Memories from Rick Dalton: Listed in order submitted (scroll down for latest)
Growing up in Newtown in the late 1940’s and 1950’s was a great experience. Attending the Newtown School, starting I guess in 1951, was another kind of experience. One thing about attending the same school as your parents attended was that most of the teachers remember teaching your parents. Comparisons were frequent. Intelligence was often questioned. Items such as “your mother grasped this so easily…” and even later at Milton High School “both your mom and dad learned Algebra, why can’t you?”
I vaguely remember Newtown Elementary School. When I first attended it was a five or six room structure made of red bricks, tall windows, wooden floors and an outside toilet. The boys’ toilet was a elongated shed building with a row of seats along one wall and a open sewer like trench facing the opposite shed wall. The one experience I remember about going to the toilet was two of my cousins grabbed me and told me they were going to put me down in the mess that was in the large pit under the seated portion of the facility. Their last names were Fouts. And both lived within a half mile of each other on Fouts’ Road and Holcomb Bridge Road. One was a Junior and the other was a Buck”.
After that experience I never returned to visit the out side toilet. The pain and discomfort of retaining one’s elimination was easier to bear than the thought of plunging four feet down into a world of shit. As we lived less than a mile from the school, I walked the trip each day, and walked faster going home because of the relief that was awaiting me there.
The school was modernized around 1956. Several new classrooms were added, a Library, a combo auditorium-cafeteria, and new inside flush type toilets. Boy, what a relief. That and the fact that my cousins’ had long departed for high school made my last years at Newtown a much better experience. Besides having older cousins in school, my class had quite a number of kinfolks included. That was the beauty of growing up in the rural south. You were related by blood, marriage or both to most of your neighbors. To some, this made the term “kissing cousins” a reality. No more on this subject.
Having kin near by also meant you always had help available for anything beyond the normal daily occurrences. But kinfolks or non-related, neighbors in the rural south always seemed to pitch together to help anyone in need or take care of things that need to be done.
My grandparents were only two generations removed from “The War of Southern Independence” and could relate the stories they had heard from their parents and grandparents. My primary regret in life is not taking the time to pay attention to these stories as once the tellers are gone, then that history is lost forever. Both paternal and maternal grandparents were landowners and considered “well to do” by the community standards of the day. Both had land, both operated country stores, and both took part in community activities, although some might say different paths.
As I remember, I will relate, although time and age may have disrupted and altered the truth. One grandfather followed the trend of the day and wore a white robe to various functions around the area. I can remember attending one of these meetings on top of Stone Mountain before it be came a Georgia State Park around 1959. It was said that the illumination of the burning cross cast light across the city of nearby Atlanta. Since I was only about fourteen at the time, I was certainly impressed. Another Gathering my grandfather took me to was in the old ball park behind a cemetery in Roswell. I was allowed to go to this one because I could now drive a car and Pa never really did learn how to navigate such a strange vehicle that didn’t have four legs for locomotion. Pa had about as many fender benders as anyone I can ever remember.
One thing about my grandfather I remember is his use of ‘strange to me’ terms, such as “make haste” and “hie over here”. He raised cotton and corn on his cultivated land and always planted watermelons on the first Saturday of May. So we could be picking cotton in the late summer and enjoy fresh picked watermelon as we quit for the day. I can remember trying to raise the weight of my cotton sack by putting a watermelon down in the sack prior to weigh-in. Sometimes this was allowed and the increased weight would be credited to my account. But that is the way of Grandfathers, God Bless them.
Pa’s store was a small two-room shed affair with two windows and a door facing east and the other walls void of windows. A lean-to shed was attached to the south wall and it contained the air compressor, along with automotive staples of grease, oil and such. A drive on grease-oil rack was behind the store with a large barrel under the rack to catch used oil for recycling. A porch on the front of the store usually had two or three chairs, sometimes a swing and a rack for empty drink bottles. Two old fashioned self-serve gas pumps were on a island about two auto widths removed from the porch.
Early remembrances feature the gasoline pumps having large glass containers atop the pump to hold the 5 gallons of self pumped gasoline that was allowed to flow into your gas tank by gravity flow. By the mid 50’s these pumps were replaced by electric driven pumps and the old glass self-pumpers were long gone. Nesbit Ferry Road was first paved about 1955 or ’56. Prior to then, the dirt road was oiled in dusty times by the liberal use of the recycled oil from the grease rack holding tank.
