GwinnettForum | Number 20.87 | Dec. 1, 2020
MOUNTAIN PARK CONCENTRATION: Here’s a map which shows the land area that the Mountain Park Community Association is focusing on, which includes some areas within the City of Lilburn. The northern boundary is U.S. Highway 29 (blue line), while U.S. Highway 78 is the southern boundary (light blue line). Its western boundary is the DeKalb County line, while the eastern limit is the Yellow River (pink line shows nearest street, Killian Hill Road). Current goals of the Association now include character enhancements, including sidewalks, on the Five Forks Trickum “corridor” between the two commercial nodes at the intersections of Rockbridge and Killian Hill Roads. There are three county parks between those two intersections.
TODAY’S FOCUS: Remembering vote counting in the ‘60s and sometimes bedsheet ballots
EEB PERSPECTIVE: Sunday afternoon junk call interruption really steamed me!
SPOTLIGHT: E.R. Snell Contractor, Inc.
FEEDBACK: Appreciates recent column about a dog scammer in Virginia
UPCOMING: Suwanee renovates old city hall, to get three story mural
NOTABLE: Gwinnett budget for 2021 totals $1.9 billion, up 3.7 percent
RECOMMENDED: Thank you, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse
GEORGIA TIDBIT: Jeanes Supervisors in Georgia help improve African American schools
MYSTERY PHOTO: Simple frame building has some clues as the Mystery Photo
LAGNIAPPE: Wetlands cleanup produces 9,650 pounds of trash
CALENDAR: Deck the Halls coming to Duluth this Saturday, December 5
Remembering vote counting in the ‘60s and sometimes bedsheet ballots
(Editor’s Note: Jim Puckett is a native Gwinnettian, and retired school administrator who also served in a variety of roles with the Georgia School Boards Association and as Executive Director of the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders.—eeb)
By Jim Puckett
BUFORD, Ga. | As I write this, controversy rages over the 2020 presidential election, in particular whether the votes were accurately tabulated. It reminds me of the times in the late 1960s when I helped count the votes in Puckett’s voting precinct in northeast Gwinnett County. The voting site was in a small cement block “courthouse” building on Hamilton Mill Road, across from what is now the intersection with Puckett’s Mill Road. Until the late 1940s, there was no electricity nor phones in the building. “Aladdin” kerosene lamps were used for illumination.
For many years, my dad, V. H. Puckett, was involved in Gwinnett Democratic Party politics. (At this time, there were few, if any, Republicans in the county.) As a member of the Democratic Executive Committee in the county, he served as the poll manager at the Puckett District voting precinct. When he first started, voting sites were often rambunctious places to be as the local “concerned citizens” hung around to see if their candidate had won the most votes in the precinct, often bolstered by alcoholic stimulation. Sometimes, fights broke out between supporters of opposing candidates.
During election days, Mom was always worried about Dad’s safety among these ‘ruffians.’ She became especially concerned one election night when he wasn’t home at the expected time. She sent the next-door neighbor to the polling site to check on him. The neighbor returned, reporting that all was well, but the count was taking longer than expected.
By the late 1960s, things on election day had calmed down and as poll site manager, Dad would ask me to come in in the afternoon to help with the after work voters rush and to stay after the polls closed to help count ballots. Back then, all ballots were paper and marked by hand by the voter. Some years ballots were quite large. These “bedsheet” ballots took considerable time for voters to complete and for counters to tally.
Some voters were focused on certain races and didn’t care about other contested offices on the ballot. One election, several voters, upon receiving their ballot told me, “I want to vote for (candidate for Governor) Lester Maddox. You can mark the rest of them anyway you want to.” Talking about potential for election fraud! For the record, I never took anyone up on their offer.
After the polls closed, the tally of ballots began. I don’t ever remember more than 300 or so votes being cast in the precinct in any election during these years (at the time the entire County population was only around 60,000.) Each ballot was read aloud with the candidate’s name that had been marked and a hand tally was marked one by one, office by office. It usually took a couple of hours to complete the count. Once the tally was complete, ballots and totals were then taken by car to the Gwinnett Courthouse, where votes from each precinct were added together and posted on a large blackboard for interested onlookers. Sometimes the smell of alcohol indicated that some of the onlookers were already celebrating an anticipated victory.
