20 Years Ago
Week of May 8, 2003
Pendleton County Jail Being Demolished
The old county jail, which is on the national register of historical buildings as a supporting structure of the courthouse, is coming down.
40 Years Ago
Week of May 12, 1983
- T. Stickley Marks 50th Year as Franklin Barber
Looking much younger than his 75 years, popular Franklin barber L. T. Stickley celebrated his 50th anniversary last Friday as a Franklin resident and businessman.
He celebrated the occasion like he celebrates all the important events in his life—by working a full day and giving the best haircut possible.
Entertaining a room full of loafers and customers who had assembled to extend their congratulations, the congenial barber paused for a moment between customers to give a brief historical account of his residence here.
“I arrived in Franklin on May 6, 1933, with 35 cents in my pocket. I spent 15 cents for a jug of kerosene to heat my shop, and that left me with 20 cents to buy my lunch. I have been here ever since, and I have never regretted coming to Franklin.”
Commenting on the changes in Franklin since he gave his first haircut in his shop in the Warner Theater building, Stickley said haircuts cost 25 cents at that time and he could get a good meal for a quarter.
“I lived during my first two years in Franklin in the South Branch Hotel which was being operated at the time by Mr. and Mrs. Bill Fleming and son, Denver,” he observed.
“The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and I enlisted in the Army Artillery two months later and served 4-1/2 years, much of the time being spent in the Pacific.”
Cutting his account short to take another customer, Stickley said, “I have been barbering 54 years and I have no intention of quitting now. I will continue to work as long as I am able and can continue to give a good haircut.”
50 Years Ago
Week of May 10, 1973
Potomac Valley
To Have 99 Dams
Half of the upstream watershed dams constructed in West Virginia by local sponsors and the U. S. Soil Conservation Service (SCS) are in the state’s Eastern Panhandle.
Sixty flood-prevention dams are now functioning in the Potomac Valley counties out of a total of 99 dams presently planned there, said James S. Bennett, SCS state conservationist.
More Americans
Returning To Old Ways, Making Soap
With a sense of history as stubborn as a ring around a bathtub, more and more Americans are going back to the old ways. Now they are making their own soap.
Ecologists worry about detergents or their ingredients which may ease washday drudgery but poison nature. Some say that disadvantages to soap and soap making are more than offset by the good they do to people, places, and the future.
Housewives swap old recipes for homemade soap, uncovering them among grandma’s reminiscences, or finding them at the local ecology-minded store in the newspaper’s household columns.
Soap is being cooked and stirred in country kitchens and city apartments alike. After a couple of batches, the serious insist, several pounds of homemade soap can be produced with a minimum of mess, while recycling waste fats into something useful and perhaps as good as store-bought soap.
An enthusiast of The Mother Earth News promises: “It’s an operation that can be just as small scale and simple or as large and sophisticated as you want to make it…anything from throwing ashes into the cookout frying pan to carefully measuring rose geranium petals into a precisely controlled batch of face cleaner.”
One proud kitchen soap maker testifies: “It doesn’t smell like perfume. It just does an astonishing job of cleaning.”
One proud kitchen soap maker testifies: “It doesn’t produce a lot of lather, and it doesn’t smell like perfume. It just does an astonishing job of cleaning.”
There is no known connection between suds and cleaning power. But minerals in hard water combine with dissolved soap to make lime soap—or rings around bathtubs. Only the dissolved produces cleaning action.
Though scientists say they have developed a no-ring, anti-pollution variety, soap may steal an excessive amount of oxygen from water, suffocating fish. Conservationists say this is nothing compared to the dangers of eutrophication in lakes, a fertilizing oxygen-using process blamed on detergents.
Soap cleans because, chemically, it has an affinity with water so that clothes being washed become wet more quickly and dirt is more easily scrubbed away.
Washerwomen of Rome, according to one story, were first to suspect this. Some 3,000 years ago animals were burned to the gods, and dripping fat ran down the altar, through the ashes of sacrificial fires, and into the river. Downriver, washerwomen found they could get clothes cleaner when the water was polluted with this accidental soap.
Soap has been made from silkworms by Pakistanis and from desert plants beaten into a frothy pulp by American Indians. Soap was so scarce and in demand it was used as money in 1841 in Mexico.
Prime Minister William Gladstone abolished Britain’s soap tax in 1853, but, objecting to public pressure, condemned soap as “most injurious both to comfort and health of the people.”
Fat or oil and lye, the essential ingredients of all soap makers are warned that besides the obvious dangers of boiling heat and caustic, they must not let their new soap get caught in a cold draft–or it will get hard and flinty.
60 Years Ago
Week of May 9, 1963
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Farmers Deserve Credit
For More Wildlife
Editor, the Times:
When the people of West Virginia take to the fields and streams to fish, hunt, or bird watch, they can thank the farmers for much of their outdoor pleasure.
This is true because farmers generally include measures in their conservation plans of benefit to wildlife. One result is that there is a greater abundance of many kinds of wildlife today than when the pioneers first settled in this country.