Now, it is a federal crime to allow hydro-carbon and petroleum based commodities to contaminate public use areas. I can remember using used motor oil to oil down dusty country roads. Also, back about this same time and continuing into the 1960’s was the use of several local landowners property for the disposal of waste. The people hauling waste paint and other liquid by products from the General Motors’ plant in Doraville dumped most of their load into the ditches and ravines off Barnwell Road. Most of these old toxic dumping grounds are now covered by high dollar homes.
When the dumpers had a really pretty color or were in a hurry, they would dump the paint barrels off the bridge on Barnwell Road directly into the creek. Since the creek was only a mile or so upstream from the Holcomb Bridge, at times the Chattahoochee River would be the river of many colors. At the time everyone seemed to think these antics amusing. Times change.
I can remember seeing the old steel trussed and wooden floored Holcomb Bridge under the flood waters of the Chattahoochee River, and since they closed the flood gates on Buford Dam in 1954 to form Lake Sidney Lanier it must have been around ’53 or early ’54. The river bottoms were all flooded almost up to the hill where sat the old Ellard (Garrard) home place. Just up the road from the Garrard place was the ramshackle home of the Prices’ and their horde of children. Seemed like Hubert Reeves’ school bus sat here the longest disembarking the Price kids and others. Old habits die hard and I was holding it until I got home.
Hubert Reeves was my school bus driver from the time we moved into the first Holcomb Bridge Road house until I was a senior in High School. The bad part was we were at the beginning of the pick up run. Hubert lived about a half mile-as the crow flies-from us and on a cold frosty morning, you could hear the old yellow bus wheeze and groan and finally cough its way into running. Hubert lived on a hill and we did on another and the clear chilled air carried sound really well.
Later, when I was in the band at Milton, I would take the baritone horn and practice out on our porch so I could share my talents with friends, kinfolks and especially Hubert across the valley. You don’t seem to have a lot of friends when you must practice outside, because your sisters can’t stand it inside. And transporting that cased horn on the limited seating area bus was a trip also. It sat along side Hubert as he made his rounds. I think every child entering or exiting the bus made an extra effort to kick my horn case.
Hubert was also the song leader during Sunday School at Mt Pisgah Methodist Church. He would stand on the right side of the alter area and lead the singing by waving his extended fore finger around through the air. Lots of fond memories about Mt Pisgah and its pastors, parishioners, and other folks that must be covered in another story format.
Chattahoochee River:
Fouts Road went from Holcomb Bridge Road on a rutted packed dirt road terminating on the north west bank of the river. Most of the ways towards the river the road was at best one lane wide and should anyone driving the road meet another vehicle it was necessary to drop the outboard tires into the ditch so passing was possible. Sometime the ditches were nonexistent or the slope of the road and land was too steep to accommodate a ditch. When this occurred it became necessary to reverse the direction of travel until a suitable passing area was obtained.
As I was very young at this time I never knew how it was decided who would take the high road and back up to allow the other vehicle to continue its course of travel.
Where the road met the river was an open area where those folks lucky enough or more fortunate had their river boats moored. All of the boats that were secured at this point were chained to one of several trees jutting from the river’s edge and were always constructed of rough sawn lumber nailed and screwed together to form a open row boat form that rarely was more than twelve feel long and three or less feet in beam.
Most of the owners of the boats were given to fishing for the local native species of fish. Catfish seemed to be the favorite type caught as more than a few of the fishermen used fish baskets to lure the unwary into gracing someone’s dinner table. My dad caught one catfish that was so large almost half of the fish was outside the basket’s length. We took this monster to Grandpa Dalton’s store as it was the closest available scale for weigh-in. The scale registered 40 pounds if memory serves correctly. Once cleaned and prepared we dined on catfish for probably several meals. The fish baskets were baited with two bars of Ivory Soap and a loaf of bread. Seems strange now that I remember this item.
I should probably mention that fishing with baskets was and perhaps still is rather illegal on the Chattahoochee and other Georgia and US Govt maintained impoundments. We were told that the game wardens would patrol the river in motorized boats and once they spied the telltale wire or rope going from a tree into the water would attempt to hoist the basket into their craft and failing that they would just cut the line thus making further use impossible.
