November 2007 
 
Interview  with Wallace Hart Beckner 
 
By Isabelle Chewning 
 
[Items enclosed in brackets [ ] are editorial notes inserted for clarification] 
[Tape 1, Side A] 
Isabelle Chewning:  My name is Isabelle Chewning.  Today is November the 2nd and I’m here in Mr. Beckner’s house to interview him for the Brownsburg Community Association.  Mr. Beckner, could you tell me your full name?   
Wallace Beckner:  My full name is Wallace Hart Beckner, nickname of Bunny.  And that’s what I get from the older people, and I get all sorts of nasty names from the young people!   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh]  How did you get your nickname Bunny, or is that a secret?   
Wallace Beckner:  It’s not a secret, but my mother made a bunny suit for me when I was about six years old [laugh] and I had to play bunny at her Easter egg hunt at church.  So I got the name Bunny from that time on.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So you’ve had that nickname a long time then.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  That’s carried me through school.  And at the present time, Freddie Whipple, because his dad always called me Bunny, still calls me Bunny.  And of course, that’s my nickname in the Ruritan Club, too.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Right.  When were you born, Mr. Beckner?   
Wallace Beckner:  July the 4th, 1926, so I’m a hot firecracker! [laugh]   
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, you’re a July the 4th baby!  
Wallace Beckner:  I don’t remember it, but they said it rained awfully hard that day, and my aunt came over to be with my mother when I was born.  With Dr. Campbell.  They couldn’t get home.  So Uncle Homer borrowed a horse and rode the horse back home because roads were washed out and so forth.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, my goodness.  And so where were you born?   
Wallace Beckner:  Born right here on the farm [269 Dry Hollow Road].  And I spent the rest of my 81 years here.  Except the time I was in Service and in college, I was here on the farm.  And I reckon when they dig my grave, they’ll have to bury me here somewhere!  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] You mentioned Dr. Campbell was the doctor who assisted in your delivery?   
Wallace Beckner:  Uh-huh.  That’s what they tell me.  I don’t remember.  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  Where was Dr. Campbell from?   
Wallace Beckner:  He was living in Brownsburg, I think, at that time.  I think he also lived over around the Fairfield area.  But of course, then, later we had a doctor in Brownsburg and the doctor’s house was built there, where Ag Patterson lives now [2744 Brownsburg Turnpike].   
Isabelle Chewning:  Right.   
Wallace Beckner:  And there were a number of doctors, Dr. Bailey and Dr. Williams, and then several others after that.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Do you remember them?  Dr. Bailey and Dr. Williams?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yes.  I was a teenager when they were here, and an adult when Dr. Williams was here.  But Dr. Kennan was the real, shall we say, the hero.  He lived in Raphine.  But he was a real hero during World War II because he was the only doctor available.  And most of the work of doctors then was in home calls.  And he would come--it might be a day late, but at one time he had to have a driver.  He would try to catch a nap between houses as he would go visit people in the community.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And would he come all the way out here to your farm?  
Wallace Beckner:  Yes.   
Isabelle Chewning:  That’s a good distance.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  He would come to this area which was relatively heavily [populated] for a rural area, there’s a lot of homes here.  Ours, the Runkles, the Conners, the Blackwells.  The Wades and Swishers were all here.  And there were more elderly people then than there were young people because most of the young people were either in industry working for manufacturing anything that the government needed for fighting World War II.  So there were a lot of elderly people, a lot who didn’t have cars that he would come and visit.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Do you consider this Bustleburg or Rockbridge Baths or Brownsburg or McElwee?  
Wallace Beckner:  [Laugh]  Well, we call it – this is Dry Hollow Road  
Isabelle Chewning:  Okay.  
Wallace Beckner:  And the reason why it’s called Dry Hollow is because the road is about three miles long and we live on the west end of it, I guess you’d say.  And there’s no running water from here to Brownsburg.  There are springs but they go back into the ground.  Like out at the Bares [Bluegrass Farm] they have a spring and a big pond or lake there.  But nothing runs away from that property.  Anyway, so that’s why we get the name Dry Hollow.   
Isabelle Chewning:  I see.  What were your parents’ names?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, of course, they were Beckners.  [Laugh]  Dad was William Walter.  His father was William.  And my mother was a Hart and she was Frances Hart Beckner.  She grew up down around the Cedar Grove area.  Both of them were from large families.  In my father’s family there were several that died in infancy.   
[Phone rings.  Tape stops momentarily] 
Isabelle Chewning:  Back on the tape.  We had a little phone call for a second.  But you were saying that a lot of the people in your father’s family died in infancy?   
Wallace Beckner:  There were two brothers that died in infancy.  And my father was crippled.  He had--they called it “white swelling” in those days, which was probably polio.  And it settled in his left leg and there was--he had really no knee.  It just grew as a child into solid form.  So he was a very active man and yet, as he said, he learned to use his handicap to his advantage.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How so?   
Wallace Beckner:  To make every lick count!   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] Was he a farmer?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, he was a farmer but in his earlier years--and I was going to talk about that later about [when we talk about] schools.  He taught school for a few years before he came back to the farm.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How many brothers and sisters did he have?   
Wallace Beckner:  He had--I think it was five brothers and there were two sisters.  And one of them was the mother of Mr. [William] Armentrout who taught school at Brownsburg in later years, from the Natural Bridge area.  
Isabelle Chewning:  Did all five of the brothers work on the farm?   
Wallace Beckner:  I want to say two of them died, and then the others left the area.  I’m sure they worked on the farm as children, as teenagers.  But we talk today about people, the young people, leaving the community, and yet we look back, and history repeats itself.  Very few families stayed intact during the late 1800s or the [early] 1900s and so forth.  They went elsewhere for work, too.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How many generations of your family have been on this farm?   
Wallace Beckner:  I don’t know about generations.  But the farm that we live on now was deeded to some great, great, great grandfather somewhere along the line in 1750.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, my goodness. 
Wallace Beckner:  This was part of the Borden Grant.  And there were 612 acres deeded to Robert Kirkpatrick.  See, my grandmother on my father’s side was a Kirkpatrick, so this farm that we live on has been in the Kirkpatrick, and now in the Beckner name, since 1750.  But we do not have the full 612 acres.  Some of it evidently was sold off along the way.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How many acres is your farm now?   
Wallace Beckner:  About 220.  So really, I wasn’t born in Brownsburg except as such, but I was close enough that I claimed it as being the closest village-- 
Isabelle Chewning:  Right.  How many brothers and sisters do you have?   
Wallace Beckner:  I have one brother and two sisters.  I’m the youngest.  I’m the caboose of the family.  {Laugh]  And I have a sister that is next to me, lives in Waynesboro.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And what’s her name?   
Wallace Beckner:  Her name is Mary Frances.  She taught school for a while.  And then her husband was a so-called disabled veteran from World War II, but he taught and worked in rehabilitation at Woodrow Wilson [Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville] for many, many years.  My brother is a retired doctor who practiced in Hagerstown, Maryland and later came to Lexington and practiced until he retired.  And he now lives in Winchester.  And my oldest sister lives--she taught school and lives in Waynesboro also.  And she did a lot of work in the summertime -- before she was married -- working and teaching Bible school in West Virginia, and in Highland County where she taught a mission school during the year.  And then in the summertime, she would teach Bible School in those areas.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What’s her name?   
Wallace Beckner:  Her name is Bernice.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And what’s your brother’s name?  
Wallace Beckner:  Bill, or William.  He’s William the third, not that we’re any kings or anything like that!  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] Sounds very royal.  And you mentioned some of your neighbors who lived out here in Dry Hollow.   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, the Runkles were the closest--their farm adjoined ours.  The Hutchesons.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Which Runkles were they?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, they were the parents of Mr. Russ Runkle, or grandparents of Bobby and John Runkle and so forth.  And they lived in the brick house about a half a mile east of here [32 Clever Lane].  And those houses must have been built around 1800 because they were similar: ours, and the Runkles, and the Watts place below here [324 McElwee Road].  And people who know more about structures than I 
do said that it was around 1800 because all of them had the rafters in the attics [that] are numbered with Roman numerals.   So that they fitted them on the ground, and hoisted them up, and put them in place.  And that’s how they could keep them marked and put in the proper place because everything was hewn by hand, and what would fit one place, the next one might not fit.  So, as I said the Runkles and then there were Wades and Swishers.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Which Wades?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, Mr. Bud Wade, he and his wife lived adjoining us for many years [near 107 Dry Hollow Road].  And that is, of course, Janis Ayres’ mother and father.  And of course, he ran the barber shop in Brownsburg for many years.  And I’ve gotten many a haircut there.  I always liked the little plaque that he had up on the wall.  It was a picture of two old tramps sitting on a log, and each of them had a stick with a can tied on the end of it heating their food.  And one said to the other one “If you’re so damn smart, why ain’t you rich?”  [Laugh] So I always remembered that and I can still envision it in my mind.  I wonder if it’s still out there somewhere.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was it at his house, or at the barber shop?   
Wallace Beckner:  It was at the barber shop where Ms. [Catharine] Gilliam owns now [2707 Brownsburg Turnpike].   
Isabelle Chewning:  Right.  And he at one time had a barber shop in the back of Supinger’s store; right [the current location of Old South Antiques]?   
Wallace Beckner:  Right.  That was in the earlier days when Saturday night was the biggest day because all the farmers and people around would come to Brownsburg to get a few groceries, or their coffee and sugar and so forth like that, and to share news and spread news, and a little bit of gossip.  And the barber shop was always full of men, some of them had gotten haircuts, some didn’t need it, and some were waiting for haircuts.  And I could tell you a real good story on Fred Whipple.  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, please do.   
