Did you know?

It was pretty gloomy in Cliffside homes prior to 1915, for they were lit only with kerosene lamps or open fireplaces. But around that year the Company began providing electricity to the workers. A page of rules and charges, written in 1918, stated that light fixtures would be installed in the houses of those who wished them, in the center of the rooms, with a “full set of lamps (25 to 40 watts)”. One light would cost 40¢ per month, two would cost 60¢, and so on. (Or you could purchase and use an electric meter and be charged—per month—10¢ per KW hours for the first eight KW hours and 5¢ for each additional KW hour.) If the lamps burned out, the homeowner had to pay for replacements, and, if a family moved, it was required to leave behind a “full equipment of lamps that will burn.”

Cliffside’s available power for consumers was limited. Through the week, the power was “on” only from 5:30pm to 6:30am. The street lights were turned on only from dark to 10:00pm, except Saturday and the nights before holidays when they were on all night. Some mill companies would make periodic inspections in the wee hours of the night. If the inspector saw a light burning, he would wake the family and, if there was no one sick in the household, request they douse the light.

First published in the CHS Special Report, the Cliffside Historical Society’s bimonthly newsletter, Nov-Dec 2006 issue.

Before the days of tape players and FM radios in cars, Otto Moore bought a new 1957 DeSoto that had a factory-made 78 rpm record player installed in the dash. Sam Davis says, “Otto was in town one night and was playing the record player for us boys. Don’t know how DeSoto mounted the player but he could drive down the road and play records. At least he said he could.”

Since Colonial times, or even before, it has been the custom in Christian cemeteries to bury the departed “facing” east (with the head at the western end of the grave). And for all these years this tradition has been followed at Cliffside—with one exception. One man, before his death in 1980, made arrangements with the undertaker to break with this tradition, and to bury him facing the west. He now—and forever— lies at the edge of the cemetery, facing Stimpson Street—and the setting sun. His reasoning: If someone comes along the street and wants to have a conversation, he (the departed) doesn’t want to miss the opportunity. His name: Robert Clyde “Tubby” Hawkins.

Source: Horton Landreth

We all know, don’t we, that the Romina Theater in Forest City was named after Walter Haynes’ two daughters, Rosa May and Amanda. So he combined the two names and came up with… Romanda? No, wait, that doesn’t work.

Actually the theater’s name was a combination of the first two letters of “Rosa” and the last four letters of Amanda’s middle name, Elmina. Ro—mina. We’re happy to have cleared that up. But lending a part of her name to a movie theater was only a minor accomplishment; she later became the mother of North Carolina’s current (2009) lieutenant governor, Walter Dalton.

Some Cliffside residents lived in fairly isolated places that made it difficult to reach the rest of the town. In the 1940s teenager Mavorine Melton lived on the west side of the river. Her only means of reaching her friends and the stores in town was either to walk several miles around by Bunker Hill or to cross the river. Most often she chose the latter option, using her father’s rowboat.

Mavorine’s family’s house was almost directly across the stream from the 4th Street footbridge, and about half a mile up the hill through the woods from the west bank. When she’d come to town she would tie up her boat on the Cliffside side and walk up through the woods by the old band house to her friend Juanita Davis’. They would go downtown to the movie or the cafe or wherever, and when the day was done she’d reverse the route and paddle back across.

Was she ever scared? Once she got “concerned” when the river was way up and the current swept her a ways downstream. Somehow she got to the bank before going further on down and maybe over the dam itself. (Mavorine was just twelve or thirteen at the time, but she didn’t ask her daddy’s permission that day, for she knew he’d never give it.)

Brothers Grayson and Fred Beheler also lived across the river, and used the same method to get to work the year round. They could often be seen after work getting into their boat with their groceries and paddling across.

Source: Sam Davis

The Cliffside Telephone Company was incorporated on August 16, 1912. Its purpose (as stated on the Certificate of Incorporation) was “to carry on the business of erecting, operating, owning, maintaining, selling and leasing telephone lines, exchanges, instruments and all necessary appliances, and all electrical apparatus of any kind, also run a shop for repairing telephones.”

Source: Phillip White/Wayne Smith Cliffside Archives

“There was a park built on a wooded slope between the railroad and the river. Rustic seats were built here and an elevated band stand stood in the center. The Haynes Band often gave concerts there on Sunday afternoons.”

—R. R. Haynes’ biography

The band stand was later converted to a small, 3-room house in which, over the years, the G. C. Fishers, Riley Callahans, T. C. Smiths, Gabriel Hills, and Odus Greenes lived, among others.

The deep-red, glazed bricks used in the construction of Cliffside School, now over 80 years old, are as new-looking as ever. If you have the chance, stand close to an exterior wall and marvel at how the bricks, although never pressure washed or sand blasted, are as clean, solid and shiny as they were in 1920.

