Tybee Island, Georgia, Anchor for Show

Almost like Popeye's!

Hangars at NAS Lakehurst

These are the three hangars we saw daily when we were station in Squadron HU-4, Lakehurst, NJ..  If I remember correctly our hangar is the far right one.

To give you an idea how huge the hangars are/were, here are some pictures of me and other humans with a hanger behind us.

In front of the hangars, where the huge doors opens is a very big paved area for aviation use.  I found it amusing that the winds coming across the huge paved area into the opened doors.  On the other end there is a normal size door.  If one should open the regular size door when the huge doors are opened with strong winds I found that if you jump the wind will carry you a few feet. 

You may have heard of the largest hangar on the left.  A visiting German passenger  on a goodwill mission, exploded there May 6, 1937, killing over 30 people.  Thirty-six of the ninety-seven people on board were killed.

This is a postcard of the back of the hangars.  That is where we parked our cars.  I had a PV544 Volvo which did not have brakes.  It had brakes but we wore them out.  I developed the art of slowing down by gearing it down.  When we went out in the evening, to drive in I had to gear down and creep and hope the guard at the gate would wave me on, which they did.

But once in the parking lot the SP put a traffic ticket on my car.  The reason it was past due for inspection.  We knew it would not past inspection with no brakes, so I ignored the ticket.

About a week after the ticket was issued when I was getting into the car two SP popped up from nowhere and wanted to know what was I going to do about the ticket.  One of the SPs threatened me with his billy stick brig(another time I will tell you about the base's brig).

This time I talked myself out of any punishment temporarily, if I get the inspection fixed.  I took the car into Lakehurst and the brakes  cost was not as expensive as I feared.  I had the brakes fixed and got an inspection.

I think I did have to park outside the gate for about a week until I got my brakes fixed and re-inspected but I'm not sure.  Time blurs a lot.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! Daily Funnies

Our local paper, THE MARIETTA DAILY JOURNAL has revamped their comic strip section.  It seems the controversial and cranium ones have dispensary such as DOONSBURY, FUNKY WINkERBEAN, MOTHER GOOSE, and a few others.  , 

I miss even the older comic strips.  Here are some remembrances from MAD #27.  Editor Harvey Kurtzman did the writings and Will Elder did the drawing:.

(as usual click on the page to read the balloons so you can get the gest of it)

Waiting on Mommy

Benjamin and Rocky sitting on the porch waiting on Mommy.

I And My Annabell Lee

I was a child and she was a child,

In this KINGDOM BY THE SEA -
We Love With a Love, More than Love

- 12 grade English class, like a catchy tune, I cannot get it out of my mind (and as you see, cannot recite it correctly either)

Profit Is Our Most Important Product

Today's Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Almanac page-a-day calendar tells that in 1989, GE chairman Jack Welch went to Bangalore, India to meet a delegation of business executives and India's prime minister Rajiv Ganhi.  They discussed GE  buying India software.  Welch was more interested in India's cheap labor force.  In one year GE shifted some of its labor force, the phone-based customer service to Bangalore.  Other American companies followed, which caused thousands of Americans to lose their jobs to a new word, "Outsourcing".

Shame on  General Electric and the companies that followed.

Self-Portrait of the Invisible Man

You know that self-portrait of Norman Rockwell sitting at his easel and bending over looking around his canvas to get a better view, and the subject is doing the same?

Well, this is about the same.  Here is my self-portrait of the Invisible Man.  If you don't see it look hard at the sand.

Throwback Thursday: Luther and Lilie Mae Foster

Throwback Thursday:  Most of my blogs qualify to be thrown back.  But on Throwback Thursdays I like to point it out.

This is of Anna's grandfather's brother Luther Foster and his wife Lilly May Cook.  Anna's late mother Marie made very meticulous notes   on the back of the pictures.  This one points out that Lilly May died almost eleven months after they were married. 

Daddy the Witch Doctor

This building was built about 1946 or '47.   It was built as an annex for the Marietta First Methodist Church.

