No, this is not a move review.  Despite the headline, I am not going to write about Patrick Swayze, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.  I am going to tell you a few stories about our forgotten past.  I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed putting them together.

It was one hundred and five years ago when the editors of a newspaper saluted "one of the most pleasant social events the young people of the city have enjoyed in some time."  Fifteen couples danced in the dance hall of the Henry Building until their self-imposed curfew sent them home after their Friday evening fete.  But, times change.

It was in the months following the end of World War I, called by victorious politicians and generals as "the war to end all wars."  Young men were jubilant and wanted to celebrate, especially in the company of the city's most attractive young women.  These men formed a club and called themselves "The Stags."  No, it wasn't the first instance of a gang in the Emerald City, but it was an association of young men seeking to have a good time by ignoring their inhibitions and dancing until, well until their dates had to go home.

The Stags did not just want to have a dance once a month.  They wanted to dance with the young ladies on every Friday evening.  They even had the audacity to stage a street dance as the finale of "Dollar Days," a downtown wide mercantile event.  The leader of the Stags secured permission to stage a dance in front of the courthouse on a Wednesday night.  It didn't take long for word to reach the pastors of the local churches.

Dr. R.L. Baker, pastor of First Baptist Church, warned his congregation that any member caught dancing in public would be subject to banishment from the church.   Rev. L.A. Hill of First Methodist Church was more blunt on the subject.  Rev. Hill called the event a "public hugging game, which would be a blot on the fair name of the city."  He asked the men if they would allow their wives or daughters to dance with hoodlums, ragtags, and bobtails from all over the county.  He denounced the houses of ill fame located just across the river in East Dublin.  Rev. Hill believed that the women of Dublin would enter into a public dance with all innocence.  However, according to statistics in his possession, nine out of ten fallen women began their fall by dancing in public.  Rev. Hill was not directly opposed to dancing in public, as long as the men danced with men and women danced with women.  It's funny how things change. 

John A. Harvill and his wife had just sat down by the fire on a cold December evening in 1882.  The newly wed couple were distracted when they heard a noise which sounded like a squeaking old wagon.  They ignored the discord as a mere passerby.  After a moment, Harvill thinking the continuing commotion to be strange, sprang to his feet and opened his front door.  

To his utter dismay Harvill observed what appeared to be a very large dog with a torch or lamp attached  to the top of its head.  He called out thinking that he must have been the brunt of some of a candid camera joke, of course, television cameras wouldn't be around for more than five decades.  When no reply was received, Harvill did what most terrified men of his day would do, he picked up his gun and shot at it.  He shot. He shot again. The dog didn't move.  In the words of a writer of the Dublin Gazette, "there stood the specter as steadfast as the rock of Gibraltar."    Harvill couldn't believe his eyes.  Was he seeing things?

It didn't take long for the neighbors to come rushing to the scene of the skirmish.  Harvill pointed out the apparition to friends, hoping that they would see it as well. Reportedly, they did.  The brave generals in the crowd consulted each other and devised a plan of attack.  Everyone who could, grabbed a torch and began their advance.  As the first wave of the assault reached the ghostly canine, the pooch resumed his squeaking stride into the oblivion of the night.  While the reporter for the Gazette was covering the calamity, a neighbor came up to him and confirmed that he had also seen the dog, without the squeak.  

Minnie Howell and Charles Jones were deeply in love.  They couldn't wait to get married.  They rode into Dublin on a Sunday morning in February 1914.  As they drove their buggy through the streets of Dublin, they desperately looked around for a "man in black," either a minister or judge, both of whom traditionally were donned in a black suit or wearing a black robe.  They wanted someone to marry them and quickly.  It was then when they spotted the newly elected Judge K.H. Hawkins, judge of the superior court of the Dublin circuit, walking to the First Methodist Church for its morning service.  The startled judge honored the anxious couple's request and legally joined their hands in marriage as they sat on the seat of their buggy.  Had Minnie and Charles been able to wait until January of the following year, they may have spotted one W.H. Brunson on his way to church. Brunson, who had only been practicing law for three months, easily outpaced a field of older and more well known candidates to win an election to fill the vacancy in the office of Justice of the Peace of the Dublin militia district following the death of Judge Chapman.  Brunson, a twenty-two-year-old attorney, was the youngest Justice of the Peace in the State of Georgia.

It was a quiet day at the Park-N-Shop in the Shamrock Shopping Center on the last day of January 1974.  City Alderman Glen Harden was manning the cash register at his store as he usually did.  A trio of customers came through the door.  Harden didn't pay too much attention.  He thought he recognized them, or at least one of them.  But that wasn't unusual  because Harden knew a lot of folks.  

But there was something strangely familiar about the man.  Glen knew he recognized him.  He asked the man if he was who he thought he was.    He had seen the tall dark stranger on television before. He had listened to his voice on records.  The man acknowledged his identity and introduced his wife and mother-in-law to Harden.  The trio were on their way to Savannah for a concert that night.  In today's day of interstate highways, we tend to forget that most people traveling to Savannah from anywhere west of the port city had to come through Dublin to get there.

The customers purchased some groceries and had a good time talking with Harden, so much so that they promised to stop back by on their return to their home in Nashville.  Oh, they also bought a pair of scissors, a pack of needles and a few spools of thread, possibly black thread.  For you see the trio who stopped in one of the city's first modern convenience stores was June and her mother Maybelle.  The man, of course, was the world's most famous "man in black," the iconic legend, Johnny Cash.  

