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Sundays At Augusta: Stephen Vincent Benet

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

StephenBenet.jpg

“The whooping crowd fell silent

And scattered, as a single man walked out

Toward the engine-house, a letter in his hand.

Lee watched him musingly. A good man, Stuart.

Now he was by the door and calling out.

The door opened a crack.

Brown’s eyes were there

Over the cold muzzle of a cocked carbine.

The parleying began, went on and on,

While the crowd shivered and Lee watched it all

With the strict commonsense of a Greek sword

And with the same sure readiness.

Unperceived,

The dawn ran down the valleys of the wind,

Coral-footed dove, tracking the sky with coral…

Then, sudden as powder flashing in a pan,

The parleying was done.

The door slammed shut,

The little figure of Stuart jumped aside

Waving its cap.

And the marines came on.”

From John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benet on J. E. B. Stuart and John Brown at Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

Stephen Vincent Benét was born on July 22, 1898, and died on March 13, 1943. An American author, poet, short story writer and novelist who is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown’s Body (1928) and for two short stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster and By the Waters of Babylo. Benet won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 and in 1944.

What I did not know about Benet was that he spent part of his youth in Augusta, Georgia, my mother’s hometown. Just up the hill from my Aunt Kathryn’s home is Augusta State University that was Augusta College and before that the United States/Georgia Arsenal. The latter brought the future author to the Garden City of Georgia. Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he spent most of his youth in California. One source said that, “His father was Colonel J. Walker Benét. Frances Neill (Rose) Benét, Stephen’s mother, was a descendant of an old Kentucky military family. Because his father was an avid reader, who especially loved poetry, Benét grew up in home, where literature was valued and enjoyed.”

His father Colonel Walker Benet lived in the Commandant’s House at the Augusta Arsenal, now the President’ Home at Augusta State University. Benet moved into the home in 1911 and lived there until 1915. He was 13 on arriving and 17 when he left. He went on to a military school and Yale receiving an MA in 1920. Interestingly, both his siblings Laura and William were writers. He lost money in the stock market crash of 1929. He died at age 44 of a heart attack. He received a second Pulitzer posthumously in 1944 for his poem Western Star. Several movies came from his works including obviously The Devil and Daniel Webster, but also John Wayne’s Big Jim McClain and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. The house today is on the National Register of Historical Places. It is part of the Augusta State University History Walk, which I will blog about later.

Read More About The Benet House Here

Read More About Benet’s Father

I began my favorite book J. E. B. Stuart’s Birthplace: The History of the Laurel Hill Farm with Benet.

“Call the shapes from the mist,

Call the dead men out of the mist and watch them ride.

Tall the first rider, tall with a laughing mouth,

His long black beard is combed like a beauty’s hair,

His slouch hat plumed with a curled black ostrich-feather,

He wears gold spurs and sits his horse with the seat

Of a horseman born.

It is Stuart of Laurel Hill,

“Beauty” Stuart, the genius of cavalry,

Reckless, merry, religious, theatrical,

Lover of gesture, lover of panache,

With all the actor’s grace and the quick, light charm

That makes the women adore him—a wild cavalier

Who worships as sober as God as Stonewall Jackson,

A Rupert who seldom drinks, very often prays,

Loves his children, singing, fighting, spurs, and his wife.

Sweeney his banjo-player follows him.

And after them troop the young Virginia counties,

Horses and men,…”

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Sundays At Augusta: Richard Henry Wilde

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

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My life is like the summer rose,
That opens to the morning sky,
But, ere the shades of evening close,
Is scattered on the ground - to die!
Yet on the rose’s humble bed 5
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see -
But none shall weep a tear for me!

My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon’s pale ray: 10
Its hold is frail - its date is brief,
Restless - and soon to pass away!
Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree - 15
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!

My life is like the prints which feet
Have left on Tampa’s desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,
All trace will vanish from the sand; 20
Yet, as if grieving to efface
All vestige of the human race,
On that lone shore loud moans the sea -
But none, alas! shall mourn for me!

A mile or so away from my Aunt Kathryn’s house in Augusta, Georgia, is the home of Richard Henry Wilde, who wrote the above poem. On a recent trip to Virginia Tech, I discovered a book Richard Henry Wilde: His Life and Selected Poems published by the University of Georgia in 1966, but written by Virginia Tech English Professor Edward L. Tucker.

