Sunday, March 29, 2015

OM's Part 2









We were talking about who is an O.M.  Well, O.M., as far as we are concerned means Old Mariettan.  That should speak for itself.  But it is more  a state of mind or state of being.  There are pictures in here have people that live as far south as Brunswick, Georgia, and as far north as Acwoth.  You can make your own definition, I don't know a solid one myself.

Due to  technical problems (they are too technical) there will be no music in this final segment.

O.M. Part 2 is the final part.


Enjoy!


P.S.  

t is a running joke that when the newspaper makes an error they hide the retraction back in the want ads or some other section that is seldom read.
I am at a disadvantage, I don't have a want ad section, but on the other hand, all my stuff is seldom read! So here goes my retraction:
I goofed. I put out on facebook and chicken-fat "OMs Part 2" which I had the 250 plus pictures and near the end was the below picture which I identified as "Lois Frasure White and Carol White" Opps! It should have read "Lois Frasure White and Linda White Watson". I apologize. I know the difference in their names, I grew up knowing them. But my mind, I suppose, has it aging moments. I tried to silently edit it on Youtube and nobody would notice but could not figure out how. It is not fun becoming an old fart. On second thought, it is a little fun - I find myself in a virtual guessing game.



t

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! CRACKED's John Severin, Planets


This from a special edition of CRACKED, dated 1982.  The artist is John Severin (1921-2012).  John was one of the original four artists of MAD comicbook when it was first created.  He lasted four issues.  I do not know why he and MAD parted company.  He had a vast knowledge of the right uniform for any military garb from BC up until the 1960s, he was good at illustrating war comics.  He also has a sister, Marie Severin who's work was respected in the comicbook industry.  She was mostly known for being a colorist.


Remember, click on each image to make them readable and understandable.







Friday, March 27, 2015

Retail Merchants Talk About Business on the Square Back When..



Today the Marietta Museum of History hosted a talk of a hand full of merchants that ran retail stores back in the told days.  Each gave a history of the store, sort of, with a few insights and antidotes of course.








Look!  The room was filled.


Harry & Judy Collins Dupre


Dan Cox, Haydn McLean, & Harry Dupre


Reed Brown (principal of Waterman St School and Westside School and my Sunday School Teacher at Crestview Baptsit Church..



Bill Dunaway & Phillip Goldsein.  According to the newspaper sometimes Bill and Phillip are at odds with each other.  But there were no snapping today.


Jean Galt and Dan Cox

Paula Goldstein & Mrs Galt



Joe Kirby of the Marietta Daily Journal taking notes.



FRONT PORCH PROPHET Book Report





  I just finished the book THE FRONT PORCH PROPHET by   Raymond L. Atkins.   I stayed entertained throughout the book.  That is what it is all about isn't it?   The story takes place in northwest Georgia, near the southwest base of Lookout Mountain.   It is just about a tri-state neighborhood:  Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.  When they drive to Chattanooga is about like "going to town".  It was funny with a few swipes at sacred cows and a few undercurrent messages on religion and  the downside of big business and individuality (a lost art).   

The author, Raymond L. Atkins,  is an English Teacher  at a vocational school who lives in Rome, Georgia, not far from the territory he writes about.


Thursday, March 26, 2015

Luckies Struck Me Down




When I was about 4 or 5 years old living in the Clay Homes  Project my friends and I were free range kids.  I think our range was anyplace in the downtown area of Marietta. 

During this time I noticed grownups smoking cigarettes.  They looked so knowledgeable and sporty when they took deep draws of their cigarettes and inhaled.  I wanted to be like that.

My next door neighbor Carol Joe Clayton, one year youn-
ger than me, and I watched smokers.   We took note that after they smoked awhile they would throw down their cigarette with it still smoking.  We picked up a cigarette and sucked on it and had a mouth full of smoke.  We were thrilled.  We were just like grownups!.

We did not know about inhaling.  But we did know about image and sophistication.    We were getting pretty good with that.  Until we got caught.

I don't remember how we got caught but I remember being caught; and the punishment.

