>> Okay. And we are rolling.
>> I am James Moon here with Sarah Strickland.
We're interviewing Mr. George Hayes at the Sans Souci
clubhouse in Adairsville Georgia on October 8th, 2018.
Good afternoon, Mr. Hayes.
Thank you for meeting with us.
>> Good afternoon.
>> Would you start out by telling
us your name and where you were born?
>> My name is George Hayes Junior.
And I grew up in the house that I'm living in now,
at 1:05 Park Street,
which is just half a block from Sans Souci.
>> What's your occupation?
>> I'm retired. I spent most of my work in
life working for the City of Seattle.
>> What did you do for the City of Seattle?
>> I was a budget person.
A paid bureaucrat.
>> So the house you grew up in,
you said it was your parents who lived there as well.
Did the house exist before they lived there?
>> No. My dad contracted to have the house built,
and with my mother's input.
And then in 1939, they started building.
And as soon as it was built in 1940,
they got married, moved into the house,
and lived there their entire lives.
Both of them actually died in the house.
My dad was 90, my mother was in her late 80s.
>> So were you born in the house?
>> Not born in the house,
but born in a hospital in Rome.
They took me home to
the 105 Park Street when I was an infant.
So I spent my entire childhood growing up there.
>> Why did your parents choose Adairsville?
>> They both had history.
My mother had lived in Adairsville,
as well as Shannon,
and my dad had grown up in [inaudible] in Adairsville.
So we have a lot of history in Adairsville.
>> Does living in the house that you grew up in make
you feel a little more connected to Adairsville?
>> Well, sure.
I mean, it's a place that I feel very comfortable in,
obviously, the towns great.
The way I ended up here was
that I was married for a second time back 10 years ago,
and my new wife was living in Dallas, Texas.
And I talked a lot about Adairsville,
and we visited Adairsville,
and she said, "Wow, this place is pretty cool.
You know, we could live it."
Because I kept my childhood home,
I was renting it out.
So we remodeled the house and
and moved in and we've been happy.
>> So speaking about remodeling,
I know that you have someone who's very famous
for a lot of the building that took place in Adairsville.
Can you tell us what you know about.
>> John Smith.
He was in Adairsville at the turn of the century,
1900, and lived there for a few years after that.
And he was an architect and builder and
built a lot of the houses on Park Street
and built the Maggie [inaudible] tea house
or the 1902 stock exchange on the public square.
And so his signature trademark of these houses,
all of them would have it
in the attic or the second floor,
they would have colored glass in the window.
So if you go around and look for houses in Adairsville,
that have a second story window that's stained glass,
it's in all likelihood it was
designed and built by my great grandfather.
>> Didn't he design and build
the first school house in the Adairsville?
>> I don't believe so.
That building was in the original.
I think it was already there when he moved here.
>> Okay. Somewhere I had read that
he built that building right after he got here.
>> Not that I know of. It's possible.
>> And what can you tell
us about some of the structures that you do know of?
>> Besides that?
Well, they turned the century houses of [inaudible].
They had high ceilings.
All of them would have been heated by
either coal or wood so they would they
would have had wood stoves and fireplaces.
One of the things that I was told to me by my father,
I mean, it was his grandfather,
was that John Smith's motto or words to live
by was that if something was worth doing,
it was worth doing well.
And all of his houses are
really well built and put together.
I still have a desk that he put together,
and it's put together with pegs.
And so there are no mails in the desk.
And so it's upstairs in my office now,
it's a nice solid piece of furniture
that I'm very happy to have in my possession.
>> Definitely.
So are there are a lot of the houses still
standing in Adairsville or do you know?
>> Yeah. Eight, probably 10, possibly.
I think there's information on
those houses at the Depot Museum,
and several of them are going to be on the home tour that
the Sans Souci and historic society
are putting on in November of this year.
So if you want to see one of those houses,
the two houses at the top of
the Public Square were
both designed and built by my great grandfather,
so you can go look at those.
Hopefully, you'll have an opportunity.
>> In 1917,
when your great grandfather left Adairsville,
did someone in your family stay
behind or did they come back later?
>> His daughter who was
my grandmother stayed in Adairsville.
She married a Hayes, and stayed here.
So she had come down shortly
after John Smith had moved down
here and had looked after him.
