CONFESSIIONS OF A DOPE PUSHER!

In today's world it is chic and glamorous to bare your soul with your relationship to dope. I, too, have been involved with 'dope'. My tale is not of jet-setting, penthouse parties,'the beautiful people', etc., but rather a more mundane, heavier side. The only bright spot to this story is the stainless steel---? For 3 long months during the Summer of 1966, I pushed it day and night!

Before you disavow knowing me, let me clear this up. The 'dope' I pushed had 4 wheels and was locally known as a 'dope wagon', a 1200 lb., stainless steel food cart that I pushed through the old mill on Green Ave. I made the dinner run on all three shifts, with time of in between. It was an adventure and involved more that just Cokes and sandwiches. There was a rhythm of life to that job, with each day being different.

If everything has a heart, then the heart to the food service for the 3 mills of Uniroyal in Hogansville was the old Canteen, owned and operated by the famous or infamous, Louis Booker. Many, many tales could be told about this man. Although quite a character and would "forget" to pay you at times, I loved this old guy and thought highly of him. There was the time that Dwayne Robinson and I opened up one morning and found Louis passed out at his desk, liquor bottles and glasses everywhere, a .45 Army Colt on the desk, playing cards on the desk and floor, and several thousand dollars in a pile under Louis' head, like a little greenback pillow. We helped Louis to a cot that was kept in the corner of his office, while Dwayne bagged the money and hide for safe keeping(this was not Dwayne's first time doing this), I cleaned up the rest of the mess. We then started working on getting the day's food prepared and waited for the others that worked there to arrive. Just before lunch time, Booker started stirring around. He called Dwayne back and asked if he "found" anything earlier that morning. "You mean the $7,000-plus on the desk? Yea, I found it. You gonna get your ass run off if you don't cut that s*** out! If Mike(Link, the superintendent) finds out about these poker nights, there will be hell to pay. Even with a deep hangover, a sly grin came across old Booker's face. I guess that meant he had the proverbial "Ace up his Sleeve".

Dwayne and Buddy, the other cart guy, both loaded and pushed out of the Canteen, which used to be a small cinder-block building, located to the north end of the mill on U.S.29(if anyone has an old photo of the Canteen, or the mills, please post them to the comment section). I, on the other hand, would load everything I needed and take it across the street to my mill and to my little area there. It was a room that had been made by adding two walls to the corner of the cotton bale storage area. I had my own ice machine and an outlet to plug in the wagon to keep the steam tray heated until time to push. I kept a supply of the stapes, canned drinks, chewing gum, cakes and pies, and the life savers--headache powders! I only had to take the fresh made sandwiches and such before each run.

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE!
I think some of those good ole boys would have killed me if I failed to come in early on Mondays. It seems that the only thing that could get them through after a long weekend of partying and hangovers was several Goody's(or BC or Standback) powders and a couple of grapefruit chasers. Remember those little cans of grapefruit and orange juice that you had to have a 'church key' to open? I always made sure that I had plenty of those on ice for the guys. I always assume that the girls partied too, as the guys would gather up extras and take them back upstairs to who knows who. Now it was against the rules for workers to leave their area and to come down to where I was, but management knew that life in a cotton mill is a lot different that most other places and allowances had to be made.
I don't remember the exact menus for the days of the week, but I do remember that people liked to change it up and so I had more of some things on different days. Hell, I even sold sunglasses off that wagon.

THURSDAYS! Now Thursdays were special. Special in that for whatever reason, the Mill paid off on Thursdays. That meant that I had to have extra cash on me to cash checks, many people did not or would not do business with a bank. This was probably a holdover from the Great Depression and banks closing and keeping the folks money. Anyway this was a service that Booker offer. I would not walk through that place or any place today with that kind of money in those deserted areas, but those were different times with different people. I knew everyone by first name and knew their families. What a great false sense of security!

The other thing that made Thursdays special is that it was Collection Day. On Thursday mornings, Booker would give me a 'little black book' with the names and amount borrowed and the date. As I pushed the cart, cashed paychecks, I also loan sharked the employees. If you borrowed $7 the week before, you paid back $10, $14 cost $20. Anything above that and you had to see Booker, as mill hands did not make a lot of money and had other bills to pay. If they got in too deep, well, it would upset the apple cart as the saying goes and that criminal enterprise would come to an end. Also, if you failed to pay, you did not get your check cashed and you could not buy off the wagon, even with cash money. Booker had strict orders. As I think back, food service was just a way to get in and loan money.

