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Bad Man Otto Wood: This Date in History
- Thread starter donbosco
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donbosco
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donbosco
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An essay on Lights and Tall Tales. Long Beach/Oak Island was ‘discovered’ by my parents sometime right after WWII from what I’ve pieced together. Of course the 13 mile-long island had been the site of projects and dreams for centuries. Native Americans, Dawhee, Waccamaw, and Winya fished the area and through the colonial period people came and went. Nearby on Bald Head Island a lighthouse was built in 1817 and at the Eastern end the Oak Island Lighthouse beams its four powerful bursts of sweeping light across Frying Pan Shoals. It was erected in 1958. That light and I were born the same year.
Fort Caswell, built in 1836, stands at the north end of the island near the light. Designed to guard the mouth of the Cape Fear River from marauding pirates, the fort, a twin of sorts to Fort Fisher, was in operation through The Civil War to World War One. For decades (since 1949) the grounds have been home to Southern Baptist summer camps. My aunts Burdine and Leisel Womble went there for weeklong Bible Study as did cousins and friends. I was spared for some reason though growing up I visited those ruined fortifications many times.
I think it was T.L. And Mrs. Smith that cultivated in my parents their love of Long Beach. They seem to have been on the leading edge of folks in the Piedmont investing in the beach. They were from #SilerCity (he started Smith and Buckner Funeral Home there with B.B. Buckner in 1933). He talked my Momma and Deddy into buying a lot there when the only way onto the island was a ‘swinging’ bridge. They built a house which they used far, far too seldom but rented out for decades. Many, many folks from Chatham County spent vacations in that place.
We mostly only went to the beach in the winter when the house wasn’t rented. We’d head out of #Bonlee on Saturday afternoon after closing the hardware store and return late Sunday night. Even as a young boy that trip down and back seemed a bit frustratingly quick but I also could tell that my parents dearly loved the simple act of ‘getting away.’ Growing up that house very mercifully had no telephone. I didn’t get it as a child. I now understand such a welcome sense of ‘disconnecting.’
Heading back home from Long Beach late on a Sunday meant night driving for Deddy. It also meant that as we drove old highway 87 homeward that we passed over the railroad tracks at Maco. I have mentioned before the prominent place that John Harden’s ‘The Devil’s Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories’ held in my growing up years. Having been raised up so close to the famous Satanic lair mentioned in the title and having been treated to Tall Tale upon Tall Tale by the clientele of #BonleeHardwareStore, I was more than curious about any and all mysterious phenomena.
So we had to slow way down and look look look down the track as we crossed the railroad there at Maco on the way back from the beach to spy the light of Old ‘Joe’ Baldwin’s lantern as he searched for his missing head. I’m sure I saw it at least once. In college once I even trekked down the trail there in pursuit and on another occasion some very peculiar things transpired along that desolate stretch of highway. I won’t go there with that story here though others might. And all this leads to the #OnThisDay..and a most disappointing news report…read on just below and in the clipping image attached for the full story:
#OTD 1856 (January 4) Conductor Charles Baldwin was mortally injured in a train accident near Wilmington. From this tragedy was born the Ghost Tale of The Maco Light and headless ‘Joe’ Baldwin a-searching along the tracks, light in hand. The clipping below is from ‘The Wilmington Daily Journal’ January 11, 1856. Origins of Maco Light Legend Date to 1856
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I went to Long Beach 1-2 weeks a year for maybe 40 years Often our family would rent three cottages. Old school-no air conditioning-pine walls not dry wall. And we often went with another family One year a bunch of us teenagers did sit all night on the aforementioned rail road tracks. Pretty sure we saw the light-but we were all pretty high
An essay on Lights and Tall Tales. Long Beach/Oak Island was ‘discovered’ by my parents sometime right after WWII from what I’ve pieced together. Of course the 13 mile-long island had been the site of projects and dreams for centuries. Native Americans, Dawhee, Waccamaw, and Winya fished the area and through the colonial period people came and went. Nearby on Bald Head Island a lighthouse was built in 1817 and at the Eastern end the Oak Island Lighthouse beams its four powerful bursts of sweeping light across Frying Pan Shoals. It was erected in 1958. That light and I were born the same year.
