Athens World

Originally posted by Tim

Well, this sux. Barnetts is closing down. I have been shopping there since I was in grade school. We used to ride our bikes downtown and try to get to the magazines that were in the back of the news stand but the cashier knew what were about and always ran us off. I suppose change is inevitable, but this is a shame. An Athens landmark is soon no more..

Originally posted by Tim

Let me reface this with the acknowledgement that I sold my first house in three weeks using only a Pennysaver free ad. So I am a fan of this little magazine. For those not familiar with the Pennysaver, its a free publication that has want ads, car lot ads (usually featuring weekly payments) and the like. I always pick one up when the new version comes out. I never fail to find something to amuse me in the ads.

The current edition (Dec 21 — Jan 11) contains several interesting things. The first thing I noticed was an ad from a wheel-chair bound woman who was seeking a friend, male or female, non-drinker no drugs. I wondered at that one. It was sad. There were several ads from single moms who needed to have a washer dryer donated to them, or help with their christmas plans for their kids. I wondered if those are real situations or someone trolling for yard sale loot? One ad touted mobile home lots out in Madison County. With good credit, Big Wayne would make the down payment and closing costs for you. Big Wayne? I noticed the phone number for Big Wayne and noticed that same number would also line you up with a camper shell, an metal outbuilding, you know the ones that arrive on the back of a flat bed tow truck? Turning the page, right there on page 13, was a full page ad featuring Big Wayne. Big Wayne has on a white suit and white cowboy hat. There with him in the picture were his wife and daughter (I think, it didn’t say). They were all grinning at the camera and the wife and daughter had on belly dancing outfits. You can’t make this up. In addition to the other enterprises in mobile homes, camper tops, and outbuildings, Big Wayne has a car lot. A true Madison County tycoon in the making.

Previous editions of Pennysaver have had the following gems:

Free to good home, male poodle mix dog. Doesn’t like cats and will bite if you mess with his food.

Stratalounger recliner. $85 OBO, Buy this chair or I’ll burn it.

Sears stereo, 8 track tape unit and black plastic ball shaped speakers. $50 OBO.

Anyway, pick one up, they are located around Athens and seem to always be good for a laugh.

Originally posted by Tim

This was on the original athensworld, I wrote it as a part of a series of posts on Athens in the 60s and 70s.
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The Palace Theater had Saturday afternoon at the movies. Kids got in free with a can of food for the poor folks sometimes. Sometimes it cost a quarter to get in. For that price, you got a newsreel, some previews, at least one cartoon, usually more, and a double feature. The double feature movies were always of a similar genre, like two westerns or two war movies. One Saturday we got two civil war movies. I remember watching the battle scene where the South got beat and the Union was saved. Most of the kids booed, there were several kids from Up North sitting down in front, they cheered and were promptly bombarded with popcorn.

About this time of year, when school had just let out and we had the whole summer in front of us, the Yo-Yo Kings would come through town. These were always Philipino guys who could do the most amazing tricks with their Yo-Yo’s. Before the movie, the Yo-Yo Kings would be up on the stage in front of the screen, doing their tricks while music played over the sound system. We were mesmerized with the performance. The Palace Theater made sure we knew at least two weeks in advance of the Yo-Yo Kings arrival. This gave all us kids time to agitate our parents, cut grass, break into our piggy banks, whatever it took to get the money together because after the Yo-Yo Kings performed, they set up a table in the lobby and us kids would line up 50 deep. We’d stand there inside the plush velvet ropes and we’d buy our Duncan Yo-Yo, just knowing that if we got the latest model, we too could perform those same tricks. (Walk The Dog, Around The World, Jacob’s Ladder etc etc). Of course, it never really worked out that way, but we bought into the dream every June anyway. We’d return to our seats with our new Yo-Yo in hand. The year the metal-flake model came out, I spent the next three hours admiring the little flashes of light as it picked up the projector light in the darkened theater. I don’t think any of the kids there that year saw the movies at all, we were all trying to figure out how that Yo-Yo could sparkle like that. One year, the new model was the Butterfly model. It had edges that pointed out and within one hour of our getting the Butterfly model, all the kids had bruised fingers to show for it.

