Over the past 3 weeks we've bounced from North Carolina to California and back for the Thanksgiving holiday. The whirlwind nature of it left us at times wondering, "Wait, which state am I in right now?" There seems to be SO much more similar between these two states than we first expected that we began to wonder why there's so much talk about Californians moving to Austin. Seems like they'd be much more at home in North Carolina. Even our sordid histories seem to be more similar than we'd like to admit . . . . but we'll save all the reasons for the thought of the day, down below.
In the meantime, the highlights of the past few weeks included:
Roanoke & Wytheville, VA - Ok, not technically North Carolina, but as we emerged out of the Appalachians on our way to NC these lovely towns were a special delight,
Asheville, NC - Great art, lots of beer, ghosts, and the first Mexican food we'd seen in a long, long time.
Elon/Greensboro, NC - where we channeled Emily by both dining with her roommates and going for a nice long run.
Durham, NC - for van repairs, a history lesson, and Duke basketball!
Wilson & Duck, NC - for a quick stop at the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park. (a MUST SEE in North Carolina) on the way to visit with Craig & Alison in the Outer Banks.
Wilmington, NC - an unexpected stop and yet another unexpected treat of a small town. . . . but a difficult and sobering lesson in the history of African Americans.
Roanoke, VA & Wytheville, VA (almost North Carolina!)
Coming out of West Virginia AND the pounding rain that made up our last day there, Roanoke was a wonderful and welcome surprise. Imagine us wandering around this cute downtown with disbelieving smiles on our faces. Not only were there people and businesses, the streets were in good repair and none of the buildings we saw were either burned or boarded up. According to the local paper the Roanoke metro area has more college students per capita than either Boston or Raleigh and therefore more energy and entrepreneurial spirit. While we can't speak to all of that, we can say that the food is interesting, the beer is good, and the city is definitely walkable. It has train service direct to D.C. and is about 2.5 hrs from Raleigh/Durham. We hope to find more and more cities like Roanoke.
We zig'd and zag'd on our way southward, ending up spending a night in beautiful Wytheville, VA (ok, again it's not really North Carolina, but roll with me here.) It's a town of only 8,000 people, but with more than its share of good brew pubs. (we spent the night in the parking lot at one of them.) The downtown is sparkling -- wide; newly planted with trees, flowers, and grasses; and full of local businesses of all sorts. Everything from paint stores to pizza parlors that have died out in many other towns seems to be thriving in this little throwback city in western Virginia. As in many many other towns, there was a terrific little museum on the mainstreet. This one happened to be in the childhood home of Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson.
Ms. Wilson was the 7th of 11 children whose childhood responsibility was the care of her grandmother. In return, her grandmother taught her to read and write and to hold strong, thoughtful opinions of her own (obviously a rarity for women in those days). After just 14 years of marriage, her first husband died suddenly. Then, as PBS put it:
"Friendship with Woodrow Wilson's cousin led to the widow Galt's chance meeting of the president in the White House. Over fifteen years Wilson's junior, Edith captivated him with her charming, independent vitality. After an intense, whirlwind, and almost unseemly courtship, Edith and Woodrow were married, only nine months after meeting in a very small ceremony at her Washington, D.C. townhouse."
It's a bit hard to imagine that sort of a scenario these days isn't it! :-) She was an uncharacteristically involved first lady and after Wilson's stroke during the campaigning for the League of Nations, Edith became the "steward" of the Presidency and the sole conduit to Wilson. It's an extraordinary story and the museum was a terrific stop.
We can't fail to point out that a previous town administration had tried to make Wytheville stand out by getting every business to create larger-than-life versions of their products as a way to mark their stores on Main Street. Note the HUGE pencil and paint cans below. They seemed to be all that remained of that effort, but if we'd been voters we'd have been heavily in favor of the effort!
We mentioned that Wytheville has this music playing all the time . . . well, we don't want to distract from the fact that is a very cute little town (AND the birthplace of Edith Wilson) . . . HOWEVER, we just have to share this moment when we figured out about the music.
