This Date in History | Flat Rock Playhouse

[05C40]

My opinion of Edith Vanderbilt is based on the book The Last Castle. She was a remarkable, admirable woman.

Once when visiting Biltmore, I met an archivist in the library. We talked a bit and I told her a story about how during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, my grandmother and great grandmother were Red Cross volunteers in Buncombe County and went door to door caring for the sick and dying. And how after the Pandemic passed, Edith Vanderbilt held a tea at Biltmore for the Red Cross volunteers. In part, because Mrs. Vanderbilt had also been a Red Cross volunteer. At this point in telling the story, my grandmother would always add that tea at the Biltmore was special because usually neither she nor her mother socialized with the Vanderbilts. The archivist was astonished at this story, had never heard it before, and said she would research it. She asked for my name and address and promised to let me know what she found. A couple of weeks later, I received in the mail a photocopy of the invitation list for the Red Cross Tea held at Biltmore in 1919. And both my grandmother's and great-grandmother's names were on the list. Because I had given the archivist their names, she had highlighted them on what she sent me.

 

[donbosco]

On Saturday, June 2 - Summer of 1979 - Raleigh's Carter Stadium (Finley wasn’t added to the name until the fall that year) was THE place in The Triangle to catch a Rock-n-Roll Mishmash of Poco, Van Halen, Boston, and The Outlaws (in that order). That grab bag of Country Rock, Metal, Radio Mix, and Southern Guitar Rock brought 40,000 16 to 25 year olds from multiple Carolina subcultures together to sweat out a day of sound, smoke, and smuggled-in spirits. Imagine that.

Could we call it a cross-genre show? Maybe today but not in 1979. That wouldn’t have been a phrase for those times. I did have albums by all of the bands present and knew each of their discographies quite well. 45 years ago shows of that type were not that odd. For example, just two months earlier than the Raleigh gig, on April 21, 1979 in Kenan Stadium I made my way through a strange brew throw down that featured The Spinners, Jimmy Buffett, and oddly-named local heroes, Nantucket. A year later in Kenan I saw a line-up of Bonnie Raitt, Atlanta Rhythm Section, and The Beach Boys. I also had albums by every one of those bands. For multiple reasons I have a hard time imagining anything similar to that Carter Stadium extravaganza happening In These Times.

A recollection on Chapel Hill Spinner/Buffet/Nantucket happening: This concert had been dubbed Springfest and was a Big Brother to a campus dorm-lawn Henderson Residence College placed event the previous year that featured The Blazers, Brice Street, Nightshift, Arrogance, Page Wilson (?), Toulouse T’Trek, and maybe Mike Cross. In 1979 things moved to Kenan Stadium and the more ballyhooed line-up. That was the famous (infamous?) “Moving Luminaries” show…as I recall it, the attendees were occupying one side of Kenan Stadium while bands were on the field. That left the other side of the stadium empty so organizers had arranged a simple (primitive?) light set-up that spelled out S-P-R-I-N-G-F-E-S-T. Delightfully once night fell the crowd noticed the lights mysteriously rearranging themselves—watching with interest the last four letters were transformed from the innocuous FEST to the far more favored FUCK rendering the event the S-P-R-I-N-G-F-U-C-K instead. Cheers and jeers filled the venue as that unfolded before our eyes.

Back to June 2, 1979 in Raleighwood at Carter Stadium — gates opened at 10 am and things wound down 12 hours later — Poco was meh, Boston was terrible, Van Halen gave a great high energy show, and The Outlaws stole it all. “Green Grass and High Tides” rock and rolled the place for what seemed like an hour (and may have been). The organizers knew something because that’s the order in which the bands played. It was also very HOT. An endless blizzard of RED plastic cups flying through the air during Van Halen’s set sticks in my remembering almost as firmly as the fruitlessness of my hours-long attempt to locate a high school flame (who I still suspect did not want to be found) in the throng.

 

[donbosco]

Stadium shows!

