20 Years Ago
Week of August 26, 2004
SUGAR GROVE
Writer Shares
‘Rules for Teachers’
Summer has sped by like a red hot arrow shot from a blazing sun. The midsummer flowers are blooming all along the roadsides. There are patches of eye-pleasing contrasts of black-eyed-Susans interspersed with the lacy blossoms of the Queen Anne, bright blue chicory weed, and the brilliant hues of the orange butterfly weed.
All of these days are blessed, even the hot and rainy ones. Summer has moved on to school days, and with that, the writer wishes to share Rules for Teachers which were formulated in 1872.
- Teachers each day will fill lamps; clear chimneys.
- Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.
- Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
- Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
- After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
- Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
- Every leader should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
- Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public hall, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
- The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.
There are also Rules of Conduct for Teachers.
- You will not marry during the term of your contract.
- You are not to keep company with men.
- You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.
- You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.
- You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board.
- You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.
- You may not smoke cigarettes.
- You may not dress in bright colors.
- You may under no circumstances, dye your hair.
- You must wear at least two petticoats.
- Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankle.
To keep the school room neat and clean, you must:
- Sweep the floor at least once daily.
- Scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water.
- Clean the blackboards at least once a day.
- Start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm at 8 a.m.
Summit Donates
Baseball Scoreboard
To PCHS
“You don’t have to look twice to see what’s up there, to see how many are out and what the count on the batter is. We are so grateful to Summit Community Bank for stepping forward and giving the school system something that was truly needed.”
So declared Pendleton County High School baseball coach and athletic director Sam Yokum in discussing the scoreboard that was installed at the baseball field this past April.
The high-tech scoreboard makes use of LED lighting and thus represents a major technological step forward inasmuch as the old scoreboard relied on light bulbs.
The new scoreboard has a dollar value of more than $6,000 and was donated by Summit Community Bank.
30 Years Ago
Week of August 18, 1994
Gas Prices Jump
The average price of a gallon of unleaded regular self-serve gasoline in West Virginia increased five cents from $1.16 to $1.21 since the week of July 19, according to AAA West Penn/West Virginia’s Fuel Gauge Survey. This is the highest that gasoline prices have been in the West Virginia area since AAA began taking the surveys in May of 1993.
These findings are based on a sample of West Virginia gasoline stations in the AAA West Penn/West Virginia area, not including the cities of Charleston and Beckley where gasoline prices are usually higher. This week’s local fuel trends are based on a comparison of current self-serve regular unleaded average prices to prices from the week of July 19.
40 Years Ago
Week of August 18, 1984
Big Stony Run Dam
Did What it Was
Supposed to Do
Events last week at the South Fork Water Control structure on Big Stony Run sent emergency services, fire departments and sheriff deputies through the South Fork Valley warning residents of a possible flood.
Concerned citizens and county officials feared that an overflow would occur at the dam and that a major evacuation would be necessary. Fortunately, this was not the case. The dam was in no immediate danger of over flowing when the water level began receding at about 3 p.m. on Tuesday, August 14. In fact, 31 percent of the storage capacity of the structure still remained.
“It became quickly apparent that very few people know how these dams operate,” said Al Stewart, district conservationist with the Soil Conservation Service in Franklin. “I hope I can clear up some questions people have about these dams,” Stewart said, “because all these South Fork structures operate the same way and what happened at Stony Run is a good example.”
Several severe storms struck the Stony Run watershed between Friday evening, August 10, and Tuesday, August 14. By some accounts, as many as 13 inches of rain fell on the area over the four-day period.
All this rain caused the ground to become fully saturated, and most of the hard rain which fell on Monday ran directly into Stony Run, causing water behind the dam to rise rapidly.
John Bowers, owner of the Stony Run dam, said the water level reached Tuesday was about one foot above the water attained from a storm back in 1974. “I wasn’t worried a bit,” John said. “The dam did exactly what it was supposed to do, hold the floodwater back.”
There were rumors Tuesday that the dam was washing out, but that was completely false. “All these dams are inspected every year by the sponsor, the Potomac Valley Soil Conservation District,” Stewart said. “They are also monitored during periods of high flow by S.C.S. personnel located in Franklin.”
Although no immediate danger existed, local officials thought it would be better to be safe and initiated evacuation plans. Through a misunderstanding, the entire South Fork Valley was notified instead of the immediate area of the Stony Run dam. “Any inconvenience or unnecessary worry caused to downstream residents is deeply regretted,” Stewart said.
