Lady (Paula Deen) & Sons Restaurant iln Savannah

What We Did On Our Anniversary

The other day was our 44th anniversary. Wow! We have been married 44 years.

We started out the day by going to the Governor’s Mansion. We read that the mansion is decorated for Christmas and it is a sight to see. We also read it is opened from 9:30 to 12:30 daily.

When we drove onto the Governor’s Mansion grounds a Georgia State Patrolman asked us could he help us. We told him we would like to see the mansion, He had a clipboard. He asked for my driver’s license then he walked around and wrote down our license plate number. He told us to proceed up the hill and we were directed where to park.





The mansion was decorated in all sorts of trees and figurines and things. Each room had a docent, which was always a charming, with a Georgia accent, well dressed lady who gave you the run-down on what you were looking at. The first room, the lady introduced herself as “Sandra Deal, wife of the Governor. “ We had a nice conversation with Mrs. Deal. We were the last of the group that just went through, so she talked more on a one on one. She told us it was a big nice place, but they lived upstairs and used only about 3 of the rooms, an office, sitting room, and the bedroom, “3 rooms, just like we do back at home”, she added.

I asked if I could take her picture and she said of course I could. She told us a good deal (get it?)about the design of the house, using Greek names and different styles from trends and/or fashion. I asked her where she was from and she said Gainesville. I asked her if she knew any of Englands in Gainesville. And she said something like Godfrey England worked for them. I told her my last name was Hunter and the Hunters and the England intertwined in their marriages in Union County, Georgia, and some of the Englands overflowed into Hall County (Gainesville).




She gave me a quick polite smile and greeted the newest arrivals and started talking to them. Our audience with the First Lady of Georgia was over.

The decorations were great. Each room has a theme of a sort of a certain area of Georgia. One room had a Christmas tree with sea shells and star fish on it that represented the coast. Another tree in another room had picked cotton all over it, that represented one of south Georgia’s principle crop.

The room that represented north Georgia had Cabbage Patch Dolls (Cleveland), and other things typical of of the area but what stands out is the Spanish Moss hanging from a fireplace. Was that a joke?

Two rooms had children singing groups singing Christmas songs. See the video above.

Mrs. Deal pointed out that if we come back sometime when it wasn’t the Christmas season, with all the decorations gone, we could see more of other such in the house, and I think she meant historical things on display.

















In the basement in a room where one group of kids were singing were portraits of all the governors of Georgia. I made a point to find the below one and photograph it. It is a portrait of Button Gwinnett. Button was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. If that isn’t interesting enough, he was killed in a duel. He was an exciting person, wasn’t he?




Also in the same room in the basement singing was a big table where the staff, or volunteers, were overseeing the cookies baked from the mansion’s cookies and apple cider. With the people standing on the other side of the table watching who took how many, I only took one cookie – it would be embarrassing, at 70 years old, to get my hand slapped.



The Governor’s Mansion grounds were impressive landscaped and well trimmed. Georgia has come a long way since Governor Gene Tallmadge brought his cows to the capital to graze on the grass. I haven’t heard if Gene put cattle at the mansion grounds or not. Then, the mansion was Ansley Park, which was not much in the public view, so I dout it, Gene Tallmadge was a master showman.





We went to Atlantic Station to do some Christmas shopping. Atlantic Station looked like a chunk of New York City, maybe a 5 block square, was ripped up and it sailed away and landed off Northside Drive in Atlanta. That section could pass for a section of Manhattan. Apparently, if it was a chunk of New York City was somehow lifted up and scaled down to Atlanta, the cheap street food venders fell off along the way. By the way, I think it was named Atlantic Station because it is the same area that the old Atlantic Steel yards were at. Some of you readers, will mumble something like, “I thought everybody knew that."





We had lunch at Which Wich. Which Wich is a unique sandwich shop. You fill out your order on a brown paper sack by filling out the blanks and multiple choices. Then you give the brown paper bag to the cashier who adds it up on the cash register, put it on a clothes hangers and sends it down an assembly line. Then at the pickup area people are patiently waiting for their order to come. And then, in our case, you look for a normal height chairs with a normal height table instead of those high seats and chairs that they mostly have. We shared a turkey sandwich WHICH was pretty good.