 

[donbosco]

Is The South more prone to bloody mayhem? Surely the genre of literature labeled as ‘Southern’ corroborates such speculation. Popular memory likely does too, but that can be an individualized and perhaps deceptive sort of thing I reckon. Sociologists have long pointed to a penchant for violence in the region that has exceeded other parts. No doubt the cruelty of slavery that so permeated these lands for so long and the desperate, dishonest, and bitter legacy of the aftermath, as so many tried so hard to maintain White Supremacist ways as the Ruling Ideas has led to blood spilling normalized.

One once hoped that civilized thinking was the future but at present my Two Cents is that instead of such primal, visceral attitudes fading, they’ve become increasingly less specific to place. Indeed, as The Texas Rockers Z.Z. Top prophesied for good or ill about southernism spreading, “I’m Bad. I’m Nationwide.”

Is that how ‘The South Shall Rise Again” (As if it ever truly rose the first time)? Or is there a southernization of the nation going on around us cloaked in the slogan “Make America Great Again”? Is the Dixie Difference going continental as Ice Tea goes national, the biscuit creeps North and West, and Guns become a right of passage and an object of worship?

A necessary aside is required here. I AM a southerner. Barbecue, the Blues, and Bluegrass are my touchstones, and since I’m even more so a Tar Heel my other B is beloved Basketball. I still wave when meeting a car just in case I know them or they know me. In New York and other places I have yet to jettison eye-contact with strangers and my drawl and instinctual use of Y’all are points of linguistic pride. Like we do when we love someone we want better and better for them and hate to see them ‘act ugly’ just the same.

The following is from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources: “On June 3, 1985, a Chevrolet Blazer driven by Fritz Klenner exploded during a police chase in Summerfield, north of Greensboro. Klenner, a native of Reidsville, was a suspect in the murders of three people in Winston-Salem and two in Kentucky. Also in the Blazer were Susie Newsom Lynch and her sons John and Jim.

Klenner, who had deceived and manipulated family and friends for years, had become romantically involved with his first cousin, Susie Newsom Lynch, after she divorced. The murders appear to be rooted in the couple’s belief that Lynch’s ex-husband and other family were conspiring to take the boys from her.

Klenner, who for many years pretended to be a medical student at Duke to please his father, added service in the CIA to his imagined resume.

is suspected of having killed his cousin’s former mother-in-law and her daughter in Kentucky in 1984 in an attempt to make the ex-husband appear to have mafia ties. In mid May 1985, he killed Lynch’s parents and grandmother in their Winston-Salem home with assistance from a misguided friend who believed he was “auditioning” for the CIA.

With law enforcement closing in on the couple a few weeks later, Klenner loaded his Blazer with weapons and rigged it to explode. Susie’s remains were found in a nearby culvert, blown apart by the bomb that must have been under her seat. One of the Kentucky detectives located Klenner, barely alive, in a ditch. Hoping for a confession the detective leaned an ear toward Klenner, who gurgled blood and died.

Evidence later revealed that the young boys had been poisoned with cyanide and shot in the head by their mother prior to the explosion.

The story of Klenner and his crimes is chronicled in ‘Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder,’ a bestselling book by Jerry Bledsoe, who was writing for the ‘Greensboro News and Record’ at the time. https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2016/06/03/the-bizarre-bitter-blood-murders.”

 

[donbosco]

I heard people talk about ‘Jugtown’ from an early age. I went there on short ‘road trips’ from Chatham as a boy but I mostly remember running around outside while my mother and her sisters shopped. (They were perhaps wise to keep this little bull out of the ‘china’ shop) When I graduated from college (the first time) way back in 1980 my parents gifted me a set of reddish-brown dinner plates, bowls, et.al. Being 40+ years back I’ve nothing left to show of that generous and classic present - such things are often wasted on the young but I’m pretty sure those pieces, or most of them, still survive, so durable was their composition. Thrift Shop Treasures, I hope whoever has them knows what they’ve got.

There is a historical connection with the production of jugs in the state that did not come immediately to mind - at least it didn’t automatically occur to me (and it really should have - given my life’s work in two areas). Most of Randolph County’s Jugtowners trace their roots as potters back to the 1700s and in those days their containers were essential for transporting corn made into distilled spirits. Moonshiners and potters were partners up until the Mason Jar gradually replaced the jug in that ‘industry.’

