BOOK REPORT (comicbook): WEIRD SCIENCE Issues 7 – 12) Vol 2.  WEIRD SCIENCE was a comic book in the 1950s published by EC Comics, who also brought you other sci-fi comic plus Horror Comics (TALES FROM THE CRYPT, etc). war comics, and last but not least humor & satire comics (MAD & PANIC).

When William Gaines father Max,  was killed in a boating accent, William ended up running EC Comics, which then EC stood for Educational Comics but soon stood for Entertainment Comics.  William was not happy with his new responsibility and planned to sell it.  But as it turned out he and artist/editor teamed up and put out some very entertaining books and money making comic books.  The science fiction line was not a money maker.  They lost money.  But Science Fiction was where William and Al’s heart were. 

I read this book on-loan from my Kendal ipad through the LIBBY system.   It had about two dozen very interesting scifi stories.  The artists includes Wally Wood (excellent sci fi illustrator),  Al Feldtein, Harvey Kurtzman (creator of MAD Comicbook), Joe Orlando, Jack Kamen and more.

Some of the stories were openly stolen. Publisher William Gaines said “everybody did it back then), and some was much like O’Henry Stories.

I think I have read all these stories in my preteen youth but they were still just as entertaining.  They are withstanding the test of time.

My Grandpa Frank Hunter & G Grandpa Wm Hunter

 My grandmother, Minnie Tyson Hunter died July 1948. Almost two years later, March 1950, my Grandfather Frank Paris Hunter died.

When Grandma died we moved in with Grandpa. For twenty month I Had some great interactions with him. He taught me to ride a bike; He pushed me hard up a hill and turning around going down hill he let go and I kept my balance; Once I backed up too close to the fireplace early in the morning a hot cinder popped out and poof! My pajamas flamed up and he grabbed me and threw me down and extinguished the fire, how I don’t remember. My legs were covered with blisters for a while. He saved my life!

He was a drinker. He kept homebrew hidden under the house by brick pillar. He hid his drinking, and we pretended not to know about it.

Sometimes when he drank he got teary. One time in a tearful way he told our last name was not really Hunter. He told me his father was adopted as a baby in Franklin, North Carolina.

About 25 years later when our oldest son was born and we named him I remembered what Grandpa said, “our last name is not really Hunter”.

So I took up the past time of genealogy to find out what our last name really should be.

Grandpa’s father, I knew, is buried in Carmel Baptist Cemetery in Woodstock, Georgia, and he was married to Emaline Ray.

By his tombstone I knew he was born in 1842. In the Georgia Room of the library I looked at the 1850 of Franklin, Macon County, Noth Carolina, hoping to find a William A. Hunter, age 8. No such name was listed.

At the time a neighbor wprled for Southern Bell Phone Company. He got me a telephone book for Macon County. I knew he married Emaline Ray. So I sent every Ray in their phone book did they know of a William Hunter that married Emaline Ray. I enclosed stamped addressed envelopes. There were about 30 Rays that I sent the enquiry to. I got a few back wishing me luck and one with the information I wanted.

The response said something like this. “I hate to tell you this, but your ancestor was named William A. Trammell.. After the Civil War he and his brother Van Trammell shot and killed a man and escaped Franklin, NC, for they were wanted for Murder. And William changed his last name to Hunter.

The letter was not completely true. Van Trammell was his uncle, not his brother. The person killed last name was Lambert of Lambert’s Cove. It was about a year after the Civil War and they had a heated political argument which Lamert was killed. Uncle Van Trammell did the killing and William was somehow pat of it.

William fought in the Civil War, being wounded on Kennesaw Mountain and recuperated at a private residence in Woodstock, Ga. (in the Anderson Community of Cherokee Co., Ga).

They both fled the state. They, and William’s wife Emaline and children fled to Texas. They had a hard time making it so they went back East. Grandpa was born in Paris, Texas. Paris is his middle name.

Uncle Van Trammell settled in Arkansas, near the Texas state line

William A. Trammell changed his name to William A. Hunter, which it should have been anyway. Franklin’s constable, Jason Henderson Hunter, impregnated Rebecca Trammell, daughter of Jacob V Trammell. Rebeca sued Jason H. Hunter for bastardy and won, Jason had to pay $100 a year for child support.

William A. Hunter remembered how friendly the folks in Woodstock, Georgia, was to him so he and his family moved there. He died in 1928.

William and Emaline Ray Hunter house is on Main Street in Woodstock, Ga., which is now a tool rental company.

On the TV series LINCOLN LAWYER one of his client is LISA TRAMMELL triggered my brain into spilling all this out

Natural Curves on a fence

 My father-in-law's fence by his Garden, many years ago.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! MAD #24, art make believe ads looks like real photos.

 art make believe ads looks like real photos.

Picking up coins

 A pen pal told me Krogers in Texas no longer deals in change.because of the virus. They don’t accept or hand out coins. They issue some kind of debit card for the change.

That reminds me of an incident at the Post Office years ago.

POSTAL and AMERICA story. When a carrier returns from his/her route they check in with the accountable clerk. Any money transactions, such as C.O.D.,s postage dues, stamps sold, etc, are turned in to the clerk.