Wilde served in the U. S. House of Representatives from Georgia. Born in Dublin, Ireland, on September 24, 1789, he immigrated to the United States in 1797 with his parents and settled in Baltimore, Maryland. He moved to Augusta in 1802. He studied law and joined the bar in 1809. He served as solicitor general of the superior court of Richmond County, Attorney General of Georgia (1811-1813). Elected as a Republican to the Fourteenth Congress (March 4, 1815-March 3, 1817), Wilde was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1816. Elected to the Eighteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Thomas W. Cobb, Wilde served from February 7 to March 3, 1825, and lost a reelection bid in 1824. Elected as a Jacksonian to the Twentieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Forsyth and finally reelected to the Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third Congresses serving from November 17, 1827, to March 3, 1835. His best speeches were those on internal improvements, in opposition to the Force bill, the removal of the deposits from the United States bank, and those on the tariff and the currency. His opposition to President Jackson made him unpopular with his constituents. He lost reelection in 1834 to the Twenty-fourth Congress. Wilde engaged in literary pursuits while traveling in Europe 1835-1840, engaged in scholarly pursuits. He devoted himself specially to Italian literature, chiefly in Florence, and, obtaining access to valuable private libraries, discovered some forgotten documents bearing on the life and times of Dante, and also a portrait of the poet that had been painted on the wall of the chapel of Bargello by Giotto, but covered for many years with whitewash. He also made a study of the life of Torquato Tas so, and became the friend of many Italian literary men., moved to New Orleans in 1843 and continued the practice of law and as a professor of constitutional law in the University of Louisiana at New Orleans. He died in New Orleans, on September 10, 1847. He rests today in the City Cemetery in Augusta.

The poem above has an interesting story that begins with Wilde’s brother, James, who served in the Seminole war, interested him in Florida, which caused him to write an epic poem that occurred in that state. Wilde did not complete the poem, but a lyric that it contained, called “The Lament of the Captive,” but now known by its first line, “My Life is like the Summer Rose,” became widely popular. The verses appeared first in print about 1815 without Wilde’s authorization. The song was set to music by Charles Thibault. The story of the poem in its entirety was first told in “Our Familiar Songs” by Helen Kendrick Johnson (New York, 1881). Mr. Wilde’s only published work is “Conjectures and Researches concerning the Love, Madness, and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso,” which came from his studies in Italy (2 vols. New York, 1842). He contributed an essay on “Petrarch” to the “Southern Review,” and wrote poetry, original and translated from Italian, Spanish, and French. Wilde left many manuscripts, including an unfinished “Life of Dante” : a collection of translations of Italian lyrics, which he intended to publish with biographical sketches of the authors; and a completed poem of several cantos, entitled “Hesperia,” about the geography and topography of the United States, which was edited by his son and issued after his death (Boston, 1867).

Coming a little closer to home, I found evidence that Wilde visited Virginia. In reading Tucker’s book on Wilde, I discovered the following poem entitled “To Virginia” or “The Natural Bridge”. Printed in 1834 in The Southern Literary Messenger Volume One, December 1834 on page 187, this poem is in Wilde’s papers dated 1820 and is printed in his epic poem Hesperia.

Thou hast they faults Virginia! Yet I own

I love thee still, although no son of thine,

For I have climbed they mountains—not alone—

And made the wonders of they vallies mine:

Finding from morning’s dawn to days decline

Some marvel yet unmarked—some peak whose throne

Was loftier—girt with mist and crowned with pine;

Some narrow rugged glen with copse o’ergrown

The birth of some sweet fountain—or the line

Traced by some silver stream that wandered lone:

Or the dark cave (Weir’s Cave) where hidden chrystals shine—

Or the wild arch (Natural Bridge) across the blue sky thrown—

Or else those traits of Nature more divine

That in some favored child of thine had shone!

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Sundays At Augusta: Floyd Thomas Hobbs

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

FH010027.jpg Floyd and Elizabeth Hobbs with their great-grandsons Robert and Adam Pennington circa 1974. Courtesy of Ann Dozier.

Floyd Thomas Hobbs passed away twenty-two years ago when I was fifteen years old. He was born in the nineteenth century and died in the bicentennial year of 1976 in his sleep at his home at 1815 Fenwick Street in Augusta, Georgia. Outside his bedroom window, there were roses and azaleas everywhere. Cuttings from some of these plants are still in my mother’s yard as he was her father and my maternal grandfather.

