REMEMBER:
Friday Night lunkies
At The Crescent
Those Slalesville lads had I heir own
uay of financing the ritual cowhov mo¬
vies.
By
1СОШ1М
I,. WILLIAMS
Ai the souih end of Seventh Street in
Statesville there was in the late thirties
and early forties a junk yard enclosed
by a beautiful fence that surrounded
what was once the baseball park where
the Statesville Weavers played some of
the finest games ever seen in the area.
A hundred yards below Eighth Street
there was a deep gully, almost a small
Singing Sandy— John Wayne in one ol his caily
roles
ravine, where old automobiles no
longer of value were dumped to become
a home for blaeksnakes. chipmunks,
and field mice.
One block from the square in uptown
Statesville there was a movie house
called The Crescent, and two doors
west was located an eatery called Atlan¬
tic Hot Lunch where the finest hot dogs
and hamburgers ever created were sold
for five cents a piece.
i6
Living in a two-block section of Sev¬
enth Street and a similar stretch of
Eighth Street were the Friday Night
Junkies, a cluster of kids ranging in age
from six to sixteen. And living in the
same general vicinity, often in the same
houses, were grown-ups who owned
hammers, hacksaws, chisels, screw¬
drivers. and an assortment of other
tools needed for the all-day endeavors
of the Junkies.
These were the same kids who
slopped the hogs, cleaned houses, split
kindling wood, shelled peas, gathered
persimmons, mowed lawns, or what¬
ever else eould and would earn them a
few pennies. But w hen times were hard
and there were no allowances to be
earned and no small jobs to be obtained
for cash money, the Junkie crowd had
no recourse but to borrow from the
toolboxes of adults who were at work,
out hunting, or asleep after a long
night's work at one of the local cotton
mills or furniture factories or stills.
A Dime was Enough
The Junkies assembled every Friday
afternoon and. equipped w ith their bor¬
rowed tools, invaded the ravine or gully
and at once launched an attack on the
junked cars. They unscrewed, smashed,
pulled, sawed, pried, and in other ways
separated anything metallic from the
old Terraplanes. Hudsons. LaSallcs.
Studebakcrs. and Fords. Chevrolets.
Oldsmobiles. Buicks. Plymouths. and
Pontiacs; then, after tugging the scrap
metal to the top of the red dirt banks by
use of ropes similarly borrowed from
barns and workshops along the street,
they loaded the junk onto home-made
wagons (no Radio Flyers could be af¬
forded by Junkie parents) and hauled it
to the junk yard w here the Weavers once
thrilled crowds.
Bob Sloe to. one ot the good guy» In white hat*, in
hoi pursuit ol the outlaws, or the runaway stage, or
whoever happened to be breaking the law or mak¬
ing llle unhappy lor anyone on the range.
George O'Brien, right. In one ol his lamous Indian
roles. That s probably Slade or Ace Hanlon or Fer¬
guson with him.
THE STATE. January 1987