UPSON COUNTY, GA - HISTORY "I Remember"  2001 columns

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This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by:
Hartford Pryor

These "I Remember" columns appear each month in the Upson
Historical Society Newsletter. Reprinted here with
permission.  Year 2001

JANUARY 2001

I remember the late 20's and 30's on the Peerless Mill
Village where I lived, the streetlights were on large
wooden poles with regular, large house bulbs that had a
round cover to protect them from the rain. Mr. Willie
Chastain had the job of replacing the bulbs when they
burned out. His main trouble was with boys who had BB
guns and who used the light bulbs as targets for their
shooting. Mr. Artie Turner who was the policeman for the
Peerless Village would keep a watchful eye on all of the
boys with BB guns. I have seen him catch boys who shot
out a light. When he apprehended a perpetrator, Mr.
Turner would take the BB gun from the boy, hit it on the
ground, breaking it in half, and then throw it into the
back of his truck. He never got into trouble with any of
the parents because he walked the Village and  he knew
everyone and everyone knew him and respected him. He
would visit and sit on the porches with people and almost
everyday someone would invite him to dinner. When I was a
kid he would sit with my dad for hours at a time on our
front porch because he could see the Peerless Mill and
everything that went on there.

Recently, I was reminded of things which we used to serve
as substitutes for hot water bottles when you could not
afford to buy one.   For the earache, people would heat
salt in a skillet and then place it in a towel and lay in
on the ear. A remedy for cold feet was to take two bricks
and heat them inside the stove before wrapping them in a
towel. They were then placed near the feet when you went
to bed.   I also remember when people would bake potatoes
in their fireplace ashes.

FEBRUARY 2001

My wife, Neva, was bom and raised on a farm in Crawford
County near Roberta and she reminded me of something
about their water supply when she was a girl. They had a
65 foot dug well. They had to draw water from it using a
wind-lass and bucket. (Wind-lass means to wind on a beam
or apparatus for hauling or hoisting, consisting of a
cylinder upon which is wound a rope which is attached to
a bucket to be lifted with water from the well.)

Sometimes insects, called wiggle-tails, would accumulate
in the water and techniques were used to get rid of them.
One was to pour salt or alum into the well. Another was
to lower a catfish into the well and the fish would eat
the wiggletails.

Both of these solutions created other problems. If you
used salt or alum too. often it would accumulate in the
well. This meant that the well had to be fully drawn
(emptied). If you used the catfish solution, you might
accidentally kill the kill the fish when you dropped the
bucket into the well. In a few days the fish would decay
and putrify. Once again the well would have to be fully
drawn. In either case, drawing the well took time and was
a problem for the entire family. (Pictured to the left is
a well and wind-lass which belongs to Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth
Hatchett of 614 Eastside Drive.

I also remember how, when I was a child, I would watch my
Grandmother Storey make butter. She would take a large
earthenware container called a church that a had a lit to
fit the top that had a small hole in the center. She
would then take plain milk and put it into the chum and
let it sit awhile in a warm place near the old fashioned
wood-burning stove, (continued in space to left)

MARCH 2001

I remember when I worked in the cloth room of the
Thomaston Division back in 1947 that Otis Daniel of
Roland Road worked next to me. One morning as he came to
work, he told me this story. Earlier in the day he had
gone to a grocery store on Crest Highway and there he met
three inexperienced deer hunters from Atlanta. He asked
them did they have any luck; and they said, "yes, we
killed one deer." Otis went to the truck to see how big
the deer was and discovered that they had killed his
neighbor's billy goat.

I remember in the 20's and 30's before electric irons and
perma-press cloth, the ladies who wanted to iron their
clothes had to heat their irons by placing them on the
top of the wood burning or kerosene stoves. Sometimes,
rather than fire up a stove, they would heat them on
small electric hot plates which became popular even
before electric irons. Quite often these hot plates would
overload a circuit and blow a fuse. Everyone had to keep
extra fuses all of the time. [These fuses screwed into a
socket on the main line and let the current flow through.
If the fuse blew, the current was shut off. ] Then
someone came up with some ideas for substitute fuses. One
was to take a stick and push a copper penny into the fuse
socket and then screw the fuse in on top of it, letting
the penny carry the load. Another was to wrap the fuse in
aluminum foil which could also conduct electricity.
These could be very dangerous  substitutes  because ; an
overload could short-circuit the electrical wiring system
in the house and cause a fire.