After the Church moved to a bigger location Office Sales and Service, which was next door, took it over.

And presently, it is law offices of Governor Roy Barnes.  I heard he had a mock-up of a courtroom there, with pews, Judge big desk and all to practice and fine tune the lawyers courtroom skills.

In 1946/47 when the building was being built I was about 5 or 6 years old and played there daily after the workers went home.  Most of us local kids did.  We climb all over the building, having fake gun fights and chasing one another.

The Hobby family lived right behind the building in an old white building.  One time while playing in the construction area Mike Hobby fell from the 2nd level  floor to the ground floor.  He did not break any bones but a nail did go through his foot.

He was afraid to tell his parents because his father game him and George strict orders not to play in the building.  They were Catholic.

My daddy had medical skills that he surprised us with often.  This time Mike Hobby went to him with medical needs, to pull the nail the rest of the way through the foot.  Daddy did, and afterward soaked the wound with kerosene.

Daddy had a lot of medical home remedies in his head.  One time my leg were eaten up with risons, little bumps with white heads.  He got black walnut podshells from his parents house and massaged my legs in the black juice.  He was a whiz at take foreign matter from a person's eyeball.  When my sister broke her arm the doctor told her she would never be able to use that arm again.  Daddy made her squeeze a rubber ball all the time and it fixed her arm.  I often saw him standing at our gas stove eye eating a knife or a needle for an operation. 

His parents never found out.

Our Man Flynn

Yesterday we had lunch at the Daily Bread.  Whenever we are near the hospital around lunch time we eat at  the Daily Bread on Rose Lane.  Their lunch items are delicious.

When we entered there were a bunch of uniformed policemen ahead of us in line.  The last one in line turned around and said to us if we were two minutes earlier we would be in front of the line.  He introduced himself as the Deputy Chief of Marietta Police ( but I already forgot his name).

Then I asked him was Dan Flynn still the chief.  He said, "Yes, and there he is"  (pointing at the uniformed officer and the head of the line).  I would have never recognized him.

I said I met Dan Flynn and his wife at a Civil War Hospital tour in downtown Marietta a few years ago.

He called Dan over and Dan did not remember me but he did remember the Civil War Hospital Tour.  That figures (whimpers the invisible man).

I also reminded  him we talked about him being chief of the Savannah Police before coming to Marietta.  He remembered us talking about that.  And also that my father had his job back about in the early 1950s.

The Deputy Chief said he wished my dad could come back now and see how everything has changed.  I said I do too, but not for the same reason.

The Deputy Chief asked was my dad's picture up on the wall at the Police Station.   I said, "Yes, between Earnest  Sanders and Earnest Sanders".*

*Earnest Sanders resigned and became the trips and  departing times announcer at the newly built Greyhound Bus Station at Anderson, Roswell, and Green Streets (it paid more than being chief of the police). And after Daddy left to be Chief of Cobb County Police, the city asked Earnest Sanders to come back.

Also I threw in my Uncle Dick Hunter was Mayor of Marietta.  And I wasn't  sure if I should have said my uncle Herbert Hunter, owner of Hunter's Barber Shop called all the shots of  Representative Harold Willingham's legislative votes or not - when I doubt, I keep my mouth shut.

Chief Dan Flynn on Marietta Civil War Hospitals Tour

Frank Meaders, RIP

A Marietta surveyor and business owner was struck and killed by a driver Tuesday morning.

Robert Frank Meaders, 71, was doing surveying work on New Salem Road just north of Kirk Lane in Kennesaw about 8:55 a.m. when a blue 2011 Toyota SUV hit him, according to Cobb County police.

Meaders owns the Whitlock Avenue surveying company R.F.M. Consulting.

He Is One Of Us

In a TV Commercial for Daniel Moody running for Congress  David Perdue said, "He is one of us."

I think that line has been in a movie about outer space aliens taking over this world and also  a movie about a growing secret society.

It is a scary line.

