EDITOR’S NOTE: Old File’s Store down on the Bringle Ferry Road is gone now, moved to Gold Hill to become part of a historic village.
But Greg File remembers what he saw and heard there, remembers the tales told and opinions argued by the men who gathered around the pot-bellied stove when he was a boy, tagging after his daddy.
And one day he decided to write those memories down so they’d never be forgotten, gave them titles and is sharing his stories of long ago with us.
TELLING TIME
My grandfather, Columbus File, who everyone called Lum, never owned a watch or had an alarm clock, but he could keep up with what time it was.
When someone in the family needed to get up at a certain time, they would ask him to wake them up. There wasn’t any need for an alarm clock.
On Saturdays the family would usually work in the field till 12 and then be off to go to town or go to a ballgame, and Lum would stop working and go to town or to a ballgame after noon time.
Now one day, Junior Wyatt, my first cousin, had just got a new watch, and this Saturday he was wanting to get off early and decided he would set his watch ahead one hour, figuring Lum wouldn’t know the difference. After all, Lum didn’t have a watch to compare it with, and by the time they would get to the house it would be too late to go back to the fields anyway.
So at 11 o’clock, Junior showed Lum his watch, telling him it was time to go to dinner.
The hands were straight up. It was 12 o’clock.
Lum looked up at the sun, stuck his leg out, looked at the shadow, and told Junior he had better get his watch checked out. It wasn’t a bit past 11.
POKER
Mrs. Ore Agner was my mother’s aunt. She had her hands full keeping up with her husband, Arthur. He would meet other men at the store and before long they would be deciding on a new place to play a game of poker. A new place would always be in the works because Ore was always looking for Arthur.
One night Ore was able to find them in the woods playing around a kerosene lantern. She snuck up on them quietly, being careful not to be seen, and observed what was going on. She waited till the pot was full and everyone was only conscious of their cards, anxious to see if their hand would win all that money.
Ore picked up a fist-size rock and taking careful aim, threw that rock. The rock hit the lantern, putting it out and putting the men in the dark.
Ore ran in, taking the pot of money, and the men ran blindly through the trees.
It was hard for Arthur to find poker players for some time to come.
FEEDBAGS
File’s store sold flour and feed to his customers. The bags were stacked in the back of the pot belly stove on a platform where people could see them. I laid on them many hours while waiting on my dad to go home.
The bags back then had many pretty designs on them so they could be sewed together to make dresses and shirts.
Sometimes Ore would brag that her underwear had Grimes’ Best! on them.
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