40 Years Ago
Week of November 21, 1985
Pendleton Digging Out of Worst Flood In History
695 Apply for Disaster Assistance
A total of 695 persons had filed applications for assistance at the State/Federal Disaster Application Center in Franklin as of Monday evening, according to Ronnie Saunders, state coordinator in Clarksburg.
Damage to County Roads Estimated at $54 Million
Pendleton County residents have begun the herculean task of digging out of the worst flood ever to hit this county. The November 4 holocaust left 16 persons dead and missing and property damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Flood damage to roads in Pendleton County has been estimated at $54,000,000, with $34 million in damages to primary roads and $20 million to the secondary roads.
YESTERYEAR IN PENDLETON
“Ah, Ah, Little Lassie — You Didn’t Listen”
By Janet Conrad
My mother made soap from “store lye,” but my grandmother made lye from ashes. In doing some research I found many people who remembered this method. Ashes were stored in the ash house. When meat rinds, tallow or old lard had been saved, it was time to start making lye.
The ash hopper was made of wood and looked like the letter V with legs. Underneath was a trough that was inclined just enough for the lye to flow into a wooden tub. The ash hopper was lined with straw and then filled with the wood ashes. Now came the hard part. A hole was pushed out in the center of the ashes enough to hold about a bucket of water. Water was added only after the other had disappeared. It took a long time for the ashes to become moist enough for the lye to start dripping. This procedure took many, many buckets of water and it was a boring job.
I can still remember the fascination I felt when watching that dark brown liquid, drop, drop, drop into the wooden tub. I was always warned to leave this liquid alone for it was extremely strong and would leave a bad burn.
My grandmother made two kinds of soap. Soft soap that was a brown thick liquid and was kept in one-half gallon crocks, and hard soap that was cut in the kettle, placed on boards and allowed to dry. This soap would keep indefinitely. Soap was made in the big iron kettle outdoors over an open fire and it always seemed it was made on the hottest day of the year.
Usually enough soap was made in early summer for the entire year. It was best if it dried out before winter; this way it dried hard and smooth and did not crumble.
I often spent several weeks of the summer with my grandmother and I loved staying there, but I finally reached the age when I was big enough to wash the dishes—instead of drying them. My grandmother told me to use just “two fingers” of soap. After she had gone from the kitchen I took at least half a handful for I knew “two fingers” wouldn’t be enough.
The water was soft water from a dug well, pumped into the kitchen by a pitcher pump, and heated in a heavy iron teakettle. Of course, you know what happened — I had a pan of suds heaped up and overflowing. I was trying to take out scoopfuls of suds into another pan when in came my grandmother. She gravely spoke these words, “Ah, Ah, Little Lassie, you didn’t listen!”
I know she had expected this very thing and I had been caught red-handed. It was a lesson in discipline that I have never forgotten.
50 Years Ago
Week of November 20, 1975
WVU Man Finds Cure For Disease Threatening Peach Industry
To an orchard owner, dead trees mean trouble. During the past decade, Ellis and Gary Shanholtz, co-owners of Shanholtz Orchards at Romney, have had more than their share of trouble—they lost over 400 peach trees to a disease called stem pitting.
Because West Virginia’s peach industry is located in a small area of the Eastern Panhandle counties of Hampshire, Berkeley, and Jefferson, the disease had to be stopped before it spread. Peach sales account for about $4 million annually for West Virginia growers.
Stem pitting is a relatively new disease and before Robert E. Adams, WVU professor of plant pathology, began his work with the Shanholtz trees, scientists knew little about controlling the disease. Since Dr. Adams began his work, and because of a very fortunate accident, new avenues of knowledge about the disease have opened up.
While Adams was planting trees in an experimental plot in Shanholtz Orchards, he found that the new trees he was planting had a disease called crown gall. In an effort to prevent this disease from spreading, Adams dug up the newly planted trees and treated them and the soil with a special formaldehyde solution.
A later examination of the soil revealed that the formaldehyde treatment not only stopped the crown gall, it destroyed the nematodes that were spreading stem pitting.
70 Years Ago
Week of November 17, 1955
CALIFORNIA REDWOODS?
Not at all. Massive logs came from a Pendleton County white oak which was cut by W. F. Ganoe and his crew of Ivan Stone, Clinton Rexrode, Virgil Ruddle and Clevie Dowdy.
The tree grew on the Walter B. Smith place near Ruddle and scaled 3,750 feet. The tree was 58 inches across the stump and was estimated by Mr. Ganoe as being 500 years old.
Season’s 1st Snow Stalls Traffic; Wrecks Power, Telephone Lines
4 to 9 inches falls in county thursday
The county’s first substantial snow of the season fell last Thursday afternoon and night and played havoc with local electric power and telephone lines and sent State Road Commission snow plows into action for the first time this fall.
