will be 2030.

The census report each family member by name and age. I got the 1850 Census of Macon County and looked name by name for a William Hunter, age about 8. I couldn’t find a such name. I went through it again, it was not there.

It was common family knowledge that his wife was Emaline Ray, also a Macon County Native. I got a Macon County phone book (don’t ask me how) and saw there was about 30 to 40 Ray families listed. I wrote each Ray family telling them what I was looking for, namely Emaline Ray and enclosed a self-addressed, stamped envelope. My plan was do 10 a week. Some Rays used the self-addressed-stamped envelope to wish me luck. About half-way through it I received a letter with the letterhead RAY’S SMOKED HAMS. He said he did not know, but he thought his cousin probably would because he was into family history. He said I wouldn’t have written him because he doesn’t have a phone. He gave me his address, which was Otto, NC, which is also in Macon County. I wrote him and he replied, which said something like this:

“Your grandfather was William A. Trammell.. He and his brother Van killed a man and they were wanted for murder and escaped to Texas.”

First of all, he was my great grandfather, not my grandfather. I went back and looked at the 1850 census and sure’nuff found a William A. Trammell, age 8, living with his grandfather Jacob Trammell, and a bunch of kids, including a Jacob Van Buen Trammell. So, Van was his uncle, not his brother.

I knew William fought in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. His name is listed as a CSA soldier. In fact, I found his company:

William joined the Confederacy. On, 1 May 1862, he enlisted in Macon County, North Carolina, into the 39th North Carolina Infantry, Company I. He was nineteen years old. He enlisted with the name he had used since birth - William A. TRAMMELL.

The first year of his war efforts has yet been uncovered. On 19 May 1863, he was admitted to the First Mississippi C. S. A. Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, for Febris Intermiten Quotidian. In layman terms he was having a reoccurring fever daily. He returned to duty 25 June 1863 after spending a month and six days in the hospital.

While on furlough, 19 April 1864, William A. TRAMMELL and Emaline RAY married. William was twenty-one and Emaline was eighteen just one week.

Shortly after they were married William returned to his Unit. The Unit went to be part of the "Battle of Kennesaw Mountain", near Marietta, Georgia.

Note- About one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five years later over a hundred of William and Emaline's descendants would be living within a few miles of Kennesaw Mountain.

William's unit, the 39th Regiment, Company I, was fixed on the crest between Big Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain.

His bosses:

Corps - Loring

Division - French

Brigade - Ector

William and two of his friends were at a spring kneeling down drinking water. Shots. One of his friends dropped with a bullet hole in his head. He and his remaining living friend got up to run. More shots. William was shot in the leg. He fell while his friend fled. The boys in blue ran by him in pursuit of his friend, evidently assuming he was dead.

According to the records William was shot in the knee July 18, 1864. That, incidentally, was the same day that the President of the Confederacy fired General Joseph E. Johnston of that campaign and replaced him with General Hood.

On his questionnaire for a pension a question was what date he was wounded and William replied "July 18, 1864". Another question asked where was his unit at the time he was shot and he replied "Peachtree Creek" (Atlanta) which is historically accurate. Unfortunately, the questionnaire did not ask the applicant where he was when he shot, only where his unit was, which could be two different places.

A note: There are eight active springs on Kennesaw Mountain and several dried up ones.

Peachtree Creek or Kennesaw Mountain? Or Chickamauga, Georgia?

Ms Thelma Swanson, a TRAMMELL/RAY descendent/researcher, found that the North Carolina Troops Roster, page 108, shows that he was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia.

The Chickamauga Battle was held in the Northwest corner of Georgia, September 19th and 20th, 1863. I personally think this

could be another William TRAMMELL listed (Mrs. Swanson later stated that it could have been William K. TRAMMELL wounded at Chicamauga).

On August 6, 1864, William appeared on a receipt roll at Marshall Hospital in Columbus, Georgia.

He was put on wounded furlough. He told his grandchildren that he recuperated in a private home in Andersonville, Georgia.

Andersonville was not far from the Marshall Hospital in Columbus (about 20 to 30 miles). The Andersonville Confederate Center had the facilities for a hospital and a prison. The cruel conditions at Andersonville Prison still shock people. Men were forced to suffer and die in painful and cruel ways just for fighting in a cause they believed in or had to fight. Some of the prisons in the North were just as bad - one that comes to mind is Camp Chase, Ohio.

Another academic question: Which Andersonville? During the Civil War times there was a Andersonville Community in Cobb County at the northern border of Cherokee County, where Highway 92 is today, only about three or four miles east of where he eventually settled in Woodstock.

He said that in that private home where he recuperated the lady that nursed him was named Amanda Jane. A few years later he would honor that lady by naming his only daughter after her.

After he got well enough he somehow gained possession of a mule and walked (or limped) back home to Macon County, North Carolina, which if the Andersonville was in Cobb-Cherokee County it would be slightly over a hundred miles away, if the Andersonville was in Southwest Georgia it would be close to three hundred miles away.

Apparently, he arrived home before November 1864 (based on the incubation period and birth date of their first born Charles). He was about twenty-two when he returned from the War.

For the next couple of years William and Emaline lived just south of Franklin, North Carolina and had two children.

Posey C. Wild was a close friend. He was the close friend who was with William at the time he was shot by Union Soldiers by the spring, and was lucky to flee with his life. After that event,

10 August 1864, Posey was promoted to Second Lieutenant.

Another close person to William was his uncle Jacob Van Buren "Van" TRAMMELL. Van was only a few years older than William and they lived in the same household during their childhood lives. With William and Van living in the same house; with the same last name; and close to the same age - some thought they were brothers.

With that, this story has been handed down through the generations in the RAY Family:

"Van TRAMMELL and his brother William were trying to collect pay for a horse that had been stolen from William. The man refused to pay. William hit the man with a gun and killed him. Van left for Arkansas and William for Georgia."

The man who William and his uncle Van Trammell killed was named Lambert. - Surname TRAMMELL from nformation submitted by Darlene Lackey. June 18, 2004, posting no. 1405.

Actually, Van went to Round Prairie Township, Benton County, Arkansas.

The William A. HUNTER family went to Texas. In Texas, William acquired "twelve or fifteen" tracts of land and tried being a cattle rancher. He had problems supplying water and had to give it up.

William Trammell and family returned to where he recuperated but changed their family name to Hunter.

Then upon more research over court records I found that in 1842 Rebecca Trammell sued the city of Franklin’s town Constable for Bastardy. The judge said Jason Henderson Hunter would have to pay $100 a year in child support.

Jason and his family left town rather hurriedly.

I’m quiet sure Jason Henderson Hunter and Rebecca Trammell are Willilam Hunter/Trammell’s parents.

Jason Henderson Hunter had an interesting life. He was a Federal Soldier during the infamous “Trail of Tears” in about 1838. Franklin, NC; Cape Giraldo, Ms, and Greene Co., Ak were all big gathering places for the Native Americans. Strangely, Jason moved to Macon County, NC, Cape Giraldo, Mo, and Greene County . Ak

In the Civil War Jason Henderson Hunter formed his on company which he commissioned himself “Colonel” His expertise was battling Yankee Gunships on the Mississippi River. His immediate officer over him was “Swamp Fox” Thompson who organized she short lived Poney Express.

He was a state representative of Greene County, Arkansas and another time Bolinger County, Mo.

Probably what will ad up mostly in his heritage is his fertilization He had 3 wives, at least 4 mistresses and over 20 Children