On the Band Wagon

Because of the movie, SELMA is being talked a lot about these days and the bravery of those who marched over the bridge.  Keeping a segment of the population from voting or depriving them of any other guaranteed right is just plain UnAmerican.  It  is now and it was then.  Only then, to hear the people who were keeping people from voting,they were doing the patriotic thing.

Now,  it is time for me to get on the bandwagon.

When I turned 18 I registered to vote.  I went to the  Cobb County Courthouse and went to the appropriate office and showed the man my proof and credentials I was age 18, and a citizen.

I filled out the application or whatever I need to fill out.  

The man said according to Georgia State Law I had to qualify.   I had to pass a reading test he said.  He handed me a  sheet of paper of some printed words on it.

He said, "Read that aloud."

It was part of the Gettysburg Address, by Abraham Lincoln.

I started reading aloud:  "Four Scores and Seve...."

He interrupted me.  "That's good.  You passed, congratulations".

I said, "But I did not read much."

The clerk said, " You read enough.  You pronounced the word "four" correctly".  If you had pronounced it "foe" I would have failed you on the literacy."

I looked at him suspiciously.  He went on to say:  If we allowed all those people who say "foe" instead of "four" there is no telling what they would elect.  We are doing this to keep the U.S.A. a democracy."

Alone the same note, a few years after that, a friend went to Canton, Georgia, to get his drivers license renewed.  He heard the lines wasn't so bad at the State Patrol Office in Canton.  In line was a black man. 

A state patrolman looked up from his desk and saw the man and walked up to him and rudely told him to go to the back of the line, didn't he have the sense to turn and see all the white folks in line behind him.

By theory, he could be the first one in line but have to wait until the end of the day to get service.

click on image to read balloons.

The above  by  cartoonist Bud Grace, from his comic strip PIRANHA CLUB reminds us in the late 1950s.  We were not above piling into someone's car trunk and letting one or two people drive into a drive-in movie.  I remember once at the Smyrna Drive In theater we took Larry Southern's 1957 Ford, it had a big trunk.

I was elected to drive in the theater, which I did.  I drove around to the back row and got out of the car and was about to open the trunk when a man with a flashlight  walked up out of the dark and told me I had to move, the area I parked was for "colored people". 

I went back to get into the car and the man added, "Before you go you need to get those boys out of the trunk before the smother."

Old Selma, Alabama, Post Card

Main Street, Selma, Alabama.  This is the city that the authorities had a confrontation with Afro-Americans who wanted to register to vote in 1965.

Of course this post card is much earlier.  It was probably before automobiles.  See that post in the middle of the street?  What do you suppose that is?  Have you ever heard of a "whipping post"?

The Toasted Pups eatery

This picture came from the Marietta High School 1955 yearbook, The Olympia. The right side was an ad for The Toasted Pups Grill.

The Toasted Pups was on the North Park Square, separated from the block The Strand and Cobb Theaters on by Root Street. Root Street looks more like an alley than a street.

After the toasted Pups next in that spot was Dr. Cutherson, an optometrist. My uncle Leonard made glasses there.

I don’t know what else was there, maybe a Goldstein uniform shop or something because Hubert Goldstein owns the building. Now the space is empty and needs improvements – it has been in the news off and on lately, for being an eyesore.

But, back to The Toasted Pups: Back in high school sometimes when we got out of a movie late we would stop in the eatery for a bite to eat before heading home. I remember one cold wet evening after a movie going into The Toasted Pup – I remember the blast of hot wet air and the smell of grease hit us as we opened the door to go in. It had a long counter with stools – that was the dining area.

Behind the counter was a grill, a counter to prepare stuff, and a cash register.

At the end of the room was a window and a door going outside to Root Street and beside the door was a window.

We ordered coffee and had a seat. There were a bunch of men in the place chatting staying dry and warm. The cook, who was the only evening employee, was a blond guy, not too much older than me. If I was 16, then he was probably eighteen. I slightly knew him because we had a mutual friend, Grady.

The blond guy served our coffee and whatever else, probably french fries and went back up to talk to his hanging out spot and leaned against the counter and continued to talk to some of his friends.

The door opened and a black man stepped in. He was probably in his 40s, non-descript dressed. He sat down at the counter. The blond guy jumped up from his leaning perch and rushed over to him and plainly told him to leave. He was not abusive to the black man but he was stern. As he held the door opened for the man to go out he told him he would have to order from the window outside on Root Street.

