My Bradbury Days, My Bradbury Month

It is June, the Bradbury month.

Most people think of October when they consider Ray Bradbury. Not I. June is the month that I discovered Ray Bradbury. School was out and it was Atlanta-hot outside where I played in the sun most of the day, running through the green forests of Decatur, the suburban town where we lived. There were creeks everywhere. Full of salamanders and leeches, turtles and snakes. The old Confederate village had long since covered the cotton fields with streets of homes, but the green land was still all around us, a patchwork of forested yards and greenways snaking along the banks of the creeks that led everywhere, from neighborhood to neighborhood, endless journeys and new sights. My days of running, chasing, pursuing all that is fun--my hours of Creme-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes.

June was the month--school gone and twelve weeks of vacation begun--when my mom had brought home a book to give to me: THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. So, through Alice Kurtz Smith, that book, that author, that voice found me. Before THE OCTOBER COUNTRY grabbed my breath, I already knew who Bradbury was because of my mother, and because of the lazy days of June.

June is Bradbury for me. It is the month of my birth. June is when I married Carole Henderson. That first month of summer is when my son came into the world. June is when I first put my feet to a long backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail, only seven years after I held THE ILLUSTRATED MAN in my eight-year-old hands, thus continuing my love of the green around us, of Mother Nature.

I have always thought of this month--this 30 days of warmth and sun, of golden light, of sweating skin, of dusty ground, of green stains on my denims as I cracked up on my Stingray bike careening down hills overgrown with tall grass; it is long day's adventures following creeks, catching crawdads, skipping stones, barreling into the neighborhood drug store to see if the latest issue of Star Spangled War Stories and the War that Time Forgot is on the shelf. June--hours from morning until night spent mainly out of doors, coming home only for lunch, maybe to read a short story or a Jack Kirby comic book, and then out again, chasing friends, riding bikes, wandering the blocks to see what is what.

Bradbury Month, I tell you.

Bright and warm. Sunny and damp with threatening rain, dark clouds, playgrounds. June is romance just a few years later. Sitting by a lake, holding my soon-to-be-wife. Later still, June is cradling my tiny son in my arms, never ceasing to lift him up and hold him just so until the day he no longer wants me to carry him around and then those later June days I just watch over him, and smile, my June boy.

The month of June. The days of Bradbury. The song that speaks long after that first encounter, that chilling, disturbing, amazing, June voice. My month. Bradbury days.

Mead Road, the street of my childhood, my Bradbury neighborhood, my Illustrated Days packed with color, and life, and love.

A Decatur forest. A Greentown place.

2010. Me, and Bradbury.

Vacated Childhood

Sometimes I happen to drive through towns or cities where I lived with my parents when I was growing up. These days there is absolutely nothing whatsoever in those places that is welcoming to me or which resembles in any way the comforts of--as they used to say--home and hearth.

It's strange to travel through these spots, now. What were once areas where I could count on something approaching welcome there is now only coldness and a lurking fear. These days I don't even have photographs of these old homes and neighborhoods. The houses that my parents either owned or rented are mainly gone. I used to joke that wherever I lived was later leveled.

There's nothing quite like the iciness of traveling through a town that once held the promise of a safe place to lay one's head, and a warm home where you could retreat from the rain with the security of four walls and supportive allies. Now, when I move through these towns and cities all I see are buildings and streets and strangers and no hope of any finer emotion.

I never lived in this house. But this wreck isn't far from where I did live when I was a kid in the hell-hole known as Brunswick, Georgia. When I was a child, Brunswick had an economy based on industry of various types. Chemical companies, pulp mills, industrial fabricators, and other such ongoing concerns. One by one those places closed up shop, some of them leaving hideously polluted superfund sites. This crappy shell is typical of the structures still standing in Brunswick. My skin crawls whenever I do happen to travel through this horrid little burg, but I sometimes force myself to go back there to take photographs of places I recall. I have one single friend who still lives there, but mainly I stay the HELL away from it, zipping past at the speed limit on the rare occasions when I do travel nearby. I once took my wife to see Brunswick, and after about 30 minutes she started begging me to get her out of there as fast as I could. I complied.

