Ncm novdec2013 lores

What's In Your Pocket? movie magic Special effects whiz provides explosive excitement

Being

Santa

Three Cowetans help carry on a holiday tradition

novemBeR | decemBeR 2013

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» in this issue

CONTENTS » NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2013

36 22

FEATURES 22 | Spinning Forward With the vinyl craze growing, The Record Store owner Paul Tidwell provides junkies a place to browse for old classics rather than in Atlanta.

36 | Being Santa Every year, Buster Meadows, Thomas McCague and Paul Boylen put on the pounds, dye their hair and don the familiar red suit in order to spread the Christmas spirit throughout Coweta County.

62

50 | Timeless Treasure Food writer Amelia Adams has gotten her hands on a one-of-a-kind Newnan cookbook and shares two of its recipes with NCM readers.

90

62 | What’s In Your Pocket?

In the knife world, EDC — everyday carry — is not just a fad, it's a way of life. A good knife is a tool that often comes in handy for day-to-day chores.

72 | Demolition Man From “Green Lantern” to “Fast & Furious 7,” Newnan's Skip Scurry is the guy many Hollywood types call to make things go boom in their next blockbuster.

84

84 | Historic Hand-me-down The Adamson cabin dates back to the pioneer days, making it one of Coweta County's oldest homes.

90 | Fallout Shelters A blast from the past, many fallout shelters are still underfoot in Coweta County and recall a time gone by.

the Editor

10 |

34 | Holiday Memories We all have our favorite and our not-so-favorite holiday memories, so we asked several Cowetans to share theirs with us.

44 | Candlelight Tour of Homes For many, not much signals the coming of Christmas in downtown Newnan quite like the annual Candlelight Tour of Homes. See which five homes will be featured this year.

» in EVERY ISSUE 14 | Letter from

23

100 | Pen & Ink 104 | Blacktop

16 | Roll Call

106 | Index of Advertisers

20 | Duel Pages

106 | What’s Next

www.newnancowetamag.com

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cover

on our

A Publication of The Newnan Times-Herald

president & publisher vice president general manager editor creative directors graphic designer production director contributing writers

William W. Thomasson Marianne C. Thomasson John Winters Will Blair Sandy Hiser, Sonya Studt Maggie Bowers Debby Dye Amelia Adams Jeff Bishop Carolyn Crist Sarah Fay Campbell Ana Ivey Greg Leftwich Rebecca Leftwich Elizabeth Melville W. Winston Skinner John Winters

photography circulation director sales and marketing director multimedia sales specialists

Jeffrey Leo Naomi Jackson Colleen D. Mitchell Wendy Danford Mandy Inman Candy Johnson Norma Kelley

controller

Diana Shellabarger

FoR adveRTising inFoRmaTion call 770.253.1576 or e-mail colleen@newnan.com Cover photo by JEFFREY LEO

Newnan-Coweta Magazine is published bi-monthly by The Newnan Times-Herald, Inc., 16 Jefferson Street, Newnan, GA 30263.

Coweta‘s very own “Santa South,” Paul Boylen, with his granddaughter Emily Hutton, featured in “Being santa,” page 36

subscriptions: Newnan-Coweta Magazine is distributed in home-delivery copies of The Newnan Times-Herald and at businesses and offices throughout Coweta County. Individual mailed subscriptions are also available for $23.75 in Coweta County, $30.00 outside Coweta County.

To subscribe, call 770.304.3373. on the web: newnancowetamag.com

© 2013 by The Newnan Times-Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

12 |

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» welcome

LETTER

FROM THE EDITOR

The holidays ARE quickly approaching, as stores line their shelves with various and sundry Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff and we map out our itineraries, menus and gift ideas. But for me, it’s not Christmastime until I hear Christmas music.

Depending on the album, I typically prefer to hear Christmas music on the platform on which I was first introduced to it. Holiday melodies by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin? I’ll spin the old-time radio dial. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio and “A Very Special Christmas” with Run DMC and Bruce Springsteen?

Pop in the CD. As for Sufjan Stevens’ “Songs for Christmas” (try it; trust me, you’ll like it), well, my iPod comes to life.

But the holidays REALLY don’t arrive until I break out Don Janse and His 60 Voice Children’s Chorus Christmas album on vinyl and load the turntable.

When I was a child in the ’70s, my parents would play the album, “The Little Drummer Boy,” at least twice each Christmas season — shortly after Thanksgiving, when my sister and I decorated the tree, and on Christmas morning, when we opened Santa’s presents.

I say twice, but I mean on those two occasions, because we played the “The Little Drummer Boy” repeatedly while decorating the tree and while opening presents. It’s a quick listen.

“Drummer Boy.” “Silent Night.” “Babes in Toyland.” It’s timeless music, but it also takes me back to a time when deciding which present to play with first was my only holiday burden.

Of course, there was a long period in my life when I thought I’d left that album behind me. You know, you grow up and leave those childhood things behind. But, a few years ago, I reconnected with my earlier self after my parents found the album stashed somewhere between their Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash records.

Sure, I got “Live at San Quentin” out of it, but I also got ... Don Janse and His 60 Voice Children’s Chorus.

If there’s anything that makes me feel like George Bailey running through the streets of Bedford Falls, it’s the hissing of aged Christmas vinyl. So much so that, for a while, I was keeping an eye out for extra copies at Goodwill and while browsing record stores and flea markets.

And here’s the kicker: It’s not as much a rarity as I once thought. With the click of a mouse, you can find Don Janse and His 60 Voice Children’s Chorus at multiple online retailers. AND they recorded more than just one album. Last summer, at Goodwill, I found “Hark! The Herald Angel Sings” — this time, with 40 voices. I’m guessing it would count these days as Volume II. At any rate, the holidays will be here in no time, and many of us will fill our time with food, family and gift-giving.

But on Christmas day, you can bet there will be at least ONE house in Coweta County filled with the warm, pleasant sounds of a long-ago personal classic popping and hissing beneath a turntable’s needle.

Thanks for reading,

Will Blair, Editor will@newnan.com 14 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2013

ROLL CALL

» thank you Amelia Adams is a retired high school English teacher who began her career at Newnan High in 1966 and joined The Heritage School as a charter member of the faculty. Returning to her high school alma mater, Monroe Area High School, in 1983, she took the advice of one of her professors: “Get on the other side on the desk.” She has written a food column for The Walton Tribune for 23 years.

The Newnan Times-Herald who’s still occasionally astonished she managed to get a real job with a degree in history. As a teen, she wanted to write novels, but quickly discovered non-fiction a much better fit — though she’s been flirting with the idea of writing children’s books. She’d rather be camping.

JEFF BISHOP is a writer and public historian who lives in Newnan with his wife and five children. The author of “A Cold Coming,” a story of murder and family history, he is currently working on a book about the McIntosh Trail.

Though "Knight and Day" was not a box-office smash, Ana Ivey and her Fayetteville-based family, husband Andy and their 17-year-old son, Carlos, enjoyed the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz movie. She was thrilled to learn her subject for Newnan-Coweta Magazine, Skip Scurry, had worked on the special effects for the movie.

An avid Tolkien fan, Ana is looking forward to the second installment of “The Hobbit” series, which will be released in December.

Leverett Butts teaches composition and literature at the Gainesville campus of the University of North Georgia. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The University of West Georgia’s Eclectic publication and in The Georgia State University Review. He’s written a collection of short fiction, “Emily’s Stitches: The Confessions of Thomas Calloway and Other Stories,” and a novella, “Guns of the Waste Land: Departure.”

Carolyn Crist is a freelance writer and graduate student in health and medical journalism in Athens, Ga. While studying journalism at the University of Georgia, Crist interned at The Newnan Times-Herald for two summers. Following graduation, she became a reporter for The Times in Gainesville, Ga., where she wrote several Santa stories.

16 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

Sarah Fay Campbell is a 14-year veteran of

Melissa Dickson Jackson is the author of two collections of poetry, “Cameo” and “Sweet Aegis, Medusa Poems.” She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA in poetry from Converse College. She lives in Newnan with her husband and four children.

A native of Warm Springs, Ga., Bart Gibson currently lives in Newnan with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of the “The Place,” a book based on actual events and his family from the World War II era. When not writing, he enjoys outdoor activities and reading history.

A former Newnan Times-Herald newspaperman, Gary Leftwich works for Southwire Company as manager of the company’s corporate philanthropy and media relations programs. He is a graduate of the University of West Georgia and the University of Georgia.

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» thank you

» feedback Rebecca Leftwich is a writer and editor whose work appears regularly in publications throughout the state. A gun-for-hire at both The Newnan Times-Herald and Newnan-Coweta Magazine, she lives with her husband and three children in Carrollton.

Elizabeth Melville is a wordsmith/freelance writer in addition to working at a private school and for a pro-life organization. She, her husband, Jonathan, and their daughter, Nora, reside in downtown Newnan. Liz — as her friends know her — earned her bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Winthrop University. Stories — words — satiate her inner restlessness.

Russell Scott O'Neal is a Newnan native who has enjoyed writing — mostly horror/science fiction — since childhood. His short story “The Closet” appeared in “Summer Shorts: Short Stories by Coweta Authors,” which was published earlier this year. When it comes to writing success, Russell likes to quote George Castanza’s character from “Seinfeld” — “God would never let me be successful. He’d kill me first!”

W. Winston Skinner began writing for Coweta readers as a college intern in 1978.

He has been on The Newnan Times-Herald staff since 1982 and lives in an antebellum cottage in the College-Temple neighborhood with his wife, Lynn.

After traveling the country writing about anything and everything over the last 30 years, John A. Winters has called Newnan home for more than a decade. He likes playing with knifes, fly fishing and backpacking with his three boys, affectionately known as “SONS of Thunder.”

Sometimes, his wife, “the Little Black Dress,” tags along.

Check out their adventures at justflipthedog.com.

18 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Don't Forget I enjoyed the latest magazine.

The article by local writers was very good. I learned a lot about local music. In future magazines, I would love to see more on gardening and decorating. Maybe some recipes also. I know you are probably trying to reach younger readers for the magazine; just don’t forget us “old folks.”

— Earlene Scott

The Next Level I was very impressed with the quality of journalism and the layout of the September/October issue. The changes that have been made make your publication both interesting and informative. I am sure your results will increase both readership and time spent with the magazine. Thanks for bringing Coweta Magazine to the next level.

— Sincerely, Fred Estanich

Front to Back I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the September/October issue of Newnan-Coweta Magazine. The cover was very pleasing to the eye and the content was informative and entertaining. It isn’t often that a local magazine not only catches my attention but keeps my interest. I read it front to back. I look forward to future issues. Thank you.

— Teresa Taylor

Let Us Hear From You! Feel free to send thoughts, ideas and suggestions for upcoming issues of Newnan-Coweta Magazine to magazine@newnan.com

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DUEL PAGES

» opinion

I’ll read the book any day

by REbECCA LEFTwICh

whEN I wAS 12, I scared myself silly with Stephen King's “Pet Sematary.”

I finished the book in the wee hours of a summer morning, long after the timer shut down our attic fan — which served as our main cooling unit in those precentral air days — and its drowsy hum. King's terrifying tale of necromancy turned my friend the whippoorwill into a harbinger of evil and its lovely song into a cry of doom emanating from the massive white oak tree outside my open window.

The rustle and gentle mooing of the cows across the highway became a low, eerie moan and the distant barking of a dog set off a slideshow in my mind; all the beloved pets we lost on Highway 5 and buried on our 36-acre property, where there was not only a proper human cemetery with one actual headstone but also pottery fragments and other irrefutable signs that Native Americans once inhabited our land.

By that point, I had convinced myself that the barking dog was marching ever closer, leading an apocalyptic parade of resurrected animals who'd unwittingly been interred in cursed ground — their sweet faces twisted and grotesque, their former fondness for their little mistress now soured by an insatiable hunger for my flesh.

» Send your suggestions for upcoming Duel Pages to magazine@newnan.com 20 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

It was then I realized I had to go to the bathroom. Which was all the way across the pitch-black den from my lamplit bedroom. Which would require me to unclench my shaking knees and actually put my feet on the floor. Which would allow all the monsters who had ever lived under my bed to emerge and drag me, feet first and too terror-stricken to scream for my Daddy, into their hellish abodes …

Fortunately, sun and cicadas woke me later that morning and I scurried to the bathroom in the perfect daylight. Later, I shoved that book as far back in the linen closet as I could reach and I never touched it again.

Fast forward to my West Georgia College years. My friend Steve, who lived in my apartment complex and loved scary movies, convinced me I needed to see “Pet Sematary” on the big screen after I told him how the book terrified me. I was fearless by then; besides, he dared me, so naturally I had to go.

Steve was my only entertainment at the Village Theater that night.

He cringed and jumped and hid his eyes and cowered under his seat, then told me it was the scariest movie he'd ever seen. I, on the other hand, slept in my apartment alone with all the lights off.

I've learned to separate the book experience from the movie experience, making both more enjoyable. I adore “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and its ’70s movie counterpart, “Willy Wonka

and the Chocolate Factory;” the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and all 12 hours of extended-cut DVD movies and “making of” documentary; L. Frank Bynum's “Oz” series as well as the glorious Judy Garland movie and “The Wiz,” both movie and play.

But as much as I have learned to enjoy movies, books remain the constant — the irreplaceable — in my personal journey.

I might date a movie, because movies are beautiful to look at even when they lack substance.

They have the ability to show me a good time. They might move me, make me think, educate me or even push my boundaries. But I can't settle for being one of many passive participants in such a casual relationship.

I want to be the other half of an intensely personal relationship, unique even among other readers of the same words. Books ask for a commitment: Will you be the reader of my words, the interpreter of my stories, the living half of the equation? For better or worse, even if I am so terrifying that your 12-year-old imagination is in control of your physical body for a couple of hours?

Yes to all. I guess I am just the marrying kind.

Take me to the movies by gARY LEFTwICh

enchanted by the story’s twists and turns that she could not put down the book. Not me. Only a half hour in and I’m counting pages.

At the same time, my mind struggles — using only black, onedimensional letters on a white page — to see what an author sees.

Recently, in anticipation of the film release of “The Hobbit,” my youngest son and I made our way through the book. I pictured each of the characters, formed mental images of their surroundings and experienced their joy, humor and fear. I could almost taste the richness of their food and smell the dark, earthy scents of the forest as they travelled.

Almost.

While I enjoyed the printed version, the movie grabbed hold of me and held me for nearly three hours. Aided by the magic of 3D, I walked through that forest and faced each nemesis the dwarves confronted. I understood the characters more by seeing them and caught details that passed by me in the book.

But that’s just me. I am a visual creature who, as a child, lived on a bicycle, later graduating to a motorized version. Racing at breakneck speed, I eluded spies along wooded trails that surrounded my neighborhood.

