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Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.

Friday, April 27, 2018

Bush 41, Meacham and the SBC wing of the Eagle Forum

       T Perry Brannon was a Missionary denominationalist and tent revival preacher during the Depression through the early 50s of Chattanooga Tennessee. He was born in the Corinth community of Gaffney SC where my Dad was a Baptist preacher from 62-78.

   His father, my Grandfather WD Shorty Fox had an 8th grade education and worked the third shift at Celanese in Rome Ga from 29 to 65. He could heard TPerry on the radio and was the height of his faith pilgrimage to be a prayer warrior for Brother Brannon when he came to Rome on more than one occasion for his sometime three week revivals.

   Papa's first grandchild, my first cousin Harold Brannon Simmons did pretty well with Sears and Roebuck in corporate offices and Atlanta. His middle name was for the preacher.

    So it is with some interest I finally have Chattanooga native and Harvard PHD Marie Griffith's new book Moral Combat about how the Eagle Forum and other women of the Birch Society tradition shaped the modern day Republican party and church rifts in the Southern Baptist Convention and elsewhere.

    Andrew Jackson and Bush 41 biographer as another native of Chattanooga does her top back cover blurb. We know he was the Historian who said good things about Barbara Bush last Saturday at her funeral.

   I liked Barr. She told a great joke to the Columbia SC Rotary club in circa 96 and her son W last commencement address was at my and Marshall Frady's alma mater, Furman University in Greenville SC.

   Lee Atwater's daughter Salley is also a Furman grad and in a few weeks Clayte Hubbard, golfing son or recent Bama House Speaker Mike Hubbard will join our august ranks.

    So far after waiting with a bad car belt I thought was the alternator; after waiting three months to get my hands on the book from some great librarians at a nearby juco, spot reading I'm all in.

    I hope maybe Ms Griffith and I can do lunch later this summer, and would be a stoke for me and my blog if she can get Jon Meacham himself to read this.

   From Criswell to Jesse Helms takeover of the SEBTS seminary in Wake Forest NC to Criswell's race baiting speech to joint session of the 1956 SC legislature--Stewart Newman, the man who followed him at the SBC pastors conference the day before said WA shouted out "Now you wouldn't call a chigger a chiggerow, now wudya"; To Bush 41 ethics nominee Paul Pressler now the subject of numerous allegations of sodomy with boys he's  crossed  paths over the years; to Bush 41 1966 confrontation with the Harris County Texas John Birch Society, to EJ Daniels presentation in Gaffney in fall of 1966 on masturbation in the boys session right before the sermon Stop Lights on the Road to Hell, a few months before I saw Billy Graham and the Baptist movie star who was on Rawhide with Clint Eastwood at the 67 SBC in Miami; well Ms Griffith and I got a lot to talk about. Come back to this soon. I'm just startin to roll.

   Wuthnow and Lee Atwater's famous Nword memo; we got to talk to Meacham about that too!

Friday, April 06, 2018

Confederate Home Guard in South Dekalb County Alabama

        Edwin C. Bridges, a Graduate of my alma mater Furman University and 30 year archivist for the state of Alabama wrote the 2016 Bicentennial History of Momma's homestate. Among other flourishes he has several paragraphs on the failings of the Daughters of the Confederacy to tell the Truth about the Civil War to several generations of Bama's high school youth in their textbooks, and does justice to the truth pointing out DOC fallacies of  that era. His illustrious chapter on the Civil War and Reconstruction  in Alabama goes for 27 pages.

   He mentions numerous reports of Homeguard activity along the Bama, Florida panhandle border in the Piney Woods. There are reports from other sources about pockets of Homeguard  Activity in NE Bama  that went  from Stevenson on over to Winston County, basically Robert Aderholt's current Congressional district into Dade County Georgia.

    He also has a picture of Judge Frank Johnson in the book and one of Momma's hometown of Collinsville.

     Eulene Reed was a distant cousin of my Mother and her family is legendary in Sacred Harp community nationally with an annual singing at the Pine Grove Primitive Baptist Church on Lookout Mtn.  She tells a great story of my extended family of Union sympathizers  later in this blog. On the Oliver side of her family, Bud, was on first name basis with JFK's Vietnam Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and there is a picture of Bud and McNamara in the Collinsville History Museuam . See Kiri Miller's Traveling Home on the Reed/Oliver contributions to Sacred Harp.

   My Grandfather Jordan, born 1881, taught Eulene and her cousin Bud Oliver in the sixth grade at the church. Ive attended annual singings there pretty much every year the last twelve.

    His father, my great grandfather John Sanders Jordan was born in 1841 now buried in the Rocky Mount Cemetery about forty yards from the train tracks from Birmingham to Chattanooga up to Knoxville the Shenandoah Valley and beyond constructed in 1872. JSJ fought with the Union in the Alabama Vidette Regiment in skirmishes around Stevenson and the Nickajack area of the Tennessee River Valley.

    Oliver Hall II told me today his Dad Harris said the oral history in these parts  was the Jordans and other Lincolnites of South DeKalb County wore bonnets in the field to escape inquiries from the Rebels;  though II was as certain as my Cousin Eulene was sure, the Homeguard never operated in Collinsville.

    I tend to believe Eulene and Barrett Ashely knew what they were talking about.

    Today at lunch Eulene told me the story Barrett Ashley told her.

     Eulene's great Grandfather didn't believe in Slavery. The Home Guard in South DeKalb County came to his house down around the curve if you take a right at the ST Reed Place top of Lookout Mtn looking for him. He got word and wandered out into a cornfield. The HG got his wife and took her to the barn and threw a rope over an eave and noosed her hangin. She told em they could hang her till she died but she wasn't gonna help em in the least.

     They did discover somehow he had ran into the cornfield and they shot it up pretty good but never saw him. I guess they ran out of ammo. Story was later he got to the brow and hollered to kin he made it alive.

   Eulene is one of his direct descendants.

    She said a retarded son was born soon after the incident. Her ggrandfather went to the neighbor in the homeguard and told him if he didn't apologize for noosing up his wife and the resulting injury to his newborn he was gonna kill him if he didn't get on his knees and pray for  forgiveness.

    They both had a salvation moment in that ordeal and Eulene's Great Grandfather became a Baptist Preacher.

   Gives extra mustard for me at least  this August when I sing at Pine Grove, especially the verse of my friend  Sam Hodges Great great great Grandfather Fitzpatrick, a Rebel of Crawford County Georgia,  whose dying words from injuries in the Battle of Petersburg Va near the end of the war,  were from the  Sacred Harp hymn Jesus can make a dying bed, soft as downy pillows are.