Woodville

My Grandmother Ellen McWhorter, "Nenny", among many wonderful gifts, brought us the Woodville branch: Uncle Bill, Uncle Vase, Aunt Lucile, and Aunt Coralita. Plus cousins Mack & Julian.

Dad took me several times on a weekend night-fishing trip to Woodville. Uncle Bill and Uncle Vase would load up Vase's sedan with essentials and we'd head to the fish camp on the Oconee (or maybe a large creek tributary... not sure exactly where. I was maybe 8). After setting up camp for cooking and sleeping, out came the Coleman gas/mantel lanterns with their mysterious hiss and bright light and we'd head for the Jon boats. First job was to run the trotline across the river, tied off to tree roots on either side. Then holding on to the line we'd tie on the leadered hooks with cut bait. Then back to camp for supper. Bill & Vase liked to cook. Everything was delicious. Including the Moon pies.

Most exciting was the midnight harvest/re-bait. Tape a Coleman to the bow seat, hold on against the swirling current, and work our way across the dark water. Quite a few hooks would have had the bait stolen, and a few would have a good size catfish. We re-bait all the hooks and take the fish back to camp for cleaning. This was an un-imaginable adventure for a boy. I don't think anything in modern life compares. What would happen if we lost grip on the line? Would we sink? Go all the way to the ocean? What about dams?

Breakfast was eggs, bacon, sausage, catfish filets, and coffee for the men. I probly had milk or juice, don't remember. I do remember Uncle Vase would produce a block of yellow cheese and carve a few chunks into his coffee. After a while he'd fish out the melted cheese and spread it on a piece of toast with his jack knife. That's when I knew he was a genius.

Sometimes when visiting Woodville we'd fish on a lake in the daytime. To me that was OK, but in no way as fun as the night trotline camp. Vase used grubs from a knocked-down wasp nest as bait. One time he got stung when he left a nest in the car trunk and they hatched and swarmed out when he opened the trunk a few days later. I got wasp-stung down there, maybe from the car trunk. Vase made a compress of cigarette tobacco and spit, which made the sting go away fairly quickly.

The whole family would drive down from Athens around Christmas. The old houses were all wood frame two-stories with a walk-in "crawl space" underneath and a dog-trot down the middle of the first floor. Many if not all rooms had a fireplace. Floors were pine, creaky and wavy. They had two modernizations - a large black&white TV (with a tiny screen) and a new-fangled oil heater, one of those huge brown metal jobs. It was cold on many of these Christmas visits. The oil heater kept the TV room at about 90 degrees, which they seemed to like, and the rest of the house would be just barely above absolute zero.

Cousin Julian, a teenager,  was much too old to be bothered with the fish camp. He undoubtedly had bigger fish to fry. Later on, Julian acquired an outboard motor "speed boat". He taught Ellen and me to water ski on Lake Sinclair. That was another huge adventure for us around Woodville. I never forgot that skill. (Or the sore arms and shoulders ...) The next-best time water skiing for me was when visiting Jimmy Green's place on Lake Burton as a semi-adult.

I had to call Ellen to be reminded of the exact relationships of the Woodville clan. Bill, Vase, Lucille, and Coralita were siblings of my granddaddy Bob McWhorter, and Mack and Julian Davison were children of Coralita and Mr Davison. I need to write a fairly deep and lengthy (and possibly boring) essay on the McWhorter connection and my grandmother. Just as the iceberg tip, Bob was her third husband. No divorces, just deaths. The first was Dr Jesse Ansley Griffin, my "blood" grandfather who died while my mom was young. The second was Mr Alexander Rhodes, who became my mom's Daddy and who gave her his name - she was Sarah Rhodes Lacher when she passed away at age 99. The third was Robert Ligon McWhorter, "Bobpa", the only granddaddy I knew as a child. Nenny and Bobpa are buried in the McWhorter family cemetery in Woodville. Ellen and I visited a few years back and scattered some of Sarah's ashes there. Julian's boat was still in his garage.

We were all embraced wholeheartedly by the Woodville branch that was grafted into our tree by my Grandmother.

Sakkara Big D, Nov 24, 2012 - August 1, 2026

With a heavy heart I bring the news that our Greyhound Big D has passed on to the happy racing grounds. 

Big D was born with several siblings in Abeline, Kansas, each named for a character in the TV show Dallas. He had a fairly short racing career, followed by two adoptions, the second being ours. The first was to a college student who didn't understand greyhounds and who turned him back to the adoption kennel in St Petersburg, where we found him. 