Some of those ruts and road became racetracks as I gunned the 100cc engine of my Suzuki, seeking to outdistance any competition.

Try as I might, I just could not get that same thrill from reading.

Books were relegated to school.

Teachers used them to educate — to burden me with concepts whose

fit in my life I did not understand at the time. Sure, I enjoyed much of the literature from my school days. (Thanks, Mrs. Landreth.)

But that was assigned reading. It was something I had to do … for a grade. Reading became a chore and I never really recovered its joy.

So those are my reasons — personal shortcomings, really — for choosing visual media over books.

It simply is a matter of personal preference and ability to process information. In the end, I would rather watch a story unfold on a screen than on a page.

Now, I know you’re asking exactly what does this have to do with Monty Python. Picture this…

Two men clad in khaki shirts and shorts and wearing boots and pith helmets stand on a concrete dock beside a river on a dreary London day. With a lively and playful piece of classic music as a soundtrack, one of the men dances prancingly toward the other, striking him in the face with a small fish held in his left hand. He then dances backward and forward again, striking the second man in the face with another small fish in his right hand. The first man dances backward, then forward again, striking the second in the face with both fish. He repeats the gesture before finally standing still. The second man then produces a large fish and strikes the first man with it, sending him splashing into the river.

Sound funny? Not really? Go to YouTube and watch Monty Python’s 15-second skit called “The Fish Slapping Dance.” Try not to laugh. I dare you. NCM

DUEL PAGES

ANd NOw FOR SOmEThINg completely different — a man using the written word to explain why he prefers movies over books.

With apologies to the great minds of Monty Python, my tongue sits firmly in my cheek as I explain why I prefer the visual media to the printed. Setting irony aside, my argument is not that movies and television are superior to books. That’s not a case I care to make or defend for fear of stern reprimand from those who taught me an appreciation of literature.

I enjoy good, thoughtful writing.

But, because I suffer from a weak imagination and a short span of attention, reading “Hamlet” pales in comparison to watching Derek Jacobi or Kenneth Branagh bring the character to life with far greater depth, nuance and emotion than I ever could give the character using only words on a page.

So, let’s be clear. I’m not saying movies are better than books or comparing them as art forms or tools for expressing ideas or whatever they are. (Thanks, John Lennon.) That’s for you and the critics to decide. I simply prefer the visual media. Here’s why.

I eluded to two personal shortcomings that cause me to view anything over 5,000 words with dread. My wonderful wife, Becky, can read for hours — often across multiple books — caught in an author’s spell. She once read an installment of the Harry Potter series in several hours, so

» coweta finds

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“… AND IF YOU EVER GET LONELY, JUST GO TO THE RECORD STORE AND VISIT YOUR FRIENDS.” The

Record Store part of vinyl’s resurgence with a new generation of music lovers Written and photographed by REbECCA LEFTwICh

ThE PRObLEm wITh PENNY’S AdVICE to her friend William in the movie “Almost Famous” — set in the early 1970s — is that the era of the record store had ended long before Cameron Crowe’s movie was ever filmed. Over the years, music lovers moved on to 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs, then digital downloads.

Meanwhile, records died before they got old and record stores — once hubs of coolness and culture — just faded away.

But a funny thing happened. People “got lonely,” and their neighborhood record stores no longer existed.

They started dragging down their dusty turntables from attics and digging out their old vinyl. They didn’t just visit their friends; they introduced their friends to another generation or two.

They started searching for records at thrift stores and yard sales. november /december 2013

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Current artists, many of whom cut their musical teeth on vinyl, began releasing new material for the turntable. And a handful of throwback shops grew into the hundreds and hundreds of independent record stores where more than 200,000 vinyl albums were sold during 2013 Record Store Day celebrations alone.

A two-time participant in Record Store Day, which celebrates the vinyl medium and the independent stores that specialize in it, is Paul Tidwell, who owns The Record Store in Thomas Crossroads.

“I think that some of the greatest music that we probably ever will have has already been recorded,” said Tidwell, who says his interest in records stems partly from a

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desire to preserve history. “Lots of the new artists just do not seem to have the soul that many artists on vinyl and from the past have, and there is a lost sound when you compare that music to newer music.”

Its unusual location — inside another business, A Better Way Thrift Store — prevents The Record Store from blasting ’70s rock or indie re-releases through its impressive collection of vintage stereo equipment like some stand-alone record shops, but that doesn’t mean Tidwell can’t calmly spin a Cars album while he leads a tour through his small but well-stocked corner.

He says he’s proud to have been favorably compared by some of his

customers to the iconic Wax N Facts and newer but equally well-known Criminal Records in Atlanta’s Little Five Points.

“I have been told I have lots of used vinyls that [my customers] were seeking,” Tidwell said. “They said those type of vinyls either are not in stock at those locations or would get purchased very quickly. They also said those stores carried lots of newer and not good used and that they were overwhelmed with the amount of vinyl, much of which was genres of no interest.”

Demand may have ebbed and flowed over the years, but because records really never have been out of production, according to Tidwell, opportunities to

TIDWELL’S INTEREST IN RECORDS STEMS PARTLY FROM A DESIRE TO PRESERVE HISTORY.

The small but well-stocked corner of The Record Store includes an impressive collection of ’60s, ’70s and ’80s classics. Most of the more expensive albums are labeled in “very good“ or “near mint“ condition.

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Tidwell was one of hundreds of independent record store owners participating in this year’s Record Store Day. RECORd STORE dAY began in 2007 as a way to spread the word about about the unique culture surrounding the hundreds of independently-owned record stores in the United States and the thousands of similar stores internationally, according to its official website, www.recordstoreday.com.

Celebrated the third Saturday of every April, Record Store Day is endorsed by many mainstream artists who arrange for special releases and promotional products exclusive to the event. Musician support has helped Record Store Day boost the sale of vinyl, which has inched up each of the past few years.

Nielsen SoundScan statistics show a trending increase in vinyl album sales, with a record 224,000 LPs sold in the United States during the week ending April 21, 2013.

Coinciding with Record Store Day, those sales broke the previous record of 213,000 set the week ending Dec. 23, 2012. Record Store Day 2012 statistics showed 172,000 vinyl albums sold.

Of the record 224,000 LPs sold in April, approximately 200,000 were purchased at independent record stores, according to Nielsen.

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Owner Paul Tidwell said photography and a love of antiques — along with a box of records he rescued from the trash 20 years ago — planted the seeds for The Record Store.

“SURPRISING TO SOME, BUT VINYL HAS A LARGE SOUND RANGE,” TIDWELL SAYS.

hear history through recordings on vinyl is endless when compared to newer formats.

“We offer music from the 1950s to current,” he said. “If you look at how much music and spoken word has been recorded over the centuries, only a small amount of it has been converted to either CD or digital format.”

The experience of holding an album can’t be duplicated, Tidwell said, and neither can a record’s authenticity of sound.

“Surprising to some, but vinyl has a large sound range,” he said. “When vinyl is transferred to other formats some of the sound quality is lost.”

Admittedly, some of the sound quality depends on the turntable, speakers and other equipment. That’s why, in addition to selling new turntables with the ability to record mp3s of the records they play, Tidwell typically keeps a few vintage turntables, receivers and “old-school” speakers in stock.

“They just don’t make things of that good quality any more,” he said.

As for the vinyl medium itself, it has outlasted many of its successors. (Does anyone remember laser disks?)

“Think about it,” Tidwell said. “CDs can go bad sometimes within five to 10 years.

Digital files are disposable. Then there is vinyl. Its earliest form was invented in 1865, and those records can still be played.”

Tidwell and his wife, April, run a photography studio. Tidwell bought, moved and dismantled a 100-year-old cabin, which he spent two years rebuilding into a barn that has become a popular photo backdrop. The 46-year-old said photography and a love of antiques — along with a box of records he rescued from the trash 20 years ago — planted the seeds for The Record Store.

“I found a box of great albums on the curb next to my parents’ house that were going to be thrown away,” he said.

“It included albums like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eric Clapton and

Fleetwood Mac. I purchased some equipment similar to what we sell and could not believe how good the records sounded. It sounded like the bands were right there in the room.”

Tidwell said he’s a fan of musical storytelling, and some of his favorite music is bluegrass like Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe.

Other favorites are Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and George Jones.

“I was fortunate enough to hear Merle Haggard this summer,” he said. “I never got to hear Cash, Waylon or Jones, so I made a point to hear an icon. Just think, I was listening to an artist that was born before Elvis and he was still performing.

These are guys that were around when it all started and that is something that will never be recaptured in history.”

He may have his favorites, but like many of his customers, Tidwell has a wide range of musical interests. That led him to score what he considers his biggest vinyl treasure.

“I was at a store with a large bin of records, and there was one in there in a plain white sleeve and the vinyl was a swirled marble texture,” Tidwell said.

“No markings anywhere. I purchased it for $1. It ended up being a live recording of Led Zeppelin at the Filmore and was worth about $150. I think part of the obsession of vinyl is the hunt for these types of albums.”

Tidwell serves many young customers who have become part of the vinyl culture.

But as a former youth home employee and an adoptive father, he wants to make sure that as a new generation comes into his store to “visit their friends,” it doesn’t also become friendly with a dangerous lifestyle — one that has robbed the world of so much potential by causing the untimely deaths of some of music’s brightest stars.

“I try to watch what is in the store,” he said. “It is impossible to weed out everything but I do not want to play up

Gift ideas that fit perfectly

november /december 2013

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MANY GREAT STORIES are not only told through but are born from music, and Tidwell says one enjoyable aspect of keeping a record shop is swapping stories with customers.

He often shares what he says is his favorite music story, which begins in a prison and ends in a legend.

Adam Hollinger was a soldier from the Mobile, Ala., area who was captured during World War II. He and other prisoners of war were held in a German stalag, where they were subjected to deplorable living conditions and tortured regularly.

Hollinger, a banjo player, met a fellow American soldier who played fiddle. To keep their spirits up, the two were allowed to play for the other prisoners. Both eventually made it home safely.

Back in the post-war United States, Hollinger learned of a promising young singer who was looking to start a band in Montgomery. He hitchhiked his way there with a friend, auditioned and was hired.

Unfortunately, the singer was just starting out and only playing local gigs, so he was unable to pay Hollinger enough to live on. After a short while, the banjo player was forced to leave the band for more lucrative work.

Hollinger, who passed away about three years ago, was a lifelong friend of Tidwell’s family. His story is one the shopkeeper often shares, but not just because of his personal ties to the banjo-playing veteran.

The fiddle-playing Paul Warren, Hollinger’s fellow prisoner of war, went on to play with bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. And that struggling young singer from Montgomery?

His name was Hank Williams.

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music that promotes drug use, cults, etc. Of course, many artists had drug-type issues. Many started clean but caved with the pressure later in their careers. I am thinking of putting up a long line of artists that died from overdoses or other causes before their time, and put up a sign that reads ‘Enjoy the music but learn from their mistakes.’ ” Vintage and new vinyl is, of course, available on multiple Internet sites these days. Local big-box locations sometimes carry records, and thrift stores, antique stores, flea markets and yard sales could yield hidden treasures. But nothing replaces the magic of the neighborhood record shop, where, as singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith says, you can “dig through the record bin and find a record for 69 cents that you’ve always wanted, all your life.”

The Record Shop is that kind of place for Cowetans, where nostalgia and music peacefully cohabitate once again.

It’s a place where a music lover can remember or discover, right in his own neighborhood. And if people ever get lonely, they can — once again — go to the record store and visit their friends. NCM

THE RECORD STORE Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Saturday 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

770-561-6116 2826 Sharpsburg-McCollum Road at Thomas Crossroads (Inside A Better Way Thrift Store)

Owner: Paul Tidwell Method of payment: Cash preferred.

Credit cards accepted.

Price range: Anywhere from 25 cents to $50. Average on popular sellers is $5-10. Concert posters – including some autographed by Widespread Panic and Pearl Jam – are $10 each.

THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIANEWNAN IS “GOING WEST” — THREE MILES WEST — TO DOWNTOWN NEWNAN. In Spring 2015, UWG will move its Newnanbased undergraduate and graduate degree programs in nursing, education and business to 80 W. Jackson St., the site of the historic Newnan Hospital facility.

We’ll be growing our healthcare-related degree programs and expanding dualenrollment opportunities for area high school students, particularly in the science, math and technology disciplines. Today more than ever, Once you Go West, you can go anywhere. gowestgeorgia.com

Paul Tidwell doesn’t just sell vinyl records.

The Record Store also is stocked with a wide variety of posters, vintage audio equipment and pop culture memorabilia.

GO WEST november /december 2013

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Q&A WITH THE RECORD STORE OWNER PAUL TIDWELL Q: Why open a record store?

A: I had purchased a huge collection of albums from someone. I had sold some vinyls at events so it seemed like it may work to have a store. I had heard that there was a resurgence on vinyl and I also found an affordable location.

Q: What are customers typically hoping to find when they come into your store?

A: We have an inventory of about 1,500 albums at any given time with 1,000 more waiting.

Mostly ’70s classic rock. They also like the collection of Beatles vinyl along with Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. They also enjoy the many concert posters and other music-related items displayed for sale.

Q: Do you have many repeat customers? Why or why not?

A: We have people come from Atlanta to buy.

We also do have many repeat and local customers. Hopefully, they keep coming back because prices are reasonable. I also try to add new vinyls each week and just started a "new arrivals" area so they can see those albums without going through the whole store.

Q: What kinds of records do you sell?

A: We sell a wide variety of music. Categories include ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, with most

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being from the ’70s. We carry some new vinyl.

We also have comedy, bluegrass, country, Disney/Kids records, jazz, R&B and gospel.

Some of the bands or albums you will find at our store will include about every band imaginable: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, CCR, Clapton, Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, the B-52s, REM, Van Halen, Queen ... too many to list! We also have soundtrack albums like "Spider Man," "Superman," "Star Trek" and "Star Wars."

Q: My 17-year-old and his friends are crazy about vinyl, which seems odd in such a digital age. Do you have many young customers?

A: We have customers from early teens to those in their 70s. Most seem younger. I think many younger people have discovered that music used to be better than it is now, bottom line.

I have also heard that although teens like mp3 music, they discovered something was missing and enjoy holding a physical album.

The artwork is one-of-a-kind and you just don't get that creativity with CDs or, obviously, with digital music. I think digital short-changes the artist, since this aspect of the music and the connection you can get with an album cover just is not there. Very creative artists like Jack White have even tried things like liquid-filled vinyl.

CLAYTON STATE UNIVERSITY MORROW, GEORGIA

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Kenny Barron Trio, JAZZ Saturday, Nov. 23, 2013 | 8:15PM | $46

“Kenny Barron is the leading practitioner of an elegant, economical and sure-footed piano style” (The New York Times), hailed as “the most lyrical piano player of our time” (Jazz Weekly).

