Archive for the ‘Our State’ Category

Posted on February 15, 2007 - by Ralph Grizzle

Opportunity Knocks

In this age of e-commerce and warehouse-size superstores, Luther Clegg is something of an anomaly. While the Greensboro-resident remains part of the retail revolution, the mechanism that drives his merchandise is not bottom-line pricing or the World Wide Web. It is a 1977 Buick. You see, Luther Clegg still peddles his wares the old-fashioned way: door-to-door.

“Miracle Cloth,” Clegg says while holding up the all-purpose polishing cloth. “They named it right. It will take out scratches and remove rust. 1001 uses. Never wash it. Keep it in a Ziplock bag, and it will last a long time.”

At a time when the world seems steadfast on moving increasingly toward impersonal sales venues – the internet and mail order shopping – Luther Clegg serves as a living reminder that door-to-door salesmanship and the personal touch still have a place in this ever-changing world.

A Brisk Business
On the trunk of his Buick, Clegg lays a black suitcase on its side and opens it. He shows how he once presented the Fuller Brush merchandise that he sold from 1956 until 1962. “Selling for Fuller Brush was hard,” he says. “They gave you the worst territory in town, just to see if you could cut it. I had to order $200 worth of merchandise a week. I got a $20 production discount, which was my take. So I had to sell other things to keep my head above water.”

Those other things included household-cleaning supplies and other products that now represent Clegg’s sole sources of income.

How is it going for Clegg? While he can’t provide specific sales analysis – in fact, he uses a pad and carbon paper to write receipts – Clegg can tell you he has a “hard time keeping up” with demand. Beginning his rounds in the early afternoon, he returns home each night – most times after 10 – with an “inch thick of invoices,” which he tallies up before making his nightly bank deposit.

His Own Man
Probably the height of his self-sufficiency took place the time he performed surgery on himself to save $50. While pruning a tree for one of his customers, the ax he was using fell on his shin, cutting a gash that exposed bone. Clegg limped to his car and drove to the emergency room. But upon being told the cost to treat and stitch the wound, he turned and drove himself home. There, he poured alcohol on the gash and stitched it – with fishing line no less. He still has a scar to show the shortcomings of his medical handiwork. But to Clegg it was worth the savings.

When we visited Clegg in May, his hip was giving way. It hurt him so much that he practically had to crawl up stairs – “like a baby,” he says – lugging his wares. A few days before our interview, Clegg was scheduled to enter the hospital for hip surgery. (Apparently, he felt this was beyond the scope of his limited medical abilities.) Nonetheless, the worn out hip did not keep Clegg from going to work each day right up until his operation.

Clegg works in what should be his golden years because he must. His rent has more than tripled in past years, from $75 to $275 a month. Plus, Clegg needs to earn extra cash to keep his favorite charities going – the Bible League and other organizations that distribute the “good book” worldwide. “I try to do a little good with what little I make,” he says. “My main goal is to get out Bibles to countries where Christians are being persecuted. I want as many points as I can accumulate when I get to heaven.”

A Family Tradition
Clegg inherited his work ethic from his father. Born in 1869, W.F. Clegg manufactured cigars in Greensboro beginning in the late 1800s. His factory was situated across from the train station, and with such proximity to travelers coming and going, the elder Clegg soon began to offer sandwiches and coffee, and eventually, rooms.

In 1891, the business was expanded to incorporate Hotel Clegg. Young Luther, born in 1919, remembers visiting the hotel and the cigar factory on the third floor above the guestrooms. “I could barely look over the table where the women were rolling cigars,” he says.

Clegg’s father lost nearly everything during the Depression. In 1941, he was broke and dying at Wesley Long Hospital. Clegg went with his mother and sister to visit the ailing patriarch. From the side of his father’s bed, Clegg watched something about the size of a bumblebee exit and fly out a partially opened window.

“Did you see that?” Clegg asked his mother. She did not.

“Did you?” he asked his sister. No.

“I think it was his soul leaving his body,” Clegg says all these years later. “Whatever it was, it sure knew where it was going.”

Following his father’s death, Clegg took on the responsibility of caring for his mother, a role he played for the next 37 years. He still mourns her death. “She lived 97 years, three months and 15 days,” Clegg says reflectively.

On his own since 1978, Clegg never married. “I thought taking care of my mother was more important than marriage,” he says. “I guess the Lord will have to pick me out somebody.”

A Bag Full Of Goodies
Clegg’s father left his son with a fine appreciation for numbers. His reality, in fact, seems to be steeped in the value of things, including his own merchandise. “Perma Scour,” he says. “Cleans without scratching surfaces. Rosemary Crank [one of regular Clegg's customers] dropped one in her garbage disposal. Hardly hurt it. $1.98.”

Carbon steel scissors. “16.50,” he says. “They’re the only scissors that will cut silk without causing it to unravel.” Garden shears. “$22.50. Painted orange so that you won’t lose them. Clips on to your belt.” Clear Magic. “If you have a dog and it urinates on your rug or something, this will take it out. $12.06.”

In 1937, he had surgery on a hernia: “$25,” he says, adding, “I made a deal with the doctor.”

The house on Mendenhall Street where he lived with his mother in 1941: $65 per month. His salary as a teenager for delivering baked goods: $18 a week. The amount he earned on his first day as a nine-year-old selling the Saturday Evening Post: a nickel. The Navy paid him $21 a month in 1942.

His father paid $540 a year for Clegg to attend Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia. The rent his father paid for his cigar factory: $30 a month.
Giving Thanks

With no wife, no children, his mother and father gone, Luther Clegg is not entirely alone. “He probably knows more people than anybody else in Greensboro,” Zelle Jester says.

And most folks do welcome a visit from Clegg. The lean senior citizen shows up dressed as the professional that he is. He wears a tie clip that bears his name and a pocket protector with several pens – tools of his trade.

He also brings with him a sweetness that is immediately apparent to anyone he meets. “He doesn’t have an unkind thought in his head,” Jester says.

Clegg will sometimes show up with a loaf of bread or a carton of sweet rolls, intended as gifts for his customers. “He just wants to give something back,” Jester says. “He wants to thank people for what they’re doing for him.”

As if a visit from Luther Clegg weren’t thanks enough.

Posted on June 2, 2003 - by Ralph Grizzle

Roads Less Traveled

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s graduating class walked without senior Charles Bishop Kuralt in the spring of 1955. The 20-year-old, who at age 16 had enrolled with an intent to major in history, had been too busy in his role as editor of the student-run newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, to bother with attending to his studies — or even going to classes.

Where he did go after his class walked was directly to The Charlotte News, the largest evening newspaper in the Carolinas. There, he wrote front-page stories on a wide range of topics, including one story about a runaway circus elephant named Vicki who eluded capture for 11 days. “The elephant who went out like a lion came in like a lamb,” Kuralt wrote, and then went on to tell how Vicki was captured.

The young reporter dressed as a bum to get inside a rescue mission to write about what life was like for the destitute. “I was there to find out what it’s like on the other side of the green-painted plate glass windows that face the street,” he wrote, under a headline that read, “Night at the Rescue Mission: Reporter Kuralt Checks In.” He is pictured under a “Jesus Saves” sign, slim, a hat casting a shadow on the upper part of his face, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips.

He wrote a touching story about the death of a sparrow, not normally the stuff of newspapers but an engaging story when told by such a talented writer. “She was no mere straw-and-grass sparrow. Somewhere in the Diana Drive neighborhood of Joe Ammons, she had found a fine, long length of nylon thread. With infinite skill and care, she had wound the nylon thread in her nest. It was like the frosting on the cake, or the single red cherry atop a sundae, or the bright chrome strip of an automobile.” But the story ended in tragedy: One of the sparrow’s babies strangled itself on the thread; the mother despaired and abandoned her fine nest.

Kuralt was assigned to write a story on prostitution in Charlotte, and after some investigation cheerfully reported that Charlotte had no lascivious ladies of the night. “Charles tells me there’s no prostitution in this town,” the News editor growled at reporter Julian Scheer. “Do you think that’s true?” Scheer replied that there might be a few. “Well, do you think you could find Charles one so he can do this story?” Charles found the story, all right, but felt he was a washout at hard news reporting.

He had been at the News for nearly a year when he began to pen a column in April 1956 that would pave the way for the rest of his career. “People” sent him onto the streets of Charlotte in search of stories. “Each day I would seek out some cop or kid or cab driver,” Kuralt wrote, “and tell his story in a few hundred words . . . I used to walk bravely up to panhandlers and crapshooters — the sort of people others avoided — and strike up conversation.”

On the streets, Kuralt met the likes of Israel Smith who collected junk by day and played the violin at night. He wrote that Smith had been educated at New York’s Julliard School of Music. “But there’s no money in Mozart,” the junkman told him. “There is money in piles of lamp bases, garage roofs and airplane motors,” Kuralt concluded.
He wrote about Martha Farmer finding love in a bus station, and then going to buy a new dress for a date only to be disappointed. He wrote about people, black and white, and about Civil Rights as Bob Raiford is fired from WBT for airing opinions about an attack on Nat “King”Cole in Birmingham, Alabama.

Kuralt’s talent for doing these types of stories did not go unnoticed. The Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate awarded Kuralt its Ernie Pyle Award for the 170 “People” columns he penned in 1956. CBS sent a congratulatory note; Kuralt fired back, “If you really mean you’re impressed by this, isn’t there something you could do?” The director of news at CBS responded with a job offer, and thus began Kuralt’s 37 years at the network.

The reporter who hosted such popular programs as “Sunday Morning” and “On the Road” remained virtually unchanged from the writer who got his start at The Charlotte News. The tone, styles and reportorial substance laid down in “People” by 22-year-old Kuralt – trim, bright-eyed and as fresh as the starched white shirt he wore – differed little from that of the balding, roll-bellied reporter who at CBS collected 13 Emmys and other awards for the stories he found in places where no one else thought to look.
–
Asheville resident Ralph Grizzle is author of “Remembering Charles Kuralt” and editor of “Charles Kuralt’s People.”

Posted on June 2, 2003 - by Ralph Grizzle

Building Biltmore

In the early 1960s, Asheville’s Biltmore House was, in the accountant’s parlance, bleeding red ink. The 250-room French Renaissance Chateau, which had been opened for tourism in 1930 at the city and county’s request, was losing $250,000 a year. Profits from Biltmore Dairy were used to shore up the losses, but at the rate things were going, the house would soon milk the dairy dry.

The grandson of George Washington Vanderbilt knew that the estate could not cling to such a precarious financial precipice for long. So the young junior officer at New York’s Chase National Bank did what Asheville native Thomas Wolfe could not do: He returned home.

William Amherst Cecil, who was born and raised in the sprawling Biltmore House, returned to “see what could be done about the old family homestead,” an 8,000-acre dairy farm and country estate. With his wife and children by him, Bill Cecil began the arduous process of putting the family home on the road to self-sustainability.

He launched a vigorous marketing campaign that included offering photos of the Biltmore House to newspapers. In those fledgling days of building a business, he wore all caps — manager, promoter, ticket salesman. “The work was so diverse,”he says. “If I tired of doing one thing, I could go do another.”

