Out with the old - In with the new

Another in a series of Youthful Recollections

For the Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

          Can you believe it?   Another year and another decade, the first of a new century, have come and gone?  Where those years went, I haven’t a clue.  

 

          I retired from the U.S. Navy and moved back here to my home town in 1992.   At first glance, that doesn’t seem like that long ago.  However, the inescapable truth is that in just a few short months, eighteen years will have come and gone since I returned “home.”  Eighteen years, that’s nearly two decades. 

 

          To put eighteen years in perspective, it’s one year longer than I originally lived in Wilkes while growing up.  It covers the time from that fateful Sunday morning in September 1943 when Dr. Fred C. Hubbard was summoned out of a church service at the North Wilkesboro United Methodist Church to deliver this future scribe into this world, and continues until the time I graduated from Wilkes Central and went off to Brevard College in 1961.   

          With the New Year 2010 and yet another national census fast approaching, it occurred to me that in another eighteen years, I will be eighty-four years old.  Then it occurred to me that if that next eighteen years passes a quickly as the past eighteen, I am rapidly running out of time and space; but then aren’t we all?

 

           Where were you eighteen years ago?  Where will you be in eighteen more years?  How many of us will still be around to celebrate yet another Christmas or New Years in 2028? 

 

          Today is only a couple of days shy of New Year’s Day 2010.   As I considered a theme for this week’s column, I recounted the many New Year’s days I have been privileged to witness and mostly enjoy in the past two-thirds of a century.  While many of those days were special, one stood out in my mind.  It was back in the late 1970s. 

 

          My Navy squadron, the “Sidewinders” of Attack Squadron Eighty Six (VA-86), flying the single-seat, single-engine A7-E Corsair II, was deployed in the Mediterranean aboard USS Nimitz, CVN-68.  The “Cold War” was still in full swing and we were considered to be “the underbelly of NATO’s southern flank.”  

 

          As you might imagine, being the “underbelly” was a very important NATO role and somebody had to do it during the Christmas/New Year’s holiday season; we were the proud, chosen ones.  Fact is, being the newest aircraft carrier in the Fleet, Nimitz was tapped for so many of these so called “good deals” that the ship’s slogan became the acronym BOHICA...Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.”   You may have seen the bumper sticker.

 

          For readers familiar with all things Navy, you will recall that, like all of our newer aircraft carriers, the Nimitz (named after five-star Admiral Chester Nimitz of WW-II fame), is nuclear powered.  Because of its nuclear power plant, the ship was restricted by local authorities from entering many of the more desirable Mediterranean ports. 

 

          The popular ports like Palma de Majorca or Barcelona or Cannes, the same ports conventional, diesel boats like the Forrestal, Saratoga, Ranger, Independence, Kitty Hawk, Constellation, America and Kennedy were  welcomed to visit, were “off limits” to Nimitz. This restriction was placed on Nimitz primarily due to the highly unlikely notion that the ship’s power plant could have a nuclear meltdown and wipe out the fishing industry for the surrounding region.  

 

          As a constellation prize, Nimitz got to visit such scenic ports as Naples, Italy; Tunis, Tunisia; Naples, Italy (again); Naples, Italy (again); Gibraltar, Spain; Livorno, Italy; Haifa, Israel; Casablanca, Morocco; Taranto, Italy; Rota, Spain; Wilhelmshaven, Germany and Portsmouth, England.  Oh well, as they say in the Fleet: “Any port in a storm,” and when you are the “underbelly,” there is always a storm brewing somewhere.   

 

          As one of over 6,000 men who made our floating nuclear power plant our home-away-from-home for months at a time, we literally bet our lives every day on the ship’s safety, so much so that I didn’t even wear a Dosimeter, that small device clipped to the belt that measures radiation in the air.  The Dosimeter seemed to be more of a status symbol for the ship’s company officers and engineers.

 

          Naples, Italy, was one of the few major ports that would allow the ship to make a port call, buy even then, the ship had to anchor well offshore.  Naples is a major headquarters city for NATO.  The ship used liberty boats to transport officers and sailors to and from shore. 

 

          This boating arrangement worked fine except for those times when the weather turned sour, and wave action became so dangerous for these relatively small liberty boats that boating had to be cancelled.  It was possible to be stranded ashore for several days, which of course created a “Throw me in that briar patch” mentality.  Hopefully, if you did get stranded, you had enough money and /or plastic to cover your meals, hotel and transportation.

 

          And so it came to pass in this late-1970s year that USS Nimitz was chosen to spend the week of Christmas and New Years anchored offshore in Naples in the shadow of historic Mt. Vesuvius, the ancient volcano that centuries ago destroyed the nearby city of Pompeii. 

 

          Being away from home during the holidays was a real challenge for most members of the crew.  I had missed Christmas at home during earlier combat deployments to Vietnam aboard USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63).   My wife and I and our two children were no strangers to my being away during holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, family weddings and family funerals.  I had an idea what was in store for the crew, morale wise. 

 

          The whole holiday thing might have been a real low point if the ship had not done its best to give the Christmas/Hanukkah holiday spirit a boost.   Seasonal music was piped over the ship’s TV and Radio stations; fireproof, seasonal decorations were allowed to be displayed on bulkheads, hatches, knee knockers and overheads as well as throughout the main passageways, ready rooms, ladders and maintenance work spaces.  

         

          The Mess Deck crews did their part by serving traditional holiday meals in the various enlisted chow halls and officer’s wardrooms.  How often do you get Baked Alaskan for Christmas at home?  Leave was also granted more liberally and those who could afford it brought family members to Italy for the holiday. Unfortunately, I was not among those folks. 

 

          As New Year’s Day rolled around, the ship’s Captain made a point to lay on a special warning to the crew regarding local Italian New Year’s night customs; customs that differed dramatically from those back home. 

 

          In Italy, while massive fireworks light up the sky to denoting the ringing in of the New Year, it is the custom literally to throw out the old with the ringing in of the new.  Neapolitans actually throw old or unused items out into the street.         

 

          Since the majority of residents in Naples live in high-rise apartments, condos and rental flats, many objects like chairs, beds, couches, dishes, radios, TV’s, and even toilets and kitchen sinks are discarded from upper floors.  This custom is usually carried out with the aid of the liberal consumption by residents of large quantities of the fine wines for which the country is so well known around the world.

 

          This “out with the old and in with the new” custom is aided and abetted by yet another custom in Italy.  Whether rented, leased or purchased, living quarters advertised as “unfurnished” are literally unfurnished.  New occupants must provide their own toilets, sinks, refrigerators, stoves, bath tubs and other appliances normally integral to unfurnished units in the U.S. 

 

          As you might imagine, every New Year’s Eve, a number of unwary tourist and or street people end up being seriously injured by falling debris in Naples.  The good news is that the next morning, all those discarded items are on the street for the taking, and most of it is quickly taken in the early morning hours by would be looters and scavengers, reminiscent of  bargain hunters at a big post-holiday sale at Wal-Mart back in the USA. 

 

          As a safety precaution, liberty for much of the crew was curtailed for the night of New Years Eve; that was not a popular decision with the crew, but a safe one.  Therefore, many of us ended up on the ship’s five acre flight deck at midnight watching an extended, phenomenal fireworks display.

 

          The fireworks display went on for about one hour and 45 minutes.  At times, it was so spectacular, it gave the impression that Mt. Vesuvius itself had come back to life.  The display was one of the most impressive fireworks shows these salty ole eyes have seen, at anytime and anyplace, bar none.   It was, in the words of an ole Nate King Cole song – “Unforgettable.” 

 

          True to my past, I again have run out of space... so here is a little ditty just for you:   Now that you’ve heard my story; a tale I’ll swear is true, I’ll leave you with sincerest wishes: Happy New Year’s Day to you.   (End)

 

 

 

 

 

When I Was a Child

By Russ Pearson

            With Christmas just a couple of days away now, it seems fitting that this week’s column have a corresponding holiday theme… but what can be said about Christmas that has not already been said by somebody somewhere at sometime.  Just as I was about to panic to find a theme for this edition, a Bible verse learned as a child crossed my mind; it gave me an idea for the topic de jure. 

                The verse is from 1 Corinthians 13:11:  “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”  The longer I pondered the meaning of this verse, the more I realized how much it applies to our perception of Christmas as we grow from early childhood into mature adulthood.  

                As a child, Christmas was the most magical time of the year.   In my make-believe world of super heroes, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Jack O’Lantern, Santa Claus reigned supreme.  He was king of the good guys, notwithstanding the fact that the real good guy is Jesus; after all, Jesus is the reason for the season.  

                Even now, two-thirds of a century later, I still vividly recall the excitement of counting down the days till jolly ole St Nick, dressed in his bright red Santa suit and black leather boots, would arrive in his reindeer-drawn sleigh in the zero-dark thirty hours of the night, descending down from on-high, skillfully landing on the roof of our family’s house on College Street in Wilkesboro.  Santa performed this remarkable feat with all the skill and aplomb of a seasoned Navy attack pilot landing his jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier at night.                 

                With his reindeer and sleigh safely tethered to the chimney, I could imagine the portly old gentleman delving into his toy-laden sleigh, busily filling several sacks full of toys for my sisters and me.  Once the sacks were filled, I laughingly imagined Santa miraculously squeezing his rotund jelly belly into the chimney’s small smokestack and somehow managing  to slide down into our festively decorated living room where he would be welcomed by an Angel perched high atop a Frazer-fir Christmas tree  and standing tall and proud next to the fireplace. 

                Mom and Dad always insisted a snack be left out for Santa.  Dad insisted that we leave some Jack Daniels and Ginger Ale, but Mom vetoed that notion.  She said Santa’s awesome chores on Christmas Eve required energy and sobriety.  She contended that a glass of milk and some chocolate–chip cookies were just what Santa needed to sustain him for the remainder of his whirlwind evening; so that’s what Santa got, much to Dad’s disgruntlement. 

                 When my bed time came, I remember how hard it was to fall asleep on the night before Christmas with all those visions of sugar plums dancing in my head.  Sleeping was a seemingly impossible task, but somehow, the trusty ole sandman eventually came a-calling, and I would finally drop off into a dreamland world; a Walt Disney kind of world where reality gives way to the imagination, and wishes do indeed come true.  

                Suddenly before sunrise and well before Mom and Dad were ready to roll out of their bed, an internal alarm went off in my head.   I was instantly awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed.   I was fired up and ready to go as I remembered this was the day for which I had waited so eagerly and for so long.   It was Christmas day.  Jumping out of bed, I hurdled down the stairs to the living room to see what bounty Santa had brought.  

                Yes sir that was Christmas for me when I was still thinking, speaking and understanding like a child.  At that point, the scripture had me pegged.   But then came the hard part, when the Scripture says: “When I became a man, I put away childish things(13:11).”              

                Well, friends and neighbors, forgive me if it’s a sin, but try as I might, I just could not put away the childish things that helped me make Christmas such an enchanted time.  Absent the magic and innocence of childhood, Christmas just wouldn’t be the same, which brings me to the part when I became an adult.

                First, there was the transition most adults make when they become parents; the transition from believing in Santa Claus to actually being Santa Claus.   It’s traumatic.  As Santa, you must be a jack-of-all-trades.  A Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering helps, as does having a garage full of specialized tools.  Surely you’ve been there, done that, and know of which I speak?  

                During the transition from childhood to adulthood, nobody warned me that most all of those wonderful gifts from Santa required additional assembly, and lots of it.   Like most children, I always believed that Santa’s elves did all the required assembly work at their North Pole workshop prior to loading all the goodies on Santa’s sleigh.   Somewhere along the way, after I joined the married-with- children sect, the shoe went over to the other foot.

                If dropping off to sleep as a child on Christmas Eve had been next to impossible, in my Santa role, I found just the opposite to be true.  Invariably, I have had to remain up well into the wee hours of Christmas day trying to understand the directions for the required assemblies in order to get Santa’s toys and games put together before the sun and the kids simultaneously spring to life, just as I once did in the zero-dark-thirty hours of Christmas morning.  After that, I spent the next week desperately trying to catch up on lost sleep. 

                Of course, all this begs a question:  Why can't those “brilliant” engineers who design those complicated Christmas toys, produce a coherent assembly instruction booklet?   Can it be that engineering schools no longer teach English or Logic?  How much better it would be if engineers stuck to the design work, leaving the instruction sheets to someone more literate…perhaps Liberal Arts major who could edit and publish less esoteric and arcane assembly instructions.  That way, the dream of a Merry Christmas would not turn into a nightmare, as it has in so many of my years playing the Santa role. 

                Realizing that I am rapidly running out of space, let me assure you that Christmas is my favorite season of the year.   I especially love Christmas for its music.  No other season can compete with the traditional songs of Christmas, from Handel’s “Messiah” to Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song” to “Silent Night” sung by a local combined church choir.  By their very nature, the songs of Christmas sooth the restless and weary soul, ease troubling tensions and promote peace on earth, goodwill to men.  Wowser, we sure could use more of those rapidly disappearing commodities, both in our local community and in our world.

                Second to the music, I love the lights and colors of Christmas.  The radiant glow of Christmas lights draw me like a moth is to a flame.  There is no other time of the year when our churches, homes, streets and sidewalks are so beautifully embellished with colorfully lighted scenes and displays found throughout the area.  Their glow adds a festive mood and a cozy charm to the streets, stores and shopping areas in our downtowns. 

                To their credit the towns of Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro continue to participate in this celebration of the Christian faith.  Both towns light up and come alive at Christmas time, and the gentle sounds of Christmas carols can be heard over outdoor speakers and fill the air throughout the downtown areas.  The combination of lights and music project a warm welcome and inviting presence to all who enter.

                So if you're like me and prefer to think of Christmas with childlike innocence and enthusiasm, or even if you have put away such childish things, or perhaps you are an Atheist or Jewish or a Muslim, there is no excuse not to experience and enjoy the enchanted aura of the Christmas season. 

                Many of us reaching our “Golden Years” can now count more Christmases in our past than we will have in our future, and we, along with everyone else, regardless of age, must know that with the passing of each Christmas, there will be one less Christmas season left for us to enjoy.  The spirit of Christmas is contagious; so catch it and pass it on.  Merry Christmas everyone. 

 

Happenstance:

“A circumstance regarded as due to chance”

Another in a series of Youthful Recollections

 For The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

 

          A local friend, neighbor and fellow aviator recently recommended a newly released film to me.  As luck would have it, that movie was playing at a theater near where my wife and I were staying during an out-of-town trip last week, so we decided to check it out.  The film is entitled “Precious.”  Unlike the title, the film was anything but precious… in fact, at times it was painful to watch, but then pain plays to the point of the movie. 

 

          The film is about a generously overweight, illiterate African-American teen from Harlem, a young girl with little to no hope for a future, who is about to give birth to her second child when she discovers an alternate path and enrolls in a new “alternative” school.  There, with the help and guidance of an empathetic teacher and a male nurse, she receives a gift that most teens in similar situations never get; she gets a chance to start over.

 

          The film’s director describes the film as an “inspirational drama,” the operative word being “Inspirational.”  The “R” rated film was a winner at Robert Redford’s “Sundance Film Festival” out in Utah this year.  The “R” is appropriate and stems from several scenes of child and sexual abuse.  This is a film about hope but is not a film for the faint of heart.

 

          Many of the scenes in the movie reminded me of situations and “clients” I encountered during my tenure as a caseworker in the Wilkes County “Welfare Department.”   I was hired there just after college by Mr. Charlie McNeil.   At that time, the Department was located in a suite of offices upstairs over the old Wilkes Savings and Loan, Co. office on Bridge Street in Wilkesboro.  The office was caddy corner to the old Wilkes Courthouse.   I worked there for two years prior to entering the U.S. Navy’s flight program.  

 

          Today, in this age of political correctness, that Department is called the “Wilkes County Department of Social Services.”   The Department’s offices are now located in a far nicer facility on College Street in Wilkesboro, immediately below the Wilkes County Health Department on the site of the old Wilkesboro prison camp.   

 

          In the upstairs office on Bridge Street, I was privileged to work with a terrific crew of folks, including Dean Edminston, Beverley Cook, Jason Brannock, Carter Perkins, Herman Gruber, Flora Friend, Vera Casey, Bob Crawley, Bill Bumgarner, Bill Alexander, Dorothy Beamon, Inez Bowles, Jean Absher, Judy Church, Peggy Hamby, Valerie Hildalgo and a few others whose names I regret escape me just now.  The late Ruth Canter was my immediate supervisor. 

 

          All of these dedicated folks were doing what they could, always under tight budget and bureaucratic restrictions, to help some of our less fortunate Wilkes County neighbors to have better lives for themselves and for their children… just as the current Director, Donny Bumgarner, and his staff are still doing today.

 

          At one time, I carried a case load of 212 clients in a mix of programs ranging from Old Age Assistance (OAA) to Aide to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to Aide to the Permanent and Totally Disabled (APTD).  Each category had its own set of rules and regulations.  Unlike in the movie however, race or minority status played only a minor role in my everyday caseload.  Of 212 cases, only five families were classified of “minority” origin and the number of illegal immigrants had not yet become the challenge it is today.     

 

          I remember one client, a man from way back up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a place my dad would have referred to as “Plumnelly”, i.e. “plum out of town and nearly out of the county.”  This was an older, illiterate, man who not only had never learned to read or write, he had never learned to tell time.  He could not read a clock or watch, nor did he know when or where he was born, all of which were required to prove he was of the proper age to receive Old Age Assistance for which he was applying.  To make matters worse, he had no family Bible, which was often accepted as a substitute for a birth certificate.  Fortunately, we were able to guesstimate his age by his memory of the 1940 flood and WW-II.

         

          Then there was the poor, illiterate, single-parent woman who had a daughter somewhat similar to Helen Keller.  This child was both blind and retarded.  She required constant attention, round the clock.  The girl could not go to school.   Yes, there were institutions for the blind and other institutions for the mentally retarded, but no place for a little girl who suffered from both ailments.  Both she and her mother were destined for a miserable life.

          It was not at all uncommon to have illiterate clients; people whose inability to read and write placed an awful burden on them as parents and breadwinners to provide for their families.   But just as their parents had done to them, some had an attitude that what was good enough for the parent was good enough for the child. And so, the circle of poverty remained unbroken and the burden continued for yet another generation.

         

          After seeing the movie “Precious,” I discussed it with the friend who first recommended it and we agreed that in the end, the film was inspirational.  It provided us with even more reason to be thankful this holiday season.  Unlike Precious Jones, we were so fortunate to have been born when and where we were and into families that nurtured us.  How different our own circumstances could have been had it not been for happenstance… there but for fortune could go us all. 

         

          Have you ever stopped and wondered how much different your life would be now had you by chance been born on a different continent, or in another country or another culture or another religion or to a different race?  What if by chance you had been born of the opposite gender?  Would you still be who you are now?  Probably not.  We are who we are largely by happenstance.

 

          My friend and I recognized how very fortunate we were to have been born in America rather than anywhere else on this planet.  We acknowledged how grateful we were to have been born into middle-class families of some means and solid educations.  Families who saw to it that we had a solid roof over our head and over a nice, warm interior of a comfortable home, located in a pleasant neighborhood. 

 

          We talked about how thankful we are that we had adequate and even fashionable clothes on our backs and plenty to eat and drink and much about which to be merry; that we were provided with appropriate medical and dental services; a suitable religious orientation; a proper formal education and introduction to socialization skill sets that have allowed us to prosper in adulthood; skill sets that so many others in our midst are lacking.  By sheer happenstance, they will never know such advantages. 

 

          As we climb aboard our winter sleighs and ride headlong into the joy of this 2009 Christmas holiday season, we all have so much for which to be thankful.  This is the season to take inventory and be thankful for the things we so often take for granted. 

 

          If you can read this column, be thankful… there are still far too many among us who can’t read.  If you are in good health, be thankful… far too many among us are sick, impaired or disabled.  If you have even a modicum of formal education, be thankful… there still are many unschooled among us who don’t and who suffer for it daily; if you have a roof over your head, be thankful… far too many don’t, and shamelessly, many of those who now are homeless are our Veterans who fought for and put their lives on the line for this great country. 

 

          Be thankful if you have good, nutritious meals on your table everyday… too many folks, especially children, don’t and go to bed hungry every night.  Even if you are a curmudgeon or the “Grinch” personified and think you have nothing for which to be thankful this Christmas, at least be thankful for happenstance, for who knows where we all would be without it?    

 

          Here’s wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and to all a good night.  (End)

Giving Thanks

A Holiday Piece for the Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

          With Thanksgiving Day 2009 now in the history books, I am still thinking of all the many blessings for which we Americans have to be thankful.  My list of blessings seems to grow each and every year. 

