The Crab Chronicles

Broad Street Augusta Georgia, 1946

I found some old photos and an old book manuscript in a box in my garage. Apparently it was a book about the history of the old First National Bank in Augusta where my dad worked, but the manuscript never got published. Really cool to see a folder preserved since 1946, more than 70 years. This photo is my favorite so I scanned it in. This is what Broad Street looked like in 1946. It looks the same today but very different. Lots more trees planted today, plus a statue of James Brown, Augusta's favorite son.. If you're from Augusta or you've ever been there to visit, you should get a kick out of this. I was born in Augusta in 1962 and lived there until we moved to Tennessee in 1971. Still love the town. My Dad grew up there. I still have family there.

Growing Up in the 1930's and 1940's

The world was a very different place in December of 1933 when my mother was born. The Great Depression was in full swing and millions of Americans were out of work -- the unemployment rate was 25%.

Franklin Roosevelt had just taken office a year before, and launched the New Deal.

Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933.

It cost 3 cents to mail a letter in 1933.

A lb. of ground beef was 11 cents.

A new Plymouth was $445.

The 21st Amendment is passed repealing the 18th Amendment ( Repeal of prohibition ) on December 5, 1933.

right, the family before Elva

My grandparents were in a bind, just like most of the other folks in America. My grandfather had been a professional baseball player since 1919, but in 1933 he couldn't find a job playing baseball. He was 37 years old.

On New Year's Eve, 1933, they nonetheless welcomed their third child and only girl, Elva Elizabeth Hasty.

My grandparents brought baby Elva home from the hospital and both her older brothers came down with whooping cough. Papa stayed upstairs and nursed the boys, and Memaw stayed downstairs with baby Elva. They lived in Marietta, on Powder Springs Road.

below, a clipping from 1932 when Papa played with the Birmingham Barons

My grandfather soon found work with companies around Atlanta who wanted him to coach and play baseball on the company teams, and gave him a token job to do the rest of the year, which he hated. He changed jobs so often when Mom was small that she never went to the same school twice until the family moved to Atlanta after World War II.

below, Papa playing on a team in Buford, Georgia - Papa in seated on the right, between the two men in white shirts

My grandmother, who had been raised in a wealthy family, found herself the mother of three small children, trying to manage a household during the Depression, when money was tight. She made aprons and dish towels and oven mitts out of flour sacks, and made clothes. We still have two of the flour sack aprons.

Everyone saved buttons. If a shirt had to be thrown away, the buttons were removed. Mom remembers being put at the table and told to "sort the buttons." When a new dress or shirt was being sewed, the buttons would be re-used.

At one rural school, there was no school lunch program. My grandmother had studied Home Economics at Bessie Tift College and she organized a school lunch program for all the children. Lunch might only be a bowl of soup and a piece of cornbread, but Memaw and the other mothers made sure each child was fed.

In the late 1930's the family left Smyrna and moved to Inman, South Carolina, then to a farm outside of Moore, South Carolina. The pipes were there for water but there was no water in the house - it came from a pump in the yard. There was no electricity in the house. It was during the war and when they built the house they couldn't get the wiring for the house because building materials were needed for the war effort. The family was put on a waiting list and eventually got wiring.

Mom recalls those times without electricity as not being so bad. After dinner, the family would sit around the big pine dining room table with oil lamps on each end of the table, kids doing homework and grownups reading or sewing.

In addition to trying to take care of their own kids, my grandparents often took in relatives.

My grandmother had 11 siblings and Papa had 7 siblings. Oftentimes, nieces and nephews were sent to stay with the family while their parents looked for work or if childcare was a problem. "Visits" lasting several months were not uncommon. Mother grew up with two brothers, but many cousins in and out, all the time. If they ran out of beds, quilts were put on the floor for the children.

Picnics were a source of fun, and long drives in the country. Ice cream was churned by hand, a great treat. Kids read comic books and played cowboys and indians. Mom played dolls and made "mud pies."

Mother remembers on the farm my grandfather would often pick broccoli out of the field and bring it home for Memaw to cook -- and she would throw it in the pressure cooker and reduce it to mush. My grandmother could also use her trusty 410 shotgun to shoot the head off of a chicken, pluck it, and fry it for supper. Everyone also worked very hard canning fruits and vegetables, and in South Carolina harvesting peaches. To this day, my mom and uncle Don love South Carolina peaches.

 

I feel very fortunate that my mother has an incredible memory and often tells me stories of her childhood. She describes people and events vividly and I can hold in my hand a flour sack apron that's over 70 years old, and light the antique oil lamps that my grandparents used. I eat on a table that was made by my great-grandfather more than a hundred years ago. History is a living, vivid, touchable thing, to me.

 

above, Mom and my grandparents, early 1950's

below, my grandparents and their children and grandchildren in March 1970 - Mom has on a red headband and I am wearing a red jacket

 

A 1959 Dinner Party Menu

My mom and I have been cleaning out old photos and papers a lot lately, and Mom came across a piece of paper yesterday that instantly flooded her with memories of being a young newlywed in the late 1950's and trying to entertain. It's hard for millennials, I think, to understand what a different world their grandparents inhabited, and how bound they were by societal customs and rules.

Mom was trying to plan out her menu and get all her ducks in a row here, to celebrate New Year's Day with my dad's family. How do I know it was New Year's? Easy. It's the only time we ever serve blackeyed peas to company, here in the South. You eat blackeyes peas for good luck. You eat greens for money.

The peas were dried and they would have needed to be blanched and soaked to bring them back to edible. No self-respecting Southern cook would have fixed them without hog jowl/fatback. I used to love to eat fatback, as a kid. It's actually making a comeback, only now chefs call it "lardons" because I guess it sounds more elegant than hog jowl or fatback.

