Update on Spring 2008

The leaves on the big hickory out the window are starting to come out. They were still in their buds this morning, but now they're partially out. The trees were smart enough to wait out that last snow.

Stories on a Road - Summary


And thus endeth the tale.

Water Update

A few thoughts on the latest water shennanigans here.

Stories on a Road - Dirt Road No More


Most times I walked home from school, I took a route that cut through some woods on a trail, went across a small field, and then down a short dirt road. That dirt road ended up here. Eventually that road and field were sold as part of a larger infill development. One house was built directly over part of the old roadbed. They filled in some extra dirt, because the original bed cut through the hill. The daylight exit from this house's basement is at the original road level, as the red drawing is meant to show.

I walked down that dirt road so many times that I had a pattern worked out of how to go when it was raining (or had rained recently), so that I had to jump the least number of mudholes (of which there were many).

Stories on a Road - Intermission

When I was a kid, I knew a few people who still got milk from the Atlanta Dairies milkman (and I think one from Mathis). Now Atlanta Dairies' end has come a littler sooner than planned.

Stories on a Road - Part Three


When the house (house complex?) above was built (during my high school years, I think), it was totally incongruous with everything else on this road (explanation of the red circle: coming below). The other infill houses came much later. This house and outbuildings sits on about two or three acres.

Before the current state of things, there was a single smallish 50s era ranch house. The lot was encased in a six foot high chain link fence, and two big loud dogs roamed within. On the times that I walked home past that house (rather than going through the woods), I stuck to the other side of the road. Otherwise you'd practically go deaf from the dogs barking in your ear and following you from behind the fence. When I rode my bike, they'd keep at it in the mornings as I slowly pedaled uphill (it isn't a steep hill, but I was 8 and on a BMX-style bike).

There's a little bit of a "secret" here, though. When they built this house, they didn't tear down the old one. They moved it diagonally to the right and rear of where they built the main house. Then they added on a second floor (and new siding) to the old house, and it became the guest house. That's what is circled above. Note that, to the right of that, there's also a separate storage garage with a loft/attic above it.

Stories on a Road - Part Two


Take a look at the first photo in Part One. For many years, there was a "Slippery When Wet" sign to the left of the view, right about where that crepe myrtle is now (it faced traffic coming the other way). In high school a friend of mine (also my senior prom date) found out the hard way that the sign wasn't lying. She was driving down the road in the direction of this view. She hydroplaned and went off the road to the left. She just missed the stand of pines to the left of the photo in Part One.

The blue line in the photo above roughly traces her skid across that lawn. That big stucco-brick house didn't exist back then, nor the little hill it sits on (nor the house you can see over the fence in back of it). There was just the 50's era house to the left (the edge can be seen in the above photo on the left side) and then the older white house featured below (which is to the right of this view. There was a chain link fence which followed the right side of the driveway above (you can barely see the driveway in this photo). The horizontal red line shows roughly where the fence was. Beyond the fence was a small field. My friend skidded all the way to that fence, where her car stopped. Back then there was a huge oak tree in this lawn (schematic "art" above), and she just missed it. All in all she was totally uninjured; very lucky, given many others who weren't.

Stories on a Road - Part One


I'm trying something this week which may be sleep-inducing, but may also bring back a memory or two for a few readers with inside knowledge. We'll see. I thought I'd reminisce about a 250 yard stretch of road that has changed greatly from my childhood. Above, we have a modern-day view down this street, near where I grew up. Actually, it's on the way between the first house I lived in (ages 0-2) and the second (ages 2-18). Those two houses are really about 200 yards apart, as the crow flies, but you had to go out of the way a little bit, and go down this road, to get between them without fence-jumping.

Below is one of my favorite little old neighborhood houses, which I've featured before.


It's still hanging in there, unoccupied but maintained. It sits on a very valuable acre of land now, but the owners haven't sold it out. I don't know if it is being maintained until some patriarch or matriarch passes on, or if the owners just can't stand to see it go any more than I can.

It is little chainged from when I was a kid, except that about half an acre used to be cultivated (including part of the area in the foreground below, but mainly a field to the left of the visible field of view).


I used to ride my bike home this way from elementary school (or sometimes walk, but mainly when I walked I cut through some woods and a different field). When I coasted past this house, I started to feel like I was officially close to home.

Tomorrow: the spin out.

Scrip for Teachers

Time for another interesting passage from Living Atlanta : An Oral History of the City, 1914-1948:

Teachers received additional salary cuts in 1933 and 1934. Then things got even worse. "We reached the point," remembers Witherspoon, "that the schools could not give the teachers any kind of a check. We were paid with scrip. Now, scrip is only a promissory note. It says, if we ever get the money, we will pay - if. You couldn't take it to the bank and get a penny."

Like other municipal workers, teachers had a hard time getting scrip cached by local merchants without a markup. "Most of the stores, they wanted a percentage for it, for cashing that scrip," states E. T. Lewis. There was, however, one notable exception, Rich's department store. "Rich's did come through, " recalls Louis Geffen. "They agreed to accept the scrip for cash. Had not Rich's come forth and done this, I don't know what would have happened because these people would have been unable to pay their rent. They couldn't buy groceries, they couldn't buy clothing, and just absolutely all the necessities of life would not have been available to them."

I think in Austin, around 2001-2002, someone should have come up with a system of scrip for insolvent tech companies. Speaking of Rich's, I've never taken Bethany on the Pink Pig at Christmas-time. Doesn't seem to be worth waiting in line since it's not on a roof with a view anymore.