Happy Birthday to Andrew Jackson–the president claimed as a native son by North and South Carolina, but who was elected while a resident of Tennessee. As a person who was educated entirely within the confines of and by the State of North Carolina, I was convinced that our southerly neighbor’s claim to Old Hickory was bogus. Yes, he was born on March 15, 1767, in the nebulous Waxhaw region, which lies along the border of the Carolinas near present-day Charlotte, but we had a statue on the State Capitol grounds in Raleigh claiming him (along with James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson) as our own. Well, I can’t offer the definitive answer on the controversy and different opinions still exist, but according to Robert V. Remini’s biographical sketch of Jackson in American National Biography, Old Hickory “always believed and repeatedly stated that he was born in South Carolina.” I wonder if a similar disagreement will arise if John Edwards is elected as president.
The Perfect Season
This year is the 50th anniversary of McGuire’s Miracle…32-0…the perfect season…UNC’s 1957 NCAA National Championship. On March 23, 1957, the Tar Heel men’s basketball team, coached by Frank McGuire and led by All-American Lennie Rosenbluth, defeated Wilt Chamberlain and the University of Kansas Jayhawks in a triple-overtime thriller in Kansas City, Missouri.
The North Carolina Collection honors this anniversary with “McGuire’s Miracle: UNC’s 1956-1957 Championship Basketball Season.” The website features individual and team photos, action shots from league and tournament games, game results, and a list of references for further research on this remarkable season.
Encyclopedias of the Carolinas
I continue to enjoy my wanderings through those two excellent new reference works, Encyclopedia of North Carolina and South Carolina Encyclopedia. Lately I have been musing on alcohol – the drinking kind. Surely the subject is relevant to both states. After all, perhaps the best known joke about the two Carolinas is “What did the governor of South Carolina say to the governor of North Carolina?” The answer, of course, is “It is a long time between drinks!” I was not surprised, therefore, to find that things alcoholic were well represented in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, with full entries for whiskey, beer and breweries, moonshine, and wine and wine making. There were also full entries on such related topics as the Anti-saloon League, blind tigers, and blue laws, not to mention prohibition.
Well, imagine my surprise when I turned to the South Carolina Encyclopedia and found virtually nothing on the demon rum in any of its various forms: no whiskey, no beer, no wine, and only one mention of moonshine and that in the article on Berkeley County. Come on! Thinking back to my youth in dear old Spartanburg County, I distinctly remember that there were a few folk who would take a drink – at least a small glass of port at Christmas. I call to mind riding down the road with a friend when we passed a sign advertising ginger ale. “Drink Canada Dry?” he said. “I haven’t drunk South Carolina dry yet!” How can I explain this? Have South Carolinians suddenly developed amnesia about their tipsy past? Has spiritous drink become a taboo subject south of South of the Border? For these dark and troubling questions I have no answer.
I cannot leave this subject without noting that the SCE, for all of its weird silence on booze, does have a couple of good alcohol-related articles. People my age will remember when liquor was sold in South Carolina at “red dot stores.” These are discussed, as is the dispensary system, Pitchfork Ben Tillman’s particular, not to say peculiar, contribution to prohibition in America. Until next time, Cheers.
Destinations of Distinction
Hillsborough, the one-time state capitol and current center of statewide literary activity, has been named by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the country’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2007. It’s been a few years since a North Carolina town has made it onto the list. The National Trust has been publishing its distinctive dozen since 2000, highlighting Asheville in 2002 and Edenton in 2003.
What’s for Dinner?
The Jargon Society, founded by North Carolina poet Jonathan Williams, has been publishing fine press editions of innovative poetry and art for more than half a century. But apparently that’s not all they do. I ran across White Trash Cooking (Jargon Society, 1986) in the North Carolina Collection stacks this afternoon. Of all of the outstanding recipes in this book, if I had to pick just one to share, I think this would be it:
FRIED SQUIRREL
Make sure all the hair is cleaned off the squirrel. Cut it up. If it’s old and tough, put it in the pressure cooker for about 15-20 minutes.
Salt and pepper it. Cover with flour and fry in a cast iron skillet on a medium fire until brown and tender. This is a real sweet meat.
You can smother a squirrel just like a chicken.
This begs the question, what kind of wine would you serve with a fried squirrel? I think the answer is obvious: Cheerwine.
Snooping
It seems that privacy concerns during times of conflict are not a new problem. On February 2, 1776, Anglican clergyman James Reed wrote a letter to the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. In the letter, Reed comments on the “exorbitant passions of Men” and the “desolating progress of civil discord” occasioned by the American Revolution. As a loyalist sending a letter to London, he obviously realized that the correspondence would arouse suspicion and would likely be opened. So, he added a nota bene, which stated:
“Any person prompted by curiosity to open this Letter is desired to Seal it up again in a Cover and forward it.”
