Palmetto: A friendly city recalls its past

Written by JENNIFER DZIEDZIC

Highway 29 serves as Palmetto’s Main Street. Photo by Jackie Kennedy.

In 1833, John H. Johnson constructed a general store in northern Coweta county located on a trail that would later become Highway 29. Palmetto was first known as Johnson’s Store with its name changed to Palmetto in 1847.

When the Atlanta and LaGrange Railroad reached Palmetto in 1851, the town shifted away from a farming community as more businesses entered and the population grew.

Palmetto was officially chartered on Feb. 18, 1854. Early residents had varied vocations such as doctor, school teacher, dry goods merchant, minister, brick mason, and railroad employee. The town had one lawyer and one druggist.

In 1923, with its city limits spanning two counties, Palmetto received its first paved road with Highway 29. The Coweta County side was finished first, and a few months later pavement was completed on the Campbell County side. In 1932, Campbell County was abolished when the Bigger and Better Counties program merged the town of Palmetto into non-equal parts of Fulton and Coweta counties.

Garfield Cannon and Pure Oil Service Station

Garfield Cannon, 92, was born in Coweta County. In 1957, he and his wife Mildred bought Pure Oil Service Station, which operated at the spot where Supermercado La Bendicion Mexican restaurant is today. With gas in the ground, stocked goods on the shelves, and a cigarette machine out front, Garfield moved his family to Palmetto and started business in 1958.

While Garfield worked 18 hour days at the service station, his wife took care of their five children and did mending and alterations on clothing for people all around Palmetto.

Service stations ran differently than gas stations of today.

“When a car pulled up, usually the most they bought was $2 worth of gas,” Garfield says. “We’d clean the windshield, check your oil and water while that gas was pumping, and then they’d be ready to go. My kids washed cars for me.”

Garfield served three terms on the Palmetto City Council and also worked as a volunteer fireman and police officer. At that time, the police department had three men on the force, so he and other local men helped out the police by going on calls with them.

“We didn’t have but three police, and the mayor and I would help them out at night,” Garfield recalls. “We didn’t even have a gun, but we’d go with ’em on calls.”

The Cannons’ son Charles Stanley Cannon, who died in 2004, founded Cannon Load Banks Company and began manufacturing load banks.

“He invented a machine and got a patent on it and started building them,” says his father. “When an airplane stopped, they had to pull up a ground power unit that weighed 900 pounds. He invented one that weighed 65 pounds that’d do the same job.”

Garfield continues to call Palmetto home.

“What I like about it is the people,” he says. “They were just so good. When we came here, we were strangers. They accepted us and most of that was because of the young people. They hung around my station at night, and I’d just let ’em sit in there and talk and cut up, because they weren’t getting in trouble. I got a lot of heat for it, but I tell you what: There were a lot of young boys who were real good because they hung around the station and didn’t cause anybody trouble.”

The longtime resident recalls a drag strip at Palmetto that garnered much attention.

“On Saturday nights, they’d have all them dragsters up there, and some of them boys would get out here at night on open roads and drag a little bit,” he says. “That was a good bunch of kids; they just had a little mischief in ’em.”

He recalls one time when a young man drove a car backward from Douglasville to Palmetto “to see if they could do it.” They did.

Garfield and his second wife Juanita, 90, were married two years ago.

“We knew each other when we were young, we were boyfriend and girlfriend, but she moved off to Atlanta and she married somebody up there, and I married my wife. I had 70 years with my wife and she had 54 with her husband,” says Garfield. “We both had a good long marriage, and then we got back together again. She called me one day and we just started back seeing each other. We were crazy about each other when we were young.”

Juanita adds, “He had a wonderful wife, and I had a great husband, and we both were devastated when they passed away. They would be happy that we’re happy.”

From his home spot in Palmetto, Garfield loved to travel and explore the world.

“I don’t care where I die,” he muses, “but I want the hearse to have to hunt me down. I don’t want to be sitting at home waiting on it.”

Don Hayes and Piggly Wiggly

Don Hayes has owned Piggly Wiggly Express in Palmetto since 2015. He grew up in Columbus, then moved to North Carolina, and found his way to Palmetto with his wife Judy, now deceased, in 1966. They initially found work at a Main Street department store called Alfords, where Jack Peek’s lawn equipment store is now.

