March 6 through the years
By Holly Kozelsky and Pat Pion
100 years ago – 1924
Ad: “Poor Old Soles! Bring ’Em Here! If your shoes get into the hole-in-one club, bring them to us. We’ll put them back in the class of ordinary mortals with lots of wear left. We’re the original shoe doctors. Parker’s Shoe Hospital, Anderson Building, Bridge Street.
75 years ago – 1949
Midway Furniture on Highway 220 in Collinsville was offering the 1949 Philco refrigerator for $229.95. It was 7.2 cubic feet capacity with 14 square feet of shelf space. The picture of it depicted a refrigerator with a slightly rounded top, a very small top cabinet for frozen foods, with a “cold storage tray” directly beneath it, four metal rack shelves and one half-width crisper drawer at the bottom.
1960
The deadlocked Senate resumed business after taking a 36-hour break from over 125 hours of round-the-clock sessions. The stalemate over civil rights continued.
The stranded Joseph Martin School seventh graders, who had been detained on a field trip in Richmond because of bad snow storms, made it safely home. Jimmy Clark, Michael Byrd, Jimmy Coulson and David Barnes enjoyed being part of the group of around 70 students. Barring further weather complications, all local schools, furniture and textile factories would return to business the following day.
50 years ago – 1974
The Henry County Board of Supervisors held a joint public hearing with the planning commission on the most comprehensive subdivision ordinance ever proposed – and the subject of such controversy that the county had not addressed the matter since it tried in 1965, and an unruly and angry crowd of 500 showed up at the meeting, mostly to protest it. It was still a hot topic in 1974, as more than 250 people squeezed inside the Henry County courtroom (now the MHC Heritage Center & Museum) and other 150 tried to participate from outside, so Supervisors set a second public hearing for April 2.
Wednesday Morning Special at Sater’s Furniture Store (632-2388): Metal Wardrobes, Many Sizes, $39.95 and up.
25 years ago - 1999
The Toastmasters club was active. Toastmaster Jo Dykes had been a recent winner with her speech “My New Sport.” Jean Fitzgerald won the table topics category with a talk on San Francisco. Christine Bennett was the contest chair, and other organizers included Holly Grogan, Tom Mayo and Mary Nell Wilshire.
PHOTO: Sallie Hall Slate and her son Timothy Alan Slate pack the leaves down, removed the cylinder, and "sheet" the leaves as the final prep before the move to the sale barn, 1978, Patrick County. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer, Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project collection, 1977-1981 (AFC 1982/009), Library of Congress.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.