The Jugtowners also have a less known tie to New York City. By the early 20th century traditional ceramics had lost a great deal of its utility but still a flicker of the historic artistry remained. Around 1905 Raleigh artists Jacques and Juliana Royster Busbee were captivated by a plate they found at a flea market and traced its origin to the small town of Seagrove. There they found what survived of the local pottery folk culture. Their North Carolina roots notwithstanding, the Busbees were worldly travelers and split their time living in Raleigh and New York City.

In 1917 Juliana opened ‘The Village Store and Tea Room’ at 60 Washington Square, in the artist hub of Greenwich Village. Bars in those days were not particularly welcoming to women and despite the somewhat high-sounding name, tea rooms were really more of a safe space where women might gather, joined by men, to socialize. The tea might often be spiked and other potent potables were also available. A ‘New York Tribune’ article of July 27, 1919 noted that Busbee’s establishment was rooted in the “habitat of the long-haired men and short-haired women who constitute the race of near-Bohemians known to readers of those lurid tales as ‘Greenwich Villagers.’” This warms my heart.

And so Jugtown met Bohemia and backcountry North Carolina came to the Big Apple through the ingenuity of Raleigh’s Juliana Busbee and soon enough traditional Tar Heel pottery had caught the attention of The Metropolitan Museum and The Smithsonian and the value and beauty of the art took its rightful place alongside other regional folk art.

I’ve wondered often what my mother and her friends saw in the things from Jugtown. I think more than art or design they saw value in the history the objects represented combined in their sturdiness and utility. The stuff from Jugtown ‘Worked.’ Of course they were also ‘pretty.’

#OTD in 1904 Ben Owen was born in Moore County. From a family of potters, Ben teamed with The Busbees at Jugtown (‘23-59) near Seagrove and later his own Plank Road Pottery (‘59-72). The styles created there meshed N.C. and World traditions. Today his grandson Ben III carries on the craft. Master of an Art Form, Potter Ben Owen LINK HERE to current Ben Owen studio w/historic video, narrative, and photographs: History — Ben Owen Pottery

 

[Zoo_View]

I heard people talk about ‘Jugtown’ from an early age. I went there on short ‘road trips’ from Chatham as a boy but I mostly remember running around outside while my mother and her sisters shopped. (They were perhaps wise to keep this little bull out of the ‘china’ shop) When I graduated from college (the first time) way back in 1980 my parents gifted me a set of reddish-brown dinner plates, bowls, et.al. Being 40+ years back I’ve nothing left to show of that generous and classic present - such things are often wasted on the young but I’m pretty sure those pieces, or most of them, still survive, so durable was their composition. Thrift Shop Treasures, I hope whoever has them knows what they’ve got.

There is a historical connection with the production of jugs in the state that did not come immediately to mind - at least it didn’t automatically occur to me (and it really should have - given my life’s work in two areas). Most of Randolph County’s Jugtowners trace their roots as potters back to the 1700s and in those days their containers were essential for transporting corn made into distilled spirits. Moonshiners and potters were partners up until the Mason Jar gradually replaced the jug in that ‘industry.’

The Jugtowners also have a less known tie to New York City. By the early 20th century traditional ceramics had lost a great deal of its utility but still a flicker of the historic artistry remained. Around 1905 Raleigh artists Jacques and Juliana Royster Busbee were captivated by a plate they found at a flea market and traced its origin to the small town of Seagrove. There they found what survived of the local pottery folk culture. Their North Carolina roots notwithstanding, the Busbees were worldly travelers and split their time living in Raleigh and New York City.

In 1917 Juliana opened ‘The Village Store and Tea Room’ at 60 Washington Square, in the artist hub of Greenwich Village. Bars in those days were not particularly welcoming to women and despite the somewhat high-sounding name, tea rooms were really more of a safe space where women might gather, joined by men, to socialize. The tea might often be spiked and other potent potables were also available. A ‘New York Tribune’ article of July 27, 1919 noted that Busbee’s establishment was rooted in the “habitat of the long-haired men and short-haired women who constitute the race of near-Bohemians known to readers of those lurid tales as ‘Greenwich Villagers.’” This warms my heart.