Mark O’Connor & Friends KENNY BARRON

MARK O’CONNOR

An Appalachian Christmas Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013 | 3PM $40 Adults | $15 Children

Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the most talented and imaginative artists working in music – any music – today,” Grammy Award-winning violinist and composer Mark O’Connor is “brilliantly original,” praises The Seattle Times: “No matter what he plays, when you’re listening to O’Connor, you know you’re listening to genius.”

Regina Carter Quartet, JAZZ Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014 | 8:15PM | $46

“Regina Carter creates music that is wonderfully listenable, probingly intelligent and, at times, breathtakingly daring. . . taking the listener into the future of jazz” (Time Magazine).

Monty Alexander Trio, JAZZ Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014 | 8:15PM | $46

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Visit www.SpiveyHall.org to purchase tickets and for complete program information.

Acclaimed the world over for his seemingly extraterrestrial technique and sublime, heartfelt swing, Jamaican jazz piano virtuoso Monty Alexander “delights audiences everywhere” (London Evening Standard).

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» gift ideas

Stuff their Stockings Stocking Stuffer Ideas for Everyone on Your List Here are some of our favorites: • Specialty Coffee or Teas • Memory Card • Phone Case • Jewelry • Universal Remote • Movie Tickets • Hunting or Fishing Knife • Dark Chocolate Truffles • Updated Family Picture • Fun Office Supplies

Make Christmas morning memorable with this fun holiday tradition.

• Skin Care Products • Calling Cards

• Golf Balls/Hobby Goodies

• Wine Glass Charms

• Lip Balms in fun flavors

• Key Chain

• Ring Holder

• iTunes Gift Card

• Favorite Magazine

• Flower Seeds

• Scarf

• Votive Candles

• Homemade Fudge

• Batteries

• Speciality Olive Oil

• Luggage Tags

• Throwback Candy (Pez, Pop Rocks)

• Tire Pressure Gauge

• Hand Sanitizer

• Lottery Tickets

• Mouse Pad

• Tools, Tools, Tools

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1103 Crosstown Court PeaChtree City, Ga 30269 770.486.3400 www.muCklowsfinejewelry.Com “When Love and Skill Work Together, Expect a Masterpiece”

It was the best of times; There’s always pressure for the holidays to be perfect. Folks get time off work and extra time with the three F’s — family, friends and food. What could go wrong? With all the hype, sometimes the holidays really deliver.

And sometimes, just sometimes, our grand plans cave under the weight of our expectations and we end up disappointed. We’ve all experienced a little of both, the merry and the not-so-merry.

Best

“My first granddaughter was born five days before Christmas. That Christmas we put her under the tree and took pictures of her in about 20 different outfits. We were just having a good time. It was one of the best Christmases ever.”

— Bonnie Bearden, Newnan “I remember Christmas Eves spent in Italy when I was a teenager.

My sister and I would walk bundled to church in the middle of town for midnight mass; she sang alto and I sang soprano. It was always so wonderful; the stars and moon were out and the snow would be glistening. Even after being in America for 66 years, those memories stay with me. That’s why I go to midnight mass. It is just a part of me.”

— Josephine Thomas, Newnan “I have five siblings but two younger brothers.

I was home for Christmas on a college break. My brother, Troy, is crazy about Christmas and has a tendency to wake us up super early. So, my baby brother and I decided to play a trick on him. Instead of getting woke up at 6 a.m., we — when he went to sleep

Newnan-Coweta Magazine conducted a man-on-the-street poll to see what some of you had to say.

— took some plastic wrap and covered his door so that when he opened it in the morning he was stuck and had to figure out how to get out and get over the shock of it before he woke us up.”

— Christy Bowlby, Newnan “One Christmas when my son was younger, his father and I had promised him a car. On Christmas morning, he went outside looking for the car. He scanned the driveway: Nothing. Then he looked on the porch: There it is on the swing — it was a Hot Wheels!”

— Barbara Garner, Atlanta “The one that comes to mind was the last Thanksgiving with my grandma. She had lung cancer and was bedridden on hospice care and wasn’t moving around much at all. She promised us that she’d make it to the table for dinner. She mustered up the strength to get in her wheelchair and we wheeled her in. It was the first Thanksgiving she didn’t cook — and the last one we spent with her.

She didn’t eat much, but we always had Thanksgiving at her and my granddad’s (he was deceased by that time) house, so it was so special that she made it. It was bittersweet, but one of the most special holidays we had.”

— Katie Wood, Newnan

Compiled by ELIZAbETh mELVILLE 34 |

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“I have a brother and a sister. When I was a sophomore in high school, my mom and dad came to us and explained that we weren’t going to have a Christmas that year because Dad had lost his job. As children, we were understanding, but at the same time it affected us. My mom belonged to a card group, and they found out about it. One day I came home from school and there was a Christmas tree sitting outside our back door. The next day I came home and there were boxes of food sitting out there.

This happened for a succession of two weeks. Presents showed up at our door — everything to make our Christmas completely memorable. Mom and Dad suspected that her card group did it, though they would never own up to it.

That was the best holiday because we learned what Christmas was really about.”

— Tracy Escoe, Newnan “My best Christmas was with my nana, because she cared for me. She gave me the best presents and I loved her. But most of all, she loved me. So that’s my best Christmas.”

— Olivia Janes, Newnan

it was the worst of times ...

Worst

“There was me, my twin brother, my older brother, Jeff, and younger brother, Chad.

It was Christmas Eve and I was about 8.

My older brother kept teasing me and I took off my shoe and threw it and smashed my mother’s curio cabinet. Needless to say, my mother was very upset, and I didn’t get my Christmas toys that year until after New Year’s. She said Santa Claus took all my toys away.”

— Teri Crossway, Newnan “It was Christmas.

I was 10 years old.

My whole family had the stomach flu and my grandmother was having a colonoscopy the next day. She couldn’t eat and we were vomiting everywhere. I remember laying on the couch looking at my presents under the tree and thinking, ‘I don’t even care.’ And who schedules a colonoscopy for the day after Christmas?”

— Andra Farill, Sharpsburg “It was Christmas in Canada in the mid-1970s. It had been really cold and Lake Erie froze over early that year. And

there was a line to all the bathrooms in my house because we all got sick. You could hear everybody puking. Three of us were shoved in one bed, and my cousin got up in the middle of the night and threw up on the floor. I ended up spending the night laying on the cold toilet. So, for Christmas, we have all these pictures of everybody holding trash buckets.”

— Samantha Byrd, Newnan

then it snowed and snowed and snowed.

And then, two days before Christmas, a nor’easter came in and blew all the snow from Lake Erie onto shore. We had snow drifts as high as telephone wires. The drift was above our two-story house. We dug tunnels from the roof of the house and slid down them like slides. We were locked in for three days.“ — Chris Krowchuk, Newnan “When I was a freshman in college, I had to get reconstructive surgeries on both of my shoulders. The second of my two surgeries (the one on my left shoulder) was scheduled three days before Christmas. I was so jacked up on painkillers that even two days removed from surgery, I still was so far gone that I don’t remember a thing about Christmas 2006. But I heard it was great!”

— Will Daane, Newnan

“It was Christmas 2004. I was at college in Nashville. There was a snow storm headed our way and I wanted to try to make it home to Kansas City before it hit. I left at 1 a.m. and made it 60 miles north in about four hours before I surrendered to the storm. The heat in my car went out, I had no money, my cell phone died after calling my dad and freaking him out, and the hotels were full. I charged my phone at a truck stop enough to call a friend who booked me a hotel room nearby. I sat in the lobby for nine hours waiting for a vacancy. During that time I babysat kids to barter for food. I ended up making it to Kansas City a few hours before Christmas Day. Funny thing is, a friend of mine left Germany the same time that I left Nashville, and she made it to Kansas City a day before me.”

— Amy Nelson, Peachtree City

“On Christmas one year, my whole family got together (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, my brother and my parents) all in one house. My cousin wasn’t feeling well when she arrived. She’d been throwing up on the plane. After she was quarantined at our house, she started feeling better. Then, on Christmas Eve,

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10:30 AM Sunday and 7:00 PM Wednesday | www.abundantlifefaithchurch.net 10 Forest Road, Newnan (Shenandoah) | (770) 304-1172 november /december 2013

| 35

Being Santa

Coweta’s jolly characters discuss what it takes to play the part

Newnan Police Chief Buster Meadows has been dressing up as Santa Claus for 40 years.

For more than 40 years, Buster Meadows has greeted Newnan children with a bushy beard and a “ho ho ho.”

As a Newnan native and the city’s police chief, Meadows has watched many children grow up and bring their own to sit on his lap.

“The children are great. They’ll tell you the truth as they perceive it, even if it embarrasses the parents,” he said. “I remember one boy bringing in the Sears catalog with marked pages. We went from front to back of that catalog.”

Meadows started playing Santa when he was 17 years old, following in the footsteps of his brother Wesley. He dresses up for the Main Street Newnan parade each year, as well as for a few private parties. Spread through word of mouth, Meadows was hired

Written by CAROLYN CRIST | Photographed by JEFFREY LEO 36 |

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“Santa South” Paul Boylen shares a moment with granddaughter Emsley Hutton, 2, who blows a kiss to mom during her visit with Santa.

for house parties and stores in earlier years, but he’s cut back in recent years.

“Some years, I was busier doing Santa than my regular job,” Meadows said. “But it finally came to a point where I had to back off and have more family time.”

At age 18, Meadows started at the Newnan Police Department as a radio operator and worked his way up the ranks as a patrol officer, desk sergeant, patrol lieutenant and captain of administration.

When he was appointed interim chief in

“The children are great. They’ll tell you the truth as they perceive it, even if it embarrasses the parents.”

november /december 2013

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2003, he knew he would keep signing up for Santa events, especially the department’s annual Christmas party.

“The staff seem to enjoy it and get a big kick out of it when they bring their kids,” he said. “During that time of year, everybody is glad to see Santa and have a good time.”

Meadows dons a beard and a suit for the events, usually replacing the suit every seven years. In the early years, Meadows struggled to dye his dark hair and blend it with the beard. These days, he uses less dye but still doctors his eyebrows and facial hair. In all, it takes about an hour to prepare for an event.

“My parents enjoyed seeing me dressed up, and my wife always likes me doing it,” he said. “My daughter had a suspicion that Daddy was Santa Claus, but I didn’t say anything until fifth or sixth grade. After that, she even dressed up as one of my elves.”

Meadows has enjoyed his many years of Santa experience, and he looks forward to many more.

“Some moments leave you speechless.

The hardest part is when a child lost a parent or has a parent on deployment with

the military,” he said. “That chokes you up. You say you’ll be praying for them and try to comfort them, but that’s all you can do.”

Learning to be Santa Thomas McCague bought his first Santa suit in 2003 to play the part for his neighborhood — The French Village on Palmetto Tyrone Road.

As a member of the subdivision’s board of directors, he donated the $35 for the 15-minute visit to the neighborhood’s treasury.

Thomas McCague, “Santa Thom,” spreads cheer during a Light Up Senoia Christmas parade along with Liz Sargeant as Mrs. Claus.

Buster Meadows, top right, waves atop a vintage fire engine during a MainStreet Newnan Christmas parade.

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“I enjoyed it so much that I decided to start going to classes,” he said. “I wanted to see what it was all about.”

McCague, who goes by “Santa Thom,” first attended a class in 2004 taught

by Tom Connaghan, known as Santa Hollywood. McCague then tried the Santa School in Michigan, established more than 70 years ago by Charles W. Howard, the original Macy’s Santa. In an intensive three-day class, Santa recruits learn to be professionals: Don’t smoke, drink alcohol, or eat pungent foods before seeing the children. Brush your teeth and clean your suit. Never lie to the children.

“If they ask if you’re the real Santa, you ask what they think and leave it at that,” he said. “If they ask you to bring something specific, you say you’ll try but may not have enough to go around so there isn’t any disappointment.”

Like Meadows, McCague has also handled some heart-wrenching moments.

“One time an 8-year-old boy asked me to help his father stop drinking, and last year a 10-year-old girl asked me to help her friend beat cancer,” he said. “In those cases, all you can say is that you’ll pray for them. You can’t promise anything.”

McCague retired from IBM in 2008 after 33 years as a second-line manager in charge of audits and business controls.

Then the Santa gigs bombarded his schedule. He’s visited Ashley Park for almost a decade and regularly dresses up for Jefferson Parkway Elementary School, The Heritage School and the

Paul Boylen is always on the lookout for which kids are being naughty and which ones are being nice.

Senoia parade. McCague also played

his wife will take a trip to Italy for three

your bell and not fall out of the truck.

Santa when former Gov. Sonny Perdue

weeks, where many people recognize him

It’s exhausting,” he said. “But I wouldn’t

lived in the Georgia Governor’s Mansion

as Babbo Natale.

change anything. People are always

and in commercials for Morgan Jewelers

“Every event is different. I thought the

enthusiastic and friendly there, and

and Steve Mader’s SouthTowne Motors

Senoia parade would be easy, but you

nobody gets irritated when they must wait

dealership. This season, McCague and

have to belt out the ‘ho ho ho’ and ring

in line. That doesn’t happen everywhere.”

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McCague visits the salon for a final haircut and beard trim in July each year.

As the holiday season approaches, he bleaches his sideburns and hair to look “as white as snow.” The events start on Nov. 6 and run through Dec. 23, often booking all his weekends and even some of his weekdays. By Christmas Eve, Santa should be flying around the world, so McCague takes a break to attend Christmas Eve church services with his family.

“The only thing I hate about being Santa is having to bleach my hair,” he said.

“In January, the first thing I do is go to the barber shop. My wife says I look like a homeless guy at that point.”

McCague also takes his three suits to the cleaners and packs up figurines that he likes to give out at home visits at nursing homes, such as candy canes or sleigh bells on lanyards.

“I’ve really loved being Santa, especially

for in-home visits. The whole family gets excited, and it makes you feel really good,” he said. “But it’s tough to watch the kids grow up and not believe anymore. It’s like being Peter Pan.” Taking Santa in a new direction When Paul Boylen first traveled to Mexico in 2004 for a church mission trip, a friend handed him a Santa suit and talked him into handing out toys for a week. He returned for a few years and then stopped for a few years.

But when the economy plummeted, so did his 37-year-old house framing business. During Christmas 2010, Boylen told his wife that he would be in business the next year and started growing a beard.

Like McCague, he attended Connaghan’s program to learn the business of being Santa. He opened a barn near Thomas Crossroads and adapted it to look like

Santa’s workshop. Families can visit Boylen, who goes by “Santa Paul” or “Santa South,” in Santa’s living room, office, or toy construction area.

