It was one old those really cold and windy Saturdays in Rockingham back in 1951.  December 22nd to be exact.  It is extremely rare when it stays below the freezing mark all day long in this part of the country; it probably doesn’t happen but once or twice every five years.  The weather

was perfectly clear that day with a beautiful azure sky. Back in those days there were no jet contrails, which are so common today.  It had rained the previous day, but the previous night was mostly windy, blowing out the fronts and low-pressure centers which is how meteorologists refer to dark clouds and rainy weather.  I don’t know that there is much otherwise special about December 22 unless it happens to be your birthday; it was just one day after the winter solstice, which is another way of describing the shortest day of the year and the first official day of winter.

 

That year, I was in Miss Bobbie Long’s fourth grade; we had classes in one of the Sunday School rooms of the First Methodist Church due to an overflow from the main school.  Yes, it was due to kids like us that prompted the city fathers to build the new L. J. Bell School to which our

class marched in cadence the following spring.  We would walk over to the main Grammar School for lunch and assemblies, but otherwise we seemed to exist independently.  For example, I never saw the principal,

Miss Bessie Terry, at out detached location.

 

Now there was this certain young lady in my class I befriended named Patricia (name changed to protect the innocent); seems like we spent our romantic moments together discussing the previous day’s “Howdy Doody”

show.  By the way did you know Bob Keeshan who portrayed  “Clarabell” later played “Captain Kangaroo”?  Patricia seemed quite captivated when I told her what happened at Old Hundred, but unlike my siblings she did

believe me.   

 

My father was a Florida native, central Florida at that (Oxford, near Ocala).  Growing up in that part of the country does not provide the necessary experience for driving in North Carolina on days like that day.  He probably had never seen snow until he married my mother who is from the mountains of North Carolina.  My family lived in Rockingham from 1940 until 1954; however that was ample time for children number four and five (me and my younger brother Jim) to be born there.  We lived on Sand Hill Road, which is now called Caroline Street.  We were just up the hill south of the old railroad station.  Going south, on the left, it is one house short of the intersection of what is now called Midway Road.  Our winter heating system amounted to one coal burning stove in the great room which also served as our dinning room and den.  All of us children would run from our cold bedrooms to the great room to dress from our

pajamas to our school clothes, play clothes or Sunday clothes as appropriate so as to be by the warm fire.  Being  this was a Saturday, I was the only one of my siblings up that morning when we left town; as I was going with my father on one of his cracker routes which happened this day to be down in Scotland County.  His territory included five or six counties in North Carolina to which Rockingham was more or less central.

 

 

My father was a salesman for Sunshine Biscuit Company.  He would call on storekeepers and take their orders.  The delivery truck, which my father never saw, would bring the crackers the next day.  This arrangement worked well as it gave a lot of personal interaction with the store owners and managers since the company was in fierce competition with Nabisco.  My father was very good at what he did; he was one of a few top salesmen for whom the Company furnished a new car every year.  We were in a new 1951 Ford that day; it was a leased Company

car, but you didn’t have to tell that to your friends (such as Joel’s older brother Gary or cousins Bill & Jerry).     

 

Old Hundred is a small junction where the Seaboard Railroad track underpasses old Highway 74 in Scotland County about three miles this side of Laurel Hill.  There is probably a little bit more to the town off the main road, but all I remember is the railroad underpass and several small grocery stores or perhaps I should say general stores that also sold gasoline.  In fact both of those store were among my father’s accounts.  I don’t think the train made routine stops at this town.  I assume the community got its name from a locomotive (steam engine) that would

come down the tracks like clockwork.  The town was in close proximity to the tracks.  All the trains at this time were the old steam engines.  The diesels were not introduced to our area until the mid fifties.  I can remember seeing the last of the old steam engines as late as the early sixties over in Raleigh.   We used to affectionately refer to them as “Choo Choos” because of the rhythmic sounds they made as steam was expelled.  The steam engines had several cycles to it (intake, exhaust, et cetera); reminds me of the cycles to the human heart.  Does anyone remember “Choo Choo” Justice the football running back at the University of North Carolina from back in the fifties?  He evidently was difficult to stop when he developed a full head of steam.  He was from Asheville, but had an insurance sales office here in Greensboro before he died several years back. 

 

Well folks let me tell you a word of wisdom.  If you are out on the highway at highway speeds in North Carolina, and an ambulance passes you, and then you see a lot of congestion at an upcoming bridge, you probably should slow down as quickly as you safely can.  Well my father

evidently was thinking he was in Florida and someone had just spotted a wild alligator or something like that. My Aunt Lucile told me about five years ago that she had lived in Florida all her life, and she had never seen an alligator in the wild.  So I expect that sort of excitement could have explain things in Florida, but Mother Nature had left us a chilling reminder of her power up on that bridge that day.  We hit the bridge at about thirty five miles per hour.  We discovered this ice patch, and my

father lost control of this big, beautiful, maroon, “Custom”, 1951 brand new Ford.  They didn’t have seat  belts back in those days.  My father held on to the steering wheel, and somehow I managed to get to the floor.  It all happened in a couple of seconds; so I may be a little vague on some the details.   I think the list price of this car back then was between two & three thousand dollars.  The manager at the Ford place in Rockingham (McGinnis Motors if I remember correctly) offered the insurance adjuster only six hundred dollars for it after they pulled it all the way back to Rockingham.  That probably didn’t include the wrecker fee.   

 

We were the second car to hit that ice and tumble over the embankment within a short period of time.  The spectators said we had rolled over three times.  Both my father and I walked away from this.  We both may have had very minor cuts or bruises, but I don’t really remember anything specific.  We were both very thankful for that.  The first car was not so lucky as they were the one for whom the ambulance was intended.

 

One of the spectators offered my father and me a ride back to Rockingham.  When I saw my brothers and sister, they at first would not believe me.  It was about ten in the morning when we got back home; and they were still setting around the stove as it was still very cold.  It takes a very long time to change from your pajamas into your play clothes sometimes - especially on a cold Saturday.

 

By the way, Sunshine Biscuits replaced that car with a white 1950 Ford; I assume it must have been one someone else had returned back to the Company.  I probably accompanied my father a hundred times on his various routes up until we moved to Gastonia in 1954.  He passed

away in 1973, but I still like to reminisce about these adventures with my father.  I was nine and one half when this event happened.