Wallace Beckner:  Fred was there one Saturday night and it was pretty well filled.  And Fred had gotten thirsty and he said--walked up to Bud and whispered “Do you have something to drink?”  And Bud said, “No.”  And a little bit later Fred came back and he said, “Bud, I see a bottle there back of your radio.”  That was the old Philco, kind of oval shaped one that works sometimes.  And he said, “I see it back of there.”  And Bud said “Okay, put it under your coat and go out there on the back porch.”  So he did.  When Fred 
came back in, he was kind of white and he said “Bud, that wasn’t whiskey, that was hair tonic!”  [Laugh] Fitch’s Hair Tonic which is greasy.  [Laugh] That might be taken from the record.   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] That’s a good story.   
Wallace Beckner:  And another one was Mr. Mote McClung.  He and his two sisters--none of them were married--lived down where Jen Heffelfinger bought and restored [Level Loop at 567 Hays Creek Road] and so forth.  He would come in about once a month to get a shave.  And one day someone said to Bud, “You know why he comes once a month?  He wants to get his razor sharpened.”  Because Bud would always whet it on his razor strap to get it good and sharp before he shaved you.  And he said, “That’s the only reason why he comes.  He can’t sharpen his razor.”  So the next time he came in, Bud lathered him up but he didn’t whet his straight razor at all.  He just lathered him up.  And when he came down, Mote slid down in the chair about six inches.  [Laugh]  And the next time he [Bud] went on the other side, he [Mote] went down a little bit lower.  And that was the last time Mote ever came in to get a shave.  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] So you would bring your own razor when you came?   
Wallace Beckner:  Oh, yeah.  Well, normally you didn’t but Mote would say, “Use my razor because razors spread germs.”   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] How do you spell Mote?  M-o-t-e?   
Wallace Beckner:  I think so.  That was a nickname.  And they were a nice family.  He was a graduate of college which was unusual in those days.  But Mr. Clint Troxell who later was kind of the community tramp, at one time did farming and he plowed their garden for them one spring.  And when they got through, they asked him how much they owed.  And he said $3.  They said, “That’s too much.”  So each one of them gave him $2 each!   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] So he got $6 instead of $3!   
Wallace Beckner:  Six instead of three.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was one of the sisters Sally Reid McClung?  I’ve heard that name before.   
Wallace Beckner:  Probably so.  I’m not sure.  As I said, my dad told me that, and it had to be factual because Dad was a man of few words and it was always well thought before he ever expressed anything.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How about school, Mr. Beckner, where and when did you start school?   
Wallace Beckner:  I started school when I was six years old.  And in those days you weren’t supposed to start until you were seven.  Of course, you didn’t have kindergarten.  You started in the first grade.  Being the youngest of the family, I wanted to go to school.  I didn’t know what it was all about then, so I said, “I want to go to school.”  So I got permission.  Dad and Mother got permission, and Mr. and Mrs. Bob Stuart got permission for their son, Boyd, and I, to start school early.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Who would you get permission from?   
Wallace Beckner:  My parents went to Mr. Irby who was the Superintendent of the Schools.  And for many, many years he was Superintendent.  So he gave permission.  And so, really, I ended up being the youngest in my class all the way through school which really wasn’t an advantage because I always felt like I wasn’t big enough or capable enough to do what the other class members did.  But I’ll have to say this, that I survived it!  And when we went to Brownsburg School for the 3rd grade, I think it was 3rd grade, I met a friend, and he has always been my friend, Mc Sterrett.  And we kind of buddied up together and now he will be 82 in [November] and I’m 81 now.  And we’ve always been friends, very close friends.  When he had a bout with cancer, my son and I drove him some to treatments.  And then when it was my turn to go for treatments to the burn center, he drove me back and forth for treatments.   
Isabelle Chewning:  That’s great that you’ve been friends all this time.   
Wallace Beckner:  We call each other--I call him the old man.  And then when I catch up with him in July, he calls me the old man.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Well, where did you go to school before you went to Brownsburg?   
Wallace Beckner:  Went to a little two room school, Oak Hill, which is now on McElwee Road.  And it was closed after we went two years there, I think.  It was a community school, but consolidation.  And it sat empty until about 1938.  And at that time it was moved and restructured and put up at the back of the Brownsburg schools up on the hill.  And that was [the] Vocational Agriculture and Shop school.  This was the introduction of Agriculture and Shop into the school systems of Rockbridge County.  And I have a picture laying right there of the school when it was down here at Oak Hill below McElwee Chapel.  Right there in the turn of the road.  The foundation -- concrete foundation is still there.  You can see it.  But it was used as a community center.  They used to have cake walks and things like that to raise money for the school and for the chapel and so forth there.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So was it associated with the chapel?   
Wallace Beckner:  No.  In fact, the chapel used to have services there before McElwee was built.  McElwee celebrated its 100th year in 2004.  So that school building was around for a good many years before that.  And it must have been around about 1938 that it was moved to Brownsburg.  And what was one classroom became a shop and the other was still used as a classroom.  [Shows photo.] 
Isabelle Chewning:  That’s a pretty building.   
Wallace Beckner:  And it’s still up there but they put brick around it <inaudible>.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, really?   
Wallace Beckner:  And in later years, they used it as a band place.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Do you remember who your teacher was at Oak Hill?   
Wallace Beckner:  Bless her heart.  [Laugh] Miss Elizabeth Ward.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, really?  She was my teacher too.   
Wallace Beckner:  She taught in Highland County three or four years and then she came to Oak Hill and she taught at Oak Hill till it was closed.  And then she taught at Brownsburg until she retired.  She taught me, and she taught both of my sons in the first grade.  She was a good teacher, but she was very strict.  And in the first grade, you only went a half a day.  You walked home at lunch time.  And being younger, I was slower and she would bend my hand back and swat it with the ruler.   She tried to make me hurry up,  and I would just cry, and get that much slower.  [Laugh]   So that meant, when I did get out at lunch time, I’d have to run to catch up with the others to get home at the same time.  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  How many grades were at Oak Hill?   
Wallace Beckner:  I think at one time there were seven grades.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And then after they finished 7th grade, did they go to Brownsburg to high school?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  Of course, you had combination grades.  In other words, I think we had first, second, and third in the room where I was.  And one teacher taught all those.  There were two teachers at Oak Hill.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So you had Ms. Ward for a lot of years then.   
Wallace Beckner:  I had her for two years.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Two years?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you get any faster after-- 
Wallace Beckner:  I got less ruler <inaudible>.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was she still as strict when Wally and Jimmy [Mr. Beckner’s two sons] had her in the first grade?   
Wallace Beckner:  As strict as the law would allow.  [Laugh]  But she was a good teacher.  It was just that maybe she taught us more discipline than we would have had otherwise.  And Miss Williams taught me, I guess, when I went to Brownsburg.  I think she taught me in the 3rd grade.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And who was she?   
Wallace Beckner:  She was related to the Dices that lived in Brownsburg.  And she lived with Mrs. Watts down the road here [324 McElwee Road].  She was a sister-in-law I think to her.  She was a good teacher, as I said, but as long as she taught probably--she taught the Shorter Catechism in the classroom, which would be illegal in today’s world.  But that was one of her requirements.  You learned the Shorter Catechism in that class.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did Miss Ward live out here somewhere or did she live in Brownsburg when she taught out here?   
Wallace Beckner:  I think she lived in Brownsburg.  I’m not sure.  She may have lived around Bustleburg but it seems to me like she lived with her mother in Brownsburg.  That’s the log house across from Richard [Kauffman].   
Isabelle Chewning:  Right.  Where Sterrett Road dumps into [Route] 252 [2763 Brownsburg Turnpike].   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  I think that’s where she lived.  Of course, right below there was the community cannery.   
Isabelle Chewning:  You’re the first person who’s said that.  I thought I had a vague recollection of that cannery.   
Wallace Beckner:  I would say it was probably in the late ‘30s.  I read not long ago where the government established canneries around in the country, and Brownsburg was designated as an area for them.  And you could take your vegetables there, and they had cappers that would seal the cans for you.  You could buy the cans there.  And that was when people used to can maybe a hundred quarts of tomatoes and so many of beans and vegetables and so forth.  Then in the fall of the year, they would can meat, sausage and tenderloin and things like that.  I think it was maybe about three cents a can.  That would pay for the can and for the work and the fuel for cooking them after they were canned.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was it seasonal?  Did it just open certain times of the year?  Summer and fall?  
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  Summer and fall.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And were there local people who worked there?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yes, there were.  And I don’t remember the details.  I remember being there with my parents.  I think there were one or two people who worked there seasonal, but most of the time you went there and you did the work.  It’s just that they assisted you, or would get the cans and look after the equipment and so forth.  They might advise somebody new how to can, or how to season or something like that.  But it was mostly a community aid to help you do your own thing.   
Isabelle Chewning:  When you started to school at Brownsburg, did you ride a bus?   