“We take pictures and read books and just have fun interacting,“ he said. “The number one thing about being Santa is that it ain’t about Santa. It’s about the kids, always.”

This will be Boylen’s third year as Santa South. The last two years were “comfortable,” but Boylen says he hasn’t gotten rich and doesn’t expect to be. He’s found that advertising the workshop is expensive, but he enjoys spreading the word through social media and interacting with families in Coweta County. To play on the popularity of A&E’s most watched reality television show, “Duck Dynasty,” Boylen ordered red camouflage to wear in the workshop as the “Elf Commander of the Reindeer Dynasty.”

In addition, Boylen has an apron for

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november /december 2013

| 41

Paul Boylen is busy making toys for the holiday season from his Christmas workshop in Thomas Crossroads.

42 |

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the workshop, two Santa suits, a vest and various hats. When he first started, Boylen bleached his hair but found it damaged his strands. Then he found a barber in Peachtree City who could lighten his hair to a platinum blonde, which shows up better in pictures, he said.

“I love passing out cards that say, ‘Santa caught you being good,’ ” he said.

“I tell them there aren’t bad kids, just bad behavior, and I remind them to be polite to everyone and share.”

When Boylen visited Honduras this fall with JOY FM, he translated the cards

into Spanish and handed them out while donating shoes and socks to orphanages.

Boylen has taken 23 mission trips to Latin America since 2002 and always enjoys playing Santa when he can.

“Last year in Guatemala, we saw tons of tourists in the streets taking pictures, and I would walk up behind them and photo bomb them,” he said. “The person taking the photo would laugh and give me a thumbs-up. I bet people from around the world are shocked to develop their pictures and see Santa there.” NCM

Santa’s Workshop ThE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CLAUS, cited as the largest annual professional Santa school in the world, hosts two-day workshops around the country for those who want to learn how to be an authentic Santa or Mrs. Claus.

More than 2,600 Santas have attended class, with more than 300 signed up in 2013.

The school was created by Tim Connaghan, who has donned the Santa suit for more than 45 years and serves as the official Santa for the U.S. Marines Toys for Tots Foundation. As the Santa in the Hollywood Christmas Parade for 10 years, he’s appeared on “Dr. Phil,” “The Today Show,” “Deal or No Deal,” “Castle,” “It’s Complicated” and “Southland.”

He has been on five JC Penney catalogue covers and played Santa at events for Coca-Cola Company, Disney, Target, Hallmark, McDonald’s, Southwest Airlines and Wal-Mart.

As part of School 4 Santas, participants can earn one of five diplomas — associate, bachelor, master, advanced master or doctor — of Santa Clausology based on years of attendance.

During the two-day workshops, attendees learn the stories and legends behind Santa, different posing techniques, how to talk to children, how to maintain appearance, how to market and promote the business, and what to do year-round as Santa.

» Read more information

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» happenings

Candlelight Tour of Homes

141 Greenville Street

Ready to get into the Christimas spirit?

The 26th annual Candlelight Tour of Homes in Newnan will be held Dec. 6 from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will highlight five homes in the Greenville Street/ LaGrange Street district: the Reese-Umberger-Wright home at 85 Greenville St.; the Turner-Nolen-Fanning home at 122 Greenville St.; the North-RosenzweigMcCondichle home at 141 Greenville St.; the Cook-Healy home at 84 LaGrange St. and the Bryant-Christiensen home at 108 LaGrange St. Proceeds from the event will be directed toward a $150,000 pledge for the establishment of a healing garden at Piedmont Newnan Hospital. The garden will be located to the right of the hospital’s front entrance. It will serve as a refuge of beauty, peace and serenity for the community, patients and staff. NCM

122 Greenville Street

85 Greenville Street

GET YOUR TICKETS Tickets go on sale Nov. 8 and may be purchased at Piedmont Newnan Fitness Center in downtown Newnan, the Coweta County Visitors Center in downtown Newnan, Branch and Vine in Ashley Park, The Poplar Shop in Piedmont Newnan Hospital, Collectors’ Corner in Sharpsburg and The Gift Shop at Piedmont Fayette Hospital in Fayetteville.

Tickets are also available through the Piedmont Newnan Hospital Auxiliary. Call the office at 770-400-2380.

Tickets are $15 in advance. On the evening of the event, they can also be purchased at any of the homes on the tour for $20.

84 LaGrange Street

108 LaGrange Street 44 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

A Magical Main Street

Christmas Christmas Parade Sunday, December 8, 3 p.m.

Holiday Open House Sunday, November 17, 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

Join the town in celebration with colorful floats, local businesses and marching bands from local high schools. An annual event you don’t want to miss!

Get an early start on your holiday shopping in Historic Downtown Newnan.

Christmas spirit will be in the air! An exciting time in Newnan with refreshments, entertainment and in-store specials!

Mingle with Kringle

Plaid Friday

Friday, November 29, 6 p.m. until 8 p.m.

Friday, November 29, until 8p.m.

Santa arrives in downtown Newnan.

Bring your list and join us on North Court Square to sit on Santa’s lap!

Celebrate our local independent business by dressing in plaid and shopping in downtown! Plaid Friday celebrates the diversity and creativity of local business.

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Shop

local this holiday

season!

november /december 2013

| 45

Shop Downtown Newnan this Holiday Season!

We invite you to browse our picturesque downtown streets, explore our interesting and unusual shops, sample the local cuisine, and discover the true hospitality of the South. Don't be afraid to ask for that special request! We can do that — our "Owner is In"!

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Holiday Open House Sunday, November 17 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

Get an early start on your holiday shopping!

Christmas Parade Sunday, December 8 3 p.m.

Join the town in celebration!

Mingle with Kringle Friday, November 29 6 p.m. until 8 p.m.

Santa arrives in downtown Newnan on the North Court Square!

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Shop Downtown Newnan this Holiday Season!

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FOOD

Timeless Treasure

One-of-a-kind, local cookbook dates back to the late 1940s With the year’s most festive family gatherings approaching, recipe boxes and favored cookbooks filled with patinaed pages often emerge to both satisfy taste buds and nourish memories.

Such a cookbook found its way to this writer’s hands, placing her in a time of six decades ago.

Karen Reynolds Martin knew she possessed an important family historical record in a rather inauspicious dun green notebook, a simple label on the inside cover: “to Gene with love,

Ella.” Karen’s cousin, Carolyn Bowers, solved what was first deemed an insoluble mystery. Originally, Martin assumed the cookbook existed in multiple copies since so many Newnan cooks’ recipes appeared in it.

However, Bowers remembered its singular origin in 1949. Martin’s grandparents, Gene and Garnett Reynolds, lived near their niece, who spent many wonderful evenings on their porch. Bowers reflects that the Reynolds’ neighbors, Eloise and Hardy Johnson,

often joined the family in engaging conversations.

Eloise, a secretary at R.D. Cole Manufacturing Company, competently typed two copies, one a carbon, to fill the notebook. Whether she or Gene Reynolds requested the recipes within remains an unanswered question. What stands is a testament to friendship and a collection of recipes that’s uniquely filled with Newnan flavor. As well, it gives insight into the era after the war — a time, too, when many families had a cook in the kitchen other

Written by AMELIA ADAMS | Photographed by JEFFREY LEO 50 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

Mrs. Chandler’s White Charlotte is one of many dessert recipes found in the pages of the 1949 cookbook. It has the consistency of mousse and is prepared in a similar fashion.

november /december 2013

| 51

A simple label on the inside cover of the cookbook reads: "To Gene with love, Ella."

52 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

than a wife and mother.

The bulk of the cookbook’s contents features desserts and party food rather than modern concerns of vegetables and healthier options. This detail merits an interesting observation from Bowers: “Most people or their cooks knew how to cook vegetables as they enjoyed them, seasoned with pork, so there was little need for recipes.”

She remembers, however, that cooks’ cakes or other dessert recipes were held precious.

“Some people would deliberately give an incorrect ingredient just so the shared version would not be as good as theirs,” she said.

Food enthusiasts discover that older recipes or cookbooks include many recipes with no directions. One might surmise that those who bothered to have interest in cooking simply did not need steps in reproduction.

The green notebook also records dishes that are rarely served today: Birds on Toast, Pressed Chicken, Boiled Dressing, and Veal Loaf, to name a few. Lenox

sauce, XYZ dressing, 5 cent cherries have vanished. “Keeps well in the GE,” recalls the then-amazing concept of refrigeration.

Canning seems important not only in offering a condiment, but to preserve extra produce to be enjoyed out of season.

Sweet sandwiches such as date and cream cheese appear numerous times; a multitude of congealed salads with fruits and vegetables abound. “Finely ground” appears often.

One of the recipes from Gene Reynolds appears as a casserole. Although celery on its own is rarely a feature these days, this crunchy vegetable was most popular in 1949.

“Celery was an inexpensive vegetable then; everyone was still conscious of cost in those years after the war,” Bowers said.

The recipe has been amended slightly, decreasing the almonds and adding celery broth to the sauce.

Mention Charlotte to many Southerners, and they might swoon.

These holiday seasons of the past were not complete without a bowl of charlotte,

FOOD

Typed in a dun green notebook, the bulk of the recipes in the 1949 cookbook features locallyinspired desserts and party food.

which has the consistency of mousse and is prepared in a similar fashion. It owes its origin to a famed French chef, Céreme, who named it in honor of King George IV’s daughter Charlotte. As he also served the Russian Court, the name is also known as Charlotte Russe.

Although Newnan cookbooks do not serve the dessert in ladyfinger-lined molds or garnished with fresh fruit, some Southern communities do. Since the use of alcohol was used sparingly at that time, to have sherry or bourbon as flavoring is

Around Around the the corner. corner.

Right Right where where you you need need us. us.

noteworthy. Often a stemmed maraschino cherry was placed on top of each serving.

The examination of this aged record produces more than a simple journey into the lifestyles and food of a period. The volume highlights the splendid gesture of friendship, not a monetary one, but a selfless gift of time to say “how much you mean to me.”

This element of thankfulness and giving echoes still in the holiday seasons we cherish.

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White Charlotte isn’t considered complete until it’s garnished with whipped cream and red cherries.

Mrs. Chandler’s White Charlotte courtesy of Gene Reynolds

Charlotte recipes were common staples in many Southern cookbooks of the time.

1

1 3 ½ ½ 1

package unflavored gelatin dissolved in ¼ cup cold water pint whipping cream, whipped stiff egg whites + pinch of salt cup sugar cup orange juice (1/4 cup may be bourbon) teaspoon vanilla Pinch of salt

Soak gelatin in cold water and mix well. Allow to stand for a few minutes. Melt over boiling water and mix well with the orange juice and/or bourbon and set aside to cool.

Beat egg whites with added salt until they are stiff; add sugar slowly as for making meringues, and beat until the sugar is well dissolved and mixture very firm. When the gelatin mixture has cooled, pour into egg whites, and then mix with the pint of whipped cream. Pour into a bowl to get firm. Garnish with whipped cream and stem-on red cherries.

54 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

FOOD

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Skin Cancer Specialists, P.C. Although celery on its own is rarely a feature these days, the crunchy vegetable was most popular in 1949.

• • • •

Baked Celery courtesy of Gene Reynolds 3 cups sliced celery

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½

Specializing in...

cup sliced almonds tablespoons butter tablespoons flour cup warm half-and-half cup celery broth Salt and pepper cup lightly toasted, buttered bread crumbs

Cook the celery in salted water until tender (This may take as long as 45 minutes). Drain and retain one cup of the liquid. Melt the butter, add the flour and cook two minutes. Add the half-and-half, celery water and cook until thick.

Taste and add preferred amount of salt and pepper.

Top with bread crumbs and almonds. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees until crumbs are brown and almonds are toasted. Miss Gene made layers of the creamed celery and almonds and used bread crumbs on the top. In that event, the amount of almonds must be increased.

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www.SkinCancerSpecialists-Newnan.com november /december 2013

| 55

» entertaining

A beautiful holiday table lets your guests know they are in for an evening of fun and good food as soon as they arrive.

Tips for a Casual Holiday Party Make your holiday gathering both beautiful and memorable without all the fuss It's the most wonderful, and hectic, time of year. Everyone loves to get together with family and friends during the holidays. Want to make your holiday gathering both beautiful and memorable without all the fuss? Gather things you already have around the house to create a festive tablescape. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Add to the fun holiday atmosphere with bright red chargers under the white dinnerware. If you don’t have chargers,

56 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

tuck one end of a red linen napkin under each plate and drape the other end over the edge of the table.

• Place flatware on top of a folded napkin, tie them up like a package with red ribbon, and tuck in a sprig of holly or other greenery.

• There’s no need to buy an expensive table runner. Find beautiful fabric at your local craft store, drape it down the center of the table, and you’re all set.

• Add an extra splash of color to the

holiday table by dropping a few raspberries into wine glasses filled with sparkling wine or club soda. Always keep frozen berries in the freezer during the holiday season. They are a pretty garnish for desserts and make even the simplest cocktails look more festive.

• Scatter candles and pinecones down the center of the table and pop some colorful flowers into a white vase or pitcher. The look is perfect for a casual gathering of friends and family. NCM

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» happenings

Light Up Senoia returns Light Up Senoia is the city’s annual Christmas event, featuring a parade, Santa and Mrs. Claus, the lighting of the city’s tree and decorations, food vendors and entertainment.

This year, it will be held on Dec. 7. The event will run from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m., with the parade along Main Street starting at 5:30 p.m.

Light Up Senoia is sponsored each year by the Senoia Downtown Development Authority.

“It’s a great family event,” said Gail Downs of the Senoia DDA. “We’ve got great entertainment this year. Santa and Mrs. Claus are wonderful and are always a big hit. The kids can’t wait to talk to Santa.”

This year, Senoia’s Candlelight Tour of Homes will be held on Dec. 8. The two events are usually planned a week apart, but this year they are being scheduled as back-to-back events.

“I think it will keep the momentum going after Light Up Senoia,” Downs said. NCM

An annual tradition, Light Up Senoia will run from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m., with the parade along Main Street starting at 5:30 p.m.

58 |

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» For more information, visit www.EnjoySenoia.com

Shop Downtown Senoia this Holiday Season!

Light Up Senoia Saturday, December 7 • 4 p.m. until 8 p.m.

Festival of Lights Parade, Christmas Tree Lighting, Visit Santa & Mrs. Claus, Shopping & Dining. Parade begins at 5:30 p.m.

Candlelight Tour of Homes Sunday, December 8 • 5 p.m. until 8 p.m.

Make plans to attend and come early to historic downtown Senoia on the day of the tour to shop and dine.

Tickets: $12.00 each • Evening of the tour: $15.00 at the new location of the Senoia Welcome Center at 68 Main Street.

