Reflections on the past are stories, dependent upon the memory of the story teller -- very clear or a little foggy as time passes and are colored by later experiences. With these qualifiers, these are my stories:

Joe Dale and Mary Ann (Anderson) Anderson, my parents, were married June 25, 1930, while Mother was visiting her father's sister, Margaret Anderson Hamilton in Chattanooga, TN, or in LaFayette, GA. Brother Morris Steve was born April 25, 1931 in Chatsworth; I was born. June 26, 1933. Maternal grandparents were Johnnie Reed and Parker Anderson; paternal grandparents were Susie Morris and Herbert Anderson, all of Murray County.

When brother Steve and I were born in the early 1930s, Daddy's parents, attorney Herbert H. Anderson and his wife, the former Susan Ellen (Susie) Morris lived behind our house. Our grandparents' home and Granddaddy's office in the Court House were Steve's and my refuges and places of joy and care throughout our grandparents' lives. (Granddaddy and Grandmother lived at an earlier time in the house later owned by Jack and Pearl Waters.)

So far as I know, Steve and I were born in Chatsworth in a long-gone small wooden frame house on Market Street, hammered together by father Joe Anderson and his maternal uncle, John Morris, a local carpenter. Dr. Bradford delivered both of us; chloroform, offering a brief respite from pain, was dripped on Mother's pillow during delivery contractions.

The Pearl and Jack Waters' family (sons Wendall and Jackie) later lived farther down the grandparents' side street. The Tucker family lived in a brick house nearby with children Gretel, Hansel and another daughter; John and Harbin Hemphill in another brick home, and the Quarles family (of Quarles & Westfield Department Store) were south of the Tuckers. Parks Adams, his wife Bessie Mae and her young relative Bobbie Davis and the Levi Goswicks (daughter Rainey taught grammar school) were also neighbors. First Baptist minister, "Preacher Kelley" as he was called, lived about this time farther east on Market Street toward town. Grandmother's brother John Morris, wife and daughter lived on the next side street toward town; Melva Jackson and her husband lived on the same street toward town. The streets and avenues were unpaved.

Later families and homes recalled may include some older homes and residences; among them were: a Taylor family with children JoAnn, Earl and Terrell, who lived in the square-looking clapboard former Goswick house on the corner of Market. The Goswicks had a one-car garage fronting on Market, a distance from their back door; the house fronted on the numbered avenue. The Goswicks were noted for their out-of-town general-merchandise store. Roy Gordon, wife Sue and daughter Beverly, lived on the parallel street north of Market across from the now-gone, two-story Barksdale house. Ben Leonard lived with his beautiful white-haired mother at the top of the hill diagonally across from the Court House northwest corner. Ben Leonard and Ruth Peeples were life-long friends but never married. Dr. Bradley and his wife Jen(nie) Phillips lived behind the courthouse at the top of the hill.

Steve and I were Depression babies... our parents' problem. My birth year, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated his New Deal, creating government organizations and public-works projects . Daddy worked as probably a fast hunt-and-peck typist with the Works Progress Administration (W. P. A.) and also as a county teacher. He may have been among young teachers who lost jobs due to empty coffers.

A cottage craft, bedspreads for tufting on stamped material were dropped off at our home for Mother to tuft for a few cents each spread. The spreads were dropped off at ladies' homes (Marvin Jackson was one person who dropped off supplies and picked up finished spreads). Tufting was done by inserting needle-drawn thick yarn along the designs, pulled through, cut and tied off in tufts, creating the appearance and weight of a spread. Industrious needy women pioneered later local machine spread-making industry. (Candle-wicked spreads may also have been made in homes.)

One fireplace provided heat for our small house, coupled with a wood-burning kitchen stove when lit -hot cooking in summer. Winter meant ice-cold rooms, beds warmed with a hot-water bottle or wrapped brick, and drafty, cold wooden floors, sometimes covered with washable patterned Linoleum. Stacks of hand-pieced heavy quilts kept us warm at night. Waking up meant running toward a heated space to bathe and dress. Summer cooling was accomplished by closing out the sun and opening windows and waving fans or hats. Every public place gave away hand fans with advertising messages on them; every-day activities and church services took place amid the flutter of fans or hats to create a breath of air. Men and women wore hats and carried sun/heat-protecting parasols. There were fewer cases of skin cancer in those days -- even for farmers and outdoorsmen. No sun screen products were on the market. Tanned skin was unpopular. Farmers with red necks from bending over in the sun were the first "red-necks."

About 1934, Daddy went ahead of the family to find campus housing at Lincoln Memorial University, where he matriculated that year. The house must have been furnished. Mother followed, carrying Steve and me by bus, with our clothes.

When we moved to L.M.U. in Harrogate, Tennessee, I was about a year old. To earn money, Daddy assisted professors grading papers. (Daddy's fraternity was Lambda Chi Alpha for non-legacies; one of his subjects was German language....) Among old campus photos is one of Tom Peeples, also at L. M. U. Tom is standing in deep snow in tall laced boots holding my three-year old brother Steve atop a fence post. Another friend of Daddy's, Seward Hix, was at L.M.U. Daddy on guitar, Seward on ukulele and men with other instruments played for dances at college and in Murray County. (The fraternity probably provided opportunities to play (for pay?) for dances during the hardship times of the Great Depression..)

(Earlier, in Chatsworth, this small band had gone across the creek toward Fort Mountain to play for a dance. Returning late at night, the group on foot was held up at gunpoint by a desperate man or men for their money. They may not have had a red cent, other than a dollar or two earned that night. Their instruments were thrown in the creek. Daddy continued home and crept quietly into bed without waking his parents. Arriving punctually about 7 a.m. at his office in the court house, Granddaddy was met by the sheriff, who asked whether Joe arrived home safely the night before. The robber later traveled south of Chatsworth the same night and killed a man.)

Family always helped when needed. At the time I was born, Steve had whooping cough (Pertussis).

Grandfather and Grandmother Herbert and Susie Morris Anderson cared for Steve to protect a nursing mother and newborn infant. Due to Mother's typhoid (Typhus) while I was an unweaned infant, the Parker Anderson Ramhurst farm was my home, cared for Mother's young sisters Bonnie and Jennie and brother J. P., with Grandmother Johnnie Anderson's supervision. Typhoid fever was a serious illness; Mother was forced todrink freshly-squeezed orange juice as part of the treatment. Physicians must have known it contained Vitamin C. No antibiotics were available.

About1936-7, after the stint at L.M.U., Daddy was employed as principal and teacher for a grammar and high school in Sugar Valley, GA. He taught there about a year before we returned to Chatsworth.

There was no air conditioning, no electric fans. Women privately discussed not wearing slips and stockings; men rolled up their shirt sleeves (no short-sleeved shirts). Fort Mountain provided cooler temperatures up the narrow road built by the Governor of Georgia during Turner Warmack's early childhood (he was born May 1928). We never owned an automobile except for the brief time we lived in Dallas, Paulding County, GA. , and probably while in Sugar Valley.

Ladies in hats walked under "parasols," (umbrellas kept off rain) to protect their skin and provide shade; women always wore hats or bonnets outside; their legs covered with hosiery. Corsets continued in vogue among older women. Men wore hats and suits with vests. (Men always tipped their felt or straw hats when they met a girl or woman on the street. Men doffed their hats inside or when talking with a woman on the street.) One's social and economic status were reflected in the manner of dress in those days. (Blue jeans for boys made their appearance and were worn occasionally with girls in the 1940s in high school. This trend must have followed women's working in WWII war-effort factories, where they for safety tied their hair in square scarves and wore slacks. They replaced the young male workforce then away in military service.)

Attorney Col. C. N. King was the smartest dresser around. With snow-white hair, plus probably a seersucker suit and dressy straw hat with a wide band around the low crown in summer, he cut a handsome figure. Until WWII, agriculture was the prevalent occupation; farmers in blue-denim overalls came to town in wagons pulled by mules. Older farm women chewed green sweet-gum twigs into toothbrushes to scrub their teeth and to dip their snuff. "Dips" of snuff were held inside the lower lip or between the cheek and gum. Spitting was necessary. Among some country people, olde-English speech patterns were commonplace. An example was, "I would just as lief go as stay." Lief meant "willingly." Southern speech was and remains very expressive and colorful. No other Southerner had to guess the meaning of another's words. Traveling "by shank's mare" meant walking. A man greeting another on the street often received the answer "tol-abul" (tolerable) when asked how he was. Everyone meeting on the street spoke to the other.

