Center for Pioneer Life

This past week Trish and I had a wonderful week at the Center for Pioneer Life outside Burnsville, North Carolina.

The Center is a project of the Strawbridge and Martha Wilson Young Foundation and seeks to preserve our understanding of life in the region in the mid-nineteenth century through interpretive and educational programs.

On Monday all of the Middle School students from Yancey County were bussed to Mountain Heritage High School where I got to tell them stories and suggest ways they could find their own family stories.

Fourth Graders visit the Center for Pioneer Life.

In the afternoon we began to have the Fourth Graders from the county come out to the Center itself for stories and a tour of the Homestead.  The Homestead site centers around an 1850’s log cabin that was actually the home of some of the Young family ancestors.  The cabin was for all the world like the house in which my mother was born and grew up, the place where I would go to visit my grandparents as a child in Haywood County.

Sleeping loft in the cabin...just like the place where my mother and her six little sisters slept as children.

After an adult workshop on Tuesday and more Fourth Grade visits in Wednesday, we concluded our visit with a performance in the Town Center at Burnsville.  There were a half dozen people there who were old friends of mine from school days in Waynesville.  It was like a home visit.

We returned to the island at the end of the week to find slow progress being made in the house recovery.  The big problem now is that the road north is still closed after a storm last weekend overwashed Highway 12 again.  But, in spite of frustrations, we were still greeted by a magnificent burning sunset.  See why we live here!

Our sunset over the Pamlico Sound.

Memory Lane

On Saturday Trish and I went to the Southern Christmas Show in Charlotte.  Just about everyone in the world was there...and there was a car in the parking lot for each of them! We did have a good time looking at things and doing a bit of Christmas shopping.

On Sunday we were to travel to Burnsville, NC, for this week of work.  On the way we passed by Davidson College, where I was an undergraduate student more than fifty years ago. So, we stopped for a while so I could take Trish on a little walking tour of some of my old haunts.

The main front part of the campus is much the same as we walked under the big  beautiful oak trees that shaded the campus well even when I was a student here.  We walked past the Literary Halls and the Fine Arts Center, a place where I spent much happy time working with theatre productions under wonderful Dr. Rupert Barber.

Taking Trish around my old campus.

We walked along the row of old dormitories so I could show her my freshman dorm, then called East Hall but now renamed Sentelle.  I could show her the exact window where my room was.  We then went next door to my favorite dorm, Duke, where I had a single room for three years.  It was a third floor room with windows that opened out onto the flat room of the wing below.  I had a secret private deck out there for sunning and reading.  I thought it to be the finest room on campus and it was my home for the majority of my college career.

Duke Dorm, my home for three years.

We looked at beautiful new buildings that one could not have imagined fifty years, especially the Student Center and the Little Library.

After our campus walk we checked out Main Street so I could show her where I went to the barber shop of Hood Norton.  We even ate at the Soda Shop, back then called the M and M after Mary and Murray who ran it.  I ate the same cream cheese and olive sandwich on toasted white bread that I had loved as a student.

Inside the Soda Shop everything looked exactly the same.

Our last stop was the Copeland House, in the old days Mrs. Copeland’s Boarding House, where I ate along with about a dozen other non-fraternity “friends.”  When we gathered there for meals it was like the bar scene from Star Wars.

Mrs. Copeland’s Boarding House, where once a strike of lightening threw a dead squirrel through the window and onto the dining table.

Along the way Trish and I realized we were visiting two different places: she saw Davidson in 2019 while I saw very clearly Davidson in 1962.

Recovery in Progress

Back at home on the island this last week and we are seeing the beginnings of recovery from Dorian.  As we drive around most of the debris has been picked up...more is accumulating though...most cars have been hauled off, and some construction is beginning.

Kim and Reggie’s home is all gone. Directly across the street from us.

We still see more houses and now businesses being torn down totally.  The Edwards Motel is now gone along with the old Trolly Stop building, recently home to Ocracoke Judo studio.  We are seeing many houses being raised.  We can’t raise ours because it is too long and narrow for the beams to fit all the way under it.

Our friend, Debbie’s, house...up in the air.

We are, though, seeing work progress at home.  Armando and Luis have almost completed the new drywall installation, so it looks like we have rooms again.  When the drywall is finished we can move on to tile for the bathrooms and flooring for the rest of the house.  There is still a transportation issue: our replacement shower unit for the main bathroom has been on a truck in Norfolk for a month and cannot be delivered to the island until highway 12 to the north is reopened.  That holds up several things that cannot happen before it is installed.

We are going to have a living room again!

Outside we are cheered by the growth of the winter rye grass that I sowed everywhere!  Now we are sowing permanent fescue through the ryegrass, but the beautiful green covering the storm-caused bareness  is an encouraging thing to see.

Green grass over bare dirt is a Wonderful sight.

