October 2021 – Life In & Around Martinsville-Henry County

Henry County’s Newest Brewery

Scuffle Hill Brewing has been open now for a couple of months. They are the second craft brewery to make Henry County their home and the first in Collinsville. They are located in the Colony Place Shopping Center at 2620 Virginia Avenue.

If you haven’t been yet, they have generous hours*:

Wednesday & Thursday 5 to 9

Friday 4:30 to 10:30

Saturday 2 to10:30

Sunday 2 to 7

*These are their hours as of Halloween 2021, so double check their hours if you are reading this later in the future.

They have a good line-up of beers and I overheard some fantastic flavors they are planning on in the future. If you are a fan of domestic beers, it looks like the first three on their list have you covered.

If you want to try a few of their beers without committing to just one, order a flight. Since this was my first time, that’s what I did. I ordered a flight that included the Campfires and Canteens smoked rauchbier, the Country Inn dark mild, the Dick &Willie oatmeal stout, and the pineapple seltzer. I also lucked out and got a gift certificate to Papa’s Pizzeria (a cute little pizzeria up in Bassett on the banks of the Smith River). Scuffle Hill was awarding the certificates randomly for Halloween.

I liked the oatmeal stout but I have to say that my favorite has to be one of the first two. Campfires and Canteens has a smoky flavor but is a gentle and smooth beer that is not too unique to be enjoyable. The County Inn mild ale almost has a coffee taste to it but does not actually contain coffee. It’s hard to say which one I’ll order the next time I’m in, except that it will be one of these two.

One of the owners and the man at the bar dressed as a caveman talked with me about how he’s been struggling to get the new brewery listed on Google Maps. He had no trouble getting the business added to Apple Maps but Google keeps insisting that they can’t verify that the business exists. He is continuing to try but, if you are a Google Maps user, you might be able to help him out by asking Google to add the business. (When you pull up Google Maps, hit the 3 horizontal bars on the upper left and select “Add a Missing Place”). If enough of us do it, at some point Google is going to have to admit that this business exists.

Scuffle Hill has made some mentions in the Martinsville art world too. They hired local artist Ashley King to paint some beautiful murals on the walls. She did a phenomenal job.

They were busy installing television mounts on Halloween evening and plan to have sports streaming by Wednesday.

If you need any more incentive to go and take a look at Scuffle Hill, there’s one more thing that might just push you over the edge: they have a very healthy Pint It Forward board. The entries on this board represent pints that have been paid for in advance for someone coming in later that is either named or described on the board. You can only get one per visit so, based on the board when I took a picture of it, three firefighters can go in and have a pint a piece, prepaid. One firefighter cannot go in and have three pints.

Take a look and see if there is a description that fits you and you may have the reason you need to go.

Hmmm… I know a lineman who likes breweries. I’ll have to give him a ring.

The Very First Henry County Fair

We recently saw the very first Henry County Fair. At least, I think it was the very first county fair. Comments on one of the local paper’s Facebook page sugggested that with questions like “Since when have we had a county fair?”.

It was pulled off beautifully and, if this had been a normal year, I think it would have been a big hit. However, this was not a normal year. The annual Martinsville Oktoberfest that was to be held just a week later was cancelled over Covid concerns. From the comments I saw, there was just a general confusion over why sometimes Covid is treated as a concern and sometimes it is not.

The fair was held Wednesday through Saturday at the Martinsville Speedway. A friend and I went on Friday, September 24th, shortly after it opened at 4 o’clock. The Valley Star Credit Union 300 was to be held the next day so the track itself was busy and loud until 6 o’clock. That gave us a couple of hours to kill before the shows started.

Infinity Acres had a petting zoo set up on the lawn just off of the fair grounds. Handlers walked around with the llamas and I’ve seen photos of the camel actually touring the fair.

For 25¢ you could get a Dixie cup of food for the goats. Stand too close to them and they’ll pretty much each anything (like purses, camera bag straps, etc). They would stretch their necks out hopefully whenever anyone came close.

After the petting zoo, there was a tent of the typical judged entries – canned goods, quilts, art, crafts, etc. I got so absorbed in the variety of the entries that I completely forgot about my penchant for taking photos. That rarely happens.

We watched them setting up the soundstage.

There was a tent offering covid vaccines.

We bought some fried oreos and lemonade. I don’t think that my friend cared much for the fried oreos.

And we rode some rides.

Finally, 6 o’clock rolled around. The cars on the track stopped and the shows started.

The first show was the Great Lakes Timber Show. They demonstrated a lot of what you could see in competitive lumberjacking. In one of the first feats, they used a chain saw to quickly whip up a number of small chairs that they handed out to the audience.

Timber Lakes Show Hands Out Little Chairs Cut by Chainsaw

They called on an audience member and showed how incredibly quickly they could saw through a log.

An Audience Member Helped with the Two-Person Saw

And then another audience member was invited up to try to log roll.

In the finale, one of the team got up and performed a fantastic log roll perfectly scripted for laughs.

Next up was Circus Shane’s Rock-N-Circus. He juggled. He did acrobatics. He invited kids up to be part of the act.

And then he jumped off a 65 foot platform. It was a very high-adrenaline show.

The last show was Josh Shilling and Mountain Heart. A Martinsville native, Josh and Mountain Heart put on a brilliant show. Josh is a local boy who went out and has made his way in the music world and there was a tangible excitement to hear him play for us. He and Mountain Heart did not disappoint. He is an excellent pianist and then he stood up and took up a guitar. Judging by the instruments, you know they played a little bluegrass.

