Oral History Memoir
Interview Conducted by David Piet
December 19, 2002
Peachtree City Library
201 Willowbend Road
Peachtree City, GA 30269
Phone: 770-631-2520
library@peachtree-city.org ptclibrary.org
Collection Peachtree City: Plans, Politics, and People, “New Town” Beginnings and How the “New Town” Grew
Project Peachtree City Oral History
Peachtree City Library
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Interview History
The recordings and transcripts of the interview were processed at Peachtree City Library, Peachtree City, Georgia.
Interviewer: David Piet
Transcriber: ??
Editor: Molly Stinson
Final Editor: Jill Prouty
Collection/Project Detail
The Peachtree City Oral History Project at Peachtree City Library includes interviews with city founders and their families, elected officials, and other community leaders.
Transcription Style
The Joel Cowan History Room at Peachtree City Library follows the transcription style guide developed by Baylor University Institute for Oral History as well as The Chicago Manual of Style
Joel Cowan History Room at Peachtree City Library
Interview Abstract
Interviewee: Ralph N. Jones
Interviewers: David Piet
Collection:
Peachtree City: Plans, Politics, and People, “New Town” Beginnings and How the “New Town” Grew Project: Peachtree City Oral History
Interview date: December 19, 2002
Interview location: Peachtree City, Georgia
Recording medium; duration: Cassette tapes, digitized; 0:43:05 hr.
Abstract
Ralph N. Jones was born and raised in North Carolina. He obtained a civil engineering degree at North Carolina State University and was a veteran of the Korean War. Jones worked for Mabie Bell, a company out of Greensboro, North Carolina, that produced architectural pre-cast concrete. He moved his family to Peachtree City after opening a Mabie Bell plant in Peachtree City’s Industrial Park. He was elected the second mayor of Peachtree City and served two twoyear terms from 1966-1969.
Cassette 1A (p. 1):
Born and raised in North Carolina, civil engineering degree, Korean War veteran, works for Mabie Bell in Greensboro, North Carolina producing architectural pre-cast concrete |00:02:40|; construction begins on plant in Peachtree City, purchases home lot on lake |00:04:16|; stays in lodge, buys home on Hip Pocket while house on lake is built, works for Joel Cowan in 1973, other work history up until retirement |00:06:17|; Mabie Bell becomes Exposaic Industries, closes in early seventies, family still in area |00:08:01|; serves as mayor 1966-1969, residents involved in local government |00:10:15|; City has 650 residents, no money |00:11:34|; City buys first fire engine |00:12:57|; initial location of Highway 74 South, starts Little League |00:14:23|; water treatment plant, utility franchising |00:16:46|; no city taxes, developer-driven operations, local airport |00:19:08|; building inspector, malt liquor ordinance |00:20:32|; second term as mayor, makeup of City Council, planning board |00:22:28|; forms recreation committee, builds little league field Pesky Park |00:24:10|; City Council meets in maintenance building, construction of old City Hall building [Municipal Building] and its occupants, first post office, construction of Peachtree City Elementary |00:26:40|; Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to patrol Peachtree City, bank robbery |00:28:56|; Police Department established |00:30:31|.
Cassette 1B (p. 30):
Discussion of landfill below Kelly Drive |00:01:44|; adoption of leash law, plumbing and electrical code, first fire station opens on Paschall Road |00:04:52|; decides not to run for Mayor in 1970, thoughts on widening of highways 54/74 |00:09:00|; house on Pinecrest Drive and neighbors |00:10:52|; wrap up, salutations |00:12:34|.
Ralph N. Jones
Oral History Memoir Interview
Conducted by David Piet December 19, 2002
Joel Cowan History Room, Peachtree City Library Peachtree City, Georgia
Project Peachtree City: Plans, Politics, and People, “New Town” Beginnings and How the “New Town” Grew
PIET: Today is December 19, 2002. My name is Dave Piet I am here representing the historical preservation society I’m in for the oral history program and today I’ll be interviewing Mr. Ralph N. Jones, a former mayor of Peachtree City.
pause in recording
PIET: We’re going to be recording this, as you know.
JONES: Sure.
PIET: And you know the reason for this, you know, we have a great little community here and somebody asked me the other day what I was doing with my free time, which I have darn little of, but he said and I said “Well, I’m doing this project,” and he says, “You all are only thirty years old or so, why are you keeping the history?” and I said, “Well, you know some of the folks who made it what it is are still around. We thought it’d be nice to collect their thoughts while we
could and then maybe a hundred years from now when somebody starts to scratch their head and say “Well, I wonder how this place got to be here ”
JONES: Good idea.
PIET: ―there would be some documentation to help them along in the process. So that’s what we’re about. I’ve already met with Joel and with Chip. And you’re number you were actually the second mayor, correct?
JONES: Yeah.
PIET: And I was going over these notes that we’ve gotten from Joel from some efforts he had put on of his own to kind of―a chronology of the thing. Before we start with this, could you just tell me a little bit about yourself? You’re originally from Georgia?
JONES: No, I was born and raised in North Carolina. Went to school at North Carolina State, got a degree in civil engineering. I went in the service to Korea.