This is Decatur, Georgia. I rather liked Decatur when I was living there as a kid. Some of the happiest memories of my life are from that time. The town was pretty cool in those days, and it's pretty cool now. But there is no one there for me and if I go back, the only thing in the way of a welcome is what I can buy from a lodging establishment and a restaurant.

My parents' first bookstore was somewhere around this area (North Highland Avenue), circa 1966. It was a great bookstore and I loved being in it. It's where my dad began to accumulate the vast stock of old comics I was able to rummage through during my childhood. It's rare that I encounter a comic book that was published after 1955 or so that I haven't at least held in my hands.

This is Macon, Georgia. Another town that holds absolutely nothing for me. This was on Poplar Street where my parents' bookstore was located. Also known as "the Avenue of Flags" because of the state flags project. My parents funded one of them--the flag for the US Virgin Islands. That was a place they longed to visit, but which they never got to see. I did visit the

Islands, partly because of their fascination with that part of the Caribbeans. As for Macon...the only thing that could entice me to visit it again would be to see the Ocmulgee Indian Mounds.

This is part of downtown Ellijay, Georgia. When I lived in the county it was 100% white and was easily the most virulently racist spot I ever lived. You learned to keep your fucking mouth shut there. One of my teachers was a supporter of a well-known neo-Nazi (JB Stoner) and the school system would bring in Christian evangelists to regale the student body with messages from Christ (against the law and all that, but who was going to complain?). Ironically, I had pretty fun teenage years and developed my love of the outdoors there and learned to hike and backpack. I was also active in sports--football, track, and wrestling. We were rarely in the town itself because we lived on 120 acres of forest on the other side of the county on a chunk of wilderness where our nearest neighbor lived 2.5 miles away and the nearest paved road was more than four miles distant and our driveway was exactly one mile long. I miss the land, but not the ignorant, hateful, racist folk who lived in Ellijay. There is nothing there for me, now.

Atlanta Signing, Atlanta Family

Carole and I headed off Friday morning to Atlanta. We had arranged to stay at the home of my niece Michele and her husband Jeff (and their dog, Petunia). Carole and I spent the first part of the day visiting my old neighborhood of Oakhurst and walking around downtown Decatur. But then we headed over to see Michele and Jeff. We also made plans to have dinner so that all of us could link up with Michele's older brother Shane (named after the title character of the film version of SHANE).

I had not seen Michele in decades, and had never met her husband. Michele has grown into a sweet and beautiful woman and her husband Jeff is a very nice fellow. They both work for the Federal government in downtown Atlanta. And for you WALKING DEAD fans, some of the scenes were filmed behind the building where Michele works!

They have a very nice house in Tucker in a neighborhood with many great trees. One thing that I had forgotten about living in the Atlanta area is that it is home to vast numbers of grand old trees. Someone needs to write a book or pamphlet on the groves and individual great trees of the Atlanta area.

Where Michele and Jeff live. Nice big house!

We all link up and head over to The Farmstead in downtown Decatur!

Shane, Jeff, and Michele standing for a quick photo. Well, Shane was squatting down--he's really tall.

My niece Michele, me, Carole, and my nephew Shane.

The Farmstead is in a converted train depot. Very cool place! Good food, too!

And the next day, off to Peerless Book Store to work to make sure I can do this gig long-term. More on that tomorrow.

Fine Memories

I traveled down to Atlanta to attend a signing even at the brand-new Peerless Book Store in Alpharetta, a northern suburb of the city. But one thing that I wanted to do was see the neighborhood where I lived when I was a boy. From the time I was eight years old until I was almost twelve we lived on Mead Road in Decatur, Georgia. It was an absolutely great place for a kid to grow up for much of the time we were there. True, the neighborhood degenerated into a war zone so fast that, looking back on those days, it seems almost impossible how far the place fell in so short a period. My parents tried to tough it out, but when the rocks came flying through the windows at night, it was time to go.