By the end of the night, my camera was dying and we had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The sequence of shows would start up again later in the evening. We kept waiting and hoping for crowds to show up but the turnout seemed meager compared to what we expected. I don’t know if there was some political drama that kept crowds away or if there was a fear of covid or something else entirely.

I do hope that they have the fair again next year. Although I failed to get any pictures inside the Exhibit Hall, both my friend and I are excited for next year and are thinking of what we do well enough to be able to enter. She’s got what it takes to enter several categories.

The Bassett Heritage Festival

Bassett is a beautiful community of around 1100 people to the north of Martinsville. It is very close to the Henry County access to Philpott Lake and the Smith River flows through the heart of the downtown area. Papa’s Pizza has a prime position right on the Smith River and has a beautiful stone patio overlooking the water. They serve a mean calzone and absolutely humongous cupcakes. The new Railway Cafe has good food and live music on the patio. The river is stocked with trout.

By all rights, Bassett should be a popular tourist spot dotted with B & B’s, fly shops, and artist studios. But it’s not. At least, not right now.

There was a very good book by Beth Macy called Factory Man that recounts the near demise of furniture making in Bassett due to outsourcing a couple of decades ago. Tom Hanks had bought the rights to turn it into an HBO mini-series several years ago but nothing ever came of it, as far as I know. But all of that is ancient history and history can’t be changed.

Bassett has seemed to me like Brigadoon sitting up there in the mists waiting for true love to break the spell. (If you don’t get the archaic reference, Brigadoon was a 1954 musical with Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, and Cyd Charisse about a village in the highlands of Scotland embattled by witches so the local minister found a way to protect the village by asking God to put a spell on it. Every night, when they fell to sleep, a hundred years would go by. Gene Kelly and Van Johnson run across it by accident on the one day that the village wakes up and can be found. When Gene and Syd meet … well, you can take it from there).

And there have been signs of life from Bassett recently. The Railway Cafe opened up within the past year or two and they regularly have live music on a beautiful patio across the street from the historic train depot. That may sound like small potatoes but that’s something.

It sits in an adorable little shopping strip with a lot of still empty storefronts. With any luck, I’ll take a picture in the next couple of years and these storefronts will all be filled. Salons, boutiques, shops of any sort …

Storefronts Next to the Historic Train Depot

Very recently, they redid the historic train depot as a venue rental. It is now the Bassett Train Station Event Center. I had gone up to see it before but it was not open to be toured. When I heard that it would be open for the Bassett Heritage Festival, I had to go.

Inside the Bassett Train Station Event Center

They have really outdone themselves. On one end, they have a multi-media conference room set up. On the other end, they have a beautiful banquet hall with a stage at the far end. Someone was still busy mopping the stage as I was visiting, so the shot below is the best I have of the stage.

Facing the Stage in the Banquet Hall Section of the Event Center

The venue is perfect for any large event and the history of Bassett is front and center on the wall that divides the banquet hall and the conference room.

Timeline for the Bassett Train Station Event Center

In the 1880’s the Bassett family started a lumber mill…

It’s a little unfair that I understand the significance of the humbleness of the beginning when I’m presenting Bassett as such a small community now. It’s too much to go into here but you do know Bassett. There is very probably a Bassett Furniture store somewhere not too far from you if you live in the U.S. There are 100 dedicated Bassett retail locations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The corporate headquarters is still here, across the street from the Train Station.

But my focus is on today. Or, rather, on September 11, 2021, the day of the Bassett Heritage Festival. The festival was held across the railroads tracks in the lot behind the Well Fargo building.

Looking Up Fairystone Park Highway From the Train Station

As small town festivals around here go, the Bassett Heritage Festival is worth a trip. Though small, it had a lot going on.

The Stanleytown Family Ruritans were serving a pancake breakfast. (Stanleytown is another small community that sits on (or near) Bassett’s southern border.)

Pancake Breakfast by the Stanleytown Ruritan

The Southern Gentlemen Band played live music.

And the proportion of the tent vendors selling handmade wares is high. Very high, actually. I ended up spending quite a bit of money at the festival and I really was trying to behave.

One of my best finds was Charm Cat. Charm Cat’s booth had a huge selection of cards for different occasions, including blank ones, all drawn and painted by a local artist, Ashleigh Pritchard. She has a very good website and sells online “Pretty Paper Things for Pretty Funny People”.

I was pleased to meet author Nancy Naigle, a new resident of Patrick Springs who happily found her way to the festival. She is a talented author and has had several of her novels translated into Halllmark movies. She’s on the left holding a copy of “A Heartfelt Christmas Promise”. That’s right. Christmas romances. Move over Debbie Macomber. I’m currently reading the book I purchased there, “Hope at Christmas”, and thoroughly enjoying it. If you are a fan of the genre, I highly recommend it.

There were a lot of hand made decorations, pretty and funny – some both.

I was glad to attend the Bassett Heritage Festival this year and am looking forward to next year.

I hope you are enjoying your fall season.

If you are interested in Bassett as a community, I encourage you to check out the real estate there. Though these things can change on a dime, real estate there is still relatively inexpensive right now. The screen shot below is a snapshot in time showing the four most expensive properties currently on the market. I sometimes am amazed that Bassett is not bustling with river nuts and artists. It is a beautiful place.

Maybe someone put a spell on it. You think?

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