            In addition to a few trivial, material items, this year’s list of things for which I am personally thankful includes the perennial list toppers of family and friends, and even a few strangers with whom our paths crossed along the way; people who have stood with us during good times and bad.

          Nor can I forget how fortunate we are to be Americans.  We enjoy far more freedoms than citizens of any other nation on the globe.  Freedoms gained and maintained for us by a strong and dedicated military and a Constitution and Bill of Rights that together, have made this country the most desirable place to live on this or any other planet in the Universe.

          In the more trivial mode, I thought of some of the many material things that, just in the last few decades, have seemingly become an integral part of our lives.  I sometimes wonder how life was possible without these marvelous inventions.  

          Exhibit #1 would be the cellular telephone.  How in the world did we manage to function without it?    Just look around in almost any setting these days, and count the number of people engaged in a cell phone conversation at any given time… it is amazing.   I must confess to being one of them!  Think how different our lives would be if, by some freak of science and technology or interference from unfriendly outside sources, all of our cell phones suddenly became inoperative?  We couldn’t even use an expired one to call 911 in the event of an emergency. 

          High on that same list of material things that have changed our lifestyles for the better would be the ATM machines.  Do you remember what it was like before these ubiquitous money machines began showing up everywhere?   Would we willingly return to the days when we had to actually go to the bank during limited banking hours to cash a check every time we needed cash, not that we actually really need cash anymore thanks to credit and debit cards.

          Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention the Internet, the one invention that perhaps has changed our lives the most these last few years.   Some say the change has been for the better; other argue the opposite. But all surely agree that the Internet has been the single most prominent, life-changing invention of the past century.  In addition to all its other applications, the Internet has given seniors and those of us now reaching our senior years a new toy with which to play while making it easier to stay in touch with family and friends in faraway places, and enjoy a few jokes along the way.  

          Add to that list of material things for which I am personally thankful, the magic of the Global Navigation (GPS) devices now found in a rapidly growing number of automobiles, not to mention hand-held one found in pant pockets. 

          A factory installed GPS device is in my car, and I just don’t know how I managed to get anywhere before I had one.  It makes it virtually impossible to get lost when driving anywhere, including unfamiliar big cities, as I have learned from personal experience while driving in Atlanta, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and New York City.  Sure, I still carry maps in the side pocket of the driver’s door, but I can’t recall the last time I had to use one.

          While on the subject of GPS systems, how about those Sirius and XM Radios.  They have virtually made FM and AM radios obsolete.  My car also has that feature and it is so nice not to go in and out of radio range while listening to a your favorite college football game as you travel on a fall Saturday, or never lose a signal of a favorite music, news, weather or business program while passing from one state to another.  After giving due consideration to those and other material items for which I am thankful, I come down to the most important item of all:  life itself.  

          Don’t know about you, but I am alive and still kicking despite six and a half decades of excellent opportunities not to be.  Like you, I somehow survived childhood in an age before the FDA came along and told us how dangerous everything we ate, drank or played with really was. 

          Those early childhood years were followed by some traumatic teen years.   I vividly recall the time I was just sure my Dad was gonna kill me after I burned up the engine of his two cycle Harley-Davidson (Junior) motorcycle because I did not know to add oil to the gasoline.  I wondered why the gas tank cap had and extended cup attached when Wally VanMeter and I filled it up at M.C. Jones store in Oakwoods, only to have the engine seize a couple of miles later as we were roaring down Country Club Road. 

          Then there was the time I knew Dad was gonna have my head after I blew the engine in my Sunbeam Alpine shortly after racing up and down Rendezvous Mountain in 1963 with my good friends Eric Williams, Larry Nichols and Bill Moseley.  

          Then there was the now famous underwater ejection from a Navy A-7 carrier aircraft on my very first attempt at a night carrier landing one dark and stormy Pacific Ocean night in mid-June of 1969.  That event, which produced instant notoriety for me within the Naval Aviation community, was soon followed by two tours flying combat missions off the USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) in Southeast Asia (Vietnam). 

          During those two years, the bad guys, or “Gomers” as we called them, did their best to bring me down to share a suite in the infamous Hanoi Hilton with another Wilkes County aviator named Denver Key or maybe even a luxury suite with Admiral McCain’s son John.  I declined those almost daily invitations.  

          Then there was the locally lesser known, near fatal head injury in an auto mishap in November of 1980, the mishap that through no fault of my own, left my left side partially paralyzed and brought an otherwise promising career as a Naval Officer and Aviator to a screeching halt.  Dare I mention the heart attack that almost got me a few years later while visiting family in Athens, Georgia?  

          Some of my friends have compared my life to the RAYOVAC battery cat; the one with nine lives.  Others just think I am accident prone, while a few just think I am the luckiest guy they know.

          Yes sir, I am thankful still to be alive, and especially when I think of so many friends and relatives who did not make it this far.  In two-thirds of a century, I already have out lived most of the males in my Dad’s family(hopefully my longevity genes are from my Mother’s side of the family); a dozen or more of my school classmates, several dozens of my Navy contemporaries and quite a few others with whom I have crossed paths over the years. 

          Many of these fine folks have not lived to experience one of the greatest joys of a lifetime…the presence of their grandchildren, a treat shared at our house this past Thanksgiving week.  Nor have many of these departed souls lived to see the wonderful material inventions mentions earlier in this piece.  They will not be with us this Christmas and New Years to share the joy and camaraderie of family reunions or experience yet another joyous birthday party.  They will not know another Valentine’s Day, or share another Easter Sunrise, or enjoy another the splendid coming of spring greenery.

          They will not know another summer’s trip to the mountains or the beach, nor will they again share the magnificent splendor of the beautiful colors of fall nor come full circle to share yet another Thanksgiving Day with family and friends.  

          Do we have a lot for which to be thankful this Holiday Season?  You bet your life we do, and the most important of all, is life itself.  If you’re not thankful to be alive as you finish reading this piece, you ought to be.  (End)

 

Youthful Recollections:

SUMMERTIME VI

By

Russ Pearson

(Continued from last week):

Then came the summer of 1962… the summer following my freshman year at Brevard College.  Not only was I a year older but presumably a year wiser and more sophisticated.  An eighteen year old who thought that his one year of college made him wise to the ways of the world.   That summer’s job turned out to be the most significant summer of all in teaching lessons of life.   

Along with many other college students, I was hired on the second or night shift as a cigarette inspector at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem.  At the time, the cigarette business was booming; the plant was working overtime on nine hours shifts. The night shift ran from 4:00 PM until 01:00 AM.  Throw in the hour and half drive each way to and from Wilkesboro on what is now old highway 421, and allow for a few hours for eating, bathing and sleeping and your day was all but gone.  

It was only a temporary summer job.   College students were hired as stand-ins for regular plant workers taking annual vacations, but it sure paid well, more than enough to offset the hassle of a daily 116 mile, round-trip commute to Winston-Salem in a five person car pool. 

Starting pay at Reynolds was over three times the federal minimum wage.  That was a lot more than I made mowing grass, bagging groceries, pumping gas, washing cars or delivering newspapers or flowers. 

Regular plant workers claimed that the higher pay helped maintain employee loyalty, which when translated into English meant keeping the union out.   “Why should any worker pay union dues when the company was already paying above union wages and providing excellent fringe benefits as well,” they reasoned?  I sure couldn’t argue with that.

I was assigned to a machine making Winston cigarettes on the second floor of old building 256.   That was one of the beautiful, old buildings made of hand-crafted bricks in downtown Winston; regrettably, that historic building burned to the ground a few years ago.

My machine was one of over 30 identical machines in my section, each turning out 3,333 Winston cigarettes a minute.  The cigarettes were automatically rolled out in front of me on parallel conveyer belts. 

My job was to inspect each cigarette for any one of over 30 discrepancies and to discard those while gathering the good cigarettes and spreading them gently into a square wooden tray directly in front of me.  Each tray held 4,000 cigarettes and filled every three minutes.  

Once the tray was full, a metal cover was placed over it and it was pushed sideways onto a cart placed next to my machine.  The cart was placed there by a “phantom” worker.  This guy appeared and disappeared as if by magic.  He would bring an empty cart to my station and wheel the full cart and its 44,000 cigarettes over to the building’s adjacent “Packing Department”.  

Twice during the nine-hour shift, inspectors were relieved for a 10 minute bathroom/smoke break by a roving inspector.  I usually needed both of those breaks.  Midway thru the shift, there was a 30 minute break for the evening meal.  That was just enough time for me to get down to the company’s ground-floor cafeteria and scoff down a quick sandwich before going back to work on my upstairs machine.

It was during one of those “smoke breaks” very early in my employment that I almost got into trouble… a situation that could have gotten me fired had someone in management seen it. 

As you might recall from an earlier column, back in those days I had the nasty habit of smoking, as did about everybody else I knew.   My favorite cigarette brand was Marlboros, a product made by Phillip Morris out of Richmond, Virginia, and a major competitor of the Winston brand I was making at Reynolds. 

 On the occasion in question, I turned over my machine to the relief person and headed for the men’s room to answer the call of nature and to smoke a cigarette.  As usual, the men’s room was relatively crowded with mostly regular, long-time employees taking their break and smoking cigarettes picked up off of one of their machines.  Can you see it coming?

Well, when I pulled a flip-top box of Marlboro cigarettes from my shirt pocket, flipped open the lid and slipped a Marlboro into my mouth, the conversation came to an abrupt halt.  The men’s room suddenly got very, very quiet and all eyes were on me, and the faces those eyes belonged to were less than friendly, to put the best face on it. 

Finally, after what seemed like my allotted 10 minutes, one of the crusty old fellows who had probably 30 years under his belt with the company spoke up and said,  “Son, if you like your job here, you’d best not come in here again with those kind of cigarettes. In fact if I were you, I’d dump them in that trash can over there in the corner right now.”

Sure sounded like good advice to me, so I took it.   I dumped that half a dozen of so “weeds” remaining in the pack in the trash and tore the box into several pieces and tossed it in there too.  

As I was walking out of the Men’s Room, obviously embarrassed, the ol’ timer patted me on the shoulder and said, “From now on son, do like the rest of us do and grab yourself a handful off the belt and stick em in your shirt pocket to smoke on your break.”

Well for the next week or so, I took the ol’ timer’s advice, but I wasn’t happy about it… not that I was “stealing cigarettes from the company… I just didn’t like the taste of Winstons as much as I liked Marlboros.   

 

Then the solution hit me.  The next day, I bought a flip-top box of Winstons and a flip-top box of Marlboros.  After I had smoked all of the Winstons that day, I packed the Marlboros into the Winston box, stuffed it into my shirt and went to work. 

Fortunately for me, Winston and Marlboro cigarettes look identical.  The only real difference is the barely visible printed name on the paper up near the filter end, and your fingers usually cover that name while you are smoking it.   For the rest of the summer, I smoked Marlboros in the Men’s Room at R. J. Reynolds and until now, no one was the wiser. 

Notwithstanding that little secret, I found that working on an assembly line was incredibly boring and by the time that summer ended, I was bored stiff.   I couldn’t wait to get back to college and hit the books with a renewed appreciation for the value of classroom education.  I was so thankful that I was only a temporary summer hire.

During an end-of-summer-exit interview with my floor supervisor, himself a Wake Forest graduate with a degree in Chemistry, I told him how boring I found the job.  I told him that I was amazed that some of my fellow workers had managed to handle this same job inspecting cigarettes for over 20 years. 

He laughed and admitted that the company did not hire college students for such jobs fulltime.  He told me that over the years, the Company had found that workers with IQs between 80-90 were best suited for such positions because they were not as easily bored or distracted from the tedious, irksome day in and day out, eight or nine hours a day, five days a week.   

Applicants with IQs above 100 and suitable for college-level entrance were considered for summer employment only and other non-assembly line jobs.   Hiring college kids during the summer was the Company’s way to help students financially with college expenses, while providing the Company with a reliable pool of workers to fill-in for workers on vacation.  He then very graciously invited me to come back again next summer and to consider a management position with R.J. Reynolds when I graduated from college, an invitation I once considered, but then I found a higher, and less boring occupation flying off the pointy end of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers.  

So what did I learn working in the “real world” during my school “vacation” during the summer of 1962?   I learned two things: 1) There’s no cigar for working in a cigarette factory, and 2) My IQ had to be at least 100 or I wouldn’t have gotten a job inspecting cigarettes.  

I remain forever grateful to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. for affording me an opportunity not only to work alongside some wonderful, hard-working people, but the chance to earn enough money to help me make it financially through the next year in college.

 

The Best of Seasons (Part II)

By RUSS PEARSON

          Until space ran out last week, this column was on a roll talking about the early days of high school football and its star players in the Wilkesboros.  Let’s pick it up from there this week...   

                During those early winning seasons, the green and gold clad Wilkes Central Eagles continued to field winning teams with such outstanding players as Nelson Lowe, Ralph Steele, Bill “Bruno” Pearson, Jim “Semper Fi” Swofford, Ted Hall, Gary Vannoy, Jerry “Jug” Moore, Odell White, Augustine Quilicci, Russell Gambill, Benny Phillips, C.G. "Bear" Walsh, Bill Eller, Rick Jones, David Wiles, James Forester, David Deal, John Pipes, and Johnny Myers. 

                Under the superb leadership of Coach Marvin “Red” Hoffman, these Eagles soared to new heights in a new conference against such competitive high school opponents as Hickory, Lenoir, Morganton, Valdese, Marion, Mt. Airy, Newton-Conover, Elkin, and of course, our perennial winning season opener with Taylorsville.  

                As the Eagles successfully defended their winning ways into the late 1960s and the decade of the 1970s, team players with such atypical Wilkes County names as David Turnipseed, Tommy Necessary, Bo Forehand, Dexter Hoffman, Ron McGrady, Tom Ingle, Sonny Church and oh yes, we can’t forget Bill or Johnny Swofford.  These gents led subsequent teams in upholding the Eagle’s winning tradition.  What’s that you ask? ….. Is that THE Johnny Swofford? 

                Yes indeed, sports fans, for those who may have been living under a rock these past four decades, the same John Swofford who played quarterback and later served as Athletic Director at UNC – Chapel Hill and now presides as Commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), started his illustrious career as an Eagle’s quarterback.  John is the youngest of North Wilkesboro’s Swofford brothers: Carl, Jim, and the late Bill Swofford, each of whom has their own unique claim to fame.

               

          Carl is a successful businessman in North Wilkesboro.  Jim played football at Duke University prior to distinguishing himself as a member of the United States Marine Corps.  Bill, who was also a star running back at Wilkes Central, became a singing star with hits as ”Good Morning Starshine” and “Jean”.  Bill was known professionally by his middle name “Oliver”.

                As ACC Commissioner, Bill’s younger brother John Swofford has become one of Wilkes Central’s and Wilkes County’s most successful and celebrated alums.  He has significantly raised the ACC football bar by advancing what is arguably the country’s greatest college basketball conference into an equally great and definitely more competitive football conference within the NCAA sports arena.

                John accomplished this major feat by taking the lead in expanding the ACC conference from eight to twelve teams.  He negotiated the addition of such powerhouse football schools as the University of Miami, Florida State, Boston College and Virginia Tech.  

          As the parent of a son who grew up in Orange Park, Florida, a suburb of Jacksonville, and who spent the first three and a half years of his extended collegiate career as a student at the University of Miami, I am especially pleased to have the Canes of the University of Miami, (Better known as “The U “) in the ACC.  Not only did “The U” get my first born as a student, Miami also got a substantial chunk of my hard-earned money, but who’s complaining?  When your school’s winning national championships, money’s not a problem.  

          Some of my good friends have asked me, “Russ, if you are such a diehard football fan, why didn’t you play football in high school?”  To which I answer, “I tried” and I really did… I tried hard, if not for myself, I tried for my parents who really wanted their only son on the football team. 

          During my first two years, I played on the freshman and then sophomore teams, under Coaches Dan Stallings and Smith Hudson.  Unfortunately, there were two strikes against me even before it was my time at the plate; I was too small and too slow.  At 135 lbs fully dressed out and skinny as a rail, I was too small to play on the line and too slow to be in the backfield.    

                Coach used me as a center on offense and as a line backer on defense.  However, the small size and slow speed didn’t get me a lot of playing time.  Even when I did get to play, I often was creamed just after snapping the ball by some oversized guard or tackle weighing a hundred or more pounds than me.    

          Then came decision time…the junior year.  Up until then it was possible to play in the band (which I had done since 3^rd grade) and play Junior Varsity football at the same time… the band did not perform for the Thursday night Junior-Varsity games.  Now, a choice had to be made between the band and football. 

                As a rising Junior, it was time to step up to the varsity team but by this time, it wasn’t hard for me to realize that football wasn’t in my future.  I realized that I wasn’t an athlete; I was more of an “athletic supporter” and I could play that role as well from the grandstands with the band as I could from the bench with the team.   

          The toughest part of the decision was that I thought I was letting my parents down.  After all those years watching my friends and me playing backyard football in the neighborhood, they had dreamed of the time when they could come to the Friday night games and see their son play football under the lights.  Instead, they were gonna have to come and watch me march in the band. 

          But I was a realist.  I knew that if I chose football, I would spend most of my time on the bench and not on the field.  At least in the band, I would get to perform on the field, and unlike football, my speed and size didn’t affect how well I played trumpet.  Besides, if I chose the football route, I wouldn’t get to ride on the Band Bus anymore. I might have been slow and small, but I wudn’t stupid!  I chose the band, but I still love a good football game. 

 

 

 

A Tall Tale

By RUSS PEARSON

Author’s Note:  Following several columns in The Record touting high school and college football, my friends-- all three of them-- have asked which football-orientated college I attended after high school?   Rather than disappoint them with the embarrassing truth, I concocted the following, almost believable, tongue-in-cheek tale which I now unabashedly share with you on the condition that you don’t tell anybody else:

 

As it became apparent at the last minute that notwithstanding my less than stellar overall grade average, there still was a good chance I might actually graduate from high school, my parents presented me with a list of schools they would like me to attend and strongly urged me to begin sending applications to each of them.  Like all good parents, mine wanted only the best for their first-born son and the list of schools they gave me said as much, although I seriously questioned whether Harvard, Princeton and Yale were my kind of schools. 

 For one thing, IV League schools routinely field lousy football teams and who, other than an Eskimo, would want to go to a college where the temperature is colder than the balls on a Navy destroyer’s brass monkey, not to mention their locations in a strange northern land where the people speak English with funny, foreign sounding accents?   Quickly, I decided that the IV League just wasn't for me, so I scratched those schools off the list.  After all, choosing the right college was serious business.   There was no time to screw around with a bunch of losers.  The only Bowl game any of these high-foluting institutions were destined to play in was the “Ice Bowl”.  I quickly moved on to the next choice on my parent’s list, the Military Academies. 

It didn’t take long for me to narrow the Academies down to two: the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy.   Why would anyone in their right mind want to go to West Point and then spend years in the Army living in a fox hole when they could be in the Navy or Air Force living on a nice clean, air-conditioned ship or modern barracks with showers and three squares a day in a friendly wardroom?  As far as I was concerned, anyone wanting an Army life style would do far better by going to the Naval Academy and then into the Marine Corps, a.k.a., the Navy’s Army ... Semper Fi !  

Of course, as far a football was concerned, the service academies had relatively mediocre teams.   Notwithstanding exceptional cases like Roger Staubach, it’s difficult for the Academies to recruit top players who have professional football aspirations when those players are faced with lengthy active duty obligations after graduation.  Contrary to conventional thinking, football isn’t the primary mission of the Academies.  The name of their game is national defense.

Then there was that little matter of political patronage, something a candidate for the Academies must have to be admitted.  Unfortunately, the closest things I had to "political clout" was the fact that my maternal grandmother, Juliet Herndon Church, was a genuine descendant of Francis Scott Key, author of our National Anthem.  Additionally, my maternal grandfather, Roby Church, was a distant relative of one of Wilkes County’s most infamous celebrities, Tom (Dooley) Dula, not to mention the fact that my grandfather was an elected member of the Wilkes County School Board for some 25 years.   I figured that if the old saying “all politics is local” is still in play, I should have had it made politically. 

Proud as I was of the exceptional credentials of both of my grandparent’s,  I soon discovered that my connection to Francis Scott Key and the School Board wouldn’t even buy me a cup of coffee at Potty Horton’s Peoples’ Drug Store on Main Street in downtown Wilkesboro where Grace Bumgarner, my friend and favorite waitress there, was sympathetic to my case.  So much for attending one of the Service Academies.

