Category: Just A Bite

“The juxtaposition of progress and nostalgia [in Charlotte during the 1929 reunion of Confederate veterans], far from being contradictory, was, the Observer argued, touching and poignant. A reporter captured this striking anecdote: ‘Two gray-haired men stood on the corner of Trade and Tryon streets, unmindful of the swirling traffic around them. As they lifted their eyes toward the bank building with its wealth of Confederate flags… they did not notice the harsh honk of auto horns, the press of hundreds of busy people, the bustle of uptown trade. “My, but they look good,” said one of the men….  “Just like they flew ’em in the war,” said the other. … Two girls of the flapper age stared at them curiously.  A young collegian, hatless and hurrying, almost bumped into them.’

“It is a perfect piece. More than anecdote, it is epiphany… [showing] that the magic worked, that the myths of the New South and the Lost Cause still held themselves, and the South, together.”

–From “Like Fire in Broom Straw: Southern Journalism and the Textile Strikes of 1929-1931” by Robert Weldon Whalen (2001)

“In 1916 the [International] Health Board established its first county health unit in North Carolina…. Although directed primarily at hookworm, these units were educational in scope, awakening people to the importance of public health and hygiene.

“North Carolina was not a healthy place. Its population, 85 percent of which was rural, suffered from ‘low-ebb vitality’ brought about by chronic, devitalizing and crippling diseases such as malaria and hookworm, and by constipation, gum problems, childhood adenoids and bad teeth….And the state had an annual death rate exceeded only by that of Kentucky. As a typhoid pamphlet noted: ‘Thank the Lord for Kentucky.’ ”

–From “To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (1913–1951)” by John Farley (2004)

“[1930s pop star Rudy Vallee] leaped from the stage of the Twin City Club in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after he spied someone hitting on his girlfriend, administered a beating, and then climbed atop the bar to accept the crowd’s plaudits. Host R.J. Reynolds Jr., the tobacco scion, kept it out of the papers.”

— From “You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon” (2004) by Lenny Kaye

“In June 1975 I was booked into the frighteningly named Hub Pub Club in Winston-Salem. Located in a shopping mall, it was trying to be a fancy spot for gentlemen, but liquor laws in North Carolina limited attendance at nightclubs to members only. About the worst things an entertainer can hear are ‘members only’ and ‘group tours.’ While I was on stage doing my act to churchlike silence, a guy said to his date, loud enough that we all heard it, ‘I don’t understand any of this.’

“My [diary] entry for the Hub Pub Club started this way: ‘This town smells like a cigarette…. My material seems so old…My act might as well have been in a foreign language.'”

— From “Born Standing Up” (2007) by Steve Martin

Within weeks Martin’s luck turned. He was booked into more appreciative venues, pulled together his stage persona and in 1976 made his first appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”

“Movie stars such as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin visited the Queen City to generate enthusiasm [for war bonds]. Charlie Chaplin’s stimulating 10-minute speech on April 11, 1918, succeeded in raising $20,000 to $25,000 in subscriptions. He promised to kiss any woman in the audience who subscribed $5,000 worth of bonds…. Several $1,000 pledges were made….

“Shouts of ‘Hi Charlie!’ ‘Hoorah for Charlie!’ were heard amid cheers as he rode through [Camp Greene] …. He visited one company at a mess hall and had a picture taken with the boys circled about him. Chaplin holds a plate of dollar bills, calling attention to the [need for] money to put something to eat in the soldiers’ pans.

“As he returned to his car Chaplin assumed his famous waddle. His hat flew up and with his familiar expression he glanced up, reached out and caught it.”

— From “The Echo of the Bugle Call: Charlotte’s Role in World War I” (1979) by Miriam Grace Mitchell and Edward Spaulding Perzel

Curiously the book’s illustrations don’t include one of Chaplin, nor is there one in the collection of the Robinson-Spangler North Carolina Room at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. I haven’t checked microfilm for the Observer and News. I do have a (flea-market-found) photo of soldiers at Camp Greene lining a dirt road and “Waiting for Charley Chaplin” taken by “Watson / Army Navy News.”

“I have a framed, yellowing copy of my first published oeuvre, a poem called ‘Fresh Fruits of Autumn Leaves,’ which at five years old I had composed for my mother while we were having a bath…. My mother jumped out of the tub, grabbed a pen and paper and asked me to repeat what I’d said….

“My father, so moved by this effort , sent my poem to the Carolina Israelite — why this publication, I’ll never know…. Even at age five… I knew it would never have gotten published if my father hadn’t been James Jones.”

— From “Lies My Mother Never Told Me: A Memoir” (2009) by novelist Kaylie Jones

Naturally, I was curious. What was the connection between Israelite editor Harry Golden and James Jones, author of “From Here to Eternity” and “The Thin Red Line”?  They shared bestseller lists in the ’50s, of course. But my inexpert Googling turned up no more in common than both their names on free-speech petitions on behalf of Lenny Bruce.

Although Jones isn’t mentioned in the Harry Golden Papers at UNC Charlotte,  I found what I was looking for in the James Jones Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin: a 1965-66 exchange of letters between Golden in Charlotte and Jones in Paris, plus Gloria Jones’ handwritten manuscript and James Jones’ typewritten version.

And here’s the Carolina Israelite connection: “Dear Harry Golden, It turns out that my secretary is a great fan of yours and receives your columns from a brother at home. So I’ve been reading them too…. You published a poem by a young boy of seven, or was it nine?… It gave me the idea of sending you a poem which my five-year-old daughter wrote, and which astounded me…. If you could see your way clear to printing it, we would all be most happy…”

Golden: “I will run Kaylie’s poem in the January issue…. The next time I get over there I’ll call you and maybe we can have a chat and bit of fellowship.”

Jones: “I am writing now at the request of my wife, who would like  ‘many, many copies’ of the January issue. If you could send us… say 60 or 80, I would reimburse you at their retail cost.”

These are only excerpts — I forwarded to Kaylie a copy of her father’s lengthy and (in Golden’s words) quite “warm-hearted” query letter. “What an amazing thing to receive,” she replied. “I’m sitting here with tears streaming…. How wonderful to know how he chose that publication!”