Today houses have breaker switches and old-time fuses are
a thing of the past.

APRIL 2001

I remember John F. Miles. After John died, and following
conversations with Hoge Miles and Lois Fountain Denny, I
remembered that John came to Thomaston to play baseball
as a pitcher for the Thomaston Mills team. C. 0, English
had been the pastor of the Amos Creek Baptist Church in
Clarksville, Georgia, where all of the Miles family
attended church in the 1920's. By 1926, Rev. English was
called as pastor of the East Thomaston Baptist Church.
When Rev. English heard that the Thomaston Mills baseball
team was looking for a pitcher, he contacted John Miles
and told him. John came down, got a job with the mill and
joined the baseball team. For five years, John boarded
with Mr. & Mrs. John Fountain at 102 Willow Street. While
living there he became acquainted with Ruby Sergeant who
lived with her mother on the same street. After dating a
while, John and Ruby were married and lived with Mrs.
Sergeant until they could establish their own home. John
and Ruby had two sons, Theo and Ronnie, and one daughter,
Brenda. [Editor's Note: John F.   Miles,   one   of
Thomaston's distinguished citizens, a true leader in
religious, civic, and industrial activities, died on
February 18,2001.]

I remember that in the early 1930's, Eugene   Talmadge
was   a   very controversial governor of Georgia. His
opponents often quoted him as saying, "A farmer in
overalls is not worth a dollar a day." In 1939 I worked
for the Peerless Mill for 25 cents per hour. For some
reason, I became interested in politics and wrote Mr.
Talmadge for a picture. He sent it, and I still have it.
He wore red suspenders; and at all of his rallies, his
workers would sell red suspenders to the crowd

MAY 2001

I was reminded some time ago of how Bulldog Curve on
Highway 19, South, got its name. In the late 20's and
30's it was a very popular name because it was a very bad
curve and there were a lot of automobile wrecks there. It
was not paved until the 1930's. Over the years,  it  has 
been  rebuilt  and straightened. Some of the curve is
still there in the twelve hundred black south of town
near the Southside Baptist Church and the old abandoned
WSFT radio station building. Now, how did it get its
name?   I called Mr. Buford Thompson of 218 Denham Road
who is 82 years old and he told me the story. On the old
Mill. Village in East Thomaston, there was a lady that
claimed she was a fortune teller by the name of Mrs.
Seth.Whitman. She had a bulldog and it died and she was
"gonna" get rid of it by throwing it in the woods south
of Thomaston. When she drove south of town, she had a
wreck on this sharp curve and was killed.   It has been
called Bulldog Curve ever since.

I remember how in the late 1940's Rev. Herbert Morgan was
pastor of the East Thomaston Baptist Church; and he loved
to hold tent revivals. He became good friends with Mr.
Rob Hightower, so Thomaston Mills gave Bro. Morgan a big
tent. At this point in time, the Assembly of God was
enlarging a house near the south end of Five Points into
a church building. They were using the building and
working on it at the same time. One day a wall collapsed.
Rev. Morgan then loaned them his tent which they used
until they could get their building ready.

I remember during the 1930's a lot of people raised
chickens and there was a Bird's-eye feed store on the
Square. The bags were made of printed material

JUNE 2001

In the late 20's and early 30's, Mr. Lawson Whitten lived
in a big house in the pines on Park Lane. He was plant
manager at the Thomaston Division of Thomaston Mills.
Across in front of his house, where the Hightower
Methodist Church and the East Thomaston Baptist Church
are now located was an open field. Mr. Whitten used to
plant a large garden on this piece of ground.

I Remember Dr. B. C. Adams who used to be our family
doctor and who was so good to our family. He would come
to our house at Christmas and make sure we had everything
we needed. He and my Dad became very good friends.   I
remember one day they discussed the subject of castor
oil. Dr. Adams made the statement that his book said,
"quit it, don't take it." Then he made the remark that
castor oil was good for one thing and that was to grease
wagon wheels.

With   our  hospital   recently celebrating its  50th
anniversary, I recalled how, in the 1940's, a Mr. Jim
King had a tract of land in Pike County planted with
cotton. When time came to pick it, he hired some local
labor to help him. Once, when the day's work was done,
his son Frank was bringing the workers home when the
truck turned over and four were killed. All of the others
were injured.   At this time, the only ambulance service
was handled by the 2 local funeral homes: Pasley's at 107
East Thompson Street next to the Post Office and Stevens'
at 205 South Hightower Street across from R. E. Lee. The
injured were carried to the only medical facility that
Upson had, a clinic owned by Dr. B. C. Adams and Dr. R.
E. Carter on South Green Street across from the First
Baptist Church.   Our medical facilities have come a long
way since then.

