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Folk artist Don Cochran's Art Gallery
Paintings, sculptured high relief murals, backdrops, folk art, fine art, landscapes, waterfalls, wall murals on canvas and other paintings by Georgia's Folk and Master Scenic Artist Don Cochran for church, business and home.
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She said, with tears in her eyes that we would have to wait a little while longer for Christmas. I said that's alright Mother, I know there's not a Santa Claus. Ronald said, "yes there is. Tell him mother!" and then he started to cry. Mother put her arms around him and pulled him close to her and he said, "You remember Donald. We heard him, those jingles!" Betty, my oldest sister, was like my mother and she took care of me more than mother did. Mother always had her hands full with everybody else. Betty had told me about Santa but not to tell Ronald and Tommy, and that I was old enough to understand. I was an hour and five minutes older than Ronald and she told me to keep it a secret. So I didn't say anything else and went to bed. Christmas morning I woke up. Everybody else was still in bed. It was so cold that no one wanted to get out from under the cover. I had to pee. So I got up and went to the front door and pulled it open. It drug on the bottom, so I had to reach down to the bottom and pull on it, stepped out the door and looked up. There was a 25 lb. bag of gold-medal flour, a big bag of potatoes, cornmeal, a big ham, canned goods, apples, oranges, nuts, candy and toys! The whole front porch was full as I stepped forward in the middle of them. I saw two sets of cap guns. One Hopalong Cassidy and the other Roy Rodgers. Ronald had said he wanted Roy Rodgers guns. I knew those were for us. picked up Hopalong Cassidy guns, put them on, and then picked up the hat and put it on. There was a feeling in my head that went to my hands, into my stomach, into my legs and my feet start moving. I couldn't control them.
I looked out over those old tombstones. They had a little snow gathered on top of them, and then a little puff of wind blew the snow up in the air above the graves, and it looked like a white Santa Claus, and I heard a little jingle. My feet would not stop dancing. I hollered, danced up and down the porch, on the steps, in the yard, around the graves and around the house. I was the happiest boy in the world and I couldn't stop dancing. I was making so much noise I woke everybody up. Mother and Tommy came to the door first. Mother was more surprised than anyone. I couldn't stop dancing. I would slow down and pick up a piece of candy and that feeling would come over me again. It felt like my hair was standing up and then it would go down my back and hit my feet and they would start moving. I have been so tickled I couldn't stop laughing and I had hurt so bad I couldn't stop crying. I didn't know they were a feeling of happiness that would make you dance. That was a feeling I never will forget. For two or three days I would pick up an apple or an orange or something else Santa Claus had brought and that feeling would hit me and I would start dancing again.
 
. About a week or two before, down at the old barn, Ronald had written a letter to Santa Claus, but not a real letter. He couldn't even write. He just scribbled something on paper and pretended it said he wanted Roy Rodgers guns and then put his letter in an old army boot. No one knew it but him and me. His letter was written on an old paper bag. There was a nail on the post at the top of the steps and a brown piece of paper with Merry Christmas written on it. We took it down and on the backside of this paper was Ronald's letter to Santa Clause! So I believe in Santa Claus. He may not have a beard and red suit, but he could. He may not live at the North Pole, but he could. So don't forget, you may not be Santa Claus, but for someone you could be. And you may never be so happy it makes you dance, but you could.
like I said we lived in a lot more places from North Georgia to South Georgia and all in between. In my 12th year we moved right in the middle of town in Macon, Georgia and we had an inside toilet, running water and everything. But that didn't last very long and back to the country we went. .
By then I had discovered how to sell things on the side of the highway. You know? Produce, red wigglers worms for the fishermen, boiled peanuts, little cedar trees at Christmas or anything else I thought someone would buy. When I was 14 my father died. That summer I went down to a little town call Boston, Georgia to run a fruit stand for my Uncle Carl. It seemed like a 1000 mi. away. When I got there it was just a square cut out of a cornfield at the forks of the road. A cedar tree and an old Nash Rambler car setting on the ground with no tires on it. You know the model that the seats lay back to make a bed? That car was my home for the rest of that year and into the next.
Fruit Stand
I was working hoping I could send home some money to my mother and my younger brothers, however, I sent very little home. In fact they moved and I didn't know where they had moved. I was taught a lot of lessons that year. Here is just one of them.
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Folk art Paintings by Georgia artist Don Cochran