I drive my mother to Augusta, Georgia, to visit her sister, Kathyrn, who continues to experience the short-term memory loss of Alzheimer’s. I listen to the conversations between the daughters of Floyd Hobbs and learn something new every single time. I drive them out to the countryside in Jefferson and Warren County, where my grandparents grew up and lived before moving into the “Garden City” of Georgia.

His father David Thomas Hobbs descended from several generations in Warren County, Georgia. I recently discovered they came from North Carolina all the way back to Edenton, North Carolina, in the 1750s. He never talked about his family and his mother. I am sure there is some story there, but that is for another day to investigate.

I have very good memories of him, but not as many as I wish. I remember he took me to Burger King up the alley, Barnes Lane, from his home. He drove me around town. Once he got a ticket for running a red light, which was very embarrassing for him having his youngest grandchild in the car. I was his only naturally born grandson (Uncle Ed and Pat adopted Jack) and I can imagine what he felt as only a man can about a grandson.

Before World War Two, he worked at many places such as at Fury’s Ferry on the Savannah River, where the bridge on Highway 25 is today in the fashionable northern end of Augusta up in Evans. He worked on the locks at the Augusta Canal at the northern end of that body of water that supplies Augusta’s water and is now a National Heritage Area. He and my grandmother Elizabeth Prescott Hobbs moved to Augusta and back to the country then back to Augusta with the depression, jobs and other factors affected their lives. She worked in textile mills along the Augusta Canal and at Bailey’s Frame Shop downtown. He was too old to serve in World War Two, but he contributed to the war effort as a carpenter and electrician. He worked at Fort Gordon, shipyards at Savannah and Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.

These are some of the facts about my grandfather, but here is the kind of man he was. Every time he went to visit his father-in-law Jesse Prescott, he always carried them fruit. During the war, he never passed a walking soldier along the roads between Savannah and Wrightsville Beach without picking them up. When his sister-in-law, Pearl and her husband lost their son to a blood disease and her husband Restey became disabled he made sure they had food. Pearl said they would have starved if not for Floyd.

Floyd and “Momma Lizzie” lived on Fenwick Street when I knew them and before in Harrisburg area on Hicks Street. He worked as a mechanic at Eastern Motor Company and other dealerships fixing cars such as Oldsmobiles. He was hit by a car crossing Broad Street while working at one of these dealerships. For the rest of his life he could not turn his neck to the left to see and you always had to tell him if anything was coming before he pulled out while driving.

My main memory of him is tending his flowers. Roses and azaleas bloomed all around the little house on Fenwick Street. He tended them as if they were children. His grass was perfect and he watered every day all around his house. It is the image of him that always comes to my mind. I visit his grave every time I go to Augusta and spend some time in the shade of a gigantic pine tree in the cemetery. Nearby are azaleas.

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Sunday At Augusta:Signers Monument

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Being in Augusta Georgia the week before the fourth of July I thought about the three men from Georgia who signed the Declaration of Independence. Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall and George Walton came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1776. George Walton, born in Virginia, is one who comes to my mind first as Walton Way is the man thoroughfare in my mother’s hometown near my grandparent’s home that I have heard my entire life. His remains were reinterred in 1848 to the Signers Monument. Lyman Hall, born in Connecticut, graduated from Yale, served as Governor of Georgia, and helped to start the University of Georgia. He wanted the college to be in Augusta, but it went to Athens instead. The site of his “College Hill” is now the home of Augusta State University. Walton lived at Meadow Garden. Two of the three rest today on Greene Street in the “Garden City” of Georgia. Button Gwinnett died in Savannah and his grave is lost, but he the Signers Monument in Augusta honors him. Gwinnett born in England, served as Governor of Georgia and lost his life after wounds suffered in a duel turned to gangrene. His signature is one of the valued in the world according to Wikipedia.

Button Gwinnett

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http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/signers/gwinnett.htm

Lyman Hall

Lyman_Hall_signature.png

http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/signers/hall.htm

George Walton

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http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/signers/walton.htm

Posted in U. S. History, Augusta GA | No Comments »

“I’ll Be Your Huckleberry”

