Growing Up in Flower Gap

By Phillip Berrier

Born in Winston-Salem, NC, my family moved back to the mountains when my Dad entered the navy in WWII. I grew up in the rural, mountainous area of Flower Gap and surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I attended a one-room school for five years before moving to Lambsburg High School with grades 1-12. This school burned in 1959, and I went to Hillsville High School from which I graduated. I was the first in my family to attend college or get a Master's Degree. I became an elementary school principal at the age of twenty-four. I was married after graduating from college, and we had one child. I became principal of two schools at the age of twenty-six. After fifteen years as a principal and enduring an unsuccessful marriage, I changed professions and left my wife to explore other avenues and career paths. I remarried, bought a general store, and settled in a new career with my second wife. We sold the business after twenty-two years. I was elected to the school board in 2004, and we were partners in a tax preparation service; I began selling life insurance and Medicare Supplements in 2008. This book is a collection of stories to depict different times and situations I have encountered throughout my life as I grew up in Flower Gap, and how this impacted my life right up to this day. Growing up on a farm and apple orchard taught me responsibility, good work habits, and a closeness to God which served me well all the days of my life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781633389236

Book preview

In the Beginning

On a sunny spring day in April 1943, a little baby boy was born to Bill and Zita Berrier in the City Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This little baby had no way of knowing what his life’s path would be as he made his trek through this world. This World War II baby, born to working-class parents living in Winston-Salem, could not anticipate that his life would be one with great promise and achievements on the one hand, but a life of pitfalls and failure that was unknown at his birth. Yes, a life of accomplishments with short-comings, but a life with blessed hope for eternal life

Baby Picture 1943

In 1944, this little boy was brought back to Carroll County, Virginia, to live in the Flower Gap Community where he would live, work, and grow to adulthood on the ancestral land purchased in 1943 at an auction; in fact, this young man and his family lived for several years in the same log house that his ancestors had built in the 1850s when they first moved from Davidson County, North Carolina, to live in this remote, mountainous area of Southwest Virginia.

Flower Gap Community

Flower Gap was still fairly remote and primitive in 1944; electricity finally came to the area in 1947, which made life easier for the residents. However, the people still used outdoor toilets, water was carried from a spring several hundred feet from the house, there were no telephones, and the roads were unpaved. Life was hard as the family eked out a living by tilling the soil and hoping to have an apple crop in the fall. A lot of the food was grown for the family’s consumption, and the whole family participated in processing and canning beans, corn, beets, okra, tomatoes, and other crops that were grown on the farm. Around Thanksgiving, two hogs were killed to provide meat for the family during the long cold winter that was fast approaching. Most of the meat was canned: including sausage, backbone and ribs, and tenderloin; the shoulders and hams were salted to preserve them for later use. Though life was arduous, there was much love as the family worked together, played together, and virtually did everything as a unit. My mother churned butter from the milk that came from the family cow, which we milked twice daily; she, also cooked, sewed, and cleaned. My brother and I carried water from the spring and brought wood in to heat the house and cook the food. My dad plowed the fields, cut the wood, and did other work on the farm. There was always plenty to do for everyone on the farm.

The 1950s

Life began to change in 1951, when we moved into our new house, which was built from the lumber sawed by Troy Rippey on the mountain property owned by my parents. I remember traveling up to the sawmill as they cut the timber and sawed the logs. Then we had a bathroom installed in 1954; now we had indoor plumbing and a bathroom and a shower. We bought our first television in 1955, and another world entered our home. The telephone came later, but we now had a refrigerator and an electric stove, and an oil furnace soon replaced the wood stove. Life was changing, and life was good and improving.

We had always had a vehicle, since we bought our first pickup in 1947; it was a red Ford that took some strings being pulled by friends as the market was so hot after World War II, the automobile industry could not meet the demand. Dad was never pleased with this vehicle, so in 1952 my parents traded for a Dodge pickup. These vehicles were vital for farming, visiting family, going to town, etc. This was our link to the larger world; then in 1957, we purchased our first Chevrolet pickup; this was the vehicle that I first drove, dated in, drove to the senior prom, and left me stranded in Mount Airy with my date in 1961. I had to hire a cab to take us home, and we met my dad walking to try to locate me. This was quite an embarrassing evening. I don’t think I ever dated this girl again. I suppose she wasn’t impressed with my vehicle, or was it me?