JULY 2001

I lived in Northside in 1957 and it was really beginning
to build up. The water system owned by Dr. Mullins, the
owner of City Drug Co, was not good enough to supply all
of the new houses. Dr. Mullins would ride around and if
he saw someone watering outside, he'd turn the water off.
Sometimes the pressure was so low we would not have water
for several hours.

Some of us neighbors decided we would drill our own well:
Mr. & Mrs. Stanley Waller, Mr. & Mrs. J. V. Canady, Mr. &
Mrs. J. C. Irvin, Mr. & Mrs. J. D. Dickens, and me and my
wife. The next Step was where to drill it. We heard of a
man that lived in Macon who could tell people where the
water was. We paid him $25 plus bus fare to come to
Thomaston.    When he arrived, we showed him the five
lots that our group owned. The first thing he did was to
cut a limb from a peach tree. The limb was in the shape
of a "Y." He then placed both hands on the "Y" end with
the single end pointing outward away from his body. He
then began walking over the lots. All at once His hands
and arms began to shake and the single branch pointed
down. He could not hold it still; and then he told us
that this was where we could find water. We contracted
Mr. Hoyt Waller ofZebulon. He came down, set up his
equipment and began drilling. In about 3 days at 242
feet, he hit water. The water was so strong that it came
within 10 feet from the top. He estimated it to be about
30 gallons a minute. That was 43 years ago and the well
is still in good condition and in use today.

Special note: I got a call the other day from a man in
Texas claiming to be kin to me. He had gotten mv name
from a web page telling about these articles.

AUGUST 2001

I remember when shoe stores had an X-Ray machine. When
you bought a pair of shoes, the customer would stand on a
small platform about 6 inches off of the floor, insert
your feet into a slot at the bottom of the machine, and
then look through a vision port on the top of the machine
so that you could see how well the shoes fit,
particularly around the toes. [Editor's note: this was
before we understood some of the negative effects of
radiation.]

I remember when some brands of loafers that the kids wore
had a strap on the top and the boys and girls would
insert pennies under this strap.

I remember when ladies wore "patent" [artificial] leather
shoes that were shiny. The ladies would then polish them
by cutting a biscuit open and using the inside of the
biscuit to rub on the shoes to make a good shine. [The
lard in the biscuit did the trick.]

I remember when the barbershops all had a shoeshine boy
that would polish and shine your shoes. After the barber
had finished your haircut, the shine boy would also
remove the cloth from around your neck and brush the hair
from your clothing, expecting a tip.

I remember when I was a child, some parents had a saying
when their children misbehaved.  "Soap Sally's gonna get
you!" Soap Sally was a make-believe old woman that
supposedly walked the streets looking for children who
did not obey their parents. When she found one she'd put
them into a burlap bag and take them home with her and
dump them into an old fashion black pot filled with water
and boil them until they turned into soap. This made many
a child say, "Yes Mam'm" or "Yes Sir" and do what they
were told.

SEPTEMBER 2001

In the late 40's, the Rev. Herbert D. Morgan  was  pastor
of the  East Thomaston Baptist Church. He had a talent
for raising money, and he loved to help people in need.
When any of the civic organizations would put on a "fund
raiser," they would always ask him to help. When people
knew he was working for the cause, they would always give
more liberally.   I remember one year when there was a
drive for a polio fund; and the Rev. Morgan was asked to
help. He would do anything to bring attention to a fund
drive. During this particular campaign, R. E. Lee
Institute had a basketball game at the old gym on the
back of the campus next to the cemetery. During the half-
time, an announcement was made that a lady wanted to
speak in behalf of the polio drive and that she was
waiting outside.     When she was introduced and walked
in the front door, she could hardly walk for her high
heels. When she began to talk, everyone recognized her
raspy voice. It could only be Herbert Morgan.   He
brought the house down with laughter, but the polio drive
profited from better contributions.

I remember when Billy Reeves—he now lives on Mountain
View Drive—was a little boy. He was quite a character,
always giving his parents trouble—not anything bad, just
kid pranks.   For instance: Billy's daddy was a shift
foreman in the Card Room of the Peerless Mill and once a
year he gave a fish fry for his help down on the river.
At that time Billy was 9 and wanted to go, but his dad
said, "No!" Billy then hid in the trunk of one of the
cars and when they arrived at the river and unloaded the
cars, out Billy jumped, much to the surprise of his
daddy.

