| Have You Lost Your Marbles? written by Paul Warnock This is another in a series of essays on my adventures with my father. He was a salesman for the Sunshine Biscuit Company back in the 1940’s and early to mid 1950’s. He serviced a five or six county territory in North Carolina more or less centered in Rockingham. He was fairly successful at what he did as the Company provided him a new car (Ford) every year for his work. He was able to provide personal interface with the storeowners & store managers; this was essential since they were in serious competition with Nabisco. He traveled various routes usually in a two week pattern. He liked for me to travel with him so he would have someone to converse with on these somewhat tedious, or at least repetitive, trips. He could easily cover one hundred miles in a day. Although I came from a fairly large family, none of my siblings liked to make these trip; but being the adventurous type, I relished them. I probably went with him at least one hundred times; my sibling’s trips with him combined could be measured with the fingers on one hand. This was usually Saturdays during school, but it could have been any day during the summer or holidays. This day we went to Laurinburg, over in Scotland County. At that time, Laurinburg was about the same size as Rockingham. My father’s task that day was to stay at one store all day, one of the new supermarkets. He would provide samples to each customer as they passed down the cracker isle. “Don’t you think these ‘Sunshine HiHo’ crackers are a lot better than those old ‘Nabisco Ritz’ crackers? Here, please try one.” They hadn’t invented store brands yet. Watching him do that got old fairly quickly; so he allowed me the run of the town more or less (meaning I was free to go and do as I pleased within reason). I was supposed to stay within a reasonable distance of the store. Can you imagine that today? Allowing a ten year old boy the run of an unknown town? Even as late as the early 1950’s, the general store was still the mainstay for grocery shopping. Supermarkets were just starting to change shopping cultures; the problem with supermarkets was they insisted on cash, and you had to have a car to get to them. They didn’t allow credit, which was the edifice of any farming community back then. When the crops were harvested, the farmers paid their debts, which could have been accumulating for up to a year. Back then there was this novelty item that some people used on their car’s headlights. It was a metallic half-moon shaped head light deflector; it looked like the bill of a baseball hat. It fit into the top of a car’s headlight holder. It would keep the headlights from shining higher that the hood of the car (for at least three or four inches). I doubt it had much impact on oncoming traffic at night, but the man at Western Auto told you it would. They were three holes in them where you could place crystal marbles usually in attractive colors. At least the driver could tell if his headlights were working as he drove down the road. The marbles would be illuminated. You could buy a pack of these type marbles at the Dime store for a nickel, but who had an extra nickel? In Grammar School, marbles was a popular sport for boys during recess. The teachers allowed us to play “for fun”, but not “for keeps”. I never knew anyone who played “for fun”, not even the girls, but they almost never played marbles. I was a mediocre player at best; at any rate there seemed to be a constant demand for me to replace my marble inventory. Nickels were hard to come by back in those days. So you might see how a parked car with six beautiful marbles would be a temptation to a young boy. Anyhow, as I meandered around Laurinburg that day, I saw several cars with these marble headlights. There was no one around; no one knew me even if they did see me; so why didn’t I just help myself? They don’t put ten year old boys in jail for petty theft, do they? There was a particular nice candidate parked in the parking lot of a competitive supermarket. I stood over by a nearby tree, and I deliberated for quite some time. But I had the same Sunday School teacher Joel had, Mrs. Rebecca Bullard. I knew it was wrong. So did I take those marbles? No I didn’t, and I’m extremely proud of that even to this day. Eventually the car owner came (a middle-age farmer). I mentioned to him how tempted I had been to steal his marbles, but didn’t. He was so impressed with me that he said he had some extra marbles in this trunk, and he gave me a whole bag of them. |
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