WHAT'S HAPPENING DOWNTOWN?
Here Are the Headlines and Upcoming Events from Downtown. See Full Stories Below.
Buzzard Blast 2008 Blows into Town Saturday, June 7
Hello! Goodbye! Interns Dan Rekshan and Maiben Beard Share Their Thoughts on Passing the Baton
Joy's Décor and More Finds a Special Niche
Capturing the Essence of Place -- Brett Busang's Paintings at The Fire House Gallery starting June 11, Opening Reception, Saturday, June 14, 7-9 p.m.
Printmaker Kristin Casaletto Super Sizes It at The Fire House Gallery through Sunday, June 8.
Check it Out - Photos from the Opening Reception of Ideas APart
Georgia State Librarian Lamar Veatch Reminisces about Growing up in Louisville
Touring the Courthouse Clock Tower Restoration with Contractor Burles Johnson.
Clock Tower Restoration Photo Gallery
Need directions to Louisville? Click here!
For the most up-to-date news from around Jefferson County check The Downtowner, official newsletter of Friends of Historic Downtown Louisville, and
The News and Farmer!The Buzzard Blast is back! If you missed last year’s (rainy) festivities, be prepared to come out to Helen Clark Memorial Park on Saturday June 7th. Friends of Historic Downtown Louisville is proud to present the Blast this year along with the City of Louisville. All proceeds from the festival will go towards a Downtown Façade Grant Program administered by the Louisville Downtown Development Authority. The program will enable local business owners to apply for small grants to beautify their storefronts.
The Blast will feature a selection of arts and crafts vendors selling such items as pottery, jewelry, photographs, purses, antiques, candles, sculpture by Willy Tarver, etc. Food vendors will be providing turkey legs, BBQ, homemade ice cream, hamburgers and hot dogs – even tomato sandwiches from the Louisville Garden Club!
“We are also going to have a kids’ area with pony rides, dunking booth, and kids games. And door prizes will be given away all day!” says Becky Harrison, Program Coordinator of the Chamber of Commerce, which lends a hand on the Blast. The grand prize will be a 15” flat screen LCD television. “We will also have community organizations providing information to the public.”
A stage will be set up in the park with live performances all day. Steve Hein of the Lamar Q. Ball Jr. Raptor Center of Georgia Southern University will present an educational demonstration. INSKI Theater will present a puppet musical, and local Christian musician Josh Gay and the band Velocity will perform.
A new addition to the Blast this year is a shuttle which will make routine stops at the festival, the Baptist church parking lot, and downtown Louisville. There will also be a $2 admission fee to the festival, with children 10 and under admitted free. The festival runs from 9 am to 4 pm. We hope to see you there!
Interns Maiben Beard and Dan Rekshan Muse about Passing the Baton
We invite them to this tiny town they’ve never heard of, and they come. We ask them to put body and soul into this work for practically nothing, and they do. We tell them to serve, and they become servants. They are extraordinary. Now Maiben and Dan share their thoughts about passing the baton.
Maiben: Hello!
Dan: Hi!
Maiben: Welcome to Louisville and The Fire House Gallery. We’re glad to have you here. I’ve heard you’re a painter, former philosophy student, and a Yankee! Where are you from?
Dan: Well, Maiben, I just came from Annapolis, Maryland, where I attended school, getting a degree in liberal arts. Before that I am from a small town in Northern Michigan called Marquette, like the explorer. I hear you’re going back to where you’re from?
Maiben: That’s right, Dan; I’ve taken a job in Auburn, Alabama, at the Center for the Arts and Humanities, which is part of Auburn University.
Dan: So what will you be doing there?Maiben: The Center works to connect the academic community, the arts, and the public through statewide arts and literacy programming. I’ll be coordinating several outreach programs involving the arts and even planning a book festival! Similar work to what I’ve been doing here!
Dan: The people of Louisville must be very nice to let themselves be used as guinea pigs in the testing ground of your career.
Maiben: They most certainly are.
Dan: That’s what I hear! And that’s what makes me happy to be here. But one local citizen told me they’re also a bit crazy – I mean, eccentric. What do you say about that after living with them for two years?
Maiben: All I have to say is that I’ve become one of them – this has been one of the most fulfilling and fun experiences of my life!
Dan: Why don’t you share some of the most memorable experiences with me?
Maiben: So much has happened! I’ve had a lot of fun working with Louisville Academy and Jefferson County High School and all of the students. And the opening receptions have been great! It’s nice to see how much the community supports us. As an artist, are you looking forward to painting the local area?
Dan: Yeah, that’s right, Maiben. I’ve seen some very picturesque locales, such as the pecan orchards, the Spanish moss, and when I interviewed here the winter grass growing alongside the pine forests. In addition, the architecture of Louisville and its inhabitants have a unique charm and a beauty all their own. But beyond painting, I look forward to getting to know everyone and becoming involved in the community. People seem like they’ll miss you, Maiben. Won’t you miss them in your new job?
