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Odds & Ends

It was pretty gloomy in Cliffside homes prior to 1915, for they were lit only with kerosene lamps or open fireplaces. But around that year the Company began providing electricity to the workers. A page of rules and charges, written in 1918, stated that light fixtures would be installed in the houses of those who wished them, in the center of the rooms, with a “full set of lamps (25 to 40 watts)”. One light would cost 40¢ per month, two would cost 60¢, and so on. (Or you could purchase and use an electric meter and be charged—per month—10¢ per KW hours for the first eight KW hours and 5¢ for each additional KW hour.) If the lamps burned out, the homeowner had to pay for replacements, and, if a family moved, it was required to leave behind a “full equipment of lamps that will burn.”

Cliffside’s available power for consumers was limited. Through the week, the power was “on” only from 5:30pm to 6:30am. The street lights were turned on only from dark to 10:00pm, except Saturday and the nights before holidays when they were on all night. Some mill companies would make periodic inspections in the wee hours of the night. If the inspector saw a light burning, he would wake the family and, if there was no one sick in the household, request they douse the light.

First published in the CHS Special Report, the Cliffside Historical Society's bimonthly newsletter, Nov-Dec 2006 issue.

Chase is lower Rutherford county's consolidated high school. The letters in “Chase” all stand for something: C - Caroleen and Cliffside; H - Henrietta and Harris; A - Avondale; S - Shiloh; and E - Everyone else. This according to Scott Withrow in his article “Henrietta, Caroleen and Avondale” in the book The Heritage of Rutherford County, North Carolina, 1984. (We've republished the article in the County section under History.)

Before the days of tape players and FM radios in cars, Otto Moore bought a new 1957 DeSoto that had a factory-made 78 rpm record player installed in the dash. Sam Davis says, “Otto was in town one night and was playing the record player for us boys. Don’t know how DeSoto mounted the player but he could drive down the road and play records. At least he said he could.”

Did you know where our school song came from? We had never given it much thought, assuming it was something that was always there, like the bark on trees or the blue in the sky. Not hardly, as they say in places less sophisticated than Cliffside. We were thumbing through a copy of an old school paper, the Cliffside Hi-Lights, dated February 1939, and this item leapt out at us:

New School Song

Margie Blanton is worthy of all the praise we can give her, for the new school song she composed. The old song was discarded because it was difficult to sing and a new song was born and adopted by the majority of the students of the school. This is an honor that comes only once in a "coon's" age, so we are thankful that Cliffside School possesses such talent within her bounds.

The song is as follows:

"Cliffside High"
Three cheers for dear old Cliffside High,
To which we will ever be true;
Hurrah for the blue and the white,
The colors of our school.
We love all its rules and we'll try
To be loyal forever and ever.
We love our dear school, and we know
That it's proved worthy of our paise and our endeavor.

(It's sung to the tune of John Phillip Sousa's “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Elsewhere in the paper it's revealed that Margie Blanton was head cheerleader that year, although neither her name nor photo appears in the school yearbooks for 1939 or '40.)

Since Colonial times, or even before, it has been the custom in Christian cemeteries to bury the departed “facing” east (with the head at the western end of the grave). And for all these years this tradition has been followed at Cliffside—with one exception. One man, before his death in 1980, made arrangements with the undertaker to break with this tradition, and to bury him facing the west. He now—and forever— lies at the edge of the cemetery, facing Stimpson Street—and the setting sun. His reasoning: If someone comes along the street and wants to have a conversation, he (the departed) doesn't want to miss the opportunity. His name: Robert Clyde “Tubby” Hawkins.

Source: Horton Landreth

Quinn Lee Womick was only eight when his father John died in 1885. Quinn's widowed mother Alpha married a widower, Thomas R. Cole^*, who (by his late wife Mary) had had a young daughter named Eva. Quinn Lee and Eva grew up in the same household, and in adulthood fell in love, married and had four children: Josephine, Worth, Mary Quinn and Lee. So, the grandparents of these children were the same on both the paternal and maternal sides of their family. Their paternal grandmother was their maternal step-grandmother and their maternal grandfather was their paternal step-grandfather.

^*Thomas Cole and Alpha had children of their own, including a son named D. C., later to become Cliffside's and Rutherford county's well-known musical director.

We all know, don't we, that the Romina Theater in Forest City was named after Walter Haynes' two daughters, Rosa May and Amanda. So he combined the two names and came up with... Romanda? No, wait, that doesn't work.

Actually the theater's name was a combination of the first two letters of “Rosa” and the last four letters of Amanda's middle name, Elmina. Ro—mina. We're happy to have cleared that up. But lending a part of her name to a movie theater was only a minor accomplishment; she later became the mother of Rutherford County's State Senator, Walter Dalton.