This letter made it to London, but we unfortunately do not have any record about how it arrived–opened, sealed, or opened and resealed.
Literary Festival in Cullowhee
The Spring Literary Festival at Western Carolina University will take place this year from March 26-29 and will feature readings from Charles Baxter, Gish Jen, and many other authors. This only confirms my earlier claim that North Carolina has an embarrassment of riches these days when it comes to literary gatherings. Scarcely a month seems to pass without another big event like this taking place somewhere in the state.
Early N.C. Images Available Online
The North Carolina Collection is excited to announce the launch of a new online exhibit: Picturing the New World: The Hand-Colored De Bry Engravings of 1590. This site contains high-resolution images from the NCC’s rare, hand-colored edition of Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. These illustrations represent the first images of North Carolina to be published in Europe.
These are striking images, but they are also interesting cultural objects. The engravings, by Theodore De Bry, are based on original watercolors by John White. De Bry took some liberties with the images, especially those of the native inhabitants of the area around Roanoke Island. While White’s drawings are judged to be generally authentic depictions of late 16th-century Native Americans, De Bry’s figures appear with Europeanized features and in poses that reflect classical statuary. The person who colored the volume took it even a step further, adding a pale skin tone and blonde hair to many of the people, and bright, unnatural colors to some of the vegetation.
There is still a strong interest in the original settlements on and around Roanoke Island. Today’s News and Observer has an article about current efforts to determine the site of the original 1585 fort. The De Bry engravings may not be accurate enough to give much help to modern archaeologists, but they are certainly a fascinating example of early European efforts to understand and interpret Native American life and culture.
March 1948: The Death of Zelda Fitzgerald
This Month in North Carolina History
Late on the night of March 10, 1948, a fire started in a kitchen of the main building of Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Spreading rapidly through a dumbwaiter shaft, flames reached every floor, and, in spite of efforts by hospital staff and local fire fighters to evacuate everyone from the building, nine patients died. Among the victims of the fire, identified only by her slipper, was Zelda Fitzgerald, who with her husband, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, represented for many the talent, sophistication, glamour and excess of American life of the 1920s.
Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama state supreme court justice, met Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald in 1918. She was a Montgomery, Alabama, belle, pretty, vivacious, and independent, and he was a former Princeton student from the midwest with a burning ambition to make his name as an author. Their marriage in 1920 was followed almost immediately by Scott’s emergence as one of the most popular writers in America. With the substantial income from Fitzgerald’s short stories and novels Scott and Zelda lived a life of excitement and sophistication in Europe and America.
Beneath the surface of their marriage, however, Scott and Zelda were an increasingly unhappy couple. Their personalities clashed in an environment made stressful by their extravagant lifestyle. In 1930 Zelda suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed (perhaps incorrectly) with schizophrenia. From then until 1940 her life was spent mainly in mental institutions in Europe and America, except for short periods living with her family. At the same time Scott’s popularity waned and his income fell. Looking for a less expensive place to relax and recover, he began visiting the area around Asheville, North Carolina. In 1936 he moved Zelda from an institution in Maryland to Highland Hospital in Asheville.
Zelda remained for four years at Highland under the care of Dr. Robert S. Carroll, who has been described as “something of an original in American psychiatry.” Carroll believed in treating mental illness in part with a regime of diet and exercise although he also used other standard therapies of the day. Zelda, who saw her husband, daughter, and other family infrequently, was often lonely at Highland, but she made progress there. She participated in activities such as hiking and playing tennis, and she continued to write and paint, pursuits she had begun in the 1920s. Zelda’s painting reproduced on this page was purchased from a collector for the North Carolina Collection Gallery in 1991. It is identified on the back as depicting a Highland Hospital scene.
In 1940 Carroll agreed to release Zelda to live with her widowed mother in Montgomery. Over the next decade Zelda returned several times to Highland for brief periods of treatment, including the visit which ended in her death in the fire of March 10.
By the time of the tragic fire, Highland Hospital had become part of the Duke University medical system. Duke sold the hospital to a private psychiatric business in the early 1980s. The hospital closed for good in 1993 and today the property includes an office park and shopping plaza.
Sources
Milford, Nancy. Zelda: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman’s Life. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2004.
Image Source:
North Carolina Collection Gallery
Zelda Fitzgerald in North Carolina
The March This Month in North Carolina History feature looks at the tragic death of Zelda Fitzgerald in Asheville, N.C. in 1948. Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald spent time on and off in Asheville during the latter years of their lives.
There are at least a couple of Zelda Fitzgerald items in the North Carolina Collection. The NCC Gallery has one of her watercolors, done while she was a patient at the Highland Hospital, and there is a letter of condolence from her to Louise Perkins following the death of Maxwell Perkins in the summer of 1947. This letter (the signature is shown here) is in the Aldo Magi Collection of Thomas Wolfe materials.