A few of the bolder kids would pair up with their sweethearts and sit together in the double seats that were on the isles of the theater. We called these the Love Seats and it was quite a scandal when one of our number didn’t sit with us, but sat with a girl in a Love Seat. I admit to having sat with a girl in a Love Seat once myself. I was ostracized by my crowd for several days after that. The Love Seats were located on each isle, one every 10 rows or so. I found out years after the fact, that these weren’t installed by the Palace Theater as Love Seats, but rather, were paid for by a prominent Athens businessman who was named Fats Baker. Fats tipped the scales at better than 400 pounds. I remember seeing him walking along College Square as he was going to lunch at the Mayflower. Anyway, Fats loved the movies, but he couldn’t fit in the regular seats, so when the Palace was built, he had those custom seats put in for his use. Fats never went to Saturday Afternoon at the Movies, that was strictly kid terror-tory.

The Palace Theater was located up the hill from College Square, just up the hill from where Wuxtry is now. The whole building was torn down to build the parking deck some years ago. After the movies let out, all the kids would walk down the hill and go to the Varsity for a coke or a shake, it was located at the corner of College Square, where the Chinese place is today. The downtown Varsity is a topic for another post I suppose.

Originally posted by Tim

As you drive down Lumpkin near the track, notice the cement block wall that surrounds the football practice fields. This brick wall was built way back in the day to protect the sanctity and secrecy of the UGA football team practices. Coaches and scouts from other teams would spy on upcoming opponents practices to try and figure out the game plan in advance. So the wall was built.

In its first form, it was a plain cement block (we called it cinder block) wall. As such, the wall was pretty porous. You’ve no doubt seen a cement block up close, there are little holes, fissures, and the like throughout the block. Well, the wall was no different as it was unpainted.

In a previous post, I had mentioned the drug culture that flourished in Athens back then. Yeah, I know, it still does, but in the 60s that culture was…different. I guess it was more innocent. Most of the drugs other than weed were acid, mescaline, psilocybin, hallucinogenics in other words. College kids in the 60s really thought that this was a mind expanding thing, nothing insidious. It was widely viewed as a part of the educational process I suppose, but more importantly, drug use was counter-culture, another form of protest. And Athens/UGA was all about protest as I had mentioned. So kids dropped green-dot LSD and went to class. Or maybe did a little blotter and hit Legion Field for some tunes. Or maybe the Arch for an anti-Vietnam rally. The Arch has always, as long as I can remember, been a focal point for protest and it gives me a sense of well being that it still is.

There were frequent rallies on campus at various locations. Most of the Vietnam protests tended to be up near the Army ROTC building for obvious reasons. It is still at the same location, so the rallies would be there on Baldwin. The rallies started out being completely peaceful and even respectful. Just a bunch of engaged college kids who felt compelled to voice their disapproval of the war in Vietnam. As such, the campus police stood by and mainly watched. The Athens City Police would be around too, just in case. I attended more than several of these rallies/protests just to see what was happening, to try and understand what was up with this Vietnam thing.

Then Kent State happened. The hippy movement was in full swing before then on a national and a local level, but after Kent State, things changed in tone. The Students for a Democratic Society had gained some momentum during this time, and after Kent State, the SDS took a more activist roll in their protests. In fact, they became violent.

Now, this is just my opinion, and I would be glad to hear other’s opinions on this, but here is what I think happened at UGA. The SDS folks and their rhetoric, their anarchistic elements, tended to alienate the true hippies. The real hippies were into peace, drugs, music, and all the other stuff that you are no doubt aware of. So here at UGA, there was a split on campus between the hippies and the freaks, the SDS types. I won’t mention the south campus, and usually south Georgia, kids. They were ag types, country boys who looked down their noses at the whole thing going on on north campus. I know, that’s a huge generalization, but I make it to illustrate the divisions on campus. The frat boys and girls didn’t count one way or the other in all of this for what that’s worth.

