Osmo, Opal, and friend at Red Hills House

c1936 - A friend, Osmo Petty (hat), and his sister Opal Petty in front of the old house they lived in when they lived in what they called "the Red Hills" in Murray County, Ga. Their livihood was not shown: Picking Cotton.

NYC 9TH PART,, MID DEC 2018, 911 MEMORIAL

Do you Know Where Your Students Are?

I just saw a picture on line of the Varsity on North Avenue in Atlanta.. I made about it and could not figure out how to transport to my facebook page. You know what the Varsity on North Avenue looks like anyway, so we will just skip that part, and I’ll rewrite the text from memory, which will probably won’t be word pe word: In 1960, MHS Senior Day several of us skipped where we were suppose to go and went to Atlanta to a pool hall on the second floor on North Avenue, one block from the Varsity on Forest Avenue. We played pool for a couple of hours. Afterwards we went down the stairs and was walking out the door when a car drove back slowly. In the car was Doctor Mussaurra (?) looking intently at us. Doc Mussaurra was the MHS Football doctor. Strangely, about a few months earlier Dr. Musaurra drove by and saw us leaving Pasttime Pool & Grill at the corner of Waddell and Roswell Streets. This time he told Lloyd Cox, the principal, on us. I don’t think it went very far. And when he saw us on North Avenue in Atlanta exiting a pool hall when we should have been on MHS grounds I don’t think the good doctor said anything. Why bother?

By Gosh! By Golly!

Tonight on the radio I heard the song, "IT'S ALMOST TIME FOR MISTLETOE AND HOLLY." Before they got the "By Gosh, By Golly" out I thought of my old friend Larry. I always think of him when I hear that song. Back in the '50's Larry used to love to drive aimlessly around all over Cobb County with us in the car talking and bickering. Larry is a quiet sort of person. While we talked Larry would tilt his head against the door window and hum and sing lowly the MISTLE TOE AND HOLLY Song. It was all times of the year, from the heat of July to slippery icy January. By Gosh, by Golly! Also that song brings back the memory of shooting down mistletoe greenery which attach themselves high up in the trees. Other than climbing up high we shot them down. If I rememger correctly, shotguns were used. Now, thinking about it over 70 years later it seems to me the buckshock fired from a shotgun would tear the greenary to pieces. But what do I know?

NYC Museum of Modern Art, MOMA, Part 8, Mid DEC 2018

The Museum of Modern Art or MOMA as us artsy in-the-know people call it. The day we visited MOMA we arrived early. It was only about 2 or 3 blocks from where we were staying and it was a cold windy rainy morning. We walked in, the first room which must is probably the foyer or lobby. Groups of people were standing around. A uniformed New York policeman was standing alone. I thought he probably would know where to go to buy tickets. I walked up to him and asked him. He laugh and said he did not know, he was just inside to get away from the cold rain. Eventually I asked the right person and went inside. Be sure to to click on the pictures to make them bigger and hopefuuly better. This is a good sampling of what we saw:

Sorry Excuse

I tell you, I am a sorry excuse for an excuse. I tried to ease the tension between Gentiles and Muslims. I just left the Cajun meat market and beside my truck were 4 females: a mother, two teenage daughters and one preteen daughter. By their garb they were wearing I think they were Muslims. The girls were happy giggling Muslims. The mother scolded her daughters, saying, "Hurry up and get into the car this nice gentleman (meaning me) was waiting on them so that he can get into his." I gently told them in my good old boy accent to take their time, no rush. The mother, in her heavy thick accent said to me, "Please sir, I was using you an excuse to hurry them up, please do not take that away from me." Well, shoot, I can't do anything right, not even be a good excuse.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! MAD Pokes at Little Orphan Annie

We are still on the "ANNIE" Broadway hit bandwagon. This is MAD's take on LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE. Story by editor Harvey Kurtzman, illustrrated by Wally Wood. Be sue an click on each picture to make it more bigger. Get it? More Bigger? We got a million of 'em!

Ed Hunter Raiding Whiskey Still

The image shows the late Journal editor emeritus Bill Kinney, at right, pouring out bottles of moonshine at a still bust. An Aug. 15, 1955, Journal article reported on a “monster still smashed off (the) Four Lane Highway (U.S. Hwy. 41).” The still was “the largest illicit whiskey-making distillery ever discovered in Cobb (County).” The article said “the factory-type moonshine plant, valued by federal revenue agents at about $15,000, was capable of turning out nearly 400 gallons of liquor daily with an income of about $3,000 a day for its owners.” The still, “a 100 by 300 still house cleverly camouflaged and half-buried in a hillside,” was found behind a “sprawling grey brick ranch type house in the fashionable Rottenwood Creek section.” Revenue agents and GBI officers said it was the second largest still ever found in Georgia. (today it was near 41 just before Delk Road Bridge) The still was believed to have been operating since the fall of 1954 and required “a half dozen or more men” to operate it. Trails were found leading to look-out points in the hills behind the still and several buck-shot shells were found at one site indicating that the watchers were armed. Officers were reported as finding - 1,181 gallons of moonshine, neatly packed in one-half gallon jars stored inside the still house; nine tons of sugar - 180 bags of 100 pounds each; 42 (hogshead) barrels, each of 220-gallon capacity, of fermenting mash; 140 cases of empty fruit jars, each case containing 12 one-half gallon jars; a 30-horsepower, upright steam boiler attached to a 2,000-gallon still, a 1,000-gallon pre-heater and a 750- and a 500-gallon vat; 350 gallons of fuel oil; and in 100 pound bags were 15 bags of malt, nine bags of meal and eight bags of “brand” and three 50 pound cartons of yeast. The “area below the distillery turned into mash by the poured out liquor” and that “cattle drank from these pools of whiskey and passed out in minutes.” Photo courtesy of the Marietta Daily Journal and Marietta Museum of History See less Comments Eddie Hunter That is my Daddy (Ed Hunter) with the white shirt. He was the Chief of the Cobb County Police at the time).

Siblings Osmo and Georgia Grant Petty

Probably taken in Murray County after WWII. These two siblings probably did not mix very well. Osmo was a hard drinker and Georgia was a hard Bible thumper.

Art by Will Elder

Art by the late Will Elder

NYC VISIT MID DEC 2018. Part 7, Grand Central Station

Remember, click on the picture for bigness.

Osmo & His Family

c 1954: My uncle Osmo Petty and his family and his brother Leonard and his family. Plus me and my immediate family and our grandmother/mother. The picture was taken in our front yard in Marietta, across the street from Larry Bell Park. Oh yeah, and that's my bike too.

NYC VISIT, PART 6, ROCKEFELLER CENTER, TOP OF THE ROCK

Besure to click on each picture to make it enormous and scary looking.