100 Cherokee Street, Marietta, Georgia

After

Before

click on each picture to enlarge it

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated this date 49 years ago.

100 Cherokee Street is a Cobb  County Government business building easily accessible to the public.  You go there when you want to change something on your property taxes, sit in on a commissioner's meeting, and more (I just don't know what).

Before it was owned by the county it was a built by Barnett Bank, which bought The First National Bank and in time change its name.

Before the Barnett Bank/First National Bank it was another banking institution, which I don't recall the name.

The building sits on the corner of Lawrence  and Cherokee  Streets.  Across Cherokee Street is the Strand Theater; across Lawrence Street is another Cobb County Government building which was a judicial building; and cater-cornered is Glove Park.

Before the big white  elephant building it was a racial dividing line.  Into the Marietta Square were mostly white people.  Down Lawrence Street were mostly Afro-Americans, a pool hall, historical slave started Mt Zion Church and a black -owned funeral parlor. 

Afro-American men were always standing around talking and not many feet away at the courthouse white men always doing the same thing.

On April 4, 1968, Anna and were still newlyweds.  We went to see Odetta perform at Bottom of the Barrel in Atlanta on something like 9th or 11th Street.  We went in and was waiting when the manager came out and said Odetta would not be performing because Martin Luther king has been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Stunned, We drove back to Cobb County.

Before going home I wanted to drive up through downtown Marietta to see if anything was going on because of the latest news.

We went through the Square from Atlanta Street.  At the corner of Cherokee and Lawrence Streets was a big crowd of young black men talking intensely.   

I was driving slsowly studying them when I ran a red-light, almost hitting a car going through the green-light.  I slammed on my brakes making a loud skidding scream and at the same time held out my arm to block Anna from ramming the dash.  All the young men looked up at me.  I turned left and we got the heck out of there.

We went there to witness history, not to be part of it.

Bluegrass Jamming on Tuesday Evenins

Thelma Welch Swanson

Thelma Welch Swanson (1917-2000).  Speaking of Thelma Swanson, she too, is a John Ray and Nancy Sumner descendant).  She was a enthused compulsive family researcher.  She contributed a lot to the Macon County, North Carolina, Historical Society and wrote a several family genealogy books, one which I bought, DESCENDANTS OF JOHN RAY AND NANCY SUMNER.  We have visited her several times, which she gave us tours of the back roads of Macon County, and cemeteries. 

Although Thelma was not related to the Trammells, she knew I am and knew my Trammell kin were all over Macon County at one time.  Whenever she came across Trammell information she passed it on to me.  One time she wrote and told me she found something that stated that Revolution soldier William A. Trammell  (my g-g-g-g grandfather) is buried in the First Methodist Cemetery in Franklin, but went there and could not find it.  We planned a time and I took my sons Rocky and Adam up  with me.  Thelma, as usual, gave us a short tour, then we went to the First Methodist Cemetery.  We looked at every marker and could not find his name.  Of course some of the markers were weather beat and unreadable.  We decided to go to the local K-Mart and buy some drawing pads, and crayons to rub the markers to read them.  While at K-Mart we decided since there was a Burger King across the street, we would drop by there and have lunch.  After lunch we went back to the cemetery.  When we drove into the part of the parking lot closest the cemetery.  The sun had shifted and shiny its beams in new directions and even bouncing them in other directions.  The new lights illuminated one tall stone under a huge oak tree - it was shady all around it but seemed to glow.  I felt like Indian Jones holding up the cross on a shaft.  We looked at the tall marker, it was William Trammell.  I felt it was meant to be for me to see it.  Eerie!

Thelma is the daughter of Thomas Floyd Welch and Annabel "Annie" Lee Ray.  She was widowed to Ray Marshall Swanson.  She and her sister Pauline "Polly" Welch Buie lived in a duplex, each having their own apartment.. 