He experimented with growing mushrooms and salad tomatoes for distribution. “We did anything that we could,”he says. “Even landscaping for outsiders. We couldn’t afford a full-time landscaping crew, so we tried to fill in their time doing work off the estate.”After eight years, Cecil had reversed the tide, and in 1968, the house realized a profit, $16.34. Black ink never looked so good. “It made my day,”Cecil says, adding perspective: “It certainly was better than losing half-a-million dollars.”

At last, Biltmore House was able to sustain itself without needing subsidies from the dairy farm, so in 1979, Bill and his brother George split their inheritance — George took the farm and some land; Bill held on to the house and grounds.

Nearly 1 million visitors pass through the gates today, compared with 361,000 visitors in 1979. 1998 revenues, the last year for which figures were available, exceeded $53 million, compared to 1979 revenues of $3 million. In 2001, Biltmore opened a deluxe inn on the property, and with it, created many more new jobs. Biltmore now has a payroll of more than 1,500 employees, compared with 129 in 1979.

Admission to Biltmore, $2.50 in the early 60s, is now $36. “When it was $2.50, you got to see the ground floor, the gardens, the greenhouse and the dairy barn, and that was about it,”Cecil says.

What makes Bill Cecil’s story even more interesting is that had his grandfather not died of a heart attack at age 54, the estate may never have had the chance to fulfill George Vanderbilt’s ambition for a self-sustaining estate.

Shortly before his death, Vanderbilt was lobbying the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take control of the house. The wealthy Vanderbilt had spent most of his inheritance building the house, and now the country’ new income and inheritance taxes meant that he could no longer afford the upkeep.

To stay solvent following her husband’s death, Vanderbilt’s widow deeded away all but 11,000 of 125,000 acres. Had it not been for her prudence, Biltmore would not have been what it is today.

Bill Cecil’s grandfather will be remembered for constructing a country estate of magnificent proportion, but his grandson receives credit for assuring that the estate would be around for generations to come. It is one thing to build a house but quite another to maintain it.

Cecil retired from Biltmore in 1995, during the centennial year of the house’ opening. He left the business in the care of his son, Bill Jr., who became CEO and president.

Posted on January 2, 2002 - by Ralph Grizzle

Well Known North Carolinians And Their Heroes

How do we define our heroes? Webster’s Dictionary tells us they are mythological or legendary figures “endowed with great strength, courage or ability.” Certainly our militia, our firefighters, our policemen and others who face great danger with dauntless courage fit that definition, and you’ll meet at least one of those folks, Daniel Johnson, on the following pages.

Johnson, who lost both legs saving the life of a fellow sailor, says heroes are people who act as “symbols for us to model our lives after.” After talking with many North Carolinians for this story, we suspect Johnson’s definition is closer to the truth.

Heroes inspire us to be the best that we can be. Many of the North Carolinians you’ll meet on the following pages took inspiration from someone who they considered to be the best at what they did.

Heroes need not perform feats of heroic proportions to be admired. They do not have to rush into burning buildings or put themselves in the line of fire. They may be immortalized as heroes simply by listening, or loving, or caring.

When Morley Safer asked Charles Kuralt why he defined the people he met on the back roads as heroes, Kuralt replied, “Because they keep the spirit of the country alive.” That is the essence of heroes. By keeping the spirit alive, they embody us with irrepressible verve. In doing so, they perpetuate a new generation of heroes, endowing all of us with strength and courage – and teaching us to tap into abilities that we never knew we had.

Bob Timberlake, artist

My dad instilled his work ethic in me. He worked hard, was the salt of the earth, one of the people who made America what it is. He worked in a furniture store that my grandfather started in 1910. The furniture store had a funeral home in back, and he ran both. He enjoyed the relationships that he had with the families. It wasn’t death [to be mourned] but a family gathering, a reunion. He made lemonade out of lemons wherever possible.

Later, he started a gas company. After working all day, he and Jack [an employee] would leave the house with some sort of gas appliance – a water heater or a stove – on the truck. Dad would not come home until he had sold that gas appliance. For the first three years, he averaged selling 365 gas appliances a year. He taught me that the best salesmen in the world were the ones who were in love with what they were selling. I am in love with what I am selling. The whole idea of what I do is to bring a little joy and happiness into people’s lives. Dad set the stage for that.

Betty Rae McCain, former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

“North Carolinians are so wonderful that you can be inspired by all sorts of people. One may be a lawyer; another, a musician, an artist or a doctor. So it’s hard to single out just one. Jim Hunt, who I worked with since 1966, is one. Bill Friday, who I adore, is another. My daddy was the funniest man alive, and my mother was saintly. I miss both of them daily. And I devotedly loved Mrs. J.B. Spilman, now deceased. She was the first North Carolina Employment Security Commission Chairman, worked until she was almost 90 and was someone who persevered in the face of great tragedy, including the loss of her son in World War II. My husband makes the cut – for his long-suffering.”

William Friday, University of North Carolina President Emeritus

“My dad had four sons and a daughter, and though he had attended Chapel Hill for only one summer session, he sent all five of us through college, four of us for advanced degrees. He just drilled education into us all the time when we were growing up. One of the most memorable times was when he drove me in an A-Model Ford to Wake Forest. We walked in, and the dean said, ‘Son, do want to go to school here?’ He took my father’s word for [tuition payment].”

Friday’s father David L. Friday was chairman of his church’s Board of Deacons and Mayor of Dallas, North Carolina. He worked with the Boy Scouts and “did all the things that inspired us to be committed to public service.”

“My dad taught us lessons of tenacity, commitment, hard work and family love. So he has to be my hero.”

Charlie Daniels, Award-Winning musician, vocalist

“Jesus Christ is my big hero, and along with him Billy Graham and Pat Robertson. Billy Graham has such integrity. He is a man who has stood for what he believes in for so many years and has never wavered. There’s never been a doubt about his integrity or honesty. He’s just someone you can really look up to.”

Daniels, born in Wilmington, says he was raised in a Christian home and that though he strayed, he gradually came back to Christianity. The Charlie Daniels Band frequently has performed at the Billy Graham Crusades. Recalling the first time he met Graham, Daniels says: “I was excited about meeting him. I called him Dr. Graham. He said, ‘I’m not much of a doctor.’ He was very humble.”

Daniel Johnson, naval officer who lost legs saving sailor’s life

“I was fortunate when I was growing up that I didn’t have to look too far to find heroes. My grandfather [Eugene L. Daniel] was a chaplain during World War II. He landed in Africa with the U.S. forces and was captured during a campaign by the Germans. Though he could have avoided capture, he volunteered to stay behind with troops who were injured and could not retreat with the Americans. He set the example for me.

“I found his stories to be heroic and learned through him that heroes were important. I think of heroes as people who have lived a certain standard that a lot of us look up to. They provide visible symbols for us to model our lives after. I don’t know what life would be like without them.”

Johnson, a native of Hickory, lost both legs below the knee in 1999 after saving the life of another sailor during an accident aboard the command ship USS Blue Ridge in Korea.

Doris Betts, novelist and Alumni Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill

“Apart from my parents, I have to name the Litaker family, which bought the house where we were renting an apartment when I was about 8. They were schoolteachers, the kind of people who took – and kept – piles of National Geographics, who still had their own childhood books stored in the attic waiting for a starved reader like me, and who allowed me to learn to play their piano.”

Betts also recognizes “a long string of devoted teachers” in the Statesville public schools, “especially Mrs. Josie White who died recently, in her 90s, and was still correcting hospital workers’ grammar from her deathbed. The Rev. Mr. H. Louis Patrick, now of Charlotte, who first made it clear that believers and intellectuals were not in opposition. College writer and teachers, like Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley, Frances Gray Patton at Woman’s College in Greensboro, and Jessie Rehder and C. Hugh Holman of UNC-Chapel Hill, newspaper editor Robert Mason of Sanford and Norfolk. So many of these, after emptying themselves of many kindnesses and after setting so high a standard of performance and character, have died, but never their memory, never their influence, never my gratitude.”

Earl Scruggs, born in North Carolina, the banjo picker moved to Nashville in 1945.

“My hero was my father, who died when I was 4 years old. I remember him pickin’ a little bit, and I missed him a terribly lot after his death. He was a farmer in the Flint Hill community in Cleveland County. Like him, I farmed until I was 16, then went to work in a thread mill in Shelby. Because of my father’s early inspiration, I grew up with a banjo and guitar – I was playing before he passed away – but my favorite was always the banjo.”

Roy Ackland, host of Roy’s Folks

“Charles Kuralt was such an inspiration to me when I was younger. His genuiness is the thing I learned to appreciate most. He was not just reporting; he went beyond the story and showed genuine interest in the individual. In his travels around the country, he would never go out on our differences. He showed us to be all members of the same club – just living in different places.”

Fred Chappell, award-winning poet and novelist

“Ron McNair, the astronaut who died aboard the Challenger (1986) and who was one of the few black astronauts. He was courageous and extremely learned. I always wanted to meet him. I think of him as one of the martyrs for science. Astronauts have done so much to further our knowledge of our own world.”

Senator Jessie Helms

“My number one hero is Jesus Christ, followed by Thomas Jefferson, Douglas MacArthur, Robert E. Lee, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Jefferson understood the meaning of freedom. To him it was not just a word but a blessing. He realized it can’t be achieved or kept easily. MacArthur showed courage when others did not, and Robert E. Lee – well, my wife would kick up a fuss if I didn’t include him. If there were no Churchill, I don’t know what would have become of World War II. Thatcher was cut out of the same bolt of cloth as Churchill. She was a tough lady who understood that the socialist government, which was the alternative to hers, just wouldn’t work.”

Hugh Morton, photographer, guardian of Grandfather Mountain

“Charles Kuralt, Charlie Justice and Bill Friday come to mind. All of them were – or are – the best at what they did. Charlie Justice was unquestionably the most exciting football player we ever had in North Carolina. Bill Friday, having served as head of the university system for 30 years, did a lot for higher education in the state. Charles Kuralt was the best ever in his line of work.

“I’m a hero worshipper. If I see someone who is good at what they do – a good plumber, a good carpenter – I have admiration for them. . I never have been the best at anything, but I am inspired by people who are. Just recently I went to the 90th birthday of Luther Thomas, who lives near Burnsville. He can carve the most marvelous black-eyed Susans from one piece of wood. He doesn’t use glue or anything else. He carves a narrow stem with flowers branching out of the top.”

Jerry Bledsoe, Best-selling author

“Mark Twain, our greatest writer as far as I’m concerned. Wise, funny, true

and good. His work is as fresh today as when it was written, and I never tire

of reading it. In low times, I often pull Twain down from the shelf.”

Joe Gallison, actor, now living in Wilmington, who for 17 years played Dr. Neal Curtis on “Days of Our Lives.”

“Anton Checkov, the consummate writer who died at age 44. To be a great writer you have to understand the human experience. Checkov understood it more beautifully than any other writer, except for Shakespeare perhaps. It’s also true of actors, to the extent to which they understand humanity and themselves and have access to that, they can recognize their own potential as illuminators of the human condition.”

