WARNING, THIS IS LONG.
I will fill in a few items from last week that weren’t in this blog previously. All the effort I went to get the letter from my doctor was useless as was putting all my wallet cards in a conference name tag around my neck. The TSA people only looked at my driver’s license and my boarding pass. They took my word that I had a chest full of metal and let me stand at the X-ray machine or the one that “takes off your clothes”. Nothing was said, and because I was in a wheelchair, I think my trip through was faster than most. I walked through the machines, stopped, stood on the yellow footprints facing sideways, held my breath and was X-rayed, I guess. Airporter Shuttle bus trip over from Eburg to SeaTac was uneventful and fine. We did not lose any time with stops for construction. AirTran was just within the gate and two doors down. My one complaint was I had to stand in line (a long one) for requesting a wheelchair. I don’t know what would happen for people who are unable to make it through the line. You will see later that Atlanta has a different policy in place.
I was wheeled out to my plane and the plane flight was non-stop, a 5-hour trip. My trip was in seat 27 F (window) and next to me was a couple from Spokane. We got to talking and found out their son was at CWU and is a pilot on AirTran. I asked his name because I used to get lots of Flight Tech students in my classes, particularly the Map Reading and Map Interpretation one. What a surprise when I said, “He was my student; I remember him well.” I described my memory of him and they pulled up their phone with pictures. Yep, I was sure that was him. What a small world! The man gave me his card, and I gave him one of mine.
In Atlanta I had a wheelchair waiting for me at the exit from the plane. Then the man who pushed me actually pushed two chairs. He had to take us both on the train and in the elevators. It was very nice to have the help. In the wing where the gate was I needed for departure, there were no electric cars; only moving sidewalks, and it was a long way to baggage claim.
When I got to Atlanta’s baggage claim, there were my friends waiting for me. I was so happy to see them late that night. Not too far to the parking garage and “home” to Decatur.
Thursday, my visit to cousin’s houses and transportation by other cousins, went as planned. The only additions are that we enjoyed a tour of the stables and horses at the Marietta stop. We met her 30-year old Stallion and what a nice boy, gentle and still willing to stand in a “show” pose. All of the horses loved the carrots my cousin brought for them. At the Mableton stop (to meet my 3rd cousin once removed), we viewed pictures of our old relatives, and talked about genealogy. It was totally fascinating. In Marietta, I met a whole bunch of cousins and their kids and grandkids that I had never met. We did plan a trip for lunch into the day, and had a good meal in a fancy restaurant. It was not fast food by any means. Dinner (Pit BBQ and Brunswick stew) we picked up on our way to Mableton and then once done with dinner in Marietta, we had leftovers, of which I carried some home to the place I was staying. The dinner was scrumptious. Added to the BBQ we brought, was potato salad , a great cake (cream cheese pound with thick creamy caramel frosting, rolls, chips, fruit, lettuce/pea salad (best I’ve ever had—see the link below for the directions from my cousin-in-law who made it):
http://thewannabecountrygirl.com/pea-salad/
What a fantastic time and beautiful view of the woods down from the house to two pastures for their horses. They are sited on about 37 acres. Very neat. Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the house and people for John to see. I did take pictures of my cousin showing us her horses.
Friday. Was another full day, and after a breakfast with the family, the lady of the house and I went to The Container Store. We have been friends a very long time – because our mom’s raised us as babies together. Most of our baby pictures have the two of us in them. Back to the store, of which there is one in Bellevue, WA. This one was in Buckhead (old neighborhood near where I grew up); a fascinating place. I have never been in one. For the location of stores, check out this map:
http://www.containerstore.com/locations/index.html
We were in search of a shoe container and two plastic boxes, one an egg box for storing decorated Easter eggs. While there my friend showed me around and we only saw a few rows of the store. I was amazed at all the containers I saw, and intrigued by the display of real things in them. Kinda like a mannequin in the window of a downtown department store with clothes of interest. We drove around in my old neighborhood of Garden Hills where I spent my grammar and high school days. She drove me by my old high school and my old grammar school: Garden Hills Elementary School, which is still in operation. My old house is no longer there on Piedmont Road, so that was a pity. Then on the way home we drove by my other house where I lived later in life (after 1963). I swear it is so ugly and unkempt that I’m almost sorry I saw it. It had an extra driveway added across the tree roots, and not paved, and a large dark brown fence as if they did not want anyone to see in. They even fenced off the old carport. I think something was going on there that they didn’t want seen. If you look on Google Earth, there is a large white roof in the structure in the backyard. I think it is a greenhouse and they are growing pot. We considered reporting it, but didn’t. In case you want to see what I mean, look on Google Earth, or the Satellite view on
for 1938 Fisher Trail, NE, Atlanta, GA. You will see the large white structure in the backyard (west of the house) in the image. My friend also drove me by Echo Lake further up Briarcliff Road to bring back memories. That’s where I caught a large fish when I was a kid (won a contest—it was a ¾ lb Catfish). That’s also where I learned from my uncle, how to fly cast. My dad had already taught me to do regular casting.
