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LOCAL HISTORY Make a Mark By Ken Langley Have you ever carved your initials in a tree? I don’t remember if I ever did or not when I was a kid. I know some of my friends did, but it’s been over 40 years since I last walked through that particular area, and I don’t know if the carvings are still legible or even if the trees are still standing. Carving initials and messages in trees has been a time-honored practice of bored kids and even adults. The 1941 movie, Sergeant York, has as its opening scene Alvin York shooting his initials into a tree with a pistol from the back of a horse. A later scene shows an old tree with the inscription, “D. Boon cilled a bar on the tree in year 1760” etched into its side. Evidently Daniel Boone could have benefited from a spell checker. While walking the woods of Rico over the years, I’ve happened upon a few old trees with memories scarred into their bark. Only once could my mind translate any of the time-worn letters into a real person with any degree of certainty. Down Kite Road, about a half mile from the river, a few hundred yards behind an old house, on an old tree at the back of a small cove, I happened to notice the letters “H. C.” John Huland Carmical was born in Rico in 1895, and the Carmical home was the old house I mentioned. It’s fairly reasonable to assume the initials on the tree were his. So, who was John Huland Carmical? Glad you asked. From his inauspicious beginning a half mile from the Chattahoochee River, Huland Carmical went on to become arguably Rico’s most famous and influential native. The following is a short biographical synopsis culled from Internet sources. As previously stated, Mr. Carmical was born in Rico in 1895. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1917 and proceeded on to New York, where he attended Columbia University as a graduate student. He worked for a time as a financial analyst for J. P. Morgan Co. before settling into his life-long career (46 years) with the New York Times newspaper in 1922. As a financial reporter and later an associate editor, Mr. Carmical’s specialty was the oil and transportation sectors. His coverage of the oil industry prompted travels around the world. While his career and life were centered in New York and Washington, Mr. Carmical maintained a connection to the Rico area. By the 1960’s he had amassed enough land along the river, from Garrett Creek to Bear Creek, extending to and across Campbellton-Redwine Rd., to probably be 8
A photograph of Rico native John Huland Carmical, from the 1917 UGA yearbook, The Pandora.
the area’s largest landowner. My remembrances of Mr. Carmical center around Smith’s Store. For some time until the late 60’s, John Smith, the owner of the store, acted as an overseer of Mr. Carmical’s land while he was away. I remember him sitting in the back of the store on an old sofa by the stove, discussing farming matters and telling stories. To see him sitting there one would never guess his importance, or his political and financial connections away from Rico. The shabby sofa and Mr. Carmical appeared made for each other. His appearance would always be best described as rumpled, with shoes that hadn’t seen a dab of polish since they came out of the box, and he was perpetually smoking or chewing on a cigar. Unfortunately, most of my memories of Mr. Carmical are now lost in the fog of time. But I do still remember one story, a story that has stuck because at the time it gave me some inkling of the true prestige of the man. I remember Mr. Carmical relating a story, about himself and Sen. Stennis, the senator from Mississippi. He and the senator had been reveling around Washington one night, and Sen. Stennis evidently reveled a little too much and became, shall we say, incapacitated. Mr. Carmical then had to go shopping for some kind of present the senator was supposed to give his wife the next day. That’s when I realized the man in the rumpled suit was more than he appeared to be. About 15 or 20 years ago, I was talking with Andy Thompson and somehow the topic of Mr. Carmical came up. Andy said that he had gone to the library and read some of his articles in the New York Times from the 60’s and that the articles, detailing issues in the world oil industry, foretold the Arab oil embargo of the 1970’s. Mr. Carmical was evidently a very good reporter with a deep insight into issues involving his field of expertise. Doing a Google search of the Internet, if you structure your search carefully, you can still find articles referencing Mr. Carmical’s work, almost fifty years since it was published. So the next time you take a walk in the woods, take along a pocketknife. And if you happen to become bored beside a nice smooth barked tree, preferably beech or maple, make a mark. Carve your initials, your name, or whatever. Who knows, maybe years from now someone might happen across the same tree and think, “I wonder if that could be…”
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