North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 10/30/1995

Already already It's Monday October 30th to knowing that along the barbecues in North Carolina now. Good evening everyone I'm going to try thanks for joining us for another

week of North Carolina now. We certainly hope that you had an enjoyable and relaxing weekend this weekend people from all over North Carolina gathered in Lexington for the big barbecue cook off of course. Bob Garner was there and he'll have a report. Our guest tonight will be a Baptist minister from wood North Carolina who has written the fastest selling history book in the past 20 years. The book chronicles the history of North Carolina through the tales of the people who lived through it. It's interesting reading and his hollow Ween is just one day away tonight we offer you another installment of our North Carolina Ghost Stories series. But first each year the town of Lexington holds a barbecue festival that brings together local restaurants and thousands of visitors for the first time ever. Lexington was the site of the championship pig cook off. Bob Garner reports. Look at the barbecue that made Lexington famous has always come from Port shoulders slowly and lovingly cooked over hardwood coals. Somewhere around 19 20 some folks around Washington started holding public cookouts called everybody's

day. They revive that general idea 12 years ago and today the Lexington BBQ Festival is known all over the country. An event like this takes some 11000 pounds of barbecue. That's five and a half tons. After all they feed close to a couple of hundred thousand people. Several participating restaurants pitched in to get the cooking done and it goes on continually for a full 24 hours ahead of time what is it that sets Lexington BBQ apart tasting style which is more tomato and I prefer the Mexican style. It may have been a group just like the Lexington Mass. Yes I like ketchup myself rather than a mouthful. Here's the official explanation of the difference coming from the shoulder rather than the whole hawg Lexington style barbecue tends to be more moist and more coarsely chopped than its eastern counterpart the sauce which is known in Lexington as dip starts with the same vinegar and red pepper base as the Eastern style

sauce but a little sugar or other sweetener is added along with a little ketchup or tomato sauce for color. It still isn't a thick BBQ sauce like you'd find in Tennessee or Texas. The slaw is red because barbecue sauce ingredients are added to it. This year the Lexington festival was home to the official North Carolina championship sponsored by the state Pork Producers Association. Those who placed high enough in dozens of local contests were invited to compete. Now you have to understand that most of these whole hog cooking experts were from the eastern part of the state and in fact this was the first time the state contest was held in the Piedmont. Did it make any difference competing on foreign soil. No not really. I use an Eastern style baseball the key solace and it's done real well for me in three years we've been doing it so I brung it out here and see what it'll do. Cooking shoulders is one thing but what's the real secret of cooking an entire pig.

Cook it slow. Keep the mortar in a lot of people farm real hot you know. Start with get a tin city kind of scene get brown and a little bit and it's pretty hard to get it done. But I cook it slow take it and most competition to get the 12 hours real hit cooking family run BBQ places seem to be decreasing in number as the younger members of some of these families look for better hours and less backbreaking work. Still barbecue is a cultural phenomenon is probably as popular as ever and the Lexington BBQ festival helps keep it that way. Reminded us a little of our roots. The top five honors in the pig cook off all went to Eastern chefs Newport resident Bobby Prescott won the championship and took home two thousand dollars. Well coming up my conversation with a man who refers to himself as a Swedish Yankee. He's written a book about North Carolina's history.

But first Congressman David Funderburk is in the news again Michel Louis has the details of that and the rest of the statewide news. Hello Meche. Hello there Maria. Good evening everyone. U.S. Representative David Funderburk says he wants to get back to representing North Carolina's second congressional district. That's why he entered a no contest plea in Harnett County today to a charge of driving left of center during a controversial traffic accident. Assistant court clerk Upchurch says an additional charge of giving false information to a law officer was dropped in exchange for Thunderbird's no contest plea. However Funderburk told a group of supporters at his Dunne office this afternoon that despite today's plea his wife was driving during the accident. The accounts of two eyewitnesses who say Funderburk himself was driving led the highway patrol to press charges against the congressman. The repeal of the intangibles and inventory taxes put a dent in the amount of money going into the state's general fund revenues total revenues for the first quarter of

the fiscal year were just under two billion four hundred nineteen million dollars. That's down more than 26 million dollars from the same period last year. Some of that is because of the way the state reimburses local governments. Meanwhile more businesses are deciding to go to court to try to lower their property tax assessments. The chief appraiser for the state revenue department says the number of appeals has more than doubled since the 1980s an increase in school bus accidents in North Carolina is prompting the highway patrol to take action. State troopers will start following the buses for 30 minutes at a time during each school day. Highway Patrol officials say they hope the new patrols will remind drivers to slow down their school buses and also find any bad bus drivers. Last year there were more than 800 school bus accidents statewide. That's up from seven hundred sixty five accidents during the 1993 94 school year. The draft Powell for president campaign will be making its way through part of North Carolina over the next two days. Organizers are hoping to push