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

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I recently spent an entire week in my mother’s hometown visiting her family. During these visits I immerse myself in family history talking to my mother and her sister Kathryn including visits to the country outside Augusta, Georgia, to Jefferson and Warren counties. I always come back knowing much more about my family history and the history of Georgia and Augusta. The “Garden City” has spent millions of dollars on history to induce tourists to visit and preserving history within the city including the restoration of the Boyhood Home of President Woodrow Wilson, the Augusta Canal is a National Heritage Area including museum, boat rides and walking trail along the banks of the canal, a Riverwalk along the Savannah River downtown, a History Walk on the grounds of Augusta State University that was once the Arsenal for the United States and the Confederate States of America and the Museum of History downtown that at the present time has exhibits on James Brown and Baseball from Ty Cobb to Cal Ripken, the latter recently bought the minor league team in town the Augusta Greenjackets, a yellow jacket wearing a green coat like a winner of The Masters’ golf tournament would wear. I am going to write a series of blogs about the history I discover to go with blogs already written from previous trips. I will call it Sundays at Augusta paying homage to the golf tournament and the lazy summer days, I spent every summer in my youth. I spent two weeks every year with my grandparents Floyd Thomas and Elizabeth Irene Prescott Hobbs at their home at 1815 Fenwick Street. During these visits, I stay at my cousin Kathy’s while my mother stays a few blocks away with her sister. I get lots of work done during these trips reindexing all of my first four books while researching my fifth Notes From The Free State Of Patrick. Now Kathy’s only child is Amanda Marion Warr, who at this writing is a very pregnant architect in Raleigh, North Carolina, but she is a very good artist and I make jokes about staying at the Amanda War Art Museum. The subject of all the art is Amanda and being a self-absorbed only child, I can relate to this, but she is very good working in all sorts of media from paints to photography. Above is Amanda in her “Blue Period.” While staying the week of July 4, I found myself watching the television one night after a week of watching the entire HBO movie on John Adams and Ken Burn’s The War I came across The States marathon on the History Channel. The show included a segment on Kansas and there was the voice again. Deb Coalson Goodrich, formerly of Patrick County now Topeka Kansas, is talking about the Sunflower State with a particularly Patrick County accent. Deb shows up as a talking head on many documentaries these days and I enjoy seeing someone from Patrick County “doin good.” If it could not get more ironic, right after The States went off, History Channel’s Reel to Real at the movies comes on with Tombstone starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp. Now I know this is one of Deb’s favorite movies and mine too. Filmed just after Gettysburg the cast includes many of the same people such as Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp in one and Union General John Buford in the other. Stephen Lang is George Pickett in Gettysburg and Ike Clanton in Tombstone. Other in the cast include Powers Boothe of Deadwood, Billy Zane before Titanic and Dana Delany after China Beach, but before Desperate Housewives. All in a good night at the movies with Charlton Heston in possibly his last movie and narrated by Robert Mitchum. I do not know if the history is correct in the film, but the Shootout at the OK Corral is a favorite movie subject on mine from Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine, Kurt Douglass and Burt Lancaster in Shootout at the OK Corral, and Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp, which came out about the same time as Tombstone. So there I sat the Amanda Warr Museum laughing aloud at Val Kilmer’s performance as Doc Holiday “I’ll be your huckleberry.”

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Good Dawg

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

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Oh the gnashing of teeth, grown men crying in the streets, flags at half mast, Athens’s Rock Band REM’s lyric “It’s the end of the world as we know it” never rang more true. The Athletic Director of the oldest state university said “It is a very sad day” and the Governor of Georgia said the dear departed was “a tremendous ambassador.” Sports Illustrated named him the “Nation’s Best.” A procession rolled across the grass towards the final resting place. Red and white flowers adorned the mausoleum as the procession rolled towards the final resting place. The deceased was in a kennel on a golf cart with his jersey and leash. Yes, that is right UGA VI, the University of Georgia mascot, recently passed away. The sad event occurred while I was recently in Augusta, Georgia, with my native of the peach state mother. I thought the state was going to shut down over this dog, I mean DAWG. UGA VI rests today in a tomb in Sanford Stadium, where the Georgia Bulldogs, I mean DAWGs, play football along with his illustrious family members. UGA V, mascot from 1990-99 was 69-41-1. This DAWG was famous for lunging at an Auburn player on national television after the player dared to score on the DAWGs and he was a movie star nearly stealing the show in Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Forget John Cusak and Kevin Spacey, UGA was the man, I mean DAWG. UGA IV (1980-89 was 77-27-4) once wore a bow tie to the Heisman Trophy banquet when Herschel Walker received the trophy in 1982. UGA III (1972-80 was 64-28-2) presided over a National Football Championship in 1981. UGA II (1966-72 was 47-17-3). UGA I (1955-65 was 53-53-6) called a “Damn Good Dog” saw Fran Tarkenton take the Bulldogs to a win on the Orange Bowl. Now, back to the dear departed DAWG. UGA VI (1999-2008 was 87-27) watched the most wins as a mascot at Georgia. He was the biggest of the DAWGS used as a mascot. His owner stated, “None of his wardrobe would fit. We had to make all new clothes. He was big, he was kind, and he had a great big heart, which finally played out. I never saw him get out of sorts.” UGA VI passed away on congestive heart failure on June 27, 2008. They flew his remains from Savannah to his funeral and burial in Athens. Everyday there were stories and editorials in the newspaper. Virginia Tech suffered the wrath of UGA in a bowl game two years ago and even Mike Vick was brought up in comparison to UGA in comparing the love for the dog versus the disgust at Vick’s animal cruelty. One said, “You look like your dog just died.” Another stated, “Other colleges have mascots. The University of Georgia has an icon.” There was one UGA, who was not UGA. Otto replaced his brother, UGA IV, temporarily when the latter had knee surgery. That is right the mascot had knee surgery. Football Coach Vince Dooley said he was a real team player. “He came off the bench.” So, with the passing Sonny Seiler owner of the UGA’s will soon replace VI with VII. “Another season is on us and we’ll be ready.” The King is dead. Long Live the King. “Sic’em UGA. Woof! Woof! Amen.”

