The following article entitled "Fifty Years Ago" as written by Solon D Poe and published in the Pocahontas Star Herald, was written in response to a article entitled, "Fifty Years Ago" (#1) written by Elbert Robinson, published in P S H on 7 March 1924.

Fifty Years Ago

Oh, yes, Bro Robinson, I too was here fifty years ago. I remember Uncle Bob Hamil as the pioneer merchant in Pocahontas. In fact he and I were in business together for a long time. He sold goods and I bought them. I got the experience and he got the money. We bought our first dishes from him.

We moved into the Clearview neighborhood fifty-two years ago. There lived then in this community such men as, W E Poindexter, T S Bennett, J C Wilson, N B Beakley, S P Hurn, and other good men. Of course these men lived in good, neat, log houses, didn’t have puncheon floors and neither were the bed steads nailed up in the corner of the house. Yes, they had nice pictures in their homes and plenty of them. No, they didn’t have bath tubs and they haven’t got them now. Yes, they spun and made cloth in those days and you couldn’t pitch straws through it either. Yes, they had good wagons and teams. They lived at home and boarded at the same place. They got their corn out of the crib, their hay out of the barn and their meat out of the smoke house. They raised their wheat, took it the Hufstedler Mill and got their flour. It wasn’t the best flour, but it made good biscuits just the same.

Money was scarce but a dollar would buy something, sugar 22 lbs, coffee 14 lbs, good shoes $1.50 a pair.

No, they didn’t have telephones and there isn’t a telephone in the Clearview neighborhood, now. Yes, we have some better schools in town but not in the country, when such men as A J Witt, and Sol White taught from sunup to sundown.

Of course we have in some respects greater opportunities than the people of fifty years ago and this implies greater responsibilities.
Then let us live up to those responsibilities.

Signed: Solon D Poe
Pocahontas Star Herald 14 March 1924