Of course, my parents were understandably very disappointed.  They had been looking forward to sending me to any one of the Academies;unlike regular colleges, the Academies provided their Cadets with free room, free board, free tuition and a clothing allowance, in addition to a generous monthly stipend.

Next on the list were several ACC schools, but they didn’t last long either.  The University of Virginia thought my resume was not Cavalier enough, and my application to Duke was rejected outright because I wasn’t a member of a very wealthy family from somewhere up north.  Duke also said that my “C” average high school academic record wasn’t up to their “high standards”.  To their credit in their letter of rejection however, they did strongly recommend that I apply to schools with significantly lower academic standards and recommended schools like UNC Chapel Hill or that other Carolina University in Columbia, SC; so I sent them a nice, handwritten thank-you note for sharing that advice.       

  The letters of rejection received subsequently from the two Carolinas both implied that I didn’t appear to fit in well with their student body.   Apparently the Tarheels and Gamecocks both thought I was much too serious and studious for their reputations as "party-schools" … If they only knew how wrong they were about that. 

Then the letter from Wake Forest arrived.  Although the letter didn’t put it in writing, I strongly suspect they rejected me because I was a Methodist; an open and shut case of religious persecution.  They probably assumed that I had never been baptized in “deep water”, which was true… a light "sprinkling" was all l ever got at the Wilkesboro Methodist Church.  The Deacons just couldn’t image having an "unsaved heathen” on their heavenly campus at Wake Forest.  

Only later did I realize that putting down “Shagging” as a “favorite pastime” on my application may have done me in with Wake…I forgot the Deacs weren’t allowed to dance on campus.  I forgot also that “Shagging” had a slang meaning; a term that had nothing to do with dancing.  Unfortunately, neither of those two meanings was in my favor …Wake is a Baptist school you know. 

To their credit however, the good folks at Wake did strongly suggest that my earlier experience as a supermarket bag-boy, plumber’s assistant, grounds keeper for several local churches, and ambitious paper boy for the Greensboro Daily News made me an ideal fit at NC State, Clemson, Georgia Tech or Appalachian which I much appreciated. 

However, at that point in my young life, I just wasn’t into driving trains, raising chickens, hogs, tobacco, cattle or producing textiles, and had no desire to be a school teacher.  I didn’t mind spinning yarns, but not in a mass-production ladies underwear factory or in front of a classroom full of rowdy students like me.  Out of courtesy, I did however send Wake a nice, handwritten thank-you note for sharing their advice. 

Well, once again, I've run out of space before running out of words; see you next time... Russ

 

 

 

 

Youthful Recollections:

What about the SEC Schools?

 

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

 

By

Russ Pearson

 

          When this column ran out of space last week, I was lamenting my conundrum as to which college was best suited for me following graduation from Wilkes Central in 1961.   Remember that year; it was a factor in my available choices.  

          Shortly after that column came out, I received an e-mail from an old college and Navy friend in Pensacola, Fl.   It seems that my friend read my column from last week on the Record’s Internet website and felt that, based on my stated requirements for a school with a good balance between academics and football programs, I should have considered a school in the Southeast Conference (SEC) rather than just in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). He singled out the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa as what he considered would have been the perfect choice for me.  Such a recommendation was not totally unexpected; my friend is a native of Alabama, although he himself chose first to attend a college in North Carolina. 

           My friend didn’t have to tell me that the “Crimson Tide” football team was on a “Roll” at that time under head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.  That year, the “Bear’s” team won what was then the equivalent of today’s Division I National Championship and he was voted College Coach of the Year.  Coach Bryant’s teams went on to win the National Championship five more times under his tutelage.

          Where did Coach Bryant get the nickname “Bear” you ask?  He got it because he once wrestled a bear for money and the nickname stuck.  Now my question is: what is a “Crimson Tide”?   I always thought that a “Crimson Tide” was one of those red algae epidemics that periodically invade the water on the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean.                 

          My friend didn’t have to mention that the “Tide” also had a “million dollar” band, one of the most celebrated bands in all of college football land; I already knew that.  As a former high school band member myself, I considered a good band to be a key ingredient for a good football environment.  The band adds to the festive atmosphere that accompanied the game and helps to rev up the fans and the cheering sections.  As to the academics, I didn’t have a lot of data available to me to judge that aspect at Bama; so academics became a neutral factor. 

         

          But there was yet another more sensitive reason why I did not seriously consider Alabama or any other “Deep South” SEC school to be my Alma Mater, and it had nothing to do with football or academics.  This is where the year 1961 comes into play.  Remember, as a popular song of the 60’s that sez…“The times, they were a changing”. 

          The year 1961 was President Kennedy’s first year in office.  His brother Robert was Attorney General and Lyndon Johnson was Vice-President.  George Wallace, running on a strong segregationist platform, was about to become governor of Alabama and segregationist Orvil Faubus was already Governor of Arkansas. 

          My point is, social conditions were dramatically different in 1961 than they are now, and especially on the racial scene.  Segregation was still the order of the day in many parts of the south, including North Carolina.  Here in Wilkes County, Lincoln Heights was still the only operating high school for blacks in this area, and all four of the County’s other high schools were totally segregated, even though the Tar Heel state was generally considered to be more moderate and progressive in matters of race vis-à-vis most of its neighbors to the south. 

          Now consider that the SEC is made up of twelve schools, all in the south, and several in the “Deep South”.  Two of those schools, Alabama and Auburn, are in Alabama; Vanderbilt and Tennessee are in Tennessee.   Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Louisiana State, and the Universities of Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, and South Carolina are located in their namesake states.

          For a young, self-proclaimed progressive student born and raised in the more moderate culture of North Carolina, to leave this state and venture into unknown collegiate territory outside the cultural environs of his upbringing would have posed an unnecessary and unwelcomed cultural difficulty to the educational task at hand.  In short, it didn’t even occur to me to consider any of the schools in the SEC nor can I think of any of my local college bound friends or classmates who chose to attend an SEC school. 

          In later years in 1967, as a young Navy Ltjg and Student Naval Aviator stationed at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Mississippi undergoing initial jet training, I learned that as far as the local residents were concerned, North Carolina was a “northern state”, not a “southern” state and they felt this way even though they were aware that North Carolina and Mississippi were on the same side during the “War of Northern Aggression” as the “Civil War” is known in the deep south.  Perhaps having the word North in our home state’s name confused them?  

          Before I run out of space again, let me make the understatement of the year:  Having lived in seven states and traveled extensively throughout our country and the world including most of the towns in the SEC’s domain like Athens GA and Oxford, MS, I can assure any Rip Van Winkles out there who may have dozed off in the early 60’s and are only now awakening, there have been many major and positive changes in the South (and the rest of the country for that matter). If  I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have a second thought about going to any SEC school, even the ones in the Deep South, the only question for me would be, do I have strong enough academic credentials to be admitted to any of them and enough money to get a season ticket to the football games near the 50 yard line?  Gotta go…hope to see ya again next week.  (End)

 

 

A Virgin No Longer

By

Russ Pearson

 

          Now that the 2009 edition of the World Series is in full swing, the time appears right for this column to switch hitters from the football mode of the past weeks and say a word or two about baseball, the sport that for as long as I can recall has proclaimed itself our “national pastime,” a claim that may best belong in the history books.  Seems intuitively obvious to this casual observer that football and auto racing have overtaken the top spot.  

          If baseball really is our “National Pastime”, how could it be that it took me 66 years to attend a major league baseball (MLB) game?  But alas, I am an MLB virgin no longer yet couldn’t help but wonder if I had been the last MLB virgin standing?

          It all started about a year ago during a visit with my daughter and her family in Atlanta, Georgia.   When the subject of baseball came up in polite conversation, I casually mentioned that never had I attended a professional baseball game. 

          Well wouldn’t you know that my off-the-cuff comment set the wheels in motion with my daughter’s husband and father-in-law, both avid sports buffs.  In less time than it takes to do an Atlanta Braves Tomahawk chop, the decision was made to get me to a Braves game at the earliest opportunity. 

          Not that I didn’t know something about baseball myself mind you, after all Carmen Kilby, David Turnipseed and I were all members of the Cincinnati Reds when Little League Baseball first came to town back in the early 1950s.  Carmen was our team’s ace pitcher, David played 3^rd base and I played 1^st base, and we were up against some stiff competition you know.  You don’t play for the “Cincinnati Reds” for three years against such star athletics as Don Love and Eugene Reavis and not learn something about baseball.  

          It took the family just over a year to arrange, but they finally helped me lose my Major League Baseball (MLB) virginity a few weeks ago.  I was in nearby Athens, Georgia to see a Georgia Bulldog’s football game.  It just happened to be on the same weekend the Atlanta Braves were hosting the Washington Nationals at Turner Field in Atlanta for the final game of the season for both teams.  As it also happened, my grandson’s school was selling tickets to that game as part of a fundraiser.        

          Turner Field, the Braves home stadium, is a beautiful baseball venue.  Immediately outside the manicured playing field, a host of extracurricular activities, arcades and restaurants entertain visitors before game time.   My favorite was the Cartoon Network’s terrific kiosk designed for kids, both young and old.  Finally, after six and a half decades, I was going to see for myself a “national pastime” game up close and personal.  

          Ok, so it wasn’t so up close after all…our seats were way up high in the nose bleed section.  Now some folks may have found that uncomfortable, but the height didn’t faze this old, retired Navy pilot now living high atop the Brushy Mountains.   In fact, our seats had one of those unexpected favorable consequences: a gorgeous, panoramic view of the impressive skyline of downtown Atlanta.

          The baseball song sez “Take me out to the ballgame….. buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks….” two treats I was really looking forward to enjoying.   But to my disappointment, neither of those delightful delicacies could be found.  The best I could do was a $5.00 beer and a fully loaded $7.00 hot dog, but who’s complaining?  It was only money.

          How could I have known when the game started what a good deal this particular game was gonna be.  I paid to see 9 innings but got much more than I bargained for…With the score tied at 1 to 1 at the end of regulation play, the game went into a 10^th inning, and then an 11th  inning, before going into a 12^th, 13^th, and 14^th inning.  It was beginning to look as if a sleeping bag might come in handy.

          Finally, in the top of the 15^th, the visitors scored a run, putting the onus on the Braves to score in the bottom of the 15^th.  The bad news for Braves fans is that the home team just couldn’t rise to the occasion.  Atlanta lost their final game of the 2009 season 2 to 1 to the lowly, hapless Washington Nationals.  But for this first timer, it was a win.  A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon was spent with family members, including two grandchildren. 

          Then suddenly, like Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, the epiphany struck me…it’s not the game of baseball itself that makes the game what many still consider the national past time, it’s the many opportunities for families living in the vicinity of major league ball parks to attend games and spend quality, fun time together at “ye ole ball game.”   It’s an atmosphere that just can’t be duplicated at the once-a-week football game or the occasional NASCAR race.

          So sports fans, while baseball may no longer be our national past time, attending a game with children and grandchildren is a great way to spend an autumn afternoon and as I found out, being at the game in person sure beats watching it on television.   I look forward to next season and another opportunity to attend another Major League game.  (End)

 

 

Who’s Your Daddy?

by

Russ Pearson

 

            One of my favorite recollections from early youth is the story about how I met my father.  After retelling that story while speaking with a grandniece on Veterans Day, it occurred to me that a similar story might apply to a number of readers of this column.

         

          My story begins, or more correctly stated, was “conceived” in January 1943.   World War II was in full fury and my Dad had been drafted into the U.S. Army.  He had completed basic and advanced training and was about to be shipped overseas out of Jacksonville, Florida, to his first duty assignment in London, England.  But alas, as is my custom, I have gotten ahead of myself…let’s back up a bit. 

         

          Dad was a 1939 graduate of North Wilkesboro High School where he played on the “Mountain Lion’s” football team and sang in the school glee club.  He and my Mother, a cheerleader from archrival Wilkesboro High School, surreptitiously dated for sometime before they eloped in January of 1940 to York, South Carolina, while Dad was still a full-time student at National Business College in Roanoke, Virginia.  They chose to elope for fear that my grandfather, Rome Pearson, might cease funding Dad’s education if he found out the marriage.

 

 

          Being the youngest in their respective families (Mother was 17 and Dad was 18), they managed to keep their marriage a secret with a little help from a couple of very close friends.  Also, Dad’s older sister, Beatrice, and Mother’s older brother, Forest Church, aided and abetted the “undercover union” until after Dad graduated.  Only then did they go public. 

 

          Following graduation in Roanoke, Dad returned to North Wilkesboro where he was employed by a relatively new, upstart financial institution… the Northwestern Bank.  At Northwestern, he worked as a teller for Edwin Duncan and Vernon Deal, along side such notable up-and-coming young bankers as Bill Young, Ed Bell and Anne Duncan.  

 

          But the bank job was short-lived.  Like so many young men of his age, Dad received an official letter from the local Draft Board.  The letter began by saying:  “Greetings, Your friends and neighbors have chosen you to serve…etc. etc.”   Mother later told me that Dad's first response was that if he had known that was the kind of “friends and neighbors” he had, he would have moved to another county.

 

          Following completion of the Army’s basic training, and largely because of his business background and the fact that he could type, Dad was sent to a Camp in Norman, Oklahoma, for advanced training in Cryptology.  There he was schooled in operating state-of-the-art equipment that sent and received coded or “cryptic” secret and top secret messages. 

 

          Following completion of weeks of classroom training in Oklahoma, Dad received orders to report to a holding unit at the Naval Station in Jacksonville, Florida.   There he was to await further assignment in the barracks aboard the station.   

 

          Unlike some waits in the military, Dad’s wait was a brief one.   Shortly after checking in at Jacksonville,  his orders for an overseas assignment came through. He was to report for duty on a General Staff headquartered in London, England.  The orders contained a departure date from Jacksonville, which set in motion plans for a trip to Florida by my Mother, who was anxiously waiting back home while working as a secretary for Mr. Absher at the Dodge dealership on Forester Avenue in North Wilkesboro.  

 

          Sure enough, with Dad’s departure date now in hand, Mother boarded a Greyhound bus in Winston-Salem and headed south for sunny Florida. It was during that trip to Jacksonville that yours truly became more than just a “twinkle” in my parent’s eyes. 

 

          Like all the other soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines departing on that same London bound ship, Dad received a three-day weekend pass before his ship pulled out.  The pass was designed to give the men time to take care any "final personal business" before departing… and I am here to tell you that they took care of business alright! 

 

          Having been in similar situations myself during an extended Navy career that included many similar departure scenes, I can well imagine how the two of them passed the hours and minutes.  For all they knew, this could have been a “Last Farewell” weekend, to tap into the title of a poignant Roger Whittaker song.

 

          And so it came to pass  that some nine months following that farewell weekend and Dad’s departure for war-torn London and a nightly blitz by the German Luftwaffe, an eight and one-half pound bouncing baby boy bearing Dad’s name was born at the Wilkes Hospital on Eighth Street in North Wilkesboro.   According to the Birth Certificate on file at the Wilkes County Courthouse in Wilkesboro, the parents of the child were Russell G. Pearson, Sr. and Margaret Ann Church Pearson.   Dr. Fred C. Hubbard was the attending physician. 

 

          Like so many war-time babies, I was named after my Father.  Apparently that gesture was often done in the event the dad failed to return home.  Regrettably, as the many names, including the names of my cousins Alvin and Joe Pearson on the War Memorial Monument at the Wilkes Historical Museum (old Courthouse) attest, such tragedies happened to many patriots from Wilkes County families.  Fortunately, my immediate family was spared the agony of such a painful and sorrowful event.

 

 

          My Dad did return home shortly after the war.  He arrived back in Wilkes County early in 1946 after completing a swing with his unit thru mainland Europe as part of a team helping to document the atrocities of the Germany POW camps where millions of Jews were exterminated. 

 

          Meanwhile back at home, Mother and I were managing to survive in relative comfort.  We were living back and forth between North Wilkesboro and Wilkesboro in the homes of my respective Church and Pearson grandparents. 

 

          As fate would have it, both sets of my grandparents in earlier years had endured the loss of a son, while each of these sons were still in their teens.  To my grandparents, having a grandson in their home was something of a “second coming.”   To them, I was a surrogate for their own lost sons, James Pearson and Robert Church.

 

          When the war in Europe finally ended, there was concern in both houses as to how I would react when my Dad finally did come home.  I only knew him by a tinted, official 8” x 10” Army photograph and a few other small, black and white pictures he had managed to send home.  Conversely, he only knew me from a very limited number of photos Mother had sent to him.

 

          During the war, film was at a premium.   It was rationed because the silver used in the making of film was badly needed in the war effort. Baby books in those days contained far fewer photographs than those of later newborn generations.  

 

          To make sure I would know Dad when he arrived, both households placed a framed copy of that 8” x 10”, tinted photo of dad in uniform in a conspicuous place, and I was repeatedly told that this was my Dad, a lesson as later events would bear out, I literally took to heart.   

 

          Finally, the long-awaited, much-anticipate day arrived.  Dad came home to his parent’s house at the top of “F" Street in North Wilkesboro where Mother and I, along with my Pearson grandparents and several other family members and friends had gathered.  According to all accounts it was a most joyous homecoming. 

          I was kept under wraps in a back bedroom of the family's large, two-story home, so that all the adults could share their special moments with the returning “hero.”  The debut of the 2 ½ year old, the “main attraction,” was saved for last.  It is difficult to imagine what that moment must have been like for my Dad.   

 

          Being only 2 ½ years old at the time, I don’t recall any aspect of that "Father and Son reunion.”  However, family lore has it that I stubbornly refused to accept that this uniformed man standing anxiously before me had anything to do with my existence.   After all I had been repeatedly taught that my Dad was the framed picture on top of the piano.  I had no idea who this handsome, young “imposter” could be, although I am pleased to report that everyone there thought he did look a lot like me.   Reportedly, everyone in the room got a big laugh out of my not connecting the dots.   

 

          Fortunately, it didn't take long for me to come around.  That probably happened when this uniformed stranger took me down to my grandfather Pearson’s North Wilkesboro Grocery on 10^th street and gave me a bag of candy.  From then

 

on, I never doubted that this was my Dad. 

 

So let this be a lesson to one and all: if someone asks "Who's your Daddy?" just remember who pays for  your candy and you'll have the answer. 

 

 

 

WHAT MAKES YOUR HEADACHE?

by

Russ Pearson

          Just thinking about it makes my head hurt!  All those great weekends needlessly wasted while suffering from a dull, aching, sometimes throbbing headache.  But that was before I discovered the underlying cause and cure.  I suppose it’s all common knowledge to most folks now, but maybe, just maybe, there are a few folks who don’t know.   Seems there’s always that ten percent who don’t get the word. 

          Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear; back to a time when men were men and the women were glad of it.  When the more coffee a man drank, the more macho he became.  After all, coffee contains caffeine, and caffeine is the Jekyll-to-Hyde elixir that turns “Casper milquetoast” personalities into aggressive “Rambo” types. 

          Surely everyone knows by now that caffeine is a drug contained in regular, high-octane coffee, just as nicotine is a drug contained in cigarettes.  As such, caffeine increases heart rates, dilates blood vessels and perks up the nervous system.   Coffee also exercises the body’s urinary tract.  For pilots like me who once piloted single-seat aircraft, consuming too much coffee before a flight can pose real problems after the flight becomes airborne.  Trust me; I speak from painful personal experience!

          Like most Corsair II drivers, I was forever grateful that engineers at Ling-Tempco-Vaught (LTV), manufacturer of the Navy’s single-seat A-7E Corsair II, the carrier-based, attack aircraft that I flew for a number of years, were aware of this delicate issue.  The engineers wisely included an easy-to-use “relief tube” complete with a funnel shaped, plastic port connected to a rubber hose that vented to the outside.  This device was stowed in a cradle on the deck of the Corsair’s cockpit, just forward of the ejection seat.

          Of course, like all Naval Aviators, I had a custom-made coffee cup with my name and squadron insignia on it.  The cup was mounted in order of seniority on a peg board in the Coffee Mess at the rear of the Ready Room where that “Good-to-the-last-drop” java was readily available… around-the-clock.   That slogan always made me wonder what’s wrong with that “last drop?”

          Such coffee consuming behavior was not only acceptable, it was in keeping with long-standing traditions of sailors everywhere…being on a supposedly “dry” ship at sea for weeks at a time sure makes for a thirsty crew.  As you may have heard, coffee is not the only beverage sailors have a reputation for consuming in abundance, especially when they are on “liberty” in port. 