In the evening we had reservations at the Canoe Restaurant on the river. The waitress was a firm believer, I think, in making the customer feel comfortable and right. And also we were absolutely right on everything we said, like, “Excellent choice!” I had lamb sirloin and Anna had the most tend part of a cow, if I understood correctly, it is along the spine. However, as nice as it was, we were seated by a plate glass, of a glassed in porch. It was cold.

Then, after we left one of the better restaurants in the Metro Atlanta area we went to Big Lots to look for more clear Christmas lights and they were out.

A Visit to the Hickory Pig BBQ

During a recent joy ride to Gainesville recently to test our "new-to-us" car, we came upon the barbecue dive "The Hickory Pig" which was rated #1 by Atlanta Magazine. The owner, Phil Beaubien ,is a laid back former insurance man who seems to enjoy life as it comes. As we read the menu on the wall (why waste money on a fancy menu?), he told us a couple of times we could sample anything. We didn’t ask for any samples. I ordered ribs and Anna ordered a pulled pork sandwich.

After we received our plates and sat down to eat, he and his assistant sat down at the next table and talked to us as if we were in their dining room. The place is a good example of a homemade building. It goes by no architectural rules that I could tell. He told me he started with “these two planks” that he apparently sat up as a counter about 20 years ago. Then he added a room around it, then another room and so on. The walls are covered with little pictures, signs, pigs, kid's drawings and anything they happened to like. An interior decorator would faint in shock, then quickly disassemble everything that makes the room unique.






My ribs were pretty good. The coleslaw was good, and to be truthful, the Brunswick stew and I didn’t get along. By the way, the banana pudding is pretty good too. It was a topic of discussion preceded by the question, "can you handle the truth?" He preceded to tell us the evolution of his recipe which we labeled "semi-homemade". He liked that description and had the menu changed to reflect the term. Guess we left our mark on "The Hickory Pig".

Rome's Rivers

Above is the Oostanaula River lazily making its way through downtown Rome, Georgia. Lazily? Look again! See all the logs and debris traveling down the river? It is probably cleaning up the storm mess we had recently. Also notice how high the water is. See the trees standing in the water?
I don’t think this river is normally this wide.

We went to Rome, Georgia, this past weekend. Rome is an interesting-scenic Georgia town. It has three rivers that flow through the downtown area which also has seven big hills. The seven big hills are why it is named Rome, after Rome, Italy.

Below is the Coosa River. It is only a mile or so from the above Oostanaula River. It too is wider, I think, than it normally is. Again look at the trees standing in water. What kind of ducks are those?





Not pictured is the Etowah River. The Etowah is an interesting water way. It keeps the water basin full for Lake Allatoona, and there it is dam controlled so it will not flood Rome, about 20 miles away.

I don't know about the Etowah River in Rome but the other two have nice parks that over look the rivers where people are running and other fun activities. I would imagine in the old days instead of parks and the good life there were people fishing for catfish to survive.

I'll Tell'ya About Tellus

Yesterday, on my birthday, Anna treated me with a visit to the Tellus Museum in Cartersville, Georgia.

The Tellus Museum is several museums in one: The planetarium; the mineral museum; the giant prehistoric creature museum; the men in motion section showing a good wrap up of man’s travel machines, such as antique cars, Wright Brothers aero planes, astronaut capsules, all electric cars, etc.; a mining for minerals section where you are given a mining pan and your dip your pan into the water and scoop up sand and shift around for a unique shiny mineral or something. And probably more I don’t remember.

The Tellus is just off the I-75 in Cartersville. When you turn into Tellus Drive you have probably a half mile or so of a pleasant drive with a lot of well sculptured trees and bushes. As you enter the parking lot you see there is about as much, if not more, parking space allotted for school buses as for private vehicles.

In the lobby there is a big pendulum in the lobby that swings back and forth in very long strides making a slight change in direction each time. The slight change in movement is credited to the earth’s gravity pull and the earth’s rotation. Right in the path of the swinging pendulum is a huge circle of little wood blocks, about the size of domino tiles. Every 21 minutes it moved just enough to knock another one down.

I wondered how they down set them back up when they are all knocked down. It kind of reminded me of the old bowling ball alleys where a “pin boy” would hop out and put the bowling pins back upright. It also reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum.