So we have the hippies and the freaks. The freaks got somewhat violent here on campus, I had mentioned the ‘firebombing’ of the ROTC building, which didn’t really amount to much at all. I remember when the thing was thrown, I got on my bike and left quick. Everyone else was headed out too, and I don’t even know if the police knew that the place had been ‘fire-bombed’. So there was the violent element that was really the polar opposite to what the hippies were about. So they withdrew from the protests and rallies. The real hippies just quit showing up, but they didn’t quit their drugs. Not at all. In fact, I think maybe it intensified. More kids were tripping more often, which brings us back to the wall around the football practice field.

Word got around about all those little holes and fissures in the wall. The hippies were drawn to the wall like moths to a light in the summer night. The holes and cracks were thought to contain little worlds, miniature societies. I’d ride my bike down Lumpkin and turn right on Smith Street, it runs parallel to the wall and behind the Hoke Smith Annex building. And there they’d be, sometimes as many as 10 or 12 kids, tripping their heads off, standing with their faces about 2 inches from the wall. Some of them would just stand there in silence. Some would be muttering, some would share what they were ‘seeing’ in the wall. They saw little creatures, humanoid or otherwise. They would see interactions between these little creations, one group invading another. I know that sounds like so much hyperbole and may be unbelievable, but I saw it on a weekly basis for several months as I recall. It got so bad that the Athletic Association finally painted the damn wall with several thick coats of acrylic paint, dooming, I suppose, all those miniature worlds. And dooming the hippies to go somewhere else to trip.

Originally posted by Tim

In the 1960s, there were two gas stations in 5 Points. One was the Standard Oil Station, which is now Jittery Joes. The other station was the Gulf Station, which is where the Golden Pantry is located now. Both were full service stations which was the norm for that era. Both stations had two service bays with lifts and overhead doors that could be closed and locked at night.

The Gulf station stayed open 24 hours a day. There was an older guy that worked the night shift named Loyal. It was pronounced Lowell though. Loyal was a fixture in 5 Points, you could count on seeing him there at night. He worked from about 10 PM until about 6 AM or so. As 12 or 13 year old kid, I’d sneak out of my parent’s house in the middle of the night and walk up to 5 Points to visit with Loyal. He’d let me pump gas sometimes. I could not count the times that I saw carloads of Athens High School kids (now Clarke Central) come in there to buy 2 dollars of gas so they could continue cruising Athens. Lots of kids would be at the Varsity drive in, that was a popular gathering spot for AHS kids and for kids from surrounding counties. The drive in area was the lot that is between the Varsity and the Dairy Queen. Most Friday and Saturday nights, you’d have to cruise through there many times to get an empty spot. So kids would cruise between the Varsity and the Pick and Pay shoe store parking lot on Broad, another popular spot. They’d drive into 5 Points to get the gas needed for that cruising. Many times, there’d be beer involved and I would watch as a carload full of high school kids would pull into the Gulf station, raising hell, making noise, generally driving too fast. At these times, I’d pump that gas or Loyal would, but Loyal would get the driver of the car to come into the office to pay. Loyal would make the driver drink a cup of coffee and tell stories about kids getting killed in wrecks driving drunk. Many times, that carload of kids would leave the station in a much quieter and safer manner than the manner that they drove in.

At the time, I didn’t think much of that one way or the other, but as I got older, I thought about that and I wonder to this day how many lives Loyal saved over the years? He did that just out of the goodness of his own heart and his caring for the kids of Athens. Loyal would tell me stories of driving a truck for a living, which he had done in a previous job. He told me about driving a wrecker truck, which is where he saw all the carnage and wrecks caused by high spirited and drunk teen drivers. Depending on how much gas I had pumped on a given Friday or Saturday night, Loyal would pay me 2 or 3 dollars, which I would promptly spend over at the Waffle House which was a fairly new business at that time. I’d have some breakfast, then walk back down Millege Circle to my parents house, sneak back in, and sleep until 1 PM or so. I don’t think my parents know to this day that I spent the better part of two years of weekend nights pumping gas in 5 Points.