Across from Granddaddy's office was Richard Kendrick's Clerk-of-Court records office, a busy spot. Granddaddy's sign, H. H. Anderson, Attorney at Law and Notary Public, hung outside the sheriff's office, which fronted his. He was situated to catch business. Mr. J. W. Dooly, Ordinary, was just down the hall; Miss Mary Cox worked as his secretary for many years. Col. Rufus Steed's office was upstairs; Col. Steed and Herbert Anderson were interrelated through the Treadwell family. The courtroom was on the second level. During WWII, Granddaddy served on the Selective Service Board for the county, drafting young men for the military; I believe Rachel Morrison (now Mrs. Zeke Hufstetler) worked with him.

[Grandfather Herbert Anderson told a joke on himself: He represented a black man by the name of Mose (Bond?) , who had been charged with stealing chickens and exonerated. His attorney bill not having been paid, Granddaddy asked Mose for a little money. Mose replied, "Colonel, will you take some of them chickens?" ]

(Colonel was a title of respect, denoting an attorney, not a military veteran. Granddaddy always wore a black suit with vest, white shirt with starched detachable collar, black bow tie, dark shoes, socks, and dark felt fedora hat. His gold railroad pocket watch (he had earlier worked for the railroad in Chattanooga) was in the black vest pocket and the gold chain and fob secured in a button hole across his chest. All menswear had watch pockets. )

Grandfather Herbert H. Anderson of Spring Place was elected to serve in the State legislature 1912-1914 to present a bill and convincing speeches to garner support to move the county seat from Spring Place to Chatsworth, on the railroad. Despite much opposition and hard feelings among citizens of Spring Place and Eton, the bill passed. Grandfather Herbert Anderson's deceased wife's (Clara Von Berg's) father, Frank von Berg, of Spring Place was ringleader of a group which traveled to Atlanta to oppose the Bill. Granddaddy's letters from Atlanta to Grandmother in Spring Place reported progress of the bill as it went through protocol. Family tradition is the Von Bergs never spoke to Granddaddy and his children, their relatives, again, but that Granddaddy said he had never delivered a better speech than the one promoting the Bill. He must have felt he represented the common good. Once settled in his Chatsworth practice from Spring Place, Granddaddy's law partner was Jesse M. Sellers.

(A family story relates my father was asked by his father Herbert and Jesse Sellers to take their cash receipts to deposit in the bank; young Daddy must have been carried away with money in his hands. He caught the "short-dog" train to Cartersville, spent the day and the money before returning on the same commuter train.)

Daddy's half-brother Edwin Stephen Anderson seemed a fascinating and exotic person. Single, he had a bedroom with his parents -- off limits to children--who peeked every chance to see and try out his wind-up Victrola that played thick, heavy records. I recall Ramona, since it was the favorite romantic music and lyric of his sister Mamie Anderson Frey when she visited with her young son Glenn, Jr. ("Ramona, when day is done, I hear you call..., Ramona, we'll meet beside the garden wall.....).

Edwin smoked long cigarettes purchased in flat decorated tin cases. He drove at one time a LaSalle automobile (never ran well). After finishing Baylor Boys' School in Chattanooga, Edwin studied civil aeronautics in Chicago and was mechanically talented. One of his best friends I recall, besides Lewis P. Huff, was his cousin Dr. Thomas Green (for whose family Green Road is named); Tom Green, also thought to be eccentric, drove a long-hooded Cord from which he sold patent medicine for the heart formulated by his father's H. H. Green and Company pharmaceutics in Atlanta. Tom Green and Edwin Anderson sat together on their center-right aisle seats near the screen for all movies that came to Fort Theatre in the 1940s. After Edwin developed a brain tumor and moved to Spartanburg to be cared for by his sister Frankie Anderson Zimmerman, Dr. Green continued to sit alone in his same seat. Before the lights dimmed, he wrote mysteriously in a small book, probably entering his business transactions.

Dr. H. P. Kitchen, who had the first drug store, and his lovely wife were good friends of my father's half-sister Mamie Anderson Frey, who visited from Portsmouth, Virginia. Luke Cox, who had a service station south of Lou Ogletree's rock house, was also Mamie's friend from her youth. Others I've forgotten.

Some ladies in those days, finished their morning work and mid-day dinner, dressed, with scented powder and perfume, lipstick and jewelry to go to town. Drug stores were perfect places to see and be seen over a refreshing "Co-Cola." Kitchen's Drugs in its hey-day must have been The Ritz to the down-town crowd.

(Destinations were important; only "street walkers" paraded aimlessly around, looking for business.)

Turner's mother, Billie Cole Warmack, born in the late 1800s, called a cola drink a "dope" all her long life. This referred to Coca-Cola's original product with cocaine. Turner's father, Ed Warmack, a local businessman, was offered stock in the early Coca-Cola Company in the 19-teens or 1920s -- "No, thanks," who could imagine buying stock in something so frivolous when trying to rear a young family of three children.

[Father's half-sister Frankie Anderson Zimmerman (named for her maternal grandfather Frank E. Von Berg) after teaching in Murray County schools, left to teach and serve as principal in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She was free summers to visit Chatsworth and old friends, many times on her way to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for the waters, and on to see sisters in Virginia and Washington, D.C. My paternal Andersons were interrelated I believe through Herbert Anderson's grandfather, Smith Treadwell, to the Greens of Chatsworth and Atlanta, who built a handsome (vandals burned it in 20th century) summer home on Green Road, and the Brown family of Chatsworth. Frankie and her husband Marchant always visited with Fred and Frederick Brown. The Browns had a funeral home where Peeples Funeral Home is located today; funeral services for both Susie Morris Anderson 1947 and husband Herbert 1949 were handled by the Browns.]

Granddaddy was a faithful Baptist all his life, at one time teaching what I believe was a co-educational inter-denominational class in his law office. (Lawyers used the Bible for swearing-in witnesses and scripture was read or quoted to win a case in court, if thought helpful.) Grandmother was Methodist, following her Spring-Place Morris family's affiliation. She loved the Methodist Women's Circle, which included luncheons at someone's home. The women seemed to vie with each other for the tastiest luncheon. On Mother's Day, both grandparents wore white roses to church honoring deceased parents. People with parents wore red roses.

Daddy's half-sister Willie Anderson Freeman and daughter Ellen visited from Atlanta and for many years from Portsmouth, VA. where another half-sister, Mamie Anderson Frey (Mrs.Glenn, Sr. ), also lived. Daddy's oldest half-sister, Nora Anderson Lowe (married Dr. C. D. Lowe, veterinarian with the Georgia Department of Agriculture), visited occasionally from Morristown, Tennessee, and for long years from Washington, D.C. ]

When the book and later award-winning 1939 movie Gone With the Wind arrived, there was much discussion about both among Mother and her sisters Easter, Cora, Jenny and Bonnie. EVERYONE read the book and saw the movie. The movie was magnificent, but the book included characters omitted from the film production.

Grandmother Johnnie Reed Anderson, after a lifetime of farm life and delivering and rearing ten children, had time to read in her new home in town; she read Gone With The Wind -- and God's Little Acre, by Tennessee Williams. The setting for God's Little Acre was in Ty Ty, Georgia, a spot she and her husband Parker took their family briefly to live. Cora Anderson Duncan was born in Ty Ty, GA. (They made another trip by train to Texas destination with as many children as they then had -- no one is sure why "Papa" Anderson had this traveling itch at that time.)

[Children weren't allowed to see the Gone With The Wind, the subject matter and language not considered appropriate (birthing babies and Rhett Butler's line, "Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn," as the movie ended). As a teenager, I saw the movie from a box at the Dalton Wink Theatre on a double date with Billy ("Bunt") Patterson and his brother Sam and his later wife, the sister of Laverne Lindsey. The book and movie characters are still as real and vivid to me as living persons; the historical novel was well researched by Margaret Mitchell.]

Beginning first grade in 1939 (no kindergarten then) was the most exciting thing I could imagine. Mother's sister, Easter Anderson (later Mrs. Emmett Elrod) taught first grade for the first time, repeated for forty plus years. The report card included "Deportment --- "Talks Too Much" showed up monthly on mine. Talking, shooting marbles and reading were fun. Usually a boys' game, with inevitable arguments, marbles meant drawing a circle with a stick; players brought their colored-glass marbles and favorite "taw" shooting marble (sometimes a stainless steel, powerful "steely") in a small draw-string bag. Hop-scotch was a girls' favorite. Classes lined up outside school to march in single file; seeing who could be first in line was the head-start beginning of each day. There were other games -- "Who's got the thimble?" - "Red Rover," interactive play without a playground -- just dirt to play on. There was a clay tennis court with a sagging, worn-out net, and a large grassy area where softball and baseball were enthusiastically played. The balls and bats must have belonged to some child....?