Maiben: I most certainly will, Dan! I’ve grown very attached to Louisville, and I’ll try and visit as often as I can. In fact, one of my old photography professors will be having an exhibit here this fall.
Dan: Well, that’s exciting. I’m looking forward to a lot of shows coming up in the Gallery. That’s one of many things I look forward to this year! I also look forward to other conversations with Louisvillians.
Maiben: I hope you have as wonderful an experience as I’ve had!
Dan: Thank you! One final question - What’s one thing you would like to say to Louisville in farewell?
Maiben: I would like to thank everyone who has been so kind and gracious. Louisville will always hold a special place in my heart. You’ll have to be sure to keep me up to date on the local gossip.
Dan: Will do!
“All three of us are pretty overwhelmed right now,” confesses Lil Easterlin, who, together with her sister Hulet Kitterman and sister-in-law Tish Easterlin, is preparing for the slated June opening of “Twisted Sisters,” a new retail venue at the corner of Broad and Mulberry Streets.
“It’s more than just a store,” offers Ms. Kitterman. With a small interior terrace garden, Twisted Sisters will invite visitors to sit down, relax, and stay a while amid a wide variety of merchandise and décor.
Twisted Sisters will feature art, antiques, market items such as linens and handmade soaps, eventually a garden center with pots, sculptures, and the like, and free-trade coffee from Café Campesino.
Emily Fulghum, Old Town Plantation, the Arts Guild of Jefferson County, Becky Harrison, and Emily Trotter (an interior designer from Atlanta who owns Arbor House Interiors there) will be among the early vendors.
The Arts Guild of Jefferson County will have its own Marketplace inside offering local art as well as work from artists outside the area. Occasional demonstrations will round out their fare.
“We hope we’ve been very careful not to do things other people are doing,” says Ms. Kitterman. “If you come to town to see the bookstore you might say, ‘Oh, let’s go over here and see what this is,’ or ‘Oh, let’s go and see what Joy’s doing.’ The more businesses you’ve got, the more business you create.”
In time, continues Ms. Kitterman, “We’d like for each vendor to be so successful that they can open their own businesses – keeping business in Louisville, getting other people to come to Louisville, and keeping people from driving to Augusta every whipstitch.”
Each of the sisters brings something unique to the mix. “Tish has a very astute interest in antiques – china, crystal, and silver,” explains Lil Easterlin. “I’m more familiar with furniture, wood, and the arts and fine crafts. And Hulet’s really quite good with fabrics and décor. She’s also doing a lot of the marketing and business sorts of things – researching new vendors and sources of products.”
In the meantime, there’s plenty of work getting ready. “We’ve been down there pretty regularly, taking over some inventory, and trying to get our system set up.” Along the way, the sisters have enjoyed considerable help as they learn to navigate, as Lil Easterlin puts it, “how to go to auction, when the auctions are, where they are – and how you pack a minivan to get two tables, four armoires, and a bed in it!”
“We’re so excited about this and the things that we hope that we can do,” concludes Ms. Kitterman. “Our goals are to help stimulate retail business downtown, not to compete with anybody else, to help build on what other people have already done, and to provide a venue for artists to sell their work.”
Twisted Sisters will open in early to mid-June, with hours Wednesday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm. You can visit the sisters online at www.Twisted-Sisters.org.For five years, Joy Hadden has been living her dream in downtown Louisville. “Not too many people are fortunate enough to be able to say that,” she says. Helping people find that special antique or collectible is a skill she employs as the proprietor of Joy’s Décor & More. “It is such a pleasure to be downtown and to be able to have a business you enjoy doing in your hometown.”
Eight years ago, she started working at Southern Home Interiors as a decorator, using her home and car as her office. As business grew, Ms. Hadden decided she needed a central location to work from and eventually became the owner of Southern Home Interiors. Now, Ms. Hadden runs Joy’s Décor & More on Broad Street. “This all seemed to fall into place. It is just a blessing in disguise.”
The more intimate shop down the street allows for the creation of small vignettes that illustrate the intersection of Ms. Hadden’s interests – antiques, collectibles, colors, and fabrics.
If you want to “perk up your house,” the shop offers a selection of wall coverings and fabrics. Ms. Hadden is first and foremost a decorator, and is currently taking on redecorating jobs throughout the county.In addition to the antiques and collectibles, Ms. Hadden also carries a line of jewelry by Emma LeRoux, a small line of children’s furniture, and customized gift baskets. Joy’s Décor & More also offers a bridal registry.
Ms. Hadden loves meeting new people, and caters to a wide variety of customers. “I have many tourists who come through here, and love downtown Louisville and my shop so much that they make it a regular stop when they are coming through the area.”
