Month: August 2013

National Rum Day…recipes from the collection

Today is National Rum Day.  Here are a few recipes to help you celebrate.

Thirsty Soul - The Lost Colony Cookbook

Thirsty Soul from The lost colony cookbook : 400 years of fine food & feasts in the Old World & the New.

Rum velvet black bottom pie - Carolina Cooking

Rum Velvet Black Bottom Pie from Carolina cooking.

rumbumble - Dixie Dishes

Rumbumble from Dixie dishes.

Hawaiian Chicken with Pineapple Rum Sauce - North Carolina Bed&Breakfast Cookbook

Hawaiian Chicken with Pineapple Rum Sauce from North Carolina bed & breakfast cookbook.

Rum Milk Punch - A Taste of the Old and the New

Rum Milk Punch from A Taste of the old and the new.

Rum Balls - Pass the Plate

Rum Balls from Pass the plate : the collection from Christ Church.

Bacardi Cocktail - Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide

Bacardi Cocktail from Hemingway & Bailey’s bartending guide to great American writers.

Artifact of the Month: UNC Cardboard jacket

This morning’s cool weather may have sparked some to wonder whether fall has arrived. Autumn is more than a month away, but fall sports—think football—is a mere two weeks away for UNC Tar Heel fans!  May’s “Artifact of the Month” highlighted the contributions to the game by Carolina’s cheerleaders.  This month we salute the members of UNC Cardboard, students who planned and executed card stunts during halftime at home football games.  Norman Sper, a UNC cheerleader in the class of  ’50, brought the tradition to Carolina in 1948 after admiring the card shows at UCLA. For a few decades in the mid to late twentieth century, students sitting in the lower deck on Kenan Stadium’s south side flipped colored cards to make designs and spell out words.   By the early 1950s more than 2,000 students participated in the stunts, and UNC’s card section was believed to be the largest in the eastern United States.

Jacket courtesy of F. Marion Redd
Jacket courtesy of F. Marion Redd

This navy jacket was awarded for service to F. Marion Redd ’67, who led the club during the 1966-67 academic year.  According to Redd, club leaders preplanned stunts on grid paper and hand stamped and placed all instruction cards underneath stadium seats the evening before the game

 

Stunt instruction card for UNC vs. Wake Forest, 1966. Other cards used colors rather than stunt names. Instruction card courtesy of F. Marion Redd.
Stunt instruction card for UNC vs. Wake Forest, 1966. Other cards used colors rather than stunt names. Instruction card courtesy of F. Marion Redd.
"Hi Deacs" stunt, 1966. Photograph courtesy of F. Marion Redd.
“Hi Deacs” stunt, 1966. Photograph courtesy of F. Marion Redd.

UNC Cardboard was an official student organization and was funded by the Carolina Athletic Association.  It’s unclear when or why Cardboard stopped performing stunts.  In the late 1960s there were several occasions when students hurled cards at the end of games, injuring other fans. These incidents left University administrators threatening to pull the plug on card stunts at football games.  Perhaps one of our readers can offer more details on the demise of UNC Cardboard?

Vance had his fill of roaming Confederate cavalry

“North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance grew so exasperated with the indiscipline of Confederate cavalry wandering through the state that he cried out in 1863:

” ‘If God Almighty had yet in store another plague worse than all others which he intended to have let loose on the Egyptians in case the Pharoah still hardened his heart, I am sure it must have been a regiment or so of half-armed, half-disciplined Confederate cavalry.’ ”

— From “Fateful Lightning: A New History of the the Civil War and Reconstruction” by Allen C. Guelzo (2012)

 

The News and Observer celebrates a birthday

N&O_1894_new_ownership

Happy Birthday to The News & Observer. Although the paper’s roots date back to the 1880s, the first issue under publisher Josephus Daniels rolled off the presses on this date in 1893. And since then, the paper has operated continuously under its current title. The print version of today’s paper features a front page mocked up in the style of the 1893 paper.