A dark shadow hung over me as I walked to first grade -- Mother and Daddy were embroiled in an unusual-for-that day-and-small town contested divorce suit. I can't recall the exact order, but we moved about that time to a rental house on the avenue that runs south behind the Court House - and in those same early years to the two-story rock house upstairs with Miss Lou Ogletree on the main highway.

During the time we lived with Miss Ogletree, Aunt Easter Anderson became ill with diptheria. Quarantined, she stayed with us, to be near physicians in town rather than at home on the isolated Ramhurst farm with her parents. There was no vaccine at that time. (The Ramhurst farm never had running water, electricity, nor indoor plumbing, nor telephone as long as it remained in the family in the 1940s. This was not extremely unusual. Out-door privies and limited amenities were found also in town.}

Steve had a severe case of red measles (no vaccine) while we lived in the rock house. On an extremely cold winter day during his illness, when he had hallucinations from the fever, Mother sent me as usual to walk several blocks to school. The building was locked. There was no way to get out the closed-due-to-cold notice in those days (remember -- few phones). A first-grader didn't know what to do. I sat down outside to wait for someone to open up. Principal Archer (Archie) Morgan, Daddy's friend, came by to check on the school building and found me fairly frozen on the front steps. Mr. Morgan took me across the street to Genevelyn Wells' and Jean Wells Cole's mother's house, where she unthawed me with hot chocolate. I guess Mr. Morgan afterward took me to mother's cooped-up, quarantined rooms at Miss Lou Ogletree's (who owned the house?) Even without the cold, most women were always home before World War II.

Later, we lived on the second floor of the Barksdale (son J. C.) house on Green Road, just across a side street from grammar school. From the Barksdale houe, getting to school meant passing through the Barksdale peach orchard (green, unripe peaches were stolen and tasted or thrown at someone by many school children) .

Sometime during these moves as Mother looked for housing, we had a room at the Chatsworth (Wright) Hotel -- a grand adventure for children. [Tom Wright, the hotel builder, was the son of Cordelia Moreland Wright, the sister of grandfather Parker Anderson's grandmother Mary Ann Moreland Logan.]

Thank heavens for small-town hospitality and helpfulness in those days.

[Few homes had telephones; most were for businesses. The Chatsworth Hotel phone was in the front hall. To call someone, one rang Miss Myrtle at Central by cranking the handle on the wooden wall box while holding the large spool-like receiver to your ear. Miss Myrtle could track anyone down in no time. Calling here and there, she found the person or where they were. She knew about fires and other 911 situations - and gossip. Great system, really-- almost like CNN news today].

Essie Dickie, Dr. E. H. Dickie's wife and Mrs. Wright's daughter, visited her mother often. Mrs. Dickie suffered from epilepsy; at the hotel we saw her enter a trance-like seizure and then awaken it seemed, to begin folding stacks of newspapers in her mother's room off the west rear hall. Another time Mrs. Dickie suffered a seizure while Mother and I were with the Dickies in Dalton. Parked on the street in their car, we remained quiet in the back seat, not to disturb her. Medicine had not advanced a great deal in those years.

There were no anti-seizure drugs. A child-hood fall resulting in a head injury was thought to have begun Mrs. Dickie's seizures.

My parents reconciled about 2nd grade, 1940-1; we moved to Dallas, GA , where Daddy was head of the Paulding County Conservation or Agriculture Office, something like that. During fourth grade Mother and Daddy separated for the last time about 1942 while we were living in Dallas. Daddy had received a promotion to Newnan, Coweta County, GA, and was living there for several weeks at a time. Mother, Steve and I returned to Chatsworth to live in various places.

We arrived about Christmas time and spent part or the remainder of the winter on the Ramhurst farm. The bus stop was on Highway 411, some distance from the farmhouse. The walk from the farmhouse to wait for the school bus that winter, often in snow, sleet, rain and ice, meant cold, wet mornings getting to the huge spreading oak where we stood for protection with Aunt Easter Anderson. Steve and I thought this was a normal thing to do. (Elementary and high-school bathrooms were located outside the heated part of the buildings. I hated having the necessity of removing there the last undergarment, the one-piece underwear. It was an icy cold trip.) However, I enjoyed this change in routine, which seemed an adventure. Long icicles hung from roofs and trees. We made delicious "snow cream" from pure snow, sugar, a little icy milk and vanilla flavoring. Aunt Easter suffered from painful sinusitis made worse from the extremely cold weather of those early years (no antibiotics). Women and men wore galoshes (rubber, ankle-high boots) over their shoes. Men's galoshes came to the tops of their shoes or covered bottom portions of heavy-duty boots.

[World War II had begun in 1941. Cigarettes and chewing gum, when available at the beginning of the War, were wrapped in aluminum foil. The foil was rolled into a ball, taken to the Post Office to be weighed and a few cents given you. The foil was re-used for the war effort. When there was an extra ten cents, children bought a stamp or two at the post office to fill books used to purchase a $25 War Bond from the U. S. Post Office (other denominations were available). Two unpackaged large chocolate-covered peppermint patties (like Peppermint Pattys today) cost one penny. A Coca-Cola was five cents; the glass Coke bottles returned to the store to be refilled. Salaries were commensurate with prices .....]

WHEN WE WERE Back in Chatsworth with Miss Ogletree, THE CHATSWORTH TIMES' Editor, J. Roy McGinty and his wife Evelyn and young daughter were living on the first floor of the rock house. Mrs. McGinty's father Wiley Swann lived behind the rock house fronting another street. (After Mr. Swann's death, Roy Parrott may have lived in that large wooden home; the same house or one next to it later belonged to Claude Anderson, the grandson of Herbert Anderson's uncle, Dr. William Anderson.) Editor McGinty worked all night and slept most of the day, emerging late in the day to walk straight beyond town to his free-standing CHATSWORTH TIMES' building. The weekly paper sometimes came out late.... oral history by then.

Miss Ogletree, an older lady, lived upstairs in one of the rooms off the living room she and we shared. A local minister visited Mother, a new prospect, one day while Steve and I continued our game of cards, betting loudly. Cards and gambling were frowned upon. Mother was disturbed and told us after the minister left -- too late! We were good candidates for church.

At grammar school, there may have been one swing set in the school yard. This memory stands out as Mary Belle and Lillian Wilbanks took their turns by shoving others off the swing. (The Wilbanks' girls were distantly related to me. I didn't publish that information since they didn't notice me.) A red-headed, freckle-faced Junior Wilbanks (I think George, Jr.) had the widest grin and friendliest manner in Chatsworth and made up for the shenanigans of the girls, maybe his cousins. June Nell Parrott was one of my best friends in first grade -- I still love saying "June-Nell-Parrott," it flowed perfectly. She had a pixie smile. (Episodically, in first grade, I was sent out of the room for "deportment" reasons (talking too much). In winter, I "hid" behind coats hanging on hooks in the hallway -- feet and legs protruding. But the principal Archer Morgan never saw me.) Frank Butler was school custodian at that time; I thought he was the greatest fellow.

A fascinating and memorable event occurred during chapel one morning. Loud screams came down the short hall from the Principal's Office into the open gym where chapel was underway. Afterward, we learned eventh-grader Clifford Walls had been disciplined by the male principal. Allegedly a wooden paddle was applied liberally, with curdling screams emitted by Clifford at each stroke. No one learned whether his screams were honest or dramatized. There was discussion of some duration between his family and the school principal, as I recall. Spanking (and with a wooden paddle) was not abolished.

Teachers I recall were Mrs. John (Harbin) Hemphill in 5th grade; Genie Walls (now Wilbanks) was one of my best friends. Genie and I did homework at her house; by chance on a test she and I made the same grade -- a 94+. Mrs. Hemphill accused us of cheating; I cried for weeks. Genie and I didn't know anyone who cheated. (Mrs. Hemphill lived across the street from the Walls' family.) Mrs. Hemphill's habit was repeating, "Shhh, shhhh," whether or not anyone was noisy. We made her nervous.

Lucy Cox taught sixth grade. Miss Cox was dating her later husband, service-man McWhorter; he sent her Hershey bars and chewing gum, unavailable at that juncture during WWII except to those fighting for our country. At recess, a few of us beggars asked teacher for a bite of that lovingly, painfully-slow unwrapping of the milk-chocolate Hershey bar, scored into blocks, or for a coveted tiny piece of Dentyne gum-- both with irresistible aromas.