PIET: Okay, so that gives us a time somewhere in the third(??) or fifties.
JONES: I was in Korea in ’52 and ’53. In ’53 I went to work for a company in Greensboro, North Carolina [Mabie Bell]. They produced architectural pre-cast concrete, and we did a lot of work in Florida and a lot of work in Georgia. In 1957 we decided to put a plant in Miami,
Florida, and at that time, I was promoted to the plant manager in Greensboro. We were doing a lot of work in the Atlanta area for C&S Bank, and we ended up doing the Merchandise Mart for John Portman and we decided that we wanted to put a facility in the Atlanta area because it was―you know, we thought it was going to be growing and our product was fairly new to the market. We did the Merchandise Mart; it was a twenty-two-story building. So we started looking around
PIET: (crosstalk) What year was this?
1A |00:02:40|
JONES: It was, uh―we finished it the Merchandise Mart opened in July of 1961. We started looking around in spring of ’61 for a place to put a plant in Georgia. So we went to the C&S industrial development department, C&S Bank’s department. At that point we had no immediate cash to put in something, so they put us on to Joel Cowan, and my bosses made a deal with him to put a plant in Peachtree City. And they came back and announced that we were going to put a plant in Peachtree City, but Ralph had to go to Georgia (laughs)―anyway, that’s what they told me. So I went home that night and I told Brownie we were moving to Peachtree City, Georgia. I had a little mimeographed brochure that had a picture of a sign over here where the conference center is, says “Welcome to Peachtree City,” and I did have a, uh―some kind of a sheet of land use plan _____(??) it’s on the original. So I came down and met with Joel and we’d made a deal on how we were going to handle the financing and construction. I bought my lot at the time, I think the first time I came down, a lot on the lake. Then we started construction in the fall of
1961, and I came down on a part-time basis to manage the construction. We designed our own plant and Joel just helped us pay for it. We had a local contractor in Fayetteville do the job.
1A |00:04:16|
You know what, I lived in the lodge where Joel had built for his guests so I lived there when I was here, and I would go home for a week, come back and stay two weeks. Finally, we got the plant moving right along so I bought a little house on Hip Pocket to be built so I could move my family there. So I moved my family the first of March of ’62 and we built our home on the lake and moved in that home in January of ’63. So we’re celebrating forty years in January in that house. We got the plant running in May of ’62, and I stayed with it for eleven years, then sold my interest that was the time I was mayor then, I think. And then when I left that, I went to work for Joel and managed his Snapfinger Woods project.
PIET: (crosstalk) That would have been, what, ’70?
JONES: Seventy―I went to work out there in January of ’73, I think it was.
PIET: So actually, after you were mayor (unintelligible)
JONES: What I did, I worked for―and then I came back, worked out there three years, came back here with Garden Cities and worked a year and then I knew the Phipps Land Company was going to turn the business over to Equitable, so I went to work for Hamilton Mortgage
Corporation in Atlanta and brought them out of bankruptcy. Lamar Seals, who lives here, was president, I was vice-president. And we brought them out of bankruptcy and we both left and Lamar started his own business and I went to work for John Portman in the management of the market center and stayed with him for the last fourteen years of my career. Now I’ve got the oil change businesses.
PIET: The what?
JONES: Oil change businesses. We have the Valvoline Oil Change
PIET: Yeah, yeah I remember that one
JONES: ―here in Peachtree City. So that’s where we are today.
1A |00:06:17|
PIET: And that’s how you got to here today. It’s interesting, when Joel was here he was telling me some of the creative financing you had to do to get the place started, some of the creative financing you had to help people out with to move down. (crosstalk)
JONES: (crosstalk) Yeah, my company was one of those.
PIET: (crosstalk) Made you an offer you couldn’t refuse, huh?
JONES: Yeah, he (Joel Cowan) furnished the land, furnished the money to build the building, gave us a lease with an option to purchase. And over a period of time, we went from fifteen acres to thirty acres and built two more additional plants on the property. And, of course, we had ownership changes during that. We eventually bought the property from Phipps Land Company.
PIET: Which―? I don’t know where all these industrial places
JONES: This was called well, it started out as Mabie Bell, then it became Exposaic Industries. It’s over on Dividend Drive. It’s the first building on Dividend Drive on the right a big operation.
PIET: Is it still functioning?
JONES: No. No, it uh―I left it in ’70, late ’72. It functioned for probably ten or twelve years after that, and then they closed it up and now they’ve sold it off in parcels and it’s being used for different things now.
PIET: And the family?
JONES: We have three children and five grandchildren.
PIET: (unintelligible) Have they stayed in this area? Did you raise your children (crosstalk) here in Peachtree City?
JONES: Yeah, raised our children here in Peachtree City The two oldest ones live in Peachtree City and the youngest daughter lives in Atlanta, but she works for me here in Peachtree City yeah, and all the grandsons are ______(??).
1A |00:08:01|
PIET: So you came here to work in the plant, you got the house built, it’s early sixties
JONES: Right.
PIET: Got the house built, family is getting going and the plant’s working. How did you get involved in the political side of things, such as they were, back in the early sixties?
