Gwendolyn Pearce and Jim Pearce

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This Week's Stories

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SMOKING OUT THE MOSQUITOES

By James D. Pearce

In the hard-times days, the 1930s, we didn't have electricity in our neighborhood, and folks liked to enjoy the outdoors after the sun went down.

They would take an old chamber-pot, fill it with kerosene-soaked rags and light it. Then they'd take the chamber-pot top and snuff out the flames, leaving the rags to smolder and smoke.

The men, sitting around the smoke-pot on chairs, benches and the ground, would take out their pipes and cigars and light up, and discuss the major issues of the day.

They said the smoke kept the mosquitoes away.

DIPPIN' CHEWIN' AND SPITTIN'

Cigarettes were not the "smoke of choice" in tobacco-farm country in the 1930s, probably because you couldn't exhale enough smoke from a cigarette to bother a mosquito.

For their nocturnal smoke-pot bull sessions, the men preferred a heftier (and more economical) smoke, such as a pipe filled with Prince Albert from a can, or an occasional cigar, either of which combined with the smoldering chamber pot could make any mosquito take notice.

In between pipes and cigars, the men liked an occasional "cut" from a plug of Red Apple chewing tobacco, and the smoke-pot was handy when it came time to spit.

Practically no ladies of the time smoked, but many of them had occasion to spit because they were fans of Tube Rose snuff, dipped "straight" from the little can with a "swiggum stick."

The ladies, who didn't mix too much with the men in public, kept their own "spit cans," usually old Luzianne coffee cans.

CIGARETTES AND BASEBALL

Cigarettes for smoking pleasure weren't frowned on by doctors and surgeon generals in the 1930s.

In fact, most of them ~ backed up by famous athletes of the day ~ enthusiastically endorsed cigarettes as something that would soothe your throat, calm your nerves, improve performance and generally deliver almost unbelievable ecstasy.

We had a barn, one whole side of which was filled by a gigantic billboard showing Gabby Hartnett, the famed major league catcher, behind the plate in full gear.

He was holding his face protector in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The huge legend flowing from the pack of cigarettes above his head proclaimed that Gabby would "walk a mile for a Camel."

DICK NEWSOME AND JOE DIMAGGIO

Baseball was a big thing in country life in Northeastern North Carolina in the 1920s and 1930s.

For adolescent males down on the farm, there wasn't much else in the way of recreation. Some of them became good enough at the sport to play professionally, and several made it to the major leagues.

Probably the most noted baseball player from Ahoskie was Heber (Dick) Newsome.

Heber Dick, as he was called back home, pitched practically all the 1930s for Sacramento, Calif., in the Pacific Coast League. The Coast was one step below the "big leagues," but it was generally conceded that they had some of the best players in the country under the "farm system" operated by the majors at the time, when the young men had to sign themselves into a lifetime of servitude to one team.

Around 1941, Heber Dick, despite getting along in age for a baseball player after all those years in the minors, went "up" to the Boston Red Sox, where he posted a respectable record for several years.

His name really was put into the record books, however, by Joe DiMaggio.

When "Joltin' Joe" was slamming his way toward his 56 straight games of hitting safely, he had to pass an earlier record held by Wee Willie Keeler.

Keeler had hit safely in 44 consecutive games, and Joe had to hit safely in his 45th to become the new record-holder.

The pitcher that day for the Red Sox against the Yankees, who held Joe DiMaggio hitless until the ninth inning ~ and then let him get a hit in his last at-bat?

Right.   Heber Dick.   You could look it up.  Click DiMaggio's feat.

FAST PITCH

The season after Dick Newsome broke his leg skipping down the clubhouse steps in Boston, he asked around Ahoskie for a warm-up catcher to help him get ready for spring training.

All the big boys were off at war or working in the shipyards at the time, and he was directed to me ~ who happened to be the catcher for the high school team.

I tried hard, but let me tell you, even with a broken leg, he was a strong-enough pitcher to quickly make me realize that I was never going to be a professional catcher of baseballs.

He told me to hold the mitt "where I wanted the ball," and the instant I did, the ball was in it.

He could throw a baseball so fast that I truly could not see it from the time it left his hand until it hit my glove. He scared the heck out of me. I put on my face mask, shin guards and two chest protectors just to catch him in "warm-up."

It took weeks for my left hand to get over the bruises.

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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 2, 1941

Ahoskie's Dick Newsome, in his American League debut Friday, did his Ahoskie admirers proud as he delivered a five-hit performance for the Boston Red Sox for a 3-1 victory over Connie Mack's Athletics at Boston.

