A Hundred Year Story, Part 40

By Elton Camp

The Years in Columbus, Georgia

My father wanted me to go directly on to graduate school. I considered that for a while.

The two I most seriously considered were the University of Mississippi and the University of
Southern Mississippi. I went so far as to apply to Ole Miss, but withdrew the application before
they acted on it. Dr. Self, dean of the graduate school at Jacksonville, contacted me to try to get
me to enroll there, but at that time they didn’t offer a master’s degree in biology. The education
master’s they suggested didn’t fit with my long-range plans. To work at the secondary level was
to be a temporary arrangement.

Near the end of my senior year, a recruiter, R. Bryce Carson, Assistant Superintendent of
Education, came from the Muscogee County School District to recruit teachers for Columbus,
Georgia. “There’s an opening in biology at Columbus High School and another one at Jordan
Vocational High School,” he explained.

Columbus High School was the outstanding academic secondary school, so I expressed
interest only in that opening. I heard from the recruiter within a couple of weeks. He informed
me that I had an appointment with Dr. John Deason, principal of Columbus High. “Call me when
you get into town and I’ll tell you where to meet Dr. Deason,” he said.

My parents and I made the over 200-mile trip to Georgia. When I called, the truth
emerged. He hadn’t even told Deason to expect me. The principal wasn’t in town and wouldn’t
be back until late evening. Astonished, I said, “You let me come all this way and didn’t really
make an appointment.”

Carson acted like it was nothing of consequence. “Go take in a movie and then it won’t be
long until he gets back.”

I came very close to telling him off and leaving, but decided to stick it out since I was
there. Upon his return, I met with Deason and accepted his offer of employment. That school
system was having a difficult time keeping its positions filled. In time, I learned the reasons.

To take a job out of state for five years was a huge mistake that costs hundreds of dollars
every month in lost retirement benefits. A young person seldom looks that far into the future. My
contract called for $3800 annually, but it increased to $4000 before school started. Both amounts
were well above the pay in Alabama. I looked at the short-term when I should have taken a long-
term view.

The Muscogee County School District had a policy of paying new hires after only two
weeks during the first month of employment. This was humane and considerate since many of us
were fresh out of college and working at our first jobs. My monthly take-home pay was about
$280 and didn’t reach $300 until two years later. If paid as worked, over nine months, each check
would’ve been more, but I spread it out over 12 months. By doing that, I was sure of regular
income.

An older teacher advised me that if I took it in nine months, it could hurt Social Security
benefits by creating a blank quarter each year. Social Security age seemed a remote possibility so
that factored only slightly into my decision. Georgia was one of the few states that wouldn’t
allow teachers to receive both retirement and Social Security, so even if that was true, it didn’t
matter to people who planned to live permanently in Georgia. I expected to return to Alabama at
some point.

The next item of business was to find a place to stay in Columbus. I’d written the principal
for suggestions, but he’d ignored my inquiry. “Your letter got lost under a pile of papers on my
desk,” he explained when I called him about it. “I found it only yesterday.” He sent me a city
map with a circle drawn around several blocks near the high school. “This is the area you’ll
want,” he jotted on the edge of the map. The information was worthless.

I contacted the Chamber of Commerce but their senseless reply was to advise me to stay at
the Ralston Hotel, an expensive downtown hotel. As they surely must have known, the place was
far beyond my modest means.

My parents went with me on a second trip a few weeks before school started in the fall.
We scanned the list of available rentals in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer and made phone calls to
likely prospects.

The first possibility we located was an upstairs apartment directly across the street from
the back of the school, but it had two bedrooms and rented for the exorbitant amount of $75 a
month. When combined with a utility bill, I couldn’t afford it. We kept looking.

Later in the day, we pulled into the shade of a huge tree in a churchyard to look at the
newspaper. Without warning an enormous limb crashed onto the car. It smashed the windshield
of their new Ford Falcon. The loud noise caused mother not to hear well for an hour or so. It
scared Buster, the Chihuahua so much that he tried to break free and run away. People at
surrounding houses came out and looked, but turned and went back inside. We could expect no
help.

“We’ll call the State Farm agent,” my father decided. “Maybe he’ll tell us what to do.
We can’t drive the car the way it is.” The windshield was demolished and glass was scattered
inside from front to back.

The representative was nearby, around the corner on Linwood Avenue. The man came
right over and led us to a glass repair shop. They promptly replaced the windshield. Because he
provided such outstanding assistance, I took out insurance with him for the entire time I lived in
Columbus. One time, I let him finance a car for me. He was well rewarded for his service.

I thought I had to find something in walking distance of the school since I didn’t expect to
have a car. My father ended up lending me the old 1938 Chevrolet for a few months until I saved
enough to pay down on a new car. But I didn’t know that at the time. I felt that I had to limit my
search to an area within a half-mile or so of the school.

We next responded to a want ad reading: “Highland Hall. Gentleman, a home for you.” It
contained the street address, 1504 17th Street and the phone number 322-4938. It was two blocks
from the school, an easy walk. The house was large, old, white wood, with green trim. It was on
a lot with little frontage, but surrounded with brick walls and had a brick cottage out back. The
rear of the house was two-story. The grounds were cluttered with random shrubbery and flowers,
but neatly kept.