Back when summer meant going barefoot and boys had long idle days to get into all sorts of mischief, Earl Owensby and I cleaned out a space in the old barn behind my house at 59 N. Main and made it into a “theater.” In the war years it had housed Fred Swing's chickens, and the smell of poultry still lingered on into the fifties. But you work with what you have.

We hung blankets over the windows, tacked a bedsheet on the wall for a screen and “installed” the two 16mm movie projectors we had gotten for Christmas. Our vast inventory of silent films (none over five minutes long) included a documentary called Cavalcade of Presidents, a shortened version of a Little Rascals short, a fragment of a Tex Ritter western, and a few other less-appealing titles. (You could buy these little gems at the drugstore for about a dollar.)

By word of mouth, our enterprise became known to a fair-sized contingent of little Cliffsiders, eager, despite the smell, to attend our matinees— for only five cents.

A few days passed without incident, but one afternoon we looked down the cinder-track driveway and saw the manager of Cliffside's real theater, Bobo Harrill, and his trusted projectionist, Paul Gosey, approaching our cinematic outpost. We were busted. He told us in no uncertain terms that, inasmuch as there was room for only one theater in town, that one was going to be his. Moreover, running a business requires a license, and if we had one he would like to see it.

Curses, foiled again. It was just as well, though, for we had pretty much run through our library, and our patrons had just about depleted their meager allowances.

Frankly, it was a relief to be out from under the burdens of our piddling undertaking. But it was an auspicious beginning: Earl went on to make millions in the movie business. I went into broadcasting and continued to collect nickels.

— Reno Bailey

Some Cliffside residents lived in fairly isolated places that made it difficult to reach the rest of the town. In the 1940s teenager Mavorine Melton lived on the west side of the river. Her only means of reaching her friends and the stores in town was either to walk several miles around by Bunker Hill or to cross the river. Most often she chose the latter option, using her father's rowboat.

Mavorine's family's house was almost directly across the stream from the 4th Street footbridge, and about half a mile up the hill through the woods from the west bank. When she'd come to town she would tie up her boat on the Cliffside side and walk up through the woods by the old band house to her friend Juanita Davis'. They would go downtown to the movie or the cafe or wherever, and when the day was done she'd reverse the route and paddle back across.

Was she ever scared? Once she got “concerned” when the river was way up and the current swept her a ways downstream. Somehow she got to the bank before going further on down and maybe over the dam itself. (Mavorine was just twelve or thirteen at the time, but she didn't ask her daddy's permission that day, for she knew he'd never give it.)

Brothers Grayson and Fred Beheler also lived across the river, and used the same method to get to work the year round. They could often be seen after work getting into their boat with their groceries and paddling across.

Source: Sam Davis

In the summer of 1928 two Cliffside boys, Gifton Jolley and Butler Pruette, made a 20-day round trip to Kansas by what was then an unusual method— hitchhiking. It made the front page of the Rutherford County Sun.

The Cliffside Telephone Company was incorporated on August 16, 1912. Its purpose (as stated on the Certificate of Incorporation) was “to carry on the business of erecting, operating, owning, maintaining, selling and leasing telephone lines, exchanges, instruments and all necessary appliances, and all electrical apparatus of any kind, also run a shop for repairing telephones.”

Source: Phillip White/Wayne Smith Cliffside Archives

It doesn't happen very often but a new enterprise has sprung up in “downtown” Cliffside. Mark and Janice Bridges Swing have opened a new barbecue restaurant called the “Swingin' Pig." It's on Old Main Street across from the new Baptist Church, and the food is outstanding. They're open Tuesday through Saturday.

“There was a park built on a wooded slope between the railroad and the river. Rustic seats were built here and an elevated band stand stood in the center. The Haynes Band often gave concerts there on Sunday afternoons.”

—R. R. Haynes' biography

The band stand was later converted to a small, 3-room house in which, over the years, the G. C. Fishers, Riley Callahans, T. C. Smiths, Gabriel Hills, and Odus Greenes lived, among others.

The top couple of feet of the old stone dam is made of wood, which, because of the wear from the passage of water over it, has to be replaced every decade or so. Frank Holtzclaw says he can remember it being replaced three times.

The deep-red, glazed bricks used in the construction of Cliffside School, now over 80 years old, are as new-looking as ever. If you have the chance, stand close to an exterior wall and marvel at how the bricks, although never pressure washed or sand blasted, are as clean, solid and shiny as they were in 1920.

In holiday seasons of the 1950s, downtown Cliffside would be adorned with Christmas lights and a large decorated tree—sometimes atop the clock tower; in other years in front of the fish pond in the town square. Lighted wreaths were placed high up on the front of the store building and strings of lights were hung across the square. Its scope and grandeur might not have rivalled Rockefeller Center, but it was enough to make us proud

A tornado hit Cliffside around 1955-56. “I can remember looking out the bedroom window and seeing the trees move, it traveled down Mud Cut crossing Academy and Church St.,” says Mary Scruggs. “I remember that it picked up our neighbors Jack and Margie Bostic's garage and carried it away before splashing it into the ground, and put trees on the house beside ours...my brother and I were so upset because we had no damage.”