We’re marking the occasion by providing you with a look at the full first issue. To take a closer look at the individual pages, click on one of the images below. You’ll be taken to a new page. Click on the image on that page and you can view the full page.

There were better places than Grabtown. And worse.

“They used to write in my studio bios that I was the daughter of a cotton farmer from Chapel Hill. Hell, baby, I was born on a tenant farm in Grabtown. How’s that grab ya? Grabtown, North Carolina. And it looks exactly the way it sounds.

“I should have stayed there. The ones who never left home don’t have a pot to pee in, but they’re happy. Me, look at me. What did it bring me?”

— Ava Gardner, quoted by Rex Reed in “Ava: Life in the Afternoon” (Esquire magazine, May 1967)

 

Plymouth, N.C., 1921: No place for Jim Crow

“To venture into many of the small towns situated on barrier islands or peninsulas was to venture outside the archetypal Jim Crow South and into places characterized by high rates of religious and ethnic diversity, social practices and cultural sensibilities that shocked, horrified and piqued the curiosity of visitors….

“Recounting a visit to Plymouth, North Carolina, a remote town near the Albemarle Sound, in 1921, Bruce Cotten, a tobacco planter’s son, speculated that the inhabitants had ‘partaken too heavily of the Lotus Plant[s]’ that lined the waterways leading into town. ‘A motley crowd of whites and blacks [crowded] the sidewalks and streets [giving] the impression of an Oriental Market Place…. There was plentiful signs of bootleg whiskey, as well as intimacies between black girls and white boys, which were openly going on and jested about….. My first impulse was to inquire my way to the American Consulate.'”

— From “The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South” by Andrew W. Kahrl (2012)

 

‘A visitor was shocked to see men butting heads’

“During [the 1870s] in Windsor, North Carolina, raucous turkey shoots and bearbaitings remained popular…. On Saturday, men gathered in saloons and ‘presently a dispute would arise [and] everyone would rush to the scene of the battle,’ according to a fascinated onlooker. Within a few moments the street would be filled with fighters, ‘a half acre of them, swearing and tearing at each other’s clothes, and all about the most trifling incident…. To miss a part in a free-for-all fight was considered a sore disappointment.’

“So intense was the desire of spectators to see the fighting in Williamston, North Carolina, ‘that they would often climb up on each other’s shoulders’…. When a battle would start one man would jump in, and ‘then another and another would go on until the battle would wax fierce and general.’

“In Martin County should anyone try to halt the fight or interfere, another spectator would ‘spring upon the interloper’ and stop him, ‘often leading to another brawl.’

“An English visitor to North Carolina was shocked to see men butting heads — a popular method of fighting in some locales — ‘as practiced in battle between bulls, rams and goats.’ ”

— From “Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America” by Richard Stott (2009)

Early North Carolina’s lust for “rough and tumble” and gouging is well established, but contemporary accounts always capture my attention. 

 

How plantation owner corresponded with his slaves

“Illiteracy… compromised but did not preclude participation in America’s [antebellum] postal network.

“A fascinating correspondence between absentee slaveholder William S. Pettigrew and the enslaved foremen on his two North Carolina plantations illustrates this crucial point nicely. During an an extended convalescence at Healing Springs in Virginia, Pettigrew sought to manage his business affairs by corresponding with Moses and Henry, the two illiterate overseers, relying upon a white intermediary.

” ‘Thinking you would be glad to hear from me,’ Pettigrew wrote to Moses in 1856, ”I have concluded to write you a few lines and will enclose them to Mr. White who will read them to you.’ Though Malica J. White’s own skills were quite rough, he dutifully transcribed the replies of three different slaves, and a detailed correspondence ensued, dealing with countless details of crop production, workplace discipline, and plantation life. Pettigrew always addressed Moses and Henry directly, and they responded in kind. Upon receiving their replies, Pettigrew offered paternalistic congratulations to Moses for his ‘succe[ss] as a letter-writer,’ proudly showed the letter to a friend, and instructed Moses to ‘writ[e] more frequently,’ de-emphasizing White’s mediation’ ….”

— From “The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America” by David M. Henkin (2008)