Memories of Charlton County - by Gibson and Mays Back to Table of Contents 11. WOODEN SIDEWALKS AND THE FIRST TELEPHONE (Pp 14-15) When I was a boy,
Folkston didn't look anything like it does now. The streets were just sandbeds and, the few sidewalks that were there were only two wide boards that had been put side by side. These were in front of the stores and were used by everyone, for it was much easier to walk on the boards than trying to walk in the sand. The town's streetlights were lanterns mounted on pointed posts. The lantern's base was shaped like an upside-down funnel and it fit over the top of the post,
which was about six feet high. Each corner in the business section of Folkston had a post with a lantern on it. The city policeman went around each evening and lit the lanterns and then blew them out, the next morning. The street light posts also had another useful purpose in those days. They made handy hitching posts for the horse and wagon when we came to town. One of the first hotels in Folkston was the wooden two-story Durden
Hotel on the west side of the railroad tracks. Mrs. Durden's husband had owned lots of land and cattle near Racepond, and when he died she sold all of that and built the hotel. There was a big room upstairs with about a half dozen beds in it. Elbert Altman and I once spent a night there when we were young men. We had been in Folkston and stayed until it was late and we decided that instead of going home, we would spend the night at the hotel, Elbert slept in one bed, I
slept in another and Professor John Harris, who had moved to Folkston from St. George, slept in another. L. E. Mallard was in still another bed. We paid what we thought were outrageous rates for the privilege...fifty cents. Mrs. Durden charged twenty-five cents for the bed and twenty-five cents for the breakfast the next morning. Sometime later the hotel caught on fire and was destroyed. Ed Davis was city policeman at that time and he helped the
boarders get their belongings out of the burning building. It was such hot work that he took off his coat and put it on the ground so he could work faster. When the hotel was burned up, Mr. Davis looked for his coat, but found that it burned up along with the building. Folkston had only one telephone at that time and it was in T. L. Pickren's store. I didn't have much use for a phone, in fact I was afraid to use one. I was in Folkston one day when Mr.
Pickren took a long distance message. He saw me on the sidewalk and called me to his store and told me to use his telephone and call a person in Waycross who had a death message for the Gibson family. One of my stepmother's nieces in Waycross had died or been murdered, and they wanted us to know about it. I had to call Waycross for information concerning the young woman and was mighty uneasy while doing this. The idea of hearing someone talk over the phone scared me, but I made the call
anyway. We never did know whether the girl died or was murdered. That was always a wonderation. | 