It was an interesting lesson for me to watch democracy in action in Puckett’s voting district.
I guess these words attributed to Winston Churchill about sums it up: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
And: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
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- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Sunday afternoon junk call interruption really steamed me!
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
DEC. 1, 2020 | The telephone rang on a Sunday afternoon. A pleasant-sounding lady said she was calling about my house in Norcross, and gave our address.
My immediate question to her was direct: “Why are you calling about our house?”
“I’m just calling to see if you are interested in selling your house,” she said.
Yep, it was just another junk call, this one interrupting a Sunday.
My reply: “Ma’am, I’ve lived in this house since 1979. And I’m planning to live here until I die. When you read my obit, that’s when you should call about this house, and not until then.”
She may have hung up before I got in that last part.
But boy, do junk calls make me mad! And this year, they seem to have multiplied, what with some people wanting to know the views of many about the election. But, somehow, this topped any I’ve had lately and got to me.
We all know the polling firms had a bad year, at best a mixed result this year about the elections. We’ve been getting those political calls since early spring, or was it late Winter? And since then, I’ve adopted a new response.
I prevaricate. One day I’ll give what I think are Democratic responses. The next time a call comes, I’ll give what would best be Republican responses. I’ve even fabricated in an independent mode.
No doubt you have had similar calls. I wonder if I’m the only one giving out false responses. After so long, you just get tired of giving these people interrupting your life with their questions to make money on your thoughts. So why not make your responses downright false, so that in the long run, the polls will report inaccurate data. In this manner, their wrong presentations will predict inaccurate and unreliable information. Can this work to make the polling industry wrong many times, and therefore useless?
So that’s my tactic for them bothering me. It is my way to do my utmost to make polls unreliable. At least the pollsters aren’t passing on to their candidates anything which is valid from me. If enough of us do that, perhaps the guy who invented the polling industry, George Gallup, an alumnus of one of my alma maters, we’ll have the guy twirling in his grave.
Perhaps much of Gwinnett also gets these unsolicited offers all of the time by phone or in the mail to buy our homes. But somehow, the mail inquiries don’t not seem as intrusive as people phoning and interrupting your day wanting to know: “Can I buy your house.” Yep, it steamed me!
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- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
E.R. Snell Contractor, Inc.
The public spiritedness of our sponsors allows us to bring GwinnettForum.com to you at no cost to readers. Today’s sponsor is E.R. Snell Contractor, Inc. of Snellville. Founded in 1923, ERS was built on Christian beliefs with honesty and integrity leading the way. Specializing in roads, bridges and culverts, its goal is to build a safe and modern highway system while preserving our natural environment. Through quality production and high safety standards, it strives to be the best contractor possible, while continuing to be a positive influence on its employees and the community.
- Visit online at www.ersnell.com.
- For a list of other sponsors of this forum, click here.
Appreciates recent column about a dog scammer in Virginia
Editor, the Forum:
Wow! Your recent column about dog scams was sent to me by my sister in Georgia. I was looking for a dog for my aunt in Lonoke, Arkansas while I was visiting family. I was looking at corgis and the family said they had two, Sasha and Ed, and sent me videos and photos, (Weren’t they cute?)
Then they said they had supposedly moved to “Virginia.” Thank you for the article on this dog scam. I ended up finding her a free puppy at a sales barn.
— Krissy Pollatz, Chicago, Illinois
There is no penalty for spreading lies on the airwaves
Editor, the Forum:
There are no penalties for people lying on the air waves. Trumpism and adherents are trying to build a new reality. They have already reached several million people looking for a present-day savior. However, their “New World” is like a Hollywood studio that would make Warner Brothers jealous. They live in an echo chamber.
If you want fantasy, just watch a lot of Fox, anything on OAN or NewsMax. Or for a shorter version, any of the president’s press briefings.
