10 Years Ago
Week of July 24, 2014
Old Toys Window
Into Appalachian Past
Retired teacher and school administrator Paul Clayton discussed and demonstrated toys from Appalachian folk culture before a crowd of more than 40 on Sunday afternoon at the South Fork Ruritan building in Oak Flat.
Clayton’s presentation followed a business meeting conducted by the Pendleton County Historical Society.
Clayton’s presentation and his extensive collection of exhibits was broken into four categories—noisemakers, puzzles/board games, dolls and games such as “Red Rover,” “Who’s Got the Thimble (or Button)” and “Drop the Hankie.”
He emphasized that the toys were homemade, constructed of everyday items and materials. Illustrating the resourcefulness and ingenuity of Appalachian and mountain-dwelling folk in older times, Clayton said, “People used what they had.”
He noted that day to day life for children in Appalachia in older times often could be characterized by prolonged periods of solitariness, and that farm life in the mountains even for children meant that “you worked, from daybreak to dark.”
Speaking from personal experience, Clayton noted that playmates in his age cohort were not always easily come by when he was a boy. The nearest neighbor could be “half a mile away,” and, in his case, his brother was eight years older than he, which represented a significant gulf in interests and extracurricular activities.
Clayton began by commending the historical society for the organization’s efforts to preserve local culture, especially inasmuch as “we are losing so many of the older folks.”
Clayton noted the novelty and simplicity of the toys’ design, which emphasized function over ornamental form. Again speaking from personal experience, Clayton recalled having been told a time or two by cultivated and ostensibly well-educated individuals that he, and by extension others of his background, were lacking in appreciation of some of the higher culture’s more refined and sophisticated enchantments.
Clayton at those times was face to face with ignorance and cultural bigotry and knew that he was. He recalled that card games had been popular in the household he grew up in, not gambling games as his father was a minister, but games like setback and rummy, which stimulated his early interest in math and his native ability with numbers.
In an interview, Clayton said that reliance on homemade toys, noisemakers and board puzzle games certainly had waned in Appalachian households by the late 1950s. Television was bringing cultural uniformity to rural America, and there was a growing sense that many of the old items were things of the past. Moreover, fancy machine-made games and toys were plentiful by then in five-and-dime stores, like Murphy’s, and available for purchase through catalogs such as Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward.
After graduating from Franklin High School, Clayton attended Fairmont State and, for his master’s degree, West Virginia University. In the late 1960s, while teaching in the county, he began attending arts and crafts demonstrations dedicated to Appalachian culture.
Many were sponsored by WVU and the state extension service, as well as by Marshall University. Those shows and fairs deepened his interest in old toys as artifacts of Appalachian mountain life at a time when pop culture was pervasive and elbowing the olden ways aside, even in the more remote outposts of Appalachian culture in mountain communities.
For example, one of the most popular items in his collection is the limber jack or stomper doll—a male doll that can be made to dance through manipulation by a stick.
The stick, Clayton explained, was introduced, possibly in the later 19th century, by British soldiers who came home and had no pension. To musical accompaniment, they entertained on the street and at public thoroughfares, using the tips they received to help support themselves. The stick made the dancing man easier to control. Prior to that, only strings were used to author the doll’s movements.
Sailors Help Make
Relay a Success
Sailors assigned to Naval Information Operations Command Sugar Grove took time to volunteer during the 2014 Pendleton County Relay for Life at Pendleton County Middle/High School, June 12.
Sailors helped to set up equipment and hang banners, as well as fill and display luminaria which are small bags with sand and a candle inside that were lined up outside and lit after the sun went down.
“The Navy, even Sugar Grove as a base, has to interact and support the local community. That is who supports us—the community,” said Ship’s Serviceman 1st Class Michael Smith.
40 Years Ago
Week of August 2, 1984
Four Travel 400 Miles
On Skateboard
How would you like to travel across the United States on a skateboard?
Impossible, you say. Not at all.
Four boys stopped in Franklin last week, dusted off their skateboards and paused just enough to eat a quick lunch at the New Frontier Restaurant.
They didn’t tarry. They were anxious to get on with their trip to Williamsburg, Va., and were expecting to arrive there by Thursday. They had left Newport, Oregon, July 1, and had traveled 2,675 miles on skateboards when they arrived in Franklin on July 23.
The young men were making the trip for the benefit of multiple sclerosis. Individuals and business firms made approximately $10,000 in pledges before the skateboarders left Oregon, and additional pledges were picked up along the way. All went to the multiple sclerosis fund.
Making up the cross-country team were Paul Dunn, 23, and Jack Smith, 27, both of Morro Bay, Cal., Gary Fluitt, 20, of Los Osos, Cal., and Bob Denike, 27, of San Jose, Cal.
“We have made the entire trip on skateboards,” said Dunn. “To keep from tiring out one leg, we push about five pushes with one leg, and five pushes with the other leg.”
The young men averaged about 114 miles a day. They said they camped out the first 10 nights, but since then they have slept in motels.