Growing Up on a Farm

After harvesting the crop, my dad would take a load of vegetables to the market in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; there he would encounter buyers who purchased the farmer’s vegetables, so they could retail such in their stores. At other times brokers would purchase the entire load and become a middleman between the farmer and retailer. This was how we converted vegetables into cash to provide the funds to purchase things: gas, clothes, coffee, sugar, pop, etc. Dad would leave out in the middle of the night in order to be at the market by 2:00 a.m. to meet the buyers; he would return home in the early morning, sleep another hour, and work on the farm the rest of the day. Thanks to my mom and dad, we survived and prospered by the sweat of our brow. Life was not easy, but life was enjoyable in the 1950s. One year all the apples were destroyed by an early frost and freeze; it was April 1955. Tires were burned to produce a billowing black smoke that covered the orchard to protect the young fruit, but the temperatures were too cold for anything to survive. My family dug in and planted larger vegetable crops; both an early planting and a second crop to bring in more vegetables to sell at the market. We survived this difficult year but this strengthened my family’s resolve to survive no matter the circumstances. God had provided a way! We survived the winter on two hundred dollars.

My Early Education

Asixteen-year educational journey began for this six-year-old, in 1949 at West Liberty school, a one-room school, in the Flower Gap community. This youngster was petrified on his first day of school; the school had a large room with seven grades and one teacher. As I recall, I walked home on my first day of school as we didn’t know about predators or child abductors. Spending five years in this school had its ups and downs. Some of the teachers did an admirable job, but others were a dismal failure. One could say that all the students learned to survive as the larger kids terrorized the smaller ones by tying them to trees and throwing rocks at them. Some fantasized that they were cowboys and Indians as the bad guys were killed off. We would come to school and reenact the radio programs we had listened to the night before such as Sergeant Preston and the Lone Ranger since television still did not exist in Flower Gap. Books never got in the way of our education at West Liberty. Many played in the woods and mountains. Some played games on the school grounds such as marbles or dodgeball; others picked up cigarette butts and mimicked their parents by smoking at an early age. Some teachers would go home at lunch, leaving the children alone with no supervision. Life was tough, but the children were tougher.

Lambsburg School

After five years in a one-room school, some of us students moved on to Lambsburg High School, which was a combined school with grades one to twelve. It was here that the students entered the adolescent years and puberty set in. The girls became more attractive to the boys and vice versa. Sometimes it got out of hand when the boys got too fresh with the girls and made out, and the girls’ parents came to the school. On one occasion, some girls and boys went too far, but we were young and our bodies were changing; we never had biology, but the human anatomy was something that we knew all about.

It was during the late 1950s, and athletics was a big deal as the school fielded teams in baseball and basketball. The long bus rides to the gym in Galax made indelible memories for everyone on the teams. The boys refused to wear shorts and played in long pants; frequently, there was a fight in the restrooms. Country boys grew up playing baseball, so most of the boys were pretty good; few schools could hold their own with the boys of summer from Lambsburg.

Teenage Years

During the 1958 school year, I recall that Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash. All the students were devastated, and many were crying; but we still had Elvis, Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers, and countless other heartthrobs who were leading this new music revolution called rock and roll. Every day after school, I would tune in The Platter Party on the local radio station to hear all the latest hits. We began going to parties to dance and play spin the bottle; our lives were changing, but this era preceded the drug infested 1960s and 1970s. Life was still simple in Flower Gap and Lambsburg, and life was good as a teenager growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

We played sports and went to parties during our teen years; however, I still had to work on the farm. I picked apples and peaches in late summer, and in early Summer we harvested beans, cabbage, tomatoes, and onions. We had to peel the small spring onions, place them in a bunch, and tie a string around each one. This left a strong odor, or stench on your hands, and a yellowish stain; I would use detergent, Clorox, etc. in an attempt to eliminate the odor but to no avail. This was rather embarrassing on date nights.