The man walked around the corner on Root Street and ordered from the window and had to wait in the rain and cold to get his food. Then, he disappeared into the night.

The blond guy and the men he was talking to were trying to figure what made him do something so stupid. Was he drunk? Was he crazy? They finally decided he was probably from up north where they allowed such things.

I felt sorry the man. We were in the middle of the caste system and didn’t even know it.

Fast forward about six months or so on Halloween night. My sister just bought a new white 1959 Chevrolet from Anderson Chevrolet.

She and my mother went to the downtown area to sit on the Square in the new car and watch people walk by dressed up in their costumes.

I was with my cronies. I was the one driving my family’s 53 Chevrolet. I ran into my sister and my mother and I begged to swap cars with them so my cronies and I could cruise around in my sister’s new car. She generously let me take her new car.

Within ten minutes I had a wreck in it. Driving down Washington Avenue I sideswiped a car coming in the opposite direction. Or it sideswiped me, or both… who knows?

The guy driving the other car was the blond guy that was the cook at The Toasted Pups
Grill. Lordy, Lordy. It was a small town.

WOMAN OF COLOR, DAUGHTER OF PRIVILEGE

Amanda America Dickson 1849-1893 by Kent Anderson Leslie

Kent and I are both alumni of Marietta High School. We graduated the same year. I knew her and her two brothers well enough to – well, speak to them by name, and they in turn, knew me about the same way.

I knew she had written this book, I read about it in the paper when it was first published and have stumbled on it more than once at the Marietta History Museum. On a visit to the High Museum last year I ran into Kent. We spoke. I decided to get her book and read it. I did and found it very good.

Kent wrote it as her thesis or dissertation , when she was in college.

It is a very well researched book. The end-notes pages take up a big portion of the book.

It mostly takes place in Hancock County, Georgia, and ending mostly in Augusta, Bibb County, Georgia.

A wealthy young plantation man, or brat, David Dickson raped one of the family slaves, Julia Frances Dickson. Julia had a child by this rape, a daughter that was named Amanda America Dickson.

I perked up a this. America is a rare name. She is the second person I know that had that name, except Captain America in the comics. The first person was my mother Ethel America Petty Hunter, or “Janie”.

There are unbelievable amount of censuses, conclusions from the censuses, agricultural reports, state and county laws studied, and statistics and more.

David Dickson did not hide the fact that Amanda was his child and his mother sort of gained possession of her. Legally she was more property of the white ruling family than the daughter of a slave.

In time Julia moved from the slave area to the house and was House-Slave, and through the years more or less ran the household. She even kept the papers and paid venders who delivered things to the plantation – which demonstrates how much trust David had in the lady.

David became the master of the plantation and with his planning it became very productive and he became one of the richest men in Georgia.

Being a self-earned of the richest came with bragging rights which David fully used, he wrote articles on farming – how he did it.

And during this same time Amanda grew up well petted among the white family that care for her.

David said he was very humane with his slaves and it appeared that they had a caste system on the plantation. The more productive a slave was the more benefits he or she got.

After slavery was abolished one old ex-slave on the Dickson plantation remembered the whipping post and the food served in troughs, kind of the same way hogs were fed – how was that for humanness?

Visitors who visited the Dickson house for dinner had a rare experience. Amanda, and I think Julia too, sat at the table and ate with everybody else. They knew ahead of time, if they had a problem with that, then they did not come.

I don’t want to give away too much of the book. Kent looks down every avenue and possibility in the book.

The society in Hancock County, probably more so than most other counties probably was at its height of racism holding the black man down with Jim Crow laws when David Dickson died and left Amanda a fortune. All of his white relatives had a fit and challenged the will. You will have to read the book to see what ruing the courts handed down.

The book also tells how Amanda’s family developed – her husbands and off springs, etc.

I thought it was good and educational – but a bit sad, as far as human dramas go – but that is life.

Separate But Equal Ads

While doing some mini-research with google, trying to come up with a visual on Hambones I came across the above ads. You know to click to enlarge.

Welcome To The Sunny South

The latest issue of GEORGIA BACKROADS magazine (Autumn 2007) has some interesting articles. Two of the articles deal with racism in Georgia’s past. One article is about slavery and the other is about the Jim Crow state of mind.

