Georgia – Mostly True

Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, Georgia

It had been many years since I’d visited Cartersville, a small city of 20,000 north of Atlanta. In October of 2017 my wife’s sister took us to the Booth Western Art Museum. I never imagined that this gem of a museum was in the little town famous for the world’s first outdoor Coca Cola sign and the Etowah Indian Mounds.

The museum is home to the largest collection of western art in the United States and is the second largest art museum in Georgia.

The grounds contain sculptures by leading western artists, including the wonderful “An Honest Day’s Work by Fred Fellows.

The museum hosts hundreds of paintings and sculptures from artists as diverse as Frederic Remington and Charles Russell to Andy Warhol and Leroy Neiman. The art is divided into galleries focusing on various aspects of western art. There are also galleries dedicated to the American Civil War and U.S. Presidents.

Millar Presidential Gallery

War Is Hell Gallery

Heading West Gallery

Mythic West Gallery

The Millar Presidential Gallery is fascinating, with portraits and information about each of our presidents. There is a trivia question for each president. Did you know that the “S” in Harry S. Truman doesn’t stand for anything and that Ulysses S. Grant was the first president to be pulled over for speeding? Interesting and fun stuff.

My favorite gallery was the Modern Art gallery, but all the galleries were full of beautiful works. There was a lot of art by Native American artists and African American artists as well as famous artists like Frederic Remington. Here’s a wonderful painting by Shonto Begay titled “Our Promised Road”.

Bob Vann has a couple pieces in the museum including “The Victorio Campaign”.

Andy Warhol’s “Sitting Bull” is one of the highlights of the Modern Art gallery.

Andy Warhol - Sitting Bull — Andy Warhol – Sitting Bull

And now for something completely different. Bill Schenk’s beautiful “From Dust to Dusk” celebrates the beauty of the western landscape with an unusual jazz theme.

We spent hours at the museum and could probably return to find new art or art that we failed to notice on the first trip. If you’re in the Atlanta area I hope you’ll visit this wonderful museum.

Sixes Mill, Sixes, Georgia

This old gristmill was built in the 1820s to service a community of miners and prospectors. It survived the American Civil War and was extensively rebuilt in the 1880s. It’s in remarkably great shape for a structure of this kind. Sixes Mill is on private property, but you can easily pull off the road to take a photo.

Old Mill

Southern Tech Bathtub Racing

Most bathtub racing is either on water, which makes sense because they’re usually associated with water, or turned into modified wheel barrows and pushed for the race. Southern Tech, in Marietta, Georgia, had a different take on bathtub racing, turning the tubs into little rockets.

Bathtub racing at Southern Tech began in the late 1960s and continued into the early 1980s before taking a 20 year hiatus. Racing did return to Southern Tech during the early 2000s but seems to have once more stopped when Southern Tech was consolidated into nearby Kennesaw State University.

I attended the races, I think, in 1981. I was surprised at the speed these things could achieve. The bodies were bathtubs but the rest was pure racing machines. You can see from the photo that speeds were considerable and the racers took this sport seriously.

Bathtub Race Sensia 100

Red Boathouse

This photo was taken many years ago, with a film camera, at a small lake in North Georgia. I was lucky enough to be the only person visiting that particular spot that day and was able to enjoy the quiet peace and beauty of the lake and woods. I was taken by the way the man made object looked so at home in the natural setting. I also like the faded red of the boathouse is complemented by the reddish tint in some of the foliage.

Red Boathouse

National Infantry Museum, Columbus, GA Summer 2013

I was an Army brat. We moved a lot but we always seemed to go back to Columbus, Georgia, home to Fort Benning. Oakland Park, Baker Village, Benning Hills- those were the neighborhoods we lived in while my dad was stationed at Fort Benning, while he was in Vietnam and after he retired. I consider Columbus my home town.

That being said, my trips back to Columbus have been few and far between. Life gets in the way. My wife and I did take a trip to Columbus in 2013 to attend an impromptu reunion of the Baker High School Class of 1978. I really enjoyed seeing my classmates and I was amazed at how Columbus had changed over the years since I was last there.

There are a lot of really nice things to do in Columbus and one of them is the National Infantry Museum. Opened in 2009, the museum has one several awards, including USA Today’s 2016 Readers’ Choice Award for Best Free Museum. We visited the museum as part of a memorial luncheon for classmates who are no longer with us.

The first thing that struck me was the Infantryman, or Follow Me, statue at the entrance to the museum. The statue was originally located at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning before being moved to the Infantry Museum. What was interesting to me is that the sculpture was created by two U.S. soldiers, Private First Class Manfred Bass and Private First Class Karl H. Van Krog. It’s a beautiful monument to the Infantrymen of our country.

Infantry Museum Entrance HDR Structurized 1 — The Infantryman sculpture

The museum campus has a 2,100 seat stadium where Army trainee graduations are held twice a week. We visited on a graduation day and there were a couple hundred very proud graduates and their family members at the museum that day.

The exhibits inside the museum honor the men who fought in the many wars and conflicts the United States have participated in over the years and can only be described as incredible. The entrance to the exhibits is called the Last 100 Yards Ramp. As you walk up the ramp you pass Infantrymen fighting battles from the Revolutionary War through the Afghanistan War.

Infantry Museum Paratrooper — The Last 100 Yards Ramp

My favorite exhibit halls were the World At War 1929-1947 and the Cold War 1947-1989. Life size displays are combined with projected images to create amazing interactive dioramas. Here, a Korean War soldier sits and writes a letter to home.

Infantry Museum WWII Trench HDR Deep 1 — The Cold War Exhibit

A special exhibit, the Hall of Valor, pays tribute to the nearly 1,500 American Infantrymen who were awarded the nation’s highest award for bravery, the Medal of Honor. It’s a beautiful exhibit.

Infantry Museum Medal of Honor Hall — The Hall of Valor

Some of the weaponry on display is quite scary. There’s one weapon, kind of a rocket launcher, designed to launch a shell armed with a nuclear warhead up to five miles. Fortunately, it was never used.

There are exhibits focusing on the Rangers, Cavalry, and Armor, all important parts of the Infantry. There’s even an exhibit hall celebrating the connections between Fort Benning and Columbus.

Infantry Museum Ranger Room — Ranger Exhibit

There’s a lot more to Columbus. There’s the Chattahoochee RiverWalk, the Coca Cola Space Science Center and Planetarium and a whitewater kayaking course on the Chattahoochee River. The Infantry Museum, though, brought back a lot of memories from a childhood lived around Columbus and the Army. Our day at the museum was a day well spent.

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