By Stephen Smoot
“We take pride in our product. It’s our product. We grow it. We’re not ‘the middle man.'” This statement from Bobby Bice III about the fauna grown and sold at Bice’s Greenhouse for the past century serves as both description and mission statement.
It also explains why generations of those in the area continue to shun the big box stores and buy from their neighbors when starting or maintaining their gardens and other plant projects.
The seed planted that germinated into a successful and long-lasting business started in the “cold frames” used by W. O. Bice even before he launched his greenhouse.
As Bice III explains, “a cold frame is a boxed structure built low to the ground, or in the ground, often only one or two feet high, with a removable (or even hinged) transparent top.” A century ago, long before the proliferation of plastic, Bice would have likely used glass sashes to ward off the various threats that come from weather and a number of species of hungry critters.
Those came from the booming glass industry in the Clarksburg area. Most constructed these frames so that the top rested at an angle, which “provided an opportunity to capture more sunlight and also allowed runoff of rainwater.” These also extended the growing season at both the front and back end, creating insulation against cold temperatures, winds, and out-of-season surprise frosts.
These provided Bice’s customers at the company store with plants early in the season so all could start their gardens as early as Mother Nature allows in a temperate clime.
Determination to start and succeed in business converged with an opportunity created by Consolidation Coal Company. By the 1920s coal companies in Appalachian states, particularly those in Southern West Virginia, had attracted the ire of social welfare activists and union organizers who condemned conditions in remote company towns established in places like Logan, Mingo, and McDowell counties.
Additionally, many miners had served patriotically in the American Expeditionary Forces and had seen, most for the first time, major American cities and also the European countryside. Many returned from war determined to have a better life in their hometowns, even the company controlled ones.
Those pent up needs, plus the failure of the 1922 miners’ March on Logan and subsequent combat along the Logan – Boone County line, pushed the United Mine Workers of America to permit a massive strike in 1925 against Consolidation Coal Company, one of the dominant producers in North Central West Virginia as well.
As Bice III noted “Consolidation Coal Company wanted ‘model’ mining communities that put a better face on company towns. As opposed to the slapdash “board and batten” houses erected quickly in the southern counties, these model communities would have cheerful and more “middle class” looking colorful domiciles.
The company encouraged further decoration with flower gardens to accentuate the “sidewalks, water wells, and white picket fences that were all maintained.” Hand-crafted postcards featuring the most attractive such neighborhoods and homes were fashioned to attract immigrant labor from both impoverished populations in southern and Eastern Europe, as well as blacks from the Deep South.
They also made a strong statement against accusations of corporate neglect of workers and families.
At the same time, however, these added aesthetics from coal companies did give those who lived and worked there a true sense of pride in their homes, their families, and the vital work they did to warm people’s homes and support American manufacturing at first – then the war effort to save the world from National Socialism as well as the imperial ambitions of Benito Mussolini and also Japan.
A postcard portraying Viropa has W. O. Bice and a flower bed that “he had converted from a cinder pile outside the coal company store.”
Three years after establishing his greenhouse business, W. O. Bice felt he could retire from managing the company store at Viropa, “so his full focus could be on growing and selling plants.”
Losing “that dependable income he had as the store manager” created a bind for the Bice family a year later when a convergence of economic trends and conditions combined with the new world economic order created by the Treaty of Versailles crashed the global economy.
“Everyone was in the same boat, though,” remarked Bice III.
For example Stephen Annese, an Italian immigrant who helped to found the George-Annese Coal Company in Barbour County, was compelled by familial and financial need to till every spare inch of the two acre plot surrounding his newly built, handsome three story mansion near the campus of Alderson-Broaddus College.
The produce grown, much of it carefully canned, sustained even a company owner’s family during the extremely hard times from 1929 through the start of the Second World War.
“People still needed to eat,” shared Bice III, “and they still canned food, so they needed plants to grow . . . . to produce those vegetables to can.”
Through the Great Depression “most of the plants sold were vegetable plants, because that was the ‘need.’ Flowers were considered a luxury.”
Most sought after fruits and vegetables enjoyed in their countries of origins, such as tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, different lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, melons, strawberries, and “many other crop-producing plants were serving as food to be able to live.”
Those habits established by need in 1929 and the 30s transformed into an expression of patriotism and support for the war.
Soon after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked loyal Americans to grow as much of their own food as possible so that agricultural production could better provide for American servicemen and American allies.
An emphasis on food production did not mean that Bice’s greenhouse shunned growing and selling flowers. W. O. Bice’s wife Donna, whose maiden name was Tetrick, would hand-cut flowers for special occasions such as weddings and funerals. At this point, most funerals took place in private homes, so Mr. Bice would load the vases in his truck for special deliveries.
Other greenhouse businesses took off at the same time, but extreme circumstances made some more cooperative than competitive.
When growing shifted from frames to greenhouses, the plants enjoyed protection from cold weather with coal fired boilers providing vital heat to keep roots warm. This ensured that plants could grow during winter months and be ready for the start of gardening season. “This process, said Bobby Bice III “involved manually shoveling coal into the firebox, thus someone had to be on hand 24 hours a day during the cold winter months.
W. O. Bice and his sons would rotate in turn to keep watch on the fire during the cold months. During the second week of February 1927, ironically during a several day period of temperatures more usually seen in mid April, “one of the sons was keeping watch when the pressure inside the boiler far exceeded its capacity, causing the boiler to blow up.”
It was a life-saving blessing that the young man stood on the opposite end of where the explosion occurred. He sprinted from the greenhouse to the home to alert the family. As Bice II told, “as the temperature inside the greenhouse dropped, immediate action was taken to avoid the complete loss of every plant and seedling.”
Though daytime temperatures hit the 60s that week, those overnight dipped just enough below freezing to still threaten every plant there. W. O., his wife Donna, and their boys hustled out to save each and every plant, each growing in its own diminutive clay pot.
Once “every available space inside the homeplace – floor, on furniture, up the staircase – was filled with plants,” another local greenhouse with safe and warm storage space took the remainder. They even sent a truck over to help their competitor in his time of need.