John Ehle, novelist

“Paul Green took a special interest in my work and was supportive of all sorts of causes that were important to me when I was in my 30s. He was very helpful and encouraging, a good advisor, and a wonderful person to sit down with and talk over a manuscript or an issue. He was very much against the death penalty. When he was living in New York City, he would invite me to use his guestroom at no charge, but he would always ask for a contribution for somebody on death row. I’d give $100. He thought money to hire the right lawyers could save anybody on death row. Writing was one thing for him, but so were certain liberal causes.”

Lee W. Kinard Jr., former TV anchor, reporter, writer and producer.

“Edward R. Murrow is a hero for me. His voice was one of the first radio voices that I adhered to when I was 9 or 10 years old. From my earliest years, radio was a real companion. My mother put me to bed so early that I had to read books from the Concord Public Library or listen to radio. I listened to Murrow on WBT radio out of Charlotte. He became the inspiration for me to get into radio. The drama of, ‘Gee, wonder what it would be like to do what he’s doing?’ ”

Linda Lavin, the star of “Alice” from 1976 through 1985 makes her home in Wilmington

“It’s not one particular person. There are many, such as the women of the last two decades who have made great positive strides for all women economically, spiritually and politically. No one woman embodies all of that for me. I learn from multitude. My philosophy is that my life hasn’t been turned around by just one person but by the inspiration of how one person connects with another and another and how the community formed from those connections informs me.”

Marijo Moore, Cherokee author, artist, poet and journalist.

“My paternal Cherokee granddaddy, Cornelius Hansford Moore. I see his faint outline in a ragged gray suit and worn fedora hat as he stands on a street corner in front of my grandmother’s tiny shotgun house. Granddaddy stood five-feet-four inches and was slight of stature. ‘Paper-sack-brown’ was how my family described his coloring. Shiny, crow-black hair and eyes, he called himself a ‘full-bloodied Cherokee.’

“When I was growing up in the 50s, it wasn’t as acceptable to be American Indian as it is now. I am sure at one time Granddaddy was extremely proud of his Indianness, but because he was constantly put down by others, this changed. Granddaddy preferred to pray down by the river or in the woods. I think these were the only two places he felt safe and at peace with the world. Because he did not attend a Christian church, he was ridiculed and, more often, ignored. I know this hurt him terribly and so he drank to hide his pain. It was during his drunkenness that he would sing in Cherokee and tell me how proud he was that I had his blood. Some people called Granddaddy crazy.

But his craziness has manifested itself in my spirit as the madness of creativity, and for this, I am grateful. The Cherokee songs he sang to me and the stars are the words that sparkle in my writings and the blood he passed on to me is the blood of survival.”

Max Lanier, former Major League pitcher and North Carolina Sports Hall of Famer

“Stan Musial was my hero. He was not only a good hitter but also a friend of mind. A down-to-earth guy.” Now living in Florida, Denton-native Lanier says Musial taught him to not let fame go to his head. “Musial would talk to anybody and go all out to help them. He was just an everyday guy who was raised in Pennsylvania where his dad worked in the coal mines.”

Pat Hingle, living in Wilmington, Hingle is one of the industry’s busiest character actors

“My father flew the coup when I was six years old, so as a child, I lived off and on with my grandfather who was a [railway] engineer. I would swell with pride when he came puffing up the Saluda Grade. He would wave to me with his red bandana and engineer’s cap. Now this was before the airplane, so a steam engineer was a very respected character. The railway ran right by Main Street, with people piling into Saluda from Charleston to get away from heat. I was this skinny kid with short pants and no shirt. The other kids would point at me and say, ‘That’s his grandfather.’ I’d strut around. It was a big deal.”

Robert Morgan, novelist

“One of my heroes is Dean A. Ward, principal of Tuxedo Elementary School when I was a student there in the 1950s, and my Sixth Grade teacher. Growing up at a time when there were no rural high schools in Henderson County, Mr. Ward had worked his way through Fruitland Institute, and entered Furman University around 1922. After graduating from Furman he earned a master’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. I’m sure he was the first person from our community to earn an advanced degree. I have two particular memories of Mr. Ward as a teacher. When I began school in 1951, I was overwhelmed by the bleak prospect of sitting in a desk all day. I made it through the first half day, but the next day, the first full day, I broke down in grief and desolation, knowing I’d be away from home all day. The teacher took me to the principal’s office. Instead of scolding me, Mr. Ward sat me on his lap and let me play with the gold Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain. He made funny faces until he had me laughing, and he said, ‘Robert, you don’t want to go home now; we couldn’t run this school without you.’ I returned to the classroom feeling my importance, and never cried again.

“In the Sixth grade I fell in love with reading, and because the Henderson County Bookmobile had begun to come to Green River Church once each month, I had access to more books than I had ever seen before. I read Jack London and James Oliver Curwood’s stories of the Yukon. I read ‘Farmer Boy’ and ‘Oliver Twist.’ I liked to read so much I often took the books to school and read them inside my spelling book. If Mr. Ward caught me reading while he lectured, he simply lifted the book out of my hands and laid it on the shelf, without pausing in his presentation. He drilled us in grammar and made us recite the parts of speech. He was a master storyteller and often entertained us with scenes from ‘The Odyssey’ and one afternoon told us the whole plot of ‘Silas Marner.’

“In the spring of 1957 the class took a day trip to The Biltmore House near Asheville. Because I didn’t have the three-dollar cost I had to stay at school while the rest of the class left on the excursion. Mr. Ward told me that instead of sitting idle all day I should write a story. Knowing I loved stories of the North he gave me a plot: a man is lost in the Canadian Rockies. How does he find his way back to civilization? I sat with the page in front of me, puzzling about how to begin a story. Finally I decided I would just put down the details about how he survives. I told how he sharpened a stick on a rock to make a spear, and how he rubbed two sticks together to start a fire, and how he caught a fish by threading a worm on a thorn. I got so caught up writing the details that before I knew it the day was over and the other students had returned. That was my first story.

“Mr. Ward taught hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young people in his years at Tuxedo School. Many of us have had better lives, and been better people, because we knew him in those early years.”

Roman Gabriel, National Football League’s Most Valuable Player in 1969

“My father a Filipino guy who worked as a waiter and cook for Atlantic Coastline Railroad. They retired him at 69, but he went on to work as a short-order cook until age 90. He passed away working. He was probably first and foremost the guy I tried to pattern myself after, because of his work ethic. Dad wasn’t a sports person, but he taught me to smile and laugh and enjoy what I was doing, whether I was having a good time or not. I don’t remember ever going on the field not to ‘play’ ball.”

Tom Wicker, former New York Times columnist

A native of Hamlet, North Carolina, Wicker, who now resides in Vermont, says the person he has admired most over the years is Dr. Frank Porter Graham. “I admired him for his character, integrity and his courage.”

Wilma Dykeman, writer, historian and environmentalist

“I have many heroes. Eleanor Roosevelt, because of her political and personal commitment to justice and compassion for all people. Rachel Carson, because of her book, ‘Silent Spring,’ which brought the environment to our attention. James Stokely, my late husband, who treated everyone in the same wonderful way – by being a wonderful listener. John Hope Franklin, who overcame all the impediments of racism to make history by writing history. And Mark Twain, because he made us laugh and think at the same time.”

Posted on April 2, 2001 - by Ralph Grizzle

Stories That Make Us Smile

The Old North State may be geographically diverse (after all, our license plates once bore the phrase “Variety Vacationland”) and even culturally separated from one end to the other (can the folks from Murphy really claim that much in common with those in Manteo?), but our oral tradition unites and binds us. From the ridges of our majestic mountains, the High Country’s Orville and Ray Hicks engage audiences with their Appalachian antics and Jack tales while on the fringe of our Atlantic shores, Harkers Islander David Yeomans tells tales of life on Cape Lookout. We are a state of stories and of storytellers.

A good dose of humor permeates many of the stories told in our state. We North Carolinians seem to appreciate few things more than a good laugh, or at the very least a subtle smile, at the end of a well-told story. And we’ve been blessed with an abundance of folks who can tell a funny story. If space permitted, in fact, we could fill this issue (and probably a year’s worth of issues) with amusing stories spun by North Carolina’s storytellers and humorists. For now, though, we hope you’ll sit back and enjoy just a few of the stories that make us smile.

Carl Goerch

Founder of the magazine you’re holding (called The State from 1933 through 1996), Carl Goerch was born in New York state in 1891 but came to North Carolina in 1913 as a newspaper editor. Goerch’s anecdotes appeared throughout the pages of The State and in his half dozen books. Here’s a story you may remember from the magazine’s March 1, 1969, issue.

This lady in Raleigh was having a bad time at the bridge club. She trumped her partner’s ace, reneged twice and passed an informatory double. She seemed confused and uncomfortable. Finally she excused herself and went to the powder room.

When she returned, her playing picked up and she and her partner made the rubber. “What happened to you?” asked the partner. “You’re really back in the game.”

“Took off my girdle,” replied the lady calmly.

Orville Hicks

Orville Hicks was raised in Beech Mountain, one of 11 children. With no radio or television at his home, young Orville listened nightly to his mother, who told stories that had been handed down from Orville’s grandfather, the legendary Council Harmon, the earliest known teller of Jack tales in Western North Carolina.

Orville travels the state”¢the country, in fact”¢amusing audiences with his Appalachian antics. During the week and on Saturdays, he manages a container site, located on U.S. 321 between Boone and Blowing Rock. The dump and recycling station has become a virtual tourist attraction, as those who use the facility stop to listen to Orville’s tales, like the one that follows. Orville’s cousin, by the way, is Ray Hicks, one of the most famous living American traditional storytellers.

Well I had two uncles back in the mountains ‘ere. They went out and bought ‘em a horse apiece. We got the horses home and got to lookin’ at ‘em, and that one says, “How we goin’ tell these horses apart?”

That other one said, “Let’s measure and see which one’s the longest.”

They got their ruler out and measured the horse and both of ‘em was the same longness. They measured them this other way and both of them was the same tallness, and they still couldn’t tell ‘em apart. That one said, “What we gonna do?”

The other uncle said, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll take the scissors and cut a piece out of my horse’s ear.”

He got the scissors and cut a little piece out of his horse’s ear and said, “Now we can tell them apart.”

Well, that night the other horse got hung in a barbwire fence and tore a piece out of his ear. They went down ‘ere the next morning to get ‘em and they couldn’t tell ‘em apart. That one said, “What we gonna do now?”

That other one said, “I’ll cut part of mine’s tail out.” He cut about three or four inches of the horse’s tail out. He said, “Now we can tell them apart.”

But that night that horse got hung in a barbwire fence and pulled part of its tail out. They got down ‘ere lookin’ at ‘em. That one said, “What we gonna do now? How we gonna tell ‘em apart?”

That other one said, “The only thing I know to do is you take the white one and I’ll keep the black one.”

