Celebrating Sharpsburg’s Bicentennial “A Time Remembered”

Chapter Two

Winter was the time when places such as stores owned by Will Sharp and My Uncle Ollie Knight were heated by the proverbial pot-bellied stoves.

They burned soft, smoky Eastern Kentucky coal, and provided not only heat but rallying points for many of the men of the community.

These men, in their leisure time, would sit around the warm heater in hard, but otherwise comfortable chairs, to talk of hunting, politics, crops and the affairs of the world.

No history was made, no great decisions reached, but the wit, the homespun philosophy expounded, the stories told and sometimes re-told were legend.

The pot-bellied stove sessions were not confined to winter days or nights. In less inclement weather, they continued.

On summer evenings, it was almost a sure thing too that relatives and friends would gather on the front verandas of homes.

These neighborly, get-togethers occurred often and with the elders discussing a myriad of subjects, while we youngsters sat in the background and listened, or better still, caught fireflies or played hide-and-seek.

And I well remember summer evenings on our front porch listening to the radio, tuned to full volume at Mr. Adam’s home across the field and the public pond in Taterville.

It was not a noisy nuisance but a source of entertainment and wonder. Mr. Adams had the only radio in town.

The wireless contrivance had been built by the brother of Mr. Adams son in-law, the latter was principal of the school, the former worked for the telephone company in Louisville.

It was he who built one for my dad in 1923. I can see and hear it now. It was at least three feet long, ten inches high and deep, the large detached speaker was no superb, but it was adequate.

One night stands out as the ringing of church bells past midnight sounded the alarm that there was a fire in town. The two-man fire department, aided by a dozen or more volunteers formed a bucket brigade to fight the blaze with water drawn from nearby wells.

The hand-drawn fire engine kept regularly in the burning garage was destroyed along with the building.

When we returned home about 2 a.m., my dad could not resist switching on the radio. The turning of the several dials brought the sound of music. And to our amazement, it was a station in Denver Colorado.

There wasn’t too many radio stations on the air in those days. And there were more exciting things to do anyway.

There were forays into the adjoining farmland almost any season of the year, to explore, to fish in Hinkston creek or Wright’s lake, and to hunt rabbits with Red Moore or Jack Clark or Waller Sharp.

None of us had guns, but there were dogs to chase the fleet of critters and it was fun.

Then there was the hut we built in the back corner of our vegetable garden, the detached garage forming one or our walls. IT was a fort, a clubhouse and a second home to us. It was the center of our world, especially when we’d filch potatoes from dad’s garden and roast them on our crude cooker.

Sometimes, the hut abandoned for a period, we’d build a crude shelter and hiding place from the branches of the willow trees that bordered the public pond.

In the summertime, we swam mostly in the animal watering pool that had been dug out on a nearby farm and lined on the sides with limestone rocks.

The front end of the spring-fed pool was shallow, at mid-point of its 30 foot length a pole extended underwater from each side to keep the cattle and us kids from the deep end.

Then there was Wright’s lake, a dammed- up, spring -fed body of water less than two miles out the road that went past the school. It was deep in the middle.

One day I was swimming, if one could call it that, for my dog-paddling never won any medals, and I attempted to get onto a log being propelled by one of the older boys, but I didn’t quite make it; down, down, down I went.

I really thought this was it but I surfaced coughing and wheezing above the water.

The aroma of country ham being pan-broiled in a home along Main Street often scented the light breeze on a late spring evening.

There were but a few who could ill afford the luxury of such delicious meat for supper.

Some of the residents owned farms and stocked their own larders and meat houses with pork or bought fresh beef steaks and roasts at Mr. Slick Peeds store downtown, beef from young steers were slaughtered and butchered in the big barn just to the rear of the grocery.

Sharpsburg was not an enviable place in which to be born or to live.

But what pre-teenager is envious? Unless it be for a pony, such as one friend I had, or the ability to knock a home-run in the almost bare field in the public square, which surrounded the century old Baptist Church, and on which was situated the town’s two-celled jail.

It’s a matter of fact that the older folk, for the most part, had only a glimmer here and there of envy.

Most seemed content to live and let live in the sometimes-smothering atmosphere of a small town.

The Great War had been over since 1918. It was the comfortable era.

There was no one of great wealth, and there were few, including most African Americans, who were desperately poor.

It was a time of little need, of few apparent problems. The war was over.

There was peace and prosperity or the promise of it. There was no madness of competition, no sky-high ambitions, no rush to beat a deadline or accomplish some mysterious, unlikely mission.

Life seemed to simmer along on a slow burner, seldom boiling over to a crisis.

The hazy, hot days of summer were lazy.

The feeling of frenzied activity was non-existent.

Tenants of the townspeople’s farms did their chores, but with no great gusto. Life was humdrum, unhurried.

Tasks that had to be done, somehow were.

And when at last the sun was down, and a light breeze inspired the maple and oak leaves to stir, an aura spread softly over town.

Neighbors would gather in small groups to sit a spell on a front porch and talk while the voices of tree frogs blended in harmony with the crackle of crickets and the call of katydids.

Now and then the hoof-beat of Dr. Conway’s horse, as his buggy glided toward the home of a country patient, sounded on the macadam but oiled street.

Now and then came the bark of a lonely dog. And on occasion there came the soft rumble of thunder as storm clouds built slowly on the western horizon.

Or it could be a spring or fall evening, just before or shortly after the town’s electric lights shut off at 11 o’clock, a haunting, familiar sound could be heard from the countryside; the melodic barking of hound dogs, hot on the trail of a crafty fox on a nearby farm.

On such a night set aside for fox hunting it was quite different from a daytime hunt when men in red coats, mounted on Kentucky saddle-bred horses or jumpers rode to the hunt.

It was the kind of hunt that found the dog’s owner, maybe eight or ten of them, seated comfortably around a small bonfire where they would listen as Old Bass or Big Bamby and others would chase the elusive fox.

Each man knew the voice of his dog and the anxious bark of the other hounds.

So they would sit and listen and talk, spurred on by a swig now and again from one of the several bottles or mason jars that at the beginning of the evening had been full of good 101-proof moonshine.

There might be a pint of red whiskey; bourbon obtained by prescription from the towns drug store pharmacy counter.

Stay tuned for Chapter-3 in next week’s edition of Around Town.