Always a Bulldog: Players, Coaches, and Fans Share Their Passion for Georgia Football
424
Always a Bulldog: Players, Coaches, and Fans Share Their Passion for Georgia Football
424eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781617495571 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2011 |
| Series: | Always a... |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 424 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Always a Bulldog
Players, Coaches, and Fans Share Their Passion for Georgia Football
By Tony Barnhart
Triumph Books
Copyright © 2011 Tony BarnhartAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61749-557-1
CHAPTER 1
Memories of Athens
Get a group of University of Georgia alumni together and sooner or later — regardless of their age or when they graduated — the subject will turn to Athens and how, without question, it is the best damn college town in America.
Every generation of Georgia graduates has its own set of special memories. For my generation it was Zoo Night on the deck of T.K. Harty's, hanging out on the deck at O'Malley's, or watching a sporting event on the big-screen TV at the Fifth Quarter Lounge.
A lot of my time at Georgia was spent with my fellow staff members of the Red & Black, the student newspaper. There was many a night, after we had put the paper to bed in our little office the corner of Milledge and Springdale (where we kept cold beer in the Coke machine), the production staff would adjourn to a nearby apartment (Myrna Court) I shared with Bill Durrence, and, for lack of a better term, we would enthusiastically celebrate life.
I am proud to say that more than 35 years later, Bill Durrence and a number of those folks from the Red & Black are still my friends. I wish I could mention every one of them here, but among that group of very talented people, we have a Pulitzer Prize winner (Deborah Blum), a best-selling author (Kathy Hogan Trocheck, aka Mary Kay Andrews), and an Episcopal priest (Patricia Templeton). I've been working with photographers all my life, and Durrence is still the best one I've ever met.
Yes, we all went to Georgia to get an education. Most of us did get our formal education and the degree that comes with it. But we also got another education when it comes to making friends that will last a lifetime. Many of the most lasting memories we have of our time at Georgia were gatherings with friends at restaurants, clubs, and other assorted watering holes when all of us were blissfully naïve and ridiculously poor.
Here are just a few of those places where we made those memories. A lot of them — most of them, in fact — no longer exist in Athens, which only adds to their charm. And for every one that I list here, there are 100 more that could have been in this chapter. It is not a definitive list and does not pretend to be.
Yes, there is a common theme here of eating and drinking (usually both). But it is who we did the eating and drinking with that was so important at the time and gives us memories we still enjoy today.
This is just one man's trip down Memory Lane in Athens. Feel free to add your own stops.
Allen's World Famous Hamburgers
by Zell Miller
Every college town has a favorite place to get a hot cheeseburger and a cold beer. But very few towns have a place like Allen's World Famous Hamburgers.
The year was 1956, and I had just enrolled at Georgia after serving in the Marine Corps. I had a wife and two babies. So I needed to make some money while I was going to school, and jobs were pretty hard to come by.
Allen Saine was the owner, and he was willing to give me a job. He gave me $7 a night and all the hamburgers I could eat and all the milk I could drink.
The great thing about Allen's was it was like that bar in the TV show Cheers. It was a place where everybody knew your name. There were folks who came in there every day. It was their place to hang out.
There were no frills with Allen's. We served the hamburgers in waxed paper and put some pickles and onions in there in case you wanted them. The place just never changed, and there was a certain comfort in that.
When I got into politics, I decided I would go back to Allen's where I got started to launch some of my campaigns. Putting on that white robe again reminded me where I had come from. I was fortunate to become the lieutenant governor of Georgia for 16 years, was governor of the state for eight years [1991 to 1999], and then a United States senator. But I can promise you that I never forgot where I came from. I will always have great memories about Allen's for as long as I live.
Zell Miller, who retired as a United States senator in 2005, lives in his beloved Young Harris, Georgia.
Notes on Allen's
Allen's opened in 1955 on Prince Avenue in the Normaltown section of Athens and served as a popular watering hole for students and locals alike. It was also a good place to hear live music. Allen's was a beer joint and damned proud of it.
Allen's was thought to be lost when the doors closed in 2003, a victim to the burgeoning restaurant and club scene in downtown Athens. But two Georgia graduates, Mike Hammond and Hilt Moree, brought it back with the original sign and a lot of the memorabilia. They moved it to Hawthorne Avenue about a mile from the original location.
"We get a lot of former students who want to sit at the bar, drink a cold one, and go down memory lane," said Moree. "It is a tough business, but it is a labor of love."
For more on Allen's, go to www.allensbarandgrill.com.
Barnett's News Stand
For 65 years Barnett's News Stand was located at 147 College Avenue, just a few steps away from the university's arch. And for all that time Barnett's served as the place where students and locals alike could go to get the real pulse of what was going on in Athens.