So she she stayed here.
>> What was it like growing up in Adairsville.
>> It was during the '50s,
and it was in ideally time,
at least at least for us,
that Sans Souci was
the building library in town at the time.
And from as early as I can remember,
which would have been four,
I think, I would come down here to the library,
I mean, it's half a block from my house.
And Ms. Topsy was the librarian,
and I would sit on her lap and she would read to me.
I mean, way before I could read myself.
And so those are my earliest memories.
And the Public Square downtown looks to me,
I mean, very similar to the way
it was when I was growing up.
The buildings that they're standing there now,
date from the turn of the century,
and so they were all there when I was growing up.
I was born in 1946.
And so the early '50s,
there were three mom and
pap grocery stores in the Public Square.
And growing up,
my mother would tell me quite often to run to
the store to pick up a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk
or a pack of flour or whatever it was that she needed.
And of course, the shopkeepers knew me,
and they would just write down the charge.
So I never had to take any money and pay for anything.
They kept it on a book there.
And my parents would settle up at the end of the month.
So that was a very fun time to grow up.
>> Sounds good. Can you tell us
anything else about Ms. Topsy,
other than she worked at the library?
>> Ms. Topsy was the town historian,
and she wrote for the newspapers around.
And she wrote the first account
of the Great Locomotive Chase that shows up
in the semaphore which
is the newspaper that comes out every
year at the same time
the Great Locomotive Chase Festival happens.
She was historian, she was a poet.
She published a couple of books.
She was very literate.
She'd been a teacher for for a while,
that's before I was in school.
But mostly Ms. Topsy was my close friend,
and I did stay close with her until she died.
And she lived to be in her 90s,
but she would tell stories
about things that happened to her growing up.
She talked about her house where she grew up,
which is the Northwest side
of what's now the new elementary school,
but that's where the school was that I attended.
And that house, she was growing up,
it was during the depression
and she talked about
how people would come to the back door,
and because they knew
that there was always food available.
And there were certain houses
in all the small towns everywhere
where hobos or people traveling
would be able to go and get something to eat,
because things were very tough.
My dad had left
Adairsville after we graduated from high school.
I would spend a year in Berry College,
but he had gone to Florida,
and was part owner of an orange growth,
but he would talk about driving a truck load
of citrus to New York City,
and then coming back with an empty truck,
and how by the time he got back to Adairsville,
it would be full of people
or hobos that were trying to go to
Florida to work just like the migrant workers went
to California from Oklahoma and the Midwest.
>> So did your father move out of
Adairsville; is that correct?
>> He did. My grandmother,
his mother was still living here.
So he lived in Florida for a number of years,
and made enough money
to be able to build the house on Public Square,
which was his goal and he wanted to marry my mother.
And so that's exactly what he did.
He made enough money to actually build the house,
and they moved in in 1940 as soon as they were married.
>> Besides coming to the library,
what did you do for fun?
>> One of the things that we did,
we would ride our bicycles all over town.
And a few times,
we rode our bicycles out to Barnsley Garden,
which at that time was just a room,
and it was overgrown,
and the rumor was that it was haunted house.
That there were ghosts there.
Of course, there was a murder there.
And you'll find out all about that when you
talked to Mr. Coker.
But the other thing,
my mother was a cub scout leader,
and so I was in the cub scouts.
And then when I grew a little older,
I became a boy scout,
and we would go up once a month and
have camp out at Lonesome,
the top of Boyd Mountain,
and Chief Willis Boyd was my scoutmaster.
And at that time,
in the late '50s and early '60s,
he was proud of the fact that he was
the oldest living active
scoutmaster in the United States.
He was in his late 80s at that time.
And my father had been a scout with chief as well.
And my dad was the first eagle scout,
the Chiefs troop 12.
And well, 40 years later,
then I became chief's last eagle scout.
But we would walk up Boyd Mountain.
It was a dirt road at that time. It wasn't paved.
And sometimes we meet
chief at his house at High Lonesome,
and the chief was a pianist among other things.
He was an educator and a school teacher.
And he had a baby grand piano
in his house at High Lonesome,
and I distinctly remember him playing Moonlight Sonata.
And my mother was also a pianist.
So so they were good friends.
Of course, my dad idolized chief, and so did I.
Chief was a moral force.