There were a couple of sections of the mill that had ramps from one room to the next as the floors were uneven. Now pushing a cart loaded with cotton is one thing, but a huge stainless steel food wagon loaded with ice, drinks, and everything else is another thing. Without fail, every time I got to one of those hard ramps, several guys would come off theirs jobs without having be be asked and help give that extra muscle needed to go to the next floor. I don't see that happening today. Sad!

Two things in closing:
Yes, Dwayne gave Booker his ill gotten gains at the end of the shift, just to make Booker sweat a little.
And why was it called a DOPE WAGON? It was a holdover from the early years of Coca Cola when they actually put cocaine in the drinks. Cokes were often called Dopes.

When I was a small child, I remember there was a time that Mother worked the 3rd shift and on Thursday mornings she would have treats for us. It would either be Nutty Buddy Bars or the little You Can Eata chocolate covered cake with cherry filling. They were only a nickel each back then, but man was that a big deal!

LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING!

  
Look at the charming face of Alyce G Weiher. a big smile, happy expression. If you know her, then you know her children, her grandchildren, and all the other pertinent facts about this typical Southern Grandmother, going up and spending her life in her hometown.


That's what you see. What I see is the second picture. A red 1964 Red Oldsmobile with the words, "THE RED COFFIN!" emblazoned across the back window.
I hear my Daddy saying, "Hoss, that girl drives wilder than you do.( you know I cleaned that up a whole lot from what he really said) You'll get your killin' in that damned car!" 
I remember that later in life being in shoot outs as a police officer and not being near as scared as I was the first time I wrote in that car. 

What I remember most is that we had the most exciting times of our lives growing up in Hogansville and would not change a minute of it.(well, maybe a few minutes, we'll talk about some other time)

Alyce Gray you were and still are an important part of my life. Thank you for scaring the pee out of me!

DINNER ON THE GROUND!

When you think of Dinner on the Ground, your mind usually goes back to your childhood at your Church or your Grandparent's Church. Mountains of fried chicken, potato salad, melt-in-your-mouth buttermilk biscuits, fresh vegetables of every description. Don't even think about the desserts, that would give you an instant 'sugar high'.
I can only speak from my own upbringing, but Southerners will use any excuse to have this kind of feast, whether it be a Church Social/Homecoming, new preacher coming/old preacher retiring, kick off the annual revival, or at our Church, the 5th Sunday in a month was cause to chow down. Take a second. close your eyes and picture that endless table, sagging in the middle with more food than you could sample if you tried. Think hard and remember where your favorite dishes would ALWAYS be located(for patrons of such to find easily).
And of course, it almost goes without saying that when someone in the community passes away, a feast will be assembled and taken to the appropriate family member's house to console the spirit and the body with nourishment.
There is also another type of get together that requires huge amounts of food, the Annual Family Reunion. Now most are held at the appointed family member's house having enough parking and table space to fit the requirements. But luckily for me in this story, there are lots and lots of families that opt to go to a public park to hold such events and freeing any one person of having to clean up after just such a stampede.
I worked on the City of Newnan(Ga.) Police Dept. the 1st half of the 1970's. The old Newnan Water Works had a public park at the foot of its tallest dam, complete with several pavilions, areas for playing ball, tossing horse shoes, and just sitting and admiring the beauty of this park. A family was required to make arrangements with the park to reserve a particular pavilion for a reunion and in the summertime, in good weather, every area would have a gathering going on.
It was customary for Lt. Smith to assign me to ride(or rather chauffeur)with him on those Sundays that we worked the day shift. At about 11:00am we would make our first pass through the park and smile and wave as if conducting business as usual. What we were really doing was trying to spot a familiar face in each group to contact when the eating began. If that failed, we would go in 'cold' and always scored.
It went something like this; we would pull up to a pavilion, walk up to the person that we knew and ask if the accommodations we satisfactory, the water superintendent took great pride in present a clean, safe park. As soon as we started speaking, others would wonder over(just being nosy), and we would greet them, asking their relationship to the person we were talking to, often asking if they knew so-and-so by the same last name. A few minutes of idle talk always brought on an invite to share in the bounty. Just like Julius Caesar of old, we would refuse three times, saying we didn't bring anything, didn't want to impose, etc. I can not remember a time that someone would take us each by the arm and walk into the crowd and exclaim something like, "Hide the liquor, the Po-lease are here!", which would bring a roar from the crowd. Or there would be any number of other light hearted jokes told at our expense. Women would bring their special dishes to make sure that we got the best food, and on it went.
After eating all we could hold, and usually having a plate of incredible desserts thrust into our hands to take with us, we would give our thanks to the hosts and guests and make our way back to the car. Upon storing the excess to that visit, we would make our way to the next group. They too would offer to feed us, but we would tell them that we had run into Brother So-in-So, and while there had eaten our fill, but theirs did look much better. With that compliment, we would get several to-go boxes with an assortment of meats and vegetables, and not to mention more desserts. After thanking everyone for their generosity, we were back to the car and on to usually the third and final reunion, not that there were not more there, we just could not pack anymore food in the car.
We we finally left the park, waving to all of our new found friends, we headed to the station to share with the dispatcher and decide what we would take home for supper.
Back in those days, very few black families were using the park, but when they did, they were some of the best. Say what you will, it may be the lard, or it may be the love, but black woman sure can cook.
The black families welcomed us, for they knew there would not be any rednecks riding through the park as long as we were there.(remember this was the early '70's and turbulent times) It seems like there was more BBQing going on with these reunions and hardly a time went by that we did not come away with sauce stained uniforms. 
What I wouldn't give for one more Sunday in uniform at the Newnan Water Works Park! SHUT YO MOUTH!

