Memory Joggers

How DA BOYS lived in the ‘40s & ‘50s in Oakdale, Smyrna and Environs

Write down your earliest memories through your senior year. 

How different it was when you were there.” Ernest Hemingway   

  1. Location, address and style/construction of your first house .Date built.  If the house is razed, (what stands in it place) still give location and even more important if the original street is gone. Closest still standing landmark. Live in the “city” or on a farm. Did a grandparent live with your family? Date your family moved in this area. Party phone line?
  2. Same as above for grammar school (middle if any), high school. Lunches, recess activities. Dangerous dodge ball or treacherous tag? Bike rides.
  3. Name and location of your church. Still standing? Activities?
  4. Home meals? What kind -- any special one  - Sunday dinner. Home garden, chickens, cattle, pigs.  Canning vegetables? Baking by your mother or dad or grandparent. What did you eat for snacks? Any recipes from parents /grandparents. Ever ring a chicken’s neck or see it done or skin a catfish? Yum! Of course, all chickens today come from Publix or Kroger;) Where did your family buy their groceries in the 1940s and early 1950s.Rogers, J.D.s ?  Remember WWII tokens for sugar, coffee etc. ?
  5. Boy scouts, scout hut location. Camping adventures on Blood mountain and Bert Adams? Swimming holes? Sope creek, Chattaochee, Nickajack creek at the covered bridge. Belmont  Hills  pool and putt- putt golf.  How did you earn money?  Pay scale?
  6. Where did you “eat out ?” Howard Johnson’s on the “four- lane” or in Buckhead. Did your family visit other relatives for Sunday lunch and /or dinner. First taco or pizza ?
  7. First car? Date destinations. Aunt Fanny’s cabin, Landers Drug Store, The Varsity, The Yellow Jacket, GB’s, Dog & Suds, The Dairy Queen, Po’k chop Inn, B&H Skating Rink, Varners, Twelve Oaks etc. Daniel’s Grocery, Smith Service Station and the Oakdale drug store. Don’t forget the Fair Oaks drive-in!!  
  8. The Fox Theater, Loews Grand and The Strand in Marietta.  Gas $.25 a gallon. (Date’s name optional J .) Rock and  Roll shows at the Ponce de Leon ball park and the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Atlanta
  9. Old family cemeteries. Obscure National or Civil War landmark(s), battles etc.
  10.  Photographs must be digitized.

     Use the above suggestions as you see fit and get it into digital format (MS Word, Notepad, email, etc) so it can be put on our web site and also be placed in the Smyrna Museum and the libraries of Smyrna, and Oakdale for posterity.  Just type it on your computer or have a friend or relative do it (grandchildren are a good source.) Send copies to Bill Pilcher at wpilcher@bellsouth.net or Charles Gustafson at cgustaf@att.net