I
840110 C
i'3ardner~Webh College Library
P.0, Bo>; EJ36
The Foothills View
FEBRUARY, 1983
"Address Correction He^uested
Blk. I’osMRc P(l. Permit lr>
SINGLE COPY 15 CENTS
“Just A Little
Country Church
The Inside VIEW
Billy Graham Pg- 2
Boiling Springs News pg. 5
Kathr^ Hamrick pg- 2
Car Collides With
Do-Nut Shop
Signup For
In-Kind
We left a friend among the pine woods and killdeer this week.
His name was Jim, the third Gardner-Webb professor to die follow
ing an automobile wreck last Thursday night. Two other professors
had died at the scene; Jim lived two days in intensive care. Saturday
morning 1 tried to characterize him as we walked from the funeral of
one of the two;
“Jim likes to write funny stories about the country up near Ruther-
fordton,” 1 told a friend from Charlotte. “Every now and then Td print
one in the paper.”
“We’ll go see him at the hospital and swap stories with him when
he’s feeling better,” she said.
Jim died that afternoon, and driving to his funeral the following
Tuesday 1 thought how little 1 really knew about the man I had
reguarded as just a little country writer from a little country church.
Jim had talked to me in the evenings after his classes about syndicating
a column of country humor to newspapers and as 1 drove I
remembered I had assured him there was little money, and no fame, in
such work.
1 did not know how famous my friend was until 1 crossed the
Rutherford County line.
At the intersections of farm-to-market roads, a ftre truck marked the
way to the small country church where Jim was to be buried - it’s
presence no smalt sacrifice in a rural community protected only by a
volunteer fire department.
A count deputy stood directing traffic at one intersection. “You go
ing to Jim’s funeral?” he asked. 1 leaned out of the car to yell yes and
received an intimation of my own mortality; I was shocked by how
boyish was the face under the brim of the Smokey hat. “You better
hurry up,” he said. “The church was about, full near an hour ago.” He
waved me through, then shouted after me;
“He was a good man. 1 knew him.”
The little Baptist church on the hill was in fact more than filled
when 1 got there. Jim’s friends and neighbors filled the sanctuary and
stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway under the blue stained glass
“Jesus Saves” at the front door. To my left stood a man whose years of
work under the sun had given his face a texture and color resembling
red brick; at my right, in a small room, a laughing toddler was minded
by one of the women. The organist finished “Rock of Ages” and a
white-haired man walked to the front of the church.
“My name is Aulton Cole,” he toid the congregation. “I’ve known
James all my life.”
As Cole, a deacon, began to tell the story of Jim’s life, each of us in
the congregation recalled our own memory. I thought of how Jim
would walk forward to shake my hand and tell me a story of a cousin
in Rutherford who “held his mouth just right” to be the subject of a
joke. Jim limped as a result of childhood polio, and each time I saw
that smiling, halting figure coming toward me 1 was forcibly reminded
of the truth of the Roman slave Epictetus that “lameness” is an im
pediment to the body but not the mind.”
“1 suppose if he could speak to us this morning he would say it was
better,” Aulton Cole said. “Never again will he have to limp as he
walks through life. Never again will he have to suffer the pain of ar
thritis.” I realized with a jolt I never knew Jim was arthritic because he
never complained of it. “Today he is in the presence of God,” Aulton
Cole said.
“I miss him. He was my friend.”
We had to step outside to make room for the coffin. Outside the air
was full of hot, piney smell and as we waited for the pallbearers to br
ing the coffin forward, I looked out from the church steps over a land
scape that must have given Jim pleasure many times. To the west miles
away the mountains were as blue as the “Jesus Saves” over the church
door, the immediate landscape would gladden any country heart: a
cow pond, then rolling pasture dotted with white farm houses to the
distant mountains.
From inside was heard the final praying over the body. Outside
were the sounds of life as usual in Rutherford County: a buzz saw
worked in a pine grove to our left, while down the hill in front of the
church two brown-tailed birds flew away with their distinctive cry,
killdeer, killdeer.
The pallbearers brought the coffin out the door, and we followed it
down a narrow lane to the church cemetery. There, after a chorus of
“Amazing Grace,” among the pine trees and the killdeer, we left our
friend.
That was Tuesday. Today my friend Jim is among that other con
gregation of the little country church that waits, their tombstones ex
pectantly facing east. The cemetery is a friendly place for one who lov
ed and wrote about the country; members of Jim’s family are buried
there from 1833, and yesterday there at dusk I heard through the pine
tres the cows bawl for supper, the birds grow quieter, and saw one-by-
one the lights turn on at the surrounding farm houses.
I’m grateful for the light of a little country church to remind us that
one day, in the words of the Psalm, the Lord “upholds all who are fall
ing and raises up all who are bowed down.”
Until that day, as Aulton Coie so eloquently said;
“I miss him. He was my friend.”
—Dave Robertson
Payment
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Boiling Springs donut vendor
Homer Monroe Mullen Jr. was
not prepared for the kind of
drive-in “customer” that bat
tered his mobile shop last Satur
day.
Mullen was dropping donut
batter into bubbling grease about
11 a.m., when he glanced out the
window of his camper-shop,
parked at the Gulf service sta
tion at College and Main, saw
the rear of a driverless car bear
ing down on his domain.
“I just happened too look out
just an instant before the car
hit,” Mullen said. “The car door
flew open and a little girl fell out.
I knew that car was going to hit.
I got out of the way just as that
375-degree grease hit the floor.”
The child, Brandalyn Sperling,
7, was not seriously injured, but
Mullen suffered severe burns
when the grease splattered on his
feet and legs. Bystanders took
him to Crawley Hospital for
emergency treatment.