During these formative years at Lambsburg, most boys smoked cigarettes regularly. The teachers were fairly good, and the students were taught the basics in math and English. There were no foreign languages or advanced sciences taught through the tenth grade. Students were engaged in plays, a student newspaper, The Trumpet, and sports. Life was good! That is until March 1959 when the school burned to the ground, and the students’ lives were shattered. There would never be another high school at Lambsburg!

Life After Lambsburg School

In the fall of 1959, every student had to attend other schools; some went to high school in North Carolina and others went to Hillsville High School. The bus transported all the kids from Lambsburg and Flower Gap up the long, treacherous mountain to Hillsville. Coming from a small remote high school to a fairly large school was a traumatic experience for everyone; the new kids were outsiders, and we could not find our homerooms on the first day and were laughed at by the other students; however, we persevered and learned to mix with others and pretty soon all was well under the sun. A horrible snowy winter in 1960 caused school to close for more than thirty days. When Spring rolled around, some of the boys from Lambsburg excelled on the baseball team. Then, they were accepted by everyone and not just looked down on as being from below the mountain. Others from Lambsburg excelled in the classroom making the Beta Club and being in the top ten academically.

By 1961 two of the star baseball players at Hillsville came from Lambsburg. Both of these young men were invited to a tryout camp in Roanoke during the summer by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yet the parents of the young man from Flower Gap were proudest of their son who was the highest-ranking male in academics in the class of 1961. It was a long trek from West Liberty to the top of the mountain.

Life in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Growing up in Flower Gap was filled with work, chores, and a lot of happy times. In the summer we had to work on the farm hoeing corn, bagging cabbage, picking peaches in the hottest times with no AC, but we would pond up the creek to make a cooling-off place. We made our own toys and were particularly fond of making wagons and racing them down the hills. We began playing baseball at a young age, and making ballfields in the cow pastures. We improvised and created new games such as using a corn cob for a ball and a board for a bat. You could curve it or throw it hard and hitting the cob took some skills. When my brother was signed by the Houston Astros in 1965, I often wondered if our cob game had helped to develop his hitting skills. After getting bicycles, all the boys in the community had a new means of travel. One time, a bunch of us boys took our bikes to the top of Wheeler Knob, a several hundred feet hike up the mountain, and one of the boys rode his bike down the mountain hitting a tree head on. The rest of us walked our bikes down the steep incline, and Kyle was banged up, but he survived. We learned to never ride our bikes off a mountain again.

On another occasion, Jack Tolbert, was holding a live chicken as he descended down the rough mountain road leading from Arnold Bryant’s home; needless to say, he didn’t make it—chicken feathers flew everywhere as he crashed his bike, sustaining cuts and bruises both to his body and ego. The chickens were never seen again!

Easter Sunday Hike

On April 5, 1953, my family and the Arnold Bryant family hiked up the mountain with a picnic lunch; it was Easter Sunday and my birthday as we celebrated both. I remember walking across the apex of the mountain, as we passed the buzzard den, and we settled on the bald rock located on the Sugar Loaf. Nature and all its glory is hard to beat for a backdrop for our lives, and my early life was filled with nature’s glory! We ate our picnic lunch on this bald rock overlooking Lambsburg. It was a gorgeous Spring day, and the view from the Sugar Loaf was spectacular as you could see Pilot Mountain, the high school, and all the orchards and fields that were dotted by the people’s homes. What a panoramic view we had as far as the eye could see. There was no interstate and no noise to ruin the view or to interfere with our enjoyment. After eating, we hiked down the mountain and on to our house. What a wonderful day and trip

With my family and friends. This trip made an indelible memory in my mind, and I still cherish this simple little excursion up the mountain and across the ridges. We all need to spend more quality time with our children and families.

