>> We are rolling.
>> We are Jeff Kurtz and Liz Christensen.
We are interviewing Danny Pelfrey at
the San Souci Club in Adairsville, Georgia.
Today is October 4th, 2018.
Could you please state your full
name and where you were from?
>> I'm Pelfrey Danny, David Pelfrey, actually.
And I'm from Adairsville, Georgia.
Live most of my life here.
>> Where's your family from originally for you.
How many generations have been here?
>> Well, both sides of the family have
been here for or at least three, maybe four generations.
My mother's family as well as my dad's family,
and have been in the general area for that long.
>> Do you mind tell us when you were born,
it's an idea how long you've lived here?
>> I was born in May the 2nd,
1946, so I haven't lived here all that time.
As an adult, I went to college,
and then after college,
I spent some years,
well, four years in Richmond, Virginia,
before going to Chicago for a year,
that's about as long as I could last,
and then back to Indiana, and then to Ohio.
So I spent a good number of years in in
the Midwest before we came
back to Georgia a good number of years ago.
>> What are some of your earliest memories
growing up here in Adairsville?
>> Well, my dad was an alcoholic,
and I don't have a lot of fun memories of those years.
I live on my grandparents in and around the area,
my grand mother's father
and mother for a good number of years.
And that was always within 20 miles of here.
But my memories my early childhood are not so good.
And later, I have
some fond memories of my high school years as I
got to know people better and participated in
sports, and that thing.
And those high school memories
are the ones that stand out for me.
And some years ago,
for several years, I wrote
a bi-weekly column for our newspaper,
and it was in the columns entitled as I remember it,
and most of those columns or many
of those columns are in
the book that I wrote about Life in Adairsville.
And if you go through them,
you'll find that most of those memories
come from my high school years.
And so those are memories of a lot of
great people with high school with some blind people.
There were only 37 that was in the graduating class,
30 girls and seven boys,
and that was standard eight.
And I happened to
be the only boy athlete in the senior class,
so I got to be captain of everything,
and that was me.
And very upon my wife
and I started dating in our senior year.
We went to college together,
and then we're married after two years of college,
and we've been married now for 51 years.
And so that was
a very special memory that year in high school,
as we begin to date and develop our relationship.
>> And you mentioned
you participated in high school sports.
During your high school years,
what are some of the other things you did around
town to pass time?
>> Well, I was very involved in the church youth group
from the time that I was about or
almost 16 years old for the rest of my high school years,
which involved about 25 of those teams,
pretty good size small town youth group.
And we did a lot of things together.
That was one of the things I used to do.
This building doubled not
only as the latest San Souci Club,
but as the library.
This room used to be lined with shelves,
and I used to come in here and check out books,
and used to check out
my Harvey boy books and that thing here,
and did a lot of reading in those years.
But sports was the center of
my life when I was a teenager,
the church, and in sports.
>> What sports did you participate in?
>> Well, I played basketball.
I was a three year letterman in basketball,
thought it was neat.
Recently, I discovered that
the Adairsville basketball team
has been 15 times that the boys have gone to state.
And I was on one of those teams when I was a sophomore.
It would have been 62,
63 seasons, years ago.
And recently my grandson was on one of the other teams.
So he and I were covering two of
those 15 sports or state championships and basketball.
I also played football when I was a senior year.
I was a captain in both high school basketball
and football ran track.
Held the two mile record for about a year or two.
I didn't last very long.
And we did not have a baseball team in those years,
so I played summer baseball in the program in Calhoun.
It wasn't a program around here,
and so I played out of Calhoun,
and I played baseball.
Was offered the opportunity to try out with
a professional baseball team when I finished high school,
but had, by that time,
decided to go to college.
I had decided that
the Lord was leading me into the pastorate,
and I had already made that decision.
So I passed up what had been
my dream for years prior to that,
but did not take that opportunity.
>> You were to school during segregation then.
What did you notice about that,
and how did that affect you?
>> Well, you have
a hard time finding
a real story about that in Adairsville.
Of course, every other town in this region
were completely segregated at that time.
I never went to high school with
anybody whose color was other than mine.
But what we knew
about those things is what we saw on TV,
and what we read in the newspapers.
Of course, I can remember the separate water fountains,
not here, but when I went to Rome,
I can remember the separate restrooms
in Rome, but not here.
And probably a lot of
that reason I don't remember here is,
we didn't have anything going
much here in town at that time.
There weren't any restaurants or
one sprang up from time to time.
We didn't even have fast food places in those days.
And so there's not a lot, and I remember,
I don't remember a lot of,
and even though there was a segregation,
I think we integrated into the school, either.
