North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 05/16/1994

Tonight we take you to the pope for a look at our day magnificent lighthouses. Even the White Houses might be today's tools and technology obsolete. They still stand for a seat at the border for Pronger travel from Lexington north of North Carolina's best barbecue. This is North Carolina now. Happy

Monday to you everyone I'm more educated And I'm John Bryson thanks for joining us on a big night of television here on USC TV. It is a big night. At 10:00 o'clock we have a moving documentary called when doctors get cancer. It's very moving as I said but at 9:00 o'clock we have a U.N. CTV co-production with clean air awareness films it's called The Search for clean air. It was a hit Hugh Morton as its executive producer and Walter Cronkite as an air Reagan. And our newsmaker is in the documentary Dr. Bob Brock of NC State University so stay with us. We'll talk with him later in the show tonight yes exactly. Well before we get into the meat of today's show we want to wish happy birthday to our state's chief executive Governor Jim Hunt is 57 years young today. He was born May 16th 1937 in Greensboro North Carolina and he is a governor who definitely made history the first to succeed himself and then to come back again so long a history making man. He is a history making day. Well coastal North Carolina has a great seafaring history the seven lighthouses the daughter Coast

stand today as proud reminders of that tradition. Producer Sabrina Francis and reporter Elizabeth Hardy took a look at these majestic towers and. Promised 200 years in North Carolina lighthouse of the guiding light in the landmark these beacons one of the dangerous currents along the treacherous the Outer Banks are a beautiful example of nature. Sand Dunes dot the landscape. See it's gracefully dance in the breeze and the ocean crashes on to shore. But this peaceful scene is only an illusion at sea sailors find treacherous currents and dangerous shoals over 500 ships have been sunk off our coast giving the seas their nickname graveyard of the Atlantic. Canni Mason is a curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum. We have the famous epic the graveyard of the Atlantic

and it is so well or for all the rich we have all four coast. Like hell says We're very important to warn Mariners the first of all to tell where they were and how close they were. The White House is all you need. North Carolina has the nation's tallest lighthouse Cape Hatteras stretches 208 feet into the air and the world's brightest as the Oak Island lighthouse south of Wilmington. The coastal towers are larger because of the coastline of Okinawa being so low and the object of course is to get a light that's seen far out at sea. In 1789 the United States Lighthouse Service was established and the government began building lighthouses along North Carolina shore. A keeper one or two assistant keepers and their families were stationed at each lighthouse It was a keeper's duty to maintain the light ready Jeanette's father kept the right burning. My father of course was the principal keeper. Their job back and the time that I was going to

appear was to light the kerosene man a lamp and proceeded to burn all night. I used to have sweet staffer 268 you know and I signed the lands and some of the brass work up there. I did a lot of things just to get a chance to go out. Eventually seven towers were built along the coast North Carolina's lighthouses played a vital role in establishing safe trade routes from New Zealand to the south and on to the Caribbean. These trade routes were important to the economic growth of our nation. Today these lighthouses stand as a symbol of the strong enduring spirit and determination of those who built this country. They're part of our maritime heritage and culture. We are a young nation and we have so few symbols of our culture and of our growth. And even though the White Houses might be in today's terms and technology obsolete they still stand for a lot of the

seafaring spirit its lighthouse has its eye marking in light pattern. This was to help Mariners determine which light they were using as a navigational way. Today the lighthouses serve a different purpose. Shipping lanes are now much farther out to sea thanks to modern navigational equipment. Today the lighthouses are used mainly by day sailors fisherman and tourist. Mary Jo is a park ranger with the United States Park Service to Cape Hatteras. I think a lot of lighthouses happy come more trips to attractions than they were for just this summer we averaged Fifteen hundred people a day. I think the White House is making the outer banks stand out. My 4 year old has never seen a White House before and she is just fascinated with it and to not have it preserved for generations to come. I think you're total waste. Everybody loves the lighthouse I think there's a lot of romanticism that is involved with White Houses and white house keepers and the raging ocean and the storms.

Bald head light held his head light houses open year round Cape Hatteras and currituck beach light houses are open seasonally and visitors are invited to climb to the top of any of these three light houses. The basis is some of the others are open to the public during the summer but visitors are not permitted at the top. Now we have several statues of famous North Carolina light houses right here on our set. They were made at homebound studios in North Carolina. Now a North Carolina barbecue is more than food and only slightly less than a religion. A smoky finely chopped pork we enjoy connects us somehow to our rural heritage suggesting harvest tobacco options and church camp meetings throughout the week. Bob Garner is going to take us to some of the state's truly great barbecue restaurants. Tonight we visit Lexington the spiritual center of the so-called Western style barbecue. Robyn the river 31 year and travel the eastern seaboard. Please come back here unless I'm in the market.

