Small Town Spotlight 7: Thornville

Aside from Mayberry (of course), Thornville is the small town nearest and dearest to my heart. You see, for elementary school, I was in a class with only Mayberry and Thornville kids- all thirteen of us! The Shiffon and Chaper kids (and all the other riffraff towns surrounding) had their own elementary and we all merged together in 6th-8th grade in Thornville, then we all stayed together for 9th-12th at the high school in Shiffon. When the M-T and S-C towns/kids come together in middle school, there’s definitely a bit of a divide and the M-T allegiance stays strong. Of course, we all end up befriending some kids from the other towns, but the M-T people tend to stay the A1s from Day1s ya feel me? Well, at least that was the case for my group of friends- Agatha is also from Mayberry, and Henrietta and Ardith are Thornville gals, and our bitchy clique loyalty to each other has been going strong for a long time. We may or may not have been referred to as “The Thornville Girls” and “The Thornville Bitches” by… a lot of our S-C classmates for a long time. And, honestly, even still. Check out this Insta message I received from one of our high school classmates after posting a picture of Ardith and me in a “Glamour Shot”¹. It’s worth noting that this classmate is a Shiffon guy…

Anyway, to get back to the actual town of Thornville, it’s a cute little place, home to Pleasant Valley Golf Course, and was the site of Bev’s elementary and middle schools. When the school consolidation with all of our M-T-S-C towns and Rockdale-Swale happened, the Thornville building was no longer needed, and was eventually torn down. That’s probably an extremely confusing story to follow, but that’s kind of the theme in the rural Midwest. Small towns keep consolidating into bigger schools, and a lot of the tiniest towns’ school buildings are demolished. Mayberry used to have a school and so did Chaper. I’m sure Swale probably did at one point. Dougherty and Arendale may have too, though I’m sure Arendale’s was probably some type of portal to Hell.

Small Town Stats
Public Pools: 0
Private Pools: 7
(this seems asinine to me, but I trust Bessie and the rest of the Cheese Bawl Crawl crew to have been diligent in their work)
Pop Machines: 1

Let’s kick off the Thornville post with a lovely shot of the PVGC clubhouse- home of $6 styrofoam cups of Chardonnay on ice. And I’m not talking about like the little coffee cups. These babies hold at least 2o oz. and PVGC bartenders don’t do light pours.

Next up is The Cage, which is really a tennis court sandwiched in between two buildings downtown. I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t realize that The Cage was, like, an official name. It’s just what we all called it. The Cage has been updated with its own sign and what looks like a fresh coat of paint!

You might see the sign advertising fundraising efforts for… another sign and I’m happy to report that the residents of Thornville were able to meet their fundraising goal and Thornville now has… a $25,000 digital sign. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve got some opinions about the need for this sign, but my loyalty to Thornville is strong, so I’ll just leave it at… whatever floats your boat, Thornville! You do you!

Maybe Smoke or MamaG can even go over to Thornville soon and capture some pictures of the new digital sign for us all!²

Also downtown Thornville? The Printing Office. Think they’d cut me a deal publishing a book? Probably not after those shots were fired at “the sign” above.

But also on Main Street near the cage? Some empty building housing an artifact from the old Thornville gym (which was also once the M-T High School, home of the Fighting Lancers. This further complicates the whole school thing explained above, but from the days of Smoke and MamaG through about 1990(?) Thornville was the high school for both Mayberry and Thornville before any of the consolidations started. We Mayberry-Thornville folks hold that Lancer name near and dear to our hearts³, along with its corresponding color- affectionately known as Lancer Blue. It’s a lovely shade of light blue and I might be able to scrounge up some photos of it for you.

Anyway, somebody saved an old sign from the gym that was painted by some M-T high schoolers and posted a little trivia next to it. These are the signs I can get behind, Thornville!

Another Thornville highlight I haven’t told you about yet?

Pronto.

Which is now called Thornville Mart, if I’m not mistaken. Since losing the Pronto name in the late 90s, this place has gone through more names than Prince. Pronto. Fuel Time. K & H Quick Stop. Thornville Mart.

Anyway, it’s a gas station and it’s filled with wonderful snacks. If I could have all of the money I spent on Clearly Canadian at Pronto, I could probably literally buy Pronto. And actually, at least 75% of those Clearly Canadians were purchased by Uncle Bart who played basketball in the school gym on Tuesdays and would come and pick me up to let me go in and play with all the kids there, including Timmy, Gertrude, and Bessie. Looking back, I wonder if this was really for me to play, or for me to halfway keep an eye on Timmy while he jumped off the top of the bleachers repeatedly… You see, Timmy was a bit of a wild one back in his day (he’s literally a pediatrician now, which I’m not sure any of us would have expected when he was in his younger days, peeing out of barn doors, scratching us with his “dagger” toenails, and just generally wreaking havoc. I’ll tell you a good Bev babysits Timmy story another day). Anyway, Pronto is home to many a good snack, lotto tickets, and apparently, now… tropical decor?

Now, Thornville wouldn’t be a typical small town without a church (or three) but I had to capture this sign. Just check out the letters on the word pastor. I don’t know why, but this slays me.

