Getting From Lubbock to Marietta ... When we left Lubbock, it was at the end of the school year (unlike the move from Santa Fe to Lubbock, which was in the middle of a school year!), so we had time to take a leisurely route south to the Gulf of Mexico and along the coast from Texas to Georgia. The route we took was approximately Lubbock to Dallas/Ft.Worth to Houston/Galveston to New Orleans to Mobile to Montgomery to Atlanta and finally to rural Marietta -- about a 1500-mile trip, which was a lot of miles for our little old 1937 Chevy, which by then was going on 15 years old. As we pulled into one station in a backwoods sort of place somewhere in Louisiana, the very laid-back Negro station attendant said to us, "Lawsy me -- a little old car just looking for some more miles ..." We probably looked like Okies going in the wrong direction, with Jimmy having lashed a bunch of stuff on top of the car (as usual!) and our pulling a little trailer behind the car with enough of our belongings to get a fresh start in Marietta. Because Jimmy had a job lined up with Lockheed, they had paid for the few household goods we had acquired in Lubbock to be shipped to Marietta, so the piano got a free ride in a Bekins moving van, along with whatever furniture we had acquired in Lubbock after our fire sale when we left Santa Fe (only about 9 months earlier -- whoa, fast times back then!)
Dallas / Fort Worth ... Driving from Lubbock to Atlanta back in 1951 was quite a different experience than it is today. For one thing, the Interstate Freeway system didn't exist yet -- heck, Eisenhower hadn't even become president yet, and he didn't sign it into existence until 1956 -- 5 years after we started out. That meant it was two-lane roads almost the whole way with our little old '37 Chevy barely having enough power to pass anything else on the road. (Tedi wouldn't let Jimmy drive over 40 mph anyway, so that wasn't often a problem!). After passing through such noted destinations as Sweetwater and Abilene, our first stop of any significance was in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, which back then consisted of two completely different cities, not the slurb it is now. Our reason for even passing through it had to do with the fact that it was the home of two stores of note in Tedi's eyes -- "The Fair" at Seventh and Throckmorton in Fort Worth, and Neiman-Marcus, a store of almost mythical proportions in Tedi's eyes, as she had heard about its fashion-leading role and big display windows ever since she had been working back in Hollywood. All I can remember now is standing on a wind-swept, almost abandoned Dallas street (it was a Sunday afternoon) with trash being blown all over the place while Tedi went from window to window at Neiman-Marcus looking at the sophisticated (woo-hoo!) New-York-style displays of women's clothing. After a few long minutes she shrugged her shoulders, waved her hand (Jimmy rolled his eyes -- just a bit!), and we climbed back in our little ole car and continued our journey ...
The Gulf Coast ... None of us had ever been to the Gulf Coast before, so it was a bit of a treat to hit what looked like open ocean after we had passed through Houston and were approaching Galveston. Galveston is some 50 miles south of Houston (a good drive for us) at the end of a long sort of spit that runs parallel to the coast. We hadn't seen any ocean since we'd left Los Angeles, and we suddenly felt very much at home. As I recall though, there was no way to keep going along the coast, and so we had to swing back up just south of Houston to continue our way eastwards -- thereby losing what turned out to be one of only a couple views of the Gulf for the whole trip! Major bummer! The road from New Orleans to Mobile does run roughly along the coast, but I recall it as being more like driving through a continuous swamp with all sorts of humming and buzzing critters in the air (an occasional snake or baby croc splayed across the road after having been run over by a car) and being very hot and humid -- your basic Southern weather!
