SUMMERS COUNTY W.Va. (Hinton News) – Many from the Ballengee/Talcott area may remember or have heard about Arnold Thompson over the years. Arnold Thompson was handicapped from birth due to a bout of “infantile paralysis,” more commonly known as the after effects of “polio” today.
Before polio vaccines became available in the 1950s, Arnold was one of the 15,000 yearly victims of the polio virus in the United States. Instead of becoming a victim of his ailment, he operated a general repair shop in Ballengee. As shown here, he walked on crutches around his shop to conduct his work.
My father, David Jones, remembers his father. Gene Jones, going to him for leather harness work for his draft horses he showed around the region. It is not apparent when Arnold branched off into doing leather work as well. What my father remembers is a larger workshop than the one that was apparently his original shop when grandpa would go to have things made.
This leather knife sheath was made by Arnold. When dad was a young kid dad would play with a knife that lay on a bench in front of the window every time he went with grandpa to his shop. So much so that once he went over to the shop, he had made a new leather handle for the knife, and this leather sheath, and gave it to him.
He even stamped Dad’s name on the back of it, “David Jones”. I have the knife somewhere. After Grandma passed away in 2020, I found it while cleaning out her house. The sheath I found recently while cleaning their cedar chest. If you have any memories of Alford and his repair shop, please email me at greenbrierantiques@gmail.com.
A funny little side tale; dad was telling me while writing this piece, a memory he has about Alford’s shop. He said when he got a little older and was driving, he had the worst car ride of his life on the way to Alfords once. He was friends with my mother’s cousins, Davis and Arnold Knapp, from Alderson, prior to him and Mom getting married. They all went over to the shop for something and ran over a skunk along the way. And let’s just say it made for “punget” memory, HA. Also, I am not sure of the exact family ties, but Alford is a distant cousin on my Thompson side.
