THE ET CETERA CHRONICLES - VOL.102
IN COMING! - Miss Lily Hightower was truly a competent and talented librarian at the eight-year-old Carnegie Library in June of 1912. With every passing rainfall, she was incessantly aggravated at flakes of plaster falling to the wooden library floor. One day, Miss Lily left her seat at her desk to attend to an errand. Just a few moments later, Miss Hightower was astounded by the sound of a one-hundred-pound slab of plaster colliding with her chair. The flustered librarian composed herself and contacted the head of the Library Board. The board quickly concluded that a pressed steel roof would be installed for everyone's protection. That roof remains in the building today. Laurens County Herald, June 27, 1912.
BEER AND CIGARETTES TO GO - Walter Wooten, of Wheeler County, needed a drag from a pack of cigarettes, with some hooch to wash it down. So, he mounted his bicycle and headed north into “The Barrell” in the Cedar Grove community some fourteen crow-fly miles away. He stole as many cigarettes, beer, and wine as he could carry back to the privacy of his home. Laurens County Sheriff Carlus Gay and his deputies sped to the scene of the crime. They followed Wooten’s bike tracts through a cornfield, a pasture, and a potato patch until they caught up with the fleeing felon. Atlanta Constitution, July 13, 1955.
NOTHING TO IT - Major Murah Sturgis, of Dublin, Georgia, was not a person who had ever driven a horse in a wagon or buggy, much less a trotting horse in a real race on an oval track. Neither did any of the other military personnel who also agreed to their first chance in a horse race. At the last minute, Sturgis was called upon to race Cornigliana, a fast trotter, which had never lost a race on the track in Naples, Florida. From the start, Sturgis pushed the horse to a personal record of one minute and twenty-four and eight-tenths of a second, some two seconds faster than in past races. Admiral William E. Fetchteler won two dollars when he chose the horse driven by an army man. Atlanta Constitution, November 22, 1954.
COMMANDER OF HELL - Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Webb, a former Dublin jeweler, served his country for more than two decades. Webb enlisted in the local company of the Georgia National Guard in 1923. Webb landed in France in September 1944. Assigned to the 9th and 102nd divisions, Webb was assigned the duty of commanding a prison in Dachau, Germany with 20,000 German SS prisoners inside its walls. In the five years before 1946, more than 30,000 Jews and other prisoners were murdered there. Dublin Courier Herald, September 23, 1947.
STOP STEALING MY COTTON PICKIN’ HELP - Keeping good help has always been a challenge to businessmen and farmers. It got so bad in the autumn of 1879 that cotton farmers had to defend themselves against other farmers coming onto their cotton fields and stealing workers. Camden SC Journal, Dec. 25, 1879.
KUKLUXKARMA - In the late summer of 1879, just across the Laurens County line in what is now Bleckley County, Frank Smith was killed while in the act of killing a Negro man, “Sugar Bill.” Smith snuck into the man’s watermelon patch. Smith objected, and a general row commenced. Smith, vowing revenge, assembled a party of Klansmen, who sought out the home of one Riley Smith, where “Sugar Bill” was staying. The masked Avengers broke down the door of the Smith home and kidnapped Bill and his wife.
Riley Smith and his good friend John Donaldson ventured out to confront the invaders, who began firing, wounding Riley Smith. The less-than-all-powerful klansmen tucked their robes between their tails and fled into the sanctuary of darkness.
Smith and Donaldson recovered and approached what appeared to be a dead body. The corpse belonged to Frank Smith, the instigator of the whole tragic night. Smith was still grasping his pathetic two-barrel derringer with one more bullet left. When Smith’s body was presented before a coroner’s jury, he lay on a bed of karma, still wearing his robes of terror. Cincinnati Daily Star, September 23, 1879.
Comments