Newsome was a surprise starter. Manager Joe Cronin had planned to offer the veteran Lefty Grove for pitching duty against the A's, but a sudden cold snap caused Cronin to switch his plans and Newsome got the opportunity to show his wares ...... and he had plenty to offer.

Until the ninth inning, the 185-pound righthander from Ahoskie yielded only two hits, widely separated. In the ninth, however, he lost his effectiveness momentarily and three Athletics batsmen hit successive singles, filling the bases. Ahoskie breathed easier when Newsome mastered the situation again. The best Hal Wagner could do was a grounder which forced a man at second. Then Chubby Dean was set down on strikes, and Eddie Collins Jr. grounded out to end the game.

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While one Roanoke-Chowaner turned in a sparkling performance in his big league debut, Burgess Whitehead of Lewiston continued the sparkling play he started early in the spring for the New York Giants. In addition to batting a healthy .300 plus, Burgess has been showing fans of the National League the famed fielding prowess that has earned him the reputation of being one of the majors' leading infielders. Metropolitan sportswriters are confident this will be one of Whitehead's best years.

Clipping courtesy of Lawrence Memorial Library, Windsor, NC

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MEMORIES OF A BIG-LEAGUER

By Don Upchurch

I grew up playing baseball on Dick Newsome's vacant lot beside his house on West Street in Ahoskie. At the age of 12, I had no idea of his fame, and neither did most of my buddies.

In spite of an occasional broken window, he always encouraged the neighborhood boys to play ball there. He had a picnic table behind his house and would come out at times and watch us play. I guess he may have seen a little of himself in us. We never realized that had it been anyone else's lot, we surely would have been chased away.

We called the place "Dickie's Lot," and many times we would say to each other, "Let's go play baseball at Dickie's Lot." We never knew the origin of the name, except that we called it that. I guess it was named for his son Dickie.

One day we were playing and Mr. Newsome ~ as we called him ~ came out with a cardboard box full of shellacked baseballs.

We gathered at the picnic table as he showed us the signatures on the balls ~ some signed by entire teams, some signed by individuals. I still can see the names as he pointed them out ~ names like Babe Ruth ~ Joe DiMaggio ~ Willie Mays ~ and many more that I can't remember. I was familiar with those names and to say the least I was impressed.

I also remember when he died in an automobile wreck on Highway 11, between Murfreesboro and Ahoskie.

I remember being very upset that such a wonderful man would lose his life in such a manner ~ one of the first adult friends to me and my buddies.

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This Week's Verse

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Nelly Kelly loved baseball games,
knew all the players, knew all their names.
You could see her there every day,
she'd shout "hurray" when they'd play.
When the score was two to two,
Nelly Kelly knew just what to do,
and to cheer up the boys she knew,
she'd lead the crowd in this song:

Take me out to the ball game,
take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks,
I don't care if I never get back,
O, it's root, root, root for the home team,
if we don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
at the old ball game.

(1908. Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer)

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This Week's Mailbox

In the interests of everyone's privacy, only the letter-writer's name
and general location will be used here ~ unless the addition
of an URL or an address is approved by the writer

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...... Thanks for your latest (Poor Town News, in which you note) that with computers and spelling checkers, there are no more misspellings. How true!

My New Spell Checker

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
(Sauce unknown)
~ Kjell Petterson, North Carolina
Kjell's Web Site

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...... That was really a cute story about Elmo and our friend Lee. I now know why she comes up with some of the abbreviations she has used. ~ Norma Scott, Florida.

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...... Wow! You learn something every day! Thankf so much for The Poor Town Newf (No. 67) ...... and thanks also for the photo of you and Rebecca (in No. 66). Maybe some day we'll get to swap stories face to face. ~ Ron Lupton, Colorado.

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...... I am a granddaughter of W. O. Saunders. I just read what you wrote about him and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it ("The Independent Man," under "Tales the Old Folks Told"). I lived with him until that awful day he died. I was 10 years old at the time, but I still remember him so vividly. He was a wonderful, warm and loving grandfather whom I will never forget. Thank you for your remembrance of him. My uncle Keith (Saunders) passed away in 1994. I am still in close touch with his widow, who is 91 years old, in bad health and lives in a retirement home near me. ~ Byrd Barnes, Virginia.

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...... The lesson on the history of printing (No. 67) enlightened me considerably. Thank you so much! ~ Aggie Green, Michigan.

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