Wednesday, June 27, 2001
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Wednesday, June 27, 2001 |
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Willowbend the heart of the city? By
SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
As I hoped, several readers corrected my efforts to set the record straight on Peachtree City history a few weeks ago, and added their own memories. The first was Clare Hindman, who sees my column in the South Fulton Citizen. She wrote rather brusquely, "Re: article in The South Fulton Citizen, Friday, June 1, 2001 in which you are correcting history, U.S. 27 does not run through Fairburn; it is U.S. 29, aka Roosevelt Highway." Of course it was on U.S. 29, the A & P we shopped before Jim Hudson opened his grocery store in Peachtree City. I knew that, I told her, was just testing my readers. She took my quip with the humor intended (I felt rather chastised for such a dumb error) and wrote back that the column interested her because both she and her future husband ("my high school sweetheart back then") worked with Jim at his brother Leon's Red Dot Supermarket in Fairburn during the 1950s. "I started out as a cashier for Leon and Annie Ruth in the summer before I went into 10th grade at Campbell High School," Mrs. Hindman wrote. "They started me out at 75 cents per hour and told me that when I learned my job I would get a raise. Apparently I didn't learn it because I worked for them until after graduation in '59 and never got a raise! "But being an old cashier, I do know how to make change by counting backwards, something the kids today don't have a clue about. We have fond memories of those days. Jim Hudson taught [my husband] to be an expert meat cutter, and he made his living doing that for many years." Annie Zink called to reminisce about a building that meant a lot to me, a former motel down the hill from today's City Hall complex, near the lake. She said Bessemer Securities, (predecessor to Garden Cities Corp., predecessor to PCDC, predecessor to Pathways Communities) used it as office and conference room, and it had two bedrooms and a kitchen. Her late husband Charles stayed there a month when they were in the process of moving here from Chicago. Trouble was, GCC turned off the phones when they left the building each day, and Charlie had no way to call out. My recollection was that it provided housing for people waiting for their homes to be finished. About the time we moved here in 1971, it was being renovated for the town's first physician. I worked for Dr. Henry C. Drake from 1973 to 1983, and can recall the discomfort of patients who were asked to undress in those huge rooms with their sliding glass doors. The doors had light-reflective film on them, making them in effect one-way mirrors, but it was hard to convince a patient who could see all the way to Lake Peachtree that no one could see her clutching her little paper gown on the examination table. Mrs. Zink and I differed about the name of the original little food store in Willowbend Shopping Center before Hudson took it over in 1972. Jim's son-in-law says it was Dixieland; Annie says it was simply Gene Johnson's grocery store and that Dixieland was a frozen food packer in the industrial area. She's thinking of Dixie Frozen Foods, later Hi-Brand. That was the city's first industry, placed very visibly at the intersection of Ga. highways 54 and 74 to lure other enterprises to our fledgling industrial park. Today that property is too valuable to be occupied by a meat-packer, and showcases one of the county's most upscale shopping centers, The Avenue. Miss Annie also mentioned the cafeteria at the corner of Ga. Highway 54 west and Huddleston Drive, where there's a golf cart dealer now. The cafeteria was owned by Mrs. Bell (spelling?) who used to serve huge country breakfasts and "meat and three" lunches to local workers. The place changed hands often. I liked it when Herb Frady ran it as a steakhouse and even more when several Greek families served authentic cuisine there. I miss their moussaka to this day. But back once more to Willowbend: Russ Hudson called me to task for leaving out Mickey Odom's barber shop, "between Dixieland and the washateria." It was the only place in town to get a haircut; sooner or later, every male in Peachtree City sat in Mickey's chair. You could tell when Mickey had National Guard duty in the summertime, Russ added: Folks looked shaggy with their only barber gone. When Aberdeen Village Center finally opened, Mickey moved over there and added some lady barbers. He's retired now, with serious health problems. Son Scott still runs the shop. If it sounds as though Willowbend was the heart of Peachtree City, in a way it was. Until Aberdeen opened, our only food store, Laundromat, walk-up fast food window and barber shop were there. The only gas/service station (the fire truck quartered in a bay) was next to Willowbend; there was no police station. Cheek's Electronics was across the highway, and the bank and post office were in the building a half-mile to the east, where "City Hall" had a corner in the welcome center. Add one elementary school, the country club, and Dave McWilliams' general store and you've pretty much listed every public building in Peachtree City, circa 1971. More later. ...
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