Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2A — THE MADISON COUNTY (GA) JOURNAL. THURSDAY. APRIL 23. 2009
Electricity .cont’dfrom 1A
Pictured on the front
(Top left) Clyde Fitzpatrick sits in his easy chair recently
next to his reading lamp, but as a youngster, he grew
up reading by the light of kerosene lamps and firelight.
Electricity, when it came to the rural areas like Madison
County, was “something wonderful,” he said.
(Top right) Wini Bell Hancock (L) and her younger sister
Trudy are pictured as small children. Hancock was a teen
before she and her family afford electricity in their home.
(Bottom right) Senior Center member Edna Mack is shown
enjoying one of her favorite pastimes - quilting. Mack was a
young girl when electricity came to Madison County.
on pretty well.
For one thing, he remembers the
towns having electricity through
Georgia Power before the cre
ation of FDR's Rural Electrical
Administration (REA) lit up the
farms and rural areas.
Ila Fligh School, where he went
to school (and later taught and
served as principal), had the first
auditorium/gymnasium in the
county, and it was equipped with
two electric lights that hung down
from the high ceiling. Power for
the lights (before the REA) came
from gasoline-powered dynamos
in a building behind the gym.
The lights, which were strung on
cords that hung over the gym floor,
were often the unfortunate victims
of a stray basketball, Fitzpatrick
remembers. When one of the light
bulbs popped (a frequent occur
rence) the audience waited patient
ly in the darkness, while the play
ers grabbed a tall straight ladder
kept for such occasions and hoisted
it toward the fight receptacle. One
boy would climb the ladder while
the others held it steady until he
replaced the bulb and climbed
back down. The game would then
resume where it had left off.
As a young boy, Fitzpatrick
walked the three miles from his
home to the school, often in the
cold and the dark, since there were
no fights except the stars to light
his way. "I was scared walking
along that road,” he remembers.
At home, Fitzpatrick and his
12 siblings studied their books
by kerosene lamps and firelight.
Sometimes, particularly during the
Depression, the family’s supply of
kerosene ran too low to reach the
wicks. When that happened, they’d
add water to what was left of the
kerosene. The kerosene rose to the
top, which allowed the lamps to
bum a little longer.
When the REA, through the
local cooperative Jackson EMC,
brought electric fines into the area,
those that could afford to had their
houses wired for it, though many
in the area, including Fitzpatrick’s
family, had to wait. Wiring, when
they did get it, consisted of fight
bulbs and receptacles that hung
from the ceiling of each room on
long cords. There were no wall
receptacles in the beginning,
Fitzpatrick remembers.
“It was truly something wonder
ful,” he said.
Later, when electric refrig
erators came along, many folks
plugged them into those same cord
fight receptacles dangling from
the ceiling. "That was a danger
ous practice, looking back on it,”
Fitzpatrick said.
Wini (Winifred) Bell Hancock
was around seven years old and
living in Toledo, Ohio, when the
Great Depression began. Though
she was born in Oglethorpe
County, her father, a finish car
penter by trade, had moved the
family to Ohio to find work. As the
economy collapsed, jobs became
scarce and soup fines soon formed
to feed the many who were jobless,
and soon homeless.
“We lived right in town and I
remember seeing those soup lines,"
Hancock said. “Daddy saw what
was happening and he decided we
better come back to Georgia.”
The Bell family moved to a farm
in Oconee County where Hancock
entered second grade.
“The first thing I did was give
everybody (at school) the ‘Yankee
measles,”’ she said laughing.
Though the family had electric
fights when they lived in Toledo,
their move to Oconee County
returned them to a life without
electricity.
“We studied and read by lamp
light,” she said.
Later, the family rented a farm
already wired for electricity with
“hang-down fights” and a switch on
the bulb socket, but they couldn’t
afford to have them turned on. She
also remembers her younger sister
Trudy swinging on those fights.
Hancock was a teenager in high
school before she lived again in a
house with electricity.
At first they had only those the
pull-cord ceiling fights, but eventu
ally her father purchased an elec
tric stove.
“That was a day, when Mama
got that stove,” she said.
Hancock said the family's fight
bill was a couple of dollars or
so a month, which was no small
amount for those days. It was a
while before they got their next
electrical appliance — a refrigera
tor, and then it was only the refrig
erator, not a freezer. “We kept ice
in a wash tub," she said.
“Daddy never would go in debt,”
Hancock said. “He never bought
anything on credit."
