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This Week's Story

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JUNIOR'S SISTER

          Boweaver's best friend was Junior Snyder, a little snip of a fellow, lean and stringy.  He wasn't as big as Boweaver, who was under-size for his age.

          Junior wasn't the world's greatest for education.  He'd missed a lot of school transplanting peanuts, picking cotton and handing tobacco – and he had a slight eye defect.  A wandering eye, his daddy called it.

          He had three sisters, one older than he was, pretty as a picture with long blonde hair that she brushed a lot, and green eyes.  The others were younger than Junior, one five and the baby, Lily, two.

          Junior's family, like everybody else in the neighborhood, had an outhouse out back where people used the bathroom.  It wasn't called a bathroom, of course, because nobody would think of taking a bath there.

          Junior's outhouse was a two-seater, so that two members of the family could, if so inclined, use it at the same time.

          On the terrible day, Junior's five-year-old sister went to the toilet and Lily, the baby, tagged along. 

          When the bigger girl raised the wooden lid, Lily raised the other lid and fell in.

          The older girl screamed and ran for her mother. 

          Mrs. Snyder came running, and screaming.  Neighbors, hearing the commotion, also came running and screaming. 

          Boweaver and Junior, in a field nearby, came also, but there was so much confusion that for a while they didn't realize what had happened.

          Workers roofing a house nearby heard the screams and came on the run.  When they discovered what had happened, some of them began to scream also, but one or two grabbed shovels and pitchforks and tried to get the little girl out through the hole.

          That effort was unsuccessful, so they got outside and pushed the house over.  The slime was so near ground level that they were able to reach in with the pitchfork and pick the baby out.

          The stunned gathering stared in silent disbelief at the sight of the tiny child balanced on the tines of the pitchfork, until the mother's screams drove them to action.

          One woman primed the water pump at the back steps while another ran for a washtub.  A roofer took over the pump and quickly filled the tub with water.  Others ran down the road in search of someone with a car.

          Lily was placed in the tub, and her little body was washed as clean as it had ever been in her short life.  A car came and they took her uptown to a doctor, who sent her to the hospital in Rocky Mount, 50 miles away.

         She lived three days at the hospital, and then died of pneumonia. 

They brought her back to the old yellow house on the corner for the funeral.  The whole neighborhood came.  

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This Week's Verse

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Come and bathe my forehead, Mother,
For I'm growing very weak,
Let one drop of water, Mother,
Fall upon my burning cheek.

Soon I'll be an angel, Mother,
In perhaps another day,
Say you'll do this for me, Mother,
Put my little shoes away.

Tell my loving little playmates,
That I never more will play,
Give them all my toys, but Mother,
Put my little shoes away

Baby Brother's growing older,
Soon they'll fit his little feet,
He will be so happy, Mother,
When he wears them on the street.

Now I'm going to leave you, Mother,
Please remember what I say,
Say you'll do this for me, Mother,
Put my little shoes away.

(Lyrics date to Civil War era.
Author is unknown.)

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This Week's Mailbox

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To the Poor Town News ~ As I have looked in several of the old church minutes here in Bertie County I can only imagine the chaos that our church people faced (during the Civil War) ...... I have noted that in the Connaritsa and Holly Grove Baptist Churches (organized in 1789 and 1804), during this time period church members were (dropped from) membership for fighting for the Union forces.

Ross and Capeharts Church (organized in 1804 and 1824) had many members fighting for both sides. Ross and Capeharts appeared to be neutral ...... Researching their minutes, the records indicate that many of the members would write to the church, (regardless of their allegiance) and the clerk was asked to respond to them by letter. In Capeharts, Deacons Calvin and his brother Frazier Hoggard fought for the Union while Deacon Joseph Nathan Thomas fought for the Confederacy. Approximately 40% of Bertie people were fighting for the Union. I can only imagine the trials of the church and its people during this time period.

Capeharts Church received a letter from (my great-great-grandfather) Joseph Nathan Thomas on Sept. 10, 1864. (He) served in the Confederate Army and was captured at Hatcher's Run VA on April 1, 1865 ...... He was confined at Point Lookout MD until June 21, 1865, after taking the Oath of Allegiance to the US. It took Joseph nearly a year to walk back to his Bertie County home. His body was literally covered with ticks when he arrived. He was extremely happy to see for the first time his son George, born Oct. 15, 1863. ~ Neil Baker.

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To the Poor Town News ~ I thoroughly enjoy reading stories and anecdotes on your site. I looked for a link that might place me on a notification list of updates, but I didn't see one. If there is such a thing, could you please add me? Although I'm not from Poor Town, I find your site quite interesting. You see, I'm not from around there, I'm from Millennium. ~ Sandra Clark Outlaw.

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To the Poor Town News ~ I was surfing the net ...... and came across your (Dick Newsome) story. I have a Joe DiMaggio signed ball that I believe was one of the home run balls he hit during his streak, most likely the one he hit against Dick Newsome. Here's the history of the ball as I know it. An uncle of mine was in the insurance business in the Boston/Hartford area. I spent summers in Connecticut as a child, and loved listening to the Red Sox on the radio. When I was about 8 or 9 he showed me the ball, and told me the story of how he gave the boy who caught it two quarters for it, and had Joltin' Joe sign it after the game ...... He was not a collector, and I remember he said he was going to give it back to the boy, but he was not outside the locker room when my uncle came out. He stuck it in a desk drawer and forgot about it, but kept it in a little more special place a few years later after DiMaggio's streak made the ball more special.

