Old Friends, Red Dirt, and Cherry Pepsi
Memories of Growing Up in Newton, North Carolina

By
Joe Hester

Joe Hester is a retired educator and freelance writer living in Claremont, NC. He has authored over 40 professional and children’s books and many professional articles. Joe graduated from Newton-Conover High School in 1958, Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1961, and Southeastern Seminary in 1964 and 1967; and earned the Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1973. Since retiring in 2001, He has authored five books and co-authored two more. His work in gifted education, especially his 15 volume curriculum entitled Philosophy for Young Thinkers, was honored in 1995, by the Torrance Center at the University of Georgia. The Torrance Center is an international research center which focuses on Gifted Education and Creative Behavior. The Center selected Hester for their Creative Scholar of the Year Award. In 2006, Hester was notified that his publication on public school safety is being translated in to Chinese and will be republished by the China Industrial Press, and that his book on the Ten Commandments was being reissued in paperback. His newest book, Religious Issues and Controversies in Contemporary America will be published in 2007 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc., publishers in New York City.


PART ONE: A SPECIAL TIME

We are of course from the old school having been born in the 1930s and inheriting the values of depression era parents. We are perhaps the last of a dying breed. Ours was a special time, especially reaching our teenage years in the Fifties. So, we put brackets around our small fragment of space and time. We call it “home” or “home town” and go on to identify ourselves to the younger folk as “depression babies,” “World War II Kids,” or “the fifties bunch.” In a way, they all fit, for we were born in the middle or near the end of the Great Depression and at the beginning of World War II. We grew to adulthood during the fifties and our values are anchored back there somewhere, even before our births, for they were hammered into us by family, community, and a religious belief system as rigid as grandma’s corset.

Then, along came Elvis in 1956 and changed the world in which we lived. Rock’n Roll, the “Devil’s music” as my grandmother called it, was an unsolicited intrusion in the lives of many families and provided the fodder for numerous Sunday morning sermons in area churches. There was also Myrtle Beach—not the one of golf courses, expensive shops, and restaurants—but the one of sand, water, beer, and the Shag. The Shag was a dance which had its roots in the 1920s and the music of rhythm and blues. We thought we invented it; actually we only gave it a Catawba County twist and fine-tuned it in the Newton-High School gym (that we called the “cracker-box”) during those long hot school dances.

Our values would later be struck by the racial tensions that began in the fifties (and probably long before) and bubbled over into social upheaval in the sixties. In Newton, we were for the most part unaffected by these problems as our lives were sheltered by segregation – the “whiteness” of both church and school. In fact, integration was preached against in our churches on Sunday mornings. I remember those conflicting values that plagued me during my high school years and that would later be worked out as I reached adulthood.

Ball was on the mind of most boys like me. The rich red clay on which we played colored my jeans and sneakers, and seemed to anchor me in place and time. Red dirt has provided a foundation for the experiences that have enriched my life and etched in memory a past that has highlighted all that came after it. In the red soil that tainted all that it touched, we learned games like hopscotch, kick-the-can, and marbles, and later, baseball and football. If there is one thing I remember about my youth, it’s the color of its dirt. At the old ballpark, down off “D” Street and over at Clyde Fabrics field, and on the playgrounds at Ridgeview and Conover, dirt is one thing we all had in common.

But there is much richer soil than just the red dirt we played in—there are classmates and friends and the memories we collectively share. Although we remember our past differently, the lessons learned from growing up together in the same small place bonds each of us forever. As we now have entered the final third of our lives, nothing gives me more pleasure than to talk with old friends, mourn the passing of a few, and remember those youthful days around Newton. Ours was not an uncommon group of kids. Out of the dust of the fifties has emerged many wonderful and contributing people, people who have reared families and enriched the soil of Catawba County as they set in motion a new history—as did their fathers and mothers—with their own ideas, hard work, and moral values.