A tornado hit Cliffside around 1955-56. “I can remember looking out the bedroom window and seeing the trees move, it traveled down Mud Cut crossing Academy and Church St.,” says Mary Scruggs. “I remember that it picked up our neighbors Jack and Margie Bostic’s garage and carried it away before splashing it into the ground, and put trees on the house beside ours…my brother and I were so upset because we had no damage.”

(This may have been the ‘blow’ that took the top off the water tower.)

Once upon a time, the first line of our school song was “Cliffside School is quick and snappy,” according to the 1937 yearbook, Old Gold and Black. (By 1940 the yearbook’s name had been changed to The Echoes.) In the ’20s and ’30s the school’s newspaper was titled The Purple Cloud. It was reprinted each week in The Rutherford County Sun, at least during the late ’20s.

In the 1920s the Cliffside Mills Department Store (and its three branches) had over 50 employees, and in its advertisements claimed to be the largest department store in the county.

Until the early ’30s the state of North Carolina financed only six months of education per year in the public schools, and left it to the county school systems to foot the bill, if they could, for up to three additional months. Cliffside School was able to stay open eight months a year, says Myrtle Greene Mashburn, thanks to the Company, which provided the money for the extra months. Read more in Anita Price Davis’ North Carolina During the Depression.

Since Cliffside had no real fire truck, about every second house in town had its own ladder. Built in the mill’s wood shop, these ladders were mounted on the side of the home (or car shed) for use when needed.

Back in the late ’40s and early ’50s, boys in Cliffside would make a game out of hitchhiking. One group would hitch to Forest City-Shelby-Cliffside, while another group would simultaneously reverse the route: Shelby-Forest City-Cliffside. The winner was the group that returned home first.

“Cliffside School Changes Its Name” was the headline in the paper one day in May, 1927. The pupils of Cliffside High had voted to change the school’s name to “The Charles H. Haynes High School.” Proving once again that inmates never have much say-so in running the asylum, officials promptly ignored the action.

The last motion picture to be shown at the Cliffside Theater (before it was so unceremoniously abandoned) was “Dracula Has Risen From the Grave,” starring Christopher Lee. This, according to K.D. Scruggs, who was in attendance that night in 1970 or ’71.

In January of 1928, Cliffside opened its dry cleaning plant. It was called “Rutherford County Dry Cleaners and Dyers,” and was installed on Main Street in the long white building three doors up from the Memorial Building. That building, before the Memorial Building was erected, was used as a movie theater.

Until it was renumbered in 1933, our Main Street, the highway from Forest City to the state line, now known as “221A,” was Highway 207. (It was a dirt road until the county “tarred and sanded” it in late 1926.) Also, the highway we know as US 74, was officially Highway 20 until it too was renumbered in 1933.

Why several of Cliffside’s Biggerstaff men were called “Pick?” Remember when “Pick” ran one of the barbershops in town? Well, his real name was Broadus Franklin Biggerstaff (1896-1954). His father, William Henry, was the original “Pick.” William Henry once made picker sticks for the fly-shuttle looms in the mill at Caroleen. Consequently, people began calling him “Picker Stick,” which was soon shortened to “Picker,” and then “Pick.” When William Henry passed on, Broadus Franklin, the barber, inherited the nickname. And upon his passing, his son Jack assumed the name.

In the ’35 house list, the Charles H. Haynes residence at 37 N. Main was omitted. And on the town map of 1942, the house was shown but its number of rooms was not given. Perhaps the desire for privacy was at play here. By and large, the rich don’t advertise. Now it can be told: Before the house was demolished, Phillip White walked through it and counted the rooms. There were 17.

From the very earliest years, downtown Cliffside had a central heating system. The boiler was located at the ice plant (so the operator could attend to both the boiler and the ice-making machinery). Steam was sent through underground (and some overground) pipes to the Memorial Building, and many stores and offices. [Thanks to Jim Haynes for this information.]

The street that we all called “White Line” was, according to the 1942 town map, actually named West Avenue. And the road running up beside Haynes Grove Church, the colored church, was named Washington Way. (Its official name now is Washington Street.)

The small stream that runs between Valley and Academy Streets, and flows into the river just downstream from the dam is called Riddles Creek.

Over the years there have been four different locations for Cliffside’s Haynes Bank: The first was in the mill office building. Later it was moved into the “store building,” in the space between the drugstore and the department store. In 1948 a standalone bank building was erected on North Main across from the Baptist church. In the 1970s, this was replaced by a new building near the spot where the dry cleaners used to stand.

About 1914 electricity was installed in the homes of Cliffside. It was “on” only between 6:00pm and 6:00am. All chores using electric appliances, scarce as they were, had to be done at night.

Until the mid-1940s, many homes in Cliffside had no indoor plumbing. On most streets, there was a single water faucet located between every other house, shared by two families. Toilets were outdoors.