by Larry Chowning –
The archives of community weekly newspapers are often filled with history and culture of the area it serves. Longtime co-owner and editor of Southside Sentinel Carl Tomlinson had a passion for publishing anecdotal stories of the past.
When Harwood Bristow dropped him a note from St. Petersburg, Fla. in January 1939 with some anecdotal history, Tomlinson ran the stories in the Sentinel.
“A few days ago we had a card from a former citizen of Urbanna, only remembered by those who resided in the town about a half century ago, Harwood Bristow, who clerked for Bristow & Bland in the old brick store near the site where the A.B.C. store is now located and which burned a number of years ago,” wrote Tomlinson.
“Mr. Bristow wanted to know what his bill to the Sentinel was and asked if I remembered when he lived in Urbanna (in the late 1880s), when he clerked in a store here, and I was a little boy.
“I answered his card and told him I remembered him very well, one incident in particular, when he brought the first bicycle to our town, a great big wheel and a little wheel behind, and one Sunday when he was out riding he landed in a bobbed-wire fence in front of F.A. Bristow’s store (where the gas station is located today) and came out minus the seat of his trousers, much to the amusement of the little boys who were running behind the wheel.”
The following letter was received in reply to my letter:
“I do recall the high wheel bicycle which I brought to Urbanna nearly half a century ago and the many comical performances that old bike gave for you boys’ amusement and to my chagrin,” wrote Bristow.
“My trouble was that all the roads in Urbanna were then of sand and anyone who drives a car will readily understand how difficult it was to retain control in loose sand.
“Another amusing incident which occurred back in those by gone days (mid-1870s) in Urbanna happened on an occasion which was expected to be more solemn. My uncle, R.S. Bristow Sr., had just purchased the large plot of land in the center of the town (to build Bristow’s Store still on the corner of Virginia and Cross streets) and was having the graves of two old ladies buried in the town square during Colonial times removed to Hewick Cemetery.
“Two colored men were exhuming the few decayed bones from the old graves. A ventriloquist happened to be on the scene and threw his voice into the open grave where one of the colored men was handling the remains.
“The voice entreated the man to ‘stop disturbing’ her since she had been ‘peacefully resting’ there ‘for two hundred years.’ The colored man knew nothing about Charlie McCarthy and his art, so he jumped out of the grave with much more speed than he had been employing on the job previously. More over, nothing would induce the laborer to go back and resume his task. (The bodies were eventually removed to Hewick Cemetery.)
It happened here in Rivah country!
