Local author tells of Hayesville’s glory days

Betty Benedict remembers a different Hayesville.

Kids roller skated through the courthouse, children had teeth pulled at school, and traveling salesmen would stay at one of the town’s three hotels before going on their way.

Adding a personal touch to Clay County’s rich history of names and facts, Benedict self-published a memoir of her local childhood in January.

Bendict wrote the 282 page book with help from her longtime friend Charles Thompson, whom she attended Hayesville Grammar School with.

When Thompson asked to see the poems she had penned as a young girl, she showed him a box full of napkins she had written on before she turned 12 while she sat at her mother’s restaurant on the Square. Thompson suggested entering all of the poems into a computer to preserve them.

While Benedict was about four-years-old customers at the restaurant would ask where she was. Benedict recalled her father telling everyone, “I think she’s out winding ’round the square.”

“I had had so many adventures that I would tell my friends about,” Benedict said. “I would tell these little tales about my childhood and people always said, ‘Oh Betty, you should write a book.’”

For several years Benedict had worked on a poem called “Winding Round the Square” but just couldn’t get everything to fit.

“There was just too much to say in a poem and I couldn’t get it to work,” she said. “But I started the book exactly the way the poem started…”

From April until December Benedict would recount her memories as Thompson typed every word into a laptop computer.

“It took a lot of man hours,” Thompson said. “I had to tell her to slow down every once in a while.”

Benedict said she was proud of the book because when she began she had no idea how to make all of the stories flow together.

“I have a memory like an elephant,” she said. “I’m 76 and most of my friends this age just can’t remember anything. I think the reason I remember is because every day was different.”

Benedict was born on the Square and lived in a house that was on the property of the Tom Day Mall.

“I had a very unusual childhood and I loved hayesville,” she said. “We were around the Square all the time playing. We played paper dolls up in the courthouse in the courtroom; I mean we just took the whole town over and played.”

Thompson said people couldn’t believe that the book was finished in nine months.

“We were about halfway through it and I told Betty: ‘We could say anything we want for the rest of the book because people aren’t going to believe it anyway,’” he said. “Some of these tales are unbelievable but they’re true, they’re all true.”

Benedict weaved 40 poems into the book between tales of a Hayesville quite unlike the town today. She said many of the names mentioned in the book would be familiar as ancestors of the county’s modern population.

“It was a thriving little town; it had a lot of charm,” she said. “It’s a shame that all of the old beautiful homes around the square have all been torn down.”

Very few families at the time owned a car because most people could buy anything they wanted at the Square, she said.

“We bought most everything here because my dad was a great believer in buying local. The shops thrived,” she said. “People made a good living with their businesses… no one had any money but we really never realized it. We all thought we were rich and that everyone else all over the country was like us.”

Downtown Hayesville suffered the moment the highway was rerouted to bypass the town, Benedict said.

“It cut our town off. It cut the commerce off,” she said. “It was like a chop. All of the hotels had no business anymore.”

Benedict said that Hayesville gradually became less of a self-supporting community throughout the years, ruined by stores like WalMart and non-local retail outlets.

“Many people regret that a lot of new people have come in but I think that hayesville would have just dried up if they hadn’t,” she said. “I just hope that these shops can really survive and do well here.”

During her childhood, rowdy moonshiners were about the only thing Hayesville had to worry about, she said. Robberies never occurred and locals left their doors unlocked and windows open.

“When we had a prom we couldn’t wear long dresses because a lot of people couldn’t afford them so we just wore our regular sunday dress or whatever we had,” she said. “And the football team had such pitiful uniforms but they won all the games.”

Despite having no local family other than her parents, Benedict said she made everyone in town her family.

“Hayesville to me was just the most wonderful place in the world to grow up,” she said.

On January 11, Benedict and Thompson officially printed the first 500 copies of the book through Pennsylvania publisher Xlibris, but the supply is quickly dwindling.

In the short time that it’s been available, Benedict said the book had already been shipped to Germany, China, Australia and England among other locations.

The paperback edition is available for $20 at Phillips & Lloyd and Tiger’s in Hayesville. A hardcover edition is also available. Benedict said the books were also available for order online at Amazon.com.

An excerpt of the book is available at the author’s website, BettyBenedict.com.

Rob Tiger donated a collection of historic Hayesville photos to be printed in the book, Thompson said.

“People just go wild over it,” Benedict said. Thompson added that the book had received several outstanding reviews from online customers.

Benedict donated a copy of the book to Moss Memorial Library in memory of her friend, Mary Janice White Lunsford.

“She died three weeks ago and this book is full of her but she didn’t get to read it,” Benedict said. “This square was our playground.”

Although the pages are printed, Benedict said she keeps remembering more tales she should have included. Perhaps some of them will make it into a second book she’s considering writing to detail her life after graduating from Hayesville High School.

“I wanted to give people a feel of…the way we survived during the depression and World War II,” Benedict said about her book. “We could have had a national disaster and it would have affected us very little here…. Most people had no electricity and were not dependent on anyone. Everyone had gardens, wells, and their own animals…. If everything else on Earth had been bombed and destroyed except Hayesville, North Carolina, we would have just kept winding round the square.”

Listen to the author read poetry from the book.