Shoes, coffee, gas, rubber auto tires, sugar, women's silk hose (parachutes were silk) -- -- many things were rationed during the war. Nylon replaced silk hosiery for women and a pair of hose were called "nylons." Many older women rolled the tops of their hosiery on elastic-band circular garters above the knee or just below; younger women wore garter belts that snapped at the waist. The belt was a tummy tamer with long garters stretching and snapping with tabs to the tops of the hosiery (going out without hosiery was frowned upon).

All women's hosiery had a dark seam in the back which had to be kept perfectly straight. The seam ended near the shoe heel with an inverted-T reinforcement band above the shoe. The seam had to be positioned straight above high-heeled pumps and travel upward in an always-straying straight line, needing constant adjustment. Girdles were equipped with garters for the same use.

Beautiful blonde Edna Waldrop, principal, taught seventh grade. Chapel, with prayers, the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, entertainment, singing led by one of the teachers accompanied by a teacher pianist, was part of each week. A visiting zoo of small animals, exotic to most of us, was a lasting memory.

Basketball was extra-curricular. Girls played basketball in whatever they brought from home, I guess. (Girls didn't wear shorts or pants to school or anywhere else, except for warmth in winter under their skirts. The warm pants were removed at school and hung with the coats. If wet from walking to school in the rain or snow without an umbrella (no one carried one), your top clothes were stacked to dry on top of the large metal radiators. The room had visible vapors of stinking hot, damp wool. Everything else stayed wet that day.)

An annual event was playing against the high-school girls' second basketball team. A good high-school second-string player was Chloe Rene Huff (now Pat Goble). I recall only Bobbina Dover and I playing for grammar school; we played on one side of the court only, standing to watch as the play moved into the second side of the court. Forwards shot on one side; guards on the other side threw stolen balls or rebounds to the forwards. Who coached? ( Turner's sister, Edress Warmack, finished two years at North Georgia College, Dahlonega, and taught fourth-grade math. The classroom was partitioned gymnasium space.)

Mother worked at various places: An early spot was W. A. Tatum's Store, previously Cochran and Tatum, on Second (?) Avenue east from the main highway; the dirt street had pot holes calf-high after a rain. Mr. and Mrs. Tatum in memory remind me of two ruddy-faced plump gnomes. Nina Middleton worked with Mother at one time. The store carried every piece of unsold inventory ever purchased -- soft leather high-topped, high heeled laced shoes for ladies and other antique needless treasures. These were brought out to sell while Mother and Nina worked at the store. The marketability is questionable; everyone was using antiques already. Men came in winter to sit around the large centrally-located coal stove, swapping yarns, smoking or spewing chewing-tobacco spittle toward the stove. In fairness, there was a wooden frame filled with stones (I think) under the stove. Some aims must have hit the stones.

Seed, feed and kerosene were stored in the rear, penny vanilla cookies and candies were up front near the north-entrance door, fabric and shoes for women on the southern end, and men's wear near the center front, with useful pitchers, crocks, and other household wares scattered throughout. The store appeared huge, with tall ceilings, everything open, not partitioned into departments. All stores had mingled aromas of everything in stock. Meat markets provided pork chops, sausage, steaks, and chicken, cut to order.

Later, Mother worked for Frank Westfield and Julia Mae Quarles, his wife, at Quarles and Westfield's Department Store on the same street. Women's wear shoes, handbags, and fabric were next to the street; the partitioned center section handled Men's Wear, down a step or two from Men's Wear was the Grocery Department. Before Christmas, Mrs. Westfield (ne'e Julia Mae Quarles) opened a Toy Department. All spaces were heated by centrally located tall coal-burning round stoves. Stoves were gathering spots when no customers were around.

(Elderly Mr. Quarles left home in his car, the gear thrust into reverse sending the car bursting backward into the street. He changed into first gear and roared to town without changing gears. Everyone heard him coming and got out of the way. He stopped with a jolt at the front of the store. There were no automatic gears.)

Pauline (Polly) Moreland Groves worked also at Q&W; her husband Carl bought my first roller skates at Oscher's Department Store for about $3-4.98. Until that time I borrowed Nannie Sue (Tootsie) Davis's skates daily to practice falling on the jointed sidewalk. A roller rink set up directly across the street from Q&W. Billy Gulledge skated often and was able to skate backward! An added treat was holding hands with a boy as we skated to music -- around and around and around the small rink.

(One summer, we lived over Quarles &Westfield's store, along with Carl and Sue Tanksley and their baby daughter, another couple whose name I've forgotten, with one bathroom off a large central space (never furnished nor used except for passage). The Westfield daughters, Lois and Frances who helped in the store, came upstairs sometimes to wash their hair. The space was extremely hot in summer; at night we sat in the alley out back in straight wooden chairs and drank Mother's fresh iced orangeade, while talking with anyone who joined us. Mother hung wet sheets on lines in our room to catch any breeze to cool the air. We must have moved before winter to the north end of town. I can't recall the exact sequence of lodging.)

World War II was raging during this time; Mother's job in Q&W Department Store selling women's clothes and shoes allowed her to shop early in the grocery section and get cigarettes for her Army brother Jim, sugar and coffee with her rationing stamps. By this time a rental house in the north end of town had become available and affordable. I suspect Mrs. Lou Cochran owned the house. (Mr. and Mrs. Cochran's home was on the main highway nearby, across the road from the W. A. Tatum home.)

Home alone in the summer, I learned from neighbor Martha Jane Harrison Dickie to make chocolate fudge, cooked on a small laundry heater before Mother could afford a used electric General-Electric stove on legs. The rationed sugar rapidly disappeared. Martha Jane Dickie and her mother Mary Quarles Harrison came over to play Set Back at night with us- Martha Jane always brought fresh fudge to nibble. Card games were popular as home entertainment. Don't recall our having a radio then.

(Martha Jane Harrison Dickie was the daughter of Lee C. Harrison, whose mother was Amanda Jane Logan (Mrs. Wm) Harrison, the sister of Parker Anderson's mother, Margaret Ann Logan Anderson, more relatives. Mr. Harrison owned a seed-and-feed store downtown. He also sold coal and wood for burning.)

Dorothy Dickson Cantrell and Jeff lived next door. (Dorothy was a descendant of Dr. William Anderson through her grandmother Frances Elbana who married James A. Dickson; James Dickson's son Oliver owned the Fort Theatre) . After Dorothy and Jeff moved, we rented their house. Jack, Irene Chambers Greeson, and their sons Bob and Tom moved into our former house.

I don't recall whether Jack Greeson had just returned from service or the family had been living away. Mrs. Greeson, a Home-Economics teacher, invited me Saturday mornings to learn to bake devil's food cake with seven-minute egg-white frosting (more sugar used). She made a cake for her family in the tiniest of kitchens while I copied what she did. Memory tells me we worked on the drain board section of the cast-iron porcelain large sink; can't recall whether we used an electric mixer or hand power.

(Square dances were popular. Dances were held at one of the school gyms or after WWII at the American Legion Hall. Sets started and ended with the same partner, but the dance included break-ins and round-up-fours when partners were exchanged. At times, one danced with almost everyone there. Occasionally intoxicated men careened over the floor, trailing alcohol fumes, and became a brief partner. Bands furnished live music. A few good partners shone when almost alone on the floor they slow danced. Teenagers wanting to do the new Jitter-bug, usually two girls dancing together, got up between sets. I recall Chloe Rene Huff and De Ette Calhoun dancing together.)

Fires were big events. The volunteer fire truck and crew operated like the Little Train That Could. They kept trying, but everything burned to the ground with everyone gasping, helplessly standing in the middle of the street watching huge flames shoot into the air. (Chatsworth Grammar School burned to the ground in 1934, just up the hill from our home on Market Street.

Ben Keith Wilbanks and I found each other recently through genealogy; he also lives in metro-Atlanta. I recall only one birthday party I attended -- his. His father was sheriff at the time; the family lived in the jail first floor, where his mother cooked and cleaned for prisoners in upstairs cells. The jail included an upstairs gallows; no one was hanged there, as I recall.

At Ben Keith's birthday party, Mrs. Wilbanks served, with other treats, cinnamon "Red Hots," the first I remember. I believe Tommy Moreland (later Georgia Department of Transportation Director) and others I can't remember were also at that party.

Tom Moreland's ancestor Jasper N. married Mary Lavica Anderson, my maternal great-grandfather's sister. Tom's parents were J. L. Moreland and Evelyn Terry. Jap Moreland, Joe and Jack Willbanks, and Jim Springfield (descended from Bennett Springfield and Mary Ann Wilbanks) owned a straight line of adjacent land lots that formed the original City of Chatsworth.)

