How green was my Valley then,
and the Valley of them that have gone.
How Green Was My Valley (Richard Llewellyn)
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| The Covington Hospital (late 40s) |
"I think the baby's ready to pop out, Curly," Juanita whispered to her sleepy husband. Austin, known as Curly to everyone, sat up quickly and rubbed his tired eyes. He snatched up the nearby suitcase as he helped Juanita up off the couch. They quick-stepped out the front door to their car, destined for the town of Covington and its fancy six bed hospital. As they bounced along the heavily rutted Potts Creek Road, Curly worried about his wife, and hoped like hell they would make it to Covington in time. As he lit a cigarette to steady his nerves, he saw Juanita's worried look illuminated by the match.
Months earlier, Juanita suffered a miscarriage but the constant wondering whether she should have done something different tormented her. She determined to do every little right if she had another chance. Most others preferred to birth their babies at home, a Valley tradition. "Ain't no need to run off to a hospital to birth that calf," they said, "All of us folks was born right here in the Valley, in our homes." Hilde, her mother, had given birth to Juanita at home. But Hilde knew her daughter was worried. Maybe it was new mother's intuition or maybe it was fretting too much. Either way, Hilde trusted Juanita's innate wisdom, just as Curly had. Others, including plenty of family, didn't see the reason to trek all the way to Covington when women had been birthing babies right at home for a few hundred years.
Holding herself as still as she could during the ride, Juanita gazed at the trees lining the road. Green and full as they always were by early May. She liked early spring in the Valley, with everything coming to life after a hard winter. A few short hours later, Juanita brought forth her own new life when Austin Hines, Junior was born. After seeing his baby son for the first time, Curly let Juanita rest as he strolled outside for some fresh spring air.
Although he was born Austin Hines, most folks knew him as Curly because of his coal black wavy hair. Tall and lean from years of hard labor, he had an easy smile, liked to laugh, and smoked plenty of cigarettes. Rarely did he touch alcohol. He reasoned that life revolved around a man’s ability to think and work, regardless of age, and that drinking would impede the few opportunities available. He was born in Acworth, Georgia, around 1905, to Littleberry and Emma Hines. Seems no one ever told him is actual date of birth, not even when he died years later. Curly liked to use January 1 since it was easier to remember. Littleberry was born during the Civil War, likely in Texas. Most folks vividly recall his handlebar mustache and tanned skin. Family said he was part American Indian, perhaps Cherokee. By the time Austin, Jr. was born, Littleberry and Emma lived in South Carolina. Curly was one of seven children that survived into adulthood: Walter, Clyde, Houston, Austin (‘Curly’), Oscar, Raymond, and Pearl.
Before moving to Covington, Curly worked as a loom fixer at a silk mill in North Carolina during the late 1930s. He took a job as plant supervisor for the Covington Weaving Company, a subsidiary of Klopman Mills, at 200 East Hawthorne Street. It was the Second World War and factories of all sizes pumped out military goods in one form or another. Covington Weaving prospered manufacturing parachutes and other silk products for the war effort. They paid well and hired often. Here he met Juanita Childs. Her family had lived in the Valley for many generations. Beautiful, strong and with a will of her own, she represented the best of the women from those parts. Juanita loved to dance, seldom frowned, and wasn't afraid of much of anything. She liked hard work for the satisfaction it brought her, especially the job as a loom operator. Curly was happy, too. "Covington," Curly mused soon after meeting Juanita, "has turned out to be a real good place for me."
In 1943, Covington was indeed a good place, a small mill town nestled deep in the southern part of the Shenandoah Valley, and just off Virginia Interstate 64 West. On Main Street, there was a Rose’s Five-and-Dime, a few nice diners, the Strand Theatre, and even a Visulite Theater. It was the kind of town where old men would sit out on the concrete ledge in front of the bank on Saturdays to talk and watch the pretty girls. Over in nearby Mallow, the drive-in theater charged a dollar per carload, and movie-going teens often packed their cars to take advantage. Originally, the whole area was called ‘Mouth of the Dunlap,’ until the biggest landowner at that time, Bernard Pitzer, renamed it Covington to honor some local General killed in action during the War of 1812. Covington was officially designated a town in 1819.