Asheville, NC
You may have already heard of Asheville. It's about the same size as Roanoke (~100,000 people). Though it has fewer students, it started long ago becoming a haven for artists. Along the railroad tracks, in a wide variety of old warehouses and trading offices there are perhaps 250+ artists of all sorts. The heavy concentration means that the artistic spirit simply can't be contained by their buildings' walls and, as a result, graffiti is everywhere. The two beautiful (and humongous) murals at the top of this blog entry are only the tip of the iceberg. Almost all the buildings have been "arted" in grand style making the area feel almost like one is walking through a comic strip.
However, as one guide told us "the art district really helped the town, but we didn't really take off until we started the brew pub district". Well, amen to that.
The "Greater Elon Metro Area".
(aka everything from Durham to Greensboro)
Dinner with the Roommates: Our daughter Emily is down under this fall on a long-delayed (by covid) semester abroad, so unfortunately she wasn't in Elon when we passed through. However, we were able to connect with her roommates and friends and take them out to dinner. It was as close as we'll get to having Emily back in country -- great conversation and lots and lots of laughing. Sidenote: Because Emily's been in Elon for 4 years, we tend to think of everything between Durham and Greensboro as "Elon and it's suburbs".
Yet another surprise about RV life: We made our homebase at the Jones Station RV campground in tiny Mebane, NC. It's a very cozy space and the staff is extremely friendly. Interestingly though, they told us that about 80% of their spots are rented on a long term basis to families that are undergoing cancer treatments at the Duke medical center. These families either can't afford to commute or their doctors want them to remain close to the emergency room. As a result, they pile the family into a trailer or RV and camp out in Mebane. Yet another way that our view of "RV people" has evolved over the course of this trip. Sometimes your home really NEEDS to be mobile.
Cafe Press and Beautiful Graham, NC: One highlight, for Randy at least, of visiting the area was the chance to eat multiple times at one of his favorite restaurants -- Press Cafe in Graham, NC. The people are great. The food is amazing. And walking around Graham is always a joy. We don't generally think of rural North Carolina as being a hotbed of public art (especially when there isn't a college in town), but Graham is the exception to the rule. The shops and artists are all local.
The Greensboro Half-Marathon: The second highlight was stopping in Greensboro. I know you're thinking we're going to mention the 40-year-old doughnut at the UNC Greensboro campus, but no, that's not it. In Greensboro is a Fleet Feet franchise. A sister store to the one at home in Menlo Park (run by our friends Jim & Lisa). We stopped there to look for some new shoes for Joan and instead found that they were having a half-marathon on Saturday. Joan was super super kind to agree to let Randy give it a try and it turned out to be a great course and a great morning. After so much sitting and driving it was nice to go out and pound the pavement for a couple hours!
Durham, NC and Van Repairs
Van Repairs: During the time shortly before and shortly after Thanksgiving break, we discovered several problems in Doris. Luckily we also discovered that Mercedes Benz of Durham has a very accomplished van service practice. They were able to help with a good bit of warrantied work as well as a tire rotation. Seth was super helpful at getting us shoehorned into their already busy schedule, but it meant that Joan and I had to do a lot of walking and waiting around. Those first two pictures are from Cracker Barrel (our home away from home lately) and the manager's message from Starbucks we spent a lot of time at. After the dealer had fixed the "Mercedes problems" then Randy got to fix the Winnebago plumbing problem -- and after about 5 hrs in the Home Depot parking lot (where we were shopping alongside a buddhist monk with some DIY needs) we got that taken care of.
"Success" and the Starbucks Manager: We found it especially interesting to read about the Starbucks manager's upbringing and education. It's not your usual background, but it's a job that's becoming more and more common obviously. And we think it's hard to argue that he's anything but a success. He grew up the son of a pastor, constantly travelling in rural NC. He went to college though and is now working on his 3rd different college degree or certificate. He's clearly hard working, but more than that was how he worked with the staff while we were there. He was patient, but energetic. He was thoughtful and kind, but clear about his expectations. And he was very, very detailed with them about everything from "When you leave, you need to check the schedule for the next week so that you can plan ahead." to "When you greet a customer, be sure to smile and have energy in your voice." And his efforts showed in the way the store ran. The team seemed to like each other and their jobs. They were really fun to be around. And they were going 100 mph the whole morning. He probably isn't the kind of success that we imagined for our kids when they were born. Yet, he's hard working, upbeat, detail oriented, and he clearly cares about his job. If all I got was that description about how my kids turned out, I hope I'd say that sounds like a success.
