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Court rules cohabitation not grounds
for determining joint ownership
ATLANTA (AP) - The Geor
gia Supreme Court refused
Wednesday to recognize cohabi
tation outside of marriage as
grounds for determining joint
ownership of property.
The court ruled against Hazel
Rehak, a Floyd County woman
who sought to enforce an al-
Busbee asked to transfer
youth center jurisdiction
MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga.
(AP) — State Sen. Culver Kidd
has asked Gov. George Busbee
to transfer jurisdiction over the
Youth Development Center
from the Department of Human
Resources to the Department of
Offender Rehabilitation.
In a letter last week to Bus
bee, Kidd said the DHR had
“failed miserably” in its ad
ministration of the Milledge
ville facility, which houses
Canoeing, drifting
state rivers differ
By NOLAN WALTERS
Daily Tifton Gazette
Canoeing South Georgia rivers differs from floating
North Georgia “white water” just as eating boiled okra
differs from eating fried okra.
The motions are the same, but the feeling is entirely dif
ferent.
For one, North Georgia rivers and sometimes streams
exhibit a strange phenomenon the natives call “current.”
This mysterious force actually will propel a boat down
stream with minimal help from the passengers.
I noticed this right off when I left South Georgia to at
tend college in Athens. The misconceptions I had about
upland rivers exist in reverse when people visit God
Country here, below the fall line.
A friend of mine took a little trip, three or four days,
down the Withlacoochee a while back, with a female
companion, his dog, a couple six-packs and other
necessities.
He was lying back drifting quietly; listening to the ca
cadas ratcheting in the woods and counting the tupelo
berries as they fell with a “ploop” into the river, when he
heard another canoe closing fast from behind.
Turning around, he beheld three crash-helmeted boys in
a heavy-duty, fiberglassed, reinforced floatation
guaranteed vessel churning toward him with the
discipline of Roman galley slaves.
“How far to the rapids?” one adventurer asked when in
range.
My friend couldn’t bring himself to tell the stranger
there weren’t any. So the two parties just studied each
other like different species until the river eased them
apart.
Having spent time in cosmopolitan Athens, I can readily
understand both my friend’s bias and that of the
strangers. But all those early South Georgia years
swimming in the Kinchafoonee (pronounced Kitch-afoo
nee) Creek and falling out of trees into a spring we called
Mossydale have had their effect.
I can resist the allure of plunging over cataracts, swirl
ing through Charybdis or bashing my brains out on a
granite wall, for fun.
“Maybe you prefer the slow death of a snake bite?”
someone might reasonably ask.
Well, no. But that’s not a problem if you watch where
you’re going. Actually, wild life—alligators, snakes and
the occasional wild boar—perform the same service for
South Georgia canoers that “white water” does for their
North Georgia cousins.
They terrorize and impress the innocent when you tell
them about your trip, probably the greatest of all
pleasures to be derived from the out-of-doors.
Sadly, this summer has not been a good one for river
trips in South Georgia, and my friends once again are
starting to doubt my devil-may-care courage. They’ve
heard all of last year’s adventures.
But the last time I tried the Alapaha River, billed as the
cleanest in Georgia, the best I could do was to take my
canoe for a walk.
After a while, it became embarrassing sitting there in
my noble, red Ouachita, looking heroic, in two inches of
water.
Fall is the kindest season for South Georgia canoe trips,
though, and the rain has picked up of late. During Sep
tember and October (and sometimes November and
December), the weather is still warm enough for people,
but not for snakes and bugs.
Plus, the water level usually reaches the right height
high enough for mobility and low enough to keep you out of
adjancent peanut fields.
There was a particular pleasure to be had last Labor
Day on the Alapaha, drifting now and then past old men
and boys fishing, asking if anything was biting.
You can’t find that sort of thing when you’re rocketing
down a river toward certain death.
In fact, I’d be satisfied right now to be camped out on a
sandbar, the moon the only light, listening to the owls
hooting back and l forth through the fog.
I wouldn’t mind some boiled okra either.
leged agreement to share own
ership of a home with Archie
Mathis, a man with whom she
had “cohabited” for 18 years
but never married.
“It is well settled that neither
a court of law nor a court of
equity will lend its aid to either
party to a contract founded
youthful offenders up to the age
of 17.
