I Remember:
The Newton-Conover Twins


The dates are fuzzy, but many of the memories of The Newton-Conover Twins are as clear as a November morning. We – Joseph Lee Hester, my father, Thelma Hester, my mother, and my sister and brother, Iona and Tom – returned from Wilmington in the fall of 1945 at the end of World War II. Dad and two of my uncles had volunteered to work in the shipyards during the big war. We lived on Carolina Beach for two years and near the shipyards, in Maffitt Village, for about two more years.

I don’t know how my dad got caught up with the Twins. There may have been a connection before the war, I just don’t know. You see, I was born in 1939 and was almost six years old when we came back from the war effort in Wilmington.

Baseball was exciting. Dad helped with the high school team in a volunteer capacity and loved the position of catcher. He bought me my first catcher’s mitt when I was about 12 years old – I was supposed to play the position of catcher in high school. It never happened! He then bought me a regulation first-baseman’s mitt. I used it and loaned it out to high school players when I was in the 7th or 8th grade.

The Twins and Newton-Conover High School played in what we called “the old ball park” just off ‘D’ Street in South Newton. It’s full of apartments now, but I would like to know the history of that old field. It had a grandstand and a cement-block concession stand with dressing rooms and restrooms attached. By the time I was eleven or twelve and playing for the Newton Recreation Center, those dressing rooms smelled like an open sewer. When I was in high school and playing football, we didn’t use them. We just huddled at the end of the field at halftime. The air was much fresher.

The Twins, as I remember them in the late forties, played at night. We lived on South Cline Avenue, and the Fred McRee house and our house began at the grandstand behind the old wooden fence and ran down the first-base and right-field line. We ate our suppers as quickly as we could on game nights and twelve or fifteen of us would gather on the McRee and Hester chicken houses that were in the back of our yards and higher than the fence.

From our chicken houses we watch Eddie Yount and Don Stafford, Ray Lindsey, and all the rest. Dad and Earl Holder were positioned up on the clay bank behind home plate where they called the game – dad was the public address announcer and Earl did the radio broadcast. Dad had a great voice and I remember a picture of him holding a microphone. The picture dated back to at least the thirties, so I believe he had become involved in radio (maybe baseball too) before World War II.

Those chicken house evenings were a lot of fun. We listen to the older fellows and their exploits with girls, but mostly talked about the game. Each of us was required to bring some kind of food from home as a fee to get on to the chicken house – a cold biscuit, chicken wing, ham biscuit, etc., which really tasted good during the cool of the evenings. Of course there were fights, not over girls or food, but over foul balls that usually ended up in our backyards. By the time I was in high school, I had an amazing collection of baseballs, old gloves, and broken bats. If the bats were just cracked a little, I nailed them with finishing nails and wrapped them in electrical tape. They usually lasted a few games in the recreation league.

Most of the time I got up real early the morning after a game. I crawled through a hole in the fence and usually walked under every bench and through the grandstand before other kids could get there. I found old baseballs and gloves thrown away by players. On a good morning I would come away with two or three dollars in change and maybe a dollar bill. One time I found a five dollar bill and worried over it for a week. Five dollars was a lot of money in 1948 and 1949.

My favorite games were with the House of David and the Donkey games where the players had to ride unwilling donkeys about the base-pads. They housed those donkeys in the park two or three days before those games and we sneaked in and tried to ride them ourselves. We usually got kicked a lot and thrown to the ground. The smell was like a farm yard, and maybe that's why the memory of those stubborn mules have lasted until this day.

The summer of 1949 was the last summer the Twins played behind my house. I would play football there for the Red Devils, but chose track over baseball when I got in high school. That choice really disappointed my dad. One reason was because our eighth grade team was so good. Down at the “new” ball park on Western Boulevard, our eighth grade team had beaten the high school team in an exhibition game. We had Jo Ray Shook pitching and Glenn Wayne Campbell at first base, both excellent players. Raymond Sharpe and Leonard McRee were on that team, as well as myself and Tim Craig. It was supposed to be a fun game, but to us it was serious. A slide into home for a run messed my leg up so badly that I almost missed football my freshmen year. Football became my sport and I loved to mix it up and hit people. I played basketball for Doc Lemmon, but was too short to really make a difference. Bill Inscoe got me involved in track and I became a long-distance runner in high school and in college.

