Last column we started through the “Looking Back” photo book the Dalton Daily Citizen put out in 2001 filled with old photos of folks and families and familiar places from waaaay back in time. The Town Crier took a look at the book a while back but focused on what most folks would focus on, the people and places.
The telling detail
This time around the Town Crier has gone all shamus on the photos, looking far in the background for signage that gives us interesting info on what businesses were around then, as well as other bits of info like what was playing at the movies or how much pork chops were. There is knowledge to be gleaned from these photographs that will never show up in any other place, especially for smaller businesses that didn’t advertise anywhere. So, time to get out the old magnifying glass and take a gander at these photos with an eye out for the telling detail.
Previously, we discovered numerous store signs on a wide angle shot of Hamilton Street, and then dropped in on the telegraph office in the Old W&A Railroad depot. Flipping a few more pages we get to an interior shot of the old Hill Drug Store which was on the southwest side of Hamilton down near the Morris Street intersection.
I’ve looked at the picture several times but until I slowed down and really studied it, I had never seen the Christmas tree way in the background, or the evergreen bunting draped for decoration. and in the foreground I glanced at the young girls up front but never noticed they were eating either vanilla ice cream cones or perhaps carnation flowers. I’m going to go with the ice cream. You can’t make one out in the photograph but I’d love to see one of the lunch counter menus.
Too small to read, but visible on the back wall, are the diplomas and certifications for the pharmacists. There’s a counter around the walls with shelves filled with medicinals and pharmacy items. Above each section is a name plaque with departments for “Skin-Ointments,” “Prescriptions,” “Sick Room Supplies,” “Liniments” and what looks like “Mange Medicines.” This was before pet stores so I’m guessing the local pharmacy was for women, men and man’s best friends.
Moving on to some outside shots of business, there’s a picture of a series of flatcars on the railroad loaded with the jail cells that Manly Jail Works innovated. Instead of building a building and putting bars on the windows (if you’ve seen a jail break in an old Western film, you know how easy it was to bust out), these jail cells were literally steel boxes/cages that fit on a rail car for easy shipment. Once on location you put them in or built the structure around them and the prisoners were enclosed on all sides, including above and below, with steel.
On the portion of the train you can see there are five cars with a jail cell on each. For advertising as the train passes through other towns there are banners on the cages. Every third rail car gets a banner. In the middle it says “Manly Jail Works Builders.” On the left side of the banner it explains “Portable Convict Cage” and on the right side “Dalton GA”, so you know where to buy one of these beauties (unless you’re inside looking out) for $525 in 1912.
In a photo above this one is the outside of the North Georgia Buggy Co., photographed in 1919. Under the company name it says “Buggies, Wagons, Harness.” In the street in front is a tractor with a poster on it proclaiming “Sold To Bill Wood.” If Bill has bought it, you should get one, too!
In a photo from the 1920s looking down King Street you can make out the signage for “Fincher & Nichols Paint and Oil Store.” I’m not exactly sure what that means: oil paint? Oil for mechanical things? and just this side of it you can see painted on the side of the building “R. D. H.” with the rest of it covered by another building, but that clue lets us know it was R.D. Hurt Dry Cleaners, which was still around when I got old enough to need dry cleaning. Dry cleaning was invented in America in 1821 or Paris in 1845. In 1924, a William Stoddard from Atlanta developed a better chemical. Dry cleaning isn’t really dry, it just uses a chemical to wash clothes instead of water.
From 1923 there’s a picture of a horse and wagon. The wagon has “Dalton Bakery” and “Fresh Bread Daily” written on the side. This was in the days when groceries like bread and dairy came to your house. On the side of the building is a painted sign that says “Bakery” and is part of a still life showing bread, rolls and a cake. On the next page is another, wider angle of the bakery. It shows two trucks for delivering the bread. The building is two stories high with a porch on the second floor. On the windows on either side of the doors “Dalton Bakery” is painted with the proprietor’s name on it, Mr. Ellis.
Turn the page and there’s a place where the bakery trucks may have filled up with gas. A gentleman by the name of Gordon William Bearden evidently had at least two grocery stores in town. In front of one he had gasoline pumps so you could fill up with “That Good Gulf Gas,” as it says on the pump, while the signs on the windows for the store specials would lure you in to buy your groceries.
The window signs state, “Lard bucket $1.95,” “Coffee bucket $1.10” and “flour plain 4 lb bag $1.65.” There’s coffee and biscuits for breakfast right there.
His other store was called the Jitney Jungle, which was run by him, but was part of a chain of grocery stores started in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1919. It was a privately-owned company and became a large chain throughout the South, eventually sold by the family in the early 1990s, with about 100 stores for $400 million and then the chain was eventually sold to Winn-Dixie.
The name Jitney Jungle comes from jitney being a type of low-cost bus that carrried people (think of a 12- or 18-person van) back then around town, say from the railroad depot to a hotel. It generally cost a nickel, so jitney took on a second slang meaning of a nickel.
The window states, “Save a nickel on a quarter,” meaning for every quarter you spend there you’ll save a nickel on the prices. The jungle part came from the idea you would find a jungle of deals inside. Way back, a lot of stores gave you credit so you could get things today and pay on payday or when the crops came in. Jitney Jungle was a cash-and-carry model; pay when you shop, which was a somewhat novel idea at the time. Products and prices in the window include “Full Cream Cheese for $.15 a pound, Fat Back $.9 a pound, Beef Roast $.19 a pound, Sausage $.15 a pound, Sugar … 10 lbs $.49.” I can’t make out what the “Pig Liver” is going for, but I’m OK with that.
Travel business
Dalton is on Highway 41, aka the Old Dixie Highway, and before the interstate, 41 was a major highway for traveling from the North to the South, with Miami at the southern end and going to Chicago and on up into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Old Dalton photos show some of the businesses that relied on some of that travel business.
There’s a picture of a lady at the “Ellis House, Rooms, Free Garage” and outside the main house “Cottages” with “Drive-in” which meant you parked next to them. Downtown was the Lone Star Service Station, a Texaco station with signs all along the top of the store to let you know that by dialing 555 you could get “Service with a smile,” “Road Information” was available as well as “Tire Service,” and there was a “Ladies Rest Room.” High Pressure Washing,” “Polishing” and “Greasing” were to be had, and with “Texaco Products” you got “Prompt Road Service.” In addition to the “Texaco Fire Chief Gas” the station provided “Texaco Oil,” “Texaco Ethyl,” and was one of the “Murray Tire Stores.” and on the side of the station was a place to get your vehicle clean. A car wash? No! An “Auto Laundry” they called it.
The photos of Dalton’s first taxi company show that on the cars the doors had “Blue Bird Cab” and to summon one all you had to do was call (or maybe ask the operator back then?) 988. The two-tone cabs are numbered, and there is a cab “3,” “5” and “10” so there was quite the fleet. They have “TAXI” painted on the top, over the front windshield.
And looking at the pictures, my detective skills pick out the Home Plate Cafe behind and across the street. On the side of the building is a big Coke ad and the word “Luncheon” framing it. So let’s all get a Coke and ponder on what we’ve learned by looking at these pictures as the clues to the past they are.
Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.