This one's kinda personal,(oh, wait I guess they all are) but it's a great link for anyone who's interested in 'old' Atlanta. 'I saw it on Ponce' is an "award winning" blog, and deservedly so. It's designed well and attractively, fun to be on, and very lively, just like Ponce the street.
Funny Panama City aside: One of our local morning show anchors is a talented and smart journalist from North Carolina who has to pronounce the name of the panhandle town 'Ponce de Leon' often. She invariably pronounces it the 'correct' way -go here to see and hear the Webster's version- which no doubt tickles the folks in PONCE duh LEE ON just as much as it would an Atlantan.
Click here, if you haven't already, for a tune: The Animal World
ANYway- Linda Weller is on Ponce! She got a job at Sears as a typist/clerk in 1940 and was able to get Mama and Betty and Horace and herself back to civilization, an apartment on Augusta in Grant Park. Came December 1941 and she was hired as a clerk at the Depot in Conley, which was the beginning of her adventure as one of the few females employed as a civilian supply officer for the US Army. She was an active Christian woman who loved God, her family, people, animals and WORK.
She was born too early in 1919. The attending doctor told her mother, Mama (Lennie Mae Butler), that she was too small, her stomach hadn't even closed, and she was just going to die, and he left. Mama, alone in a 'far off' town (in Tennessee, somewhere,) decided differently and put Linda in a shoebox in the oven to keep her warm, and then fed her by dropping milk down her throat and holding her nose!
Linda and Mama decided to do the figurative same for me when they determined, with my Grandmother's blessing, that the care I was receiving on Somerset Terrace was not acceptable. There began my adventure with two fantastic, formidable women, who gave me material sustenance, but more lasting, a spiritual connection that is responsible for my being alive and typing on this blog right now.
"But I digress..."
Otre ssam- Ponce memory: Another fantastic story from "Doug Davis" via Robert Davenport:
What a joyous birthday it was, and actually my dad was glad to
see my interest in the baseball equipment. He was really a big fan
of baseball and he liked just about any any level of baseball.
I can remember all the Saturday afternoons that he and I went to
see the Atlanta Crackers play baseball at old Ponce De Leon ball
park. We would always sit in the bleachers along the 1st.base side
each and every time. We never sat in the ones on the 3rd. base side
because he said that bad things went on over there. I found out
many years later that this is where all the gamblers sat and
wagered on what was happening during the games. I can remember the
names of some of his favorite players, like Ebba St.Claire-Eddie
Matthews-Pete Whisenant-and Chuck Tanner and a player named
Country" Brown. I always enjoyed those outings with my dad because
I looked up to him and thought so much of him. I couldn't wait to use my new baseball equipment.
Have a great southside Sunday: Go to church, then for lunch, go get a bucket of chicken, and take a Sunday drive down Ponce, and when you get home, call a relative or old friend, then sit down and go on 'I saw it on Ponce.'
