30 Years Ago
Week of October 5, 1995
DAHMER
After many years flax is being grown again in Pendleton County as an experiment or hobby. Mary C. Rexrode had plenty of flax seed, but the germination was gone.
In the spring of the year, 1992, the writer went into the Wetzel Seed Company at Harrisonburg, VA, and asked for flax seed. The reply was “no flax seed.” After telling why I wanted flax seed and about the flax plant to be displayed during the Treasure Mountain Festival, one clerk spoke up and said, “Go see the manager upstairs.”
Calling upon the manager and telling him a convincing story, he looked at another man and said, “Don’t we have flax seed in some bird feed?” Pouring some bird food out on a table, he and another man began picking out what he said was flax seed until they had about a tablespoon of seed, and no charge thanks to Wetzel Seed Company.
The flax plant displays a pretty light blue petal flower in the morning which drops to the ground. A new flower is present each day. The abundance of seed often makes the plant top heavy, thus bad to lodge. There are different ways to harvest the flax. Mrs. C. C. Rader stated, “I got so tired of pulling flax, and then scutching flax.”
‘Quiet as a Mouse’ Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Quiet
The person who coined the phrase “quiet as a mouse” obviously never shared winter living quarters with one.
A mouse’s noisy nighttime activities of gnawing, scratching and running inside wall spaces are definitely disquieting.
Each year at this time, mice enter heated buildings seeking shelter from the winter and a guaranteed food supply. These tiny rodents damage structures with their gnawing and spoil stored foods with their excretions.
Agile and quick, mice can find many routes into a house. They can climb almost any rough vertical surface, such as trees and brick walls. They can scamper across pipes and power lines, and they can squeeze into holes as wee as one-quarter inch wide.
The homeowners first defense against this common pest is preventing entry into the house. That means first sealing or screening all holes and openings around the foundation.
Steel wool stuffed firmly into a small opening makes a good temporary barrier. For a more durable seal of entry points, position three inches of concrete, 24-gauge galvanized sheet metal or one-quarter inch mesh hardware cloth to close off the opening.
Pet food and bird seed attract rodents, so store them in sealed containers and clean up any spills immediately. Don’t leave any pet food out in bowls after the pets have eaten.
Be careful not to provide mice with shelter near your house. Clean out an accumulation of junk. Clear away excessive plant growth and debris that meets the house’s foundation.
Avoid stacking firewood near the house. In the garage or basement, stack storage containers a few inches away from walls. This will facilitate inspections for signs of mice.
Dark droppings the size of rice grains in cabinets and drawers are a sign of mice infestation. Hoarded food piles and nests of shredded paper or cloth are further evidence that mice are present.
If you have mice in the house, set traps in areas where they are most active — along walls and ledges. Set spring traps with the trigger end against the wall. Two traps set side by side improve the success rate. Good baits include peanut butter, bacon and milk chocolate.
Check the traps daily to dispose of the catch and renew the bait.
Poison-based traps are not recommended for homes because they present a danger to children and pets. Also, with this method, dead mice often end up behind walls, under floors and in other places where disposal is impossible.
40 Years Ago
Week of October 3, 1985
State Champion Hog Caller
Harlen R. Moyers was winner of the West Virginia State Fair hog calling contest held August 23 at Lewisburg. His Pendleton County call was so successful that the hog (Rosie) came up and nibbled on his pants leg. He was awarded a trophy and a blue ribbon for winning first place which he proudly displays in his home.
50 Years Ago
Week of October 2, 1975
Hopley Yeaton Served As First Skipper Of U.S. Coast Guard
During the Revolutionary War, smuggling was both patriotic and profitable and Americans proved adept to it.
Too adept, for many continued the practice after the war was over and the 13 Colonies had won their independence in 1783.
The nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, prevailed upon Congress in 1790 to authorize 10 armed vessels to enforce payment of customs duties on goods entering American ports.
At Philadelphia on March 21, 1791, President Washington signed an order appointing Hopley Yeaton of New Hampshire “Master of a Cutter in the Service of the United States, for the Protection of the Revenue.”
Origin of Coast Guard
Yeaton was the first seagoing officer to be commissioned by the United States. His schooner, Scammel, and nine other small vessels fitted with swivel guns were the first ships of what became the Coast Guard, this country’s oldest continuous sea service.
Survived
Battles, Shipwrecks
In a long and adventurous life, Yeaton fought British warships and American smugglers, survived battles and shipwrecks, and didn’t relinquish his quarterdeck until he was 70 years old.
60 Years Ago
Week of September 30, 1965
DAHMER
Johnny Arvin Dahmer was the successful bidder on the “Old Corner Cupboard” at the sale, the property of Joel Dahmer, his great-grandfather who died November 18, 1899 from the infirmities of age, and the same year in which John Dahmer began his teaching career.
Another large and commodious dwelling house which was the home of eleven inmates is now unoccupied and locally called the “Chestnut Woods” or in the region of Ned’s Mountain.
80 Years Ago
Week of October 2, 1945
Similes Play Part In American Folk Lore
(From Christian Science Monitor)
America, past and present, lives in her folk similes, the great national barrel of stock comparisons, big as all outdoors, on which we all draw when we want to illuminate one thing by comparing it with another. We are an ebullient people and out ebullience finds expression in the richness of our supply of stock comparisons.