(This may have been the 'blow' that took the top off the water tower.)

In the early years of Cliffside, as we've documented, the town had a photographer named W. E. “Will” Hames. Around the same time there was another photographer in Caroleen named W. E. Haynes, and in the Forest City-Rutherfordton area there was yet another photographer named W. E. “Will” McArthur.

Speaking of photographers, in 1922 there was a Gilbert's Studio in Cliffside, which advertised in The Courier. Its exact address was not revealed in the ads.

Once upon a time, the first line of our school song was “Cliffside School is quick and snappy,” according to the 1937 yearbook, Old Gold and Black. (By 1940 the yearbook's name had been changed to The Echoes.) In the '20s and '30s the school's newspaper was titled The Purple Cloud. It was reprinted each week in The Rutherford County Sun, at least during the late '20s.

The population of Cliffside once included a General who was not in the army, a Commodore who was not in the navy, and a Doctor who was not of the medical or academic professions. Were they imposters? No, those were their names, not their titles. The first was General W. Tate, who worked in (and may have supervised) the card room in 1910; the commodore was Plato Commodore Hawkins, once the superintendent of the mill; and the doctor was Doctor Samuel Boyce Bridges, for many years the beloved boss of the weaving department.

In the 1920s the Cliffside Mills Department Store (and its three branches) had over 50 employees, and in its advertisements claimed to be the largest department store in the county.

In the spring of 1910 there were two Charles Haynes in Cliffside. One—the famous one—lived with his father, Raleigh, in the big house on the hill; the other boarded at the Q. L. Womack house at #2 N. Main Street. He was a 17-year-old weaver in the mill. (Another boarder there was Frank Haynes, age 20, who may have been Charles' older brother.)

Until the early '30s the state of North Carolina financed only six months of education per year in the public schools, and left it to the county school systems to foot the bill, if they could, for up to three additional months. Cliffside School was able to stay open eight months a year, says Myrtle Greene Mashburn, thanks to the Company, which provided the money for the extra months. Read more in Anita Price Davis' North Carolina During the Depression.

No one graduated from Cliffside High School in 1946! This is no joke; that was the year the state tacked on an additional 12th grade to all high school programs, so the class of '46 had to go another year, and graduate in 1947.

Since Cliffside had no real fire truck, about every second house in town had its own ladder. Built in the mill's wood shop, these ladders were mounted on the side of the home (or car shed) for use when needed.

As hard as it may be to believe, the Sauline Players, the acting troupe that enchanted Cliffside school kids for years with performances of “Hans Brinker & the Silver Skates,” “Tom Sawyer” and other unforgettable productions, was not from New York's Great White Way. It was based in Belmont, N.C.

From The Cliffside Hi-Lights (the school newspaper) of January 1939:

Sauline Players Visit School
    The Sauline Players were cordially accepted to our school Thursday morning when they presented the interesting and entertaining "Anne of Green Gables."
    A large crowd gathered in the auditorium at ten thirty and enjoyed splendid acting by each of the players, especially Uncle Matthew and Moody.
    Every year these players come to our school and present a play. The programs are clean and everyone looks forward to their return next time.

Back in the late '40s and early '50s, boys in Cliffside would make a game out of hitchhiking. One group would hitch to Forest City-Shelby-Cliffside, while another group would simultaneously reverse the route: Shelby-Forest City-Cliffside. The winner was the group that returned home first.

Dr. Mills would open up the drug store for about 30 minutes after church on Sundays for people to get medicine—and nothing else. You couldn't even buy a funny book!

“Cliffside School Changes Its Name” was the headline in the paper one day in May, 1927. The pupils of Cliffside High had voted to change the school's name to “The Charles H. Haynes High School.” Proving once again that inmates never have much say-so in running the asylum, officials promptly ignored the action.

Cliffside once had an 8-piece musical group named The Collins Orchestra. On Dec. 3, 1927, it became the first orchestra in Rutherford County to broadcast on the radio. It performed for half an hour on Sunday evening on WBT, Charlotte.

The last motion picture to be shown at the Cliffside Theater (before it was so unceremoniously abandoned) was “Dracula Has Risen From the Grave,” starring Christopher Lee. This, according to K.D. Scruggs, who was in attendance that night in 1970 or '71.

One of Forest City's popular movie theaters in the 1930s, the Romina, was named by its owner after his daughters—two Cliffside girls, Amanda and Rosa Mae Haynes.