And so Jugtown met Bohemia and backcountry North Carolina came to the Big Apple through the ingenuity of Raleigh’s Juliana Busbee and soon enough traditional Tar Heel pottery had caught the attention of The Metropolitan Museum and The Smithsonian and the value and beauty of the art took its rightful place alongside other regional folk art.

I’ve wondered often what my mother and her friends saw in the things from Jugtown. I think more than art or design they saw value in the history the objects represented combined in their sturdiness and utility. The stuff from Jugtown ‘Worked.’ Of course they were also ‘pretty.’

#OTD in 1904 Ben Owen was born in Moore County. From a family of potters, Ben teamed with The Busbees at Jugtown (‘23-59) near Seagrove and later his own Plank Road Pottery (‘59-72). The styles created there meshed N.C. and World traditions. Today his grandson Ben III carries on the craft. Master of an Art Form, Potter Ben Owen LINK HERE to current Ben Owen studio w/historic video, narrative, and photographs: History — Ben Owen Pottery

From when we first moved to Chapel Hill in the late ‘60’s, my parents were dedicated pottery buyers.

A.R. Cole in Sanford was a frequent stop. He was only open 1-2 days a month (Saturday mornings my brother and I were sleeping in the back of the station wagon as Cole opened at 6:00 or 7:00 am). People lined up for 2-3 hours before he opened.

Wonderful, functional pottery. My parents still have tons of it - some of my favorites are glazed with Crystal Blue Mistake (a medium brown glaze with black specks). They have a custom punch bowl with a matching ladle and punch cups. It’s red. Hardly ever used. The glaze has A LOT of lead in it.

Lots of mugs, jugs, and teapots from Jugtown.

Somewhere in the late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s my parents mostly stopped buying Seagrove Pottery - the house was full.

In 1991, my former wife and I, on one of our earliest dates, went to Seagrove. Her first thought was “Pottery? Why?”

We lucked out and visited on a day that Wedgewood (the china company) was leading 2 busloads of tourists through Seagrove. This meant the buses stopped at 4-5 different potters; AND, each of those potters invited 8-10 other potters to set up and display (and sell) their wares. So, in 4-5 stops we were able to see 30-50 potters.

What’s still great about Seagrove is that many potters still make functional pottery and NOT art - Tom Gray and Dirtworks are two of my favorites.

Don’t get me wrong - plenty of Seagrove potters make art. Look no further than Ben Owens III, grandson of the great Ben Owens. He makes pieces that sell for hundreds and thousands. Some are 5 or 6 or more feet tall.

Seagrove is worth a trip if you haven’t been there.

 

[05C40]

Is The South more prone to bloody mayhem? Surely the genre of literature labeled as ‘Southern’ corroborates such speculation. Popular memory likely does too, but that can be an individualized and perhaps deceptive sort of thing I reckon. Sociologists have long pointed to a penchant for violence in the region that has exceeded other parts. No doubt the cruelty of slavery that so permeated these lands for so long and the desperate, dishonest, and bitter legacy of the aftermath, as so many tried so hard to maintain White Supremacist ways as the Ruling Ideas has led to blood spilling normalized.

One once hoped that civilized thinking was the future but at present my Two Cents is that instead of such primal, visceral attitudes fading, they’ve become increasingly less specific to place. Indeed, as The Texas Rockers Z.Z. Top prophesied for good or ill about southernism spreading, “I’m Bad. I’m Nationwide.”

Is that how ‘The South Shall Rise Again” (As if it ever truly rose the first time)? Or is there a southernization of the nation going on around us cloaked in the slogan “Make America Great Again”? Is the Dixie Difference going continental as Ice Tea goes national, the biscuit creeps North and West, and Guns become a right of passage and an object of worship?

