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Pat Dye – Pat was an All-American college football player at UGA and recently was named to the college football Hall of Fame. He ended his coaching career at Auburn University and the football field there is named in his honor
Jack Fisher – Pitched 11 years in the major leagues. Jack threw two pitches that are listed in a number of places including the Baseball Hall of Fame. He threw the pitch to Roger Maris that was hit for a home run to tie Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season. He pitched the last at bat to Ted Williams and served up a home run. I believe that both of these balls are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, Jack didn’t go with them.
Marshall Frady – Marshall was a journalist and author. In 1968 he published WALLACE, a biography of George Wallace which was later made into a movie. He wrote a number of other books on Martin Luther King, Billy Graham, Jesse Jackson and articles for major magazines like News week, Life, etc. When we were around- 12 years old, Marshall wrote a story and we filmed it with our 8MM camera. One funny story I read about Marshall. He walked into the restroom in the capitol and Lyndon Johnson (before his presidency) was at the urinal. Johnson wheeled around with his dick out and proclaimed, “have you ever seen anything bigger than that, I call him Jumbo”. This is not the first time I had read about Johnson’s pride in Jumbo.
Bill Baxter – Later to become Billy to go along with his occupation of being a professional gambler and prize fight manager. Bill won 7 World Series of Poker bracelets and is in the Poker Hall of Fame. Bill also sued the IRS and won a landmark decision which allowed gambling expenses and losses to be applied against winnings for tax purposes. Sports Illustrated wrote a feature article on Bill when he was in his prime.
Willy Perkins - Willy was the Road Manager for the Allman Brothers rock band and wrote a couple of books about that adventure. I once had a picture in the August Chronicle going over a hurdle. The paper called me “the ace hurdler” and I was ace to Willy from that point on.
My first experience at the Augusta National Golf Club (Masters Golf Tournament) was in High school. My high school, Academy of Richmond County was chartered in 1783. The school was chartered through a United States government land grant and is the 5th oldest high school in the U.S. Land grant schools (usually colleges) had to have a military program so three days a week we had to wear our military uniforms and perform military exercises even though we were the only public high school in our county. During Masters week schools were closed and the boys in their military uniforms would be gallery guards. During those times the fairways were not roped off so you could walk anywhere but the greens. The gallery guards would stand on the edge of the fairway and after the tee shot, we would run out and hold ropes that lay across the fairway to keep the gallery back from the players making the next shot. Notice I called it “gallery”. Today that is a no-no the gallery is now called Patrons and the gallery guards no longer exists. The fairways are now bordered by ropes the keep the patrons off of them. My next Masters experience is outlined in the 60s decade and is much more interesting since I worked in the men’s locker room in the main club house. Only golfers and members were allowed in the locker room.
My first year at Augusta Junior college, I coached a grammar school football team which paid my tuition. There were 28 schools in Richmond County and we won the championship. I was encouraged to go into coaching after college but didn’t think there was any money in it. Don’t tell Nick Saban that he will laugh all the way to the bank.
STUPID IS STUPID AS DOES
Friday afternoon classes at Augusta College are out and we are all standing around and we look at each other and in unison we say, let’s go to Savannah Beach. So, we (5 of us) pile in the car and off we go for a 3-hour trip to the beach with nothing but the clothes on our backs and butts. Load up on beer and away we go. Had a great time Friday night dancing and chasing the ladies. As my friend Neal Brook would say and he was with us on this trip, nothing greater than, “beach air, beer and pussy”. I’m pretty sure we got plenty of the first two. I don’t remember much about the third. We slept on the beach showered at the beach showers. We were ready for the day.
We get started on the breakfast of champions late morning. I have a friend who says you can drink all day and night if you get the blood/alcohol ratio at the right level and then moderate to keep the ratio right and float right along. By 3 PM we had the ratio just right.
Unfortunately, we didn’t bring any bathing suits. So Neal and I go into T. S. Chu’s fine establishment which has everything you would ever need at the beach and to take home, from bathing suits to pink flamingos for your front yard. My friend Neal tried on a bathing suit and forgot to take it off before he put his clothes back on. You should remember that our blood alcohol ratio was doing well and we were 18 years old and dumb as a box of rocks and that is insulting to the rocks. Neal is stopped at the door by the po-lease and was unable to explain why Mr. Chu’s bathing suit was under his britches. I don’t have a bathing suit under my britches so I walk out unnoticed as they load Neal in the po-lease car and escort him to the Savannah Beach jail with promises of 6 months picking up trash in his nice well-tailored orange jump suit.