I don’t see how my progenitors could have condoned such. But apparently they did.

Which brings me to the above picture. I copied it from a great aunt’s collection years ago. She told me this picture was a post card from a picture that was super-big and was on a wall of the Atlanta Airport in the 1940s facing the doors people came in the building from the planes. She told me underneath the picture said “WELCOME TO THE SUNNY SOUTH!”

What was politically correct over 60 years ago is not necessary politically correct today. Time changes.

The mountain in the background has the shape of Kennesaw Mountain here in Marietta.

Well!

Many years ago in Georgia, by law, blacks and whites were separated. Normally they were not allowed to sit by each other. Silly!

Then when segregation was ruled illegal and blacks could sit with whites it was not uncommon if a black person satt by a white person the white person move away.

That was the way it was. It was no hard feelings. The whites mistakenly thought they were the king of the roost by heritage.

Now, times like that are happily gone forever.

A few years ago on the way back from Memphis we stopped at a Tennessee State Park and spent the some time there. They had a couple of beautiful water falls. While there, in their gift shop I bought a walking stick. It was naturally curved, heavily varnished, and had a little hole up top that a loop of rawhide there. It was cheap, considering – I think I paid about $9 for it. Since then, I have become a connoisseur of natural looking walking sticks. At craft shows I always look at them and admire them, but they all seem too expensive compared to my one I bought. The first (and only) walking stick buy spoiled me.

Now when I see somebody with a natural walking stick I sometimes mention to them how nice looking their walking stick is.

I just remembered this when I saw my noticed my walking stick in the corner this morning: When I took my sister to the doctor and I sat in the waiting room for a couple of hours people were coming and going. They would have a certain phase of their stress test and come back to the waiting room and wait for the next phase.

Once, a little short black lady came and sat by me. She had a natural walking stick. This one had part of the limb bark still on it, and rings were carved up and down the stick. It looked very unique. I turned around to the lady and told her, “I like that walking stick.”

She got up and moved across the room.

The Royal Peacock and Ike & Tina Turner

I got of the Navy in July 1965.

We haven’t seen the movie “Dream Girls” but from the trailers Eddie Murphy reminds me of a little outing back in July 1965.

I was only back at my parents home about two weeks when two of my old friends, *Monty and John came by. They wanted to go to Atlanta to The Royal Peacock Club.

The Royal Peacock Club was a black owned and controlled club. I have never been there but heard of it many times. The all-black club allowed teenagers there. We were no longer teenagers, but I suppose we still had that teenager frame of mind.

Monty said The Royal Peacock had Ike and Tina Turner there for a week. I asked who were Ike and Tina Turner.

“You are kidding – right?” Monty said and sung a few words of their recent top 40 hit. Now, I remembered. M used to do a good job with his renditions of top 40 songs, you should have heard his “Mona Lisa”.

We drove to Atlanta to the all black area of the downtown area. Monty had been there before and knew where it was at. Before we went in we went into a whiskey store and bought some bourbon. We then went upstairs to the famous night club. We were the only white people there.

The Royal Peacock did not have a liquor pouring license. They had a covered charge, sold set-ups along with a big bowl of ice, and food from the restaurant next door.

So! That is why they waited on teenagers I knew so openly several years ago. They didn’t sell them booze, they sold them set ups.

Ike and Tina Turner and the Ikettes came into the spotlight and put on a fantastic high energy show. I sat there transfixed on the action. Tina Turner and the Ikettes were dressed in very revealing and clinging sparkling clothes. The show they put on had the house rocking.

As I remember there was not stage and we were fairly close to them – they were right up in our face.

The Royal Peacock had no dancing license. You had to sit in your chair and rock and beat on the table as they took us higher.

The Ikettes reminded me of the Supremes, only sexier, and the backup singers in the movie “Ray”, and I suppose also like the singettes in "Dream Girls".
they were sexy, but not as sexy and bountiful as the lead singer Tina Turner. She dominated the show.

Ike Turner had his on special talents also. He played an electric guitar and handled it in a very erotic fashion. He also did some wicked tongue work with the each loud strum of his guitar.

They put on a good show.


I found this picture on Google of the interior of The Royal Peacock. It looked about right.