I don't remember the year,
but it had to be in the year or the second year
after I graduated,
all the sports that I played,
I never remember playing against
anyone except black kids and guys.
And that was the way it was,
but I don't remember a lot of
most folks had black friends,
and that's not to say everything is perfect.
Here it was that, I can remember,
there was a lot of language that was used in reference to
others that was inappropriate then and inappropriate now.
But most of those comments were
things that it's what
those who were using them had heard,
and all they knew.
And I'm being completely honest when I say
that most of those,
I should say, we guys,
probably didn't even have any idea we were
doing anything wrong by using
that language in those days.
So I don't know if you guys grew up in small town.
I think you have a small town
in a different generation though,
but that's the way it was up here.
And I my first real close black friend
was between my first and second year college.
I worked in a carpet mill in Calhoun,
and worked in shipping department,
and had a guy that was probably in his mid,
I thought he was probably in the 70s then,
but now I'm sure he was probably late 40s, early 50s.
And we got to be buddies,
and he invited me even to speak
for a special occasion in his church on one occasion.
And I lived later in the Midwest,
and there was no difference.
As far as that subject is concerned,
I saw no difference in those years in
the Midwest toward attitudes and
even language than what I had experienced here.
Probably if I had been
a African American kid in those days,
I certainly would have noticed
that there was something wrong,
but we never had problems of that nature.
Well, I shouldn't say we never had any,
probably have had that,
but I didn't know about the wrong.
But if you've read my book, Dan Bowden.
I compile the works of
several people and Dan Bowden
talks a little bit about that.
But he's at least one generation older than myself.
>> And you mentioned that you lived
quite a few places other than
the Dyersville going to college and after high school.
What prompted you to move back?
Did you miss town?
>> Yeah, we really did. We we missed it,
but my wife was an only child
and when
her mom well,
lived to be 90 years of age and and
my wife's dad was
not in a good physical condition
for a good number of years.
In fact, he was bedridden
for the last three or four years of his life and we had
to be nearby in order to take care of them.
And she was the only one available to do that,
and so we moved to Rome.
I accepted the ministry.
We were living in New Philadelphia, Ohio.
I only lived there for two years
when they called and asked if I would accept
the ministry to church in
Rome where I had been
youth minister when I was a college student.
And we agreed to do
so in order that we would be close enough.
And Wanda's mom and dad lived
in the next house down this road,
the big white house right down here on the left.
It happens to be
the home in one of the novels that we wrote.
[LAUGHTER] But I stayed
there and so we were
only 25 minutes away from them in Rome.
And I spent eight years there
and the last year and a half,
we actually lived with them in the house here
and I commuted to full-time ministry
in Rome and the time came and we needed to be here.
And so I resigned my ministry there and began to do
interim ministries in about five state area,
or I just on weekends went to churches
that were between ministers
and about five state area and did that for several years.
And also during that time,
in that ministry,
you never know if you're going to be
able to pay the bills or not.
And so I had always loved books and I got
involved in dealing in used rare books,
which I still do to some degree.
I have a little bookshop up in
the [inaudible] stock exchange.
But I did that in order to
put food on the table and pay the bills.
And then later when my home church,
which is up on the hill here,
first Christian Church in
Dyersville needed a minister and they asked me
if I would consider becoming
the full-time pastor for the church.
And I told them I'd give them four years and I gave them
six before I retired.
And it was a wonderful experience to spend
your last six years of
your ministry with your home church.
And that was neat and still my home church.
It's where I attend church now,
but I've not been
the pastor now for over
two-and-half years, I've been retired.
>> So you talked a little bit about
the first Christian Church in Dyersville,
what role did it have in your life? Can you elaborate?
>> It played a big part in my life.
The people who were a part of that church,
both old and young,
I'm thinking of three elderly people, Chester West,
Mr. Tom Swindell,
names probably aren't important to you, and Stevens.
These were men who were well known in the community,
but they were great men that really
had a tremendous impact on my life.
And then I mentioned earlier,
the youth group, kids my age,
we were very close.
And at some very difficult times in my life,
they were there with me and
really made all the difference in the world.
Young pastor of the church at that time was the one who
influenced me to go into the ministry.
When I became a Christian,
he started talking about then I went into the ministry,
so I thought it was all part of it.
[LAUGHTER] He just assumed
that I was someday go
into the [inaudible] and I did and I loved.
I spent 45 years or so in the past [inaudible].
I told someone not long ago
that I loved every minute
of it and then I got to think about that and said,
well, maybe not every minute.
But I loved most of it
very much and miss it today tremendously,
even though I enjoy what I'm doing today.
>> You mentioned that you first
started going to church around the age of 16.
