HAMLET - In 1951, I was born in a small North Carolina town appropriately named “Hamlet” by John Shortridge, the Scottish proprietor of a woolen mill on Marks Creek.
I knew two things from the time I was very young – I did not want to be in the grocery store business or mayor! My dad, born in 1902, was the owner of a small neighborhood grocery store and a five-term mayor of our town. He operated a credit business and people tended to forget they owed a bill after they consumed their goods and the mayor’s phone was open season for complaints, e.g., “They didn’t pick my garbage up,” etc.
Hamlet, however, was a great place for a boy to grow up. It was a railroad town and most of my friends’ dads worked for the Seaboard Coastline Railroad, which was in later years taken over by the conglomerate CSX. During my growing up years, Hamlet was known as the Hub of the Seaboard.
My dad, in his younger days, was a quail hunter. Due to his obligations of the grocery store and as mayor, he had limited time to hunt when I was young. I guess I just inherited the gene or DNA to become a bird hunter. The 1950’s were the best of times to grow up. There was Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Roger Maris and Duke Snyder playing professional baseball; we could ride our bikes to school; freely pledge allegiance to the flag of the great United States; and, though not welcomed, get a good paddling if we misbehaved at school and another one when we got home. We could walk downtown to the picture show and afterwards go to the drug store, either Birmingham’s or Mabry’s, for a freshly-squeezed limeade. About the time we were in the fourth or fifth grade, some of us met our first girlfriend there.
Yep, there was everything a boy needed during that era in our little Southern town: baseball, 6-cent Coca Colas, Main Street, Pinecroft Industries with a huge sawdust pile to play in, plenty of railroad tracks to walk, the train station to explore, Hamlet city lake to fish, girls, and best of all, lots of quail. Life was good!
To be continued …
Editor's note: This story was contributed by Joe Liles of Hamlet and will be continued intermittently.