The first large paper producer, West Virginia Pulp and Paper company (Westvaco), arrived in 1900 and a paper plant was built in Covington. The massive Westvaco plant took up over half the town, and its smoke stacks produced a horrendous odor and sooty acid specks each day. The plant brought sorely needed jobs and unwanted pollution. If you could abide the awful smell, Covington was rather a nice place to live. "It sure smelled good on paydays!" was a common refrain of locals when asked about the stench. When other mills followed Westvaco’s lead and started building their own plants, many out-of-state workers flocked to Covington for jobs. One of them was Curly.
Curly courted Juanita for a while until they wed in 1942. They lived with her parents down the Potts Creek Road, a few hard miles from Covington, but not long after Austin Junior's birth, the new family moved 230 McCurdy Street, a nice little home not far from the mill. They both continued to work because even back then, it took more than one paycheck to survive.
By 1950, Austin Junior's parents saved enough money to move into a duplex at 401 North Alleghany Avenue. It was a modest two-story home with a small fenced-in front yard. Their neighbors were Junior and Ethel Reid, and their son, Gary Lee, became Junior's best friend -- and accomplice. When the homes in the area changed over - from coal and wood stoves - to electric and gas heat, Gary Lee and Austin learned about fuel and fires. Playing with matches in the old coal house by the alley behind their house one day, they set a garage on fire. Soon after, the Covington Volunteer Fire Department arrived, followed by Curly. Junior thought for sure the world had come to an end -- his daddy would be real mad. Instead, Curly pulled Austin aside and talked to him. "You have to be smarter than that, little Austin. You have to understand the consequences of your actions." In a time when misbehaving boys were often told to ‘go git yourself a switch,’ and a tail whipping was close at hand, Curly's response was almost shocking. Now in hindsight, taking a switch (a thin tree branch) to a child may appear cruel, but lessons were quickly learned and not easily forgotten. Curly figured he didn't like it when Littleberry whipped him, so why would he make little Austin feel that way.
As his parents worked at the weaving mill, one of Austin's older cousins, Christine Childs, usually watched over him. Despite her best babysitting efforts, little Austin ran away from the house one day and walked nearly a mile to mill.
"Daddy was sure happy to see me, but then I got a scolding for running away and he made me walk all the way back home. I turned around a couple of times and saw Daddy following me in his 1946 Plymouth Mayflower to make sure I got there. Maybe he wanted to dissuade me from stopping by Mr. Rapp’s sweet shop. Mr. Rapp and Daddy were good friends. We'd stop by every week and Daddy would buy me a chocolate maple nut sundae which cost 35 cents, an extravagance for that era. Mr. Rapp liked children and I stopped in to see him at every chance, even when I didn’t buy anything. I'm more mindful of that nowadays. Back then, well, those were different times, and often it was good that adults liked children. They watched out for everyone’s kids then."
"Daddy was sure happy to see me, but then I got a scolding for running away and he made me walk all the way back home. I turned around a couple of times and saw Daddy following me in his 1946 Plymouth Mayflower to make sure I got there. Maybe he wanted to dissuade me from stopping by Mr. Rapp’s sweet shop. Mr. Rapp and Daddy were good friends. We'd stop by every week and Daddy would buy me a chocolate maple nut sundae which cost 35 cents, an extravagance for that era. Mr. Rapp liked children and I stopped in to see him at every chance, even when I didn’t buy anything. I'm more mindful of that nowadays. Back then, well, those were different times, and often it was good that adults liked children. They watched out for everyone’s kids then."
Yet, life was not always so great. When he was six, his parents decided to separate. They remained friendly enough. Since both of them continued to work long shifts at the mills, and Christine now in high school, his parents sent Austin to live with his momma’s parents, Manuel and Hilda Childs, a few miles down the Potts Creek Road in a little ‘holler’ called Jonestown.
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| Covington, Virginia today |