There have been about 60 es
capes from the center in the last
12 months, and two escapees
have been charged in con
nection with the death of a
Milledgeville man.
Kidd cited apprehension in
the community and added that
the youths are “thrown together
under scattered supervision and
limited control” and added that
upon an illegal or immoral con
sideration,” the court said in
the 5-2 ruling.
The woman alleged the two
bought the home together in
1957. Records show Mathis put
the home in his name for loan
purposes, and moved out in De
cember, 1975, ordering her to
“fights, extortion and sexual
promiscuity permeate the youth
population.”
Kidd also said the facility
originally was built to house
delinquents aged 8 to 13, but
slowly became transformed
into an institution for older ju
veniles with long records.
The DHR has announced
plans to build a fence around the
center and to hire more guards,
but Kidd said more radical
changes are needed.
He suggested that a new de
partment, called the Adolescent
Offender Rehabilitation Divi
sion, be created inside the DOR
and that the center and its three
sister institutions in the state be
placed under the division’s
authority.
“Law enforcement officials,
court officials and the citizens
who are violated (by escapees)
are justifiably angered to find
that virtually nothing can be
done with these juveniles on ap
prehension other than place
ment in the same inadequate
facility,” Kidd said.
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In another decision, the high
court reversed the conviction
and life sentence of Floyd
Brown, convicted in 1962 in a
Chatham County murder case
and imprisoned the last 15
years.
A federal court ruled earlier
Speck
Richard Speck, above, who 11
years ago murdered eight
young nurses, skipped his
parole hearing on Wednesday
and in a letter, used obscenities
to inform them he would see
them next year. (AP)
that Brown, now 57, was unlaw
fully denied an appeal because
his court-appointed attorneys
failed to carry out his wishes to
take the case to a new court,
and ordered that Brown either
be released or that his case be
reviewed.
Brown was convicted of the
murder of Mrs. J.T. “Billie”
Inman, whose body was found
in a wooded area near Savan
nah in 1962. She had been shot
five times.
The Georgia Supreme Court
said the conviction must be re
versed because blacks had been
systematically excluded from
the grand jury that indicted
Brown and the trial jury that
decided his case.
In other decisions, the court:
—Upheld the Clarke County
school board’s action in estab
lishing a millage rate designed
to produce a surplus.
—Upheld the conviction and
life sentence of Randy Darnell
Mitchell for the 1976 murder of
the wife of Superior Court Judge
Horace T. Ward of Fulton
County.
—Reversed the conviction
and life sentence of Judy Carter
in Bacon County for the 1974
shotgun slaying of her husband,
Roy Carter.
—Ruled it is not a violation of
law for a parttime teacher in a
county vocational-technical
school also to serve on the board
of education.
—Declared unconstitutional a
1960 law making the Laurens
County grand jury the final ar
bitrator in disputes between the
sheriff and the county commis
sioners.
Page 3
w ' Hit
"* ■’*’”*’*
Survived
water
Beetles and army worms
control of the army worm is Lannate on
soybeans and Sevin and Parathion on
pastures and lawn grasses.
“Sevin is one of the safer chemicals
and it will do the job if it is applied
properly. This has been one of the
major shortcomings of those who have
applied chemicals — they have not
applied the chemicals properly,” he
said.
Herbert Womack, Cooperative
Extension Service entomologist at the
Agricultrual Experiment Station in
Tifton, said the army worms arrived
about six weeks early this year and are
— Griffin Daily News Thursday, September s, 1977
HUNTINGTON, W. Va. — Eric Hagerstrand, a Cin
cinnati, Ohio, attorney, survived a white water raft trip on
a West Virginia river but was undone —by Monday’s
torrential rains — on his way home. Hagerstrand,
foreground, was flooded out when his van stalled in a fast
filling underpass here. (AP)
(Continued from page 1)
likely to be around longer.
The mature worm is light green to
black and grows to about one and one
half inches before going into the pupa
stage. It pupates five to 10 days and
then emerges as a moth. The moths
mate in two or three days and the cycle
starts again. The moths can lay up to
1,000 eggs in a season.
Womack said the hot, dry weather
attributed to the early arrival of the
worms. He also said viruses and fungus
diseases that usually hit the worms
have not developed this year.
