Dr. James Thomson’s youngest child tells of his childhood in the 1920s, 1930s.

By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer

Second in a series

“One man was laughing so hard, he had to lay down. I guess it was a funny sight,” said a smirking Stuart Thomson, the 94-year-old who retired to his hometown of Lake Waccamaw in 1986.

Thomson was telling the story about a birthday party at his lakefront home – only one of three along the north shore – in 1918. Stuart was 5 years old, and it was a party for one of his brothers. Young Carolyn Council, who lived about two-tenths of a mile away along the lakeshore, attended.

“When the party was over it came time for Carolyn to go home. She was wearing a pretty pink dress and had a pink parasol. It was hot weather, and Mother told me to walk her home and hold that parasol over her to keep her in the shade.

“Well, we struck out toward her house (the second of the three homes along the lakefront), and some fellows were hoeing peanuts in the field beside our house. They laughed, and that’s when one of ‘em had to lay down he was laughing so hard,” Thomson recalled with pleasure.

The bantam hen

Thomson, the youngest of Dr. James and Thyra Topping Lucas Thomson’s six children, laughed heartily before beginning the story about his brother Randolph’s pet bantam hen.

“A seamstress who did work for our family gave Randolph four duck eggs. He put them under his pet bantam and she did the rest. They hatched, and she was a proud mother.

“Eventually, they found the lake, and they took to it like all ducks. I can still see her wading in as far as she dared, and I’m not going to repeat what she said as her babies were swimming off.

“But she was giving them hell for playing in the water and wanted them to come right back to shore. She just didn’t understand,” Thomson related with a big laugh.

The ducks grew and grew. Dr. Thomson and his wife decided to go to the river mouth and have a picnic for Thanksgiving that year. “We had a good time and a great meal. We had duck on the menu,” he stated.

The 1918 epidemic

Thomson recalls vividly the great flu epidemic in 1918, the one that killed hundreds of children and adults in Columbus County, as well as most other North Carolina counties, and across the nation.

“I had the flu in 1918, but it never developed into one of those deadly cases. Daddy, being one of the few doctors in the county, was gone five days at a time. He’d nap at one house before going to another home.

“He’d get a bite to eat at somebody’s house before moving on. During that whole time of being around such a contagious disease, he never got the flu,” Thomson declared.

The Thomson family moved to Whiteville in 1917 so the doctor’s children could attend school here, but the epidemic forced the schools to shut down, and the Thomsons returned to the lake.

Mae Belle Powell, living in Wananish (the community where Council Tool is located – about three-quarters of a mile north of the lake along Pecan Lane) came to our house to teach us,” Thomson said.

Thomson graduated from Hallsboro High School in 1929, and when able, still sings with choir at the Lake Waccamaw Presbyterian Church.

Speedy Milton

While living in Whiteville, Stuart and his brother David were visiting “Aunt Bea Smith on Madison Street,” and “Milton McKenzie was there. He asked if we wanted to see something, then told us to sit by the side of the street and wait.

“Milton was known for his love of speed. He bought a hydroplane and raced up and down on the lake. Well, this time, we waited a few minutes. Madison Street was still dirt then, and here came Milton in a sulky and he had the horse running as hard as he could.

“Milton came by wide open. He loved it, and we loved it.”

Thomson said that when the schools reopened and the Thomson children attended the Hallsboro school, they would go each day in a Model-T Ford. “Fred (another older brother) drove us. He’d sit on the back of the front seat and steer with his feet, and manage the gas with his toes.”

Dr. Thomson’s first car was a Brush. This was a low-priced vehicle with a one-cylinder engine designed for rural conditions. In 1912, the Brush produced a two-seat open car with a folding top, and developed 10 horsepower. Innovative coil springs and shock absorbers suspended the body on the chassis, attached to wooden axles and wheels. It cost $350.

Never steered

Stuart said his father discarded the Brush and got a new Maxwell, a big step up in transportation.
The Thomson children were too young to drive, but they’d push the old Brush around the yard and up and down the dirt road along the lakefront.

“We’d all push, except one who got to steer. I never steered, because I was the youngest. I was always a pusher,” he recalled.

“One time Daddy’s Maxwell locked in reverse, so he got on the hood and drove it home backwards from the Slap Ass Swamp (home of Big Creek, the primary tributary of Lake Waccamaw) northeast of Wananish.”

The swamp’s true name of Slap Ass has been changed to merely “Slap Swamp” for modern use. The original name – from a hand-me-down-story – is taken from a game played by Revolutionary War soldiers who camped near the swamp and played a knife game – spinning the knife, slapping their behind before trying to catch the knife before it hit the ground.

Sunday ice cream

In the early 1900s, Arthur Council from the lake and Oscar High from Whiteville built and owned the first summer cottage on the lake. The “cottage” is still there, located at 1110 Lake Shore Drive, the one covered on the sides and front with cypress shingles. It’s just three lots west of the old two-story Thomson home.

The co-ownership lasted one year, and High bought out his friend.

This began a series of vacationing at the lake each summer, an experience that’s lasted for more than 100 years by some of the High family.
Thomson remembers in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s there would be ice cream served at the High cottage each Sunday during the summer.

A five-gallon container would be shipped from Wilmington on the afternoon train.

“The Highs had a lot of company every Sunday. You serve food and you draw a crowd. I was one of ‘em,” Thomson remembers with pleasure.
He also recalls he went to a big land auction along the lakefront in the early 1920s. He thinks it was Dallas Cameron selling lots on the north shore.

“My mother admonished me not to eat any of the food. It wasn’t for me, she said.”

‘Willie Bud’

Thomson remembers attending a large baptism celebration at the old public beach area where Weaver’s Pier was located in the 1920s. Willie Bud Flynn was among those being baptized that day.

“I was halfway out on Weaver’s Pier. I was somewhere between 8 and 12 years old. Willie Bud went under and when he came out he started playing in the water.

“His mother started yelling, ‘Willie Bud! Willie Bud! You come here!’ Willie Bud never paid her any mind, he just kept playing. I can still hear her calling out, ‘Willie Bud.’”

Thomson, who was working in a Pennsylvania plant in 1942 making bombs for the armed forces, returned for a visit and was there for one of the tornadoes that hit Columbus County.

“It was about 10 o’clock at night, and it sounded just like a freight train. It came from the southwest and ripped the roof off the Townsend cottage, tore the front off the McLean-Kelly cottage, took the garage behind the High cottage, and wrecked our chicken house and the rear of our barn.”

(The final installment of Stuart Thomson’s stories will be April 19. He recalls pumping water for trains, his biggest fish, camping with a bear, working in a bomb plant, sturgeon in the lake, the cold chicken, medical treatment for Andrew Carnegie, driving off the Elwell Ferry, and how he got “something in his eye” when he spied the girl he’d marry.)