Because family lines were pioneers in the county, it's hard to write about anyone I knew who wasn't related some way to me. Everyone knew you, your family, and ALL about you. Family lines were prolific, particularly on my mother's side. (Living in Chatsworth today are my husband's first cousin R. L. (Zeke) Hufstetler, who married Rachel Morrison. Rachel is the granddaughter of Laura Jane Reed Morrison Jackson, a sister of my maternal grandmother Johnnie Reed Anderson.)

A humorous story appeared in THE CHATSWORTH TIMES during the 1940s about my maternal great-grandmother Rebecca (Becky) Wilbanks Reed's first visit to Oliver Dickson's Fort Theatre. Her grandson J. P. Anderson took her in his old Model A or Model T Ford, which sat high off the ground and allowed him to travel the long deep-rutted road where he lived on his parents' farm at Ramhurst to the Talc Mine where he worked. Mammy Reed, as we called her, in her nineties (born 1847, died at 97 in 1944), used only a cane and wore no glasses. Her reaction to the black-and-white movie was perplexity about where "all those people would stay overnight. " She wanted to see more movies and wished she could have "touched" the screen. (Mammy Reed's daughter, Johnnie Anderson, after seeing her first movie, said the food on screen "made her hungry." She wanted to eat with the actors.) Mammy Reed never gave up Victorian black mourning dresses, aprons and bonnets following the death about 1912 of her husband.

[Rebecca Wilbanks married Jasper Reed after the Civil War; he and his older brother Andrew (Andy) Jackson Reed served the duration of the Civil War, surviving Gettysburg and other big battles in the Army of Northern Virginia. Jasper Reed is noted on an early Murray-County census as a lumberman, a business continued today by his grandson Jimmy Reed who owns Reed Lumber Company south of Chatsworth.]

THE CHATSWORTH TIMES carried another humorous story about Aunt Becky Reed as she grew older, unable to read, and having always lived in the country. A rolling store traveled town and back roads selling useful commodities and staples, including some clothing. Mammy Reed needed new underpants, then called step-ins. She climbed aboard after waiting on the Federal Road for the rolling store. She forgot the new name and asked the driver for jump-ins.

Everyone participated in Winning the War. Home signs in windows indicated family members were in service. Hazel Terry lost I think two or three brothers (all children of Addie and Grover Terry); one or more were aboard ships bombed December 7, 1941, in the Japanese surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor, forcing the United States into the Pacific War. (The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki frightened and prevented sleep for some at home; I was sure atomic blasts would end the world very soon. The mushroom-cloud bombs resulted in Japan's surrender and brought about an earlier end to the long, costly War. Lives were saved, justifying the decision of President Harry Truman, who as Vice President replaced Franklin Roosevelt who died in office.)

Western-Union Telegrams were dreaded, usually informing a family their service member had been wounded or killed in action. (Deaths occurred off the battlefield; one of my maternal aunts, Irene Anderson Dominick Smith, lost her first husband on training maneuvers in Louisiana when a firing-range bullet ricocheted off a tree, killing him instantly.) This War saw women serve in skirts in the Women's Army Corps (WACS) and Women Accepted For Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), among other organizations. Women were needed to fill every sort of home and war occupation, except fighting on the front lines, in this desperate long war which killed many sons, brothers, and husbands.

A WWII sugar ration-book cover asked the owner to report the amount of sugar on hand and remove stamps covering that poundage before the book was put into use. The naive honor system probably worked in most cases, although hoarding rations was discussed and happened. A black market appeared to a small extent.

Cigarettes were rationed, if available. Mother's clerk job at Quarles and Westfield's Department Store gave her an edge on first shipments of rationed items. She would purchase a carton of Camel or Lucky-Strike cigarettes to mail to brother James Woodrow (Jim) Anderson, who served in the Third Army Infantry's big pushes into France and Germany (the Battle of the Bulge) . The cigarette package was addressed to a post office address. (Jim was wounded twice in these battles. He apparently was a good soldier but also found himself learning KP (kitchen patrol). Learning to cook before joining the Army and during his service provided an occupation as owner after the War of a small Fort Cafe' on the main street in Chatsworth.

Jim's wife Edna Earle Parrott's two younger sisters and I worked in the kitchen washing dishes. Did we earn money or work for the fun of it?)

Almost everyone smoked cigarettes, cigars, or pipes in those days, chewed tobacco twists or dipped snuff. Almost all younger men (and women, more privately) smoked modern cigarettes. No living room (actually used!), car or business space was without ashtrays. The Court House had strategically-placed brass spittoons in every room and a sign that read, "$5 FINE - SPIT ON THE FLOOR," near a central-hall spittoon.

Movies were important as entertainment and relief from the War and were continuing their hey-day of the 1930s. The picture changed three times during the week, and twice on Saturday. Saturdays a Roy Rogers', Gene Autry, Hop Along Cassidy, or some other western-theme movie was shown from about 1 - 9 p.m. If girls and boys stayed all afternoon, it was no hardship. Walking around to attract attention broke the monotony and being lucky enough for some boy you liked spotting you, which could mean holding hands. Clean-up was followed by the midnight show (often something scary) that began about 10 p.m. and was over before midnight. Those not having anything else to do parked their cars or loafed on the street watching movie-goers emerge.

The movie cost for those under 12 was ten cents; popcorn was ten or fifteen cents. Cecil Bradley and Junior Ledford popped corn.. No drinks; there was a water fountain. The movies were educational, providing news of the world, always a comedy of Bugs Bunny, The Three Stooges, The Marx Brothers, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, The Roadrunner....., as well as previews and the full-length movie. One's money's worth.

During the war, propaganda to promote patriotism was included in the Movietone News of battle fronts, officers, the president, and leaders of allied nations. We were taught to hate Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, the enemies. We SAW history being made, which increased patriotic feeling. These were educational, also showing skiers in the west, news of movie stars (we wrote the actors and scrap-booked their autographed photos sent us); and more exotic places and things.

A colorful town figure was Maude Edmondson Gudger (Mrs. Robert M.) . As the octogenarian she called herself, she sometimes in hot summer wore her full-length fur coat to town, teetered on high heels, lipstick and face powder applied, her body shaded by a brightly-colored parasol, as she headed toward her old social haunt, Kitchen's Drugs, then owned by Dr. and Mrs. Sam Porch. Every girl must have wanted to be glamorous and sophisticated like Mrs. Gudger when they grew old.

The wonderful aroma lingers of Harvey Cantrell's hot-roasted peanuts sold from his wheeled cart on the main street. They tasted better than any peanuts I have ever eaten. Well-loved. a little bit mentally challenged, Harvey found his supplier and roasted perfectly those tempting peanuts. Busy court week when EVERY MAN came to town must have brought in Harvey's heaviest income. He always had a smile and a word as customers purchased a small brown bag for ten cents (no sales tax in those days). [During the infamous Pulliam murder trial of a man accused of killing his wife and several children and then burning their bodies, Harvey's peanuts were cracked and eaten in the courtroom after school. Cracking peanuts didn't disturb anyone engrossed in the trial testimony. Shells went on the floor.

During winter in high school, I was home first to make the only fire of the day in the living- room Warm Morning stove. The ash dump below the belly had to be emptied and coal brought in a coal bucket with shovel. Coal was delivered from Lee Harrison's or later Robert and Martha Jane Dickey's store across from the Chatsworth Hotel. Stoves were an improvement over open fireplaces for safety and warmth, though not aesthetics. We lived then in the north end of town on the street one block off the main highway.

Neighbors remembered were the Davis family (children Ralph, Leonard, and Nannie Sue; Ralph was in the Navy); Mary Quarles Harrison (Mrs. Lee); Jack and Irene Chambers Greeson; a widowed lady and her daughter lived across the side street from us and the Harold Swanson family lived farther north on our street (memory tells me the Swanson's beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter died of cancer).

At that time, Chatsworth had two drug stores, Kitchen's and Fincher's. The late Senator W. W. (Bill) Fincher owned one on the main drag, straight across from the Court House. I worked there summers, then after school and weekends (the store remained open until 9 or 10 p.m. on Saturday night).

Bill's wife Peg Loughridge Fincher brought in home-made chicken salad for the soda-fountain luncheon business. We made simple syrup, equal parts water and sugar, stirred until the sugar dissolved, for lemonade, orangeade, and other fountain drinks.

Gallon Coca-Cola-syrup jugs were poured into the fountain pump to mix with carbonation brought in tanks by Coca-Cola truck; those were the best "Co-Colas" anywhere. No other carbonated drinks were served or asked for - Coke was it in bottles also. A cherry Coke meant adding cherry syrup to a fountain Coke. Ice-cream sodas and milk shakes were the rage.