retired General Colin Powell into a run for the White House. A rally is planned at USC Wilmington this evening. There will also be stops tomorrow across across the southeastern part of the state. Taking a look at tomorrow's weather temperatures will range from the 60s in the Piedmont to the low 70s in the sand hills and beaches. It will be cloudy across most of the state with a good chance of showers near Boone and Ashville in business news a new partnership between a Durham organization the National Mortgage Group Fannie Mae and five banks could make homeownership possible for thousands of North Carolinians. The Durham group known as self-help will buy 100 million dollars in home loans that the five banks made to low and moderate income residents of the state. Fannie Mae will then package the mortgages as securities allowing the banks to use the money to make more loans. Fruit of the Loom employees and Rockingham star and troika are waiting to hear if they will keep their jobs. The company announced plans today to close six plants and cut 30 to 100 jobs but

didn't say where the cuts would be taken. It did say the plants being closed are in North Carolina Kentucky Mississippi Alabama and Louisiana. The decision came after fruit of the Looms profits fell 39 percent in the third quarter. Two weeks ago Chairman William Farley warned the company would face streamlining in order to improve profitability. Two of RJR Nabisco biggest shareholders are putting pressure on the company to split its tobacco and food businesses. Bennett Lebeau and Carl Icahn say they believe the move will increase shareholder value in the company something RJR Nabisco says still is not clear. Together the two men now own about 4 percent of the stock. They say they will seek support of other shareholders to nominate new directors to the board next year. If the company doesn't agree to a spinoff the stock market regained some ground today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose fourteen point eighty two points to close at forty seven fifty six point fifty seven with advancing issues leading decliners six to five about three hundred eighteen million shares traded

hands. The Standard Poor's 500 Index and the Nasdaq composite were both up and now for some stocks of North Carolina interest. Hollowing is coming up tomorrow Traditionally it's a time when we remember stranger scary tales What's a night.

In part two of our three part series on North Carolina ghost stories producer Elizabeth Hardy teams up with storyteller Nancy Roberts to bring us a tale of deja vu from Statesville. Do people ever have preman issues. I think that are going to occur in the future flashbacks to tragedies that have happened in the past night. I want to tell you the story of passenger train number nine. It was a movie with a valid point that it just made its day. The steam engine spits smoke into the sky. We can use you in the film the early morning. A couple named Larry and Pat were headed toward the mountains on a vacation. Unfortunately on the way

they had a flat tire. The roads were deserted. So the Lhari headed back for help leaving past the whites their two children in the car. Pat heard the whistle of a train off in the distance and as it came closer she thought the train sounded late at night. Then a light appeared. She watched it then closer and closer until it was just a few hundred yards from the car. The headlight of the engine came along like a fierce and she could see the engine and the coaches clearly wrong. She watched its train begin to cross the bridge as it reached the center

of the train gave a bone sieve lurch left the train and plunged off the bridge down into the darkness and out of sight. There were cries she wrenching Stan wood and metal being torn apart and then there were the springs men and women's voices pleading for help. Our stricken pack raced toward the crate and she looked below. The sight made her with the train wreck debris was damming up the car he withstood all the cries and groans she became a way to remember standing still.

He was dressed in a railroad uniform and his face looked extremely funny. No wonder after what this poor man had gone through she thought he asked for the time he was gazing down at a large gold watch which looked like the old fashioned watch her grandfather used to show her when she was a child. But no doubt railroad men still carried watches like this. Pat told him it was five pence three and explained that she would soon go for help when her husband returned. Suddenly his face began to blur and it began to feel the very thing. At that moment Pat heard the car door slam and ran over to explain to her husband about the terrible wreck she had

just with this. Larry and the other men ran with her to the side of the street and together they all looked down. But when they saw that there was no overturned cars no heat only the wire was of the street. The next morning Pam insisted that they go to the railroad station when they arrived they found an old man there and she asked him had there ever been any train wrecks along this track. Oh not in years he said. Not since the wreck my father used to tell me about the wreck of a passenger train nine

and eighteen ninety one if with a horrible wreck the train reached the middle of the trestle and plunged into the stream below. The cars crashed together. There was a founder of passengers screaming. Hundred and Twenty seven people died in that rack. But would you like for me to show you some of the clippings from it. And with that he brought out the yellowed newspaper clippings of the past. And as Pat looked at that all of the hour of the night before returning she remembered the sound of the cars crashing together. The screams of the passengers that she would remember for the rest of her life. Many thanks to the folks at the railroad for their help in the re-enactment of passenger

train number nine. Tomorrow night following night we'll wrap up our series on North Carolina ghost stories with a story about a ghostly hitchhiker well telling tales be they haunting or otherwise is a North Carolina tradition. Our guest tonight has followed the tradition of oral storytelling to chronicle the history of our state. He has written a book called hills and hearts of gold. Recently I had an opportunity to speak with Michael Caine or about his new book. Mr. Cantor thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you for having me. Now your book spotlights one community in North Carolina wood and Franklin County and it traces the history of our state and the nation through that one community why did you take this particular approach. It was a normal approach I had started out just writing history. And when you write the history of a small community you include the individuals will a rejection slip after rejection slip and such I decided that perhaps we could implement the idea that Alex Haley revolutionized in the 70s which was to view the history of the nation