New Orleans ... After a day or so of sloping through such scenic highlights as Beaumont, Lake Charles, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge (all of them at least 10 miles inland, to our great disappointment) we landed in the fabled city of New Orleans! As I recall, Tedi and Jimmy had carefully scheduled things so we would arrive in the city fairly early in the morning, have a few hours to look around, then skedaddle out of town to a place where lodgings were a good bit cheaper. I can remember walking around the French Quarter and looking at all the wrought-iron grillwork on the doors and windows (something which I don't think any of us had never seen before). There was also a lot of water nearby, which (looking at a map now) I realize must have been the Mississippi River. The really big deal though was that we went into a restaurant in the French Quarter for lunch (probably either early or late to avoid the peak menu prices!) and had a meal at a table with a white linen tablecloth and starched white napkins, along with large-bowled wine glasses which were promptly whisked away before Kim and I had a chance to pick them up and probably break them! We had some kind of fish served in a very fancy manner, and for dessert Tedi picked out what was for them a fabled New Orleans dish -- Baked Alaska with (just a tiny bit!) of brandy poured over it and set aflame and, of course, with one piece split among the four of us! Kim and I had never heard of Baked Alaska before, of course, but I do remember it as being mighty tasty and sweet. Some years later, around 1970, Kathy and I went back through New Orleans and, in memory of that long-ago passage through the deep South, treated each of ourselves to a large (individual!) serving of Baked Alaska, this time complete with the full course of flaming brandy! (From Google -- Baked Alaska is ice cream placed in a pie dish lined with slices of sponge cake topped with meringue, then placed in an extremely hot oven for a brief time, long enough to firm and caramelize the meringue.)
Mobile ... Once having left New Orleans, our next destination of interest was the little town of Mobile, Alabama. Tedi's mother (the "Grandma" we knew so well from our 10 years in Los Angeles) had been born around 1870 in Whistler, a little hamlet outside Mobile, and Tedi had somehow managed to keep in contact with a family member named Florence (probably a cousin) and her teenage son David who lived in Mobile. We drove up and down several streets looking for their house, and I can still remember the masses of Spanish moss hanging from the drooping limbs of trees along the streets (along with the oppressive heat and humidity). Florence lived in a little house on just such a street, worked as a secretary of some sort, and was very neat and reserved. She was very cordial, and we had a very pleasant visit with them for about an hour, after which we continued on our way! I think Tedi kept in touch with her for a number of years afterward by exchanging Christmas cards, but I don't believe they actually ever saw each other again. Grandma was still alive at the time and had almost certainly engineered the visit, but Tedi's (possibly notorious!) reputation as a designer for the Hollywood studios had probably preceded her and undoubtedly left Florence in a bit of a tizzy as to how to receive her!
Marietta ... Once we left Mobile, there were no other destinations of note (to us!) lying between ourselves and the gates of fabled Marietta, Georgia -- our hoped-for salvation in the way of a job for Jimmy (and perhaps Tedi, as well!). We quickly bypassed both Montgomery and Atlanta and arrived in Marietta one afternoon in early summer and immediately encountered the "four-lane" -- Highway 41 (Marietta's claim to fame, as it lay smack on a major North-South route between Atlanta and Chattanooga, known to us at that time only as a name in the song "Chattanoooga Choo-Choo" -- a Glenn Miller hit from the early 1940s movie "Sun Valley Serenade"). There was actually a town of Marietta a mile or two to the West of the four-lane, but it was several weeks (months!) before we really became aware of its existence. We moved into a motel (not an upscale Howard Johnson's, but right next to one!) on the four-lane for about a week waiting for our furniture to arrive from Lubbock, and, before the familiar Bekins truck showed up, Tedi and Jimmy found a rather nice little house somewhat out in the country on a hard-packed road called Barnes Mill Road -- referred to by the locals as 'Barn Smell Road' because it also served as the road to the county dump, and large garbage trucks passed back and forth along the road at rather closely spaced intervals throughout the day. The house was actually almost a brand new one, with a huge corn field on one side, deep woods directly behind it, a large set of chicken enclosures on the other side, and a Negro cemetery directly across the street. For kids such as ourselves it was quite a fascinating place, although perhaps not the cultural center of greater Marietta! Despite the fact that the house was brand spanking new, it had probably been for rent for quite some time due to the challenging nature of its location!
