I was digging through some old papers and such the other night while at my Dad's house and ran across a letter that my Mother had saved. It was from my Grandfather Dobson (my Mother’s father) to me (via my Mother) at the time of my birth, 13 November 1955. I had never seen this letter before, so it truly was a "letter from the past". I've spent the past day or so transcribing it (it was hand written), and thought you may enjoy reading it as well.
Some of the stories my grandfather Dobson related in this letter I remember hearing him and Grandmother tell before, but some of them I heard for the first time when I read this letter. However, what really struck me was the fact that this letter is older than the stories were at the time he was writing about them. That is a really sobering thought. Where have the past 50 years gone?
As you all know, I love all things "old" and find this letter interesting in that perspective. But, more than just a collection of old stories, this letter is a testimony to part of my heritage. There is one thing that I know for sure; the older I get the more I realize just how blessed I am to have been born into the family I was. The loving, caring, Christian examples of my parents, both sets of my grandparents, and the aunts and uncles, and great aunts and uncles on both sides of my family have had an immeasurable impact on me for which I will be eternally grateful.
The letter is rather long, and some of the stories pre-date the general time-frame that the Fedora Lounge centers around; not to mention that some of the descriptions of people and places probably will be lost on folks who are not familiar with the Morganton, NC area. I do, however, believe that folks from the Fedora Lounge will find the majority of this letter interesting.
Western Branch
YMCA
1601 Clark St.
Detroit 9, Mich
2300 hrs 13 Nov 1955
To: My Dear Grandson:
For days and weeks, your Mother has been expecting you. You came two days earlier than your Grandmother thought you would, but somehow for the last two hours I had been sitting here in this room (about a thousand miles from where you are) just waiting for the telephone to ring, and when your Daddy called I was not in the least surprised.
You did not have much choice about selecting the time and place of entry into this troubled world. There will be many times that you will have an opportunity to make your own decisions in life, some will be made through necessity or duty as you see it. Most of your decisions tho will be made because of the early training and ideals implanted in your mind by your Mom and Dad. I am sure now that the training they give you will be the very best. They are far better prepared than your grandparents were to give the proper training and instructions.
You too will have many more opportunities for self expression than they or we had. I recall so vividly when your Mother was born. I too as now was almost 1000 miles from home, she did not have the facilities of a hospital. This may be hard for you to understand but your Granddad did not even have a physician to help bring him into the world. He was born just before the beginning of the century in a little two room cabin with a practical midwife as the attendant. Your uncle Ned was the very first baby born in the same hospital in which you were born. Your name whatever it is will be recorded immediately and entered in the vital statistics of North Carolina. My name and your Mother’s name was never entered until many many years later.
We did not have the conveniences that you will never know how to do without. We walked to school we rode horseback, we rode in wagons and buggies. I rode in an automobile for the first time when I was 17 years old. I used a telephone for the very first time after I was 22 years old. I heard my first radio broadcast when I was 23 years old, I saw my first television program in New York City in the year 1947 and this is the machine age. You are entering into an entirely new era, the Atomic or Scientific age. The doors of opportunity for accomplishment in the scientific age will radically change the world even more than it has changed during the past 50 years.
When I first made the newspapers just 52 years ago by being on the honor roll of the 1st grade in the Old town Hall in Morganton, NC, I was 7 years old. That was the year that Saloons were still on Main St. There were no filling stations, no paved streets or roads. I recall so clearly Miss Rose Woodward, then in the 5th grade leading me by the hand for the first month of school. We had to walk three miles around the road or about 2 miles if we cut across the fields and passed by what is now Drexel Furniture Co – at that time it was a patch of woods. There was the Alpine Cotton Mills (now gone) and the old Depot, across the railroad tracks, pass by Beaches store and a saloon. It was there in the fall of 1905 that Neta Clark, Lucy Alexander, Walter Carter and I with one or two more saw our first automobile. We did not know just what it was. It looked like a buggy without any chases. It had a stick to guide it and a gasoline motor under the seat with a crank to start the motor on the side of the seat, some kind of a belt came down from under the seat (chain) and was wrapped around the inside of one of the back wheels that seemed to have points (sprocket) sticking up. It made so much noise when it started to go that us kids ran in fear till we were several hundred yards back up Green Street and we were afraid to go home till the two men got it turned around and were of up the other street.