EDITORIALS
You Can Help – – –
One of the most stubborn diseases that has plagued mankind down through the centuries is tuberculosis. It has existed since the time of our first medical records, and even today there are approximately 110,000 new cases of tuberculosis each year. Right here in Pendleton County we have some 32 active cases at this time making it the county’s most serious infectious disease.
Fortunately weapons have been discovered that can go a long way toward defeating tuberculosis. But in order to cure TB, the disease must first be detected and then treated. Early detection is difficult because in the early stages TB has no warning signs such as coughing, losing weight or spitting blood. When these signs appear the disease is in an advanced stage.
The best method of detecting TB in its early stages—when it can be easily cured—is by use of the x-ray.
80 Years Ago
Week of November 16, 1945
MOUTH OF SENECA
Top of the morning to you! And a cheery hello to all of you fellows. Does the heading—Mouth of “Sineker” look good to you? Are you happy to know the lost has been found?
Judging from the reports I get at the crossroad stores, the “nail keg assemblies” via voice, via “letter, telephone, telegram and “tell-a-woman” you will be glad to hear from me.
I always thought of myself as insignificant and the quintessence of nothing, but after all, I guess I have a job to do.
I remember making a little speech to a mountain lassie that had graduated high school with high honors and pointed out to her specifically that there was a niche in society for each one of us to fill and to find that particular niche and fill it. I long since had forgotten my advice and admonition. Then the other morning I was surprised and embarrassed when I was told to practice what I preached by this same person. I didn’t stop, but as my custom when things suit me—hurried on my way.
She evidently meant—I am doing my job like you told me, now you do yours.
It is inspiring to have so many folks telling you that they miss you and I appreciate it. Thank you! I wish I could answer all of your nice letters, but I can’t. I can only be one place at a time and I have a living to make and these are very busy days for me.
Harvest time and happy days are here! Harvest time is rapidly passing and the frost long since is on the pumpkin, the fodder is in the shock, but the cider is not in the barrel. This valley has had a wonderful harvest and we should be happy—the farmers stock has gone to market at good prices. His cellar, granaries and barns are stuffed to overflowing. The forest and the autumn flowers in the recent past were things of magnificent beauty. The weather has been a scream—simply beautiful.
Today the radiant sun and the song of the birds was more like a May morning than mid-November. Have you stopped to count your blessings? Have you observed and enjoyed these features?
The terrible war has ended and we are happy. The boys are coming home and we are happy. The Stars and Stripes, your flag and mine, is floating over more foreign lands than ever in its history. Symbolic of power and peace, symbolic of the land of the most fortunate people of all the earth, yet symbolizing, “Don’t tread on me!”
Bears and Bear Hunters
Big bad bears are killing sheep! Big bluffing, blowing wind-jamming legislators hung a protecting screen over him. Shame on them!
Some of our leading bear hunters in the persons of Hurl Butcher, Charles Thompson and others, made up of local and foreign sport lovers came over Saturday and invited me to go with them and run him down with my old brave dog. But Q. Shecks, how unfortunate for me and how fortunate for the bears. It was one of my busy days, and my boss wouldn’t let me off. They wanted me —knowing that I was a veteran of many a successful chase, and only I knew how to gouge him out his lair of green briers, slashings and laurel thickets. Crestfallen and moody, they moseyed off to the task and all day Saturday and all day Monday they tramped the bear trails to the bark and echo of a pack of cowardly bear hounds that know more about back tracking when the going is tough than forward march, not having my brave old hound to lead the way. They were Butch’s dogs! How many bears did they kill, you say? Well, I have driven by there several times since and I see no bear hides “nailed in the gable end of the house,” which symbolizes a successful chase and veteran bear hunters.
—Yours Katinka
A PROCLAMATION
________
BY THE GOVERNOR
Whereas, the Congress of the United States has designated the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day;
Whereas, the past year has seen the accomplishment of many steps toward mankind’s dreams of lasting peace;
Whereas, the abundant harvest of field and the fabulous yield of mine and stream and forest, have not only supplied our war time needs but have provided our normal wants, so that we have been far more fortunate than any other peoples during the world’s most costly war.
Now, therefore, I, Clarence W. Meadows, Governor of the State of West Virginia, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 22, 1945, as Thanksgiving Day in this state with full confidence that all of us will observe the occasion by manifesting, in whatever ways our hearts find best, our profound gratitude for the blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon us as a state and nation in the troublous times.
Done at the capitol in the City of Charleston, State of West Virginia, this the twenty-ninth day of October, in the Year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and forty-five and in the eighty-third year of the state. —Clarence Meadows, Governor.
105 Years Ago
Week of November 19, 1920
STATE TO HAVE GUARD OF 6,400
West Virginia, through Governor Cornwell, has accepted the new national guard allotment tendered by the War Department under the provisions of the national defense act as amended last June. The acceptance is subject to approval of the state legislation next January.
Under the allotment, the West Virginia national guard will be reorganized with 1,600 men in the ranks by June 30, 1921.
