Another Update on Jayne Mansfield's Car Filming!

Update Thursday morning:  Here's a link to the local newspaper showing first day's filming photos.  Here's another with Billy Bob and some fans that also has a link to a video. On the same page with that video, look for another on the sidebar 'Cedartown goes '60s'.  I can't make a link to that one work, but it has great shots of various stores and good interviews.  Rain began in mid-afternoon and has continued all night with no let up in sight for awhile.  Not sure what that'll do to their schedule, but I plan to be down there this afternoon by 1pm to find out!

They start filming tomorrow, go through Friday, so I thought I'd take a walk around town to see what it all looks like.  They're still painting signs and hanging signs and getting things ready, but the city has Main Street closed off in that area so we residents are free to wander around at will, talk to folks, see what's going on.  I saw the city manager, one city commissioner and the streets manager, all of whom I know.  The streets manager gave me a copy of the shooting schedule from the production company.  One of the workers told me that yes, we can watch the filming, said that one particular local store was going to be open and would have the best view of the action, and that whoever was in there when they start shooting will need to (!) stay in there while they shoot.  They won't be shooting constantly -- just for 20 minutes or so at a time. The street will be open except for the actual shooting time.

There's a lot of buzz downtown -- you can feel it in the air.  Here are my pics from the morning.

One tidbit that I picked up from the city commissioner.  That mechanical hobby-horse beneath the brown awning is the original one that sat in front of the dime store that was next to my grandfather's barber shop!  He said he'd ridden it plenty as a kid, and so did I.  Hard to see it here -- can't believe I didn't get a decent photo of it.

Main Street at West Avenue, a couple of weeks ago

The same scene, more or less, today.  They actually did remove those new traffic lights and standards and walk lights, and have worked on the crosswalks.

Moores, a couple of weeks ago.

Moore's today -- with more authentic Rexall colors.

What I thought was going to be a bar is actually a barber.

The far end of the 'set'.

This new local business hadn't had a chance to get signs on the windows, so the movie folks painted it for her, and kept the name.  This is one of the stores that are front-and-center at the intersection.

There was one just like this in my grandfather's barber shop.  Could be the same one.

Takes a lot of power to shoot a movie!

I won't be able to watch tomorrow, unless it's after work, but I can sure wander down there on Thursday and check out the action.  They'll be filming behind the West Theater on Thursday night and IN FRONT of it on Friday night, as well as daytime stuff inside and outside various shops.

From Main Street to Movie Set

Changes are really happening downtown, and with good reason: filming begins next week.  Last I heard they'd be re-striping the road on Saturday, then beginning Sunday Main Street will be closed intermittently all day every day through Thursday of next week.  Also last I heard, they plan to put the cars of the era on the street Tuesday night so everything will be ready for filming on Wednesday, although that may have changed.  I just took a brief stroll through downtown to check it out and take a few photos.

All of the old storefronts on the blocks around the intersection are being changed.  Fortunately or unfortunately, lots of them are empty.  Binderson Hardware, for example, doesn't exist and I believe the property to its right has a fresh coat of green paint, although I wouldn't swear to that.

All of the signs on the upper parts of the buildings are new -- such as this Jewelry sign.  I asked one of the workers if they were going to leave anything behind when they were finished, and he said they'd probably leave the signs, which is interesting.

Oh no!  A bar on Main Street!  You can't read the signs painted on the windows here, but they are turning it into a bar.  The citizens will turn over in their graves.  Polk County was dry until just a few short years ago, and alcohol is still seen as an instrument of the devil.  Do you think maybe that comes from the County's notorious bootlegging past?  I think the awning here is new, and a new paint job.

Moores is being transformed, too -- all new signs painted on the windows, new red trim, and work going on inside.  I was tempted to poke my head inside to see what they're doing, but didn't want to be run off.  Chicken.

Lots of new signs on the other side of the intersection.  The blue-striped awning is actually a deli/cafe with its name on the glass. I'm wondering what they're going to do with that.  The sidewalk tables are new.  The wide tan awning toward the end of the block is new, I think.  They were working on it one day when I drove past.