Next year in 1906 the new graded school opened. I was promoted to the 2nd grade taught by Miss Presnel. We had toilets in the basement but most of the boys were scared to go down to use them, so we went to Breakneck (a ravine) behind the school for about two years before we were caught by the principal. I was then in the third grade taught by Miss Janice Pearson. Miss Mary Ann Miller was my 4th grade teacher, it was there that I first noticed your Grandmother. I had scarlet fever that year and did not get to finish the 4th grade.
Next year, my Mother & Dad decided to move out West. We went in the spring of 1909 to a little town of LaCrosse Washington. We lived in Washington and I went to school one year at LaCrosse and one year at Hoy Washington. I had to ride horseback seven miles to school because we lived on a ranch. Our school was only two rooms, all the little children in one room with all the big ones in another. I did not know just what grade I was in, but I must have learned a little since in November 1912 the next morning after Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the U.S. we boarded the train and went back to Morganton North Carolina to live and I started back to school in the 7th grade, and there was your Grandmother, pretty as a picture. I remember that I wore long trousers, a wool red sweater with a large white stripe. Your Grandmother had a pretty navy blue mittie blouse with skirts going down to her high top button shoes. She wore her hair in three long curls tied with a ribbon. Then I remember we went to church. The Rev. F.A. Bowers came to be the Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Morganton. He organized the Baptist Young Peoples Union. Jerome Workman became the sponsor. We had such wonderful times.
Your Grandmother and I used to meet every day during the noon recess at school. We had our own corner near the lower wing of what is now the Morganton Primary School. In those days it was the High School. Miss Beatrice Cobb was my eight grade teacher and of all my teachers, I think I learned more from Miss Cobb and Miss Bell Corpening than all the rest of the High School teachers. Miss Cobb’s father was editor of the Morganton News Herald, and he died that year and Miss Beatrice quit teaching and took over as editor and still is to this day forty long years. But these forty years have been pleasant. There have been hardships, sacrifices, sickness, tears, and laughter. I almost have forgotten the few unpleasant things, heartaches for all the darkness there was a beautiful sunshine to follow. Troubles now seem so little, then they seemed insurmountable.
Your Mother and Charles gave me and your Grandmother a lot of worry during those first years. Like hiding behind the burning bush after climbing out of a banistered porch and the time your Mother cried for three straight months – Then Charles got sick for several weeks after I had took him on a rope to the bottom of our new well. I worried for fear he had some kind of gas poisoning. I blamed myself. Then the great depression of 1932-33 hit. All factories closed everywhere, banks failed and closed their doors – money could not be had. Gold was taken in by the government and was not to be used as currency any more. Men in high office and men of wealth took their own lives. We were desperate. We could only hope and pray, it did not then seam possible that we could survive, but we did and now its only a memory like the one thing that I will remember all my life. We planted our first crop of corn. We made lots of corn but nothing to do with it. We canned corn. We traded corn for tomatoes. We traded for beans – and to top it off your Grandmother traded corn for a pig. We raised the pig and your Mother & Charles named it “Lucy” for Lucy Smith.
Things began to slowly look better. It was then 1935 – Mary Helen (your aunt) and your uncle Ned was getting pretty big – along came your aunt Margaret. I was promoted to Office Manager Main Plant of Drexel Furniture Co and in Feb 1936 when Margaret was just one year old we moved to Marion. We only lived there one year and moved to the farm at Pleasant Gardens where your Mother, uncle Charles aunt Mary Helen and uncle Ned had the most glorious time of their lives. They learned to drive an automobile, ride horseback, swim in the river, made cider, harvested walnuts, peanuts, popcorn. It was in those days that your aunt Cecil and aunt Barbara came to live at our house. Your Mother was the main baby helper and was then getting all our breakfasts. I recall so well when she first learned to cook. We had somehow managed to keep a helper all the previous years as there was Olive Nixon first then several others, but when your Mother was fourteen she took over the duties of getting all breakfasts. She had been doing it for some time. We had a gas stove and one morning she was fussing because Charles would not light the stove. Your Grandmother scolded her and suggested she light it herself. Your Mother replied I don’t know how! I was furious and was in the act of spanking her for being impertinent when I discovered that she had never in her whole life struck a match.
