Part-1

Family history of the Kennebec potato & me.

Walter Harris Sutton left Michigan & went to Brevard, NC area looking for a mail order bride in the late 30's-early 40's. She was already taken so he went back to agronomy. He was working on a new variety of potato (now known as the Kennebec) part of the name probably came from the Quebec area of Lake Toxaway, NC.

Walter was told to go try Lake Toxaway area as he needed ground where no potatoes had been grown & none growing for 1-2 miles.
He found land owned by "Looney" and Penira Owen. "Looney" would raise corn & grain for untaxed beverage purposes. "Looney"and Penira had 5 kids. Ellen, Marvin, Wayne, Donna, Lucy.

Walter was of the old school, of a family wealthy before the depression, but he was wiped out by it; as well as most of them. Educated in the best schools of old Europe, and a world traveler.

His wife had left him years earlier with their one child, to be relocated & remarried in California. This he discovered after years of searching. Her reasons for leaving I don't know. When he resumed working on his new variety of potato he was fifty five years old, no heirs, and lonely. Solace was found in botanical work. Those who knew more are long dead or unaware of relatives.

The Owen children had typical high-school range education. Walter was a near physician whose career was aborted by amputation below the left knee and subsequent years of trying to drink away dashed hopes.

Donna was very late teens to early twenty something. Walter was fifty five, aristocratic and commanding in demeanor. Tall and striking in appearance, penetrating eyes and prominent bushy eyebrows curling upwards and at times a dark mustache.

She told me it was love at first sight for both of them. A north / south romance that risked violence toward himself while in the autumn of his years, for a kind and dark haired girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains .

To get married they hitched a ride with the mail truck on it's way down the higher mountains to the county seat, twenty plus miles and two thousand foot plus drop in elevation below.

Mervin Anders was the post master driving the mail truck. Mervin & his wife Kansey Anders were solid Seventh Day Adventists, lovingly trying to lead as many of their fellow mountain neighbours to God and the Bible as possible.

Mervin was a little suspicious when Walter an older man and Donna a young girl, hitched a ride to go to Brevard together. They did not tell him their plans.

Halfway down to Brevard from Lake Toxaway was the little town of Rosman. It had only a blinking caution light for it's one intersection in town while it straddled the land between the densely wooded mountains and the river.

At that intersection if you turned right you would wind down a narrow two lane blacktop down the steep mountains to Pickens SC. ; where for a fee the justice of the peace would marry a couple with out waiting.

As they got close to that intersection, Walter tapped Mervin on the shoulder & said "you can turn right here Mervin". Mervin started & kept objecting and stated that "Looney" would shout him for that. Donna convinced him that would not be allowed to happen.

Walter told him essentially that if they had to walk and hitchhike they would. Did he want an older man with one leg and a young woman going through some of those rough places?

Mervin relented and took them & they were married. Talk about the mail being late that day!

After 20-30 years of faithfully working for souls, how do you suppose Mervin and Kansey Anders felt when the only male child of Walter and Donna Sutton was baptized into the Seventh Day Adventist Church by immersion in the Davidson River up in the Blue Ridge Parkway?

In the late 1940's Walter Harris Sutton sold the Kennebec Potato to the USDA, he probably did not negociate and without a contract ever being mentioned, only got a small amount for this very popular potato variety.
Walter Harris Sutton June 18-1884.....October 9-1961 Fondly in my memory
by ...........Edward F. Sutton 10-07-51.............and still kicking.

end of part-one.

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Edward F. Sutton

So, and how long are you going to make us WAIT for the next installment?
I remember how your better half nearly drove me crazy with anticipation over each and every installment.

Are you cut from the same jib?

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What is popular is not always right.
What is right is not always popular.
Gerry B.

Yes ma'am.
Sorry, I keep having these blonde moments.

My brain must have slipped into neutral there for a second.

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What is popular is not always right.
What is right is not always popular.
Gerry B.

Doesn't he just drive you NUTS sometimes? It's in his nature to be impatient about stuff like this, though. Please, don't hold it against him. Edward, just continue at your own pace, don't worry about my dad. Truth be told, he's just as slow as some other people about typing out a story. Admit it, dad! They'll figure it out eventually anyway.

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God bless!

Angie

I am reading this thread & it is September. In one other thread Gerry is waiting with baited breath. His wife ought rejoice a lot !!

My breath is usually loaded with garlic. Never trust a skinny cook unless they workout.

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Edward F. Sutton

Part-2
Family history of the Kennebec potato & me.

My dad got blood poisoning("ie:lockjaw") from a compound left lower leg fracture & it became gangrenous, and medicine what it was when he was mid 30's - off came that part of the leg. Gone was his hopes of becoming an MD.

He turned to the bottle for solace. @ 6'4" was a "Mean, Violent" drunk. He would strain camphor and or shoe polish through a loaf of bread and drink the residue. He took the "cold turkey cure" 4-5 yrs before I was born and never drank again.

At my repeated insistance he taught me to read at age four. Since I was born with cerebal palsy & did not walk except with braces & help at a much later time than usual, I was a vorasious bookworm & still am. I would think nothing of reading a whole book in an afternoon for fun, still don't.

