THE WAYNESVILLE MOUNTAINEER 8ucn?w . ? I * 1 Arrington Recalls Devastation Caused By San Francisco Earthquake Of 1906 By AGNES FITZHUGH SHATTER A blanket-wrapped Army recruit lay shivering on the ground In the chill mists of the early San Fran cisco dawn. Suddenly the very ground on which he lay began to shake; an eerie noise rose "like a whirlwind acoming". "I was ready to run. but I didn't know where to run to," says Lane Arrington, as he recounts his ex periences in the days following the earthquake and fire which devastat ed San Francisco in 1906. Less than four months after his enlistment, the 21year-old ArTing ton's regiment was ordered down from Vancouver Barracks, Wash ington. to guard duty in 'Frisco after the quake. He arrived on the third day after the first tremendous earth shocks, while there were still i.iin(?^*emors being felt through out "In fact,'' he says, i ' thaW^ound kept on shaking for several more weeks?not something you enjoy getting used to." Along with other Service units, Arrington's regiment was assigned to guard the stricken area. Some times he helped keep the hungry people in line as they waited at the "soup houses". "You know how it is ? somebody tries to elbow in ahead of somebody else, and that's apt to start a free-for-all. We were ordered, though, to put any elder ly or dizzy people up toward the front of the line. Some of those people had been without food for so long that they could barely stand up." Arrington's sympathy with the sufferers once put him somewhat on the wrong side of duty. "I was on guard up at the Santa Fe ware house,'' he relates. "Most of the food and other relief supplies came in at Pier 14 and were stored at the Santa Fe place, and keeping off looters was a round-the-clock job. | This old, hungry-looking fellow came up and I could see he was eying a whole lot of those little picnic hams. 1 just handed him one of them and he took it and stuck it under his coat. Talk about getting away from here?he was gone!" One of the most vivid of Sgt. Ar rington's recollections is the clock ; on the fcrrv boat on which his unit I crossed the Bay from Oakland to i the Presidio. "I can still see that 1 big clock," he muses, "with the ' hands stopped at just about 5:15. They told us the shock of that first big tremor stopped it." (The official time of the onset of the 1 quake is recorded as 5:12 a.m.) 1 Arrington's unit remained in San Francisco until the middle of June, two months after the quake and fine. He remembers guarding the tf. S. Sub-Treasury and the Mint: "That place was a sight. Walls still standing, but everything inside had just caved in and crashed down into the vaults. Just a big hole in! the ground." The fire was far from checked when Arrington arrived, "Looked like the whole city was aburning, or anyway smoldering." (Official estimates are that, f?ur fifths of San Francisco was destroyed by the catastrophe.) He recalls the spec tacular method finally used to stop the raging flames: "They made a fire line out of Van Ness Ayenue ?and that was a beautiful big street with some fine homes along it. But the general ordered them to blow up a good stretch of it ahead of the fire, so there wouldn't be anything left to burn. That did the trick." On the lighter side. Arrington chuckles over one experience. "We were passing one of those old | saloons. The whole front was blown in and you never saw so many bottles in that window. So w'e reached through and helped our selves to three or four quart bot tles. But when we got them open, every one held not a thing but mineral water from the nearby Shiuda ttpi-ingg." - Mr. Arrington has returned twice to San Francisco since his emer gency duty there. The first time was only four years later, in 1910; and the second, accompanied by his wife, in 1936. "You wouldn't know the town, it was so built up," he says. Now retired after thirty years' service in the Army. M/Sgt Ar rington, his wife and son live in Ratcliffe Cove. A little gardening, a little yard work fill his time, with plenty left over to share his keen recollection of the impressions of a youngster face to face with one of the most spectacular catastro phes of the century'. IN A REMINISCING MOOD Friday morning was Lane Arring ton of RatclifTe Cove as he described scenA of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to Mountaineer feature writer Agnes Fitzhugh Shapter. Mr. Arrington was stationed in the Golden Gate eity in 1906 with an Army unit. (Mountaineer Photo). Blue Ridge Spelling Bee Set Nov. 20 The second annual Blue Ridge Conference spelling bee will be held at the Bethel School audi torium Tuesday, November 20, ac cording to C- C. Poindexter, con ference secretary. The first conference last year was won by a Ben Lippen stu dent. Mr. Poindexter said that each conference school may enter three spellers and an alternate from grades 9 12 Eligibility rules are the same as those for athletic ?teams. Notification of entry in the contest and a list of the competi tors must be sent to Mr. Poindexter at Bethel not later than Friday, November 16. Word lists, pronouncers, and judges will be provided by West ern Carolina College The following National Spelling Bee rules will be observed at the conference match: 1. In competition, contestants may pronounce words before spell ing them, after spelling them, or not at all. 2. Proper names must be capit alized. 3. Having started to spell a word, a contestant shall be given no op portunity to change letters once pronounced. A speller may retrace, provided letters and their sequence are not changed in the retracing. 4. A contestant may request that a word be re-pronounced, de fined or used in a sentence. The pronouncer shall grant this request until the officials agree that the word has been made reasonabl ? clear to the contestant. Judges u?ay disqualify any contestant who ig nores a request to start spelling. 5. Obsolete spellings will be re garded as errors. 6. If. inadvertently, no defini tion of a homonym is given, the correct spelling of either word shall be accepted as correct. When a speller is given the definition of a homonym, he must spell the word defined. ? 7. When a speller fails lo spell a word correctly, he or she must drop out of the contest, and anoth er word shall be given to the next contestant in lino. 8 The elimination procedure changes when- the contestants are reduced to two. At that point, as soon as one contestant misspells a word, the other contestant imme diately shall lie given an . oppor tunity to spell that same word. If the second contestant spells the word correctly, plus the next word on the pronouncer's list, then the second contestant shall be declar ed the champion. 9. If one of the last two spellers misses and the other, after corrects ing the error, misspells the new word submitted to him, then the misspelled new word shall be re ferred to the first speller for cor rection. If the first speller then succeeds in correcting the error and correctly spells the next word on the pronouncer's list, then he shall be declared champion. 10. If both misspell the same word, both shall continue in the contest. 11. Webster's Unabridged Die ti LOUVERS FROM TO* kTO BOTTOM / ' SlOTTtD f lif BRICK LINING* FUUS COLD AIR OFF THI FLOOR lARCI ASM RAN ? ii A SEPARATE ANTI. 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