>> Well, the church here.
>> Well, what prompted you to go here?
Was there influence?
>> There was two things.
I was aware of the church because it was my grandmother,
my dad's mom's church.
And as a child, I
occasionally came to church
with her, so I was aware of the church.
But that wasn't the exciting factor that drew me there.
In my childhood, we lived for
about three years a little community Plainville,
which is, I don't know,
15 miles west of
here and travel right on the Gordon County,
Ford County line right there.
And we were living in that area and I went
in a church there.
But when I came back to live with my parents,
I wasn't going to church anywhere.
And there was a guy my age,
actually he was about 9 or 10 months older
than me that influenced me,
started asking me to go to church and so I went with him.
I liked it. I liked the young preacher very much.
A preacher by name George Peavey.
And so I continued to go to
church there and ultimately became a part of the church.
Started going when I was I guess probably 15.
But I probably didn't
become a member of the church until,
I hear people say all the time they can tell you
exact date that a Christian became a member of church.
I can't tell you the exact date,
but it must have been right
after I turned 16 in that area.
But it was the influence of those two people,
that Joe Ellis, a guy my age.
We later were roommates in Bible College
and for two years before we were both married.
And he has deceased since then,
but had a great impact on my life.
>> I remember reading
one of your columns in your book about Joe,
and that was very impactful.
Is there any more you can tell us about that friendship?
>> Well, it was a very special friendship.
We as adults,
after college, we certainly saw each other.
We lived in different parts of the country
and we didn't stay in touch that much.
Occasionally, I might get
a call or I might call but not very often,
but when we would get together,
it was just as if no time passed.
We were still best friends and
had some really great times together.
He and I were in college, at one point,
we were pretty much
the maintenance crew at little college that we went to.
During the summer months, they
had a supervisor who worked full-time,
and we were the two full-time flunkies,
they worked for him.
And we rode around in old
1953 on-service pickup truck all the
time and being converted and just rode around
campus only occasionally we got to downtown Atlanta.
But I figured that
when I reached retirement age
and he reached retirement age,
that we'd be riding around some old pickup truck again,
having a good time,
but he passed away a few years ago,
sadly, and I miss him.
Fact is, I had a cousin who was like a brother to me.
We were very close and he was the pitcher and I was
the catcher and we
were together all the time we were growing up.
And he passed away a number of years ago.
My middle school best friend passed away a few years ago.
And most of the people that were very special to me,
friends in those early years are gone now.
And I really miss them.
>> How would you describe your role
in the community and Adairsville today?
What do you do with your time?
>> Okay. Of course,
until my retirement, I was one of the pastors,
and spent a lot of time through church activities,
working with people in various capacity around town.
I'm still very much involved,
mostly in now the history of the town.
I spend most of my time now writing.
I'm a person who,
I have to have a full-time job.
And after I resigned from the pastorate,
I had off and on,
both my wife and I had written for years,
and so I decided that's what I wanted to do.
I've always loved books.
When I was in high school,
I mentioned the fact that my dad was never home.
But we didn't have entertainment.
We didn't have a TV at home,
but most time we didn't have electricity.
Most folks don't believe me when I tell them this,
but we usually saw a little kerosene out
and it was not a good,
but when having a TV,
I would check a book out almost
every day in the school library,
will be open for a half hour,
so I'd go in and pick a book off the shelf and
check it out and I'd check
it again the next day, and check out another.
And now, all my teachers are gone so I can tell this.
Yeah, I took it home and read it and that
was my form of entertainment but I also
often had a book hidden on
the desk during school to read it.
And I would read at times,
four or five books a week.
Now, these were going.
I did read [inaudible],
but it's that one that I would have
read in a couple of days.
But I would read at times four or five books a week.
So I've always loved books.
And I had written non fiction for years,
and of course, we decided some years ago,
I wanted to learn to write fiction,
alll those little mysteries.
So we have written a little mystery series,
and Davis Morgan mysteries,
there are four in the series.
I've finished that up.
The last one will be released, well, I'm not sure when.
The publisher hasn't let me know,
it'll be sometime early next year.
I'm hoping in January, but I'm not sure.
But it's set here in the Adairsville, the whole series.
And we use the landmarks' history
of the town in order to develop those stories.
I spoke at the Bartow History Museum here a month ago on
the use of Bartow County landmarks history
in the Davis Morgan mystery series.
And so it's a form of promoting the town.
There are a number of reasons that Molton asked,
why did you choose to set the series in Adairsville?
Well, one of the reasons
was we wanted to promote the town.
And we finished that series.
My wife has joined with me in writing those.
And I'm getting ready to start another series,
and it's also going to be set here again in Adairsville.