When the 1950 Twins opened in the new ball park, it was an exciting time for me. Dad announced the games and Earl Holder handled the radio. Before school was out and after track practice, I usually headed to the park. I got in free because of dad and usually sat up on the top of the grandstand somewhere. The foul balls that came up there I threw back down to the field. Before the game, Dad would warn up the fans with his records like the “Saber Dance” or Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First.”

In the old (new) wooden park, the runway under the stands ran from third base to first base and housed restrooms, player dressing rooms, and the concessions area. With my mind’s eye I can see the boxes along third and first full of eager fans and young people. I can hear the vendors screaming “pop corn, get your hot pop corn,” and I can see Barney Fry yelling for Eddie Yount to hit one out of the park. I can see and laugh again at Ray Lindsey’s blooper pitch that fooled spectators and players alike. I can almost see again Don Stafford’s long neck and Adam’s apple as he held the runner on first base.

Memories, accurate or muddled, take us back to a “slice of time” that meant something to us. In Newton during the late forties and early fifties, baseball was king and the entire town came out to see and enjoy the many friendships in the stands. In 2003, at my 45th high school reunion, I wrote about those times and gave my essay to my classmates. It was entitled “Red Dirt, Old Friends, and Cherry Pepsis.” In that essay I recollected, “Back then, in the small towns of Newton and Conover, friends gathered, more often than not, at such watering holes as the City Pharmacy, Shady Grove, the H&W Drug Store, the Dairy Center, and the Blue Mirror Café. Before we reached driving and drinking age, no matter where we landed after a ball game or on a date, one thing were certain, we were going to have a cherry Pepsi. These were the golden years before Sundrop and Mountain Dew. There were no pizza parlors, no Chinese restaurants, and no steak houses save Mackie’s Motel Restaurant in Conover. The meal of choice was a burger, fries, and a cherry Pepsi.

At school dances, in our homes, and during 6th period at Newton-Conover High School, the common theme was “Let’s go get a cherry Pepsi and see what’s going on.” We walked to the Square and later borrowed our dad’s care to get there. We listen to the car radio and to the 45’s playing at the Rec Center. John Tate, the Rec manager was always there and seemed to know what we needed. Wherever we landed, there were old friends and cherry Pepsis, and if you looked closely enough, you’d see some of that red dirt on their jeans or sneakers.”

The sad thing about those memories was that the Twins were gone. They did not return until the sixties and most of my group had moved on to college and new towns and jobs. When I was in college the Twins did return and Dad became their “official voice.” I saw some of the games, but was working at Bowman’s Drug Store in Conover from noon until 10 every evening and did not have the opportunity to attend many of the games. Several things stand out in my mind from those days. I moved into my grandmother’s apartment, my brother was in the Marine Corp, and dad rented our bedroom out to young ballplayers. I don’t remember but one name and that was Jim Burnett who later married a Newton girl and became a meat cutter for Harris Teeter. Sometime on weekends, when the Twins were not playing, I pulled out my old catcher’s mitt and caught balls for one of the young pitchers staying in my old bedroom. I knew then why I never played baseball in high school – those pitchers threw too hard and fast and it was much, much safer running track. Even our practice runs from the high school to St. Paul’s Church, to Startown, and back in town were safer.

I have often wonder, “Could my life have been any richer or fuller than it was growing up in Newton in the late forties and fifties?” I don’t think anyone could have had a happier or complete life – it was the lure of the Twins and the ball park, the smell of popcorn and soft drinks, Barney Fry and all those yelling fans; united by the spirit of the game we came together as a community of friends and a life time of memories.

Joe Hester