We came on home and I rested for an hour or so, and then my friend and I went to the reception and registration at the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center at Lenox Square. She knew many of my classmates from her church, but she graduated from a different high school (and they had their reunion the previous weekend). She and I met several of our crew in the elevator and found our way to the proper ballroom. I grabbed my registration materials and we found a mutual friend. I visited a bit with folks and had a good time. It was amazing to see how some people had not changed that much in 50 years, but others were unrecognizable. It was loads of fun to reminisce. I came from the farthest distance, but there was one fellow who is in Budapest who would have “beaten me for the prize,” but there was none. After the reception was done we left to be at the Druid Hills Country Club for an evening meal with the couple and me and her friend from my class. We had a great dinner of scallops with a nice salad, and I had a crème brûlée for dessert. Yum. Something I never remember having in my life. It is composed of egg yolks, white and brown sugar, vanilla, and heavy cream. With a blowtorch, it is flamed on top to have a little hard crust. Pretty neat and very tasty. Check out the you-tube video below to see how it’s done and what the final product looks like. Mine was served with a dollop of whipped cream and a strawberry on top. (Don’t even try to start counting calories or carbs or fat or cholesterol !)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_16ZZtTH_Y
Saturday morning I was picked up by a friend from high school days, who lives in Decatur, 1.5 miles from where I was staying. She drove me to our old high school for the 45 minute tour, led by one of our classmates on the Reunion Committee and still living in Atlanta. Small groups of about 12 went through, and we went on the “reverse tour” only running into one group we passed in the hallway. John has already included in last week’s blog the use of the school now. I took a lot of pictures for memories. After that tour we piled into my friend’s car with the addition of two classmates, and drove to the Varsity down town. Again, John mentioned that to you last blog, but you don’t know what I had. I ordered an order of Fried Onions, a chili dog, and a frosted orange. Twenty of our classmates showed up and we sat at adjoining tables and booths. A lot of fun was had by all. The most interesting thing that happened there was hearing from my fellow classmate that he had worked in the medical industry on cardiac devices. I asked which company. It was Medtronic. He showed me his ring from the company. I said, “Oh, I have a Medtronic artificial porcine heart valve, and pulled out my wallet card for it. He looked at it and held it over behind his left side and started telling me a story about something he had marketed and the fellow’s name. It was a neat story and the name Hancock was mentioned. After that build-up, he brought the card back to the front of us and turned it over and showed me that I had that “issue” of a Hancock porcine valve, called a Hancock® II Mitral valve. It has been used in patients for the past 25 years.
On the link below, read more about it, if you want:
Although I met a wonderful bunch of friends all the way back to grammar school days, I think this was the most memorable occurrence while in Atlanta, May 20, 2011.
That evening I saw many of my old classmates and we shared memories. I’m sorry I didn’t get around to everyone there. Guess we will have to reconnect at the 55th. One other special one was the gal in my class who also was in my church, and we started in the Cherub Choir together at 2.5 years of age. She brought a photograph taken of us when we were about that age, maybe 3 or 4. I tried taking pictures of the picture but had trouble with the flash reflection. I hope to get her to scan it and send it to me on email. It was very clear where we were and the gal between us was also a NFHS graduate, but she has since died.
I was too tired to make it to the ending at midnight, and I had gone with my friend and her friend in his convertible. They stopped in Decatur, to pick me up. I made a call about 10:30 to my friends where I was staying and asked if they could come pick me up. Thankfully, they did. It had just been too long a day. I was fading fast.