Jerry Bledsoe

Best known for his gripping chronicles of true crimes, Jerry Bledsoe’s first true-crime book, Bitter Blood, spent six months on The New York Times 1988 best-seller list, half of that as No. 1. But Bledsoe also is known for his humorous writing. You may remember him as a columnist and reporter at The Charlotte Observer and The Greensboro Daily News & Record. He also served as contributing editor of Esquire magazine from 1972 until 1975, and his work has appeared in other national publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and New York magazine.

As a journalist, he twice received the National Headliner Award and also the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award. His work has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize four times. Bledsoe was born in Danville, Virginia, but grew up in Thomasville. He and his wife Linda live in Asheboro and in Carroll County, Virginia, where he does his writing.

I didn’t intend to buy ham when I went to the supermarket, but I noticed it was on sale as I was passing the deli section, and I’m a sucker for anything on sale.

“I’ll have four ounces of that ham sliced thin,” I said to the young woman who came to help me from the bakery department, where she had been negotiating the sale of a Mickey Mouse birthday cake.

“You mean you only want one slice?” she said, looking puzzled.

“No, I don’t want it sliced thick,” I said, thinking perhaps she had misunderstood me. “I want it sliced thin.”

“Still that won’t be but about one slice,” she said.

Now it was my turn to look puzzled.

“A quarter of a pound?” I said. “That would have to be a thick slice.”

“Oh, you want a quarter of a pound?” she said.

“Yes,” I said, relieved that we were now getting on the same wave length.

“Then you want 25 ounces.”

“No,” I said, again befuddled, “I just want four ounces.”

“But that won’t be but one slice,” she said.

It was clear we’d reached some sort of impasse, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Suddenly, her face brightened, as if she’d seen a way out.

She was holding a thick red marking pencil and she placed it on the scale.

“See, that weighs five ounces right there,” she said.

“No, that weighs point zero five of a pound,” I pointed out. “Five hundredeths of a pound.”

I was trying to figure out how many ounces that came to but my mind wouldn’t calculate that fast.

“A pound is 16 ounces, right?” I said.

“No a pound is a hundred ounces. See, we have computers now,” she said, indicating the digital scale.

“Oh,” I said, flabbergasted at what computers had now wrought. “Well, I just want a quarter of a pound.”

“So you want 25 ounces.”

“I guess so.”

“Sliced thin?”

“Sliced thin.”

“I see how you’re looking at it,” she said, attempting to offer solace as she handed me the ham, but it was clear that she was only feeling sympathy for an old codger that the computer age had left behind with 16-ounce pounds.

From The Bare-bottomed Skier and Other Unlikely Tales (Down Home Press, October 1990)

Betty Ray McCain

Faison-native Betty Ray McCain was the secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. She has served as president of NC Democratic Women and became the first chairwoman of the NC Democratic Party. Once called the funniest woman in America by actor Alan Alda, McCain is a natural-born storyteller.

Hal Crowther

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, of American parents, Hal Crowther is a graduate of Williams College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was a staff writer at Time and an associate editor at Newsweek, where he was television critic and editor of the media section. In 1981, he began writing his syndicated column for Spectator magazine, where he was executive editor from 1986 to 1989.

Since 1989, his column has originated at The Independent Weekly in Durham. In 1992, it received the Baltimore Sun’s H. L. Mencken Writing Award, the first weekly column so honored. The column is syndicated to weeklies and Sunday newspapers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

Crowther also writes a column on Southern culture and literature for The Oxford American and contributes regularly to the book section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has published two collections of his essays, Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South (LSU Press, 2000) and Unarmed But Dangerous (Longstreet Press, 1996). He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and is married to novelist Lee Smith.

Not long ago, my wife and I moved into a house in Hillsborough, North Carolina, that was built before the Civil War. It’s of no special interest to historians, as far as we know. But it has an aura. It belonged to a family of undertakers, for one thing. My bedroom overlooks an eighteenth-century cemetery, where a signer of the Declaration of Independence is interred along with Confederate officers, antebellum governors, and the like. We own a decrepit red carriage house from a previous century and an ancient freestone wall halfburied under honeysuckle, and out back a brick summer kitchen, older than the house, where someone’s slaves cooked supper when Andrew Jackson was president.

Crooked trees, stripped and maimed by the hurricane, give the place an Addams Family atmosphere. A friend, only half joking, tells me I’ve come to rest where I belong-in a decommissioned mortuary with a view of the graveyard.

History has tightened its grip on me. Don’t look for me on horseback next spring, dressed for a Civil War reenactment. But those accountants brandishing bayonets don’t seem quite as silly as they used to.

History lives in the bricks and stones. For a price, established by a realtor, you can listen to those stones day and night. In the South, as so many writers have noted, they never shut up . . .

From Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South (Louisiana State University Press, August 2000)

Sidebar: Rah, Rah Carolina!

As a journalism student at UNC, I remember picking up a newspaper on the Chapel Hill campus that parodied NC State’s student newspaper, The Technician. The bogus paper was titled The Tachnician, so that pronouncing the title would make one sound as though they had a wad of tobacco wedged in the cheek. The paper contained front-page articles about farm issues, cow milking and the like, all silly stuff but a good poke at our rival NC State. I’m sure the students at the Raleigh campus responded in kind.

Jokes and prods between university rivals represent perhaps what most distinguishes North Carolina humor from Southern humor – or even from our national humor, if there is such a thing. While many of our puns may resonate throughout the South – especially those jokes about farmers, traveling salesmen, rednecks, religion and other topics – it is our universities and the rivalries they spawn that create a humor that arguably could be claimed as distinctly North Carolinian.

Sure, every state has its share of college jokes, but the abundance of universities in our state, and their proximity to one another, provide the fodder for many a good joke. After all, most of us claim allegiance to at least one of our state universities, whether or not we are alumni. There are avid Duke fans who have yet to set foot in Durham but love leveling a joke at Carolina, State and Wake Forest.

Of course, we Chapel Hill alumni respond in kind, as in the following joke reprinted in Tar Heel Laughter (University of North Carolina Press, August 1983).

A young Chapel Hill foursome . . . were burying a pet bird that a cat had killed. One little girl was telling her mother about it all. “We put it in a box and we dug a hole under the crabapple tree,” the youngster said wistfully. “And Tommy prayed about the bird, and we covered it up then. And then we sang a song . . . ”

“What did you sing?” asked the child’s mother.

“We sang ‘Don’t Give A Damn for Duke University’ because that was the only song that all four of us knowed,” she replied.

Asheville-based writer Ralph Grizzle is a graduate of School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Posted on January 2, 2000 - by Ralph Grizzle

The Long Journey Home

In September 1994, I received a phone call. “Mr. Grizzle, it’s Charles Kuralt. You probably thought I’d died . . . .”

The consummate traveler had taken several weeks to answer the messages I had left for him. I was a reporter for a trade magazine for the American Society of Travel Agents. Kuralt was to be the keynote speaker at the Society’s annual conference. My job was to profile him for the upcoming event.

Kuralt said he had been “up in Montana doing some fishing.” He sounded jubilant. For close to an hour, we talked about his career, his North Carolina roots and travel. “Are you a fan of the West, Ralph?” I told him I was. I said I loved its rugged beauty.

“It is gorgeous,” he rumbled with delight. “I just hold my breath at the beauty. A couple of days ago, I got going just about as the sun was coming up. I was coming back from Billings, back toward western Montana. With the sun behind me, a cup of McDonald’s coffee in the cup holder of the Jeep and the NPR station on the radio, somehow or other everything really seemed right with the world.”

This was Charles Kuralt at his best, celebrating simplicity: the Montana landscape, the rising sun, a cup of coffee and the cool-mannered broadcast of National Public Radio. He was in no hurry. He had no hard deadlines. There was no place he had to be. Half an hour into the interview, I asked if he needed to go. “No,” he said, and he meant it. “I have all the time in the world right now.”

Six months earlier, Kuralt had left CBS. He had grown tired of the “chatter and commotion” of television and the burden of having to answer to an employer. Not that his employer ever knew where he was. He was, of course, on the road for much of his 37 years at CBS.

He thought it unwise to stay too close in touch with the office. “You get a long line of messages that leaves you no time to do your work the rest of the day,” he told the Greensboro News & Record in 1994. “You need a little freedom in this life. In this business, you go and go and go. You never have time to think.”

Kuralt wanted some time to think. He wanted time to take the days at his pace, to slow down and be present in life. He told me it all dawned on him at the 1993 Winter Olympics in Norway. He was enjoying his time over there, but what he really wanted to do was hang around in Scandinavia to learn more about the country and the people.

“But no, I had to leave on a certain day and get back to New York to do the ‘Sunday Morning’ program. And even that much duty, I realized, had become kind of onerous. I longed for an even greater freedom than I had. An inner voice spoke to me and said, ‘You have done this long enough, you know that? You’re not going to do anything new or better, so you’re just going to have to give up your corner office and your big paycheck and strike out and do something different.’ ”

He returned to New York, and with three years remaining on his contract, he left CBS. Then he set about doing what he loved best: roaming the country with pad and pen. He was going back to where it all started, back to the road, back home.

“I always feel like a North Carolina boy a long way from home when I’m in Thailand or Zaire.”"“Charles Kuralt in 1994 interview

Popular history will tell you that Charles Kuralt was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was born there, as the records indicate, but only because it had a hospital. At the time of his birth, Charles’ parents were living with his maternal grandparents on their 100-acre tobacco farm in Onslow County. Worried about complications from delivering the baby at home, the Kuralts drove to James Walker Memorial Hospital, a little more than an hour south. After Charles was born, the family immediately returned to the farm.

It is an important distinction, because Charles Bishop Kuralt grew up not as a city-dweller but as a farm boy who later in life began to acquire a thin veneer of city sophistication. Named for his paternal uncle, Carl (Norse for “a man of the common people”), Kuralt remained connected to his rural roots all his life. Being raised on a farm provided him with his neighborly mien and ambling Southern disposition. On television, at times, he appeared as though he were leaning on a fencepost, dispensing rural wisdom to viewers.

The farmhouse where Kuralt spent much of his childhood had no electricity. In winter, woodstoves and fireplaces worked to heat the high-ceilinged rooms. There was no plumbing. A pump with a long, cast-iron handle delivered drinking water on the porch. A gourd on a nail nearby served as a drinking dipper. There was a well in the side yard, with a bucket for watering the stock.

Life was full of simple pleasures. Charles spent his days flying kites of newspaper held rigid by flour paste, making slingshots from dogwood branches, and tickling Venus flytraps shut with a piece of straw. Evenings, his grandmother, Rena Bishop, stoked a fire to warm well water, which she poured into an old galvanized tub to wash the dust from her grandson.

After the evening meal, his grandfather spun long yarns. Charles sat spellbound by his voice.

On the front porch of their two-story farmhouse, Charles often curled up beside his grandmother on the swing and listened as she read to him from the travel books of Richard Halliburton, the short stories of O. Henry and the poems of Kipling and Poe. Her reading fueled his love of words and sensitivity to the rhythm of language. It was from her that he first heard words like “pyramid,” “igloo” and “Taj Mahal.”