For further information, contact Suzanne Helfman at 770-599-8182 or Gail Downs at 770-599-9155.

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|591

A few of our favorite

Christmas Movies Sometimes you want the comfort of a traditional holiday classic. On other occasions, something off the beaten path is a little more entertaining.

Though it’s simply impossible to list ALL our favorite holiday movies — or even narrow the field — here are several of our favorites.

“Elf” SOn OF a nuTCRaCKeR, do we love this movie. This film gave us “ginormous,” “cottonheaded ninnymuggins” and an appetite for elves’ four main food groups: Candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup. Buddy the Elf may be naive to the ways of New York City, but his earnest efforts to remove his biological father from Santa’s naughty list — and his dexterity with an Etch-A-Sketch — have earned this movie a place among annual Christmas must-sees.

“White Christmas”

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” ThiS MOVie giVeS CeleBRaTiOnlOVeRS a perfect excuse to start early. Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, laments his lack of new worlds to conquer after masterminding yet another over-the-top Halloween in this animated Tim Burton tale.

Music by composer Danny Elfman is the costar as the Pumpkin King stumbles onto the idea he can out-Christmas Santa. But Jack runs afoul of the terrifying Oogie Boogie and traumatizes many a child on the way to learning a lesson about his true destiny.

dannY KaYe and Bing CROSBY in drag are the least beautiful — but arguably the most hilarious — thing about this beloved holiday classic. Who could ask for more than a pair of spunky and ambitious sisters, two successfulbut-reluctant bachelors, a couple of well-meant but grossly misunderstood plot twists and an ultimately happy ending? The Christmas season just wouldn’t be complete without this postWWII classic and its stellar soundtrack.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” ClaRenCe The angel’S wORdS still resonate with us: “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” We can thank PBS for turning this once obsolete Frank Capra film into a holiday classic.

Remember watching it with rabbit ears and snow on your RCA TV at least four times in December? We sure do.

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“Rare Exports” FOR an adulTS-OnlY TwiST on the Santa tale, “Rare Exports,” a Finnish release, is a trip into the dark, cold and creepy side. A revision of the Santa myth in which naughty children are eaten by a gargantuan antlered madman recently uncovered and slowly thawing in the Nordic wilderness, this one may be destined for cult status. Hint: that old guy in the red felt hat … he’s not your problem.

“A Christmas Story” a FilM ThaT highlighTS family experiences throughout the Christmas season, with characters and experiences that many of us can relate to — from the little boy who has the ultimate present he wants but doesn’t think he’ll get to the impromptu Christmas dinner at the Japanese restaurant. Watching it during the holidays is as much a Christmas tradition as eggnog and gifting socks to dad.

“Planes, Trains and Automobiles” hOw ManY MOVieS revolve around Thanksgiving? And how many of those also are centered around a road trip between two would-be strangers trying to get home for the holiday? This 1987 classic includes a pair of career-worthy efforts from Steve Martin and John Candy. The way Martin and Candy play off each other with their characters’ flaws, not unlike an Abbott and Costello movie, makes for a setting that turns a nightmare of a journey into an enjoyable 90-minute ride.

“The Family Man” ThiS One TaKeS a Ferrari-driving New York investment banker for a ride in an alternate reality where the minivan barely starts, the house is mortgaged, and his wife eats the chocolate cake he was saving. It’s bad enough that he has to change the baby’s diapers on alternate weekday mornings, but when his wife gives him a knock-off Ermenegildo Zegna jacket, the rubber really hits the road. Téa Leoni as the centered wife and Don Cheadle as the angel of alternate realities are spectacular, but it’s Nick Cage’s turn as the disappointed family man that makes this a modern classic.

“National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” ClaRK w. gRiSwOld is the ultimate boob of a father. More often than not, his heart is in the right place. All Clark wants is a full-fledged Griswold family Christmas.

But instead of the best Christmas ever, Clark causes a domino effect of disasters that eventually drives everyone crazy. NCM

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T o graduate fro Tw f m Coweta DUI Court see page 3

Small business ow o ners fe f el pinch of refo f rm fo Editor’s ’ note: This is the third ’s installment in a continuing n ng series by The Ne N wnan TimesH rald on the fe He f deral Aff Affo ffordable Care Act and what it means fo f r Coweta area residents and businesses.

BY CLAY A NEELY AY L LY Peachtree City. y y. didn’t make any immediate need to worry about it. tive fo f r them to subscribe to our CLAY AY@ AY Y@NEWNAN.COM ff red health insurffe As an employer, Smith cur- moves. He relies on info f rmation fo H i s c o m p a n y c u r r e n t l y company-offe rently staffs ff roughly fo ffs f ur to six fr f om his insurance agent. Aft f er offers health insurance, but ance through Blue Cross Blue ft Christopher Smith is the employees at each location. everything he had read or heard it’s not a popular item with his Shield. We have a lot of single guys who fe f el like they don’t ow ner of t h re e Va lvol i ne When he first learned about on the news, Smith concluded employees.

Instant Oil Change locations t he passage of t he federa l that because he has less than We’re not paying minimum W “We — one in Newnan and two in Affordable Care Act, Smith 50 employees on staff he didn’t wage, but it’s still not cost effe ff cffe HEALT L H, page 2 LT

HERITA T GE’S QUEEN TA

What's In Your Pocket?

Man victim of drive v -by ve b by

MOVIE MAGIC

Motives of two suspects unclear

Special effects whiz provides explosive excitement

By WES MAY A ER AY

news@newnan.com

A man was injured in a drive-by shooting late Friday and was transported to the hospital by helicopter.

The man was believed to be playing basketball with a group by a small church around the 90 block of West Washington Street, said Lt. Eddie Attaway with Newnan Police Department. Police are currently searching fo f r two unknown suspects who drove by and fired into the group just befo f re 6 p.m. fo One man was hit in the stomach and was fo f und on the f ont porch of a home across fr the street when public safe f ty fe personnel arrived. He was shortly transported to Atlanta

Being

Santa

PHOTO BY CLAY AY NEELY A L LY

The victim of a shooting on West Washington Street was transported to a hospital in Atlanta by helicopter late Friday.

by helicopter, which landed in are unsure of the vehicle or the Westside Plaza shopping type of weapons used in the center around 6:30 p.m. shooting at this time, and are According to Attaway, y police still interviewing witnesses. y,

NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2013

Three Cowetans help carry on a holiday tradition

4th armed robbery suspect arrested

By WES MAY A ER AY

suspect we were looking g fo f r,,”

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What’s In Your Pocket?

Knives not just for old-timers anymore Written by JOHN WINTERS | Photographed by JEFFREY LEO 62 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

ONE OF THE MANY RITES OF MANHOOD was getting that first pocketknife.

Sometimes it was handed down from father to son. But often it was the grandfather, who would at some point dig into his pocket and pull out his knife. And with a nod and a smile, and a “don’t tell your mother,” he’d hand it over.

There were stories behind that knife.

It was part of one’s family history. And it created yet another bond between the past and the future.

But the days of your grandfather’s Old Timer are slowing fading. Even the namesake company closed its doors in July 2004.

Blame part of it on television. Shows like “Man Versus Wild,” “Survivor Man,” “Dual Survivor” and other knockoffs push the necessity of always having a real knife.

Because we all know we are going to be stranded in the middle of the Mojave Desert or the wilds of Alaska at some point in our lives.

And as those shows proliferated, YouTube picked up the pace. There are literally thousands of channels dedicated to the perfect pocketknife — the key component in one’s EDC, or “everyday carry.”

The whole EDC concept exploded as the survivor shows hit the public mainstream. One must always be prepared. One of the more popular varieties was the simple Altoids can. It was the perfect size for pure survivalists to live off the land in an emergency — back to that whole wild Alaska image.

Inside that small canister would be a couple of birthday candles, water purification tablets, a button compass, waterproof matches, flint and steel, a small flashlight, aluminum foil, wire for snares, a condom (non-lubricated and used to hold water) and other small items.

And there was always the knife.

Technology also played a major part in changing the once-familiar penknife.

Many got tired of breaking their

fingernails trying to open a blade. What has transpired over the years is a move toward quick-release blades that also lock.

The beloved Swiss Army knife, with an assortment of scissors, nail files, toothpicks (which we all lose the first week), scissors and other items, remains strong in many a pocket. But “multitools” are appearing more and more, with companies like Leatherman, Gerber and SOG leading the way.

Whatever the style or purpose, there are some who wouldn’t be caught dead without their knife.

“When people ask me if I have my knife with me, I ask, ‘Do I have my pants on?’ ” joked Kurt Gaude, an information technology specialist.

When not at work, Gaude actually carries an Old Timer. “It holds its edge,” he said. “I’ve had it since I was born.” At work, however, Gaude prefers a lighter blade, like a Gerber paraframe with a quick release and locking blade.

“I’ll do just about anything I need to

Often it was the grandfather who would at some point dig into his pocket and pull out his knife and hand it over.

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As both the popularity of knives and the EDC trend continue to rise, there's also a growing subculture dedicated to making, watching and sharing knife reviews on YouTube.

Here are just a few of our favorite knife review channels: nutnfancy With more than 360,000 subscribers, nutnfancy is widely considered the king of knife reviewers. His videos are extremely informative. Just look out for his conspiracy theory politics.

cutlerylover The nice guy of the EDC underworld, cutlerylover’s knowledge and experience with knives is extraordinary. He’s the guy-next-door type with a calm voice and self-deprecating sense of humor.

WeAllJuggleKnives You get the feeling he’s filming in the basement of his aunt and uncle’s home, but this reviewer covers everything from low-end, convenience store-variety knives to the high-end, exclusive folders.

The Late Boy Scout His enthusiasm is infectious, and the viewer might find himself ordering a knife he had no interest in moments before. The Late Boy Scout not only reviews but field tests his knives.

Good stuff.

jdavis882 Another blade tester, this no-nonsense reviewer isn’t interested in face time, just getting his knowledge of knives out there to his audience. His reviews can make or break the reputation of so-called must-haves.

Worth mentioning: bluntruth4u, kailacumings, equip2endure, and xiuxiu1313.

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Many law enforcement officers and firefighters will tell you a knife is one of their most necessary tools of the trade.

The tactical pants worn by investigators and officers are specially designed with reinforced pockets to hold a knife that clips to the pocket.

with it,” he said about carrying a knife.

“Cut through boxes, that impossible plastic packaging. And when we’re out backpacking, sometimes I use it to eat with.”

Al Robertson, who owns a construction company, is another one who is never without a knife. For him, it’s usually a Benchmade or CRKT — a typical folder with a quick release and locking blade.

“It’s just for everyday use,” he said. “I’ll open packages, cut rope, sharpen pencils, whatever needs to be done.”

Robertson has more than 40 pocketknives, and he’s been known to hand out small Swiss Army-type knives frequently. The reason for that is when he flies, the first thing he does is stop and pick up a little pocketknife. When he flies back, he simply mails the knife back to his home.

“I don’t go anywhere without a knife,” he said.

For Steve Mapel, a former Scoutmaster, carrying some sort of multi-tool is just part of nature.

GMC FAIRBURN

“The Scout Motto is ‘Be Prepared,’ ” he’ll point out. For his purposes, the Leatherman Micra is perfect.

“There’s really nothing small I can’t fix with it,” he said. “It’s got a nice little sharp knife, bottle opener, scissors, screwdriver. I can pretty much fix any little thing.”

Knives have evolved to include all kinds of steel and even various edges, from flat grinds to Scandi to convex edges. It’s enough to make your head spin. When you think about it, knives are like buying a car.

There are all different makes and models and extras and costs. Cars are to get you from A to B, the only issue is how much you want to spend to get there.

Knives are the same way. The less expensive knives from the most popular brands in America — Gerber, Benchmade, SOG, Case, Buck, Kershaw, Ka-Bar and others — primarily use a flat or hollow grind and are more mass-produced. Semi-custom knives, from companies like Bark River Knife and Took, Columbia River Knife and Tool and Fallkniven, will set you

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The sheaths, pictured above, for fixed blades are almost as important as the knives themselves. What’s the blade retention of the knife? Does the knife rattle in the sheath? Is any part of the blade exposed?

Though leather is nice and will last a lifetime, many hardcore survivalists pass on the material because it's prone to absorb moisture, which can eventually rust your blade.

At left, some ornamental knifes are considered “safe queens,� meaning they're intended to be fondled and admired or otherwise stored in a safe, but never dedicated for hard use.

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back even more. And then there are the custom knives made in small quantities by knife makers that can soar into the hundreds of dollars.

Your classic grandfather’s knife came with two or three blades, and you were never sure when to use which blade. Plus, there was that whole fingernail-breaking issue we mentioned earlier. Newer models focus on a single blade and are either a folder — the blade folds into the handle — or a fixed blade.

Folders are much easier to open now.

They have a large thumb hole or a button or finger switch (flipper) to open quickly.

More importantly, the majority also lock, meaning you won’t be cutting off your finger doing whatever it is you are trying to do with your blade.

Those in the more survivalist/ backpacking genre prefer a small fixed blade with what is known as a “full tang.” That simply means the blade and handle are one piece of metal, thus

there's less chance of breaking your blade.

Commonly called boot or neck knives, they are designed to be worn just as their name implies. Some people even get attachments that include clips so they can wear them on their belts.

And for those who don’t like carrying a knife around their neck, many cottage leathersmiths have opened up and offer a wide variety of leather sheaths. One of the most popular is a pocket sheath that fits a back pocket like a wallet, conforming to allow the wearer to sit and not stab themselves.

One would think with the coming Zombie Apocalypse, people would always carry a knife. But that’s not the case.

When asked, Robertson smiled and said he has “other tools … larger capacity for zombies.”

Gaude was more blunt. “I carry a gun for that.”

One occasionally reads of someone being robbed at knifepoint, but in

everyday civilian life, knives are rarely the tactical weapon of choice. But for law enforcement and public safety personnel, knives play a critical role in their mission.

Coweta County Sheriff’s Office patrol units usually carry a small device or knife that can break windows and cut seat belt straps. And in the evidence kit for the Criminal Investigation Division, you will always find various multi-tools.

The tactical pants worn by investigators and officers are specially designed with reinforced pockets to hold a knife that clips to the pocket.

“Being able to release the blade onehanded is very important,” said Lieutenant Colonel James Yarbrough.

“People don’t take knives as seriously as they should,” added Lieutenant Mark Fenninger. “You can really get cut up bad.”

And because of that, deputies and investigators are trained in close combat situations involving knives — not only how to use a knife properly, but also

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Here are a few of my favorite knives – With three boys in Boy Scouts and the accompanying backpacking and camping adventures, we have no lack of cutting instruments.

