G.rdner-Uebb Collba,
Library
^ * 0 . Box
E'oilins Spring
NC 28017
The Foothills View
FRroAY,N0V. 25,1983
BOILING SPRINGS NC
BIk. Postage Paid
SINGLE COPY 15 CENTS
The Ladies Of Sharon
Movie Crew Finds
Shark’s TootK
;,£GE LlBBffi
In that other time, before carols
blared in early November in the
grocery and department stores,
before Mattel took over Santa
Claus, before credit cards bought
stuff broken long before the bills
were paid, there still was
Christmas.
The ladies who live at the Sharon
Retirement Home near Boiling
Springs remember it. Sometimes it
was sparse pickings, Christmas
morning, “What did you used to
get?” one was asked. “Nothing!”
she laughingly replied. But then
that was not quite so; there was
always something. Maybe oranges
and candy, or a rag doll. To the
specially blest went a china
headed doll. Which .sometimes
came to tragic ends.
“I didn’t have but one doll in my
life,” said Mrs. Dollie Austin, a
lively and wdtty lady of 87. “It was
a china doll, the kind with a china
head. And I broke it. I got mad at it
and throwed it in the floor and
broke its head. Never had another
“I had a little old doll,” said Mrs.
Mae Camp, a Lattimore-born
youngster of 73. “Mine crumbled
all to pieces. After we buried it. We
pretended it died, you know, and
we had a funeral. We had
preaching, and we sang that song,
“I’m Going Home To Die No More’
— we didn’t know but a few words
of it. My brother dug the grave and
we put it in a shoe box. When by
mother found it out she said, ‘You
go dig that doll up!’ But it’d done
got wet, and it just crumbled all to
pieces...”
Miss Ethel Bridges, also born in
Lattimore, remembered the trees.
“We always had a tree at home,
and one at the church,” she said.
There would always be little
presents on the Sunday School
tree, and little bags or packages of
candy. There would be programs
at the church, and at the school,
and everybody would have a piece
to say.
Mrs. Camp remembered hers:
“Santa Claus will come tonight —
If you’re good. And do right as you
should. Down the chhnney he will
creep. Bringing you a wooly sheep.
And a doll that goes to sleep — If
you’re good...”
and nobody could get there. We
finally got a neighbor to come over
and eat with us.”
One of her most vivid memories
had nothing to do with Christmas,
or good times, though. It was a
tragic story that started out with a
hen’s egg.
“I found a nest with an egg in it
and brought it to the house,” Mrs.
Austin remembers. “My mother
said it wasn’t ours, said to take it
over to the woman it belonged to.
So I went over there with it, and the
woman had the smallpox.
“I got it, I was seven years old.
And my mother got it, and died
with it. My uncle died with it. We
all had it; the doctor would come to
the bam and change his clothes
and come up to the house to see us.
People died like flies with it.”
Miss Bridges also remembered
having smallpox, though neither of
the women were scarred by it.
Mrs. Camp, Miss Bridges and
Mrs. Austin live at the Sharon
home, along with a fourth resident,
Mrs. Flora Gold, from Forest City,
who is 94. Mrs. Camp worked in
nursing many years, most lately at
Cleveland Memorial Hospital,
Miss Bridges and Mrs. Austin both
worked in miUs, and Mrs. Austin
worked for a time at the old Blow
ing Rock Hotel, in the mountains.
All said they loved the mountains
more than anyplace.
But at the little retirement home,
life seems good; Geraldine Dover,
who runs the place, and her sister-
in-law Irene Dover are good
family-style cooks — “I love that
combread,” said Mrs. Gold — and
there is a homey feeling.
And always, good talk.
-mS!
An especially memorable
Christmas in the past of Dollie
Austin, who grew up in Bessemer
City, was the time, after she was
married, when it snowed 16 inches
and isolated everyone.
“I cooked a big pork roast for
dinner, and a pot of white beans,
and I’d made potato salad and
deviled eggs, enough for a crowd.
At right: Dollie Austin, Ethel |
Bridges, Mae Camp pass an af
ternoon remembering other times.
Above: Inez Dover fixes hair for
Flora Gold, 94, at Sharon
Retirement Home.
Friend Points The Way
j:
The flutter of quail from the stubble of a grain field, and the bobbing stride
of feeding doves are a hunter’s delight on a November day. The quarry of
this bird dog, at the moment, though, is a yellow sulphur butterfly.
Turns Up On Broad
A shark’s tooth found near the
site of the old steel bridge on Broad
River was not lost there by the
shark, says Dr. Les Brown of the
Gardner-Webb College science
department.
