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Back to Family Memories Index Jail Birds!The following is an excerpt from Family Memories of Peggy Lybrand Jenerette, currently residing in the mountains of North Carolina. As a child Peggy lived in Kingstree with her grandparents who owned Lybrand’s Restaurant, a block or so from Black River. Used with permission. “My cousins Jack and Jim used to come stay with us during summer vacations. Since Mama (Peggy’s name for her grandmother) was running the restaurant, we’d stay down there with her. This adventure happened when Jack was seven, Jim 10 1/2 and I was nine. At the bridge down by Baker's Furniture Store there was a tower in the middle of Black River used to measure the level of the water. It had a little office on top, a ladder and a big measuring gauge on the side. A trolley car went out to it on a cable from the river bank. It had two seats and was open at the bottom, just a bar to put your feet on. A big sign was posted beside it that said “Do not get on this under penalty of law.” Of course to us kids that was like saying "Do this, do this," so one afternoon we climbed aboard. Jack and I sat on one side facing forward and Jim sat on the other side riding backwards. A hand crank was used to pull the car across the water. Jim was working the crank and we had gotten to the middle of the river when a police car spotted us dangling over the water. They were afraid if they started hollering for us to come back, it would scare us and we might fall off. So they went to the restaurant and told Mama to come get us off of that car. Mama walked down to where we had gotten on that thing, called out and told us to get back over here. We were scared to death because Mama was standing there. We sat there for a long time trying to decide – do we go back or do we stay here? As long as we're out here we're safe. Then she yelled, "If you don't come back right now, I'm going to punish you twice," so Jim started cranking and back we went. Of course the policemen were quite relieved that we didn't fall in the river because the current is extremely strong there and it’s very deep water. Jim could swim and I could swim a little but Jack couldn't swim at all. All three of us would have drowned if we'd fallen out of that trolley car. We got back to the bank and Mama said, "Do you see that sign? Well, the fine for this is $200 or $300." Looking at the policemen she said, "I don't have that much so I'm afraid y'all are going to have to take them down to the jail and lock them up." The policemen looked at her like she'd lost her mind. She said, "I mean it, take them down to Sheriff Lambert and tell him what they did, and tell him he's just going to have to lock them up." So they took us down to the jail and Mama went on back to the restaurant. They told the sheriff what was going on and he said, "Well, you broke the law so I'm going to have to lock you up." Now, Sheriff Perliss Lambert was one of granddaddy's best friends. His son Pete was a friend of ours and we'd played around the jail since we were little, shoot marbles, get in cells and everything else, so we weren’t too scared. Well, they locked us up about 11:30 in the morning. Perliss told us, "We didn't know you were going to be here and we didn't prepare enough food for you, so you won't get any lunch." We grumbled a little but it was kind of fun being locked up, and it was sure better than a spanking. We figured Mama would come pick us up in an hour or so. But she didn't. It went on into the afternoon and about 5:00 o’clock we could smell dinner cooking. By then we were really hungry, and they brought us three cups of water and three slices of bread. We said, "But we smelled food cooking." They said, "Yeah but you're on bread and water, that's all you get." We started crying, and he must have gone and called her, because Mama finally showed up about 6:00 o’clock. She said, "I borrowed the money for your fine but you're going to have to work to pay me back, cause I've got to repay the person I borrowed it from." For the next month we scrubbed Venetian blinds and tile floors, and dragged a wagon all over town looking for bottles until Mama finally told us we'd worked enough to pay all the money back. I can guarantee you, we never disobeyed a sign that said Do Not Do This ever again!” |