She married Robert Hancock at
age 18 and they moved into a cou
ple of rooms in his sister's home in
Bishop. “We had electricity there
and I cooked on an iron stove,” she
remembers. And for the first time
she had a radio to listen to.
Later, after moving into their
own home, Robert, who worked
for Athens Refrigeration Company,
purchased their first TV at a dis
count - an RCA. She remem
bers the neighbors coming over to
watch the few shows that were on
then, such as “Gunsmoke" and "I
Love Lucy.”
OH CHRISTMAS TREE
Edna Sims Mack, 77, has lived
in Madison County since she was
4 or 5 years old. In 1940, her fam
ily moved near Meadow Church
and one of her first memories of
having electricity in her home is
the glowing fights on the family
Christmas tree. Though she grew
up during part of the Depression,
she doesn't remember ever going
hungry.
“We lived on a sharecropper’s
farm owned by Mr. Porterfield,
who had a store in Comer, and
we had food when others didn’t,”
Mack said. “He was really good
to us.”
Mack has other memories of
both before and after electric
ity came to Madison County. For
example, she can remember her
mother using a scrub board to
wash the family’s clothes.
“She was at it all day long some
times,” she said.
On Sundays after church the
house was often filled with family,
friends and neighbors.
"My mama cooked for them all
on a wood stove,” she said. Bom
between two sets of twins. Mack
said she didn't marry until she was
24 years old.
"I stayed home with them (par
ents) and helped with the other
kids," she said.
Opal Bridges, 92, and her
husband George raised six kids
together. She lived in the Bluestone
community most of her fife and
she was there when electricity first
came to rural Madison County.
"I remember my father-in-law
got them (fights) first,” she said.
"We had electricity pretty quick
when it came out here, but I still
used a wood cookstove to cook
on,” she said. When her fifth
baby was bom, she got an electric
wringer washer - which was quite
a wonder.
The advent of electricity changed
Bridges’ fife not only at home,
but opened the door for outside
work as women of her genera
tion flocked to sewing plants and
other factories to help their families
make a living.
Sewing plants cropped in most
of the small towns in the area and
over the years, Bridges made the
rounds of a lot of them - work
ing in Comer, Bowman and Ila
over the years. “I 'retired' at 69,”
Bridges said, smiling, though that
didn’t last long.
She soon went back to work,
finally retiring at 80 when the
industry began to die out.
She acknowledges things are
tough now, but she’s seen them
tough before.
"I remember the rationing - we
used to get a ticket for three gal
lons of gas at a time," she said. “It’s
gonna’ get better again.”
Banks .cont’dfrom 1A
as well.
Other banks in the commu
nities covered by MainStreet
Newspapers that managed to
make a profit in 2008 were
Northeast Georgia Bank
(Lavonia, with branches in
Jackson, Banks and Barrow
counties) and Pinnacle Bank
(Elberton, with a branch in
Commerce.)
In addition to the profit
picture, other financial mea
sures, such as loan default
ratios, were troublesome for
some area banks in 2008. In
Barrow and Jackson coun
ties where residential growth
boomed earlier in the decade,
a tide of foreclosures hurt
several financial institutions
in 2008.
A number of rating services
evaluate banks based on bal
ance sheet data, ratios and
related market information,
then assign a star, letter or
numerical rating.
Community Bank Performance
The following is a listing of area community banks and their star ratings at the end of 2008 as listed by two leading rating services, along with
the institution’s “troubled asset ratio” number.
Community Banks With Branches in Banks, Barrow, Jackson and Madison Counties
Financial Ratings & Troubled Asset Ratio numbers as of Dec. 31,2008
Bank (Hometown)
BankRate.com*
Bauerfinancial*
TAR’
Community Banks & Trust (Cornelia)
1 Stars
2 Stars
68
First Commerce Banks*** (Norcross)
1 Stars
0 Stars
108
First Georgia Banking (Franklin)
1 Stars
2 Stars
47
First Madison Bank & Trust (Colbert)
3 Stars
5 Stars
9
First Piedmont (Winder)
1 Stars
0 Stars
373
Fidelity Bank (Atlanta)
2 Stars
2 Stars
52
Habersham Bank (Clarkesville)
1 Stars
0 Stars
171
Hamilton State Bank (Hoschton)
2 Stars
3 Stars
34
Hometown Community Bank (Braselton)
1 Stars
2 Stars
107
Merchants & Farmers Bank (Comer)
4 Stars
4 Stars
15
Mountain Valley Bank (Cleveland)
2 Stars
3 Stars
30
Northeast Georgia Bank (Lavonia)
3 Stars
3.5 Stars
25
Peoples Bank (Winder)
1 Stars
2 Stars
58
Pinnacle Bank (Elberton)
3 Stars
3.5 Stars
27
United Community Bank (Blairsville)
2 Stars
3 Stars
31
‘With star ratings, the higher the number the better:
-Bankrate.com has a rating of 1-5 with 1 star being “lowest rated,” 2 stars being “below peer group,” 3 stars being “performing,” 4 stars being
“sound,” and 5 stars being “superior.”
