Day: June 19, 2012

Our State’s 100 N.C. Icons: What’s Missing?

Our State Magazine's 100 N.C. Icons
The July 2012 issue of Our State includes the editors’ list of 100 North Carolina icons. The list is a mix of the broad and the specific. The state can proudly lay claim to Doc Watson, Krispy Kreme, Thomas Wolfe and Belk. But I don’t think clay, sweet tea or black bears are exclusive to North Carolina. Tell us what or whom you would include and, just as importantly, what or whom you would leave out.

We’ll get you started. We don’t see the North Carolina Collection on the list.
Now it’s your turn. Don’t delay!

As others see us: ‘Hanging truck’ tours Sixth Avenue

“After two decades of living in Manhattan, this average New Yorker believed he had seen everything. Today proved that a false assumption…. Someone is driving around with the President hanging in effigy on a truck? Why?…

“VR Phipps from North Carolina believes family members were murdered by local law enforcement and a massive cover-up has prevented him from getting justice. So, Phipps built a gallows in his backyard and also constructed a hanging truck….  [In addition to Obama] the version seen today [on Sixth Avenue] has a judge, a highway patrolman, a former N.C. attorney general, the current governor of North Carolina, a chief counsel and a county sheriff.”

— From “Why Is a Hangin’ Truck Driving Around NYC With President Obama On a Noose?”   by Mike Opelka on The Blaze (May 4)

This sighting of the hanging truck is weeks old, and its current whereabouts are unknown. Perhaps VR Phipps has returned it to Duplin County, where he staged this video entitled “President Obama Visits the Hanging Truck.”

Despite the burst of attention on political blogs, this isn’t the truck’s first trip to New York — and downtown Raleigh got its own eyeful in 2010.

According to Phipps’ blog, his troubles are nothing new: “Duplin County is known for its family run corrupt judicial system since the 1898 marriage of the Johnsons and the Stevens.”