This Week's Picture

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Wedding day

Rita Loeb and Joseph Muller
May 6, 1939

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This Week's Story

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The Recollections of Rita Loeb ~ I
(Rita Loeb Muller McGuigan)

By Joe Pearce, Collingswood, New Jersey

Mary Yeager, in a convent studying to be a nun, was called home in 1889 to help care for her father, Joseph Yeager, who was sick. Joseph belonged to a fraternal organization called the Foresters. One of the bylaws of that group was that members were to visit sick members and help the family. Bernhard Loeb was a fraternal brother and visited Joseph Yeager, and that is how Bernhard and Mary met. They were married June 18, 1890, and one of their 10 children was Rita Loeb, born in 1915.

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In 1922, Rita Loeb was seven. Her older sister, Eva Ashley, 24, came home from Iowa by train with her seven-month-old son, Frederick Jr., for a visit. Rita had no idea what a seven-month-old baby was like. Could she play with him or carry him around like a doll? She was very disappointed when she found she could do neither. Frederick wasn't the right size to play with or to carry around. They arrived in July and stayed until September, and Rita was quite upset when she came home from school one day to discover that Eva and Frederick had gone back to Sioux City.

After Eva returned to Sioux City, she made a dress for Rita and mailed it to her. It was the first real new dress Rita had ever had and it was very pretty. Most everything Rita had was hand-me-downs. The dress her sister made for her had binding at both the neck and the cuff, and there was beautiful ribbon that went through the binding. The ribbon was navy-blue on one side and red on the other side. Rita had never seen ribbon with different colors on each side. She was very proud to wear that dress to church, and did not want to wear a coat because it would hide the dress.

At the age of 14, Rita graduated first in her eighth-grade class at St. Boniface Grade School. She wanted to go to high school or commercial school, but her mother wouldn't allow her to stay in school because no one else in the family had ever gone past the eighth grade.

So Rita went to work in a local hosiery mill. At the end of the week she had to turn all her money over to her mother. Then she received 10 cents on a dollar for herself. This went on until she turned 21, and after that she paid room and board. On her 21st birthday, Rita's mother gave her a fur coat.

When Rita went to work the wages were very low. She worked from 7:30 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. The first full week she earned $7.40. She worked her way up to became a looper, where if she could get a full week of work with good material and a good machine, she could earn $35. This was the same wage as a Philadelphia policeman, but she didn't have too many full weeks to earn that kind of money.

Rita saved her money. When she got married in 1939 at the age of 24, she had over $1,000. After she married, she went to live at her in-laws' house. She had been planning to buy a home, but her father-in-law had a car accident and needed a new car. (He said he was unable to ride public transportation because he would get sick.) Rita's house money went to buy a car for her father-in-law.

Later, her father-in-law borrowed enough money to repay Rita, and she then was able to buy a house. They were in their new home three years when her husband became ill with Parkinson's disease. At that time there was little information on Parkinson's disease, and not knowing how long her husband would be able to work, they sold the house in the city and bought a 14-acre farm in the county where they raised chickens. Twice a year, on March 1 and June 1, they bought 100-day-old chicks for their stock. They also raised rabbits, squab, a few pigs, a goat and a milk cow. This was during World War II, and there was no problem in selling the chickens, rabbits, eggs and produce.

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Years earlier, during Prohibition, Bernhard Loeb had made wine and beer in his cellar. His daughter Dolores always wanted to dance on the grapes to make the wine, but Bernhard wouldn't let her do that because he didn't think her feet were clean enough.

Bernhard enjoyed his beer and wine, but Rita never remembered her father losing a day's work or acting strangely from his drinking.

He had a big beer belly. One Sunday, when Rita was a little girl, she found a large hat pin, and she was just about ready to let the beer out of her father's belly when her mother caught her.

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This Week's Verse

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The mill windows
opened
toward the golf course
that way
so the children
at work inside
could look out
and watch
the men
at play.
~
(1915.   Sarah N. Cleghorn)

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LITTLE HOUSE IN THE FIELD

© Copyright 1999 James David Pearce

Along about 1939, when Boweaver was turning 12, he was quite skinny but had developed a little height.

Even though he personally didn't feel it, his daddy, Cap'n Fred, was of the opinion that he had reached an age and size that required him to act a little less like a kid and a little more worthwhile. He constantly was reminding Boweaver that if he didn't show a little more effort and enterprise, he was going to grow up to be somebody who wouldn't be "worth the dynamite it would take to blow him up."

Money was hard to come by, and Cap'n Fred welcomed any help he could get. When Boweaver was not in school, Fred kept him in tow like a puppy on a string and was forever handing him something to do, like straightening and sorting bent nails or sawing split-ends off old boards.

One day, Fred learned that Irey Parker, the farmer who owned most of the land behind the cemetery, was thinking about putting up a four-room tenant house.

