Sharpsburg Fair

 

The Sharpsburg Fair

 

Say what? Little old Sharpsburg had a fair?

Well our little town at one time was a booming place with more businesses along Main Street than you could ever imagine.

I will get to those old store fronts in later columns but this week I want to write about the fair.

Now, some of ya’ll already know this bit of historical information if you own or have read about it in J.A. Richards History of Bath County.

But for those of you who are younger, well this may be surprising news.

The following is what Richards said about the Sharpsburg Fair.

The Sharpsburg Fair was for many years a featured attraction of the summer season.

There was an Amphitheater and a half-mile running and trotting track that drew fanciers of fine horse flesh from adjoining counties who brought from their stables for exhibition the noted mares, geldings, stallions and Jacks of the day.

The Fair, Richards said, was generally held during the month of August and ran for a week and was first initiated in 1877 by the Bath County Stock and Trotting Association, an association of the leading farmers, livestock owners and fanciers in the Sharpsburg community.

The fairgrounds were located about one and a half miles from Sharpsburg on the Edgar Wilson Farm or what we know as the Ben Wilson Farm now days.

Running and trotting races were held during the week long event and other attractions included bicycle racing, a flying Dutchman and what Richards referred to as the “invariable balloon ascension”.

At one of these fairs L.L. Skaggs of Lawrence County, known as the “Kentucky Giant” was placed on exhibition.

At the time Skaggs was thirty-one years of age, weighed 531 pounds and had a waist line of 62 inches, was 6 feet, 9 inches tall and wore a size 14 shoe.

According to Richards account, the amphitheater was constructed of dressed lumber with closed in spaces under the seats, a promenade space at the top with a stand for the local band and booths underneath for merchants and others to rent for the storage and sale of articles to the patrons.

There were stalls in which to quarter horses and at the back of the grandstand was a long frame dining room and a large cistern, all of which was situated in a beautiful woodland with large trees.

One of the attractions at the fair was Old Man Story and his pulled candy which he sold bountifully to the patrons.

At times the fairgrounds became the arena for some vicious knife and pistol play.

One such occurrence happened Aug. 11, 1892, when Robert Booth of Bourbon County, and David Dale of Bath County, got into a difficulty near the amphitheater and engaged in this unusual sport. 

It appears that Dale, after advancing on Booth with a drawn dirk, began a hasty retreat when Booth drew a gun and pursuing him with cool and deliberate aim, brought him to earth with a near-fatal wound.

So, there ya have it, a small account of the Sharpsburg Fair as written by J.A. Richards’ “A History of Bath County,” Copyright, 1961, published by Southwest Printers.  A

History lesson

 Honestly, when I was young, I was just not all that into history. 

But, as I grew older I became interested in genealogy, and with the research it takes to find past relatives, well you can’t bypass all the historical information that leads you through the branches of a family tree.

Just the other day, I stopped by Sharp Farms Market and Deli, where I enjoyed a visit with Mrs. Chloe Ann and Billy Stewart, Charlie Stephens and Anthony Harmon. 

As we chatted. our conversation soon turned to our memories of growing up in Bethel and Sharpsburg and some of the towns history.

It’s interesting how my memories differ from someone who grew up there in a different decade.

For me, when I close my eyes, I can see Doodle’s Gas Station in full swing; the long wooden bench that sat below the front window and Mr. Bob cleaning someones windshield.

Next to Doodles was where my friend Daphne Fair lived and if you crossed the street to the other side is where a line of apartments once stood.

When I think of my hometown, I see folks going inside the old Citizens Bank or Jessie’s Pool Room or loading some feed into their truck at Pecks Farm Supply.

Oh, and there is Bessie Brooks standing inside the door of Mrs. Geneva’s.

For years I thought Bessie was about 12, until daddy told me she was his age.

On down the street was Fred Shrout’s Junk Store, Best Grocery and Roberts Grocery all made up the row of shops along the sidewalk.

I see Mr. Billy Roberts standing behind the meat counter in his white apron as he weighs out some hamburger or slices bologna.

As you crossed the road on the same side, there was the Post Office where Mrs. Betty Roberts would be behind the counter some days. 

The Town Square, where daddy said he got to see movies and sold popcorn for Mr. Eli Roberts, was located between the Post Office and the Fire House.

Seems like I remember a live cedar tree was decorated in the town square sometimes.

At the Fire House you could always find one of daddy’s best friends, Sleepy Martin, sitting in his usual chair next to the side entrance.

The streets were lined with beautiful huge trees and there was always an old blue garbage barrel that sat next to the phone booth on the corner.

If you crossed the street at the stop light and headed back downtown, there was the old block building that housed different businesses at times, then next was the little house where Timmy Petitt lived, and the big two story, Bachelor’s Hall, where my friend Patricia Reed once lived, and then there was Ramona’s little beauty shop and Mrs. Jenny Petitt’s house and last was Mr. Owen’s Gulley’s little shop.

Depending on what age I am when my memories surface, I can see Mrs. Nancy Gilvin as she cuts my hair short, or hear Mrs. Gladys Jones as she hollers for me or Claudia, “girls, one of ya’ll come here. I need you to run up to the store for me.”

So, as Mrs. Chloe Ann said, “we are a tight, close-knit bunch, those of us from Bethel and Sharpsburg and always will be, and we will always enjoy a chance to sit and reminisce.