Barnes Mill Road ... All of the houses surrounding us (perhaps half a dozen) were occupied by members of the same large extended family, presided over by the owner, not only of our house, but also of the corn field, the wooded area, and the large set of chicken enclosures (once called 'hen houses'). These enclosures were kept lighted and warm around the clock and contained hundreds, if not thousands, of birds in various stages of growth. Mr. Bankston, the patriarch of this operation, was a generously proportioned man in his sixties who always wore an expansive pair of denim bib overalls ("Big Boys" size) and almost always stood or walked with his hands looped through the straps of his bib while chewing on a long stem of straw -- a classic Southern chicken farmer. Mr. Barnes was a man of few words, but would fix us young'uns with a steely gaze that let us know he was 'da man' and not to be trifled with -- a pose which strikes fear into me, even unto this day. The half dozen or so very modest structures clustered on the property housed various members of his family, including a randy collection of ne'er-do-well children and their similarly disposed mates -- a real country scene!
Because we had arrived early in the summer, we weren't able to make the usual connections one makes with other kids by hooking up through school, and we were pretty much on our own socially for the duration of the summer. There was one other kid almost next door, a lad by the name of Harold Hitt (many names in Marietta rang an uncertain bell, and Harold's was no exception!). Harold was related in some unspecified way to Mr. Barnes, perhaps a grandchild or nephew, perhaps something even more peripheral -- we never found out! Harold was always a little uncertain in his manner, deflecting many of our questions with a simple shrug which didn't necessarily imply he didn't know, perhaps more that it wasn't a question he felt comfortable answering. And, given the odd mix of Southern types surrounding us, such an answer was easy to understand. One of the little houses on Mr. Barnes' property was home to a relative -- an undefined half of a couple in their mid-40s who had a daughter in her late teens who was married to a lad of about the same age, all of whom lived in one small two-bedroom house and all of whom enjoyed drinking beer directly out of the can, frequently resulting in rather loud disagreements -- all of which was shielded from general view by their hanging sheets on their clothesline to block the view of the house (l-oo-vely!). Across the street lived another son and his wife, and the wife would regularly appear in the front yard at about 5 pm in the afternoon and behead a chicken -- not always with the greatest of accuracy as the chicken would frequently end up running around the yard with its head only partially cut off! Harold would occasionally give us a tour of one of the chicken enclosures -- always a rather startling experience, what with the 24-hour non-stop bright lights and the continual movement of the mass of chickens both on the floor, at the feeding troughs, and in their nests -- the sort of things one can undoubtedly become accustomed to with time, but which is more than vaguely unsettling at first encounter. There was a little bit of the element of a horror show involved, similar to what one might experience in Iowa's thousand-animal 'hog confinements.'
Harold also initiated us into the wonders of the garbage dump at the end of Barnes Mill Road, including the large group of very meaty hogs that schnouzed continually through the garbage looking for the choicest morsels. He also pointed out the area where any junk having some possible value was dumped -- metal, wood, electrical, porcelain, etc. We were rarely able to take advantage of any of this potential trove, but it was fun picking through it anyway. The Negro cemetery directly across the street from our house was another venue of interest, and we would frequently arm ourselves with corn-stalk swords from the field next door and stage fights in the little cemetery, running around amongst the tombstones, many of which had been there for decades and which were in an uncertain state of repair. Once, as we were engaging in this activity, a funeral procession drove up and there was bit of a kerfuffle when the mourners saw that we were playing in amongst their tombstones -- a very bad scene, but the kind which we seemed to stumble into now and then with our very unsupervised activities (again, not fair to point fingers, as our parents were very engaged in the simple exercise of trying to earn a living).