A necessary aside is required here. I AM a southerner. Barbecue, the Blues, and Bluegrass are my touchstones, and since I’m even more so a Tar Heel my other B is beloved Basketball. I still wave when meeting a car just in case I know them or they know me. In New York and other places I have yet to jettison eye-contact with strangers and my drawl and instinctual use of Y’all are points of linguistic pride. Like we do when we love someone we want better and better for them and hate to see them ‘act ugly’ just the same.

The following is from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources: “On June 3, 1985, a Chevrolet Blazer driven by Fritz Klenner exploded during a police chase in Summerfield, north of Greensboro. Klenner, a native of Reidsville, was a suspect in the murders of three people in Winston-Salem and two in Kentucky. Also in the Blazer were Susie Newsom Lynch and her sons John and Jim.

Klenner, who had deceived and manipulated family and friends for years, had become romantically involved with his first cousin, Susie Newsom Lynch, after she divorced. The murders appear to be rooted in the couple’s belief that Lynch’s ex-husband and other family were conspiring to take the boys from her.

Klenner, who for many years pretended to be a medical student at Duke to please his father, added service in the CIA to his imagined resume.

is suspected of having killed his cousin’s former mother-in-law and her daughter in Kentucky in 1984 in an attempt to make the ex-husband appear to have mafia ties. In mid May 1985, he killed Lynch’s parents and grandmother in their Winston-Salem home with assistance from a misguided friend who believed he was “auditioning” for the CIA.

With law enforcement closing in on the couple a few weeks later, Klenner loaded his Blazer with weapons and rigged it to explode. Susie’s remains were found in a nearby culvert, blown apart by the bomb that must have been under her seat. One of the Kentucky detectives located Klenner, barely alive, in a ditch. Hoping for a confession the detective leaned an ear toward Klenner, who gurgled blood and died.

Evidence later revealed that the young boys had been poisoned with cyanide and shot in the head by their mother prior to the explosion.

The story of Klenner and his crimes is chronicled in ‘Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder,’ a bestselling book by Jerry Bledsoe, who was writing for the ‘Greensboro News and Record’ at the time. https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2016/06/03/the-bizarre-bitter-blood-murders.”

WOW! I was living in Western Kentucky when this Klenner thing transpired and I have absolutely no recollection of it. I must have had my head in a bucket and was completely oblivous to anything that was non-work related.

 

[05C40]

From when we first moved to Chapel Hill in the late ‘60’s, my parents were dedicated pottery buyers.

A.R. Cole in Sanford was a frequent stop. He was only open 1-2 days a month (Saturday mornings my brother and I were sleeping in the back of the station wagon as Cole opened at 6:00 or 7:00 am). People lined up for 2-3 hours before he opened.

Wonderful, functional pottery. My parents still have tons of it - some of my favorites are glazed with Crystal Blue Mistake (a medium brown glaze with black specks). They have a custom punch bowl with a matching ladle and punch cups. It’s red. Hardly ever used. The glaze has A LOT of lead in it.

Lots of mugs, jugs, and teapots from Jugtown.

Somewhere in the late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s my parents mostly stopped buying Seagrove Pottery - the house was full.

In 1991, my former wife and I, on one of our earliest dates, went to Seagrove. Her first thought was “Pottery? Why?”

We lucked out and visited on a day that Wedgewood (the china company) was leading 2 busloads of tourists through Seagrove. This meant the buses stopped at 4-5 different potters; AND, each of those potters invited 8-10 other potters to set up and display (and sell) their wares. So, in 4-5 stops we were able to see 30-50 potters.

What’s still great about Seagrove is that many potters still make functional pottery and NOT art - Tom Gray and Dirtworks are two of my favorites.

Don’t get me wrong - plenty of Seagrove potters make art. Look no further than Ben Owens III, grandson of the great Ben Owens. He makes pieces that sell for hundreds and thousands. Some are 5 or 6 or more feet tall.

Seagrove is worth a trip if you haven’t been there.