He was one of the most moral
people that I have ever known.
He fought in World War I.
And he would talk about how disappointed he was that
the United States had not ended up
joining the league of nations at the end of World War I,
because that war to
chief's generation was towards to end all Wars.
That was going to be the last one.
So he was disappointed for the rest of his life had
he not been to end all world wars.
>> Did you play fox and hounds up on Boyd Mountain?
>> We would play fox and hounds,
and the hounds would be chasing the foxes.
And it's whenever the person
that was a fox was caught
and that person would turn into a hound.
And so you would play
the game until there was only one fox left,
and everybody else was a hound,
and eventually we would catch the fox.
>> So can you tell us what all
actually goes into becoming an Eagle Scout,
at least when you did it?
>> Well, a person has to earn 21 merit badges and
a merit badge is awarded when you've taken a test
in a particular subject matter or area of skill.
And when you pass that test and you're awarded a badge,
which is a cloth badge,
which is put on a sash.
And when you have 21 of those then
you're awarded an eagle Eagle Scout badge.
The merit badges for such things as
lifesaving citizenship and history,
and camping skills like
fire building and ability to pitch tents.
It's something that Eagle Scouts are proud
and often put that on
their resume and it follows
them around for the rest of their life.
It's an honor and something
that people are proud to have and to be.
>> Which was the most difficult to earn which badge?
>> [LAUGHTER] I was lucky,
because my father who
was an Eagle Scout
was one of the people that would give the tests,
and so he would help me
as I was learning the skills necessary.
Probably the most difficult for me is
the fire building and the actual woodcraft skills.
I think that was because one of the things about Chief
was as wonderful a person
as he was and as great a scout leader he was.
And as I said, he was a moral person man,
he instructed us particular in
the scout pledge and
things like to do your duty to God and your country.
But at least by the time I knew him,
he was not as big on the scout crafting.
So he wouldn't spend much time teaching us how to
tie knots and how to build fires.
But he ended up instructing
us in how to live life and how to be good human beings,
which is stayed with all of his scouts,
I believe, certainly with me.
>> Do you think that might be because
of his views on the war not ending all the wars.
He wanted to make sure
at least the kids he was in charge of grew up good?
[OVERLAPPING]
>> Certainly he was.
And whenever he would speak of the World War.
He wouldn't talk about
the actual battles nor would he talk
about the millions of people who were killed in the war.
But that's not something
that he dwelt on or talked about.
And those were not the lessons that he thought
no humanity should learn from the Great War.
>> What would you say is the most
important thing that he taught you?
>> Respect for other human beings
for humanity and in general.
And it started with his approach and he loved
his scouts and he was very proud of his scouts and wanted
them to honor their parents and their neighbors.
>> Are you still
friends with any of the scouts in the Garrison?
>> I am still friends with
Chiefs grand nephew who lives in
[inaudible] in his Chief's house.
So I'm still friends with him.
Said he was a scout at
the same time that I was Jimmy Boy.
>> You mentioned that people would put
the Eagle Scout on their resumes and things.
Did being Eagle Scout
ever open any opportunities for you?
>> I'm sure that it didn't hurt.
I'm not aware of any specific job or anything
that they got specifically
because I was as an Eagle Scout.
But people take that
into account and it is a positive thing.
It takes discipline and
it shows that you've been able to follow
through with tasks that were said to you growing up.
>> What is it about Troop 12 in
Adair's deal in general that
produced so many Eagle Scouts.
What do you think the key to that was?
>> Well, I don't think there
were quite as many as legend had it.
But that was a tribute to Chief, certainly.
He was encouraging all
of the scouts to go as far as they could.
There's levels the way up to becoming an Eagle Scout.
So people can end up getting
five mirrored badges or ten mirrored badges
and even if they don't get the 21,
it's necessary to becoming an Eagle Scout.
They still learned a lot of skills
and chief was always pushing the scouts to do that.
>> Sounds like he had a real impact
on the community as a whole.
>> He did. Chief for
years and years was the organist
at the Desflle Methodist Church.
And the pipe organ that they had there when he
was the organist was manually operated.
And so there were bellows that somebody had
to push to build
up the pressure that would enable him to play the organ.
And that's one of the things that my dad would do.
It would take a couple of them would be
manning the bellows for the organ.