In the early 1980s, Don and Judy went into business for themselves, opening first a video store, then a TV and appliance repair service, and then a rent-to-own store. In 1995, they built and opened a Dairy Queen franchise.

“It was a really good store,” Don recalls. “Within probably three years it was in the top five in the Atlanta market because there was nothing else down here. Sunday nights, you couldn’t get in the place after church. You had to wait for a table, there were so many people.”

In 2000, the couple opened Bojangles. They sold Dairy Queen in 2008 and sold Bojangles in 2015 with plans to retire. Instead, Don bought into a local store, Bradley’s Big Buy, which later became Piggly Wiggly and has been featured twice in “Stranger Things,” the hit Netflix show. Fans continue to visit the location of show character Eleven’s heist and buy Eggo waffles to recreate the scenes for photos. Devotees of the show find the freezer stocked with waffles, and commemorative T-shirts are available as well as a guest book to sign.

Don and his family lived in South Fulton for 16 years, and their children went to Palmetto High School. In 2008, the area was established as Chattahoochee Hills, and Don Hayes became its first mayor. He served four years as mayor and was on the council for eight years more.

Neva Peacock, Palmetto’s oldest resident

At 108 years old, Palmetto’s oldest resident, Neva Peacock, leads exercise classes at the retirement community where she lives. Photo courtesy of Neva Peacock.

Palmetto’s oldest resident, Neva Peacock is 108. She lives at Palmetto Park Senior Living Center, a retirement community on Perkins Road. She moved here when the center first opened 15 years ago. Vibrant and full of life, she leads exercise classes six days a week in the center’s gym.

At the retirement community, Neva’s active in a bead club where members make jewelry with proceeds from the sales of their designs funding their Women’s Missionary Union.

Peacock shares her secret to hitting triple digits: “Keep moving, and you’ll be 108. And follow the best leader of all, the Lord.”

The centenarian says her favorite food is cherry vanilla ice cream.

“I’m allergic to vegetables,” she jokes. “But I’ve been drinking a lot of V8 Splash. It’s good.”

Marian Hammett Dudash and the good old days

Another Palmetto Park Senior Living Center resident, Marian Hammett Dudash, born in 1937, grew up on a farm in Coweta County. She moved to Palmetto in 1956 with her first husband, Kenneth Lassetter, and lived at 617 Main Street for 40 years. She sold the house in 2002, married Joseph Dudash and moved away, but she recently returned to Palmetto.

“My roots are here,” she says. “When I first married and moved here, there was a population of like 2,000-something. Kenneth, who was born and grew up here, knew who lived in every house in Palmetto. There were two elementary schools but no high school. In 1970, Palmetto High School opened, and in 1990, Creekside High became the high school.”

Marian was active with Palmetto Clean and Beautiful.

“We had the lighting of the great tree at Christmas every year and a lot of activities with that,” she recalls. “We would have a Christmas tree drawing contest at the elementary school and give a prize to the child who had the best drawing. We had a festival every year at Veterans Park. The city council did the Easter egg hunt, but we did the festivals, parades, Christmas tree lighting, whatever event was coming up.”

History buffs may visit Palmetto Historic Train Depot at 549 Main Street where there’s a history museum onsite with artifacts and old photographs of the town and its people. The depot opens Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Palmetto continues to hold fall parades and one on May Day.

“Palmetto was a great place to raise your children,” Marian continues. “I think it still is. Palmetto was a cotton mill town. The house we bought had belonged to the company that owned the cotton mill, and when it closed, they sold the house to Mr. and Mrs. Morris. The Morrises were the first family who had a TV in Palmetto. They brought it out on this porch, strung the cord through the window and plugged it up, and let the whole neighborhood come over and watch TV.”

She recalls a gym near today’s Wayside Park: “In my teenage days, it was the center of a lot of community activity. Of course, we had basketball, boys and girls, and that’s where we skated – in the gym. That’s how I met my husband. I lived in the country on a dirt road. You sure didn’t skate there.”

Where Pulliam’s Tire and Alignment is today, there once was a movie theater in a Quonset hut, according to Marian.

“I got my first kiss in that movie theater,” she recalls. “It scared me to death.” NCM