Folks lie, repeat lies, make up new lies and there is no penalty…unless they are under oath. I had an attorney friend tell me once, all you have to do is say one little thing that is true and then let it all hang out, unless you are under oath in a court of law. People even lie in the confession to their God through an intermediary.
Reputable news sources routinely fact-check of their stories. Proof positive that they will require facts are when NBC and CBS either demoted or fired a newscaster for not telling the truth or for expanding on it to make themselves look good.
I’m looking forward to a more mundane next four years.
— Ashley Herndon, Oceanside, Calif.
Joe Biden will be the second president from Pennsylvania
Editor, the Forum:
My home state is Pennsylvania, where I graduated from high school. I left to go to college and never voted there. Visited family and did business there, but never called it home again, though I will be buried there.
Pennsylvania up until now has had only one president of the United States, James Buchanan, the predecessor of Lincoln. Considered by all the historians I have read to be the worst of all the presidents. Buchanan was totally inept in dealing with the crisis facing the nation. He had a laissez faire attitude toward the country. Lincoln was elected by a minority vote and handed a mess.
Joe Biden will be the second president born in Pennsylvania. The stock market is 30,000. There are several vaccines available this December to begin curbing the COVID-19 virus from China. Arab countries are making peace with Israel. Troops are coming home and the world is generally quiet. Gas is about $2/gallon. Interest rates are below three percent for mortgages.
Let’s see what Joe Biden does with it.
— Byron Gilbert, Duluth
Send us your thoughts: We encourage you to send us your letters and thoughts on issues raised in GwinnettForum. Please limit comments to 300 words. We reserve the right to edit for clarity and length. Send feedback and letters to: elliott@brack.net
Suwanee renovates old city hall, to get three-story mural
The City of Suwanee has completed renovations to its nearly 60-year-old municipal court building, including a three-story addition of approximately 8,600 square feet to the existing 3,200 square foot building. The building – which was Suwanee’s original city hall – received an expanded lobby to accommodate court session crowds, doubled court clerk work space, and added new space for the police Special Enforcement Unit.
In keeping with the city’s request of developers to commit one percent of construction costs toward public art, a large mural will be painted on a three-story wall. Hapeville, Ga. muralist Lauren Pallotta Stumberg was selected by the Suwanee Public Art Commission out of the 24 artists from across the world who responded to the request for qualifications for the project.
Stumberg received her BS in fine arts from the University of Michigan, with post graduate work with the University of the South Pacific. Her public art commissions can be seen in Norcross, Peoplestown, Hapeville, and other Metro Atlanta cities.
A colorful abstract of magpies will cover the entire three-story wall and wrap around to the smaller retaining wall in front of the building. It will also include two free-standing five-foot-tall metal magpie sculptures. Stumberg frequently uses abstracted magpies in her work, having been inspired by an English nursery rhyme that translates one’s fortune based on the number of magpies one sees.
Today is deadline to pay Gwinnett County property taxes
The 2020 property tax bills in Gwinnett County are due today, December 1. Taxpayers may pay their bills online from any internet-connected device at www.GwinnettTaxCommissioner.com/pay.
- Paying online via e-check is simple, secure and incurs no added convenience fee.
- This year because of a CARES Act grant, paying via debit or credit card also incurs no added convenience fee.
- Mailed payments postmarked December 1 are accepted as timely; metered mail dates are not. The payment address is P.O. Box 372, Lawrenceville, Ga. 30046.
- Payments by check may be placed in drop boxes 24/7 at any tag office.
- In-person payments with cash, check, money order, debit card or credit card are accepted during stated business hours at any Gwinnett Tax Commissioner’s Office.
Gwinnett budget for 2021 totals $1.9 billion, up 3.7 percent
Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners Chairman Charlotte Nash presented her final proposed budget recently to guide County spending for the 2021 fiscal year.
The proposed budget for 2021 totals $1.91 billion, up 3.7 percent from the 2020 adopted budget. It consists of a $1.47 billion operating budget and a $441 million capital improvements budget, which includes funds from the County’s SPLOST program.