I neglected to say we had a fabulous dinner. Everything was excellent and hot. That’s quite a feat with 95 classmates (including two teachers from our day and their wives), and about 40 spouses, or significant others.
On to Sunday. It was going to be spent entirely with the couple I was staying with and their children and grandchildren. It was a wonderful day. We actually started out going to an event at the historic Oakland Cemetery downtown — Tunes From The Tombs: A Weekend of Music and Spirits Benefiting Historic Oakland Cemetery. The temperature was in the mid-90s and there was no driving through the cemetery allowed. My father and grandfathers and mothers and great grandparents are buried there. We decided that parking so far away and walking in was not something I was up to doing and they didn’t want to try either. So, we left there and went on out to Snellville (by Stone Mountain, where John and I spent our honeymoon, once canoed in the lake to watch fireworks, and also our high school class went there after graduation to climb to the top on the “easy” side.).
A fascinating slide show is on their website of restoration necessary after damage done to downtown Atlanta by a tornado on March 14, 2008. I didn’t even know about this.
http://oaklandcemetery.com/restoration.html
Another neat website is the Southern Hiker coverage of the 1.3 mile hike up the mountain to the top:
http://southernhiker.com/stone-mountain-walk-up-trail/
Of further interest is the bas relief carved on the side of the mountain of 3 Confederate generals. The one in the middle is Robert E. Lee with his horse Traveller. I am kin to him, and my maiden middle name is Lee. I’m Nancy Lee Brannen Hultquist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STNmtn_closeup.jpg
will show you the carving on the side of Stone Mountain. The mountain is an igneous intrusion and composed mostly of quartz Monzonite forming a dome or monadnock.
We were going to Snellville to watch their grandson (#22) play baseball. We got to meet him before the game, see him bat, and then we had to get back home to meet their son and another grandson. That night dinner was grilled pork loin roast, snow peas, and I’ve forgotten the rest of the menu. We had two kinds of ice cream for dessert. We had an enjoyable visit with the family and with a 2-year old Boxer, who loves to hug people. He was very well behaved and part of the family, completely at home at the grandparents’ home.
Monday brought another great visiting day. A college friend and her sister picked me up and we drove to a newly (2006) incorporated town called Johns Creek in north Fulton County. There we visited with my first geography teacher (1962) and his wife. They were also the chaperones on my 1965 Geography Field Trip to Europe. You have already been introduced to a little of this in last week’s blog, with John’s additions and edits. While there we got a complete tour of their house. Then we went with them to lunch in an eatery fairly close by, called Egg Harbor. Really a cool place:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/egg-harbor-cafe-johns-creek will give you reviews, but this is their website: http://eggharborcafe.com/
My geography professor had Barrington Benedict (grilled Canadian bacon and poached eggs on an English muffin with Hollandaise sauce, with Harbor potatoes. I had a Bacado Omelet, with crispy bacon, fresh avocado, melted Jack cheese, topped with sour cream and a great salsa, served also with a side of harbor potatoes and an English muffin. It was excellent, but after looking at the menu on line, I might have ordered something unique such as their GA cheese grits and eggs. One of us had French toast, and I don’t recall what the other two had. We took a few group pictures, and left. Our tour continued down Piedmont Road and to the “Midtown” area, where the sister of my friend lives. It is right across the street from where my friend who housed me grew up as a child and I visited her and her grandparents’ house on the corner. Small world, because these people knew each other from their church.
That evening we went to an Irish pub for dinner with one of their friends and had fish and chips. The guys left and went over to the other guy’s house to sharpen his chain saw so they could take it with them this weekend to cleanup some of the fallen trees at their Lake Burton house that was damaged a lot by the tornado that went through on May 4th.
Tuesday was another visiting day, first attending the Voter’s Guild meeting and lecture after lunch at the Druid Hills Country Club. I was fascinated by the hats worn by most of the women in attendance. One woman had on a particularly large and interesting light green hat, which turned out to be one she wore to this year’s Kentucky Derby. I was snapping pictures left and right and meeting people. The meal was excellent too. My friend’s husband joined us for lunch, and then went back to work at his office downtown at the State Bar of Georgia, now housed in the old Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta building on Marietta St. After lunch, we went for a visit and tour of the building. Meanwhile, we listened to an after dinner speaker on the importance of privacy rights to citizens. His name is Bob Barr, and he was a former federal prosecutor and former member of the US House of Representatives. He represented Georgia’s 7th congressional district as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. He was the Libertarian Party nominee for President of the US in the 2008 election. He was an interesting speaker.
