June 22
By Holly Kozelsky and Pat Pion
100 Years ago – 1924
Ad in the Henry Bulletin for Oldsmobile Six: “Make this cab your ‘personal car.’ Business may come before pleasure, but in either this Oldsmobile Six Cab is an equally agreeable companion. The Salesman—will find that he can make more calls each day. This Cab can be parked in an unbelievably small space; it can be turned around in a 36-foot street. Large sample cases can be stowed in its 13 cubic foot rear-deck compartment. Or The Women—use the Cab for shopping, placing their bundles and parcels in the convenient, covered space back of the seat. Or they drive it on afternoon calls, proudly displaying the beauty and refinement of its velour upholstery, its silvered fittings, its wide doors with generous windows so easily regulated to the weather. Men and Women—both enthuse over its attractive lines; the comfort of its Fisher body cradled on springs almost as long as the car itself; the reserve power in its smooth, 40 horsepower engine; the remarkable mileage it gives on fuel and oil. It comes to you complete – at a price hundreds of dollars lower than will buy you its equal. $985. Gerald W. King, Martinsville, Virginia.”
75 years ago – 1949
Only 20 children were enrolled in the city’s day camp for children at a city park, though the city had planned for up to 40 children. Director Lee Moore Jr. attributed the low attendance to children being busy instead with vacation Bible schools. Nevertheless, the City was planning a second two-week day camp to open the following Monday.
Martinsville stores closed at 1 p.m., following a custom of several years of closing early on Wednesday during the summer months.
1960
W.W. James of the State Health Department’s Bureau of Insect and Rodent Control proclaimed Henry County’s garbage dumping problem “one of the worst” he had seen. He was accompanied on his visit by other state officials. Henry County then did not provide garbage dumps; the only landfill type in the area was operated in Martinsville. Edmonds said that unhealth trash and dumps were partially responsible for the recent outbreak of hepatitis, and for the polio epidemic of the prior year. The worse places were in Bassett, Stanleytown and Collinsville. IT was estimated that the County would need three landfills to take care of the problem. His department would return to the area in three weeks to take a house-to-house survey of garbage.
Off-duty members of the Henry County Sheriff’s Department held their annual dinner at a county restaurant. The deputies and their guests, Mr. and Mrs. Kennth M. Covington and Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Lemons, ate 134 pairs of frog legs, all cooked by the deputies.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.