Bart Stonecypher, Rabun Co. GA
The Clayton Tribune (Rabun Co. GA) Thursday, December 9, 1943, Page 1:
“There’s Only One Bart Stonecypher---Mr. Bart Stonecypher, who lives at Cornelia, Georgia, but who is a native of this county, and a great talker, sometimes gets so far ahead with his talking down there that he has to come up here to see his friends and kinfolks, and tell them some stories. He’s not like the fellow who waits for somebody to drop the hat for him to begin, he just comes up and drops the hat and lights out. While here he told me a couple of good stories. One was about how the boys, who were reared over on Burton, did when they came to town. He said that when Clayton was a small town he and some other boys from Burton would come over to visit with their relatives and the boys would go around to the merchants and make a trade with them to cut up a load of wood for ten cents, and then agree to take the pay in brown sugar. When each boy had cut his load of wood and had received his pay they then congregated behind the stores and spread out a piece of brown paper or cardboard, or sometimes a plank and each one poured out his sugar on the plank. Then they down on their stomachs around the board and licked up the sugar. He said they considered a boy not worthy of their association if he could not lick up a pound of brown sugar.
The next day he told me about being up here last summer, and going to Bleckley’s Café for his dinner. He said that when he went in he looked around and did not see anybody that he knew and did not believe that any of the waiters knew him. He sat down at a table and a lady brought the menu and laid it down at his plate. Then he said, “Lady, I didn’t come in here to read, I came to get something to eat.” Then she explained that the little book contained the “menu,” and he asked what that was. She then explained to him that he could read it and see what they were serving that day. He told the lady that he couldn’t read and that she would have to read it for him. She very obligingly began reading down the line and naming the things they were serving until she came to “spare-ribs.” He said he told her to stop right there and just bring all the spare-ribs she had. He admitted that she did bring him a generous plate of spare-ribs, and after he had eaten, went around to the desk to pay and the lady at the desk asked him if he was Mr. Stonecypher, and he told her that he was. She said that somebody phoned in there not to charge him for his meal. Then he said, well that is just the kind of restaurant he had been looking for and asked what time they served supper and breakfast.”---L.P. Cross, Editor.