There was a whorehouse over by the river, memorialized today by the t&a of the Effie’s Club Follies, but the Methodist student center never steered me in that direction. Whiskey was illegal; the closest place to buy it was Calhoun Falls, SC, a familiar route to fraternity designated drivers. The Iron Horse had already proven unfit for discriminating undergraduate art arbiters and had been banished to the corn field. Women students could not wear (Bermuda, never short) shorts, except when going to the mandatory physical education classes, and then only when covered by a raincoat. They had to be back in their dorms by curfew, and they could not, anywhere under any circumstances, drink alcohol. To be caught in a man’s apartment was grounds for expulsion. (Women couldn’t have apartments.)

The only places open downtown at night were The Varsity and the Western Union office. Nothing was open on campus. There was one campus cop, “Dusty.” He wore a grey work shirt and matching trousers and carried his .38 pistol in his hip pocket as he walked his rounds.

You begin to get the picture: no campus bus system. People hitchhiked on Lumpkin Street to get from North Campus to classes on South Campus. At class changes, crowds of students were out in the street, though as I recall, only the girls actually got rides. Freshmen could not have cars, though some did, anyway. There were no black students until the first two were admitted amid jeering, flag-waving mobs.

Men were ruled in an autocratic fashion by Dean of Men William Tate, later Dean of Students, and the “co-eds” by Dean of Women Edith Stallings. The deal then was that when you were at UGA, the university assumed the place of your parents, making decisions for you and disciplining you and banishing you if you proved to be an unruly child. When you got into a confrontation with Dean Tate, his first action was to lift your I.D. card. Without it, you were a non-person; you could not function academically, especially to register for the next quarter’s classes. When your I.D. was in Dean Tate’s pocket, you were at his mercy, and to learn your fate, you had to go see him in his office in the Academic Building. Up or down: in or out, it was his decision, and he was your daddy.

The town of Athens in my college days is a blur to me now. To the extent that I got out around town, I was completely unaware of the city around me: the stately homes along Prince Avenue, including the twin Michael mansions that stood between the president’s house and the Taylor-Grady house; the close-in neighborhoods around College Avenue and Foundry Street and on Baxter Hill. I had hardly exited Athens before those neighborhoods were obliterated in the name of progress and Prince pockmarked with garish commercial intrusions. What’s left is always in danger, so get familiar with what’s here, so that you can enjoy what is still a beautiful town and write about it yourself some day when you feel moved or face a deadline.

There was music even then, but it was in a few black clubs and in the fraternity houses, where The Swinging Medallions entertained at formals, The Drifters or maybe even The Coasters at big campus events and groups like The Hot Nuts at parties.

The campus was smaller; the town was smaller: they were what they were, but there was plenty to do if you looked around for it. The same is eminently true today.

Whether you’re here for the first time or coming back or stayed straight through the summer, when you’ve got that paper written or that book read and underlined, take some time to look around Athens. Taste our many and varied local restaurants, our clubs that feature every kind of music, our art galleries and the many businesses with local art on their walls, our wonderful Ciné, that will show you how entertaining and moving real films can be; our whole close-knit, pedestrian and bicycle-friendly (usually), lived-in, casual, kudzu patch of a beautiful university town. Let Flagpole and the Flagpole Guide to Athens show you what’s happening. Let Athens take you over and fill you with memories that will make you want to come back or stay here. It’s a great hometown; make it yours for now or for a long while.

Welcome.