not through a sweeping generalization as as most history books do but through the eyes of one community how every war depression tragedy drought you know famine all these things how it affected one community and just pick the community in which I lived which was. Now your book starts off. It's oh it's unusual in a lot of different ways but it starts off with an apology which I found to be quite unique why the apology. Well again I used oral history beginning with a woman by the name of Mamie Gupton who's 98 years old she still farms she's And she penalizes the country attitude and the tenacity that they use. And I collected over a series of three years hundreds of stories. But as those stories took took. Shape and form in the book. I knew that as the reader would come through them they would ignite other stories and remind them of something else that I just to be quite honest could have included into a book it's already almost 500 pages long that you couldn't include at all.

Why why this narrative style why through the tales of the people who lived it. I think Oral History. I'm 28 going to be 29 years old and I think one of the things that my generation has a has a problem with or perhaps were lacking is the sense of nostalgia. We have lost this love of our own personal histories. So in using oral history I would hopefully get them to start appreciating not just their fathers and their grandfathers but also to appreciate the history of our nation through the lives of individuals not just you know the movements of the acts of Congress or the acts of battalions in war but through the lives of each individual who lived through these events. How did you gather the stories. Through an immense amount of research I went through four five states. Going to all these libraries and such and we went to England I go to Israel every year as a minister went to Israel and we stopped in England and actually got a hold of the Queen's archives. You're not allowed to take them out. You are allowed to photocopy them and we've got a lot of travel slips the tickets bought to the

various people coming to America and stopping at the ports in North Carolina. Did you talk to people. Goodness. Three hundred and seventy one interviews some hundreds of phone interviews but most of it was collaborative through the ideas taken through newspaper archives and such and then putting flesh in the stories and telling stories of people who were still living and such. Now your book goes as far back as I believe 600 a day. Now I know that there can't be much oral history from that time period. Actually there is it's a tragedy to me because as sort of a parallel to oral history the tusk or Indians. As they settled into our region of course the story the Tuscarora wars in the seventeen hundreds spoke to a chief who did not go north when the five nations to join the Five Nations he stayed down here and he takes issue with this. I guess you could call it a politically correct methodology of quality of Native Americans he said in their horrible histories. They tell of this intense travel across ice and of course

their stories of coming to America what we call America. And he said we are not Native Americans we are the first Carolinians because we came here 500 A.D. and he told me spun yarns of the struggles and the difficulties they went through in coming in settling on the coast of North Carolina in the Lumbee Indians included. Well you are not a southerner. No. In fact you know you refer to yourself as a Swedish Yankee. You know you were born in Sweden and settled your family settled in Ohio and so then you came down here. Does not being a Southerner and not being a native North Carolinian maybe offer you a different perspective of the state's history than a native would have. I think so. I think so I tell everybody in my church where I pastor Inwood that I got three strikes against me. I'm a foreigner. I'm a Yankee and I'm a city slicker and they've had to train me in all these things but when I had to avoid was writing the book as a from from my own lenses. As a Yankee or as a foreigner I wanted to write the book.

Through the eyes of the Southerner and I think if anything perhaps I was a little more objective in telling some of the stories but I had to watch so that I didn't try to inject my own viewpoints of things into the book. Maybe not having a viewpoint of being a Southerner actually helped the book. I have an intense love for these people and for the people of Franklin County the gold mine region and and specifically would interest in the intense adoration for those people. But I am objective. I mean I wasn't a Southerner I have until the same soil that they have 300 years many of their families own the same land and I don't have that sort of marriage to the land so it does have a tendency to be a little more objective but at the same time I think it might lack some of the passion and drive that they have when they tell the stories themselves. Because you basically have to start from square one and learning about the state. Last question in a very short time that we have. Have you got any kind of maybe negative response from this book. The book is very popular your publisher tells me it is the best selling

history book in the last 20 years so it is very popular. But if people from the south maybe said well what is this Yankee trying to tell me about my state. Well I think the negative response might be from the fact that it was people telling stories on each other and sometimes they open the laundry basket of their lives and shared some things that maybe the others wouldn't want to be shared but a negative response has in the Scilly been from writing it or from some of the stories that someone else chose to tell. How dare you tell that story. Well you Mike or Cain or Butch thank you so much for being aired tonight we really appreciate it. It's an honor to be here. Thank you for. On tomorrow night's edition of North Carolina now we'll take you back to their childhood as we look at the

popular hobby of toy collecting that old childhood dollar truck you may have sitting in your attic might be worth a mint. And we'll bring you the final installment of our three part series on North Carolina ghost stories and a Wilmington author will pay us a visit it seems that Cape Fear coast is a popular haunt for spirits ghosts and ghouls. Well enjoy your evening and join us tomorrow night for another edition of North Carolina now. Good night.