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We would occasionally go into the main house(mansion). They had a $.10 slot machine in the game room, and we would save out dimes for the Sunday visits.
I have a couple of stories on CUPS and the part they play in the southern culture.
Red Solo cups are a part of the life in the south. In fact, a friend of mine firmly believes that any true southern boy came from the womb with a red Solo cup in his hand. There is a country song called Red Solo Cup by Toby Keith to get the lyrics from his song, Google it. Solos are used for many things:
1. For your beverage of choice but it mostly involved alcoholic beverages.
2. For a spit cup if you used chewing tobacco, snuff or whatever you chose.
3. An emergency cup when no bathroom was close and you can’t pull over and run over behind a tree.
4. Doris and some of her friends from the Baptist church took me to dinner on a visit to Midland. It was a Mexican restaurant and we all ordered margaritas. They explained to the waiter that I was from out of town and would have a standard margarita. When the drinks came out, everyone received a coffee cup but me I got a normal glass. I said what the hell is going on and they explained that they did not want a church member to come in and see them drinking alcohol, so the margaritas were served in coffee cups. It’s a Baptist thing.
I am going to spend a little ink on Augusta, Ga. I think you will be surprised at how much this small southern town has played a part in these last 80 years and before. I grew up there and it will be mentioned throughout this treatment of the decades, along with some stories and information on how a fairly typical white southern boy progressed through life as we experienced the greatest age of innovation in the history of man from 1940 to 2020. From a white prospective, I was not privileged, in fact just the opposite. I realize everything is relative and that my black brothers had it much worse than I can imagine.
Augusta was a major industrial center during the Civil War and the reconstruction period after the war. Augusta was spared by Sherman as he marched through Georgia burning and destroying the infrastructure crippling the confederacy. They literally heated the rail on the train tracts and wrapped them around trees. The Augusta arsenal was a major supplier to the southern army yet was spared a visit by the union army. The story goes that Sherman had a lady friend in Augusta and she talked him out of burning it down. He also spared Savannah since they put up no resistance and welcomed him to the city and as he said, it was a beautiful city. He supposedly also had a lady friend in Savannah. That boy got around. Anyone who doubts me that women control everything. I can use this to prove my theory.
The Augusta Canal was constructed in 1845 to provide power to Augusta industry and later to provide power and transportation to the major cotton mills there. The canal was dug and constructed with imported labor from China. Many of whom stayed in Augusta after completion. As a result, Augusta still has large population of Chinese descendants. Paulene Woo was the valedictorian of my high school class and Madison Woo was a county commissioner and civic leader.
Things about Augusta:
1. Home of the Masters Golf tournament
2. Building the H-bomb at the Savannah River Plant
3. Vacation home to President Eisenhower
4. Home to James Brown. Augusta has a life-sized stature of James and a unique Cam feature. Take a phone photo with James and text it to a number and you will get a text of your picture within a few minutes. Other Augusta natives are Brenda Lee, Jessye Norman (look her up), Hulk Hogan and Laurence Fishburne.
5. Augusta University on the old Confederate arsenal grounds.
6. Home of The University of Georgia Medical School.
I’m not going to spend time on the dress codes of each decade because whatever was in the 50s will show up in a future decade and what was “cool” in Augusta, Ga was not cool in New York City. I got a good taste of this when my Great Aunt (my grandma’s sister) had me visit her in NYC for a summer when I was 13 years old. When I arrived, I was the “hick from the sticks”. When I left the hottest chick in the neighborhood and I were kissing, hugging and grab assing. I had never kissed a girl before then, so they were way ahead of me in that regard. I did the best I could to catch up after that.
I spent time in NYC after college and will relate that experience in the 60s decade coming up next. I will say that NYC girls/ladies like the slow talking, southern smooth, high-octane boys from the south
As president, we went from Harry S. Truman to “I LIKE IKE,” Dwight David Eisenhower in 1952. Once again Augusta steps into the middle of it. President Eisenhower made Augusta his “vacation White House” due to his obsession with the game of golf. In fact, in 1956 the US adopted the national motto, “In God We Trust”. There were rumors that Eisenhower wanted it to be “In Golf We Trust”. By the way, Richard Nixon was Vice-President. There is a side story on Truman. In fact, there is a book published recently (Deadline 1945) that does a good job of outlining what actually happened prior to dropping the bombs on Japan. The project was so secret that Truman did not know it existed when he took office after Roosevelt died.