Now the fun begins! I wait an hour and call the jail and discover that Neal has been booked. Isn’t that a surprise!! I tell them that Neal intended to pay for the suit. They asked for my location and I tell them next thing I am being booked in with Neal. Remember, I said DUMB.
Our friend Bridges comes by to visit and tell us what is being done to set us free. He tells the jailer he wants to see Neal Brook and Allen Clifford. The jailer says, you want to see our prisoners and Bridges say in his best southern drawl, “Nooo Sur I don’t want to see no prisoners I wanna see Neal and Allen”. The jailer almost choked on his pimento cheese sam’ich (southern for sandwich kinda like sumbitch is southern for SOB). The southern language is very efficient. For the record po-lease is southern for police
To make a 24-hour story short, our friends talked Mr. Chu into dropping charges by paying him $100 for a $10 bathing suit and we departed Savannah Beach at 7 pm Sunday night. I have never been to Savannah Beach again. To clarify for my Savanah friends, I know that Savannah Beach is actually Tybee Island.
We also had to pay the Savannah Beach po-lease department for the alterations on the orange jump suits. Just Kidding. Do the just kidding in real small letters.
To quote a Carly Simon song, “It wasn’t exactly what we had planned”. USE THE MUSIC SYMBOLS
WORLD EVENTS
October 2,1950 – “It was a dark and stormy night” for the first edition of Peanuts and 17,897 comic strips later it ended with Charles M. Schulz’s death on February 13, 2000. It continues today with reprints. Peanuts ran in 2600 newspapers in 21 different languages. Mr. Schultz earned more than $1 billion including merchandise sales.
Back to Augusta. The Bum plant final product is detonated. In 1954 a 15 megaton Hydrogen bomb 1000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan to end WW II. It vaporized three islands. Instead of calling it quits, there have been thousands of tests of nuclear weapons since the 1954 explosion. Even the scientists and military authorities were shocked by the explosion. Of course, showing how little they knew and yet were willing to continue testing.
Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign of hate, intimidation and bullying started in 1950 and ended in 1954 when the Senate voted to condemn him for his “inexcusable,” “reprehensive,” “vulgar and insulting” conduct “unbecoming a senator.”
The first live transcontential television broadcast took place and I LOVE LUCY premiered on CBS ushering in the Golden Age of Television in 1951.
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveiled the integrated circuit (the computer chip) and were awarded the Nobel prize in physics.
A group at IBM developed the FORTRAN programming language.
The Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional in 1954. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was enacted by Congress to establish voting rights. Two more steps to wiping out the scourge of racial discrimination
In 1954, the US rejected the French decision to recognize communist control of North Vietnam at the Geneva Conference. The US increases aid to South Vietnam. Think how the history of the US would have changed over the next 20 years. We would not have had Forest Gump (just kidding).
To keep things in prospective, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 382.74 in 1954. The first time since the peak level prior to the 1929 stock market crash.
He had a significant impact on our social structure when at 52 years old this son of Czech immigrants without so much as a high school diploma opened his first McDonald’s hamburger joint. His name was Ray Kroc. The year was 1955. Today the 36,000 locations generate over $27 billion (with a B) in revenue. Not bad for an old man with no education. He paid the McDonald brothers 2.7 million for their business. The corporation is currently worth $168 billion. If you want to know how Mr. Kroc went from 2 McDonald brothers stores to where they are today read the book, Grinding it out.
In that same year a black 42-year-old woman also had a significant impact on our future lives. Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. As you can see from the picture of the bus, buses have changed a lot in the last 65 years. This set things in motion that are still in motion,
Discretionary entertainment changed drastically when Walt Disney opened Disneyland in 1955. This opened the flood gates for Theme Parks in every major metropolitan area.
President Eisenhower secures the passage of the Interstate Highway Act. This 41,000 miles of 4-lane limited-access highway system had a profound effect on how our lives are conducted, goods transported, automobile usage, gasoline sales, pollution, and etc.