          The Navy is the one service most tied to tradition.  The ole saying: “When in Rome, do as the Roman’s do,” is well suited for such a tradition.   I personally witnessed this while serving as Senior Shore Patrol Officer during a week-long in-port period in the historic city of Naples, Italy.   Italians, including those Fatherly types wearing the white collar that tethers them tightly to the Vatican, really know how to “bend an elbow” when imbibing in the fruits of their country’s native vines… Again, as I so often do, I have strayed from the main topic. 

          Approximately twenty-one years into my Navy career, while serving on the Staff of Commander, Strike-Fighter Wings, Atlantic (STRKFIGHTWINGSLANT) at Naval Air Station, Cecil Field just west of  Jacksonville, Florida, I was preparing a draft for the Admiral’s endorsement to a recent aircraft mishap, when in walked the Wing’s senior Flight-Surgeon. CDR. Jack “Doc” Shields, MD, was a dual- designated Medical Doctor and Naval Aviator, as well as a personal friend. 

          In addition to heading up the Base’s Medical Clinic for the over 14,000 military and civilian individuals on the Station, “Doc” was assigned additional duty as “Flight Surgeon” to our Staff’ which included a dozen or more pilot types.  As such, he checked in several times a week on matters of aviation, automotive, home and workplace safety. 

          Jack always had his ear to the ground to detect any ongoing personal problems involving pilots, crewmembers and others assigned to the Wing’s twenty-four squadrons.  Wing squadrons flew a mix of aircraft types including the A-7E Corsairs II, F/A-18 Hornets, A-4 Skyhawks and S-3 Vikings. 

          The nature of the Wing’s mission and the special weapons with which we trained made it imperative that any improper or questionable behavior on the part of any assigned service member, especially our pilots be detected.  The recent massacre of thirteen individuals at Ft. Hood, Texas, is just one example of the type of incidents we were constantly on lookout to prevent.    

          In the course of our conversation on this day, I mentioned to Dr. Shields that a strange thing happened to me every weekend, although it never seemed to happen on normal workdays.  Usually on Saturdays and Sundays around noontime, I developed an intense headache. 

          “Doc” Shields proceeded to ask me a few questions about my health in general, and then he made an observation.  “Russ, I have noticed that every time I stop in for a visit, you always seem to be working on a cup of coffee.  In fact, the index finger on your right hand appears to be permanently bent to the ‘coffee cup position.’  So, how many cups of coffee would you guess you drink on an average work day?”

          I had to think about that for a minute before I estimated that I consumed somewhere between eight and twelve cups a day, including the two cups I drank before leaving home every morning. It was so easy to do; there was always a fresh pot of coffee in the Coffee Mess next door.  It was all too easy to slip over there for a refill. 

          “Doc” then asked how many cups I drank on an average Saturday or Sundays.  The answer to that question was much easier… usually just two in the morning with breakfast.  After breakfast, no more coffee was made at our house until the next day.  I began to see where Dr. Shields was going with this, and his explanation fit right in with what I was now suspecting.

          “Russ, I strongly suspect that your weekend-only headaches are caused by caffeine withdrawal.  I have seen it many times with folks who are accustomed to drinking regular coffee but then, either knowingly or unknowingly, switch to decaf… they soon get a headache.” 

          The good doctor then recommended that I gradually cut back on my heavy daily coffee consumption while at work, and at home on weekends, at the first sign of a headache, he said I should drink a cup of coffee. 

          Then he told me to keep a small bottle of Excedrin handy.  “Each Excedrin tablet contains 65mg of caffeine, about the same amount of caffeine as an average cup of coffee.” he said.   “If you can’t get to a cup of coffee when the headache starts, the Excedrin will preempt the headache.”

          Wowser, was I ever impressed.  I’m not as dumb as I often look!  Why hadn’t I figured out that caffeine withdrawal was the cause of my headaches?  Maybe it was because I never attended (much less graduated from) medical school, nor had I treated thousands of patients like Dr. Shields.   Heck, I’d never even played a doctor on television.   

          Sure enough, I took “Doc” Shield’s advice and the weekend headaches stopped… the Excedrin worked.   So, if my story helps you to get rid of those lingering weekend headaches, take two Excedrin and call me in the morning.  You may also show your profound personal appreciation by sending a thank you note addressed to “Doc” Pearson, The Record Newspaper, 911 Main St., North Wilkesboro, NC  28659.

By

Russ Pearson

          Well, it’s that time of year!  The season I look forward to more than any other and finally it’s come around again.  No, I am not talking about autumn…although that probably is my favorite of the four celestial seasons…I’m talking about football season.    

          Every year since I was a young “Whipper Snapper” just barely old enough to remember accompanying my Dad to football practices down in Wilkesboro’s Cub Creek Park where Dad was a volunteer, part-time assistant to Wilkesboro High’s coach Marvin D. “Red” Hoffman, the beginning of football season has been one of the most eagerly anticipated annual events in my life.  But then, I really had no choice other than to become a football junkie. 

          You see, Dad played football at North Wilkesboro High School in the late 1930s, while my mother was a Cheerleader at Wilkesboro High School.  Neither of them ever completely outgrew or tired of the excitement and festive aura of the football season.  In fact, considering the bitter rivalry that existed between their two schools, I have often wondered how the two of them ever got together in the first place.

          For those who may not have majored in Wilkes County history, prior to the consolidation of their two schools that created Wilkes Central High School in 1952, the rivalry between Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro High Schools was so intense that it would make today’s Duke vs Carolina basketball rivalry look like kindergarten kid’s stuff, the Army Navy game like an afternoon party in the park and the Georgia vs Florida game just another great big outdoor cocktail party.  Fact is, I don’t know the answer to the question of how my parents got together.  That secret they carried with them to their eternal resting places in the Pearson family plot at Mount Lawn Cemetery in North Wilkesboro.   

          Nonetheless, during those heady days prior to the school’s consolidation, the annual football match between the arch rivals, green and white clad Wilkesboro “Ramblers” with their blonde Cocker Spaniel mascot named “Rambler” and the blue and goal clad North Wilkesboro “Mountain Lions” was the GAME OF THE YEAR in the divided Wilkesboros. 

          That annual grudge match could draw a crowd of spectators whose numbers equaled or exceeded the combined population of the two towns.  With outstanding players like Jack Groce, Claude Nichols, Ray Triplett, Bob Parker, Buddy Mathis and “Shag” Prevette among others, the 1949-1950 Wilkesboro Ramblers were the undefeated conference champions and the pride of this football- crazed community.  Not surprisingly, that same kind of attendance became the norm in later years during many of Wilkes Central’s home games against conference rivals.

          Of course, Wilkesboro High School also had a “Secret Weapon”; some even claimed it was an unfair advantage.  The “Ramblers” sported one of the first male High School Cheerleaders known within the confines of high school football on this part of the planet… a young man obviously ahead of his time.  Although he has since become somewhat shy and retiring and assiduously avoids crowds and publicity, he has graciously given me a one-time permission slip to divulge his true identity: he is none other than the pride of Pumpkin Creek, the world famous Harold “Mule” Ferguson. 

          The nickname “Mule” was acquired years later, and is another story altogether.  Of course, Mule now has his own “Secret Weapon”.  Her name is Debbie Ferguson but Mule likes to keep here under wraps.  But enough about Mule... the publicity might go to his head.   

          Years later, after the two high schools finally consolidated, it was onward and upward in full football afterburner for the Wilkes Central High School Eagles under Coach “Red” Hoffman.  The Eagles enjoyed many winning seasons while wearing the consolidated school colors of Green and Gold… a combination later flagrantly copied by those “Cheese-headed Packers up in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  

               In retrospect, the consolidation of the two rival schools was the beginning of a still unfinished and seemingly impossible process of overcoming individual and departmental turf wars and bringing the two towns together.  If and when that ever does happen, and I hope it will in my lifetime but am not holding my breath, it will be an achievement comparable to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall to reunite East and West Germany, the reunification of  North and South Korea Korea, or getting some form of Health Care Bill passed this session of Congress.  

          As an indication of my parents “addiction” to football, they took me along to every game.  Baby sitters must have been hard to come by in those days.  As a matter of fact, from the time I was six years old, up to and including four years of high school, I don’t recall missing a single Wilkesboro or Wilkes Central High School football game, at home or away. 

          In the interest of full and fair disclosure, that claim is made with the following caveat:  While in high school, I was a proud member of the forty-plus person Eagles Marching Band, along with such budding young local male musicians as Eric Payne, John Sowder, Buddy Call, Richard Johnson, Eric Williams, Larry Nichols, Tommy Pearson, Charles Bumgarner, Harold Chapman, Jimmy Patrum, Clayton Thompson, and Drum Major Kirby Lowe.  

          During those years, the band played halftime shows at every game, home and away.  Many of the more naïve band members liked to think that the band’s performance was the reason so many folks were in attendance, but most of us knew better.   In any case, I had no choice than to be there...so throw me in that briar patch.   

          Free admission for band members was another strong incentive to attend all the games.   And then there were the rip-roaring good times to be had on the band bus during the rides home from away games… this was especially true when we won, which we did more often than not. 

          Regardless of win or lose, the band bus still had something the team bus did not have – more than half of those on the band bus were girls, including some high-stepping Majorettes in their sexy white leather boots and cosmetically tanned legs.  Yessir re Bob, they were a sight to behold; the stuff of which the dreams of young men are made. 

          Some of the fairer members of the band during my four years included Carolyn Mitchell, Barkley Moore, Judy Foster, Suzanne Somers, Martha Pratt, Judy Phillips, Ann Billings, Martha Jo Cabe, Rebecca Harris, Jane Bare, Jenny Miller, Ann Kilby, Mary Turner Gibbs, Lois Ann Shepherd, Kathy Parks, Carolyn Brookshire, Mary Flo Foster, Becky Benton, Mabel Blackburn, Kay McEntire, Marty Story, Rebecca Pearson, Jane Ellen Myers, Sue Bell, Adele Jones and others whose names unfortunately have skipped the grasp of my “Steel Trapped Mind”, but at least now you can see why it was more fun at least for the guys to ride on the band bus than on the all male football team bus.

          The good times were even more enjoyable when our old, recycled Wilkes Transportation bus broke down enroute home from the games, which it often did, delaying our return into the zero-dark thirty hours of Saturday mornings.  On at least one occasion, our parents were called to come to the rescue.

          Thankfully, the bus never seemed to break down on the way to the game.   The only time that happened was on Wilkesboro's eighth grade field trip to Raleigh. We made it as far as downtown Mocksville before the engine conked out. By the time we got a backup bus and finally made it to Raleigh, it was time to turn around and come home. But we were eighth graders and really didn’t care…we had a day off from school and had fun on the bus despite the inconvenience.

          In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the green and gold clad Wilkes Central Eagles, with players like Nelson Lowe, Ralph Steele, Bill “Bruno” Pearson, Jim “Semper Fi” Swofford, Ted Hall, Gary Vannoy, Jerry “Jug” Moore, C.G. "Bear" Walsh, Bill Eller, Rick Jones, David Wiles, James Forester, David Deal, John Pipes and Johnny Myers, the Eagles played such competitive high school opponents as Hickory, Lenoir, Morganton, Valdese, Marion, Mt. Airy, Newton-Conover, Elkin and of course, our perennial winning season opener with Taylorsville.  

          Later into the 1960s, players with such atypical Wilkes County names as David Turnipseed, Tommy Necessary, Dexter Hoffman and Johnny Swofford helped the team keep the Eagle’s tradition on track.  Yes indeed, that’s the same John Swofford who now presides as Commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference.  John is the youngest brother of Carl, Jim and Bill Swofford, each of whom has their own unique claim to fame.  Carl is a very successful businessman in North Wilkesboro.   Jim played football at Duke University prior to distinguishing himself as a member of the United States Marine Corps.  Bill Swofford, the 1970’s singing star of hits like” Good Morning Starshine” and “Jean”, regrettably passed away a short time ago.  He was better known outside of Wilkes by his professional name of “Oliver”, which was also his middle name.

          As ACC Commissioner, John Swofford has become one or Wilkes Central’s most successful and celebrated alums.  He has significantly raised the ACC football bar by advancing what is arguably the country’s greatest college basketball conference into an equally great and definitely more competitive football conference within the NCAA sports arena. 

          John accomplished this major feat by taking the lead in expanding the ACC conference from eight to twelve teams.  He negotiated the addition of such formerly independent powerhouse football schools as the University of Miami, Florida State, Boston College and Virginia Tech.  

          As the parent of a son who grew up in Orange Park, Florida, a suburb of Jacksonville, and who spent the first three and a half years of his extended collegiate career as a student at the University of Miami, I am especially pleased to have the Canes of the University of Miami, (Better known as “The U “) in the ACC.  Not only did “The U” get my first born as a student, Miami also got a substantial chunk of my hard-earned money, but who’s complaining?  When your school’s winning national championships, money’s not a problem.  

          Some of my good friends have asked me, “Russ, if you are such a diehard football fan, why didn’t you play football in high school?”  To which I answer, “I tried” and I really did… I tried hard, if not for myself, I tried for my parents who really wanted their only son on the football team. 

          During my first two years, I played on the freshman and then sophomore teams, under Coaches Dan Stallings and Smith Hudson.  Unfortunately, there were two strikes against me even before it was my time at the plate; I was too small and too slow.  At 135 lbs fully dressed out and skinny as a rail, I was too small to play on the line and too slow to be in the backfield.    

                Coach used me as a center on offense and as a line backer on defense.  However, the small size and slow speed didn’t get me a lot of playing time.  Even when I did get to play, I often was creamed just after snapping the ball by some over sized guard or tackle weighing a hundred or more pounds than me.    

          Then came decision time…the junior year.  Up until then it was possible to play in the band (which I had done since 3^rd grade) and play Junior Varsity football at the same time… the band did not perform for the Thursday night Junior-Varsity games.  Now, a choice had to be made between the band and football. 

                As a rising Junior, it was time to step up to the varsity team but by this time, it wasn’t hard for me to realize that football wasn’t in my future.  I realized that I wasn’t an athlete; I was more of an “athletic supporter” and I could play that role as well from the grandstands with the band as I could from the bench with the team.   

          The toughest part of the decision was that I thought I was letting my parents down.  After all those years watching my friends and me playing backyard football in the neighborhood, they had dreamed of the time when they could come to the Friday night games and see their son play football under the lights.  Instead, they were gonna have to come and watch me march in the band. 

          But I was a realist.  I knew that if I chose football, I would spend most of my time on the bench and not on the field.  At least in the band, I would get to perform on the field, and unlike football, my speed and size didn’t affect how well I played trumpet.  Besides, if I chose the football route, I wouldn’t get to ride on the Band Bus anymore. I might have been slow and small, but I wudn’t stupid!  I chose the band, but I still love a good football game.

         When this column left off two weeks ago, we had followed the Wilkes Central Eagles football team’s glorious history under the astute and able leadership of Coach Marvin D. “Red” Hoffman, aided and abetted by some highly talented assistant coaches.  I specifically remember Assistant Coaches Jack Branch, W. A. "Junior" Groce, Smith Hudson, and Dan Stallings from the 1950’s and into the 1970’s. 

     As a former POW of the Germans in World War II, Marvin Hoffman was what those of us with a military background call a survivor.  He managed to escape and evade re-capture from the Nazis, making his way back to allied forces under extreme physical conditions.   Hoffman is a man of extraordinarily high principle… the kind of man who possesses the courage and fortitude that commands respect and allegiance from all who know him and especially from his players; he never settled for anything less than the best from his team members.  

          In at least one very strange way, “Coach’s” experience as a very successful football coach at Wilkes Central was not totally unlike his experience on the run as an escapee from a German Prison Farm in Europe.   You see, the more games his Eagle teams won, the more he became a “Wanted man”. 

          Now don’t get the wrong idea.  Coach Hoffman was not the kind of “Wanted man” whose picture could be found adorning a bulletin board in one of our local post offices or on some TV crime program like “America’s Most Wanted” or whose name could be found on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.  He was wanted for entirely different reasons, and being wanted was not always to his liking.  The rewards of winning can fall into that “Be careful what you ask for” category.         

          With his superlative winning record, Coach Hoffman, like so many of today’s successful college and professional football coaches, was actively recruited by other schools and colleges; some near and some far away.   Although Coach and his wife were very happy living and raising their children in the Wilkesboros, it must have been mighty tempting for him to take the recruiting bait, with its potential for substantially higher pay and more widespread recognition within the coaching profession, and “pull chocks” (as we say in the aviation world) and move on up the coaching latter.  

          It was at least partially thru the concerted effort of many of his local friends, civic and business leaders, including an active and very supportive Quarterback Club, that the Wilkesboro’s were able to keep our “Coach” from being recruited away to bigger but not necessarily better coaching positions.  There is no doubt in my military mind that an entire generation of young Wilkes County folks, and especially young men who were fortunate enough to play football under his tutelage, are much the better for having Coach Hoffman as a coach and teacher.   I just happen to be one of many, some of whom have been named in earlier columns, who fall into that category. 

          Now don’t misunderstand what I am telling you… this is not an obituary for Coach Hoffman; he is very much alive and well.  I serendipitously crossed paths with him a few weeks ago in a local restaurant in Wilkesboro and he invited me to sit down and talk with him over lunch, which I did.   

          I am pleased to report that Coach looks terrific, belying his octogenarian age and he still knows how to hit a golf ball along with the best of em; he still plays a round at Oakwoods Country Club almost every day, weather permitting. 

          It is no mystery as to why just a few short years ago, the North Wilkesboro Rotary Club voted the Coach as the club’s coveted “Citizen of the Year”, an honor afforded only to the very cream-of-the crop of our local citizenry. 

          If you happen to be as fortunate as I was and figuratively bump into Coach in a restaurant or in a supermarket,  drugstore or post office, shake his hand and tell him how pleased we all are to have a man of his integrity living right here in this wonderful little community of ours.  .... (End

 

Broadcast vs Print Media

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

                One of the many advantages of finally reaching retirement age is that you have time to write columns like this one for newspapers like The Record of Wilkes and time to watch more daytime TV news programs.  Watching TV news programs is an especially good deal for “news junkies” like me. 

          When I’m working at my home-office desk in my cozy little writer’s garret at my Brushy Mountain cottage overlooking the Yadkin River Valley far below, I usually keep the TV turned on in the background.  I do that because I don’t want to miss the latest, so-called “breaking news”, a term which, in my humble opinion, is an oxymoron; just one of many morons out there in our world today.   

          It follows then that any news that is not “breaking” news must by definition be “old” news, which in itself is a contradiction of terms, regardless of how anyone defines the term.  This of course begs the question:  If the news is old, is it really news?   

          Have you noticed how often the words “breaking news” scrolls across the bottom of your TV screen or pops up on our computer screen?   Rarely is there a time there isn’t some “breaking news” somewhere in the world…Could “breaking news” be the next boy who cried ‘Wolf’?

          Having once and forevermore cleared that issue, let’s move on to the main point I originally had intended when I started this diatribe.  With the oft predicted decline and/or demise of many of our great national newspapers, what will the national TV networks do when and if those predictions come to pass, which appears to be happening now?  Who or what will fill the gap left in the wake of failing newspapers?

 In the leisure of my retirement, I have noted that all the big-time morning, daytime and primetime TV news shows rely heavily on the print media as “launch points” or “points of departure” for a given news item.   Whether it be “Morning Joe”  Scarborough on MSNBC or “Fox Morning News”, “Good Morning America”, the “Today Show”, “Countdown” with Keith Olbermann, the “Rachael Maddow Show” or “C-SPAN”, most major TV news cast rely on the print media to “prime their pumps” and give them the background and lead-in’s they need to pursue their story.  

          Many of these broadcast commentators have copies of their newspaper sources on their broadcast desk, and often hold the front pages up to the camera to validate their sources.  It’s as if they are saying, it’s in newsprint so it must be true, an assumption that presupposes the audience is gullible enough to believe everything they read.  

          CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, CNN and C-Span all apparently get their information from otherwise reputable print sources.  These sources include such prominent papers as the New York Times; the Washington Post; the Wall Street Journal; the Atlanta Journal Constitution; the Chicago Tribune; the Los Angeles Times; the New Orleans Picayune; the Miami Herald; The Charlotte Observer; The Winston-Salem Journal or even The Record of Wilkes, just to name a few of our nation’s greatest newspapers.

          So again I ask, if the print media, with its many diverse sources of background information, ceases to provide the oft-times hard-won, hard-nosed information that the TV networks rely upon to back up their reporting, who will provide that critical information; information that often takes weeks or even months to fully develop and then follow through?

                Will the television networks send “talking heads” into the world’s wilderness as “foot soldiers” for “breaking news” stories?  Will TV executives and producers allow their people the luxury of developing these stories to the same extent the print media does now?  Who will fill the information void?  Or will it be filled?  If not, what will the broadcast media do then?  