You pay according to what you are: student, senior citizen, etc, and how many of the planetarium shows do you want to catch. There are four shows, each with a different theme, like planets, the constellations with Greek mythology, beyond our solar system, and Big Bird. We skipped the Big Bird show.
We went to three of the planetarium shows. I noticed in each show the narrator would give a quick run down of the planets in our solar system and show how you can quickly locate them with your naked eye. They are all in a row. If you can spot Venus you can see directly to the left Mercury, Mars, and on in order as they are from the sun. I didn’t know that… that you could see them all in a line like that, and actually confuses me a bit – aren’t we suppose to be in that line too?



I also wondered what the reaction would be around me, sitting in the dark, if, when each time the narrator named off the planets when she said “Uranus” I burst into a giggle… being likely the oldest looking person there, I’m sure it would cause some stares.

In the mineral section displayed many types of stones and minerals. It also had a lot of visual educational displays about mining and what we use in our food and medicinal supply, which we couldn’t live without, that came from mining. This reminded me that Cartersville always has mined stuff since I remember. Every time we drove by Cartersville in the old days you could see high hills, stripped which we assumed to be mining operations. Is this section the city defending itself?




Also, while we were in the mineral section we sort of fell in step with a crowd of young kids, all with the same color t-shirts, who were listening to a museum docent explain to them about different type of rocks and minerals. It was interesting. I wondered if I should raise my hand and ask permission to go to the bathroom.





The prehistoric giant creature section was very good. There was one giant skeleton of a mole looking creature that was found in a nearby mining cavern. It was about the size of a Winnebago. They had maybe eight or nine huge skeletons of prehistoric monsters. I think some of them were casts from the bones of the actual critters.

The Man in Motion section had quiet an collection of old turn of the century (1890s-1910s) cars, horseless carriages, one of the first airplanes, a space satellite, a helicopter, and more. Also in this same section is a small art show, with maybe 15 or 20 canvases on display. And also is a tub or well looking device with round walls with a hole in the bottom. The directions said if you put a coin in a lot above it will travel a unique path down to and through the hole. It said all money will go be donated to some worthy cause, I forgot what. I was searching in my pocket for a penny and a nearby guide pulled a quarter out of his pocket and demonstrated. Thank God, I was trying to decide about using a quarter myself. The man’s quarter went around and around the inner-wall of the tub, and each revolution would go a wee bit further forward. Each rotation would be a little shorter, as the wall got smaller as it went down. It was interesting to watch…with someone else’s money.

They had a type of make believe house with a make believe playhouse to attract probably toddler age kids. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time there.

We got to mine for minerals. In one of the rooms you are given a pan that you dip into sand at the bottom of a water trough and shift through it looking for shiny little minerals and things, maybe a button or a coin… not really, it was all minerals. Anna and I each found a nice number of little fragments of some pretty precious stones. Now, what do we do with them?

The dining area is void of any sign of a place that food is prepared or cooked. It is there, but just not in view. Looking around the room on the wall is a menu and on the menu are cooked things, such as hamburgers, hotdogs, and hot sandwiches. I asked the lady that worked there where was the kitchen. She said “behind that door – you tell me what you want and I’ll bring it to you.” Why hide a hint of a kitchen? I didn’t realize it but no kitchen with humans cooking takes something out of it.

It was a very interesting educational trip.




After that we went to Euharlee, Georgia, to eat at Johnny Mitchell’s Smokehouse. We arrived before 4:00 and thus were the only paying customers there. We were welcomed by everybody there, including Johnny. Johnny and I share the same birth date. The birth day boy (or girl) gets a free generous slice of a Coca Cola cake oozing with richness. I had a sampler platter with had smoked barbecued chicken, ribs, and barbecued beef. The beef and ribs were excellent. They had a strong spiced dry-rub smoke taste that is, well, just very good, if you don’t eat them every day. The chicken I cannot say yet, I was stuffed so I carried it home to eat today.

Just about a block away from Johnny Mitchell’s Smokehouse is the Euharlee Covered Bridge. The road going though the covered bridge has been detoured now the covered bridge is just for show. The bridge was built by a freed black man Horace King (1807-1885) in the mid 1800s during slavery. Before Horace was freed he helped his master build bridges and became more knowledgeable and better at it than his master. The master freed him and help get him started in his own business. He built regular bridges and covered bridges in west Georgia and in Alabama.





The next time we were in the area and had the time I wanted to look up something. I wanted to look up Allatoona Pass. A Civil War battle went on at Allatoona Pass. It was almost a century before Allatoona Lake was created. My great grandfather William A. Trammell/Hunter’s unit, NC 39th, Co. I fought at Allatoona Pass. I wanted to see for myself the layout of the land.