The clerk Robert told me this:

A carrier was checking in the money he had collected and he dropped a couple of pennies. He bent over and picked up the coins. He had an accent.

The carrier behind him, also with an accent scolded him saying, “Don’t pick up those pennies, this is America! We no longer have to pick up pennies!”

Well, somebody does! Someone might slip and fall!

Besides, one of the Founding Fathers of America, Benjamin Franklin had some wise quotable saying about pennies., like “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

Wait did they even have pennies back then?

I still pick up pennies when I drop them, even if it does hurt my bones when I bend over.

Wrights of Woodstock, Ga

 The Wright Brothers, c1890. The Wright family members lived around Canton Road north of Kurtz Road and up the road to Woodstock, Georgia.

A photographer probably came to town, set up a backdrop and took group photos for a fee. These six brothers are the sons of Isaac and Loveuia Adeline St. John Wright: They are Henry Gable, William "Bill", George "Dave", James T. "Jim", Berry Jackson "Kid", and Simon Wright.

I don't know what order the names are in, in relation to the brothers in the picture, like left to right (like I'm use to) or what.

The only person I think Ican identify is Henry Gable Wright, which is Anna's great grandfather, on the far right, or is that him second from the far right?

The two other pictures are Henry with his wife Lula Kuykendall and Henry sitting with his legs crossed.

Harvey Kurtzman, 100 Today! (if he was alive)

Harvey Kurtzman, MAD creator, would have been 100 today.

Miss Lillian Carter

 

Yesterday on Jimmy Carter’s 100^th Birthday we watched on Public TV a special named something like MISS LILLIAN, which a Miss Lillian lookalike told in first person of her experiences, quotes, shooting from the hip, and so on.  The actor looked so much like Miss Lillian she would remind us it wasn’t really her by starting off a sentence like “After I died ….” a couple of times.

It was great, see it if you can find it on  educational  TV.

It reminded me of November 1976, when Jimmy Carter was elected President.  We drove to Plains, Georgia, to take pictures.  Miss Lillian was very much available in and near the train depot.  She was very graceful and only lost her cool when a lady tried to hug her.  Afterall, she was a nurse and knew about germs and hugging.

The pictures I took in Plaines ended up in the book  JIMMY CARTER IN PLAINS, THE PRESIDENTIAL HOMETOWN by Roberr Bucellato.  Here some of Miss Lillian that are  in the book:

Jones Sisters Portraits

 The Jones Sisters. (1) Anna's grandmother, Myrtle Irene Jones Foster (1895-1991). (2) Edith Gertrude Jones Wood (1898-1986). (3) Vernice Vera Jones Sudan-Wood-Brown (1906-1982).

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROCKY & JIMMY!

 

Skip Williamson

 

Skip’s picture at Atlanta’s DragonCon in the late 1990s that I just came across.

Skip Williamson (1944-2017). Skip was an underground cartoonist. In the mid 1990s I heard he and his family (Harriet and their twin daughters) moved to Marietta. I knew of Skip’s art in various cartoon work in underground comix and HELP magazine. He bought a house from my one-time postal Supervisor Stan. Stan did bodywork part time and rigged up his garage with ideal lighting for painting cars, which also was ideal lighting for drawing underground comix.

For the heck of it, what do I have to lose? I called Skip and welcomed him to Marietta and we invited me over for a beer. That beer grew intro many more with many more visits. We had the same MAD heroes and he did a lot of cartoons for Harvey Kurtzman’s HELP Magazine, an example here.

Looking up a his living dates I read he was called a “rambunctious cartoonist”. He was. He was also a rambunctious friend. His last art work that I know of was painting on nude women at a club of Ponce de Leon in Atlanta.

They moved again and we lost touch. I hated to read that he died.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! HUMBUG Magazine YOU KNOW WHO WILL BE KILLED

 Harvey Kurtzman created MAD Comicbook.  After that, he created TRUMP Magazine, after that he created     HUMBUG Magazine, which is this is one of the stories.  Story by Harvey Kurtzman and art by Atlanta's own, Jack Davis,     YOU KNOW WHO WILL GET KILLED

Houseboat

 