          Stay tuned to this column each week for the latest “Breaking news“ where our motto is:  ”If it’s not ‘Breaking News’, it must be ‘Old news’ and if it’s ‘Old News’, it’s not really news”…which is all news to me.

  (End)…Russ Pearson 

 

 

Youthful Recollections:

A Tall Tale

By

Russ Pearson

            Author’s Note:  Following several columns in The Record touting high school and college football, my friends-- all three of them-- have asked which football-orientated college I attended after high school?   Rather than disappoint them with the embarrassing truth, I concocted the following, almost believable, tongue-in-cheek tale which I now unabashedly share with you on the condition that you keep it to yourself:

          As it became apparent at the last minute that notwithstanding my less than stellar overall grade average, there still was a good chance I might actually graduate from high school, my parents presented me with a list of schools they would like me to attend and strongly urged me to begin sending applications to each of them.  Naturally, like all good parents, mine wanted only the best for their first-born son and the list of schools they gave me said as much, although I seriously questioned whether Harvard, Princeton and Yale were my kind of schools. 

          For one thing, IV League schools routinely field lousy football teams and who, other than an Eskimo, would want to go to a college where the temperature is colder than the balls on a Navy destroyer’s brass monkey, not to mention their locations in a strange northern land where the people speak English with funny, foreign sounding accents?   Quickly, I decided that the IV League just wudn’t for me and scratched those schools off the list. 

          After all, choosing the right college was serious business.   There was no time to screw around with a bunch of losers.  The only Bowl game any of these high-foluting institutions were destined to play in was the “Ice Bowl”.  I quickly moved on to the next choice on my parent’s list, the Military Academies. 

          It didn’t take long for me to narrow the Academies down to two: the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy.   Why would anyone in their right mind want to go to West Point and then spend years in the Army living in a fox hole when they could be in the Navy or Air Force living on a nice clean, air-conditioned ship or modern barracks with showers and three squares in a friendly wardroom?  As far as I was concerned, anyone wanting an Army life style would do far better by going to the Naval Academy and into the Marine Corps, a.k.a., the Navy’s Army ... Semper Fi !

          Of course, as far a football was concerned, the service academies had relatively mediocre teams.   Notwithstanding exceptional cases like Roger Staubach’s, it’s difficult for the Academies to recruit top players who have professional football aspirations when those players are faced with lengthy active duty obligations after graduation.  Contrary to conventional thinking, football isn’t the primary mission of the Academies.  The name of their game is national defense.  

          Then there was that little matter of political patronage, something a candidate for the Academies must have to  be admitted.  Unfortunately, the closest things I had to political clout was the fact that my maternal grandmother, Juliet Herndon Church, was a genuine descendent of Francis Scott Key, author of our National Anthem.  Additionally, my maternal grandfather, Roby Church, was a distant relative of one of Wilkes County’s most infamous celebrities, Tom (Dooley) Dula, not to mention the fact that my grandfather was an elected member of the Wilkes County School Board for some 25 years.   I figured that if the old saying “all politics is local” is still in play, I should have had it made politically.  

          Proud as I was of the exceptional credentials of both of my grandparent’s,  I soon discovered that my connection to Francis Scott Key and the School Board wudn’t even buy me a cup of coffee at Potty Horton’s Peoples’ Drug Store on Main Street in downtown Wilkesboro, although Grace Bumgarner, my favorite waitress there was sympathetic to my case.  So much for attending one of the Service Academies.   

          Of course, my parents were understandably very disappointed.  They had been looking forward, primarily for financial reasons, to sending me to any one of the Academies because unlike regular colleges, the Academies provided their Cadets with free room, free board, free tuition and a clothing allowance, in addition to a generous monthly stipend.

          Next on the list were several ACC schools, but they didn’t last long either.  The University of Virginia thought my resume was not Cavalier enough, and my application to Duke was rejected outright because I wasn’t a member of a very wealthy family from somewhere up north.  Besides, Duke said that my “C” average high school academic record wasn’t up to their “high standards”, but to their credit, in their letter of rejection, they did strongly recommend that I apply to schools with significantly lower academic standards and recommended schools like UNC Chapel Hill or that other Carolina University in Columbia, SC; so I sent them a nice, handwritten thank-you note for sharing that advice.         

          The letters of rejection received subsequently from the two Carolinas both implied that I didn’t appear to fit in well with their student body.   Apparently the Tarheels and Gamecocks both thought I was much too serious and studious for their party-school atmospheres… If they only knew how wrong they were about that. 

          Then came the letter from Wake Forest.  Although Wake didn’t say it in writing, I strongly suspect they rejected me because I was a Methodist.  They probably correctly assumed that I never had been baptized in “deep water”, which was true… I had only been “sprinkled”, which to them did not really count.   The Deacons just couldn’t tolerate an unsaved “heathen” on their heavenly campus.  

          Only later did it occur to me that putting down “Shagging” on my entrance application as one of my “favorite pastimes” may have done me in at Wake… besides not allowing dancing on campus, the term “Shagging” can be interpreted another way; they probably took it that way…Wake is a Baptist school you know. 

          To their credit however, the good folks at Wake did strongly suggest that my earlier experience as a supermarket bag-boy, plumber’s assistant, grounds keeper for several local churches, and ambitious paper boy for the Greensboro Daily News made me an ideal fit at NC State, Clemson, Georgia Tech or Appalachian which I much appreciated. 

          However, at that point in my young life, I just wudn’t into driving trains, raising chickens, hogs, cattle or producing textiles, and had no desire to be a school teacher.  I didn’t mind spinning yarns, but not in a mass-production underwear factory or in front of a classroom full of rowdy students like me.  Out of courtesy, I did however send Wake a nice, handwritten thank-you note for sharing their advice.

Youthful Recollections:

What about the SEC Schools?

 

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

 

By

Russ Pearson

 

          When this column ran out of space last week, I was lamenting my conundrum as to which college or university was best suited for me following graduation from Wilkes Central in 1961.   Remember that year; it was a factor in my available choices.  

          Shortly after that column came out, I received an e-mail from Bill Moseley, an old college friend and fellow Navy Officer in Pensacola, Fl.   It seems Bill read my column from last week on the internet and felt that based on my stated requirements for a school with a good balance between academics and football programs, I would have done well to have considered a school in the Southeast Conference (SEC).  Bill singled out the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa as the school he considered best suited for me.  His recommendation was not totally unexpected; Bill is a native of Alabama, although he began his own collegiate career at a school in North Carolina. 

           Bill didn’t have to tell me that the “Crimson Tide” football team was on a “Roll” in 1961 under head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.  That year, the team won what was then the equivalent of today’s Division I National Championship and the “Bear” was voted College Coach of the Year.  Coach Bryant’s teams went on to win the National Championship five more times under his tutelage.  Bill did tell me how Coach Bryant got the nickname “Bear.”  It seems that Bryant was tagged with that nickname because he once wrestled a bear for money and the name stuck.    

          The team’s nickname of “Crimson Tide” was coined when the Alabama football team rode a train all the way to Pasadena, California and the Rose bowl in the late 30s where they handily defeated UCLA for the national title.  During the game, one of the radio announcers made the comment “They roll down the field like a Crimson Tide”.  Apparently, the “Million Dollar Band” got its name in a similar way when a newspaper columnist said the band looked like a million dollars during a half-time performance.   That was back in the 1950s when a million dollars was a lot of money.

          As a former school band member myself, I have always considered a good band to be a key ingredient for a good football environment.  The band adds to the festive atmosphere that accompanied the game; it helps to rev up the fans and the cheering sections.           

          But there was a more sensitive reason than the football team or the band that I did not seriously consider Alabama or any other “Deep South” SEC school.  This is where the year 1961 comes into play.  Remember the popular song of the 60s that sez…“The times they are a changing”?  Well they were! 

          The year 1961 was President Kennedy’s first year in office.  His brother, Robert, was Attorney General and Lyndon Johnson was Vice President.  George Wallace, running on a strong segregationist platform, was about to become governor of Alabama and segregationist Orvil Faubus was already Governor of Arkansas--- another SEC state. 

          My point is that social and cultural conditions were dramatically different in 1961 than they are now, especially on the racial scene.  Segregation was still the order of the day in most parts of the south, including North Carolina. An undercurrent of racial unrest was brewing throughout the country.  A simmering caldron of anger, hatred and mistrust between the races was lying just below society’s fragile surface and it was about to boil over. 

          Here in Wilkes County, Lincoln Heights was the only area high school that admitted  black kids… all four of the county’s other high schools were totally segregated with white students only, and this in the Tar Heel state that was generally considered moderate and progressive in matters of race vis-à-vis most of its neighbors to the south. 

          Now consider that the SEC is made up of twelve schools, all in the south and several in the “Deep South.”  Two of those schools, Auburn and Alabama, are located in Alabama; Vanderbilt and Tennessee are in Tennessee.   Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Louisiana State, and the Universities of Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, and South Carolina are located in their namesake states.

          For a young lad born and raised in the more moderate racial culture of North Carolina an especially in a county with a less than 5% minority population and where racial prejudice,discrimination or unrest were rarely encountered, to leave my home state and venture into unknown collegiate territory outside the cultural environs of my upbringing would have posed an unnecessary and unwelcomed cultural difficulty to the educational task at hand.  In short, it never occurred to me to consider applying to any of the schools in the SEC, nor can I think of any of my local college-bound friends or classmates who chose to attend an SEC school.  

          Years later in 1967, as a young Navy Ltjg and Student Naval Aviator undergoing initial jet training while stationed at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Mississippi, I was surprised to learn firsthand that local residents considered North Carolina a “northern state”, not a “southern” state.   They apparently felt that way even though North Carolina and Mississippi were on the same side during the “War of Northern Aggression,” as the “Civil War” is known in the deep south.  Perhaps the word north in our state’s name confused them?  

          Having resided in seven states and traveled extensively during, my 26 year career as an officer in the United States Navy, including time spent in most of the captivating towns in the SEC’s domain, towns like Athens, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama and Oxford, Mississippi, I can assure any Rip Van Winkles who may have dozed off in the early 60s and are only now awakening, there have been many major and positive changes in the South and the rest of the country for that matter since your nap began.   

          If I had that same college decision to make all over again today, there would be no second thought in my military mind about seriously considering any of the SEC schools, even the ones in the Deep South.   The only question for me now would be: is my academic record strong enough to be admitted and is there enough money left in my IRA account to afford season tickets to their football games near the 50 yard line? 

Gotta go…hope to see ya again next week.  (End)

 

 

 

 

A Virgin No Longer

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

 

          Now that the 2009 edition of the World Series is in full swing, the time appears right for this column to switch hitters from the football mode of the past weeks and say a word or two about baseball, the sport that for as long as I can recall has proclaimed itself our “national pastime,” a claim that may best belong in the history books.  Seems intuitively obvious to this casual observer that football and auto racing have overtaken the top spot.   

          If baseball really is our “National Pastime”, how could it be that it took me 66 years to attend a major league baseball (MLB) game?  But alas, I am an MLB virgin no longer yet couldn’t help but wonder if I had been the last MLB virgin standing?

          It all started about a year ago during a visit with my daughter and her family in Atlanta, Georgia.   When the subject of baseball came up in polite conversation, I casually mentioned that never had I attended a professional baseball game. 

          Well wouldn’t you know that my off-the-cuff comment set the wheels in motion with my daughter’s husband and father-in-law, both avid sports buffs.  In less time than it takes to do an Atlanta Braves Tomahawk chop, the decision was made to get me to a Braves game at the earliest opportunity. 

          Not that I didn’t know something about baseball myself mind you, after all Carmen Kilby, David Turnipseed and I were all members of the Cincinnati Reds when Little League Baseball first came to town back in the early 1950s.  Carmen was our team’s ace pitcher, David played 3^rd base and I played 1^st base, and we were up against some stiff competition you know.  You don’t play for the “Cincinnati Reds” for three years against such star athletics as Rick Jones, Don Love and Eugene Reavis and not learn something about baseball.  

          It took the family just over a year to arrange, but they finally helped me lose my Major League Baseball (MLB) virginity a few weeks ago.  I was in nearby Athens, Georgia to see a Georgia Bulldog’s football game.  It just happened to be on the same weekend the Atlanta Braves were hosting the Washington Nationals at Turner Field in Atlanta for the final game of the season for both teams.  As it also happened, my grandson’s school was selling tickets to that game as part of a fundraiser.        

          Turner Field, the Braves home stadium, is a beautiful baseball venue.  Immediately outside the manicured playing field, a host of extracurricular activities, arcades and restaurants entertain visitors before game time.   My favorite was the Cartoon Network’s terrific kiosk designed for kids, both young and old.  Finally, after six and a half decades, I was going to see for myself a “national pastime” game up close and personal.  

          Ok, so it wasn’t so up close after all…our seats were way up high in the nose bleed section.  Now some folks may have found that uncomfortable, but the height didn’t faze this old, retired Navy pilot now living high atop the Brushy Mountains.   In fact, our seats had one of those unexpected favorable consequences: a gorgeous, panoramic view of the impressive skyline of downtown Atlanta.

          The baseball song sez “Take me out to the ballgame….. buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks….” two treats I was really looking forward to enjoying.   But to my disappointment, neither of those delightful delicacies could be found.  The best I could do was a $5.00 beer and a fully loaded $7.00 hot dog, but who’s complaining?  It was only money.

          How could I have known when the game started what a good deal this particular game was gonna be.  I paid to see 9 innings but got much more than I bargained for…With the score tied at 1 to 1 at the end of regulation play, the game went into a 10^th inning, and then an 11th  inning, before going into a 12^th, 13^th, and 14^th inning.  It was beginning to look as if a sleeping bag might come in handy.

          Finally, in the top of the 15^th, the visitors scored a run, putting the onus on the Braves to score in the bottom of the 15^th.  The bad news for Braves fans is that the home team just couldn’t rise to the occasion.  Atlanta lost their final game of the 2009 season 2 to 1 to the lowly, hapless Washington Nationals.  But for this first timer, it was a win.  A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon was spent with family members, including two grandchildren. 

          Then suddenly, like Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, the epiphany struck me…it’s not the game of baseball itself that makes the game what many still consider the national past time, it’s the many opportunities for families living in the vicinity of major league ball parks to attend games and spend quality, fun time together at “ye ole ball game.”   It’s an atmosphere that just can’t be duplicated at the once-a-week football game or the occasional NASCAR race.

          So sports fans, while baseball may no longer be our national past time, attending a game with children and grandchildren is a great way to spend an autumn afternoon and as I found out, being at the game in person sure beats watching it on television.   I look forward to next season and another opportunity to attend another Major League game.  (End)

 

 

 

 

Youthful Recollections:

SUMMERTIME V
Next in a series for
The Record of Wilkes
By
Russ Pearson

       

For the past several weeks, the topic of this column has been “SUMMERTIME.”    With schools now back in session and Labor Day 2009 in the history books, it’s time to start putting the summertime theme to bed.   But first, let me pontificate on the valuable role these summertime “vacations” play in complementing the more formal classroom education. Often, we learn as much or more about life and our place in it outside the classroom as we learn inside the classroom.  Case in point: mowing yards.

          When I was just a wee lad a couple of years short of my tenth birthday, my family lived in a small but comfortable house on College Street in Wilkesboro. Why this street was named “College” Street, nobody knows.  It’s still a mystery. However, I will admit that the words “College Street” really looked impressive on our return address labels.  

          That house still stands about two blocks up the hill from the Wilkes County Health Department and Social Services Offices.   At the time in question however, the site on which those two agencies are now situated was a densely overgrown, vacant property with blackberry and raspberry brambles so thick that Ole Brer Rabbit of Uncle Remus fame would have loved it.  It is a little known fact that this same site was once the location of a prison camp.

          The yard at our modest little wood-framed (now bricked) house was small by comparison to some of today’s massive yards.  I estimate its size to be about three-fourths to a full acre of grass, mostly in the back yard.

          The biggest difference between that yard then and the big ones now is that power mowers had only just begun to come down the pipeline.  We used an old, manual push mower similar to the one that sits in the front entrance of The Record of Wilkes newspaper office on Main Street in North Wilkesboro. One look at that ancient mower and you will know why folks didn’t have gigantic yards in those days… they were just too hard to mow.

          About that same time in the early 1950s, my dad came down with a serious medical problem.  He developed blood clots in both legs and was bedridden for what seemed like months.  His blood condition continued to plague him for the rest of his relatively short life.  His condition also restricted his physical activities, not the least of which was mowing the yard.  That task fell to his oldest and only son to take over as chief grounds keeper for the Pearson household. 

          As you might imagine, mowing this yard was quite a physically demanding tasking for a bantam-weight third grader, but I was proud to have been trusted to do a grown man’s job helping around the house.  In today’s world, such tasking at that age might qualify as “child abuse,” but not back then.  Child labor laws did not apply to mowing the family’s yard.  Cutting the grass around the house was just another “character building” exercise and not nearly as demanding as the chores expected of some of my friends raised on farms. 

          Nevertheless, I can still vividly remember pushing that old manual, metal mower around what I viewed then as our “massive” yard.   About once a week for 6 months out of the year, I preformed this chore.  Mowing the grass, in addition to clipping the borders along the sidewalk and around trees and shrubs with a little hand-held clipper, was especially onerous work on those really hot days in July and August.

          It should come as no surprise that for me the invention of the gasoline- powered lawn mower was among the most significant events of the 20^th century.  It ranked right up there with Henry Ford’s Model T, the Wright brothers flying contraption and Thomas Edison’s light bulb.

          In one way, the power mower was a God-send, but, it also served to increase my work load exponentially, not unlike today’s computers vis-à-vis the old-fashioned typewriter.  Once our family finally got around to buying a power mower, I was expected to mow more yards and more often.

          Well, I suppose it was inevitable.  According to my parents, I was doing such a “great job” that before long, the family tasked me to mow the even larger yard at my Grandfather Church’s house down on West Street in Wilkesboro.  That yard was about twice the size of the one at our house.  In fact, it was so large that it became a perfect venue for backyard football which my friends and I often played after Cub Scout meetings in my grandparent’s basement…my mother organized the group and was our first Den Mother. 

          In all fairness to my Grandfather Church, one of the many men in our community who learned the value of a dollar during the hard-knock days of the Great Depression, he always paid me $1.00 for my half-day’s work.   That was a most generous recompense from a most generous and kind man, and I was thankful to get it.

          As the word got out that I mowed lawns, I was asked to take on more and more yards and being the budding capitalist that I was, I agreed to take most of them on.   The going rate at that time was $0.50 an hour and I had to supply the mower and gasoline.  Such a deal!

          I was soon approached to take on the historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on top of the hill north of downtown Wilkesboro.  Later, the same happened with the Lutheran Church of the Atonement located at the entrance to Forest Hills on Oakwoods Road.    

          Greed apparently overcame the sheer agony experienced while mowing those time-consuming church grounds in the heat of the day, and especially at St. Paul’s.   That beautiful old church’s historic cemetery required hand clipping around some of the oldest grave markers and tombstones in the county. 

          Although St. Paul’s was a hard day and a half job, the church’s graveyard did give me the opportunity to learn the names of many of the town’s and county’s most prominent early citizens who are therein interred.  Being a relatively prominent and generous group of folks, the Episcopalians did pay better than most.  I received $7.00 for each mowing.  In addition to the money, I hoped that by mowing church yards, I was laying away some redeemable brownie points in the hereafter, and even then knew that I would need all the points I could get.

          So what did I learn about myself outside the classroom that particular summer?  Well, among other things, I learned that I truly disliked yard work… a lasting lesson I probably would not have learned in the formal classroom.  It was a lesson that has carried forward to this very day causing me to rhetorically pose the question: Why would anyone mow their own yard if they could hire someone else to do it for them?

          Fact is, I gladly pay a mowing service to mow my yard, and I pay them considerably more than $0.50 an hour.  Lawn mowing has become a high-paying occupation these days and it’s done mostly by grown men with families to support, rather than young teens working for spending money.   The teens are all staying indoors in the air conditioning watching TV or playing games on their computers

          I justify my position of paying a yard service by saying that it gives me free time to write columns like this one for The Record of Wilkes.  Besides, paying someone else to mow my yard is my voluntary contribution to fuller employment in our local economy.

Finally, at the ripe old age of 14, I finally was “emancipated” from doing yard work.   I applied for and got a workers permit from the Wilkes County Health Department.   Those permits allowed us youngsters to legally pursue summer and after-school work in the public sector and not get our employers in trouble with Child Labor Laws.