D was a gentle soul, fierce only when in chase. Like many greys who come out of racing in multiple states, he had an almost permanent disorientation and found it difficult to fully trust people. That lasted several years, until he finally accepted that he was part of a family.Tall, lean, and elegant, he always attracted attention first in a group of dogs. People loved to speak to him and let him nuzzle. His very height commanded instant respect among his peers as well. 

BigD's Grand Sire on his Sire's side (i.e., his granddaddy) sired a daughter named Drafting Design who was given a more suitable name for a family dog - Weezie. Our Weezie (whose obit is elsewhere in this blog). We had no idea we were adopting Weezie's nephew until weeks after we brought him into the family. 

BigD and Weezie shared a few traits. Both slender, both a touch headstrong, both self-assertive - when the opportunity arose, either one would launch a walkabout while ignoring any advice (or command) to the contrary. And of course, uncatchable, they can always trot a little faster when needed. And longevity - each living into the thirteenth year. 

The long string of Lacher-Teagle greys is most likely at its end:  Blitz, Joey, Clayton, Weezie, Beau, and now Big D have all been taken in, loved, and made part of our family. They are loving, kind, loyal creatures. We miss all of them, and we will miss having a Grey in the home.

Now Big D, go find your aunt Weezie. Perhaps, if we are worthy, we will find you all some day.

WGTV

On May 23, 1960, the University of Georgia WGTV signed on the airwaves as Georgia's first public television station. Jere Huggins and I were there. 

Jere and I were the first two employees, except for the two founding executives, Dave Fisher (executive producer) and Pope Hill (artistic director). It is unclear to me why Jere and I  were hired - maybe we were the only two applicants - but we had to learn virtually everything about the job while working at the job. Sort of OJT, or apprentice, or something. We were both math majors entering the sophomore year at UGA in September 1959 when we got these jobs. The hours were 2:00pm - 10:00pm, which allowed us to be full time students while holding down full time work. A remarkable stroke of luck. 

We learned studio lighting, Lekos and Fresnels, backlighting, side lighting, spots and floods, fill and contrast. We climbed ladders and adjusted the hardware, and saw the results through camera lenses. 

We learned the cameras. Huge monstrosities that weighed several hundred pounds mounted on pedestals that rolled, panned, and elevated smoothly. I recall we had three cameras, but normally used only two, operated by Jere and me. While Dave jabbered instructions to us via headsets and Pope threw up his hands at the lack of artistic expression while we filmed a farm show on the pros and cons of pole beans. It was exhilarating, video taping to the incredibly complex recorders. These used tape about 3 inches wide and recorded in cross-sectional strips via a spinning head. We recorded 30 minute shows in one take  - editing those complex tapes was almost impossible.

Pope and Dave were very interesting men. Both with a kind of "about to make the big time" attitude, in many ways like the characters in the TV show "WKRP in  Cincinnati". In Fall '59 Pope was ending a production of "Waiting for Godot" (way over my head) and Dave was tinkering with the protocols of technical direction, instructing the cameras, running the cuts and fades, checking the lighting, managing the talent. Both were eccentric and emotional, which added to the fun and enabled us to learn to get along with great varieties of people. 

I believe the first broadcast (May 23, 1960) was a tape of the farm show, with Jere and me working cameras. In Fall 1960, our junior year at UGA, transitions began. We had our first actual live broadcast (another farm show I think). A live 30-minute show is a pressure cooker. When taping, you could always start over to correct gross mistakes. With a live broadcast, all mistakes and accidents go out over the air. There's a scene in "Tootsie" about this.

Math was getting ever more interesting and time-consuming for me, and Jere was starting to think of media production as a career. I stuck with the skills I knew at the studio, but Jere became an apprentice technical director sitting in the control booth running the faders. 

Jere ended up switching out of math and into sound production. He moved to New York, worked on the sound track for the Woodstock film, got in the union, moved to Hollywood, and worked in the film industry. He was on a first name basis with Quentin Tarantino after being the lead film editor for Pulp Fiction.

While Jere was developing production skills, I took a couple of flings in the "talent" direction. There was a Christmas live show in December 1960 in which I had a role as an elf, dressed in green tights. Even more humiliating, a couple of months later, I was assigned to interview (live) Sarah Lacher. I do not remember why or what the topic was. But I do recall that I paused on live camera just at the point of speaking her name (trying to remember the next part of the script) which gave the impression that I had forgotten the name of my own mother. 

I stuck with math.

WGTV was the first, and has remained the flagship, station in what is now called Georgia Public Television (GPTV). They still occupy space in the Georgia Center (for Continuing Education).