Joy’s Décor & More will have a booth at the Buzzard Blast, June 7th at Helen Clark Memorial Park.
This “shop full of treasures” is open Tuesday – Friday from 10 am to 4:30 pm and Saturdays from 9 am to 12 pm, or by appointment. To schedule a visit or a decorating consultation, Ms. Hadden may be reached at (706) 466-5005.
Brett Busang - Capturing the Essence of Place - at The Fire House Gallery
A Place Not Unlike Your Own
Paintings by Brett Busang
June 11 – July 27
Opening reception, Saturday June 14th, 7-9 pm“Places,” writes Virginia-based artist Brett Busang, “stake a claim on us. They enter into our consciousness – full of associations and memories peculiar to the ways we think and see.”
The titles in Mr. Busang’s exhibition A Place Not Unlike Your Own identify most of the paintings’ locations – street corners, back lots, row houses, rivers, and bridges, from Memphis to Richmond, Brooklyn, and Syracuse – and he has tried to learn and adapt to the spirit of each of these places.
“The sort of painting I do is at least part interpretation,” he offers, “playing a score. There are certain subjects, when you approach them, where some of the notes are laid down for you and you have to choose what you want to emphasize.”
“Painting is asking the question, can I play this?” Mr. Busang continues, “Can it be known? It’s one of the reasons I paint in series.” Mr. Busang adds that if part of the motivation of painting is to know, possess, and record, “it’s a special kind of knowing and a peculiar sort of possession because it’s mostly elusive.”
Another reason for painting, the artist continues by way of explanation, is a desire to arrest the inevitable, “to hold change at bay for as long as you’re painting it.” This, too, slips away.
“A fairly large percentage of my subjects don’t look the same today as they did when I painted them,” he says, pointing for example to work featuring a row of houses he scrutinized over a couple of years, painting them from almost every conceivable angle. “In fact, that whole row of buildings is gone now.” Mr. Busang concedes, “I knew its days were numbered.” Still, the buildings were “attractively decayed” and appealed to the artist’s affinity for endangered places. “I like that panoply of decay and arrested time and the sense of poignancy of imminent loss.”
With that, Mr. Busang begins to name other locations similarly razed, touching in quick succession on eight or nine of the more than forty pieces in this show at The Fire House Gallery.
“It’s an exhibition we’ve been looking forward to,” says the Gallery’s Kathleen Galvin. “Diane Tesler introduced us to Brett, and we knew as soon as we visited his web-site we wanted to show these paintings – so full of character, so varied, and so beautifully capturing the play of light, angles, and surfaces.”
Mr. Busang’s show will be the final exhibition before the Gallery takes its summer break – a wonderful way to end the first half of the year!
Kristin Casaletto - Stretching the Limits - at The Fire House Gallery, Through June 8
88 Square Feet: The Art of the Large-Scale Woodcut – New Work by Kristin Casaletto
May 8 – June 8
Opening Reception, Saturday, May 10, 7-9pmHardware stores provoke all kinds of creative projects. Associate Professor of Art and printmaker Kristin Casaletto of Augusta State University, noticed that, “The biggest board you could get there is 4x8 feet, and I said to myself, I want to do that.”
It was a natural progression, moving to large format images, and the artist quickly found her work outgrew the presses at Augusta State. “I had been doing them in pieces and joining them after – I guess about five feet is as long as I had done. I was sick of joining them and didn’t want to saw them up any longer and join them after the fact; I wanted to work on compositions that were bigger – crazy, over the top, baroque, really energetic, fully composed pieces with a lot of work in them. So I made a commitment to scale without knowing how I could solve the printing problem.”
Ms. Casaletto needed a real solution and sought out large format presses, finding them in places like Florida, Missouri, and Washington D.C. “I was getting kind of bent because they were so far away, and then I went to a print show and met an independent printmaker who told me Clemson has a big press. I was so excited because that’s close by.”
Ms. Casaletto promptly contacted Sydney Crop of Clemson and followed up with a visit. After getting a sense of the artist, Ms. Crop offered to let her use the press for one week; and by summer, Ms. Casaletto headed north with her big boards.She did not go it alone. With increased scale comes increased difficulty – muscling big wood blocks and dealing with the great span of the prints, requiring inking a single artist cannot reach without the inefficiency of switching side to side. But thanks to a Porter Fleming Foundation grant, Ms. Casaletto was able to hire her sister Laura as an assistant to help her through the arduous week-long printing ordeal.
Despite all the difficulties, the week was a great success. “Maybe we had the sister power going,” Ms. Casaletto says. “We were absolutely in synch once we got it figured out. It took about 15 minutes or so to ink each print; we could pull a print in 45 minutes. It was a very absolutely repeatable engineering problem. At this point, the creativity is done, the block is executed, and you know how you want the ink to look.”
