| Notes |
Charleston Daily Mail May 28, 1952 page 9
Roving the Valley with Friends and Neighbors
by Charles Connow
The heavy chunk of something-or-other that 82-year old J.Johnson (Johnsey) Casto turned over and over in his hands clearly was a curiosity. We were sitting in his den at 21 Monongalia St.
"The general supposition in Jackson County is tht it's a whale's tooth," he explained. "My nephew, Frank Hill, dug it up while plowing on his farm at Divide hill. He said folks from all over the countryside came to see it. I told him I'd bring it back to Charleston to see what you thought of it."
Wherever Mr. J.J. Casto got the idea that I might be an authority on a whale's tooth, I have no idea. But I assured him it very well could be a whale's tooth which was dropped in Jackson county during some pre-historic period.
"Well, well, never mind," said the friendly little man, "maybe if we call it to public attention, some fossil man from Morris Harvey or the state museum will stop by to identify it. No one can say it doesn't look like a whale's tooth, anyway."
Mr. Casto it turned out, is one of the Jackson countians who are proud to say they wre born on a stack of stove wood. As everyone knows, Castos in Jackson county are thicker than scrub brush on the hillsides there.
That's one reason I came to Charleston on April 3, 1896," he said. "I was the first Casto in town and now there must be 500 of them. They all followed me here."
He immedidately fell in with John B. Floyd, a former mayor of Charleston, and worked for him in his market gardens where the capitol now stands.
"Yessir, we had 10 men gardening there and raised all kinds of vegatables during the summer for the folks in Charleston," he said. "the city limits were then around Bradford Street.
"I also had the pleasure, young man, of reading the first issue of the Charleston Daily Mail in the spring of 1894. Mr. Floyd published it - then called the Evening Mail - at his office two doors away from where Gates has his paint stop today. I kept the first copy for year, but it got away from me. I'd give a $20 bill right now to have one."
One impression modern-day folks have that "Johnsey" Casto would like to correct is that concerning installment buying.
"People think that's something that came in with FDR in 1932," he commented, "but do you know I sold Mrs. Everett Woodrum, wife of the big furniture man, a rug, some big red lamps and curtains on the installment plan more than 50 years ago?
"Sure, I was a salesman for the Standard Installment Co, then. Everett was working in Albert Humphrey's grocery store at the time. I called on Mrs. Woodrum over on Ohio street and she liked what I had to sell, but she told me that Everett didn't allow her to buy anything 'that' way when I explained to her about our installment plan.
"Anyway, she bought the rug, the lamps and the curtains on the installment plan from me after I promised that I wouldn't go up to the store to collect. She paid me each week out of her home money. Everett, of course, came home that night and was well pleased with his wife's selections. Later, he found out that she bought it by the easy payment plan.
"Ten years ago, when I happened to be in Woodrum's he called me over and told me that everytime he saw he, he thought of that red carpet. 'It's the very thing that started me thinking about the installment business for Woodrum's,' he told me."
From a salesman for furnishings, Casto hopped into a dozen other jobs which included selling produce, flour and seed on the road for Kanawha Wholesale Produce Co., bookkeeper, butcher, shoe repairman, department store owner, and a seven year tour as "Prof. J. Johnson, the celebrated hyponotist."
"I ran into a fellow out at Olcott in 1917 who sold me his books on hypnotism for $200." he explains simply. "After mastering the art, I played every town between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh."
For variety's sake, J.J. Casto is a hard man to beat.
"I've been here a long time though," he says, "and a fellow can't stick to one job for 82 years."
So now, he has in his possession what he and other good Jackson county folks believe to be the tooth from a whale. Could be. Anyone in town know what a whale's tooth looks like?
[Picture - caption]
Is it a whale's tooth? That's what J.J. Casto of the West Side wants to know about the heavy object he holds above. Dug up by a Jackson County farmer, it has attracted widespread attention around Devide hill.
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West Virginia Pioneers
1871 - 1958 (87 years)
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