He made a deal with Irey to provide all the labor to build the house for $500. Irey was to pay for all the materials and hauling.

Tenant houses in the '30s, new or old, were never mansions. There was no electricity or running water around, and no expectations of built-in kitchens or heating systems. They consisted of four rooms, a few windows, a front door and a back door, a small front porch and a roof. They never had all-around foundations, only brick pillars placed at strategic positions to support the main joists.

It still took some work to build one, and when Irey asked Fred who would be his helper, he pointed to Boweaver.

Cap'n Fred sub-contracted the brick pillars and chimney, and handed Boweaver a hammer and a hand-saw.

The two of them put up that house from bottom to top in five weeks. It was a pretty job, and when they nailed in the last window and nailed down the last shingle and stood back to admire their handiwork Boweaver probably was the proudest boy in Hertford County, because except for the bricks, nobody had put a finger to that job except him and his daddy.

And $500! For five weeks work, that was unheard-of income for a man and a boy in Hertford County in 1939. That figured out to $100 a week! The family even celebrated Christmas that year.

But they weren't going to do that well again.

Boweaver's daddy was getting old. He tried hard, but the best of his building days were behind him, smothered in the dust of the Great Depression.

He talked one of his acquaintances into giving Boweaver a job as a printer's devil with the county newspaper. Boweaver accepted it, and spent his entire life at the newspaper trade, but his heart was never really in it.

Every time he returned to Ahoskie, he would glance in passing at the little old tenant house back in the middle of the field behind the cemetery, and be proud.

It's not there any more. There's a street there now, with several small homes and a big school yard.

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SNOWED IN AT COLERAIN

© 2003 Roselind (Ronney) Holloman Steele
Rowan County, North Carolina

In the deepest, darkest years of the Great Depression, we lived in Colerain (second through eighth grades) and Ahoskie. My best childhood memories are associated with Colerain, and I have come to realize how isolated and remote it was.

My grandfather was Rob Holloman of the dairy (out beyond Poor Town). The house on the Ahoskie side (W. W. Mitchell place) was where my grandmother and my daddy were born. I was born in Raleigh, and my parents moved back to Hertford County in 1929 and lived with my great-grandmother Vann (at the Mitchell place), and then moved in with my mother's mother on North Street in Ahoskie.

Daddy had taken mechanical engineering at NC State and could fix anything. In Ahoskie, he worked as a mechanic for mother's first cousin, George Newbern. Harlan White in Colerain offered him $10 more a week and that is when we moved to Colerain. Ann Beasley and I used to ride bicycles, and in the summer we would go to the river every day and stay in the water all day long.

There are a couple of stories about Colerain that I recall but I am a little uncertain about the dates. In 1939 (I think), all of the water was blown out of the river. It was likened to the parting of the Red Sea, and a holiday was declared and everybody flocked to the river. Gold doubloons, diamond rings, silver dollars and lots of hairpins were found in the exposed sand. It was one of the most exciting days of my life. I have a snapshot that daddy took of a Pontiac parked next to a sign saying "5 FEET DEEP."

In 1936 (I think), it snowed for a month. The river was partly frozen over, there were no paved roads and all of them were impassable, and food became scarce.

If one grew up in Colerain the last thing you needed was a map, but to appreciate the story you have to get the lay of the land. Colerain was a fair-sized cross-roads town. You went north to Harrellsville, east to the Chowan river, south to Windsor and west to Ahoskie.

At the time of the big freeze, those roads were not paved. The snows started in January and continued into February, and the snow lay on the ground for over a month.

The river froze over and the hill coming up from the river became impassable. About a mile outside town in all the other directions, there was either a grade, an incline or a curve that even the stoutest Model A's could not maneuver. The little town was marooned.

Many people had smokehouses and just about everybody had canned goods from their summer gardens, but the delivery trucks stopped running and staples such as flour, sugar, meal, coffee, canned milk, etc. ran out.

Store-bought light bread gave out early and stayed out. After a couple of weeks, an enterprising farmer hitched up a team of mules and pulled the bread-delivery truck through. When desperation seemed close, a pontoon boat was built and with a lot of difficulty it crossed the river to Edenton and returned with much-needed supplies.

School was closed. During intervals when the snow melted a little, school would resume, but there would be buses that couldn't make it to school because of the impassable roads. At first, children were delighted, but after a month we were ready for a change. It took well into June to make up the missed school days, and that included several Saturdays. (This was the time of the eight-month 11-grade schools.)

A new-to-Colerain winter sport arose: Bicycling on the frozen river. It was great sport on Sunday afternoons to go to the river and watch the young blades show off their icy bicycling skills. Some of them fell though the thinner ice farther from the shore, and I have some faded snapshots of this.

The following summer, road-building crews came to Colerain, and the paving began. My Mother took in some of them as boarders, and that was another big help in getting through the Depression.

