| By Larry Stalnaker 2012
Arnoldsburg was a truly enjoyable place to grow
up, and each time I see an article on the Herald pertaining to life there, it elicits some great memories.
It is an overworked comment, but there was so much of
"Mayberry" in Arnoldsburg.
We had our Justice of Peace/Constable in Homer
Lynch, Vere Downs the barber, and a whole cast of characters such as Smith
Cottrill, Hudepohl Poling, "Buck Indian" Downs, John Whytsell, "Blind" Hayes the peddler, Jr. Morris
and Russ King.
Local hangouts such as Weaver's Grocery, E.G. Mckown
Grocery, Hall's Grocery, Gene Starcher's ESSO Station, and Vera's
Restaurant.
The main drag (US 33-119) was delineated by the "Upper End" and the
"Lower End," not a social scale, but rather to indicate the two extreme
ends of the town.
In the early years we had a two room school house and later Arnoldsburg Elementary, built on the flood plain, with it frequently flooding.
The town once had a movie theater, a funeral parlor, a Justice of Peace office, a telephone switchboard office, and several chicken houses.
It was an era before we got over-regulated.
I can
remember each year looking forward to going on gigging expeditions with
the adults, coming back with gunny sacks of "Red Horse" (suckers) and
watching while they were ground up at Weaver's Grocery, made into fish
cakes, and divided among the several people on the gigging expedition.
I
can only imagine how that would be frowned on today.
I hope that you realize what a truly wonderful service the Hur Herald provides, keeping old memories alive, allowing us to return in our day dreams to a better
time of life and remind us of how privileged we were to grow up in such a time and place.
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