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Gone To The Garden City

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I am off this week with Betty Jane Hobbs Perry (My mother) to Georgia to visit her sister for the week. Read more about my recent experiences in historic Augusta, Georgia.

 

http://freestateofpatrick.com/blog/category/augusta/  

 

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Augusta History: Confederate City

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

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Augusta Georgia is where I first heard about the “War. War. War.” when my grandmother talked about it with me as I blogged earlier this week. There is a huge marker to the Confederates downtown and nearby Edward Porter Alexander, who wrote one of the best memoirs of the Army of Northern Virginia is buried. James Longstreet was born just across the river in Edgefield County, South Carolina, but spent much time in Augusta. The mills along the Augusta Canal were very important to the war effort of the South and two books cover the role of the city and the powder works. “During the Civil War (1861-65) the railroad through Augusta connected the eastern and western sectors of the Confederacy. Wounded soldiers from both sectors filled the city’s hospitals, hotels, and churches. Because of the rail connections and the canal’s waterpower, Colonel George W. Rains constructed the Confederate Powder Works in Augusta. The tall chimney of the Powder Works stands today as a memorial to the Confederate dead. The city contributed more than 2,000 soldiers to the Confederacy. Several area residents gained prominence during the war, among them Generals James Longstreet, Lafayette McLaws, W. H. T. Walker, and “Fighting Joe” Wheeler. General William T. Sherman, thinking that Augusta was more heavily defended than it actually was, avoided the city on his march to the sea. As a result the city’s factories and stores revived quickly after the end of the war in 1865. The enlargement of the canal in 1875 permitted the erection of huge new factories, giving employment to thousands. Some of the Chinese laborers who worked on the canal remained in Augusta to establish one of the oldest Chinese communities in the eastern United States. Springfield Baptist Church was the focal point of black activism during the Reconstruction era (1867-76). Delegates from across the state met there in 1866 and organized the Georgia Equal Rights Association, the forerunner of the Georgia Republican Party. Augustans Rufus Bullock, Benjamin Conley, and Foster Blodgett dominated the short-lived Republican state administration. In 1867 William J. White founded the Augusta Baptist Institute at Springfield Church. Twelve years later the school moved to Atlanta and later became Morehouse College. White was also instrumental in the establishment of Ware High School (1880), one of the first for black youth. The closing of Ware by the Board of Education in 1897 prompted a suit that was taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a landmark decision (1899), the court permitted the separate treatment of blacks in education.” 


Fleming Corley, Confederate City, Augusta, Georgia, 1860-1865 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1960; reprint, Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Co., 1995). ISBN-13: 978-0871524942 
  Never for Want of Powder: The Confederate Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia by C. L. Bragg, Gordon A. Blaker, Charles D. Ross, Sephanie A. T. Jacobe, Theodore P. Savas Hardcover: 318 pages, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN-13: 978-1570036576  
  

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Augusta History: Augusta Canal

Friday, April 11th, 2008

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http://www.augustacanal.com/   

Augusta Georgia’s history begins and will probably end with water power. The Savannah River gives the “Garden City” its character and located on the fall line of the river made the city an important site geographically and historically. In the 1840s Henry Cumming had the vision to see that a canal from the river around the falls would give the city water, water power and made it possible to navigate the river. Today, the canal has been restored and is a place where you can take boat rides, walk the length of the canal and see how a city can use history to revitalize the downtown area. Here is a link for more about the history

http://www.augustacanal.com/history.html

I have a personal connection as my grandfather Floyd Thomas Hobbs worked on the canal after World War Two. I always try to visit the locks that take the water from the river and begin the canal north of town. I often take a walk along the canal which stretches several miles into downtown. It crosses the site where Rae’s Creeks empties into the Savannah River, which is the same creek that flows through Amen Corner on the Augusta National Golf Club.

