Julian Curtis Carswell Lane, D.D.S. was born in Statesboro, Bulloch County Georgia on July 11, 1919, one week after the Fourth of July celebration.  Curtis, as he was known, shares the same age as the muscadine Hunt, a female Georgia release of 1919.  Curtis grew up in a house on Main Street where a scuppernong arbor grew less than twenty feet from his bedroom window.  He most likely cut his "baby teeth" on the skins of the famous muscadine known as Scuppernong

Curtis was educated in the public schools of Statesboro.  He graduated from Georgia Teacher's College, now Georgia Southern University, in 1940 and in 1944 graduated from Atlanta Southern Dental College, now Emory University School of Dentistry.  For the remainder of WWII, he served in the Dental Corps, U.S. Navy.  After the war he went into private practice in his hometown of Statesboro.  Upon retirement in 2007, after sixty two and one half years of practice, Curtis devoted his time to his family and the completion of this book, a book he started some ten years earlier.

Curtis seemingly always had an interest in muscadine grapes and through the years a yearning was ever present for a vineyard.  This vineyard materialized in the early 1970's when a few vines were planted at, what eventually became known as, Lake Charles Vineyards, outside of Garfield, GA.  These few vines grew through the years until they encompassed over six acres, 7,000 linear feet of trellis, and 150+ varieties of muscadines.  A tremendous amount of experience and knowledge were realized from years of working with these grapes.  Due to ill health, the vineyard work had to be abandoned about the turn of the century.  This book, The Joy of Muscadines, needed to be completed and this has been done during the last days of his eighty-ninth year.  Many hopes you will find as much pleasure in reading this book as Curtis had in authoring it.