Some years back, I drove through Seagrove on my way to my sister-in-law's birthday party in Raleigh. I was planning to stop and get her a piece from Ben Owens III's pottery store because I knew she was such a fan of his grandfather. My wife cautioned me against this because it would just be too expensive. But I stopped anyway, found a very nice small piece that was modestly priced. Because Ben Owen III was manning the cash register, I got him to autograph a brochure too. I was so excited that soon as I got in my car and was on my way, I called my wife and told her what I got and how much it cost. She immediately told me to turn around, go back, get her something too, and get Ben Owen III to autograph a brochure for her. I did, but I grumbled about how I had told her she should come with me.

 

[donbosco]

“The Surprise Ending” gets its hooks into you and for good or ill, they usually reach deep. For me there’s always a bit of O.Henry’s “The Gift of The Magi’ lurking in my thoughts. This is not necessarily a good thing for a historian. Students often succumb to the temptation to misdirect then spring an alternative conclusion on their reader in papers that they write early in their matriculation as well. It is an ambitious plot device and quite difficult but with no real value in a research project. Literarily speaking though it can be the kind of twist that captures an audience. I’ve been caught many-a-time in prose and cinema.

While at 15 years old I was completely conned by the wrap-up of the Newman/Redford film “The Sting” and the master director John Sayles’ “Lone Star” starring (of course) Chris Cooper rolls in a close third, it was “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” with Edward James Olmos that stunned me with the concluding plot twist that takes my all-time first place in surprise endings.

It was native-born Tar Heel O.Henry that sunk the plot twist hooks into me when I was a preteen though and he’s fascinated and terrified me ever since. He’s an outlaw author who led a wandering and ne’er-do-well life. He grew up in the Piedmont, fled to Central America, worked in Asheville (while living in Weaverville), and spent a good deal of time in New York City. He loved bars and hung out with cows too. I’ll just stop there.

“The time has come," the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings.’”
~Lewis Carrol

OnThisDay (June 5) in 1910 William Sydney Porter, O.Henry, died in NYC. Born in Greensboro, he lived in Texas, Honduras, and spent 3 years in the Ohio Penitentiary (embezzlement). He moved to New York City to be close to publishers and there he produced over 300 short stories. The “Surprise Ending” was his forte. We’ve all read his Christmas Classic, “The Gift of the Magi.” In 1907 he married a childhood friend, Sarah Lindsey Coleman, of #Weaverville, and, not in the best of health, moved there. Finding Weaverville too quiet (and a staunch teetotaler town) he opened an office in #Asheville where he might work and sneak off to bars and speakeasies. Truth is that he was a voracious drinker.

Ultimately, missing NYC he moved back - much to his detriment. He died there on this day (6/5/10) of cirrhosis of the liver. Coleman brought his body back to Buncombe and he is buried in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery not far from Thomas Wolfe, another Tar Heel writer who died too soon. In his novel “Of Cabbages and Kings,” he coined the term, “Banana Republic.” Read more here:

https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2017/01/23/greensboro-writer-o-henry.

 

[donbosco]

#OTD in 1927 Bascom Lamar Lunsford opened up the First Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. It still goes on today. These days it happens July 31-August 2 in Asheville.

Mountain Dance and Folk Festival | Folk Heritage Committee

Lunsford is credited with composing "That Good Ole Mountain Dew."

 

[05C40]

“The Surprise Ending” gets its hooks into you and for good or ill, they usually reach deep. For me there’s always a bit of O.Henry’s “The Gift of The Magi’ lurking in my thoughts. This is not necessarily a good thing for a historian. Students often succumb to the temptation to misdirect then spring an alternative conclusion on their reader in papers that they write early in their matriculation as well. It is an ambitious plot device and quite difficult but with no real value in a research project. Literarily speaking though it can be the kind of twist that captures an audience. I’ve been caught many-a-time in prose and cinema.

While at 15 years old I was completely conned by the wrap-up of the Newman/Redford film “The Sting” and the master director John Sayles’ “Lone Star” starring (of course) Chris Cooper rolls in a close third, it was “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” with Edward James Olmos that stunned me with the concluding plot twist that takes my all-time first place in surprise endings.