These days the community (called "Oakhurst") is now a Yuppie haven and the neighborhood is once again a safe and desirable place to raise a family. When we were there we lived directly beside the elementary school that I attended from the ages of eight to eleven. All I had to do was walk out the front door, stroll a few yards, and I was walking into Oakhurst Elementary School. Those were the days. After we moved away, the Boys Club of American bought our house and for a while it was just that: a Boys Club location. Then they sold it and it was torn down and is now a playground and part of the school.

But most of the other houses that I recall from my childhood are still there. Most of them have been renovated and are pretty expensive real estate now--$400K and up. It felt good to stand along the street and look down the way, recalling those days when I would stroll from street to street, looking for my pals, wandering around, sometimes playing in the parks, sometimes hunting for salamanders in the creeks, sometimes going to the local drugstore to see what new comics were out, or maybe strolling down to the hobby shop to see the new Matchbox cars.

It was a great place to be a kid.

The front entrance of my childhood grammar school: Oakhurst.

The low building on the right was added after we moved away. Our house once stood just beyond the baseball diamond on the far right of the photo.

This is the view much as I would have seen it walking out the front of our house and looking down the street, deciding which of my pals I would go visit.

Where our house once stood is now a playground. Alas.

At the end of the street I would often walk down to this building which held two businesses: an auto repair shop and the local drug store. The drug store was totally cool. It had an old fashioned fountain and grill and LOTS of shelves of new comics. The owner-operator had several times won the Atlanta Soda Jerk competition for his skill at making shakes, malts, and sodas.

Many were the times I would walk through that door and buy the latest issue of STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES and read about "The War that Time Forgot"!

Sky & Kitty

There is no magazine with that title: SKY & KITTY.

I walked out in the back yard this evening after work to grill steaks, sit on the patio, and look at the sky. There were some really nice clouds and colors up there, so I snapped a few shots.

Lilly had been out with us playing in the grass, but she didn't have her collar on and we were afraid she might stray so we put her back in the house. This bothered her tremendously and she pawed at the screen door. She was also very vocal. I think this is the first time I've seen her get angry.

Let me out OUT of this damned place!

This is where I lived between the ages of eight and eleven. Well, actually the house was torn down and now there's only a playground where the house once stood. It was a great house with a granite foundation and a huge granite fireplace and granite stone in other places around the house. Good, old Stone Mountain granite. Many of the houses in the area were also built with that stone.

The happiest years of my childhood were spent in this house. I had lots of pals when I lived here. I loved going to school right next door at Oakhurst Elementary, and I loved my summer breaks. I read jillions of comics when I resided on Mead Road. There was an old-style drug store at the corner where I could buy a milkshake or a drink at the fountain and read comics (even though my dad had 250K of the things). The local libraries soon introduced me to Hugh Lofting and my mom helped me discover Ray Bradbury. I explored all around the area, finding streams filled with salamanders and fish and tromping through great patches of woods where my buddies and I hid out and pretended to be on undiscovered islands filled with dinosaurs. It was a great place to be a kid in those days. The house were I lived is gone, though. After we moved out it became a Boys Club location and then was sold and torn down and is now a playground. Strangely, every house I lived in between the ages of seven and fifteen has been demolished. Four houses all gone to memories only. Ah, the way of the Earth.

Oakhurst Elementary School in Decatur, Georgia. It hasn't changed a bit since I went there in the 1960s. Look at the granite foundation. Sometimes I think everything in Decatur was made out of bits and pieces of Stone Mountain.

The Pull of Dirt

Well.
 

You live your life getting away from a place. You live there and grow there and are familiar with it...and face it--familiarity breeds contempt. It's true.

