Thursday, March 19, 1914
BIG FIRE IN THE NIGHT
Saved again. A bad fire broke out Thursday night at 12:30 in a block of wooden buildings owned by W. B. Sharp at the corner of Main Street and Third Avenue, immediately across from the two bank buildings. The building was 120 feet long and was on fire from end to end, lighting the whole valley before the fire fighters got the alarm.
It looked at first like the whole business section of the town would certainly be destroyed. The flames were ascending from the roof of the building, with a six inch space between it and the next wooden building.
We noticed one stranger who was suffering from great excitement. He was exclaiming, “My God, what can they do with it? What can they do with it? “ A bystander looked him over and said: “Throw water on it.”
So the volunteer companies came and threw water on it until it got so dark they could not see to work any longer and put the fire out. The fire was confined to the building in which it started.
The weather favored us. It was a still night and a heavy snow had fallen and was still falling. What little air there was drew across Main Street and favored the building just across the alley, C. W. Slavin’s tin shop.
The fire seems to have started in the restaurant end of the property.
Those affected by the fire are as follows: W. B. Sharp, owner of the building. McNeil & Beverage, restaurant, total loss. W. E. Wilson, barber shop, total loss. H. Wells, clothing store, partial loss. Marlinton News Company, greatly damaged by water. Kee & McNeill, drug store, walls charred. Bank of Marlinton, plate glass windows broken. Marlinton Bottling works, walls charred. C. W. Galford, watch repair shop, total loss.
DUNMORE
March came in like a lion or a bull moose, we do not know which it was, and it may go out with a progressive spell of sugar making.
The ground hog played a full hand Monday which was one of the worst days that we have had in years. Lots of the roads are blocked with snow. The ford across Thomas creek has been in a dangerous condition during the cold snap.
B.B. Campbell has undertaken a big job of skidding logs for the Deer Creek Lumber company, near Arbovale.
Aunt Sallie Sharp died last week at her home near Arbovale at the age of 107. Her husband who died several years ago was 107 years old when he died.
Three car loads of grain will come to Sitlington this week, mostly for the Dunmore roller mill. If people don’t raise more grain in this county they will go the spout up, like Betsy Hocum. Do you know that you can make $100 per acre raising buckwheat and turkeys?
OAK GROVE
The literary society at Oak Grove was largely attended last Friday night. The question was, Resolved, that women should be allowed to vote. Miss Jessie Bridwell and Miss Margie Wooddell championed the affirmative against Luther Wooddell and Noel Philips. The decision of the judges was that women keep out of politics.
J. F. Ashford took a large yoke of oxen to Boyer, Saturday.
The ground hog weather is getting worse and worser and feed is getting scarce and scarcer. If March goes out like lions this writer would like to go where there are no lions.
March 2 was the stormiest day in this section for many a long year.
EDRAY
The health of the people of this neighborhood is very good.
Sugar making is in full blast.
Feed is going to be scarce here; no one has any to sell and money is about as scarce as hen’s teeth. Farmers ought not to have to buy so much feed.
Talk about the ground hog. – Gee whiz! We take the creeps to think of what he has done in 1914.
THIS AND THAT
Virginia defeated woman suffrage by a vote of 75 to 12 in the lower branch of the legislature. Virginians are not in favor of imposing additional burdens upon their women folks.
The same old annual scandal – winter lingering in the lap of spring.
We have never yearned for the song of the frog, that harbinger of spring, as we do this year.
The New York World says that Page is the guy who put the ass in Ambassador.
MARY’S ANIMAL SHOW
Mary had a little lamb –
“Twas Persian on her coat;
She also had a mink or two
About her tiny throat;
A bird of paradise, a tern,
And ermine made the hat
That perched at jaunty angle
On her coiffure largely “rat.”
Her tiny boots were sable topped,
Her gloves were muskrat, too,
Her muff had heads and tails of half
The “critters” in the Zoo,
And when she walked abroad, I ween,
She feared no wintry wind;
At keeping warm ‘twas plain to see
She had all Nature “skinned.”
-National Humane Review