And then after chief
retired from being the organist
and the pianist at the church,
my mother took over and she was
the organist for years and years and pianist.
So the Methodist Church is
still the end of the plain square.
So Chief was a factor in my growing up in all ways.
And as I mentioned,
he would play Moonlight Sonata classical music
in his house and high loans at top of Boy.
And his love of classical music was something he
shared with all of the scouts and with me and
with my mother and my dad.
And Certainly, I'm sure that was one of
the real reasons that
my mother played the piano and not her entire life.
>> You mentioned the Methodist Church.
Is that the church that you went to as a child?
>> Yes. [OVERLAPPING]
>> Are you still a member?
>> I am still a member
[LAUGHTER]
because unless you
consciously move your membership,
I believe that you're member for the rest of your life.
Yes. I'm still on the ropes.
>> What can you tell us about
being a child and going to the Methodist Church?
Any activities or?
>> Not much. I mean we had
vacation bible school every summer.
That was something that we did.
As a matter of course, we went to church.
On Sunday morning we would go to Sunday School,
it started at 10:00 and 11:00 we
always had the main service, the sermon.
And so Saturday nights,
that was the night that we had
the boys campouts on Boyd Mountain.
So every Sunday morning after we'd been camping,
we would walk down the mountain
and have to get ready and go to go to church
because certainly there was
no thought of not attending church.
>> I don't think the chief would've let you stay at home.
He might have pointed a gun maybe.
>> He might have. Of course, he would come down
the mountain and be there as well.
I know for years,
the bell in the bell title of
the Methodist Church is not had not been run.
And it's because they
were worried about the stability of the bell,
and they had tutors,
that is from the 1880s, I believe.
But the one thing that he wanted to do was
his funeral to [inaudible] and it was.
And I mean, he went to Columbia in
New York and received his master's degree.
And he was a very illiterate person
and one of the things that
he wanted to have read at his funeral was [inaudible].
Of course.
John Dunn supports home.
>> You mentioned that he was an educator?
Did he teach in Adairsville?
>> He did. He was a history teacher, as I recall.
That was before I started school.
As I said, at the time I was in
middle school of early high school,
he was already in his late 80s.
He had retired.
>> Would you care to
expand a little bit on your time in school?
>> There were 26 people in my graduating class.
The school, and there
were a few more of us when we started in the first grade.
But we started in the first grade in
the same attached building and spent 12 years there,
and along with the same people.
And there was no kindergarten.
And by the time I graduated,
I think there were 700 people in the entire school.
So there's a picture of the entire group from '64,
which was when I when I graduated.
I thought the school was really good.
The I had the same English teacher,
Ms. [inaudible] for all four years
and the same math teacher largely.
It was Marion Lacey,
the founder of the Great Locomotive Chase Festival.
And it was quite possible to get
a very good education even though
the school was just as small as it was,
and we only had a few teachers.
I did not consider myself,
nor did anybody that I graduated with,
we did not consider ourselves
as any disadvantaged whatsoever,
having attended
Adairsville high school and grammar school.
[LAUGHTER].
[inaudible] elementary school.
We thought it was an advantage.
And of course, there was
such a small number of people in our classes.
And we had the same teachers year after year,
they got to know us very well.
And they knew what our strengths and
weaknesses was and was able to build on us.
>> It's almost like having a personal tutor.
>> Indeed. Now, it was quite a bit like that.
>> Did you do any extracurricular activities at school?
>> When I was growing up
and the small number of people that were in high school,
all of us that played sports played every sport.
In the school year,
we would start off the football season.
And then as soon as football season was over,
we'd pick up the basketball and start playing basketball.
And the first year
that I was in high school in the 9th grade,
we had a baseball team.
And so we would pick up our baseball gloves
as soon as basketball season was over.
But baseball costs money
and the school decided that they would
be better served to have track and field team rather than
a baseball field and they didn't have to
pay for the gloves and bats and the baseballs.
So the last three years,
I would put down the basketball and put on
my track shoes and start running track.
And because we were a small school,
and we were part of
the lowest classification in the State of Georgia,
class C at the time of the class As and Bs
and Cs, smallest schools.
So that meant that
there weren't thousands of
people that we were competing
against like the other students.
So they were able to have success,
at least in that limited small area, the small pond.
>> What position did you play on the football team?
