Episode 2: Donald "Duck" Sprayberry

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Coweta County Bicentennial Podcast Series - Our Community, Our Story. 

Meet Donald "Duck" Sprayberry, the son of the original founder of the infamous Sprayberry's Barbeque. During this episode, Duck is interviewed by his great grandson Davis Gay as they look back on Duck growing up in Coweta County and all things Sprayberry's. 

Do you want to capture a piece of your family’s history? We’d love to hear from you! Contact us at info@coweta.ga.us and stay tuned for more episodes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Cow Weta County Story Booth Podcast, our community, our story. In each episode, family members and friends will interview one another, shared memories, local traditions, and experiences growing up in Calheader County. These stories are being preserved as part of a living archive for future generations. We hope you enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

I am Donald Duck Sprayberry, Newman, Georgia. I was the son of Houston Sprayberry, who is the original starter of Sprayberry's Barbecue.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

I'm Davis Gay, the great-grandson of Duck Sprayberry. Tell us about how Sprayberry's barbecue started and share some stories about the impact on Cowita County.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Well, I don't know about the impact. We were lucky. He asked him, did they ever work in a sawmill? He was glad to get away from the sawmill and got started in business. And uh that's uh more or less how it started. He just was tired of working as a farmer and he wanted to get in another business.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

What was it like growing up during World War II?

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Well, uh that's hard to explain because I was only about eight, nine, and ten, but I used to play uh, do you know the little kickball machine on my porch at home? You put a penny in it and kick it and try to catch it.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

I played that, I bet you, with uh 5,000 soldiers. They used to let them out on Friday, and uh taxis would carry them to Atlanta and then come back on Sunday. At that time we were open on Sunday. And of course, I was always up at the restaurant. That was my baby's. And uh I used to play those games with those boys, and a lot of them were homesick because they had a younger sister or a younger brother, and they were just drawn to a young kid. But also, of course, I didn't know much at that age I didn't know much about the war, but I knew those uh soldiers saw some of them out every weekend for about six weeks. Same ones they stopped in the taxis would go to Atlanta, carrying them to Atlanta on Friday afternoon, about make two or three stops going back and forth from Columbus. And then on Sunday they did the s reverse, the same thing from Atlanta back to Columbus.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

How has Cahuita changed over the years?

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Heavens. I don't know how you could ever explain that to someone. Well, you know, at the restaurant now, the road beside it was dirt. From Carroll to from Union to Carrollton, it was a dirt road when I was young. And it you had the same communities, Moland and Palmad up there, and uh Luthersville and all the around, but they were nothing like this. Sanoa was just Hutchison Hardway at about three or other stores now. It's a metropolis almost. And it's just like everything else in s in the county. It's just growing. Traffic is about you used to see maybe two or three cars going here to Sanoa, now you you see a hundred, you know, every mile, just about.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

What was it like when you were growing up here?

SPEAKER_02 3:42

It was wonderful. The reason I say it was wonderful, you know, we had uh this was a city of homes, and it was really the city of homes. When I was young, they had a Nunan bus and went out Jackson Street, went out Greenville Street, LaGrane Street. I think it was a dime to ride it from our restaurant to Court Square. And uh, you know, when I was in high school, uh, we had, y'all have more in probably about four grades over here than we had in the in the whole school, high school. We were there by McCoon's funeral home. We didn't have a cafeteria, so you went home for lunch. And in the mornings early, you'd get there early, so we could get on that wall in front of McCoon's funeral home, sit and talk. Everybody, same thing after lunch. We'd get right back up there as soon as you could talk until they raised a bell for us to come in. And it was just a lot more, everybody knew everybody. It was a community then. Now it's so spread out and so many new people coming in that it's hard for me to explain to you how it was. We all knew each other.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

What do you miss the most about the way it used to be?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Just being a small community where you did know everyone. You didn't have all this kind of traffic, and uh everybody knew e everybody by name. And if when you went to a town, everybody you saw was the same people.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

What do you like most about Cowita now?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

It's still a great place to live. If we don't let it become, rather than being city homes, we don't let it become a city of apartments. But that's I I should probably shouldn't say that, but that's true.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Tell us about some of the great characters of Cowita County.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

One of them was David Boyd. He'd moved in Cowita County and and he became a cartoonist. And you know, he's he's done some major stuff, and not he was very great for us, but uh uh he has he did cartoons for a lot of different people. He was a good guy, too.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

What stories have come down to you about your p parents and grandparents?

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Well, I've told some of them uh my daddy and my grandparents m they they were next door to the restaurant, and I spent most of my time out there. In fact, I used to come home from lunch at school, and I'd go out and eat with them than I ate at the restaurant really. And I uh I just always with them. They were I they were originally Irish descendants. And uh I guess that's about I mean, uh tell you they were just great people. He was a farmer. He had about he farmed about I guess five hundred acres of and he drove a tractor until he was pretty close to Age I am now, which is uh in his late eighties.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Do you remember any great stories or legends about our town?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

I had so many stories about that's a hard one for me to think about what to say. It's it was known as the third wealthiest city in the United States per capital in the 40s, 30s and 40s. And you had a lot of wealthy people here, but they were just common people. You they were a little different than some of these people that are supposedly wealthy now. They they were just common people. They you could you saw them, they called you by name, and you called in by name.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

What do you wish outsiders knew about Cowita County?

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Wish they knew what it how it was. Early on, people move here and they want to bring their way of living, but it was laid back living all most of all my life here, up until about the last 20 years, 25 maybe. It was just pleasant laid back living.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Tell me some of your fondest memories as a child gr growing up in Cowita County.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Well, fondest memory we used to go to the midnight movie. Nowadays that would be going to the movie midnight. When we call going to the movie, it meant you got out at midnight. That's about the only time you or a kid ever stayed up past 11 o'clock. And uh that kind of thing. And we used to, as I say, we used to gather on the wall there, macoons, and uh enjoy life together as teenagers. And uh we had in my neighborhood out there, we had a about, I guess about six or seven boys. We played basketball behind the high the house is still there. They had a paved drive behind that had two gold. We must have played 10,000 games of basketball back then. And we every night after supper, the big boys and the the younger ones, the younger ones could get a switch and chase the big boys, and if they caught them, they they could hit them with a switch. We did that every night just about. But the one of the funny things was Alvin Arnold could not do that with us at night because his daddy was gumb and he but they were afraid that something might like what's going on now could happen. He he couldn't play with us, but all the rest of us did. Over there in Joyland, the big house on the big house that sits back, that's where we played a lot of things on that yard there.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

What's your favorite meal at Sprayberries?

SPEAKER_02 9:54

My favorite meal at Sprayberries. I guess a Houston special, which is a barbecue sandwich with brunch stew on the meat on the sandwich. It's about as favorite as I have. I eat all of it.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

How did spray berries become such a prominent name nationwide?

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Well, through the the Lord put us here in the right place. And uh we it's ugly to say that World War II was great for us, but it was because it spread our name of so many soldiers from all over the country coming in there when the, as I said, about the taxes holding them to Atlanta. And also from Columbus, Montgomery, all out through the West, and same thing from the East. 29 was the main drag through Georgia. And it just, word of mouth was the best advertisement we ever had until David Boyd came along and put did our uh, what do you call uh, for our t-shirts. And uh he put that, that was a very popular thing. We sold thousands of t-shirts with the pig outed spray bears on there, and he loved to tell about being in Australia, sitting at a, I won't sway at a bar, he said it was a bar, but I guess it was a restaurant bar like this. And so got to talking to this fellow, and he asked him where he was from, and he said, Nina, Georgia. And he asked him, did he know spray bears? And of course, he went in and told him about he did our all our shirts for us and everything. But word of mouth, the Lord just blessed us. Word of mouth has been the biggest thing for us.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Thanks for listening to the episodes of Cal Wita County Story Booth Podcast. We hope you enjoy hearing these memories and traditions that make our community special. If you would like to share your own story and help preserve a piece of Cal Wita County's history, email us at infocal.ga.us. Again, that is info at calwita.ga.us