PART TWO: UNIQUE VALUES

Ours was not a consumer generation like the X’ers, Bobos, and the Boomers. Rather, family, friends, church, work, and good times have identified our values much more than collecting more “stuff.” I’m still amazed at those who continue to identify themselves by the “stuff” they have accumulated rather than by their values and friends. Moving back to the Newton area in 1975 rehabilitated this sense of friendship for me. As my wife Pat and our two boys, Mike and Chris, moved from place to place from 1961 to 1975, only a few real friends were cultivated and kept for a lifetime. Coming home I found my old friends and renewed my sense of time and place once again. It’s always great to walk into the H&W Drug Store and see the big smile on Ed Haupt’s face, or stop by and clear the smoke in order to find Larry Joe at his Little Gem and Rock Shop. Larry’s passing was s a great loss to all who knew him. When I see Concordia Lutheran Church, I remember singing at its opening in 1957, and when I drive through Newton, I remember those hot summer nights just sitting around the Square and talking with friends. Just recently, Bowman’s Drug store in Conover celebrated its 65 anniversary. I worked there while in college at Lenoir-Rhyne from 1959 until 1961 when I left for seminary. Doc Bowman was a true friend and his son-in law, Ken Lawing, who became a pharmacist there in 1959, has remained a cherished friend.
Some years ago I was reminded by K. Wayne Smith that we were the last generation of young folks to reach adulthood without being saturated with television. Color TV didn’t hit Newton until 1957—at least that’s my first memory of it—and we were just beginning our senior year in high school. Slide rules were in—calculators had yet to be invented! Hair cuts cost a quarter and movies, a dime. We discovered that there was much more to learn and do than to sit and watch a screen. Even today, we don’t find our values in the media, but in the little things that happen to us each day—in our families and with our friends. I really don’t think life gets any better than what we’re doing right now.

Do you remember your teachers? When I ask this question, our high school teachers usually come to mind, but it was elementary school and its dedicated staffs that set the tone of our lives and work. Down at Newton Elementary there was Principal Fred Barkley who busted my butt with his razor strap more often than I wish to remember. There were Mrs. Coley, Mrs. Bowman, and Ms. Hipp who first cranked by engine and encouraged by learning. Mary White, who could swing a mean ruler against the palm of your hand and who taught my dad and aunts and uncles was my seventh grade teacher. She never married and was tough as nails. I learned under her out of fear. But that year must have been good because I won the Audubon art contest that year and still have their large Birds of America book in my den. In the eighth grade there were Mrs. Long and Ed Gomedela. I had “Gomee” as we called him behind his back. He was a teacher, friend, and my first coach. When he built his dream home in Dogwood Hills, he hired Tim Craig and me to clean off his lot with axes, shovels, and rakes. It took nearly all one summer, but it was worth the effort. Gomee and I remained close friends until his death a few years ago. Discipline, hard work, honesty, and responsibility are what we learned from people like these. Those values build families and nations; it’s what America is all about.

PART THREE: CHERRY PEPSI

In the 1950s, 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. By 1958, Wayne Dellinger’s father was hosting after-ball game parties in his basement recreation room. Many gathered there as the food and drink were free. These were the golden years before Sundrop and Mountain Dew. There were no pizza parlors, Chinese restaurants, or steak houses save Mackie’s Motel Restaurant in Conover. The meal of choice was a burger, fries, and a cherry Pepsi.
At Newton-Conover High School in the 1950s the common theme was “Let’s go to the CP and get a cherry Pepsi and see what’s going on.” I didn’t get to the CP as regularly as most kids in my class because of my involvement in sports, but between seasons and during the summer months I found my way to the CP as often as I could. The CP was the hangout of choice for most kids my age. The drug store was on the ground floor of the old Shipp Hotel and we found it amazing what went up and down those steps leading to the hotel lobby. I usually walked to the Square and later borrowed my dad’s care to get there. Music could be heard coming from cars as they made their way around the square. Music was played on a small record player at the Rec Center where kids gathered to play ping bong, talk, or dance. 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.

Cruising was the in-thing during the Fifties, but if you didn’t have a car, sitting in the drug store window at the CP was next best thing. There was always a crowd of boys on that corner. Their hair was either slicked up with the latest in hair oils, combed in a ducktail, or, if they were jocks, butch hair wax was the common choice to make a crew cut stand up perfectly. Polyester had yet to be invented, but Orlon sweaters were definitely in for boys and girls. They were hot items, especially the pastel colors of light blues, greens, yellows, and (some) pinks.
From about 1954 through 1956, peg-leg pants were the vogue for boys. We learned to roll and tuck our jeans or putter pants to make them fit tight at the bottom. We had our dress pants altered to fit the same way. We looped key chains from out pant loops to our right front pockets—I don’t know why—but it was the thing to do at the time. That fad had died out before I graduated from high school. By then it was just jeans and a t-shirt; simple, nothing special.

Life in Newton and Conover was probably no different than anywhere else in the Southeast. By the time I reached college and graduate school, students my age seemed to have shared the same experiences, only the places had changed. Folks outside the South say we have been slow to change; they’re right, we have been slow to change. Our values have remained fairly stable through the years and I think it a shame that the South today, like the rest of America, has been homogenized into a kind of non-ethnic, non-regional, sameness. The southern accent is dying out among our kids, and I have to listen carefully to understand some of the weather and news reports coming out of Charlotte.