Through a lot of trial and error (and money), I’ve come up with a few favorite standbys. There are three main varieties — a locking folding blade, a fixed blade and a multi-tool.

Outfitting the boys first. My greatest fear is they will forget and take a pocketknife to school.

So we pretty much ban them during the week. Each has a Gerber Bear Grylls folding knife.

It’s got a locking blade and the blade itself is half serrated and half straight edge. It’s got a nice rubber handle and the boys think they are Bear when they are out in the woods.

But for camping, backpacking and the like, I got them each a fixed blade Ka-Bar Becker Necker. It’s a full tang, meaning the blade and handle are all one piece of metal. Little chance of breaking and no worries about the locking mechanism breaking and cutting a finger off. The knife has a 3-inch blade and is pretty indestructible. All of them have wrapped paracord around the handle to make it easier to hold and more comfortable.

We even got my wife one, which she carries in her purse. Of course, her paracord wrap is pink in color.

As for me, day to day I carry one of three folding knives: a small Spyderco Dragonfly with a serrated blade, a Ka-Bar Dozier, or a Spyderco Tenacious.

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My fixed blade knives are primarily for walking/camping in the woods. However, I’ve got some leather pocket sheaths that enable me to carry them in my back pocket just like I would a wallet. My go-to fixed blade everyday carry is either a Bark River Necker 2 or an Izula II. Both are excellent knives.

I’ve also been known to carry multi-tools. On my keychain I usually have a miniature Leatherman Micra. Out in the woods, I carry another small Leatherman, the Juice CS4.

Besides having a knife, scissors, can/bottle opener and the like, it has one other necessity — a corkscrew.

how to defend against a knife attack.

Deputies and investigators vary on how and where they carry a knife. Some use the pants pocket, others add a clip and stick the knife in their boots. Few wear neck knives, partly because they are too difficult to reach when they are wearing bulletproof vests.

Yarbrough grew up with knives.

“My dad always had one and now I always carry one,” he said. The colonel has collected quite an arsenal of knives over the years, many used by the department and ranging from small micro mini-tools to large machetes used to chop down marijuana plants.

The blades deputies carry vary as to the blade type as well. Some carry a straight edge, others a serrated blade. Some even go with a combination of the two, known as a

partially-serrated blade.

But regardless of what type, Yarbrough has one demand. “They have to be kept sharp. Very sharp. You can’t do anything with a dull knife.”

With the holiday season approaching, now might be a good time to find a perfect knife for your significant other.

Knives aren’t gender specific. There are plenty of women who carry them, too. Or will if you go for it.

But with so many choices out there, the question is, which one? That has been debated for centuries — what is the perfect knife? Fact is, there isn’t just one. Like any other tool, different knives are designed for different purposes. But as any knife nut will tell you, the best knife is the one you are carrying at the moment. NCM

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Two scenes from the Season 2 episode of “The Walking Dead” filmed at Newnan High School featuring Senoia "walker" Michelle Flanagan-Helmeczy.

Speaking of zombies ...

AMC PHOTOS

S

ENOIA RESIDENT MICHELLE FLANAGAN-HELMECZY has been a zombie extra in approximately a dozen episodes of the first three seasons of “The Walking Dead.” We caught up with the busy mother of two teenagers and asked her a few questions about her experiences as a flesh-eating, undead monster.

Q: How did you become one of “The Walking Dead?”

A: I went to a casting call that requested a certain size person. I was chosen and they asked if I could come back a couple of days later for zombie school. I’m game for anything. In one of the early scenes, there were around 30 or 40 zombies walking around and I just started laughing to myself. I had to put my head down and cover myself with my hair as I’m swaying back and forth so the camera couldn’t see me laughing. I thought to myself — whatever this show is, it is either going to be a huge flop or it’s going to be a sensation.

Q: What’s it like to get zombified?

A. The makeup artists have the best personality. I love working with these guys. It’s not uncomfortable — unless it’s hot and you start sweating underneath 70 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

your prosthetics, because you can’t scratch.

Q. Are there any scenes in which you can be seen clearly?

A: [In the Season 2 episode filmed at Newnan High School], right before Shane pushes Otis to the zombies, against the fence I am front and center there. And when we are running down the hallway I am front and center.

Q: Of all the scenes you have been in, which is your favorite?

A: Probably the barn scene in the Season 2 finale. There were so many walkers there, and it was such a huge event. We had been filming for two weeks in and out

Michelle before and after the “zombification” process.

Compiled by SARAH FAY CAMPBELL

of the barn. [The night of the big scene it was 28 degrees] so we could not wait for that barn to catch fire. They gave Snuggies to all the zombies. In between filming, we would be wrapped up in the Snuggies.

(During one take, Flanagan-Helmeczy fell “dead” onto an anthill. The ants attacked her, but she didn’t move.)

You can’t move until they say cut. As soon as they did I started tearing my clothes off. Crew members ran to see what was wrong. (Director and makeup designer Greg Nicotero asked her why she didn’t get up.) I said because you didn’t yell cut. He said, in that case, it would have been alright and suggested I sit out a few takes. I said hell no … people do crazy things to be seen.

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'WE'RE LIKE THE OUTLAWS ON MOVIE SETS.' In the supernatural thriller “The Sixth Sense,” lead character Cole Sear confesses, “I see dead people.” In exceptionally different circumstances, a far cry from the creepy apparitions lurking about in the movie, 54-year-old special effects guru Skip Scurry also confesses to seeing things. Not dead things, but things the average eye may not see.

Written by ANA IVEY Photographed by JEFFREY LEO

“That’s how my mind works,” says Scurry, who speaks with the passion and intensity of a tornado. “When stuff is happening fast, my mind clicks pictures and I’m the guy that makes everything stop happening. That’s who I am. That’s how I’m wired. It’s a gift.”

Like in the mid-’90s, when an effect, aka a “gag,” backfired on Devil’s Pass in Arizona while filming the Chuck Norris flick “Top Dog.” A burning Ford Taurus wagon carrying an explosive careened from its path and headed directly toward hundreds of crew members. november /december 2013

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20TH CENTurY FOX PHOTO

SCURRY NEVER GUESSED THAT HIS OBSESSION WITH FIRE WOULD LEAD TO FULL-TIME WORK IN SHOW BUSINESS. 74 |

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“Everybody else was running that way, and I went this way and disarmed the bomb. I was in the middle of it and the car was on fire. It was about to blow up in base camp,” says the short, solidlybuilt bald guy who, even when relaxing on a Sunday afternoon in his Newnan apartment with the Falcons quietly throwing away passes on his flat-screen TV, zooms in and out of work-related tales faster than the Turbocharged Mazda RX-8 in “Fast & Furious 6.”

“Effects guys, we’re like the outlaws on movie sets,” Scurry says. “We move around outside the circle. I’m the guy that works the shadows, man, like the guy that’s out there pulling guys out of burning cars and doing whatever needs to happen to make sure things go the way they should. What I do is very, very dangerous, very edgy.”

Born Matthew Scurry in West Palm Beach, Fla., the former welder took a

circuitous route to get where he is today.

His dad was a pipefitter who owned a fabrication shop; his mom, a homemaker; and Scurry, a mischievous kid with a penchant for fire.

“I loved playing with matches,” says Scurry. “I used to sneak them out in my socks. We had forts in the woods and we’d build little fires. Then I caught the woods on fire and my mom made me go tell the fire chief that I did it. My mom had her hands full.”

That passion for fire became the precursor for hundreds of special effects he has worked on in movies and television shows, including the 2012 horror flick “The Collection,” about a psychopathic serial killer.

“There was an explosion in the movie that was a really nice fireball,” Scurry says. “We use a lot of propane, which is very dangerous. A lot of times we just use mortars and a lifter, which is a 3-ounce

Scurry’s roster of movie work includes such thrillers as “Knight and Day,” left, and “The Collection.”

black powder bomb, and a gas bag. If you blow those out a window, the fire kind of goes out and they go away, and a lot of times the directors don’t just want to see the fire go away.”

“So what we do is we line window sills with this gel gas called cabosil — it looks like Tide — and we mix it with gasoline,” adds Scurry, who often uses his arms and stubby, powerful hands animatedly to describe his effects. “We throw it on the windowsills so as the fire is going by it leaves a burning on the window. And then we run propane around the windows, and as the charge goes out the windows, somebody is on a valve and they open up the propane. And we’ve got an afterburn.”

Scurry never would have guessed that his obsession with fire would lead to full-time work in show business back in the mid-’70s, when he graduated from high school. Not one to pursue a college education, Scurry, through word of mouth

LD ENTERTAINMENT PHOTO

Photo courtesy Matthew Scurry

Scurry completes some welding for the car wreck scene in the 2011 remake of “Footloose.”

november /december 2013

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THE DR. JEKYLL TO SCURRY’S MR. HYDE...

Scurry’s ability to create juxtaposes his talent for destruction.

Here are a couple of the tools he has devised to pull off some of the visual “gags” in the mystery thriller “Solace,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell:

Photos courtesy MATTHEW SCURRY

A rather large turntable made of metal beams and later covered in flowers was used in a dream sequence with Hopkins.

A pod that is strapped to the top of a car allowed stunt drivers to control the vehicle from up top.

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and a stroke of what he calls “my good luck,” landed a job with aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, wearing a white lab coat and doing all kinds of high-tech, microscopic rocket welding, and making 60 grand a year.

“I got married, had kids,” Scurry says. “It was a government job, a killer job. I had insurance ... I had the world by the a**.”

He could have stayed at Pratt & Whitney long-term, putting in 20-30 years, investing in retirement, and, like a steady, stable heartbeat, living the monotonous life of an 8-to-5er. But Scurry got restless.

Back then, South Florida was a hotbed of illicit activity.

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar passed out cocaine like candy, his thugs delivering drugs like Domino’s pizzas and executing anyone who got in their way. Castro overpopulated the area with thousands of Cuban criminals and mentally deranged via the Mariel Boatlift. Miami, just 70 miles south of Scurry’s stomping grounds, swelled with drug runners, gang bangers, crooked cops and politicians, dirty money — and all the excess bled onto the streets of West Palm. Scurry was smack in the middle of it all.

“South Florida in the ’70s was out of control,” Scurry says.

“I was surfing and fishing and going to the islands. I had white Bahamian friends and it was back in the wild drug days, man.

I lived a really wild life.”

After three years at Pratt & Whitney, he permanently hung his lab coat and went to work for the family business, his dad’s fabrication company — a gig he really didn’t want because his dad, as he puts it, “was a hard***.” Still, it was one source of income for Scurry, who got married shortly after high school and had two sons. Then one afternoon circa 1989, as he was getting ready to throw a big party at his house — “I used to make a lot of money in a lot of different ways” — local police contacted him about opening his dad’s welding shop. A television crew was in town shooting an episode of “B.L. Stryker” and they needed someone to make a harness for a scene.

“It was a Sunday and Burt Reynolds was doing a jailbreak out of a helicopter out of the women’s prison down there in Lantana,” he says. “I told them I’d be down in a little bit; I was all about making a little extra money.”

At the shop, Scurry met Ken Speed, an old-time effects guy from Hollywood who told him they needed a harness from which Reynolds would hang from the chopper.

“He just told me what he wanted and he liked what I did,” says Scurry. The crew later filmed the shot and left. But Speed, who paid the young welder a few hundred dollars for the harness, held on to Scurry’s phone number.

For the next five or six years, Scurry continued to work at his dad’s shop, taking special effects jobs from Speed on the side for a few months at a time. “Me and my guys, we’d all go in and kill these jobs, and we’d all make big money and everybody was happy,” he says. He worked on “Rescue 911”

out of Chicago and “Young Riders” in Arizona, flitting in and out of states and apartments for months at a time, never settling anywhere for too long and always ending up back home in West Palm, back at his dad’s shop.

Scurry’s reputation for being a reliable, hard-working, special effects guy willing to learn and master any gag was beginning to rise. He might have been, first and foremost, a fabrication man — good with electrical and hydraulics. But he soaked up what he could from the explosives guys, working with black powder, testing effects, and improving on them.

“I was like a sponge learning everything I could about effects — all the bullet hits, and blood hits, and head hits, just a multitude of things,” says Scurry.

Hollywood took serious notice of Scurry in the early ’90s, when he was called to help propel and explode a car at the Fort Worth Stockyards. The show was “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

“I’m out there to blow a car up (20 to 30 feet in the air) for Chuck Norris,” he says. “It was one of those Cadillacs with the 6-foot cow horns on the front, a frontwheel drive El Dorado, and the axle broke off, so the movie is shut down.”

With crew members milling around, the clock ticking, and thousands of movie industry dollars wasting away, Scurry surveyed the scene with his sixth sense, looking for a solution. Suddenly, like a ghost appearing only before his eyes, Scurry spotted something that no one else had. Across the street from the set, parked in front of a restaurant, was a front-wheel drive El Dorado. His sharp, calculating mind sped into motion.

“I went into the restaurant,” he says, chuckling, “and I cut a deal for the guy’s car, bought his car, took the front end off, took a sawzall, cut the piece off I needed, took a coat hanger and a rosebud, and put the (broken) Cadillac back together.

Meanwhile, the whole crew is standing

around this car and I’m underneath with a torch. And the guy who’s the big producer rolls up and goes, ‘Who is that guy? Put him on payroll.’ ” Today, Scurry is one of only about 150 special effects guys from around the country who have mastered gags from the knife-wielding antics featured in “The Vampire Diaries” to propelling fiery vehicles in the “Fast & Furious” movies.

Scurry boasts hundreds of films (“The Green Lantern,” “Footloose,” “Knight and Day”) to his credit. He also works on locally-filmed TV series like “The Walking Dead” — “they bring me in to do all their car flips,” he says.

His local special effects supervisor, Dave Fletcher, describes Scurry as a “well-rounded effects guy. Lots of special effects guys have their specialties, but Skip can do anything. As a coordinator, it’s my job to surround myself with the best special effects technicians I can find, and Skip is one of the best.”

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| 77

SEE SKIP’S HANDIWORK IN THESE MOVIES AND TV SHOWS...

Jayne Mansfield's Car MEDIA TALENT GrOuP PHOTO

2011

Final Destination 5

2011

Green Lantern

2011

Fast Five

2011

Mama I Want to Sing

2013

Identity Thief

2012

The Collection

2012

Lawless

2012

What to Expect When You're Expecting

2012

The Three Stooges

2012

Jayne Mansfield's Car

2011

Footloose

2010 Knight and Day 2010 Killers 2010 The Lucky One 2009 Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Lawless

The two have worked together on “Anchorman 2,” starring Will Ferrell, and on “The Vampire Diaries,” for which Scurry has been creating hundreds of smaller gags for the past three to four years.