We eventually came to make the acquaintance of another brother-sister pair down the street, much closer to the "four-lane" -- Billy and Margie Clackum. Billy and Margie were very much country types, but both very likeable, and we ended up getting to know them quite well. They even held a little neighborhood "social" party for some of the local kids to which we were invited one evening, exposing us to an even wider cross-section of our Southern neighbors. One afternoon when I was over there, Billy went into his bedroom and emerged with a double-barreled, break-action shotgun carried open over his belly and said to me, "Let's go hunting!" By that time in my life (age about 12-13) I had already been exposed to a number of situations, but hunting was not one of them! Nevertheless, into the forest we marched looking for deer, or, lacking that, simply a possum or squirrel to blast away at! I watched Billy squeeze off a deafening round or two in a very controlled manner, then he turned to me, proferring me the shotgun and saying, "Here, it's your turn!" Facing an existential crisis, I had to admit I didn't know the first thing about guns, something that Billy for a minute simply couldn't believe! He quickly set about to remedy that matter by setting me up with the gun barrel resting in the crook of a tree, warning me about the recoil (which can easily break your shoulder), and pointing out a squirrel sitting well up in the branches of a tree perhaps some 30 yards away. After a great deal of anxiety and heavy breathing, I squeezed the trigger and was instantly deafened by the roar out of one of the barrels of the shotgun. The squirrel, who was never in any form of mortal danger, scampered down from the tree while I picked myself and the gun up off the ground and handed it back to Billy. He never pressed me again to join him on a hunting outing, perhaps more out of concern for his shotgun than for me! Nevertheless we remained good friends as long as we lived on Barnes Mill Road, just not hunting buddies ...
The early Fifties were a time when many people simply burned their trash in the back yard (even in Los Angeles we had a incinerator in the back yards of our various houses, something that was probably a major contributor to the heavy air pollution of that era). Even though there was a city dump on Barnes Mill Road, the trucks didn't actually service a rural area such as ours (only "downtown" Marietta), and so we both burned our trash and buried our garbage in the large area behind the house and in front of the wooded area a hundred yards or so further back. This was a task "which fell to the young'uns" -- namely Kim and myself, and after a while we actually got to rather enjoy it (I really should let Kim speak for herself on this one!). Nevertheless, digging holes and making fires is something any kid can really get into. In addition, by the time we got around to doing it in the evening, it was frequently twilight, with the stars coming out, fireflies beginning to light things up, and the growing cacaphony of cicada and other winged bugs warming up for their evening courting activities. Even though we were still just dumb kids, we began to enjoy going out after dinner and "doing our chores."
As per usual in every house we moved into, there were modifications to be made (even though this particular house was essentially brand new!). The two main mods that Tedi always wanted (besides painting all the walls and sanding all the floors!) involved providing shelving and electrical outlets. Since I was supposed to be studying electrical stuff, Jimmy decided I should learn how to add new outlets to existing wiring, something that involved going up in the attic and cutting into existing wiring in order to splice in wires to run to the additional outlets. Somewhere he had read that you can actually wire into a "hot circuit" by stripping only one of the two wires in a cable at a time, the idea being that to get a shock you have to be touching both wires (and the advantage being that you can have all the lights on while you are working). He showed me how to do this, and it seemed very logical! The only problem is that the work is very monotonous, and it's very easy to let your attention drift. This is exactly what happened one evening when I was up in the attic wiring away while he was sitting downstairs reading. I cut into the second wire while still holding the first one (I was almost dozing) and next thing I knew I was holding onto a pair of hot wires. When that happens to someone, they are powerless to react -- current is coarsing through your body at an uncontrolled rate, and all you can do is let out a continuous involuntary scream -- which is exactly what happened! Jimmy came bounding up the ladder and fortunately was quick-witted enough not to grab ahold of me, but to knock me away from the wires, otherwise he might have been caught in the same circuit and similarly fried. I was shaking almost uncontrollably for several minutes, but gradually got ahold of myself. It was a very frightening experience, perhaps even more so for Jimmy than for me -- if I had died, a real possibility, he would have been totally responsible. I have never tried to wire a hot circuit again, and I doubt seriously if he ever tried to again either!