          Over the next few years, until going away to college, I was never without an after-school or weekend job.   I had a morning paper route with the Greensboro Daily News, worked as a plumber’s helper for Fidel Frazier, as a “bag boy” at Pearson’s and later Lowe’s Supermarkets, as a service station attendant at Whittington’s Esso Station and as a greenhouse worker and delivery boy for Henderson’s Flower shop.  Those last two were across the street from each other on Main Street in Wilkesboro.  I also occasionally helped my Dad as a part-time office worker at his finance company office on 10^th Street in North Wilkesboro.

          By the time I went away to college, these jobs had contributed immeasurably to a treasure trove of life experiences complementing the valuable “book learning” gained in formal classrooms.

          But alas, once again, I have experienced a “runaway keyboard;” I have filled my allotted space for this week and I truly hate it when that happens. Therefore, I will finish this story next week… So stay tuned.  (END)

 

 

SUMMERTIME VI

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

(Continued from last week):

 

Then came the summer of 1962… the summer following my freshman year at Brevard College.  Not only was I a year older, but presumably a year wiser and more sophisticated.  An eighteen year old who thought that his one year of college made him wise to the ways of the world.   That summer’s job turned out to be the most significant summer of all in teaching lessons of life.  

Along with many other college students, I was hired on the second or night shift as a cigarette inspector at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem.  At the time, the cigarette business was booming; the plant was working overtime on nine hours shifts. The night shift ran from 4:00 PM until 01:00 AM.  Throw in the hour and half drive each way to and from Wilkesboro on what is now old highway 421, and allow for a few hours for eating, bathing and sleeping and your day was all but gone.

It was only a temporary summer job.   College students were hired as stand-ins for regular plant workers taking annual vacations, but it sure paid well, more than enough to offset the hassle of a daily 116 mile, round-trip commute to Winston-Salem in a five person car pool.

Starting pay at Reynolds was over three times the federal minimum wage.  That was a lot more than I made mowing grass, bagging groceries, pumping gas, washing cars or delivering newspapers or flowers.

Regular workers at the plant claimed that the higher pay helped maintain employee loyalty, which when translated into English meant keeping the union out.   “Why should any worker pay union dues when the company was already paying above union wages and providing excellent fringe benefits as well,” they reasoned?  I sure couldn’t argue with that.

I was assigned to a machine making Winston cigarettes on the second floor of old building 256.   That was one of the beautiful, old factory buildings made of hand-crafted bricks in downtown Winston; regrettably, that historic building burned to the ground a few years ago

My machine was one of over 30 identical machines in my section, each turning out 3,333 Winston cigarettes a minute.  The cigarettes were automatically rolled out in front of me on parallel conveyor belts.

My job was to inspect each cigarette for any one of over 30 discrepancies and to discard those while gathering the good cigarettes and spreading them gently into a square wooden tray directly in front of me.  Each tray held 4,000 cigarettes and filled every three minutes

Once the tray was full, a metal cover was placed over it and it was pushed sideways onto a cart placed next to my machine.  The cart was placed there by a “phantom” worker.  This guy appeared and disappeared as if by magic.  He would bring an empty cart to my station and wheel the full cart and its 44,000 cigarettes over to the building’s adjacent “Packing Department”. 

Twice during the nine-hour shift, inspectors were relieved for a 10 minute bathroom/smoke break by a roving inspector.  I usually needed both of those breaks.  Midway thru the shift, there was a 30 minute break for the evening meal.  That was just enough time for me to get down to the company’s ground-floor cafeteria and scoff down a quick sandwich before going back to work on my upstairs machine.

It was during one of those “smoke breaks” very early in my employment that I almost got into trouble… a situation that could have gotten me fired had someone in management seen it. 

As you might recall from an earlier column, back in those days I had the nasty habit of smoking, as did about everybody else I knew.   My favorite cigarette brand was Marlboros, a product made by Phillip Morris out of Richmond, Virginia, and a major competitor of the Winston brand I was making at Reynolds.

On the occasion in question, I turned over my machine to the relief person and headed for the men’s room to answer the call of nature and to smoke a cigarette.  As usual, the men’s room was relatively crowded with mostly regular, long-time employees taking their break and smoking cigarettes picked up off of one of their machines.  Can you see it coming?

Well, when I pulled a flip-top box of Marlboro cigarettes from my shirt pocket, flipped open the lid and slipped a Marlboro into my mouth, the conversation came to an abrupt halt.  The men’s room suddenly got very, very quiet and all eyes were on me, and the faces those eyes belonged to were less than friendly, to put the best face on it.

Finally, after what seemed like my allotted 10 minutes, one of the crusty old fellows who had probably 30 years under his belt with the company spoke up and said,  “Son, if you like your job here, you’d best not come in here again with those kind of cigarettes. In fact if I were you, I’d dump them in that trash can over there in the corner right now.”

Sure sounded like good advice to me, so I took it.   I dumped that half a dozen of so “weeds” remaining in the pack in the trash and tore the box into several pieces and tossed it in there too.  

As I was walking out of the Men’s Room, obviously embarrassed, the ol’ timer patted me on the shoulder and said, “From now on son, do like the rest of us do and grab yourself a handful off the belt and stick em in your shirt pocket to smoke on your break.”

Well for the next week or so, I took the ol’ timer’s advice, but I wasn’t happy about it… not that I was “stealing cigarettes from the company… I just didn’t like the taste of Winstons as much as I liked Marlboros. 

Then the solution hit me.  The next day, I bought a flip-top box of Winstons and a flip-top box of Marlboros.  After I had smoked all of the Winstons that day, I packed the Marlboros into the Winston box, stuffed it into my shirt and went to work.

Fortunately for me, Winston and Marlboro cigarettes look identical.  The only real difference is the barely visible printed name on the paper up near the filter end, and your fingers usually cover that name while you are smoking it.   For the rest of the summer, I smoked Marlboros in the Men’s Room at R. J. Reynolds and until now, no one was the wiser.

Notwithstanding my little secret, I found that working on an assembly line was incredibly boring and by the time that summer ended, I was bored stiff.   I couldn’t wait to get back to college and hit the books with a renewed appreciation for the value of classroom education.  I was so thankful that I was only a temporary summer hire.

During an end-of-summer-exit interview with my floor supervisor, himself a Wake Forest graduate with a degree in Chemistry, I told him how boring I found the job.  I told him that I was amazed that some of my fellow workers had managed to handle this same job inspecting cigarettes for over 20 years.

He laughed and admitted that the company did not hire college students for such jobs fulltime.  He told me that over the years, the Company had found that workers with IQs between 80-90 were best suited for such positions because they were not as easily bored or distracted from the tedious, irksome day in and day out, eight or nine hours a day, five days a week.

Applicants with IQs above 100 and suitable for college-level entrance were considered for summer employment only and other non-assembly line jobs.   Hiring college kids during the summer was the Company’s way to help students financially with college expenses, while providing the Company with a reliable pool of workers to fill-in for workers on vacation.  He then very graciously invited me to come back again next summer and to consider a management position with R.J. Reynolds when I graduated from college, an invitation I once considered, but then I found a higher, and less boring occupation flying off the pointy end of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers. 

So what did I learn working in the “real world” during my school “vacation” during the summer of 1962?   I learned two things: 1) There’s no cigar for working in a cigarette factory, and 2) My IQ had to be at least 100 or I wouldn’t have gotten a summer job inspecting cigarettes for R.J. Reynolds.

I remain forever grateful to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. for affording me an opportunity not only to work alongside some wonderful, hard-working people, but the chance to earn enough money to help me make it financially through the next year in college. (End)

 

Youthful Recollections:

Do you know me? – Do I know you?

Another in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

         

 How many times have you unexpectedly run across someone from your past, perhaps very distant past, but could not recall their name or even where you knew them from?  Has this ever happened to you?

            Perhaps it’s someone you knew back in school or college or a former member of you church or civic club.  Maybe it’s a former colleague from your work, or someone who once lived in your neighborhood, or in yet another scenario, maybe even someone you served time with…. in the military of course; what did you think I meant? Then there’s the opposite situation.  You see someone from your past and you recognize them, but you’re not sure they recognize you. 

            If these weren’t universal problems, why do we wear name tags when we attend our high school, college, church and even family reunions? 

            The very fact that I mention it should clue you that both of those situations have happened to me, and on more than one occasion, although not quite as often now as they used to.  When I first moved back to Wilkes after being away in the U.S. Navy for two and a half decades, such run-ins happened frequently. 

          I remember on one of my very first nights back “home” in the summer of 1992.  I stopped in at the Coffee House Restaurant on Brushy Mountain Road and Exit 85 on Hwy 421 By-Pass just south of Wilkesboro to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich. 

          Shortly after taking a seat on one of the bar stools at the counter, a strong, male voice called out, “Russ Pearson”!  Naturally, I whirled around on the bar stool, and there stood a nice looking gentleman, probably in his early 70’s; his face looked vaguely familiar; I just could not place a name with the face even though obviously knew me, possibly because my picture and a story about me returning “home” to Wilkes to be the inaugural Executive Director of The Health Foundation had recently appeared in a local newspaper. 

          A little embarrassed and trying to cover my forgetfulness, I slide down off the bar stool, walked over to the booth where he was sitting with friends, held out my hand and said, “Hey, how are you?  It’s great to see you again”.

          Well, he pressed the flesh with a strong handshake, the kind I like, and proceeded to tell me that he had heard I was moving back to town and that he was very please at that news and that he just wanted to welcome me “Home”, and “Oh by the way, how’s your Mother?”  

          I was able to fake it for a minute or two longer before he said, “I’m not sure you remember me, do you”?  To which I answered, “I’m sorry sir, but I don’t; you look familiar, but I just can’t place who your are.”       

            “Well, let me give you a hint.  My son graduated with you at Wilkes Central High School, and is now living close to where you are moving back here from; these past few years he has worked for President Ronald Reagan.”

          Well that was all the hint I needed, but just to be sure, I asked him, “Did your son by chance marry sportscaster Pat Summerall’s daughter and do they live in the golf Mecca of Ponte Vedra, FL”?....to which he nodded in the affirmative.

             “Merle Wiles”, I shouted! “How are you sir and how is your son Lanny”?  I said with a great big grin of relief. 

                 From there we had a delightful conversation.  I subsequently saw Mr. Wiles on numerous occasions; usually when out for dinner at Hadley’s or Don’s or the Elks Club.  He always greeted me and brought me up to date on news from Lanny.  Merle Wiles passed away a while back, but I still remember that he was one of the very first locals to welcome me home back after 26 years of Navy life

            Another of several similar incidents occurred later when I was working with the American Red Cross Chapter in Wilkesboro.  On one such occasion, I was holding down the office while my able Assistant, Ann Rita Necessary, was working the afternoon shift at a local church’s blood drive. 

A very nicely dressed gentleman came into the Chapter House office at 201 West Street in Wilkesboro. When I asked how I could help him, he said “Well, I heard you were back here now and working at the Red Cross.  I was in town and just thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

          For the life of me, I could not figure out who this man was; he was better dressed and groomed than the vast majority of clients who came to the office in need of one of our services, so I assumed he was there to make a much welcomed financial donation. 

            It didn’t take him long to figure out that I had no idea who he was, so he decided to play the game with me, not unlike the initial game Mr. Wiles played.   He started by saying that he and I had gone to school at Wilkesboro Elementary and then Wilkes Central, and that we had graduated together.  Then he told me that he had worked as a bag boy at the first Lowe’s Supermarket on Second Street in North Wilkesboro at the same time I did.

      Awkward minutes passed, mercifully interrupted by a couple of phone calls.  Finally he must have realized that I really did not know who he was, so he told me…. “My name is Douglas Laws, now do you remember me? 

      Wowser, was I embarrassed!  Of course I remembered Douglas Laws, after all we wore out the knees in our blue jeans several times shooting marbles on the red dirt playground at Wilkesboro Elementary School during recess and P.E…… How could I forget Douglas?  It was all coming back to me now! 

      Douglas had gone into the Air Force after high school, and then came back to work for J.C. Faw at Lowe’s Foods where Doug became a successful store manager before retiring from the grocery business and going into the Insurance business over in the Lincolnton/Gastonia area, and just for a brief moment, it occurred to me that he was really here to sell me insurance like insurance salesmen are prone to do.  However, the sales pitch never came and  I soon realized that he was just an old friend stopping in to say hello.  You get the picture now, don’t you?  

      The lesson I have taken aboard from these and other encounters is to always assume on meeting a person that I recognize, that perhaps he or she may not in fact recognize me.  This is especially true if that person happens to be older than me, which is becoming increasingly difficult now that I officially qualify for Medicare and Social Security and therefore am older than two-thirds of the local population, not to mention being nearly as old as this newspaper’s Publisher, Ken Welborn used to be.     

So, what do I do in these situations?   I approach the person in question by preemptively stating my name first, e.g.  “Hey John, Russ Pearson here… how have you been, long time no see”. The usual reply I get, whether it’s true or not is, “Russ, sure I know who you are…How are you?

      Unfortunately, I still don’t have a sure fire way to respond when they know me but I can’t remember them.  I just tell them that I’m coming down with that “Old Timers Disease”, you know the one that somebody who should know told me was caused by drinking far too many Coke’s with artificial sweeteners out of aluminum cans, but then I can’t remember who told me that.  After that, I come clean and confess that I just can’t remember who they are and ask could they give me a hint?   (end)

SUMMERTIME– Part II

Next in a series of

Youthful Recollections for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

A couple of weeks ago, this column discussed the mechanics of how and why our public school system came to operate only nine months out of the year, with a three month “holiday” over the summer months.   This week, let’s talk about what those of us in the first wave of the “Boomer” generation did back in the “Good Ole Days” to occupy all that “free time” in-between school sessions.

Of course how we spent our summer “vacations” differed from person-to-person and family-to-family.  It was often dependent on factors such as age, family composition and traditions, financial and health situations, and the family wage earner’s work situation, to name a few.  Even church affiliations played a role in our summer activities.  

During our formative, early-adolescent years of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the boys in my neighborhood, and probably boys all over the county, spent much of our days mowing yards, washing cars, hunting, fishing, riding bicycles, roller skating at the Roller Rink up in Mulberry or at the County Court House in downtown Wilkesboro, playing “Army” in nearby woods or NASCAR in homemade wagons on homemade, gravity powered tracks on  neighborhood hillsides, going to the movies on Saturday afternoons at the Liberty and/or Allen Theaters on Main Street in North Wilkesboro, going to Scout Meetings on Monday evenings, Church Youth Choir Practice on Wednesday evenings, hanging out at the YMCA on Friday and Saturday evenings once it was finally opened  and swimming in local creeks on really hot days; swimming pools in the Wilkesboro’s were practically non-existent. 

Once we reached age 14, many of our activities began to change.  Not only were members of the opposite sex occupying a more generous segment of our radar screens, we could now get an official work permit from the Wilkes County Health Dept.  That valuable piece of paper allowed you to legally get a good paying summer job; work that paid up to $0.50 an hour. 

 I’m talking about good jobs!   Jobs such as Bag Boy in one of the several local supermarkets, like Pearson's,  Lowe's or Smithey's, or in one of a couple of  area flower shoppers like Henderson’s or City Florist or as an attendant pumping gas at a local full-service gas station, which virtually all stations were back then.  

Unlike today, the word “Service” in the “Service Station” business really meant SERVICE.  When a car pulled into a gasoline station like Whittington’s Esso or Dub Canter’s Texaco on Main street in Wilkesboro or Rex Kilby’s or Howard Minton’s Gulf stations in North Wilkesboro, it was standard procedure that the car was quickly surrounded by helpful attendants who cleaned the windshield, checked the oil, battery and radiator under the hood, while another person(s) checked all four tires for proper inflation and they did it all as the gas tank was being filled. 

Wash, Wax and Lubes were also available if you scheduled ahead of time.  Batteries and tires could be purchased there as well.  In fact that is where the name ESSO came from; it was taken out of the word accessories.  What better way for an energetic and enterprising  young teen to earn his keep and gas money, while honing his work ethic skills, and learning about cars at the same time.  

But I am ahead of myself.  Long before we were bagging groceries or filling gas tanks or delivering flowers, our gang also played Little League and later Pony league Baseball, as well as backyard football, and a little basketball wherever there was a hoop, with or without a net. 

As to Little League Baseball we practiced at Smoot Park or any other public diamond that happened to be available but our games were played at Memorial Park at Midtown in North Wilkesboro.  I was a proud 1st baseman for the Cincinnati Reds coached by Mr. George Turnipseed.  Our parents came to the games to see us play, and we played in the games to watch our parents yell and scream at our coaches and the umpire.   

Our rough and tumble brand of unsupervised football was played in one of several neighborhood backyards, including the cow pasture on South Cherry Street at John Henry Groce’s house.  However, I can tell you that most of us, including John Henry, preferred the backyard venue, as did our Mother’s who did the laundry.  When we played in John Henry’s pasture, we not only had to avoid being blocked or tackled, we also had to worry about “stepping or falling in something”, to paraphrase Andy Griffith.   That was true for the tacklor as well as the tacklee.

We played a knockdown, drag-out brand of football.  No pads, no helmets and no regard for life, limb, or the pursuit of happiness as guaranteed in the Constitution.  Miraculously, no one was ever hurt; although scuffles were known occasionally to break out and end the unsupervised games, at which time the owner of the ball usually got mad, took his ball and went home.  No Ball, No Game.  Who needs adult supervision?   

 During the evening hours, as pre-teens, our parents kept us tethered very close to home.  Many of our nighttime activities were done with neighborhood kids in our own local communities.  In those days, television was still in its infancy and after the 5 PM “Howdy Doody” show, there was little to no evening hour television programs of interest to kids.  Besides, not every family had a TV; some kids had to go to a friends or a neighbor’s house to see this magical invention.  My family was fortunate.  We had an early 10” screen, floor model and it was not uncommon to have a house full of friends and neighbors come over just to watch the Test Pattern, and some of the adults used the occasion to have a drink or two while they were watching.

But again I have digressed.  Who could forget those warm, balmy summer evenings when a mixed group of young boys and girls who lived within a few block area would converge on the “yard de jure” and play a game called “Kick-the-Can”.  This was a rambunctious outdoor game, probably forever lost to the ages as it is doubtful it would have made it to the Olympics in our life times.   

Even if the game were still in vogue, it would probably now be called “Kick the plastic container”, as tin cans are just not as prominent as they once were; most are saved now for recycling or tying onto the rear bumpers of cars belonging to newly weds off on their Honeymoons.

With the hours of daylight lingering well into the early summer nights, we continued to play outside until we were hot and sweaty, our clothes grass stained and our young legs worn to a frazzle, so much so that we finally called it a day and headed home; we were ready for a good hot bath and a good night’s sleep--- the kind of sleep that allowed us to wake up in the morning bright-eyed and bushy tailed and ready to go the minute our eyes opened; if only we could do that now. 

Sometimes, when foul weather dared interfere with our playing outside, we’d gather inside to take on one of several board games; Monopoly was the favorite.  Sometimes these Monopoly games would go on for days before some enterprising entrepreneur finally “won”.   Occasionally, our hosts would provide a treat of homemade ice cream churned in a manual ice cream maker.  There was no greater treat on the face of the planet, unless of course it was a second helping, which was usually available, depending on who was in our group…. Some ate bigger first helpings than others.  

As we grew older, so did our appetite for bigger and better things so we naturally graduated to bigger and better activities.  For many of us, that included social events at one of the town’s two Women’s Club Houses.  By far our favorite games at these early teen affairs were Post Office and Spin-the-Bottle.  Too bad we eventually outgrew those innocent, childish games.   Can you imagine what an uproar it would cause if we played either of those games again at our next High School Reunion?  Guess we'll just have to stick with that key game that we now play.... You know the one where all the guys throw their keys into a hat and the gals get to randomly pick one out, with eyes closed of course.... you know that game !

Occasionally, someone in our group would make telephone calls for a spur-of-the-moment, “Come-as-you-are-party” and as you might suspect, we would end up with some invitees actually coming to the party wearing what they were at the time they received the phone call, making what for them would have been considered totally out-of-character outfits to wear in public, much less to a party.  

Not surprisingly, we also usually ended up playing a modified version of those same "childish” party games, except in this format, we’d pair off with our sweetheart “de jure” and discreetly disappear into the darkness of night or hide in the nearby hedges to experience the delights of what we called a “five minute date”; if you didn’t return in five minutes, the others came looking for you.