Wallace Beckner:  Rode a bus to Brownsburg.  But when we went to Oak Hill, we walked, which was about a mile and a half.  But there were, I’d say, five or six of us from right here.  Myself and Henry Swisher, which is John Swisher’s brother; and two of the Wade boys; and a Wade girl; and Betty Jean Mohler.  We would walk down to Oak Hill until we got smart, and that’s when Harry Mohler took over as mail carrier for this area.  And he had--it was like a model A but it was a Chevrolet model car.  And we would learn to time ourselves to be at the forks down here about the time he would go to start the mail route.  And he’d always stop, and we would climb on, hanging on about three on each running board outside, maybe one inside if there was room, and sometimes hold onto the spare tire at the back end.  But he’d always take us for a ride down there.  He got a new job and a new wife.  That was the talk of the community.  He got that mail route and got married and he married Nell Wade who is Nell Mohler.  She’s in 
a nursing home now, but she was a sister to John Wade, Mr. Ott Wade, Mr. Kite Wade and all of those.  But he replaced this mail carrier, Mr. Fulwider, who drove a horse and a buggy.  So we progressed during his time from a horse and buggy to an automobile.   
Isabelle Chewning:  That’s real progression.   
Wallace Beckner:  That’s real progression.   
Isabelle Chewning:  But you caught a ride going down the hill.  Is it more uphill coming back from school?   
Wallace Beckner:  Oh, yeah.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Too bad.  [Laugh] 
Wallace Beckner:  We didn’t have to get home on time.  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  I see.   
Wallace Beckner:  Bit we had to get at school on time.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Well, what was the school bus like when you rode into Brownsburg?  
Wallace Beckner:   Let’s say it was a store bought type of bus.  [Laugh] I think they were Chevrolets and they were more like a box.  And there was no heat on them.  But it beat walking.  The first bus that I remember [was driven by] Mr. Frank Patterson, that was Ed’s father, Bruce’s grandfather.  And it looked like you’d made almost like a house -- except it didn’t have a chimney -- and put it on the back of the truck with wheels.  And I remember the siding looked like it was tongue and groove like so much was made out of wood in those days.  You didn’t have a lot of metal.  And it was very crude.  You just had fastened benches inside to sit on but no individual seats or anything.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did it have windows?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  It had a few windows but not full like now.  I didn’t ride on that as such, but I remember seeing it in Brownsburg when it was being used.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So there’s an upgraded school bus-- 
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  When I started.  But the bus came down the road and picked--no.  I’m wrong.  It didn’t come down the road to start out with.  It came around by Bustleburg and came up, and we met it down at the intersection down here which is a half a mile.  And then it went on up Dutch Hollow and picked up and circled around back into Brownsburg.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So you’d ride the bus for quite a while then.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  It was about 45 minutes, in good weather.  In bad weather, it could be longer because you might have to stop and put chains on.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did it break down a lot?   
Wallace Beckner:  No.  I think back in those days buses were owned by individuals, not by the county.  And they took pride in their buses, and they liked to keep them clean and nice inside.  The bus that we rode, Mr. Bud Wade and his brother, Mr. Kite Wade, owned it together, and they took turns driving it.  And it was always cleaned out in the mornings when you got on, and they took pride in it.  And then in the summer time, lots of times they would use the bus to maybe haul children to community Bible Schools at New Providence, Bethesda or Grandview which is out on the road to Lexington, different places like that.  And sometimes other groups, like young people, would use them.  Because back in those days, you would have a young people’s group with 30 or 40 people, and they would go places like Cave Mountain Lake and Crabtree Falls and places like that, and they would get a bus.  Sometimes they would just ride open trucks, cattle trucks we called them, to go to places like that.  Or if it was too many, maybe even go to a church rally on a truck.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did your family go to Bethesda [Presbyterian Church in Rockbridge Baths]?   
Wallace Beckner:  We’ve been at Bethesda.  I know my grandfather was an elder there because his name is on the memorial windows.  And my father.  And then I’ve been a member since 1939.  So it’s been the, shall we say, the family church.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you sometimes go to McElwee [Chapel]?   
Wallace Beckner:  My mother and father taught Sunday School and that was there at McElwee, but they went to Bethesda in the morning.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Sunday school was in the afternoon?   
Wallace Beckner:  The McElwee service was in the afternoon, at that time.  But the Bethesda bell on Sunday -- and though it’s five miles away, most of the time we could hear it here.  And Mr. Ed Carr, who was the caretaker at the church, a black gentleman, he would ring the bell at 7:00 o’clock, which was to remind everybody it’s Sunday. [Laugh] And at 9:00 o’clock he rang the bell again, which was saying “You better be on the road because you’re driving your horse and buggy.” [Laugh]  And then of course, services started at 10.  I mean, Sunday school at 10 and services at 11.  And they rang the bell at 10:00 o’clock, and at 11, and then when it was over they rang the bell.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Your bell got a good workout on Sunday! 
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah, it got a workout.  And [it was] real good clear bell.  The casting must have been good because it carries a long ways.  So Bethesda has been our home church, although I’ve been reading a lot of the bulletins that Dr. Ralston put out when he was pastor at Bethesda and were saved.  And this was back from about 1930 up to ’41, something like that.  And Bethesda, particularly young people, and New Providence, did so much together.  They planned things together and worked together.  We’re talking about probably a combination of 30 to 50 young people doing that, that were in the community at the time.   
Isabelle Chewning:  That must have been a lot of fun with a group that big.   
Wallace Beckner:  It was different from it is now.  And what is interesting to read is to find that all of their festivities and so forth, they always had a worship service with it.  Somewhere in it, in their getting together, they had a time for worship.  And they would go to a place right below the church there.  The Davises had a farm there [address?] and it was the spring down over the hill, not too far from the river.  There was flat area down there, and they used to go down there and have picnics a lot.  And later they had a weenie roast.  But when they first started having them, they didn’t have weenies in those days!  [Laugh]  That was a later addition to the grocery line!  But during that period of time, one bulletin stated, “Will the women bring their money for eggs that the chickens laid on Sundays during the month of April.  This is to go to pay for your literature this year.”   
Isabelle Chewning:  How interesting.   
Wallace Beckner:  So life was--I guess you’d say we were all poor.  Everybody was poor.  This was during the Depression.  Everybody was poor, but we didn’t know it.   
Isabelle Chewning:  A lot of people have said that, that out in a rural area, it just wasn’t the same because you had food to eat, and people worked on the farms and so they had work.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  And they patched their clothes and repaired their shoes, which brings up another point.  In Brownsburg, one of the first things that I remember remembering, if that makes sense, was Mr. [Harvey] Matheney had a--I don’t know what you would call it.  It looked like a wagon but it was like a little house on it.  And he lived there.  Lived by himself.  And he repaired shoes.  And it was parked there kind of across from where that little garage is going up Bob Driver’s driveway [22 Hays Creek Road].  And of course, there used to be a road that went up that way to the school.  It kind of went up and circled around.   Now, that was before the stucco building was built.  And it was before the brick building that was torn down, because the school that Mc and I went to was a two story long school building up where the playground is now, the tennis courts and so forth.  And the upstairs was a big auditorium.  And that was used for community for meetings and court hearings and everything.  In fact, I think that was where some of the shooting took place that Mrs. Jen Heffelfinger had recorded and so forth in her history.  Of course, that part of it was ahead of -- before my time.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So the stucco building, did you ever go to class in the stucco building?   
Wallace Beckner:  Took Home Economics in there.  [Laugh]  The Agriculture teacher, Mr. Layman, and Miss Watson, who was the Home Economics teacher, they got together and they would let the girls take shop for a month, and we boys would take Home Economics for a month.  And it was interesting, I’ll tell you that.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was it?  [Laugh] Did you have to do it?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, I don’t know whether we had to or not but everybody did it.  Back in those days, if you were told to do something, you didn’t protest.  You went ahead, and lots of times made a fun thing out of it, you know.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So did you learn to cook?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, it was more than that.  We had to learn how to set a table proper, and our manners were corrected some, shall we say.  [Laugh]  Don’t eat with your fingers and a few things like that!  But it was interesting, and it gave the girls a chance how to--of course, a lot of them probably knew how to use a hammer and saw without hurting themselves.  Making little things and-- 
Isabelle Chewning:  That’s really progressive.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  It was a good idea and it worked great.  I enjoyed it.  In fact, I made a better grade in that than I did in Agriculture.  [Laugh]   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] So did you go to school in the two story brick building, the modern [1938] building that’s been-- 
Wallace Beckner:  Yes.  We went there until ’39, I think it was.  That was when the new brick building was built down facing the road.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And the stucco building, when was the stucco building--was it always there?   
Wallace Beckner:  It was there, but it was built between the time of the old brick building and the new brick building.  I don’t remember.  It was probably there when I went to Brownsburg.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Were they attached or were they all separate buildings?   
Wallace Beckner:  No.  They were separate buildings, all three of them.  All separate.  That may have been used for the high school.  The stucco building may have been used for that, for further education.  And Ms. Jen [Heffelfinger] speaks in her recollection of the Brownsburg Academy.  I don’t know whether that was the same building that I went to or not.  I don’t know the timing of that.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So there have been at least four buildings there then.   
Wallace Beckner:  Uh-huh.  Now, my father graduated from Brownsburg Academy.  He graduated—as I said, he was crippled.  He taught school for a few years.  And he started out teaching up at Dutch Hollow.  And I don’t know how many years he taught there, but he rode horse back every morning.  And he got paid $19 a month for teaching.  Now, he also taught up at Little River, which is just outside of Goshen.  And I heard him say that the kids there used to --  would turn a bench upside down and let him ride that as a sled because his leg was stiff.  So they’d let him slide down the hill inside of the bench turned up.  The others would use homemade sleds but they fixed that up for him.   
Isabelle Chewning:  I wonder if it was hard for him to ride a horse with his leg like that.   
