October 2, 2012 Through Georgia

We visited the Oliver Hardy Museum in Harlem, Georgia, the birthplace of Hardy, the fat one. Next weekend, October 6, is the Oliver Hardy Festival. 30,000 people are expected.

After his birth in Harlem, Hardy's family moved down the road to Milledgeville to run a hotel. Hardy was fascinated by the entertainers who stayed in the Baldwin Hotel. This sparked his interest in show business. The museum's collection is almost solely hundreds of Laurel and Hardy collectables.

Kathy and I road in the back of Oliver and Laurel's automobile. (See picture.)

Next, we watched a 30-minute 1932 short called The Music Box. This film won the first academy award for live action short.

The rest of the day was driving across Georgia, around Atlanta to just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. We are staying in a KOA Kampground.

Monday, October 1, 2012 Manning, South Carolina to Georgia

Kathy and Chris spent the morning and early afternoon driving around Manning, South Carolina. Chris spent the summer of 1973 selling Bibles door-to-door in Manning and Summerton, 10 miles south.

In my memory, the Manning 40-years ago was a little  run down. My housemate Jim Wilson and I used to eat breakfast in a cafe where I learned to dislike grits. After breakfast, he would drop me off in the neighborhood I was working at the time. I spent a lot of time in the dilapidated houses of the black ghetto because these people opened their doors to a door-to-door salesman.

So much has changed that for a while I thought I was in the wrong town. Most of the houses I visited have been torn down to be replaced by newer houses, lowcost government apartments for black and white residents, banks, medical facilities, or just empty areas. Between the town and the I-95 exit, is a super-Walmart and many of the chains in other towns across America. In the town, are many new medical facilities, banks, etc.

I have numerous memories of this summer. I will share one. Near the end of the summer, my mother and grandmother picked me up to spend a vacation together in South Carolina. Before leaving town, we did washing in a local laundromat. This building was divided into three equal areas. The right end was the dry cleaning business run by the business owner. The other two areas contained washers and dryers. My mother and I went to the dry cleaning area for some reason, e.g., getting change. At one point, the business owner asked in which room we were washing our clothes. We said the middle room. He said that was good. We then realized this was a segregated laundry. The room on the left end of the building was for blacks. When we revealed this arrangement to my grandmother, she went over and sat in the other laundry for the rest of the time. Yesterday, I couldn't find this laundry.

Kathy and I ate a late lunch in a cafe near where I used to pass my grits to Jim Wilson. The cafe is now a boutique store selling pasta salads and deli meat sandwiches with avocado spread on focaccia bread.

After leaving Manning, we drove into Georgia and camped at the Petersburg Campground at the J. Strom Thurmond Dam and Lake. This is a wonderful campground because the campsites are large, well-designed and well-separated from each other. Each campsite contains a fire-ring, grill, food preparation table near grill, a lantern hanger, and picnic table.  The restrooms are clean and nice. Finally, few people are here.  

Our campsite is beside the lake. 200 yards from shore is small island with a flock of geese who honk periodically.