Continuing the series on growing up in Lewisburg, WV in the 1950s, a great town and a wonderful time to be young.   My dad was an FBI agent out of the Pittsburg office. He had been stationed in Beckley, WV, and then suddenly transferred to Lewisburg, a much smaller community. We wondered why, then later found out that he had been sent there to assist with the underground bunker being … [Read more...]

Memories of growing up in Lewisburg, WV, a great town and a great time to be young   We moved to Lewisburg in the spring of 1955. There were several necessary steps when moving to a new location – turning on the electricity, notifying the water company, installing a new telephone and contacting the milkman to get on his route. In those days, milk was available at grocery stores, but … [Read more...]

By the time my family moved to Lewisburg in 1955, some of the novelty had worn off for televisions, but with rumors of color televisions in the near future and vastly improved programming, TVs were still an important part of family life, and gathering around the set for a family meal featuring genuine TV dinners was a highlight. In 1954, the Swanson Food Company changed the way Americans ate … [Read more...]

Another in a series of growing up in Lewisburg, WV in the 1950’s, a great town and a great time to be young.   It didn’t take long after we moved to Lewisburg to discover that a huge event took place just outside of town. In Fairlea, a small burg between Lewisburg and Ronceverte, West Virginia staged their annual state fair in late August and it was well worth the price of admission. … [Read more...]

James Dean had captured the imagination and envy of most every young male in the mid-50s with his standout performance in Rebel Without a Cause. It was one of the first films I ever saw after I moved to Lewisburg. In the movie, James Dean had just rolled into town, a new kid on the block and oozing coolness. He was, in fact, beyond cool. He was the epitome of everything a young teen male would … [Read more...]

Continuing the series on growing up in Lewisburg, WV in the 1950s, a great town and a wonderful time to be young.   There were genuine marksmen in Lewisburg Junior High in 1956. Sharpshooters, you night say. As I would quickly discover, if you didn’t pack heat in self-defense, you would get squirted. Squirt guns, you see, were the weapons of choice among the young people in the … [Read more...]

Another in a series of growing up in Lewisburg, WV in the 1950’s, a wonderful town and a great time and place to be young)   There were real service stations in Lewisburg when I was a boy. They pumped gasoline and offered genuine service. As I recall, we had just two in the 1950’s, an Esso station on Washington Street, down and across from the post office, and another at the corner of … [Read more...]

(Continuing the series on growing up in Lewisburg in the 1950s, a great small town and a great time to be young)   In the early 1950s, television was on the rise at the expense of the radio. Then, in 1954, Texas Instruments introduced the prototype of the transistor radio. It was a game changer. Young people were no longer attached to a tube radio, which had to be plugged in. They could … [Read more...]

The hands-down most popular retail establishment in Lewisburg in the 1950’s was Shaver’s Music Shop on Washington Street. Kids made daily or almost daily visits to the small store to see if their favorite record had arrived or if there was a new hit out that they wanted to hear. Burr Shaver, a talented local musician, ran the shop and was one of the best salesmen in the history of Greenbrier … [Read more...]

Not long after I moved to Lewisburg, I made friends with a classmate, Dave Gladwell. Dave’s dad, Arthur Gladwell, was the town mayor and owner of Bee Jewelry. Dave and I hit it off immediately and are close friends to this day. Dave, however, was a picky eater. Green vegetables and fresh fruit were not among his major food groups. Since the Lewisburg School Cafeteria served lots of fruits and … [Read more...]