Being raised under his grandparents’ tutelage gave Kuralt his formidable love of language and words. At the same time, being delivered into the Great Depression provided the boy with lessons of hardship. His parents, both recent university graduates, had emerged into a world of dim career prospects.

A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, Wallace Hamilton Kuralt graduated from UNC in 1931 with a Phi Beta Kappa key and a degree in Commerce, but found little sustaining work. Times were hard as the nation struggled to break the yoke of the Depression, and making a living often meant chasing one. The young man ventured all the way to Charleston, West Virginia, finding there a job in the advertising division of the Kroger Grocery Co.

He left behind his sweetheart, Ina Bishop, a home economics teacher in Hillsborough, North Carolina. They met on an eight-week, cross-country trip sponsored by the University of North Carolina. Wallace noticed the attractive young schoolteacher early in the trip, but it took him several days to muster the courage to approach her. He finally broke the ice by offering her a taste of a new soft drink. In later years, they joked they had Dr. Pepper to thank for bringing them together.

Wallace lasted only a matter of months in the hills of West Virginia, returning to North Carolina to marry Ina shortly before Christmas in 1931. The newlyweds made the Bishops’ tobacco farm their first home. There, Wallace tried his hand raising “truck” crops such as snap beans and cucumbers, but the cost of trucking the vegetables to market proved too great. He also tried his hand at raising grapes, but the sandy Onslow County soil was ill-suited to the vines. And at any rate, there was no market for grapes.

To eke out a living, Wallace turned to a variety of jobs, including painting Coca-Cola signs on barns and creosoting telephone poles. He “topped” tobacco for $1.50 a day and even tried to make a go at operating a farm supply store in nearby Jacksonville.

But in 1933, his fortunes changed. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration posted a job for a “social case worker” for Onslow County, one of the few specialties in demand among millions of unemployed. Kuralt later would say his father landed the job “because he could type.” No matter. After a few months, Wallace won a promotion to county director of rural rehabilitation, and soon after Charles was born, he gained an even bigger promotion, as social services case supervisor for Robeson County, 100 miles away.

The Kuralts packed their bags and moved to Lumberton, the county seat, and Wallace quickly climbed the ranks to become director of social services for a seven-county district in eastern North Carolina.

It was a time of frequent moves, but also of growing stability. Two years into the job, Wallace decided to make social work a lifelong career, and in the fall of 1937 began attending the University of North Carolina’s Graduate School of Social Work at Chapel Hill. To support the family while her husband studied, Ina found work in Stedman, a hamlet east of Fayetteville. Barely 2 years old, Charles seemed to already be fulfilling the same destiny as his forebears, shipping from one town to another.

“I come from wandering tribes, Norse and Celtic on my mother’s side it seems, nomad Bavarians on my father’s, ancestors become Scots-Irish and Slovenian by the time of their migration to America. As far as I could tell, none of them ever stayed anywhere for long.”"“Charles Kuralt, A Life on the Road

In Stedman, the Kuralts rented a three-room apartment in a house on Euclid Street. From his bedroom window, Charles could see the brick building where his mother taught home economics. On Sunday afternoons he looked out that same window to see his father walking across the street and sticking out his thumb, hitchhiking to Chapel Hill some 80 miles away for a week of attending classes in social work. It was a routine that lasted a year, hitching to Chapel Hill on Sundays and then returning home, sometimes by bus or train, after the end of Friday classes.

After a year of graduate study, Wallace found work as a field representative for the North Carolina Welfare Board. The job required another move, to Salisbury, where they lived in a brick house overlooking a highway. There, Charles gained a sibling when Ina gave birth to a second son, Wallace Jr.

The family stayed in Piedmont North Carolina only a short while before relocating to the Welfare Board’s eastern headquarters in Washington, an hour’s drive from the Bishops’ tobacco farm. His father’s new job gave Charles a taste of being on the road, as the 4-year-old often accompanied him on his travels around to local welfare offices in the county seats of eastern North Carolina. Riding along blacktop roads to places like New Bern, Swan Quarter, Harkers Island and Edenton, Wallace filled the miles and his young son’s mind with tales of North Carolina history and local lore.

Afternoons, they stopped to fish in creeks turned black by the tannin of cypress trees. At country stores and outside the county courthouses where the welfare offices were located, father and son stopped to listen to old men spin yarns. Charles would later say that traveling with his father taught him a “little more about real life” than most kids his age.

In the fall of 1939, Charles started kindergarten at St. Agnes Academy, a Catholic School across the Pamlico River. He showed early signs of being an independent thinker. He was a daring young man, once asking the school’s Sister Rosalind, “If thou shalt worship no graven images, then what are all those statues of the Virgin Mary and the Saints doing around the school?” The other nuns frowned, but Sister Rosalind smiled. Though Charles was barely 5, she promoted him to the first grade. Charles later quipped that he heard his first French words at St. Agnes. “I remember the word for piano. It is piano. I thought I could catch on to French if it continued that way.”

Living in Washington meant that the Kuralts were close enough to visit the Bishops’ farm often, and on summer nights they gathered around a battery-powered radio, its round dial glowing orange with the station call letters. News was all around. The radio was usually tuned to the nightly news broadcast on WPTF, and stacked neatly on a nearby table were the weekly Onslow County newspaper and the Raleigh News & Observer.

As the family sat listening to the news broadcast, Charles dreamed of becoming a reporter, even playing out his dream by borrowing his father’s hat and sticking a home-made “press card” in its band. At age 6, Charles Kuralt saw reporting as a romantic profession that would take him to the exotic places his grandmother had read to him about.

“A sandy road passed in front of the house and a logging path through the pinewoods behind it,” he wrote in A Life on the Road. “I always wondered where the roads went, and after I learned that the one in front went to another farm a mile away, I wondered where it went from there.”

Kuralt’s road carried him to Charlotte, where he lived until entering the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After leaving Chapel Hill, he came back to Charlotte to work for the Charlotte News, before being recruited by CBS and making his home in New York and the back roads of America.

Bill Friday was Kuralt’s dean when he was the editor of the Daily Tar Heel in Chapel Hill. And in the years that followed, it wasn’t uncommon for Friday to hear from him out of the blue. “Every once in a while, he’d call and say, ‘Well I just called to see if the dogwoods are blooming and if the flowers are up.’ He was homesick,” Friday said. “This was where his soul stayed.”

It is also where his soul came to rest. “I know you have better things to worry about, but I thought I would ask if you have any way of finding out if there are a couple of burial plots in Chapel Hill,” Kuralt wrote to his old friend on July 2, 1997, two days before his death. Then, beneath the typewritten text, he penned: “I am only now beginning to appreciate the love I have for Chapel Hill. It is a moving place the more I think about it.”

“I have been gone a long time, but now I am home.” ““ Charles Kuralt in North Carolina is My Home.

Posted on December 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

Black Mountain’s Challenge

The “Front Porch of Western North Carolina” revitalizes its links to the past.In just a few months, 150 or more runners will assemble at Black Mountain’s Lake Tomahawk. Their destination: the highest peak east of the Rockies. Come daylight February 26, runners from states nationwide will set off, one group running a full marathon–26.2 miles–to the Blue Ridge Parkway and back, the other group running an ultra-marathon to the summit of Mount Mitchell–40 miles roundtrip.

The event is one of the most challenging races in the country. The weather alone can be an intimidating factor. Starting an elevation of 2,360 feet, the runners for the 40-mile Mount Mitchell Challenge will pass through three climatic zones before reaching the 6,684-foot summit. At that elevation, conditions at Mount Mitchell resemble those of New England and the southern reaches of Canada, several hundred miles north. While it may be 45 or 50 degrees down in Black Mountain, where the average annual snowfall is about a foot, temperatures at Mount Mitchell, which gets on average 104 inches of snow yearly, could be well below freezing.

Two years ago, race participants had to run atop six-to-eight-foot snowdrifts on the summit. Last year, they trudged through a foot of soft snow. Conditions can be so challenging that race organizer Jim Curwen has posted this warning on his web site: “Do not underestimate the dangers or the difficulties inherent in this event!”

Curwen notes that the rough terrain coupled with the forces of nature make it “quite likely” that a competitor will suffer some sort of injury, ranging from “abrasions, contusions, or sprains . . . to hypothermia . . . to animal encounters, as this is still the natural habitat to the wildcat and the black bear.”

No, They’re Not Nuts

The upcoming annual event, Black Mountain’s third, underscores a larger, ongoing effort by merchants and town officials to revive historical links that will help drive tourism. “The Black Mountain Marathon and Mount Mitchell Challenge,” for example, was originated in part to stimulate business during the off months. The runners, who hail from as far away as California, lodge and shop locally for the days surrounding the event. “We’re inviting people in so that they can find out that in fact the town does not close down in the winter,” Curwen says.

More important for some in the town is that the race achieves a “rebirth” between Black Mountain and Mount Mitchell, something that race organizer Wendell Begley has been eager to do for nearly two decades.

In the early 1980s, Begley helped organize a cross-country ski challenge, but too much snow thwarted the event the first year and too much rain the next. Interest dissipated by the time the third annual challenge rolled around.

A few years later, Begley and a group of others worked to re-establish the narrow-gauge railroad that once took visitors from Black Mountain to Mitchell’s summit. The railroad had been used primarily to transport fir and spruce logs from the mountaintop to a sawmill in town. Then in 1915, protesters won a battle against logging on the Black Mountain Range–Mount Mitchell became North Carolina’s first state park, and the Mount Mitchell Scenic Railroad was established. The railroad ran for about six years until a toll road, which was less expensive to operate and maintain, replaced it in 1921.

The effort to revive the railroad “got a great deal of press,” Begley says. Unfortunately the old tracks had been removed, and in the end the cost to pump steam into the venture was too great.

The marathon, on the other hand, is comparatively inexpensive to operate and fairly weather-resistant. Moreover, it maintains important historical connections by following the old toll road, which originated in Black Mountain and followed the Continental Divide for nearly the entire route to the summit of Mitchell.

Swannanoa Valley Museum’s Curator Harriet Styles traveled the toll toad as a child. “People drove up in the morning and headed back in the afternoon,” she says. “It was so narrow that traffic could only travel one way.”

The “Mount Mitchell Motor Road” was billed as the “World’s Greatest Automobile Trip.” The “privilege of use of Road” was $1, the same cost as breakfast or “supper” at Camp Alice. The owners of the road advertised the trip to the top of Eastern America as the “Greatest one day outing trip every offered to the American people.”

An early brochure promoting the natural spectacles along the road reads: “A few people just a little while ago awoke to the fact that in a little 120-mile circle about Asheville is indeed the high altitude area of Eastern America. Very few know it, but in this area just mentioned are 44 peaks over 6,000 feet above the sea level, while our Mount Mitchell rears its majestic head 6,711 feet into a sky more beautiful and glorious than the Italian skies of song and story.” (The spirited brochure copywriters enthusiastically added 27 feet to the mountain’s elevation.)