OTHER DUBLINS IN THE UNITED STATES

OUR ALTER EGOS
Dublins Around the Country


What do a soft drink, a hamburger and an almanac have in common?  They all come from the city of Dublin, not Dublin, Georgia, but from other Dublins around the country.  During this St.  Patrick’s Festival, the nation’s longest celebration of Irish heritage,  let’s take a look at three Dublins and what they are famous for.

All Dublins in the world derive their name from the ancient capital city of Ireland.  Dublin, Georgia holds the distinction of being the second Dublin in the United States.  It was named by Jonathan Sawyer, the town’s first postmaster.  Sawyer named the post office in the summer of 1811 in honor of the ancestral home of his wife, the former Miss Elizabeth McCormick.

Dublin, Texas, with it’s population of 3,250, lies near the geographic center of the Lone Star State.  Of all of the Dublins in this country, its history is most like that of Dublin, Georgia.  James Tucker opened a store there one year before the southern states declared their independence from the North.  J.M. Miller laid out his cotton field and began selling lots in 1881.  By the end of the 1880s, Dublin was home to two railroads, a bank and a newspaper.  Like Dublin, Georgia, Dublin, Texas owed its life to cotton and the railroads, which kept the money flowing and people coming.

For all of the 1940s and 1950s, Dublin, Texas was the home to the World Championship Rodeo, made famous by Gene Autry.  The nearby “Lightning C” ranch covered a dozen thousand acres, making it the largest rodeo ranch in the world.  Dublin is the home of Ben Hogan, one the greatest legends of golf.

But by far, Dublin, Texas is known as the home of Dr. Pepper, which was first bottled in Dublin in 1891 by Sam Houston Prim.  Every June the citizens of Dublin and surrounding areas turn out by the thousands to honor the soft drink and its plant, which is the only plant which still uses the original pure cane sugar recipe.  There is a circus with shows at “10, 2 and 4" in keeping with the slogan of Dr. Pepper.

Dublin, Texas also holds a St. Patrick’s festival.  The three-day affair features a carnival, food festival, softball tournament, art & quilt show, parade, Little Miss Dublin contest and tours of the town museum and bottling plant.  Dublin, which is located 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, is known for its dairy farming, peanuts and cattle farms.

Dublin, Ohio,  the second largest of all Dublins in America, lies among the northwestern suburbs of Columbus.  During the 1970s, Dublin was engulfed by the urban sprawl of Columbians, the completion of I-270 and the development of Muirfield Village Golf Club,  a course designed by Jack Nichalaus.  This Dublin’s origin dates back to a 400 acre village on the banks of the Scioto River in the second decade of the 19th Century. On every Memorial Day weekend, Dublin hosts a golf tournament which draws the best players on the PGA tour.  Dublin, Ohio is also the home of Wendy’s Hamburgers, founded by Dave Thomas.

Dubliners from Ohio love festivals.  There is the requisite St. Patrick’s Festival, where the Lion’s Club hosts a pancake breakfast followed by a 5K Leprechaun run and a parade.  Sound familiar?  Dubliner’s let it all hang out at the Rockin’ Barney Blash.  But the celebration of Irish heritage doesn’t end there.  In early August, there is the Dublin Irish festival, an event which began in 1988.  There are Irish goods of all kinds, as well as exhibits which feature the cultural heritage of Ireland.  Of course, there is a feast of Irish food and drink. What kind of festival would it be without stew, breads and beer?  On the first weekend of each December, known as Holly Days, everything that glitters is green.  The lighting of the city’s official Christmas tree opens the festival before the city’s merchants throw open their doors where nearly everything is on sale.

The first Dublin in the United States was founded as one of the highest villages  in New Hampshire in 1771.   In 1792, another Thomas, Robert Thomas, began publishing the Old Farmer’s Almanac.  The annual almanac is the country’s oldest continuously published periodical.    Despite also being the home of The Yankee Magazine, which publishes a variety of travel magazines, Dublin, New Hampshire’s population is around 1500 people.

Dublin, North Carolina, located in Bladen County, is located between Fayetteville and Wilmington in the southeastern part of the Tar Heel State.  About a quarter of a thousand people live in Dublin.  The big festival in the community comes during the third week of September, when everyone celebrates the harvesting of the peanut crop.




 

       A few hundred miles to the northwest is Dublin, Virginia.  Founded by the Henry Trollinger family in 1776, the community was first known as Newburn Depot and later Dublin Depot.   On May 9, 1864, southwestern Virginia’s most vicious battle of the Civil War took place in and around the depot.  Confederate troops under the command of Gen. J.C. Breckenridge foiled Union attempts to capture the vital railroad depot.

               The area around Dublin, California was first settled in 1822 by Jose Maria Amador.  In 1877, a church, two hotels, a blacksmith shop and a shoe maker’s shop was built.  The community, first known as Doughtery’s Station, is located in the Armador Livermore Valley.  Dublin, California was incorporated in February, 1982 and is located 35 miles east of San Francisco. It’s population, now the largest of any Dublin, is buoyed by the fact that Dublin lies at the intersection of two major interstate highways.  The country’s westernmost Dublin is driven by rapidly growing technological and medical businesses.

Dublin, Indiana, a small town of less than a thousand people, is located along the Ohio line in the middle of the state.  It was the site of the first women’s rights convention in Indiana in 1851.   The annual highlight of the year is the volunteer fire department’s fish fry on Memorial Day weekend.

Once there were or still are Dublins,  post offices or just places along the road named Dublin in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New York and Pennsylvania. What you may not know is that there have been two other Dublins  in Georgia.  There was once a Dublin community in Butts County, which changed its name to Cork. The third Dublin, Georgia is now known as Resaca.