The floors and fountain were black and white marble; the tall ceiling patterned tin. A ceiling fan just inside the open double-front doors in summer ran constantly and kept flies away and gave a refreshing cool, ice-creamy-smell w h o o s h on entering. Practical, but a great marketing tool.

After school, the high-school crowd gathered for sundaes and ice-cream sodas and maybe sitting with a boy or girl you liked, usually in a group like later TV series, Happy Days. This kind of gathering or holding hands in the picture show were the closest most of us came to dates.

During this time, Mrs. Fincher was expecting twin daughters, Phyllis and Frances. Mary Jane, the Fincher's first child, was said to have the cutest personality and blonde looks in town. I didn't have an idea exactly what was expected, but earned extra money sitting with the Fincher daughters while Bill and Peg made needed night trips to Chattanooga to check on their new-venture outdoor theatres there.

Next door to Fincher's was the Georgia Power Appliance Store. The Georgia Power manager whose name was Gulledge (son Billy) came into the drug store regularly for his-recipe milkshake -- several raw eggs he brought in, milk with cream, and ice cream whirred into a delicious frozen drink -- two tall glasses. We soda jerks (who sold everything except drugs from the pharmacist's area) included Hazel Moore, James (Footsie) Pierce, J. A. . Kilgore, Elene Gregory and girl-Friday Aline Ray, who kept the books in her balcony office, sold some drugs and ordered supplies. A single icecream cone was 5 cents; a double-side-by-side cone was 10 cents - flavors chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and butter pecan. Sodas, sundaes, shakes, banana splits were about 15 to 25 cents.)

Women customers whispered they needed Lydia Pinkham, patented medicine for female problems; other customers regularly bought Swift's S. S. S. Tonic -- and Hadacol for "tired blood" (high alcohol content). Doan's Little Liver Pills were popular and treated backaches and kidneys. There was women's Cardui [car' dew - i]; Castoria sweet laxative for youngsters; Vick's Salve for colds and chest poltices, and asafoetida.* This product was in pungent small paraffin-like blocks mothers hung on strings around the necks of their babies. I seem to recall seeing silver dimes on string around babies' necks for some purpose; these may have been "teething" aids. I don't recall selling vitamin supplements. Aspirin was an all purpose pain killer and fever remedy. Cold sores (Herpes Simplex) weren't thought to be a virus (not much talk of viruses in those days, even though colds were known to be caused by viruses). Most medicines and home-remedies treated symptoms and were not cures; time and luck healed the ill person.

*(Internet Google search: ASAFOETIDA: Latin Ferula means 'carrier 'or 'vehicle' derived from species f. vulgaris considered to be the plant which helped Prometheus carry stolen fire from the sun to earth. [later considered an essential ingredient for some home remedies] .)

(Chosen older women in the county were thought to have the secret ability to cure "thrush", a fungus infection inside mouths of usually unweaned babies. Babies were taken to the woman, who privately gathered needed information from the parents, took the baby in her arms and walked away, whispered secret words in the baby's ear and blew into the child's mouth. No money exchanged hands. This secret power was passed to a chosen younger person. My maternal grandmother Johnnie Reed Anderson and Turner's grandmother Caroline Henry Cole (Mrs. John) practiced the mysterious cure. Both women were born in the 19th century.)

A few men came into the drugstore regularly to get fizzy single doses of Bromo-Seltzer or Alka-Seltzer. Women and men swore by a B.C., Goody or Stanback headache powder in a paper sleeve with a Coke or water. The Bromo or Alka-Seltzer tablets required one empty and one half-filled with water Coca-Cola glasses. The men poured water and big tablets back and forth between two Coke glasses until the large tablets dissolved, bubbled and the concoction was gulped down, capturing the fizz. Paragoric in small bottles (tincture of opium) was sold legally without prescription as late as 1947-48; a signed record was kept. (I've no idea when it became a prescription controlled substance, if available at all.)

About these same years, Bill Fincher became interested in outdoor-movie theatres in Chattanooga; he hired a drug store manager briefly and later sold the store. Outdoor movies viewed from one's car were the rage for years, the nearest in Dalton. [Dr. M. L. Carpenter was the next owner of Fincher's Drugs.]

A small bowling alley (maybe three lanes) at one-time was next to Fincher's Drugs -- fifteen cents a game -- duck pins and small balls. The best bowlers were Mr. Gulledge of Georgia Power Company next door and the manager of the alley, Mrs. Dot Whitener Mantooth. Virginia Owens and I (and others) set up pins for a few cents. [As quickly as I earned enough money setting up pins -- dangerous job with flying wooden pins and padding dust -- I paid for and bowled a game.] Junior Ledford, who operated the film projector at Fort Theatre, was also very good at the game. There must have been too few interested patrons or those with time and money on their hands to keep the alley in business very long; it was open in daylight hours only.

The first Five and Dime Store managed by Thurmond Underwood (whose wife was a Roberts) was located for a time on the corner near Fincher's. Mother clerked there, as did teen friend Hazel Terry and another lady in town. "Dime" stores were wonderful places -- a little of necessary small items -- even Evening in Paris perfume and cosmetics -- and novelty cheap porcelain knick-knack decorations for shelves and table tops.

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Porch purchased old Kitchen's Corner Drug Store. The Porches employed me as one of the employees for the soda fountain and to sell shelf items. While working there, I was married over a Christmas week end in Alexandria, Louisiana. (Turner had graduated from Georgia Tech with Uncle Sam ready for his service in the Korean War).

McKesson & Robins, a Dalton drug company, distributed a popular appetite-curbing candy, "Aids." Chewy Aids were followed by a large glass of water before meals. Grilled-cheese sandwiches from the fountain grill whetted one's appetite; and hot soups were served. Favorite drinks served here were almost always (sometimes fresh) real coffee, Coca-Cola. and more sophisticated mixtures of Coke -- ice-cream floats, cherry Cokes, but fewer ice-cream sodas, shakes, sundaes; all-time-favorite banana splits continued in popularity. The counter held chewing gum, potato chips, and cookies, chlorophyll tiny green breath pills, gum and the like. There were brown Senna tablets for the breath -- popular to mask the odor of alcohol on week-end nights, purchased during evening hours ahead of planned activities.

{On the coffee subject, Sanka brand was the first decaffeinated product about the 1950s. Sanka became synonymous with de-caf coffee, like Kleenex for tissues. Cafe-Hag was another brand, a bit earlier. Families gave their children iron-rich hot Ovaltine, caffeine free. Another caffeine-free product, maybe cereal based, was served for breakfast by adults and children (can't recall that brand name).}

Limping on his cane, Mr. Claude (Paddle Foot) Patterson, came in almost daily. Mr. Patterson lived upstairs over the row of stores down Market Street. (Paddle Foot nickname was from his former younger days, when cops walked their beats usually in pairs with a pistol, billy club, and handcuffs in their belts.)

Mrs. Porch was a devout Baptist and Christian woman. Paddle-Foot knew he could get Mrs. Porch's "goat" by quoting well-chosen scripture and offering his questionable interpretation of it. Mrs. Porch couldn't resist the need to be hospitable and diplomatic, yet help him -- getting red in the face as neither yielded their firm positions. No one won. Mr. Patterson left chuckling... to study the bible for next day's discussion.... Mrs. Porch, frustrated, returned to her work.

R. L. (Zeke) Hufstetler, William Leonard and others who worked for the Department of Transportation were frequent coffee-break customers. Some passing traffic between Atlanta and Knoxville stopped in for a fountain treat in window booths. These travelers often wanted unheard-of things to eat or drink.

Lucille Langston (Mrs. Carl) Pack taught a high-school subject or two; Joan Chastain Peeples (widow of Gerald Leonard) and I sat across from each other in class. We were very quiet and good -

Mrs. Pack was a tall, sturdy woman with braided hair fastened in German-1940s style across the top of her head. She had an ugly-temper reputation we heard was demonstrated by throwing books and erasers at students.

Silver friendship rings were a current fad among girls; we all had one. Joan accidentally dropped her ring; it bounced noisily a little distance from Joan's desk. I held my breath. The room was quiet..... Mrs. Pack's face flushed and she came close and pounced verbally on Joan. This was plain "picking on."

(Joan's mother Jennie Evelyn West Chastain (later Mrs. Tom Peeples) at one time worked in the first bus station, together with Mrs. Bearden (daughter Maurene); this bus station was on the SE courthouse corner of the main drag and the Dalton Highway. It later was moved to the old Luke-Cox service-station location on the main drag south of the Court House.)

