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Health & Fitness

So Many Souls... Where to Begin?

  There are so many Souls of Norcross who have made themselves known to me over the thirty years I have lived in the historic district that I really can't decide where to begin? Let me say this about those who walked the streets, long before the streets were named or paved or saw the traffic tie ups of a modern Norcross, those founding families of Norcross sought to recover from a bloody war of Northern aggression, looking often to the church for direction.
  Life was simple but not easy. Farmers worked long days in hot fields alongside recently freed slaves of whom they continued to count as friends and neighbors. Although libations did not flow, as they do today in downtown restaurants and taverns, farmers brewed a corn mash, for medicinal purposes of course, and even sipping a Coca-Cola was frowned upon on Sundays.
   Funny to compare those hot summer days when neighbors gathered outside on large porches to seek relief from soaring temperatures, so unlike modern times when folks hide inside with air conditioning running up electric bills.
   Electricity was unheard of until about one hundred years ago (a drop in the bucket of the earth's life) and even then the average home did not hook on to the service until the 1950's. What a wonder it must have been to click on a light or a fan instead of reading the evening paper on the veranda hoping a gentle wind would provide a break in the stagnate Georgia heat.
    Music came from local bands playing big brass sounds on the old Dotson (now Thrasher) Park pavilion or Sunday service choirs who piped traditional hymns from the loft of one of the early congregations built on land lots donated by the town's founder, Jonathan Thrasher.
   Times were different, even hard to imagine, but luckily some of the Souls of Norcross have a tale to tell, which I hope to begin doing on this new blog, tales that will stir a reminiscent mellow feeling in Norcross 'moderns' allowing some respect for the past to mingle with an appreciation for the present.
  Now, let me sit on my porch for a time, listen for a train whistle to blow in to my mind one or two of those departed souls' spirited stories.
I will then pass a bit of Norcross' past along to you all of you dear readers...speak soon! 
Find details at...
http://www.historywalksofnorcross.com/
or
www.SallyToole.com

 



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