In the summer of 1899 Buddie found himself on a departing train once again. This time it was probably expected. After all, Asa, Sr., had recently sent Howard across the Southern states, selling Coca Cola syrup and meeting distributors. The senior Asa saw it as part of his earthly duty to ensure that his kin were all involved in his business and benefiting from its successes. At every level of the company he employed cousins, sons, nephews, and even his son-in-law. Keeping it in the family was high priority, and Howard and Buddie were part of that plan.

Out on the road Howard traveled from town to town, writing home regularly and reporting his progress to his father. Conscientiousness continued to dominate his personality as he put duty above personal happiness. He often expressed gloomy sentiments of loneliness in letters to his sister, claiming he’d lost all of the friends he’d once known. He felt abandoned and exiled and this showed in his writing. But rather than rebelling, he pulled the reins in tighter. He became more conscientious and tried harder to please, restricting his pursuit of fun and focusing on his responsibilities.

Flip everything that Howard represented on its head and you have his brother Asa, Jr. Ever the contrary personality, Buddie seemed to thrive on impulsiveness and impetuousness. He followed his heart in all pursuits, regardless of whether his father approved or not, and was easily distracted by new opportunities for fun. Aware of his son’s predilections, Asa, Sr., chose not to give Buddie a traveling gig. Instead, he sent his namesake out to Los Angeles, California, to settle there and help run the newly established West Coast branch, in spite of his reservations about sending him so far away. Buddie’s older cousin Samuel was already there, which meant a responsible adult was on-site to keep an eye on him. Buddie’s job was to take care of manufacturing, orders and fulfillment while Sam was out on the road selling syrup.

But rather than acting as a surrogate father figure, Samuel welcomed his younger cousin by introducing him around to the wonderful distractions that L.A. had to offer. They caroused like no one was watching, because no one was. In a letter to his parents, he took a swipe at them, asking them why they were so lonesome for him when he’d hardly ever lived at home. This bitterness about being sent away would assert itself again later in letters to his sister during his years in Hartwell, GA.

From a safe distance, Buddie could do what he wanted and report only what he thought his parents should know. Family lore and previous researchers all reached the same conclusion that I find unavoidable: Buddie fell into the sweet embrace of vice. In a 1951 interview in the book “These Found the Way,” by David Wesley Soper, Buddie recounted, “My story was the old familiar one of falling in with the wrong crowd. The habits of my associates gradually became my habits. At the time, if I experienced qualms of conscience about moral laxity, I stifled them.”

True to his nature, once vice had him in its grips he had no room in his field of vision for anything else. That included reporting home on his status and business needs. As other family members noted throughout his teens and 20s, Buddie wrote infrequently, and the letters he did write focused on why he was writing, why he hadn’t written, and whether he would write again, rather than discussing real matters. By his own admission, he didn’t like to write. So he didn’t.

Perhaps he did this deliberately to relieve himself from the obligation of reporting his transgressions to his parents. They couldn’t control what they didn’t know. And living so far away from them, they only knew what he chose to share. When Sam and Buddie visited Colorado for what they called a “business trip,” Buddie wrote home that he’d gotten sick sick from drinking bad water, a claim that was received with the skepticism it deserved.

Although never explicitly stated, Asa, Sr., had his doubts about Buddie’s activities, and this became evident in the decisions he made in late 1899 and early 1900. He knew his son, and he knew sales weren’t growing as he’d hoped they would. In July of 1899 Asa, Sr., wrote to Howard, indicating that Buddie needed some business coaching.

As he did during their college years, Asa, Sr., appealed to Howard to manage Buddie’s failings rather than doing so himself. He had no compunction about defining the direction of Howard’s life, but with Buddie he demonstrated helplessness and reluctance, and pushed Howard to be the bad cop to his good cop. He often directed his criticisms of Buddie to Howard, and asked his advice as though he were speaking parent-to-parent rather than parent-to-child.

Howard’s business ideas didn’t turn things around, assuming he offered them and assuming Buddie was willing to hear them. So in March of 1900, Asa, Sr., pulled Howard off of the road and sent him out to L.A. to look in on things, revealing that money management wasn’t going the way it should have. He expressed optimism that things would turn around once Howard arrived, applied his skill where it was needed, and straightened out the financials.

The progression of letters over the next few months reveal the degree to which Asa, Sr., understood his second son’s struggles to manage the business. He sent Howard to L.A. in March, and by mid-April he was making arrangements to bring both boys home. He made no drama about it, simply informed his sons that they would be departing by early June.