The Casaletto sisters spent one week start to finish including the loading and unloading of trucks to produce editions of ten of three oversized prints featured in this month’s Fire House Gallery show. Constrained by time, the color element came later as Ms. Casaletto hand-painted each print with watercolors to finish out her vision of the work.
In the end, though, spreading the entire process – from conception, to drawing, carving, printing, and painting – over three summer residencies proved “too disjointed” for Ms. Casaletto’s comfort. “Your mind moves on to other concepts as the work evolves,” she notes, “and there’s always a danger in working on something so long.” Grateful finally to wrap things up and see the result, Ms. Casaletto notes she will include not only the three large prints in the exhibit, but also framed studies, as well as two of her oversized boards (“Apocalypse” and “Grace’s Long Walk”), and a pedestal displaying some of the tools of her craft.“For me it’s really informative and helpful to see how artists get to a finished product – seeing how things leading to other things.” Describing a recent Degas exhibit Ms. Casaletto notes, “It’s a little rare to see a show that offers so much of a behind-the-scenes look, and it’s very instructive to see how people arrive at where they go.” Similarly, visitors to the Gallery who may be unfamiliar with the printing process – seeing the blocks and tools, cutting and reversal – may find the exhibit especially enlightening.
Of the whole experience Ms. Casaletto reports, “I learned a lot and feel like I can print anything now.” Still, her next project will be an etching, which, she adds, “is going to be smaller.”
“Grace’s Long Walk” is an image of a janitor at a school where Ms. Casaletto taught in Mississippi. Grace worked a very early custodial shift but was still on campus late at night when the artist finished her classes. “She was pulling an awfully long day and it turned out she had been going to night class after doing her shift all day.” This homage was inspired by Grace’s tremendously hard work and the fact that “she wasn’t talking about it and needing support – she was just kind of heroic.”
“Apocalypse” has to do with “longing for justice” amid various kinds of violence.” (The artist cites the Emmet Till case, Darfur, and the Iraq War.) The work, she says, is epic, violent, classic, literary. “I don’t tend to make political art, but I think about how things happening affect peoples’ lives and basic humanity,” the artist offers. “No matter what your stance, you have to reconcile yourself to all of that destruction.”
“Male Gaze Reciprocated,” ironically titled, features a cattle auction. Studying art history, “I had to read a lot of critical articles about the male gaze,” Ms. Casaletto notes. “The title amused me because when I went to this cattle auction place I was the only female there and because people have told me I draw like a man, which I find annoying.” Adding to the irony, “The only creature looking right out at you is a female: a big, dumb cow.”
We at The Downtowner are not bashful about our enthusiasm for little Louisville’s beautiful downtown. Most of the time we’re downright sanguine about it. We cheered for Southern Home Interiors and we’ll root for Twisted Sisters when it arrives on the scene next month. We applauded the arrival of the Bookworm and the longevity of Randi’s. We embraced the streetscaping when it was nothing but a muddy ditch. We acclaimed the greening of the Courthouse. And we nearly wept for joy when Ms. Culvern became our mayor. Nobody greets change with more gusto than we do. But we have to say we’re not so delighted about losing Pansy’s. We know, we know – it’s all going to be okay. Nothing much will change … well, maybe there’ll be a few additional offerings – maybe sandwiches deli-style … and a carving board … maybe feta cheese and cornichons and capers at the salad bar … maybe a pecan-crusted this or that … and what about WIFI – how cool would that be! … and being open for supper, er, dinner – wouldn’t that be something!
Sure, it’ll all be just great. We don’t doubt it for a minute. Dave and Emily know their stuff and they know Louisville. Make no mistake about it – The Downtowner is deeply grateful that this talented duo is willing to take on a new challenge. In a way, it’s a dream come true.
But Pansy’s was its own kind of dream. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a gourmet dream, but where else could you find fried chicken and sweet tea that delicious? And so what if the deserts weren’t homemade – they hit the spot. (I hadn’t had Boston cream pie since I was 12 till I fell for it again at Pansy’s and, besides, the lemon cake was just plain awesome, especially when it was still a little frozen.) And that was just the food. What better place was there for catching up with all sorts of friends after church and at Kiwanis. (Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d said the Pledge of Allegiance since I was 12 till Mr. Frank first brought me to Kiwanis at Pansy’s.) All kinds of friends, for sure – including Ann, with her trademark smile. We’re not too bashful to say it – we’ll miss you and your hospitality, Ann, and we appreciate all you did for us all those good years.
And so it goes and so it goes ….See you at Fosters!