Fort Caswell, built in 1836, stands at the north end of the island near the light. Designed to guard the mouth of the Cape Fear River from marauding pirates, the fort, a twin of sorts to Fort Fisher, was in operation through The Civil War to World War One. For decades (since 1949) the grounds have been home to Southern Baptist summer camps. My aunts Burdine and Leisel Womble went there for weeklong Bible Study as did cousins and friends. I was spared for some reason though growing up I visited those ruined fortifications many times.
I think it was T.L. And Mrs. Smith that cultivated in my parents their love of Long Beach. They seem to have been on the leading edge of folks in the Piedmont investing in the beach. They were from #SilerCity (he started Smith and Buckner Funeral Home there with B.B. Buckner in 1933). He talked my Momma and Deddy into buying a lot there when the only way onto the island was a ‘swinging’ bridge. They built a house which they used far, far too seldom but rented out for decades. Many, many folks from Chatham County spent vacations in that place.
We mostly only went to the beach in the winter when the house wasn’t rented. We’d head out of #Bonlee on Saturday afternoon after closing the hardware store and return late Sunday night. Even as a young boy that trip down and back seemed a bit frustratingly quick but I also could tell that my parents dearly loved the simple act of ‘getting away.’ Growing up that house very mercifully had no telephone. I didn’t get it as a child. I now understand such a welcome sense of ‘disconnecting.’
Heading back home from Long Beach late on a Sunday meant night driving for Deddy. It also meant that as we drove old highway 87 homeward that we passed over the railroad tracks at Maco. I have mentioned before the prominent place that John Harden’s ‘The Devil’s Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories’ held in my growing up years. Having been raised up so close to the famous Satanic lair mentioned in the title and having been treated to Tall Tale upon Tall Tale by the clientele of #BonleeHardwareStore, I was more than curious about any and all mysterious phenomena.
So we had to slow way down and look look look down the track as we crossed the railroad there at Maco on the way back from the beach to spy the light of Old ‘Joe’ Baldwin’s lantern as he searched for his missing head. I’m sure I saw it at least once. In college once I even trekked down the trail there in pursuit and on another occasion some very peculiar things transpired along that desolate stretch of highway. I won’t go there with that story here though others might. And all this leads to the #OnThisDay..and a most disappointing news report…read on just below and in the clipping image attached for the full story:
#OTD 1856 (January 4) Conductor Charles Baldwin was mortally injured in a train accident near Wilmington. From this tragedy was born the Ghost Tale of The Maco Light and headless ‘Joe’ Baldwin a-searching along the tracks, light in hand. The clipping below is from ‘The Wilmington Daily Journal’ January 11, 1856. Origins of Maco Light Legend Date to 1856
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Once, in teen years, one night we drove down Long Beach in my friend's Olds Super 88 at low tide. Built a fire. Enjoyed mood altering chemicals, etc. Strolling around we came upon a large turtle; I'm guessing a leartherback. Being young, dumb and high, of course we had to mess with it, sat on it, etc. One of those things you regret having done for the next 50+ years.
Sunup brought us back to low tide and we could traverse the beach again.
I cannot call it Oak Island to save myself.
Sunup brought us back to low tide and we could traverse the beach again.
I cannot call it Oak Island to save myself.
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Neither can I
donbosco
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No way. Friend of mine opened a sports bar there a few years ago. He really knows how to do things right. I haven’t been there though - or to Long Beach in over a decade.
https://www.paulsoki.com/
donbosco
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On this date in 1962, in his inaugural season as head coach, Dean Smith pushed his record to 3-1 with a crushing defeat of Notre Dame in Charlotte (99-80). Richard Vinroot, future mayor of that city, scored his only points as a Tar Heel.
Carolina finished 8-9 and 7-7 in the ACC (4th place). This was the first year of a deemphasis of basketball at Carolina after scandal had forced successful head coach Frank McGuire to move on.