Farmers of West Virginia have built more than 13,000 ponds and stocked most of them with fish. Some farmers permit local people to fish their ponds without cost, whereas others may charge a small fee. Besides that, the farmers have put conservation measures on their land to keep their soil from washing into streams where it could hurt fish life.
Most farmers cooperating with their Soil Conservation Districts set aside a part of their land for the planting of vegetation that provides food and shelter for wildlife. That includes game and song birds, rabbits, deer, and other animals.
- R. Leadbetter
State Soil Conservationist
Morgantown, W. Va.
Week of May 16, 1963
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.
Capitol of Mississippi Captured by Grant
The fast-moving army of Federal Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, on the warpath like never before, raged through central Mississippi 100 years ago this week, causing death and consternation to defending Confederates. Grant defeated the Southerners in four battles in five days, stormed into Jackson, the capitol of the state, and captured it, then turned on his primary target 50 miles away—Vicksburg, the Confederacy’s last important stronghold on the Mississippi River.
The week started with Grant and his rapidly growing army deep in Confederate territory—half way between Vicksburg and Jackson, with Confederate troops on both sides and an angry population everywhere in the state.
There was action every day. It started May 12 when Gen. James B. McPherson, leading one of Grant’s corps, ran into 5,000 Confederates near the little town of Raymond. The Federals immediately deployed and attacked, and the heavily-outnumbered Confederates retreated with a loss of more than 800, including 400 prisoners. McPherson lost fewer than 450 men.
Hearing of McPherson’s victory, Grant fired off orders to his corps commanders to move out fast, and headed east for Jackson. Next day, the Federals swarmed across country, burning bridges and skirmishing every mile. At dawn on the 14th, in a heavy rain, Grant’s army swarmed in on the state capitol.
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate hero who commanded all Confederate troops in the area, had arrived at Jackson the day before—the 13th. With only 6,000 troops to defend the capitol from Grant’s hordes, he entrenched his men for a delaying action and called for reinforcements. It did no good. Grant’s army stormed into town in a heavy downpour of rain on the 14th, and Johnston fell back, abandoning the city. Grant and his 12-year-old son, Frederick Dent, rode triumphantly into Jackson with the army, and the United States flag was raised. Grant’s losses in that battle had been fewer than 300; the Confederates had lost more than 800.
But Grant hardly hesitated at Jackson. Spending the night in the hotel room that Johnston had vacated, he fired off more orders to his corps commanders: “Turn all your forces . . . make all dispatch” and head for Vicksburg. In less than 24 hours, the army was on the move again, sweeping westward toward the Mississippi River.
Gen. John C. Pemberton, Confederate commander at Vicksburg, was trying to cut Grant’s supply line at the time. On the 16th, Grant’s men ran into Pemberton’s forces at Champion’s Hill, charged, and Pemberton led back toward Vicksburg. Next day, Pemberton made a stand behind the Big Black River, and Grant’s men charged again. Again Pemberton retreated, this time losing more than 1,700 men as prisoners.
There was nothing left for Pemberton but to fall back in the Vicksburg defenses, and this he did. Grant’s army swept around the city, digging in, and Pemberton was trapped.
Next week: Grant attacks the city.
70 Years Ago
Week of May 7, 1953
EDITORIALS – – –
KEEP IT RESPECTABLE
The American Legion has a fine opportunity to build a home worthy of the men from Pendleton County who gave their precious lives that this nation might live. They couldn’t have chosen a better location or a more historic landmark than McCoy’s Mill.
Veterans’ groups in many towns have tended to make their meeting halls a place for excessive drinking, slot machines and gambling, rather than a home for good fellowship with a group working for patriotic principles.
The Mill can be made a place of recreation for women and children as well as men. We know the Legion plans to make it a respectable place—not a rowdy road house that will be detrimental to the county.
YOU CAN’T TAKE A BUS
Now that the Cumberland bus has been taken off, Pendleton County is left without a single link of transportation to people without automobiles coming into the county. Every week one can see soldiers hitching rides in and out of the county on their way home to their families or on their way back to camp.
No one expects a transportation company to lose money on a route and continue to operate. No business can continue long with that kind of policy. A bus line from Elkins to Harrisonburg or from Franklin to Harrisonburg, might, however, pay dividends.
A committee should be formed to see what can be accomplished. Perhaps even a local person may be interested in obtaining a charter to operate a line to some nearby town. Pendleton has been nicknamed the “Free State” and the “Independent Kingdom”—let’s hope it isn’t renamed the “Hermit Kingdom.”
WHAT TIME IS IT?
Well, daylight saving time is back to plague us again this year. The confusing time system in this country goes on year after year with nothing being done about it. People miss trains, girls are “stood up” on dates, husbands are late for work and everything is in disorder until we get adjusted to the new time. Then, about the time we get accustomed to it, it’s time to change back to “God’s” time. The only solution to this annoying situation is for Congress to set a standard time for the entire country. As long as it is left up to the towns and states, the situation will not be improved.