Lamar Veatch has been State Librarian for the Georgia Public Library Service since 2001. In that time, he’s helped build award-winning technology for the state’s Public Information Network Electronic Services (PINES) system – a consortium of 275 public libraries across 140 counties. PINES creates a "borderless library" providing Georgians access to more than 9.6 million books. “We now have other states and Canada taking this software and developing something like what we’ve got in Georgia,” Mr. Veatch said. “In just the last few days, we’ve hosted groups from Michigan and Indiana coming in to look at what we’ve developed. Suddenly Georgia libraries are leading the way in technology and innovation.” Recently Mr. Veatch shared his recollections of growing up in Louisville with The Downtowner.
Louisville is home. After a stint in the military during WWII, dad finished college at Emory on the GI Bill. At the time he felt his choices were mortuary school – he’d done some work in a mortuary in high school – or veterinary school; he chose veterinary school. When he finished at UGA, he began working in Sandersville for a year or so and then decided he really wanted to strike out on his own. So he looked around the area and chose Louisville and Jefferson County as a place he’d like to set up a practice. We packed up and moved to Louisville in 1954 and lived in a rented house over in Pine Heights for a couple of years. I was five at the time and stayed there through kindergarten and first grade, then in the second grade moved over to the spot on the Waynesboro Road where we grew up.
Dad had a little office south of the railroad track near what we call the oil mill. He had some horses and of course all kinds of animals coming and going over the years. Louisville embraced him and he took to the community. He was pulled into the Lion’s Club right after we arrived and I think made president the second year he was there. That really got him involved, and mom was also very active with the local Methodist church.
My father went on to become county coroner, filling an unexpired term, and was reelected for a total of about thirty-four years. Somewhere along the way he was elected mayor. In fact, there had to be legislation passed in the general assembly to allow him to serve in both capacities (county and city positions) at the same time. Mr. Emory Bargeron, who had an insurance agency, was our Jefferson County representative in the state legislature and saw that legislation through. My dad served four or five terms and just loved being part of the community that way.
Meantime we lived and played all over town. If you had a bicycle the whole place was your playground. I started in first grade and went all the way through high school at Louisville Academy. There were thirty-two in our graduating class and 125 in all four top grades the year I finished. We had one science teacher, one math teacher, and one English teacher that you took your four courses from during four years of high school. If you got in trouble early with the math teacher (as I did) you were out of luck the rest of the four years.
I remember very distinctly my first job in Louisville at the little grocery store downtown near the Pal Theater, Dickson’s Grocery. It was a mom and pop operation where you could work before you were 16 and I think I made 54 cents an hour. On Saturday everybody came to town and if I didn’t have to bag groceries or put up stock they had a peanut machine that roasted peanuts and I’d sit outside and sell them. To my mind these were huge crowds walking up and down the street, meeting, talking, and shopping.
Later Piggly Wiggly came to town and of course when the bypass came in gradually there were more stores. But at that time the Louisville Drug Store was the drug store. It had an old fashioned soda fountain and made the most wonderful Cherry Cokes and ice cream. They also had a magazine stand with lots and lots of comic books you could peruse and I remember doing that quite a few Saturdays. Or you’d go down to the Pal Theater where for a quarter you could get in and then you could buy: a Coke for a dime, a bag of popcorn for a dime, and one of those all-day charm suckers, bigger than a silver dollar, for a nickel. So for fifty cents you could go all afternoon to the movie theater, enjoying Flash Gordon-type serials and movies.
Cable hadn’t yet come to town and we got just two channels, 6 and 12 (CBS and NBC), out of Augusta. Then Georgia Public television set up a Wrens Station and WPEH (the “Big Peach”) came to town with a radio station. We thought we were big time and we hung out there a lot. They played gospel and country music at different times of the day; but late in the afternoon after school let out about 3 or 3:30 they played rock ‘n roll. We also had a record store open up downtown where teenagers could listen to the new records coming out. All of this coincided with the sixties and the Beatles and Rolling Stones and all of these bands that have become so much a part of the culture.
Louisville Academy was the name of the segregated school system. The black school system was consolidated so there was one black high school for the county and there were black elementary schools in each of the towns. But until desegregation really took hold and the school in Jefferson County was fully consolidated and desegregated, Louisville Academy was Louisville’s school system. Wadley had its own and Wrens had its own and of course there were great battles and rivalries among those towns – particularly Wrens and Louisville. We were classed as C schools, the smallest of the high schools in terms of football. So all of these little towns played each other.
I remember in the stirrings of the Civil Rights era the great segregation that was part of Louisville. You had your black friends – little friends growing up – but we went to segregated schools. I think my graduating class was the last class that did not have any minorities in it. There were a couple of black kids in the class ahead of me (1966) and behind us. My brother was four years behind me so he was in that group that went over to the consolidated high school and Louisville Academy became just an elementary school.
