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1960 - Martinsville, VA
Scuffle Hill house - before it was sold to Episcopal Church and renovated. Note the front steps leading from Church Street. Today, the porch steps are on the sides and front steps are gone.
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VISITOR COMMENTS:
From: Coates "Coco" Carter Clark Aug 22, 2006
This picture vividly brings back a childhood memory that we use to play at the concrete walkway leading down to the steps. We sisters and cousins were pretty good rollerskaters. We made up a dangerous game of skating as fast as we could down the slope of the walkway and right as we would reach the steps, we would grab the branches of the boxwood and go flying in the air and down on the yard, saving our lives one more time!
From: Carl "Mickey" White Jan 31, 2006
Imagine, if you can, a barefoot 7-year-old boy climbing that long line of steps on a hot summer day, carrying in each hand a bag filled with string beans, butter beans, goose berries, huckleberries, blackberries or other treasures from a nearby garden or the woods of south Martinsville. Too young and too much into salesmanship to be intimidated by the overwhelming presence of the home--"the Pannill house"--which was always first stop on my rounds as I sold vegetables from my grandparents' garden or the fruit of my berry-picking trips door-to-door along Cleveland and Church Streets during summers and falls bewteen 1947 and 1953. Those grandparents, Ruth and Homer Minter, lived around the corner at 14 Cleveland, just two blocks up Cleveland from Pannill's knitting mill. Homer had the biggest garden in town every year and I earned movie money helping pick the produce and selling it at a price of "Whatever you want to pay" to our neighbors along Cleveland and Church. One of the adults at the Pannill house would always answer my knock, welcome me more than graciously, and then summon someone from the kitchen to negotiate "the buy." In addition to my excellent earnings I was usually offered iced tea, lemonade or a cold "Coke-Cola" and allowed to rest for awhile, inside, out of the sun. I find it strange, after looking at all your wonderful pictures on this site, that I cannot recall ever seeing a child at the Pannill house and recognize only Mimi Hart (a classmate of mine at Central Grammar, Patrick Henry, and MavaJrHi) in all the pictures of children gathered there. I moved from Martinsville in 1954 and have been back only about five times in the past 52 years. Great site! Thanks for the memories.
 
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