Loyal was killed several years after this time, he was reported to be walking down the train track over near Winterville at night. He had been drinking and didn’t hear the train coming or didn’t care, no one will ever know. But the train hit him going almost full speed and knocked him 20 yards or so off into the weeds that bordered the tracks. I heard after the fact that his funeral was well attended by a lot of young adults from the area, many of whom no doubt had him to thank for their safe passage through Athens High School and those wild weekend nights.

Originally posted by Tim

The chatter today at the Mayflower was that a middle aged man was pushed/jumped/fell off the top of the downtown parking deck. He hit the sidewalk feet first and somehow that didn’t kill him. At least, not right away. No one seemed to know exactly what happened, just that he hit the sidewalk.

I noticed signs up again, reserving part of the quad in front of the Law School. The signs warn off tailgaters, telling them not to set up in that area, as it is reserved for a Law School function, which I assume is related to the football game. I guess they would know, but is it legal to reserve state property like that? I guess it is, the Athletic Association has done it for years, confiscating parking lots and decks on game days for football fans, even to the point of not ‘allowing’ those of us who pay for parking there to have access to what we have paid for.

The Grounds Department cut the dirt again on the north campus quads. They have also replaced the pine straw around the trees with shredded wood and bark. It stinks like hell, I think its oak remnants. The squirrels don’t seem to like it either, I don’t see as many squirrels on the ground since that was done.

There is a construction company in Oconee County called SFB Construction. I saw one of their trucks the other day and it reminded me where that name came from. It seems the owner told his father that he was going to form his own company and go into business for himself. His father didn’t think much of the idea and told his son ‘You must have shit for brains’. The son’s response was to name his company SFB Construction. I like that. I’ll give him some business when the need arises.

Originally posted by Tim

Harry’s was a beer joint in Five Points back in the 60s. It was in the location that now hosts the Five Points Bottle Shop. Across Lumpkin, where the Five Points Deli is now located was Hodgsons Pharmacy. Up on the hill behind Harry’s, where the new building is going up, was a club with a swimming pool.

But Harry’s was the most interesting place in Five Points for us kids. We were told by our parents to stay out of Harry’s. It was a beer joint after all. No college students hung out there, back in those days you had to be 21 to drink a beer legally, so Harry’s catered to older Athenians. The parking lot was dirt with a little gravel and lots of beer bottle tops pressed down into the dirt over the years. Harry’s was owned by, you might have guessed, a nice fellow named Harry. Later on, Harry and his wife would manage a country club out in the south side of Clarke County, Green Hills CC.

One day, three or four of us Five Points kids were riding our bikes and we passed through the parking lot at Harry’s. I guess the thrill of at least being in the Harry’s parking lot attracted us. We’d ride through there every chance we had, which was at least 5 times a day during the summer. One hot and dry summer day as we rode through the parking lot, Harry himself stepped out of the door and said for us to come in for a minute, he had a Tasmanian Devil to show us. Well now, we were conflicted about this. We had been told by our folks not to go into Harry’s. But here was Harry asking us to come in to see a Tasmanian Devil. My conflict lasted about 15 seconds. I got off my bike, leaned it against the wall next to the door, and walked into the joint liked I owned it. So did the other kids.

