The Virginia Creeper Train was a real iron workhorse. It came into Ashe County in 1915 hauling lumber, tan bark, coal, mail, passengers and other cargo. With all of its noise and huffing and puffing black smoke, it held a fascination for some folks, especially children. Often they stood by…
The summer I was 16 years old a man in our community was asking for folks to work picking bunch beans for market. My friend JoAnne and I went on two trips. We got onto the back of his panel truck with a bunch of other people. Up over the…
My great uncle Jim was a jovial man, a pleasure to be around. He lived in a small house, set on a low hill, just across the North Carolina line up in Virginia a ways. The first time I was at his place I was ten years old. My Dad…
It was a pleasant fall afternoon. The air was crisp and the leaves were beginning to change color. Walking down the road from my house I was happy. My Dad had given me permission to visit a friend of mine. She lived over on Helton Creek – about a mile…
In the 1930’s, ‘40’s and ‘50’s the milk truck and its faithful driver were an important part of rural life in Ashe County, NC. They traveled the dirt roads, not delivering milk to us but, picking up heavy metal cans filled with milk the farmers had ready for market. Every…
They were beautiful. The old timey cherry trees on our farm were in full bloom. To me, a seven year old, it looked like they were covered with popcorn. Soon the flowers began to lose their petals. With the slightest breeze they floated to the ground like snowflakes. I loved…
Everyone was excited about my first day of school except me. In the fall of 1945 I began grade school at Helton Elementary in Sturgills, NC. The big two story building looked very intimidating to a little six year old girl. It took all of my courage to climb the…
AUGUST 1940. ASHE COUNTY, NC. – The ground was already soaked with water when another storm hit. A category 2 hurricane rolled into Beaufort, South Carolina. It came inland through Georgia, traveled north along the Appalachian Mountains and then turned west, making its way to Ashe County where it stopped.…
In 1916, when my Mom and Dad were married, her father gave her twenty acres of land. A small house made of wide oak boards set on the property. There they began their lives together in the Sturgills area of Ashe County, NC, near the Virginia line, in the beautiful…