Mom and Dad got married in February 1957 and she thinks this dinner was Jan. 1, 1959 and she was already pregnant with my brother Bruce. Mom and Dad were still living in a small apartment, although they built their first small house a few months later. The guests included my grandmother Cordelia, her sister Ceph and husband, their son and his wife, my uncle Bobby and his wife and daughters. A lot of folks.

Mom was still learning to cook. That was a huge undertaking in those days. You couldn't buy convenience foods and takeout foods like you can today. Produce was seasonal. For instance, you could get apples in the fall and strawberries in the spring and early summer, but likely wouldn't find them other times of the year - or if you did find them, they were quite expensive.

Mom remembers that she went over the menu on the phone with Mamaw (her mother) who was an experienced cook and had studied Home Economics at Bessie Tift College.

The menu is ambitious -- beef roast, scalloped potatoes, blackeyed peas, stewed tomatoes, pineapple. I asked Mom about the "pineapple on lettuce" - a very elegant food, for that time. Nobody ate the lettuce and the pineapple was from a can and included a cream cheese topping.

I asked Mom to tell me more about the menu. "Sometimes mother would do the same thing with a canned peach half, or sometimes should put some grated yellow cheese over it. That was a pretty salad. My mother didn't eat tossed salad."

The tomatoes would have been canned, probably at least 16 oz.

On the strawberry shortcake, you could buy a pound cake that was a loaf cake. You couldn't buy Cool Whip. You bought fresh whipping cream and whipped it with a mixer. Strawberries would have been expensive that time of year, or I would have used strawberries that were frozen."

The note at the top "Call Daisy" was a reminder to get the apartment professionally cleaned. Mom has a wealth of Daisy stories and I remember her quite well. (When I read the book The Help I was fascinated and appalled, because although we had Daisy as a maid off and on when I was small, we were never allowed to be rude or disrespectful to her. I never saw my parents treat her with anything but respect and courtesy either.)

I think what fascinated me about this little party menu is that Mom was trying so hard to feed Dad's family a lovely and elegant dinner, with a very limited budget. She could barely cook. Dad wouldn't help her at all. Plus, she was trying to fulfill the role that society said, in 1959, a wife needed to play. Most clothes had to be ironed. Many people didn't own dryers, and clothes had to be line-dried. There were few convenience foods. Housecleaning was a lot of hard scrubbing, not easy at all.

Women's magazines at the time were filled with advice like "keep a small makeup kit near the door so when your husband comes in he sees you with hair combed and fresh lipstick, not looking tired." Didn't matter if you had worked yourself to death all day and were exhausted, you had to keep up appearances and look like you had your s**t together or your husband might stray, was the underlying message there.

[BTW, as long as Dad lived, my mom always had a little mirror, comb, and makeup stashed away in the kitchen, so she could "fix her face" when Dad's car pulled into the driveway.]

Nowadays, young people often hook up and break up, and have children without feeling the need to get married. Is that a better way? Or is it better for women to feel burdened and subservient to their husbands? I don't know. I just feel like life works better when a couple forms a true partnership.

below, photos of the dinner guests from around the same time period

left, my grandmother Cordelia and cousin Frann. Above, Dad's brother Bobby, my grandfather Thompson (who had died in 1957) and Aunt Ceph holding Frann. Thompson and Cordelia babysat for Frann when she was small because my aunt worked.

below, Mom pregnant with Bruce, and her parents, in front of Mom and Dad's first little house in Augusta

Below, Mom and Dad on their wedding day.

 

Risking Death

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day and I wanted to write a little bit about my third great grandfather, John McConnell [1780-1866] because I didn't know much about him until recently and his story is quite amazing.

From Find a Grave:

"John McConnell Jr was the first child of John and Nancy Montgomery McConnell. He was born in the Waxhaw settlement during the Revolutionary War in which his father was fighting. Only 11 days after his birth, his father was captured, imprisoned, and sentenced to be hanged. Then John Jr. contracted black smallpox and it was feared he would die.

However, his mother had survived smallpox years before, and through her nursing he survived. While he was still ill with the disease, his father escaped from the sentenced hanging and from prison and took his small family to the snow covered mountains of South Carolina to escape the British. They stayed in hiding in the mountains for over a year until his father could rejoin Col. William Bratton.

After the Revolutionary War, John Sr. took his family to Georgia, finally settling in Elbert County, Georgia. It was there that John Jr met his wife, Anna Townsend. They married in Elberton in 1800 when John Jr. was 19 and Anna was 15."

 

The sentence that jumps out at me is: "Only 11 days after his birth, his father was captured, imprisoned, and sentenced to be hanged."

My 4th great grandfather was sentenced to be HANGED simply because he wanted to be FREE. He wanted to live in a free country where he could vote for his president and his representatives and not be forced to live under the tyranny of a king or queen. He risked his life to be free.

We keep forgetting about that and it bothers me.

Our ancestors risked EVERYTHING to make this country a haven.

I am also related, on my dad's side, to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The Europeans who settled in Virginia in the 17th and 18th centuries are all pretty much related to each other. What awes me about those family connections is simple: like John McConnell, they wanted to be free. If the American Revolution had failed, all of those founding fathers would have been hanged for treason.

Let that sink in for a minute. Would you risk your life to be free? To see your children grow up free?

We take it for granted, this freedom.

I have spent a good bit of time in Russia and Kazakhstan and let me tell you, there's a stress, an unease from being in a country where average citizens don't have a lot of rights. When I went to Kazakhstan in 2007 I saw a man in the airport beaten half to death. I don't know what his crime was but the police didn't hesitate to beat him. I've never seen anything like it and I hope I never see anything like it again.

It made me very happy to be an American. I felt like a 20 lb. weight was lifted off my chest when my plane landed back in America in 2007. I remember thinking thanks be to GOD - my son will grow up in a country where he has rights and he will be free.