Another tid-bit of information I've gleaned from a little web-searching is that the movie has nothing to do with Jayne Mansfield or her death, despite the title.  It's a story of 'human relationships' that  Robert Duvall described as 'brilliant'.  One character, presumably his, is faced with an interesting dilemma when the wife who left him behind in Alabama sometime between WWI and WWII to marry an Englishman dies and wants to be buried back in Alabama.  Her old family meets up with her new English family, and things get interesting from there.  There are also three brothers involved somehow.  If you're curious, spend a little time with Google and you'll find more info.

That's it for today.  I'm going to try to get some photos next Thursday of some action.  They did say we'd be able to watch the filming if we want to, and I have a good zoom lens.  We'll see.

Nature Photography Day

Did you know that June 15 is Nature Photography Day? I didn't, either, until yesterday.  The GATC is asking for photos from members taken today.

I did my best with what I had to work with, but since I had to go outside before 7am this morning to take a few in the dim light, it's not as good as I would have liked.  By the time I got home tonight -- even now -- the skies are dark and thunder is rumbling.

Another gorgeous pink/apricot poppy in my back yard.  They come in a whole range of colors, but this was the best of today's bunch.  I'd have liked better focus and resolution -- but before 7am with a hand-held camera, this was as good as I could manage. I do love the colors!

The real nature story around these parts this evening has been the hail storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning and wind and rain.  This was the second of two that swept through, and there may be more yet to come.  Tore big holes in my baby limas!

Couldn't stop the motion while that hail was -- well -- hailing down.   This was ugly stuff, and lots of it.  But, assuming my roof survived all is well and the garden has gotten a really good watering.

My latest project....

Aside from being an eyesore, this old, beat-up medicine cabinet  was placed too high on the wall. I could only see the top half of my head.  For the last year or so I've been thinking of replacing the cabinet with a mirror.

Last week I decided to drive to Cave Spring and check out the antique stores to see if I could find  a decent price on a mirror sized to fit (cover the hole plus extend more toward the sink).  I found this one for $20, and snapped it right up. I wasn't crazy about the frame, but that didn't matter because I had other plans for it anyway.  The mirror is good and has beveled edges, which is nice.

Came home and sanded off the old finish and gold leaf trim, then played with it a bit.  First, I put a wash of leftover blue paint on it and scuffed it up some when it dried, but that looked too white.  So, I put a wash of leftover green paint on it, then scuffed it up some more.  Actually, I did a good bit more after this photo was taken.  I wanted it to look old, and it does.

So, this morning I tackled getting it on the wall.  Naturally, the old cabinet did not come out easily -- the screws holding it in place didn't want to budge and I had to pry the last one out, but I got it out.

This probably isn't necessary, but it can't hurt and it gives me some small sense that it'll keep critters from coming through the hole.

And -- here it is!  Too bad that ugly cord has to be there, but  there is only one electrical outlet in the room and it's too  high for me to reach to plug and unplug, so it stays.  The discerning eye might notice that it's not centered on the vanity, but neither was the original, and the hole had to be covered.  I would have placed it lower on the wall, but again, it barely covers the hole at the top.  Someday, if and when this room ever gets a facelift, all this can be solved.  For now, I'm happy to have a real, usable mirror here.

Jayne Mansfield's Car filming update

For later updates, check newer posts, click on label at bottom!

The local newspaper has announced online today that the movie company is looking for local people to be extras, and looking for cars of the era.  Filming is due to begin around the third week in June.

I've been curious to see what changes they would make downtown -- clearly, it will need a little work to make it look like 1969 not 2011.  I've also wondered where they would be filming downtown.  Now I know -- some of it, anyway.  The two places named in the story are Moore's Soda Fountain and the West Theater -- both of which carry fond memories of my childhood in this town, and both of which are relatively unchanged over those intervening 60 or so years.

Moore's was for many years a pharmacy, drug store and served the local ladies needs for cosmetics.   It's currently for sale and pretty much unchanged.  Hollywood, however, has already begun changing the building to suit their needs.  This long side, where the red and beige now lie, is normally covered with murals for various local businesses.  Those coverings will be painted to look like brick, and are removable once shooting is complete.  If I had money, I'd love to buy this place and re-open.  Doesn't look as if the last person with that idea had much success.