It was native-born Tar Heel O.Henry that sunk the plot twist hooks into me when I was a preteen though and he’s fascinated and terrified me ever since. He’s an outlaw author who led a wandering and ne’er-do-well life. He grew up in the Piedmont, fled to Central America, worked in Asheville (while living in Weaverville), and spent a good deal of time in New York City. He loved bars and hung out with cows too. I’ll just stop there.

“The time has come," the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings.’”
~Lewis Carrol

OnThisDay (June 5) in 1910 William Sydney Porter, O.Henry, died in NYC. Born in Greensboro, he lived in Texas, Honduras, and spent 3 years in the Ohio Penitentiary (embezzlement). He moved to New York City to be close to publishers and there he produced over 300 short stories. The “Surprise Ending” was his forte. We’ve all read his Christmas Classic, “The Gift of the Magi.” In 1907 he married a childhood friend, Sarah Lindsey Coleman, of #Weaverville, and, not in the best of health, moved there. Finding Weaverville too quiet (and a staunch teetotaler town) he opened an office in #Asheville where he might work and sneak off to bars and speakeasies. Truth is that he was a voracious drinker.

Ultimately, missing NYC he moved back - much to his detriment. He died there on this day (6/5/10) of cirrhosis of the liver. Coleman brought his body back to Buncombe and he is buried in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery not far from Thomas Wolfe, another Tar Heel writer who died too soon. In his novel “Of Cabbages and Kings,” he coined the term, “Banana Republic.” Read more here:

https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2017/01/23/greensboro-writer-o-henry.

Asheville's Riverside Cemetery, without "O Henry" spelled out in pennies.

And near-by, another of North Carolina's sons taken too early.

 

[donbosco]

Asheville's Riverside Cemetery, without "O Henry" spelled out in pennies.

And near-by, another of North Carolina's sons taken too early.

Love that cemetery as I do with most -- this one is special though.

Necro Tourist

Your Cemetery Travel Guide Do you enjoy tourism that honors the dead like cemeteries, monuments, memorials & museums?

necrotourist.com

 

[05C40]

Love that cemetery as I do with most -- this one is special though.

Necro Tourist

Your Cemetery Travel Guide Do you enjoy tourism that honors the dead like cemeteries, monuments, memorials & museums?

necrotourist.com

I love visiting old cemeteries anywhere, but especially in North and South Carolina. Question for you. I have been baffled by how many tombstones from the late 18th Century to the early 19th Century have Lauburu Crosses in them. I have absolutely no idea why. If you ever find out, please post the explanation. The two most common explanation I've heard just aren't that compelling to me. #1: The Lauburu Cross is not exclusively a symbol of the Basque people, but was also a symbol of the Scot-Irish settlers that came down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to Piedmont and Western NC and then further south. #2: As part of the settlement of the French and Indian War, Basques who had settled in the prime fishing territories of the Canadian maritime provinces were sent South along with other folks who were ancestors of the Cajan folks in Louisiana. And at least three of the ships heading south stopped on the NC coast and were full of Basque being resettled. Because the ship repairs were so extensive and would take so long and there was land to be had in Piedmont/Western NC, this Basques decided to take what Fortuna/Tyche had offered them and headed into the lightly settled parts of NC.
Link: Lauburu/Fylfot/Solar/Pinwheel Crosses

 

[nycfan]

 

[nycfan]

 

[donbosco]

I love visiting old cemeteries anywhere, but especially in North and South Carolina. Question for you. I have been baffled by how many tombstones from the late 18th Century to the early 19th Century have Lauburu Crosses in them. I have absolutely no idea why. If you ever find out, please post the explanation. The two most common explanation I've heard just aren't that compelling to me. #1: The Lauburu Cross is not exclusively a symbol of the Basque people, but was also a symbol of the Scot-Irish settlers that came down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to Piedmont and Western NC and then further south. #2: As part of the settlement of the French and Indian War, Basques who had settled in the prime fishing territories of the Canadian maritime provinces were sent South along with other folks who were ancestors of the Cajan folks in Louisiana. And at least three of the ships heading south stopped on the NC coast and were full of Basque being resettled. Because the ship repairs were so extensive and would take so long and there was land to be had in Piedmont/Western NC, this Basques decided to take what Fortuna/Tyche had offered them and headed into the lightly settled parts of NC.
Link: Lauburu/Fylfot/Solar/Pinwheel Crosses

Hmmm. 1) I've spent a lot of time in graveyards and some of those crosses I've never seen...the more starburst ones seem familiar though. The locales that I note on that Flicker account are Thomasville, Mooresville, Lexington, Bessemer City, Liberty, Kimesville, are kind of widely dispersed it seems to me for a small late 18th century migration but maybe I'm being obtuse on it. Need to think on this some more...

