Thanks to O.M Marietta:

T

T

I remember the Dixie Inn well.  It was in Woodstock on Canton Road, about just north of Hwy 92.  My family liked to pick up fried chick in white to-go boxes on sometimes on Sundays.  I do not know if it was the fried batter or the thin white boxed that kept the heat in, but whatever, it worked!

I worked as a carry out boy at the Big Apple Grocery Store on weekends when I was in high school.  If they had a special  worth driving to Woodstock for after work chances are we would go.

At times, we have bought their specials and then go to the Drive-In Movies.  

The evening that I remember with a chill they had “all you can eat” fish, I think it was red snapper. 

While enjoyed the fish and seeing how much I could eat suddenly a fish bone lodged in my throat.  I fell to the floor kicking.  I thought I was dying.  I couldn’t breathe.

No one seem to help me.  I think a waitress, ignoring me, had to step over me to deliver her food.

Somehow, it wasn’t my time, the bone popped out.  And I jumped up back into my seat, somewhat embarrassed.

And I’m still here.

Sharon Baptist Church

Adeline Bagley Buice (1825-1910) is one of Anna’s distant relatives.  Adeline is the daughter of Henry Thomas (1787-1884) and Harmour Anna (1795-1879) Bagley.  Adeline had an interesting and tragic life. 

During the Civil War she was one of the Roswell Mill Workers who was arrested by Sherman’s troops and sent north to work in factories.  When she returned 5 years later. Her husband had assumed she was dead and married someone else and had a family.

Check out her tombstone inscription.

Adeline Bagley Buice is buried in the Sharon Baptist Cemetery, between Cumming and Suwanee, Georgia.

Frances Home From the Hospitaol

Yesterday, We got my sister Frances home from the hospital  after about an eight day stay.  She is happy as a lark!

Ryman Auditorium

These pictures were taken December 2018.

The early part of  1963 a group of us went to Nashville to see the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium.

We went in my old new Volvo.  The brakes were bad so we changed them.  On our trip on the state two- lane highway just north of Chattanooga on a steep incline going down a mountain my new brakes failed, down we sped, with one of us screaming.  Thank God for truck run-a-ramps.  It probably saved our lives.  I don't know how we fixed the brakes but one of us did,.  They probably just needed an adjustment.  

In Nashville we got a room in a hotel next door to the Ryman Auditorium and went to Woolworths to eat dinner.  Our table was in the window.  While eating an old man with a dirty coat and a guitar on his shoulder stood and watched us eat.  We motioned for him to join us and we would buy him a dinner.  He quickly joined us and ordered.  He told us he and Cowboy Copas grew up together and were good friends.  Cowboy told him if he ever got to Nashville come to the Opry and he would give him a job singing.  We wished him well.

The Ryman Auditorium was built in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle.  Rev. Sam Jones of Cartersville. Georgia, was the main evangelist that preached there.  In 1943 the Grand Ole Opry took it over. 

That night we got  sat on a church pew in the balcony.  Cowboy Cobas was the M.C.  We saw many famous country and western singers.  The only one I one I can remember is Patsy Cline.  I also remember the giant cereal box on stage and the constant plug of WSM Radio broadcasting live.

During the show I saw Cowboy Copas's friend on the main level walking up the aisle with his  guitar.  I nudge my friends and we eagerly watched him.  Almost to the stage two or three men intercepted him.  They drug him away with him trying to explain his relationship to Cowboy and Cowboy did not miss a beat or even blink during the ruckus, he just played on.

Afterwards we went to  The Jungle Club Lounge.   The waitress flirted with us but warned us she had a husband and four kids waiting on her not miles north of there in Kentucky.  

Very soon after that night, Cowboy Copas and Patsy Cline died in a plain crash, March 5, 1963.

Where Was James?

We are amazed by the power-mind of JEOPARDY contestant James Holzhauer.    James gets very few wrong. He wages eccentricity,  using the birthday of relatives and acquaintances.  If he want to bet it all, like a mime in white-face and derby had pushes an invisible pile of money away from him like he was at a roulette table in Las Vegas.   But hey, he has had experience he is a professional sports gambler.

