State

Beginning and End of a Career In w hich Iturke Ihivis recalls some fabulous stories about a fabulous North Carolina liorse-trader. businessman and politician. As a sample of ihc late George Penny’s storytelling is his account of his introduction to the world of com¬ merce as a boy horse-trader: “I worked there in the mill at Ran- dleman. as a helper. I earned 40 cents a week, and took 25 cents home to my mother. With my 15 cents I bought apples, had to go clean to Greensboro to get ’em cheap enough, thumbing rides on wagons. I sold the apples in the mill, five for a dime, or two for a nickel, on time — if they waited until Saturday to pay. Well, I got to making so much money the foreman got jealous, and he fired me. 1 had to have money, somehow. “I had an old brass pockctknifc, and a shoal I had raised, and 50 cents I’d earned clearing stumps from new ground for a neighbor. I traded all these for an old blind hoss. and took the poor old thing over to Ashcboro. walking and leading him. 1 had in mind to set up as a trader there during court week, on the Old Boncyard. where nags were traded to people from miles around. I was just 1 3 years old. Kept Turning "My first trade was with an old man who came down out of the Uhwarric Mountains with a wind-broken hoss. He looked my nag over carefully, and I look pains to draw his attention away from the eyes, and kept turning the hoss. until at last he said he’d trade me. "I told him my old daddy had told me never to make a trade without some boot, and so I got $10 and the old man's hoss for my own. The next day he came roaring back down there, raising cane. He yelled at me. ’Why didn't you tell me that hoss was blind? He couldn't even get in the barn.’ "I told him I thought it must be a secret, since the man I got him from never told me about it. But then 1 offered to trade back with him — un¬ der my rule of getting some boot on every trade. So the old man forked over $10 more, and I had my original hoss and $20 to the good. "People in the yard began lit take an interest in my trading, since I was just a knee-high kid, and lots of folks came to trade. I look advantage of every chance, and by the end of the week I had a string of twelve hosscs. all mine, and all clear. I thought I would be a millionaire inside a month. "But on Saturday I met my down¬ fall. A slick trader was in town with an old trotting hoss. and hooked him to a sulky with loose spokes in the wheels, so they would make a fine About the first of March, a great restlessness came to children in small North Carolina towns. Their feet, im¬ prisoned all winter in high top shoes or brogans, and in coarse-ribbed stock¬ ings. were crying for freedom. But appeals to Mama went unheeded. Each day, you would bring tidings that another boy around the corner had been given a shoe parole, but she would shake her head. Families who let their kids take their shoes off too soon were not considered proper in our neighborhood. Sometimes it was mid-April or later before the reprieve came but it was one of the glorious days of the year. Off came those shoes, not to be put on again until winter — unless there came a cold spring snap — and our bleached, bare feet began their sum¬ mer adventures. Remember how tender the soles were? Every pebble and briar made you wince. But nature wonderfully condi¬ tions us to adversity. By the time hot weather arrived soles were thick and hardy, and you could walk through burning hot sand; even on asphalt clacking noise, and I thought I was in heaven to go up and down the street in that rig. I traded him my whole string of hosscs for that old trotter. I rented him out to a drummer the next day. to work his trade around the back- roads in Randolph — and he dropped dead in harness on the second day. I was out of business. I had to go back to that dumed old foreman and beg for my job back, and start life all over again." — Burke Davis, (ireensboro News. streets so hot that the tar melted and ran with such fluidity that you scraped it up into little balls for “chawing tar." We cannot recollect any boy or girl of grammar school age who wore shoes in the summer time, except for Sunday school or parties or funerals. Many a stubbed toe had to be attended to, and there was many a splinter to be ex¬ tracted. and sometimes, alas, there was the serious business of stepping on a nail. But some atavism generally kept kids from harm; cunning feet observed the terrain ahead and the probable underfoot dangers. There was a superstition attached to going barefooted. In the fall, when the first nippy weather came, the shoes were welcomed again as a novelty from the monotony of summer. After going back to shoes, Indian summer often would provoke sweltering heat, fit for free toes again. But Mama thought that putting on and off of shoes might induce colds and pneu¬ monia, so once the footloose Rubicon was crossed our feet were gone gos¬ lings. No more bare feet for that year, no matter what the weather. But that was a long time ago. — B.S. When I he .shoes came off — REMEMBER ? to THE STATE. February 3. 1962