There was nothing fancy about Barnett's. It was a throwback to another time and sold a little bit of everything. If you wanted an out-of-town newspaper like the Sunday New York Times, Barnett's had it. If you wanted a magazine about snowboarding in Utah, the only place in Athens you were going to find it was at Barnett's News Stand. If you wanted to the latest best-selling book, Barnett's would have it first. And if you wanted the latest gossip about Athens and the university or local politics, somebody at Barnett's would know the inside skinny.
Barnett's first opened its doors in 1942, and in 1978 Midge Gray and her husband, Tommy Easterling, bought the business. Gray operated the business until May 18, 2008. By then, such mom-and-pop operations simply could not compete in an Internet world where the larger bookstores could sell for significantly lower prices.
It also hurt Midge when the soul of Barnett's News Stand, long-time manager Carl Smith, passed away in 2006.
Gray tried find a buyer to keep the business alive but eventually leased the space to the owner of a women's apparel shop, The Red Dress Boutique, which is still located there.
"He [Carl Smith] was my right-hand man; we worked side by side for 20 years," Gray told the Athens Banner-Herald in 2008 just before she closed the doors. "And we were pretty good friends."
Hodgson's Pharmacy by Harold B. Hodgson III
My dad, Harold B. "Doc" Hodgson Jr., opened Hodgson's Pharmacy in 1956 on a simple premise: take care of your customers and your employees. Treat them like family, and they will take care of you.
He believed in personal service. He believed our customers were our friends. He began the business by selling ice cream cones for a nickel. He didn't make any money doing that, but he did it in order to get the kids in here. And once the kids were in the store, he believed that the parents would stay and have their prescriptions filled. He was right, of course.
I could tell you so many stories about how Dad would get out of bed in the middle of the night if a customer really needed a prescription. Some of our older customers could not get out of their homes right away. He would make sure that the medicine got to them, even if we had to take it right up to their door.
When we had candy left over from Valentine's Day, he made sure it got to the firemen and the policemen. He believed in taking care of them and making sure they were customers for life.
I can't tell you how many young people he helped. But people helped him when he was coming along, and he felt he was supposed to return that favor.
In June of 2009 we moved from our original location in Five Points to another building just a few steps away. The old place was huge, and the way our business is changing, we just didn't need all that space. There is no question that the big boys in the drug store business are making it tough for us to compete. There are times when I feel like our days are numbered.
But we have so many good memories here. The Georgia cheerleaders still come by on game days. We have some special things on the wall to honor them, and coach Mike Castronis, who worked with the cheerleaders, was one of the finest men I've ever met.
We have pictures of every one of the national championship teams in women's gymnastics. This was a home for them.
We are still here, and today we sell ice cream cones for $1. It's still a pretty good value. The kids who were so much a part of this place as students have left Georgia, but many of them still come back with their children and in some cases their grandchildren. That is the most gratifying thing of all. There is something about Athens that keeps pulling people back.
"Doc" Hodgson died on February 28, 2008. The store is still managed by his son, Harold B. Hodgson III.
R.E.M., The B-52s, and the Classic City Music Scene
April 6, 1980, was Easter Sunday and one of the biggest days in the history of the University of Georgia.
It was the day that a highly recruited football player from Wrightsville, Georgia, decided he was going to sign to play for the Georgia Bulldogs. His name was Herschel Walker. That fall, the Georgia football team would go 12–0 and win the 1980 national championship. With Walker as its star player, Georgia would win three straight SEC championships. So April 6, 1980, is a big day on the historical calendar for Georgia.
But April 5, 1980, is also huge day in the history of Athens. That night, at an old church on Oconee Street, a bunch guys who thought they had a pretty decent band played their first gig for the birthday party of a friend, Kathleen O'Brien. She lived in a renovated part of the building. In fact, to get to the old sanctuary where the music was being played, you had to go through O'Brien's closet.
That band became R.E.M.
Every university town has some kind of music scene. But in the 1970s and 1980s Athens became the launching pad for some of the best music ever produced.
The B-52s played their first-ever gig in Athens on Valentine's Day 1977 at a house party on North Milledge Avenue. Not long after that they became one of the hottest bands to play the club circuit in New York.
And from the success of The B-52s and R.E.M. came one great band after another that called Athens home. It was a creative atmosphere that spawned bands like Love Tractor, Pylon, and Widespread Panic. And they performed in venues that became legendary, like the 40 Watt Club, the Uptown Lounge, the B&L Warehouse, and the Rockfish Palace.
In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine called Athens the No. 1 college music scene in the country.
During his time at Georgia, George Fontaine, class of 1976, was the social chairman of Phi Delta Theta fraternity and was thus charged with booking bands for parties. He had a lot of good ones to choose from.