Elizabeth School ... Eventually, the Fall school term of 1951 arrived, and we headed off to the local country school -- a place called Elizabeth School, which was a good half hour's ride away via a big yellow Blue Bird school bus. After a long, lonely summer of knowing hardly anyone (except for the one or two local Barn Smellers!), it felt good to return to some semblance of civilization, even if it was in rural Cobb County. The school was just on the edge of the actual town of Marietta, but it was truly a country school -- just a stone's throw away from Kennesaw Mountain, a local Civil War battle ground much revered by local Yankee-haters. The school had a big brick building which housed grades 1 to 6, along with a little wooden add-on that housed grades 7 and 8, of which we were now in Grade 7. Our room was equipped with an oil drum rigged to serve as a coal-burning stove, and it got red-hot within about a 3-foot radius, but then cooled off exponentially to the point that the seats by the walls were downright cold in the winter time, and everyone had to dress very warmly. It was a typical rural school in that the girls dressed nicely and were very sweet and giggly, while the boys were a fairly roughshod lot, many of whom worked after school at various odds and ends of jobs. Our teacher, one Mr. McDowell, was a young man fairly fresh out of "State Teachers' College" and functioned as a country preacher on weekends. He always liked to start the day off with an appropriate selection of Bible readings, followed by a heartfelt prayer. One morning he began with a selection from the book of Genesis 22:3, which reads, "And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass ..." which essentially put an end to the morning's religious activities as the boys in the class howled with raucous laughter, while the girls turned quite red with embarrassment (and with just the faintest titter!). Once the "morning prayer" was over, we settled down to the lessons of the day. I'll never forget how, each time Mr. McDowell turned to the blackboard to write out a sentence or two, the air would be filled with missiles of all sorts launched by rubber bands or even more advanced artillery. More than once I felt a spray of wet ink as such a projectle whizzed by my cheek before landing with a splat on the wall a foot or so away from my head, leaving a very visible blot of black or blue ink on the wall. It wasn't long before I myself mastered the intricacies of such matters and began to gleefully participate in the all-out warfare being waged behind Mr. McDowell's back. Such were the ways of a country school in rural Georgia ...
One of the principal activities at Elizabeth School was the FFA (Future Farmers of America) along with the FTA (Future Teachers of America), both organizations which have flourished perhaps a bit more in the countrysides of America in the early 1950s than in its more urban settings. The first school-wide assembly we attended was essentially a presentation of the projected FFA activities for the coming year, and we were sent home to ask Jimmy and Tedi whether we should get a cow or a pig or a sheep or a goat to raise for the coming year. These suggestions were met, perhaps somewhat understandably, with expressions both of surprise and confusion as to how to react to these seemingly very reasonable suggestions for integrating ourselves into the local community. A considerable amount of hand-waving followed, but the eventual answer was, of course, an emphatic "None of the above!" Perhaps a summer of exposure to Mr. Barnes, our landlord, along with his chickens and his extended family had hardened our (normally liberal and accepting) parents into rather rigid opponents of our participating in anything that could possibly lead to our pursuing careers in the agricultural sector. Disappointed, we returned empty-handed to inform our expectant teacher, the sainted Mr. McDowell, that we would be unable to participate in the coming year's much-anticipated activities. Whether or not this would be reflected in our 6-weekly grading results was not at all clear ... Most of our concerns were probably premature, for the very fact that we turned in homework at all placed us in a very favorable position as far as Mr. McDowell was concerned, particularly on the male side of the classroom setting. As it turned out, the year progressed rather peaceably, and in the end our lack of participation in the agricultural side of things did not present any significant obstacle to our obtaining quite satisfactory grades.
At the same time we were absorbed in our Elisabeth School doings, Jimmy was quite occupied with his new position as a Plant Planning Engineer at Lockheed, helping to convert the older B29 assembly lines into B47 lines (whatever that involved!), while Tedi had become interested in taking classes at the High Museum School of Art in Atlanta, with the idea of possibly pursuing a career in "Fine Arts", something that would involve her commuting by bus several times a week to Atlanta. Little did we know that all of this was shaping into yet another move!