The trip was partially underwritten by manufacturers of skateboards and sporting goods equipment.
60 Years Ago
Week of July 30, 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.
Rebel Line Blows Up, Yanks Die in Crater
Federal troops investing the Confederate lines at Petersburg, Va., launched one of the most bizarre attacks in the history of warfare 100 years ago this week and then saw their efforts end in catastrophe.
The attack was the “Battle of the Crater.” It happened after Federal troops dug a tunnel from their trenches through 500 feet of dirt to a point directly under a stronghold of the Confederate line. Then, using thousands of pounds of gunpowder, they blew up the Rebel stronghold and followed with an assault through the resulting gap in the line. But once through the line, they became confused and poured by the hundreds into the crater caused by their own explosion, and the Confederates killed them off by the hundreds inside the crater.
The idea for the tunnel originated with the 48th Pennsylvania, a regiment of ex-coal miners from the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. The soldiers gave the idea to their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants; Pleasants, who had dug tunnels before, passed the idea along to Gen. Robert Potter; Potter passed it up to Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside approved it, and the men went to work, while General Ulysses S. Grant and General George Gordon Meade scratched their heads uneasily.
While army engineers scoffed at the idea, Pleasants’ miners went to work and soon had disappeared underground. Within three weeks, their tunnel was 510 feet long; they had a ventilation system that worked, and they found themselves directly beneath the Confederate re-doubt where they could hear Confederate soldiers tramping 20 feet above them.
Four tons of explosives—in 320 kegs—were then hauled down through the tunnel and placed under the Confederate redoubt. Next, a 100-foot fuse was laid and by July 26, all was ready. Grant, who now was co-operating, prepared his troops for an attack and the order went out that the explosion would take place at 3:30 a.m. July 30. Burnside was to follow the explosion with an all-out attack through the hole to capture the ridge behind it, wipe out Lee’s army and end the war.
The time came, the wick was lighted, and nothing happened. Grant, Meade, Burnside and Pleasants got impatient. Two brave troopers went back in the tunnel and found the wick had separated. They fixed it and relighted it. And at 4:45 a.m., it happened.
First there was a rumble, then a trembling of the earth, and then the Confederate redoubt erupted, spewing up a geyser of clods, rocks, cannon and Confederate soldiers. From both sides, men watched in amazement as one-fourth of a mile of the Confederate line literally went up in smoke.
The miners had succeeded, but no one else in the Federal assault did. The Federals were forward in attack without organization or leadership. Like cows following a path, they went—almost every man of them—through the hole in the line and down into the crater where they were trapped.
The Confederates, meanwhile, recovered from their shock, looked down into the crater full of milling Yankees, turned their guns downward and opened fire. It was slaughter. Before the Federals could get back to their lines, 2,500 of them had been shot down.
Such was the Battle of the Crater. It cost Burnside his job. It added an unforgettable chapter to the story of the Civil War, and it cost 5,000 casualties. In Grant’s words, “The effort was a stupendous failure.”
Next week: Mobile Bay.
70 Years Ago
Week of July 29, 1954
EDITORIAL
A Heritage
Worth Preserving . . .
Next Tuesday the people of West Virginia will have the privilege of choosing the men and women who will be candidates for public office in the general election this fall. Although our lives are vitally affected by our laws and the administration of them, less than 50% of our citizens who are old enough to vote will bother to go to the poles.
The world today is divided into two great spheres. The one is made up of government and is sometimes referred to as the “free world.” The other is composed of countries which have the communist form of government and is known as the “slave world.” The primary difference between the two is that in the one the people have the right to vote, and in the other they do not have the right to vote.
The basic theory of the democratic form of government is that the country is run by the people and for the benefit of all. Under Communism the country is run by a small group who maintain perpetual control. The people have no say in the government, and rather than having the government run for their benefit, the people live and work for the benefit of the government. The people are considered more important in the democracy, while the government is considered more important in the communist state.
Most of us are convinced that the democratic way of life is superior to Communism, and sometimes we become alarmed that our country will be attacked by communist nations. We are less sensitive however, to the danger that the attack will come, not from armed invaders, but from within our country. The greatest assistance that could be given communist infiltration into the government is an indifferent citizenry—a citizenry that is tired of the problems of government and is willing to let the other fellow make the decisions.
If we are to survive, we must see that the proper officials get into office and that they make the proper decisions. That takes an alert and interested electorate. It places upon us the duty, not only of voting on election day, but voting intelligently. The privilege of voting carries with it the duty of investigating the candidates—to know how they stand on the important issues of the day—to know their backgrounds and their qualifications for office—to know what caliber men they are, whether they are capable of thinking through a problem and, having determined the right of the matter, to pursue it effectively, or whether their action could be influenced by the temptation of personal gain.
By leaving us a free land where we are free to live and work as we please and to govern ourselves, our forefathers left us a rich heritage—one worth preserving, not only with arms, but also by voting—by voting intelligently.
