The Ramblin' Raft Race in Atlanta, Ga 1960's -1980's | Eastern North Carolina Now

    It was the idea of a North Carolina boy while he was attending Georgia Tech. The icon picture is Larry Patrick and Playboy Playmate Candy Loving who was representing Budweiser Beer. That was back in the days of real beer and real T#ts. Click on the picture to see Candy's Playboy picture--------->

    I subscribe to the Atlanta magazine news feed and they send you links to various articles and post regarding Atlanta. Back in June they sent a post on the great Ramblin' Raft Race in Atlanta. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for the latest articles on Beaufort County Now if you just click on the link at the bottom right of this website "RSS FEED".

    For those who do not know about the race, it was started in the late 60s and ran through the 80's. The originator of the rat race was a Georgia Tech student named Larry Patrick. Larry had the idea of a casual float down the river and one of the local rock and roll radio stations, WQXI, picked up on the idea and became one of the sponsors.


    I have posted before on the my early 70's adventures as a newly returned Vietnam veteran hell bent for leather and looking for good times. The life and death of a playboy and classmate post is here. The life and death of a playboy and classmate post is here.

    I participated in the raft race and floated down the Chattahoochee on numerous occasions during the early 70's. One of my friends Tim and I used to float down the river with our girlfriends and various other friends from the Morgan Falls all the way down to the 41 highway exit which was about 10 miles. We also took our tried our hand at rafting on the Chatooga River in North Georgia. It was the site of the movie "Deliverance".Tim passed away in 2011. Here is that post on BCN.

    I thought it might be of interest to some of the North Carolina residents who read BCN to read the story and the history of the raft race since it's founder was a resident of Kings Mountain, N.C. Larry Patrick passed at age 66 on October 25, 2015 of lung disease. I did not know Larry but I thank him for providing an event for some of my best memories.

    The Man who made us float, a tribute to Larry Patrick

    He left behind a vast treasure trove of pictures and memories of the raft race which was reviewed in this article in Atlanta magazine. I'm am not much of a writer, so I'll just refer you to the raft race history oral history which was written in the Atlanta magazine.Woodstock on the water, an oral history of the ramblin' raft race

    The raft race became an icon for the wild and crazy 60s and the early disco days of the 70's that culminated in a timely death in the 1980's. Is just as well that it died as it began to have a negative impact on the Chattahoochee and the surrounding areas. There were rumors of nude swimming and topless rafters. I can neither confirm or deny such salacious stories.

    Looking back on those days brings fond memories. It's easy to see how the over exuberance of the youth finally evolved into a respectable life of middle age and finally an old age of memories of bygone days. If you are lucky, sometimes you just grow out of it and other times you're forced out of it, and some never successfully make the transition. I may have accomplished all three of these milestones at the over time.

    This article reminds me of a quote by one of my favorite automotive writers; Peter Egan.

    "I sometimes think that if I'd not indulged in the excesses of life, I might have saved enough money to retire in a higher style than I am currently living. But then, of course, I wouldn't have the same diverse bank of vivid memories, both good and bad. And it's important, as we get older and hurl ourselves toward senility, to have stockpiled plenty of things worth forgetting. My work here is almost done."

UPDATE JULY 2016

   Based on TMC article "TMc: RoboCops 2016", the police can arrest you years after the infraction based on pictures of the event.  I just got the news that "It is now legal to “shoot the hooch” with hooch in Georgia." It is referenced the passage of a law making it legal to drink while floating down the Chattahoochee River. 

   That is just one more thing I can scratch off my potential liability list from forty Four year or so ago. I do not think I am in the picture below but current technology could use facial recognition to find me if I am there.  As I remember it thought, there was this one girl in the raft that you could have recognized without the need of facial recognition software.  Perhaps (•_ㅅ_•) software could find her.

New Georgia Law

 


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