In 1939, the Blue Ridge Parkway opened, severing the umbilical tie between Black Mountain and Mount Mitchell. Since then, “about every ten or 15 years, someone gets excited about re-establishing the link,” Styles says. “Highway 9, for example, was supposed to go from Myrtle Beach to Mitchell, but it stops short at Montreat.”

Einstein Slept Here

Likewise, to attract tourists, the arts and crafts community also is trying to reestablish connections to Black Mountain’s past. Local artists and owners of the town’s 11 art galleries frequently mention Black Mountain College, an experimental school that operated from 1933 to 1956. With its emphasis on the arts, the school attracted such thinkers as R. Buckminister Fuller, who designed geodesic domes; Josef Albers, the German-born American painter who fled Germany when the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis; and American composer John Cage. Such was the school’s reputation that Albert Einstein once gave a lecture on the campus.

The Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center is currently spearheading a campaign to find a permanent home for archives and artifacts collected from the old campus. Recently, the state’s Department of Cultural Resources awarded $40,000 to the Center. The money will be used to conduct oral histories with faculty and alumni.

Few people know about the college. The Center’s founding director emeritus first heard about the school when she moved to Paris in 1980. “I was amazed that this little town in North Carolina kept popping up in Paris all the time,” says Mary Holden, who now lives in Sylva. Holden noticed that biographies of artists in galleries frequently mentioned the school. In 1992, while still in Paris, she began planning a museum to honor the college.

While Black Mountain College no longer exists, artists still are drawn to the region. Glass artist Casey Phillips stumbled upon Black Mountain on a trip from her home in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. She was looking to relocate in Spruce Pine or Burnsville, but both towns were too far from the highway for Phillips, who frequently attended shows to display her wares. On the way to Asheville, she stopped in Black Mountain. “I could just feel the artistic energy here,” says the happy resident of five years now.

Judith Hollifield, whose father and brother run Black Mountain Gallery, felt the same energy when she returned here from Los Angeles for a visit. “It’s a place of power,” she says. “Artists and creative people come here for inspiration and renewal. It’s invigorating. I think people sense that Black Mountain presents them with the way life is supposed to be lived.”

Since the early 1900s, the area has attracted religious groups seeking a place for spiritual renewal. Today, there are more than half a dozen religious conference centers whose denominations have purchased large tracts of property to hold retreats that attract nearly 700,000 visitors a year.

The best known of these is Montreat. Its beautiful stone buildings are tucked into a cove at the foot of the Black Mountain Range. From here, one could hike to Mitchell’s summit on leaf-strewn trails under a canopy of rhododendrons. Runners will trudge through here, in fact, on their way up to the peak in February.

Because of the conference centers’ land holdings and the fact that the sloping hillsides form the second largest watershed in the United States, the area will likely retain the natural components that visitors and residents find so appealing, according to Bob McMurray, executive director of the Black Mountain/Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce.

“It really is an ecological wonderland from here to Mount Mitchell,” McMurray says, adding that a hike in the nearby woods reveals why botanists like Andre Michaux and John Fraser were so intrigued with the region.

McMurray says that Black Mountain is beginning to tout its trails as one of the key attractions of the town. Some of the best hikes in Western North Carolina have their beginnings within a few minutes of the town center.

Wendell Begley’s dream is that the race will shift increasingly more emphasis to the nearby trails. Three years ago, when the Black Mountain/Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce held its “Visions Conference,” Begley’s Economic Development Committee was asked what visitors to Black Mountain twenty years from now might see. In Begley’s mind, Mount Mitchell State Park had acquired the corridor of the old toll road. A visitor’s center marked the entrance of the trail leading to Mitchell.

Of course, that’s all just a dream in Wendell Begley’s head, but one that is inspired by a true passion for the past.

Sidebar: Black Mountain Beginnings

The 18-mile-long Swannanoa Valley once served as the hunting grounds for the Cherokee and Catawba indians. Both tribes had agreed by treaty that neither would settle in the valley, as it was the natural habitat for elk, deer, buffalo and, of course, bear.

From early reports she has read, Swannanoa Valley Museum’s Curator Harriet Styles says the valley seems to have closely resembled present-day Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “It was open valley,” Styles says. “I imagine it looked very inviting for settlers.”

In 1874, one settler did venture over from Old Fort. Samuel Davidson came with his wife, baby and servant girl. But Sam was ambushed and killed; his wife, baby and the servant girl escaped back to Old Fort. Soon after, Sam’s brother came over the mountain with several other families, and they were able to maintain a stronghold, establishing the valley’s first community at the confluence of Bee Tree Creek and the Swannanoa River.

When the railroad reached the region 1879 the name of the town was changed to Black Mountain Station from Grey Eagle, the name the Cherokee had given it, presumably because of an outcropping of rock that resembled an eagle. (Mount Mitchell was known then as Black Mountain–its stands of spruce and fir made it appear darker than other mountains in the region.)

In the early 1900s, Black Mountain became a health center. It was thought that the pure mountain air was an effective treatment for tuberculosis. Aware of the perceived health benefits of the region, E.W. Grove, who built the Grove Park Inn, planned a community near Black Mountain to be called Grovemont, which would have been the first planned community in the nation had Grove not died before seeing his plan fulfilled.

“Our valley is unique because of the people who were attracted here, many who came initially for health reasons,” Styles says. “But there were also the Biltmore artisans, such as Rafael Guastavino, who built a Spanish castle nearby. The conference centers have also attracted high-class, intelligent people.”

Posted on December 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

Behind the Scenes at Biltmore Estate

An inside look at Biltmore during its busiest”“and slowest”“months.

Here’s how your holiday decorations might compare with those of Biltmore House. Number of Christmas trees at your house: one. Biltmore House: 38. Tallest tree at your house: 8 feet. Biltmore House: 40 feet. Wreaths at your house: two. Biltmore House: 300. Garland at your house: 12 feet. Biltmore House: 4 miles.

“Perhaps we are a bit over the top,” says Rick King, Biltmore Estate’s vice president of house and gardens. But if Biltmore does appear to overdo it, it’s because Christmas at the Estate is big business. Beginning November 6, when the 40-foot Fraser Fir was raised in the Banquet Hall, until January 2, Biltmore will rake in more than 20 percent of its $50 million in annual revenues.

Just what does it take to pull it all off? A lot. First, there’s the immensity of the Estate itself (four of its 8,000 acres are under the roof–that’s right, square footage doesn’t apply here–the inside of the house takes up four acres.) But size alone isn’t what makes the task of decorating America’s largest private residence daunting. There’s also the fact that Biltmore is first and foremost a historic property, where every project must be carried out with an eye toward preservation.

“In every aspect of our business, our number-one priority is to preserve the property,” says Kathleen Mosher, Biltmore Estate’s public relations supervisor. “We’re never going to do anything that violates that principle.”

Accordingly, precautions are taken to protect the house, built by George Vanderbilt and opened in 1895, from not only the hordes of guests but also the dozens of decorators and staff. To begin with “only selected members of staff are allowed to touch any of the objects in the house,” Mosher says. And even they are required to wear cotton gloves before touching some items. And because they’re dealing with antiques, the decorating staff must work around the furniture, rather than moving it, and wear plastic booties to protect the fragile Oriental rugs. Housekeepers must lay screens over the rugs before vacuuming. “We have a lot of rules and regulations,” Mosher says, “to prevent any damage to the house.”

Only 364 Shopping Days Left

To get a glimpse at how Biltmore pulls off its massive holiday event, you have to turn the calendar back one year. That’s when the floral staff starts preparing for the next Christmas season. “We begin with the little actual documentation we have of Christmas celebrations at Biltmore a century ago,” says the Estate’s floral designer, Cathy Barnhardt, who has been supervising Christmas decorating at Biltmore for more than two decades. “This includes a few newspaper articles and receipts showing purchases charged to the ‘Christmas Tree’ by Mrs. Vanderbilt.”

Though photographs of the Estate’s early years are plentiful, there are no photographs marking early Christmas festivities. So Barnhardt and her floral crew turn to magazines, such as Ladies Home Journal and The House Beautiful, for articles that will educate them in Victorian decorating. To prepare for this year’s theme, reflecting a child’s holiday dreams, Barnhardt and her crew drew on turn-of-the-century literature on childhood.

“We’re not attempting to do a 100 percent, authentic Vanderbilt Christmas,” King says. “First of all, we have only limited documentation about Christmas at Biltmore. What we try to do is use things that would have been found in the time frame that the Vanderbilts were here.”

For decorating, Barnhardt uses a variety of materials, from live wreaths made by the Estate’s landscaping staff to hand-blown German glass ornaments. There are no original Vanderbilt ornaments. Most were made of glass, and few of those survived the century. And while Christmas trees in the Vanderbilt era probably would have had candles, visitors to Biltmore House’s evening programs will not see lighted candles on any of the trees.

Two Trees

What visitors will see is a huge Christmas tree”“a 40-foot Fraser Fir set in the Banquet Hall. The search to find the perfect tree”“actually two”“never ends. “Because we need a certain height and size,” Mosher says, “we’re identifying trees a year in advance. There’s someone constantly looking for us.” Both trees come from the Newland region of North Carolina.

So you may be asking, Why two trees? Because the firs dry quickly, the first tree has to be replaced at the end of November. It is a mammoth task, on both occasions. Raising the Banquet Hall tree takes about 16 hours, ending at around 4 a.m., King says. It requires the teamwork of 30 men, who carry in the tree with limbs tied and prop it up on one end. Workmen use ropes and pulleys to bring the tree upright.

To remove the tree four weeks later, work begins at 3 p.m. The house is closed for the evening program on the night the trees are switched. Workmen use an electric chainsaw to cut the standing Banquet Hall tree into manageable pieces. The logs and limbs are hauled to an organic dump on the property. The new tree is raised and decorated without any interruption for guests arriving the next morning.

A Marketing Miracle

Winter wasn’t always accompanied by the flurry of activity and lavish decorations at Biltmore. “We used to close,” King says. “The gates were locked to guests from December 15 until February 1. The employees took a two week vacation, then on January 1, we would come back and do what we euphemistically called spring cleaning.”

Then, in 1975 the company decided to stay open through the winter as an experiment to help defray preservation costs. “It was truly a financial decision,” King says. “The employees were on the payroll, we had to heat the house, we had to light it, so we figured we may as well stay open. We figured any money coming in was better than none at all.”

Marketing Christmas was an afterthought, King adds. “It was sort of slapdash thrown together, but it went over well,” he says. “The next year we thought we ought to put more thought in it, and more money.” So management did, spending about $50,000 in 1976 and marketing the event as Christmas at Biltmore.

That first Christmas a few thousand people turned out. Then, in the early 1980s the American Bus Association named Christmas at Biltmore as one of its top 100 events nationwide. “When that happened, it was like somebody flipped a switch,” King says. “It [Christmas at Biltmore] started growing quite dramatically.”

Operationally, things changed rather dramatically, too. In the days before it became the hugely successful event that Christmas at Biltmore has become, floral designer Cathy Barnhardt recruited her mother and friends to assemble ornaments, bows and other decorations to recreate the glittering style of the Gilded Age Christmas. She now manages a staff of eight to ten in the busiest period and recruits from other departments. Barnhardt even conducts a decorating class to train them.