From the day we’re knee high to a grasshopper till time puts a great mug o’ consequence on us, we’re as busy as a bee, hungry as a bear, and happy as a clam at high water. Through summers as hot as the dickens and winters cold as Greenland, we grow fat as a pig or thin as a rail, poor as a church mouse or rich as Croesus.
Our love of exaggeration, for instance, shouts in our talk about a man so tall it’d take a steeple jack to look him in the eye, or a fog so thick you could steamboat on it. Our addiction to haste hurries in the number of our similes for a quick leave. A sailor first cuts and runs or a cowboy vamooses, and then, before you can knife, we’re doing it all over America.
We’re forever accomplishing something in three shakes of a lamb’s tail, or before you can say Jack Robinson. No one knows much about Jack Robinson or the Reilly, whose lot we are given to envying, or the Sam Hill, with mention of whom we are wont to intensify our questions. It’s harder than finding a needle in a haystack to discover the origin of such folk simile characters.
Other similes record types. The talkative woman clicks loud in folk simile—the talkee-talkee who can talk a dog’s hind leg off, or the bark off a tree, or the skin off an apple, or even the shell off a nut. Then there is the ignoramus, who doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain, or to throw potato-apples over a fence or (to get down to our time) to chaw gum.
Many of the folk similes we use today came out of the days when the long rifle was the constant companion of Western Americans. Sure as shootin’ hits the center of the marvelous marksmanship of the corn crackers. Lock, stock and barrel and its fellow shot, lock and barrel are two shootin’-iron phrases for the whole kit and caboodle.
Quick as a squirrel’s jump is another comparison we owe to the sharp-eyed Kentuckians who barked their squirrels up the right tree.
Others have steamed out of the radiant kitchens from whence issued the super-abundant meals of our Golden Age. That dog is as full as an egg, is the observation of a woman who has cracked more eggs than you could shake a stick at.
Tasty as a puddin’ string and like a hen on a hot griddle certainly smack of the kitchen stove. Rough as a grater, limp as a dishrag and dull as dishwater also came out of the kitchen with Mary Ann. Bright as a button fell out of Aunt Ann Rhody’s button basket.
Whatever is as bright as that shines like a cat’s eye under a bed. It has the true needle and thread, thimble and spool flavor of the merry meetings of gossips in the click or needles and the rattle of tea cups.
Stingy enough to skim his milk at both ends splashed out of the churn on the back porch. Slow as molasses in January has all the winter coldness of the woodshed in it.
Cold as a wagon tire on a frosty morning takes us out into the farm yard, where blue as a whetstone reminds us of the long, slow hum of summer days punctuated by the ring of scythes being sharpened for the next morning’s mowing.
Hard by the whetstone is the shady well from which a maiden with a face as smiling as a basket of chips draws water. She’s as sweet, that maiden, as the last drip of cane juice from the boiling battery.
Situation plays its part in simile. The stock situation begets its stock simile. You spill coffee on the evening dress of the girl of your dreams just before you plan to propose to her. That’s like cutting your grandmother’s toe before she makes her will.
Related to the simile of situation is the simile which refers to a story so long well-known it has become forgot. That bangs Bannagher expresses an astonishment once Bannagher, whoever he may have been, but now anyone’s who chooses to use the expression.
The ironical simile indicates what it means by saying the opposite. Sure as eggs is bacon is not sure at all, and the cold of cold as blazes as very little blaze in it. Straight as a dog’s hind leg is crooked’ern a ram’s horn or a Virginia fence. And when:
Cider and milk on the table were put, as much as you could see with both eyes shut. There wasn’t enough of either to wet your whistle with.
Our national history finds a record in folk similes. That beats the Dutch is a tribute to the doughtiness of the Hollanders in the seventeenth-century sea struggle between England and Holland, part of which took place in our waters. Safe as the furrow of a Virginia cornfield speaks for the exhaustion of tidewater Virginia’s soil and the consequent Arkansaw-Traveler attitude of the poor Tuckahoe. Customs likewise become reproduced in simile. As long as a Thanksgiving sermon expresses both our institution of Thanksgiving and our eagerness for the feast.
Like the proverb, the folk simile preserves a deal of the inherited experience of the race. From folk similes we learn that the goose, like other fools, always seems anxious to prove that he is a goose, that the owl is a wise old bird.
105 Years Ago
Week of October 1, 1920
COMMUNITY NURSE
Final arrangements have been made to get a public health nurse for Pendleton County. Miss Rachel M. Walp of Pennsylvania has been secured and will arrive next Monday.
Miss Walp comes highly recommended and we believe will measure up to the highest expectations of our people. She is a registered nurse—in addition, has done special work under the direction of the Red Cross preparatory to the public health service. She saw two years service overseas during the war as a Red Cross nurse in actual work.
The present plan is for Miss Walp to remain in Franklin two or three days until she gets acquainted with conditions in the county, after which she will take up her work actively in the various sections. It is hoped that she will be able to visit every community before Christmas. Probably she will plan to visit the schools as the first part of her work and thus get over the entire county and learn conditions first-hand.