Once Lake Sidney Lanier was operational probably around 1955 or so the river’s status changed. The water became a small bit clearer. Prior to Buford Dam the river was its muddy orange shade most of the time and during flood stage the river ran a deeper shade of red/orange as the upstream farms and fields shed their top soil for Larry Garrard’s farm.
The river’s water also became much colder. Reducing the ambient temperature of the river’s water flow allowed the Georgia Game and Fish Department to stock the stream with pen raised trout thus creating a trout stream within driving distance of metro Atlanta. With the advent of a river full of trout came another type of fishing for the local native population.
Since most of the home built river boats were rather short and narrow my dad decided that he could build us a much better fishing boat. We had a 1956 F-1 Ford pickup truck with a six foot rear bed. Dad figured that we could safely haul a twelve foot long boat in the truck’s bed and the design began to take shape. Somehow during the design stage the boat’s length morphed from twelve feet in length to around 14 feet in length. Probably because dad found two pieces of ¾ inch pine twelve inches wide and almost sixteen feet in length.
How we managed to transport those pieces of wood to the construction site is beyond my scant memory. Dad’s dream was to fabricate the boat where it would slide into the four foot width of the truck’s bed for transport and place weights into the boat to keep it secured until launch. Little did I realize that the weights were to be Sam Moore, me and the four concrete blocks destined to be river anchors.
The only error in this thought and design pattern was made during the initial assembly part of the operation. The bottom of the boat was four foot long pieces of one inch by six inch boards. When nailed and screwed to the sides of the boat frames the boat became almost two inches wider than the initial design. Thus the boat would no longer sit flat in the bed of the truck and rode sort of oddly askew during transport.
We heated and poured about fifty pounds of roofing tar into the seams and on the bottom of the boat. This increased the boat’s weight beyond the lifting capacity of my dad and me. The method my dad used to overcome this issue was to take the four wooden saw horses we used to build the boat to support the finished unit while I drove the Ford truck in reverse. This allowed Sam Moore and my dad to guide the boat into the truck’s bed for transport. Discovered during this operation was the fact that the new boat was two inches wider than the four foot width of the truck’s bed.
The boat was provided with three twelve inch boards across the gunnels for basic seating and once launched into the Chattahoochee River provided a very stable fishing platform for several fishermen. One fishing trip will stand ever in memory was when there were five of us in the boat and things went fine until we attempted to turn the boat around. Once the boat was broadside in the river the upstream side began taking water and several of us had to rapidly bail to avoid having to wade back to the bank.
One hazard that wasn’t thought of during these adventures was with the advent of the Lake Lanier impoundment was the scheduled timely release of water from the base of Buford Dam. This release would cause the river to rise rather rapidly and anyone caught unawares usually had a most difficult time getting their floating craft back to a suitable mooring site.
Another less hazardous item, but more time and labor intensive was when the moored craft, being chained to the trees overhanging the river, would rise with the water and become entangled with tree branches. This would cause our boat to become water logged and sink to the bottom of the Chattahoochee. As stated labor intensive was due to everyone standing in the waist deep water and lifting the water filled boat to where rapid bailing would once again provide enough buoyancy so as to once again become a boat.
Dad powered the river boat with a seven and a half horse power Johnson outboard. Total weight of this engine was around 45 pounds and was light enough so that I could lift the engine from our truck and lug it down the muddy bank. My most frequent and recurring thought on this was the day I slipped and slid into the river while carrying the engine. Although I was totally dunked I managed to hold the engine over my head and keep it dry.
The best part of fishing in the new trout stocked Chattahoochee River was the fact that there was an eight fish limit per person on fresh caught trout. Since these trout were pen raised they would bite almost anything tossed into the water. Thus, a single grain of Green Giant whole kernel corn on the hook would guarantee a fish almost every cast. On my dad’s summer week days off from General Motor’s we would fish in the mornings until we reached our limit. Then we would drive back home. After cleaning and freezing our catch and enjoying lunch, we would return to the river until we had our fish limit once again.