-Bauer Financial has a rating system of 0-5 with 0 being the lowest rating, 1 star being “troubled,” 2 stars being “problematic,” three stars being
“adequate,” 3.5 stars being “good,” 4 stars being “excellent,” and 5 stars being “superior.”
“ Troubled Asset Ratio (TAR) is a ratio of non-performing assets divided by the sum of Tier 1 Capital and loan loss reserves. Ratios over 100
are often viewed as a red flag that a bank needs to raise additional capital or take other action.
“‘First Commerce Bank is an institution of First Covenant Bank.
About this data
Ratings and data for this story came from several sources, including BankRate.com, Bauerfinancial.com, ProPublica (bailout.propublica.org/
programs/1-capital-purchase-program), and Investigative Reporting Workshop (banktracker.investigativereportingworkshop.org.)
Large multi-state and national banks were excluded from this report since their performance is regional, national or international and does not
reflect a narrow local market picture. Four of the banks listed in this story are large Georgia-based community banks with over $1 billion in assets:
AFB&T, Community Banks & Trust, Fidelity Bank, and United Community Bank.
New startup banks that did not operate all of 2008 are not included.
Carlton .cont’dfrom 1A
(seven).
Grownups will enjoy browsing a variety of vendor booths ottering handmade jewelry,
purses, wood crafts and aprons. Children can work off their energy on the climbing wall and
bungee jump, the moon walk and other inflatables.
All ages will enjoy riding in the ox-drawn wagon, sampling the many foods (from barbecue
to vegetarian) ottered and listening to a stellar fine up of talented musicians, organizers said.
The event begins at 9 a.m., with music starting a 10 a.m. and lasting until the last note is
played at 4 p.m. Rain or shine and the parking is free.
Carlton Festival 2008
REA - a local history
Many urban areas of the United States had been enjoying
the benefits of electricity since as early as 1882, accord
ing to a document on the history of the Jackson Electric
Membership Corporation written by Charles Dawson. But
as late as the mid-1980s electric service existed in only 10.9
percent of the nation’s farms and other rural areas.
One reason was that private investor-owned electric utili
ties were generally unwilling to build lines in the rural areas
because of the huge financial investment and most felt
farmers either couldn't afford electricity in the first place, or
wouldn’t use enough of it to make that investment profit
able.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed all that with
his administration’s creation of the Rural Electrification
Administration (REA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal to help
bring the country out of the Great Depression. It was an effort
to raise the standard of rural living and to slow the extensive
migration of rural Americans to urban areas. According to
the Encyclopedia Britannica online, more than 98 percent
of U.S. farms were equipped with electric power under the
program. Roosevelt saw the plight of farmers firsthand on
his visits to Georgia's Warm Springs for polio treatments and
he also saw something else - the positive economic ramifi
cations that providing power to rural areas could potentially
bring.
But before electricity came to an area, local leaders had
to set up electric cooperatives to plan and fund the project.
Jackson, Banks and Madison county farmers and other
locals agreed to establish such a cooperative. Madison
County agent Goss Thomas, along with farmers George
Stovall and Lonie Seagraves, were three of those instru
mental in establishing the Jackson Electric Membership
Cooperative, according to documents.
The project began with the construction of 150 miles of lines
spread out over the three-county area and 1,180 customers
signed up for the service, according to records. One Madison
County farmer, when told his house was too far from the line
and that he would have to pay $165 to fund the line in addi
tion to the $5 deposit, came back later with his $5 in hand
saying he had built a new foundation for his home nearer the
line and moved his house there, all at a cost of $50.
Approximately 250 families received the first electric cur
rent in their homes and farms from Jackson EMC in April,
1939. Jackson Electric’s first billing total for electric service
later that month was $122.65.
D’ville council to meet Monday
The city of Danielsville will hold a special called meeting,
Monday, April 27, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The purpose of the
meeting is to discuss a question regarding a budgetary item
and any subsequent necessary action.
Call 245-2695
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