My mother said something to the effect that if I liked smoking so much she was going to buy a pack for me and see that I smoked every cigarette in it.

She went across the street to Steel's Grocery and came back with a pack of Lucky Strike Cigarettes.  She told me to sit down and start smoking.  I thought it was pretty funny what she was doing and I happily lit up  one.  After I finished she showed me how to ground it out in an ash tray.  Then she told me to take another one.   Then she told me I needed to inhale.  She told me how to inhale and hold the smoke in to get the most out of it.

After three or four I begin to get dizzy.  I told her that is all I wanted for now.

She said something like, "But you are not finished with the pack, have another one."  I could barely get it down.  I was dizzy and felt sick at my stomach.

"Light up another one."  After I finished that one.
I ran to my room crying.


And that ended my smoking  recreation for about a dozen years.


Almost 70 years later when I see a picture of the above I feel a slight nausea deep within me.



Wednesday, March 25, 2015

There Are More Ways Than One to Skin a Delivery





Amazon and some other companies that sell on on-line will not accept a PO Box as an address.  That has been a problem with us for some time because we don't have a mailbox.  
Our neighbor knocked down our mailbox four or five times so we decided it was not worth the hassle and got a PO Box instead.  The neighbor is dead now, but that is another story.
Amazon will not accept a PO Box as an address because they use UPS.   What they did not take into account sometimes UPS hands off to the USPS and visa-versa,   At times when they do the hand off we are back with the same problem.

I complained to someone on the phone at Amazon several times and the people I talked to are very understanding.  But,  always, the bottom line was Rules are rules.

I ran into an old acquaintance at a funeral  home's visitation the other night.  She is in postal management now.  I told her of my dilemma.

She told me it is a common practice for post office box holders address their address as the street number of the post office and your PO Box number above that, as an apartment or suite number.

Problem solved!


Walla!

Sunday, March 22, 2015

O.M.s Part 1



These are about 150 pictures of Old Mariettans, some have died since their picture was taken.  Only one is not a Mariettan, Governor Deal's wife.  I took all the pictures, good and bad, except one:  In error I included a picture of Don Hunter at bat, which I did not take.   This is part one,  one more to follow, as soon as soon  I get around to it.

You may find some names wrong or misspelled.  Being mostly a recluse, that's my bad.  Also, if a cluster of people are in a picture, I found it hard to label everybody in it, so to be fair, I ignored all.  



SUNDAY FUNNIES!! WEIRD SCIENCE The Maidens Cried




Art by Wally Wood.  
Be sure and click on each image so you can read the story line and appreciate the art.
















Wednesday, March 18, 2015

This Is The 6000th Post on this Blog





This is the blog Chicken-fat.com's 6000th post.  If you don't believe me count them.    It has been going almost daily since  Dec 5, 2005; almost ten years.

I  have said all I have to say many times over. 

I did this blog to give my aging brain a daily exercise; to keep from forgetting things as I get older.  I did it for me the maker, not for you the reader.   Greedy rascal , aren't I?

Those who know me  know how well that  mind exercise thing went.



I plagiarized, repeated myself on my experiences and the few historical events I know.... I dug into my comic book collection to show off other work by other people.  Reused photographs over and over... it is like the unending circle.
If you read about ten of my posts you have just about read them all. 


Well, it was a noble experiment, anyway.

Therefore, the bottom line (literally) is I might slow down on my blogging and spend more time writing my experiences and memoirs. not for the blog or facebook but it is just something I feel I need to do.  I also feel the need to take the time to fine tune my genealogy findings and sleep more.


Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Rendezvous with Dick Day

Dick Day at  1965, NY World's Fair.
Photo by Don Lash




My Naval Reserve active duty ended July of 1965.  I was still a reserve and was required to fulfill my obligation by going to reserve meetings and our unit was activated two weeks every year. 

The Unit I belonged to in 1966  for the two week active duty went to Oceana.  Virginia   Oceana , Virginia, was not that far from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  My Navy  friend Dick Day was a radio announcer in  Harrisburg. 