I have tried to find Allatoona Pass before and went to the wrong road. This time with guidance from the Red Top Mountain Park ranger I found it. I think the worse part of the battle is very deep in Allatoona Lake waters but around the edges are the markers and things. One thing I saw changed my thoughts. The fight took place in September 1864. That was about two months after William was shot in the knee during a skirmish at Kennesaw Mountain. After that he was sent to a private home near Woodstock, Georgia, recuperate, and he sat the rest of the war out. He couldn’t have fought at Allatoona Pass.

However! Up on a high spot near Allatoona Road is a grassy area that overlooks the lake and on the other side of the lake appears to be Allatoona Landing. Allatoona Landing is where one of William’s favorite grandsons, Herbert Hunter docked his boat, many years later…. I just thought that was almost coincidental.




High up on top of one of the mountains or ridges looming over Allatoona Pass and on top of Kennesaw Mountain, in top of a tree, Sherman’s men communicated with mirror reflections. Sherman would send them orders and they would report back what was happening. They were instantly relaying orders and news long before electronic gadgetry.

For the next phase of my birthday we will meet the family tonight.

BBQ Joints in Georgia - a Pig Out

THE ATLANTA MAGAZINE this month reviews the top barbecue joints in Georgia. Of the 37 listed we have been to 18. That means there are 17 BBQ joints we have not visited.

We are studying the Georgia map now.

It is a thankless job but someone has to do it.

A Morning of An Evening With Johnny Mercer

On Willow and my walk this morning I listened to An Evening with Johnny Mercer. During this recording session Johnny Mercer must have been at a piano and talked what came to mind as he played his songs. He would tell a little experiences or talks which suddenly inspired him to write timeless musical pieces.

That got me thinking about Johnny Mercer. Duh! Johnny Mercer is another Georgian we can be proud of. He was born and raised in Savannah.


We toured his house in Savannah once. People, us included, were not touring it because it use to belong to Johnny Mercer, but another time belonged to Jim Williams, of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL fame.

Not long ago I mentioned Roy Rogers singing I’M AN OLD COWHAND (FROM THE RIO GRANDE). I learned this morning that Johnny wrote that song and what inspired him and where. He spent a couple days in Texas traveling from Hollywood to Savannah.

While in Savannah that time I spent hours in the Bonaventure Cemetery doing some genealogy cemetery digging. I came across the Mercer plot. See above.

Another unsung (pardon the pun) hero, or song writer-poet from Georgia is Joe South. The song I think of that he wrote instantly is GAMES PEOPLE PLAY. Joe is from here in Cobb County, Smyrna to be exact.

Dixie Highway Yardsale

Yep, a planned 90 miles yard sale along the Dixie Highway from Marietta to Ringgold, Georgia, was yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow. It is uniquely called The Dixie Yard Sale.

The Dixie Highway is officially US Hwy 41.

I have been wanting to travel up the Dixie Highway from Marietta to Rossville, Georgia (Ga/Ten state line), the old trail we kept hot back in the 40s visiting my grandmother and other relatives)... and today would be a great day for it and get a few good buys on the way however my grass is probably breaking the Cobb County 6" law.

This is an annual thing, maybe next year.

Ms Lillian Carter and the Paparazzi (me)!

Back in November of 1976 Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia, was voted President of the United States. We thought we would drive down to Plains and pay him a visit.



Jimmy’s house was on this street. This was as far as we could get.

We went just a few blocks away to the main street of Plains, the business district - which was not a big area at all. A crowd of people were standing near the old depot. We asked them what were they waiting on and they said "Ms Lillian". They said she took a little break and would be back soon. Everybody had their cameras ready. It was like waiting for the bears' feeding time at the zoo.

Just as they said, she materialized down the street walking towards us (or walking towards what was behind us, the depot building).

Lillian Carter was very friendly and gracious. I followed her to the old train depot where she had a chair waiting on her to sign autographs.

I only saw her lose her cool once. Someone almost reach out and touched her – I think the person was trying to shake her hand and Lillian screamed out “DON’T TOUCH ME!”

Being a nurse, she probably knew humans have a reputation of having their hands just about anywhere then pass them on to others by handshakes.

After she shouted she immediately turned to warm smiling butter. She realized she gave her fans a bit of a shock.

Also, I expect to eventually come across a slide of Billy Carter giving me the finger. When I do look for it here.