Boy howdy, that was some sight, seeing 8 or 10 men sitting at a long bar, each one with a beer. The inside was smoky and dark. Beer signs on the wall. Everyone was smoking. There were peanuts in the shell in bowls on the bar. I felt wicked as hell. Harry walked behind the bar and told us kids to pull up a bar stool and he’d get the box that held the Tasmanian Devil. He disappeared into a back room and soon came back out with a wooden and screen box. It was about 4 feet long. 3/4ths of the box was wood. The last 1/4 of it was screen, we called it hardware cloth, but it was a meshed screen with about 1/2 inch mesh. At this end of the box was a door that was latched shut. Harry put the box up on the bar in front of us and told us to sit real still. He told us that the Devil was real shy and very very mean. At this, we began hearing the Devil back there in the darkened back of the box. It was whining and screeching. It sent chills down my back. Harry told us that sometimes it would take several minutes for the Devil to come out into the screened end of the box, but that when it did, we’d all get a good look at it. Well, this must have been one of those times, because nothing much happened other than the whining and screeching got louder and more intense. We were nervous as we could be. This went on for 4 or 5 minutes. Harry kept telling us to be patient, he kept tapping on the top of the box with his hand. His other hand was behind the box, holding it down onto the bar. Harry suggested that one of us move around to the front of the box, the screen end of it, and maybe the Devil would see us and come out. I hopped off my bar stool and moved around to the front of box. The whining and screeching got even louder. Then, to my horror, the latched door fell open and out came the Devil, flying right towards my face. I could hear the screeching at a crescendo by now as I ran my little ass out the front door. Violating Kid Protocol of the day, I left my bike leaning there on the wall as did the other kids. We had one thought in mind and that thought was to get the hell away from the Tasmanian Devil at all costs. I was convinced that I was going to be attacked by that thing. I do remember hearing the men laughing as we ran out of there. I didn’t slow down until I was damn near to Highland Avenue. We sat down there on the curb trying to catch our breath and figure out what to do with our bicycles being left there at Harry’s. We decided to wait an hour or so, give someone a chance to catch the Tasmanian Devil and get it back in the box. I figured maybe they’d have to call the Fire Department or the Police.

After an hour, we walked back up Millege Circle, cut through the Mathis Aparments lot, and peered over the privet hedge at Harry’s and the parking lot. There were our bikes leaning against the wall just like we’d left them. Everything looked normal and quiet. No firetrucks or police cars. We walked up the sidewalk and stood in front of Hodgsons for a time, all the while looking across the street to Harry’s. Finally, we decided it was safe, so we crossed the street to retrieve our bikes. Harry met us at the door and told us to come in again, which we were not at all interested in. He said he wanted to show us the trick, so in we went one more time. Harry had the box still on the bar. On top of the box were two tennis balls with a couple of racoon tails attached to them and holding them together as a unit. That was the Tasmanian Devil. Behind the box was a waxed kite string. Harry had put some rosin on his hand and rubbed the string up and down and produced the whining and screeching sound that we thought was the Devil in all its rage. He showed us the hidden latch on top of the box and the spring door which he tripped open. In the back of the box, hidden away in the darkness, was a spring loaded lever which was operated by the same latch.

That was the Tasmanian Devil in its entirety. It damn sure looked like the real deal to us when that door flew open. At least, as much the real deal as any of us kids had ever seen in person, we had no idea what a Tasmanian Devil was, but it was real to us that day. I think back to the work, the effort, the planning, and the implementation of that joke and I am amazed that they came up with that. Of course, back in those days, what else would a group of men do over their beers? There was no TV in Harry’s and I suspect the radio only was on during a game. So that was their amusement and I feel privileged now to have been a part of it.

Originally posted by Tim

It was Athens Ga, 1960s. Vietnam was all the rage, literally. Growing up in a college town in those days, I got to see protests up close and personal. I’d ride my bike over to campus from the 5 Points area where I grew up. I saw the UGA branch of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) firebomb the ROTC building on campus. Well, OK, maybe firebomb is too harsh a word. What happened is that somebody had a bottle, or maybe it was a big light bulb, that had gas in it, and a burning rag plugging it up. This was thrown against the brick side of the building, the flames rapidly died out, so did the crowd. But for a young teenager like me, it was all heady stuff.

There were free concerts occasionally over at Legion Field. Crowds of students, lots of tie-dye shirts, love beads, incense, and protest. Protest against ‘Nam, protest against the government, protest for protest’s sake.

In the 60s bands that had a clear metaphor in their name were drug bands. There was a head shop over on in downtown Athens called Glass on Hill Wall. The clear metaphor meant drugs to more than bands, I suppose. One day, at Legion Field, there was a big free concert. A mobile bandstand was set up and something like 8 or 10 bands were to play. My friend Chuck and I rode our bikes over to Legion Field to check it out. We milled around and, behind the bandstand, we saw a group of guys, all standing in a circle, arms around one another’s shoulders. Several of them had guitars strapped to their backs, upside down. They were all breathing fast and deep in unison. What the hell, I thought? They broke up and walked past Chuck and me. I asked them what they were doing. One long haired guy looked at me, said they were hyperventilating. ‘It makes the rush better’, he said. He then said ‘Here kid, go have fun’, and he handed me a big ole joint!

