History sometimes goes astray

when filtered through the memory of those who've "been there, done

that," and occasionally an error gets by. No harm done, for the most

part.

Trouble is, when small inaccuracies

find their way to print, they have a way of becoming part of the public

record and then get picked up and repeated until they are themselves regarded

as history.

Without doubt, I've contributed

to such errata myself, so I offer most gently the following, to correct

a misstatement that appeared in a Peachtree Citizen Review several weeks

ago.

Before there was ever a Peachtree

City in western Fayette, there was the occasional local general store,

but nothing remotely resembling what we think of today as a comprehensive

supermarket. When we moved here in the summer of 1971, my dear neighbor

Tutt Cawthorne (now Larsen) and I carpooled to go shopping for a week's

worth of groceries at a time all the way to an A & P store on U.S.

Highway 27 in Fairburn.

We did have, by then, one little

grocery store, Dixieland, good for bread and milk and a few staples, at

the west end of Willowbend Shopping Center. Willow Road ran to the state

highway between Dixieland and Hanchey's Gulf station; it was later cut

off and rerouted into Willowbend near Pebblepocket Pool.

Jack Walls' laundromat and

Paul Sikes' Pak-A-Chic were in the middle of the strip, and at the east

end was the post office (although just now my memory fails to explain

why Dixieland was already open in 1971, but the post office was still

at the east end of the old city hall building).

That "center," long-since

renovated, is the strip of blue-roofed buildings at Willowbend Road and

Ga. Highway 54. Dixieland's location is now an office, two stories high.

Jim Hudson, who had a small

food store in Tyrone, believed in Peachtree City's potential and took

over Dixieland while Aberdeen Village Center was under construction. It

seemed to take forever. His son-in-law Jack Routon, now a Peachtree City

firefighter/paramedic, recalls that Jim ran Dixieland from 1972 to 1974,

when he finally moved into the bright, spacious Hudson's Supermarket

the first and only such facility on the west side of the county.

I tell you this to be sure

Jim Hudson gets his due. Life was infinitely easier for all of us once

that store opened. And for at least 11 years, Jim contributed to the community,

supporting the many organizations and traditions that were just a-borning

in my fledgling hometown then. He was known to carry a tab for customers

down on their luck, although he did not suffer fools gladly.

Jack and Brenda, Jim's daughter,

ran the store for awhile when Jim's health failed he died in 1988 at the

age of 66 and they sold it to the Tants, who ran it as A & T like

their long-established store in Fayetteville. Big Star, which became the

A & P and is now Harris Teeter's, certainly offered the Aberdeen store

competition both in prices and diversity, but we used to say it took longer

to shop at the "old" store because you couldn't drop in for

a can of soup without running into at least six people with whom you had

to visit.

As long as I'm reminiscing,

does anyone else recall the building most of us refer to as "old

city hall," which stood approximately where today's municipal plaza

sparkles like a diamond at the heart of town? When we first came to town,

that little California-style building quartered (from east end to west)

the post office; Otis Viall's insurance office; the offices of Garden

Cities Development Co., PCDC's predecessor; and Floy Farr's Fayette State

Bank, the only bank in town, complete with vault and a drive-through window.

It's hard to believe now, but

nearly every afternoon, a helicopter landed on the lawn in front of the

bank, picking up the day's money (so we thought) or delivering important

documents from Atlanta ­ a then-high-tech transfer that today would

be handled electronically.

Now let's see. I'm doing this

from memory, miles from my sources, so if I scramble history, I'll count

on a reader to correct me :

When the City of Peachtree

City needed space, Garden Cities provided a corner in its offices, a desk

and a part-time city clerk.

When the bank moved into its

big new building at Aberdeen, the west end of the old office strip became

City Hall, vault, drive-through window and all.

When the post office moved

to the Willowbend location, the Police Department and, later, the 911

dispatchers got the east end of the building.

When Otis moved his insurance

office out, the police expanded into his space, and when Garden Cities

moved to bigger digs, the city got the use of the central part of the

building for a library and meeting room.

I well remember City Council

and other large public meetings being conducted at Peachtree City Elementary

School on Wisdom Road during some period of renovation or new construction.

One such meeting was taking place April 8, 1974, when Hank Aaron hit number

715 over the fence at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, creating his own

moment in history.

Not to mention a distraction

to ours.

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