This lady in Charlotte who grew up in Rock Hill was cleaning out storage and refused to throw out the oddest set of Christmas cards anybody ever saw.
Find a Christmas card made by somebody named Jack Carroll out of a cloth diaper -- complete with tiny safety pin -- or a piece of tin roof, or a label from a can of Margaret Holmes brand Georgia field peas, and you can't just throw it away.
"The cards were sent to my in-laws," Ann Neely said. "They had all these witty sayings on them, too. I couldn't throw them out."
Some searching at Neely's church, Providence Baptist in Charlotte, ended with a guy named Carroll who said he didn't know Jack Carroll but that his mother probably did. Because that same mother, Ruth Carroll, knows all about Rock Hill. Ruth Carroll -- Carroll is her married name -- wasn't family to card-maker Jack Carroll. But it turns out her father, the late H.B. Johnston, was a printer who made those cards all those years ago from the late 1940s on.
"I can remember him printing them out in his shop behind the house," Ruth Carroll said. "He would say, 'I wonder what Jack is going to think up this year?'"
One year, it was a Christmas card done on pieces of window shade. Another year a piece of window screen. Another card was done on pieces of Rock's Laundry paper. Then one on the back of Pall Mall cigarette packs.
Jack Carroll, who died in 1990, was a legendary character in Rock Hill. He was the guy who, after the 1980s PTL Ministries scandal in Fort Mill, created eyeglasses with dollar signs on them with the idea that Jim Bakker could use some shades for his money. One time, he put a roof on his Green Street home, then placed a big sign with letters many feet tall atop the house that said: "I've finished the roof." Many times, he filled his yard with banners. Ruth Carroll found out Jack and his late wife, Juanita, "Pinkie," had one daughter, Louise. Louise Carroll lives in Orangeburg.
"I can remember sitting side-by-side with my father every year, helping to figure out how to mail these things," Louise Carroll said. "Some didn't fit in regular envelopes. He'd start thinking of his ideas in the summer. He made those cards for 27 years, every year until momma died. He had 250 of them sent out every year. The cards went overseas to buddies he was in the service with, all over Rock Hill and the country."
Some of the sayings are corny and funny, such as "From our house. We've used everything within. Now to send you this yearly greeting once again, our roof is short on tin."
The card was printed on pieces of tin roof.
Louise Carroll has a display case locked away that has one copy of each year's card, but never before had anybody tracked her down with saved cards. On Tuesday, Ruth Carroll put the saved cards in the mail to Orangeburg.
"It really does take you back in time," Ruth Carroll said.
Especially to 1949: The cloth diaper card.
"That was the year I was born," Louise Carroll said. "Everybody got a piece of diaper for Christmas with my name on it."