So my message to you this Veteran's Day is simple: cherish your freedom. If you have friends or relatives or neighbors who are veterans, thank them for their service. They risk everything to do a thankless job and they deserve respect and thanks.

My brother, now a retired Army major

my dad served in the Army in 1951-52

 

Let's All Calm Down About The 2016 Race for the White House

In all my life I have never seen a more divisive presidential race. I have had to bite my tongue on Facebook and I've tried not to post anything on my wall indicating who I will vote for, but my choice is - as always, it seems - a choice between what I see as the lesser of two evils. I do not embrace the candidate I will vote for because well... the candidate I really liked had to drop out of the race. [No, it wasn't Bernie.]

However, I suspect many people feel the way I do. It's not the end of the world. Everyone needs to calm down. Seriously.

This morning I was watching a story on CBS Sunday Morning on New York Times columnist Maureen O'Dowd and it was amusing, in some instances, when her sister talked about voting for candidates of different parties, in different years. My parents usually voted Republican, but not always. I recalled times when my parents didn't agree on who to vote for, and Dad would get mad and tell Mom not to vote because, he said, his vote would cancel hers out. By that logic, nobody should vote.

I have voted for Democrats and I have voted for Republicans. I try to ignore the party and focus on the candidate, and try to figure out who is the best human being, not who is running the best campaign. That's not always easy to do.

One thing that I have found very helpful this year is this website, Vote411. Every year I vote I find things on the ballot that puzzle me, and I mentally castigate myself for not doing more research. Well, click that link. It's an awesome resource for learning what you need to know before you go to the polls. Thank you, League of Women Voters.

Not everyone wants to thoughtfully research candidates. Lots of people want to simply rely on what they see on political ads, or the daily newspaper, or the nightly news broadcast. WRONG. Every single network - NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX - they ALL have agendas. There is no such thing as journalistic integrity or objectivity. And guess what?! There NEVER WAS. [I'm sorry, Mrs. B, my high school newspaper sponsor, but journalism is as flawed as any other human endeavor, and it always has been.] I read a lot of newspapers from 1922 once, researching a project, and they were awful. Yellow journalism at its finest...

We all have to learn and remember that journalism is totally biased.

I worked for the Knoxville Journal for nearly a year when I was a senior in high school. We had the old-fashioned AP and UPI teletypes and news rolled in 24 hours a day, tons of stories. The managing editor decided which ones to run. News folks pick and choose their stories, based on personal opinions, audience preferences, perhaps other things. If a network is owned by a conglomerate that also owns a food company and some of the food is found to be contaminated, the news network may choose to ignore that story, or downplay it. Another network may run a lengthy piece on it.

This year, however, is different from any previous year because the country is so divided. Hillary supporters passionately hate Trump. Trump supporters passionately hate Hillary. There are couples around the country who are breaking up because one is for Trump and the other is for Clinton. Yes, BREAKING UP. Apparently nobody taught them the fine art of how to disagree amicably.

I am not immune, sadly. I have a friend that won't speak to me right now because we are supporting different candidates. I have Facebook friends who have "un-friended" me and I suspect some of those are because they suspect I do not support their candidate.

So who is going to win on November 9th? I don't know. I won't predict.

Apparently, the polls this year are unreliable. I would have said that long before today - keeping in mind the quote about "lies, damn lies, and statistics" [Will Rogers, I think].

My original premise is simple. This year we are seeing an incredibly dirty mudslinging race. We have nobody but ourselves to blame for that. Don't blame the candidates. They are simply going all out to win, and as recent history has taught us, that means slinging mud. In this day and age of constant photos and videos all over the place, there are no secrets any more, especially for public figures.

Politics shouldn't end relationships or marriages or even friendships, however.

We should be able to laugh at ourselves. We SHOULD.

Who do we listen to when it comes to voting, though? Why, entertainers and actors, of course!

Entertainers all over the place are threatening to leave the USA and/or "move to Canada" if Trump gets elected. I'm not surprised at all that the recent show in Tampa sparked this article: Hundreds Walked Out as Amy Shumer Gets Political. (My personal feeling is that she is not at all funny or talented, and I am amazed anyone would pay anything to watch her, but that's not really based on her politics.)

Comedians being political is nothing new. Anyone remember George Carlin? He was often political. Sometimes it was funny, sometimes not. I usually watched clips of his shows and either laughed and thought "how clever" or I sat there and seethed, thinking he was being utterly unfair. I didn't like everything he had to say, but so what? I've never met another human being I agreed with entirely. Very few people I've ever known were as brilliant and/or funny as Carlin.

I watched a clip of Trump and Hillary speaking at the Al Smith Dinner last week. Good thing they can laugh at themselves, unlike many of the rest of us. Afterwards, they reportedly shook hands and agreed that whoever gets elected, they will need to work together afterwards. I hope they were sincere.

See, here's where I am going to turn really cynical, so brace yourself.

I don't think it matters much who gets elected. Celebrities may flee to Canada. Or not. Marriages may crumble. Or not.

Both candidates this year are very flawed and whoever gets elected, I will sit back and watch with great cynicism, frankly, because they aren't going to be crowned for life.

Whatever they SAID during their campaign will mean little. They can SAY anything during an election. What they say is almost meaningless.

What we all need to calm down and remember is that presidents don't get in office and rule like potentates. The founding fathers set things up so no one branch of government - executive, legislative, or judicial - has too much power. Congress can pass a bill and send it up the road and the president can veto it. Sometimes vetoes get overridden. Presidents can be impeached. Presidents can resign. If we have a president who is one party and the majority in Congress is the other party, little will likely get done.

Kids in school now don't get a thorough knowledge of history or civics, and that's tragic. In order to not go crazy this year, we all need to study history.