But you go back. There's the familiar. It can feel good to go back to a place, especially when there are a host of good memories that do a fair job of covering up the bad times. It can seduce a fellow.
 

Just about any place has its charms, I'm sure. My dad spent a good part of the later years of his life doing his best to get the Hell away from the Georgia low country where he was born and raised. And what the heck? He ends up back there at the end of his mortal coil.

I recall my father and my cousin Gene standing beneath the Glynn Oak, where it's said that Sidney Lanier penned "The Marshes of Glynn". And Gene and my dad gawked and gabbled over the beauty of the place. It was a beauty that I could not see, then. Later, I could and did, but just at that time I couldn't give a rat's ass about the marshes. And to hear my dad waxing all droopy-eyed poetical and softy over the place--well, it shocked me. The man who generally had nothing but ill to say about the land that was the bosom at which he had sucked.

It's passing strange, the pull of dirt.

Home is where you make it. And you're best served to make the best of things where you are. I can recall my dad champing at the bit to get up to the mountains of North Georgia where he thought the people would be different--where they'd be friendly and have a sense of fellowship. He supposed, I suspect, that there was a magical sense of the egalitarian up in those hills. What a shock he got when he found the mountain men of Georgia to be the most hideous humans he had ever faced. What a great gout of monsters into whose midst he had plunged himself and his family and his future.

The hot, mosquito-plagued flatlands of South Georgia suddenly seemed not so bad, after all. And at least he could understand the dialect and had a sense of what was in the heads of his fellow citizens of Glynn County, even if the mush between their ears was poisonous feces. It was poisonous matter that he at least recognized.

My dad spent the last months of his life having a fair time of it, I think. He reconnected with his nigh life-long best pal, Guy Frazier, from whom he had become estranged for a while. They caroused and I have to say that my dad seemed truly happy when he'd rediscovered his friendship with Guy...one of his old-time revolutionary pals who'd ended up going to work at the Paper Mill and becoming head shop steward and big shot with the Union. Those two did nothing but drink beer and talk politics and go on fishing trips the last few months of my dad's life. I remember feeling totally crushed when they packed up the truck one day to head to Florida to go on a weeklong fishing trip with my Uncle Ersley. And they went without me. It was the first time my dad had gone fishing without me. Man, it hurt. But my dad was happy. I think he dropped dead not ten days after that trip. Good for him for heading off and having a grand time.

Yeah, the old home turf can feel good to a wandering set of feet.

Me--I don't really have a home turf. Born in Brunswick--lived there twice. Done that. Hated it, both times. Lived in Ellijay, and there are some great memories. But the 120 acres is gone--sold off and likely developed (from what I can see from Google Earth). I have no desire to see the 120 acres cut up into four of five "farms" with strangers on my old stomping grounds. It would likely kill me. As for the city of Ellijay--well, it's a land of ignorant, inbred, ultra religious buggerers. James Dickey wasn't speaking in metaphor when he turned Gilmer County and the Cooswatee River into the nightmarish environs of his novel, DELIVERANCE. I have no more desire to venture there than I have of walking into a lion's den covered in bloody ribeye steaks. Decatur, I will visit. Especially now that Mead Road is taken once again by the gentry and the poor are gone.

I don't really have a home turf, as most do. I feel connected to so little. No religion ever fevered my brain. Family ties are all but shattered. I care not a whit for any particular spot I ever lived. (Well, I did love Mead Road--but that was merely a neighborhood.)

The closest thing I think that I have to the feeling most get when visiting a place they think of as “home” would be The South. As a whole. It's my Land. My Nation. I like southern accents. Low country drawl. The Elizabethan gibberish of the mountains. The city-bred accents of the New South. I know what's in the minds of most of these idiots. Their minds are full of crap...but I know what it is. It stinks, and that's okay. It's the way things are.

But that's the size of it.

No more, no less.