Rusty's Blog

Here’s our full set of wedding photos. There are captions when you click through.

All photos taken by Thomas Strickland.

Cassadaga Information Center sign

Cassadaga, Florida is a Spiritualist community established in 1894 that has remained largely unchanged in the time since, save for better signage. It contains about 55 homes, and around 25 people earn their living as spiritual mediums.

Of course we had to go, especially since it was conveniently located off I-4 W between St. Augustine and Orlando, the two primary destinations on our Traditional ‘Merican Vacation.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you want some cheap entertainment, drive around to local antiques stores and look for boxes of old postcards like the one Amber and I went through at Avondale Antiques this past weekend. Sometimes the cards themselves have neat photos or artwork on them. Sometimes they’ll have something interesting written on them. You can usually buy them for a dollar or two if you feel guilty about standing there and reading without buying something else.

Atlanta Postcard from 1945

The most interesting part of this card to me is it appears as though the Stone Mountain monument is drawn on it in the second A and maybe the second T. The idea of the Stone Mountain monument goes as far back as 1912, but work on carving it didn’t start until 1964. Maybe there was something else that just looked like Stone Mountain? What else could it be?

(Update 1:51 p.m. – I misread the Wikipedia entry. The carving started sometime in or after 1916, stopped in 1928, and was resumed in the 1964. However, it still appears the card is based on artists’ conceptions of what would be there, and not what was actually there at the time. So it’s still strange. See this postcard on eBay that Greg linked to in the comments. Thanks Greg!)

Click through to the full version of this post card to read a note from Carolyn to Eddie written on March 8, 1945. Note also the “give to the war fund” post mark.

Inman Park Festival Postcard from 1980

Here’s the 1980 description of the Inman Park Festival found on this post card:

Stately Inman Park, Atlanta’s first suburb (c. 1890), hasn’t been the same since “urban pioneers” began rescuing its Victorian homes from slum lords in the 1970s. Each April the locals celebrate the neighborhood’s revival with one of the Southeast’s more offbeat festivals. It includes an elegant tour of homes, a bizarre parade, arts and crafts show, flea market, live music, and a host of jugglers, clowns and mimes. Y’all come.

I feel cheated that I never saw any jugglers when I went a couple of years ago.

The artist credited with the card’s design is James Flournoy Holmes, who is also notable for art on several Southern rock albums, including The Allman Brothers Band’s Eat a Peach and The Marshall Tucker Band’s first self-titled album.

Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau Postcard from the 1980s

Click through to the full version and check out CNN’s archaic computers, the Fox Theatre’s pre-digital marquee, and the Hawks’ awesome Dominique Wilkins-era uniforms. What I really want to know is what the hell is that structure in picture on the bottom row, second from the left?

Postcard from The Wren’s Nest

I don’t think this postcard is all that old. I’m guessing 1990s. Lain, do you have any idea?

(Update 2:30 p.m. – Lain thinks it’s pre-1985, but not much earlier. Read his comment for a full explanation.)

(Update 2:21 p.m. – I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Atlanta Time Machine’s awesome collection of Atlanta postcards. Just wait until after business hours to check them out. If you’re like me, you’ll get sucked in and spend hours there.)

Outback Bowl, Tampa, Fla. – January 1, 2008

Calhoun, Ga. – February 8, 2008

Greensboro, Ga. – March 8, 2008

Madison, Ga. – March 9, 2008

Baltimore – May 24, 2008

Homer, Ga. – July 15, 2008

Bronx, New York City – July 18, 2008

Miller Theatre, Augusta, Ga. – Sept. 18, 2008

Knoxville, Tenn. – Sept. 20, 2008

Decatur, Ga. – October 31, 2008

Me with my mom when I was a kid. I gave a framed print of this photo to her as a Christmas gift.

The original Waffle House opened in Avondale Estates, Georgia on College Avenue in 1955. It was later sold and converted into a Chinese restaurant, and has since been purchased back and restored as a museum with furnishings very close to what the original restaurant looked like.

It usually isn’t open to the public, but was open today. We were told it will soon be open to the public two days per week.

We learned some other tidbits, like that this sign they have out front isn’t the same design as the original sign:

It’s actually a late 50s or early 60s design. The letters are supposed to look like dripping syrup. The original sign design isn’t up to current DeKalb County code, and they’re working on getting permission to use the original (or a sign with the same design as the original). The original is currently stored in a warehouse.

Also:

• Filet mignon was served instead of T-bones originally. The urban legend goes that the switch to T-bones was made after a Waffle House location ran out of filet mignon and bought some T-bones from an A&P, which proved to be very popular.
• Other menu ideas — such as the code words for hash brown toppings — permeate up to be corporate standards from flourishes of particular Waffle House locations.
• Originally, everything was made fresh on location except for saltine crackers, Coca Cola and Heinz ketchup.
• The founder Joe Rogers was (and still is) obsessed with not wasting movements, space or materials. At the original location, when they were finished with a paper cash register roll, they’d put it back in the register the opposite way and print on the back. Now, this translates into constant efficiency studies that attempt to cut down on the movements that Waffle House employees make.

You can view the full set of photos here.

Amber also has a photo set here and a blog post here.

First, this note was posted in our apartment complex this morning:

Click through to read the full text of the note, it’s hilarious. We have a neighbor who lives on our floor who lets his stupid dog go on bathroom breaks without supervision. This is problematic because he’s breaking leash laws and illegally not cleaning up the dog’s pooh, but is even more problematic because the dog has gotten lazy and no longer walks all the way to the grassy area in the parking lot before dropping a bomb. I’m amazed I haven’t stepped in a pile already.

Next, we saw this license plate on our drive to work today:

That’s going to look pretty stupid if Obama loses. Like getting a Microsoft Zune tatoo. For more fun with license plates, see this thread at Drifting Through The Grift.

And finally, my Florida-Tennessee tickets arrived today!

I wrote some about this game over at Rocky Top Talk.

If you need game tickets, you should buy them from Larry at Take Me Out Tickets. I priced these out at Stubhub as well, and the overall price was $35-40 cheaper for equivalent tickets since Stubhub has extra fees and you pay shipping. Plus he’s local and a lot of you already know him, so you’ll get better customer service. And no, I didn’t receive anything to plug the site.