A whole different set of characters.
But we'll tell a lot of the history
and speak of a lot of the landmarks around Adairsville.
And of course, I did the life
in a Adairsville. I compile.
I probably even wrote about 25% of that,
but I compile the works
of people who knew the history far better than I.
And Ms. Topsy Howard was
our unofficial historian who
knew just about everything that
was to know about the town and
I got commission from her granddaughter
to used her writings
that she had put in little booklets years ago,
and they were becoming almost impossible to get.
And so it's it's great history.
And then her nephew, Dan Bowden,
who's the grandson of Dr. Bowden,
who you know much
about [inaudible] you heard that name a lot.
He's on his information about historical sign up here
on the front the old jail courthouse
on the little white building.
But Dan, years ago,
just wrote a lot of material.
Wrote it basically for family and
friends so it wouldn't be lost.
And he gave me a map holder full of
stuff before he passed away.
He was a good friend.
It's a long story that I'm not going into,
but he claimed my life is his little sister.
And there's a reason for that that
it's complicated, I'm not going into it.
But they share a mother, in a sense.
But anyway, we were were good friends.
And I asked him, if
I decided to put it into a book, if that'd be okay.
He said, do whatever you want to do with it.
And of course, I double check with
his widow when I use the material.
And he has that sense of humor.
Not only is he a great storyteller,
fantastic storyteller, but he has that,
and I knew when I got his material,
that I had what I needed in
order to put this book together.
And I just wanted to say stuff
that I I thought was being lost,
and it was concerning the history of
the town. And that's why.
I liked when [inaudible] was set published.
The other books I was referring to,
the mystery series,
the first one was set published,
the next three, we got a contract
from a bonafide publisher,
and rather than us paying
them to do it they paid us to do it.
Not much, but they did pay those royalties.
But of course, [inaudible] was set
published through a nice publisher out in Florida,
which you know anything like that always
has to be set published because the
market part's not big enough that
any company is going to take
it and pay royalties to do it.
And I paid for it out of
my pocket to get it done and I did.
You have the paperback version there,
and the only time I've ever seen the paperback version
before I saw yours was they sent me
ten of them when they published them and I bought
hard backs and it can be both ways.
Of course, the hard back's more expensive.
But I did that
because I felt I wanted people to save it,
and the hard back is more conducive to have been saved.
But that's just my way of trying
to preserve the history of Adairsville.
Nobody knew it better than Ms. Topsy,
Ms. [inaudible], Howard and Dan.
I put him second on the list.
And and then I just threw my columns in
because I wanted to be in the book too
[LAUGHTER]. But their material.
I have often been sought out by a newspaper in Rome,
various people, as an expert on
Adairsville history since I
compiled the book, but I'm not.
It was the other two people that were experts in
history and I simply compiled their work.
I may know a little more than a common person about
the history because I've always loved
it and dug into the history,
and I can tell you about most of
the people that were not around here,
and before my time,
people who were famous well before my time.
>> And you were talking about your mystery novels,
and just to get back back to that real quick.
Use the setting in
Adairsville Bartow County and use local landmarks,
are the characters, like Davis Morgan,
are they based on real people?
>> No, they're not.
>> Okay.
>> There are people who swear that they are.
That they can find themselves and other people in it.
And I was very careful not to do that.
You'll find the police chief,
the mayor, a lot of other people,
the same mayor that runs throughout the mystery series,
same police chief that runs throughout.
And others.
And I go way out of my way to make
sure they're nothing like the real people in that room.
I was at a writer's conference a while
back and it was a lady who spoke, an author,
and an attorney that was leading
a session and we had
a question answer time and I told her what I had done,
that I had set the novels in my home town.
I said, well, is that a problem? Can I be sued?
And she said, well, if I were you,
I'd just change the name of the town just a little bit.
And I said, well, it's too late.
At that time, two of them had already been published.
And so she says, well,
if they don't sue you after the first year, you're okay.
You've got a year.
So nobody sued me, yes.
I have two or three friends that I
just shove in there occasionally just for the fun of it.
They don't really do anything.
They're just like our Davis Morgan stopped by to
visit Tara once in a while at
the General Mercantile store and she's a close friend.
And I just do that.
A lady who's a friend
of [inaudible] who's a waitress
out at the Cracker barrel.
I used her one time and I told her,
and I don't think she ever believed me.
I think she thought was joking with her,
but she she's in there.
But no, I do not use real character.
I base, like this Davis Morgan has a daughter,
a young daughter by the name of Amy,
and she's just out of college and began teaching here.
And she has characteristics of my two daughters.
I just thought and threw that together.
But that thing.
