Thursday, August 12, 1898
A cattle buyer went to a farmhouse in the Swago neighborhood and helloed for the good man. His wife came to the door and said, “He’s down there at that glory hole they call Buckeye. If he gits down there at them stores, he thinks he’s got to heaven.”
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There was a drummer in town the other day driving a skinny pony attached to an old rattletrap. He met a friend whom he had not seen for years, and in the course of his remarks, said: “It’s no trouble for a man to rise if he sets about it right. Look at me! Four years ago, I was nothing but a farmer. I got to teaching school and now I am a drummer.” His soul was satisfied.
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James Cassell lived and died in Pocahontas without ever being outside its boundaries. His first visit to Hunt-ersville, the county seat, was when he was over 60 years old. He was summoned as a witness, and came down with William Collins. Coll-ins saw that Cassell was immensely impressed with the village and was staring around generally. He remarked to him, “It’s a pretty big town, ain’t it?”
The old gentleman re-plied, “I’ll be fired if it ain’t the biggest town I ever seen.’
TWO FULL MOONS
There will be two full moons in August, says the Baltimore Sun; one occurring on the first day and one on the last. Full moons occur twice in the same month only once in about three years, and there will not be two full moons in one month again until 1901…
A BROKEN LEG
Wallace Blair, living on the east fork of Greenbrier River about eight miles above Van Buren Arbogast, had his leg badly broken last week. He went out to hunt a bee tree and came to the river which was too high to wade. Having an axe along, he proceeded to fell a tree across the stream. He was working in a thicket of laurel and he stood on a log. When the tree started to fall, he walked back on the log. The falling tree upset the log which caught him and crushed his leg above and below the knee. The bones protruded through the calf of his leg. He crawled through the laurel a half mile to a path in order that he might be found. There he built a fire and waited. On his way there, the protruding bones worried him, and he took his knife and sliced the muscles so that he could put the bones back. Drs. Austin and Hunter Moomau amputated the leg, and the patient has so far recovered that he can lie in bed and bless his nurses when things do not suit him.
He is a Union veteran and draws a pension. He is about 60 years of age. He came with a large family from Kentucky. He has lived in this county five years. He went to the Ohio river and journeyed upstream. When he passed Marlinton, he had a boat towed by a mule. Arriving at the head of navigation, he chose a piece of land, bought it, and has lived the life of a pioneer ever since. He has made a fine clearing.
THE HIGH TIDE
Last Wednesday, the river and creeks got high and made a flood that will be known as the big August flood of ’98. The water is just about as high as it was March 30, 1896, and the highest in 12 years.
The meteorological observer at this place reports over 7 inches of rainfall for July and over 7 inches fell the first 10 days of August. Tuesday evening at four o’clock the rain began and by the next day at noon, in twenty hours, 4.10 inches of rain had fallen and a flood was imminent…
THE BLACK BASS
One of the most interesting studies of all the fishes is the black bass, the only fish of any real importance of the Greenbrier River. At this time of the year, they are caught in considerable quantities and form no inconsiderable article of diet in the menu of many families. They succumb to the piece of fat bacon or the humble crawfish with the same readiness that they do to the artificial flies of the aristocratic fly fisher. The bass always makes it interesting for his capturer, but the fly fisher gets more for his money than those who fish in any other way. He works down the river casting the lure some fifty feet from him on the glassy surface of the river. Apparently the river is at rest and there is not a ripple on the face of the water, but suddenly the water boils around the fly and the fisherman thinks of submarine mine explosions, but it is only a strong bass that has darted at the supposed insect and turns and with his powerful tail troubles the pool.
Then the glory of subduing the bass! He fights like he’s possessed for awhile, but when he gives up, he lies as helpless in the water as if he were dead. Of course, a bass rises at times, churns the water around the fly and does not touch it. Then the line slips in home with a sickening lightness and the agony is awful…