There's been some dust raised about long posts. While it settles I'll wait for Gerry's colorful responce. ( It inspires me to type more - for me a couple of pages takes all night.)

P.S. A little redundency from a private posting of mine in the moderators forum for others to enjoy.

Well suns up time for this Transylvanian to sleep. (Brevard NC, is the county seat of TRANSYLVANIA COUNTY - heh heh ).

You thought I was kidding - not so - we are the only non-Romanian TRANSYLVANIAN'S on Earth.

I work nights, sleep in the day, am very very gooood at getting arterial blood.(worked as a respritory therapist for years-ABG's by the thousands.) Sleep tight I'll be lurking. Don't get caught with your corpusles down & your're out of luck I LOVVVVE Garlic - even though my favorite "stakes" are homemade glutten & not wood.

Ed the "count"-er HUMMM has a nice ring to it "COUNT EDWARD" - They always did want me to get to the point(s). Hummmm something to sink my teeth into maybe ?

Take your vitamins and especially iron - we wouldn't want a certain "fly by nite" to get a diffiency woooould we ?

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Edward F. Sutton

Ed, I consider your last post a short post.

Three times the length of your last post may be about right or still falling shy of a long post.

It's those really long posts that concern me no matter who posts it. The only exception is in the Sermons/Messages forum.

As I don't want us to deviate from this important topic, I don't want us to discuss this any further here. Any further public replies to what I have posted here can be posted as a new topic in the Suggestion Box forum.

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In His Love, Mercy & Grace

Daryl

[This message has been edited by Daryl Fawcett (edited September 21, 2000).]

Part-3
Meanwhile, back @ the Ranch.......

Well my Dad taught me to read @ 4. He had odd jobs to help the family income, my mom worked at Olin,(then Ecusta-now is back to Ecusta again.) She worked in endless belt division making woven/sewed tough braided nylon belts for industry. Often she would come home with a needle hole(s) in a through a finger or two.

When I was 18 months old my Dad was working as a dispatcher for the Fire Dept. You had to climb it seemed like 50-75 steps to get up to the dispatchers office above the Main Fire Department. One night he kept hearing "ploop,ploop,ploop,ploop,..... then again ploop,ploop,ploop,ploop,ploop,ploop,.... and so on.

What he found was a black & charcoal gray & white tiger stripe tom kitten trying to climb those steps as earnestly as it could. It would get to almost the last step and give out from fatigue and fall all the way down to just keep starting over & over ....determined to reach the top.

He could not be away from the dispatch mike but for a few seconds, and quickly scooped up the kitten and put it in a box near his desk in the upstairs office and feed it some of his supper. Having almost been an MD he knew what to do to neuter the male kitten before bringing it home. Then accidentally caught the last vertebra of it's tail in the car door @ home trying to keep the surprise that evening. (It healed without incident or crookedness.)

It would be nearly eleven PM-midnight before he would get home. That was too rough on him, he was late 60's-early 70's by now. Mama would get me up in time to run to the kitchen and greet him as he came home. I called the cat "Atomic" because he had so much energy. But in time it shortened to "Tom".

Talk about a one person cat and a one cat kid, we were the "terrible two's" for sure what one didn't get into the other did . He helped me with my cereal & milk every morning from under the tablecloth or in my lap. He had a purr box a chainsaw would envy & claws to match . We played hide and seek, he would wait out of sight till I would finish counting and then try to find me & if he couldn’t I would start giggling soon and give it all away. Or if when it was my turn & he was hid too good he would purr and purr louder and louder till I found him.

The back porch was a tin roof and screened with a non fruiting grape species with a very large leaf, screening half of it for shade . A good sized couch covered with a deep pile carriage blanket with a rich dark background and flower-like diagonal design in strong warm reds and golds. Just above the back of the couch was mom’s bedroom window. They ran the length of one wall. I had a cot @ one end of the room. I had to sleep with a brace on my left leg down to the foot. Was very hard on sheets. It was fun to pull the window up just enough for Tom to slip in streak to my bed and scurry under the covers to sleep at my feet . How he breathed I don’t know & those shoes I had to wear - well one tough kitty. Almost always we got caught & I got in trouble & he got put back out.

My mom’s bed had an underside liner on it & when things got too hot to handle Tom would race through the house & dive under that big four poster & up through the torn liner & “spring city again.” .

There he would sing & play till my sister would start poking with the broom or worse yet start jumping on the bed . Tom hated earthquakes so out he could come squawling and carrying on then off he would run. I could hold him all I wanted , but nobody else for too long.

(Well sorry Gerry ...it’s payday gotta run for now. Going to the bank is a pain with the traffic & clunky car but the money is sorta nice sometimes . I just sign it & she puts it where my pen don’t write.) Her checking account - heh heh.

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Edward F. Sutton

[This message has been edited by Edward F. Sutton (edited September 22, 2000).]

I thought that if I stayed away long enough you'd have this finished....... WROONNGG!!!!

(HEAVY SIGH)

Guess I'll just have to learn to control my impatience.

Y'all just love to tease don't ya?