Then the mean trick your Mother and all the rest of the family pulled on me. Your Grandmother was not afraid of snakes and some one had caught a large Black snake. We had a large iron wash pot that we boiled our laundry in at the wash house. Those were the days before washing machines. I came home from work one afternoon and your Grandmother asked me to turn the pot over so the family washing could be done next day. I proceeded to lift the pot and underneath was the big snake. I almost fainted with fright in fact I did not sleep for two or three nights. It really did scare me because I was deathly afraid of snakes since when I was a little boy I was tending the gate while Daddy hauled wheat from one field through the cow pasture to the house. The cows were about to get out and I was trying to head them off and stepped on a racer. The snake ran after me but after I looked back twice I did not look back anymore until I fell exhausted in the yard about one mile. I think I broke the worlds record in that mile dash. I never recovered from the run or the fear of snakes to this day.
Well I have not told you all but hope some day to be able to sit with you when you get to be a big boy and tell you more about my young boyhood, young manhood, my courting days, about my experiences in world war #1 and in world war #2 and how I was a Captain in the North Carolina State Guard, a Mayor of Drexel, a Justice of the Peace in Burke Co, a Deputy Sheriff, Coordinator of Civil Defense, Chief of McDowell County Civilian Police, a farmer, always a member of the American Legion since world war #1, a Kiwanis Club president, a business man, an Inspector for the Quartermaster Department of the Army, then and now a Safety Director for the Department of the Army. Many years I have had to be away from home as I now am and wishing I could be there to-night with you and your Mother. This is a far different world now than it was fifty years ago when I made the honor roll in the old Town Hall in Morganton. It will still be a far different world when you grow up than it is to-day. The doors of opportunity is just beginning. We as children did not know what a light bulb was. Electric motors had not been used in fact gas motors were just starting to be used at the turn of the century. I heard the very first radio broadcast in 1922 when Jack Dempsey fought Carpenter in Jersey City, then the Election returns when Harding defeated Cox for president of the U.S. I was in Akron Ohio at the time. Radio did not get South of the Mason-Dixon line till after your Mother was born. To-day we ride airplanes and here in Detroit the motor city of the world 10 million motor cars will be built this year alone. Invention and science has just begun. By the time you are grown you will probably travel (as it will be common) faster than sound. We will have a man made planet in the now outer space where we will study the planets and delve into the secrets of the universe. You will have a part in this great and unexplored unknown. It is now my hopes that you will become a man of science. Your Father has the formation of math to get you started at an early age and never never grow too old to keep on learning. It is our heritage, our freedom of thought, worship and a right to say what we think and believe so long as it does not interfere with the wellbeing of our fellow man. May the Master of the Universe bless and guide you in your every thought and action.
Your Grandfather
Cecil B. Dobson
Some of the stories my grandfather Dobson related in this letter I remember hearing him and Grandmother tell before, but some of them I heard for the first time when I read this letter. However, what really struck me was the fact that this letter is older than the stories were at the time he was writing about them. That is a really sobering thought. Where have the past 50 years gone?
As you all know, I love all things "old" and find this letter interesting in that perspective. But, more than just a collection of old stories, this letter is a testimony to part of my heritage. There is one thing that I know for sure; the older I get the more I realize just how blessed I am to have been born into the family I was. The loving, caring, Christian examples of my parents, both sets of my grandparents, and the aunts and uncles, and great aunts and uncles on both sides of my family have had an immeasurable impact on me for which I will be eternally grateful.
The letter is rather long, and some of the stories pre-date the general time-frame that the Fedora Lounge centers around; not to mention that some of the descriptions of people and places probably will be lost on folks who are not familiar with the Morganton, NC area. I do, however, believe that folks from the Fedora Lounge will find the majority of this letter interesting.
Western Branch
YMCA
1601 Clark St.
Detroit 9, Mich
2300 hrs 13 Nov 1955
To: My Dear Grandson:
For days and weeks, your Mother has been expecting you. You came two days earlier than your Grandmother thought you would, but somehow for the last two hours I had been sitting here in this room (about a thousand miles from where you are) just waiting for the telephone to ring, and when your Daddy called I was not in the least surprised.
You did not have much choice about selecting the time and place of entry into this troubled world. There will be many times that you will have an opportunity to make your own decisions in life, some will be made through necessity or duty as you see it. Most of your decisions tho will be made because of the early training and ideals implanted in your mind by your Mom and Dad. I am sure now that the training they give you will be the very best. They are far better prepared than your grandparents were to give the proper training and instructions.
You too will have many more opportunities for self expression than they or we had. I recall so vividly when your Mother was born. I too as now was almost 1000 miles from home, she did not have the facilities of a hospital. This may be hard for you to understand but your Granddad did not even have a physician to help bring him into the world. He was born just before the beginning of the century in a little two room cabin with a practical midwife as the attendant. Your uncle Ned was the very first baby born in the same hospital in which you were born. Your name whatever it is will be recorded immediately and entered in the vital statistics of North Carolina. My name and your Mother’s name was never entered until many many years later.