Today, a couple hundred thousand turn out to gaze at the more than $1 million in decorations. Which brings to mind a couple of comparisons we neglected to mention at the beginning of our story. Visitors during the holiday season to Biltmore House: more than 200,000. Your house: varies. Charge to gaze at the decorations at Biltmore: $34.95 ($37.95 Friday and Saturday nights). Your house: a warm smile and good cheer. Happy holidays to you all.

Sidebar: Seasonal Solitude

While December at Biltmore House is bustling with visitors, January, February and March are the Estate’s quiet months. In December of 1998, for example, Biltmore counted 122,000 paying guests. By contrast, January of this year saw a little less than one-seventh of December’s visitations–18,000 guests. “On most days [during the slow months],” says Rick King, Biltmore Estate’s vice president of house and gardens, “the employees outnumber the guests.”

The winter months are a favorite among employees. Special Projects Coordinator Gina Elrod says she enjoys hiking Biltmore’s trails and gardens during the winter. “The landscape was designed to provide year-round interest,” she adds.

“I recommend January and February to a lot of people,” King says. “If you’re a flower person, those months may not be the best time of year. But if you can appreciate a barren landscape with lots of contrasting light and dark elements, the winter months are a good time to visit. It’s almost a lonely type of loveliness. I find it much more emotionally dramatic than when the plants are in bloom.”

And because they’re not as busy, Biltmore employees have more time to converse with guests. It’s a good time to get staff members to share their favorite stories about the house. While employees are not exactly twiddling their thumbs, they are often “thrilled to have someone to talk to,” King says.

Moreover, you have the run of the house in winter. (As an annual passholder living in Asheville, I visit the house often when few others are around. I enjoy the opportunity to explore the rooms without bumping shoulders with other curious guests.) An added bonus for winter visitors: You can often find a parking space in front of the entrance to the house. There’s never a line–for a steamy cup of hot chocolate or anything else.

Even during the busy months, there are ways to experience solitude similar to winter’s. If you arrive at the Estate after 3 p.m. and before 5 p.m., you’ll gain not only free entrance the next day but sufficient time to explore the house in relative solitude”“the front door closes at 6. By late afternoon, most of the guests have finished their tours and are on their way home ““Ralph Grizzle

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This article is the first in a series of four that will look behind the scenes at Biltmore Estate. Coming in March, we take a look at the gardens of Biltmore and the Estate’s ongoing fulfillment of Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision. In July, we look at how Biltmore has remained true to George Vanderbilt’s goal of Biltmore being a self-sustaining estate. Our September issue will provide readers with a behind-the-camera view of movie-making at Biltmore.

Posted on November 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

What North Carolinians Are Thankful For

Stop. Look around. As a citizen of this state, there are lots of reasons to give thanks.

As a North Carolinian, what are you thankful for? Is it the diversity of our vast stretch of state, from the mountains to the sea? Is it our moderate climate, our marked change of seasons or our towering clusters of trees that brush against Carolina blue skies?

Maybe what you’re thankful for has nothing to do with the physical aspects of our state–your gratitude goes toward good neighbors, caring communities, the strong support of the arts and the opportunities that your children or grandchildren have to attend some of the country’s best universities, without leaving their home state.

As citizens of the Old North State, we have much for which to give thanks. This month, we talk with some old friends about the reasons they’re proud to claim North Carolina as their home.

Beauty–As an artist, I am thankful for the abundance of subject matter right here in my own backyard. To use a golf analogy, people wonder how anyone could play the same golf course over and over again. But the truth is that you never hit your ball from the same spot. That’s how it is with my paintings. The seasons and atmospheres are so different that I’m never painting the same scene. Early on in my career, I wondered if I would ever grow tired of painting in this state. The answer is, No, I never will.–Bill Mangum, Artist, Greensboro

Progress–I’m grateful to live in a state that has made so much progress in the fields of technology, medicine, education, highways and social services. Our progress has just been outstanding. It’s true that the whole nation has moved ahead in many of these areas, but North Carolina lagged behind for many years. It couldn’t be helped, of course, because we were still nursing the wounds of the Civil War and the Great Depression, but we’ve truly moved forward in the last 30 years.–Carol Bessent Hayman, Poet Laureate of Beaufort and Carteret County, Beaufort

Sanctuary–Having worked for the National Park Service for 25 years, I’m grateful for the protected areas we have in North Carolina. I don’t think a lot of people realize how many of those areas we have here in this state. Even natives to the state are sometimes surprised when they look down the list of protected areas. You may even be living near one and kind of take it for granted, not realizing what it represents, until you begin to explore it. There’s great variety, whether you enjoy hiking, fishing, trail riding, car camping, backpacking or watching our wildlife. We’re very blessed with our national forests, state forests, state historic sites and national parks.–Tom Robbins, Park Ranger, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Small towns–I’m grateful to have the comfort and security of living in a quaint North Carolina town. I can still enjoy the convenience of the surrounding Piedmont Triad area, but after a hectic day at work in the city, I look forward to heading home to “K”-ville with the prospect of sitting with my husband and son on a porch surrounded by woods.–Kathleen Ingram, Trade Show Manager, RF Micro Devices (Greensboro), Kernersville

Beaches–I originally came from West Virginia, and as most kids who grew up in West Virginia, I grew up thinking the southernmost city in the state was Myrtle Beach. But then I discovered Ocracoke and knew I had to live here. Living here is like living in a little slice of heaven, and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for the 16 miles of undeveloped beachfront here on this island. I’m grateful for the pace of life. It’s only 15 miles between here and Hatteras, yet it takes more than an hour to traverse those miles. That isolation could be frightening if it weren’t for the quality of people we have here.–Buffy Warner, Owner, Howard’s Pub, Ocracoke

Beacons–I’m grateful that North Carolina saw the wisdom of putting the money and effort toward saving some original history (the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Not building a replica, not tearing down and building a new building, but preserving what was there.–Cheryl Shelton Roberts, Writer, Morehead City

Goodwill–I’m grateful for our good economy. Unemployment has been down, even though minimum wages still need to come up. We’re serving as many people as we used to [through the food bank] but we’re serving more of the working poor than in the past. Here in the Triad, we are blessed with services for the needy.–Faye Ellison, Director of Food Distribution, Greensboro Urban Ministry, Greensboro

Resources–I am thankful for North Carolina’s rich diversity of its cultural, natural and historic resources, These resources offer such vast potential for rural economic development as long as we give equal attention to the protection and preservation of these assets. We truly are blessed.–Gordon Clapp, Executive Director, NC Division of Tourism, Film and Sports Development, Raleigh

Generosity–I’m thankful for R.V.’s Restaurant on the Causeway linking Roanoke Island to Nags Head. R.V. (Robert Valentine) has fed me every day of my life for the past four years. And I’m thankful for the boys at the Christmas Shop in Manteo for taking the time to teach me how to be successful in my business. Most of all, I’m thankful for God and for God being in Dare County all my life.–Lou Tillet, Florist, Wanchese

Hospitality–I’m thankful that we live in a state where so many people choose to retire to. I think that says a lot about our quality of life. We’re blessed with very little of the extremes, not only with the weather but also in what people do and enjoy. We are congenial and hospitable people, and we love to meet strangers and welcome them in. People can come here and fit in right away. I feel blessed to have been able to have lived here all my life.–Max Meeks, NC Radio Hall of Famer and host of WMFR’s “Max in the Morning” since 1947, High Point

Harvest–I’ve only been here a year, but I’m grateful for the growing season and for the beauty. I moved from Texas, where the weather can be extreme. The growing season here is shorter than in Texas but much more conducive to good gardens. I’m also grateful for the dogwood trees and the distinct change of seasons.–Susan Albert, Community Relations, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro

Neighbors–I’m thankful to live in a place where I can call the general store across the street and they’ll bring over my groceries and put them away from me (Delores is disabled by Progressive Post Polio Muscle Atrophy). We have so many small towns in this state where there are caring people. Somebody dies, the neighbors bring food, somebody’s sick, the neighbors come and sit. You tend to put in a little more effort when you’re in a place where you know you’re going to turn up your toes at the end of your life.–Delores C. Emory, Proprietor, Cutrell Inn Bed and Breakfast, Swan Quarter

People–In my line of work, I’ve had the privilege of living in 10 different cities in our state over the past 44 years. There have been beautiful people everywhere I’ve lived, kind and friendly and generous. It makes me grateful to be a North Carolinian.–Tom Cassidy, Reverend, Mt. Pisgah United Methodist Church, Greensboro

Heritage–I’m thankful for the traditions and the heritage that I still sense here. I have such a long history of my family in North Carolina that I have this sense of being here forever. I have this sense of being truly North Carolinian. It’s very powerful to me to have that sense of belonging.–Bob Timberlake, Artist, Lexington

Spirit–I’m thankful for the opportunity to work in North Carolina, and I don’t think I would have felt that way a year and half ago when I started working for World Summer Games. That was when I started traveling across the state, and I realized that there are people in this state who have great spirit for coming out to support good causes. I got a taste of North Carolina and determined that this was the place that I wanted to stay. –Todd Felts, Director of Statewide Communications for the 1999 Special Olympics World Summer Games, Raleigh

People–I travel all 100 counties in North Carolina. We have friends all over the state, and it has been really rewarding meeting the people like the decoy carvers down at Harker’s Island or the potters whose work we carry in our gallery. Making friends with all these people has been a real treasure. I enjoy the fellowship with those people. That’s what keeps me going.–”Cotton” Ketchie, Artist and Owner of Landmark Galleries, Mooresville

Posted on August 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

Franklin, Murphy and Brevard

Our State writer Ralph Grizzle seeks out high country charm set amid some of the most remarkable scenery in the state.

Coming from Asheville, I was surprised to find no parking meters on the main street of Franklin, North Carolina. “Used to have them,” Loretta Fields informed me. “They took them out several years back, though. You were only fined a quarter for overparking anyway, so it was cheaper to leave your car in the same spot all day [and not feed the meter].”

Welcome to small-town Western North Carolina, where Mayberry meets the mountains and where tourists come in droves to experience high country charm set amid some of the most remarkable landscape in the state.

This month, we visit three small mountain towns–Franklin, the self-proclaimed gem capital of the world; Murphy, the state’s frontier town; and Brevard, one of Western North Carolina’s quintessential small towns. Each of these towns is worthy of a day trip on their own or near enough to the others that they can be combined to make a long weekend.

The Plan
I opted for the long weekend, making my base in Franklin. From Asheville, I had only a little more than an hour’s drive. If you’re coming from the Triad Area, plan on driving four hours; from the Triangle, you’ll want to allow just under six hours.

If you get an early start from parts east, you can make lunch in downtown Franklin at either Mountain Vittles or The Frog and Owl Kitchen, whose owner and chef, Jerri Fifer Broyles, has been featured in Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Southern Living. I had Jerri’s chicken salad with pesto sandwich, and I now know that the fare at the Frog and Owl deserves its wide acclaim.

