Tag: asheville nc

Wolfe: Fitzgerald needed to ‘just take hold again’

“P.S. There is a poor, desperate, unhappy man staying at the Grove Park Inn. He is a man of great talent but he is throwing it away on drink and worry over his misfortunes. [Maxwell] Perkins thought if Mama went to see him and talked to him, it might do some good — to tell him that at the age of forty he is at his prime and has nothing to worry about if he will just take hold again and begin to work.

“His name, I forgot to say, is Scott Fitzgerald, and a New York paper has just published a miserable interview with him — it was a lousy trick, a rotten…piece of journalism, going to see a man in that condition, gaining his confidence, and then betraying him. I myself have suffered at the hands of these rats, and I know what they can do. But I don’t know whether it’s a good idea for Mama to see him — in his condition, he might resent it and think we were sorry for him, etc .— so better wait until I write again.”

— From Thomas Wolfe’s  letter to his brother Fred (Oct. 7, 1936)

On Fitzgerald’s 40th birthday two weeks earlier, a reporter from the New York Post had tracked down the drunken author in Asheville and brutally described him under the headline “On the other side of paradise… engulfed in despair.”

 

A light bulb goes on (belatedly) at Thomas Wolfe house

“We have had a few folks get to the end of our 50-minute tour of the old boardinghouse before they realize we are not talking about the guy in the white suit…. As a tour guide it is rewarding for us anytime we see the light bulb going on and someone finally making connections… but you do have to wonder where they were over the last 45 minutes.”

— Tom Muir, historic site manager at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville, quoted by Tyler Malone at Full Stop (April 14, 2015)

“The guy in the white suit” tells George Plimpton his thoughts about the first Tom Wolfe.  

 

Young Ty Cobb showed grit in Asheville courtroom

“As idyllic as his days in Royston [Georgia] seemed to be, [young Ty Cobb] was always delighted to visit Grandpa Johnnie, the antislavery Reb, in rural Murphy, North Carolina….

“Once, when he was about 11, he accompanied Johnnie Cobb to Asheville, where the ‘squire’ was serving as foreman of the jury in a civil matter, probably a dispute over land. When the verdict was announced by his grandfather, the loser in the case ran up and grabbed Johnnie by the shirt, an act that caused Ty to also come charging out of the audience and attempt to boot the man in the shins. The angry litigant, unaware of what a pair of Cobb-kicked pants might bring one day on the memorabilia market, swatted him away, but when he turned back to Johnnie Cobb the squire had drawn his pistol. ‘Be on your way,’ Ty’s grandpa said, and the man left peaceably.”

— From “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty” by Charles Leerhsen (2015)

 

NC was hotbed of resistance to (Jewish) refugees

“Sen. Robert Reynolds, a Democrat from North Carolina and an outspoken opponent of Jewish migration, claimed Jews were ‘systematically building a Jewish empire in this country,’ and often argued that Jews were alien to American culture. ‘Let Europe take care of its own people,’ Reynolds argued. ‘We cannot care for our own, to say nothing of importing more to care for.

“Reynolds disseminated his nativist views through a publication he founded called the Vindicator. The publication carried headlines about the ‘alien menace’ such as ‘Jewish Refugees Find Work,’ ‘Rabbi Seeks Admission of One Million War Refugees,’ and ‘New U.S. Rules Hit Immigration of German Jews.’ Defending himself against critics, Reynolds told Life magazine that he simply wanted ‘our own fine boys and lovely girls to have all the jobs in this wonderful country’….

“William Dudley Pelley, a leading anti-Semite and organizer of the [Asheville-based]  ‘Silver Shirts’ nationalist group, claimed that Jewish migration was part of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy to seize control of the United States. Pelley, whose organization routinely used anti-Semitic smears such as ‘Yidisher Refugees’ and ‘Refugees Kikes,’ attracted up to 50,000 to his organization by 1934….”

— From “Anti-Syrian Muslim Refugee Rhetoric Mirrors Calls to Reject Jews During Nazi Era” by Lee Fang at the Interceptor (Nov. 18)

 

Remembering Billy Graham — after forgetting him

“A statue of evangelist and pastor to presidents Billy Graham is expected to be installed inside the U.S. Capitol after his death. The statue would replace that of Charles Aycock, a North Carolina governor who championed public education but was also a prominent white supremacist….

“It’s likely that few people will be offended by the honor extended to Graham since he was one of the dominant religious figures of the 20th century, said William Martin, a sociologist at Rice University and a biographer of Graham.