We did not have the conveniences that you will never know how to do without. We walked to school we rode horseback, we rode in wagons and buggies. I rode in an automobile for the first time when I was 17 years old. I used a telephone for the very first time after I was 22 years old. I heard my first radio broadcast when I was 23 years old, I saw my first television program in New York City in the year 1947 and this is the machine age. You are entering into an entirely new era, the Atomic or Scientific age. The doors of opportunity for accomplishment in the scientific age will radically change the world even more than it has changed during the past 50 years.
When I first made the newspapers just 52 years ago by being on the honor roll of the 1st grade in the Old town Hall in Morganton, NC, I was 7 years old. That was the year that Saloons were still on Main St. There were no filling stations, no paved streets or roads. I recall so clearly Miss Rose Woodward, then in the 5th grade leading me by the hand for the first month of school. We had to walk three miles around the road or about 2 miles if we cut across the fields and passed by what is now Drexel Furniture Co – at that time it was a patch of woods. There was the Alpine Cotton Mills (now gone) and the old Depot, across the railroad tracks, pass by Beaches store and a saloon. It was there in the fall of 1905 that Neta Clark, Lucy Alexander, Walter Carter and I with one or two more saw our first automobile. We did not know just what it was. It looked like a buggy without any chases. It had a stick to guide it and a gasoline motor under the seat with a crank to start the motor on the side of the seat, some kind of a belt came down from under the seat (chain) and was wrapped around the inside of one of the back wheels that seemed to have points (sprocket) sticking up. It made so much noise when it started to go that us kids ran in fear till we were several hundred yards back up Green Street and we were afraid to go home till the two men got it turned around and were of up the other street.
Next year in 1906 the new graded school opened. I was promoted to the 2nd grade taught by Miss Presnel. We had toilets in the basement but most of the boys were scared to go down to use them, so we went to Breakneck (a ravine) behind the school for about two years before we were caught by the principal. I was then in the third grade taught by Miss Janice Pearson. Miss Mary Ann Miller was my 4th grade teacher, it was there that I first noticed your Grandmother. I had scarlet fever that year and did not get to finish the 4th grade.
Next year, my Mother & Dad decided to move out West. We went in the spring of 1909 to a little town of LaCrosse Washington. We lived in Washington and I went to school one year at LaCrosse and one year at Hoy Washington. I had to ride horseback seven miles to school because we lived on a ranch. Our school was only two rooms, all the little children in one room with all the big ones in another. I did not know just what grade I was in, but I must have learned a little since in November 1912 the next morning after Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the U.S. we boarded the train and went back to Morganton North Carolina to live and I started back to school in the 7th grade, and there was your Grandmother, pretty as a picture. I remember that I wore long trousers, a wool red sweater with a large white stripe. Your Grandmother had a pretty navy blue mittie blouse with skirts going down to her high top button shoes. She wore her hair in three long curls tied with a ribbon. Then I remember we went to church. The Rev. F.A. Bowers came to be the Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Morganton. He organized the Baptist Young Peoples Union. Jerome Workman became the sponsor. We had such wonderful times.
Your Grandmother and I used to meet every day during the noon recess at school. We had our own corner near the lower wing of what is now the Morganton Primary School. In those days it was the High School. Miss Beatrice Cobb was my eight grade teacher and of all my teachers, I think I learned more from Miss Cobb and Miss Bell Corpening than all the rest of the High School teachers. Miss Cobb’s father was editor of the Morganton News Herald, and he died that year and Miss Beatrice quit teaching and took over as editor and still is to this day forty long years. But these forty years have been pleasant. There have been hardships, sacrifices, sickness, tears, and laughter. I almost have forgotten the few unpleasant things, heartaches for all the darkness there was a beautiful sunshine to follow. Troubles now seem so little, then they seemed insurmountable.
