A Martinsburg Boy's Memories and Stories from the 1950s

John Bush was raised in Martinsburg and graduated from Central High in 1961. He spent most of his adult life in the Pacific Northwest. He has many memories as a boy in the 1950s that give some insight to the people and culture of Martinsburg in the 1950s.

John likes to tell stories and over the years he has repeated the stories of his youth many times. His belief is that those years in Martinsburg influenced him all of his life. Some of the stories are historical in nature, some are colorful, and some are personal. He wishes that you enjoy them.

FISHING AND HUNTING

Boys from Martinsburg could go fishing easily by bicycling to Clover Creek. Pasture fields were not posted and fishing on Clover Creek was fun and carefree. One could go out to Fredericksburg and head north onto Furnace Road for about a mile and fish in the creek just out of sight from the road and the Hershberger stone house. Sometime in the past, the creek had been deepened and the excavated dirt had been piled up on the inside of a meander bend. Here the water was deep enough for swimming, and if fishing was poor, we would just goof off out of sight from anyone. Most areas along the creek were not posted.

Another fishing spot was the Blair Bice property on Yellow Creek just south of Woodbury where there was access to a plunge pool at the dam spillway and to several meander bends in the other direction. It was about a five-mile trip on the busy Curryville Road and Woodbury Pike. Mom would drive Steve Dilling and me out there with a packed lunch to fish most of the day. Streams were well stocked before opening day, and we usually did well, each catching several trout. Steve was more accomplished than me and he taught me how to stream fish. He later became an avid trout fisherman. Two of my uncles, Paul Young and Max Hay, had taken me fishing on rivers and lakes, but stream fishing was different. We were left alone without adult supervision, which only once created a problem. I had been given a large fishing creel from Uncle Paul made of woven wood with leather straps in which I carried everything: my knife, lunch, fishing hooks and other fishing gear. It got left on the stream bank where two older men picked it up and walked on down the stream. I caught up to them and demanded it be returned. They said it was theirs and that I was mistaken. There wasn’t anything I could do about it; my lunch and all my gear except my fishing rod and reel were taken.

We also went fishing on Maple Run, a little creek reached by a dirt road from Little Jack’s Corner, just south of Loysburg Gap. We camped there a couple of times. The creek was small and lined with brush, but it was full of native Brook Trout that were easily caught. Frying them was fun and we generally had a good time if the weather was good. Once, however, we got a strong smell of cucumbers, which according to rumor meant we were near a nest of copperhead snakes. Present-day science reports state that it is a myth, but at that time we believed it and left early the next day to be picked up by one of our parents.

Small- and big-game hunting was important to many men and the boys in the Cove. Our family had a large freezer, and Dad and I hunted on both Uncle Floyd’s farm behind our house on Spring Street and Uncle Clyde’s farm along Potter Creek. The limit was twenty rabbits and squirrels and we filled part of our freezer most years. Mom soaked them in the sink, and the rabbits made for tasty meals. Some local men hunted but did not eat wild game, and it was common for them to drop off their take at our house. I hunted with a single-shot 410 and Dad with a 12-gauge pump. The 410 was Mothers’ gun but she never used it. One of the problems was that I was right handed and left eyed; I could not hit anything shooting right handed. After several practices Dad reluctantly gave in, telling me everyone shot right handed in the military. We generally walked a line across the fields and shot rabbits on the run in front of us.

One cold morning Uncle Floyd joined us carrying only a small caliber pistol. He walked behind us and shot two rabbits that were just sitting when we passed by.

Deer hunting season after Thanksgiving was such a big deal that Cove High was closed on the first day. Students were allowed three unexcused days each year. Some boys used all their allotment to hunt deer. It was common for men in the area to belong to hunting clubs in the northwest part of the state where some counties had more hunting camps than permanent residents. Much of that part of the state is on glaciated terrain and there was little land cleared for farming. I have seen many photographs of several deer hung up in a line outside hunting cabins. I was not the best of hunters. I did shoot a doe that had walked right up to me and it was so close that the pumpkin ball put a large hole in her chest.

Everyone I hunted with talked safety and hunter etiquette. I recall only one bad hunting experience growing up. Dad and I were hunting on the west side of Tussey Mountain on the south side of Henrietta Mountain Road which was only a graveled surface at the time. Dad was in my vision when a large buck walked into sight close to him. Two shots rang out and the deer dropped in its tracks. Dad was hunting with a pump 12-gauge shotgun and the deer had a hole indicative of a lead ball. It was obvious to me that Dad had shot it. As we began to gut the animal, a man ran up carrying a high-powered rifle and claimed that he had killed the deer. Dad finished gutting the deer as the man kept talking about what a great shot he had made from the top of the hill and the stranger attached his tag to the horns. It was clear to me, because of the size of the hole that the deer had been shot with a lead ball and not a high powered rifle. Dad pointed that out to the stranger, but the man yelled back like a mad man. Dad looked at me and said, “Come on,” and we walked away. I was disappointed that Dad gave in so easily, but he said, “That man is half crazy and who knows what else he would do. No deer is worth the risk.”

There were some things about deer hunting that did not suit me. Growing up in town, I was not an early riser by farm boy standards, but Dad was. We would hunt with Uncle Clyde on the west side of the Woodbury barrens in the State Game Lands. Clyde was a farmer and an early riser, so we would get up at three in the morning, meet Clyde, walk up into the woods, and line up along the edge of the State Game Lands. We walked with flashlights and would sit in separate spots. It was always cold and by the time the sun came up I was wondering why hunting was supposed to be fun. The plan was to sit tight and wait until the deer were driven or spooked out of the barrens which were very narrow, less than a mile across. Hunters in the barrens would join up and drive the deer toward others that were in a north-south line across the barrens. We lined up at right angles in an east-west line on my grandparents’ land. The deer would sometimes go between the drive and the line of men into private land along the edges of the game land.

I never shot a buck as a young hunter in Pennsylvania, and the one chance I had was blown due to classic buck fever. I was in the Woodbury barrens when shots at daybreak rang out like machine guns. I looked up and two bucks were running straight toward me. I fired when they stopped for a second and missed. I was using my mom’s gun, a 25-35 that was a lighter caliber than a 30-30, but it had the typical lever action like the ones used by John Wayne in the movies. The first buck started toward me and then stopped again. He was the older of the two, and the younger buck stopped right behind him. My heart was pounding as I levered in a new shell but in my haste, it got jammed in the chamber and I could not get it out. It seemed like an eternity while the older buck looked to his right, then to the left where Uncle Clyde and my dad were sitting, and then behind toward the barrens. The younger buck pranced around, digging up the dirt, waiting to decide what to do. The older buck started to move a couple of times and two nearly ran me over as both bucks disappeared into the woods behind me. That old buck somehow knew I was the least of the dangerous humans. I did some hunting in my later years in Idaho and killed a couple of bucks and plenty of does, but I never had such a hunting experience again. I surely understood what was called ‘buck fever.’