Keef; re Athens and kids partying and stuff...

[JC-DAWG83]

I'll have to defer to you on this one since you live there. I believe you about the bars, the kids today have so much more money than we did. Hell, I was broke as a three dollar watch the entire time I was in Athens. The only people I knew with money were the Daddy's money frat boys that had new cars and Daddy's credit card and still got an allowance. I had to work like a galley slave all Summer and at Christmas to save up spending money for the school year. My Dad paid for tuition, books and gave me $300 a month for rent, utilities, food and everything else (that wasn't enough in case you were wondering).

I don't have any first, or even second, hand knowledge about the drug use. I'm sure there is some and I'm sure you know more about it than I do.

Isn't Athens up to about 100,000 people or so now? It's not as big as Augusta or Macon, but it's definitely bigger than a "town". The college definitely affects the whole place, mostly in a positive way. There are lots of good paying jobs at the university and those 25,000 students bring a lot of money to town and they spend every penny. I'm really hoping the college here starts growing with out of town students.

 

[McDonoughDawg]

ACC population is 119K per my typolater*

*

 

[_Keef_]

Yeah, it is weird, the population is up yet it doesn't really feel a ...

whole lot bigger than 25 yrs ago. I guess it is mainly just more dense. Now Oconee and to some extent, Madison County have exploded, too, and you can really see the growth in those counties. Athens still feels and looks nothing like Augusta, Columbus or Macon to me. Downtown has got to be at least three times as small as those towns. I thought Augusta was much larger than Athens when I lived there - seemed like at least 4 or 5 times the area to me. I was a repo man for a finance company when I lived there right out of college. I rode all over it from the hood down by the river to over near the army base to way out towards Martinez. Only worked there 3 or 4 months but I got 5 years of stories from that job.

 

[lakejacksondawg]

Re: Yeah, it is weird, the population is up yet it doesn't really feel a ...

I grew up in Harlem and used to run all of the roads...I can imagine some of the stories you have about Disgusta.

 

[Concourse E]

all that money is wasted on the students

Economically, I was somewhere between you and that fratboy you refer to. My Dad paid for everything and I got a set allowance of $30 a week. The allowance had to cover spending money, personal items like soap and shampoo, gas for the car, and whatever beer or skoal I purchased.

I lived like a king for four years - I'm not sure I've yet to duplicate the standard of living I had then. Housing is definitely an upgrade, but then again, I didn't have to do any maintenance work, no yard to mow, etc.

When you give students more spending money, they generally end up using it to go someplace more exotic on spring break (nothing wrong with 6 guys in a motel room across the street from PCB) and spending it on more expensive bars and clothing.

Nobody did drugs back then because nobody could have afforded to pay for it.

 

[_Keef_]

When were you there? ...

A HIT of ACID cost $3 - $5 in 1985 and WEED was about $30 a QUARTER. 4 people could get off on a $35 bag of SHROOMS. Believe me, they were affordable if you liked doing them.

 

[JC-DAWG83]

If I had been given $30 a week for spending money, you wouldn't...

have been able to tell me anything, I would have been Daddy Warbucks. All the stuff you mention, I had to pay for out of my own money AND any going on a date or going out money I spent. I did learn to live very cheaply. We never set the thermostat above 64 degrees unless we had girls over, then we would set it at the decadent 66 mark. My Junior year, I blew a lot of money in January and February on a gal I dated trying to convince her I was a worldly man. I had to live on one meal a day for March through May. I lost enough weight that I could take my pants off without unbuttoning or unzipping them. I got a job at Classic City Beverage in May and that saved me. I was taking home about $100 per two week pay period and I thought I was rich.

The stories seem kind of funny now, but it wasn't then. When people tell me my Dad was helping me out by making it tough, I tell them, no, he was just being a jerk. He had loads of money but didn't want to give me or my brother any because we were his kids from his first wife. I guess he figured he was getting back at my Mother somehow by making my life miserable.

 

[JC-DAWG83]

25 years ago, Augusta WAS much larger than Athens, but Athens has...

grown while Augusta has shrunk, at least the part of Augusta that is actually Augusta. Columbia county has blown up with yankee transplants and all the white people from South Augusta moving out there.

I know the place you lived on Central Ave. it's still about like it was when you lived there. The area is still nice. Augusta has some very nice areas, but it has some serious sh!thole areas too. I would guess you didn't see many of the nice areas in your job as a finance company repo man.

 

[Concourse E]

I was there in 85

I never priced the stuff and to be honest, I'm not even sure I knew what acid was. But you did hear about rich kids doing coke every once in a while and how if you got addicted you'd be broke really quickly.

Maybe I was just naive, but I didn't see a lot of illegal drug use. Everybody I knew enjoyed drinking cheap beer out of a cooler or keg so much that they didn't really desire to use anything harder.

 

[_Keef_]

No, but my ...

GF was an Augusta Prep girl so I saw that, too. A lot of Augusta seemed pretty nice back then, but you are right, I did not see it during the working day. I was down by that river in the hoods a lot. If it rained hard, you could literally get trapped back in there. All the streets would flood in a freakin' heartbeat. It felt way below sea level down in there. Castleberry Plant was down there if I'm remembering right.

This post was edited on 3/26 3:19 PM by _Keef_

 

[_Keef_]

I wish that was the scene I saw ...

I might have gotten out of there with better than a 2.21 GPA if that was the case. But probably not. Going to class still probably wouldn't have been my thing. My scene was wide open and it seemed like a pretty big scene to me at the time. Most of us didn't have unlimited funds or anything. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there were just a few of us, but it didn't seem like it to me. I thought the whole damn school was on psychedelics for a little while, but apparently that must have been the psychedelics talking to me.