The Augusta Canal Interpretive Center is located in the old Enterprise Textile Mill, which is being renovated with condos, but the museum is one of the best I have ever seen. It has lots of hands on activities for the kids along with some great interpretive displays and exhibits.

 http://www.augustacanal.com/interpretive.html

A highlight of a visit to the museum is the opportunity to take a tour of the canal in one of the Petersburg boats along the canal.  

http://www.augustacanal.com/tours.html

There is a book about the history of the Augusta Canal. “The Brightest Arm of the Savannah: The Augusta Canal 1845-2000 by Dr. Edward Cashin.

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Golf Tradition

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

A tradition like no other is this week. No, not The Masters on CBS. Every year a newspaper arrives at my father’s home in Ararat from his sister-in-law Kathryn Green in Augusta. It is the Sunday Augusta Chronicle that contains multiple big sections about The Masters golf tournament. That is the tradition at our house. It arrived this week and I spent most of the evening last night reading through it as I do every year. My Aunt Sis is in the early stages of Alzhimers, but she still sends that newspaper.  The Masters has been part of my life for as long as I can remember because my mother Betty Jane Hobbs Perry is from Augusta. Her parents, Floyd Thomas and Elizabeth Prescott Hobbs lived at 1815 Fenwick Street, a few miles from the front gate of the Augusta National Golf Club on Washington Road. Now, I don’t think you could pay me to be in Georgia’s “Garden City” today, but on Monday or Tuesday I have paid to be there. I am referring to the practice rounds at The Masters. For years I could take $20 walk up to the gate on Monday or Tuesday pay $5 or $10 and walk into the closest thing to golf heaven there is on earth. You could and still can buy a pimento cheese sandwich, potato chips and a drink and not spend $5. In the old days a souvenir could wipe out the $20 I started with. Imagine going to a pro football, basketball or even a college game with $20. You could not even get in, but at The Masters you can. Today, you have to enter a lottery to see the practice rounds and I have been lucky enough on several occasions to go again. I have seen some pretty funny incidents during the practice rounds and some amazing golf. Once I took my friend Terry “Rip” Jessup and his wife Penny to the practice rounds. “Rip” is a follower of the Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus, and when he rode by us on the fairway (Jack was nursing a knee injury that year) I turned to see a grown man running down the fairway chasing a cart yelling “Jack! Jack!” while his wife and I broke into hysterical laughter. On my honeymoon twenty years ago last week (Divorced ten years now), I saw my bride of a few days Teresa Dollyhite Perry now Adams doing the same thing only chasing “The Great White Shark,” Greg Norman down the first fairway as I continued to talk to her. Sandy Lyle won that year. I once saw Norman and Arnold Palmer playing a practice round when on the second hole here came Jack, who dropped a ball in the fairway and joined them. He then proceeded to hit not the best shot of his life into the crowd. Yes the great golfer of all time shanked it to the laughter of Norman and Palmer, who was reportedly over heard saying to the Shark, “Look, Greg that is the greatest golf of all time.”  The Masters is played on the Augusta National Golf Club and you wish you had carpet in your house as good as the place has grass. It is immaculate and has some of the toughest greens I ever saw. Television does the place no justice as to how hard it is and how beautiful it is. My grandparents rest just a few miles from the golf course, Floyd passed in 1976 and Elizabeth in December 1984, but every year in April I think of my many spring visits to them and the golf tournament just up the road that is special to our family not just because of the golf. When I was growing up my father, former Principal Erie Meredith Perry was the only person in Ararat, who played golf, and every one laughed or made comments about it. Now, he and I don’t play anymore, but it seems like all those who laughed do now. Golf is an old man’s game and it is just about the hardest game to “master.” So this weekend I will watch the tournament and I will think of the many golf memories I have and that is the tradition like no other for me.

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