Pssst. Want to hear a couple good Bluffton stories? The Icon's book "A Good Place To Miss - Bluffton Stories 1900-1975," is filled with lots of stories too good to miss.
We invite you to attend The Icon's second anniversary party. It's from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 8, at Common Grounds.
You'll get a free cup of Icon coffee some other refreshments and a chance to meet The Icon team. And, if you'd like to go home with some interesting Bluffton reading material, you may buy a copy of "A Good Place To Miss."
Here's that sample we mentioned in the top paragraph. (There's lot more stories like these in the book. To read even more story samples, click here.)
See you Oct. 8, and bring your friends.
Telephone Booths
During his high school days in the early 1960s Lee Cookson worked in his dad's Marathon station. It was located in what is today A to Z Portion Meats at the corner of Main and Elm.
Across the street, on the corner of the town hall, was one of Bluffton's four telephone booths. The other booths were also on Main Street: at the laundry mat, the high school and Dari Freeze.
Lee happened to know the telephone number of the booth at the town hall. No one knew how he discovered it. Anyway, whennotever one of his classmates would walk by the telephone booth Lee could spot the classmate from the Marathon.
He would then quickly dial the phone booth. The shocked teenager, walking by, might answer the phone. If so, from the other end came a voice asking for the person who answered the phone. This was a pretty strange experience.
The phone booth at the Dari Freeze never seemed to operate properly. Town youths discovered they could pick up the receiver and dial a phone number at no charge.
It worked this way: Using the knob the receiver hung on, like Morse code, you could quickly tap the telephone number you wanted and it always worked. Three quick taps for 3, five for 5, eight for 8 and so on.
Basketball
Herb Kindle, for many years a clerk in the Bluffton post office, related this story about playing on Bluffton's 1936-37 boys' basketnotball team that advanced to the Class B state tournament.
He told me that he remembered the feeling when he first stepped into the coliseum as the team entered for pre-game warm-ups. He said that he'd never been in a building so large and with so many people that it gave him a sort of queasy feeling.
He added that the rest of his life when he entered a similarly large building with a large crowd, that same feeling came over him.