I have thought often during this campaign about President Johnson, LBJ. He was a consummate politician. He cursed like a sailor and screwed women in the White House, asking the Secret Service to help him elude his wife. He gave interviews completely in the nude, or sitting on the toilet. Biographers have a field day with him.

As one biographer stated about LBJ: "URINATING in a sink, inviting people into his bathroom, showing off his abdominal scar, exposing his private parts: after a while nothing surprises a biographer of Lyndon Baines Johnson... Sexual conquests also helped to fill the void. He was a competitive womanizer. When people mentioned Kennedy's many affairs, Johnson would bang the table and declare that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose."

However, he was able to marshal bipartisan support and pass important legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. He pushed for legislation that was part of the Great Society, which had a huge impact on our country. He started Medicare and Head Start.

"The first piece of Great Society legislation, the Economic Opportunity Act 1964, tried to give people tools to get out of poverty. The bill created a Job Corps similar to the New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps; a domestic peace corps; a system for vocational training; and Head Start, a pre-school program designed to prepare children for success in public school. The bill also funded community action programs and extended loans to small businessmen and farmers.

In 1964, 8 million American adults had not finished 5 years in school; more than 20 million had not finished eight years; and almost a quarter of the nation's population, around 54 million people, hadn't finished high school. In 1965, Congress passed the groundbreaking Elementary and Secondary Education Act which for the first time provided federal funding for education below the college level passed the Higher Education Act, which created a National Teachers Corps and provided financial assistance to students wishing to attend college."

SO... LBJ was a real jerk, a foul-mouthed womanizer, and he escalated Vietnam, but he was not 100% bad. He also did a lot of good.

Therein lies the rub. It's complicated. Politicians can be total jerks, awful, and yet good.

Just like everybody else..

photo by Linda Harris

Happy Columbus Day?

My great great grandfather was a man named CC Phillips, or Christopher Columbus Phillips. I am pretty sure we are not related to the famous explorer Columbus, however. [History now indicates Columbus was not really the discoverer of America but was a racist jerk - read more here...]

No, Grandaddy Phillips was, according to Find A Grave:

"...a pioneer builder of this town and throughout his life held a position of one of the leaders in all community activities. He was a deacon in the Acworth Baptist church and a Christian gentleman. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Nannie A. Phillips; and four daughters, Mrs. R.E. Butler of Marietta; Miss Alma Phillips, Mrs. M.A. Goodwin and Miss Mildred Phillips, of Acworth."

He was in the Civil War. He was a Private in COMPANY A (ACWORTH INFANTRY), 18TH REGIMENT,GEORGIA VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, C.S.A. Mom remembers seeing his uniform and sword, passed down through the family.

I grew up being told the Civil War was "the War Between the States." Southerners have long memories. I was born in 1962, more than 100 years after the War started.

My grandmother [C.C. Phillips' granddaughter Wilma] was joking around with her brother-in-law once when he was examining Grandaddy Phillips' Civil War sword. Harvey was from Boston Massachusetts. He said "Your sword here has a bunch of nicks in it." 

Mamaw replied "Every one of them came from cutting a Yankee head off."

Now whether that was true, who knows. Doubtful. I think she just said it to rile him.

Anyway, back to C.C. Phillips. After the war he became a successful businessman and raised four daughters. His daughter Mildred never married. She wanted to marry, but her father disapproved of the match, so she just never married anyone. Instead, she became a career woman, at a time when that was unusual. Mother described Mildred as "a wild Indian." Mother said "He had every man his four daughters dated or got serious about investigated by a detective. He told Mildred the man ran around and slept with whores and had VD. I think he just said that to keep her from marrying. That was probably not true. Grandaddy was a snob. So Mildred said if she couldn't marry the man she loved she'd never marry at all, and she didn't. She was very smart. She was well-educated, for that time. She worked. One of her jobs was as a detective - don't know for whom. She was undercover. Mother and the sisters would talk about it and purse their mouths and roll their eyes. They didn't know where Mildred worked. She was a tall, broad woman with bright red hair.

Daddy donated blood to her after an accident. Mildred was about to die. They had the same type blood. It was very rare. They joked about it for years - he said she we're related now. You've got my blood." [Of course, they were related by marriage because he was married to Mildred's niece. "Daddy" refers to Bob Hasty, Mom's daddy and my grandfather.]

My grandfather's blood type was so rare that Atlanta hospitals used to call him to come donate when there was an accident. "They got him out of bed at 3 a.m. from time to time, to come to the hospital. He felt he had no choice to go and donate." Mamaw wasn't too crazy about him being pulled out of bed at all hours but he felt it was his duty.

I wrote a short story recently about C.C.'s daughter Beulah Phillips Butler, a fictional story but based loosely on her life. After I finished it I thought to myself, I will never run out of things to write about, because just the family stories are a wealth of material...

 

Two Sides to a Painful Question

When I was a little girl we didn't usually have serious discussions at the dinner table, but as I grew up, we did, sometimes. My father would often explain why he felt a certain way about a political issue, or why he was voting for a particular candidate, or the correct way to view a situation that he felt the media wasn't covering accurately. We would also laugh and tell funny stories or jokes. What I remember well, though, is him patiently explaining things to me and my brother, and my mom sitting there quietly nodding. 

Of course, like all kids, I grew up and rebelled. When Ronald Reagan was elected I voted for him because my father drove to my college and picked me up, took me personally to the polling place so I could vote for the first time, and then after dinner at home drove me all the way back to school. He told me to vote for Reagan. I figured he knew best. In the years that followed I regretted that decision, particularly after I learned that money for college loans had been cut and some of my friends had to drop out of school. I also learned that Reagan refused to acknowledge the AIDS crisis or push for more funding for research. So I don't really agree with folks who say how great he was, because he wasn't, to me. I graduated from college in 1984, the "boom" time, Republicans would say, and I couldn't find a job anywhere.