“Candle gags, knife gags, all the smoke in the graveyards, it’s all part of the effects business,” says Scurry. “The bullet hits, every time you see somebody get shot, that’s all rigging and timing and remotes and blood packs. There are shots in the head and stakes through the heart, which we make retractable.”

Earlier this year, Scurry worked on the mystery thriller “Solace” starring Anthony Hopkins as a psychic crime analyst and Colin Farrell as a serial killer with supernatural powers. The film gave Scurry an opportunity to create a couple of special items. One, a pod that is strapped to the top of a car, allowed stunt drivers to control the vehicle from up top. The other, a rather large turntable made of metal beams and later covered in flowers, was used in a dream sequence with Hopkins. This year, he also worked on Janelle Monae’s music video for her pop hit “Dance Apocalyptic,” providing dry ice and low fog.

These days, Scurry drives from Newnan to Norcross six days a week, clocking in 12-hour days on the set of “Fast & Furious 7.” Thanks to all the film and TV work now taking place in the Atlanta area, he's not had to relocate in about three years. In 2012, he made $130,000. It’s a dangerous job bursting with risks and adrenaline rushes, a job Scurry will never trade in for a lab coat or anything else that seems remotely mundane.

“Now looking back, I could have done anything I wanted, but books and all that just didn’t interest me,” Scurry says.

“I know physics way better than a lot of people. I don’t know anything about formulas, but there’s nothing I can't fi x.

There’s nothing I can't do or make happen. Doing effects is the most fulfilling thing. I couldn’t do anything else.” NCM

FILMNATION ENTErTAINMENT PHOTO

2009 Get Low (uncredited) 2009 I Love You Phillip Morris 2008 The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond 2008 Warbirds (TV Movie) 1998 Scar City 1998 Point Blank 1997

Keys to Tulsa

1995 Top Dog Get Low SONY PICTurES PHOTO

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1994 Walker Texas Ranger 3: Deadly Reunion

Photo courtesy MATTHEW SCurrY

Scurry is likely up to no good while working on the set of “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” but, of course, he’s not allowed to talk about the soon-to-be-released film. Fans will just have to wait for the comedy’s December premiere.

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Adamson cabin in same family since pioneer days

IT WAS A COLD NIGHT in the early 1980s.

Young teenagers Dan Brock and Guy Adamson decided to spend the night in the old cabin on the Adamson farm. The original rooms had been shored up, but there was no underpinning or — as there would later be — a shed room with a heater and bathroom.

“We almost froze to death,” Adamson recalled. “There was only the original fireplace.” The friends kept feeding logs onto the fire, but it didn’t produce much warmth.

Decades later, Adamson remembered the experience of trying to sleep in “a house that was so totally, totally cold.” He reflected, “It gave me a real appreciation for what the early settlers would have gone through.”

The early settlers who lived in the cabin were Guy Adamson’s ancestors. “This is part of the original farm that Charles Leavell settled on when he came to the county from South Carolina,” said Charles Adamson, Guy’s father.

“He came from Newberry, S.C.,” Charles said. “We don’t know if he built it or whether it was already here.” An expert who examined the cabin determined it was built by settlers probably in the 1830s. Depending on who you ask, it is considered one of the three oldest homes in Coweta County.

Leavell had a son and three daughters. One daughter, Mary Ann, married Ansley Moses.

Among their children was Professor Charles Leavell Moses, who started the Newnan Male

Written by W. WINSTON SKINNER | Photographed by JEFFREY LEO

november /december 2013

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Seminary in the building preserved as the Male Academy Museum in Newnan.

Another Leavell daughter, Martha Jane, was married twice. Her first husband, Dr. Lewis Brooks, was a physician who served with the Confederate Army and was fatally wounded during the war in Tennessee. She then married Henry Smith Reese, a widower who was a prominent Baptist preacher in Coweta in the 1800s.

They lived in the cabin for a while then built the white Victorian house just up the road.

Charles Adamson’s brother, Dean, chuckled when he recalled the day some Civil War aficionados came down McIntosh Trail armed with diaries, maps and other memorabilia tracking federal troop movements in the area during the Civil War. One of the group asked if anyone might know the site of Dr. Brooks’ home.

The Adamsons were able to show the visitors not just the site, but the cabin itself, which had been the Brooks’ home during the conflict. There had been “a battle down on Line Creek,” Charles said.

“They had this house identified on the map.”

Henry and Martha Reese were the parents of Annie Reese Adamson, the mother of longtime Coweta County

Items from an earlier time are prevalent at the Adamson cabin. Farm implements, old car tags, dishes, shoes, family photographs — the flotsam and jetsam from an agrarian era are reminders of what was once commonplace.

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Coweta County’s history peers out from every corner

Commissioner Winfred C. Adamson, who was Dean and Charles’ father. The cabin property passed through the family, but after a time became a tenant house.

Among those who farmed the land was Leander Rollin Banks, the great-grandson of Drury Banks, one of the Revolutionary War soldiers to settle in Coweta. Leander

Banks also was the grandfather of Lucille Banks Adamson, Charles and Dean’s mother. In the cabin today are some old family photographs, including a sepia portrait of Leander’s son, Henry, who was well-educated and became a teacher — only to be felled by pneumonia during a virulent epidemic in 1908.

Leander Banks is believed to have lived in the cabin sometime between 1890 and 1915. Charles noted that Leander’s wife, like several women in his family tree, came from the prolific pioneer Carmichael clan. He said he and his siblings are a quarter Carmichael from various branches of their family tree.

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At top, picnic tables and a nearby pavilion mark the Adamson cabin as a spot for pleasant, relaxed family gatherings. Above, Dean Adamson relaxes in a rocking chair on the airy porch while he visits with his brother, Charles Adamson.

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The cabin was a home into the 1960s. L.E. Glass and his family lived there at one time. Andrew Hill farmed the land with a memorable white mule.

Nathaniel Render grew enough cotton one year to buy his own home.

“His cotton crop was right down there in that field,” Charles said. “Lots of different families lived here.”

With no one living in the cabin, it fell into disrepair. Dean remembered hay being stored there at one time.

A tornado around 1980 was a pivotal moment in the cabin’s history. The roof was ripped from the structure, and W.C. Adamson had to decide whether to bulldoze the old relic or restore it. There was a recession at the time, and workmen were found who would — for a very

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reasonable price — jack the house up, put new underpinning and seals, tear away a later addition and roof the cabin.

Members of the Adamson family later added a back room that allows plenty of space for gatherings. Large photographs are still on display from a wake held for Charles and Dean’s brother, Fred, four years ago. Outside there is a pole barn pavilion, perfect for a large picnic.

The ancient cabin is furnished with castoff chairs and decorated with old photographs, prints and newspaper clippings. Coweta County’s history peers out from every corner. Family gatherings, parties and meetings are held at the cabin from time to time.

Charles Leavell would be proud.

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FALLOUT SHELTERS History underneath our feet

Written by JEFF BISHOP | Photographed by AARON HEIDMAN 90 |

www.newnancowetamag.com

It’s sometime in the early 1960s. On the cover of Life Magazine the denizens of New York City calmly file into what looks like a mass sepulcher under a bridge, while an accompanying story relates the “facts every citizen should know about nuclear fallout.” The Cuban Missile Crisis dominates the television and radio broadcasts, with gray newsmen delivering grave play-by-plays of the unfolding apocalypse.

E

ven the far outpost of Senoia, Georgia — population of just a few hundred — was not immune from the panic. “Back when everyone was building bomb shelters,” said Jean Cleveland, who grew up in Senoia during that time, “my mother went downtown one day, and people were talking about a local family building one.”

Let’s call that family the Crumptons.

“They asked my mother if we were going to build a shelter,” Cleveland said.

Her response?

“I can’t imagine anything worse than coming out and it being just me and the Crumptons!”

“Actually, my mother was quite fond of that family,” Cleveland said. But the story was good for a laugh, especially once the crisis was over.

In the early 1960s, things weren’t quite so funny, according to local history teacher Stephen Quesinberry.

“When Kennedy became president, that was right at the height of the Cold War tensions,”

Above, a sign at Wadsworth Auditorium in downtown Newnan recalls a time when the building was designated to serve as a community shelter. november /december 2013

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Located in the woods on Lassetter Road in Sharpsburg across from a church, a stone stairway leads into a short hall where this shelter is located. Water lines once led to the shelter, and the remains of a wooden door are now laying inside the room.

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said the Newnan High School teacher. “The Russians were building bombs, and we were trying to build more of them than they were, and bigger than the ones they had. All that arms race stuff was going on.”

The U.S. government set up a civil defense program to prepare the populace for the advent of a full-on nuclear war.

“But here’s the problem,” Quesinberry said. “There’s no way a government can build enough shelters to shelter the entire population of the country. That’s impossible.”

Wadsworth Auditorium is one good example. A portion of the building was supposed to serve as a community fallout shelter, but it can't possibly hold more than a few hundred people.

“So the government tried to encourage people to build shelters on their own,” Quesinberry said.

The people of Coweta County heeded the call, building shelters from Senoia to Grantville, from Newnan to the Chattahoochee River, and everywhere in-between.

Quesinberry reckons he’s visited most of them.

He got interested in local fallout shelters several years ago by accident, he said.

“I was actually at a faculty meeting and I got to talking with somebody about the shelters since we were studying that time period in class,” he said. “And this guy, a math teacher, he leans over to me and he says, ‘You know, my dad

has one in his backyard.’ ” Well that just would not do.

Quesinberry had to go see it for himself.

“It’s out on Highway 16, not far from East Coweta Middle School,” he said.

“We had to pump it out. It had a foot of water in the bottom of it. But I got to see it, and it was from the early 1960s, from that time, actually right about the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

The culvert-type construction appeared to have been manufactured locally, he said. It contained four bunkbeds with wire frames and featured a hand-cranked air ventilator.

“The man who bought this one bought several more and buried them for people

all around Senoia in 1962,” Quesinberry said. “He was a construction guy so he had all the heavy equipment to do the job.”

As locals found out that Quesinberry was interested in documenting these relics, he began to come to the conclusion that, at least locally, there were “two basic types.”

“One type was the culvert type — really just a big, metal culvert that you could buy and take the whole thing and just dig a hole in the ground, drop it in and cover it up. So you had to go down a tube that was pre-made, and there was just 3 to 6 feet of dirt put on top of it. Of course it varied a bit, depending on where

it was buried.”

This was the most common type in the Senoia area, he said.

“Sometimes all you see of it in the yard are the two air vents poking up out of the ground,” Quesinberry said. “From what I understand, this type of shelter was sold at a local store parking lot at one point.

“People would buy several at one time, sometimes. Those that I’ve found in Senoia are from the middle school, up Highway 16 to just the other side of Highway 85.”

But in the Newnan area the shelters are quite different, he said.

“What you find here are basement shelters,” said Quesinberry. “People tend

“The Russians were building bombs, and we were trying to build more of them than they were, and bigger than the ones they had.”

november /december 2013

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THE ESSENTIALS

From toilet paper and toilet seats to radios and tins of food, fallout shelters in the 1960s were well-stocked with the bare necessities.

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to use them now for storage.”

Mike and Julia Barber own a home on Brookside Drive that features this second type.

“There’s a big area underneath their front porch, off the basement,” said Quesinberry. “The home was built in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and the shelter was Two of the best-designed shelters in just built as part of the construction of the Coweta County are located along Mt. Carmel Road, according to house.” shelter expert Stephen Quesinberry.

A portion of the carport area was closed off to make the shelter, which was topped off with a concrete ceiling under the front porch and concrete blocks.

“We found a glass container of water in the crawl space,” Quesinberry said.

“There’s a bricked room off the basement there,” Quesinberry added. “If you go into a lot of these, you wouldn’t even know they were fallout shelters. They don’t look like much more than storage areas now. That’s what everyone uses them for.”

There was a lot of variation in the quality of the shelters. “One way to know if the person building the shelter was paying any attention to what the government was

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november /december 2013

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Stephen Quesinberry and his son Stephen inspect a fallout shelter near Senoia, located one mile past East Coweta Middle School.

This was of the culvert type that a local man installed for a number of houses in the area when the Cuban Missile Crisis was at its peak.

“These shelters are right here in Newnan, in Coweta County. They’re a little piece of history that’s hidden away ...”

This shelter is near the intersection of Highway 16 and Highway 85, and is an example of the culvert-type construction. Water has flooded into the shelter in the years since its installation.

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OPEN in NEWNAN! at Ashley Park

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Stephen Quesinberry Jr. demonstrates how to enter a culvertstyle shelter.

telling them that you’ve got to have a U-turn in the shelter.

There’s got to be a 90-degree turn.”

That helped to ensure the radioactive materials were kept out of the shelter, he said (or at least that’s what the experts thought at the time).

“What the government said was that radiation particles were like shrapnel or a bullet. It’s going straight,” said Quesinberry. “Radiation isn’t going to make that U-turn.”

Quesinberry said that the best-constructed shelter he’s discovered in Coweta County is located on Mt. Carmel Road.

“There are actually two on that road, and they were both put in by someone who put some thought into what they were doing,” Quesinberry said. “They’re big, actually pretty roomy, compared to the others I’ve seen.”

And, yes, they feature a U-turn in the design.

The worse shelter he’s seen? Try the old Mills Chapel area, just east of the train tracks in Newnan.

“Right past the old church, there’s a house there on the left,” said Quesinberry. “What they have there, it may be a decent tornado shelter, but as a fallout shelter? It would have been a disaster.”

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Some built their shelters above ground.

“There’s one in Grantville that’s like that,” Quesinberry said. “It looks rough. It looks like some kind of mass murder happened there.”

Some supposed shelters aren’t even really shelters at all, he’s found.

“Under a parking lot in downtown

Newnan, right beside the Methodist church, there used to be a bank. And there’s a tunnel that went under the drivethrough booth. Some people thought it was a shelter, but it turns out that it was just a way to get money back and forth from the booth to the bank without having to cross through the parking lot with the

money. I knew right away — it had too many weird things to be a shelter. The tunnels were lighted. A lot of Indiana Jones-type stuff. But it was still interesting to look at.”

Quesinberry said he’s glad he’s documented all his below-ground adventures for his students to experience.

Located on Barton Road, this poured concrete shelter may be the only one in Grantville. The shelter was built in the 1950s.

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It helps to give events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, which seem so distant to today’s teenagers, a lot more immediacy.

“I think it gets their attention a lot more than ‘President Soand-So did such-and-such,’ ” he said. “These shelters are right here in Newnan, in Coweta County. They’re a little piece of history that’s hidden away, but really cool, and it’s all here beneath their feet.” NCM

This concrete block shelter on East Washington Street was constructed during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It has been used as a storm shelter in recent years.