>> I was a quarterback. And I was a point guard,
and that was a half miler.
So as I said, we had some success.
I actually won the state track meeting
so I was a state champion in the half mile,
which we were in a half mile instead
of the 880 back in those days.
The other thing was big and small [inaudible].
We got to do everything.
Anything we wanted to do.
If I wanted to, I could have been in the band.
But I was I was playing sports, that instead.
But I was I was on the debate team
and there was something called declamation,
at the time where somebody stood up and declined,
who gave a [inaudible] speech.
I It was a great time to go to school.
>> Did sports help you get into college?
>> It did. I went to Stetson University on
a basketball scholarship. So indeed.
As I said, most of our parents in Adairsville,
virtually nobody had very much money.
So those of us that went to college, we got scholarships,
either academic scholarships or sports scholarships,
or we had to pretty much find a way
to pay the tuition ourselves.
But there was never a question
in my family that I was going to college.
Had an older sister,
she was four years older and she went to college.
And then my younger sister,
she went to college and so that's what we did.
>> Had your parents have gone to college?
>> My mother went to college and it
was during the depression.
And she went for two years to Merryville College.
And at that time,
she was able to get a job as a school teacher
with only two years of college.
And after I graduated from high school,
she went back to school and went back to
Shorter College in Rome and picked up her degree.
My dad had gone for a year in Berry College,
which was free tuition at the time.
But he only stayed for one year because he wanted
to go out and make
enough money so he could build a house and marry my mom,
and they had grown up in the same town.
So they were childhood sweethearts.
>> When you left here to go to college,
did you ever have it in your mind that you would end
up back in the Adairsville or did you think?
>> No. I never thought I would come back to Adairsville.
But I could not bear
to get rid of the house that my parents had
built and lived in and died in.
So I kept the house with
no intention of ever moving back there,
but I just kept it for sentimental reasons.
I was actually renting it out to some people
when I brought my newly married wife to Adairsville.
She had fallen in love with the town and we moved here.
>> How long ago was that?
>> It was nine years ago.
>> It was a small town when you were growing up here.
Do you remember what the population
was when you left roughly?
>> Yeah. It was around a thousand people.
>> A thousand people.
So when you came back,
were there people still here
who you had known growing up?
>> Sure. [LAUGHTER] Half the town was
acquaintances of mine and so
people knew me that I frankly didn't remember.
Of course, my parents lived their entire life here.
I'm George Chase Jr,
and so my dad is known by everybody in Adair and my mom.
>> Go ahead.
>> Did you guys have a reunion recently?
>> We did. It would've been the 50th reunion.
So I guess that would have been 2014,
I guess it was nine years ago.
>> Do you know how many people were at the reunion?
>> Maybe you can talk to [inaudible].
She was one of the organizers.
She could get more information
about how many people were actually there.
She would be more precise.
But a lot, a good percentage
of the 26 people that had graduated.
>> Did you come back to
Adairsville after you graduated college?
>> I actually did come back for
one year right after college,
and I taught in the middle school,
I taught the sixth and seventh grades.
And we were basically teaching all
of the subjects or most of
the subjects in heaven had
one class and teach everything.
So I have students around.
And at that time,
my mother was a second grade teacher and so
she was teaching at the same time that I was.
So there's still quite a few people that
were in her second grade.
And she was certainly
a much more memorable teacher than I was.
Numerous people told me
that she was their favorite teacher in school growing up.
>> Before you went off to college,
what did you guys do as
teenagers? What did you do for fun?
>> [LAUGHTER] We played sports. We rode our bicycles.
We went camping.
We were boy scouts.
Growing up my parents were mostly bridge players
and we would play cards to play bridge.
And one of the Methodist preachers
that was here when I was growing up,
came home, it seemed like almost on
a daily basis and play
cards with my mother because
my dad was working at Salamis,
which is a textile meal and that was in Rome.
And they would do shift work.
So he would work
three different shifts and over a period of time,
he'd work a week working the the early morning shift,
which would start at
seven o'clock in the morning, I believe,
and then there would be the afternoon shift,
which is then the next week he would work.
And then there would be the graveyard shift which he
would work at night.
So a lot of the time he was off working.
He would either show up late after
the afternoon shift or he would show
up early in the morning after the graveyard shift.