When I realized that my dad could possibly be wrong sometimes I started researching how to argue with him, and win. We would get into shouting matches, at times. I remember a vigorous debate on the topic of abortion; then and now a very controversial topic. 

What he taught me, in a broader sense, was that there are always many sides to an issue. If you're going to argue, you need to educate yourself about the issues and argue from a place of knowledge, not just be reactionary.

I've watched in horror the riots in Charlotte in the past few days, and the reaction to the shooting in Oklahoma. I am very sympathetic to the black men who were killed, and their families. I am also sympathetic to the police officers.

First, I should explain that although I grew up in the Deep South, I was raised by Republican parents who went out of their way to make sure I was NOT a racist. In the South, Democrats were the party of segregation when my parents were young. Just FYI. My parents rejected the Democratic party for a lot of reasons but that was a biggie. I was never allowed to use the N word, ever. We had black maids but I had to be respectful, and I never saw either of my parents be rude or disrespectful to any black person, ever. When I started first grade in 1968 I went to a private school, the Episcopal Day School, and there was a black child in my class. The next year I went to public school and there were no black children in the entire school. Then we moved to Knoxville when I was 8 and I was exposed to a more diverse population, although there were very few black families in my part of town. We had, as I recall, one Asian family and one Hispanic family in my middle class neighborhood. (Don't laugh, that was pretty diverse for that time and place.) I never really thought about it as a child. They were just kids, to me. Knoxville was not a terribly diverse place in the 1970's but neither was it a horribly racist place either.

I digressed, a bit. Sorry.

What most white Americans are only now slowly starting to comprehend is that black Americans have always dealt with racism and racial profiling, and it didn't magically disappear after the Civil Rights movement took hold. It continues, and it has made their lives far more stressful than any white person can  ever imagine.

We don't know what it's like to be stopped and harassed by police for absolutely no reason. I had a black work friend years ago who lived in a very nice home, and she told me her husband was stopped all the time by police when he drove through his own neighborhood to his own house. He drove a new car, dressed nicely, and had a college degree and a high-paying job and he was STILL harassed.

My friend who told me about that came from a very affluent and well-educated family. Yet, she had grown up knowing that before her birth her own grandfather had been murdered by the KKK, hung from a tree in his own front yard.

So I am highly sympathetic to the fact that the police stop and harass black folks, and Hispanic folks in some areas, and possibly Asian or other minorities in some areas. It happens every day. It SHOULD NOT happen.

However, my curse has always been that I see both sides to every issue.

 

My first cousin's son is a police detective. He is out there every day, in the community. He was a uniformed officer for several years. He puts his life in danger every time he steps outside his home. That is his job.

I'm sure police officers have a very heightened awareness of danger because they face it all the time. I cannot imagine the stress of knowing every time I left my house to go to work that I might be killed or seriously injured - not just as random possibilities but as statistical possibilities.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund: "A total of 1,439 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty during the past 10 years, an average of one death every 61 hours or 144 per year. There were 123 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2015."

AND - "There have been 15,725 assaults against law enforcement officers in 2014, resulting in 13,824 injuries."

 

Does that risk, give police the right to harass folks who are not white, or to harass ANYONE? No, of course not.

I was a paralegal for many years, and a few years ago I was writing blogs for attorneys. I got an online publication that listed new lawsuits and settlements of lawsuits and I was shocked by how many of those suits involved incidents of police misconduct. It's nothing new.

I think there are solutions to the issues we're facing, as a society, but they are not easy or fast solutions. The problem has been brewing for a long time and it won't be solved quickly or easily.

The problem, however, can be basically boiled down to one word: FEAR

Police fear black folks and black folks fear the police. There is terrible history there.

Are riots and looting the answer? I don't think so. I understand why there are riots and looting. I totally get that. Anger and frustration reach a boiling point. However, riots solve nothing. They accomplish nothing good.They make the police more tense and fearful, as they struggle to control things. Fear breeds fear. Mistrust breeds mistrust.

We have to start and educate our children about Love and Forgiveness. Then we have to be diligent. We have to keep those words in the forefront of their consciousness.They have to be active verbs, not passive new-agey verbs.

We have to talk. Both sides have to be heard and respected.

Both sides have to replace Fear with Love and Forgiveness. What does that process look like? I don't fully know, nor does anybody.

However, we do know that what's happening now - the senseless shootings, the riots, the misunderstandings - those things must be replaced. We have to discard what doesn't work and figure out what does work, and that is going to be a process. In this age of quick fixes and instant gratification, we don't like to do difficult things. We want everything solved in the blink of an eye. That's not going to happen.

I've told my kids I don't care who they love so long as they love a good person. Race is irrelevant. Both my kids are mixed race themselves. They've gone to very diverse schools since they've lived in America. My daughter's boyfriend is black, so obviously she listened.

There's a famous quote that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We have to educate our children. We have to take that step. We have to replace Fear with Love and Forgiveness, or the cycle of violence and mistrust will never end.

 

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." -Martin Luther King

Twenty Questions With Davis McCollum

I can’t remember how I stumbled across the Old Marietta Facebook page months ago, but I was quickly fascinated by the wealth of historical photos [over 8,000 of them] and information about the area where my mother was born. My Butler and Hasty ancestors are from the Marietta Georgia area, and so it has great significance for me. The man who runs the page, Davis McCollum, has deep roots in Cobb County – back 6 generations or more. His family trees include names like Stanley, Dobbs, Durham – all longtime residents of the area. His Ancestry.com family trees have more than 600,000 names.