And there are people who think that Davis Morgan is me.
And no, he's what I would like to be.
And so we were careful not to not to do that.
>> And you were talking about
your Life in Deersville Collection
of Columns and that is
from your newspaper column, as I remember it.
Can you tell us something about that?
>> Well, as I remember,
I was still passed overall when I started writing those.
I'm not sure how long I did it, probably.
It was every other week in
the North Park News
of the weekly paper that we have here.
And I wrote them probably
four or five years so I'm not sure.
And it was just the things that I remembered and
took off from and got
a great reaction from the people in the community.
I could be walking along the street and it
was unusual for two or three people
to stop the car and say,
"I really enjoyed your column" and
it's not because they were that great,
but because people enjoy reading about
their hometown and about their past and that thing.
But I did it for four or five years and as I've said,
it was called,
as I remember, and I soon got more.
I couldn't remember anything else.
[LAUGHTER] So I read
about everything important so that I could remember.
At that time, Dan Balin was still alive
and tried to turn it over to him but it didn't work out.
He and the person who was the editor
[NOISE] at that time didn't seem to be able
to click and never really got it worked out.
It was something I did
voluntarily and I've never received a cent
for those and did those because I
enjoyed doing them and I have always enjoyed writing.
And I might say that my wife is the real writer.
My wife, Wanda,
knew before she finished
college that she wanted to be a professional writer and
she was after a year or two out of college.
She started writing professionally at first,
she'd do a basic curriculum for
various Christian publishing companies
and that went from one thing to another.
And she has done
a lot of Christian education related material.
She wrote a book and titled
Making the Most of Your Child's Teachable Moments that
was published by Moody Press and
distributed by James Dobson and focused on the family.
And it sold more copies
than most of our other books combined.
[LAUGHTER] It was actually a Christian best.
I went through something like,
I think he went through six printings.
I hesitate to say how many because I'm not
sure James Dobson and
focus on the family, reprints of them.
I'm not sure how many prints they did.
And she's the writer.
Now, I'm in the little fiction books
that we do now, I'm the storyteller.
She says I have
the imagination and she makes it readable then.
And she's certainly coauthor of the books.
Even though the stories are mine,
much of the writing is also hers and I chose to
list her as a coauthor of those books.
Last couple of books, she says she felt
like she's a fraud and having her name on
there but that's probably
because I've become a little more comfortable
with just basic writing that she's taught
me and have not had to lean on her as much as I used to.
And I think probably, and I'm
going on and on here, I don't know,
I think probably my imagination of those stories,
I mentioned my home life situation when I was up.
And I read an article recently
where someone was saying that when
you're in that situation,
you develop this imagination because that's how
you shut things out and cope with the situation.
And it was.
I spent a lot of my time in
places that I've never been [LAUGHTER] in those days.
And I think I probably developed that ability to,
as my little sister says,
to have that wild imagination as a result of
that environment when I was growing up.
Wish I'd started doing that much
earlier, writing fiction.
Now that my life,
I'm on the downside of
my life and I'm just now learning and I wonder,
how much longer am I going to have to do
this and I've got so much.
I have one book that I want to write,
just it's not a cozy mystery like these, it's literature.
But I keep putting it off because I know it's going to be
a struggle to get it published and all this thing.
And so I wish I'd started much earlier. I really do.
>> And you are somewhat of a lovely historian,
as you mentioned, or as people say you are.
Could you help us describe the beginning of
Adairsville starting back in around 1800s?
>> Yeah. I know what my research has told me,
I went around that
[LAUGHTER] despite what some people say.
It actually began about a mile and a half,
two miles from North up here.
Just actually about a half mile
off of the highway, you find creek.
Well, back with the Punkin Patch.
If you've been up there,
there's a farm, Punkin Patch Farm,
where thousands of kids
go this time of the year every year.
It was in that area because
water comes together from everywhere right there.
And it was an Indian village and which
gradually developed into a little village that
became known later as Adairsville because they
were two guys by then A there who had
both married Cherokees that had actually become Cherokee.
She's actually started goes.
I've never found that confirmed but not been told that.
But then when they developed a railroad around 1840s,
somewhere late 1830s, 1840s.
And, of course, they moved everything here.
There whole deal was
this was back the halfway
between Chattanooga and Atlanta.
So it was a big deal for the railroad.
I used to be a hotel up here on
the corner and went across the street,
that building on the corner over on the,
I never remember the name of the streets.
But right closest to the railroad was actually a hotel.
Recently when they started
digging in that thing to remodel it,
they actually uncovered 20 something fireplaces in
that building and those were rooms
in the old hotels when they were.
Each one had a fireplace.
