August 11

100 Years ago – 1924

This poem about the new style of women’s hair being bobbed, rather than long: “The Charge of the Fright Brigade – “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, Into the barber shops strode the six hundred. Forward, female brigade: Charge for the chairs, she said, into the barber shop strode the six hundred. // Forward, the Fright Brigade, Was there a man dismayed? Yea, and the things he said Are best unremembered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to bob or die, Into the barber shop Strode the six hundred.” Plus another four verses.

75 years ago – 1949

Abe Globman sold his store building which fronted the Public Square to E.J. Evans, representing United Dollar Stores. United Dollar would move there after the new Globman Department Store on Church and Main streets was finished. The price was reported to be more than $100,000. The two-story building with basement fronted 46 feet on the Public Square (Franklin street) and went back 90 feet to an alley.

The summer’s first case of infantile paralysis – polio – was reported, with 2 ½-year-old Lora Labovsky of Finley street. Her parents took her to the hospital in Richmond where her case was confirmed. She had first complained of feeling ill the week before.

1960

A long-running border dispute between Henry and Patrick counties was settled, giving 32 acres from Henry County to Patrick County – that was the century-old dispute – but the map studies also gave 415 acres east of Rt. 57, northwest of Stone’s Dairy, to Patrick County. The biggest problem to settling the dispute had been said to be which county would take about 5 miles of Rt. 822, the road going to Goose Point; Patrick County agreed to take it. Previously, the boundary between the two counties had run right through them idle of that road.

50 years ago – 1974

Inflation had driven the cost of growing tobacco up by as much as 40% from the year before, but the average prices paid on the Martinsville Tobacco Market still remained near 1973’s level. The average price paid on the 351,151 pounds of tobacco sold during the first two days was $83.85 per 100 pounds.

25 years ago - 1999

City workers took down a wall on Park Street which had become a hangout spot for teenagers at night. The area’s Neighborhood Watch (Elaine Hedrick was the co-captain) had asked for help with that spot once teenagers had been causing problems such as throwing eggs at houses, slashing tires and throwing wine bottles at vehicles. (Park Street is off Memorial Boulevard and runs sort of parallel to Askin Street.)

— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.