Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
— The last word on Tar Heel Bread?
— Philanthropic apples drop far from High Point tree.
— Was Asheville really part of Walt Disney‘s world?
— Whistling’s “electric Dylan” moment.
— Unlikely Confederates: Sons of Chang and Eng.
— One less drive-in movie, one more display lot for metal buildings and carports.
— Wouldn’t Thad Eure get a laugh out of the rise of ramps in ritzy restaurants?
“Many draft officials themselves were hardly enthusiastic about having to force men into service…. Some suspected that dragging unwilling men from their dependent families did the Confederate cause more harm than good…. A North Carolina lieutenant assigned to enforce the draft wrote of the recruiting forays he made:
” ‘I witnessed scenes & compelled compliance with orders which God grant I may never do again. To ride up to a man’s door, whose hospitable kindness makes you feel welcome & tell him, in the presence of his faithful & loving wife & sunny-faced children, that he must be ready in 10 minutes to go with you, and see… their imploring looks and glances — the tears of sorrow — the Solemn silence — the affectionate clasping of hands — the fervent kisses — the sad & bitter Goodbye — the longing glance at the place most dear to him on earth, as he slowly moves out of sight — this is indeed a sad & unpleasant task….
“What have we gained by this trip?’ ”
— From “Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War” by David Williams (2008)
“Virtually forgotten today, Joseph C. Price was once internationally celebrated…. W. E. B. Du Bois, who as a college student heard Price lecture in Boston’s Tremont Temple, pronounced him ‘the acknowledged orator of his day.’…. After Price’s untimely death at the age of 39, Frederick Douglass lamented that ‘the race has lost its ablest advocate.’…
“In 1881… a speaking tour of Britain… raised the $11,000 necessary to found Zion Wesley College (later Livingstone) in Salisbury, North Carolina. He served as president until his death of Bright’s disease in 1893….
— From “Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900,” edited by Philip S. Foner and Robert J. Branham (1998)
“Du Bois and others felt that it was the leadership vacuum created by Price’s death into which Booker T. Washington moved, and that had he lived the influence and reputation of Price and of Livingstone College would have been as great as or greater than that achieved by Washington and Tuskegee.”
— From “Dictionary of North Carolina Biography,” edited by William S. Powell (Price entry by John Inscoe)
Price was significantly less accommodationist than Washington, as suggested by this incisive observation in 1890: “The Confederacy surrendered its sword at Appomattox, but did not there surrender its convictions.”
Pictured: A pinback button marking Livingstone’s first 25 years. “A Price Builder”? Maybe a donor.
— A view thanks to Hugh.
— “I wanted to put to rest… the idea that there were no African-Americans in Western North Carolina.”
— Halifax Resolves: a bottom-up declaration of independence.
— “Likely the most architecturally ‘fun’ house in Durham.”
— NPR joins mourning for Appalachian Cultural Museum.
“…North Carolina’s claim to the highest number of Confederate dead has at times been a point of perverse pride for those whose hearts still cradle an ember or two from a bygone flame. That in itself seems slightly odd, at least from the perspective of George C. Scott’s famous observation in ‘Patton’: No one ever won a war by dying for his country — he won it by making the other poor dumb [soldier] die for his. Good theory. It doesn’t always work in practice, however.
“Southerners may not remember, because Northerners do not dwell on the fact, but Union casualties far outnumbered Confederate casualties — and New York lost more men than any other state.”
— Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial (April 15, 2011)
— “Like no-one else’s, Mr. Taylor’s music distills a primal American yearning that can never be completely satisfied….”
— Descendant adds color to “Arrangement in Black and White.”
— “He will not be hanged until the mail train comes through tomorrow.”
— Lost Cause was lost on W. J. Cash.
— “We left Wilmington… to witness and, if allowed, to participate in the bombardment of Fort Sumter”…. Road trip!
“In Wayne County, N. C., a depressed farmer cut off the rear end of his ‘disused’ automobile, fastened shafts to the axle, backed in a mule, went riding…. Soon the roads of eastern North Carolina were overrun with similar vehicles pulled by mules, horses, oxen, goats or a pair of husky boys. North Carolinians, many of whom had been Hoovercrats in 1928, transposed two letters of the term, called their conveyances Hoovercarts.
“In Goldsboro, one Gene Roberts, newshawk, promoted a Hoovercart Rodeo as a publicity stunt. Goldsboro entertained its biggest crowd since William Jennings Bryan spoke there 34 years ago. Some 400 Hoovercarts paraded through the town…. Filling stations did their best day’s business in many a month — selling hay….
“[Soon after] rodeos and parades were held in Oxford (469 entries), in Roxboro, Kinston and Wendell….”
— From Time magazine, Oct. 10, 1932
Sunday night gave me the opportunity not only to see my old friend Ed Williams inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame, but also to inquire about a longtime curiosity of mine: Who named the “Hoover cart” (the more common spelling), that emblematic vehicle of the Great Depression?
Gene Roberts, a Wayne County native who went on to a Pulitzer-studded newspaper career, told me the coinage in fact belonged to his father, Eugene L. Roberts Sr., Time’s aforementioned “newshawk,” who combined preaching with publishing the weekly Goldsboro Herald.
The Depression eventually ended, but the Hoover cart lived on, at least in political rhetoric….
“Nowhere in the United States this year have I seen a single exhibit of that famous North Carolina farm invention — that product of ingenuity and hard time, of personal despair and political mockery — the Hoover cart….
“First you had the Hoovercrats, and then you had the Hoover carts. One always follows the other.”
— President Truman, giving ’em hell in a campaign speech at the N.C. State Fairgrounds, October 19, 1948
The credit line on this photo of Truman admiring a Hoover cart will surprise no reader of the Miscellany or A View to Hugh.
Democrats in Eastern North Carolina were still getting mileage out of the Hoover cart even as late as 1952.
I’m glad that I’m not the only one that has ever been confused by this “phenomenon.”
Though the most celebrated, the Grove Park Inn wasn’t the final project of quinine magnate E. W. Grove. In Swannanoa he created Grovement, a planned community ‘where people of moderate means can secure large lots at reasonable prices.’ ”
According to this oral history, Grove envisioned “a neighborhood as close to his grandparents’ town in England as he could recreate.”
In “Asheville: A History” (2007) Nan K. Chase refers to Grovemont as “unsuccessful,” apparently another victim of the city’s extreme vulnerability to the Crash of ’29.
Pictured: a celluloid advertising mirror from the collection. I wonder if this stone house still stands — sure looks built to last, doesn’t it?