JONES: Well, there wasn’t much politics around. People just either volunteered to run or volunteered to help and basically, what happened on in my case was that Joel did not want to do it anymore. He’d had it six years and so he asked some of us to work, to jump in and pitch in. And I was asked to run for mayor, and I did. I did on two occasions. I served
PIET: How long were the
JONES: Four years, two-year terms.
PIET: Sixty-six?
JONES: Sixty-six, ’67, ’68, ’69.
PIET: Yeah. I’ve uh―from Joel's notes here I've got you know he had talked about he felt it was time for him to step out of the thing and get somebody independent, because when you actually at that point, although you had arranged the financing for your business, you had no other association with him at that time, other than the fact that you were probably neighbors.
JONES: Right. That's correct.
PIET: It’s got down here a census of six hundred and fifty people.
JONES: Sounds about right.
PIET: Yeah. You got half the people involved with the government. (both laugh) These names are pretty consistent in here, the Huddlestons, Mr. Leach. I didn't see Sam Bass and Mr. Broderick's name earlier. Are they still around?
JONES: Tommy is. Sam Bass is deceased. Let me see that list a minute. I had, uh―oh yeah, we only had Sam, Tommy, Myron and Hugh Huddleston the first time and W. D. Cawthorne that's really ___(??) Bill Cawthorne his wife, Tutt, was the city clerk, and I don't think she got a fee.
PIET: Oh, okay.
JONES: I don't recall any fee. We had no money. (laughs)
PIET: Didn't look like much of a fee anyway, just as his wife. (laughs)
JONES: She’s Tutt. She's now Tutt Larson, and she lives here. But Sam Bass is deceased. And, of course, Myron's deceased and Hugh's deceased.
1A |00:10:15|
PIET: You got mostly the same thing, these folks pretty much volunteered to run.
JONES: Right. Well, actually Myron and Hugh had been on there for years (crosstalk) with Joel, and they were local residents.
PIET: Six hundred and fifty folks, but you know, if I look through at some of these notes here, you know, I suspect if somebody were to think about it, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of monumental things going on. We didn't build bridges, you know, didn't annex a lot of land, but,
you know, it's kind of neat if you go through this thing and see some of the things that you guys had to deal with. One of the things that I'm interested in, and I think will be interesting down the road is we have Joel, and we have this business, and we have this property, and he's trying to get this plan together. And although I think history will show he did a pretty good job of kind of setting it up, you're really the first totally independent entity to really manage the political, if you will― (crosstalk)
JONES: (crosstalk) Well, there wasn’t really much
PIET: ―the civil, the civil end of it.
JONES: There wasn’t much political scene at the time, but uh― Basic
PIET: (crosstalk) ―had a lot of meat and potatoes kind of things.
JONES: Well, just odds and ends, but basically, we had the City had no money. At that point we did not have any franchises with the utility companies. We did sign several of those while I was mayor, and we started getting some revenue. The uh
1A |00:11:34|
PIET: Got some notes here I was going to jog your memory with, and we were going to go through that, but you’ve moved on to the utilities thing, and that was one of them.
JONES: Okay, um, we did sign the agreement with the County for the use of the lake during my term.
PIET: You bought the first fire engine.
JONES: (unintelligible) The fire department we started with just a pump, pumper. It cost about $3,900 if I recall, somewhere in that neighborhood, and we had no money, so I got a loan from the bank, from Mr. Farr, and we eventually paid it off, but we Joel added a bay onto the Gulf station up here which is now I forgot what it is now up at Willow Bend but that's where we kept the truck. And we had all volunteers. Myron Leach was, of course, one of the head guys. In fact, Myron was on the Council―and he and Chip Conner and Al Hogg, Tommy Broderick, and maybe Sam. They―I appointed a committee to find a truck. They found the truck. I think Myron and Chip and some of them got involved with other fire departments to help us train and that's the way we got started.
1A |00:12:57|
PIET: Kind of hard to imagine a place back then with six hundred and fifty people as I recall when I came here in the mideighties. Joel said he originally had had a house over on Shakerag.
JONES: He was up here, right.
PIET: You know, you all were starting to build houses along Hip Pocket and along the lake and then there was some of the original farmers the Huddlestons and all those kinds of shotgun houses through the whole area here. So 54 was just a two-lane road heading into Fayetteville?
JONES: Right.
PIET: And 74 was ?
JONES: Two-lane through Tyrone. (laughs)
PIET: Was part of it still dirt then?
JONES: No.
PIET: No. I think somebody
JONES: Actually, 74 South went down what is now Huddleston Drive. It went all the way down and crossed the railroad somewhere down the south end of town. And later on, it was moved to the east side of the railroad. That's where NCR is and all that. So that part moved―it moved.
PIET: Relatively speaking, yeah.
JONES: It was moved, yeah.
PIET: But you were doing a lot of kind of housecleaning, and you get into things like the recreation. It says here you started the Little League Committee.
JONES: Right, (laughs) we started Little League.
PIET: Doesn't sound like much, (crosstalk) but I mean it's one of the things that makes Peachtree City unique is the effort
JONES: Well, all of our kids were playing. (unintelligible)
PIET: You had to get organized, huh?