(Gotta go now; this is the end of this week’s edition of Youthful Recollections….Summertime II.  Hope to see you again next edition; there’s more to come in Summertime III)

 

 

Youthful Recollections:

 Summertime III

(Continued from last week)

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

 

Another favorite summer activity for kids in the Wilkesboros was going off to camp.  It may have been an equally favorite time for our parents to get us out of town for a week or two of  relative peace and quiet. 

Ironically, the summer camp we attended was often determined by which church our family attended.   Presbyterians were pre-ordained to go to Camp Greer near Blowing Rock or Camp Glade Valley up in Roaring Gap.  The Baptists were sure to be immersed in the rigors of Camp Ridge Crest near Swannanoa, while Methodists were sprinkled with the fun and fellowship of camp Tekoa up in the mountains near Hendersonville.  If you happened to be Lutheran, you could enjoy the totally reforming experience of attending Camp Luther Ridge, located south of Asheville, and Moravians had a beautiful Camp in the Laurel Springs community, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.          

As difficult as it may be to believe, I never knew a Catholic or Jewish kid prior to going to college.   I am not certain that there was a religious affiliated camp in the area for these kids, although that didn’t preclude them from attending one of several non-denominational or secular camps---- camps like ones operated by the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and the YMCA.  

          One such camp was Camp Albert Butler, located on a high ridge line just east of Stone Mountain in the Roaring Gap community of Alleghany County.  Sponsored by the YMCA in High Point and closely affiliated with the YMCA in Elkin, the camp drew its name from Albert Butler, a senior executive and a financial benefactor of the camp at Elkin’s Chatham Manufacturing Co.   The camp was originally built as a CCC camp back in the 1930s where workers lived while building the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

Summer after summer, Wilkes youngsters from both sides of the Yadkin River (including yours truly) attended camp Butler where the mountain air was clean and pure as was the water.  From the wooden deck of the camp’s main “lodge,” the panoramic view of stately Stone Mountain was spectacular.

In addition to all the usual camping activities, one of the highlights of each weekly camp session was “The Hike.”  The Hike was the time when camp counselors led brave volunteer campers down a steep, heavily-wooded trail into the deep gorge several hundred feet below and then up the steep and often slick-rock façade to the top of Stone Mountain.  Then, after what seemed like an all too brief rest to enjoy the unspoiled beauty of that massive rock structure, we’d hike back to camp again in time for supper.

That hike was physically grueling.  At times, climbing up that sheer rock face of Stone Mountain bordered on dangerous for a bunch of young campers, but we were a fearless lot; we saw it as a character building exercise.  In fact, that hike was so "character building" that it convinced me at an early age that hiking and mountain climbing were not to be among my fortes in life.

To the great chagrin of many, Camp Albert Butler, the place where I learned to swim and first conjured up the courage to jump off the diving board into the deep end of the outdoor pool, and where I gathered the cojones and social stamina to ask a girl to slow dance, that same Albert Butler became the victim of “progress.”   

Duke Power Company, in spite of opposition, chose to locate high-tension power lines across the camp’s campus.  In so doing, they sentenced that magnificent camp facility, the one so enjoyed by so many every summer, to endure a premature and ignominious end. 

The rustic little wooden cabins, that housed about a dozen campers each, were sold off and carted away.   The swimming pool was filled in and the mess hall, where homemade yeast rolls and cobbler pies once ruled, was leveled.   The old-time campfire round which we all gathered nightly to sing traditional campfire songs like “KumByYah” and hear camp counselors tell scary ghost stories was forever extinguished except in the minds and memories of those of us who have forever cherished the experience.   

The good news is that a completely new, more modern camp was later constructed on a similar site about a mile or so away, next to the current High Meadows Golf Course.  Today, Camp Cheerio is a popular summer camp and thankfully, the world of summer camping is still alive and well in our area.

  Other summer camps frequented by many youngsters from the Wilkesboros were affiliated with scouting programs.  Each offered great experiences during the summer holidays.  

Boy Scout Camp Raven’s Knob, located on a scenic lake at the foot of the Blue Ridge near Mount Airy, provided comfortable camp sites, nature and hiking, trails and lake and boating facilities for swimming, canoeing and rowing for Scouts (including our local Troops 34, 36 and 100 and others) throughout the Old Hickory Council.  Raven's Knob was and still is a “Mecca” for Boy Scout Troops and Explorer Posts throughout the region. It has become one of the finest Scout Camps in the nation.

 On numerous occasions, many Boy Scouts from Wilkes went to Raven’s Knob as campers and in the process earned the proud reputation as a “Master Snipe Hunters.”  I was one such camper, who learned the tricky intracies of hunting and catching "Snipes". 

My biggest problem in hunting "Snipes"was knowing what to do with them once they were caught?  Several of my Wilkes scouting friends including John Bentley, David Deal, and David Wiles were Staff members Raven’s Knob.   They  convinced me just to release them back into the wild, especially the little ones.

 A sister scouting camp to Raven’s Knob was Girl Scout Camp Shirley Rogers, located on beautiful Lake Louise on the affluent, “high-roller” campus  of the prestigious Old Roaring Gap Club in the Roaring Gap community near Sparta.    

Regrettably, Camp Shirley Rogers is now closed but in the 1940’s and 50’s, it was a  popular summer get-away for Wilkes County girls including Mary Turner Gibbs, Vanya Forehand, Judy Bouchelle, Rachel Helms and Judy Dwiggins, all from within the Wilkes Girl Scout community. Mary Turner Gibbs also served as a Camp Counselors there. 

Another Girl Scout summer camp that attracted girls from the Wilkesboros was located at Ocean Drive Beach, SC (now North Myrtle).  It was operated by the Manship family from Moravian Falls. The Manship’s camp was a “twofer”; it offered Girl Scouts a chance to go to camp and to the beach at the same time.

There were also a few specialty camps like Camp Sky Ranch near Blowing Rock, a camp that catered to handicapped kids.  This camp was specifically dedicated to victims of Polio, that horrible, debilitating disease that affected so many young people in the 1940s and 50s. 

Prior to the discovery in 1953 of a preventative vaccine by Dr. Jonas E. Salk, Polio afflicted many thousands of kids across America every year, including a number from Wilkes County.  Among the victims in Wilkesboro were my next door and up the street neighbors, John Q. Bryan, son of T.R. and Nell Bryan, Sr. and Gaynell McEntire, daughter of Ed and Maggie McEntire.  Others I am aware of included Carter Perkins, Bill Pearson and June Royle from the east end of Wilkesboro, as well as Patti Jones from the Fairplanes community. 

The most severe Polio case happened right here on the Brushy Mountains at the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. Allie Hayes.  Their son, Hale Hayes, contracted the disease in his pre-teen years, and was paralyzed from the neck down.  The severity of Hale’s case required that he be placed in an “Iron Lung”, an artificial, tubular shaped, life-supporting breathing devise. 

After treatments in several tertiary care hospitals in North Carolina and Tennessee, Hale returned to his parents home on the Brushy Mountains,  where he spend the remaining two decades of his remarkable life.  Not only did his indomitable spirit enable him to be tutored and graduate with the class of 1959 from Wilkes Central High School, he also became an ordained Baptist Minister, whose personal example was a beacon for so many who heard his message. 

Members of “Generation X” and “Generation Y” may not be aware that for several summers during the late 40s and early 50s, the medical story of the day was the mystery surrounding polio; how it was caused and how it was transmitted.  At the time, Polio was as frightening as AIDS is today.  This permanently disabling disease knew no boundaries, neither social status, wealth, gender, religious or political affiliations or race mattered; it was an equal opportunity disease.  Polio afflicted presidents and paupers alike.

For a time, the mystery of Polio proscribed that all youngsters take an in-home, semi-isolated afternoon siesta, or nap as a precaution to help prevent its possible spread.  This was a voluntary option to which most families with children, including mine, adhered.   It also limited sports practices and events in the school, although going to the movies was not ruled out.

As you might expect, these “stand-down” periods were, to say the least, very unpopular among those of us too young to understand the reasoning. We’d much rather be outside playing with our friends.  However, having two close neighbors afflicted by the disease made a willing rest period believer out of me, whether it worked or not. 

Dr. Salk’s break-thru Vaccine, first in the form of shots and later in the form of liquid drops on sugar cubes, was universally administered to school children around the world.  It was a major development in eliminating the scourge of Polio from the face of the earth, not unlike the earlier vaccine against Smallpox.

While the vaccine did largely wipe out polio in this country (causing many Americans to falsely think polio had gone the way of the Dinosaurs), the paralyzing specter of polio is with us still in this country today and continues to be a serious threat in many third world countries.  To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “Polio ain’t over here till it’s over everywhere”.   Many of the early victims of Polio are now suffering additional related medical problems as they age.   Many residents may not know that the Rotary Club organization has made the total eradication of polio its primary international mission; a most worthy cause.

 

 

 

 

Youthful Recollections:

 

 Disappearing Railroad Blues

 

(Continued from last week)

 

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

 

By

 

Russ Pearson

 

By 1955, the dreaded threat of Polio discussed last week had significantly subsided due to the discovery and dissemination of the recently developed and tested Salk vaccine.   Afternoon nap periods had all but gone away, much to the delight of neighborhood kids.   Youthful summer activities had returned to some semblance of “normality”.  It was a great time to be a pre-adolescent, knocking on the door of those wonderful, mysterious and wacky teenage years. 

 

Our voices and our bodies were changing, as was our awareness of of the opposite sex.  Still too young to legally drive, the new car models were of major interest for most of the boys, while the girls were more into fashion, makeup, music, movies and dancing. 

 

As for the boys in my group, besides being excited over the girls in our group, we were also excited about the mass production of the two-seated Ford Thunderbird and the competing two-seated Chevrolet Corvette.  Nineteen fifty-five was a banner year for autos and record sales were recorded. 

 

Most of the major American models were debued in the fall months, after being hidden away for weeks in local garages awaiting their official grand introduction.  Most of the secret hiding places used by the dealers eventually became known to at least one member of our gang , and like junior, undercover detectives, we would covertly visit each location to get a sneak preview of what was coming for the year ahead, and 1955 was a banner year when compared to prior years; many of the models made major changes. 

 

It was also the year the bigger and more muscular V-8 engines similar to the ones found in Ford cars since the 1930s essentially replaced the old standard straight six and eight cylinder engines in all but a few American models.  Four cylinder engines remained the purview of European models

 

It was the year that the wrap-around windshield became a prevalent feature on most models from the stables of the “Big Three”, GM, Ford and Chrysler.  It was the year seat belts began to be mandated by law and that automatic transmissions and air conditioning (albeit clumsy ones) began to come to the front of the line of desired available options.   

 

Fifty-five was also the year that my dad traded our old, high mileage, green 1952 Ford Customline for a brand new, blue and white Ford Fairlane two door sedan.   No air conditioning, but it was equipped with optional automatic transmission; the first automatic transmission ever in our family car, but not the last.

 

One of the ironies regarding our family’s choice of cars, a puzzle that was never fully explained to me, was why my dad, who grew up in a Buick family, always traded cars with his old high school friend Bud Kilby at Yadkin Valley Ford on 9^th street in North Wilkesboro.  He did so even though my grandfather, R.R. “Roby” Church (dad’s father-in-law), was co-owner, with Marv McNeil at Midway Pontiac in Wilkesboro? 

 

Not that I have anything against Bud Kilby or any of the fine folks at Yadkin Valley Ford mind you.  From Bud and John Kilby, right down thru salesman Rex Reeves and Sam Mayberry in the Service Dept, they have all been very nice to me.

   

It's just that when I am in my "Mafia mentality",  I always contended that affairs of money should be kept in the "Family".   My mother possessed that magic, female trump card that women so often play in order to get what they want,  so why she didn’t use it to influence where dad traded I am at a loss to tell.   (Read between the lines.)

 

That same memorable summer of ’55 was when the local Southern Railroad company regretfully announced that after 65 years, the company would cease carrying passengers between North Wilkesboro and Winston Salem, via an Elkin stopover.   The passenger operation had become a money losing proposition and after August 1^st 1955, Southern Railroad, the very backbone of the growth of this community, would limit its operations to transporting materials and merchandise only; no passengers. 

 

At that time, many local youngsters (myself included), had never ridden on a train.   The news of the final passenger train out of North Wilkesboro prompted several mother’s in our group to conclude that this might be the last opportunity for their kids to experience such a ride and accompanied us on the trip.  

 

Other far-sighted moms quickly came to the same realization and organized more groups of kids to take the last train to Elkin (queue up the Dave Clark Five’s “Last Train to Clarksville”).   Meanwhile, another caravan of mothers drove to the railroad station in Elkin to bring us all home again.

 

As it turned out, a lot of other local adults had the same idea as well.  On that final day, so many riders signed up that Southern Railroad had to add two additional passenger cars to handle the unusual number of riders.  Among those riders were a few who had made the first ride as infants when the service began back in 1890, the year North Wilkesboro was founded.

 

For those of us experiencing a train ride for the very first time, the trip was a delightful, but all too short experience.  The rhythm of the rails as they rumbled along the eastbound tracks was music to our young, impressionable ears. 

 

We were too young to realize it then, but it was as if an era in North Wilkesboro’s short but storied history was literally singing its own version of the “Disappearing railroad blues,” to borrow a phrase from Arlo Guthrie’s classic folksong, “City of New Orleans”.   Who knows, maybe Arlo was along for that ride. 

 

We delighted in the scenery that followed the river as it meandered through fertile fields of rich, bottom-land soil, ripe with corn and other crops on its eternal search for the Sea (queue in a little Sigmund Romberg Overture music from his “operetta “The Student Prince”, a la WKBC AM Radio signoff circa 1955 here).  We were passing scenes our young eyes had never before seen from our family’s car windows while travelling east by auto on the adjacent highway 268. 

 

As more often than not, our mothers were right by putting us on that historic train.  That ride created memories that have survived in my mind for over half a century.  The next time I had a chance to ride a train was nine years later during my sophomore year at Brevard College when I traveled to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.  

 

Now, the question of the day:  The Railroad tracks and the old Terminal are still in place.  Do you suppose a passenger train will ever come back to the Wilkesboros?  Or have those days gone the way of the horse and buggy, the typewriter and the telegraph machine?    (End)

 

 

: 

An “A” Fair to Remember

 

By

Russ Pearson

          In one of his more memorable one-liners, W. C. Fields, the great American comedian of the 1930 and 40’s joked: “I went to Philadelphia once and it was closed”.  Sitting here writing this piece in downtown Philadelphia, some 600 miles from my Brushy Mountain home,  I can do good the funny man two better; I’ve  been to Philadelphia three times, and it’s been closed every time.  Of course, the great comedian was talking about Philadelphia, PA; I’m talking about the real Philadelphia, the one in Mississippi.   

          My wife Theresa and I are here at the invitation our daughter Claire and her husband William Perry and his parents, Bill and Joyce Perry.  The Perry’s are third generation owners of one of the Neshoba County Fair’s highly coveted 600 delightful Fair cabins.   

          Philadelphia, MS just happens to be the proud home of the annual eight-day, “Best-of Breed”, Neshoba County Fair.  It truly is unlike any other in the US of A, and the 2009 edition marks the 120^th year of its existence. 

          Hearkening back to 1889 in the horse and buggy days of the old agricultural fairs and church camp meetings when fair goers camped at the fair from opening day to final closing, the Fair is so popular in these parts that thousands of folks from all over Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and at least two of us (my wife and I) from North Carolina now travel a third of the way across the county to participate in this one-of-a-kind spectacle. 

          Fact is, except for Wal-Mart, practically the whole town of Philadelphia (excluding essential services) shuts down for the last week in July.   It’s a longstanding tradition here in Philadelphia.  Closing down the town enables many more locals to attend the Fair’s abundance of events --- events that, like the area’s hearty residents, start early in the mornings and run late into the warm Mississippi nights. 

          Fair events include, but are not limited to, everything from the annual Miss Neshoba County Beauty Contest, to antique and modified car shows; to horse, carriage/harness and even mule races on the state’s only sanctioned horse racing track; to good old fashioned gospel singings as well as country and bluegrass music; to special patriotic events honoring active duty service members and Veterans and a host of events for children of all ages.  Oh yes, did I mention an extensive Flea Market and performances by well-known national celebrities?  Last evening we had the Atlanta Rhythm Section. 

          Of course no event of this magnitude could possibly pass muster without a few political speeches, and this Fair has no shortage of those too.  Local, state and prominent national politicians, from Presidents, Governors, Senators, Congressmen and Mayors, all the way down to County and City Commissioners dare not pass up a chance to speak at the Pavilion during this unique event, and especially during an election year. 

          Mississippi Governor Haley Barber was this year’s featured speaker.  In 1980, the Neshoba County Fair was the site that Candidate Ronald Reagan chose to make his very first campaign appearance after publically announcing his run for the Presidency.  Over 30,000 supporters attended the Reagan rally that year.   

          Many writers, most well above my level of literary competence, have attempted to describe this Fair, but all have found it virtually impossible to fully capture the overall essence, spirit and friendly family reunion flavor of its unique character.   The complexity of the Fair has invariably led journalist to the conclusion that in order to believe it, you’ve got to come and see for yourself this Fair that bills itself as “Mississippi’s Giant House Party”.  It truly does have a little something for everybody.   

          One of the many features that make this Fair unique is the over 600 individually owned, permanent cabins.  These are mostly wooden framed, tin-roofed structures, ranging from elaborate three-story units to plain and simple one-story abodes.  All are cleverly decorated and colorfully lighted, reflecting the personalities of their owner(s) and the festive nature of the Fair.   

          Like tickets to the annual Master’s Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, these Fair Cabins are all but impossible to come by except thru inheritance from generation to generation.  To paraphrase it in Biblical terms, it would be easier for a camel to pass thru the eye of a needle than for someone outside the Neshoba community to acquire a cabin at the Neshoba County Fair. 

          The cabin owned by our hosts has been passed down three generations thru Joyce Perry’s Great Aunt Roberta and promises to continue down the line for years to come thru family descendants like our grandchildren, Max and Lila Tate Perry.

          These colorful and creatively outfitted two and three story cabins encircle the horse, harness and mule racetrack, with its adjacent covered amphitheater and professional stage, all of which are immediately adjoined to a well–equipped, carnival-like Midway with all the popular rides for all ages.  The Midway also contains kiosk hawking products and souvenirs of every variety from burgers and hot dogs to T-Shirts, ice cream and lemonade, to the Fair’s own U.S. Post Office, with its own Zip Code.

          The perimeter parking areas of this colorful assemblage contain over 500 spaces for RV units and are filled with every conceivable sort of camping contrivance.  Campers range from homemade trailers to top-of-the- line, exquisite motor homes bearing license plates from all over the lower forty-eight.

          Bill Perry, one of my gracious Fair hosts, characterizes this Fair as a “5 F” event where the five F’s stand for “Family, Friends, Fun, Food and Festivity”.  Like so many others here, Bill contends that “There is just no other event like the Neshoba County Fair anywhere in the South, and probably nowhere else in the entire United States”.  

          Many attribute the Fair’s century old and still growing popularity to its hospitable front-porch appeal; an almost lost “Americana” atmosphere like that of hometown America before the advent of air conditioning in the late 1800’s.  Back then, residents of small-towns like Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro strolled friendly streets in the evenings and were invited to stop and sit-a-spell on the porch and maybe even enjoy a glass of cool iced tea, lemonade or even a traditional Mint Julep with friends and neighbors as they passed.  Can’t you just visualize that in your mind’s eye?

          Many visitors at Neshoba are third, fourth and even fifth generation Fair goers.  Some are people who met and became friends at the Fair in early childhood and in some cases eventually fell in love, married, had kids and have returned every year thereafter. 

          For these folks, the annual week at the Fair is like going back in time to their childhood summer camp; it’s a much anticipated “Reunion” where they can catch up on what has happened since last summer; who got married; who had kids or grandkids; who gained or lost weight; who passed away; who got promoted or who retired and all the other news and gossip that’s fit to tell. 

          Over the years, many of Fair goers have moved away from the Philadelphia environs, some even to locations overseas, but they still make it a point to come “home” for the annual, week-long shindig, and the hospitality flag is always out.

          To give my Wilkes County friends and neighbors an even better picture of this Fair, just imagine if the infield of the old North Wilkesboro Speedway were turned into a large Carnival Midway similar to the one at the Dixie Classic Fair in Winston-Salem.  Next, place a Merle Watson-like stage in the center of the infield and convert the auto race track into a dirt horse/harness/mule/tractor/lawn mower race track.  Got that picture?

          Now, on the grounds around the track, add 600 mostly rustic but brightly colored and lighted, privately owned “shotgun” cabins, none taller than three stories and none longer or wider than a double-wide modular, all with comfortable “sit-for-a-spell”, covered front porches.   On the outside perimeter of the cabin cluster, provide spaces and hook ups for some 500 RV’s, and don’t forget to allow parking space for the thousands of visitors who will fill the grounds on a daily basis.  

