A Festival Find

My last post about the Treasure Mountain Festival got me to thinking about the best thing I ever got there at the festival. It was in 1988, and what I got there that day seemed destined to be, or so I like to think. My best item from the festival was my dog and childhood companion, Speck. Speck was my best friend and we sure spent countless hours together traipsing over the hills and hollows of North Mountain.

Me, Speck and our cat, Milo, at the holler rock.

Prior to getting Speck, my brother and I had been pestering mom for several months about how we wanted a dog, and we had actually even went to see about getting a couple of them, but none of them “spoke” to us. They were either too big, too little, too wimpy, or something always seemed to be keeping us from getting a dog. Mom said what we needed was a “waller” dog, you know, a dog that you could play with and waller around with. Well, we certainly wasn’t thinking about a dog when we attended the festival that year, but one of the first things my eyes peeled upon getting out of the car, was a sign that said “Free Puppies”. I grabbed Jason by the arm and we made a bee-line for the stand.

My brother Jason, our dog Brutus, Me, Speck and our cat, Mouse.

Unfortunately when we got there, all the puppies were gone, but the lady told us to come back before we left the festival because sometimes people bring puppies back after they realize that they just can’t handle one. Well, our hearts sank but we did mull around the crowd and had a fairly decent time. When we got ready to leave, we stopped by the “Free Puppies” stand again, and the woman told us that a little boy had brought back a puppy after learning that his mother said he couldn’t have it and that she had saved it just for us. She then proceeded to lift this little black and white speckled puppy out of a cardboard box and handed him to me. My first look at that puppy was like an epiphany to me, he was just perfect. When I took him from the lady, the first thing he did was lick my face, and my brother reached over to petted him, and it licked his arm. I know now that we were destined to grow up with each other, and that is why it took us so long to settle on a dog.

A group of friends..Speck, Jason, Tippy, Matthew & Brutus.

Well our puppy was certainly a “waller” dog, he loved to play and he loved to eat, and we decided before we ever left Franklin that his name would be Speck. Those first few weeks, he grew like a weed, no doubt because of all the food we fed him. His little belly was tight like a drum. Mom let us keep him inside until he got big enough to be put outdoors under one condition, we had to give him a bath every other day. She claimed to have read that if you wash a puppy in Woolite that it wouldn’t dry out their skin, so Jason and I religiously gave Speck his allotted bath so we could keep him inside with us for as long as we could. I remember that first night when we went to bed, we took Speck into our bedroom with us, and he was supposed to sleep in his box, but halfway through the night Speck somehow managed to cajole his way into sleeping in my bed, and we got to playing in the wee hours of the morning and he fell off the bed. Well, I let out a howl, I was sure that Speck was dead, but when Jason and I managed to get him out from under the bed, he was just fine. In fact, he licked Jason’s face and tried to climb up the cover to get back up on my bed. We just knew we had us a prize dog right then and there.

Me and my baby, Speck.

By the time November came along, Speck had already grown enough to be able to stay on our front porch. We had built him a little doghouse and decorated it with old clothes and a soft pillow. He had him a doggy mansion. Then, later in the month when deer season rolled around, Speck feasted on countless deer bones. I remember one in particular he made his favorite and carried it with him everywhere he went. He still had that thing the following spring! I don’t know that he ever ate it.

Well as time passed, it became apparent that Speck was my dog more so than he was Jason's because he seemed to follow me everywhere. The next summer, when I’d climb the apple tree, Speck would even try to climb it too. He’d make it up about 3 or 4 branches, and then just sit and wait for me to come back down. Nobody had ever seen a dog climb a tree before, but Speck could. Speck used to love playing basketball with us too, the only problem was, he liked to roll the basketball around in the yard like he was rounding it up. He could steal it away from you mid-dribble! He was good at stealing the ball.

Speck, the best dog ever!

I remember one time my Uncle Tom ran over Speck with his Volkswagon, and just luckily, the only damage it did to Speck was give him a little cut him across the nose. Uncle Tom still says he remembers seeing me crying, and giving Speck bath in an old metal washtub. I wanted to make sure he was alright and I needed to clean his wounds. They say the tears were just dripping off my face and down into the bathwater. Everyone says that Speck getting ran over hurt me far worse than it hurt Speck. There was a lasting scar on Speck from his getting ran over…he had a giant scar in the shape of an “M” right across his nose. Everyone said that was just to mark his as my dog, since that is the first initial of my name.

As we grew older, Speck grew older with us. He was our loyal protector and loved us as much as we loved him. Every time we were outside, he would be by our side and ready for our next adventure. One of the hardest things about going off to college was leaving Speck. When I’d call home, Speck would be waiting at the front door for me to come outside and play, he just couldn’t understand why I never came outside. So when I’d call, Mom or Dad would hold the phone down to him and I’d talk to him a little bit. They always said that really cheered him up and that he would be okay for a day or so, but mostly they said he would just lay around and pine away for his playmates to rejoin him for another adventure. I remember how happy he’d get when I’d come home for weekends, he’d be so happy that our little team was reunited again, even if only for a short while, that he'd pee all over himself.