"There was just something about Athens that drew creative people who wanted to show what they could do through music," said Fontaine, who later helped transform the old Georgia Theatre into a music venue. He went on to establish his own record label, New West Records. "People talk about Austin [Texas] as a great music town, but Athens is different in the way the campus melts into downtown. It's just different.
"It was the happiest time of my life, and if I could, I would move back to Athens tomorrow."
Neil Williamson, now the sports marketing director of WSB Radio in Atlanta, was the general manager of WUOG, the campus FM station, in the late '70s. He saw a lot of great musical acts come through Athens.
"I remember standing outside and looking at the marquee on the Georgia Theatre one day," said Williamson. "The upcoming acts were Taj Mahal, a great blues singer; the Art Ensemble of Chicago, a wonderful avant-garde jazz band; David Allan Coe; and The Police. They were all coming to Athens in the space of just a few days!
"I was on the concert committee at Georgia for four years, and we got vilified by the Red & Black for bringing in acts that weren't big enough stars. We brought in Jimmy Buffett, Boston, Jackson Browne, Hall & Oates, Kenny Rogers, Dottie West, and Dolly Parton. Not bad."
The Murder of T.K. Harty
T.K. Harty's was one of the most popular student hangouts in Athens during the 1970s. The bar was known for its huge outdoor deck and a very narrow corridor where the ladies had to walk to get to the powder room. It was also known for "Zoo Night" when, for $10, students got a plastic cup and all the beer they could drink.
T.K. Harty's was located in The Station, a former railroad depot on Hoyt Street that became the closest thing Athens had to an entertainment district in the 1970s.
The owner, Ted "T.K." Harty, was only 29 years old but was a classic entrepreneur who had a vision. He was the first bar owner in Athens to build a deck, and he believed he could recreate his success in college towns around the country.
"Your first impression of Ted was that he was a Yankee. He was abrupt," said Athens caterer Lee Epting, who owned The Station complex back in the 1970s. "But we got along okay and later became friends. I wanted him to fashion the bar after one I saw in Heidelberg [Germany]. It would be a place for the students to hang out and meet their professors for a cold beer. Plus, I thought he had the perfect name for a bar."
With an agreement from Harty, Epting began to build the rest of The Station complex. He started an upscale restaurant, the Valdosta Dining Car. Then he entered into an agreement with John Mooney, who wanted to start a pizza place called "Somebody's Pizza."
"What we found out later was that John had worked for Everybody's Pizza near Emory [University in Atlanta] and worked there just long enough to learn their business and their recipes," Epting said. "That turned out to be a sign."
Epting laid out the ground rules on how everybody in the complex would work together.
"T.K. would anchor one end and sell draft beer," said Epting. "John would sell beer in cans and be anchored in the other end of the complex. I would have the upscale restaurant in the middle. There was enough business for everybody, and we would all serve our specific clientele."
But Mooney, said Epting, did not stick with the plan.
"He would go down to T.K.'s and start giving away tokens for nickel beers and soliciting T.K.'s customers," said Epting. "Every day I was getting a call from one of them complaining about the other."
Epting ultimately decided that he wanted to get out of The Station complex and, because Harty was an original investor in the project, Epting sold the lease to Harty. And it wasn't long before Harty served Mooney with an eviction notice.
On August 30, 1977, Harty was found slumped over his desk in his Athens home. He had been shot in the back of the head, execution style.
Mooney was charged with hiring Elmo Florence, a local electrician, to execute Harty. Florence was convicted of Harty's murder and served 30 years in prison before being granted parole in December 2007. Mooney was also convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Mooney escaped from a minimum security prison in 1980, and there were rumors that he was dead. But in April 1989 the television series Unsolved Mysteries aired a program on the T.K. Harty murder and publicized the fact that Mooney was still at large. He was recaptured several months later and still remains in prison.
The Fifth Quarter Lounge
Okay, this one is personal.
Located out on the Atlanta Highway, the Fifth Quarter Lounge was one of the first places in Athens to buy a big-screen projection television and draw huge crowds for sporting events. In 1975 I watched two of the biggest sporting moments in my young life while at the Fifth Quarter.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Always a Bulldog by Tony Barnhart. Copyright © 2011 Tony Barnhart. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Daniel Hamilton Magill Jr.,Acknowledgments,
Introduction: Once a Bulldog,
1. Memories of Athens,
2. The 100 Most Important Moments in Georgia Football History,
3. The Traditions of Georgia,
4. The People of Georgia,
5. Bulldogs in the College Football Hall of Fame,
6. Players Who Made a Difference,
7. The Coaches of Georgia,
8. That Championship Season,
9. Champions and Teams That Could Walk with Champions,
10. Always a Bulldog,
Afterword: The Best Is Yet to Come,
Bibliography,