But Louisville was still very race-conscious at that time. Daitch’s clothing store was two doors down from Dickson’s Grocery and was sort of the dividing line between black and white on Saturday. From that end down to Broadus Wren’s and the corner going to Sandersville was sort of the black end of town and everything from Dickson’s back toward the Louisville Drug Store and the courthouse was the white end of town. There were some traditional stores that catered more to the black community and of course the white end of town had stores that catered more to the white community in Louisville. That was just the way it was – certainly the world has changed for the better.
Some years ago the name of the market downtown changed. When we were little that was the Old Slave Market and with greater consciousness of the history of the Civil Rights movement and greater appreciation for everybody’s feelings it was renamed the Old Market House.
There were about five Jewish families that were prominent in Louisville at the time I was growing up and the Daitch’s were one of them. They had three boys who were our best friends and involved in scouting with us. The husband and wife ran the clothing store there for many years. Then there was the Louisville Furniture Store on the corner where the antique store is – run by Izzy and Jeanette Goldwasser. He and my dad were very close friends. In addition to selling furniture he was the local TV repairman so he would sit in the back and smoke cigars and work on television sets. He and my dad were ham radio buddies and shared a lot of good times together. Another Jewish family was named the Raskins. Hymee ran the shirt factory on the south side of town. He became mayor and when Hymee retired my dad succeeded him as mayor.
I remember the swimming pool built off of Walnut Street, a community pool mom was involved with. Of course it was segregated at that time but it was kind of a membership arrangement so you paid your annual membership and you got to come swim there. That was about 9th or 10th grade and we worked there selling concessions. My mom worked to help my dad. She was a real athlete and much rather liked working out in the yard or teaching swimming. She taught swimming for about forty years. Every summer she taught younger students and adults – she was actually teaching the grandchildren of people she’d taught before. She taught out at Nimrod’s off Old US 1; she taught at people’s private pools; but she really got involved with that new pool that was built in 1965-66.
Mom’s work also generated enough money to pay her ticket price for the Master’s. She loved golf and started buying tickets when they were pretty easy to get. That’s a legacy of hers we’ve continued to enjoy while my dad’s still alive.
My favorite spot, though, was just that downtown area right there at the market. That was especially true when the record store opened right next to the Louisville Drug Store where you could go in and listen to some of the new records that came out. It was great having a place the teenagers could go and browse through new music. And this coincided with the sixties and the Beatles and Rolling Stones and all of these new bands that have become so much a part of the culture. That was part of our access to popular music – that record store – and then the Big Peach.
Cable hadn’t yet come to town and we got just two channels, 6 and 12 (CBS and NBC), out of Augusta. Then Georgia Public television set up a Wrens Station and WPEH came to town with a radio station. We thought we were big time and we hung out there a lot. They played gospel and country music at different times of the day; but late in the afternoon after school let out about 3 or 3:30 they played rock ‘n roll which was just great.
The other thing we used to do as kids was turn right off Broad Street and head down the hill we used to call the Ice Plant Hill – a favorite place to play. It was a real steep hill that ended in a sandy turnaround at the bottom. We would go ride our bikes there and challenge ourselves with homebuilt contraptions – nailing skates to the bottom of a piece of board or building some bicycle contraption and riding it down the hill to see if we could survive. The most dangerous thing I remember ever doing with a companion was in 1966 when skateboards had just come out and the new US 1 had been built. Old US 1 was pretty much abandoned so that was a real neat place to ride your skateboards. There were some nice gentle hills going down toward the Nimrod area. I was driving about that time and had my mom’s car.
We got this idea that if we tied a rope to the car we could pull each other on skateboards. Danny Farrah was a friend whose parents owned Farrah’s Market across from where the new hospital now is and they ran the bus station and also a wood working shop where they made cabinetry and things like that. Danny was the guy on the skateboard. We took off pulling him back toward town – no pads, no helmet, just shorts and a t-shirt on a rather primitive skateboard being pulled behind a Ford Galaxy family sedan. I pulled him literally all the way to where Broadus Wren’s store is and somehow he was able to stop with no falls or scratches.
Dad’s brother was a surgeon in Atlanta and we were the country cousins. Augusta was the big city at that point.
I remember very distinctly my first job in Louisville at the little grocery store downtown near the Pal Theater, Dickson’s Grocery. It was a mom and pop operation where you could work before you were 16 and I think I made 54 cents an hour. On Saturday everybody came to town and if I didn’t have to bag groceries or put up stock they had a peanut machine that roasted peanuts and (Continued from page 7)
I’d sit outside and sell them. To my mind these were huge crowds walking up and down the street, meeting, talking, and shopping. At Dickson’s I learned a little about customer service and I enjoyed that and then when I was old enough I went over to Piggly Wiggly because they paid about twice as much. At 16 I worked there a couple of years.