 

[05C40]

81 years ago, June 7, 1944, my father-in-law came ashore on Omaha Beach with the 2nd Infantry Division, the Indian Head Division. He is the second one in line. He said he just briefly glanced up and remembered seeing a photographer. He had no idea it would be an AP photo until his mother showed him the paper. His mother saw the photo in her local paper and immediately knew it was her son. He had previously served in North Africa. He lasted until St. Lo, where he was wounded badly enough to still be hospitalized on V-E Day. He was still working on being fit enough to return to duty on V-J Day. He lived another 44 years.

 

[Zoo_View]

81 years ago, June 7, 1944, my father-in-law came ashore on Omaha Beach with the 2nd Infantry Division, the Indian Head Division. He is the second one in line. He said he just briefly glanced up and remembered seeing a photographer. He had no idea it would be an AP photo until his mother showed him the paper. His mother saw the photo in her local paper and immediately knew it was her son. He had previously served in North Africa. He lasted until St. Lo, where he was wounded badly enough to still be hospitalized on V-E Day. He was still working on being fit enough to return to duty on V-J Day. He lived another 44 years.

I ALWAYS love when you share this photo and comment on its history. Thanks!

 

[donbosco]

I grew up pretty fascinated with Daniel Boone. Bonlee, my little town in #DeepChatham, actually sits along a path where Highway 421 (now Old 421) was referred to as Boone Trail. I vaguely remember when Garrett Tillman’s gas station, directly across the road from my father’s Bonlee Hardware, was known as Boone Trail Station.

In nearby Siler City, Liberty, and Staley there were markers for Boone Trail. There is an image of one here. There is also one in Chapel Hill. (Across from the Post Office on Franklin) Of course I loved the TV show with Fess Parker as Dan’l and Ed Ames as Mingo. I ‘played’ Frontiersman constantly and that set me to my own exploring of the woods around Bonlee and down toward Sandy Branch where my Deddy kept his cows and where Grandpa and Grandma lived on the Home Place, among the state’s Century Farms. (https://www.ncagr.gov/public-affairs/public-affairs-2024-century-farm-directory/download?attachment)

Tramping those forests and fields, sometimes with Deddy as we checked fences or hunted down/counted cows, or camping with the Bonlee boys was pretty constant from around 6 thru 16 and still comes back to me often whether I’m walking parks or trails or just traversing from A to B. When creep-striding through the terrain, to take stock of the trees and their multiple twists and turns (Fibonacci Sequence anyone?) to step over and snap no twigs or limbs, and to note straight-on and peripheral movement from bird to bear is the setting made automatic in my system in those wander-filled boy years.

#OTD (June 7) in 1769, working out of North Carolina for Richard Henderson’s Transylvania Co., it is recorded that Daniel Boone first spied Kentucky. Boone, born in Berks County, Pennsylvania in 1734, spent his youth hunting and exploring Western North Carolina and Appalachia. He blazed the #WildernessRoad thru #CumberlandGap. In making these forays across the mountains Boone was among a few who were defying the orders of The British Crown banning westward migration. By the way, lest one put a humanitarian spin on that prohibition know that the King cared nothing of protecting the land from deprivation but rather feared being left out of that process. Indeed, Boone’s explorations ultimately served the purposes of iniquitous land-grabbers and caused endless harm and injustice to the Cherokee and other indigenous people. https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-07

 

[donbosco]

Daniel Boone and Boone Trail related: Boone Trail - Wikipedia

The Gall of This Guy.