Chamblee54

I was listening to a podcast. Some of the action took place in a tacky motel. The narrator mentioned a review of this motel. A guest said he complained to the staff about roaches in the room. The motel employee said the roaches were high, and that they would not bother anybody.
This got me curious, which is never a good idea. I googled “high roaches motel.” I could not find the comment from the podcast, but did find reviews of two motels in Texas. A later search for “worst motel in Georgia” turned up a third suspect. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Today’s pictures are all white men. The older, and the gnarlier, the better. Marion Post Wolcott took the social media picture in November 1939. Tobacco auctioneer (in white gloves) and buyers during auction sale in warehouse in Mebane, Orange County, North Carolina”
Beachtree Motel, 3126 Avenue S, Galveston, Galveston Island, TX 77550
“The tub was so disgusting we were better off bathing on the beach! Dust..outdated tv…bootleg rigged plumbing and lights… and to top it off the owner walked around all night and his wife checked me out with crust in her eye and no bra!”
“It was filled with junkies and Acoholics hanging in the doorways asking for cigarettes. I could not sleep all night because the drug people were up all thur the nite slamming doors, shouting and fighting and starting up their cars to go make their drug buys. The furniture looked like it came out of the goodwill store from the 50’s.”
“We went for a girls weekend and stayed in this awful place. It was so disgusting! We killed several bugs, water bugs and roaches! We had to go buy sheets because theirs were so gross, bought towels because theirs were covered in hair and bought lysol and bleach wipes to wipe everything down! Not to mention the meth heads that wondered the parking lot and came back so drunk and high from the bar they kept trying to walk into our room.”
“Jigsaw the clown would be disgusted to lock you up in here”
Gulfway Motel, 365 Hwy 124, High Island, TX 77623
“Dead bugs and dirt along with a couple of paint chips around the sink. The light fixture above the sink would not work and it was rusty. There were two bulbs missing out of it. I took a bath and ended with paint chips all over me because the poorly painted bathtub was not just beginning to flake apart, it appeared that it had been doing so for some time. … I also had to walk through bird poop(a good ammount) to get to my room. This is because a bird nest was right in front of my door and every time the bird takes off it has to fly over this spot.”
“The first thing to hit us was the odor. Many couldn’t place it, but it seemed like insecticide … The next thing that greeted us was three dead sewer roaches–not the little brown things, but the two-inch guys that look like they belong more in the Amazon jungles. No amenities, cracks in the tub base and elsewhere–obviously where this monsters hang out during the day, one meager bar of soap, a quarter roll of toilette paper with no additional roll. I knocked on the office door, the dog barked, but no one came out. I finally borrowed an extra roll of T.P. from another trip-mate’s room.”
“Only two rooms were adequate, all others contained a film of dirt on everything, stained carpets, and strange odors. The bed comforters had questionalbe stains on them and hair. … The swimming pool was green with algae and there was a dead bird”
Super Inn, 301 Fulton Industrial Cir, Atlanta, GA 30336.
“Nasty i moved the sheets back and found things that are used for drug use ..so dirty i tried to post pics of the lube on base of lamp i mean alot if it”
“We arrived after 11 pm so didn’t notice this hotel was surrounded by strip clubs…luckily we were fine once inside, but when my partner went outside for a smoke he was propositioned by a prostitute…the second time he went out there were 2 prostitutes fighting and the one was threatening that her pimp was going to come down (from the hotel)…one of them had a small board with nails as a weapon. My partner was too scared to try to intervene in the fight and just came in to warn us not to come out.”
“There are at least three strip clubs right across the street, in which, prostitution is going on too and they end up at Super Inn. … They kept slamming the doors in the hallway ALL NIGHT!!!!! It didn’t stop until 5 a.m.”
“Upon arrival, we were greeted by multiple prostitutes and their pimp/ drug dealer. The place is located in an alley with several strip clubs in sight. After making my way past the prostitutes, there was no one in the lobby. A prostitute informed us to knock on the door to get the office managers attention. Against my better judgment, I took the key and made my way past more prostitutes smoking pot in the main hallway/lobby. Once in the room, I found at least FIVE car air fresheners hanging throughout the room trying to cover the musty/smoky smell in my “non smoking” room.”
“With the stares we got from the men and prostitutes coming in and out of the hotel I felt like fresh meat among a pack of wild dogs. The taxi driver stated he could not leave us here so we got back in the vehicle and drove back to the airport.”
“First of all there are 4 strip clubs across the road from the hotel. Secondly, there was about 5 prostitutes at the entrance of the hotel. When we went into the lobby we asked the clerk if it was safe there and he said, “of course, why do you ask?” and I said, “because there are about 5 prostitues standing at the entrance” then he said, ” NO, they don’t come on my property, you have nothing to worry about. They aren’t allowed in this hotel”. We believed that until that night when we saw him give the prostitutes a room key!!!!! The whole weekend stay the prostitutes were cold I guess so they were prostituting from the lobby of the hotel! Their pimps were outside bringing in the customers. I saw this with my two very own eyes!” … UPDATE: Google currently lists the Beachtree Motel as “Temporarily closed”. The Gulfway Motel is apparently open. The Super Inn was demolished August 30, 2024. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published September 19, 2023. … Mr. Bear “Speaking of obscure, do you remember the location of a restaurant downtown called the “Cross Keys”. There’s a photo of it in the Georgia State Library archives, but no notation of its location other than it appears to be near a big Gulf Oil lighted sign.” · chamblee54 “I have seen that picture. There is a historic brass marker near Ashford Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry. Apparently there was some kind of trail crossing there called Cross Keys. Full disclosure: I went to Cross Keys High School. Nobody ever talked about what Cross Keys was. Google is not much help, except for an 1862 Battle of Cross Keys in Virginia.” This is a repost.