Eric Rudolph is known as a mad terrorist bomber.  He is in prison for exploding the Family Planning clinics, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and other places.  He was on the run from a large manhunt and hid out in the wilderness near Murphy, North Carolina.  Murphy, North Carolina, is close to Franklin - just over some hills.  At the time I read speculation that local folks in that area of North Carolina might be allowing him to hide on their property.  During that time we went to see the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Cherokee, North Carolina.  There, we saw "UNTO THESE HILLS".   It is about the TRAIL OF TEARS and how one Native American, Tsali fought the soldiers when one of them killed his wife. Tsali and his sons fled for the wilderness and stayed hid and encouraged people on the trail to resist,.   There was a manhunt out for him.

On the way back the next day we stopped in Franklin and visited Thelma.  I brought up Eric Rudolph hiding nearby.  She said she used to Eric when he was a young boy and had nothing negative to say about him and said people in that area would gladly hide him from the law.  That reminded me of Tsali hiding out from a man hunt in the area.  She said her ancestor Albert Alonza Welch his Tsali hide in his barn.  I asked, jokingly, were she going like her ancestor with Rudolph..  She changed the subject.  .   

A Braves Tale a Day Late

Dale Murphy

With the Braves moving to Cobb County reminds me of the times I carried Rocky and Adam to Braves games in Atlanta.  We did not go to many, but a few.  We went with the scouts and the baseball teams my boys belonged to.

 I remember the time Dale Murphy was up at bat.  It was in the 9th inning and the Braves were 3 runs behind.

As Dale Murphy swung his bat, limbering up everybody were cheering and clapping and hollering support. 

A lot of people around us were hollering, "Knock it out of the park Dale!"  But of course Dale couldn't here that because there was a roar of screaming.

Wanting to feel part of the roaring crowd, I too, hollered, "Knock it out of the park Dale!"

Except just before I hollered it, everybody took a deep breath from hollering so much.  My shouting demand solitarily were heard all over the stadium.  People turned around to look at me.

Being invisible like I am, every time more than one person look in my direction, I turned around to see who they are really staring at.

Me!  Embarrassed,  I looked down.

Then, I heard footsteps rapidly coming towards me and stopped right in front of me.  I looked up and a man in a Braves logo on his blazer and holding a walkie-talkie asked if I was the one that hollered for Dale Murphy to knock a home run. 

I shook my head and denied it.

Several people around me said it was me too.  Uh-Oh, I'm in trouble, I thought.

The man asked me my name and  handed me his walkie-talkie and said Bobby Cox wanted to talk to me.

I said, "Hello?"

The voice said, "Eddie?  This is Bobby Cox.  You mean to tell Dale Murphy to get a home run?"

I said, "I didn't mean to, I don't know what I was talking about."

Bobby said it might work.  They just haven't thought about it.

Then from m seat I saw Bobby Cox walk out onto the edge of field and give Dale a hand signal.

Dale's eye widened and looked puzzled.  Bobby Cox gave a Dale the same hand signal but more faster and forcefully.

You could read Dale's expression as saying, "Well, OK, if you say so..."

And he knocked the ball out of the park and it caused four runs to come in.

The Braves won.

But as you can tell, I quit giving Braves advice.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! EC's 2-Fisted Taled BOMB RUN

BOMB RUN was lifted from the pages of EC Publishers' TWO-FISTED TALE.  It was written by editor Harvey Kurtzman and illustrated by John Severin and Will Elder.

Here is something you might not notice unless you are an

EC obsessive fan:   It is known that  the writers and artists like to put in inside private  jokes that only they  would understand.  On the first page of this story the bottom  panel introducing the characters in this story names the last person as "Gunner Jerry De Fuccio, "pint-size PFC" from Yonkers, Ny."

Jerry De Fuccio, the real person was Harvey Kurtzman's assistant and Harvey sent him on countless research missions, sometimes to a military base and sometimes to the NYC Public Library.  Pint-size?  I think that is a private joke that only Harvey and Jerry know.

Be sure and click on each page to make it readable.

April Fool's Day!

It is APRIL'S FOOL DAY, Fool!