Remembering those who lived among us and before us, yep, that’s the best history class ever

Alley Cats

 

Tater Tots, Tater Town Terrors and Alley Cats

 

“Tater Town” where on earth is that? 

I think it was Mrs. Henrietta that once told me Forest Avenue was nicknamed Tater Town years and years ago because the soil in that area of Sharpsburg was the best for growing potatoes. 

The kids I grew up with lovingly dubbed themselves Tater Tots and a few of them were known as the Tater Town Terrors.

I won’t tell you which kids were the terrors, since several of them still live there... ha ha, but I will tell you that Doug, Barry and Melinda Toy, Chad and Angie Hart, LuAnn and Nancy Gulley, Lonnie, Kirk, Sandy and Tammy Reffitt, Donnie Manley, Michael Petitt, Jennifer and Robbie Tapp, are just a few of the children who grew up as Tater Tots.

My great aunt Ruth and Uncle Jock Warner lived in Tater Town and at one time we lived there when I was just a toddler. 

I remember mommy telling us the story of how my sisters Lisa and Claudia crawled up into the floor board of the neighbors car, pulled the gear shift down and the car rolled backwards into someones fence. 

The car belonged to a Mrs. Donaldson and if I remember right, it was her fence that stopped the car. She wasn’t a happy camper and I guess you could say them two little sisters of mine, were the first Tater Town Terrors.

But we moved away to live in Bethel for a few years before moving back to Sharpsburg and by then we had become the Alley Cats since we lived on the alley that leads to the old cemetery.

The little house we lived in still stands on Montgomery Street, but we just called it the alley.

If you were to ask me the actual names of those alleyways I could not for the life of me tell you what the signs say.

But I can tell you that the street behind the Citizens Bank is Chicken House Alley, since the old chicken house once stood in he spot were daddy’s house is now.

I can tell you that the little lane that runs behind where Owens’ Gulley had his shop and the water office is now, was Doodle’s Alley because Doodle Robinsons gas station sat on the corner along main street.

And the road where the old Greater First Baptist Church once stood was Church Alley and the last little lane that took you back out on the main road was the Blacksmith Alley.

We roller skated, rode our bicycles and big wheels up and down those alleys for years and had a blast just being kids.

Daphne Fair and I used to push our doll buggies, played hopscotch and jumped rope along those streets when we were little girls.

I remember Mr. Gladys and Mr. Horace Jones and Scoop, Mr. Buster and Mrs. Sally Ann Brooks, all lived within hollering distance from us and on up the street was Inas, Jenny, David and Darryl Stewart.

In later years Mike Sapp built a new home where Fuzzy Hunt now lives and me and Kim Sapp, April and Danny Warner would spend the afternoons pretending we were on the game show, The Price Is Right.

I guess all small towns change over time, but the memories we have of the people can still take us back to our childhood days, if only in our mind.

The Tater Tots, Tater Town Terrors and Alley Cats still roam the area every once in a while, just to make sure our hometown memories don’t fade too far into the past. 

Childhood memories

 

Listen, can you hear it? Echoes from our childhood

 

I am not exactly sure how old I was when we moved in the little house down on the alley.

For the younger generation in Sharpsburg, that alley would now be called Montgomery Street.

What I do remember is all the mishaps that I seemed to get into back then. 

There was the time I fell out of the big tree that sat in the coroner of the yard, landed flat on my back, and knocked the wind plumb out of me.

And the time I saw what I thought was one huge spider in the dark corner of the building out back where mommy had her wringer washer. 

I was scared to death of that spider and I climbed as fast as I could up on an old dresser and jumped through the window to get away. As I landed on the ground I heard the dresser mirror hit the floor and crash.

That same night we went to the drive in and I slid down the slide and landed in a huge puddle of mud …April said, well  it’s because you broke that mirror now you will have seven years of bad luck!

Once I came up with the idea that I could keep our dog from chasing cars. 

I figured if I could tie a rope around his neck and then wind it around my ankles and tie it to the porch post “Blackie” would not get ran over.

Well, I had that dog all tied up and anchored to my ankles and the post, when along came a car down the alley and sure enough the dog barked and jumped and tried to get loose.  

That rope started to unwind around my ankles and burned right through my skin.

And one time mommy told me not to put my hand in the metal tub of rinse water because she had one of those little electric water heater thingys in there.

Of course I had to see what it would do and stuck my hand in the water and got shocked.

We didn’t always get into trouble, we had many days of fun and adventure too.

We used to turn an old wash tub upside down and stand on it for our stage while we belted out songs loud enough for the entire town to hear. 

Seems to me we sang songs like Happiest Girl in the Whole USA, Stand By Your Man and some Elvis songs thrown into the mix.

One time after we had been to either a revival or Bible School at Donald Fosters church, Dwayne decided he was gonna preach some hell fire and brimstone to his siblings.

So, my brother made him a pulpit with some old concrete blocks that he probably took from the house Pepper Jewel was working on. … where George Riley now lives.

That street is where we lived when me and Daphne Fair would push our doll buggy’s up and down the road and where we had a fabulous time playing in the dump and rummaging through the chicken house.

That little house we lived in on the alley still stands, but it looks much different now.

The big tree is gone and so are the neighbors who lived beside us. 

The back lot is now clear where a small branch of water once trickled past a big grove of trees.

But I imagine if you listen real close on a windy day, you can still hear the echoes of six little Hawkins kids laughing and singing.