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A collection of original works

by Coweta poets and writers

On the Passing of Gourmet

The Wheelbarrow

by Melissa Dickson Jackson

by Bart Gibson

It is the last issue of our Gourmet.

Here on the rim of winter, on the cusp of consumption, how dare we foray into seasons of culinary lust sans our guide, sans brioche, sans cassoulet, merry in the face of our dying delight, minus the clear broth charm, the recipes, the bread and wine of our gastric flights?

Tell me, dear, what meaty balm, what mastic can seal this plunging and hungry absence?

Here is the turkey on page eighty-five, bronzed, glazed, a poultry hallowed and divine.

Must we greet the new year in bitter chagrin, lovers of pages that won't roast again?

When Daddy brought it home it didn’t look like much; everybody knows wheelbarrows are for work and such.

That old raggedy thing, it looked pretty bad, about wore out, the one Granddaddy had.

Covered with rust, but made of good steel, there was only one handgrip and a solid slick wheel.

We had to load it up with various things, like leaves and sticks and our old kite strings.

But when it came time to push, run we did, that’s what makes work fun when you’re a kid.

We rode each other all over the yard, until we wrecked or simply just got tired.

You could rest it on the handles and, in fact, make a recliner and just lean back.

It’s where we kept turtles that we snagged in the creek or kidnapped from the woods or saved from the street.

We would fill it full of water to save tadpoles from an isolated pool or a drying mud hole.

That bucket of rust gave us more joy than any new bicycle or store-bought toy.

We worked and played side by side, with wheelbarrow in hand, across the yard we glide.

About t his Poem : I love the sonnet form but rarely accept the challenge of end rhyme. In this poem I played with rhyme to celebrate and eulogize Gourmet magazine, founded in 1941. The Thanksgiving 2009 issue, published in October, was the last regular subscription issue of the popular magazine that brought new recipes and culinary ideas into so many American homes. But this poem is also about the people and places we miss at Thanksgiving. While some of the language may seem overly dramatic for the end publication of a magazine, this poem uses the device of the magazine to metaphorically address the “plunging and hungry absence” created by my father's death in 2006. Like Gourmet, he was born in the early 1940s and roasted, fried and smoked many a turkey before he called it a day in October 2006. I’ll never forget the year we had three turkeys on Thanksgiving day because he wanted to try all three methods in a single meal. He was silly that way, and boy do I miss him when that bird goes in the oven every year.

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WRITE

The Christmas Ride

by Scott O'Neal Amid the happily-chattering Christmas crowd, George silently stands alone, wearing a toothless grin, his gaze focused on the enormous spinning wheel that glows with pulsating neon against Atlanta’s nighttime skyline.

The cold wind pours through the man-made canyons of the city, ruffling his too thin and threadbare jacket as well as the scraggly growth of beard on his aged face, but George heeds the gusts no more than he hears the mocking murmurs nearby or sees the looks of disdain from the more fortunate. A young lady ahead of George in line grabs her son by the shoulders and pulls him away from the smelly vagrant, as if homelessness were contagious.

From behind, a teenage boy says, “Hey, grandpa! This ain’t the line for the soup kitchen.”

“Or the liquor store,” his buddy adds, drawing several chuckles.

The harsh remarks sting, of course, but only a little. His clothes ratty and with George in need of a bath, he's heard such comments hundreds of times. But he's more excited this Christmas Eve than he's been since he was a toddler awaiting whatever dollar store toys Santa saw fit to deliver to his family’s neighborhood, and he isn't going to let anything spoil his mood.

The line moves a few paces forward as a few rogue snowflakes ride in on the biting north wind. One of the boys taps George’s back with an elbow, urging him along and temporarily breaking the spell the Ferris wheel holds over George. But he's soon gazing at it in wonder once again.

After what seems like hours of watching the wheel spin then stop for loading and unloading, George finally reaches the front of the line.

The snowfall picks up its pace, the flakes bigger and more frequent, and George is half afraid they’ll close the ride before he can board it. His young tormentors revel in the rare southern snowfall and forget about George.

The wheel comes to a stop and a young man climbs from the enclosed gondola and extends his hand to help his girlfriend. After the attendant points the couple toward the exit, he turns back to the line and George’s heart speeds up with excitement.

“Paying customers only,” the attendant says when he sees the shabby old man. “No panhandling.”

Then he points toward the exit.

George reaches in his coat pocket and withdraws a crumpled wad of bills and some coins. He straightens the bills and holds out the money. He hasn't eaten in two days, saving his begging money for just this moment. It's the first time since living on the streets he's used handouts for anything other than food. He's never blown it on drugs or booze.

“Thir’teen fity, sir,” George says proudly, “just like yonder sign says.”

From somewhere farther back in line, someone yells, “Hey! Let’s get a move on up there. It’s freezing.”

The attendant reluctantly takes George’s cash, drops it in his box without counting, and nods toward the empty car. George climbs in and marvels at how warm it is inside. The attendant closes the door and spins his hand, signaling the operator to start the ride.

George feels the butterflies in his stomach as he soars into the night. He's never been on anything like this and hadn't known what to expect. He's not afraid, though. When a man knows he's going to die as well as George knows, the world holds very few horrors.

George sees the lit pathways of Olympic Park and the bright ribbon of the interstate. It looks as though he's as high as some of the surrounding skyscrapers, and still the wheel takes him higher. On the horizon, he can see Stone Mountain, a wonder of which he’s only seen in pictures, the carving on its face lit by spotlights. From up high, the dirty streets of Atlanta and the cruel people on them appear to belong to another world.

As George reaches the apex of the wheel’s spin, it stops, just as he'd hoped it would. He reaches into the same pocket that had held his money and pulls out a faded, wrinkled photograph. The picture is of a 5-yearold boy. It's all George has left of the son he hasn’t seen since the boy’s mother left with him some 12 years ago.

“I promised you we’d ride a Ferris wheel one day, Mikey," George says to the empty gondola. His eyes tear up, so he wipes them with the grimy sleeve of his coat. He holds the photo up to the window, as if his boy could magically take in the scene across the gulf of time and absence.

“Just look at that, Mikey,” he says, “we’re on top of the world.”

Soon, the ride moves again. It makes two more rotations, but George hardly notices; his mind's in the past — in a happier time.

When the gondola stops, George gets out with a resigned smile on his face. Tomorrow is Christmas. He doesn't know if he can stand another alone ... missing Mikey, wondering where he is and what he's doing, what he's become.

As the cold night settles in, George exits the park with grim determination, his steps leaving a trail on the snowdusted concrete. november /december 2013

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WRITE

Love Ever Yearns

by Leverett Butts “You wouldn’t believe the day I had,” Rayne Grisham announces to his wife as he slumps into the La-Z-Boy recliner and pops open a Coors. His wife, Christy, says nothing.

“First off,” he turns the can up and takes a long swig, “none of the little brats had done their work. Again. I don’t care how many friggin’ times I tell them; it’s like talking to the moon. They just sit there like stone and don’t say a word.”

Christy sits there like stone and doesn’t say a word.

“Then, Alex comes in to observe me today of all days. Students haven’t read, half the class is out anyway, and half of what’s there keeps nodding off, but he wants to dock me for making them read in class. What the hell else am I supposed to do?” Rayne does not pause for a reply. “I mean, I wasn’t even supposed to be there today. You’d think they’d let a guy off for his anniversary.

They could’ve covered my classes. Of all days.”

He sits back in silence and turns on the television news. Christy doesn’t seem to mind.

Rayne flips through the channels, watching a little of each newscast, enough to know he doesn’t particularly want to know more. He does pay more attention to the local news when he sees Thomas Calloway, the school janitor, being arrested by police.

“Hey,” he turns to his wife, “didn’t you date him?”

Rayne settles into channel surfing for a few more hours. Then, a little after 8, he rises and goes to the kitchen.

“What do you feel like, honey?” he asks from the refrigerator. “We got plenty. I can make us up something nice if you want. I mean, it is our anniversary and all. How about some pasta and vegetables? I can make some garlic 102 |

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bread to go with it, maybe have some merlot to top it off?”

Rayne waits several seconds. When no answer seems forthcoming, he pulls out a Tupperware dish covered in aluminum foil and looks inside. Half a meatloaf with ketchup. He absently sets it on the counter and looks in the fridge again. A few slices of loaf bread (the heels and two other slices) with the neck of the bag wrapped around them twice because the wire twist is missing, a mayonnaise jar with barely anything in it, and a jar containing two flaccid pickles floating forlornly in their brine.

All this he places on the counter next to the meatloaf.

“Last chance for real food,” he calls out to the living room. Not surprisingly, Christy doesn't answer.

“Alright,” he sighs, “leftovers it is.”

He slices the meatloaf in half, spreads what is left of the mayo on the bread, and sandwiches the meat between the slices. Putting the two sandwiches on one plate, Rayne then pulls the last paper towel from the roll and tucks it under the plate in his hand. He tucks the pickle jar under an arm, and with one hand holding the sandwiches, he grabs an open bag of chips with his free hand before returning to the living room. This time he sits on the sofa next to his wife and places the food carefully on the coffee table. He tunes the television to The Discovery Channel, and as he eats his sandwich, he watches what’s left of a documentary on advances in radiation therapy.

Afterwards, he switches to CBS for the final episode of “Murphy Brown.”

It used to be Christy’s favorite show, but now she seems uninterested. He leaves it on anyway. Christy also hasn’t touched her sandwich.

“Not hungry?” he asks as he takes a bite of hers. “Well, I hate to see food go

to waste; you know that.”

After “Chicago Hope,” a rerun that had something or other to do with a double mastectomy, Rayne leaves the news on to see if he can catch any more of the Thomas Calloway story but quickly grows bored. Just another mundane murder, but this time he happens to know the accused. After the news, Rayne stands and carries the dishes and garbage back to the kitchen.

The plate goes into the sink, the pickle jar and paper towel into the trashcan.

He yawns as he returns to the living room and stretches his arms over his head.

“Well, I guess I’ll go on to bed. You coming?”

When he receives no answer, Rayne picks up Christy and gently carries her upstairs to their bedroom.

He watches her in the mirror as he washes his face and brushes his teeth. He smiles at her, aquamarine toothpaste foaming out his mouth like a rabid dog.

“Ahh rhuvv rhu,” he laughs briefly, then spits into the sink.

She used to love that. He flips off the bathroom light. Used to tickle her to death.

He walks to her before crawling into bed and softly rubs his hand across her smooth surface. She practically gleams in the moonlight streaming through the window.

“Happy anniversary, sweetheart,” he whispers as he places her ever so gently on his bedside table. He sets the alarm for 6 a.m. and closes his eyes. The last things he sees before drifting off are the words etched across her middle: Christine Patrice Davis-Grisham Beloved wife and daughter 1971-1998

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Please include your name so that we can give you credit for your photo in the magazine!

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man

november /december 2013

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Abundant Life Faith Church .................... 35

MainStreet Newnan ............ 45

Allspine Laser and Surgery Center.................. 5

Massage Envy ..................... 43

Amazon Stone..................... 99 Atlanta Fine Homes ............ 89 Avery & Pope Wealth Management ...... 47 Bank of North Georgia ..... 108 BB&T ................................... 53 The Bedford School ............ 35 Binion Tire ........................... 99

index of advertisers

C.S. Toggery ....................... 47

Stand Your Ground Movie .. 79

Mucklow's Fine Jewelry ...... 33 The Newnan Times-Herald................... 61 NuLink ................................. 11 Oak Mountain Academy..... 77 OutPatient Imaging, LLC ...... 4 Pain Care ............................. 71 Piedmont Newnan Hospital ............................. 2 Plum Southern .................... 80

Charter Bank ....................... 67

R. DuBose Jewelers ............ 49

The Cosmetic Laser & Skin Care Center ........... 9

Radiation Oncology Services ............................. 3

Coweta Medical Center...... 87 Coweta-Fayette EMC ....... 107

Savannah Court of Newnan ....................... 89

Dawson Street Christian School .............. 41

Senoia Area Business Association...................... 59

Digestive Healthcare .......... 97

Simply Unique Finds ........... 46

Downtown LaGrange Development Authority .. 81

Skin Cancer Specialists, P.C. ............... 55

Emily's Skin Care & Spa ...... 46

Somerby .............................. 57

Emory Clark-Holder Clinic .... 6

Southern Crescent Equine Services ............... 87

Foot Solutions ..................... 27 Forest at York .................... 103 Georgia Bone & Joint, LLC ........................ 15 Georgia Military College .... 65 H.E.L.P. Spay/Neuter Clinic ......... 39 Heritage of Peachtree ........ 17 The Heritage School ........... 43 Hills and Dales .................... 82 Hollberg's Fine Furniture .... 59 In Stitches Too..................... 48 Ison's Nursery ..................... 95

Powers Pavilion ................... 27

Southern Shooters .............. 82 Spivey Hall........................... 31 StoneBridge Early Learning Center .............. 53 Towne Club ......................... 69 Uniglobe McIntosh Travel ............................... 41 University of West Georgia .................. 29 Wesley Woods of Newnan ......................... 7 West Georgia Gastroenterology............ 19 West Georgia Technical College ............................ 13

Kimble's Events

by Design ........................ 82

West Georgia Health ............ 8

Lee-King Pharmacy ............. 48

The White Orchid ............... 83

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Morgan Jewelers ................ 46

The Cellar Chophouse & Bar............ 48

Farm Bureau........................ 65

what’s

Valerie Dumas is more than an entrepreneur with a penchant for Harry Potter novels. She's also a mother, an artist, and a trend-maker whose aesthetics have generated a legion of fans and elevated the face of Newnan's on-the-square storefronts. Part silly, part sophisticated, her shop, Gillyweed, is a downtown favorite as addictive as its magical namesake.

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Invested in our Community We know you have a choice when it comes to choosing a bank. That’s why we work hard every day to provide those who bank with us the customer service experience they deserve. We are proud to offer the products and services that strenghthen families and help businesses grow. Our team members are your family, friends and neighbors. Our children go to the same schools. Our commitment and dedication to the Newnan and Senoia communities remains unchanged.

Come in today or visit us online to see what we can do for you.

Jefferson Street 110 Jefferson Street Newnan, GA 30263 770.253.1340

Temple Avenue 192 Temple Avenue Newnan, GA 30263 770.253.9600

Senoia 7817 Wells Street Senoia, GA 30276 770.599.8400

Thomas Crossroads 3130 East Highway 34 Newnan, GA 30265 770.254.7722

www.bankofnorthgeorgia.com Bank of North Georgia is a division of Synovus Bank. Synovus Bank, Member FDIC, is chartered in the state of Georgia and operates under multiple trade names across the Southeast. Divisions of Synovus Bank are not separately FDIC-insured banks. The FDIC coverage extended to deposit customers is that of one insured bank.