OCTOBER 2001

I remember in the late 40's, Upson County was
having a drive "to raise money for the March of
Dimes (an organization which funded efforts to
eliminate polio and to help its victims).
Reverend Herbert Morgan was put in charge of
this effort. He came up with a plan to have a
contest, to see who could raise the most money.
The loser would have to push the winner around
the courthouse in a wheelbarrow.   There were
two other well-known people to enter the
contest.   One was Adrian Wellborn and the
other was Guy Sharpe, who was pastor of the
Rock Methodist Church, and later a Channel 11
TV announcer. When the contest was over, you
can guess who won; Rev. Morgan got the ride
around the courthouse in that wheelbarrow.  

I remember when we were all kids and we would
have to create some of our own games. We would
go to the woods and rake up large piles of pine
straw and jump into it or ride our bicycles
real fast into it and the sudden stop would
throw us over the handlebars into the straw.
Speaking of bicycles—when bicycles first
started being build with motors, we created
something that we pretended was a motor by the
sound of it. We would attach a clothespin to
the frame of the bike with a piece of cardboard
extended into the spokes of the wheel; and as
we pedaled along, the card would make a
clicking sound as it hit each spoke, making it
sound as if you had a motor.

One of my precious memories is about my
daughter Gayla Trice. One day I was working on
my lawn mower out in the hot sun and perspiring
heavily.  I asked Gayla to bring me a glass of
water. She came back with the water and an
umbrella to shade me while I drank it.


NOVEMBER 2001

I remember how, during World War II, each house that had
someone in the service would hang a flag in the window
with a star representing each member of that household
that were members of the armed forces. I can remember Mr.
& Mrs. J. Y. Stephens at 301 South Main who had four from
their family. Their names were Denson (Big Steve),
Russell, Winford (Wink), and Ralph. All of these fine men
lived through the war but have now died.

I remember back 50 and more years ago that it was very
common on all the major highways to look off in a
distance where a farm was located that had an old fashion
barn and the roof and the side of the barn would be
painted read and black saying "See" Rock City." This sort
of advertisement has faded away but Cracker Barrel
Restaurants sell a replica of the barn as a birdhouse
still painted, "See Rock City."

I remember another popular form of roadside advertisement
which has also disappeared.    It featured a popular
shaving cream of the pre-World War II era, Burma Shave.  
On the major highways they would have the parts of a
slogan posted on a series of small signs at a distance of
about 500 feet apart. You could read as you rode along
the highway. The slogans went like these:

"Don't Frown, Be Wise, Smile, Use Burma Shave." "Young
and Old, Be Bold, Grab Hold, Use Burma Shave."

In the days before indoor plumbing people used outhouses,
but rather than go outside in the night, especially when
it was cold, they would keep a kind of "bucket bathroom"
under the bed. The large one was called a "slop jar" and
the smaller one was known as a "chamber pot." Some sat in
fancy wood cabinets.


DECEMBER 2001

I remember Mr. George Hightower, Sr., who had his office
out at the old mill in a building separate from the
plant. He was in charge of all production at the old mill
and very strict on cleanliness. At different intervals he
would tour the plant with the plant manager. Sometimes he
told the plant manager he was going to tour the plant on
a certain day, and when he did the plant manager would
call all of the department managers and tell them to get
everything cleaned up.  One man would take an air hose
and blow down the wall and ceiling. If there was any bad
work in his department that he did not have time to clean
up, it was hidden in the air conditioner compressor room.

Sometimes  Mr.  George  would surprise everyone and  come
over by himself. From where I worked, we could always see
him come out of the back door and cross the mill yard.
When he did, we would call all of the departments and
tell them he was in the plant. There were five doors to
the plant he could choose to enter and we would call the
department manager and tell him which door he was coming
through. After his tour, Mr. George would go back to his
office and call the department managers and tell them of
certain areas that needed cleaning.    Sometimes the
machinery would have to be covered with large sheets of
cloth and when we began to blow down the walls and
ceiling, it came down like snow. The overseers had a
saying that Mr. George could see overhead cleaning that
needed to be done without ever looking up.

Everyone loved Mr. George.   At Christmas he would tour
the plant, shake hands with everyone and wish them a
Merry Christmas.