But the town was moved in the 1840s.
They had been a little store,
they had sprung up outside of town and a few logics.
But they all moved this way and that was the beginning.
It was 18 and I tend the book.
I've forgotten the exact date about
looking but I think it was
incorporated in the late 1840s
or early 1850s, that neighborhood.
And from there, became
a very prosperous little town for some time.
And continued to make
a lot of progress until after the early 1900s,
is when things began.
When the automobile came along.
And people suddenly could go to all the stores in Calhoun
and Rome and Carswell and
even though Carswell at that time was still developing.
But that took away from up to that point,
business had been done
locally and there were several big,
what we would call department stores.
They were out of country stores in town here and a lot of
other things because everything was
done pretty much locally in those days.
But with the coming to the Automobile,
that began to change.
The town began to lose progress.
But, Tom, I was a teenager in the 1960s.
We didn't even have a place to buy hamburger in town.
Occasionally, someone would open up the old
red pig cafe out on
41 and it was
a little restaurant and
everybody who opened it up called it the red berry.
And I think I would have changed the name, probably.
And there was a little restaurant.
The building right on behind the police department
here was the little rock cafe,
which was a breathless lunch place
that sit right on the old Dixie.
In fact, it's about 10 feet off
of the old Dixie highway there.
And my wife's grandfather started that in 1934.
And he also had an ice house.
He was the person that's provided ice for the town.
[NOISE] Excuse me.
And it was after and operated into the 1950s.
He later sold it and,
again, he would open up.
The last people would operate it as a restaurant was
my two sisters who did that in
the 1980s and they
called the little rock
and that was the last time it was there.
And now it's different thing
in the building about every year too.
[NOISE] And it looks nothing like it did in those days.
But there was just nothing during those days.
Population in 1960 census.
If I remember correctly,
the population was 1,113.
I have to check and see exactly,
but that's what I remember.
And that's about what it was in the middle 1800s,
not a lot of difference in population.
There was not jobs here.
There weren't businesses here.
And as I mentioned
earlier in the graduating class, in high school.
Beautiful elementary school,
it's now just opened up this year.
It was all of
our grades from 1-12 was right there on that hill.
And that's where I went to school,
in a building that had been condemned
[LAUGHTER] several years before I was there,
but at least part of it.
And there were only 37 of us in the senior class,
and I don't know how many in the high school,
but not more than 300, I'm sure.
Maybe not that many,
but it just really looked bad.
And after I went off to college and left the area,
things really began to pick up.
And things were going
great recently until the financial crunch came,
and we had subdivisions going up everywhere.
And when that happened, all of
a sudden these subdivisions,
the buildings just stopped in mid-straight,
their little power things sticking up all over the place.
And it's just recently some of those have begun
to resume building those population.
However, up to that point it had grown to
somewhere between 4 and 5000, I think,
in Adairsville [inaudible] .
And a little more than that if you go to the outskirts.
But that came to a screeching halt.
I was on the planning commission when that came.
We used to meet and handle
several items of business every month.
And when that came all of a sudden we met
every eight or nine months whether we
needed to or not because nothing was happening.
But that's began to change.
And things began to pick up again
and looks promising now.
>> Quick question. You say
it took off when you were away at college.
What do you attribute that to?
>> I think probably a lot of hard work on the part of
some some people who loved the town,
who decided that even
if it was not going to be best for them financially,
they were going to stick with it here in Adairsville,
and did that over a period of time.
And I was away,
and I did not have
firsthand knowledge of why that began to happen.
But then the building,
the subdivisions around,
not in Adairsville proper,
but a mile or two outside of town,
began to spring up and folks could,
for a while, buy a house in Adairsville,
a new house, a lot cheaper than you could buy one
anywhere else in the whole Atlanta area, and still,
on a good day,
we're only an hour away from
Atlanta when traffic cooperates.
And I think that had a lot to do with it.
People came to Adairsville
looking for a house they could afford.
And I think that helped with population a great deal.
And then I think our schools began to bounce back.
It's the only way I know how to put it.
And right now we have new schools at every level,
and it's nice, it's anywhere around.
We have good staff, teachers.
My daughter teaches in the elementary school.
I know more about it and I know a lot of the folks
that I have known through the years while I
was teaching high school and middle school as well.
And I think that they are people
who see the value of having their children
in a small town school if
that small town school is the quality that it should be.
And I think that had something to do with it.
But I don't know the answer completely.
But it was during that time,
between about the late 1970s, early '80s,
up until the middle 1990s that there was
just a real surge of growth during that time.
>> But the interstate helped too.
>> Yeah, it did. The interstate was there.