PART FOUR: SHAGGING WITHOUT LESSONS

With your permission I would like to focus on creativity or what I call “shagging without lessons,” or the creative dimension of life. Special attention is given to the men and women who are able to withstand the pressures to conform and maintain their creativity and creative instincts throughout their lives. This usually brings undue stress and anxiety, but, with time, it becomes a normal way of life.

I never envisioned myself as creative—only a persistent hard worker. I am continually surprised by the creativity of others. At our 45th high school class reunion committee meeting, Leonard McRee talked about how he makes woven white oak baskets as a hobby. I never would have guessed! But why should I be astonished? There lies within all of us an emerging creative impulse—an impulse to grow. I want to believe that creativity is merely “task-committed persistence,” but it’s probably more, I just don’t know. But I do know a creative person when I run into one. Most of the time they are excited about something and have or are willing to take a risk to see it through.

I don’t know about each of you, but much of my life was played out quite by happenstance. Time went by so fast that when I look back, I know I couldn’t have planned such a career. When I think back about that elevated play ground and practice field down on Ash Avenue just up from our old high school and the thousands of creative and successful kids who learned there, I’m just amazed. I go by there quite often and just stop and look at it. I can see Glenn Campbell hitting a softball higher and longer than any one could imagine; and I can smell the sweat and dirt of a thousand football practices—trying to tackle Tim Craig who outweighed me by 50 pounds or block a defensive end closing in on Leonard as he dropped back to pass, or just doing lap after lap trying to get our legs and lungs in shape for the long, grueling season that lay in front of us. There is where I loss my front tooth, an injury that has plagued me all my life, and there is where I learned to be a man. Boy, those were great times!
Things don’t always work out the way they we plan them. I so wanted to be a college professor, and I was for about ten years. But my father’s bad health and the emerging of different goals in my life led me to work with younger kids and write new curriculum materials to enhance their development. By the end of the 1980s I had worked fifteen years in the public schools and during that time had had the further opportunity to be adjunct at three different universities, all of which kept me extremely busy. Do I have regrets? Sure I do, but doesn’t everyone? You can’t use “Whiteout” to erase the past. Looking back, creativity for me was the ability to adapt, survive, and make a difference. It was a little more than this, but not much.

I was never good at shagging by the numbers. My wife has encouraged me to take dance lessons, but I have always felt that it was our generation who molded the “shag” into its 1950s model, and modern lessons in what is called “shag” today would just interfere with my creativity—you see, every time I dance the shag, I invent just a little bit more. This is the adventure of it all, but it drives my wife crazy. I can always tell those who have had lessons as they “count” off their steps and forget freelance their bodies and their minds. You just can’t stereotype the shag and you can pigeonhole a mind in motion.

PART FIVE: JOEY'S PASTURE

Like a little boy walking in a warm, shallow creek in the summertime, I just have to pick up that next rock to see what’s under it. Down in Joey’s pasture (Joey Finger) just off South Cline Avenue, the creek is still there but houses are all around it now taking away from its mystery and destroying a young boy’s sense of adventure. I drove by it the other day and said to myself: “There is where my life was started; playing, running, and having fun in those woods, that pasture, and in that creek. What a childhood!” Some successful people grew up around that pasture: the Craig family, Bill Britain, Gerald Whisenhunt, Leon Harkens, Philip Moose, Marshall McRee, Patsy James Hester, Denelta Coley Self, Dr. Tom Harrill, Leonard McRee, Betty Drum Griffin, and many, many more.
Now in my late sixties, I still wonder about that creek and those rocks. A lifetime is not enough to turn all of them over and explore their mysteries. So, now I turn inward—to my thoughts and my experiences—trying to figure things out: What and why things happen as they do? What’s next? Do I have enough left in the tank to think wisely about tomorrow and share my wisdom with the next generation? All of this is a concern for me.
The creative life has been a challenging life. Shagging by the numbers is not an option. So many times I wanted to make a big splash, a contribution that would draw attention to me—it never happened, thank goodness! What did happen was that I learned to listen to the small voices around me—the children, the teachers, my closest friends, and my own inner voice. Here is where our reality lies and here is where we are able to contribute the most. It’s just like shagging—creating your life as you go alone.

The experiences that we have and share with each other are how we give meaning to our lives. Sharing authenticates who we are and what we are doing. Relationships are the way we think; they connect life to life and are the foundations of community. When important relationships breakdown, it is normal to feel that something is missing from our lives. There is emptiness. Therefore, each day we must behave as if people matter. Looking back to my days at Newton-Conover High School in the second half of the 1950s, I today understand the importance of the small things we shared, the good times and the bad times.