Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506200003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-18 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 1.
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
In his mind's eye, scenes of hometown, day-to-day life - autumn days, country ways, homecoming queens, camping trips, old courthouses - are valuable keepsakes.
"I like to record things," he explains.
Shelton got his first camera at 14. Now, slightly more than 70 years later, his quiet hobby has yielded albums of pictures that give the events of his days a small bit of immortality.
It's a collection he evaluates with characteristic modesty. "All I was trying to do, really, was to register the past," he says.
Yet the photographs also illustrate Shelton's devotion to the craft and affection for his community.
Born and raised on a farm near Pilot, Shelton spent his working career in Christiansburg as the co-owner of a drug store and, later, as an insurance agent. He shot weddings from time to time but never earned much money from it. Like most amateurs, Shelton found the simple practice of his pastime rewarding enough.
Over the years, Shelton spent many valuable weekends traveling and shooting pictures with Earl Palmer, regarded as one of the great photographers of Appalachian life.
Palmer was a country store operator in Cambria who shared Shelton's yen for photography. They became good friends and remain so today.
Beginning in the late 1940s, Shelton and Palmer would pack up an old station wagon and head for the eastern Kentucky hills where Palmer grew up. They'd leave by 5 p.m. Friday and arrive at midnight. "I'd do the driving and he'd size up the pictures," Shelton recalls.
Some of those trips produced the photographs of rustic Appalachian culture that have brought Palmer wide recognition and praise. "He took it to heart. I was just a tag-along," Shelton says. "But I learned from his eye. Lots of times with him, we took the same picture. His were better."
Shelton's pictures share the same rich evocation of mountain folkways that made Palmer's work famous. Closer to home, Shelton was guided by his own insights and sentiments.
"I've always been interested in old things. You realize that it's an age that's gone - never to be returned," he says.
Shelton rode along on one of the Huckleberry's last trips between Cambria and Blacksburg in the late 1950s, snapping pictures of the train's conductor. He also shot the stately old Montgomery County Courthouse - standing in front of its coldly modernistic successor - only days before its wrecking ball execution.
Other photos in his collection are less momentous, but still quite vivid, such as the picture he shot of the queen of the agricultural fair ("Miss Farmerette") and her court in the late 1940s. His subjects are fresh-faced, happily unaffected and dressed to the nines in voluminous crinoline skirts.
Shelton won some national photo contests 30 years ago. Several of his photos have been published in locally produced histories of Montgomery County and Christiansburg. Recently, however, they've been stored at his South Franklin Street home, seen by his eyes only.
"I've had some people ask me about them," he says. Yet they've never been exhibited - which is a shame.
A panoramic series Shelton shot of a farm scene near Snowville was hung on the wall of a Christiansburg business and viewed by customers over the years. Now, he says, the building has changed hands and shelves have been erected in front of the photos.
However, Shelton, a great-grandfather, has no regrets. He enjoyed his life and his photography, conducting both with an unjaded view of his world.
"I thought it was a miracle to look through a box and come out with a picture," he says. "It is a pleasure to look back on them now and recall what I saw."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***