In high school, Mrs. Lucille Pack, really a nice person, allowed a group of us who lived near her north-end highway home to come for help writing individual contest essays on assets and attributes of Murray County (about which we had NO idea). We all wrote exactly what she told us... no originality or winners in our group. [Mrs. Pack's nephew, Jimmy Langston, during high-school days lived briefly with her and husband Carl.]

Next door to the Pack's home lived the Adams' family, Lucy, Margaret, Malcolm (Snake), Jack (Pud) and other children, in a two-story white frame house with upper and lower front porches. Someone seemed always to be hanging from a window or a porch overlooking the main highway through town. Pud was full of tricks, but also agreeable if Beverly Gordon and I wanted to cook hot-dogs at night in the pasture behind my grandfather Herbert Anderson's and Clarence Greeson's homes. (One or two pastured mules were asleep in the barn already. If they chased us, we tore our clothes climbing over the barbed-wire fence.)

[Pud and others used to run repeatedly up on our front porch and pull the electrical switch, throwing our household into darkness. One Halloween, a group of boys I think led by the Adams' brothers, burst through our quilts-on-clothesline, enclosed-for-privacy bonfire when Steve and I had a few friends over to cook wieners and marshmallows behind the Adams', Pack's and Goble's homes. Halloween wasn't Trick or Treat; some boys always soaped the store windows down town - especially picking on the corner drug store of Dr. Kitchen [he became the most irate]. The Octagon soap smears stayed for months. No treats were asked for nor given; it was a night for boys doing outrageous things.

Milma Peeples (Mrs. Dan) Ernest taught literature in high school; I loved literature and spelled well (they said). Mrs. Ernest asked Ella Adams and me to represent the school in a spelling contest in Rome, GA. The word that tripped me was "cigarette." I had smoked cigarettes-- and knew how to spell the word. But, I had seen it written exotically, "cigaret," so that was my spelling choice. The judges didn't appreciate the sophistication. Murray High School and Ella Adams lost because of my foolish idea.

High school meant all Chatsworth students met the school bus at the Court House Market Street north corner; if late, it cost twenty-five cents to get a taxi at the Court House northeast corner to go out Green Road to school. Betty Jo Graves was the most popular older girl who waited at that corner; Sarah Ann Kelley lived just across the street and joined the crowd. Ray Sinor, a popular boy and vocalist, was in the group. I wish I could recall every one of the group. Joining the high-school crowd was part of the fun of the day.

First Baptist Church was across the street from the bus-stop. Baptist teens attended Baptist Young People's (Training) Union (BYPU) on Sunday nights. Tom(my) Moreland was expert at BYPU Sword Drill when we were timed finding books of the bible.

Easter Sunday meant a new light-weight dress in which you froze without a coat and maybe an Easter bonnet. (No adult woman went to church without a hat, gloves, and a purse.)

Tom(my) Moreland excelled in Mr. [Basketball Coach] C. W. Bradley's history class, along with probably Ben Jenkins and Harold Welch. Jack(ie) Keith, maybe Judy Poag, and I took the class.... Mr. Bradley loved the Civil War and stressed it exclusively it seemed. After all, he had attended Lincoln Memorial University and read everything about Abraham Lincoln.

There were many scholars in high school: Odetta Bramblett Howard, Ella Adams, and many others I can't recall. The debate team included Robert Vining (who holds a judgeship today) and Glenn Davis, among others.. Some lazy girls asked Ella Adams to knit, crochet, and cook for us in Home Economics Class under Miss Edna Jo Butler. Sewing class on electric machines meant gazing through a smoky haze on occasion when one of the machines malfunctioned. The kitchen was unheated in winter (remember there was no air-conditioning either). Recipes included scratch biscuits, scrambled eggs, and chocolate fudge.

One of Junior Ledford's bright younger sisters kept up my Bookkeeping workbook. Science class under Mr. Troy Richards meant meeting in a room over the basement coal-fueled boiler room; there was a trap-door in the floor -- and some gaping holes where cold breezes blew in winter. Fast, loud Spanish-fandango Malaguena performed on the piano by a talented (Jean?) Arthur for chapel was as close as we came to foreign language. Her piano piece demanded fast finger work and flourishes - not for beginners. A treat was having guest pianist Aloe Ernest, home from Georgia State Women's College in Macon (GSCW), play for chapel.

Chapel included prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and entertainment of some sort. Agriculture teacher G. I. Maddox played banjo or mandolin and sang occasionally, with his student string band gathered with him. I recall special evening events when Ray Sinor, Chloe Rene Huff and perhaps LaVerne Lindsey took the high-school gymnasium stage and sang beautifully. A treat was a basket of apples placed in the center of the hall outside the central indoor gym, where we met for chapel. {The High School was not accredited; no foreign language taught, one year only of math was required - probably due to a scarcity of teachers brought about by WWII. W. A. Crump, with a coupe, and a few others without cars, returned to high-school after having served in the armed forces.)

Bobbie Carver was the only girl who married during high school; she continued her education. Herbert Parrott had an old A or T-model Ford that offered transportation and fun. Not equipped with seat belts (long before seat-belt laws and mandatory number of passengers), the old fun car with its mass of youngsters looked like a a worm-riddled apple with arms waving out the windows. Old Fords made their own wonderful clicking sound as they traveled. The driver or someone else stood at the front cranking the shaft until the motor started, removed and stored the crank. The choke was on the dashboard, the clutch and brake were on the floor with the gear shift with large knob at the top coming through the floor on the right side. A turn or stop signal were made by rolling down the window and thrusting out one's arm and hand in the proper positions. There were no heaters - windshield wipers must have been elementary but essential. Windows offered a cool breeze in summer. Most homes had only one car and a one-car garage, if any. The garages weren't attached to homes.

Field Track meets were annual events. Murray High boys' basketball team was a notorious winner in its circuit. I enjoyed playing on the Basketball B-Team my freshman 8th-grade year. Coach C. W. Bradley did more gruff ordering than coaching, I thought. He had good Varsity girls' teams and sensational boys' teams (the Murray Indians) who competed well against schools from other counties.

A group of friends formed the Cheerleading Team, including Freddie Coffey at first; later Fred Bedell replaced Freddie. The boy used our only megahorn. Our cheerleading uniforms didn't match -- differences occurred with fabric choices and shades of green for the multi-gored skirts. A heavy white sweater with a thick megahorn and basketball emblem topped the green skirt hitting just above the knee. No leg show or gymnastics happened.

Among the other cheerleaders were Virginia Owens, Hazel Terry, Joan Peeples, Edna Scott, and Betty Robinson and Jeannine Rymer. Betty was good at basketball, appreciated by the Coach, and made the first team. Cheerleaders were taken to away games on the school bus with the boys' and girls' teams -- meant for flirting. There were no showers. Sweaty clothes, stinking basketball shoes, and bodies went home on the bus. Basketball uniforms for girls and boys were very short (girls wore "bloomers" with elastic legs) -- always faded-and-worn green and white cotton sateen (used for years). Girls also "bloomer-legged" the ball by free-throwing it with both hands from between their knees.

(Above-the-knee skirts were slowly getting longer during 1945-50; in 1950 Christian Dior dropped skirts to calf or tea length, a dramatic and feminine change. Some skirts were full and worn with hoops and stiffened white-eyelet-trimmed petticoats that peeped below the skirt. For school, skirts and sweaters were regular dress -- the skirts pencil slim and the sweaters tight; saddle oxfords or loafers-with-bobby-socks were for fashionable feet. Boys' clothes did not change dramatically; penny loafers were popular with them also. The loafers usually held a dime in the front receptacle, rather than a penny. Girls had a dime for a phone call if needed; no pay phones in Chatsworth!)

Free school books were old, used and abused by many before us. Glenn Petty and Elswick Keith were principals during those four years, ending with 11th grade for the last time before 12 grades were instituted.

Learning the consequences of actions, because of teenage lack of application and no guidance, I wasn't considered for a coveted role in the Senior Play of 1950. The school principal, returned Army Col. Elswick Keith, was correct about the matter. (Brother Steve had a starring male role in his 1948 class play and did a splendid job. The older students were always admired.)

Dr. Jones was the local dentist, who clamped a cigar between his teeth as he worked on patients. His office was up a flight of stairs over Fincher Drug Store. There were general-practice doctors E. H. Dickie whose home was across from the Court House. Dr. Bradley had his office over Fincher's Drug Store. His home was behind the Court House next to the Sam and Marie Kelley's. These doctors went on calls to deliver babies, saw patients in the patients' homes and in their own examination offices. Doctors always carried a black medical bag with them, which included a few instruments and medicines. Most medical care was needed immediately. Patients showed up for immediate care or sent someone for the doctor to come right away for serious illness or childbirth. There were no antibiotics. X-rays weren't a local possibility. If things were serious and hospitalization needed, Dalton and Chattanooga doctors and hospitals were used. It seemed terminal cases went to Emory University Hospital, Atlanta, GA, for treatment. Most people died peacefully or painfully in their homes.