          Last, but not least, organize a couple of thousand volunteers to assist with parking, operate the many concessions, control entrance gates, handle  publicity and security, maintain grounds, provide medical assistance, etc..  Now open this venue to the public only once each year for eight full days of non-stop activities, bringing in top-level talent, nationally prominent politicians and tens of thousands of visitors annually.  Hopefully this gives you a good mental picture of the Neshoba County Fair. 

          As I said earlier in this piece, there’s just no way to do justice verbally to this one-of-a-kind event.   It’s a southern cultural phenomenon!  But don’t just take my word for it.  Check your copy of the July 2009 edition of Southern Living Magazine.  It contains a nice write up on the Fair.  

          Better still, do yourself a favor; come see the Fair for yourself next year.   Maybe we’ll run into each other and say “Fancy Meeting You Here”--- after all, as we said in my piece two weeks ago, it really is a small world afterall and you never know who you’re gonna run into when you least expect it.

(End)                                                                                                  (RGP)

     

  

                                                    Orange Slices and Other Youthful Recollections  

 

                                                                     Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

          The recent intentional burning of the building that formerly housed W.A. “Shorty” Groce’s store on South Cherry Street in Wilkesboro was a very sad occasion for me. The long-vacant store was burned on the morning of July 11th as a training exercise by the Wilkesboro and Goshen Fire Departments.  

          For over 10 years in my young life, my family lived on College Street, just three blocks north of “Shorty’s” store.  The store was the site of many, many trips by me and members of the Pearson household for everyday items such as bread, milk, sugar and other family staples including Gulf gasoline for the car and lawn mower. 

          The store’s final demise triggered many happy memories of a time growing up in the same neighborhood that“Shorty”so diligently served.  He was open seven days a week, from early morning till late night, for which he was eventually recognized by Gulf Oil for over 45 years of loyal service.

          The only exception “Shorty” made in keeping the store open was on Sunday mornings when he closed so that he and the family could attend services at the Wilkesboro United Methodist Church.  “Shorty” always sat in the same seat on the same pew, a tradition the congregation and ushers always honored as “Shorty’s Seat” when seating visitors.

          “Shorty” and Mrs. Groce raised six children including Jack, W.A. “Junior”, Jay, Peggy, Jettie, a granddaughter named Patricia and their youngest son John Henry Groce.  Many readers of The Record will know John Henry.  He recently retired as the long-time manager of the Wilkesboro ABC store on Curtis Bridge Road; a managerial skill he learned well from his dad.  

          John Henry and I were good friends since early childhood.  We lived only a few blocks apart and were in the same grade at Wilkesboro Elementary and Wilkes Central High School.  We often played together, whether it be backyard football at my house or at Jackie McEntire’s backyard a few doors away, or in the cow pasture immediately adjacent to John’s house.  However there was a difference.  When we played in the Groce’s pasture, not only did we do our best not to get knocked down, we literally had to be careful not to step in something, like in Andy Griffith’s popular tale, “What It Was - Was Football.” 

          We also played “Army” in the nearby Call’s woods across the road and creek from the present Wilkes County Health Department.   We used surplus Army gear like helmet liners and canteens purchased at Robbie’s Army Store on 10^th Street in North Wilkesboro and BB Guns brought to us by none other than Ole St. Nick, himself a lifelong member of the NRA.  

          I would have preferred to play “Navy”, but Robbie didn’t carry a lot of sailor stuff, and besides, Cub Creek wasn’t deep enough or wide enough to operate an imaginary aircraft carrier, much less an armada of battleships, destroyers, cruisers and submarines.

          In time, we evolved into the game of “NASCAR”. This game was played on a steep downhill track built by several of us in the neighborhood, including Abbie Garwood, Walter Anderson, C.H. Necessary, and Rex Colvard.  The dirt track was on a cleared out hillside on property just behind the current site of the Wilkesboro Fire Department on Cherry Street, and across from the McEntire’s house. 

          We raced for time against the clock on wagons we made ourselves out of scrap lumber found in the neighborhood and with salvaged axles and wheels off of abandoned kid’s wagons and wheelbarrows.   In many ways, we were the Little Rascals of Wilkesboro like the Our Gang bunch we saw on Saturday’s at the Allen and Liberty Theaters on Main Street in downtown North Wilkesboro.   

          Just prior to his retirement, I saw John Henry at work, and we started talking about the proverbial “Good ole days”.  As we reminisced, the subject of orange slices came up. 

          Now you may think orange slices to be an unusual subject for two men in their mid-60's to be discussing, but for us it was as natural as fuzz on a Georgia Peach or the peel off a Brushy Mountain apple.  Our talk took us both back to the mid-1950' when the boys in our neighborhood, including the Blackburn twins, were, shall we say, “adventurous”. 

          The twins were a few years older than the rest of us; naturally, we looked up to them for leadership and guidance.   In fact, much of our early knowledge about sex and other interesting adult preoccupations came from the Blackburn twins as our parents usually shied away from discussing such risqué topics.  Fortunately the twins seemed to know the answer to just about every question our fertile young, inquiring minds could conjure up, but that is yet another story for another time. 

          As it turned out, the Blackburns were experimenting with chewing tobacco which gave our impressionable minds the idea in modern parlance that this was the kool thing to do.  Naturally, I had to give it a try. 

          Well, let me tell you, I gave it at try all right and somehow managed to swallow a mouthful of tobacco juice.  I am here to tell you that I have never been so sick in my life... and I have been pretty sick at times, mind you. I wanted just to lie down and die.  My head was spinning and my stomach was turning over like a concrete mixer ready to regurgitate a “churning urn of burning funk”, to borrow a phrase from James Taylor’s “Steamroller Blues”.

          However, as strong as that memorable lesson was for me, peer pressure was even stronger... I just had to be one of the guys, which brings me finally to the topic at hand.

          Among all the many goodies sold in John Henry's dad’s store were a plethora of assorted candies, all displayed in glass encased bins at about eye level.  Among all these tempting goodies were large, juicy orange slices, lying loosely in the last bin on the left, along with the metal scoop “Shorty” used to dish them out into small, brown paper bags.  For $0.05 cents, “Shorty” would sell you a whole bag full.  

          Wowser.... what a deal....But remember, this was back in the mid-50’s,  a time when cigarettes sold for $0.20 a pack, soft drinks cost a whole nickel, postage stamps were $0.03 cents each, and gasoline cost on average about $0.21 cents a gallon. You could get a 5 gallon gasoline can filled for your lawn mower for a dollar and your car’s empty gas tank filled for about the same cost as a single gallon today.

          Ah, but I again have digressed, which seems to be an incurable habit of mine. 

          You see, orange slices were by far, my favorite of all the candies in the store, and on my allowance of $.25 a week, I could ride my bike up to Shorty's and get a nickel’s worth every other day or so.  I always thought that “Shorty” gave me more than my nickel’s worth, maybe because I was a friend of John Henry’s or perhaps because “Shorty” was such a kind and generous man. 

          Being the innovative kid that I was at 12 years of age, it occurred to me that if I put an orange slice in my mouth and held it against my cheek, not only would it last longer, but it would appear from the outside as if I had a slug of chewing tobacco in there.

          “Holy dental floss Batman”, I could look just like the other guys, with and occasional spit thrown in just to underscore my point.  Little did I know then how much I would eventually regret this action, especially when it came time to visit the dreaded Dentist and his slow, 1950’s version of a dental drill. 

          You see, orange slices are coated with sugar.  When placed in the cheek of your mouth and held there for extended periods of time, that sugar comes in direct contact with the enamel of your teeth and begins to eat away at that outer layer.... For any reader who has never been to the dentist, this is esoterically known in the dental trade as a “cavity”? 

          You may know that in the mid-1950's, fluoride toothpastes (like Crest) had not yet come along, nor was fluoride yet being added to our town's drinking water.  As if to make matters worse, it was fairly standard procedure only to visit your Dentist once or in rare cases, twice each year. So by the time I finally got around to my next visit with our trusted family dentist, Dr. Robert Taylor (father of local Optometrist Dr. Robert B. Taylor) I had amassed several cavities; it took three more visits in fairly short order to fill them all... not a pleasant time in my life to say the least. 

          Over the course of my life, including an extended career in the Navy, I have been seen by many dentists and each one asks how I came to have so many small fillings.  The “Orange Slice” story has been retold over and over again, including most recently on the occasion of my first and hopefully last Root Canal.

          The sad ending to this story is that knowing how much I have loved and possibly was addicted to orange slices, as I have found it exceedingly difficult to eat just one, many of my “sweetest” relatives and friends” have continued to present me with a gift bag of those delightful, cavity causing candies at Christmas time. Unfortunately, short of admitting myself to an orange slice detoxification center, I just haven’t been able to conjure up the courage and wherewithal to ask these well meaning folks to cease and desist.  Hopefully, they all will read this column and get the word.

          Yes, Shorty Groce’s store is gone now; an iconic and nostalgic part of so many lives in Wilkesboro has gone up in smoke.  But the memory of growing up in those wonderful years in that delightful neighborhood still lingers in my mind.  It’s an indelible token of living the “sweet”, the one we all took for granted back in “The Good Ole Days”.

(End)                            

Fancy Meeting You Here

 

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

 

Yes indeed, it really is a small world after all.   Have you ever been somewhere out-of-town, maybe at a Mall or a restaurant or a Theme Park and low and behold run into a neighbor or someone you know from your hometown?  Amazing how often that has happened to me.

 

            Its happened many times to me in Winston-Salem and Hickory, as might be expected since so many local folks go there so often to shop and dine, but close encounters of the unexpected kind have also happened to me in the most unlikely of places; places like Jimmy’s Kitchen, a famous restaurant in Hong Kong, and La Cantenella’s Restaurant on the bay in Naples, Italy. 

 

One of the better chance encounter stories in my bag of stories happened back in 1968 when I was just a lowly Navy LTjg stationed at the Naval Air Station, Lemoore California, located in the center of the San Joaquin Valley.  Our first child had been born at the base hospital there and was now a couple of weeks old when my parents decided to come out from Wilkesboro for a week to see their new grandson, Jon Stephen Pearson. 

 

Theresa and I, along with Steve, met my parents at the airport in Los Angeles.  There we escorted them on a cook’s tour of many of  the major tourist attractions in LA, including Disneyland, Knottsberry Farm and Universal Studio’s, before driving the 200 or so miles north across the “Grapevine” to Lemoore.  It was hard to say which of us enjoyed the trip the most… but our two week old son Steve had the time of this life; all two weeks of it!

 

            In the non-stop week that followed, our family gaggle toured all over California, including nearby Sequoias National Forest, Kings Canyon Park, Yosemite National Park, and a trip up to Lake Tahoe on the Nevada border, where we tried our luck in the casino’s, only to find that if it weren’t for bad luck, we’d of had no luck at all. 

 

The week passed quickly and too soon it was over.  Prior to my parents return to Wilkesboro, we ended their whirlwind visit with a trip to Sacramento where we saw the state capitol and Sutter’s Home, the historical site of the original discovery of gold in California; that’s  where the great gold rush of 1849 started.  From there we motored over to San Francisco for a tour of that beautiful “City by the Bay”.

           

When in San Francisco there are several “must see” attractions; one of them is Ghiradella Square and its famous Chocolate Factory.  The factory is renowned for its chocolates and its delicious ice cream creations.  Large crowds of mostly tourist were in and around the Ice Cream shop where sidewalk musicians were playing and singing their songs; the lines waiting to place an order were long.  

 

As I stood there alongside my Dad patiently waiting in line to order a “Twin Peaks Ice Cream Delight”, my eyes wandered around the room taking it all in.  Suddenly to my surprise, I thought I saw among the crowd some folks from some 2,500 miles away; folks from back home in North Wilkesboro.  Surely my eyes were deceiving me. How could that be?  I was a Navy pilot with a recent annual physical under my belt, so I knew I had 20/20 vision. 

 

         I pointed these folks out to my dad who confirmed my eyes had not failed me - they were still good… Sure enough, it was Mr. and Mrs. Rex Kilby and their daughter Ann, a popular student just a year of so behind me when we both were students at Wilkes Central High School. 

 

For many years, Ann’s father, Rex Kilby, operated the Gulf service station on the corner of 10^th and “D” streets in downtown North Wilkesboro; the station immediately adjacent to the Smithey’s Goodwill Store.   The station was immediately across “D” street from Pearson Loan Company, my Dad’s consumer finance office located upstairs over the local  Sherwin-Williams Paint store.  Dad and Rex were next-door business neighbors.  What a coincidence! 

 

       It’s funny how the fact that the Kilby’s and Pearson’s hailed from the same home town some 2,500 miles east were able to make our chance meeting seem like an old family reunion, even though we were only “casual acquaintances” back home. 

 

It’s the same kind of thing that seems always to happen when you’re in a far away city or country like Naples, Italy or Hong Kong, China and by chance happen to run into another American.  It dudn’t matter if they’re from Neshoba County, Mississippi or Missoula, Montana or some other exotic place we usually do not claim... places like New York City, they seem like next-door neighbors and it’s ole home week all over again.

 

            Needless to say, we had a delightful visit with the Kilby’s, and both families had a tale to tell when they returned to Wilkes County, not to mention some great ice cream to talk about. 

 

Like most good stories, this one has a moral, and it might well apply to some of The Record of Wilkes’ more adventurous readers, some of whom have shared similar “Fancy Meeting You Here” stories with me, not all of which have equally happy endings as this one.  

 

Like the words in the song in the Disneyland and Disneyworld exhibits, it really is a Small world after all”; so heed the small-town advice from a world traveler, whether your travels take you around-town or around the world, it’s always wise to use discretion with whom you travel.   Just like on Candid Camera, you never know who you’re gonna run into when you least expect it.

 

 

(End of Fancy Meeting You Here)….. RGP

The Choir Boy

Next in a series for

The Record of Wilkes

By

Russ Pearson

 

Growing up in a county so closely aligned to the buckle of the Bible Belt and a bastion of Baptist believers, surrounded to the south by Lutherans and Church of Christ parishioners, to the east by Moravians, Catholics and Jews, to the North by a variety of Pentecostal denominations, to the West by Unitarians, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, as well as a host of wild and crazy heathen college kids at Appalachian State,  I felt privileged to be reared in what my wise old Grandmother thought was the true religion;  I grew up in the Wilkesboro United Methodist Church, which ironically just happened to be the site of one of my life’s most embarrassing and humbling moments.  Bear with me while I relive the agony of that story: 

While most churches have a choir, Wilkesboro Methodist had two choirs; an adult choir and a youth choir.   I was proud to be a member of the youth choir, along with many of my classmates and other good friends; people like Jackie McEntire, Tommy Pearson, Mary Henderson, Ann Crater Miller, Martha Pratt, Linda Gambill, Kay & Nancy McEntire, Jenny Miller, Cathy Parks, Larry Nichols, Rebecca Story, Charles Byers and Russell Gray III, just to name a few.  Both choirs were directed by the very talented organist, the prominent Wilkes County educator, musician and local historian, Mr. Jay J. Anderson, whose day job was principal of the Clingman Elementary School. 

Somewhere along the way, and initially unknown to me, my parents, in cahoots with Mr. Anderson, decided that as part of my personal enrichment, cultural diversification and socialization, I should take singing lessons, and who better qualified to coach me than our own organist and choir director, Jay Anderson. 

Well, I wasn’t too hot for the idea.  I thought boys taking singing lessons was something akin to taking ballet; in my juvenile mind, that was an activity for girls, not for guys.  Guys liked to play sports like football and baseball, and besides, I already was in the band. 

But, my parents prevailed, pointing out that my dad, who had a wonderful baritone singing voice, had once taken singing lessons and sang in the Glee Club and at the same time played football at North Wilkesboro High School; so my singing lessons soon began. 

To work around the school schedule, my lessons were on Saturdays, and although there were other things I’d really rather be doing on my “day off” from school, I took my lessons seriously and Mr. Anderson complimented me all along the way.   In fact, he praised my progress as often as did my parents; my confidence grew exponentially from week to week. 

Then the big decision was made.  Mr. Anderson suggested that I was now ready to sing a solo during an 11:00 Sunday church service, an idea that thrilled my parents and grandparents to no end….after all, they were paying for these lessons, and felt this was a sign that their investment was indeed producing dividends.  The stage was now set for my first public singing appearance. 

                A beautiful piece entitled “The Holy City” was selected, you know, the one with the refrain that goes:  ”Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Lift up your gates and sing, Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to your King!”     

                The piece was well suited for my limited vocal range, especially since I was going thru that awkward period for teenage boys when our voices are in the process of changing.  Nevertheless, we began concentrating on that piece for the next few weeks of lessons.  Then, when the “Coach “ felt I was ready, an upcoming service was selected for my premier Sunday morning performance. 

                By this time, I had been reassured so often that I was doing well, that I didn’t feel more than just a wee bit nervous about singing solo in front of a couple hundred or more folks, most of whom had known me and my family all my life, including a couple of my former school teachers who were regulars in the congregation.  

The big day finally rolled around and I was really ready, so much so that as our family pulled up to the church, I hardly noticed the WKBC Radio Station van parked in front of the church. 

Are you getting the picture now?  I did, but not for sure until I entered the Sanctuary and saw the microphones set up in the pulpit and at the altar.  The plot thickened!

In those great days of the mid-1950’s, WKBC, the local AM Radio Station, rotated its Sunday Church Service broadcasts through the various in-town churches in Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro.  To my chagrin, this very Sunday just happened to be Wilkesboro United Church’s week for radio broadcast…….or as the “KIngFish” would have said, “Holy Mackerel there Andy”, my solo was gonna be broadcast on the radio to everyone in the county.

Jay Anderson, in his characteristically calm and confident, pipe-smoking manner, assured me that everything was going to be just fine and that if I started getting nervous, just to look at him and pretend I was singing just to him as he played the organ, just like in practice sessions; advice that was easier said than done, I thought.

                The service proceeded as usual, through the Responsive Reading, the reading of the Scripture, a prayer by the minister and a hymn.  Then it came time for the offering, which was also the time in the program I was to sing while the collection plates were going around.  

On a signal from the organist, I moved from my seat on the choir pew and took my position in front of the microphone in the pulpit; the Minister, Rev. Jesse Johnson, was seated behind me.  The next few minutes were a blur to me as the music intro began.  It was “Showtime”. 

The piece lasted about 3 minutes and then it was over.  Jay Anderson gave me a big smile and nodded his head in the affirmative as I went back to my seat in the Choir.  My fellow members, most of whom were glad it was me and not them, all seemed to be pleased and I began to relax a little.

Finally, the service was over.  A rush of folks, including my parents and grandparents, came forward to congratulate me on such a “fine job.”  I was beginning to believe all was well and that the Lord had looked after me on this special day.

A few minutes later, the radio technician from WKBC came out from the passageway aft of the Sanctuary, and said,  “Hey, I’ve got you on a wire recording if you’d like to hear how you sounded?"  

Needless to say, I jumped at the chance…. Hardly anyone had a wire or tape recorder in those days.  I never had heard myself on a recording; I was eager to hear how I sounded.  Wowser, was that a big mistake!

                Everyone who remembers the first time they heard their own voice on a recording knows that our voices never sound to us as they sound to others.  The sound on the recording is the sound other people hear, and I did not like at all the sound of the voice I was hearing…. It was awful!  What a fool I had made of myself, not only in front of my family and church members, but in my mind, the piece had been heard on the radio by thousands of listeners in every home in Wilkes and surrounding counties. 

                My confidence and self-esteem were sucked down the drain quicker than an asteroid going down a black hole in outer space.    The air had gone out of my balloon.  How could I ever show my face in public again?   I would have felt like “Mr. Tanner” the singing mid-west tailor in the classic Harry Chapin song of the same name, but I didn’t know that tune yet; it would be several decades later before Chapin wrote it. 

                Despite the urgings of family, friends and my dedicated voice teacher, I decided to give up singing lessons altogether and stick with just playing the trumpet in the Wilkes Central High School band.   Mercifully, in the band, I didn’t have to sing except in unison with everyone else on the band bus on the way home after winning away football games, which we did more often than not.  

                All was not lost however.   Like the imaginary “Mr. Tanner” in the Chapin song, to this day I continue to sing, but only when there’s no one else around.  Somehow, that seems to make my wife, kids, friends, colleagues, associates, seniors and subordinates happy, and keeps peace, quiet and harmony in my Brushy Mountain neighborhood. 

 

(End of Choir Boy)... RGP