An Impromptu Civil War history lesson: The surrender at Bennett's farm - Yes, we all know that Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, VA, but the Confederacy still had 100,000 troops in the Carolinas and Jefferson Davis still believed that victory was possible. It turns out that the remaining armies were consolidating under General Johnston in the Raleigh/Greensboro area and looked to be a formidable force. Sherman's biggest fear though was that they might disband and begin a guerilla war that could last years more and cost thousands more lives. As luck would have it the Confederate General Johnston was not on good terms with Jefferson Davis and generally believed the cause to be lost. Without authorization from Davis, Johnston sent word to Sherman that he wanted to talk, Sherman jumped at the opportunity. By a quirk of geography, they happened to meet near the Bennett family's farm outside of Raleigh and were able to co-opt the house for their surrender talks. We discovered all this because the Bennett home was just a mile or so from the Cracker Barrel we were staying at. (I know, just imagine if they'd met at the Cracker Barrel instead :-) We spotted a tiny sign on one of our trips back and forth to the Mercedes dealer and decided to check it out. The site turns out to have quite a lot to see and was staffed by Fred, the very knowledgeable and friendly docent. He showed us around for about an hour, with all sorts of stories about the Bennett family and the serendipity that put them at the center of this moment in history.
Duke Basketball: No trip to Durham (nor to the Southeast in general) can really be complete without a trip to see a little ACC basketball. Thanks to our good friends Stu and Alison, we were able to get some tickets to a Duke basketball game. It's a crazy atmosphere (even when they're just playing Delaware), but the museum (shrine?) to Duke basketball's success is even more impressive. Check that one off the bucket list!
Wilson, NC and the Whirligig park
One late night early on in planning this trip Randy googled "weird things to do in North Carolina" and the first entry that came up was the Vollis Simpson Whirligig park in Wilson. If you read our entry about Quill Hill in Maine, you may remember how that was built by a retiree that decided he wanted something to fill his days. Well, Vollis Simpson was much the same. He was a talented metal worker already and he just liked to build these windmills for fun. You really have to see the park to believe it.
Duck, NC. (The outer banks)
In yet another way-too-brief encounter, we were able to overlap with our good friends Craig and Alison (and Sadie, Helen, Coleman, Devon, Katie, Timothy, Sarah & Elizabeth and Teddy the dog). They usually spend a summer week in the Outer Banks, but this year the schedule got moved to Thanksgiving week. The weather was dramatically different for them, but we brought them a dozen doughnuts from Monuts in Durham (thanks to StuJo's recommendation) to warm them up. We were very, very thankful to be able to overlap with them for 24 hours. Craig and Randy bonded over their recent health challenges (and the joy of aging), while Alison & Joan mostly drank and laughed together. Alison's college friends, Sarah & Elizabeth were a hoot to get to know and we're looking forward to visiting Elizabeth's store in Westport, NY the next time we get back to Putnam. (Small world that she's so close to our "farm"!)
Wilmington, NC - Lovely town. Sordid history
Heading south, we decided to stop in yet another town we knew nothing about.
Part one of the story: Wilmington is a very walkable town on the banks of the Cape Fear river at its outlet to the ocean. It has a lovely downtown populated by local businesses, accessible beaches, great state parks to camp in, and beautiful sunsets. In short, it's an idyllic smaller town that seems to be thriving.