>> It's completed to Atlanta in '77.
>> It was packed.
For a while we got a lot of traffic in
Adairsville because this stretch
was the stretch that you got off the Adairsville exit.
My granddad had a little peach stand set up right where
the traffic came off and hit 41 during those years,
and he sold Georgia
peaches that he went to South Carolina to get.
And [LAUGHTER] I can
remember holiday times that
there would be traffic backed up for miles.
My uncle had a service station
[inaudible] He loved those times.
He would sell all his gas,
close up and go home.
But we would ride along the old Dixie Highway,
main route to Florida [inaudible] .
Ran right behind town here.
I remember it was before I
went to first grade that 41 opened up.
I can remember distinctly when Highway 41 opened.
And then suddenly traffic moved out
away and that hurt downtown.
Of course, everything is facing
the railroad because it was a railroad town.
But the old Dixie Highway ran round behind it.
And then along came 75 and it went out further.
And at first, nothing happened out on 75.
It took us a while and it took
a while for that to catch on.
But once it did, I think they had a lot to do with it.
>> Are you pleased
with the direction Adairsville is moving today?
>> I am. I'd like
to see us be a little more economically sufficient.
It bothers me sometimes,
especially in the old business section
that we get people who come in and,
so many of them, if they don't develop
a booming business in six months they're gone.
And that hardly ever happens.
One time I started thinking that there have been
several people such as Rita,
1902 stock exchange, who
just stuck with it for years and
years and years and she's done some neat things.
She has a dinner theater upstairs,
and a little tea room,
has my bookshop in the back of it.
And she stuck with it.
Carol with the mercantile has stuck with it.
And of course, there's been
a little clothing store over here,
the ladies clothing that has been there longer than
anybody and she said she had her best year last year.
That's what someone told me that she recently said.
But most people move in and out.
And I think halfway
between Atlanta and Chattanooga, what a location.
Just off the interstate.
Our old town area has really been dressed up recently,
and boy, what you could do here.
And I get a little disturbed sometimes
that we don't do more.
And that was, again, one of
the reasons for [inaudible] .
Adairsville and four mystery
novels that are set in Adairsville.
It's all part of promoting the town.
And in fact, in the first mystery,
even have some people sitting around
talking about that very fact at
the festival [LAUGHTER] as
they're reading about what Adairsville could be.
But generally speaking, there's a lot of vision now.
I think it's interesting.
We were talking earlier about the civil rights.
We have a black mayor.
And we are town where
Whites far outnumber the Blacks in the town.
But yeah, we have a Black men. I killed it.
It was three people that ran but it's
primarily a race between me and
a lady and a kid that we were
more ready for a Black mayor
than we were for a lady mayor.
[LAUGHTER] I get in
big trouble when I start calling him that way,
but it's that kind of town.
There's not a lot of people.
I can say everybody loves one another,
but there is a lot of closeness and
some great attitudes and some businesses that have,
as Adairsville goes, have taken off.
They might not be
considered very prosperous in some locations,
but have done pretty well here and so I'm generally
pleased with where we're
at and where we're going right now.
I just like for us to do it a little faster and
move a little more rapidly but yet,
keep it going in perspective
and guard what needs to be guarded during that growth.
I think that's extremely important.
A few years ago,
there was all the talk about getting,
I forgot the name.
When I get upset at people,
I sometimes forget their names.
The business, the sports.
>> Cabelas.
>> Cabelas, yeah.
That was all, but they even advertised in
their catalog that their new store
was going to be here in Adairsville,
and I was on the planning commission at that time and
we had eight motels.
They're wait and sound,
and gone blind when they
finally saw building going up or Cabela's,
but that didn't happen.
And I don't know all the reasons it didn't happen,
but it would have triggered some tremendous growth.
The original idea was to build
Cabela's around Yarbrough's Cave.
It was actually going to be a cave inside
the store from the hill there, in Cave,
I used to play in when I was a kid,
but we got all upset that that didn't happen.
But once I look back now,
it may be a good thing that we may
not have been ready for it and it
might have produced too much growth too soon, also.
So it may it may have turned out for the best,
and most people would be
very upset at me if they heard me say
that but that may be the case and
we keep moving in the right direction.
>> So what would you say that sets
Adairsville apart from any other small towns over here?
>> [LAUGHTER] Well, I don't know.
To me, I mentioned the attitudes of so many people
and the kindness,
and [inaudible], you don't get that in other places,
but I'm just not aware of the fellowship,
the community that we have
here in Adairsville and people seem,
for the most part, to want
to help one another and encourage one another.
It's the people that make the difference,
and I think that's the big factor.
But again, I mentioned earlier,
look at our location.