“Martin said he has been retained by ABC since 1995 to be available to the network on an exclusive basis at the time of Graham’s death.

“Graham [at age 96] has been mostly out of the public eye for several years.

“ ‘Outside evangelical circles, knowledge of him is waning daily,’ Martin said. ‘Ten years ago, before I retired from teaching, a minority of my students recognized his name.’ ”

— From “A statue of Billy Graham will likely replace a white supremacist’s statue in the U.S. Capitol” by Sarah Pulliam Bailey in the Washington Post (Sept. 21)

The state’s other honoree in Statuary Hall, Zeb Vance, will remain in place, although his own support of white supremacy was just as unequivocal as Aycock’s — e.g., “Even the mind of a fanatic recoils in disgust and loathing from the prospect of intermingling the quick and jealous blood of the European with the putrid stream of African barbarism.”

In Asheville, meanwhile, some are looking askance at the 119-year-old Vance Memorial in Pack Square.

 

Thomas Wolfe, ‘the most surprised person in the world’

“Mr. Stikeleather, may I give you one little illustration of what I think may have happened between myself and the people in Asheville? Have you ever tried to pass a man in the street and the moment you stepped to the right to go around him he would also step that way, when you step to the left, he would follow you, and so the thing would continue until it became funny and you both stood still and looked at each other and yet all the time all you were trying to do was to be friendly to each other and to give the other fellow a free passage?
“Or, better still, have you ever met some one that you knew you liked and you were pretty sure he felt the way about you and yet, figuratively speaking, you ‘got off on the the wrong foot’ with each other? Now I think that something of this sort may have happened between Asheville and myself.
“When I wrote ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ several years ago, I can honestly assure you I had no notion that the book would arouse the kind of comment and response and cause the kind of misunderstanding in my home town that it did do. I should like you to believe that I, myself, was just about the most surprised person in the world when I finally understood the kind of effect my book was having in Asheville….”

— From Thomas Wolfe’s letter responding to Asheville businessman J.G. Stikeleather (July 8, 1935)
[Paragraphing added.]
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Pitt County’s little-known No. 1 in the nation

I wasn’t shocked to see Bloomberg Best (and Worst) list Asheville as having the highest concentration of Scotch-Irish ancestry among U.S. metro areas.

But I’d never have guessed the national leader in concentration of Palestinian ancestry: Greenville.

 

Swannanoa Gap tunnel cost more than dollars

On this day in 1879: Workers approaching from both sides complete 1,832-foot Swannanoa Gap tunnel, longest in western North Carolina. Master builder Thad Coleman wires Asheville that the “grades and centers met exactly.”

Later the same day, however, a slide at the tunnel kills 21 laborers. (In all, some 400 workers, most of them misdemeanor convicts, will die in bringing the railroad through the mountains to Asheville.)

 

Wolfe escaped ‘noise… tumult… too many people’

On this day in 1937: Author Thomas Wolfe writes from New York to his mother in Asheville:

“Yes, I suppose there are more modern and up-to-date places around Asheville with electric lights, new beds, etc. but I did not have time to look for them and I honestly thought that the Whitson cabin was . . . the best place that I saw. . . .

“As to your own fears of loneliness — and not liking to be alone out in the country at night — I know of no way in which you can get peace and seclusion, and not get it, at the same time. What I need desperately at the present time is to get away from the noise and tumult of New York, to get away from towns and cities and, for a few weeks at least, to get away from too many people.”

 

Before Big Macs, Big Three ruled Asheville burger scene

“Asheville’s first drive-in was Buck’s Restaurant, founded by John ‘Buck’ Buchanan in 1946….

“The next drive-in to come to Tunnel Road was Wink’s, which had a radio tower and disk jockey perched on the roof during peak cruising hours. The DJ, writes [Rick McDaniel, author of  Asheville Food: A History of High Country Cuisine], ‘would lower a peach basket on a rope down to would-be Romeos, who would send up their requests for songs to be dedicated over the air to their sweeties below’….

“On the other side of the Tunnel was the third drive-in, Babe Malloy’s. ‘The Big Three’ created somewhat of a ‘cruising circuit,’ said McDaniel. ‘All the kids made a loop around the three to see who was at which one.

” ‘The Big Three lasted from the 1950s to about 1975. Back then, you didn’t have a McDonald’s every 5 feet…. Eventually all of the fast food places started popping up, and it drove the traditional drive-ins out of business because of advertising — kids wanted to eat what they saw on TV.”

— From “The history of the Asheville burger” by Mackensy Lunsford in the Asheville Citizen-Times (Aug. 7)