Category: Just A Bite

Poitier movies on front lines of racial discord

“[In 1965]  ‘A Patch of Blue’ inflamed some Southerners…. Authorities discovered a homemade bomb with five sticks of dynamite planted in a Concord, North Carolina, theater. Luckily, the bomb malfunctioned….

“[Two years later] in Lexington, North Carolina, 20 Ku Klux Klan members picketed a drive-in theater [showing ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’], carrying signs that read ‘Fight for your Rights’ and ‘Mom and Dad — It Could Happen to You.’ ”

— From “Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon” by Aram Goudsouzian (2004)

Mighty was the mouse, less so the governor

“North Carolinians assembled in an auditorium at Charlotte one evening last week to see and hear what sort of person was Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross, the woman whom Wyoming elected three years ago to fill out her deceased husband’s term as Governor (1925-27).

“Mrs. Ross soon demonstrated her femininity. Down an aisle, terrified by the surrounding forest of North Carolina feet and ankles, scampered a mouse. ‘If I appear a bit disconcerted,’ shrilled Mrs. Ross, ‘It’s because a woman may be a governor but she’s always afraid of a mouse. If it comes up here I’m going to jump on the TABLE!’ The mouse mounted. So did Mrs. Ross.”

— From Time magazine, April 2, 1928

‘Bitter and sectional… fearless and brilliant’

“An advocate of the two dollar shirt from Scotland Neck, N. C. — that was Claude Kitchin. But he was more as well. In 1901 he came to Congress, where his father had been before him, where one of his brothers (later Governor of North Carolina) then was. In 15 years, by his mastery of diatribe and strategy, he had made himself Democratic floor leader in the House. In four years more… he had brought on himself a stroke of paralysis from overwork…. Now he is dead.

“He was…  something of a demagogue, bitter and sectional. But he was fearless, and brilliant in attack on the floor…. He made his name  by attacking the free lumber plank in the platform of 1908.

“He turned the torrent of his eloquence against President Wilson’s plan to strengthen the Navy, he fought to the last the declaration of war against Germany in 1917. But once war was declared he reversed his attitude entirely and gave uncompromising support to war financing measures.

“Kitchin’s fighting record goes farther back than his political record. His father fought for the Confederacy. Claude was one of eleven children, nine sons and two daughters. [As a young lawyer] he  defended a murderer. His father was the prosecutor — and the son was victorious.”

— Time magazine, June 11, 1923

I’m guessing the  “two dollar shirt” characterization refers to Kitchin’s hallmark opposition to protective tariffs, but wouldn’t that have been an expensive shirt for the 1920s?

Remember when Krispy Kreme took Manhattan?

krispykreme

“I spent many hours happily gazing at doughnut machines but avoiding doughnuts until last summer, when the Krispy Kreme doughnut craze began to sweep New York and I got hooked. The modest, clean Krispy Kreme doughnut store on W. 23rd Street, with its retro green Formica tables and red and green neon ‘Hot Doughnuts Now’ sign, has become a shrine, complete with pilgrims, fanatics, converts and proselytizers — the sort of religious experience New Yorkers like me are far more receptive to than the ones that actually involve God. The Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut is yeast-raised and light as a frosted snowflake. It is possible to eat three of them in one sitting without suffering any ill effects….

“The store on W. 23rd Street has its problems — neighbors complain about the constant smell of sugar and frying oil — but they are not financial. The [owners] say the store will gross more than a million dollars in its first year, and in December they opened a second store in Harlem across from the Apollo Theatre.”

From “Sugar Babies” by Nora Ephron in The New Yorker (Feb. 17, 1997)

Alas, the intervening years have been cruel to Winston-Salem’s “religious experience,” and nowhere more so than in New York City, where as best I can tell only the Penn Station location remains.

Pictured: Gift shop pinback button, probably unauthorized.

Gov. Cherry steps up, state listens up

“In North Carolina, the crimes of murder, arson, burglary and rape are punishable by death. Fourteen-year-old Negro Ernest Brooks committed two of them. One night he broke into a Wilmington home, raped a woman eight months pregnant. Caught the next day, Negro Brooks confessed, was sentenced to death.

“Last week Governor R. Gregg Cherry commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Said he, in a statement rare for a Southern governor: ‘The crimes are revolting, but a part of the blame . . . arises from the neglect of the State and society to provide a better environment. . . . Our public schools, equipped with capable teachers . . . [and] an effective compulsory-attendance law, would do much to correct delinquency among all races.’  Rarer still, in all North Carolina there was no outcry.”

— From Time magazine, Jan. 7, 1946

My magical moment with Michael Jordan

“During a rain delay in a [1997] game against the Phillies, a security guard approached me on the bench. ‘There is someone here to see you,’ he said….

“I took one step toward the locker room, and there was Michael Jordan. Yes, that Michael Jordan.