*You might remember Monty from a previous blogs on March 29 2006 and August 27 2006. That is when we found ourselves with one heck of a problem at The Golden Horn Coffee House (Beaniks) about 6 years before. To read it, if you haven't read it before go to the top bar and type in "Golden Horn" in the "search this blog" blank.

The Good/Bad Old Days

Once or twice a year my neighbor Kathleen’s daughter Jane visits her from Virginia. On each visit Jane has a project in mind. In the past it has been to replacing steps, laying carpet, painting a couple of rooms, and whatever else. Jane doesn’t come down to visit to twiddle her thumbs and look at TV.

On some of the projects, if there is any cleaning out, I may get something out of it.

On Jane’s Christmas visit she gave me a stack of Reminisce magazines from her cleaning out.

Off and on, I have been looking at the different issues. Reminisce magazine is about the good old days. Of course, it’s target readership are people who were alive and enjoying life in the 30s, 40s, and probably the 60s. Probably at one time the magazine had articles about the 20s, but their audience for that time segment has, well, moved on. Your time is coming – watch out!

The good old day in the magazines show people dancing at big dance halls; movie stars such as Clark Gable; fancy new cars which would be antiques now; radio crystal sets; plays (“Yankee Doodle Dandy” comes to mind); and you get the idea. The magazine wants to bring back memories of yesteryear; a neatly packed package of nostalgia.

One thing I noticed missing in every magazine: African-Americans. What does that tell you… the Good Old Days wasn’t that good?

this is what was the "colored" entrance at the Strand Theater in Marietta, Ga.

You mean they did not enjoy going to the movies entering in the “Colored Entrance” and having to sit way back in the back part of the balcony? – if they were allowed at all. It was common sense that if a theater did not have a balcony the blacks were not allowed. Or being not allowed in restaurants, or if a restaurant did allow them to buy they had to order at an outside window marked “Colored”. I remember seeing restroom signs at the Cobb County Courthouse saying “White Gentlemen”, “White Ladies”, “Colored Men”, and “Colored Women”… in another county building was restroom signs saying, “White Gentlemen”, “White Ladies” and “Colored”… both sexes had to share the same bathroom, which most white people thought was fine, “those people don’t have any morals anyway”. And there were the back of buses, and I could on.

What used to get to me was to be talking to a white person of authority and that person would be friendly and warm and the same person turn around and talk to a black person and naturally be sharp, curt, and contemptuous for no reason.

Those were the days my friend, I thought would never end.

Bluto Eats Hambugers at Carey's

One day I took Bluto to Carey’s Hamburgers for lunch. I thought he would find this joint interesting. I was right. Carey’s is across a boulevard from Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta. I didn’t know of its existence until I read an article by Lewis Grizzard raving about their hamburgers and the down-to-earth of the place. He also hinted that there were some racial overtones there.

I first went to Carey’s alone in a December when nearby Christmas shopping. It just seemed like a big hamburger joint, nothing fancy. The room was big and dark. I ordered a hamburger. Shortly after I ordered it, the cook came out, who I think was probably Carey and the man that took my order told the man I think was Carey another hamburger, and Carey started cursing. He said the worse goddamn thing ever he did was let that damn reporter interview him, now he doesn’t have any goddamn fucking time to rest…. Everybody wanted a fucking hamburger.

It was a delicious hamburger. It was juicy and had herbs and spices on it that just made it heaven sent. The big thick slice of onion helped too.

While I was eating a group came in. One of the people in the group was black. There was an office park nearby so the people in the group were probably co-workers on their lunch break. After the waiter took their order he hand delivered it to the back where Carey was. A moment or two later Carey emerged and put a coin in the juke box and left. The juke box played a song about “Niggers who think they are white.” I couldn’t see the expressions of the people at that booth but I would think they didn’t see the humor in it.

And a few years is when I brought Bluto to Carey’s. They had remodeled since I was there the last time. Things were brighter and it was even crowded. A lot of people were eating the special hamburger and there I noticed even blacks were coming and going with no problems. The hamburgers were as delicious as before and Carey made an appearance with an apron on and did the small talk chat at each table with a big smile on his face, even at a table with all blacks. I think after Carey got a taste of money the greed instinct kicked in, wanting more money, it was time to shed his primitive prejudices and smile all the way to the bank…. And just pay someone else to cook the hamburgers.