Carolina finished 8-9 and 7-7 in the ACC (4th place). This was the first year of a deemphasis of basketball at Carolina after scandal had forced successful head coach Frank McGuire to move on.
lawtig02
Inconceivable Member
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You speak for millions of us, Sgt. Gonell. While you were impacted in a unique and terrible way, millions of your fellow Americans feel equally betrayed. Thanks to every person who voted for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, the traitors won.
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J6 Is an easy one. So lets mellow out a bit.
1893 American poet, historian, and folklorist Carl Sandburg, whose Abraham Lincoln: The War Years won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1940, was born.
He lived here in 1945 at the now Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, located at 81 Carl Sandburg Lane near Hendersonville in the village of Flat Rock, North Carolina. It preserves Connemara, the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writer Carl Sandburg.
Happiness
by Carl Sandburg
I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children
and a keg of beer and an
accordion.
1893 American poet, historian, and folklorist Carl Sandburg, whose Abraham Lincoln: The War Years won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1940, was born.
He lived here in 1945 at the now Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, located at 81 Carl Sandburg Lane near Hendersonville in the village of Flat Rock, North Carolina. It preserves Connemara, the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writer Carl Sandburg.
Happiness
by Carl Sandburg
I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children
and a keg of beer and an
accordion.
donbosco
Inconceivable Member
- Messages
- 3,642
I absolutely love Connemara. The house is super interesting in detail, the trails all around are excellent, and the goat farm is a delight for kids. My daughter loved the place as a child. I went as a parent volunteer twice with her classes. There are activities all around the property for kids and those were great fun too.
Sandburg was amazing...
I wrote this about Sandburg for his death day. “There are men who cannot be bought.” It strikes me as odd - even remarkable - that at the height of The Cold War this nation’s Primary Poet was a socialist living in Flat Rock, NC, Henderson County, Appalachia. Entangled in a struggle to the death (it seemed) with communism in those times, some thinking Americans could/would discern subtlety and note the strength in difference. Not to gloss too idyllic, to be sure monsters like Red-Baiting Joseph McCarthy were hard at work capping off thought and squelching speech and the voices of African Americans and other POC were hard-pressed to be heard, their rights only partially realized, but even in those times a poet could make a mark and be feted by the elected.
“Connemara,” the Carl and Lillian Sandburg historic home-place is one of my favorite spaces on earth. His poems are in ‘people-speak’ in the main, not to suggest there’s no flourish, just that the words tend to be of common usage though fitted in often sparkling combinations. Connemara is fun, the house is homey, the goats timeless, and the grounds serene. Sandburg won 3 Pulitzer Prizes (1919, 1940, 1951) for prose, ‘history,’ and poetry. In 1919 as a journalist he wrote ‘The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919.’ He also saw to the newspaper publication of the NAACP platform. Both of these actions today would have doubtless gotten him blacklisted by the UNC System Governing Boards and the majority in the NC General Assembly — IF those panels could first get past his socialism. So low we have sunken.
In 1908 his “You and Your Job” pamphlet bore a Socialist Party imprint. In it he wrote, “I say that a system such as the capitalist system, putting such obstacles as starvation, underfeeding, overwork, bad housing, and perpetual uncertainty of work in the lives of human beings, is a pitiless, ignorant, blind, reckless, cruel mockery of a system.”
Among his papers the poem below, never published, was discovered. It imparts a message to the country about violence for all time.
A Revolver
by Carl Sandburg
Here is a revolver.
It has an amazing language all its own.
It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
It is the last word.
A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery hide behind it.
It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
When it has spoken, the case can not be appealed to the supreme
court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of execution
come in and interfere with the original purpose.
And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the
old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the
most revolvers.