Davis: “Stanley Road in Kennesaw is named after my Great Great Grandfather and his farm was what is now "The Overlook" at Marietta Country Club and Barrett Green subdivisions.”

Davis is a true Renaissance man, a native son who loves building projects (he is a real estate and marketing professional), history, historic photos, historic preservation, and much more. Davis’ passion for the past extends to the present. He hates to see historic homes demolished (not documented) in the name of unplanned progress. He was actively involved in the effort to save the Acworth Depot. He has also been on the Board of Directors of The Marietta Museum of History, the Georgia Historical Society, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, Georgia Genealogical Society, Sons of the American Revolution, Alpharetta and Old Milton County Historical Society. He was also honored in January 2014 by the Cobb Landmarks and Historical Society for his contributions.

It didn’t take too much digging to determine that Davis and I are cousins, through my great great grandmother Nannie Putnam Phillips, whose sister Joanna married William McCollum. I found that out by looking at a website called Find a Grave, and Davis has his own page there – and more than 284 messages have been left on his page.

Davis got started doing genealogy research about ten years ago, after his mother passed away. As he explains, “It started just after my mother died. I got into the family history after looking at the family bible. That family bible went all the way back to England.”

He explains further, “It continued by me going to Facebook and seeing a blog where everyone was talking about Marietta.”

After Davis started his own Facebook page in 2010, things really got busy. The page now has over 10,000 likes and 4-5,000 visits daily. “It’s a resource now for anyone researching Marietta and Cobb history,” he explains. “The Marietta Daily Journal and several private entities have contacted me many times about using my photos.” There are 35 different albums and more than 5,000 photos.

Davis is related to not only me, but some famous folks, too, like Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson and former Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He likes speaking to groups, and enjoys particularly speaking for and meeting senior citizens. At one speaking engagement he was able to prove that most of the audience was related to him, one way or another.

Davis is not just my cousin he’s one of the most interesting guys I’ve ever met.

 

 

What is your full name?

Davis Eugene McCollum [for a long time he wouldn’t reveal what the “E” stands for but he was named after his mother’s father Ernest Eugene “Hop” Dobbs – “That’s where I connect with Maynard Jackson, through the Dobbs family.”

Where would you live, if you could live anywhere in the world?

St. Simon’s Island Georgia. My uncle had a house down there. That’s where we went on vacation every summer.

What is your favorite movie and why?

Cold Mountain. It relates to my 2nd great grandfather William Pickens Stanley. He walked home to Kennesaw after the Civil War. Stanley Road in Kennesaw is named after him and ironically, my brother lives on Stanley Road now.

What was your least-favorite subject in school when you were a kid?

Science, never could get into it.

What was your nickname when you were a kid?

Bugsy – my cousin gave it to me, years ago, after I made a remark about Bugsy Siegal, the gangster.

Do you believe in God?

Yes. I was born a Baptist and all the pretty girls were Methodist, so I’ve been to both churches.

What sound or noise do you love?

The sound of a creek running

If you could do anything other than what you do, as a profession, what would it be?

Professional golfer

If heaven exists, what do you think it is like?

The Augusta National [where the master’s tournament is played]

Do you have siblings?

I have a brother and sister

What is your favorite memory of childhood [something specific]?

Going out to the family reunions at Old Marietta Campground. The Stanley family, the McCollums and the Walkers, every year there would be 200+ family members, all weekend. There’s a photo of me at 1 year old, on the lap of Mrs. Rusk, mother of Dean Rusk, who was born in Cherokee County. He’s part of the Stanley family, a cousin.

If you had to choose between one week traveling around the USA by car, or one week traveling around Europe on a train, which would you choose and why?

Europe by train because I want to go to the homeland, Scotland. My McCollum ancestors are from Argyll.

What inspires you?

Being successful – not just professionally, but personally, at all sorts of things - finishing a meal, closing a deal, finding a grave – whatever it entails.

Which holiday do you prefer, Christmas or July 4th?

I would say Christmas. I like July 4th because of weather but Christmas – too many memories there..

What project or idea are you most passionate about, right now?

Development, building, construction. Personally, my work in genealogy and history, what I’ve accomplished in ten short years.. When I’m dead and gone that will be my legacy, more than any warehouse I’ve built.

Do you know how to cook?

Yes, I love to cook local meats and create dishes – pastas, goulashes .

What is your favorite thing to cook/eat? Crawfish.

If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world, for 2-4 weeks, all expenses paid, where would you go and why?

Probably County Galway Scotland, just to tour the homeland

Who do you love the most in the world?

My dad. He’s 84 years old.

What question has nobody ever asked you, but you wanted to answer?

Would you like them in large or small bills?

 

Mrs. Nancy Stanley Rusk (1873-1962) The Stanley Reunion at Old Marietta Campground in 1960

 

 

Davis, brother Andy McCollum and sister Angie McCollum Durham

 

 The Stanley Reunion – 1962 – Old Marietta Campground

Gone With the Wind and Me

I am reading a terrific book called Secrets of a Charmed Life and I was thinking this morning as I read author Susan Meissner's blog, how many fascinating ways there are that my life is connected to Gone With the Wind - and not just because my home is in Atlanta.[I am speaking about the book here more than the movie.]

When I was ten years old my mother gave me a copy of the book Gone With the Wind.[Hereinafter referred to as GWTW]  I was several grade levels ahead in reading skills, but it was still a struggle to get through the 1007 page tome, in some ways. In other ways - as in, being enthralled by the character of Scarlett O'Hara - it was not. The hard part was reading all the history. 

Yes, you read that right. GWTW is filled with history.

