Tom Stroud called me to tell me about a great book "Virginia-Highland (Images of America)"  

by Karri Hobson-Pape and Lola Carlisle. It has pictures of Grady and midtown and is available on Amazon. One of the pages you can see on the website is a picture from my house on Virginia Ave.

Another great book on Amazon was written by my brother, Rupert Fike called Lotus Buffet. It is a book of poetry and several poems will remind you of the 60's. I thought of all of you when I read "Fourth and Fifth Periods, 1962". I have his permission to copy it below. Hope you enjoy it.   Jean

Just before lunch Miss Martha Lynch did her best

to convey the shining promise of 'new math' wherein

only 1's and 0's could be used for any computation.

She had just attended binary summer camp

and was feverish from her conversion.

"Computers can't understand the concept of 2,"

Miss Lynch explained in her dry-mouth drone

(people didn't hydrate very well back then).

'They can only read a 1 or a 0.

The switch is either on or off. Black or white.'

It was our low blood-sugar hour,

and we thought her not only dull but deluded

to preach that 1's and 0's would change the world.

We weren't dumb. We knew about computers.

We had seen the massive Univac on TV,

Dave Garroway half-laughing at the thing

having to be packed in dry ice so as

not to overheat while doing whatever it did.

Here, at last, was common-ground with great aunts

appalled at the folly of modernity.

After lunch we ran to the sub-basement-

Print Shop! - where Mr. Falcon, in full leather apron,

taught us the intricacies, the deft touch

of setting moveable type upside down, backward,

each inky letter, each space, set just so before

it began, the thrilling violence that could easily

take a finger, a hand, even an arm,

what first smudged then smacked out perfect sheets

into the hopper,

a process barely changed

from Whitman's - no, Swift's - no Gutenberg's time.

Here was true communication that was

so removed from the impotent 1's and 0's Miss Lynch

kept insisting would become some class of code,

love letters to motherboards not yet conceived,

a baseless promise we rejected in favor of noise,

danger, Mr. Falcon's stink, legible copy!

Here was the information age come to fruition.

Here was the worldwide conversation in our hands,

and in celebration we sometimes smeared our faces -

tribal joy from this ink, key to kingdoms. 

There was a book entitled Ponce de Leon by George Mitchell, for many years a resident with his wife Kathy Mitchell and daughter of Blue Ridge Avenue, off Highland Ave.  It was published in 1983 and contained photographic portraits of the people you regularly saw on the street, in the stores or restaurants in that era.  My father, who worked at Green's Liquor Store at that time, was one of the people featured.  I know there are several more books about Ponce de Leon Avenue out there but this one has a personal and a Grady connection.

George Mitchell also taught photography at Grady for many years between 1986-1998 and was very well liked.