Your invitation to submit Tales from the Good Old Days

A few weeks ago I talked with Bob Lasley of Hickory, N.C. about books he had published featuring “Tales from the Good Old Days”.

Lasley told me he was going to collect tales from people in this area in order to do the same thing here. There is an insert in this week’s edition of the News Journal telling how you can be a part of the book.

He then sent me a copy of his latest book consisting of short stories sent to him from people in eight western Virginia counties.

The contributors were invited to write letters describing interesting, humorous, unusual, exciting, (and even romantic) “happenings” from the past.

The book has 373 pages and contains 248 stories from the best that were submitted. I’ve read some of the stories and they are entertaining regardless of whether or not you know the authors.

Here are some of the subjects: Memories of My School Days, The Four Dollar Mule, Coal Camp Tales, Mad Dogs, Witches and Floods, The Hated Circle on the Floor, Nighttime at the Outhouse and The Greyhound Romance written by a lady born in 1939.

This is one of the stories I’ve read. I chose it because 1939 was the year I was born. She tells about a time when some families didn’t own a car and those that did usually had only one car. The Greyhound bus was the mode of transportation for many back then.

Lasley has hit upon a great idea with these books. They have hard covers and large pages with easy to read print.
He retired from the insurance industry in 1997 and since that time he has published 40 living history books about other regions. The books have been met with great success.

My sister, Bena Mae, who writes for this newspaper, has enough stories that she could fill a book of her own. I have encouraged her to submit some for this publication.

You don’t have to worry if you’re not a writer. Lasley and his staff will edit your copy and make you look as if you are a writer. I encourage everybody who has a tale worthy of this publication to submit it.

In my tenure here at the News Journal I’ve had four books published, three of them dealing with our local history. Two of them were pictorial histories made possible by our readers.

One was done for the 50th anniversary of Corbin’s Nibroc Festival six years ago. I was looking at that book today and I was again impressed with how good it is. I’ve never seen another publication on Corbin’s history with as much information as contained in this book.

Our new Web Site will be here soon and we will have the history book on it for you to view at your pleasure.
Having lived here for 69 years I witnessed much of what we wrote about. Also, it has tremendous pictures of the past. Over 10,000 of you got the book when it was first published.

Our staff has done other valuable history sections in this newspaper. Nine years ago we had the Centennial series which was published for three consecutive issues.

Then last year we covered the 100 year history of this newspaper which also was published in three editions.
Publishing histories of this area is not new to us. We’ve spent many hours researching and recording the events of the past. Soon it will be there for you to view at www.thenewsjournal.net

I’m going to submit a story or two to Lasley. One is about my adventure, along with my brother-in-law, of selling watermelons when I was a teenager.