By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer

Stuart Thomson vividly recalls the 1920s and early 1930s. The 94-year-old from Lake Waccamaw saw women and girls with bobbed haircuts and straight dresses, and the young men with slicked hair – all products of the Flapper Age.

Thomson was born at the lake on Jan. 13, 1913, and lived there until 1936 when he completed college and began a life away from Columbus County.

He returned to his hometown in 1986 after 50 years and loves to recall his youthful days when his family was one of three living along the north shore – the only area accessible by car or horse and buggy. The other families were the Councils and Gaults.

His fondest memories are of growing up at the lake – an unknown jewel 80 years ago that grew slowly and finally blossomed. Now, instead of acres of timber and fields along the lakefront, few building lots remain that provide a view of the brown-black water.

He remembers his boyhood with the Goldston brothers – Fred and Burns.

Fish for breakfast

“Fred Goldston and I went fishing across the lake, and when we finished fishing we went ‘coon hunting on Hickory Island. We went to sleep about 2 a.m.

“We got up and started out to our boat, and when we came out there was Wiley Williams. Wiley, who was one of the best fishermen I ever knew, had set a trotline, and he was cooking some of his catch that morning.

“We ate some of his fish, and they were very good. That’s the only time I ever had fish for breakfast, and I was happy to have it,” Thomson declared. He noted that Wiley was a guide for guests of a lakefront hotel (the Waggaman and later Goldston’s), famous for his ability to find the lake’s schools of hungry white perch.

“Wiley showed me the biggest white perch I ever saw. It was two and a quarter pounds,” Thomson recalled.

Thomson grew up with the Goldston boys – Fred and Burns. “I was younger than Fred and just a little older than Burns.” During World War I and through the 1920s, Thomson and the Goldston boys – living in the hotel run by their father and mother – were together often as they lived less than 1,000 feet apart.

“One day Burns had two cigars. I guess I was about 12, and he said ‘Let’s go out to the little pier and smoke’em.’ There was a small pier going out further into the lake from the pavilion. We went out there and smoked.

“I always thought the lake was sort of stable, but that day it started rocking. I’m sure it was from the cigar,” Thomson noted with a laugh. The little pier in front of the pavilion was swept away by a storm in the 1920s.

Stuart’s parents were Dr. James Randolph and Thyra Topping Lucas Thomson, and he was the last of six children – Randolph, Marian, Fred, Noelle, David and Stuart.

Waggaman Club

The Thomson family reached Lake Waccamaw in 1909, after the doctor was hired to work for the North Carolina Lumber Company in Hallsboro.

When Stuart was born, there was a large two-story building known as the Waggaman Club located just west of Pecan Lane at the lake. The club had been built by J.P. Council as a hunting and fishing hangout for him and his many buddies.

The club eventually dissolved, and the building became a hotel – named The Waggaman. Why the Waggaman? It’s a derivitive of Waggamaw, the name given to the large freshwater lake by mapmakers in the 1700s. This was eventually changed in the early 1800s to Waccamaw, named for the Indian tribe who populated the area.

A.F. Goldston moved to the lake from the town of Goldston in Chatham County in th early 1900s, and became the operator of the hotel. Following the end of World War I, a three-story pavilion was constructed over the lake in front of the hotel.

The first floor had changing rooms where people could change to their bathing suits. The second-floor was the dance area, complete with a pit for the band, and a concession area.

The pavilion’s third floor was made up of small rooms used by the many bands who traveled from all over the nation for one-night and weekend stands over the lake. Meals were served at the hotel.

Cars everywhere

“I never went to a dance there. I could hear the music, the shouting and the laughter from our house. Sometimes I’d go and watch. I remember when they had a real big dance event, there’d be cars parked all up and down the road, in our yard and in the edge of our field,” Stuart said.

It was the Flapper era, and the young women would perform the Charleston, Black Bottom and other popular dances. There were hip flasks aplenty during these years of daring by almost all young people.

Dr. Thomson was often called out from his lake home in cases of sickness, childbirth and for accidents.

“I remember one night a man went to board the tram railroad on the south side of the lake, slipped and the train crushed his ankle. The tram took my father to a little shanty in the woods (probably the Betsyburg area between Dupree Landing and the river mouth).

“One worker held a fat lightard knot for light while my father sawed the man’s lower leg off. Daddy forgot about another man holding the chloroform over the man’s face.

“Daddy pushed the man away, and nudged the man with the injured foot. ‘Hey, this man’s about dead,’ he said. That was enough for the man holding the light, and he ran. Daddy had to holler several times to get him back, so he could finish,” Stuart related.

The 1918 freeze

Thomson recalls the winter of 1918-19 when the shallow lake froze solid, following days of temperatures in late December 1918 and early January 1919 that dipped into the single digits. This is the first recorded time the lake froze over, and it wouldn’t happen again until 1989.

“I remember when the ice broke up. There were loud ‘booms’ all over the lake. Mr. F. B. Gault was the only person to ice skate on the lake. He was born in Minnesota and he had the only pair of ice skates.”

“The north wind blew huge chunks of ice onto the south side of the lake, and it piled up into the trees. Some of the piles were at least 10 or more feet high.” All of the logging company piers were beaten down.

Stuart remembers when the southwest wind blew the large chunks of melting ice to the north side of the lake, and the ice beat against and finally sawed off nearly every piling to the private piers.

“All of the piers in the lake were destroyed, plus Mr. Oscar High’s boathouse that was on brick columns out about 100 yards from the shore.” Those are the same brick pillars finally removed last year – 88 years later – from the lake by State Park workers.

Thomson said High had built his boathouse 100 yards from the shore to be certain he’d be able to use his boats. There was no dam at the river mouth in 1918 and the lake receded – until 1924 when the dam was constructed -- from the present shore every spring and summer.

(Next installment, April 12 – Stuart Thomson remembers water for trains, biggest fish he ever caught, camping with a bear, working in a bomb plant, sturgeon in the lake, some of the first summer cottages, the cold chicken, four ducks for dinner, the 1942 tornado, driving off the Elwell Ferry, medical treatment for Andrew Carnegie, ice cream on Sundays.)