Macon’s open spaces and secret places

Cardboard boxes make great sleds for flying down the slides at Coleman Hill. In fact, you better have one or friction will burn through your clothes. On Second Sunday in Coleman Hill Park, children waited their turns to rush down the hill and run back to the top for another chance while their pets and parents formed a cheering squad on the sidelines.

Quail Dogs, the band scheduled for the Second Sunday concert by Bragg Jam, had a diverse playlist from country to pop to give the crowd a taste of what they can expect when the band is part of the line up for the annual weekend of music in July. Terri Teodecki, who lives with husband, Steve, on Bond Street, was taking advantage of the outing just a stone’s throw from home, with Annette Anderson and other friends from uptown and downtown.

Blankets and pop-up picnics were everywhere with menus that were anything but skimpy — Don Bailey was finishing a tall cup of fresh fruit while Bruce Conn polished off a slice of the most scrumptious Oreo cookie and ice cream cake, for which he gave credit to Publix. The hike up and down the highest point in Macon surely canceled any extra calories for the day.

CRUNCH TIME!

By the time you read this column, the Design House, the centerpiece of the Design, Wine and Dine Festival, will be open and many of you will have seen the transformed Porter Summer House on the edge of Wesleyan College’s campus. Behind the scenes, for the past two weeks, local designers and a few from out of town have been bringing in furniture and accessories. Starr Electric has been busy hanging light fixtures, and new cabinetry has been installed in the caretaker’s portion of the house. They could teach those HGTV crews a thing or two about quick-change artistry when it comes to decorating during crunch time.

Check with Historic Macon Foundation, the sponsoring organization, online at historicmacon.org for a full schedule of programs and events associated with the 10-day annual celebration of design, good spirits and mouth-watering food. A recap of this year’s event will be in next week’s column. But, seeing the Design House in person is a treat far better than reading about it.

SIX YEARS OF SHARING THE BACK STORY OF MACON’S MUSICAL HISTORY

It did not take more than a day for Jessica Walden and her husband, Jamie Weatherford, to decide that something had to fill the void for visitors to Macon when the Georgia Music Hall of Fame closed. In fact, according to Walden, the day they launched Rock Candy Tours, 40 people were eagerly waiting for the inaugural trek through Macon’s music history — not in a museum, but on the streets where it all happened.

On Monday, Walden was the featured speaker for the Macon Rotary Club where she explained the genesis of the tour service, gave a slide show presentation of some colorful moments in the lives of luminaries in rock music archives, and clarified for the audience what they might see and hear on a Rock Candy Tour.

The name is a nod to the family businesses of both partners — Jessica as the daughter of Alan Walden, who helped launch the careers of Otis Redding and Lynard Skynard, to name a few, and to Jamie, whose family owns Crown Candy Company, which they moved to Macon decades ago.

The tours are held Friday evenings and Saturdays, the former concentrating on the downtown locations associated with rock ‘n’ roll and the latter on the areas of town where some of Macon’s most famous musicians grew up and attended school. In her presentation to the Rotary club, Walden touched on plans for expanding the scope of the tours and on the growing influence of Macon on classical and other genres of music. Although she is too young to have known many of the characters included in Rock Candy Tours, her grasp of the history of the era inspires a passion for its preservation.

This story was originally published June 16, 2017 at 11:30 AM with the headline "Macon’s open spaces and secret places."