Some time in our high school days, late 1950s, my friend Monty decided to build a cabin with Lake Allatoona as frontage. How we got the materials to build the cabin are several long boring stories I will not bore you with, besides I’m not sure if the statue of limitations has ran out yet.
Monty picked a place for the cabin in a little cove just before the Boy Scout property began. He said the cove had the longest view of the lake.
He did all he was suppose to do, he thought. I think one could lease the land for 99 years either from the Army Corps of Engineers or Georgia Power, I forgot which. I think there was a stipulation you must live on the leased land at least one day per month.
So, we hauled the materials up there, it took many trips. Monty and other friends did the nailing and digging. I know I know nothing about building, so I was a gopher.
I remember we got the cement blocks base laid in balanced harmony and had par of the frame up when WHAM! One day we got there and the Army Corps of Engineers ordered for it to be torn down. The lot it was built on land lower than Lake Allatoona’s highest mark..
We had to tear it down.
But being resourceful like Monty is, he decided to take the lumber and build a houseboat.
He took the boards and made what looked like a large floor. I forgot how he did it, but underneath the large floor were frames about the same width and height as a 55 gallon drums. On a cold Thanksgiving we stripped down to our jockey shorts and pried one 55 gallon drum at a time under the big floor or platform. In the water, once a drum is placed it is floating so it can’t go down, and cannot go. sideways or forward because a board would be blocking it.
It seems like it took 18 55 gallon drums. Again, I won’t bore you with where the drums came from.
Sometime or another we, via the water, floated the platform around the bend to Victoria Landing. They had electrical power sources.
Monty built a cabin that was shaped like a pup tent. It had a loft for sleeping and counter to cook. Not bad.
Then he changed it to what looked like a regular weekend fishing houseboat.
One time on Easter morning a bunch of us went swimming (in our underwear) and got drunk and visited some friends’ parents, who we did not know were having an Easter Party on their Boathouse and we crashed into the boathouse damaging it.
At work that Monday morning I was telling a friend that worked the same place about the swimming, the drunkenness', and the crash into the boathouse and she said, “Rock! Didn’t you freeze your balls off?” I thought one co-worker, a deacon would choke on his donut.
I do not remember why but Monty decided to change the house boat from looking like a giant pup tent to looking like a floating camper, but we did.
Bubba Johnson liked what we did and decided he and his friends would do the same. They built the floating platform and built the frame. And decided to have a party to celebrate the frame looking so perfect. I was not there that day, but this is what I heard. They were all drunk, sitting on the rafters and all. They started singing anti-religious songs. Mike was the leader of the songs. One girl told mike to stop singing bad songs about Jesus because something bad would happen to him. He sung louder. Then thunder and lightening came and somehow the frames began folding like dominoes and fell into the lake Several kids fell in too.
The girls said something like, “Mike! I warned you!”
No reply.
Mike?
No reply.
Where is Mike?
Then they heard his whispering voice: “Help me.”
Only Mike’s arms were sticking out of the pile of lumber. Everybody jumped in and drug him out of he water. He was rushed to the hospital. He had a punctured lung. He lived

Hubert Prance (1917-1930)

 This is Hubert Prance (1917-1930). He lived only 13 years. He was a younger brother to Anna's father Paul Prance (1910-2000). Hubert is buried at Noonday Baptist Church Cemetery, north of Marietta.

It is the only time I have even seen anybody ride a rooster.

MAD COMICBOOK #1

 Cover, first issue.

Homer & Cora Smith Prance Boating

 Of all of Marie's pictures she left the ones from Homer and Cora Smith Prance some are, well, different, like a Fellini movie is different. But different also means interesting! Of Homer and Cora's pictures there are a batch that have no names, they all are labeled from "From Cora's negatives. Here goes:

Moses Harshaw, Meanest Man in Georgia

 

This was the home of Moses Harshaw. In about 2010 when we visited it, it was Stovall’s Bread and Breakfasr.

Moses Harshaw is sort of a relative, sort of. He was an in law to an aunt, whose niece married one of John Hunter’s daughter. So, he was an in-law to an in-law. The reason I am distanting us from him, because he was considered the meanest man in Georgia during his time. When slaves got too old or sickly to be productive into the grave they went. At the time he was considered the meanest man in Georgia.

Moses was a lawyer. I think his number one client was himself.

The house is located in the Sautee Valley, near Helen, Georgia

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! MAD Magazine #24 Photo Quiz

 Words editor Harvey Kurtzman; Art Georgia's own Jack Davis

LOOKIE! THE CARTER BOOK MY PICTURES ARE IN!!

 

This is the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center. If you look hard enough you might can make out me hiding naked behind that tree right.

No, seriously, we went down to the Carter Presidential Center for an Arcadia book signing. A book was published Feb 1st a few years ago that the title said something about Plaines Georgia in 1976. I think it had about 16 pictures of my pictures that I had taken in Plains in November 1976, which was about half of them. Hey! I was one of the book signers along with the editor and the other photographer.

Petty Family, including Walt Ridley, 1930s

 

The Pettys at the home near Cohutta, Murray County, Ga., they called the Red Hills, c 1937.

Left to Right.

First Row: Osmo Petty (1915-1978), Opal Petty (1913-1992) , Thelma Cox Petty (1908-1994) (wife of Wallace), Wallace Petty (1910-2007), and Sarah Petty (1927-1999) (will become wife of Bill McLemore).

Second Row: Cecil Grant (1901-1958), Georgette Petty Grant 1906-1966), Walt Ridley (1888-1954) (Grandma's brother), Janie Petty Hunter (1918-1996) (Mama and wife of Ed Hunter), Viola Ridley Petty (1885-1968) (Grandma), Mary Jo Johns Petty (1913-2000) (wife of Tom) and Tom Petty (1908-1979).

Behind Walt: Probably Roy Petty (1921-2000). But where is Leonard Petty (1924-2001)? If that is Leonard, where is Roy? Maybe the missing one is taking the picture.