WAITING FOR THE BUS!

I do not remember exactly when this occurred or where my Mother was at the time. That is not really critical to the story. I do think I was about 15 years old, so probably around 1962.
Aunt Ima, my Mother's oldest sister was having "nerve" problems. For whatever reason, my Uncle Lee had taken his own life some time before and naturally that had a profound effect on Aunt Ima. Her doctor had determined that she needed 'shock therapy' to help her. Now for those of you who are clueless about this archaic form of treatment, it is somewhere between a defibrillator and the electric chair, being closer to the latter. It was serious business to be sent to those treatments. If your nerves were not on edge before, being told you were going to be semi-electrocuted would put you over the edge.
Well there was no way that Aunt Ima was in any mental shape to make the trip, which was either to Augusta or Milledgeville to have those treatments, so my Mother was tapped to accompany her oldest sister on the trip. As Aunt Ima lived in Centralhatchee, they were to catch the Trailways bus at Mr. Hyatt's country store.
Now as I have said, Aunt Ima was as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. She could not sit still, nor could see stop talking. This is the part of the story that Mother retold that made us all laugh when she returned from that long trying trip.
Aunt Ima was fidgeting around and Mr. Hyatt was was calmly doing his business, doing his best to ignore her constant chatter. Finally she stepped up to him and in rapid fire order asked, "What time does the bus get here? How much are those bananas? How deep is that lake out there?"
Without breaking a stride of his dusting, he looked at my aunt and said, "10:15am. 3for a dime, and up to your ass!", and then turned back to work.
Mother said Aunt Ima did not speak again until the boarded the bus!

WHICH IS WORSE, THE WASP STING OR THE CURE?

As a child, we would go often to my Grandmother(Maw) Norwood's house in rural Heard County. Paw Norwood had a huge old barn that he did not use anymore. There were huge, I mean HUGE red wasp nests in the very top of the ceiling of that old barn. Of course, the first thing grownups would say the first step we took towards the barn is, "Stay away from that barn and don't mess with those wasps, they will sting you." Yeah, yeah, how is a tiny, dumb bee gonna sting us? We have sling shots made out of a real rubber inner tube and we were all crack shots to boot. No one bothered to tell those hundreds of mean wasps just how fearless we were. And no one told us those wasps could trace the path of that rock shot from dozens of yards away. Add all this together and somebody was going to get stung, and that somebody was me. It felt like I had been shot in the neck with a BB gun. As soon as my senses came back to me and the pain became almost unbearable, I started running to the house. To be precise, I ran to the shade tree in the front yard where all the women were gathered in a circle of chairs, talking as women do. They were also dipping snuff as was the custom back then. As soon as I reached Maw Norwood's side she turned and asked where I had been stung, already knowing what I had gotten into by the speed I ran and the volume of my anguish. No sooner than I pointed to the spot, she spat snuff with deadly accuracy on the exact spot. Then I was immediately grabbed and spat upon by others in the circle, each in turn hitting the site of the bee sting. Within minutes the pain was gone and my once white T-shirt was forever brown stained. Since I only owned 2 or 3 more T-shirts at one time, the next time I wore that shirt, someone would see the stain and remark, "Got stung by a bee, huh?"
Snuff spit is a good pain reliever for a bee sting, but man is it nasty?!?