Now, I had never seen weed before. We had heard about it in school, they told us how it’d make us crazy and make us have to raise deformed kids later in life. So I had never seen it before, but I damn sure knew what I had. I palmed it, walked quickly over to Chuck. I showed it to him and we high tailed it over to the scrub pines on the hillside that defined one side of Legion Field. About that time, the band had taken the stage. By now, the guitars weren’t on their backs, upside down. They were hooked up to big amps. The band was called Glass Menagerie. Their first song was a cover of Lady Madonna, a Beatles standard. By the time they were half way through that song, Chuck and I had run the fire out to about 2 inches on that joint. I never felt a thing except the blister on my finger that I got from hanging on too long. I guess my liver didn’t know what to do with that stuff. It learned later on though, I suppose. By now, all these years later, I guess its forgotten again.

Originally posted by Tim

I talked to Adrian recently about reposting some of the crap I wrote for the original athensworld. Here is a quick writeup on a visit to Alewine’s junkyard. Ya’ll let me know if you want me to stop..

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I was a grad student back in the 80s here at UGA. I had an old Ford F-250 truck that needed maintenance on a regular basis, and having no money to speak of, I became very familiar with the local junkyards. That was my source for parts to keep the old truck running. After I got into the private sector, I ended up selling the truck 750 bucks. I was a busy IT professional and didn’t have time to fix it any longer. I’d give 5,000 bucks to have it back now.

Anyway, in the 70s and 80s most of the junkyards around here were owned by the Alewine family. There was the Alewine Junkyard out on the Atlanta Highway, across from where Sams is now. Back then, Sams was an empty field and Alewine’s was out in the country, or almost so. I went out there one hot summer afternoon to get a part for the truck. I had called and was told that they had several 64 F-250s in the yard, so I went out there to get my fuel gauge. My truck’s fuel gauge didn’t work and I was tired of running out of gas. Once there, the counter person told me to go out with one of the employees and he’d drive me out to where the trucks were parked. I went out into the compound and was greeted by the sight of three big mean-ass German Shepards. They watched me and growled a little. The person I was with climbed into a Ford Maverick and told me to do the same. The Maverick was hacked on to say the least. There was no roof at all, it had been cut away with a torch. There was no back end either, just some structural steel beams onto which a tool box had been welded. There were no seats in the front of the car, just two folding chairs. The mechanic pressed the hotwire button and I discovered that there was no muffler either, not even a pipe at all, just hot exhaust blowing right out of the exhuast manifold and into our faces. Starting the car up got the dogs fired up, so they started barking like hell and off we went. The dogs were running beside the car, biting at the tires and barking. The car made a tremendous racket as we bounced along narrow dirt paths. I was hanging on for dear life, hoping not to fall off the folding chair or worse yet, fall out of the car. I thought the dogs would then kill me.

Finally, we stopped in front of three old F-250 junkers. The mechanic turned the car off. The dust settled, the dogs calmed down, and the ringing in my ears subsided. He got ‘out’ of the car (thats a relative term for a car with no top, no doors, and no body past the front quarter panels). It was then that I noticed, on the metal dash, someone had taken a nail or a screwdriver and scratched into the paint, the following words:

SHIT I RECKON

That summed it up better than anything I could have come up with. I got my fuel gauge and later that evening when the heat had broken, I installed it in my truck. It didn’t work. Shit I reckon. I never did have a fuel gauge that worked in that truck. I wish I had that truck back.

Originally posted by Adrian

Just after noon at the Tate Center Plaza the Campus Greens began a funeral march for the writ of habeas corpus. It proceeded to the Arch with students carrying a fake coffin labeled “R.I.P. OUR FRIEND HABEAS CORPUS” and a banner that said “REPEAL THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT.” They sang and chanted phrases like “Where have our rights gone?”

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