In January of 1928, Cliffside opened its dry cleaning plant. It was called “Rutherford County Dry Cleaners and Dyers,” and was installed on Main Street in the long white building three doors up from the Memorial Building. That building, before the Memorial Building was erected, was used as a movie theater.

Back in the 1920s, the building that in later years housed the hardware store was the site of Cliffside Furniture Company, which had a “funeral department” that sold caskets and conducted funerals.

Until it was renumbered in 1933, our Main Street, the highway from Forest City to the state line, now known as "221A," was Highway 207. (It was a dirt road until the county “tarred and sanded” it in late 1926.) Also, the highway we know as US 74, was officially Highway 20 until it too was renumbered in 1933.

The engines of Cliffside Railroad could not be turned around; there was no turntable. They always faced the same direction, either pushing or pulling cars. If the train was going forward, it was headed toward Avondale. If going backward, it was returning to Cliffside.

Why several of Cliffside's Biggerstaff men were called “Pick?” Remember when “Pick” ran one of the barbershops in town? Well, his real name was Broadus Franklin Biggerstaff (1896-1954). His father, William Henry, was the original “Pick.” William Henry once made picker sticks for the fly-shuttle looms in the mill at Caroleen. Consequently, people began calling him “Picker Stick,” which was soon shortened to “Picker,” and then “Pick.” When William Henry passed on, Broadus Franklin, the barber, inherited the nickname. And upon his passing, his son Jack assumed the name.

In 1935, according to the house list, the Mills residence at 11 Main Street was described as having seven rooms. But the town map, drawn seven years later, has the number of rooms as 11. Do you suppose “11” was a mapmaker's error? Or do you think Charles H. Haynes, in hard times, authorized the addition of five more rooms to a building that housed a family of three? Doesn't sound like the Charlie Haynes I remember.

In the '35 house list, the Charles H. Haynes residence at 37 N. Main was omitted. And on the town map of 1942, the house was shown but its number of rooms was not given. Perhaps the desire for privacy was at play here. By and large, the rich don't advertise. Now it can be told: Before the house was demolished, Phillip White walked through it and counted the rooms. There were 17.

Manhole covers in the early days were square, not round. According to our California correspondent, R.G. Watkins, “there was a man hole at the rear, southwest corner of the Memorial Building with a very heavy cast iron cover. It had to be 'old' for it was square, and every time I had to lift it to turn off the steam going to Solon Smart's washerette, I was worried I'd drop it down into the pit and break pipes down there, or I'd drop that heavy thing on a finger or toe. Round man hole covers can not fall into the opening.”

From the very earliest years, downtown Cliffside had a central heating system. The boiler was located at the ice plant (so the operator could attend to both the boiler and the ice-making machinery). Steam was sent through underground (and some overground) pipes to the Memorial Building, and many stores and offices. [Thanks to Jim Haynes for this information.]

In an area between Academy Street and Riddles Creek, there were a number of hog pens. Anyone wishing to raise a pig or two as a food source could build themselves a new pen or appropriate a vacant one. The downside was, you had to visit the smelly site often to keep the curly-tailed darlings fed and watered. But the bacon, ham and sausage sure tasted good later.

The street that we all called “White Line” was, according to the 1942 town map, actually named West Avenue. And the road running up beside Haynes Grove Church, the colored church, was named Washington Way. (Its official name now is Washington Street.)

According to the 1935 list of households, and also the town map drawn in 1942, what many of us knew as River Street was actually named Riverside Street.

The small stream that runs between Valley and Academy Streets, and flows into the river just downstream from the dam is called Riddles Creek.

For many years there were two major bridges in Cliffside. The one that spanned the river on highway 221-A was always referred to, logically enough, as the “river bridge.” The other one, which led to Highway Street (or, as some of us called it, “Shelby Highway”) was called the “creek” bridge.

Over the years there have been four different locations for Cliffside's Haynes Bank: The first was in the mill office building. Later it was moved into the “store building,” in the space between the drugstore and the department store. In 1948 a standalone bank building was erected on North Main across from the Baptist church. In the 1970s, this was replaced by a new building near the spot where the dry cleaners used to stand.

For one year during World War I, Cliffside School had a woman principal. She was Miss Caroline Wright.

About 1914 electricity was installed in the homes of Cliffside. It was “on” only between 6:00pm and 6:00am. All chores using electric appliances, scarce as they were, had to be done at night.

For many years, up into the 1950s, the street lights in Cliffside were turned off at midnight.

Until the mid-1940s, many homes in Cliffside had no indoor plumbing. On most streets, there was a single water faucet located between every other house, shared by two families. Toilets were outdoors.

One of the busiest streets in Cliffside had no name. It was the street that passed between the store building and the Memorial Building, and wandered on down toward the old ice plant. (If you know otherwise, please let us know.)

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