You Can't Fall off the Floor

By Ben Watford and Dudley E. Flood

Can anything good come out of Winton? The King James Version of the Holy Bible relates an episode in which Jesus Christ was choosing men to become Disciples. Phillip was sent to invite Nathanael to join the other followers. When Phillip informed Nathanael that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Messiah, Nathanael asked, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Nazareth, like Winton, was not a place in which one would expect to find greatness. The negative label that too often has been placed on small, rural towns and their people can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Unless an individual has a healthy view of self, he or she may live down to the level of popular perception.

I spent a fair amount of my youth living with the socially assigned designation of country kid. The inference of this distinction was that I lacked many of the virtues that were automatically attributed to city kids. That may have been true, but the net result was that it motivated me to prove that something good could come out of Winton. As Phillip did to Nathanael, in this book, we invite all to come and see.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9781449035570

Book preview

You Can’t Fall Off

the Floor

by

Dudley E. Flood and Ben Watford

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2009 Dudley E. Flood and Ben Watford. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/29/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3557-0 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3556-3 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009910493

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Dedication:

You Can’t Fall Of the Floor or a Perspective of a Small Town This book is dedicated to all the people who grew up in small Southern towns and who defied the stereotypical assignments usually attached to them. It is also dedicated to all the people, including teachers, family and others, who affected the lives of Ben Watford and Dudley Flood during their formative years.

Contents

Prologue

Winton

An Introduction

Introduction

Winton, North Carolina Census Perspective

Life on Manley Hill

River Herring And The Chowan River

Twelve Years At C. S. Brown School

White Jacket John

Ceaphus Bobo Walker,

A Giant Of A Man

A Short Tale Of Two Radically Different Men:

A Pearl of A Man and His Neighbor

J. Eli Reid, Sam Pillmon And The Chowan Beach Recreation Site:

Lee Dozier: The Common Man’s Mechanic

My Two Oldest Sisters

And The Lost Book

Calvin Scott Brown:

A Man on a Mission

Hertford County:

A Haven For Black Education or Waters Training School/Calvin Scott Brown High School

Fred Liverman - Winton’s Sheriff

Mrs. Undean Jones; A Superior Teacher

A Visit To Our Second Grade Teacher,

Mrs. Alice Jones Nickens Who Is One Hundred Five Years Young:

A Teacher’s Teacher

Katie Hart, Winton’s Black Librarian

Weekends and Holidays at Manley’s Field

Pulpwood Annie

John Willie Weaver, a Man of Many Talents

Winton Nightlife or the Lack Thereof

Some Winton Customs

and Traditions

Pleasant Plains

Baptist Church

The Tolling Of The Bells

Epilogue

Prologue

By Dudley E. Flood

Can anything good come out of Winton? The King James Version of the Holy Bible relates an episode in which Jesus Christ was choosing men to become Disciples. Phillip was sent to invite Nathanael to join the other followers. When Phillip informed Nathanael that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Messiah, Nathanael asked, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Nazareth, like Winton, was not a place in which one would expect to find greatness. The negative label that too often has been placed on small, rural towns and their people can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Unless an individual has a healthy view of self, he or she may live down to the level of popular perception.

I spent a fair amount of my youth living with the socially assigned designation of country kid. The inference of this distinction was that I lacked many of the virtues that were automatically attributed to city kids. That may have been true, but the net result was that it motivated me to prove that something good could come out of Winton. As Phillip did to Nathanael, in this book, we invite all to come and see.

Winton

An Introduction

By Ben Watford

When I contacted my long time boyhood friend, Dr. Dudley Flood, about collaborating on a book about Winton, North Carolina, I was not sure how he would respond to the offer. I was pleased to find that he not only accepted the challenge but was pleased with the format that the book would take. The book would describe the many characters in the town of our boyhood. It is of interest that two boys could grow up in the same small town and have experiences that would generate a totally different point of view of the town and the surrounding area.

When I finished college I had no intentions of going back to my home town. I left the town of Winton in Nineteen Fifty intending never to return. The description of Winton depicted below is how Winton appeared to me as a boy, I am sure that there have been many changes during the past sixty years.

The town of Winton was a small, sleepy little hamlet located just south of the Chowan River in northeastern North Carolina. In many ways, Winton was typical of many small towns that dot the coast of the eastern part of the United States. There was no theater, bowling alley, Y.M.C.A., Art Gallery, Museum, or other forms of public recreation, only people, churches and a few stores. Winton is located about forty miles south of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, as the crow flies. It lies about thirty miles south of Suffolk, Virginia and the nearest town of any size is Ahoskie nine miles south. There is no industry except an aluminum factory on the Chowan River that dumps its waste directly into the waterway in a desperate effort to duplicate New York’s Hudson River If you have ever traveled north or south along North Carolina’s scenic, Route Thirteen, you must have passed Winton. If you are not the observant type, you could have passed it without being aware that Winton was there, because of its size. There was one traffic light along Winton’s main concourse that was aptly named Main Street. Main Street which extends about one mile through the center of the town, a wide thoroughfare lined with century old maple trees. Large stately homes sit just off the sidewalks on both sides of the street. At the northern end of the street on the right, if one is traveling north, was the Post Office. Located on the other side of the street was the Chowan Savings and Loan Bank. Directly across from the bank was a drug store, stopping place for the Trailways buses traveling North and South. Adjacent to the bank, across the street from the drug store was a grocery store. Here, the local white men gathered in the evening to discuss the affairs of the town. At the southern end of the town’s main street, on the left side of the street was the black funeral parlor operated by one of Winton’s leading citizens, John Willie Weaver. Next to the funeral parlor was the black owned Jones’ grocery store where the local black men gathered at sundown to discuss the affairs of the town. Directly across the street from the Jones’ store was the former Calvin Scott Brown High School for blacks. On the grounds of the Calvin Scott Brown High School, which looked more like a community college campus than a high school, was the South Winton Baptist Church.

