Daddy the Local Medicine Man

This was the 1st Methodist Annex. Now, it is the law office of former Governor Roy Barnes. It was built about 1945-46. I know, because I was there. We lived about a block away in the Clay Homes. I was preschool. When the workers building the Annex left in the evening we, the local kids, would suddenly materialized. We played war, invented toys such as see-saws, leaping contests and whatever else we could invent with what we had. One kid, Mike Hobby, fell from one level to the next, landed on his feet like a cat, however a spike or nail went through his foot. Mike and his little brother George did not live in the Clay Homes like the rest of us, they lived in an older house next door to the Annex-to-be. They just moved there from Macon. Their father, Marian Hobby, gave them strict orders do not play in the Annex-to-be. Opps! Of course they did not want their father to know they disobeyed him. I don’t remember how this came to be, but Daddy solved their problem. If I remember correctly he cleaned the wound with kerosene. And all’s well that ends well. Daddy was something of a local unofficial witch doctor. He could get foreign objects out of one’s eye socket, puncture infectious pusy sores and other home remedies. I remember seeing him many times over the stove holding a needle over the stove’s blue flame, getting ready to operate. I remember one time my legs were infected with who knows what, my legs were covered with risons with whiteheads. We went to his parents’ house and got a sack of black walnuts that have fell off the tree. He wanted just the black liquidy goo that surrounded the walnut shell. He rubbed my legs with that smelly stuff for a few days, and in the disease was gone. Poof!