>> Did you ever gather at
the square with the other teenage guys?
>> [LAUGHTER] Not that I recall.
We would play baseball in the lot.
It was just west of where I'm sitting right now.
It was that vacant lot that was
a place that we used for playing ball.
>> When you were in school,
the school system was segregated.
Do you remember very much about race relations
during your childhood in Adairsville?
>> Sadly, no. The town
was very segregated as the school was totally segregated.
And we had virtually no contact
with any African Americans at all.
And so in those terms
that until I was in high school, I was oblivious.
And the period I was in high school,
things started happening and
people started protesting and
so I became conscious
of what was going on in our society that,
the Brown versus education in
1955 had no effect upon me and we didn't even
know that it happened and Georgia didn't get around
to implementing until actually
a year after I graduated from high school,
there were no African Americans that attended
Adairsville High School and
the entire time I was there, the early '60s.
So I didn't have any classmate
until I went off to college.
>> Was there protesting in Adairsville?
Do you remember?
>> Was there what?
>> Was there any protesting that happened in Adairsville?
>> None that I'm conscious of.
>> So then when you
came back after college and taught for a year,
the school was integrated at that point?
>> It was partially integrated.
I don't remember having
any African American students in my grade.
And they may have,
gosh, I may really have to
talk to Linda Bass about that as well.
She was a teacher.
She and her husband, Kenny,
started teaching right after they
graduated from college and taught
here their entire lives for,
working on us, obviously still alive.
>> Do you have any final questions?
>> Do you have anything else that you would
like to mention? Can you think of anything?
>> My grandfather who was my mother's father,
Hogan, had run a store for a while on the Public Square.
But the other thing that he had done,
he had worked for the railroad,
and he was a telegraph operator.
And if you go to the Depot Museum,
there you'll see the desk where the telegraph operator,
the station master sat,
where the telegraph was.
And the people would send telegraph messages to him,
telling him when the next train was
coming by and how big train it was,
and tell him to get ready because at that time they
would stop but not always stop if he had,
and so they had to find out whether or
not there were any passengers,
because there was some passengers out there as well
as freight trains running.
And when he was the telegraph operator,
the story is, as I always heard growing up,
was that there's a special code for
every station along the railroad line.
So every every telegraph operator,
there was a certain code that they would start
off each telegraph message that was directed to him,
or it was directed to the Adairsville Depot.
And if it was going to
the Rissaca Depot or Chattanooga Depot,
then it would start off with a different code.
And the story was always that my grandfather
would sleep until he heard the code.
And whenever his code came on,
he would immediately awaken and answer
the telegraph as to what they had wanted to know.
>> So he had conditioned himself to recognize that code?
>> That code that code would wake him up.
>> This alarm to wake him up.
>> Did you ever take any trips on train from the depot?
>> I did not. By that time,
I was growing up.
The passenger service was not
quite finished until early '60s,
I believe, it was the last passenger train
that ran through here.
We were part of the generation that grew up with
the automobile and it
was part of the Sid USA and your Chevrolet.
It was that kind of story.
Every summer, the five of us,
my mom and my dad,
and my two sisters would take off for vacation,
driving across the country much of the time.
So we drove across to California a couple of times.
Drove to Florida, and drove to New York,
drove to Canada and that's
that was part of my growing up.
>> How would you describe Adairsville
to a complete stranger?
>> [LAUGHTER] It was like maydear.
It was like growing up
with Sheriff Taylor or Andy Griffith.
We only had a couple of
police officers who we seldom saw.
And I thought it was routine.
I thought it was life was like Father Knows Best and
leave it to Beaver and the Andy Griffith show.
And that's the way it was.
>> Were you shocked when you left in there
and you only got out there in the world?
>> No, not at all.
It's much of a small town as it was.
It was not provincial in terms of the education
with chief and with my parents and with Topsy.
All of those people were
very literate and very well read and
very politically aware and and sad.
Most of the people that of
my parents' generation were Roosevelt Democrats.
And the biggest shock to
me was after I had grown up,
gone to college and was coming back and finding out that
a great percentage of the population
suddenly become Republican while
I wasn't paying attention.
>> Anything else?
>> I think that will do it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
>> I enjoyed recollecting the past.
>> Thank you so much.
>> My pleasure, certainly.