After my uncle died, his wife, knowing I was such a baseball fan, gave me the ball (he and his wife had no children). Years after, I asked family members if Uncle Don may have simply been boasting about the ball to an impressionable youngster. We all remember him as an extremely conservative and staid Connecticut Yankee, and any exaggeration would have been completely out of character. He died a very wealthy man, and the feeling among family was that if Uncle Don said it was a DiMaggio home run ball from the '41 streak, you could take it to the bank. Not that I ever would.

The signature is clearly authentic, and the ball is an official ball from that era, but the Hall of Fame couldn't tell me anything further to help determine how special the ball really is. There is no Hall of Fame or collector info on the Newsome HR ball ever being circulated, and I was hoping you might know someone in Mr. Newsome's family, and be able to determine at the very least if a ball exists that Mr. Newsome possessed or knew of that was purportedly the ball in question. Then at least I'd be able to narrow this one down. ~ Rick Selah, Texas.

If you know anyone with information about the Dick Newsome home-run ball,
you can click here to eMail Rick Selah

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THE HAUNTINGS

(Ron Lupton submitted this by email. An NC-reared reader
of The Poor Town News, he now resides
in Colorado Springs CO.)

Ettie Smith Felton of Roxobel NC, my mother's sister, was always "afraid of dead folks," but ironically enough seemed to deal with their spirits more than she wanted to. We Lupton kids would always ask her to tell us her first-person ghost stories, especially at night if there wasn't anything good on the radio, and she'd generally oblige us, to the point of having the short hairs on the backs of our necks bristle in fear.

Mom and Dad, devout Christians, had either never had such experiences or at least weren't about to share them with us. Dad, Ottis R. Lupton of Columbia NC, did mention an incident dealing with a neighbor of his in the little settlement of Burtonshell. The neighbor's name was Woodard, or something similar. His fields abutted the Lupton farm. One day the gentleman stopped plowing and called either my dad or one of the other men of the house over to the fence, and said, "I'm going to need your help. You know mother's been bedridden for several years now. Well, I just now watched her walk from the house to the barn. I'm sure she must be dead, up at the house, and I'll need you to help with gettin' her ready for burial."

Naturally, everybody walked over to his house with him to find that the old woman had, indeed, passed away quietly in her sleep within the hour. What he'd seen had been her ghost, fully dressed and solid-looking in the midday sun on a route she'd so often traversed while alive.

This was a mild event in comparison to many of the things which occurred to Ettie Felton. One of the most horrifying for her surely must have been the occurrence involving a broken window pane and a sick baby......

Aunt Ettie, or "Sister" as she was called, was married to her first husband at the time, probably in the early to mid 1920s. Her husband's name was Thomas Cain and they had a single child, a boy baby named Thomas Jr. They were renting a cottage at the time, apparently someplace near Kelford or Elizabeth City, so Mr. Cain could pursue his job nearby as a day laborer.

The cottage houses were overseen by a landlady who owned them and had had them built on her farm estate. Although Aunt Ettie didn't mention the woman's name, she described her as an enormous fat woman with a tiny head who was a real nitpicker. Obviously she kept a close eye and tight reins on her holdings, as things were to prove out.

Ettie was sweeping the bedroom floor of her little rental home one morning when the broom slipped and the handle broke a hole in one of the bedroom "window lights" (a window's glass pane). Of course the fat lady spotted the damage right away and began to needle Ettie and Thomas to get it repaired. The young couple put the chore on a back burner priority and went on about life.

Shortly after the incident, Ettie and her little family were called away on a trip of several days. While they were gone, the fat lady with the small head was hanging up clothes to dry outside, when one of her roosters flew up on a fencepost and "crowed in her face." The woman dropped dead.

Ettie and Thomas arrived in time to view the body, laid out in her ample parlor and dressed in a lovely gown. The woman was buried in her family's plot a few hundred yards away from the farmhouse.

During the trip, Thomas Jr., still an infant, had come down with whooping cough. There was no cure in those days, and the little one was in real trouble. Ettie kept close watch over him by day and night, trying feverishly to nurse him back to health.

Within one or two nights of their return, Ettie was awake in her bedroom with the baby, "bumping" him on her knee in a chair to help comfort him and keep him breathing. Mr. Cain, bone tired from a hard day, was asleep in their bed. In the small hours of the night, Ettie worked over the racked form of her little one, angry that she didn't even have a proper rocking chair.

At one point she happened to glance over at the broken window. Outside was the unmistakable face of the fat woman with the tiny head, staring at her through the hole in the window pane. In an instant, the woman came inside, ALL of her! Her enormous figure swooped through that broken hole, staring at Ettie the whole time. The apparition sat in another chair facing her in the cramped bedroom, scowling. The woman wore the burial gown Ettie had seen such a short time before. The spirit was absolutely silent, but glared balefully.

Naturally, perhaps, Ettie was paralyzed with fear. She stared at the thing for long seconds, unable to move or pull her gaze away from those awful eyes. At last, Ettie was able to reach toward Mr. Cain's sleeping form, but she couldn't find him at first. She averted her gaze from the horror long enough to find her husband and shake him violently into wakefulness. Of course, when she looked back toward the ghost's location, it had vanished.

I remember asking her how long it took them to move away, and I believe it was not long. Young Thomas Jr. recovered fully and lived a long and prosperous life in California. The only other thing I remember asking Aunt Ettie about the occurrence is whether or not they ever fixed that window pane.

"No," she said. "Never did."

I would have.

That same night.

And I'd have moved out that same night, too......

© 2002 Ron Lupton

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