Hard to photograph through dirty glass with the sun coming up behind you!  But, you can get a sense of the soda  fountain, which was perhaps my favorite place in the entire town, aside from my grandfather's barber shop just down the block. Fountain Cokes and the best chicken salad sandwich I ever ate.  Yum. You can bet that Hollywood will have this place up and running for the movie -- I don't expect there are lots of these left, especially in such pristine condition.  There weren't any tables back in the day -- that entire area was packed with tall cosmetic stands and a cosmetic counter.  The pharmacy was way in the back with just an access window.

I spent countless hours here!  A dime would give us entry into an all day double feature of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, musicals and most other movies that came to town. Once inside, you could literally stay all day.  It was a Saturday ritual for the local kids, and the mom's didn't have to worry about babysitters because we were glued to the screen, even if we saw something twice.  Didn't matter. I remember once when my dad got home from Japan around 1952 he came down here and dragged me home, really pissed off, one Saturday afternoon when he had something else in mind for me.  This, too, is virtually unchanged since my childhood, although the paint job is new. I haven't been inside yet, but my understanding is that the inside has been as lovingly maintained and restored as the outside.

When you get right down to it, the entire downtown has been preserved virtually unchanged.  We did have a traffic light at this intersection, but no walk lights. Wonder what they'll do about those?

The town is starting to buzz, and I'm not someone who's really in the loop for those things.  A kid at the local hardware store this morning was talking about it -- he'd read the same online article I did this morning.  This location is only a couple of blocks from my house. I doubt that we citizens will get much opportunity to actually watch what's going on, but it should be fun anyway.

Gonna be another scorcher today.  I did a little gardening, plan to spend my day indoors where it's cool, reading.  I do have to bake brownies sometime today, but will put that off until late in the day when the kitchen is already hot from the day.

Garlic harvest!!!

A few days ago I said the garlic wasn't ready for harvest yet, but I must have been thinking about harvest dates in cool Oregon, not warm Georgia.  I checked on the Dirt Doctor site and found that the big purple one, Duganski, was past ready.  This is the same one that I taste-tasted a couple of days ago.  So -- out I went to pull them up.  Instructions were to not wash off the dirt, not cut off the tops or roots, cure slowly indoors in a cool, dry place.

Well!  There is no cool, dry place right now and I have no clue how long it takes to cure.  But, with thunderstorms looming I brought them inside and made do, for now.

A grand total of 54, including the one I picked earlier in the week.

Beautiful stuff, if you like garlic.  Note the bits of purple -- most of which has peeled away.  That's a bad sign, because it now has fewer outer dry leaves to protect it in storage.  It's because I harvested too late.  But, I'll eat lots of it.

The Duganski is still out there and not as ready to harvest as the Susanville was.  It should still be fine, although I'll probably harvest it this weekend.

This is the closest I could come to a 'cool, dry, place'.  In my pantry, layered on the wire storage shelving.  It smells strong -- like garlic (duh!) and the rotted manure in which it grew.  

I've emailed the garlic expert at Dirt Doctor.com and hope he'll help me figure out how to best cure and store this and the Duganski. I should have about 100 bulbs, which is far more than I will use in the coming year.  I may have to share.  The main thing is to save a few bulbs of the Duganski to re-sow this fall.  I love the big, fat cloves, as compared to the smaller cloves of the Susanville.  I use a lot of garlic, so it's easier to peel fewer bigger cloves than lots of small cloves.  I think it's called lazy.

The perils of sugar....

We all know that sugar is bad for us, but we continue to eat it (including me).  I had a real wake-up call on Friday when I found a magazine in our waiting area that had clearly been left by a customer.  The magazine was Natural Health and they had a big article on sugar.  I'd already made two hits on the M&M Peanut machine, but this article stopped me in my tracks.  Here are the health costs they list of too much sugar:

Anxiety: sugar causes wide swings in blood sugar, wreaking havoc on the nervous system, which can leave you feeling on edge.

Depression: Eating sugary foods rather than nutritionally dense foods often leads to B-vitamin deficiencies which can exacerbate the blues.