REMEMBERING MY MOTHER!

WHOA! WHOA! MY MOTHER'S DAY MEMORY.

Daddy bought his David Bradley Walk Behind Garden Tractor the Spring of 1947, before I was born the following December. 66 years later, me and the tractor are still running.
Time passed, Daddy became infected with the asbestos of the cotton mill, was 'retired' for all his loyal work, opened a successful service station/tire store, and continued to provide for his family as best he could. He never really has the physical ability to work that tractor after his illness, nor did he have the time. That did not stop him from lamenting about having a garden every spring and reliving stories of the bounties of gardens past.
ENTER MY LOVING MOTHER!
I guess I must have been 18 or 19 that Spring when she approached me and said that together we were going to put in a garden for Daddy. O.K., with me, for I knew Mother had not planned this out thoroughly and we should be in for some fun.
She did not tell Daddy what was afoot, as she wanted it to be a surprise. We went to the house we lived in on Power Plant Road(I always thought a lot of planning went into the naming of that thoroughfare), and Mother asked me to get the tractor ready. I had it fired up and running in 5 minutes. That was a wonderfully dependable machine. I took it down to the familiar garden spot and awaited further orders, where upon Mother ordered me to 'break up' as section of the garden.
I told her this tractor would not do that, we would need Mr. Caldwell, next door to come with his big tractor to do that, then we could use our little tractor.
That did not sit well at all with Mrs. Willie Mozelle Cook! She had planned for us to get his done by early afternoon and did not want to hear of any delays. She said if I wouldn't do it, she would do it herself! I maneuvered the David Bradley in to a straight line down the garden space and stepped back, there was no telling my Mother NO!
SHE UNLEASHED THE BEAST!
For those of you that have never experienced the power of this little tractor, you just had to be there to see this circus. This machine does not have different speeds, it just has a handle to flip forward to engage the motor and transmission. You had better be ready to work, as this tractor can pull a car down the road(but it can not break up hard ground).
I kept telling her that tractor would not break hard ground, then she said those magical words, "Shut up, I know what I am doing!"
"OK, sister have at it." As soon as I uttered those words, my Mother's farming adventure began. That tractor went from a happy little 'putt-putt-putt' idle into a mean sounding 'chug-chug-chug'. Let me tell you, when those tines are not digging into the dirt and are skipping along the top of hard ground, that tractor has got some speed.
There it went, full speed down the path, bumping and jumping on ever lump and clod, my Mother hanging on for dear life, her 125 lbs. looking like laundry flapping and drying in a Summer's breeze. "WHOA! WHOA! DANG IT! WHOA!", was coming from her at the top of her lungs! Well, me being me, all I could do was cup both hands to my mouth for extra volume and yell, "LOUDER, MA, I DON'T THINK IT CAN HEAR YOU!"
Thankfully at the end of the row, the tractor ran into a fence post and gave Mother the chance to kill the engine, by that I mean turn off the ignition, as she would have literally killed that tractor if she could have. When I saw that she was safe, I could hold it no longer, I started laughing that turning to crying. I was laying over a large tree stump, I had lost use of my legs I was so weak. I then felt what seemed like little bee stings on my legs. I looked around and Mother had broken a branch from an apple tree and was whipping my legs for laughing at her. The more she whipped the harder I laughed. "Stop laughing!", she ordered. "Stop whipping!", I said through tears of uncontrollable mirth. She stopped, looked at me, looked at the tractor, then she started laughing too. I stood up and gave her a big hug and a kiss on the top of her head. "You almost had it for a second!" She took her tiny fist and punched me on the shoulder.
After we regained our composure, I ran next door and happened to catch Mr. Caldwell at home, told him what we were doing for Daddy's surprise, and being the wonderful man that he was, came straight over and plowed up the garden and had it ready for us in almost no time.
I think of my Mother and this adventure every time the subject of gardening comes up.

I miss my Mother, my Daddy, and that deaf old tractor.

TIME TO MAKE THE DONUTS!

 There are always jokes about police officers and donuts. Here is one of mine. 

In the early '70's, the city had just hired a large number of black officers to come up to 'standards' with the racial balance in the community. The concept was good, except with all government programs, they went with quantity and not quality. I suppose Copeland would have been just as bad an officer if he had been white. I think that he thought he had an advantage, he certainly had a chip on his shoulder. Either way, he was placed on our crew.