Me & Speck, Spring 1995.

Speck came up missing right before Christmas of my freshman year of college. People said he had just lost his will to live, and they all figured he just went up on the mountain and died, as dogs will sometimes do. When I came home for the Christmas holiday, I looked all over that mountain but never did find him, and even to this day I find myself wishing to see my old friend just one more time.

A Festival & Lard Scalding

This coming weekend, September 19-22, my home county of Pendleton will hold the annual Treasure Mountain Festival. Growing up, my family always got together and went to the Festival, and we usually just milled around in the crowd and ate a lot of food. You see, there’s not much to do at the Festival besides see old friends and eat. I always liked to use the festival as an excuse to put on my “winter coat”, an old mountain term referring the need to get fattened up for the winter months.


Me at the TMF 2006. Yes, those bags are full of food!

The Festival is always held on the 3rd weekend of September and this year it will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Burning of Fort Seybert.


Every year following the parade, the Burning of Fort Seybert is re-enacted on the site of the original fort.



The Treasure Mountain Festival story begins shortly after the attack in 1758 when a band of Shawnee Indians under the leadership of the Delaware chief, Killbuck, attacked and burned Fort Seybert & Fort Upper Tract. The only remaining fort left standing in Pendleton County was Hinkle’s Fort, which was built by my 7-great grandfather Johann Justice Hinkle.


My brother Jason and the 7-great-granddaughter of Chief Killbuck. She attends the Treasure Mountain Festival every year.

After leaving the site of Fort Seybert, the Indians along with their prisoners crossed the mountains through Greenawalt Gap, a natural and well-known crossing through the rugged mountains. From there they travelled through Germany Valley and westward to the Little Kanawha River in present-day Upshur County, which in turn, further took them to the Ohio River and the Shawnee town of Chillicothe.



Pendleton Natives, Brud & Ardella make their annual pilgrimage through the TMF Parade. Brud always fires off a few rounds from his muzzleloader to delight the crowds.




The few settlers who escaped the massacre told of what happened and they recounted a story of how the valuable possessions and treasures belonging to the settlers were collected in an iron kettle and a wooden pole was stuck through the bale and two Indians carried the treasure. As they were climbing up the eastern slope of South Fork Mountain, the terrain became steeper and the two Indians fell behind the larger group. Fear of pursuit made the two Indians abandon the kettle full of treasures, and when they rejoined the larger group they were empty-handed. They said they had hidden the treasure somewhere on the mountain along the trail near a giant hollow tree, and that they would return to claim the treasure at a later time. It is doubtful that the Indians returned , as this was their last known visit to the area.

Over the years since that fateful autumn day in 1758, many locals have so strongly believed in the existence of the treasure that they searched the still-visible mountain trail in hopes of locating it.

While no one has succeeded in uncovering this ancient "pot of gold", the legend lives on and is celebrated every year at the Treasure Mountain Festival.

I have a family story that tells of this Shawnee raid in Pendleton County. On their way up the South Branch of the Potomac River, the Indians passed my Grandmother Rebecca Skidmore’s cabin. All the menfolk were away hunting up in the mountains. According to the story passed down through the generations, Grandmaw saw the Indians coming up the river but didn’t run away, she said she was too old to run anyway, and besides, her grandmother was a Shawnee woman named Sowetha, so she figured she had no real reason to fear and expected the Indians just wanted to trade as they usually did when they were in this part of the country. As they neared, my grandmaw said she saw that this was a raiding party and she knew she was in trouble but there wasn’t anything she could do about it, so she just went about her business, which just happened to be rendering lard. Well, the Indians pulled up their canoes and started up to the Skidmore cabin, and she just acted like she wasn’t afraid. She said the Indians went into the cabin and stole her coffee and sugar and came out and that she could tell they were deciding what to do with her. She said she knew a couple of Shawnee words and said them, and tried to tell them that she was part Shawnee, and they just grunted and talked among themselves. She said then one big Indian pulled out his knife and started toward her and she knew she had to do something right then, so she instinctively threw a big dipper of rendering hog fat in his face and he took to digging at his eyes and scalded face. The other Indians thought this was just too funny and roared in laughter, and then restrained the man from revenge. She said they then went back in the house and took her butcher knife and a hatchet and nodded to her as they went back towards the river, still laughing about what she had done. The story further tells how Grandmaw Skidmore was rather shocked that they left without killing her. Years later, when Killbuck was asked about this, he talked of how the raiding party had encountered an old white woman that fought like a Shawnee, and for her bravery, they had let her live.


The Giant Pendleton Pumpkin Contest 2007.

So, if anyone is in the area this coming weekend, be sure and stop by the Treasure Mountain Festival, there's sure to be something that will interest you there.