Keith School (405 Lawrence Street) ... As per our normal protocol, Tedi had enrolled us in a local CS group -- again a small congregation which met in the basement of the local Marietta library (much like the CS church in Santa Fe). This led to our striking up a friendship with Tom and Susie Swain, CS kids who lived in downtown Marietta and who attended an intermediate school quite close by named Keith School. What with Tom and Susie being downtown kids (not country kids!) we felt a certain elevation in status when we hung around with them after Sunday School while Tedi was attending the following church service. In Spring of 1952, after we had attended Elizabeth School for almost an entire school year, Tedi and Jimmy announced we were going to move to 405 Lawrence Street, almost in downtown Marietta, kitty-corner across the street from where Tom and Susie lived, and an almost even 6 weeks before the end of the school year. To their credit, Tedi and Jimmy had consulted the appropriate authorities and had obtained permission for us to finish out the current school year at Elizabeth School even though our new residence would be in the Keith School District. However, since Tom and Susie attended Keith School and my enthusiasm for Elizabeth School had waned considerably over the course of the school year, I found the idea of switching to the very near-by Keith School very appealing and asked if it would be OK to change schools for the remaining 6 weeks of the year. Both my parents and the school authorities were somewhat surprised at this, but in the end they ceded and I transferred to Keith School while Kim continued to attend Elisabeth School (she probably had made more close friends than I had!). In the end this worked to my advantage because I was able to enter Marietta High School the next year knowing a fair number of people, an advantage that I had not foreseen, but which nevertheless worked out quite well. The fact that it involved changing schools for a period of only 6 weeks hardly made any difference at all to me at that point, since that mode had become almost a norm ...
Marietta High ... The transition to Marietta High also hardly represented anything new for us -- another year, another school! It actually wasn't quite as different as many of our other transitions, since all of the kids in our class were also changing schools -- from Junior High School to High School. The fact that they knew a lot of their classmates was certainly significant, but (again) by that time we hardly noticed the difference! The one thing I remember from Marietta High was that a lot of the teachers were young females (particularly Miss Arnold and Miss Stillwell!) recently out of Teachers' Colleges in various Southern states (something that may not exist throughout the US, but which was certainly typical of the South back in the 1950s!). Many of them were only a half dozen years or so older than their students, which sometimes made for an interesting social mix. When the teachers chaperoned the school dances and the older kids asked them to dance, one could hardly tell which was student and which was teacher ... We stayed at Marietta High for two years, but Tedi soon tired of her bus commute to and from Atlanta every day, and she and Jimmy soon found a house in Northwest Atlanta which was a very easy commute for both of them. Next thing we knew, Marietta High was history ...
Kittyhawk Club ... Shortly after we made the transition from Barnes Mill Road to 405 Lawrence Street, Jimmy introduced me to a friend of his from Lockheed named Bill Bothwell, who was very active as a leader in a local group known as the Kittyhawk Club. Bill was what you might call a model airplane freak and was very involved in teaching young kids such as myself how to assemble and fly model planes, mainly from kits with pre-cut pieces of balsa, but also making them from plans (using sheets of balsa wood, long stringers of the same balsa wood, and paper material for covering the wings and coating them with various sealers). During the remainder of my time in Marietta -- approximately two years (freshman and sophomore years at Marietta High) -- I became almost maniacally involved in building model airplanes -- everything from hand-launched gliders to large sail planes and on to motor-driven planes, both free-flight and U-control (flying the planes in a circle while holding a pair of wires to control the plane). I even continued doing this through my final two years of high school after we eventually moved to Atlanta, although the support structure in Atlanta was not what it was in Marietta through the Kittyhawk Club, and I eventually moved away from the activity altogether after I went off to college. It was a great shock to me when, later on during my absence from home in the Army, Tedi took my entire output of dozens of planes (which were sitting harmlessly in the attic) and donated them to the local Boys Club without even asking me (major "Ouch").