A sweet lady by the name of Mrs. Bray owned the Newnan Bakery just off court square. Her baker, JW, came in about 2:30 am in the morning to start the donuts and other such things. As a reward for seeing that JW safely got into the shop(and giving him a ride on rainy mornings), the 3rd shift crew got to eat as many fresh donuts and coffee as they wanted--in the store--not 1 was to be taken out the door. That rule was to prevent some lowlife from feeding his whole family. 

 The Square Officer would usually be around the area when it was time for JW to arrive at the Bakery, give him about 30 minutes to get the donuts in the hot grease and the coffee on and then drop in for a few. If you were smart, when you pecked on the window and got the thumbs up from JW signaling that the first batch was ready, you would radio the Lt. and say, "JW wants to see you." There was a pecking order; Lt., Sargent, Square man, then the others. We were allowed(except for Lt. Smith, who could take all the time he wanted) a 15 minute break at the Donut Shop. This system worked  fine until it came to Copeland. He would go in when JW got there and stay and stay. This did not set well with Lt. Smith for several reasons, 1. Officers were to do their jobs, 2. this was unfair to the other officers, 3. the Lt. did not like being last.


The one thing that Copeland did know is that if the Lt. called your location and called you again 10 minutes later and you were still in the same place, you would have some explaining to do to the Chief. This is where the side door that opens into the alley comes in. If you got the second call, you could be out the door, down the alley and a block away from the Bakery in about 20 seconds. That would be enough time for the Lt. to come by and see that you were on the job.

The mass hiring of all the black officers was a hot button issue. No one in charge wanted to call out a single black officer for fear of repercussions of the NAACP and other black organizations. The Lt., tiring of Copeland and his antics, called the officers together and announced that if "we" did not stop spending so much time in the donut shop, he was going to place it off limits to the entire crew. I took this as a personal challenge to handle the situation. Maybe I misunderstood.

ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH! 

I was not going to be denied some of the best, freshest, donuts anywhere just because of some selfish jerk. I had been rolling this plan around in my head for a long time, just sort of a fantasy in the beginning, now it was time to put it in action. I had everything I needed in my locker; a .22 caliber revolver, .22 caliber nail driving blanks, fishing cord, and the will to get even.

The next time it was Copeland's turn on Square Detail, he did what he always did, went in and stayed until the Lt.'s second call. As soon as he went in, I found an iron vent grate halfway down the alley. I duct taped the pistol, loaded with the blanks and cocked, to the grate. I ran the fishing line from the trigger, back through the grate and across the alley to another grate at mid-calf high. I then parked my patrol car where I could see when he ran out the door, down the alley, tripped the trigger, and watch him pee his pants. I got much more than I was expecting!

Sure enough, like the predictable script of a cheap play, the Lt. called and then 10 or so minutes later, he called again. As soon as the Lt. started talking the second time, the side door flew open and Copeland hit the ground running, kicking up gravel as he went. I thought he was running fast, but when he tripped the wire,  that .22 sounded like a cannon in that alley. I believe his shoes would have "smoked and burned rubber" had he been on asphalt as his speed doubled. I swear it looked like he was at a 45 degree angle as he turned the corner of the alley into the street. I was already laughing uncontrollably from the time he cleared the side door, but when he suddenly stopped, flattened himself again the side of the building and drew his weapon, I almost choked. Then, like something out of a movie, he stuck the gun down the alley and fired all 6 shots in rapid order. He then ran to Jackson St., turned the corner and ran towards the Courthouse, where he told the Lt. he was. As he ran, he tried to tell the Lt. and everyone else on the radio that, "Some mother****** just shot at him and tried to kill him and he shot back."

As soon as Copeland turned the corner on Jackson St., I ran into the alley, cut the taped gun and line, put them in my pocket, drew my weapon, and advised the Lt. that I was securing the Morgan Street end of the alley, the end Copeland ran out. The Lt. and another officer secured the other end of the alley, while the Sargent came to my back up. After several long minutes of looking, we determined that no one had been in the alley. Copeland tried as best he could to explain that there had to be someone in the alley with him, but no one would believe him. He sort of had suspicions that we, or someone, wanted him dead, which we didn't. We just wanted him out of the donut shop. Either way, all worked out as he never went into the donut shop again. 

Not very long after that he was fired. Good riddance.