Some helpful person sent a couple of links, and soon I was learning about Cross Keys… the militia district, not the school. Apparently, Cross Keys was centered around the intersection of Ashford Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry. The crossroads is a doozy … the two major thoroughfare are combined into a hundred yard stretch of asphalt, only to separate again at a red light. Both roads run between Peachtree and I-285. One goes through pill hill, and the other leads to Perimeter Mall. None of this was going on when the Post Office was built in 1846.
“Historical records provide that the militia district of “Cross Keys” was established in 1827 and continued to be referenced as such at least as late as 1951. Prior to 1827 the only Federal post in the region was known as “Cross Keys,” and subsequently, “Old Cross Keys,” when the post moved to near current City of Chamblee just prior to Sherman’s March. … The area was increasingly settled by farming families during the first quarter of the 19th century. As land concessions were signed with the Creek (Muscogee) Nation between 1818 and 1821 more land was made available via grants to European settlers. While the mascots and symbols of “Indians” at Cross Keys High School are culturally inaccurate and reflect garb and headdresses of nomadic tribes of the mid and far west, it is a fitting and ironic tribute to the Muscogee Native Americans who long thrived on the same land. … The area remained primarily an agricultural community until the acquisition by the United States Army of a large tract of land in heart of the district in July of 1917. This tract became Camp Gordon, an infantry training and artillery cantonment. Part of that original 2,400 acres later became a Naval Air Station at the current site of Peachtree-DeKalb Airport.”
“There was a Cross Keys post office as early as 1846, when the postmaster was James A. Reeve.” A marker at Johnson Ferry and Ashford Dunwoody Road in Brookhaven gives this history for Old Cross Keys: “Ante-bellum crossroads settlement & post office, James Reeve (1792-1852) Post Master & merchant. Prior to 1864 the Post Office was removed to a point between Chamblee and Doraville where, name unchanged it was known as Cross Keys Post Office. To distinguish the one from the other, this place was called Old Cross Keys & was cited in Federal dispatches, maps & reports of military operations here in 1864. At this point, a brief contact was made between the marching columns of Dodge’s 16th and Schofield’s 23rd A.C. July 18, both enroute to Decatur from Chattahoochee River crossings.”
“Samuel House was one of the early settlers of this area, arriving in 1830. In 1850, he built a brick home that is now part of the Peachtree Golf Club. General Sherman spent the night at the home on July 18, 1864 and described it as “a brick house well known and near old Cross Keys.” … The name Cross Keys is referenced in Civil War records. Special orders from General James McPherson on July 16, 1864 instructs “The fifteenth Army Corps, Major General John A. Logan commanding, will move out from its present position at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow on the road leading to Cross Keys, following this road to a point near Providence Church, where he will take a left hand road (sometimes called the upper Decatur road, and proceed on this until he reaches Nancy’s creek, where he will take up a good position on each side of the road and go into bivouac.”
Major General William T. Sherman also issued orders on July 18. At the 15:00 mark of this lecture (no source available), the speaker quotes a dispatch to Gen. James Birdseye McPherson. “I am at Sam House’s, a brick house well known, and near old Cross Keys … a sick negro is the only human being left on the premises … we are eleven miles from Atlanta, five from Buckhead, and the signboard says ten miles to McCaffrey’s bridge and eleven to Roswell.” Four days later, Gen. McPherson was killed, in what is now East Atlanta Village.
There is little indication about why this area was called Cross Keys. In 1827, this was the middle of nowhere. “The symbol of the “crossed keys” itself traces to early Christian representations of the “keys to the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth” famously offered by Jesus to Peter according to Matthew 16:19.” The phrase Cross Keys does not appear in the verse.
No one seems to know much about the Cross Keys restaurant. The GSU picture is dated November 8, 1951. A postcard gives the address as 237 Peachtree Street, and has the address of a CKR in Nashville. The Nashville restaurant is mentioned in a WSB-TV film from May 13, 1963. “African American students protest segregation at two restaurants in town. … a white doorman outside the Cross Keys Restaurant. African American students march on the sidewalk … where police forcefully push the demonstrators away and let white people through the crowds.”
Two articles were quoted in this post: Going way back to Cross Keys · Every few years I tell the story of the name, ‘Cross Keys,’ so our community doesn’t forget. The second story has a comment by Mr. Bear. Several links in the original story no longer work. Pictures today are from Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken September 16, 1961. “Stewart Avenue (later Metropolitan Parkway) and University Avenue intersection.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah