Over the years, there have been quite a few famous visitors to Inman.
My dad, now 95, said it was an established fact in his childhood that Franklin Delano Roosevelt came through Inman on the train when he was traveling to Warm Springs, where the healing waters helped his polio and where he established the Little White House during his presidency.
It makes sense because the tracks went from Atlanta southward, offering a straight shot to Warm Springs. And historians in nearby Woolsey said Roosevelt was there, which means he pretty much had to pass through Inman, which is about a mile back up the tracks.
More recently, during the time of COVID, NASCAR driver Ryan Newman and his girlfriend McKenzie Geibel stopped by the farm on the Sunday morning prior to a race at nearby Atlanta Motor Speedway. Since we share a love of farming and old iron we enjoyed looking over our collection of tractor and trucks, as well as our Christmas trees and muscadines. (Ryan said he felt the muscadines were more work than they’re worth, so he’ll be happy to know we recently took out five rows to clear space to plant about 500 Murray Cypress trees.)
Many an old Western actor and country music singer visited Ralph Wofford and his family back in the day, and the Olympic Torch passed through Inman on the way to Atlanta for the 1996 Games.
But my favorite visit from celebrities came in 1982 or maybe 1983, when Johnny and June Carter Cash were on Hill’s Bridge Road near the Flint River bridge to film part of the movie Murder In Coweta County.
Johnny & June Carter Cash as Lamar Potts & Mayhayley Lancaster in Murder in Coweta County. Photo credit: IMDB
Johnny Cash played the part of Coweta Sheriff Lamar Potts, and his wife played the eccentric fortune teller Mayhayley Lancaster. Andy Griffith played John Wallace, a powerful landowner from Meriwether County, who was convicted and executed for the 1948 murder of a tenant farmer whom Wallace had accused of stealing one of his cows. Because the crime occurred in Coweta, Potts led the investigation.
We learned of the filming just a short walking distance from our house, so Joanne and I took my grandmother Sarah Harp Minter, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s at the time, and our older daughter Tammy with us to check it out. When we got there, Johnny and June Carter were sitting in two of those tall chairs like you see on movie sets. Johnny immediately got up and gave my grandmother his seat. Both he and his wife were extremely kind to her, and were very patient with her – and with us.
June Carter Cash (L), Andy Griffith and Johnny Cash (R) on set of the filming on Murder in Coweta County. Photo credit : Henry Vaccaro taken from his book “Johnny Cash is a Friend of Mine.”
Andy Griffith was sitting in a separate area, across the river in Clayton County, with a security guard discouraging visitors.
They filmed the scene on a hot, sunny afternoon and used a bee smoker to make it seem as if the actors were in a foggy swamp. After watching them blow a few puffs of smoke toward the actors and film a few seconds of dialogue, we were amazed how foggy it seemed when we watched the movie.
Margaret Anne Barnes, a writer from Newnan who worked for the Newnan Times-Herald, wrote the book Murder in Coweta County, and followed that with an autobiography, A Buzzard Is My Best Friend, that focused on her earlier life on a farm in Virginia.
Author Margaret Anne Barnes (L) with Johnny Cash (R) and unknown woman on set of the filming of Murder in Coweta County. Photo credit: Newnan Times-Herald
To re-familiarize herself with the operation of a tractor, she came to our farm and drove our Massey Ferguson 165 tractor. (She knew my dad due to their newspaper connections.)
Years later I got to meet some of Sheriff Potts’ grandsons, and also met the grandson of John Wallace, who was visiting the Betsill Family Moonshine Exhibit at Inman Farm Heritage Days.
I asked him about the book and the movie, and he said he and his family didn’t really have a problem with the book, but the same couldn’t be said of Andy Griffith’s portrayal of Wallace as a cruel villain.
After watching reruns of the Andy Griffith Show for decades it is hard to get used to the idea of the folksy Sheriff of Mayberry as the bad guy.