EDITOR’S NOTE: Old File’s Store down on Bringle Ferry Road has been gone for more than a year, 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.
One day he decided to write them down so they’d never be forgotten. And gave them names. And shared them with us last year and has plenty we haven’t heard for a second helping during this year’s holidays.
Tough
Harold Hodge went into the Army as a young man, and once he’d finished his training, he thought he was tough.
He told the people at File’s Store about all the running he’d done while he was in the Army and that a run to Salisbury, which was 10 miles away, wouldn’t be any problem at all. Then he asked if anyone wanted to run to town with him, thinking no one would care for such a laboring run.
But to his surprise Harvey Brady — better known as Wink — spoke up. He said he’d go along.
Harold thought that with him being used to running, he’d have no trouble wearing Wink out before they got anywhere close to Salisbury, and it wouldn’t take long until they’d be turning around.
So they took off for town, running side by side and stride for stride. They didn’t stop until they got to Salisbury. Then Wink looked over at Harold and asked him if he wanted to run back to the store.
Well, Harold said, it was OK with him if they just walked back and talked. And maybe thumbed a ride if somebody came along.
Wink didn’t argue, but he could have run back. He was used to hard work on the sawmill and cutting timber. Some said he was as tough as a pine knot.
Sawmill drive
Wink grew up around sawmills and that toughened him in a lot of ways. His father, Jack Morgan, owned a sawmill that they could move to the tracks of timber he bought.
One day Wink was moving the mill with a WC Allis-Chalmers farm tractor.
The tractor was slow so when he got to the paved road, he would take it out of gear and coast down the hills to go faster.
On one hill close to Badin Lake he was going downhill out of gear and didn’t realize it was that steep or that long. But after he put it out of gear, it got going so fast that the tractor’s front wheels started shimmying so he couldn’t take both hands off the steering wheel, and the brakes had to be operated by hand.
If that wasn’t bad enough the brakes were on both sides, the left one on the left side and the right one on the right side. So he couldn’t use just one brake because it would turn him in that direction, and he couldn’t let go of the steering wheel the way the tractor was shimmying.
Then he realized he was coming up on a car, and there was nothing he could do but pass it — tractor, sawmill and all.
Whew!
When he finally got it slowed down, he put it back in gear, and there it stayed, slow and all.
Growing up
Alex, the 10-year-old grandson of O.J. and Connie Polk, was telling O.J. that he should build Connie a table.
O.J. told Alex that he had asked her if she wanted the table, and if she did, he would build it. But she said she didn’t want it.
Alex had a good argument for that though. He told O.J. that Connie wanted him to stay little and not grow up, but he was going to grow up anyway.
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