20 Years Ago
Week of February 12, 2004
Highland Data
Closes Doors Here
The Franklin branch of Highland Data was closed on Jan. 20, and company officers, with regret, say they don’t expect the business to re-open, based on current prospects and market conditions.
Amory Mellen, the president of Highland Data, and company vice-president Edmund Hevener said they bid the job which would have kept the Franklin office open at zero percent profit.
Even so, Mellen and Hevener lost out because of what they termed the “negative effect of off-shore labor costs.” Indeed, Highland Data was underbid by 20 to 25 percent by an off-shore competitor.
Altogether, the loss of the contract cost Highland Data between 35 and 40 jobs in Franklin and in Blue Grass, VA.
When the Franklin office was closed, the staff was down to about seven employees, from a high of 65 full-time equivalent jobs here a few years ago.
West Virginia Ranks Number One
In Percentage
Of Family Farms
The West Virginia Agriculture Statistics Service revealed a sneak peek of its full 2002 Census of Agriculture, due out in June. Among the highlights: West Virginia is the number one state in the country in percentage of family farms, followed by Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Individuals or families run 95.3 percent of the Mountain State’s farms.
Week of February 19, 2004
SUGAR GROVE
Superstitions Enshrined In Friday 13th,
Valentine’s Day
Friday the thirteenth, a day feared by the superstitious, has come and gone. That it was the day before Valentine’s Day makes it even more interesting. For instance, there is much mention of “love lore” that many may scoff at, and yet it seemed that at one time, there was a sign for everything that was done.
- Light a match and let it burn. Whichever way it falls will show the direction of your boyfriend’s house.
- Look down into a well through a piece of smoked glass and you will see the man you will marry.
- Marry in white, you have chosen right; Marry in red, you’d better be dead; Marry in yellow, ashamed of the fellow; Marry in blue, your love is true.
- Pare an apple. If the skin comes off in one piece, throw it over your shoulder. It will land in the shape of the first letter of the name of the person you will marry.
- If your eyebrows meet across your nose, you will never wear your wedding dress.
- If you open an umbrella in the house, you will never marry.
- If you sweep under someone’s feet, that person will be an old maid.
- Young ladies are strongly advised never to marry a man who has the same initials.
Country Store Opry
To Celebrate
37th Anniversary
The singer wasn’t a country music star and the stage was not that of Nashville’s Grand Ole’ Opry, but that of the Country Store Opry, a cheerful little imitator located in a frame building that was once a country store in a bend of US 220 six miles south of Petersburg.
Since the third Saturday in February, 1967, the Country Store Opry has been the scene of live music shows every first, third and fifth Saturday, April thru November.
Everyone used to get together and play music at different homes until so many people wanted to come that the musicians outgrew the homes and it was then decided that a larger place was needed to play music.
The late R. C. Mullenax, then the owner of the building, offered the old general store building. Several people in the community pitched in and cleaned out the place, built a stage and spruced up the inside, added 125 theater seats, and thus began the Country Store Opry—37 years ago.
Over the years, the Country Store Opry has grown. The building was enlarged and in a new and bigger stage was added. The performers for the most part are local people who love to play country and gospel music.
The Country Store Opry has a warm up show broadcast over country radio WELD beginning an hour before the live show. The Country Store Opry is a family show, and about an hour before showtime, people begin arriving in pickups, cars, vans and campers filling the parking lot behind the Opry House and the overflow lot across the two-lane highway.
The last three years the show has drawn bus tours from Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and Maryland. The Opry has gone modern in that they have a website.
Please come some Saturday night and hear “From the Country Music Capitol of the POTOMAC Highlands it’s time for the Country Store Opry.” No, it’s not Nashville but it sure is fun! As one of the families who attends said afterwards, “they have pretty good music here.”
30 Years Ago
Week of February 17, 1994
New Franklin
Post Office
To Open Tuesday
The new Franklin Post Office located on the west side of Main Street on the site formerly occupied by Sites Chevrolet, Inc., will open for business next Tuesday.
“We will move into the new building this weekend,” Franklin Postmaster Gene Scott Hammer said yesterday. “Monday will be a holiday so that will give us an extra day to get moved and organized before opening on Tuesday.”
Seneca Rocks
Fire Department
Pays Off $60,000 Debt
Members of the Seneca Rocks Volunteer Fire Department responded to 21 emergency calls and donated 700 man-hours to fire department activities last year.
These figures were included in a report on Seneca Rocks Fire Department and Ladies Auxiliary activities given at the organization’s February meeting.
50 Years Ago
Week of February 14, 1974
Gasoline Supply
In County Approaching Critical Stage
The gasoline supply in Pendleton County is becoming critical according to the opinions of most service station operators in the area. Many are of the opinion that there will be little or no gas available by the end of the month if deliveries are not received by that time.
Stations in the Brandywine area have been dry for a week or so, and stations in the Franklin area have only small quantities of gasoline on hand.
The present critical shortage of gasoline apparently is a result of a combination of the shortage of available fuel and the truckers’ strike.
