Not-So-Humble
Farmer Is Here
Beginning today on our editorial page you
will find the observations of The Humble
Farmer, whose column is becoming a favorite
feature in newspapers across the country.
The “farmer” is Robert Skoglund, a former
graduate-level lecturer in linguistics whose
letterhead now reads “Rotovating and Mow
ing.”
Skoglund, a self-styled reclusive bachelor
of 46, lives in an ancient, ramshackle yellow
farmhouse in St. George, Maine. A sheep
staked out front cuts his grass while he mows
for others. Driving around the country to visit
state press associations and newspaper edit
ors, he travels in a dump truck. The imposing!
Mercedes Benz reporters have noticed parked
behind the farmhouse is a relic of a spell
of high-cotton in what the farmer assures
us is an increasingly humble existence; his
ads in local papers now offer, “Fields and
Horrid Ugly Bushes Mowed.”
It was ads of another sort that helped
launch him into the column business. As
a lark he sent in a few post-card entries
to personal classified columns in small
papers. Things like “Man living in filth,
poverty, ignorance and squalor wishes to
meet attractive, educated, affluent young
woman who seeks a mission in life.”
Wnen people began turning to the class
ifieds first, a publisher decided to put an
obvious talent to work. So have we, and
about 75 other papers. And Foothills View
readers will probably not notice that the
farmer is from Maine He, and his side-kick
Gramp Wiley, could just as well be in Flint
Hills, Prospect, or Mount Pleasant. We hope
you like him as much as we do.
Going To The Mat
\
lA
.1 ■
lamie Nolen (above) from Boiling Springs works toward competes with wrestlers in his weight class in the 23-schoou
a win, as the Crest senior came out on top at the South- sectional tournament at Charlotte, Feb. 12-13. If successful,/
western Conference Wrestling Tournament last Saturday Jamie then will move up to the regionals at Kannapolis,|
week. Jamie, the son of Rodney Nolen, has won 16 con- and then the state finals of wrestling competition at Winston-
secutive matches without a loss. The 167-pounder next Salem.
. J. Cash As Reporter
He Signed Stories“Jack Cash
99
i The Mind of the South will have out-lived its Boiling
Springs author W.J. Cash next week.
Cash, a sardonic wit who at 41 committed suicide four
months after his book was published Feb. 10, 1941,
probably would have found that fact a grim hilarity.
But by completing his book before ending his life.
Cash was a professional journalist: he finished the
story before he left the office.
Discussions since of The Mind of the South have not
centered on Cash’s work as a joumsJist. But
newspapers and news people played a large part in
that book’s being written. A program to be presented
next Wednesday at 10 a.m. at Gardner-Webb College
is titled “W.J. Cash: The Man and His Times.’’ For
much of those times he was writing The Mind,
1929-1941, that man was a journalist. And he was
known in the newsrooms not as “W.J.” but as he
signed his news stories: Jack Cash.
“Jack Cash would cbme up to the Star when I was
working there,” recalled Dr. Wyan Washburn in an
interview this Monday. “I argued with him a great
deal.” Dr. Washburn, now a physician prominent
throughout Appalachia, also is remembered by North
Carolina joumeJists as a highly professional reporter
and editor at the Star from 1934 to 1939. ‘ ‘Cash didn’t
know the South that I knew,” Dr. Washburn said.
Dr. Washburn was among a circle of local journalists
at the Star in the 30’s and 40’s who, like the “Shelby
Dynasty” in politics, dominated their field. They
included: C.A. “Pete” McKnight, who later' edited
both the Charlotte News and Observer; Kays Gary,
the columnist; Jay Jenkins of Boiling Springs who
later became a top investigative reporter for the
Observer during the 60’s; and Cameron Shipp, later
book editor at the News. Shipp, according to Dr.
Washburn, affected the content of Mind of the South: .
“Cash would get Cameron Shipp to challenge him on
points he ought to put in his book,” Dr. Washburn
recalled. “And he got Mrs. Erma Drum, the society
editor at the Star, to tell him how to re-arrange the
sentences and punctuate it and how to make it say
what he wanted to say.
“I know Cash would never have been able to get it
(the book) ready for the printer if had not been for
Shipp’s needling and Mrs. Drum’s getting it into
shape,” Dr. Washburn said.
The Charlotte News provided Jack Cash with not
only a Depression-proof salary of $40 a week but also a
home for the eccentricities that clung to him. “Cash
was eccentric in his personal life, eccentric in his
[Right] W.J. Cash, author
of The Mind of the South
i i )1,1 i [ fj 11 i| ? i' ^'
these two Cleveland natives both had apartments on
the same floor at the Frederick building:
“Cash, a lover of good music, had a substantial
collection of recordings and an early hi-fi phonograph.
My key fit his door. I had his permission to play his
recordings for my dates or to borrow from his library
at any time when he was away.
“These were the days before Cash met, and later
married, the vibrant and talented Mary Ross
Northrup. He did not drink heavily, but even a small
amount of alcohol affected him strongly. On more than
one Saturday night, coming in from a date, I would
- , I I , ^ n , ,, hear Cash’s phonograph replaying a record, at an
* enormous volume, and would open his door, turn off
Editor Pete McKnight (left) lived on the same the phonograph, and help him get undressed and in
bed.”
Nevertheless Cash found time to complete ms
manuscript of The Mind as well as write daily
XT
tv
After Shipp left Shelby to edit the book page of the
Charlotte News, he also was responsible for getting
Cash jobs as a book reviewer and, in October, 1937, as
a full-time editorialist at that paper. Cash worked for
the News until 1941; unquestionably it was the
hanniest time of his aHiilt life
floor as Cash at the Frederick apartments
during the 30’s. When he heard Cash’s phono
graph player stick on a record “at enormous
volumn” on Saturday nights, he knew his
friend’s condition:
“I would open his door, turn off his phono
graph, and help him into bed.”
The Frederick is still popular with literary
types today.
thinking, and eccentric even in writing the book, Ur.
Washburn emphasized. But at the big-city newsrooms
of the 30’s and 40’s, including the Charlotte News,any
eccentricity short of ax murder probably would not
have been noticed.
Pole pro'
as well as
editorials and book reviews of startling quality. “I find
it rather incredible,” said McKnight, looking back,
“that literary writing of such high quality was
appearing in a rather small afternoon Southern
newspaper in those grim depression years.”
Finally Cash completed his manuscript, and shortly
before he left the News for Mexico had lunch with his
publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, at the Hotel Charlotte on
Feb. 20, 1941. A News photographer snapped the
scene. Knopf, with his European mustache and
leanness, suggests a greyhound in a three-piece
suit. Cash, his premature baldness somehow giving
him a dapper look, airily traces a metaphor in the air
with a smoking cigarette. Ashtrays, dirty dishes, and
a bottle in a brown bag litter the table in front of them.
To a couple sitting at the next table, these two exotics
would be easy to place: Newspaper Types.
r.i>tnro r»f 1939 when
Please turn to Cash, page 8