Type II Diabetes.  We all know this one, but -- too much sugar can overwhelm the body with the demands of processing all that sugar, which can lead to insulin resistance and weight gain.

Fibromyalgia: Sugar suppresses the immune system (just one 12-oz can of soda can drop immune function by 30 percent for three hours) which makes it harder to fight infection and can lead to both chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.

Migraines: A drop in blood sugar after a sugar "high" can cause muscles to spasm, causing and worsening tension headaches and migraines.

Sinusitis: Too much sugar causes yeast overgrowth, which may trigger an inflammatory reaction in the nose.

Somehow, seeing all these listed out so clearly made me realize that sugar may well be the cause of many of my current issues.  All the things I've been whining about recently -- anxiety, depression, weight gain, extreme fatigue and pain in the body.  I haven't been checked for chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia and don't intend to do so, but as of Friday afternoon this gal is off sugar in just about every form.  It'll be interesting to see how many of these issues disappear, if any.

I'll still drink milk, despite the natural sugar that's in milk.  But, I'll stop with the candy, baked goods with flour and/or sugar, hot chocolate, apples and other sugary fruits.  Fortunately, I don't have much of a fast-food or processed food habit, and I don't drink soft drinks or fruit juices and rarely drink alcohol.  But, am I going to not eat those nice sugar peas that I harvested from the garden this morning?  Or the carrots that are currently flourishing out there?  Sorry. 

I'll keep you posted if I see any difference, plus now that I've put it out here in public, it'll be harder to fall off the sugar wagon.

Coffee

Remember back at the end of 2010 when I began my annual alcohol-free month of January, then added coffee and sugar to the banned substances for the month?  I remember saying at the time that sugar would be the hardest to give up, and I was right about that.  Lasted about 6 weeks until Valentine's Day and I baked some brownies for the guys at work.  Such things involve a lot of taste-testing by the cook.

Coffee was a whole nuther story.  I'd quit caffeine months previously, but I liked my morning joe.  The plan was to rest my adrenals, I believe it is, and stop the rapid accumulation of belly fat, by eliminating the effect that coffee has on cortisol.  Sounded like a plan, because nothing else has helped much on the belly fat issue. Well, I can say that for me, at least, eliminating coffee has had no effect whatsoever on the belly fat issue, and since I started craving coffee a couple of weeks ago, I finally gave in and bought some Seattle's Best, which is my favorite.  Would have bought Maxwell House, except that 1) the decaf version cost $2 more per bag at WalMart and that pissed me off; and 2) Kroger didn't have it at all.  In fact, there was precious little decaf on the shelves at either store.  So I went with what I could get.  If I'm going to pay a premium price for decaf, I'm going to get a better coffee.  Period.  I'm loving it -- after over 4 months, it tastes really, really good. 

Still haven't had alcohol, and haven't had any particular urge to do so.  There's no doubt in my mind that I'll put away a cold beer or two over the upcoming summer, but in the meantime, I'm happy to continue giving the body a rest from that stuff.  If only the sugar addiction were so easy to break!

I've had to sit back and admit that depression has shown its ugly head again over the last couple of weeks.  It's something I always try to deny in the hopes that I can beat it that way, but it never works.  I recognize the symptoms -- grouchiness, insomnia in particular -- but try to lay it off to something else.  Not working.  Looking back, it seems to have been triggered by the death of my kitten, for which I still hold a lot of guilt.  There's also been a long string of stress around this house, but that has been stemmed, for now.  For me, meditation is the best medicine for depression, and while I've been meditating, I haven't been meditating well or for long.  Fatigue gets in the way.  Body pain gets in the way.  I sit, but accomplish little.  Still, that's the nature of meditation as well as all of life.  Impermanence!  Everything changes, nothing stays the same.  This will pass.

I rested yesterday, as much because I had no energy as because I wanted to let the body rejuvenate, but today I need to do things because over the years I have learned that action of any kind is the quickest antidote to depression.  And there's work to be done.