Your Mother and Charles gave me and your Grandmother a lot of worry during those first years. Like hiding behind the burning bush after climbing out of a banistered porch and the time your Mother cried for three straight months – Then Charles got sick for several weeks after I had took him on a rope to the bottom of our new well. I worried for fear he had some kind of gas poisoning. I blamed myself. Then the great depression of 1932-33 hit. All factories closed everywhere, banks failed and closed their doors – money could not be had. Gold was taken in by the government and was not to be used as currency any more. Men in high office and men of wealth took their own lives. We were desperate. We could only hope and pray, it did not then seam possible that we could survive, but we did and now its only a memory like the one thing that I will remember all my life. We planted our first crop of corn. We made lots of corn but nothing to do with it. We canned corn. We traded corn for tomatoes. We traded for beans – and to top it off your Grandmother traded corn for a pig. We raised the pig and your Mother & Charles named it “Lucy” for Lucy Smith.
Things began to slowly look better. It was then 1935 – Mary Helen (your aunt) and your uncle Ned was getting pretty big – along came your aunt Margaret. I was promoted to Office Manager Main Plant of Drexel Furniture Co and in Feb 1936 when Margaret was just one year old we moved to Marion. We only lived there one year and moved to the farm at Pleasant Gardens where your Mother, uncle Charles aunt Mary Helen and uncle Ned had the most glorious time of their lives. They learned to drive an automobile, ride horseback, swim in the river, made cider, harvested walnuts, peanuts, popcorn. It was in those days that your aunt Cecil and aunt Barbara came to live at our house. Your Mother was the main baby helper and was then getting all our breakfasts. I recall so well when she first learned to cook. We had somehow managed to keep a helper all the previous years as there was Olive Nixon first then several others, but when your Mother was fourteen she took over the duties of getting all breakfasts. She had been doing it for some time. We had a gas stove and one morning she was fussing because Charles would not light the stove. Your Grandmother scolded her and suggested she light it herself. Your Mother replied I don’t know how! I was furious and was in the act of spanking her for being impertinent when I discovered that she had never in her whole life struck a match.
Then the mean trick your Mother and all the rest of the family pulled on me. Your Grandmother was not afraid of snakes and some one had caught a large Black snake. We had a large iron wash pot that we boiled our laundry in at the wash house. Those were the days before washing machines. I came home from work one afternoon and your Grandmother asked me to turn the pot over so the family washing could be done next day. I proceeded to lift the pot and underneath was the big snake. I almost fainted with fright in fact I did not sleep for two or three nights. It really did scare me because I was deathly afraid of snakes since when I was a little boy I was tending the gate while Daddy hauled wheat from one field through the cow pasture to the house. The cows were about to get out and I was trying to head them off and stepped on a racer. The snake ran after me but after I looked back twice I did not look back anymore until I fell exhausted in the yard about one mile. I think I broke the worlds record in that mile dash. I never recovered from the run or the fear of snakes to this day.
Well I have not told you all but hope some day to be able to sit with you when you get to be a big boy and tell you more about my young boyhood, young manhood, my courting days, about my experiences in world war #1 and in world war #2 and how I was a Captain in the North Carolina State Guard, a Mayor of Drexel, a Justice of the Peace in Burke Co, a Deputy Sheriff, Coordinator of Civil Defense, Chief of McDowell County Civilian Police, a farmer, always a member of the American Legion since world war #1, a Kiwanis Club president, a business man, an Inspector for the Quartermaster Department of the Army, then and now a Safety Director for the Department of the Army. Many years I have had to be away from home as I now am and wishing I could be there to-night with you and your Mother. This is a far different world now than it was fifty years ago when I made the honor roll in the old Town Hall in Morganton. It will still be a far different world when you grow up than it is to-day. The doors of opportunity is just beginning. We as children did not know what a light bulb was. Electric motors had not been used in fact gas motors were just starting to be used at the turn of the century. I heard the very first radio broadcast in 1922 when Jack Dempsey fought Carpenter in Jersey City, then the Election returns when Harding defeated Cox for president of the U.S. I was in Akron Ohio at the time. Radio did not get South of the Mason-Dixon line till after your Mother was born. To-day we ride airplanes and here in Detroit the motor city of the world 10 million motor cars will be built this year alone. Invention and science has just begun. By the time you are grown you will probably travel (as it will be common) faster than sound. We will have a man made planet in the now outer space where we will study the planets and delve into the secrets of the universe. You will have a part in this great and unexplored unknown. It is now my hopes that you will become a man of science. Your Father has the formation of math to get you started at an early age and never never grow too old to keep on learning. It is our heritage, our freedom of thought, worship and a right to say what we think and believe so long as it does not interfere with the wellbeing of our fellow man. May the Master of the Universe bless and guide you in your every thought and action.
Your Grandfather
Cecil B. Dobson
