Last year, I had an e-book published called Surviving The Smoke Hole. It made millions of dollars. Since my class reunion a couple of weeks ago, I've had many people (two) ask me about it. Here's an excerpt.
Most books written by my generation mention “change” and how quickly thing changed in our lifetime. The difference between 2005 and 2015 seems like ten years. The difference between 1963 and 1973 seems like one hundred years.
Looking at it from a historian’s eyes-ok, through the eyes of a person who majored in history in college and has watched the History Channel, a lot of events happened between 1963 and 1973. Mainly: Vietnam, The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and various political/inspirational leaders being killed in public for no reason.
These topics have been written about ad nauseam, which according to my high school Latin teacher, Noel Jenks, means “a lot". I don’t want to review them here except to say The Beatles were great, I’m glad I didn’t go to Vietnam, and Lee Harvey Oswald shot John Kennedy.
I must be the only person my age that never watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I am pretty sure my parents thought Ed Sullivan was a mentally ill. At least my mother did. She didn’t like that Ed Sullivan wouldn’t show Elvis and his hips but would show those old long haired boys from Liverpool. It didn’t make sense to her that Sullivan wanted to spare the world from Elvis’ hot smoldering Elvis shakes but didn’t have a problem with The Beatles saying they wanted to hold hands and you know where that would lead. (Up the arm, on the shoulder, then down to the Promised Land.)
She thought it was all about what today we would call “Southern Phobia” (i.e.: Sullivan was prejudice against Southerners). If Twitter was around, she probably would have tweeted: Sullivan stop hatin’ us. #Southernphobic.
What The Beatles did besides holding your hand was have long hair and this started a trend which was in full force by the time I got to high school. All the boys had their hair long in the seventies and the eighties. This caused most parents, especially the dads, to remark how much the boys looked like girls with “that old long hair”.
The whole point of the above History Lesson is just to acknowledge that times were a’changin and they began a’changin big time in Cobb County in 1973.
Companies from the North began moving to the Atlanta area in 1973. Atlanta had developed a reputation as being a pearl in a sea of grits. Despite Lester Maddox’s best intentions, we didn’t have bad racial hostilities like Alabama and Mississippi. Basically, Atlanta cared only about one color: Green. Atlanta was interested in business and running around beating people due to their skin color was bad for business, so Atlanta told the bigots and racists to shut up so the Northerners could move down here and bring their money.
East Cobb was close to Interstate 75, which when it wasn’t being “improved” could theoretically allow a person to leave his house in East Cobb at 7:30 and arrive at his office in downtown Atlanta at 8:00. In reality, I-75 allowed a person to leave his house in East Cobb at 7:30 and arrive at his office in downtown Atlanta at 7:30 the next day.
In a classic bait and switch, the leaders of Cobb County touted their access to Atlanta as a plus and began to build high-class subdivisions in the Eastern part of the county. Now the subdivision I grew up in, Beverly Hills (really) was pretty snazzy before all of the Northerners moved down. Nice houses and a Home Owners Association, which Inez refused to belong to (we were not required to join since we moved in before the HOA was started) because she had this quaint notion that nobody had the right to tell anyone what to do with their property. Because she refused to join, she didn’t pay the fees for the subdivision’s pool therefore, we couldn’t go swimming there. This really became an issue for me when one of my friends saw a hot female classmate’s bosoms due to a swimsuit malfunction at the pool. I would have paid to see this malfunction. Thanks, Mom.
However, a new subdivision was soon built. This subdivision had a golf course. It was called Indian Hills.
I don’t think I ever met a native Southerner that lived in Indian Hills. It was always families from the North. The families whose dads were doctors, lawyers, or accountants; Big Shot Dads. Not like Old Man Manis, who in fairness was a foreman at Lockheed. These Dads were hip and the Moms looked like they actually cared about their appearance. All of the kids in Indian Hills were above average and pretty nice looking, too.
All of those kids attended Wheeler.
The kids from The Atlanta Country Club made all of the rest of us seem like we were raised in a Philippines trash heap.
All of those kids attended Wheeler.
It was nothing in Junior High School to have three or four new kids a week. All from the North. Everyone’s last name ending in a vowel. I remember one young lady, Lynn when she was introduced to our class in eighth grade. It had to have been a frightening experience for her. All of these eighth-grade eyes staring at you. None of them could have been more than a quarter Italian at best. When she opened her mouth, the mother of all Boston accents came out. It had to be rough to have someone look at you and say, “Whut? Ah didunt understand a wered you sed” (Translation: “What? I didn’t understand a word you said.”).
[Note: Shortly after I started this book, I learned Lynn had passed away several years earlier. I don’t ever remember teasing her, but if I did, I hope she forgave me. You have to cut us some slack. Most of us had heard about people from Massachusetts but we had never seen a kid our age from Massachusetts.]
There were kids from Minnesota, Indiana, New York, and Maryland. They were all just a tad bit better than the rest of us. Better hair, teeth, glasses, grades, and personalities. You wanted to dislike them because they would talk about how their Dads would let them drink beer and go to R-rated movies. But you couldn’t because they were so cool.
This population explosion in East Cobb caused two events to occur. One was the building of another new high school, George Walton (Walton) in another part of East Cobb to ease the overcrowding at Wheeler. The second was Split Sessions at Wheeler. The Upper Classmen (Seniors and Juniors) went in the morning because they had “jobs” and “cars”. The Sophomores and Freshman went in the afternoon.
Because of split sessions, my first two years of high school were spent in this weird blur of time. We went to school at Noon and got home after six. The lowly freshman did not even see the seniors, which was probably good for me since I had entered the awkward phase of my life known as the rest my life.
I entered 9th grade just like I exited 8th grade: with greasy moppy hair and thick horned rim glasses. I would have looked like the average hipster today, but back then my look was the King of the Dorks.
My look was forever captured on film during the “picture day” for the yearbook. Like most school picture days, it was a cattle call, but for some reason, this one was the worst of all picture days in the history of picture days.
First of all, it was one of those September days in Georgia when it is overcast, hot and the humidity was about a billion percent. The air conditioner unit at Wheeler, which apparently was a fan behind a block of ice, was out and the whole school smelled like one gigantic educational funk.
Secondly, you had a team of the worst photographers in the history of photography running the smelly, sweaty kids in and out in record time. School legend had it that one kid’s school picture featured him with a fly on his nose. I would have chalked it up as an urban legend if I hadn’t seen my picture.
I was wearing my favorite maroon shirt that I thought made me look semi-cool and probably the best looking 9th grade male on campus. I had taken special care to WASH my hair the night before to give it the extra bouncy 1973 look. However, since this was at the end of the day, my hair looked like I just got out of the shower. Still, I was convinced I was the coolest looking kid ever, despite my horn-rimmed coke bottle glasses.
I remember the photographer telling me to say “Cheeseburger”, the flash of the bulb and the feeling that this picture was going to be on various mirrors of the comely young ladies of Wheeler.
When the pictures were handed out, it featured a greasy haired kid with horn-rimmed glasses with his lips pooched out like the “duck lips” pictures you see today on Facebook and Instagram. Nobody, I showed the picture to DID NOT laugh and this included several comely young ladies of Wheeler. My mother refused to buy them. She said she didn’t want this picture to be on the news if anything happened to me. The problem was my eighth-grade picture wasn’t that much better except I wasn’t pooching out my lip but I guess that would have been her only choice.
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