Wallace Beckner:  The stirrup length had to be so much longer and it stuck out.  But let’s say he was a man who--he had to swing that leg out as he walked, but he cut corn by hand, he did everything.  He plowed and so forth.  He did everything that anyone else did.  It’s just that--well, the Runkle boys told me several times how they thought “I’d like to work for that old man because he moves slow.”  And maybe he’d say “Well, will you boys help me cut corn?”  And they’d take off and they were ahead.  And before long, he was ahead because he never stopped.  And he told me, he said “It was an advantage because I learned to make every lick count.”  So he never wasted energy.  He never wasted breath talking.  He never 
said anything--if there were three people in a room, he would never open his mouth.  If there were two people, you and somebody else, he’d carry on a great conversation.  But he was very quiet and we used to laugh and say that, at church, if he would stand up, if we were having a meeting or something, and if he stood up, you could hear a hush go over the congregation for two reasons.  One is that they knew he had thought through it, and what he was saying was worth listening to.  And the other one was he talked so low, you had to be quiet to hear him.  [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] How about some of your teachers at Brownsburg, did any of those stick out in your mind?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, of course, I went through during Osie Trimmer’s time.  She was a history maker.  She taught English.  She was principal.  She coached basketball, girls and boys’ basketball teams.  In fact, she did all the coaching in her earlier years.  And in later years, they hired a man and he coached baseball.  We had a football team about two years, and then that’s when World War II broke out.  So all sports were eliminated during the war and physical therapy – or P.E. took the place of that.  We used to have to do exercises, and run and jog and so forth.  We had contests in distance, running and so forth like that.  But no sports.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Why was that?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, first of all, there couldn’t be any competition because you couldn’t travel-- 
Isabelle Chewning:  I see.  Because there was no gas.   
Wallace Beckner:  Gas was rationed.  In fact, when Mc [Sterrett] and I graduated, of course gas was rationed.  That was in 1943.  And if you had a three gallon a month card, you could use it to go to the store and you could go to church.  If necessary, you’d go to the doctor.  But no pleasure driving.  So we had to have our baccalaureate service at New Providence on a Sunday night so people could come.  Because that [was] coming to church. 
Isabelle Chewning:  Coming to church .  Oh, I see.   
Wallace Beckner:  So we reneged on that.  And during that time, there was a lot of switching and so forth with stuff that was rationed.  You’d get a gallon a month for your washing machine if you had a gas motor on your washing machine.  And lots of people scrubbed their clothes [by hand] and burned that gallon of gas to go somewhere.  [Laugh]  We didn’t drink coffee in our home, never learned to.  Our parents didn’t drink coffee.  And we acquired a lot of friends who wanted coffee rations.  They would call mother up and say, “Mrs. Beckner, do you happen to have a coffee ration?  We’ve got company coming.”  So if we had 
and somebody else hadn’t gotten them, we would share them.  And likewise, they would share things, too.  The old community spirit that’s gone now, I’m afraid.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So did you have Miss Trimmer for any of the classes?   
Wallace Beckner:  I had her for English.  She was a real good teacher, but she was a disciplinarian.  And when we got into high school, somehow if you went out somewhere the night before, she knew it the next morning.  And you might get called to the office for your behavior the night before.  I don’t know how she learned this, but she knew what went on.  And she ruled with an iron hand.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you ever get called to the office?   
Wallace Beckner:  Not individually; [laugh] as a group sometimes.  But as I said, I was the youngest of the family.  My oldest sister [Bernice] was a good student but she had to work for it.  Bill came along and he was valedictorian of his class.  He could kind of loaf through and still get straight As.  Mary Frances was the same way.  Then I came along and Ms. Trimmer wanted me—or thought I ought to follow their steps.  And I rebelled.  I wanted to have fun.  [Laugh]  And I just wasn’t interested in school as much.  I liked Agriculture and some classes.  And Ms. Trimmer came to see Mother one time and she said “I know Wallace can do it.”  Of course, she was thinking what my brother and sisters had done.  And he wanted me to be the same way.  And everybody’s different.  And she said, “You know, I get on him, and he’ll just look up at me and smile a little bit, and that’s the end of it.”   So my senior year I didn’t have any classes in the afternoon so Dad said “Well, son, if you don’t have classes, why can’t you come home and help me shuck corn?”  Well, I said, “I’m sure Ms. Trimmer will let me do it but you’ll have to write her a note.”  So he did.  So I’d walk home at lunch. 
Isabelle Chewning:  That’s a long walk.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  But it was better than school.  And shuck corn or hauling corn, and so forth.  Along in November, Ms. Trimmer said “Don’t you think y’all are through shucking corn by now?”   [Laugh] Of course, we’d been done a month, but I was still walking home to get out of the school.  [Laugh]  But she kept up with everything.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So then did you stay in the afternoons after that?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What did she have you do if you didn’t have classes?   
Wallace Beckner:  She told me to study, and sometimes she would give me chores to do if I wasn’t studying.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Who taught you Agriculture?   
Wallace Beckner:  Mr. Layman.  He was our first Agriculture teacher and he was-- 
[End of Tape 1, Side A] 
Isabelle Chewning:  I flipped the tape over and we were talking about Mr. Layman.  He was your first Agriculture teacher.   
Wallace Beckner:  He was the first Agriculture teacher.  Then Mr. Zigler followed, and then Mr. [Lynn] Woody.  And all three of them were men who were interested in developing the total person.  And if they saw a particular talent or gift that a person had, they tried to enrich that, and encourage the young people to follow up with those traits or talents that they had.  And in shop, we were taught metal working, woodworking.  We had a blacksmith shop and we learned to make some tools, chisels, punches and so forth.  And we learned how to temper them.  With chisels, you would temper them by putting them in oil.  Otherwise, you would cool them with water.  But the temper would come from getting it a certain color and then putting it in oil and that would temper the metal.  We did welding of metals together with heat where you would get them white hot and put a flux between them and overlap them and beat them together -- the two pieces of iron --and that would weld them together.  And this was used whether it be on tools, or wagon wheels where you had to shrink them so they would fit and stay tight.  This was the way of shrinking them or cutting them and then re-welding them together and so forth.  These are pretty much lost arts but they were ways of surviving back in those days.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you have Animal Science or Animal Husbandry or any of those kinds of classes?   
Wallace Beckner:  We had Animal Science, which was history.  There was some -- nothing extensive like today where you have plant nutrients, you have chemical application and animal nutrients, and science and so forth.  Back then, it was mostly very limited.  Kudzu, which has now taken the country and become an obsession, was so-called discovered back in those days.  And I remember talking about here was something that could be planted on the old red clay eroded fields of North Carolina where they’d raised tobacco for centuries and centuries and wore the ground out.  Kudzu grow on it and revitalize it.  And they said that it could be cut and used for hay.  We’ve seen it now almost taking over the roadways. [Laugh]  If you cut it for hay, you’d have to climb trees to get it.  But I remember two things from that, shall we say, about the plants.   One was, we had not planted alfalfa, and we didn’t know what alfalfa was in this part of the country.  We’d heard of it but nobody had ever planted it.  But reading it in the book, there was a picture of Mississippi in the black Delta ground there.  They had dug down and an alfalfa root was 24 feet 
deep in that.  And we thought that was unbelievable because in this type of country, once they hit that red clay hard packed ground, it probably wouldn’t go quite that deep.  And the other one was, it showed a mule in Australia that had a foal.   And it’s always been proclaimed that the cross between jackass and a horse, it produced a mule, but the mule was barren.  But this was a picture of one that has happened in Australia.  And I think it’s happened several times since.  But those are two of the --that’s how much I learned!   A little bit more than that, but well – [Laugh] 
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] You remember a lot.  How about FFA [Future Farmers of America]?  Were you a member of the FFA?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yes.  I think during the four years of Agriculture I served--I don’t think I was ever president, but I served in all the other offices, I think.  And that was a real asset, and it still is today, in that it gives people training to speak, to think, and so forth.  Recently I was talking with—well, last year talking with Dr. Strecker, and he was saying that [in] our agriculture program here in the county --which is more shop than anything else -- the FFA is not active.  And he was saying this is good training for young people for later in leadership, learning to be able to speak, to learn, and to be better qualified.  I know you can go to college and get classes, or maybe in high school, and get many trainings but that is a good program.  And I watch it on television on the farm channel when they have their conventions.  It goes on about three or four days, or up to a week.  I enjoy every bit of it, seeing these young people taking leadership and being able to handle it, and looking at the other areas that this enhances.  Well, they enhance each other;  of learning responsibility, of learning jobs, of understanding politics, understanding world situations.  It’s just a good step in broadening a young person’s life.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What sort of activities did you do with the FFA?  Did you have cattle judging and those sorts of things?   
