I remember spending a lot of time roaming around in the packing shed watching the operation take place. There were two packing sheds in the town of Timberville. Herman Hollar owned one and the other one owned by George Bowers. Herman’s was enclosed and Mr Bowers’s was an open air structure. When the wind blew it was a cold place to work.
My mother and grandfather were yearly employees there. My father being a cripple was unable to work and he was left to do some babysitting. He would take me to Timberville in his Model A Ford car, (one you could always bank on running) and turn me loose in the packing shed while he loafed at “Bucket” Neffs filling station along with the other loafers, located on the north end of the bridge. He probably thought that was the best place I could be, educational and otherwise. Little did he realize I would someday be able to write this story of a small bit of history of good ole Timberville, Virginia. I loved that, as I was only five or six years old. The area I liked best was up in the loft where they stored the baskets. I would help to throw the baskets down the chute to be used to pack the apples/peaches in. For that I was given a pay envelope when the rest of the employees got theirs at the end of the week with 25 cents enclosed. I still have one of the envelopes. Remember this was 1944 when I was around 6 years old. I was old enough to climb the ladder to get in the loft. I don’t think there was a child labor law then. Besides it was fun. I wish I had a camera then but that didn’t come until I was 9 years old.
The trucks would haul the apples to the packing shed and park in the alleyway between the packing shed and the high cement walls on the west side of Rockingham Milling Co., now the museum building. There they would unload the boxes of apples and pour them on the grading belts to be graded by different size holes in the belts. I believe the fellow that unloaded and poured the apples on the grader was Jess Hollar. They would roll down these belts until all found a hole in the belt they could drop through. All apples the same size would be together. This continued until all the apples had dropped through the belts.
My grandfather manned the shute of the larger size apples. He would pack them in the baskets with a layer of the nicest ones on top. Put the lid and paper packing on the basket and sent them down another conveyor belt to be stamped by my mother using her rubber stamps and red and black ink pads as to kind of apple, etc.
I suppose they were stored in the cold storage bldg at Rockingham Poultry until they were shipped out.
The packing shed burned to the ground by unknown causes after it was bought by Early & Eddins Produce Co. around 1966. By this time I had joined Uncle Sams army and returned home, got married and found myself grown up. Like so many other good times I can remember, the good times there were gone.