How My Love for Sports Developed

Ideveloped a love for the New York Yankees and began listening to their games on the radio. During the Summer days, we listened to baseball on WSYD, which carried the Cubs and Yankees more than anyone else. At night, we could pick up the Yankees sometimes, but we could always get the Pirates on KDKA. During this decade, I also developed an affinity for the UNC Tar Teels and listened to all their games. I especially remember their climb to the top in 1957 to win the national championship by beating Kansas with Wilt Chamberlain; also, I remember a game in 1958 when the Tar Heels defeated Oscar Robinson and the number-one ranked Cincinnati Bearcats ninety to eighty-eight in the now defunct Dixie Classic tournament in Raleigh, North Carolina. But my greatest thrill occurred when Mickey Mantled homered in the bottom of the ninth to win the game. That was a Flower Gap high for me!

1961 HS Graduation and Beyond

1961 was a memorable year in my life. In April my great-grandfather died having lived a long life that stretched back to 1869. Then I graduated from high school in June. I’d enjoyed a very successful year playing baseball in high school. In fact, I pitched the opening game versus Mount Airy and we thrashed them quite well. I believe that we won more games at Hillsville than any previous team; Coach Dowdy was a very good coach, and my love for baseball grew even more during this time and into adulthood. I played until I was thirty or more, then we turned to softball. My greatest memory on the diamond was in the early 1970s in a baseball game in Pinnacle, North Carolina, when I homered on four consecutive times at bats.

During the summer of 1961, I worked for Bedsaul Surveying as we surveyed for the New River hydroelectric dam to be built in Grayson County; unfortunately, it was never built due to the pressure put on the federal government by the environmentalists. During that summer, I also worked for Davis Construction Company, which had the contract for constructing the new elementary school in Lambsburg. I alternated between the two jobs since Mr. Woodrow Bedsaul was on the school board, and he coordinated my work schedule between the two jobs. For the Davis Construction Company, my job was to haul mud, bricks, tile, etc., or do any other menial, hard, physical labor needed at the work site. I worked with a lot of locals from the Lambsburg area as a day laborer. I never realized at the time that much of my future would revolve around this building, and the future elementary school that we were building. In fact, in 1961 that never entered my mind as a possibility. I had greater dreams of future conquest and delusions of grandeur.

By September 1961, I was ready to attend Catawba College. I had put in my time working on the farm, picking peaches and apples, and yes working for others during my last summer before college. I remember going to the Earl Theater in Mount Airy to see Come September the Saturday night before going to college. I went alone as it was a somber time, and a time for reflection on my future. I had never been away from Flower Gap for more than a night when I stayed with a friend or my aunt Edith. This was a big deal for me and my family; no one in my family had ever attended college, and few had even graduated from high school. My mother had to drop out in the seventh grade, and she was intent on my going to college. Though my mother probably never intended it, I could always sense some pressure for me to succeed and even excel in school, and I worked diligently to please my mother.

Catawba, Here We Come

Before dawn, on an early September morning, my father and I started on the hour and a half drive to Salisbury, NC to begin my brave new adventure to attain a college education. We were traveling down highway 601 in our farm pickup—yes, the 1957 Chevy pickup I had driven on dates, to the prom, and all around Cana and Mount Airy, the same pickup that hauled our apples was now hauling me to college. We had loaded up my clothes and other necessities of life and placed them in a cardboard box or maybe two; since we didn’t own a suitcase or trunk, a cardboard box would have to suffice. I didn’t realize that others would drive up in fancy cars and bring their trunks and expensive luggage as they came to Catawba from New Jersey, Pennyslvania, Charlotte and other places foreign to a boy from the backwoods. Dad and I were just driving down the highway listening to Little Jimmy Dickens as he sang Does your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the radio.

Upon arrival, we carried my boxes to my room, and I met my roommates from New York City and Winston-Salem. Being very naive about the world and people in general, I had much to learn about other cultures and people; in fact, my family had never traveled farther than Winston-Salem in my life. I had traveled to Christiansburg and Martinsville playing high school baseball. Now I