1A |00:14:23|
JONES: But basically, when you come back to it, everything we did had to have the support of the developer. Particularly their legal department. And so, we didn't have a city attorney. So we used the legal department of Joel's company to draft all our ordinances and do that sort of thing.
PIET: It says here in May of ’66 you got a grant for the water treatment plant. Did you actually start building it, or was that just the process?
JONES: That water treatment plant was a privately owned plant to start with. The City did not own it. And I think the developer owned it and then eventually sold it or gave it to the County.
I'm not sure exactly how that worked. But the City never did own the water treatment plant.
PIET: Okay.
JONES: In fact, the two wells that were supplying water early on were owned by the developer. The developer ’s name if I recall Joel might have told you, it was Bessemer Properties to start with, then they―then he changed it to H.H.(??) Phipps Land Company and eventually Garden Cities, as a subsidiary.
PIET: One of the things and, you know, if you don't remember it's not important, I'll go back and see if I can't figure it out, but―just to kind of get an idea of how the growth was here, I was looking at some of these things and it said back in January no money, pretty much no money January of ’66 they said the assets of the community were about like $8,200.
JONES: Uh-huh. Yeah. (laughs)
PIET: And then we buy a fire engine, but, of course, you borrowed the money so that doesn't add too much to your assets, (laughs) you know, we subtract out liabilities. Then it says here total assets in December, by the end of that year, were $75,000. I was kind of wondering where cause back when it gets (crosstalk, unintelligible) back to December of ’67 you were back down to $11,000.
JONES: I don't know I'd have to research the minutes.
PIET: Yeah. I was just wondering what he was accounting for there, because it looked like you had this big growth in something or other, and that―
JONES: (crosstalk) I think it probably had to do with franchising. Because the first and only monies we had were from the utility company, and they might have paid us some back-up stuff. You have (??) agreements. Yeah.
PIET: Not the kind of thing I would expect you to remember
JONES: (crosstalk) But we had no but we didn’t have any
PIET: (crosstalk) pretty next to nothing to $75,000.
JONES: I don’t know when―I have no idea when city taxes started, but we didn't have time ourselves.
1A |00:16:46|
PIET: So you weren't collecting taxes at this time?
JONES: No.
PIET: So the taxes all went to the county.
JONES: All was county taxes.
PIET: So you were still pretty much on your own. I mean, how did you finance anything?
JONES: Well, we didn't have to finance much because the developer furnished about everything.
PIET: So you're still pretty much (??)
JONES: (crosstalk) For instance, the airport we applied through Joel's legal group for a federal grant to build that airport on two occasions. And we had to do a lot of documentation. And we were turned down both times. So Joel just finally decided that they’d build an airport, and they did, and it was eventually turned over to the City. I forgot whose regime it was but, uh
PIET: Getting back to those kind of things, when I was talking to Chip, he was telling me about one of his great frustrations was dealing with Lake McIntosh. And that kind of struck me, because, you know, he was right after you and so that makes it late sixties―so now we're still fooling around with Lake McIntosh.
JONES: Yeah.
PIET: Was there any conversations, was there any efforts back when you were mayor to start getting that lake built?
JONES: No.
PIET: So it was pretty much after you.
JONES: After me.
PIET: But you had to deal with the airport, trying to get the airport.
JONES: Well, we tried―no, we just tried to get the federal assistance and couldn't get it and so
PIET: (crosstalk) And that's when Joel said, "okay”
JONES: (crosstalk) "We'll just build it."
PIET: Remember what I don't know that I asked him this question what did you all think was so significant about the airport at that particular point?
JONES: Well, we felt like it would be a plus for the community and as you see, it is.
PIET: Oh, I mean, it clearly was right. I was just wondering at that moment with all the other things
JONES: (crosstalk) Well, there wasn't too many regional airports around the Atlanta area at that time. We felt it was a necessity for a community that was supposed to be as big as this one.
PIET: Right. It would have been I guess, handy for well, I imagine it gets used for guys who were in your situation now for guys who are in your situation (??) (crosstalk) sort of getting ready to move in and build and get your operation here, but you’re still in North Carolina and New York (crosstalk) flying in―check the operation, and get back.
JONES: (crosstalk) My main headquarters for my company was in North Carolina, but we had a plane.
PIET: (crosstalk) Yeah, and if you have an airport, it might have been―
JONES: And I was fortunate enough to be able to use it occasionally to go to my projects.
1A |00:19:08|
PIET: So that yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You started getting into codes here it says, you know, ventilation, air-conditioning, back in ’67, so I imagine this whole process of you all trying to establish building codes and the standards for how things would be built.
JONES: That all came through Joel's company―those standards.
PIET: Says here, you increased salaries in ’67 for the building inspector. When did you get a building inspector? (laughs) Think you remember?
JONES: (laughs) Yeah, we got one. Let's see, Keith Topham. I think possibly Joel was paying him, though.
PIET: Okay. It's amazing how all this stuff gets started.
JONES: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, if you are going to build a city you got to start putting in some front money, and that's what they did.