[Mother's sister Leila Mae Anderson, a nurse in Chattanooga, married physician Oscar Howell Clements....helpful for us. A trip to Chattanooga meant getting up very early in the morning to get Mr. Bramblett's jitney to Dalton; from there we caught the bus to Chattanooga, got off and walked everywhere we needed to go. We skipped lunch, hurrying to see cousin Louise Reed at Sear's where she worked, seeing Dr. Clements and his nurse, wife Leila Mae [or nurse Irene Anderson Dominick Smith] Finally we visited Parker Anderson's sister Jane Anderson Harris where she worked as secretary at First Christian Church. We shopped as well. It was dark night before we were back in Chatsworth, repeating the morning's chain of travel.]

Having a professional photograph taken in Chatsworth meant going across from the Jail and Court-House square to Carl Smith's studio in his and his mother's home. With some frequency, an inexpensive company, Olen Mills Studios, came to town and set up in the office of V. C. Pickering's Apartments on south Main Street. Everyone wanted to be captured on film. Brownie cameras were used by the rank-and-file to make black-and-white snapshots; no close-ups possible. Everything was posed and without color (professional portraits could be perfected and "tinted" by the photographer).

For many years I recall only two paved streets, the main highway through town and the road to Fort Mountain, paved during Turner Warmack's early years (born May 1928). Most people walked everywhere. There were few automobiles until after World War II.

Elected first in 1933, President Roosevelt's polio-caused lower-torso paralysis was hidden from the camera. (He was shown in the Movietone News therapy swimming at The Little White House in Warm Springs, GA.) He, when speaking or in a group picture, was always shown sitting or propped at a podium. No one was wiser when he grew gravely ill and died suddenly, we thought, in his unparalleled third-term presidency. Harry Truman, Vice President, stepped into the Commander-in-Chief seat. Plain-spoken Harry was a contrast with patrician popular Democrat Franklin Roosevelt but Truman earned great respect for his leadership and tell-it-like-it-is style, courage and wisdom to end the War and to resolve post-war problems.

(Both my grandfathers had radios they enjoyed but used only once a day usually. Parker Anderson had a battery-powered radio, turned as loud as it would blast the news before daylight. Everyone in the house was awakened by it. He wasn't deaf; just thought the volume was intended for use. Herbert Anderson in his overstuffed chair beside his radio table, chuckled at Fibber McGee and Molly; Lum and Abner; Amos and Andy; Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy. Great stuff.)

(Not all family tragedies occurred on the battle field. Mother's brother, J. P. Anderson lost his wife, Ora Lee Davis, and two infant children in a house fire on the Ramhurst farm; about a year later, J. P. and his surviving son William Lee [Little Billy], 10, were killed when J. P's car was struck by the 10 o'clock train on Parker Anderson's farm, wiping out the entire family. J. P. and son Billy were returning from an evening picture show in Chatsworth. There was no funeral home, so J. P.'s open casket was at our house in the upper end of town. Billy's mangled small body was not viewed.)

My teen generation, before black-and-white TV was an option, listened to the radio on Saturday nights to Your Hit Parade. Frankie (The Crooner) Sinatra caused girls to swoon as he sang top hits. Snookie Langston also sang with Frankie, and maybe Florence Henderson and an earlier woman vocalist. The ten top hits of the week were sung in winning order. Hoagie Carmichael, a composer and pianist, wrote and sang his famous classic "Stardust." The Lone Ranger and Tonto and The Shadow, cowboy and mystery programs, were popular. The Shadow ("Only the Shadow knooows....") was broadcast with believable hair-raising sounds, better than any picture. Comic strips and ten-cent comic-books of Dick Tracy, Tilly the Toiler, The Phantom, Buck Rogers, Dagwood and Blondie, Jigs, beautiful Brenda Starr (her eyes sparkled with star-like flashes) and her black-patch-over-one-eye mystery love, became part of our vocabulary (HEAVY reading). The strips and books covered a range of subjects and were widely read. Serial strips were followed closely when the ATLANTA CONSTITUTION arrived. Mary Worth, was really a serialized situation-soap opera; Mary, an older, white-haired lady, taught non-preachy life-and-moral lessons.

The radio carried daily serials (Soap Operas, when soap sponsors became genesis for the name). Story lines weren't racy nor complicated -- and were accompanied by dramatic music foreshadowing events and the next day's discoveries.

Radio commercials weren't changed often -- and many were memorable jingles, incorporating chimes, and other catchy gimmicks. Pepsi-Cola's jingle, sung by two fat policemen, went: "Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you, Twelve full ounces, That's a Lot, Twice as much for a nickel, too, Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you. " Tall, twelve-ounce Pepsi was competing with Coca-Cola, still in small six-ounce bottles. Others rattled off amazing results from products like Crazy-Water Crystals, which sponsored a bedtime show clearly heard at night from as far away as Texas. JFG or Maxwell House coffee was "good to the last drop" A shoe-polish commercial sung with three sound-effect bongs announced "It's time to shine!" Simpler times.

(Most movies and comic strips weren't realistic; if not humorous, almost every character was glamorous and wealthy; most movies had happy endings and nothing was graphic. Orphan Annie (later on recent Broadway stage and a movie) was a favorite strip. Rich Daddy Warbucks saved Annie from a terrible life in an orphanage. These strips were welcome relief from the misfortunes of life and the War.)

A small black and white television set reached my maternal grandmother's house in Chatsworth and provided everyone with great news and entertainment (after she left the Ramhurst farm due to ill health). (We were then taking care of her and living in her house straight down the street from the rear of the Court House.)

The now-demolished house was built south of the Leonard's house and north of, but next door to the Bob Bradley, Posey and Daisy family who owned W. S. Bradley's old corner store. The Bradley's son Robert returned from service. Robert Bradley's constant companion was friend Barney Wright, the son of one of Tom Wright's sons. Barney lived with his grandmother Laura Wright at the Chatsworth Hotel, taking care of the coal furnace and other chores . Walker Moreland and wife Janie lived down the street. Jennie Lee Cooley (later Weyman) and her children lived nearby. Bee Hall, daughter Shirley, and his wife lived next door to us. Others I can't name lived across the street.

Someone owned a bed-spread making business on the east side of this street toward the Dalton highway. Jenny and Bonnie Anderson worked there at one time; Mrs. Roy (Sue) Gordon, Beverly's mother, was a supervisor at some time. There were surely many other employees.

The Ed Sullivan variety show (Elvis Presley in the 1950s appeared on it); Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis slap-stick comedy and Dean's crooning Italian voice; The Bing Crosby musical show; I Love Lucy (Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnez situation comedy), crooner Perry Como and other hilarious weekly programs made us laugh til we cried. Mother came home after dark in winter, carrying a bag of groceries, passing by the TV in the living room on her way to the kitchen. Her face already turned toward the TV, she was immediately caught up and laughing at an entertaining show underway. This was about 1946-50s.

After marrying December 24, 1950, in Alexandria, LA, where Turner's Korean-war training unit, later part of the 45th Army Infantry Division from Oklahoma, was ready to be shipped out, I returned to my job at Porch's Drug Store.

Before traveling three weeks by boat to Japan and Korea, Turner was granted a short leave in early 1951 and came home.

State of Georgia Pardons and Parole Board member, the late Judge Charlie Pannell located Atlanta work for me with the newly-instituted Sales Tax Unit of the Department of Revenue. Judge Pannell grew up in Chatsworth, married another native, Ruth Ann Loughridge; they later lived in Atlanta.

By early 1951, I moved to Atlanta to begin work for the Department of Revenue, and moved briefly into a large 14th Street boarding house with Chatsworth girl friends, Hazel Terry and Betty Robinson. After we went separate ways into apartments, Jeannine Rymer Pierce and I lived together on 25th Street for about a year until Turner's military service expired in 1952.

Atlanta has been my home since 1951. However, memories of the good luck to have grown up in My Home Town among family and friends remain strong.

Small towns are stages where actors play their perfect roles.

Joann Anderson Warmack (Mrs. Edward Turner Warmack), 4388 Woodland Brook Drive, S. E., Atlanta, GA 30339-4809 Amended March 10, 2007, for the Herman McDaniel Murray Museum website.

Murray Memories