The inch-wide pearly fang was
spotted in the riverside clay last
week by Steve Weingard, a
member of an Earl Owensby film
crew using the secluded spot as a
film scene location.
Weingard and others of the team
picked up the tooth along with
. several arrowheads from the clay
I near the bank. Curiosity arose as
to whether the tooth was a local
fossil.
“It’s very puzzling,” Brown
said. “The arrowheads are
reasonable,” because the river
was heavily used by Indians, he
said. But the type of rock along the
river is not the kind that bears such
fossils. “There’s very little
sedimentary rock,” he said; “most
of our rock is metamorphic, the
roots of old mountains.”
In prehistoric times the sea
came up to the fall line in the
Carolinas, in mid-state. Brown
said. It would be highly unlikely
that a shark shedding molars ever
swam up the Broad.
So where did the tooth come
from? “Somebody lost it,” Brown
said. And that is not necessarily a
dull drab end to a good story. It is
possible, he went on, that Indians
used such things as a medium of
exchange. That tooth may have
been traded in a coastal deal of
many centuries ago, and worked
its way westward, hand to hand. It
may have been some early
settler’s souvenir.
Or it may have fallen from sone
fisherman’s pocket. Local swim
mers will be relieved to know,
though, that the biggest jaws
they’re apt to meet will likely be on
a catfish.
Fragrant Shrubs
Season’s Pleasure
V.
It helps, while watching the
leaves fail this time of year, to
notice the shrubs that show us their
blossoms even this late.
We are blessed in this area with
a long growing season that in
cludes fall-flowering shrubs, some
of them very fragrant.
One of the most popular is the
Sasanqua camellia, an evergreen
with handsome, shiny leaves. It is
adaptable to many locations in the
garden since it may be shaped into
diverse growing habits by prun
ing: compact or upright, or open
and spreading. Many of the Sasan-
quas have fragrant flowers, which
range in color from white through
pink to red.
The tea plant, a member of the
camellia family, shows small
white flowers with cupped petals
and many gold stamens. The shiny
leaves are used in making black
tea. One tea shrub is a lovely addi
tion to the landscape, but it would
take hundreds to keep you in tea
bags!
Some gardeners are partial to
the flowering olives. Several
varieties are available, with
flowers ranging from white to
greenish-yellow, and all are highly
scented.
For those with lots of space,
osmanthus may be of interest. It
can grow to 15 feet high and equal
ly wide in an open area. Scattered
among its holly-like leaves (a com
mon name for this shrub is holly-
olive) are clusters of small cream-
colored blossoms with a very sweet
fragrance.
Many of these shrubs are hor
ticultural varieties available in
local nurseries. They also are
suitable for hedges and screens,
since they grow to be thick and
dense. Sometimes a single shrub
might be planted near a porch or
doorway so that the perfume may
be enjoyed in passing.
Another fall bloomer is the
native shrub, witch-hazel, found at
the edge of the woods, since it
needs some sun. It late faU, after
the leaves have fallen, witch-
hazels produce yellow star-shaped
flowers. The nut-like fruits “ex
plode” when ripe, throwing the
seeds a dozen feet or more. Aside
from its interesting shape, witch-
hazel has an honored reputation in
folklore. A snuff made of its dry
leaves was onces thought useful in
stopping nosebleed, and a decoc
tion was said to relieve inflamma
tions of the eye and skin. An old-
time saying went: “Witch-hazel
blossoms in the fall/To cure the
chills and fevers all.”
A forked twig of the plant was a
favored kind of divining rod.
The flower and vegetable beds
give up in late fall, but flowering
still goes on. Sitting beside a fire on
a nippy fall day and looking out of
the window at the shrubs in bloom
— that’s not bad!
For more information about faU-
flowering shrubs, call, write or
visit the N.C. Botanical Garden at
the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
Hoopful Of Fun
Tech Holds
Registration
Next Week
Registration for Winter Quarter
at Cleveland Technical College will
be held in the Campus Center on
Thursday, December 1, from 9
a.m. to 8 p.m. The first day of
classes is Monday, December 5.
Approximately 1300 students are
expected to register for the 13
technical, 11 vocational, and
general education programs of
fered by Tech. In addition, two
telecourses will be avaOable for
students desiring to study at home.
The technical programs include
accounting, business administra
tion, electonic date processing, ex
ecutive secretarial science,
general office technology, medical
secretarial science, communica
tions technology, fashion merchan
dising and marketing, electronic
engineering technology, industrial
management technology, in
dustrial safety and health
technology, criminal justice and
radiologic technology.
Sundown on Holly Hill Road, in Boiling Springs, cat
ches Amy, Chris and Andy Brookshire racing against
the dark for a few more baskets, a few more points in
the front yard of their home.