PIET: Did you have a particular reason it says here you adopted the malt liquor ordinance in ’67, and you were starting to get some people
JONES: We wanted we did that basically for the Flat Creek Club because they wanted to serve malt beverages over there, and that's why we did it. And we were allowed to do it without a referendum. You have to have a referendum for liquor but not for at that time.
PIET: Yeah. Chip was telling me about all the moonshiners in this area
JONES: Oh, yeah. (laughs) He knew them too.
1A |00:20:32|
PIET: He said he was doing the surveys down here he'd run across them all the time. One of the things, I was on the Planning Commission for a long time
JONES: (crosstalk) Yeah, I know you were.
PIET: One of the questions I had here, just a matter of procedure, says―this is December of ’67―says dissolution of the Planning Commission, appointment of a Planning Board. Did that mean anything? Or was that a technicality?
JONES: I don't remember why. It was a technicality (unintelligible).
PIET: I just wondered, cause, you know, you wanted to do away with it and then somewhere along the line, and I haven't picked up where, we went back to a Planning Commission and what was the difference.
JONES: I don't know where the minutes of the meetings are. But I'm sure they're somewhere
PIET: (crosstalk) Oh, I imagine
JONES: They're in the archives. And we documented everything that we did. We didn't do a lot, but we documented. It's somewhere.
PIET: Well, like I say, we wanted to get your take on it. We figure if somebody ever wants to really go back and research it, they'll have to do, you know, like any researcher, they’ll have to do the homework and dig it out. But we'd like to get your words so that maybe when somebody’s going looking for something and you know Joel's and everybody else's so that they can maybe emphasize one thing over another. Well now it's 1968 and you're still mayor. This is your second year of your first term, I guess.
JONES: First year of the second term.
PIET: First year of your second term. Alright, let’s get you (??). (papers shuffling) Well, we talked about it, but you had pretty much the same set-up: Sam Bass, Broderick, Leach, and Huddleston.
JONES: It changed the next time. Let's see, Hugh Huddleston wasn't on it anymore.
PIET: He finally had enough, huh?
JONES: Yeah. Chip and Tommy Broderick and Al Hogg―and Al, yeah. And, uh―Donna Garrard. She was my secretary, so she didn't get paid. (Piet laughs) I paid her.
PIET: Did she live here in town?
JONES: Hm?
PIET: Did your secretary live here in town?
JONES: Yeah. Donna Garrard, yeah.
PIET: And now you have this planning board of three people.
JONES: Right. (unintelligible) Yeah.
PIET: Fulton― (??) Fulton.
JONES: Miriam, Miriam. Miriam was on it. Yeah.
1A |00:22:28|
PIET: Get my glasses out here in a second.
JONES: Yeah, we had a recreation committee.
PIET: Now you established it during this year?
JONES: Must have.
PIET: I mean, I don't see it anyplace else. Mr. York, Thurman York?
JONES: Thurman, yes.
PIET: Is he still around?
JONES: He's still I think he lives in Tyrone. And who is that? Tom Mundy. Is that Mundy?
Yeah. Tom, I think he's dead. He―I'm not sure. He was at Warm Springs with a bad problem.
PIET: First goal was to get all the old mayors and then, you know, as far as some name-dropping that they’ve done, we’re going to follow through with some other
JONES: Tommy. Tommy's still here. And of course, Al's still here.
PIET: Right.
JONES: Bill Garrard's still here.
PIET: I’m not sure about that.
JONES: I think he's deceased. His son lives here.
PIET: So, you're getting so busy now, you're putting up “Children at Play” signs.
JONES: Yeah. (laughs) Well, we actually built a where the Baptist Church is now we built a Little League field and we named it Pesky Park.
PIET: Pesky Park.
JONES: It was named after Johnny Pesky, a famous shortstop for the Giants or somebody and he happened to be a friend of Tommy Broderick. So he came. As I recall, he got him to come down to dedicate the park. Coca-Cola furnished the sign. We all chipped in to rake the rocks. We actually played softball up there, too the men did.
PIET: So you got a baseball field and you have a recreation committee and that's about all else you got.
JONES: That's about it, yeah. 1A |00:24:10|
PIET: They still don't have a building. You don't have a city hall yet, do you?
JONES: Oh, no. Well, now let's see.
PIET: I mean a real city hall.
JONES: We didn't have a real city hall when I was first mayor, up here about where the Peachtree National Bank is, somewhere in that area, Joel and them had a house that had been part of a property they acquired, and they used that for a maintenance facility. And upstairs they had two or three little rooms, and so we met in there the first couple of years, and then somewhere in there Joel built the old City Hall building, which was a commercial building [Municipal Building]. And I was the mayor then and, of course, and we my operation started expanding over at Exposaic or, it was called Mabie Bell still. We closed our Miami operation and moved some of the people here and doubled our size here. And I needed office space, so I rented half the building from Joel. And then we moved the bank from Tyrone to the other end, and in the middle, we were fortunate enough to get a post office. And that took some doing because we were and Joel may not have told you about this but we were turned down two or three times. But finally, we got Jack Flynt, our congressman from Griffin, up for a dinner, and all the industry leaders met with him. And Andrew Whalen was his kind of assistant guy. Andrew wound up being a judge and now he’s retired. But we got a post office. Even though it was still a branch―a branch of Fayetteville.