I decided to arrange a weekend meeting.

Our unit's people did not drive our cars up and meet at Oceana - we flew as a group.  How I got to Harrisburg from Virginia I have no idea.  I know it was all planned.

In the barracks that we stayed at was one of the people that did the janitor work  that I had seen before.  I asked him was he from Marietta.  No.  I asked him was this his first duty assignment.  He said no, he was stationed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, with a helicopter squadron.  BINGO!   Then I remembered him.  Unfortunately, any name I asked about he didn't know - he just didn't keep up with names and seemed uninterested in people.  However, on the same base I ran into guy that was in our helo squadron that knew a lot of the same people I knew..... he was a boisterous kind..... drats - It is hard to pump information from that type too.... I think their favorite implied statement is "What does that have to do with me?"

I got to Harrisburg and met up with Dick Day and his wife Nancy and their daughter.  Also in the meetings was another Navy friend from Chicago, Don Lash.  Don arrived shortly after I did.  Dick and Nancy took us to a lobster house for dinner.

We stayed overnight  in their guest bedroom, which was mostly a storeroom in their basement.  T he first thing in the morning Don left.  He had plans in New York City.

I went to work with Dick in downtown Harrisburg.   When we arrive the person  that Dick was relieving showed us a  tape he was working on that he was proud of. 

On the weekend NBC Monitor domineered the programming.   Dick would check scores and the teletype and make notes and when Monitor would take a break he went on the air and read off ball scores, weather, and anything of interest newsy.

Once or twice he said he had a guest with him and mentioned my name and even asked me a question on the air - which caught me off guard, but I said something that seemed to be appropriate.

Dick went on to make a name for himself with NBC News and moved to the Washington, DC, area.  When I say made a name for himself, i mean literally, he change his name.

He started off as a page on a daily talk show and then a tour guide for one of the big three networks, I forgot which one.


After we were  married Dick and Nancy visited us a couple of times.  One time when they visited Schatzi, our Schnauzer dog had puppies. 

Chumley's Menu, an Original






Above is my Navy buddy and cube mate Ray Shultz  opening the door of Chumley's about 1964.  Ray could not do that today, the joint is closed.

Chumley's was speakeasy back in the Roaring 20s and you had to know someone to get in.  It stayed in intact until many years later when a wall caved in.

We were stationed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and Greenwich Village in the lower part of Manhattan was just a hop, skip and jump away.   We went there a bunch of times over about a two year period.

They want to reopen this year but there are hurdles to jump over and hoops to jump through and probably some building inspectors to "be nice to" before it can be opened again.

See the linked article below:

Chumley's History & Rebirth

I returned  in the early 1970s and brought my wife Anna with me. 

This past week while going through some old forgotten stuff we came across a Chumley's menu that we must have accidentally swiped when we were there then.  Truthfully, we forgot we had it.

The menu texture seem to be the same type of paper used in sketching.   The dimensions of it is 6" x 9.5".  It is folded over and over.  If you unfold every fold you would have about a 24" x 9.5" sheet of paper in front of you.  One side appears to doodles and the other side the printed menu.  

Apparently,  management once placed these sheets of paper as place-mats on tables hoping some of the creative people that patronized the joint would  doodle, which they did.  Then they took them up at the end of the day and carried it to a printer to print the menu on the other side.  Walla!

Chumley's was known to be a magnet for writers and artists.   Here is page by page of the menu.  Some of these original doodles might have been done by someone famous.

Maybe I should take this to the Antique Road Show.  

click on each image to see it better.










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.



Monday, March 16, 2015

Ruby Laura Tyson (1904-? )





Meet my 2nd cousin, twice removed,  Ruby Laura Tyson.   A new old picture of a relative.  Ruby was born 1904, in Gordon, Palo, Texas.  Her parents are John Forrest Tyson (1863-1936) and  Ida Judson Gilbreath  (1863-1907).  From the dates I have, Ruby was only about 3 years old when her mother died.  She married Frank Williams born 1902).  I do not have any information yet of her their destiny. 

I think it is a good picture.