Wallace Beckner:  We had cattle judging and we used to go to Mr. Frank Patterson’s--where Bernice Nye lives now.  He raised pure-bred Herefords.  He had one cow that was special.  She had twin calves every year.  And he used to take them to the County Fair and sometimes to the State Fair and show them.  But Mr. Layman would take us down there, and Mr. Patterson would bring out maybe six or eight cows and they all looked the same at first, and we’d have to judge them and so forth.  Then after we’d made our mistakes, Mr. Layman and Mr. Patterson would go by and point out the good points and the bad points of each one of them so that we could see how to make up our minds and so forth.  The night that Mc [Sterrett] and I graduated [in 1943] --I said we had a baccalaureate service out at New Providence Church—in the middle of the program of the service, it came I would say the worst electrical thunderstorm that we’ve ever experienced in this area.  I think there were 21 horses that the paper announced were killed by lightning that night.  And Mr. Frank Patterson that I was talking about lost his prize bull and prize cow.  They were in a lot together at the front that night.  And the speaker was Mr. Harness who was our minister at Bethesda.  And when the lights went out, he just kept on until it was over with.  And everybody was amazed at it, but very few people realized that his vision was so poor that when he read the scripture, 
he always carried his own Bible because it was really large print.  So he never read a sermon.  He preached a sermon from memory.  So that night he just went on as if the lights were still going on, and everybody marveled that he could do this.  I was younger than most in my class, Mc and I.  He was about six months older than I was.  And I never dated anybody in my class in high school but there was a girl that was a sophomore that I liked a lot, and she wouldn’t go with me very much but she said she would let me take her home from commencement exercises.  I never did find her that night in the dark.  [Laugh]  So I got cheated out of that one.   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh]  Too bad.  What did you do after you graduated?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, see, I was 16 when I graduated and I worked here on the farm.  And then when I became 18, being on the farm and Dad being crippled, I got deferment.  But I didn’t want deferment.  So in early ’45, this was just before the war had ended in Europe--of course, in the Pacific, it was still going wild --   I joined the services.  And I was in the Army then until ’47.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Where did you go to boot camp?   
Wallace Beckner:  I went to Camp Meade here in Virginia and then I went to Fort Belvoir which is up near Washington.  Which is engineering, although I was in infantry.   I went in, and it was about 60 days later I went overseas.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Where?   
Wallace Beckner:  I went to the Pacific.  And we went through the Philippines.  And then the atomic bomb dropped on Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And we moved on into Japan then, just weeks after that and stayed there until ’47, early ’47.  It was in February of ’47 when I came back.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What part of Japan were you in?   
Wallace Beckner:  I was in Beppu which is the southern most island of Japan and we were on the southern end of that.  And the climate was much better there.  In Northern Japan, Mt. Fuji stays covered with snow, you know.  But the Tokyo area and so forth is sort of like here.  You get a lot of snows and so forth.  Where we were, I remember snow flurries one time, and that was I think on Christmas day the first year we were there.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And what was your mission there?   
Wallace Beckner:  We were occupation.  Of course, we went in with the purpose of making sure that their surrender was genuine.  And I would say that the Japanese were so totally bewildered because Shintoism said that they would be the ruler of the world and they went into China in the low ‘30s with that, and that was the beginning of their conquering the world.  So when the atomic bombs hit, and their leaders surrendered, their nation and their god were gone.  And so here were a people without government, you might say, or very little to start out with, and no religion.  And we saw very, very little bit of resentment or anything.  It was bewilderment.  And I think at that time they saw a lot of kindness, consideration that maybe occupational forces now don’t see.  Of course, every war is different in the way it’s fought, the purpose and everything else.  You look back at pictures of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and here are multitudes gathered together fighting against multitudes over here, just massed together.  And World War II was different.  The mechanism was in force.  And of course, in World War II, the airplane was playing a major role in that.  Everything was different.  They were a bewildered, lost people.  And would you believe that before I left in ’47, early ’47, the Japanese government dictated that they would teach the Bible in English.  Now, the intent was double there.  One was to teach the Japanese people English because that was--that’s the dominant language of the world.  And with occupational forces there, they soon learned communication and so forth is a problem in the world.  And then I think missionaries in Japan, a lot of orphanages that were in Japan and survived throughout World War II, like the Church of the Nazarene, it’s a Pentecostal.  Not only just line denominations but all these other so-called, that we thought were minor had orphanages there and survived during the war.  And of course, this was about the time that back in America we were taking the Bible out of the school.  And that’s another subject because in today’s world, freedom of speech, freedom of right has been exercised and de-exercised and a few other things to the point where freedom often times ruins a nation.  And that’s kind of a broad statement to say, but it can.  What Hitler said during World War II, that he would take Poland in 30 days, which he did.  He said he would take France in three months, which took about that or a little bit more; and he said, I think it was two years, he would take England.  And they asked him what about America, and he said that will happen from within.  And we’re a great nation but you wonder if we aren’t destroying ourselves.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you follow the war?   On the radio or in newspapers?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yes.  We didn’t have electricity but we--my brother at that time, he’d finished Hampden- Sydney College in ’41, and he went to work for DuPont in Pryor, Oklahoma, where they made gun powder.  They worked in safety shoes, safety glasses, all wool clothing.  Of course, there wasn’t air-conditioning in those days, and the plant, he said, at night never got below about 98 [degrees].  So during that period of time, he got a rationed car.  Of course, they had to ride because this plant was out in nowhere being a powder plant.  So two years of that, and he said the Army couldn’t be any worse, so he volunteered for the service.  So he left the car here.  
Isabelle Chewning:  And what year was that when he volunteered?   
Wallace Beckner:  I think it was in late ’42 that he went in.  But he left his car here, and it had a radio in it.  So I used to go out, and managed to listen to the radio at lunch time just enough to get the news, and then go in and tell Mother and Dad.  And then we would snitch a little bit of washing machine gas and keep the battery charged up a little bit.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was he overseas?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yes.  With his chemical background, the first thing he did once they enlisted, the Army put him in chemical warfare, and so he went to school and trained down in Alabama, I think.  Then they sent him for three months to University of Ohio which was a testing lab during war for ammunition and so forth.  And that’s the only place he ever got wounded.  He walked past--somebody was working with TNT in the first nitrate stage which is supposed to be nonexplosive.  Anyway, it blew up in this test tube and the glass cut him in the neck a little bit.  So that was his greatest wound of war.  [Laugh]  But then he went overseas, and they put him in the post office.  So he and another guy volunteered for the 82nd Airborne Division.  So he jumped in the Battle of the Bulge.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you have any idea where he was or what he was doing?  Did he write letters home?   
Wallace Beckner:  We’d get a letter about once a month but we didn’t know.  You know, you couldn’t write anything where you were or anything.   
Isabelle Chewning:  They were all censored?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  And you might get a letter and it would have part of it cut out, some lines cut out or something like that.  Yeah.  As I said, he went through the Battle of the Bulge without being wounded.  And he still carries that scar when that test tube blew up.  [Laugh] So there was humor to everything.  But that was the way we kept up.  And of course, if you got a chance to go to Lexington to the movie, then they would have a news reel for about 15 minutes that updated you, and you would see scenes.  And in fact, during the Normandy Invasion, some people recognized Fred Tolley.  That’s Clarence Tolley’s brother, but he was younger than Clarence.  On Normandy Beach.  But everybody shared what information they had because, in this area, we didn’t have electricity here.  Now, Brownsburg had electricity when I went to school in the late ‘30s, or mid ‘30s.  I don’t know when they got electricity in Brownsburg.   
Isabelle Chewning:  When did you get it out here on the farm?   
Wallace Beckner:  We got it through here in ’43 under the Rural Electrification Act.  And of course, you got electricity and you had a light in each room and maybe an outlet, one outlet.  I know Mr. Bill Allen down here, he put a light in each room and he had one outlet, and that was out on the porch.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Who came through and wired up your house when you got electricity?  Or did you do it yourself because you learned it in Shop?   
Wallace Beckner:  There were some people -- now I’ve been reading in here when we wired the Bethesda church and the manse.   And that was about a year and a half or two years before we actually got it here.  And the Methodist church [in Rockbridge Baths] was wired.  It cost--with fixtures and everything, I think it was 400 and some dollars to wire the manse and the church.  And they mentioned a couple names that I wasn’t familiar with, but here we had my Uncle Alec who was the father of the cousin I was talking about before we started recording, he was a retired welder.  He helped put the first wireless stations in Alaska.  He was in the Service at the time.  This was the Spanish-American War at the time.  And he helped put in the first wireless.  He retired.  He had a business in Norfolk and retired to the home place where Don Hart lives now in that area [address?].  And he helped a lot of people with wiring.  He wired over at home, and he and I wired the [McElwee] Chapel.  And I learned a little bit about wiring then, because it was so simple.  Now I wouldn’t dare try to do anything.  But then it was so simple and so limited that it wasn’t that complicated.  Now, they did say in Dr. Ralston’s bulletin [from Bethesda Presbyterian Church] that the electricity wasn’t turned on this week because the inspector--and I didn’t realize they had inspectors--the inspector would not approve the entrance of the current into the church.  So I don’t know whether that was the electric company’s fault or what.  And the Methodist church, they got electricity and they sold their lamps, a lot of lamps to McElwee Chapel down here.  And they used them until Uncle Alec and I wired it which was probably--it wasn’t wired for a couple of years after we got electricity because they had services in the afternoon there.  Then after it was wired and they started having--we’d have evangelistic services at night then.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did electricity change your lives?  Did it make a big difference?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  Let’s say a lot of old things--like, we had water rams and they were wearing out.  They were very limited.  We had a ram down here at the spring that pumped water up to the house.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How did it work?   
Wallace Beckner:  You use water to pump water.  Water comes in, and it has to with be a certain amount of pressure.  It was coming out of the spring and we had it in a deep place that was dug down in the ground so that the water was falling down and was building up a certain amount of pressure.  And that pressure would make the valve come up on the ram.  And when it did that, it pumped a little bit of water from that spring, I mean the spring on the rod, the plunger.  It would cause that little bit of water to go into 
the pipe.  And so you would pump about that fast [demonstrates].  So you didn’t get a lot of flow but eventually you’d have a little trickle of it.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So most of the houses probably around here were built somewhere close to a spring-- 
Wallace Beckner:  Close to springs.  In fact, you can go--we used to do custom combining and you’d go to all these farms, and you’d see if so many of them were built near a spring or else they had a spring house at the spring.  And that’s where they would carry their--keep their milk cool and carry food that they wanted to keep and so forth down there.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you have a cistern, too?   