Part 2 of the story. The 1898 Massacre and Coup d'Etat: What we didn't know going in was anything about the only coup d'etat to ever take place on US soil. A fuller history of the 1898 Wilmington Coup is here, but the short version is this. Wilmington at the time was governed mostly by Republicans, a mix of whites and blacks. In the lead up to the November election an editorial was written in a local black owned newspaper that essentially said, "you know how common it is for white men to have affairs with black women? Well white women do the same thing with black men." By the time of the election, white supremacists had organized into "red shirt" squads who roamed the city, intimidating black voters and actively preventing them from voting. The result was Democratic victories in all the races on the ballot. However, because not all seats were up for re-election the Republican coalition still held control of the city. The situation so incensed the white supremacists in the area (mostly Democrats) that 2 days after the article about 500 of them, led by Alfred Moore Waddell (former Confederate officer and US congressman) marched on the newspaper offices and burned them to the ground. Under pressure, the mayor, most of the city council and other city office holders resigned under pressure and/or were driven out of town. Mobs killed hundreds of blacks and drove hundreds more from the town. What was at the time a majority black community was forever changed. The town today is 75% white.
All of this we stumbled upon or googled, discovering the full story in bits and pieces. When we finally found the local history museum (remember we said that every small town seems to have it's own museum) it seemed to us that Wilmington is still figuring out how to deal with its history. In addition to local history, there were exhibits on early farming techniques, on the science of fire, on the space shuttle, The result was that, despite how large the 1898 coup loomed in our own minds it was clear that the event was viewed as only a small part of Wilmington's history. Race, in general and specifically race related to the Civil War and reconstruction seems to be the elephant in the room, judging by the way the museum presented the events of Wilmington's past.
The cause of the Civil War was presented as oddly unemotional, as if it were an argument about the weather or crop futures.
There was a lovely graph about the racial composition of the city, but no discussion about why the black population didn't seem to grow after 1900.
Native Americans warranted only a single line of the history. In the brown colored sign below they noted "A few years after European settlement there were hardly any Native Americans in the area".
However, we were particularly struck by the unironic presentation of a quote from a white Wilmington resident about the the Union occupation of Wilmington at the end of the Civil War.
"The sense of captivity, of subjugation . . . is so galling."
In the museum's defense, the video of the 1898 massacre was frank and vivid. It however made up probably less than 5% of the material on the history of Wilmington.
Home for Thanksgiving
It wasn't glamorous (especially since we flew on Frontier Airlines), but it was an adventure nonetheless, so it goes on the blog -- we took time out to fly home and have Thanksgiving with our 2 boys (Matt & Adam) and Randy's mom & dad (Bob & Betty). What a wonderful and relaxing week! Yes, I said it, "Relaxing". I'm not sure we had fully understood how much the constant motion was draining our batteries.
I'm realizing that we "recharged" by "reconnecting", not necessarily sitting around or by napping. It was a vacation of constant motion, yet we both came away completely energized and refreshed. Highlights included:
Half Moon Bay beach with the boys and ALL 3 dogs. That made Joan SUPER happy. :-)
Walking with the Bing gals (for Joan)
Running with the Soles (for Randy)
The infamous Morrissey mile on Thanksgiving day
Watching LOTS of football and futbol with Bob & the boys
Gathering our dinner group for an impromptu feast
Watching Adam gather info for a class project (that's a Sturgeon head in the picture that he's showing to Betty . . . nasty looking bugger!)
And, of course, another terrific Thanksgiving feast at Bob & Betty's with our good friends Brenda & Roger
Thought for the day: Two sides of the same coin?
In many, many ways these two states -- California and North Carolina -- are similar. Both have amazing beaches, famous mountains and hiking, astounding brew pubs, great sports teams, and vibrant arts communities. Weather on the two coasts is moderate and invites you to get outside and explore. Both have terrific universities, both public and private. They are similar down even to the techies in Patagonia vests at the Starbucks.
AND, both have difficult histories that they are grappling with. While the historical experience of African Americans is North Carolina's historical burden, it has parallels in California in the experiences of Asian Americans in the 1800's and Latino farm workers in the 1900's, not to mention African Americans' experiences with redlining, discrimination, and urban poverty in our lifetimes. None of this is meant to be an exhaustive list of the pro's and con's of different communities' struggles with their histories. Instead, as Joan & I discussed and reflected on all we saw in Wilmington our first reaction was to be righteously outraged. Our second, and perhaps more honest reaction, was to think,
"In California, have we done any better?"
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