One thing did impress me regarding this access point to the river. There were paths along the side of the river leading in both directions along the river’s edge. Later in my youth I would walk down to the river and follow these trails out of curiosity as to where each led. Once my fear of the river somewhat subsided I waded across the river carefully and discovered that people prior to me had made their own trails along each side of the river.
About wading the river; the easiest place was Island Ford. Downstream from the Horseshoe Bend was another; however I did wear an old life jacket in areas where I could not see the bottom of the river. My Mother does not know I ever waded across the river so keep this part quiet.
THE OLD HOME PLACE
A story by Rick Dalton
Remember Brad Pitt’s movie “A River Runs Thru It.”; well it took a bulldozer and a rather large backhoe tractor to r u n thru the old home place when it was demolished last month. When it was completed in late 1928, the house was one of the finest homes in the neighborhood. Shaded by large and spreading white and red oaks, we grandchildren 'spent many happy moments around the old house as we grew to maturity.
The house was built entirely by hand labor as electricity was not available in o u r area of Georgia until the mid 30’s onward. I can personally remember seeing older homes lighted by kerosene lamps, heated by old mud brick fire places and the family’s meals prepared on and in a cast iron stove as late as 1960 in rural Georgia. My maternal grandfather began construction of his home early in 1927, with lulls in the fabrication and assembly process taken as farming and harvesting duties demanded.
Most of the early craftsmen were also subsistence farmers. This meant that their first responsibility was to plant, sustain and harvest the. season’s crop before one could pursue more profitable ventures requiring engineering and fabrication skills. Thus most of the actual work involving house construction was completed during the winter or inclement weather that forbade farming.
Completed in 1928, the house had been built from local materials, including heart pine flooring and foundations, hand cut oak paneling and trimmed with all the care and patience a master craftsman could produce. As best asI remember, the house had five, perhaps six large rooms, a central hallway and a fine staircase, leading to the floored attic spaces above the main house. All of the rooms sported ten foot ceilings and would have been in tune with modern construction today. There were at least three fireplaces, maybe more as some were surely bricked up by the time of my first remembered inspection in the mid 50’s.
The first thing that attracted one’s eye was the concrete and wooden piers and columns that supported the long over hanging roof. This was the only house in our community with such a roof line or the long expansive porch underneath. The porch or walkway was a good eight feet wide and seemed enormous to us as we were growing to manhood. Each of the piers was connected to the other by long black painted pipe like rails on which we could slide and pretend we were riding planes, trains or automobiles.
As completed, the house did not have electricity. My grandfather did provide running water by the prudent use of a tower windmill that pumped the well water to a holding tank and allowed gravity flow water to enter the house. This sounds rather primitive now, but in 1928 and in rural Georgia, it was state of the art and the only system in town. And
it provided for a flush toilet. Probably the only inside toilet in a five mile radius of the Old Home Place. Another innovative item he installed was a DELCO Electro System to provide illumination in the house after dark thirty.
A DELCO System used a generator and batteries to store and use direct current [DC] electricity for homeowners use. It was a forerunner of today’s portable generators. This unit may have been portable too, if you considered it weighed several tons due to the old time batteries and two cylinder gasoline engine driven generator. This primitive electric lighting system served until the Rural Electrification Act brought electricity to America’s heartlands.
My mom was four years old when she and the family moved into the new house in 1928.She and a younger sister were born in an older house that stood adjacent to the newly constructed home. Two more sisters and her brother were born while the family lived in the home. They lived there for several years until her dad purchased another old homestead nearby and relocated the family into the newly acquired property.
The home to where they relocated was considerable less habitable than from‘ where they had left and a lot of my early memories are associated with the constant rebuilding, the additions, and redoing of this older property. The old home place remained in my grandfather’s estate and a host of other relatives occupied the residence over the years.
My grandfather passed away in 1982. When the estate was settled and his children had inherited the property, we were suddenly over taken by the land speculators and others that had waited until our patriarch had passed. It wasn’t long until the farmland was being uprooted to house a new school, an ever expanding church and many new housing developments. The old home place was rented for a number of years and gradually fell into disrepair. When the property was annexed by a local municipality the powers that be declared that such a nice level spot that commanded the fronts of two streets would be the ideal location for their new library. My grandfather was self educated and extremely intelligent. He will rest easy knowing a library will eventually sit on the old home place.