Wallace Beckner:  A lot of people did.  Now, we didn’t.  Well, there was a well or a cistern at the back of the house that had been filled up that I remember.  But now, whether it was--I don’t think it was a hand dug well because Dad had filled it in with rock to keep us children from falling in.  I think it must have been a cistern.  But people, a lot of people kept their cisterns if they didn’t have a spring or a spring house.  They kept their cisterns after they got electricity because first of all, if you put an electric pump in it, you’d use all the water out too quick and wouldn’t have it until the next rain.  [Laugh]  But electricity very definitely has--a fellow from Colombia who’s a doctor had bought property down here, down here at the intersection.  He’s a urologist down on the eastern shore.  He says electricity is the greatest invention that man ever made because from that, everything else radiates, you might say.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What were your chores when you were growing up on the farm?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, you had to milk the cows like your dad did.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you have morning shift or afternoon shift, or both?   
Wallace Beckner:  Both.  And my brother didn’t learn to milk because he cut the end of his finger off, and he said he couldn’t milk.  That was an alibi.  So he would kick me out and I’d have to go and milk.  And that always griped me because I was younger than he was and he’d make me get out of bed to go do it.  [Laugh]  Yeah.  You’d milk twice a day and your dad could tell you how that was because he milked a lot more than I did.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How many did you milk?   
Wallace Beckner:  We kept about six or eight cows.  Of course, your dad--well, I can remember when they went into the dairy business, and they grew from a smaller group and went up, became a large dairy.  Of course, he used milkers later too.  But I remember asking Mc [Sterrett], “How do you remember the names of all these cows?”  And he kind of grinned, and he said “If you shook hands with a person twice a day, you’d remember their name.”   [Laugh]  But you know, your dad had his front teeth knocked out.   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh]  I know.   
Wallace Beckner:  And he [Mc Sterrett] was carrying a couple of buckets of milk, I think, to the house.  And scared old Charlie.  And Charlie reared up and hit him in the mouth and knocked his teeth out.   
Isabelle Chewning:  I didn’t know it was Charlie.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah, it was old Charlie.  And I ended up buying old Charlie.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, you did?   
Wallace Beckner:  Uh-huh.  In fact, I’ve got a picture of him here.  He was quite a horse.  He was a large gaited horse, very spirited, high-headed and so forth.  I said he was so spirited that I think Mr. Mc [Mc Sterrett, Sr.] was glad to get rid of him.  I traded a cow and a calf for him because you could work him if you wanted to, or you could drive him to the buggy, or you could ride him.  But I eventually got him to the point where I could ride him without a bridle or saddle and come across from there and take the poles down.  This was pasture over here and old Charlie would throw that head up and he would till he’d see the cattle, and he was just like a dog.  He would bring them in and so forth.  You’d just sit there and hold on the best you could.  But I got your dad’s downfall.   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh]  He’s never cared much for horses.   
Wallace Beckner:  I can understand why.  But old Charlie was a tall bay with three white stockings and a white star.  He was a beautiful horse, but he was very high strung and spirited.  Sometimes Bennie [Fauber] would hook him up with one of his [horses] and they’d go for a carriage ride.  Thank goodness Bennie’s was a little bit less spirited than old Charlie, so they would manage to get there and back.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What’s the difference in age between you and Bennie?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, I’d say about nine years.   
Isabelle Chewning:  So you really didn’t know Bennie well at all then probably.   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, you see, during the time of World War II, everybody learned to know each other better because you couldn’t go places.  You had to do things together, and work together and so forth.  And we young people all had horses, and Bennie had horses then.  So Mc [Sterrett], Carl Wiseman, Ed Patterson and that whole crew used to do things together, you know, as young people.  And Sunday afternoon we’d get on our horses, and ride to Rockbridge Baths or Fairfield or anything like that.  I don’t think Mc ever rode much.   
Isabelle Chewning: I just don’t think he liked them.   
Wallace Beckner:  And there was a Swope boy that got killed.  He had a horse that he rode.  And Bud Wade down here and Kite Wade, they all had -- everybody had riding horses.  And they rode a lot because there wasn’t any gas and you could still do that.   
Isabelle Chewning:  We were talking about your chores on the farm.  Did you have chickens, hogs, sheep?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  We had chickens.  Mother used to order a hundred chickens every spring from a mail order company.  They’d come in a box and you’d feed them.  Curdled, or what you call cottage cheese now, you’d make it and let them eat that.  It was semi-solid form, like it is today.  That’s how you started them out with feed.  And you’d generally keep them in the house in the box for a few days until they got started.  You might have to stick their bill down in the water a few times for them to learn to drink, but it didn’t take them long.  And you would keep the pullets, and they would furnish you your eggs then when they became adults.  And you ate the roosters, or you took them to Wade’s store [in Bustleburg] and sold them, because eggs and chickens were the biggest produce that you took to the store to buy your sugar, salt, clothing.  You could buy – they would keep -- stores would have bolts of cloth.  You didn’t have to go to Lexington.  Most of the stores had to have things like that.  So you didn’t have any money except your produce that you took.   
Isabelle Chewning:  How many of the hundred chickens would live?   
Wallace Beckner:  Oh, I’d say probably 90.  It was pretty good because you took care of them.  They were individuals, not like the thousands that they have in a brooder house.  You took care of them.  Lorene Steele, who’s a good friend of mine now, grew up on the farm right below us here [361 Walkers Creek Road].  We were laughing the other day about--she got kind of choked and I said, “Have you got the gaps?” and she started laughing.  Because if you let the chickens out before the dew went away, there was little worms that would be on the grass and they’d be pecking around.  And they would swallow them and then that worm would come back up and infect the throat.  So you would take bluegrass, you know how when it comes in a head? You would skin the seed off, and that left kind of little arms on the plants, 
you know.  They were small and tender.  You would put it in kerosene and put it down their throat and turn it a few times and yank it out, and most of the time you’d get that little worm out.   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh]  Oh, gee.   
Wallace Beckner:  So that was the way of—you didn’t have medications.  That’s the way, if the chickens got out and you got some gaps, you got busy.   You were your own veterinarian.  Same way with livestock.  If they got cut, you’d use some carbolic acid or something on it and wrap it up with a bed sheet and most of the time they got well.  So we had a veterinarian, a Dr. Glover from Staunton that would come out in rare cases.  But most of the time everything was pretty much the farmers did it themselves, or they’d call in somebody to help them, or sometimes there was someone who was pretty good at it -- with calving problems, or a colt or something like that.  Lorene’s grandfather [W.A. McCurdy] that lived up at Rockbridge Baths, he pretty much was a veterinarian for that area back in, we’ll say 1900 up to--well, he kept a dairy up until ’34 when he died.  He recorded in his diary every day.  It was quite interesting.  And he would say “Went to such and such and tended to two colts,” which meant that he went up there and castrated the male colts.  But he used the word tended.  And he was the community -- in that area, the Rockbridge Baths area – I guess you’d say undertaker.  He’d record where “so-and-so died today and I went up and helped lay him out,” which is the terminology because, of course, they didn’t embalm them then.  But they cleaned the body and prepared it.  And the next day then he’d record, “Went to Lexington to get a casket.”  Of course, that was on the wagon.  And the next day “was buried.”  Never saw the word funeral ever mentioned.  “Buried” was the terminology.  “Buried Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so.”   A lot of children died, small children in those days.  But in 1928, he recorded that--and I forgot who it was that was buried--and he says “We used automobile hearse today.”  Borrowed it from Harrison’s [Funeral Home in Lexington].   
Isabelle Chewning:  Interesting.   
Wallace Beckner:  So the people were very self-sufficient in those days.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Resourceful.   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  And in these questions here, the word Decatur doesn’t appear, and yet people around the [Rockbridge] Baths particularly used Decatur as the railroad place.  They hauled railroad ties there.  They hauled staves.   Like 300 staves to a wagon load.  And every day or two, they would say “Hauled a load of staves to Decatur.”  That’s to make barrels out of.   Also, they would ship tanning bark.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What’s that?   
Wallace Beckner:  Used for dyeing.  You know how a walnut, it’ll stain you?  Well, oak bark and other different barks will give you different stains, and that was used a lot in dyeing back in those days.  And they’d load them on the rail car and sometimes a car would come in on a certain date and all the people who, particularly in the winter time who had time, would take a load of bark or tie [??] over and sell them and ship them and so forth.  Now in my day, we used to have our fertilizer to come in on the rail car at Decatur, and Mr. Frank Rees there at Brownsburg was an agent.  And then there was a Mr. Frank Armentrout, who lived there where Branner [sp?] Tolley lives [3413 Maury River Road].  Our agent.  And they would go around in the spring and in late summer to each farm and say, “How much fertilizer are you going to need?” and order it.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And what did he use for fertilizer?  What was it?   
Wallace Beckner:  Well, mostly what you would get then is 16 or 18 percent phosphate.  You didn’t have nitrate or you didn’t have potash.  But they put potash in because most of the time they had manure and that furnished the nitrogen that they needed.  But the fertilizer came in 167-pound bags, and now you go get fertilizer in 50-pound bags.  Feed in 50-pound bags.  Mainly because women do the work now.  And I could never lift one.  I could sometimes drag a bag.  But we would go, and everybody would go -- when the rail car came in -- with your wagon, and wait in line until you got up there and then Mr. Rees or Mr. McCurdy or Mr. Armentrout would say “Okay, Mr. Beckner, you get 20 bags.”  So they would load the 20 bags on the wagon.  You’d come home.  I was a small kid and I went with Dad one day and we were waiting in line over in Decatur and you come over Decatur Hill--and of course right at kind of the foot of the hill is where the railroad went through.  We were waiting in line.  And in that house--it’s still there on the corner [get address] --there was an old parrot on the back porch.  And I had never seen a parrot.  I had read about it in school books.  But the old parrot was saying “Polly wants a cracker.  Polly wants a cracker.”  And I was fascinated.  And the old parrot got tired of hollering I guess.  He said “Polly wants a cracker.  Damn it.  Polly wants a cracker.”  [Laugh]  I knew that was a bad word, I wasn’t supposed to use it.  So Dad changed the subject.   
