Halloween Discussion Forums, Costumes, Horror!

Murfreesboro wrote:She said that during WWII, many people were stationed there, people from the interior parts of the U.S., who had never been to CA before or even much thought of it. Afterward, many of those people liked it so much they decided to stay.

Still happening. A lot of Sailors and Marines who have been stationed here decide to stay. One of the reasons you see so many fans from other teams at our pro games. My dad had a tour here during WWII, wasn't impressed. Thought of it as a little Navy town till the day he died. Couldn't convince him otherwise.

VanHelsingStandIn wrote:You'd be surprised how many people come to Atlanta looking for Tara. They ask where the movie was filmed, and when you say Hollywood, they go bonkers. Tara was never real although in Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell puts it in Jonesboro, Georgia area. Today that is about 20 miles South of Atlanta and close to the airport. People forget that Atlanta sits at the begining of the Appalachian mountain range and the city and surrounding areas northward are quite hilly. Plantations were never found this far north in Georgia because the soil and terrain were not suited for plantation style economics.

It's funny you mentioning this because I'm re-reading the book now and it says they're "Northern Georgians".

Mike, that was quite a tribute to your grandpa that those black friends of his made.

Bit of trivia..UAPB is the only other school besides SMU to have gotten the death penalty for their football team. Seems they had players who had been playing like 6 or 7 years. The opposing team would look across the field and see people who looked very familiar. UAPB tried to hide it by giving them different names and jersey numbers. They finally got caught in 1991 or 92 I think. The NCAA gave them the death penalty for one year, but they escaped it by leaving the NCAA and joining the NAIA for one season, and playing there. They then came back to the NCAA after the year was over and are now supposed to be a clean program.

Bit more trivia..While there are white students at UAPB, they along with most other public colleges that are considered historically black in the south, have not reached federally mandated integration standards. In 1964 and 1965 when Federal law decreed that all public colleges and universitys integrate, they were given a specific period of time to complete it.

Most looked at this as white schools allowing blacks to enroll, but it also meant for historically black public colleges to increase the non-black levels as well. Black colleges were the ones who were resistent to the change, saying they needed to retain their black identity because it would hurt them as a group if they became too integrated with whites.

So today, while all historically white public schools reached the levels required by law, only about 3% of the black colleges have done so and despite being in violation of federal law, continue to receive federal aid.

So much for equality.

I've spent pretty much my whole adult life in uniform, and have been in some tough spots over the years, but I was also born late in my parents life and most of my cousins in Arkansas are quite a bit older than me. So despite all I've been through in the past 30 years I find myself being one of the few members of my family still alive. The others I'm related too are too young for me to have much in common with. So it goes!!

Take some pics for us Mike

I didn't know that about the UAPB football program, VanHelsing.

And speaking of Pine Bluff, there is a very atmospheric graveyard there called Bellwood, where most of my mother's family has been buried for generations. I say atmospheric, because it has the stand-up monuments and the crypts dating from the mid-19th century. It is old enough that it is even divided into Jewish, white, and black sections.

Oh, there are a number of old cemeteries around here. There is the original one on Vine Street, which is closed to the public, but you can look over a fence into it. It has ghost stories and stories about witches, etc. There is one not too far from me, called Evergreen, which was taken from the plantation land surrounding Oaklands Mansion (crown jewel of our local historic district). The earliest burials there are from the Civil War (Confederates), but my in-laws are both buried there, too. It is still open & active. Then there is the Union cemetery at Stones River National Battlefield, where they do the Hallowed Ground lantern tours during the warm months.