Another sign. (not the $25,000 one)

Here’s the site of the Thornville school, which is a nostalgic place for all us M-Ters.

I mean, this is where Smoke sawed someone’s shoe in half in shop class (with the same teacher I had for shop class in middle school. He literally made me spend half a semester sanding a freaking one-foot shelf I made. Just keep sanding. Alllllll the sanding.). Mr. Clarence Wuhbinga⁴. Clancy. He smoked in the corner of the shop with the big shop doors open and once sold his old beater pickup truck to Smoke. This was not long ago- probably 2000 or so, and Smoke had the truck until about five years ago when he sold it to a man who was hoping it would make a 50-mile trip. He later called Smoke to tell him that Clancy had made it to Texas. The truck, that is. Clancy (the man, the myth, the legend) never left Thornville and passed away not long ago. Rest in peace, Mr. Wuhbinga!

This is also the site where Beverly here took on her first political stance in late elementary school. “The boys” always used the big field to play football and “the girls” usually played in other areas of the playground. Well, Bev got a bug up her ass that this was unfair, and an early version of gender inequality, and organized a “sit-in” for a few days on the field. All us girls went and sat in the middle of that field in a line. We didn’t want to play football. Hell, we didn’t want to play anything there, but I wanted to prove that we had as much right to use the field as the boys did. This caused slight anarchy among a few grades of boys and girls, and the ladies eventually acquiesced, giving “the field” back to “the boys” and going back to “playing house” by the trees. Ardith, Agatha, Henrietta, and I spent hours playing house under those trees. Ardith was almost always the mom and Bev was usually some kind of naughty teen runaway. Foreshadowing at its finest, folks!

Other significant happenings on the site of that old school? Bev and her M-T classmates absolutely ruthlessly hazed a first-year teacher who came to M-T our 5th grade year. We were not a rebellious group under normal circumstances, but we were absolute hellions for this poor man. His name was Mr. Moore, and we was all of 22 years old and 122 pounds soakin’ wet. My twelve classmates and I were like sharks to blood on this poor man. We had to have a suggestion box (where the cronies and I told Mr. Moore he had bad breath), a color chart (I’m pretty sure Josh E.⁵ got put on red every single day, and the rest of us would take turns making it our goal to get on red for the day), and Mr. Moore probably had to have a lot of whiskey.

It’s worth noting that from 5th grade on, when Bev needed to be woken up, Smoke has called up the stairs with a “Bev, get up! Mr. Moore called! It’s time to go to school!” Every. Time. From 5th grade through high school graduation. And legitimately to this day. I don’t often need my parents to wake me up, but if I do? Mr. Moore calls!

Other M-T students/graduates- share your favorite Thornville school memories in the comments or send me an email at beverlygoldenstein@gmail.com. If I get some good nuggets, I’ll compile them into a post or two. Smoke, Uncle Bart, Andy, and Mouse- I’m looking at you!

OK, now that we’ve covered the school memories in Thornville, let’s get to the rest of the tour!

Oh, here’s Mr. Bohman, painting a house. Mr. Bohman was my teacher and coach in various capacities in middle and high school, and is also a close family friend to the Goldensteins. He lives across the street from Kenny Hot Nuts (RIP) and works at the Thornville bank. He paints in his spare time. Well, paints and drinks beer.

Here’s Iona’s salon. It’s the first thing you see as you enter Thornville from the west and although it’s been there as long as I can remember, I’m not sure it’s been functional in Bev’s lifetime. I mean, it’s not Arendale, but I’m pretty sure an appointment at Iona’s is more likely to cost you a kidney than $15 and an inch or two of split ends.

Let’s not forget about Thornville’s little league diamond! This is where Bev and Co. stormed the field as Lancers from 3rd-6th grade before the forced transformation to Shiffon and becoming Spartans. I’ve got some great memories in this here dugout, and while I’d like to tell you some stories of me making some amazingly athletic plays, well… I can’t. #NotAnAthlete

And, now, let’s just see Thornville’s version of our small town staples. Water towers, golf carts, boats in yards, and the like. Oh, and have you ever seen a lawn mower pop a wheelie? ‘Cuz you’re ’bout to.

¹This Glamour Shot was absolutely not a real Glamour Shot. It was a photo taken after a Mary Kay party where the host let us pose with feather boas and such. No, no, we never had the Goldenmeans to take Bev to get real Glamour Shots. I mean, we probably could’ve actually afforded it, but Smoke and MamaG aren’t exactly the Glamour Shot type, ya dig? It has become one of my life dreams (bucket list if you will) to get Glamour Shots. If you know of any open studios, please reply in the comments.

²On MamaG’s phone, not Smoke’s flip.

³Like, the group Snapchat between Bev, Henrietta, Agatha, and Ardith is called Lancer Beaches. Today. In 2021. Lancers4Lyfe!

⁴Last name purposely spelled wrong in order to protect the (sort of) innocent. It is pronounced just as it looks though. Great name. Couldn’t change it. First or last. Clancy Wuhbinga. Absolutely born to be a shop teacher who smokes in the corner.

⁵Josh E because, yes, in a class of thirteen, we had two Joshes.

-Beverly “I Bleed Lancer Blue” Goldenstein