Homes of white residents were located on the northern end of the street while blacks lived on the southern end. There were some black homes intermingled with the white occupied homes on Winton’s Main Street. In this aspect, the town of Winton differs from most towns in the northern section of the United States. Using the system of communities where each ethnic group lives, the Northern states developed segregation into an art form. A form so pervasive that it would pass all federal laws concerning segregation and integration. This system perpetuated by real-estate agents and economics prevents any real form of integration in both housing and education.

The following is an axiom that aptly describes this phenomenon: In the north whites don’t care how high blacks get as long as they don’t get too close and in the south whites don’t care how close blacks get as long as the don’t get too high.

Winton’s only claim to fame is that it was the first hamlet in North Carolina burned to the ground during the Civil War. Winton remains the county seat for Hertford County and contains the court house and a jail. At the court house there is a historical plaque attesting to the passage of the Union soldiers through Winton. The Plaque caption reads: A detachment of United States troops burned Winton February 20, l862, the first town in North Carolina to be burned during the war, State Historical Commission l940.

Beside the plaque, and typical of many southern

towns, there is a statue of a Civil War soldier in full battle dress, musket and all, facing north. The memorial reads: To Our Confederate Dead l861-1865, Hertford County Chapter UDC. I suspect that some of the white people in Winton still believe that the south won the war. It would not surprise anyone to find them still hoarding confederate currency waiting for the time when the south rises again.

I should mention that one would have missed Winton completely when traveling south along Route Thirteen during the past ten years or so. The old bridge passing through Main Street was torn down some years ago. A new bridge built farther upstream bypassed Winton. Winton is now in its death throes as a thriving town, as the traffic from points north and south no longer passes through it. The one traffic light that was situated about mid-way down Main Street has been removed.

My life had its beginnings there but I left there with no regrets. I have very few pleasant memories of my hiatus in that small community. It was only as an adult that I realized and understood the impact that Winton had on my view of life. Where one grows up as a youngster is just a place and little do we understand the role it plays in shaping our lives.

Though I grew up in Winton, North Carolina, when I retired from a teaching career in Smithtown, New York, I elected not to return there. Most of my recollections of growing up in Winton are negative. There are very few positive experiences that I recall from growing up in the town of Winton, North Carolina.

At the end of my teaching career, my wife and I moved to a retirement community near New Bern, North Carolina. The weather in this section of Eastern North Carolina is usually pleasant and one does not have to stand in line to play a game of golf. With rare exceptions, one can play golf year round, even during the months of December and January. Once I realized that I would never make the pro tour and that I will forever shoot in the eighties as my best game score, I find that I can enjoy the game of golf and have some pleasure in my limited ability doing it. One can play a game of golf in Eastern North Carolina for about twenty dollars, including greens fees and a cart.

I booked tee times on the Fairfield Harbour golf course for Monday, June 8, at ten o’clock. It was a beautiful summer day, no clouds in the clear blue sky. It was not too hot and the absence of rain made it a perfect day for a round of golf. I arrived at the pro shop about thirty minutes before my tee time. The Pro said to me, There are two men already signed in and prepared to play whenever you are ready.

I was surprised and pleasantly pleased to find two black men waiting for me on the first tee. Very few blacks live in Fairfield Harbour and fewer still come here using time shares. So, it is always a pleasure to see blacks in the area and still more of a pleasure to get to play a round of golf with them. We introduced ourselves and I found that they were from New Jersey and were down using their week of time share.

We got three good drives off the first tee and all three of us bogeyed the hole. We then proceeded to the second hole that is a doglegged right, par four, and about three hundred fifty seven yards. While waiting for the foursome in front of us to hit their second ball we got into a conversation about where we lived.

Bill Brown stated, I am from Newark, New Jersey and I have known James Lewis for many years. We usually spend our vacations together.

In fact, we live very close to each other in the same community

I said to them, I worked for many years as a teacher on Long Island, New York and had finally retired to Eastern North Carolina.

James asked, Why did you decide upon North Carolina?

I said to him, I grew up about one hundred miles north of here in a place called Winton, near Ahoskie, in North Carolina. I am familiar with this area.

Bill spoke, and his next few words shocked me and brought back a flood of memories from my sojourn in Winton. Most I had successfully hidden in my subconscious. His brief statement brought me back to that period of my life that I had tried desperately to forget.

He said, I know Winton; the black people there are light bright and damn near white.

His words describe Winton better than any that I could have thought up. Yet he stated it matter-of-factly and in a joking tone. His artistic description of my home town shocked me. Yet it was an adequate description of the Winton that I knew and where I had grown up.

He stated, I grew up in Windsor, North Carolina, about thirty five miles from the Winton-Ahoskie area. As a young man my friends and I would drive to Winton to look at the white-black people.

There are many communities like Winton, where light-skinned blacks settled during and after the Civil War. In a time when having light skin had advantages over dark skin, marriage and associations outside the color line were taboo. Winton, similar to many towns like it, practiced a subtle form of segregation within the black community.

My father was light skin and my mother, born in Portsmouth, Virginia was very dark skinned.