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8 Oo Lois Massey The one special person who shared Belle’s dreams and vision of Hobcaw Barony was Lois Massey, who served as social secretary to the Baruchs at Hobcaw and later to Belle at Bellefield. Lois loved Hobcaw almost as much as Belle and was often her companion when Belle visited Hobcaw. Lois’s uncle was Captain Jim Powell, and her first memory of Hobcaw was at the age of five: “I remember riding on a horse named ‘Big Jim’ with my uncle over the woody roads and across the rice field banks where hundreds of Negroes were working in the fields. . . . The rice mill was on a canal where flats, or lighters, loaded with rice were to be towed to town. The sound of music filled the air as their [the workers’] favorite songs were sung in unison as they worked.”1 In 1922, when Lois was still in her teens, Baruch hired her father as a master mechanic, and the family moved to a house provided for them on Hobcaw Barony. The Baruchs liked the cheerful young girl who was so willing to do anything asked of her. Baruch hired her as his social secretary at Hobcaw, and later she worked for Belle in the same capacity. Both Jim Powell and the Baruchs decided that Lois had to learn to ride and shoot. “I got so I could stay on the horse pretty good after a fashion.” Shooting did not go as well. “Really, I couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” Lois admitted, “and Uncle Jim would get disgusted with me.” Belle decided to take Lois in hand and improve her marksmanship. After careful instruction, Belle took Lois duck hunting one morning, and to Belle’s delight, Lois brought down four ducks with a single shot. “Dead-eye Dick,” Belle crowed. “I didn’t hear but one shot!” “It never happened again,” Lois admitted ruefully. “But I kept trying.” Baroness of Hobcaw 42 Belle teased Lois unmercifully about her adventure with the snake in the chicken coop. Near the Massey house was a chicken coop large enough to accommodate about one hundred chickens. Every morning Lois would gather eggs to be delivered to the big house. One morning Lois reached into a nest and found herself clutching something very cold. Startled, she snatched back her hand and saw a huge chicken snake that had happily devoured all the eggs in the nest, then curled up to nap and digest its meal. “I rushed to the house,” Lois said, “picked up a pistol, came back and ‘bang!’ into the nest.” Everyone came rushing out, but to Lois’s chagrin, when the smoke cleared the snake was still sleeping peacefully. Even Bernard Baruch took a hand in training Lois to shoot and took her on her first deer hunt. When a beautiful buck came into view, Baruch gave her first shot. “I froze,” Lois recalled. “Lois, shoot!” Baruch shouted. Woefully Lois shook her head. “No can do!” she croaked. Belle loved to tell about the time Lois discovered a “dead” opossum by the side of the road. She was on her way to Hobcaw House, and, rather than let the creature lay there and rot, Lois picked it up, heaved it atop the luggage rack of the car, and continued down the rutted, bumpy road. As she drove through the gates at Hobcaw House, people gathered about the car, pointing and laughing. Puzzled, Lois climbed out of the car only to see a terrified opossum, its tiny paws clinging with all their might to the rungs of the luggage rack. “It must have had a wild ride!” Belle teased. “The best times,” Lois Massey reminisced, “were when the whole family was there. Belle would take a notion to go foxhuntin’ by moonlight. The stable hands would saddle the horses and have them waitin,’ and then the colored men, with the hounds, would leave early to scent a fox, and when they finally got him in fast pursuit, their voices in rhythm would sing a song which could be heard for miles. We’d be sitting down to dinner and if, in the middle of the meal the men ran in to say they’d found a fox, why, Belle and whoever else was going would jump up from the table, say ‘excuse me,’ leap on their horses and take off after that fox. She was a foxhunter from her heart, I’m tellin’ you...

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