He said more than once that the trip home would be a one-month stay. This was always the plan, although the reason for the duration is not captured in the Candler papers archive. On April 30, 1900, he wrote to Buddie, urging him to depart as close to June 1 as he could, while also trying to ensure that the business wouldn’t slide any further in his absence. He wanted a full transfer of knowledge so the office could operate without him, and spoke encouragingly to him from one side of his mouth, while exposing his doubt in his son’s judgement from the other.

His tone, as is typical in his letters to and about Buddie, was pandering in its encouragement. He often used words with Buddie that he didn’t use with his other children, his wife, or his siblings. Only Buddie was instructed to be calm and deliberate in his decisions. Only Buddie received pleas to be good, be careful. Given the timeline, it’s likely that Asa, Sr., had significant concerns and was already making arrangements to permanently extract his son from the temptations of California without tipping his hand and causing him to take flight.

Buddie returned home in mid-June for what was promised as a one-month stay. So in mid- to late-July he should have gone back, right? He didn’t. On Sept 17, 1900 a letter from Buddie to Lucy in the Emory Rare Papers Archive reveals that he had been relocated again sometime in August or early September, this time to a tiny town in northern Georgia called Hartwell.

There is no record of how the proposal to relocate him to rural Georgia was received. However, it seems likely that the reason for his relocation was made clear to him, given the contents of his first letter to his sister once he settled in his new home. In his letter, Buddie himself revealed that he had fallen in with a bad crowd.

Nine days later he wrote to Lucy again, this time with gushing praise for their parents that reeks of overcompensation, given his past disobedience, recklessness, and disregard for their rules and expectations. It is also out of keeping with his usual tone, which typically alternated between deflective humor and wounded narcissism. This isn’t the only time in Buddie’s life when simpering deference to parental authority appeared at the intersection between indulgence and guilt. But it is the most gratuitous example on record.

Buddie’s time in Los Angeles was short, and the family was discreet enough to never speak directly about what happened during his West Coast adventure. Many of the conclusions about his time there must be extrapolated from letters In the context of typical communications. By comparing tone and word choice to previous and subsequent periods in the family’s correspondences, a portrait of 20-year-old Buddie emerges, showing a thrill-seeking, easily distracted, and poorly organized young man who was unable to fulfill his father’s expectations. Whether Asa, Sr.’s, expectations were too high, given his son’s personality and immaturity, is debatable. Howard certainly did his best to prove that youth was no obstacle, which made it even harder for Buddie to be seen in any light other than failure.

I tend to be charitable about the L.A. year. Personality quirks aside, Asa, Jr., was young and inexperienced. He’d lived the life of a boarder since he was 8 years old and had few opportunities to practice business acumen before being deployed to run and grow an entire regional branch on the opposite side of the country. Telephones were still a luxury item so support from home was delayed and asynchronous. His rebellious and selfish personality certainly played a role in his failure to thrive, but success would have a long shot for anyone. Asa, Sr., was 37 when he purchased the Coca Cola formula. He’d had years of successes and failures under his belt before Coca Cola took off. Sending a freshly-graduated 20-year-old with a personality like Buddie’s to California probably wasn’t fair.

And when Asa, Sr., realized his error, he made an executive decision to correct course. His goal was to save his son from the evils of temptation and place him where distractions were few and distant. It wasn’t a discussion, it was a mandate, and Buddie’s desires weren’t a point of consideration. As perhaps they shouldn’t have been. His parents made what they felt was the right decision for him, for better or for worse.

Hartwell, GA, was no Los Angeles, and that was precisely its best selling point. So without his input or say-so, Buddie was brought home and sent away again without notice or fanfare, drawing to a close his year as a Georgian expat.

Sunny California Timeline

Sunny California Gallery

Sunny California Resources

• Los Angeles History:

  • LA Directory Archive

  • 1900-1901 Los Angeles Directory

    Asa, Jr. listed at 123 East 4th St. Los Angeles

    • Hotel Johnson listed at 123 East 4th St Los Angeles

  • Former Coca Cola LA Headquarters at 612 San Pedro, LA

  • 1908 Sanborn General Index, Page 78, Volume 2, sheet 143-144

  • Former location of the Hotel Johnson

• Historic Location Hunting in L.A. - Basic Resources:

  • Los Angeles Conservancy Historical Research Guide

  • Zimas Los Angeles Parcel Search

  • Navigate LA

  • Los Angeles Online Building Records