26 - Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run

THE ABERDEEN HOTEL,  Aberdeen, North Carolina

Aberdeen street scene circa 1906 (hotel on right)

 
The hotel seed may have been planted somewhere in my genes.  Although none of my family ever voiced any particular interest in hotel life, my father and his sisters more or less grew up in one.  

My grandfather worked for the railway.  He was a conductor, and in those days in the early years of the last century, a conductor's job description included various administrative and office duties.  His sister and her husband owned the Aberdeen Hotel, and as Aberdeen had well under 800 souls at the time, one assumes the hotel facilities were, like most small town hostelries, on the modest side.

The white-frame hotel seen in the distance around 1900

Aberdeen is located approximately in the center of North Carolina in what is known, for obvious reasons, as the Sandhills.  Although on U.S. Highway 1 and serviced by the major North-South railway line, it was never more than a sleepy southern community.  Still, in its earliest years it boasted a plentiful and profitable supply of lumber, and was relatively rich in cotton and tobacco.

(I sometimes enjoy recounting to Parisian friends my cotton-picking days, but am no longer very sure just how long I survived in this arduous adolescent endeavor.  I don't think I lasted as much as a week. )

Uncle Ralph, Aberdeen hotel keeper

 When Great Uncle Ralph died in the flu epidemic of 1918, Aunt Zadie made an impassioned call to her brother, Ernest, who was my grandfather.  In short, she beseeched him to take a leave of absence from the railroad and move his family to Aberdeen to help her manage the hotel.  Which he did.

So my father settled in for several years with his four older sisters, living in an annex to the three-story hotel.   

He rarely spoke of those years, but once towards the end of his life he reminisced with great nostalgia about racing up and down the hotel corridors with his cousin little-Ralph  (who much later became big Ralph after fathering another little Ralph; just as his wife was big Polly after she became the mother of little Polly).  I wasn’t certain, but I think there were tears in Daddy's eyes, as though this were a most cherished memory.

 My father, Norfleet (left), with cousin Ralph (circa 1920).  
The hotel is seen to their right.    Ralph, the only member  
of the family actually born in the hotel, was later thought
to bear a remarkable resemblance to Clark Gable!

  



Norf with Buster Brown haircut 1923

  Daddy talked affectionately about walking with his dad in front of the hotel during the 1927 World Series.  It looked much like those saloon-style structures in the old Saturday westerns.  From the balcony, someone would fill in a chart on a large board as the baseball results came in by telegraph, and townspeople would wait for the scores below.



Granddaddy in later years

 As my grandfather used Morse code in his job on the railroad, he could “hear” the results at the same time as the telegraph operator.  To my father’s great pride, his dad announced to him and to nearby spectators, “Babe Ruth just hit his 60^th ... ”  well before the telegraph operator had time to transcribe the information. 

Ruth, called the Home Run King, was the most famous and highest paid baseball player of his generation.  He broke his own record for home runs in one season in the eighth inning of that historic final game of the 1927 season.

 

Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium 1924 (Google photo)

The Aberdeen Hotel suffered a serious fire in 1941.  It was replaced by a brick structure, reopened as the Sandhill Hotel, then in 1942 --the year I was born-- it burned to the ground.  It was never rebuilt.  

The Aberdeen Hotel, the early years  --The hotel's clientele was principally comprised of commercial travelers, including a myriad of tobacco-related businessmen.  Those pod-like things leaning against the ground floor railings are undoubtedly bunches of tobacco leaves, awaiting shipment to the auction markets.

Your input is welcomed:  hotel-musings@hotmail.fr

Next Friday:  "Stompin' at the Savoy ... the London years"