The Waiter that waited on me last time wasn’t there. In his place was a sexy girl with short shorts. Carey also figured other ways to attract customers. I still wasn’t satisfied – I brought Bluto there to show him a touch of the old south I told him about at Carey’s and it didn’t appear to be around anymore.

I noticed two juke boxes side by side. One was unplugged. The one that wasn’t unplugged had your top 40 rock and country. The one that was unplugged had the racist songs on it. I saw four or five with “Nigger” in the titles. I called Bluto over from our booth to look at them. He was amazed.

I asked our leggy waitress did they ever plug in the other juke box and she looked at me with a smile like a flirting “You naughty naughty boy you”. But, I still didn’t know, not that it matters.

The last time I rode by there I noticed a car rental agency had taken over the space Carey’s was in.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Today is Martin Luther King day.

Living near Atlanta, I just want to ramble about not Martin Luther King, but the going on, concerning his death, that I witnessed or experienced. First of all, I never met the man. But I admire him foe what he did, the non-violent force that turned this nation around and even changed a lot of people's frame of mind.

The night of his assignation Anna and I were in Atlanta at a bistro type place named The Bottom of the Barrel to hear Odetta, a back folk singer with a booming voice, sing. We were waiting and somebody came on the little stage and announced Odetta would not be singing because Martin Luther King had just be shot and killed in Memphis.

We left and drove back to Marietta. We drove through the downtown section and clumps of blacks were standing around. It looked scary. I was keeping an eye on the black groups and making a turn at the same time, in other words, not watching my driving, and I almost had a wreck, I almost ran into something, I forgot if it was a person or another car, or an object. I slammed on my breaks and made a squealing noise – when I slammed on the breaks Anna fell forward… that was before seat belts. By reflex, I held out my arm to keep her hitting he dash, which worked. But, it did make quiet a show among the group of blacks. Luckily no damage and no one was hurt. I sped away.

It reminded me of the time at night when I first started driving instead of waiting for the turning of a traffic light, I turned off my lights and drove through a church’s parking lot, while church was in progress. As I was silently and smoothly driving through the corner parking lot. I noticed a police car was sitting at the light, facing the opposite way, hopefully they hadn’t noticed me, and then for no reason, but maybe Divine intervention, my car horn starting blowing. I thought I had better turn on my car lights to appear I wasn’t trying to pull one over on them or anything. The horn stopped when I pulled out of the parking lot and the police maybe didn’t even notice me. Not that this had anything to do MLK.

Then, for some reason, the FBI figured a certain color Ford Mustang had something to do with the shooting and on TV a telephone number flashed for anyone to call if they see that Mustang. At the time I worked in the office of Sinclair Refining Company. The manager, Barry something, of the company-owned station at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets called me very nervous and told me the Mustang was there at that very moment. I told him to hang up and call the FBI. I was the last person to speak to Barry, he disappeared off the face of the Earth.

About a year later, Barry’s wife sold me his PV545 Volvo, he never again, as far as I know, has shown up.

During the funeral of Martin Luther King, Lester Maddox was Governor of Georgia. He made a complete fool of himself and Georgia, I think.

One rabble-rousing black militant said Atlanta was going to burn again. Because we worked at the base of three or four huge gasoline storage tanks we winced at that statement. Our boss told us we were going to have to stand guard at the tanks and each have a gun. I refused. I do not see putting my life on the line for the health and happiness of a large corporation. And others refused. Then they looked into hiring temporary guards, but kind of lost interest when they found out just complicated it could get putting up armed guards… all the bonding, paperwork, and all… like it is OK for us to put our lives on the line to save Sinclair a huge amount of stock, but when the boss had to do some complicated paper work and filing for different permits, then the work isn’t work it.

About a year later a friend from Chicago was visiting. We were in the Navy together. He, Anna, and I went to a Seals and Croft Concert (or is it Cross?) at the Art Center in Atlanta. Before the concert we went to the High Art Museum in the same complex. While appreciating the fine art I glanced over at a graceful black lady standing next to me. It was Coretta Scott King. She was so graceful and cool. I wanted to speak but did not know what to say. “Sorry about your husband”? “I think you have a graceful way about you”? So, not to spill the beans to show I had no dignity, I kept my mouth shut.

Years later I worked with Coretta’s niece Debby Scott, who is a very positive and seemingly happy lady.