Eagles Are Extinct Here
whose woods are these…
(A Weekly Column of Wilderness Lore by The Woodlands and Whitewater Institute Staff Spruce Knob Mountain)
If a young child were to ask you, “What is an eagle?” How would you respond?
Perhaps a large rodent eating bird that hunts by day and is not a hawk, falcon or buzzard. In the United States this type of bird is represented by our national symbol, the Bald Eagle and the powerful and majestic Golden Eagle.
Both of these birds of prey, particularly the Golden Eagle, represent a climax or highly specialized species which is the result of thousands upon thousands of years of evolution. These birds have been selected by the natural forces in our environment to perform a specific role in the natural world. This role is very important in helping maintain a delicate balance in nature.
I have spent some time talking with Old Timers of Pendleton County, men who could remember the days when the mountain had no few number of these great birds.
You could see their eyes flash as they spoke of the eagles and their activities in and about the jagged peaks of the hill country. But ask these same men where the eagles are today and they can’t say. Ask them, when was the last time they saw the nine foot wing span of a Golden Eagle and they scratch their wrinkled brow and reluctantly reply, “can’t rightly remember.” They can’t recall what happened to these winged monarchs of the air but they do know for sure that they are all nearly gone from the crags and cliffs of the West Virginia Highlands.
It is unfortunate that there are some who refuse to heed the lessons of the past. Indiscriminate slaughter of the passenger pigeon brought about the extinction of this bird in just a few decades. Similar uncontrolled slaughter of other native species in North America has left our country without much of the wildlife we had only 100 years ago.
Must the eagles of our area pass the way of so many other animals that did nothing more than play their role in the great and dynamic scheme of nature. Who is going to answer for the loss of a species, certainly no one man, but we shall all pay the price for its disappearance. That is the price of never again seeing these great birds riding the warming up drafts of our West Virginia mountains.
60 Years Ago
Week of February 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.
Florida Is Attacked; Bragg Gets Top Post
Federal troops marched into central Florida 100 years ago this week in hopes of bringing that state promptly back into the Union. But Southern troops greeted them with a barrage of gunfire that sent the invaders scurrying back to the coast.
Hardly had the Florida attack been repulsed when a new, and unrelated, event sent tongues wagging in the South; Braxton Bragg, who had lost every Civil War campaign he had undertaken, was promoted to chief of staff of Confederate armies, and his critics within the Confederacy threw up their hands in disgust.
The Florida attack—called the Battle of Olustee and the Battle of Ocean Pond—was a “side-show” in the war, according to one general, but it squelched Federal hopes of quickly ending secession in the state.
Florida had been spared the ravages of most Civil War fighting, and it contained few Confederate troops. Federal officials, spurred on by President Lincoln himself, believed they could occupy the north-central part of the state, cut the state’s supplies to armies farther north and negotiate to bring it back to the Union.
4-H’ers Plan
Bicycle Rodeo
At a meeting of the Pendleton Builders 4-H Club last Friday Mrs. Pauline Harman announced that a “Bicycle Rodeo” will be held in the spring by Cpl. Huff and Tpr. Midkiff for all 4-H members who own or ride bicycles. The rodeo will actually be a series of tests to see how well 4-H’ers can ride and handle their bikes.
During last Friday’s meeting Cpl. Ramsburry of the West Virginia State Police from Elkins presented the “Lucky 13 Rules” and a film on bicycle and automobile safety.
12 TO 17-INCH SNOW BLANKETS COUNTY
Pendleton County was buried under from 12 to 17 inches of snow Wednesday morning. The snow began falling Tuesday morning and continued all day Tuesday and Tuesday night.
Already on the ground were several inches of snow which remained from a snowfall the previous week.
70 Years Ago
Week of February 18, 1954
Servicemen
On Varied Fronts
FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo.—Pvt. Sheldon A. Smith, son of Mr. Arnold B. Smith of Upper Tract, is nearing completion of a 16-week training cycle here with a unit of the 6th Armored Division.
SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va., February 10—Sergeant Albert Nelson, Jr., Army Reservist of Upper Tract has volunteered for 24 months active Army duty, it was announced today by Colonel James R. Wheaton, military district chief.
Sergeant Nelson will be relieved from his current Army Reserve assignment to enter active military service reporting to Ft. Knox, Ky., February 15th for physical examination, processing and further duty assignment. He has over three years prior active military service.
X CORPS, KOREA—Pvt. William A. Warner, son of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Warner, Cherry Grove, recently arrived in Korea with the 5th Field Artillery Group.
NORFOLK, Va.—BMI/c Denver H. Judy, husband of Bonnie Mae Judy of Upper Tract is now at the U. S. Naval Receiving Station, Norfolk, Virginia, awaiting further assignment to a Naval unit in the Atlantic area.
DAHMER
The deepest snow that ever fell in Pendleton County was supposed to have fallen in the year 1889. Mr. Edward H. Rader says it was in the evidence of Mrs. Armeda Mitchell and Mr. Benjamin Propst.
