Remembering the big snow of '73

It was 35 years ago next month -- Feb. 9-10, 1973 -- that more than a foot of snow fell on Warrenton. I've tracked down the pictures my family took during the storm and uploaded them to a public album on Google's Picasa system. Follow this link to check them all out, and feel free to comment here on the blog or shoot me an e-mail at jpintn@gmail.com if you feel like it. Here's one just to get you started, a picture of my grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Langford, in the snow in their yard on South Gibson Street. (And you can read more about the big snow of '73 at this link.)

From the scrapbook files

Long live the Dodge Dart

The New York Times' story this morning about a lady in California who has a 1969 Dodge Dart made me smile. My grandfather in Warrenton, known to many Warrenton Watch readers as "Mr. James" Langford, had a blue one that he drove through much of the 1980s. On the trunk lid he stenciled the phrase "I am not a dirty old man, just a sexy senior citizen." He died 13 years ago this last Christmas, but I still think about him every day.

Art teacher from Warrenton honored for her work

Carroll Bolton, a Warrenton native who has been teaching art in the schools down in Decatur County, Ga., down around Bainbridge, has been honored by the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, according to the Bainbridge Post-Searchlight.

Some good, if sad, Camak pictures, and some downtown Warrenton pics, too

Blogger Radical Georgia Moderate has posted some very good pictures of old Camak and downtown Warrenton via his Flickr account. He took the pictures during a recent road trip through the area, he says on his blog.

Remembering Mrs. Newsome

Some very sad news to report: Mrs. Beth Newsome, who was my sixth grade homeroom and English teacher, has died. Her remains were found Friday in the woods near the Shoals area of Warren County, and authorities are investigating why she died. She had most recently been teaching at Thomson Middle, where she had been named Teacher of the Year.

To give you a sense of how long ago I was in Mrs. Newsome's class, remember that it was called "English" then and not "language arts." I remember she had us read The Wind in the Willows -- the original, turn-of-the-century Kenneth Grahame version, not any of the later, Disney-ed-up cartoon ripoffs. I don't think it became a favorite of any of us in the class, to be honest, but she did have each of us get up and do a monologue in front of the class as one of the characters, and some of them were quite good. I can't remember what character I was, but I remember wearing an upside down paper grocery bag with a plaid-like pattern on it as a sort of vest, or as the Brits might call it, a waistcoat. (Maybe I was Mr. Toad? I can't remember.)

I also remember her staging a men-versus-women classroom debate over some sort of gender issue in the news -- I can't recall what it was -- and I remember her allegiances lay with Georgia Tech, while most of the rest of her homeroom were Bulldog fans.

My thoughts and prayers go out to her students and her family. There are some thoughtful comments posted in the Chronicle story about her death.

Legion Field fades into history

The old Warren County High School football field -- where my mother played the clarinet in the school band and where my uncle was once center on the football team -- has played host to its last game. The Warren County Screaming Devils have relocated to the new football field to compliment the new high school building. (They won in the first round of the playoffs last weekend, The Augusta Chronicle reports.)

Legion Field -- that was its proper name, which hardly anyone ever used -- was, or is, a few hundred yards from the house where I grew up on English Drive. I remember swinging on the swingset in my backyard many an afternoon, listening to the thump-thump-thump of the beat as the band practiced at the football field.