Isabelle Chewning:  [Laugh] That parrot was going to corrupt you!   
Wallace Beckner:  Because I never heard my father use--the strongest word I ever heard him use, and I only heard him use it one time, he said “dern.”  A lady had aggravated him to death.  And he said, “Shut your dern mouth.”   Strongest words he ever used, but she was standing up the road telling him what to do.  He was working with a horse that had gotten in the creek.  And she said “If you weren’t so tight, the boys would come down and help you.”  And at that point Dad turned and he said “Shut your dern mouth,” and he went back to work.  And that’s the only time I ever heard him say even doggone or anything.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was your farm mainly pasture, or did you have a lot of crops growing?   
Wallace Beckner:  We did mostly crop and some milk cows.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What did you grow?  Did you grow wheat and corn?   
Wallace Beckner:  Wheat and corn were the two main because you had to have wheat to take a portion of it to the mill, and you drew off of it for flour throughout the year.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Which mill did you go to?   
Wallace Beckner:  We went to the one out here next to Bill Dunlap’s place [803 Hays Creek Road, currently known as McClung’s Mill].   
Isabelle Chewning:  Was it called Wade’s Mill too?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  That was one of the four or five Wade’s Mills in the area.  Of course, Harold [Wade] ran that most of the time that I remember.  And of course, he lost his arm in some machinery out there.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Oh, in the mill?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  But he could tie a string with one hand on a bag of feed so quick that you didn’t see what he was doing with that one hand.  He was good--well, all of the millers, they had to be good people to stay in business because you could go over here if you didn’t.  And they were all--Mast had one up here at Rockbridge Baths.  And of course, the Wade’s Mill out there where Jimmy Wade lives and so forth.  And there was one at Greenville and the one over here at Hays Creek.  And of course, they were all water powered.  Both of them, I’d say about ten years before they went out of business, got some diesel powers because they could grind with different types of grinding equipment faster.  That’s when they went in more into feed because the flour production wasn’t needed as much and then commercially, the flour in different grades and so forth was being sold in the stores.  But they were all a group of people that were interested in you.  In other words, when you went to get something, you cried on their shoulder a little bit about the cow that died, or something like that and they were sympathetic and they would tell you “So-and-so lost one or so-and-so had twin calves.”  Sort of like the barber shop.  They were a place of communication and so forth.  Not like going in WalMart now where you may meet your neighbor in there but you’re going to meet a whole lot of neighbors that you don’t know.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Right.  Did you use horses to do the farm work?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yes.  We used horses till 1946, just before I came back to the United States.  We used horses to do all of the farm work.  In fact, old Charlie that we were talking about, your grandfather used to work him and then the boys would drive him at night.  He might be plowing during the day, but they kind of  doubled up on him because he may be smaller, but he was gritty.  Like I was speaking about, everybody raised horses just like we raise cattle, because they had to keep a certain amount and they would sell them.  And not all of them turned out to be the best, so they got rid of them.  In fact, Lorene’s father [Fred McCurdy] who was--speak of him, Fred went to Lexington to get such-and-such and sometimes he’d go twice a day and ride horse back from Rockbridge Baths into Lexington.  And court day was when everybody brought their horses in to trade which, was once a month.  And Mr. McCurdy recorded “Fred went to town today and traded his horse for a watch.”  We’re not sure whether it was a gold watch, or the horse was no count, which was which.  But that was kind of unusual to trade.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Didn’t seem quite even.  Didn’t seem quite balanced.   
Wallace Beckner:  And when they were hauling grain, generally you would store your grain in garners in the granaries.   
Isabelle Chewning:  What’s a garner?   
Wallace Beckner:  That’s just a blocked off area with boards.  Maybe four or five feet wide and maybe [it would] go back six feet.  And you had garner boards in front, about six inches wide that you would slide down.  As it got fuller, you’d put another board in, and so forth.  And in the winter time, you would take it and sell it.  You’d take it to the mill generally from the threshing machine, but lots of times if you were going to sell it, by that time you knew how much you were going to use yourself, and you’d sell the rest.  And they’d bag it up in two-bushel bags and take it to the train.  Now, Dad used to speak of going to Raphine to put it on the train.  And he said that at the foot of – out there near Wade’s Mill [55 Kennedy Wades Mill Loop], they would keep extra teams of horses there, the community would, when they were hauling.  Cooperating together.  And to go up Raphine hill, since it was so deep and so long, they would hook another team of horses in front and make four horse teams to get it up, because in the winter time it could get real rutty and so forth.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Because it was a dirt road.   
Wallace Beckner:  Dirt road.  And Dad said that was the first hard surfaced road in the area.  That the farmers did it to get better roads to haul their merchandise or produce over to Raphine.  You can see it would be a long hard run.  But neighbors would keep some extra teams there, so that when so-and-so got here, they’d hook up to the front tongue and take four horses to pull up there.  As you can see, it’s more of a total cooperation.  Everybody didn’t live to themselves.  They lived with each other.  And if we sold veal calves, you had to take them and put them on the railroad and send them--they either went to Chicago or 
Baltimore.  Those were the two markets.  I remember one time we took a veal calf and I’m not sure whether--I believe we took that to Decatur, though.  And my brother and I were holding him.  Of course, we had a rope around his neck and kind of a halter on him in the back seat of the model T, and he kicked the door.  And the model Ts had--it was a form of cardboard covering over it.  Now we have plush and so forth on the inside.  Anyway, he kicked a hole in that and that hole was still in there when Dad traded it off in ’33.  [Laugh] I guess one of us was supposed to been back there and catch it from kicking but we didn’t.  And then Mr. Bill Buchanan lived over where Freddie Whipple bought [1397 McElwee Road].  He was a livestock dealer and he’d come around in the summer and look at your lambs and offer you a price on them and so forth.  In the fall of the year, he would--your calves, if you raised some calves or if you had some veal calves to go around about that time when he was making up a load, he’d buy them from you.  And you may haul them in a wagon, or you might drive them.  He used to drive cattle that people would keep when they’d wean the calves, stock cattle.  He would hire local boys and drive cattle to Highland County for the summer, for pasture out in Bath County because there was a lot of acreage out there that wasn’t farmed and it was great bluegrass country.  And I never did drive any because I was too young when that was going on.  But that was something that the older teenagers or young men would look forward to.  It would take about a week to drive them out there, and about a week in the fall of the year to round them up and drive them back and so forth.  But everything was taken care of in its way.  
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you have a big garden?   
Wallace Beckner:  Oh, yeah.  Garden was the life line of the family.  You raised wheat and corn.  You could get cornmeal.  Cornmeal was used a lot, too, for various things.  Mush and corn bread and things like that.  But canning, like at the cannery.  Of course, you raised a lot of potatoes, a lot of sweet potatoes, cabbage.  Turnips, and so forth like that, they were raised and buried in the ground.  And in the fall of the year, you’d dig a hole and line it with leaves or straw and put your vegetables down in there and then put straw or something over top and then put four to six inches of dirt on top of that and that would keep it.  And you’d go out in the winter time, and if you needed a cabbage, you’d dig out a head of cabbage and take it in and use it for slaw or cooked cabbage or boiled cabbage and so forth.  Of course, your potatoes, apples and pears and so forth.  Most people either had a ground cellar, which was a hole in the ground with pretty much just a roof over top of it.  And it would be sealed tight enough that you wouldn’t freeze in there.  But the temperature was such that you would keep apples and stuff like that in there.   
Isabelle Chewning:  And it wouldn’t freeze?   
Wallace Beckner:  Wouldn’t freeze.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Because it was far enough below ground?   
Wallace Beckner:  Yeah.  Most of them were kind of walk-in.  With a door out here, put it on the side of a hill, you know, and dig back.  And you had a roof over it to keep the water out.  You could make it as crude as you wanted to, or you could fix it up, put some shelves or something in there, a box, wooden boxes.   
Isabelle Chewning:  Did you all have one of those?   
Wallace Beckner:  We had a basement in underneath the house which was in two parts.  One part was --  during slave times -- where they prepared the food, a big wide fireplace probably about six feet wide with the hanging arms and so forth that swing in and out.  We used it when we would butcher to render lard and cook the food for sausage and so forth.  We’ve canned in it when we had our own capper.  We’d seal the cans up and put them in the water and cook them there.  And we made apple butter there.  But then the second part of it we called it the upper cellar.  This had a brick floor, but this upper cellar was just a dirt floor.  And there were bins in there and crude tables that we would put canned goods on.  And back on the back side was big bins there that we put the potatoes in, because the darkness, since there was no light and all in there, they wouldn’t start sprouting. 
[End of Tape 1, Side B] 

Wallace Beckner Index 
 
A 
Alfalfa · 19 
Allen, Bill · 24, 53 
Armentrout, Frank 
Fertilizer Agent · 29 
Armentrout, William · 4 
Automobiles 
1926 Model T Ford · 57 
Model A · 11 
Model T · 32 
Ayres, Janis Wade · 6 
B 
Bailey, Dr. 
