By Kathy Buie Vance.
The men in Wagram had various jobs. A couple of them owned and operated filling stations and several of them owned and managed grocery stores, a hardware store, a pharmacy, a feed and seed store, and there was Dr. Womble’s medical practice. Bill Shaw had an office, but I never knew what his business was. I just know the men loved to gather there and laugh and tell stories. Some of the men had to drive to Laurinburg for their jobs – Dusty Odom as a deputy sheriff and Angus McInnis as a barber. There was also a policeman, but he didn’t get much business.
Daddy got involved in the scale business in the mid-40’s. I don’t know how he got interested in this, but he loved being his own boss. He would load up his scales into his trailer every Monday and spent the week putting them out in front of businesses all over the state and then go back and collect the money on Friday. He would bring home loads of pennies in bags, put them in paper sleeves, and take them to the bank. He was always buying more scales, and our garage was full of them. When he ran out of room, he built another garage. Soon that one was full of scales too, so a third garage was built. He was also into vending machines, so there were fortune scrolls, charms, trinkets, gumballs, you name it, all over the house. Kids love those things, so we were popular as we shared them with our friends. We would turn our daddies’ discarded felt hats into caps like Jughead (in the Archie comics) wore by cutting off the brim, turning up the edges, and zigzag cutting them. Then we’d sew the charms all over the top.
Daddy stayed with the scale business nearly his whole life. When he died, the four of us inherited 300+ scales.
Our Wagram mothers started going back to work during the 1950’s. Margaret McKinnon was my second grade teacher, I had Odessa Memory in third, and my favorite was Wrae Smith in fourth. Mother got a job in Maxton (10 miles away) teaching English, French, and History when I was 13. Jim was three, so Esther was hired for mornings and Hattie came in the afternoons. Our mothers were everywhere – as girl scout leaders, Sunday School teachers, lunchroom supervisors, school secretaries, as well as our school teachers. It was truly a community of women leaders.
I remember well the polio epidemic of the 40’s and 50’s. When I was five and Ann was three, a young woman who grew up in Wagram died suddenly of polio, and it was the first time I had seen adults cry. She was in her 20’s, married with a toddler. Her name was Anne McMillan (don’t remember married name) and was Miss Bessie McMillan’s daughter. Ann remembers her 3rd birthday party getting canceled and Mother arranging for the Laurinburg radio station to have someone sing happy birthday to her. Then, as we started school in the 50’s, we all got the polio vaccine, and nobody as far as I know objected or thought it was dangerous to get it. Because of this vacccine, polio was eradicated. I don’t remember FDR but I know he had polio and couldn’t walk. There was no TV, but there were newspaper photos of him sitting behind his desk, no wheelchair in sight. I wonder if he felt the public would think he was not strong if he appeared in a wheelchair. He was, though.
There was a man in town called New York Smith. He married a Wagram lady and the community in general had never seen anybody from New York, so they called him that. I thought that was his name. One day New York Smith collapsed in his front yard, and the news quickly spread through town. Mrs. Nicholson (Miz Nick) heard that he was dead, so she started making her famous caramel cake. When she took it over to his house, he answered the door. She got mad and told him she thought he was dead and took the cake back home and put it in the deep freeze.
Mother teaching high school in Maxton, NC during the 1950s.
Daddy working on his scales.
Jim’s article on Dr. Womble in the Fayetteville Times in the 1970s.
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