Highland Hall

We mounted the high front steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. A short, poorly
dressed older lady with glasses opened the door. I explained the reason for being there.

“Come in and see if this suits you,” she invited.

Another older woman hurried toward the front from within the mansion. “This is my
sister, Mary Mowen,” Mrs. Smith informed us.

“Arsenic and Old Lace,” I heard my mother whisper to my father.

The comparison to the story was valid. They were two old ladies who rented rooms to
men. They looked, talked, and acted like the insane, murderous women in the play.

The interior was a surprise. The house was an elegant mansion with splendid furnishings
in some rooms. The ceiling of the long, wide entrance hall was an impressive 24 feet high. It was
crowded with antique furnishings such as enormous mirrors, tall oriental vases, carved tables, and
an incredible glass prism chandelier with various tiers of prisms. Genuine Oriental rugs covered
the floors.

Mrs. Smith explained, “My husband was an importer. Most of these things came from
European castles.”

A library was to the right and a parlor to the left. Both were filled with luxurious antique
furniture. Mrs. Smith’s bedroom, the second door on the right, called the Josephine Room,
contained the most elegant antique canopy bed I’ve ever seen. Other pieces matched.

“I didn’t know you could rent a room in a house like this,” I said with awe. Mrs. Smith
smiled, but made no reply.
 My Downstairs Room as it Appears in 2009

The room that I rented was the second one on the left, but that door from the entrance hall
was never used. The entrance hall led into a common area that had, at some point, been open to
the outside. It appeared that the kitchen had once been separate from the house. Over the years, it
had been attached. The floor in the commons was shiny black and white tile. The entrance to my
room led off from it. To the left, outside my door, were two recliners and a black & white TV set.
Color sets were rare in those days. This is the set where, in 1964, I saw Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey
Oswald.

Three bedrooms downstairs and an apartment upstairs were available for rent. The room
that I agreed to take was far less elegant than the ones near the front of the house, but it had an
unbelievable chandelier with many tiers of crystals. Strangely, as it then seemed, the many
sockets for light bulbs were empty except for a single sixty-watt bulb.

I later learned that Mrs. Smith was a miser as to the use of electricity. She would
complain if I left the lights on in my room even long enough to use the bathroom down the
hallway toward the back. Although I knew she might raise a howl, I finally slipped bulbs into all
the empty sockets so I could enjoy the light when I had my door closed. I figured she might not
notice it since she’d be too stingy to turn on the light when she was in the room. That assumption
must’ve been correct since she never seemed to discover it.

“Maid service is included,” she stated. I assumed that she employed a maid, but later
learned that she did the work herself.

She kept my room clean and would’ve even made up my bed each day, but I did that
myself. She changed the bed with fresh sheets weekly. Lacking a washer and dryer, she had the
sheets and towels done at a laundry near downtown.

The furniture in my room was quite ordinary, but a nice cedar lined closet was a luxury
feature. Heat was by an unvented gas space heater that I was worried might create carbon
monoxide. The old windows with their wavy glass panes were so drafty that there probably was
no reason for concern. Old houses, built when energy was inexpensive, were like that.

The rental was $35 a month which seems cheap by current standards, but that represented
a significant fraction of my take-home pay. Still it was a bargain since that included all utilities
plus she usually fed me breakfast and supper at no cost. She could sometimes be surprisingly
generous since that was no part of the deal. I tried to refuse it, but she insisted.

The bank I used was in easy walking distance of where I stayed, as were a barbershop and
coin laundry. It was possible to walk to a major supermarket, but I drove there since carrying a
bag of purchases would’ve been a task. It would’ve been possible, with some difficulty, to get by
without a car.

Of the two other rental bedrooms downstairs, one contained an impressive four-poster
canopy bed that Mrs. Smith claimed was copied to appear in the movie Gone With the Wind. She
said that her nieces knew Margaret Mitchell who had visited in the house and mentioned her
furniture to the moviemakers. Reportedly, they came there to made drawings of it to reproduce
for inclusion in Tara. I later found out that it was a total fabrication. She was lying almost
anytime her lips were moving.

Canopy Bed Like the One in the Room

That pattern of mendacity continued the five years I lived there. She told people that
various prominent generals had lived in her house early in their careers, but that was also untrue.

“Mark Clark and Omar Bradley lived here when they were majors and colonels,” she told
person after person during the years I was a renter. Perhaps it was real to her.

It was true that Dwight Eisenhower had regularly eaten at a café about a mile from the
house. The place’s name was GooGoo. The management kept Ike’s favorite barstool marked
even during the time I was living there. The spot finally burned and wasn’t rebuilt. I never visited
it, but have since wished that I had.

It was Ft. Benning that drew prominent military people to Columbus. The military base
was on the opposite side of town from where I lived, out Victory Drive. Ironically, it was named
for a Confederate general. I didn’t have any reason to drive out that way beyond curiosity as to
what that famous area looked like. It had lots of places to eat, but they tended to be seeding-
looking in keeping with catering to the military. From the public road I wasn’t able to see any of
the military installation beyond distant buildings and threatening signs warning away trespassers.

The children of low-ranking military personnel attended the nearby Baker High School,
but we got the kids of the officers at Columbus High School. It was the elite school at the time.
The school for Negroes was Carver High. Segregation was in full flower.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)