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MR. MARVIN JOHNSON'S BUS

Farmer Marvin Bernard Johnson of Pendleton built a prosperous Northampton County business focusing mostly on farm equipment that was manufactured from ideas, inventions and modifications of his own, including crop sprayers and potato diggers. From 1914 until 1931 he was a partner in a cotton gin. Beginning in 1923 he went into radios, and in 1950 he added televisions.

According to information provided by his granddaughter, Susan Johnson of Winterhaven, Florida, it was in 1931 that he began the enterprises for which he probably is best remembered in Northampton and Hertford counties. That was when he started his trucking company and his bus business.

His buses transported Home Demonstration groups, 4-H Club boys and girls, and various rural school classes on many North Carolina and Virginia outings, including state fairs, during the '30s and early '40s.

Joe Dickerson, who grew up in George, and Becky Parker (Pearce), who grew up in Murfreesboro, remember Mr. Johnson's buses. Joe said the first trip he ever took out of Northampton County was when his senior class at Woodland school rode one of them to tour Richmond, Va. Becky rode one of them with her 4-H Club on a week-long outing to White Lake once, and also to Nags Head.

Mr. Johnson's early buses weren't built like school buses or other buses today, according to Becky. They were tractor-trailer affairs, with the driver in the tractor separated from the passengers in the trailer. And they didn't have the seating arrangements of buses today. There was a long bench that ran the length of the bus under the windows on each side, and another long bench with no back-rest that ran down the center.

She recalls vividly the long trip across the sound bridge between Point Harbor and the Outer Banks around 1940. She said the kids were terrified. The bridge was so narrow and the bus was so big and high that when they looked out the windows there didn't seem to be any bridge there. They just felt like they were riding on the water.

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FOUND IN AN OLD NEWSPAPER

The following news article was discovered by researcher/historian
Neil Baker in the Windsor Ledger for May 26, 1898

A TERRIBLE BATTLE

    Aulander, N.C., May 19. ~ Yesterday evening about 6 o'clock about a half-mile east of town, I was driving on my way from here to Windsor, N.C., and close by the roadside I heard several screams and a great yelling.

    Casting a glance in the direction of the noise, I saw a great gang of men in pursuit of a big bear, which seemed to be crippled in some way, and was defending his rights with all his power. I saw one man coming from the direction with a terrible wound on the left jaw from a lick by the bear's foot. Several more were severely wounded.

    Bruin fought for at least an hour or more and great excitement prevailed, but at last he was conquered and taken to town perfectly lifeless. He weighed 458 pounds gross. People here seem to be greatly excited over the affair and it is thought that in the near future when dark comes, everybody will close their door and take in such arms for protection as pitch forks, turtle giggs, broad axes, etc.

    There is no doubt the community will be bothered a good deal by such animals, the forest having most all been cut with the exception of one large pocosin near here known as Beaver Dam.

    Another sad accident recently occurred in or near Aulander, which is too old to mention, but I can say one thing:   Aulander has heretofore been a great place for tramps to lay around but from now on, I would advise all who intend going tramping and to make Aulander their headquarters, to change their notion as there is nothing that pleases a grizzly more than to take a meal off of a tramp's carcass.

Clipping courtesy of Lawrence Memorial Library, Windsor, NC

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This Week's Mailbox

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...... I read all your (Poor Town News) articles after my sister, Elizabeth H. Wiggins, introduced me to your site. I spent my first 19 years around Ahoskie and Aulander. I went to school in Ahoskie and graduated from Aulander High. My stepfather was Johnnie Terry (Johnnie's Superette) ...... It intrigues me that your (contributors) write in their letters of "long distances" that we know in modern times would be only one or two hours driving ...... At one time, my family lived approximately a half-mile from the radio station, and not much farther from the drive-in. I have an old photo of me in bib overalls, standing in front of a tobacco barn at that farm. ~ H. L. Hoggard.

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...... Happy new year to all at The Poor Town News. Thanks for the wonderful stories. I have so many wonderful memories about all these places. I visited my Aunt Brenda Leonhirth and Grandma and "PopPop" Leonhirth (George Stuckey) so many times growing up. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for these towns. I am on the edge of my seat for more stories. ~ Shelly Koehler (daughter of George Stacey Leonhirth), Orlando, Florida.

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...... As usual, it was really interesting to read The Poor Town News (No. 55). The story about Millennium was very interesting. I was only a little girl, but I remember Hurricane Hazel when the roof blew off the house across the street. I was sitting on my mom's bed and was terrified as it peeled off in front of my eyes. ~ Brenda Leonhirth LaDell, Virginia.

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...... I did a Google search on W. O. Saunders, not expecting to find anything. What a surprise. ("The Independent Man," from "Tales the Old Folks Told," at the Poor Town website.) My mother was his daughter, Mary Byrd Saunders. Thank you for keeping his name and talent alive. ~ Dave Barr, Petaluma, California.

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