With Piggly Wiggly in town and after the bypass came in, gradually there were more stores. But at that time the Louisville Drug Store was the drug store. It had an old fashioned soda fountain and made the most wonderful Cherry Cokes and ice cream. They also had a magazine stand with lots and lots of comic books you could peruse and I remember doing that quite a few Saturdays. Or you’d go down to the Pal Theater where for a quarter you could get in and then you could buy: a Coke for a dime, a bag of popcorn for a dime, and one of those all-day charm suckers, bigger than a silver dollar, for a nickel. So for fifty cents you could go all afternoon to the movie theater, enjoying Flash Gordon-type serials and movies.
I remember applying for a job at WPEH one time. I was still in high school and thought it would be great to be a disk jockey on the radio station, and I didn’t get the position. I’ve often wondered if I had gotten the job, would I have gone into broadcasting rather than libraries?
I found my way into libraries, though. There was a lady named Katherine Rowell who ran a kindergarten out of her big rambling house on Walnut Street with Lucy Bell Morris. I had a hand-me-down bicycle; so here I was at five and a half riding to kindergarten pretty much every morning. Katherine wound up being a librarian, and when I decided to go to library school and thought about library service as a career, I got a job out of college as director of the Jefferson County library. I was 21 or 22 having graduated from UGA with a history degree. They needed somebody for a year to fill in while the acting director went back to school for her degree. So I thought what better than to try it out, live at home, sort of catch my breath after coming through college. Katherine Rowell was the head non-professional in the library. So in a quirky way my kindergarten teacher became one of my assistants – though of course she really ran the show – the budget, schedule, employees.
That’s how I got my feet wet in the profession and once that year was over I enrolled in Emory’s library program, got my degree, and began my professional career in various public libraries. I spent about twenty-two years out of state before moving back to Georgia. When I graduated from library school in ’73 I went to work at the Ohoopee Regional Library in Vidalia. I’d drive up just about every weekend and stay in Louisville. After three years my parents encouraged me to go back to school and helped me do it. So I went to Florida State for my doctorate, then took a job at a regional library system in Colorado for three years before moving to Texas as director of the Irving Public Library outside Dallas. I stayed there 16 years as we built libraries and expanded the service.
After that I applied for and got the job as State Librarian in Alabama which I did for two and a half years. I really hadn’t planned to leave so quickly but this job in Georgia came open, it was attractive, and as my parents were getting older it was time to be closer to home.
These days I make it to Louisville a few times a year to check in with good friends I’ve been close to a long time.
Contractor Burles Johnson Takes Friends President Helen Aikman on Tour of Clock Tower Restoration
Friends board member Robert Yonchak called me one bright, breezy December morning as I was hard at work to invite me to come meet Burles Johnson, the contractor managing restoration of the Courthouse roof. We made a date to meet at one o’clock by the cherry picker on the Courthouse lawn.
After Robert introduced us, Burles launched into the story of his Courthouse project. Blond, sunburned, and trim, he talks and gestures at a fast, spirited pace – but for his native east Georgia accent, I might have mistaken him for a fellow Yankee. He explained that he’d been hired by the County to repair the Courthouse roof, but once on the job discovered the roof wasn’t all that needed attention. The entire clock tower, he found, was perilously compromised by decades of neglect and slapdash repairs.
His initial examination of the clock tower surface had revealed that, beneath pealing layers of paint, the structure had been repeatedly coated in tar to prevent and repair leaks. From his extensive experience repairing roofs of historic buildings, Burles knew well the result of such treatment – that the crust of tar, once weather worn, admits the water it was intended to shed and traps it against the structure envelope, causing rot or, in the case of metal surfaces, corrosion. He tested the tar, chipping and scraping it away in places, and his suspicions were confirmed. Once he’d started, he simply couldn’t stop.
Before climbing up to the clock tower, Burles led Robert and me to his truck in the lot across Green Street. There he produced a stamped sheet metal foliate ornament about a yard long that he’d taken down from the clock tower exterior. Turning it in his hands, he showed us the remnants of tar clinging in its crevices and the tell-tale pitting and rust holes caused by water that had seeped through the tar. “Before we removed this and cleaned it up,” he said, “it was coated so thick in tar you could hardly see it. All of the detail was lost.”
Burles explained that the clock tower is a steel-supported wood structure entirely enveloped in a sheath fashioned of stamped sheet metal and decorated with stamped metal pediments, columns, entablatures, finials, festoons, and foliate ornaments like the one he held in his hand. Left to corrode another decade – perhaps less – under the tar crust, the entire metal sheath, with all its fine Beaux Arts adornment, would be destroyed. Burles and his crew had arrived in the nick of time.Burles’ enthusiasm for his task shone as he detailed his restoration strategy. To replace the corroded members would be prohibitively expensive – molds would have to be created, then stamps, to reproduce them. Instead, he ingeniously contrived to apply the very same technology he was using to repair the Courthouse roof.