The continued uncertainty regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and the operations of the County led Chairman Nash to work with staff in tightening some aspects of the budget in order to create additional flexibility to respond to these challenges in 2021. The new budget also has a reserve fund for initiatives and improvements rather than funding many of the specific requests from departments. This approach will allow the next board of commissioners to decide which initiatives and improvements they deem most important.
New positions in Elections, Transportation and Information Technology are funded to meet the needs under the Smart and Sustainable Government priority.
To support the Board’s Strong and Vibrant Economy priority, funding is included for the new Rowen knowledge community, the Gwinnett Entrepreneur Center and the new Water Tower water innovation center.
The entire proposed 2021 budget resolution is available online at www.gwinnettcounty.com. Residents can offer input on the budget and its priorities at a public hearing on December 9 and on the County’s website through December 31. Commissioners will consider the final budget at their January 5 meeting.
GGC lecturer in history produces documentary on the Pilgrims
Smith
A faculty member at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) has just released a video about the Pilgrims. It is a 30 minute documentary entitled: The Pilgrims, 17th-Century English Emigrants. It is produced by Dr. Frank J. Smith, lecturer of History at GGC, and features an introduction by Provost T.J. Arant. It was done for the celebration of the 400th anniversary this year of the voyage of Mayflower. To access the video, use this link: https://youtu.be/DzDeCLpJkYE.
Thank you, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse
From Susan McBrayer, Sugar Hill: One doesn’t always read a P.G. Wodehouse story for the plot. No, Wodehouse offers much more than that. He whisks you away to a time in England that never truly existed and a place Anglophiles can only dream of. A world where violence consisted of nothing worse than pushing someone out of a rowboat and where language was so polite that “I say!” was about the most vulgar thing uttered. Wodehouse called his books “fairy tales for adults.” I read this book 35 years ago and fell in love with the posh, goofy Bertie Wooster and his brilliant, quintessential (and too-good-to-be true) butler, Jeeves, who always managed to save the day. I’ve been craving some frivolity lately so I’m reading it again. Is it incredibly silly and ridiculously unrealistic? Yes! But is it delightful and uplifting? Absolutely! So if you’re also looking for some escapist reading now, look no further.
An invitation: what books, restaurants, movies or web sites have you enjoyed recently? Send us your recent selection, along with a short paragraph (150 words) as to why you liked this, plus what you plan to visit or read next. Send to: elliott@brack.net
Jeanes supervisors in Georgia help improve African American schools
Anna T. Jeanes was a Philadelphia Quaker philanthropist who sought to improve community and school conditions for rural African Americans. In 1907 she donated $1 million for the creation of a fund to hire black teachers as supervisors in African American schools and to improve black communities. This fund was distributed by the General Education Board, which was established by the John D. Rockefeller Foundation in 1902.
The program in Georgia began with six Jeanes teachers in 1908 and eventually grew to 53 by 1939. Known as Jeanes Supervisors, a name upon which they insisted, the teachers encouraged the Division of Negro Education in Georgia to hire more African American educators. The Supervisors improved school buildings and grounds, organized clubs to develop African American communities, and sought to enrich local cultural and social life. Although the work of the Jeanes Supervisors was explicitly defined by guidelines established by the General Education Board, African American women often covertly used this role to enhance historical ties between blacks and social institutions and to maintain efforts to gain equality in Georgia.
In 1911 Georgia established the Division of Negro Education, which publicized the need for more Jeanes Supervisors. In the early years of the program, Supervisors initiated standard curriculum guidelines for African American teachers, combined the improvement of schools with the enhancement of community life, and successfully implemented summer school programs for teachers in several counties. Teaching methods followed industrial education guidelines, which combined academic education with training in cooking, farming, and the canning of produce and fruit.
In 1924 Walter B. Hill Jr. became director of the Division of Negro Education and aggressively promoted the hiring of Jeanes Supervisors, as did his successors, John C. Dixon and Robert Cousins. In 1935 Dixon appointed Helen A. Whiting, a professor from Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, to coordinate the Jeanes program in Georgia. For the next decade, Whiting worked hard to promote African American education and to improve classroom conditions. She developed curriculum guidelines to standardize teaching in schools and held demonstrations across the state for teachers and Jeanes Supervisors. One of Whiting’s most important goals was connecting African American lives to education. She created teaching programs that emphasized health, nutrition, academics, and community involvement in education.