PIET: (thumps)―had the stamp of Peachtree City.
JONES: Right. We originally (crosstalk)
PIET: Was that part of Joel's reason and you all's reason just to get the―so that it was postmarked Peachtree City?
JONES: Yeah, well, we needed it. And originally, we got our mail from a Senoia route; Route 2, Senoia, is where we got it. A fella named Jim Baggarly delivered it. It was quite interesting. But yeah, Joel―during that period of time Joel also decided we needed an elementary school and the county
PIET: Right, because your kids were probably still going (crosstalk)―Fayetteville―
JONES: The County couldn't afford it at the time, so Joel built the school.
PIET: Which one?
JONES: Peachtree City Elementary and paid for it. And then, later on, sold it to the School Board. But it opened with eight grades. And in fact, they had eighth grade baseball (laughs)
1A |00:26:40|
PIET: Tyrone couldn't have been very big at all.
JONES: No. Tyrone had a small school.
PIET: And Joel was telling me during these late sixties, early seventies, there wasn't much growth down here.
JONES: There wasn’t much growth.
PIET: So, your population was probably relatively flat in the six [hundred] to one thousand range during those years, I would imagine.
JONES: Right. In fact, one of the years I ran for mayor, I remember we only had 125 registered voters. I think one of them voted against me, and that was my wife. She didn't want me to do it. (laughs)
PIET: Would you think she wants you to do it now? (laughs)
JONES: No. Another thing that's interesting, we needed some police protection out here. And I don't know whose idea it was, whether it was Joel's or mine or somebody's, but we came up with the idea of working with the Sheriff's Department. And they said they would provide a deputy if we would pay enough―pay for the car. So I got all the industry leaders together, and we decided to go ahead and do it. I think we paid like $6,000 a year. And we all pitched in and raised it and
so they assigned Haskell Barber out here. And Haskell would patrol about ten hours a night for six nights. There’d be one night that he wouldn't patrol. He'd come by my house in the evening and let me know what all went on the night before. Then he'd start his patrol. Well, one night when he was not patrolling, somebody broke into the bank (laughs) through the roof on a Sunday night. I got to work about seven thirty the next morning. Floy was already there, and he said that he came down to my office and said, "Ralph, you'd better come look." So I went down and took me into his office, and oh gosh. They'd cut a hole in the roof and blown a hole in the top of the vault with dynamite. They used sandbags to muffle the sound. And they had gotten in there, and they rifled every safety deposit box and stole whatever money the bank didn't have a lot of money in that ____(??)
PIET: (crosstalk) Sounds like a disaster.
JONES: The same thing happened in a bank [in] north Atlanta within like two weeks. And as far as I know they've never been caught. And it was a disaster for some people in those safety deposit boxes.
1A |00:28:56|
PIET: I can imagine.
BROWN: They kept jewelry, cash (crosstalk) All I had they didn’t have anything but my paperwork, it was all over the floor. (crosstalk) But, you know, it had happened in Tyrone before they moved the bank here.
PIET: Really?
JONES: Same thing. They got in, went through the safety deposit boxes.
PIET: I guess if you are going to be a bank robber it makes a certain amount of sense, very little police enforcement, not a lot of people moving around at night, Sunday night. How many people could you find out on the street around here on Sunday night?
JONES: Anyway, in my last term, we decided we needed a Police Department. So we got all our ducks in a row and everything. We hired Haskell Barber to be the chief, and Orville Harris to be the patrolman. And we bought a car. And then January 1, 1970, it became effective. Somewhere in that era Chip's era
PIET: How did you pay for it?
JONES: We had some money. We started getting money then.
PIET: Haskell Barber and Orville Harris, December 8, 1969.
JONES: Right, that's when we started it. And I was still Mayor then. So my claim to fame is we started Little League. Oh, we formed a Rotary Club, too. (laughs)
PIET: I don't know if that made this list.
JONES: We formed the Rotary Club, and we started, uh―well, we started church―our churches. Presbyterian Church was started then. Baptist Church started a little later. And we got a school, we got an airport.
1A |00:30:31| pause in recording as cassette tape 1, side a ends; cassette tape 1, side b begins
PIET: Okay, so uh―you have, well, you were saying you were involved with putting in some of the key things that we see here today that worked out pretty good. We've got, you know, I think the Fire Department gets high marks. I know my insurance company likes it.
JONES: Oh, yes.
PIET: The Police Department, you know, the only rap against them that I've ever heard in all my years is maybe they are a tad enthusiastic, but they seem to be a highly professional force.
JONES: Yes, they are.
PIET: And we've got a nice airport, and things started to lay down pretty well.
JONES: Yeah.
PIET: When we get into 1960, there was one question I had on my little list of things here. In May 28, 1968 a landfill constructed below Kelly Drive on 74 [Prouty note: location of Police Department]. I can't imagine trying to get a landfill in Peachtree City today. I was wondering (crosstalk)
JONES: Well, that was basically―the developer did that. They needed a place to dump their stuff and things, and it was over there near where the cable company is down behind the cable company. No, no, that was Kelly Drive you were talking about.
PIET: Yeah, (??). Kelly Drive.