This morning     THE TODAY SHOW announced James would be there.  I made a Facebook announcement knowing some of my friends would like to see him.  Thy were enthused.

Then, as far as I can tell he wasn’t on THE TODAY SHOW.  

Aside from the announcement, poof!

Charley Hunter

This is my 3rd cousin, once removed, Charles Milford Hunter. Charley is the son of William Jess and Sadie Ray Collins Hunter. In this picture on his porch in the Choestoe District of Union County, Georgia, on property he was born on, and so was his father Jess.

Once at a Hunter Reunion in Blairsville when I first met Charlie we were making the world smaller, he found out he live in Marietta and he said he was stationed at Marietta at Dobbins Air Force Base. He said the bank kept confusing him with another Charlie Hunter in Marietta who owned a laundry. I don't remember how we zeroed in on his Air Force friend "Smokey" Stover who also is from Marietta and still lived there until he died recently. Smokey was at the time my in-laws handyman. Small world.
The old John Hunter Cabin which I have shown pictures of many times on facebook and my blog was sitting on property sold to someone who arranged for it to be demolished. It was the oldest standing dwelling in Union County. Charley stepped up and purchased it and paid to have each board and rock and bricks removed, numbered, and cataloged to later reassemble at a history museum that was being planned for the Choestoe District at an old school house. I haven't heard anything of that lately.
Charley used to call me two or three times a week.
A few years ago we were in Union County and in the back country, looking for old cemeteries we rode by the street I remember Charley lived on, Hunter Circle. We pulled onto the graveled street. There was only one house on it. It had to be Charley's house.
He came to the door. We woke him up, he was taking a nap. He invited us in and we sat down and talked a while about the area, his immediate family and so on.
After a while I felt he was just putting up with us so I told him we had to go.
He saw us out to the front porch and as I was taking this picture, he said, "I hate to ask you this, but who are you?"
Charley will be 91 this coming October.

James M. K& Jane Pannell Prance

1925 - James Marion Prance (1857-1935) and Mary Jane Pannel Prance (1853-1927) eating watermelon out by the well | The Prance Farm - Canton Rd., Noonday Creek District, Cobb County

Sunset NAS Lakeurst, NJ

Aug 1963

Benjamin in School's Garden

Photos by Benjamin's Mom Sabrina

Postal Blues

Yesterday I went to the Post Office to get our mail.  We have had a post office box for almost 20 years.  We got a PO box when our neighbor Bob, who was high most of the time, knocked our mailbox  down by backing into our mail box five or six times.

Most of the time he came forward, admitted backing into it and put it up again.  Once he said he did not back into it that time.  But his adolescent son, standing by said he did.  He was in his dad’s truck playing and the truck started rolling.  He said, “Remember Dad, you had to put the truck back in our driveway.”  Bob admitted it and replaced the mailbox again.

We decided we didn’t want to put up with this, so I rented a PO box.

Yesterday when I went to the post office, it was after hours.  They close at 1 pm on Saturdays.  My PO Box key would not turn to open it.  I noticed in the lobby a makeshift work bench was there with a bunch of PO box locks on it.  I’m sure they changed my lock along with some others.

This is the post office I worked at until I retired at in 2000.

I walked around the back to go into the carriers’ door to talk to someone about it and get my mail.  I have been retired almost 20 years and I expected most of the people I worked with have also retired or died.  It looks they all did.

When I walked through the back door and saw two people  pushing hampers and walked up to them and they saw me, I might as well been carrying  an assault rifle.

“SIR!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!  YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED IN HERE!”  And they shooed me out.

One told me to meet him in the lobby.  

I went back to the lobby.  He was nicer.  He listened to my story and went inside and checked my mail and I did not have any anyway.

I told him I was at this post office from the first day they opened it and retired there.

He thanked me for my service and told me I would have to come back Monday to talk to someone of authority to find out why the locks were changed.

OK.

After thinking it over, Monday will be a bad day at the Post Office.  That will be April the 15^th.  The line will be out of sight with IRS procrastinators.  Shit!