By Leisha Wessinger-Huffstetler
It is beautiful when the past and present intersect to create current history. I sat with two beautiful, elegant, spunky ladies last week, Margaret Gates Robinson and Millie Courtney. The two best friends met in 2014 in an elevator at Mt. Horeb Lutheran Church. Mrs. Margaret was born in 1934 and lived across from the Caughman Harmon Funeral home, the railroad track as her backyard. The lumber yard lay on the other side of those railroad tracks. She jokes about not knowing which side of the tracks she grew up on, the right side or the wrong side.
Millie was born in 1938 in Warrenville, near Aiken, in a cotton mill town. She was a “lint head,” a common term for kids raised in a cotton mill village. The mill homes were owned and furnished by the mill, and mill workers paid rent to live there. Her dad raised pigs and chickens. Her uncle raised a cow, and the families would swap milk, eggs, and meat.
Margaret’s dad was a math and physics teacher at Chapin High School, a brick two-story building located off Peak Street. She says the punishment in those days was a ruler being smacked across the knuckles. Ouch. She says she got into trouble a lot in school because she talked too much. One day, she said she got in trouble and was sent to the principal’s office. She met her dad in the hallway, who asked her where she was going. She quickly said, “I’m going to the bathroom.” She also remembers demerits being given for “bad” behavior, and recalled receiving demerits for eating biscuits from lunch in the classroom!
Both ladies remember playing on a “jump board” and a “Flying Jenny.” A jump board was a board nailed to a log; one kid would jump on it, and the other kid on the other end would be jolted into the air. The ladies said this was incredibly fun. Margaret said her dad built her the first “Flying Jenny” in Chapin. This was a board attached to a stump with a hole drilled in the center on an axle so the board would rotate when pushed. On each end of the board was a child; another child pushed it around until someone fell off the end of the board. This type of playground equipment would not pass safety inspections today, but it is worth noting that the kids who played on it survived. Both of them remember roller skates being popular entertainment. Margaret’s dad taught her to roller skate at the age of three on the wood floors of their hallway. Stay tuned for more adventures from Margaret and Mille!