You cannot have a more perfect location,
an hour to Atlanta and 50 minutes to Chattanooga.
Ruff said, it was right on 75.
The gentleman who at the time was a high official
in the Rome City government once told me he wished
he wished Rome had the location that Adairsville has.
[LAUGHTER] And so that location
is certainly a big part of it.
Then I think the history.
It has such a fascinating history.
Read about it like in Adairsville,
but it really does.
I've often told the story
of Colonel Boyd who lived up in Boyd Mountain here.
If you go out and look up on the hill there,
we call the mountain Boyd Mountain,
you'll see the house and one of
the boys have lived in the house since the mid-1800s.
I guess Jimmy Boyd still lives there today.
That's where Colonel Boyd grew up,
and the American Legion and cars were name after him.
He's the gentleman who gave
the ceasefire order that ended World War I.
He was on the staff of the general.
Who was the general?
>> General Parsons.
>> Parsons, yeah. I couldn't remember,
but he was on his staff
and they said every time he had to make a decision,
he began to yell, "Where's Boyd now? Where's Boyd?"
And he was a young man and the stories that I've
heard is that he had gone to
West Point and his army career
was moving much faster than the other guys that
had come out of West Point at that time,
guys like Eisenhower, and so forth.
And he died Colonel Boyd
of the flu in
France just weeks after the end of the war,
and he was buried in France.
But had he lived,
I've often heard it said,
that he probably would have been,
instead of hearing about Eisenhower's and those guys,
it probably would have been Boyd,
that he was ahead of those guys and being
General Parsons' right hand man during those years,
and from Adairsville.
I speak about,
I'm not going and know this in
the book, in Bartow family.
Four sons, and one headed up a national corporation,
one was, I keep remember what they all were.
One of them commanded the fleet
in the Navy during World War II,
and the other had his own ship during World War II.
Another was a college professor.
He at least all came from
a middle class family here in Adairsville.
They're just story after story like that in the history
of Adairsville, just [NOISE] fascinating.
Well, I've given you enough examples.
[LAUGHTER] I guess starting with some of
the figures from the past,
and I'm so fascinated by him
that I had a hard time stopping sometimes.
>> Well, we're talking about figures of the past,
and you've mentioned a couple that
are from here in Adairsville,
but the highway used
to pass through here, Dixie Highway.
Any travelers of note
that had pass through and left their mark here?
>> I don't know. Probably. But when
I spoke at the Bartow County History Museum,
I tell them I think
a little differently in the every person,
but we were talking about the little rock cafe,
that's at 8-10B off of Dixie Highway,
and I wish my wife's grandfather who ran the cafe back in
those early days had kept a little guestbook
or something that people passed
through because you think everybody who
drove in Florida coming
from that [LAUGHTER] direction and went
right by there and probably stopped in for breakfast,
lunch, or whatever, and there had been no telling.
Of course, you've probably heard the story that
Pretty Boy Floyd grew up in the little gray house.
He was born out of town here.
There are different stories about that,
but the actual fact was that he was
born outside of town while he was still
a very young child and moved in the town.
They moved away when he was seven years old.
But there are the First Eagle Scout
in Bartow County and lived
about three houses up from right here.
I think George Hayes Junior is his dad,
and George Hayes Junior and I
worked together in high school.
We played football, basketball, ran track together.
I had an outstanding time in the 880,
and for two years,
I couldn't win in the 880.
I never won because I ran behind George Hayes who
won state for three years in the 880.
And this was George Junior,
but his dad was a very quiet man who was quite a figure.
I'm not sure who passed through.
Don't have a record of that,
but there were some pretty well known folks
that once lived in this town.
>> Well, is there anything else,
any final word you'd like to leave us with?
>> Well, no. My wife and I,
Wanda, are like a lot of folks.
As we began to get older,
we were anxious to get back
home and we find that happening.
I mentioned George a moment ago.
He lived out in Seattle or somewhere
and he showed up about the same time we did,
a little after we did.
Someone told me, when
he was moving back to town, I said,
well probably the first thing I'll do when I see him
walking down the street is run up to
the person that's closest to him and do a pick on him,
a basketball because that's what I did for two years.
I'd set picks for George to shoot.
[LAUGHTER] But a lot of folks
as we have noticed
is seem to want to come back to Adairsville,
and I think it's a great place to live.
And for a lot of us, once you've lived here,
you never quite get over it and did want to come back.
>> I think we end on that note.
It's hard to top that.
[LAUGHTER] Thank you very much.
>> Well, thank you. Appreciate it. I hope it's okay.
I'm not great with interviewers. [LAUGHTER]
>> You're fine. It's terrific.