Brownsburg Doctor · 2, 54 
Baker Brothers Equipment · 46 
Bare, Ada · 33 
Bare, Claude · 33, 58 
Bare, Tom · 45 
Barter System · 61 
Beard, Ruth Wade · 34 
Beckner, Bernice · 5, 18 
Beckner, Frances Hart 
Death in 1985 · 47 
Mother · 3 
Beckner, Jimmy · 10, 42 
Beckner, Lula Shaver · 39 
Dunsmore Business College · 41 
Engagement · 41 
Flora McDonald · 41 
Music Teacher · 42 
Teacher at Beverly Manor · 41 
Beckner, Mary Frances · 5, 18 
Beckner, Wallace Hart 
"Bunny" · 1 
Army · 21 
Bethesda Presbyterian Church · 13 
Birth · 1 
Brownsburg School 3rd Grade · 8 
Democratic Judge at Polls · 58 
Deployment in WWII · 40 
Farm Bureau · 44 
Farm Chores · 25 
Farming · 43 
Hampden-Sydney College · 35 
High School Graduation in 1943 · 17 
Lee's Carpets · 36 
Marriage in 1951 · 42 
School · 8 
School Board Member · 59 
Beckner, Wally · 42 
Beckner, William 
Grandfather · 3 
Beckner, William III · 5, 40 
82nd Airborne · 23 
DuPont · 22 
Hampden-Sydney College · 22 
Valedictorian · 18 
Beckner, William Walter 
Brownsburg Academy · 16 
Death in 1956 · 47 
Democratic Judge at Polls · 58 
Father · 3 
Handicap · 16 
Polio · 3 
Teacher · 4, 16 
Bethesda Presbyterian Church 
Bible School · 13 
Electricity · 24 
Blacksmithing 
Taught in School · 19 
Blackwell Family · 3 
Borden Grant · 4 
Bosworth, Tom 
Brownsburg Doctor · 47 
Bosworth’s Store · 60 
Brown, Jim · 51 
Brownsburg 
Barber Shop · 6 
Cannery · 11 
Doctors · 2 
Doctor's House · 2, 61 
Farm Store · 61 
Pool Hall · 60 
Saturday Night · 6 
Shoe Repair Shop · 15 
Stores · 51 
Undertaker · 60 
Brownsburg School 
Animal Science Class · 19 
Bus · 11 
Football Team · 17 
Home Economics · 15 
Shop Class · 19 
Vocational Agriculture and Shop · 8 
Building Practices 
Circa 1800 · 5 
Bustleburg Ball Park · 62 
C 
Camp Briar Hills · 55 
Campbell, Dr. 
Brownsburg Doctor · 2 
Cannery · 11, 32 
Carr, Ed 
Bethesda Caretaker · 14 
Carwell’s Garage · 62 
Chestnut Blight · 56 
Chickens · 27 
The Gaps · 27 
Chittum Family · 44 
Christmas · 57 
Church of the Nazarene · 54 
Cisterns · 25 
Conner Family · 3 
County Fair · 20 
D 
Decatur · 28 
Depression Era · 14 
Dry Hollow Road · 3 
Dunlap, Halsted 
School Board · 59 
F 
Farm Store · 61 
Farming 
Alfalfa · 19 
Butchering · 33 
Cattle Drives to Highland County · 32 
Chickens · 27 
Combine purchase in 1954 · 44 
Combining Grain · 45 
Corn Planter · 60 
Crops · 29 
Fertilizer · 29 
First tractor in 1946 · 44 
Grain Sales · 31 
Granaries · 31 
Veal Calves · 31 
Fauber, Bennie · 26 
Fulwider, Mr. 
Mail Carrier · 12 
Future Farmers of America · 20 
G 
Gardening · 32 
Glover, Dr. 
Veterinarian · 28 
Grandview · 13 
H 
Harness, Mr. 
Bethesda Minister · 20 
Hays Creek Mill · 30 
Heffelfinger, Jen · 15 
School Music Advocate · 42 
Horses 
Charlie · 26 
Farm Work · 30 
Horse Trading on Court Day · 31 
Huffman, Emerson · 54 
Huffman’s Filling Station · 61 
Hunting · 54 
Hurricane Camille · 53 
Hutcheson Family · 34 
Hutcheson, Robert Steele · 34 
I 
Irby, Mr. 
Superintendent of Schools · 8 
K 
Kaye, Floyd 
Superintendent of Schools · 42, 59 
Kennan, Dr. 
Raphine Doctor · 2 
Kirkpatrick, Robert 
Borden Grant Deed · 4 
L 
Layman, Mr. · 20 
Agriculture Teacher · 15, 19 
Leach, Dr. · 54 
Lee's Carpets · 36 
Lipscomb, Bruce Alexander, Sr.. · 59 
Lunsford, Al 
Teacher · 49 
M 
Mast, Wilma · 42 
Mast's Mill 
Rockridge Baths · 30 
Matheney, Harvey · 61 
Shoe Repair · 15 
McClung, Mote · 7 
McClung, Sally Reid · 7 
McClung’s Mill · 30 
McCurdy, Fred · 31 
McCurdy, Mr. 
Fertilizer Agent · 29 
McCurdy, W. A. · 28 
Rockbridge Baths Funeral Director · 60 
McElwee Chapel · 9, 13 
Evangelistic Services · 24 
McLaughlin, Sam · 55 
Miley Family 
Decatur Undertakers · 60 
Mills · 30 
Mohler, Betty Jean · 11 
Mohler, Henry · 11 
Mohler, Jake · 44 
Mohler, Nell Wade · 11 
Montgomery, Miss 
Teacher · 49 
Morris, Mamie · 53 
N 
New Providence Presbyterian Church 
Bible School · 13 
Youth Group · 13 
Nye, Bernice Wade · 34 
O 
Oak Hill School · 8 
P 
Patterson, Bruce · 12 
Clerk of Court · 58 
Patterson, Ed · 12, 27, 44 
Patterson, Frank · 20, 51 
School Bus Driver · 12 
Patterson, Mrs. J.K. 
Math Teacher · 48 
Uncle Remus · 49 
Peters, Carrie · 50 
Polio 
"White Swelling" · 3 
Poole, Mary Frances Wade · 35 
Poole, Roscoe · 35 
Potter, Buck 
Blacksmith · 61 
Practical Jokes · 54 
R 
Railroad Depot · 28 
Ralston, Dr. 
Bethesda Pastor · 14 
Raphine 
Train Depot · 31 
Rees, Frank 
Fertilizer Agent · 29 
Reese, Carl "Big Eye" · 45 
Combine operator · 44 
Reese, Ralph Wayne "Weasel" · 62 
Roads, Paved 
Raphine · 31 
Runkle Family · 3, 5, 33 
Runkle, Bobby · 5 
Runkle, John · 5, 62 
"Grasshopper" · 62 
Runkle, Russ · 5 
Rural Electrification Act · 24 
S 
Samples, Mr. 
Superintendent of Lexington Schools · 42 
Sandridge, Charlie · 55 
School Bus · 12 
Serenading · 57 
Shorter Catechism · 10 
Slusser, Bruce · 45, 55, 57 
Slusser, George · 58 
Killed in WWII · 58 
Slusser, Harry · 58 
Slusser, Hugh · 58 
Slusser, Mary Belle · 57 
Softball · 62 
Springs (Water) · 25 
Steele, Lorene McCurdy · 27, 55 
Sterrett, Madison McClung Sr. · 43, 48 
Sterrett, Mc · 8, 26, 48 
Dairy Farming · 26 
Stuart, Bob · 8 
Stuart, Boyd · 8 
Supinger, Ocie 
Telephone Operator · 55 
Supinger’s Store · 6, 51 
Swisher Family · 3 
Swisher, Henry · 11 
Swisher, John · 11 
Swope, Carl · 51 
Swope’s Store · 51 
T 
Tannery 
Tanning Bark · 28 
Tolley, Clarence · 23 
Tolley, Fred · 23 
Tractor 
John Deere B · 46 
Trimmer, Osie · 18, 50 
Principal · 17 
Troxell, Clint · 7 
U 
Uncle Remus · 49 
V 
Veterinary Work · 28 
W 
Wade Family · 3, 34 
Wade, Bud · 6, 27, 34, 54 
Barber · 6 
School Bus · 13 
Wade, Harold 
Miller at McClung's Mill · 30 
Wade, John · 12 
Wade, Kite · 12, 27, 34 
Horse Trader · 34 
School Bus · 13 
Wade, Ott · 12 
Wade’s Mill · 30 
Wade’s Store (Bustleburg) · 27 
Walthall, Dr. 
New Providence Minister · 58 
Ward, Elizabeth 
First Grade Teacher · 9 
Watson, Miss 
Home Economics Teacher · 15 
Whipple, Fred · 6, 51, 55 
Whipple, Mollie Sue Hull · 49 
Whipple’s Farm Equipment Dealership · 60 
Whipple's Store · 51 
White, Mr. · 52 
Whitesell, Virginia Wade · 34 
Whitmore, Billy 
School Board · 59 
Williams, Dr. 
Brownsburg Doctor · 2 
Williams, Mrs. 
3rd Grade Teacher · 10 
Wiseman, Carl · 27 
Woody, Lynn 
Agriculture Teacher · 19 
World War II · 2, 17 
Deferments · 21 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki · 21 
Occupation of Japan · 22 
Radio · 23 
Rationing · 17, 61 
Z 
Zigler, Mr. 
Agriculture Teacher · 19