In 1951, Georgia employed 95 Jeanes Supervisors, who by this time were being paid by the state. But the state was unaware that many Jeanes Supervisors were accomplishing more than educational improvements for African Americans. Those who were members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Georgia Teachers and Education Association (GTEA) also informed African American communities about the work, promoted by both organizations, for equal schools and voting rights. By communicating African American goals at the state and national level to local communities, many Supervisors served as leaders of the early civil rights movement during the 1950s. Following the guidelines for equal rights developed by C. L. Harper, the executive secretary of the GTEA, most Jeanes Supervisors constructed their duties in political, social, and educational terms.
Although the program ended in 1968, the contributions of the Jeanes Supervisors continued to benefit black communities, many of which would have lacked schools and better teachers without the efforts of these educators. The work of the Jeanes teachers in organizing civic leagues and promoting equal education during the 1950s also provided a critical foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1960s
- To view the Georgia Encyclopedia article online, go to http://georgiaencyclopedia.org
Simple frame building has some clues as the Mystery Photo
Today’s Mystery Photo seems fairly simple, a wooden house. Now figure out where it is located from the clues the photograph provides. Send your answer to elliott@brack.net, to include your hometown.
Rob Ponder of Duluth easily recognized what the recent Mystery Photo was, but did not know where it was located. He wrote: “I’m not sure where the ones in the photo are sitting. But you can buy the same trio for just $7,899.99 at Wayfair! We were looking for some “public art” for a hotel a while back and I remembered seeing several different versions of the same “three monkey” group on the WayFair site.”
The photograph came from Chuck Paul of Norcross. George Graf of Palmyra, Va. also recognized them. Virginia Klaer, Duluth wrote: “The mystery photo is titled ‘Three Monkeys Socializing on a Bench.’ The artist is from Thailand.”
Susan McBrayer of Sugar Hill recognized that “This one is tricky. These three monkeys socializing on a bench are sold online (from $3,000 to $10,000), so they could be in many places. I know they were in Koln, Cologne, Germany, for a few years and they were also on South Main Street in Sheridan, Wyoming, at one time. Are they still in those places?”
Allen Peel of San Antonio, Tex. wrote: “While I thought it would be easy, this week’s mystery photo was really quite challenging, so much so that I am not 100 percent confident that I have it correct. The issue is that this sculpture is actually available from a number of sources. Based on the stone work surrounding the statue in the mystery photo however, I am betting that this particular sculpture is located in (or around) the Rhine Garden along the western banks of the Rhine river, not far from the Ludwig Museum and the Hohenzollernbrucke in Cologne, Germany.
“This artwork is a play on the famous “Three Wise Monkeys” Japanese pictorial maxim, embodying the proverbial principle “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” In this case however the sculpture depicts a child monkey trying to avoid seeing his parents smooching on a bench. It made me laugh as it reminded me of my grandson (who just turned eight years old), and his reaction whenever we are watching a TV show or movie and someone starts to kiss someone else. He immediately covers his eyes, and asks me to tell him when the horrible scene is over, just to avoid this clearly ‘icky’ part of the show!”
9,650 POUNDS OF TRASH: In just three hours, Gwinnett Wetlands had a successful outing recently at Bromolow Creek. Altogether, the volunteers collected 103 bags of litter, found eight tires, a sofa, box springs, shopping carts, furniture and even a fire extinguisher, all totaling 9,650 pounds of trash. The event was co-hosted by Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful and Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources. Some 55 volunteers came out for this venture. Unfortunately, there was no identification of these participants.
Deck the Halls in Duluth will be on Saturday, December 5 from 1-6 p.m. on the Town Green. Santa will be flying in for this, but must fly back to the North Pole at 5 p.m. Mr. Claus will be posing for photographs from inside of his snow globe, and guests will be invited to pose for a free professional picture outside. All photos will be available for free digital download the week after the event.
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