There has been a rough storm with wind and rain this weekend, but, we hope that it will not slow the progress of road repair.  Right now the road is scheduled to reopen on November 22.  We are hopeful.

Balmoral

We just finished a lovely weekend in Germantown, Tennessee.

Way back when I was a student at Davidson College, I had a very dear friend from Taladega, Alabama, named Bill Jones.  Bill and I sang together in the Davidson College Male Chorus and in a smaller group called the Lamplighters.

After college we both went to seminary and Bill became a Presbyterian minister while I was Methodist.  Many years later we connected through storytelling as he was at a church in Kingsport, Tennessee, near the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough.

When later Bill and his wife, Lida, moved to Germantown, Tennessee, where he was minister at Balmoral Presbyterian Church, he was instrumental in starting a church storytelling weekend there.  This year was the twentieth year for that festival, and, though Bill is retired with Lida to Ocracoke, I am still going to Balmoral every other year.

The church is very accommodating and involved in community life as well as the life of its own members.  In one hallway there are bulletin boards that interpret to all who see them the total life of the church in all its dimensions,  This is a great idea as most church members only have intimate knowledge of those areas in which they are themselves personally involved. It is a model of interpretations others could duplicate.

The hallway interprets church missions and activities.

Also, as one enters the church, you pass under a gigantic flock/mobile of six hundred origami peace cranes made by church members.  It is almost a calming experience and reminder that you are entering an earthly home of the Prince of Peace.  (In one of the hallways there are other peace cranes, each of which has the name of a church community member who has recently died.)

Balmoral Peace Cranes.

We had a wonderful festival in itself, but, the Balmoral Church setting makes it quite a memorable and unique event.

PS:  on our drive home we saw, at the North Carolina State Farmers’ Market in Raleigh, a truck carrying the largest pumpkin ever.  Worth taking a picture!

Cary to Memphis

Last weekend we were at a wonderful new festival in Cary, North Carolina: the Old North State Storytelling Festival.  This festival was the fruit of tremendous work by Alan Hoal and the NC Storytelling Guild.  I was featured along with Donna Washington, Michael Reno Harrell, and a half-dozen regional tellers from across the Carolinas.  Watch out for next year as this event is destined to thrive and grow.

From there we had a couple of baby days in Roanoke, Virginia.  We visited with our two-month-old grandson, Beckham.  He is Trish’s daughter, Betsie’s second son..his brother is fifteen!  Lots of fun there!

Sleeping and growing!

In addition there were more babies. When Trish moved to Ocracoke, she had to leave her long-term hair-care person, Kate Altizer.  At the same time, Kate was in the process of having twin boys.  During this visit we got to both go to Kate’s house and meet her for haircuts and to see the twins.  We now look better and it was lots of fun.

Sleeping twins.

Now we are headed to Germantown, Tennessee for our semi-annual  visit to Balmoral Presbyterian Church for their festival there.  On the way we spent the night at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, an experience of rest and good food all in itself.  Now we are ready for the weekend.

Fun time at the Opryland Hotel.

If you are near Memphis, check out the Balmoral Festival.  The church is located on Quince Road in Germantown.  I will also be preaching on Sunday.

Wonderful Halloween

There were only treats and no tricks this Halloween week.  We got home on Monday and had three upcoming days of wonderful clear and temperate weather for working on the house.

Trish and I were able to get our screen porch back in order so we could actually use a part of our house as autumn rolls on.  It had been power washed and disinfected by Serve Pro and now we managed to get the paper lanterns replaced and repaired, put some treated furniture back in place, and add a new colorful rag rug to the floor.  It feels so good to see one little space begin to look normal.

With new paper lanterns, the porch almost looks normal again.

The biggest work was done outdoors.  The washed up pilings in the front yard were salvaged to use in raising and doubling the size of the food pantry at the Lighthouse Church.  Ivey and Greg managed to pull them out with a ditcher and a front end loader and then the yard was almost empty.

Watching the pilings get removed.

I had managed to salvage two truck loads of wood chips from trees being ground up, and, as soon as the yard space was clear we began filling and leveling with our wood chip treasure.  We hauled many loads in our little truck and our yard cart and in the end sowed annual rye grass to stabilize the
surface.

Wow...the yard is looking better now.

In the late morning the debris haulers came down our street and gathered all of the building and yard debris we have accumulated since the last pickup.  Now the house looks clear to the street and we believe it will eventually look normal again.

All the debris is hauled away...for now!

In mid afternoon the best thing happened:  a Kempsville Building Supply truck got over on the ferry and delivered our order of drywall!  Now the first work can be done at putting something back in place instead of just tearing it out.  It has been almost two months since Hurricane Dorian and at last we can say we are making visible progress toward recovery.

Drywall arrived!  Our first load of new building supplies.

The day ended with wonderful hoards of Trick or Treaters showing the world that a hurricane cannot stop children’s appetite for candy and costume fun!