The On This Day entry follows:
#OTD (July 22) in 1967 Poet, Journalist, Biographer, and Musician Carl Sandburg died at his home-#Connemara, in Flat Rock, NC, #WNC. A socialist, he evoked the spirit of America for many who have labored and respect work, his Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Lincoln was an Epic (but short on attribution). He was the son of Swedish immigrants, and in his early years he hoboed, and worked many jobs from waiter to agriculture. He wrote on the Red Summer in his ‘The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919.’ At Connemara he penned poems and music and his wife Lillian raised world-renowned goats. Today that beautiful place is a National Historic Site.
“...at his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that ‘Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.’” ~ ‘Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works,’ by North Callahan. Prolific Poet Carl Sandburg
"Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought". ~ Carl Sandburg
Sandburg was amazing...
I wrote this about Sandburg for his death day. “There are men who cannot be bought.” It strikes me as odd - even remarkable - that at the height of The Cold War this nation’s Primary Poet was a socialist living in Flat Rock, NC, Henderson County, Appalachia. Entangled in a struggle to the death (it seemed) with communism in those times, some thinking Americans could/would discern subtlety and note the strength in difference. Not to gloss too idyllic, to be sure monsters like Red-Baiting Joseph McCarthy were hard at work capping off thought and squelching speech and the voices of African Americans and other POC were hard-pressed to be heard, their rights only partially realized, but even in those times a poet could make a mark and be feted by the elected.
“Connemara,” the Carl and Lillian Sandburg historic home-place is one of my favorite spaces on earth. His poems are in ‘people-speak’ in the main, not to suggest there’s no flourish, just that the words tend to be of common usage though fitted in often sparkling combinations. Connemara is fun, the house is homey, the goats timeless, and the grounds serene. Sandburg won 3 Pulitzer Prizes (1919, 1940, 1951) for prose, ‘history,’ and poetry. In 1919 as a journalist he wrote ‘The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919.’ He also saw to the newspaper publication of the NAACP platform. Both of these actions today would have doubtless gotten him blacklisted by the UNC System Governing Boards and the majority in the NC General Assembly — IF those panels could first get past his socialism. So low we have sunken.
In 1908 his “You and Your Job” pamphlet bore a Socialist Party imprint. In it he wrote, “I say that a system such as the capitalist system, putting such obstacles as starvation, underfeeding, overwork, bad housing, and perpetual uncertainty of work in the lives of human beings, is a pitiless, ignorant, blind, reckless, cruel mockery of a system.”
Among his papers the poem below, never published, was discovered. It imparts a message to the country about violence for all time.
A Revolver
by Carl Sandburg
Here is a revolver.
It has an amazing language all its own.
It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
It is the last word.
A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery hide behind it.
It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
When it has spoken, the case can not be appealed to the supreme
court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of execution
come in and interfere with the original purpose.
And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the
old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the
most revolvers.
The On This Day entry follows:
#OTD (July 22) in 1967 Poet, Journalist, Biographer, and Musician Carl Sandburg died at his home-#Connemara, in Flat Rock, NC, #WNC. A socialist, he evoked the spirit of America for many who have labored and respect work, his Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Lincoln was an Epic (but short on attribution). He was the son of Swedish immigrants, and in his early years he hoboed, and worked many jobs from waiter to agriculture. He wrote on the Red Summer in his ‘The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919.’ At Connemara he penned poems and music and his wife Lillian raised world-renowned goats. Today that beautiful place is a National Historic Site.
“...at his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that ‘Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.’” ~ ‘Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works,’ by North Callahan. Prolific Poet Carl Sandburg
"Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought". ~ Carl Sandburg
- Messages
- 1,102
Charles Samuel Addams (January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters.<a href="Charles Addams - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a> Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Family, and were subsequently popularized through various adaptations.
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What like a bullet can undeceive...
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Hoboed!!
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- 1,102
Elvis Aaron Presley[a] (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), known mononymously as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Known as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Presley's energized performances and interpretations of songs, and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, brought both great success and initial controversy.
So many. One if my faves.
So many. One if my faves.
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Maybe should wait until next year to post this, but on this date in history (this morning, actually) the BT in AB burned down. For the uninitiated, that's the Beach Tavern in Atlantic Beach. I've spent many a bleary hour in that joint. Hope the Tackle Box can handle the overflow...