“Three years earlier, during the one season Jordan played professional baseball, he played for the Birmingham Barons and I played for the Orlando Cubs, both in the Double-A Southern League. As opponents we came to know each other. My mother’s family hailed from [Rocky Mount] North Carolina, so we had plenty to talk about….

“Michael had been in a skybox at Wrigley until the rain delay. Remarkably, he said he had been following my career….  Then he said I should call him to link up.

“When I returned to the dugout, you could hear a pin drop. Glanville knows Jordan? How can that be? He just got to the big leagues.

“A few days later, [Cubs star Sammy Sosa] approached me in the locker room. This time he didn’t ask me to fetch him a cup of water. Instead he asked if I’d like him to bring me to the ballpark in his luxury SUV [and] to hang out with him from time to time.

“Sammy began to ask me all the time for his fellow superstar’s phone number…. I never gave it to him.

“Maybe if he’d brought me some water.”

— From “The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View” by Doug Glanville (2010)

40 years ago: Love Valley’s would-be Woodstock

“The Love Valley Rock Festival was held July 16-18, 1970, [in] the Western-themed community of Love Valley, 15 miles north of Statesville…. This small town became a big city, swelling from roughly 100 full-time residents to perhaps 200,000 youthful pilgrims.

“Because of its size, the Love Valley Rock Festival made headlines. Beyond the initial buzz, the festival served notice that the counterculture was beginning to invade formerly resistant corners of the hippie-hating South.

“ ‘We all felt we were re-creating Woodstock,’ says Marilyn Wolf, [now a Greensboro psychotherapist], who attended with friends. ‘That was the hope.’ ”

— From “Remembering N.C.’s Woodstock” in the Greensboro News & Record. Rock  journalist Parke Puterbaugh uses the recollections of festivalgoers to capture a salient cultural moment that seems much longer ago than 40 years.

Were any other large-scale rock festivals staged in North Carolina?

‘Iron-jawed, copper-bellied’ — and ‘zigzaggy’!

carolinachoochoo

“In North Carolina’s tobacco belt last week, tongues were wagging with happiness and hope. At last, the state had an iron-jawed, copper-bellied football team that combed its hair with lightning and ate opposing tackles for breakfast. First crack out of the box,  the ferocious University of North Carolina Tar Heels took Texas apart, 34 to 7.

“The chief wrecker was slim, 165-lb. Halfback Charlie (‘Choo Choo”) Justice. He ran like a jack rabbit, fast and zigzaggy. Against Texas, Choo Choo scored two touchdowns, threw passes for two more, modestly demurred when called upon to score another. ‘I’ve had my flurry,’ he said in the huddle. ‘Give somebody else a chance.’

“Carolina folks were mighty proud that Choo Choo, in this age of interstate commerce in footballers, was a native North Carolinian. Prosperous alumni, who pour about $100,000 yearly into a football fund, convinced him of the virtues of staying at home. Like many football heroes, Choo Choo drives a new car. He and his family live in a cozy bungalow off Chapel Hill’s main street. After he graduates, a loyal alumnus has promised to set him up with an automobile dealership.”

— From Time magazine, Oct. 11, 1948

Well, yes, Charlie Justice played under quite a different system of subsidizing college athletes. Although the NCAA had just enacted restrictions that became known as the Sanity Code, they proved unworkable and were rescinded in 1951. The now-familiar (if problematic) athletic grant-in-aid wasn’t adopted until 1957.

‘North Caclalacka/Cackalacky/Click/Clicky…’

“North Cack n. (Southern sl.) new school

“1. North Carolina. (var. North Caclalacka/Cackalacky/Click/Clicky, N. Cee)

“ex: ‘I’m about to make this run to North Cack.’ ”

—  From “Street Talk: Da Official Guide to Hip-Hop & Urban Slanguage” by Randy Kearse (2006)

According to a feature in Saturday’s New York Times, “Mr. Kearse, 45, went from hustling crack cocaine as head of a multistate crew [based in North Carolina], to federal prison, to author and…  subway sales impresario.”

In 2005 the Miscellany came up empty in pursuit of the etymology of “Cackalacky” — might it be rooted in urban (i.e., black) slang?


Lost and found: N.C.’s Civil War reputation

“In the Confederacy, North Carolina regiments endured a great deal of disdain from those of other states, especially Virginia. Union victories over small armies composed of North Carolina troops at Hatteras Inlet, Roanoke Island and New Bern early in the war rubbed salt in the psychological wounds of North Carolinians.

“One general from the Tar Heel State made the soldiers in his brigade promise  ‘not to visit wife, children or  business till we have done our full share in retrieving the reputation of our troops and our state.’

“When North Carolinians fought courageously in later battles with the Army of Northern Virginia… the conceited Virginians had been put in their place. ‘It was a proud day for the old state,’ a major in the 46th North Carolina wrote after Fredericksburg.”

— From “For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War” (1997) by James M. McPherson