Category: New Books

Just as the nation was embarking on the the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, North Carolinians were reminded of the conflicts, hot and cold, of an earlier era. Charles Robert Jenkins, a soldier from Rich Square, North Carolina, disappeared while patrolling the DMZ in Korea in 1965. Nothing was heard of him again until 2002 when his Japanese wife and four other Japanese kidnapped by the North Koreans were allowed to visit their homeland. Jenkins did not accompany his wife, in part because the North Koreans were using him and their two daughters as hostages to force Mrs. Jenkins to return, but also because Jenkins feared extradition to the United States to face a court-martial.

The case of the Jenkins family became a cause célèbre in Japan, where there was much sympathy for Mrs. Jenkins. North Carolinians were not of one mind on Mr. Jenkins. Was he a deserter, or someone victimized by the North Koreans–or both? Two years of media attention and diplomatic activity produced a resolution. Mr. Jenkins went to an American base in Japan and admitted to a court-martial that he deserted because he feared being sent to Vietnam. The court showed mercy, giving Jenkins a short sentence. He and his family retired to his wife’s hometown in Japan where Jenkins wrote his autobiography, which was published in Japan in 2005. The North Carolina Collection now has a copy of that work, Kokuhaku=To Tell the Truth. If you can’t read Japanese, check back in 2008, when the University of California Press will be publishing an English language edition of the autobiography under the title The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea.

I continue to enjoy my wanderings through those two excellent new reference works, Encyclopedia of North Carolina and South Carolina Encyclopedia. Lately I have been musing on alcohol – the drinking kind. Surely the subject is relevant to both states. After all, perhaps the best known joke about the two Carolinas is “What did the governor of South Carolina say to the governor of North Carolina?” The answer, of course, is “It is a long time between drinks!” I was not surprised, therefore, to find that things alcoholic were well represented in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, with full entries for whiskey, beer and breweries, moonshine, and wine and wine making. There were also full entries on such related topics as the Anti-saloon League, blind tigers, and blue laws, not to mention prohibition.

Well, imagine my surprise when I turned to the South Carolina Encyclopedia and found virtually nothing on the demon rum in any of its various forms: no whiskey, no beer, no wine, and only one mention of moonshine and that in the article on Berkeley County. Come on! Thinking back to my youth in dear old Spartanburg County, I distinctly remember that there were a few folk who would take a drink – at least a small glass of port at Christmas. I call to mind riding down the road with a friend when we passed a sign advertising ginger ale. “Drink Canada Dry?” he said. “I haven’t drunk South Carolina dry yet!” How can I explain this? Have South Carolinians suddenly developed amnesia about their tipsy past? Has spiritous drink become a taboo subject south of South of the Border? For these dark and troubling questions I have no answer.

I cannot leave this subject without noting that the SCE, for all of its weird silence on booze, does have a couple of good alcohol-related articles. People my age will remember when liquor was sold in South Carolina at “red dot stores.” These are discussed, as is the dispensary system, Pitchfork Ben Tillman’s particular, not to say peculiar, contribution to prohibition in America. Until next time, Cheers.

The appearance of editor William S. Powell’s Encyclopedia of North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) comes at the same time as the publication of The South Carolina Encyclopedia, edited by Walter Edgar (University of South Carolina Press, 2006). The coincidence of publication dates practically invites comparison of these two compendia of Carolina knowledge and trivia. Convinced that my status as a South Carolinian by birth and a North Carolinian by adoption outweighs my total lack of expertise, I am taking up the challenge. To begin with, these are a couple of weighty volumes. I mean your grandma could have pressed a lot of flowers with either one of them. At 1314 pages to 1075 the Encyclopedia of North Carolina (hereinafter ENC) wins in the size category. The South Carolina Encyclopedia (SCE) is no lightweight, however, and you will not want to keep it on a high shelf.

Since both North Carolina and South Carolina have adopted the Shag as their state dance, I was interested to see how the two encyclopedias treated the subject. Both articles are well written, interesting, and informative. I couldn’t help but notice that the article in ENC dealt somewhat gingerly with the soul of the dance, while the SCE article got right down to the nitty gritty. The Shag may have links all the way back to the St. Cecilia Society in Charleston in 1760 as the ENC suggests, but the steamy dance I first saw as a kid was a lot more likely to have evolved, as the SCE argues, in black nightclubs such as Charlie’s Place in Myrtle Beach. Kudos to the SCE! Watch this blog for more rambles through these two great books.