Burles is a licensed contractor for HydroStop, Inc.’s PremiumCoat System, an elastomeric product designed to restore and waterproof metal and other roofing surfaces. It is applied in layers – first, a liquid prime coat, then a thin, tough fabric layer, followed by a liquid green top coat. Properly applied, the system creates a waterproof barrier without obscuring the roof’s decorative detail. Burles has restored many historic roofs with this product, including the vast roof of the federal building in Savannah, and his plan was to use it to restore the long-lost detail of the Courthouse clock tower.
With that explanation under our belts, it was time to go have a look. Rather than take a quick tour of the exterior in the cherry picker, Burles took us up to the tower by way of the interior of the Courthouse. We climbed up the inside stairs to the second story, then climbed a ladder through a trap door in the stairwell ceiling onto the roof, where we found ourselves standing at the base of the clock tower under its west-facing pediment.
The day was brilliantly sunny and what had seemed a pleasant breeze on the ground buffeted us without mercy on the roof. I eyed the series of ladders leading upward from there, wishing I’d worn more sensible shoes. From above came the sounds of workers chiseling tar off sheet metal.
Before climbing farther, Burles showed off the work done so far on the roof. Like the clock tower’s metal sheath, the standing seam roof had been tarred and more recently coated in urethane foam that completely obscured the roof’s detail while providing only short-term water protection. By now the foam was badly degraded. Burles showed us how his crew had removed foam and tar and applied the layered HydroStop membrane technology to restore the original form of the roof, which was now an unappealing green. He assured us the green top coat was only a base for the painting that would come.
The next ladder took us to the octagonal platform that sits atop the four tower pediments, each point of the octagon adorned with a large, urn-like finial. Sure-footed as a mountain goat and undaunted by the wind, Burles made a full circuit of the platform, pointing out the evidence of corrosion in the newly stripped finials, as I hung close to the tower walls. The finials would soon be getting their prime coat and then would be tightly layered in fabric and painted in green top coat like the already-restored portions of the standing seam roof.
Completing that part of the tour, Burles hopped up another four feet to the narrow ledge between the western pair of columns and offered his hand to pull me up. On each of the four sides of the clock tower, the columns bracket arched and louvered, shutter-like panels directly beneath the four clock faces. One of the west panels had been removed to give access into the tower’s interior. Burles guided us through the opening into the tower belfry.Concealed behind the louvered panels, amid exposed heart pine beams and steel struts, hangs a formidable bronze bell with its striker poised above. Scrawled on one heart pine timber beam is the year “1904,” date of the construction of the Courthouse. Another bears the date 1913, and we guessed what might be the significance of that date.
Burles pointed out that the courtroom was directly below us, and indeed, gaps in around the edge of the belfry floor allowed us to look directly down onto the top surface of the courthouse ceiling. “The judges won’t let us work when court’s in session,” Burles advised. “They won’t put up with the noise.”Against the far wall, narrow planks nailed horizontally across joists made a ladder to yet another chamber above. One at a time, Burles, Robert, and I climbed to the next level. Emerging through the opening, we found ourselves in the compact space of the actual clock room, illuminated by bright sunshine streaming through the four white, translucent clock faces. The center of the room was occupied by the clockworks themselves – antique though gleaming as if brand new. Thin metal shafts emanating from the clockwork gears linked up to gears behind the four faces to turn the clock hands. Old, discarded clock faces lay broken and abandoned at the edges of the room.
“Look up,” Burles said.
Over our heads, curved heart pine joists rose and gracefully converged to support the very apex of the Courthouse – the clock tower dome.
East Georgia is strewn with county courthouses, and surely every county is proud of its own, but few can possibly make the same claim our does to being unique. It is the only courthouse ever designed by Louisville’s famous native son architect, Willis Denny. Navigating back down the belfry ladder and out again into the blustery December afternoon, I began to understand that our Courthouse is as lovely on the inside as it is – as Burles Johnson will make it again – on the outside.
Out on the roof again, we saw Burles’ crew chipping and scraping away – no court in session that day.
“Is all this in your contract?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet,” he said.
“So you’re doing all this work at risk?”
Burles laughed. “Everything except the roof, but I’m not worried about it.”
We looked down at little Louisville laid out so like a movie set – the old oil mill, the Queensborough complex, Pansy’s, City Hall – once Dr. Pilcher’s hospital – the roof tops of Seventh, Eighth, Green, Mulberry, and Walnut Streets, the old fire house – now our Gallery – the charming cupola of the Abbot and Stone building, the Market House, and all of Broad Street, busy as a Breughel with the work of streetscaping, the graceful steeple of the Methodist Church – a fragile, durable town, unique like its Courthouse.
Incidentally, it’s interesting and not too surprising that Burles Johnson had the metal spire from the Methodist Church steeple in the back of his truck that afternoon. As he’d explained back in the parking lot, the wind had blown it down, and he’d told the Methodists he’d do what he could to make it right.
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