Margaret Mitchell, the book's author, had been a newspaper reporter, and she spent years researching the history of the Civil War, or as southerners would have called it in her day The War Between the States. (That's what my mother was taught to call it, as a child.) Mitchell started writing the book in the late 1920's and didn't finish it until the mid 1930's. She did her research - which in those days involved musty old libraries, not 2 minute Google searches. Her accurate writing about of battles around Atlanta, Sherman's march, and most importantly how civilians fared in the south, during the war, were all accurate. There were civil war veterans still alive when Mitchell was born in 1900. The memories of Reconstruction were still fresh in the minds of many southerners in the 1920's.

Now, before you label me a delusional racist, let me make something clear: Gone With the Wind is a racist book and the movie is racist. Anyone who doesn't see that lives in a fantasy world. I cannot blame African Americans for hating the book because it depicts them very negatively. I won't even try to defend GWTW from charges of racism. However, I will say this. We are all products of our upbringing, and Mitchell's upbringing is where she got her attitudes, which are, from our perspective undeniably racist.

However, in her defense, Mitchell was not entirely racist, by the standards of her day. She was very upset that black cast members of the film were not invited to the 1939 premier, which was held in Atlanta. She developed a friendship with actress Hattie McDaniel and wrote many letters to her. Most importantly, she underwrote the cost of many scholarships to Morehouse College so black students could become doctors, at a time when public knowledge of that would have caused a furor. [See Dear Mammy, for more] The University of Georgia [my alma mater] possesses a collection of letters which bear out these facts.

"She was a white woman who had written a powerful novel embracing the antebellum South, its plantations and slavery. He [Dr. Benjamin Mays] was a black man who stood at the helm of a prestigious college that taught African-American men to succeed in spite of the past. But in 1942, when Benjamin Mays needed money to help poor students at financially struggling Morehouse College, he went to Margaret Mitchell. Over the next seven years, the author of "Gone With the Wind" paid the tuition of dozens of young black men to go on to medical school in Washington and Tennessee." (from Of race and a southern novel, Chicago Tribune, March 31, 2002)

So Margaret Mitchell was not 100% racist, and I feel that she should be judged by the standards of the time in which she lived, if she is to be judged fairly. I mean let's be fair - Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and yet was a slaveowner. History is full of great people whose lives are not exemplary by our standards today, but I think it's unfair to hold everyone in the past accountable by those standards. We cannot imagine what it's like to live in any time but our own.

Now, as to how GWTW intersects with my life...

When the film premiered in 1939, here in Atlanta, my grandparents went to the ball. My mother remembers going to the parade on Peachtree Street, even though she was a small child. Papaw knew somebody who had an office on the second floor of a building adjacent to the Loew's Grand, and she recalls: "We got to sit and look out the window and see the parade."

The book was considered "naughty" but my grandparents all read it and quoted it. It was slightly shocking the word "Damn" was in a book! Even Papa, who was very conservative and straitlaced, read the book, even to the point of ignoring his children while he read. Mamaw would laugh and say "He's not paying attention because he's gone with the wind!"

Mother: "When I was growing up everybody had read the book. Everybody I knew read the book. I used it for book reports all the way through high school and college. I had memorized the number of pages and the publisher. I could sit down and scribble out a book report in about two minutes flat."

"It was not considered a love story, a trashy book. It was considered a serious book. My daddy read it. I'm sure your daddy read it. Of their contemporaries, I'm sure everybody read it."

My grandmother Cordelia was awake late one night reading the book when a pedestrian was struck and killed on the street near their house. She was so enthralled by the book, she told the police she just hadn't heard anything, and could not be of any help to them.

I visited the Margaret Mitchell House and toured it around 2000 when I was working in an office just down the street, and it's a fascinating sight, this tiny brick house amidst the towering buildings in midtown Atlanta. I went to an event a couple of years later where family members of the Atlanta Crackers were recognized and author Tim Darnell spoke. His book, The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball is a terrific read. (My grandfather was on the Crackers team in 1919 and again in 1932, as you can see here.)

When I was in my late teens I began to wonder about Margaret Mitchell, the woman behind the book. I read biographies of her. I began to see that an author will often use things from their own life even when they are writing novels. A few years ago PBS did a terrific American Masters program about Mitchell, Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel, and I think you can see the whole thing on the PBS website. It's very well done.

During World War II, Mitchell pitched in and helped with the war effort here in Atlanta. One of my great aunts remembered chatting with "Mrs. Marsh" many times, at bandage rolling events.

Margaret Mitchell was hit by a car and killed right outside the Atlanta Women's Club, where my grandmother was a member. My mother went there many times as a child, and learned to swim in their pool.

Mitchell's grave in Oakland cemetery

 

I remember as a child first reading the book that I loved and admired the character of Scarlet, because she got to wear fancy dresses and go to parties and Rhett loved her. After I had matured a bit, I realized that Scarlett really isn't all that admirable because she lies and schemes to get her way, not caring who she hurts, and she's a rotten mother. What intrigues us about her though is that she is a survivor. She goes through terrible things and she struggles mightily and she endures. I think that's why she will always be a classic character.

Taylor says the letters—many of them excerpted in Young’s documentary—provide insight into the author’s evolution from a spoiled, self-indulgent child of privilege into a driven visionary who accurately predicted Atlanta’s future as a black metropolis and quietly but fiercely fought racial inequities in education and healthcare. - See more at: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/civilrights/friendship-margaret-mitchell-benjamin-mays/#sthash.EGv6LEPp.dpuf

Taylor says the letters—many of them excerpted in Young’s documentary—provide insight into the author’s evolution from a spoiled, self-indulgent child of privilege into a driven visionary who accurately predicted Atlanta’s future as a black metropolis and quietly but fiercely fought racial inequities in education and healthcare. - See more at: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/civilrights/friendship-margaret-mitchell-benjamin-mays/#sthash.EGv6LEPp.dpuf