JONES: I don't know where that was. I don't remember ever being a landfill being put there.
PIET: I was just wondering how long was it open?
JONES: I don't know that there was one there.
PIET: I uh, you know it’s one of those interesting things because, you know, I’d say a landfill inside the city limits would be rather unusual today I would think.
JONES: In fact, I'm not sure that that piece of property up behind the cable company is in the city limits. It probably is.
PIET: I think it is.
JONES: Probably is, yeah.
1B |00:01:44|
PIET: Alright, we have your―here I've got your first citizen complaint concerning dogs within residential areas.
JONES: Right.
PIET: So you have to now deal with dogs. (crosstalk)
JONES: So we adopted a leash law. And, uh―we didn't have anybody to enforce it except the police, you know? (laughs) (??) (crosstalk) I think my dogs were the worst. They got out worse than anybody else.
PIET: So Flat Creek's already open. Joel's already built that, right?
JONES: Flat Creek Club. Uh-huh
PIET: But, uh―somewhere in, uh―it says July here of ’68 is when you gave them their malt beverage license.
JONES: Well, they opened that fall.
PIET: Okay, so―
JONES: They
PIET: Everything was in place so they could do that.
JONES: Right. Right.
PIET: And so, we're still doing code here. It says in September you adopted the plumbing and electrical code. I assume you used well, what did you use as an electrical code?
JONES: Probably Southern Building Code, I expect.
PIET: And a maximum speed limit of forty-five miles an hour on 54/74. Nobody goes forty-five miles an hour on those highways anymore. (Jones laughs) First of all at the intersection you can't hardly go five miles an hour.
JONES: Yeah, I know. (laughs)
PIET: Did you ever thought did you ever imagine that that intersection of 74 and 54 would ever be that crowded?
JONES: Oh, yeah.
PIET: You kind of envisioned was Hi-Brand―I noticed Hi-Brands first of all was Hi-Brands there by now?
JONES: They were the first industry here. They were here when I came here.
PIET: Okay. You know, I forget. (crosstalk) It's on the list somewhere.
JONES: It was called Dixie Frozen Foods at the time.
PIET: So it was already operational (??) (crosstalk)
JONES: And see, when I came here in '61 they had just opened. And Norman Paschall was almost ready to open his plant. And then I opened the third operation.
PIET: Yeah. And then it says here on Paschall Road and Highway 74 the first fire station opened.
JONES: Right.
PIET: Well, that's where the current―they just― (crosstalk)
JONES: Right they moved(??). That was our first fire station. Was it built during my term?
PIET: Says November 20, ‘68.
JONES: Yeah, that's what I thought.
PIET: Well, at least the one acre was donated.
JONES: Donated. I'm not sure when.
PIET: At the _____(??) cost. A pool was given to spend $16,000 to construct the station, so apparently you must have, somewhere in that (crosstalk)
JONES: (crosstalk) I think we built it, but yeah.
PIET: It must have at least started the process.
JONES: Right.
PIET: [reading] “ (??) adopt an ordinance to remove buildings obstructing traffic in or out of Peachtree City." I’m not exactly sure what that
JONES: “Buildings obstructing traffic in and out of Peachtree―” I have no idea what that is.
PIET: Not sure what they were getting at there.
JONES: Let's see there. We borrowed $12,000 to pay for the new fire station.
PIET: (laughs) $12,000. What does a fire station cost today? About $100,000?
JONES: I remember this (??)
PIET: And then you adopted the leash law in ’69. And (??) reappointed for four years planning commission. I guess it must be just terminology here. We jump between Planning Board and Planning Commission during this time, and I’m just wondering what
JONES: Oh, that's just terminology, I'm sure.
1B |00:04:52|
PIET: Police court. Did you have it says police court docket purchased for thirty-eight dollars was approved. What's a court docket?
JONES: Where did these come from?
PIET: Joel's notes.
JONES: All these are Joel's notes?
PIET: Uh-huh.
JONES: I don't know what that means.
PIET: Joel has made some effort to keep track of a chronology of events. He didn't claim that they were totally accurate. But he was just trying to just jog your memory. What he was hoping was that maybe from these tapes that we could kind of embellish (crosstalk) kind of link to sooner or later we could find sure.
JONES: (crosstalk) Well, I'm sure if you went back and could find the minutes of the meetings, then you would find all this stuff.
PIET: And that would be ideal.
JONES: Detail.
PIET: So now, by December we're still a voluntary fire department, right?
JONES: Right.
PIET: But we now have two law enforcement officers that are on the payroll. Now did you―did Mrs. Jones decide that you weren't running in 1970 or did business get the best of you?
JONES: (laughs) No. Business got the best of me. Four years was enough.
PIET: Yeah. And so
JONES: It's all volunteer, you know.
PIET: Now, you know, Joel's company still owns the property by and large.
JONES: Right.
PIET: And is heavily subsidizing your operations during this time.
JONES: Oh, yeah.
PIET: But there is this transitioning beginning from the company town, if you will, to a political entity with its own government, and having to deal eventually with what the corporate plan is and how this will evolve as a city. Were you getting much involved with the land use planning at this point?
JONES: No.