60 Years Ago
Week of August 20, 1964
100 YEARS AGO
By LON K. SAVAGE
Editor’s Note—The following is one of a series of articles on the Civil War. Each weekly installment covers events which occurred exactly 100 years ago.
Sheridan Burns Crops
In Shenandoah Valley
Ulysses S. Grant, ever since he had launched his final campaign against Robert E. Lee, had figured he must do something to stop the flow of grain and other food from the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to Lee’s army around Richmond. One hundred years ago this week, “something” began.
Grant had planned the effort weeks earlier. In a letter to Washington, he had said an army must push up through the valley burning and destroying everything that could be eaten by man or beast — “so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their own provender with them.”
Then, when Confederate Gen. Jubal Early made his raid up the valley and invaded Maryland and the District of Columbia in late July, Grant knew it was time to act.
He named 33-year-old Phil Sheridan, a major general, to command 35,000 men, formed into a new Army of the Shenandoah, and gave him orders to carry out the unhappy task.
On August 10, Sheridan’s long wagon trains, infantry and cavalry set out from Harper’s Ferry, heading southwestward through the lovely, rolling farms that stretched from one blue ridge to another alongside the looping Shenandoah River.
He hardly had set out when he ran up against Early’s army, that had remained in the valley following its raid northward. Fighting broke out, but it was not heavy.
Early expected re-enforcements, and he fell back slowly while waiting for his new men. Sheridan pushed on to Winchester, then almost to Strasburg. It was all very cautious.
At Strasburg, Early got his re-enforcements, Sheridan heard about them and not wishing to battle until he knew his army better, began retreating back down the valley. And the pillage began.
The Rev. Frederick Denison, chaplain of a Rhode Island cavalry regiment, recalled the event in later years: “The 17th of August,” he wrote, “will be remembered as sending up to the skies the first great columns of smoke and flame from doomed secession barns, stacks, cribs and mills, and the driving into loyal lines of flocks and herds . . .”
As the valley people watched, the Federals spread out from ridge to ridge and swept down the valley, burning food, barns, flour mills, hay and wheat—herding cattle, sheep and hogs northward, beyond the reach of Lee’s army.
The destruction was visited on all alike; on ardent secessionists, on Mennonites who inhabited the valley and refused to take part in the war for religious reasons, even on Union sympathizers. The war had entered its final phase—a phase of total destruction and unyielding bitterness.
Next week: Lincoln reaches a low ebb.
70 Years Ago
Week of August 19, 1954
EDITORIAL
Curves With Figures – – –
Numbers usually are uninteresting. Sometimes, however, they are startling. At least we were startled several days ago by the number “thirteen” when we were told by the state police that is the number of automobile accidents that have occurred on the three mile stretch of road between Franklin and the Thorn Spring Road since the first of the year.
But what is even more shocking, out of those thirteen wrecks, seven have happened at one place—at what is known locally as “slaty turn” approximately 1-1/2 miles south of Franklin.
But if the number is shocking, the seriousness of the accidents is sobering for one of them was a fatality. And in two others the occupants miraculously escaped injury when their cars plunged over the 40-foot embankment.
It is a strange coincidence that most of these accidents follow a definite pattern. The car, failing to negotiate the curve goes into the ditch and upon pulling out of the ditch, it swerves across the road.
The driver manages to get the car turned back toward the bank, but now out of control, it runs up against the bank and back across the road and over the high bank into the field below.
This pattern indicates too much speed. And so far as strangers are concerned, we are not surprised that the curve catches them at too fast a rate. Although it is almost a 90 degree curve, there are no curve signs on either side of it.
Considering the number of accidents that have occurred here, it would seem that it should be marked with approximate signs that would adequately warn unwary drivers of the death trap that lies ahead.
Pendleton
May Get ‘Big Ear’
Washington, D. C.—U. S. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) announced today that the Navy is giving serious consideration to a “pancake” design antenna for its principal “ear” at the $3.8 million Radio Receiving Station at Sugar Grove.
“I have been told that two of these wire grid antenna could compose the ‘ear’ that will make Sugar Grove the Naval Radio receiving hub of the universe,” said Byrd.
“The designers say each antenna will do the work of 1,000 acres of conventional receivers.”
Looking much like a giant trampoline or a massive pancake, each antenna will stand 110 feet off the ground. Its lens will have a 900-foot diameter, and its base will span 20 acres of ground.
“Although the cost of each receiver has been placed at $1 million, the contractor has pledged to use local labor for the work,” said Byrd.