Taylor says the letters—many of them excerpted in Young’s documentary—provide insight into the author’s evolution from a spoiled, self-indulgent child of privilege into a driven visionary who accurately predicted Atlanta’s future as a black metropolis and quietly but fiercely fought racial inequities in education and healthcare. - See more at: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/civilrights/friendship-margaret-mitchell-benjamin-mays/#sthash.EGv6LEPp.dpuf

Taylor says the letters—many of them excerpted in Young’s documentary—provide insight into the author’s evolution from a spoiled, self-indulgent child of privilege into a driven visionary who accurately predicted Atlanta’s future as a black metropolis and quietly but fiercely fought racial inequities in education and healthcare. - See more at: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/civilrights/friendship-margaret-mitchell-benjamin-mays/#sthash.EGv6LEPp.dpuf

Unlike the North, the south was much more affected by the Civil War. It was everywhere - homes looted, families torn apart, homes burned to the ground. It was personal and real to civilians, not just soldiers. I think a lot of southerners feel a great affinity for the book because it talks about how the Civil War changed all of our lives, forever. I remember Mother telling me when I was a teenager that one reason to be proud of our heritage is that we survived. Despite poverty and devastation and hard struggles after the war, our family survived and eventually we flourished - on both sides of my family.

As a child, we took a lot of trips and my father took us to every Civil War battlefield. He told us the stories of those battles, because he was an avid student of history, particularly the civil war. The battle details were usually rather boring to me but watching how animated my dad was in telling us those stories left a big impression on me. History was not just something dry and boring, in my house, it was something to feel passionate about.

Finally, I remember sitting in a big chair in the living room of my house reading the book and feeling like I was living inside that book. Margaret Mitchell brought that time and place alive in a way that was incredibly vivid and passionate, and despite it's flaws, Gone With the Wind is a classic American novel and it deserves to continue to be read and studied.

Hopes and Prayers for Our Girls

Yesterday my father would have turned 85 years old. I didn't really remember it was his birthday until later in the day, to be honest. I had watched the Dawgs defeat Auburn, which Dad would have loved. We ate Mexican food from Eduardo's for dinner, which Dad would have tolerated.

The weather was chilly but clear, and I walked Lola several times. Dad always loved getting outside on a pretty day. He loved dogs.

The one thing that would have puzzled him is why I couldn't call my daughter and wish her a happy Gotcha Day.

In 2004 when I appeared in a Russian courtroom for my daughter's adoption hearing, I was very happy that it was my father's birthday. I thought that was a good omen.

Above, the two of us outside the courthouse in Russia on adoption day, November 14, 2004.

My journey to adopt my daughter was long and arduous, as I've documented in my book Adopting Alesia. Just finding the money to adopt her and then overcoming so many obstacles along the way -- the orphanage director who didn't like Americans, the adoption agency who kept telling me to adopt another child, the many naysayers among my friends and family who told me I was crazy -- that was a journey of faith and a very tough road. I really thought once I got her home, and Alesia learned English, and learned what it was like to live in a family, that everything would be fine. It never occurred to me that the process of acclimating her to a new country, new family, and new life would be so incredibly difficult.

I had Alesia here at home with me from December 2004 until June 2011, and then she left, at my request. She was going through a time of pushing the boundaries as hard as possible, experimenting with every drug and drink out there, and determined to do exactly as she pleased and to hell with the consequences. I didn't know what to do any more. All I knew was that I had to keep Mother and Michael safe.

What made the ordeal worse was that I simply couldn't talk to her. I couldn't reason with her. I tried. My friends Bronwyn and Leslie -- both very wise ladies who knew and loved Alesia -- tried, and failed. I took her back to the therapist, and she advised me to lock Alesia in her room at night so that she couldn't escape. [Alesia had been climbing out the window every night for months, to go out partying all night.]

The very simple concept of cause and effect was incomprehensible to my daughter. For example, IF you shoplift, you will be arrested. IF you take too many drugs you will overdose. [two terrible experiences I never wished for her]

In the 4.5 years since she's been gone, I have read a lot and commiserated with a lot of other moms of girls adopted from Russia and other countries. We've all had to deal with a very sad reality: most of our girls will bolt once they are 18, and they will seek out love in a lot of scary and dangerous ways. My friend Cindy [adoptive mom to more than a dozen girls] has watched many of her girls seek out their birthmoms and then learn that those women are still incapable of parenting because drugs and alcohol are still more attractive to them than being a good example to their children. Cindy has a number of grandbabies born to these girls who think having a baby will bring them love, not realizing they are facing a huge burden, not a cure for loneliness.

I have a friend whose daughter is 19 years old and who is pregnant and still drinking. So she will likely have a child with the same type of brain damage. Thus the sad cycle continues.

For most of our adopted girls, the early trauma suffered with birthmoms or in orphanages pales in comparison to the burden of trying to function in a world where their brains simply cannot really comprehend cause and effect thinking, and they have huge issues with memory. Fetal alcohol exposure causes, among other things, what's called "swiss cheese memory." You tell a girl something one day and she has forgotten it by the next day. It's very difficult for facts and ideas to stay put in a brain that doesn't function properly. Therefore just finishing high school is very difficult. Remembering to use birth control is difficult. Remembering that drugs are bad for you is difficult.

Perhaps worst of all, most of these girls and young women refuse to believe their brains don't work properly. Simple tasks of daily life will always be a challenge, therefore they will need help all their lives. If they do not find a life partner who is really devoted and good, that makes everything much more difficult.

It breaks my heart.

However, my daughter is now 24 years old, and when I spoke to her last summer I detected some new maturity and intelligence. She doesn't call me often and I don't have any way to call her, but I still hold out hope. I pray for her every day -- and for all the adopted girls of all my friends. None of them asked for their lives to be so challenging, but it's the reality.

Please continue to pray for all these girls and young women. Miracles happen every.single.day.