Franklin has about 600 rooms for guests. My plan was to spend two nights here. On the afternoon of my arrival I would visit downtown Franklin and the surrounding area, then travel to Murphy, an hour west, the next morning.

I would spend the day in Murphy, then wind back to Franklin over beautiful Wayah Bald, a knob of mountain rising to a height of just over a mile above sea level. On the morning of my third day, I would go mining for gems just north of Franklin before heading out to Brevard, an hour and a half to the east. Looking back, this This schedule allowed ample time to take in all the sights.

I pitched camp at the Snow Hill Inn, a turn-of-the-century schoolhouse that has been renovated into a bed and breakfast. One of the eight beautifully restored guest rooms still bears the faint markings of idle students who wrote their names on the back walls of the auditorium. The Inn’s large rooms feature 12-foot ceilings and windows that look out on pristine mountain views.

Located six miles north of Franklin, the Snow Hill Inn sits on a hill overlooking a scenic valley rich with history. Settlers came here to mine native rubies, sapphires and other precious gems and minerals. They built farms, churches, stores and homes, many well-preserved. When this issue of Our State went to press, the region was on its way to becoming a state-designated “rural historic district.”

It was also from here, north of Franklin, that in 1767 a South Carolina planter shipped to England chalk white clay that was used in the production of Wedgwood china. And it was here in this valley that the Cherokee held their town council, on a mound they called Cowee.

Franklin First
In his recent best-selling book, “A Walk in the Woods,” author Bill Bryson characterized Franklin as “small, dull, and cautiously unattractive, but mostly dull.” He wrote that Franklin was the sort of place where, for lack of anything better to do, you’d find yourself “strolling out to the lumberyard to watch guys on forklifts shunting wood about.” He added that there were no diversions, nowhere to buy a book “or even a magazine that didn’t involve speedboats, customized cars, or guns and ammo.”

No doubt that Bryson’s observations were skewed by his grumbling trip through the southern Appalachians. The weather had not gone the way he had wished (which had forced him to come off the Appalachian Trail into Franklin.) The hiking was harder than he had anticipated (which had forced him to eventually accept defeat and travel by car from Gatlinburg to Skyline Drive in Virginia.)

By contrast, I arrived in Franklin on a sunny June day and found it to be fascinating. For starters, Franklin is surrounded by natural beauty. The town sits in the middle of the half-million-acre Nantahala National Forest, the largest of four national forests in North Carolina. Moreover, the 18 miles between Franklin and Highlands through Cullasaja Gorge is arguably the state’s most beautiful mountain drive (the Blue Ridge Parkway’s Lynn Cove Viaduct, skirting Grandfather Mountain, would be a fierce competitor in this category.)

Culturally, this town of 3,000 has three museums, including the Scottish Tartans Museum. Declared a Cultural Treasure by the state, it is the only museum of its kind in the country, a branch of Edinburgh, Scotland’s Scottish Tartans Society, charged by the Crown to maintain the Official Registry of All Publicly Known Tartans.

At the museum, descendants of Scottish pioneers may view their family tartan on a computer. Or they can trace their Scottish heritage in the library. Visitors will also be able to see how tartans were woven and used in dress over the centuries, dating back to 325.

Why did the Society choose Franklin? Part of the decision was based on the fact that North Carolina has more Scottish descendants than any other state, according to Matthew Newsome, the museum’s curator. Another factor was that Macon County, of which Franklin is the county seat, has a strong history of Scottish migration. Finally the region resembles Scotland, thus making it a natural choice for this branch of the Scottish Tartans Society. Plan to spend at least one hour in the museum.

All That Glitters
Down the street, at the Franklin Gem and Mineral Museum, native rubies and sapphires are on display along with other gems, rocks, arrowheads and Cherokee artifacts.

Mining for ruby and sapphire began in Macon County in 1870. In the 1890s, American Prospecting & Mining Co. and US Ruby Mining Co. came to the area hoping to find the source of the rubies. Both ended their search after only a decade or so, leaving the area open to tourists and gem enthusiasts. The source still hasn’t been found.

The region north of Franklin, in the Snow Hill Inn area, has about a dozen gem mines. I visited Rose Creek Mine, where for $5, I grabbed a bucket of dirt, poured part of it into a mining screen and lowered it into water rushing through the trough known as a flume.

As the dirt washed away, the gems began to appear. Most were tiny, about the size of a pea. I found a few worth keeping, but none so grand as the one found by my flume-mate, Martin Hartshorn. A gem enthusiast, Martin travels from Kentucky each year just so he can go mining. Two years ago, in the spot where we were sitting, he found a 14.5-carat Star Sapphire, appraised at $2,000. “All you can find in Kentucky,” he jokes, “is coal.”

I asked Marty Martinez, owner of Rose Creek Mine, if many people walked away from here with a valuable gem. He told me that most people come to the mine just to relax and have fun. “If they find something worth $200 or $300, they’ve had more fun,” Marty says. “But it’s not a get-rich-quick type of thing.”

Even so, you can have your gems checked–at Burglens Natural Gems, Tari’s RokGems or any other lapidary shop–to determine if you’ve found anything worth keeping and cutting.

Also, you should know that many mines “salt” their buckets with stones from abroad. These enriched buckets can sometimes make mining more exciting for the kids and for gem enthusiasts who are looking for exotic stones. For the purist, most mines offer “unsalted” buckets, where all that you’ll find is what Mother Nature put there. Plan on spending a minimum of two to three hours mining.

Macon History
Back in town, at the Macon County Historical Museum, I learned a little more about the Scots-Irish, English and Germans who pioneered the region. Most came from the eastern parts of North Carolina and from upstate South Carolina. I also learned a great deal about the first inhabitants, the Cherokee, who ceded a large portion of their land in 1819, then all of it in 1835.

And down the street, at Alpine Tobac & Coffee Haus, I learned why people are attracted to Franklin. From behind the counter, Loretta Fields, the woman who had told me about the parking meters, said that she and her husband came here 23 years ago, leaving behind St. Petersburg, Florida. The Fields wanted to get away from the big city and all its problems. Here, they found their mountain paradise.

And so have a lot of others who are following in the Fields’ footsteps. “Hardly a week passes when a couple from Florida doesn’t come in the store and say they’ve just bought property here,” Loretta says. Then, she adds: “People are polite here. They stop to let you cross the street. They take time to say ‘Hello.’ It’s a different type of living, very nice.”

Very nice indeed say the 200 to 300 tourists who stop daily at the Chamber of Commerce’s Information Center. Floridians constitute the lion’s share of those visitors, with almost 90 of every 100 visitors coming from the Sunshine State, according to Linda Harbuck, executive director of the Franklin Area Chamber of Commerce.

What brings them here?

“Probably the biggest thing is geography,” Harbuck says. “We’re convenient to get to. But the other thing is that we are just small enough for people to be comfortable and yet large enough for them to have everything they need to have.”

Go West, Young Man
Harbuck sent me on the scenic route to Murphy, across Wayah Bald and by Nantahala Lake on a road that changes numbers three times. If you’re interested in traveling this route, I recommend stopping by the Information Center to get a free map. Have someone there highlight the way for you, and be sure to allow three hours going this way, only because you’ll want to stop and stretch your legs along the way. The drive back to Franklin, on Highway 64, takes about an hour.

Murphy is a quaint town, with some interesting architecture and history all within a few blocks’ walk. The Cherokee County Court house is worth a visit. Completed in 1927, its exterior walls are constructed of native blue unpolished marble, quarried just two miles north of town. Down the street is the Cherokee County Historical Museum, where you’ll find weapons left by Spanish explorers, led through here in 1540 by Hernando de Soto.

The museum’s largest collection is devoted to the life of the Cherokee. Wanda Stalcup, the museum’s director, showed me a ledger dating back to the 1830s that recorded transactions between the Cherokee and shopkeeper Archibald Hunter.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that the Cherokee were removed from this area,” Stalcup told me. In 1838, the Western North Carolina Nation of the Cherokee were rounded up and held in Fort Butler, which was located in what is now Murphy. With the first footsteps out of the gates of Fort Butler, those hapless souls started their 1,200-mile journey on the tragic Trail of Tears.

Heading west from Murphy on Highway 294, I came upon Fields of the Wood, a “Bible Park.” I drove through the gates of the park where “God’s word is displayed amid God’s creation,” according to the park’s brochure. On my right, running up a grassy hillside for what must have been 100 yards or more, were the Ten Commandments and the New Testament Marker in huge letters. “Come to the mountains . . . catch the vision!” reads the brochure. Replicas of Joseph’s Tomb and Golgotha await the curious visitor. It really was truly a sight to behold.

As I was leaving, I thought it to be a bit ironic that the Cherokee must have walked right by this place that in later years would glorify such Christian virtues as, “Love Thy Neighbor.” I remembered reading that one Georgia soldier had written in his journal that he had seen war and murder but nothing as cruel as the Removal. One in four Cherokee died along the way to Oklahoma.

Brevard Bound
I returned to Franklin late in the evening and set out the next morning to Brevard. I had two choices. I could either head over up to and along the Blue Ridge Parkway and down Highway 276, past Sliding Rock and Looking Glass Falls or I could head up the Cullasaja Gorge, through Highlands and past Lake Toxaway. I chose the latter only because I was less familiar with that route and wanted to see what it offered had to offer.

I drove the 111 curves through Cullasaja Gorge (I overheard a Floridian tourist who had counted them), to charming Highlands, which was bustling with tourists. I then continued on toward Brevard through Cashiers. The drive took me about an hour and a half, and I crossed the Eastern Continental Divide along the way. It was almost a fitting metaphor, for Brevard is different from Franklin and Murphy.

The catchphrase for this town of 7,000 is “Catch the Hometown Spirit,” and Brevard was indeed a friendly town. It had the feel of a 1950’s small town, where people were kind and friendly. . The town even had its own 1950’s style soda shop, Rocky’s.

While downtown Brevard provides a fun afternoon of diversions, the town and county are perhaps better known for their waterfalls, of which there are more than 250. Nature is magnificent here. In the town parks, you may see the local white squirrels, whose predecessors were reportedly brought here by a visitor in the 1930s. Brevard College even offers a wilderness program.

The college has also broadened its curriculum from a two-year to a four-year program. In Libby Freeman’s mind that underscores the fact that Brevard is developing into a real cultural community. Executive Director of Brevard’s Chamber of Commerce, Freeman says that Brevard has a “very active” arts community. She also mentions the Brevard Music Center, which draws visitors from all over. The Center has attracted internationally renowned musicians and performers since its opening in 1946.

Homeward Bound Again
I enjoyed my three days visiting these three small towns in Western North Carolina. They offered not only beautiful scenery but also small town charm and a dose of history. They also offered a simpler style of living than I was accustomed to, even in laid-back Asheville. I thought of that when I picked up the local paper and read about the City Council’s plan for raising rates for downtown parking, from 25 cents to 60 cents an hour. The thought of it made me want to go back to Franklin.