Charlie Sprittles, Mayor

920 South 5th West, September 1967

When the mines in Atlanta started to close down (1953-54), Ora and Eva Statler bought the back acre of my Dad's property in Mountain Home. They bought another one of the old Anderson Dam houses that was blocked up across South 5th West street, borrowed a couple of moving dollies from Vern Everett and a tractor and it moved through our place onto their lot. Ora came out from Atlanta on his days off through most of the summer getting it ready to live in.

By mid-August or so, it was time to move the family to Mountain Home so they could be there to start school.

We left Mountain Home on Friday afternoon and went up to Atlanta to help load up Ora's old Diamond T flatbed truck. Around noon on Saturday, Mom and Eva loaded most of the kids into cars and headed out toward Mountain Home. Dad, Ora, me and Leroy (Ora's youngest son) climbed into the cab of the old truck and headed out toward Rocky Bar. The truck was loaded to the hilt and the climb up James Creek is really steep. We had all kinds of trouble with the old truck, heating and boiling over, just plain quitting, and so on. Ora was a good mechanic and managed to work through each of the problems, but by the time we made it over the top and down into Rocky Bar, it was nearly dark.

While Ora was getting gas in the truck, Dad went inside the Rocky Bar "store" to get some bread and bologna to fix us kids a sandwich.

An old Welshman named Charlie Sprittles owned the store, which was really a little bar with a few racks of dry goods and a couple of coolers for beer that also kept essentials like eggs and milk cool. In the process of talking with Dad, Charlie found out that we hadn't eaten since breakfast. Charlie insisted that "those two little kids needed something hot for supper". Despite Dad's arguments about being in a hurry, Charlie insisted that he was going to fix something hot. It would only take a minute he said.

Charlie went into the back room of the store, which was where he lived, opened up the old wood cook stove, tossed some kindling sticks and, a couple of pieces of pitchy wood inside and lit some newspaper to get them burning. He didn't bother to put the lid back over the stove, just stuck an old cast iron skillet over the now roaring flame from the hole. He lifted another lid off the stove, put the coffee pot over it, dipped a couple of cups of water from a bucket on the counter and into the pot, then added a handful of coffee out of a mason jar in the cupboard.

He went back out into the store and grabbed a can of Spam off the shelf and some eggs from a cooler. When he got back into the other room, he scooped a big spoonful of bacon grease or maybe lard out of a can and dropped it into the skillet. The skillet was already hot and the smoke rolled out as the grease melted and heated up. He opened the can of Spam and quickly cut it into little cubes. Into the skillet they went and he broke four or five eggs in on top of them. After a couple of quick stirs, he reached into the sink and grabbed a couple of plates. He rinsed them off with a little water out of the bucket and dried them with an old dish towel. A couple of more stirs in the skillet and he dished up two hot meal on the plates.

Us kids gladly ate the concoction, but Dad and Ora stuck to a hot cup of coffee.

Dad offered to pay Charlie for it, but he just laughed and said there was no charge for feeding youngsters.

We left and finally rolled into Mountain Home well after midnight, much to our mother's delight..

Several years later (1961 I think), I was in the store again, this time with Dad on a deer hunting trip. It was late October.

We stopped in because I had to go to the bathroom, which was an old outhouse on the ridge, just behind the store. You had to go through Charlie's room to get there. When I walked into the room, I remembered the spam and scrambled eggs, but it was clear that Charlie was a bachelor and not much of a house keeper. Dirty dishes were stacked everywhere there was a spot and the dust on the floor seemed thick enough to grow grass. I understood why Dad was so reluctant to stay there for the supper.

Charlie died about 2 years later, snowshoeing home from Featherville and is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Mountain Home.

I'm still not a fan of Spam in any form, except perhaps in memories and tall tales.