The fine art of dodging trees on skis

SALISBURY POST

Editor’s note: Old File’s Store down on Bringle Ferry Road has been gone for more than a year now, moved to Gold Hill to be 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 kid, tagging after his daddy.

And one day he decided to write them down so they’d never be forgotten. And gave them names. He first shared them with us last year, and we asked him for a second helping during this year’s holidays.

Skiing

One summer Pink — that’s what everybody called Carroll Pinkston — was learning to water ski with his friend Harold Holder.

Pink would talk all day about skiing and was always anxious for quitting time so he could go to the river. But after about a week, he stopped talking about it, and if somebody asked him about his skiing, he would change the subject.

Not long after that, someone saw Harold, and Harold told him how he had thrown Pink on the water skis. He said Pink was getting pretty good at skiing so he decided to play a trick on him. After Pink got up on the skis and was going along at a pretty good clip, he’d let up on the gas and get a lot of slack in the pulling line. Then he went wide open on the gas.

Pink should have just dropped the line. Instead he held on, and when the line got tight, the force of the boat going so much faster threw Pink into somersaults. Skiing wasn’t the same for Pink — for a while.

But not long after that, he got back on the skis — and got Harold back. He ran him into a wooded island, and it’s hard to dodge trees wearing water skis.

Might be crazy

Buck Lineback lived around Salisbury and would do odd jobs to get his meals.

He had trouble with his speech, and people who weren’t around him much had trouble understanding him — if they could understand him at all.

One day he was crossing Main Street at the Square in Salisbury, and a man who was waiting for the light to change hollered out for him to come over to the car. He needed to find a place of business in the town, he said, and asked Buck if he could tell him how to get there.

Buck did.

He was pointing his hands in the directions the man needed to go and mumbling, of course, but trying hard. Still, the passenger in the car just couldn’t understand him, and after a little while, he said to the driver, “Let’s go. This man is crazy.”

Buck understood that perfectly and responded in a clear, loud voice.

“Me might be crazy,” he said, “but me not lost!”

Who?

One morning while Ladie and his sister were waiting for the school bus, their dog was run over by car.

They were really upset, and when they got to school, they were in tears.

Mr. Homer Clodfelter, the principal of the school, asked them what was wrong, They said Clifford had been run over by a car.

Mr. Clodfelter knew their parents, Clifford and Nancy, well, so he called their home, and Nancy answered the phone. Mr. Clodfelter said that Ladie was quite upset over Clifford and then asked how he was.

Nancy said that he had been hit by the car and was dead. Mr. Clodfelter was really feeling bad now and was without words, but he asked if he could do anything to help.

Finally, Mr. Clodfelter realized that it was Clifford, their dog, that was run over, not their father.