The runaway car, a 1974 Ford
sedan, had been parked across
Main Street at the post office.
The driver, Debroah F. Moore
of Boiling Springs had left the
motor running and the child in
the. car while she went briefly in
to the post office. Either the
child bumped the shifter or it
slipped from park into reverse,
investigating officers said, and
the car lurched backward, across
Main Street, and into the donut
shop.
No charges were filed in the
accident, which did $450
damage to the car and $400 to
the donut shop. Mullen, who
lives in Forest City, is recovering
from the burns. As soon as his
doctor says he is able, he says,
“I’ll get back over there and try
to get set up again. I’ve got to get
all that grease and batter off the
floor.”
Bill Barmore, Director,
Southeast ASCS Area Director,
announced at a Press Con
ference in Charlotte Friday,
January 21, 1983, that a large
number of eligible farmers are
expected to participate in the
Payment in Kind Program.
‘“We have a three-fold objec
tive for Payment in Kind,” Bar-
more said. “Reduce production,
reduce surplus stock holdings,
and avoid increased budget
outlays that would otherwise be
necessary under Price Support
Programs.”
The signup began January 24
and will end on March 11, 1983.
The signup date for the earlier
announced Reduced Acreage
Program is now advanced to the
same March 11, 1983, deadline.
Marshall W. Grant, Chair
man, North Carolina State ASC
Committee, said that the pro
gram applies to wheat, corn,
grain sorghum, cotton and rice.
Farmers have four possible
options for making their 1983
farm plans. They may par
ticipate only in the regular farm
programs; participate in the
regular program plus the 10-30
percent Payment inKind;
withdraw the entire base acreage
if the whole base is accepted; or
not participate at all.
Mr. Grant urges farmers to
visit the local ASCS Offices and
get full details of the program.
“A Penny’s Worth Of Candy”
A Wealth Of Art
Few grown-ups remember this
past Christmas, or what they
had for dinner last night, half as
vividly as Corene Blanton An
thony remembers the gentle joys
of a childhood before World
War I.
It’s not rare for older folks to
recall early times and tell stories,
usually with a moral, to the
young; many a school child has
heard Grandpa say, “When I
was your age 1 had to chop a
cord of stovewood before 1 walk
ed five miles to school in the
snow, barefooted.”
But Corene Anthony’s
memories of life in the old
Sharon Community, south of
Shelby, were so full of love and
delight and mischief that these
little sermons would never be
enough to convey them. Well in
to her middle age, she began to
put them on canvas. In bright
colors, with technique born of
talent but no training, she
painted the kids’ lemonade
stand, as it probably stood under
the trees of S. Lafayette Street,
where her family home still
stands.
She painted wash day, with
the stout washwoman and her
round black washpot, and the
Sunday processional to church,
and bringing in the Christmas
tree, and a make-believe baptiz
ing, where the pretend preacher
’accidentally” spills the whole
bucket on a tiny parishioner who
was only expecting to be sprinkl
ed.
It was 1956 when she sent by
an office friend who was going
to a paint store, for her first box
of oil paints. That night she sat
down and painted a yellow
chrysanthemum from her yard.
Pleased with the result, that
same night she painted a still-life
4 ::r,
liri ft
of fruit. The only training she’d
ever had she says, was when
“Annie Patterson used to give us
little art lessons. She was my
third grade teacher.”
Between that beginning and
later intensive study and the
abstracts, noted for the richness
of their colors, which are now
being widely shown around the
area, Mrs. Blanton produced the
bulk of her primitives, the
childhood scenese that first
brought her recognition as an ar
tist.
Seventeen of these are in a
book, with a short memoir, call
ed “A Penny’s Worth of
Candy,” that Mrs. Blanton
published last year. Others are
available as prints.
The oldest girl of the nine
children born to Drury Watson
and Ida Pearl Byers Blanton, she
had known by the time she was
three years old that she wanted
to be an artist, she says. “My
mother was an artist,” she
remembers now, with a little sur
prise. “She was a real mother,
soft-spoken and lovely. We used
to hang on her rocking chair and
we’d say, ‘Draw us a bird...draw
us a lady...draw us a flower.’ She
would have been great, if she’d
.11
Mrs. Anthony at left holds her version of history. Above is her
painting, "A Penny's Worth Of Candy."
had training.”
While it was a good life, of big
gardens and picnics and produc
tive cotton fields, it was not easy.
Corene went to work in a mill, at
14, to help her parents keep the
boys in school till they could
finish. Later she worked 40 years
in the same Shelby office. When
her husband, John Carl An
thony, who had encouraged her
to paint, died in 1973, art meant
more than ever. Though she had
produced at least a thousand
paintings by that time, and many
were already in the hands of col
lectors, she began To study first
at Canaan Valley, West
Virginia, and then wherever a
seminar or teacher led her.
A collection of the paintings
of Corene Blanton Anthony are
on display through Feb. 17 in
the lobby of Brown Auditorium,
at Shelby High School. A larger
exhibit follows, at Forest City,
opening with a reception from 2
to 4 p.m., Feb. 20, at the Ruther
ford Arts Council Gallery, 2 E.
Main Street. The public is in
vited.
Some of her childhood scenes,
she promises, will be included.
They are, she assures, painted
exactly from memories of life.
Except, “The red clothes on the
little girls 1 did just for color. My
mother never would put red on
us.” Red was not for ladies, in
that other time.
Soon to be 74, Corene still
finds the greatest peace and
beauty in that time: “It was the
cooperation and understanding
of my mother and father that
made our home so happy...”
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