We left the country club and made our way downtown, through Georgia State University, and by the parking garage I used to park in. The school has expanded so much that I didn’t recognize anything. I was there from 1962 till ’65 and then came back and taught 2 years, ’67 to ’69 in Geography. John and I returned the summer of 1970 and taught a summer course together and John worked on a research project at the Atlanta Airport. We made it by back streets to the parking garage of the old Federal Reserve building and went inside to my friend’s husband’s office. He was the General Counsel for the Georgia bar for many years till 2010 (I think). He now is still going to the office every day and taking part in business. Every 2 weeks he is on call for Ethics questions from lawyers all around the state. The week I was there he talked one day over his 8 hours to 30 lawyers.
He took us on a tour of the building, the old Federal Reserve. It was particularly interesting seeing old telephone booths, the old vault, the windows where John and I bought $100 of pennies for his dad long ago (probably in 1970), we even saw the first floor rebuilt office of Woodrow Wilson, who practiced law in Atlanta, long ago. They have his old office, the roll-top desk he used, and the wooden door of the office. There are huge conference rooms and old furniture and beautiful rugs the Feds left there. We even saw the shooting range in the basement where the guards practiced their gun skills.
That evening we went again to the Irish Pub for dinner. This time we had Shepherd’s Pie. We went back because they have an open mike type environment for Irish and Celtic music. There was one group of folks there who played a little Irish music mixed in with some Appalachian blue grass. There were several fiddles, a mandolin, and guitar. I was in heaven but we could only stay for an hour, because I needed to pack for my trip home the next day.
When we got back to the car, my friend put in a CD of Appalachian Fiddle music. Then she brought it in the house and found another so we sang and listened all the way home and then sat there for a couple hours in their house. She pulled out her birthday present, a Dulcimer, which she just got last November, and hasn’t yet learned how to play. I don’t know how to tune one from scratch (yet) but I did play the melody on the bottom string (or I tried). It was really hard to keep up with the fast tempo of the music being played (even though I knew most of the songs). If I had had my fiddle I would have not been able to keep up either.
So, we stayed up till late, and we enjoyed ourselves very much for our last night together. We got up at 6:30 the next morning, ate a nice breakfast, and took off for the airport. It was a good trip back, and my nicest item to mention about the Atlanta airport is that I did not have to wait in line to request a wheelchair. Instead, the staging area for wheelchairs was across from the check-in counters (and long lines of people). I was off and being pushed to my gate, very soon. I got on the plane easily, and the trip was on time, but when we got over Kansas, we ran into horrible turbulence – the worst I have ever experienced for an extended time. The pilot even moved down from 38,000 feet to 32,000 and it helped for 5 minutes and then started up again. I was happy the plane didn’t break up. We had no view of the ground the entire trip (so much for paying extra for a window seat). It was raining in Seattle when we arrived, but we had a nice landing and we were early by a half hour. Unfortunately, that time was made up by waiting on the tarmac for a slot to pull into. I was the last person off the plane and there was no wheelchair waiting. I was in the wing without electric cars and the trip to baggage was more than I could attempt. So, I waited. They recalled for a chair for me. I waited. Finally a person appeared. I was starting to worry about making it to baggage claim gate 00 where I was to pick up my Airport Shuttle, but thankfully, I made it with only 5 minutes to spare. Phew. Rained on us all the way back across the pass and into Ellensburg. We were early because we didn’t have to stop in North Bend for anyone, and we didn’t run into a 30 minute delay on the Snoqualmie Pass road construction that had happened every day for the past several. John met me at Starbucks in Ellensburg, and I was so happy to see him and be home safely. Coming home was also nice when I walked into the house and all the dogs and cat greeted me with open paws.
It’s taken me a couple of days to recover and I have been sleeping as much as 9 hours/night.
Thanks to all the people I saw while in and about Atlanta the region. This was a very special trip for me and I am very happy I was healthy enough to make it. I’m very grateful to my friends for housing me for a week and chauffeuring me all over town. Thanks, as well, to my other friends and relatives who transported me to various visits and events. I’m already looking forward to the 55th.
All our best regards from Nancy
(home on the Naneum Fan)