A Trip Into Family History

Tuesday night I had a long-postponed meeting with my cousins in Alabama, just across the state line. Our common ancestor, William Elliott Williams, moved to this area in the early 1800's and became a large landowner, had many children by two different wives.  He was from North Carolina.  Last year the Williams researchers asked Roy, the cousin I met Tuesday night, to do a DNA test proving the entire lineage back to a Jones Williams, b. 1731.  A straight-line male descendant is needed to do these tests, and Roy fits that bill.

Roy and I are descended from two different sons of William Elliott Williams and his first wife, whose name is unknown.  I was told years ago by an elderly great-uncle that she was 'a Bagwell from Temple, GA'.  The 1850 census shows her first initial as "H".  That's all we know.  William fathered three sets of twins (which run in the family).  Roy is descended from one of these twins, I am descended from another brother. Roy and his wife live on William's original homestead.

Update: For those of you who have an interest in this descendency, we've learned more about William's wives. It seems that Harriet Bagwell is probably not my ancestor. We found a marriage license in Paulding County, GA for these two, dated May 11, 1850, a good while after William's first group of kids were born. After that, we realized that something we'd seen for years in the Rutherford County, NC Marriage book was probably our William. We'd ignored it previously because we were focused on H. Bagwell from Georgia. A William Williams [not an uncommon name around there] married a Nancy Johnson on December 19, 1832.That fits in with the timeline of William's move to Alabama as well.  The first census we have him on in Alabama, in 1840. It seems probable that Nancy Johnston is the mother of William's early children, since he did not marry Harriett Bagwell until 1850.  Further research is needed to prove this. Harriet Bagwell died before 1860, since by that census William was married to Elizabeth. It seems unlikely that there were any children from that marriage, as William's youngest child before his family with Elizabeth was born around 1847, and would have been from Nancy (unless Nancy died earlier and Harriett had children with William before they were married.)

This is the view over the back pastures and fields of the old homestead, from the new home.

William's original barn and outbuilding.  The road leads back to the new house on a hill behind the trees.

The gravestone for William and his second wife, Elizabeth, lies hidden in the brush in an old, abandoned and unkept cemetery called Baker Hill.  William is my great-great-great-grandfather.  Without doubt, his first wife is also buried up here someplace, in a grave that is either unmarked or lost in the undergrowth.

A portion of the Williams Family Cemetery, called Cherry Grove Cemetery.

Augusta Williams is one of the twins, brother to the twin from which Roy is descended.

Gush, or Gushton, is Roy's ancestor.

Andy is the brother from whom I am descended

His wife Nicey, whose maiden name was Pence.

On my way home I had to take a detour because the main highway was closed down due to an accident.  The secondary route took me by this old church, Shiloh Baptist Church in Esom Hill, where most of the rest of my family is buried.  I took a drive up through the cemetery, on the hill in the rear, but it was late and I was tired, so those will need to wait for another day.

It was a fascinating evening.  I drove and listened to them talk and tell tales for about three hours, over hill and dale, over dirt and gravel roads, to hidden churches and old cemeteries, into the heart of my Williams ancestry.

We're gonna be in pictures....

Just heard on the local radio that a movie called "Jayne Mansfield's Car" will be filmed downtown for a couple of days in June.  It stars Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Duvall and Dennis Quaid, plus others who were unnamed.  Billy Bob and his producer were in town last week checking us out, talking to local shopkeepers.  They'll obviously be filming other places too, with only a couple of days scheduled here.  Maybe Robert Duvall liked filming in Georgia for "Get Low".

Probably won't be a fun movie (are Billy Bob's movies ever fun?).  Jayne Mansfield was killed in an auto accident in a southern state, Louisiana I think. Decapitated.  I remember it clearly. I expect graphic detail and normally would not go see it, but how can I resist?

The back room looks good, aside from two new, deep gouges in the wood inflicted around 4am when I hauled a big exhaust fan into the room and plunked it in a window.  I know this fan is powerful and needs to be held in place by the window sash, and I thought it was, but when I turned away to open the other window, it crashed to the floor -- still running.  Oh, well.  He said people pay him to make holes in new wood so it looks old, so I guess I saved a few bucks.  It won't show or hurt anything.  All my plans for a trip to HD dissolved, since I didn't get much sleep and decided that my body needs a rest day today.  I'm pooped.  Been a long week, and even longer since I took a day to rest this old body.