PIET: And, again, I suspect it's because there really wasn't a lot of people yet.
JONES: There wasn't any while I was mayor as far as I know, there wasn't much changes in the land use plan. It was done more in the seventies, I think.
PIET: Right.
JONES: And, of course, the land use plan and the model that I saw when I came called for like eighty thousand population in build out.
PIET: Right.
JONES: High-rises (laughs)
PIET: People don't appreciate that when they complain about the population. (Jones laughs) I mean, for a lot of folks, particularly the folks who were here back like you were in the early sixties maybe late fifties, when they say you only got a shotgun hand full of houses around here―this must be a shock to see how it's all developed out. Even if you were thinking in terms of understanding what the plan was.
JONES: (crosstalk) Well, I'm very pleased with what's happened over the forty years I've been here. I'm not disappointed in any of it, other than the fact that I wish we could have gotten the highways widened quicker.
PIET: Right.
JONES: Particularly the one now that is really giving us a fit. Highway 74 North is wonderful. Fifty-four to Fayetteville is wonderful. But then the other two directions I wish we could have gotten that done earlier.
PIET: Yeah, when I first I got here in ’86 and [Highway] 74 was just two lanes through Tyrone.
JONES: Yeah.
PIET: And I actually felt like one of the few times in my life that I've seen somebody actually be ahead of the curve when they widened 74. Because for those several years after it was opened
in its current form, traffic into town was as easy as could be. It was really great. Now it's starting to queue up again up on [Interstate] 85. (crosstalk) That intersection is really miserable. These days it’s terrible.
JONES: (crosstalk) But you know, even today from Interstate to 54 is not bad.
PIET: Right. No, it's not.
JONES: You can move right along even with a lot of traffic signals.
PIET: Yeah, well, east/west is not going well. And south of here is getting kind of messy.
JONES: Well, the worst one is the West. You know, over there it’s just awful.
1B |00:09:00|
PIET: You still live off of Hip Pocket?
JONES: I live right here on yeah, I live on Pinecrest right on the lake. I live three doors―I live next door to Floy and three doors from Joel. But I bought my lot from Joel on the first day I came here.
PIET: Friend of mine bought a house a few years ago and just recently sold it at the end of Hip Pocket actually at Loblolly. I don't know if you know him or not, Doug Downs. He renovated a house right there at the end of Loblolly on the lake there. And it's been a dramatic change in the economics of this place. I looked at that house in 1986 flat roof, one story.
JONES: One of my employees built that house.
PIET: Really? (both laugh) Needed a lot of work in 1986. But that house sold I could have bought that house in the range of $117,000. I don't know what Doug sold it for this year, but he was asking $990,000. Now he put in major renovations. I mean, it's not the same house by any stretch, but it's kind of fairly dramatic over a period of because I would imagine, even though it was on a lake, the relative value of those properties didn't increase dramatically.
JONES: You know, it's really not on the lake that much, I mean he was a little bit out.
PIET: Right.
JONES: Well, the problem is that every time one is sold on the lake then my property taxes go up. (laughs)
PIET: Pros and cons, right?
JONES: My son lives down on the lake next to Chip Conner.
PIET: Oh, is that right?
JONES: He's got that cedar house down there. His taxes are sky high.
PIET: Oh, that one right off of Hip Pocket there?
JONES: He's right next door to Chip. It's a cedar with a mansard roof. It's a nice big house. And he's done a lot of work to fix it up.
1B |00:10:52|
PIET: Well, anything else you would like to add to this?
JONES: No. No, if you need me to research anything I could do it.
PIET: Well, what I suspect we will probably what we've been what we are going to do is eventually, we will get the minutes to you and give you a chance to collect, clarify, and if you think of anything else
JONES: Well, I thought about, you know if it's that important is to go back and research the minutes.
PIET: Oh, we will. The idea was to get your thoughts, and again, maybe now that we've talked about some of these things and you see the minutes, if you want to add anything to it, let us know and we'll add to it.
JONES: I'll let you know.
PIET: And eventually we're not really our goal wasn't necessarily to write a book or to do all this, but is to capture everything we could and then probably just store it here and so that if at any point somebody wants because it takes money to do the research. (crosstalk) We wanted to have it all available in case somewhere along the line someone actually wanted to
JONES: We had a big, uh―as you know, at the church, we've been having this Forty Days program and― Were you there for the celebration Sunday?
PIET: No.
JONES: Well, I had to do a history of the church. Basically, I had to go back and do some research. (laughs)
PIET: Well, Don's [Smith] one of the guys I want to get to after I've gotten through all the mayors, because he can tell me what all sins you guys have
JONES: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He and I were fishing together last week and the only sin we committed was going fishing. We didn't catch anything. (laughs)
PIET: Well, knowing you two, you probably lied about what you caught.
JONES: I don't know.
PIET: They were this big. Right?
JONES: Oh, yeah. They get bigger.
PIET: Bigger every year?
JONES: Every time you tell the story they get bigger. (laughs)
PIET: Well, thanks for coming and you have a good holiday.
JONES: Alright, David. Good to see you. We'll see you in church. All right. (unintelligible)
1B |00:12:34| end of interview