This used to be all there was of Interstate 85 through Lexington the main road to Charlotte from the Durham and Greensboro area. But even though the main part of the highway is moved over a few miles to the faithful all roads still lead to Lexington BBQ. Even with old fashioned curb service available the dining room is always packed at peak hours and this was their slowest day the main attraction. Pork shoulders. It cooked for 10 hours. That's good it is just the same like a Lexington BBQ cooks with oak wood and hickory when they can get it with more coals spread under the meat every 20 or 30 minutes. The woodpile is out back and that's one thing to look for when you're searching for a good BBQ place inside the kitchen. The summertime temperature reaches a hundred and twenty degrees. How in the world do they get you to do this job in the heat of the summer. Well he pays pretty good. He's the best man I ever worked for at say he is Wayne monk whose own Lexington BBQ for 31 years. He can take a pork shoulder apart like a puzzle getting rid of

everything that isn't pure lean meat if they can plant and have a pretty you know long man. Did you get that. That make you feel like you're playing by the brown outside media say for special orders. The rest is either sliced regular chopped or coarse chopped into chunks. Your choice now Lexington style cole slaw a staple here and a lot of other places is red with ketchup but a growing sugar added practically the same ingredients that go into the dip served over the cooked meat and barbecued really unique here and what makes it so unique and so special I don't know he has a special way of prepared and I've tried BBQ at all the places and this is really fine BBQ and I'd recommend it to you or anyone. We ran into one westerner from Montana greenies turned on a bone if you know. I'm tapped out ready for you to eat and wear the order regular chopped or coarse chop.

This is the regular thing. It's going to be lean and tender with just the right body for the ultimate in flavor order the sliced Brown this is the crusty outside meat the texture is to eat and that intense smoky flavor or remind you of campfire smoke from when you were a kid in the house Bobby is here fantastic. First of all this is just the right shape for a Hushpuppy is not too big and yet not too skinny. There has puppies aren't you. True it isn't overwhelmed by a taste of sugar onion a very strong definite cornmeal taste wonderful to all the barbecue comes with the regular dip on it which is wonderful but if you like it just a little bit hotter try the smokehouse barbecue sauce. This is a secret recipe that only Wayne monk knows and in fact this is the only place in the world where this sauce is available you'll easily find Lexington BBQ

right on business I-85 not the interstate bypass practically in the middle of Lexington for cleanliness service variety and most of all for that wonderful smoke flavor. We give Lexington BBQ our highest rating. I have little pigs. Now grab your pencils the phone number at Lexington BBQ is area code 7 0 4 2 4 9 9 8 1 4 and we hasten to add that a lot of people out there have a much different idea of how a North Carolina barbecue should taste. So tomorrow night Bob will balance this review by tasting an outstanding example of Eastern style barbecue. He'll travel to a place I know so well. Nelson's and Rocky Mount my hometown. We want to make all this information we've gathered about great barbecue available to you so we're cooking up a North Carolina now barbecue brochure. This is it. And if you like one send us a self-addressed stamped envelope to NC now barbecue P.O. Box 1 4 9 0 0 RTP and see 2 7

7 0 9. Michel Louis will be here in a moment with a review of news highlights from across the state. And later I'll talk with Dr. Bob Brock about his search for clean air. Don't go away. Good evening. I'm Michel Louis. Here's a review of today's statewide news events. One person was killed and more than 350 people were injured in an Amtrak train wreck early this morning. Conflicting reports indicate that a second engineer may have died. The train jumped the track in the Johnston County town of Soma. A truck trailer

filled with kitty litter being hauled by a CSX freight train slipped off a flatbed truck and into the path of Amtrak southbound Silver Meteor. The passenger train slammed into the trailer causing the train to derail. Amtrak says one of its veteran engineers died in the crash. He is identified as 41 year old a North Carolina native Brooks Woodard. Rescue crews at the site say nearly all of the 418 people on the train were injured in that irrelevant. Some suffered broken bones but most had only cuts and bruises. Seven passengers have stained injuries serious enough to be airlifted to Duke Medical Center. At the time of the accident Amtrak Silver Meteor was on its way from New York to Miami. Members of the North Carolina Council of Churches held a prayer vigil today protesting the scheduled execution of convicted killer David Lawson. The group stood on the south side of the old capitol building carrying large white crosses and holding signs pleading to Governor Hunt for clemency. Reverend Jimmy Creech believes the state doesn't have the right to put anyone to

death. We very much grieve the death of Wayne Shandon who was the victim of David Dawson's act of murder. But David lost his wife is no less valuable then Wayne Shandon. And to put David Lawson to death is no less. In morrow then David Dawson's murder David Wain Shann the North Carolina Council of Churches plans to hold these noontime prayer of vigils every day until Lawson scheduled execution on June 15. A state representative who's running for Congress is coming clean about his embellished resume. Well the last two weeks Republican David Balmer was blaming political rivals and a former campaign aide for falsifying his credentials but now Balmer admits that he created the inflated resume. Bombers acknowledgment comes about three weeks before his May 30 first runoff election for the GOP nomination in the ninth congressional district in the May 3rd primary bomber captured 26 percent of the vote

to 30 percent for former Charlotte mayor Sue Myrick one of bomber's opponents Donna Reed who didn't receive enough votes to be in the runoff election says bombers should drop out of the campaign. A record number of loggers were killed last year in North Carolina. Thirteen lawyers died in on the job accidents. That's the largest number ever for a single year in the state. That proportion of deaths to workers is huge in a state with about 4000 bloggers. Labor officials say it is difficult to prevent the hazards involved in logging because most of the deaths occur on the ground. Last year 10 of the 13 lawyers who were killed died when they were struck by falling trees or Linux. State officials are devising plans to help North Carolina 17 major river basins survive despite the pollution being dumped into them. Most of the concern centers on the lumber river basin where State researchers have documented the most widespread mercury contamination. Environmentalists fear that the mercury in the lumber River Basin could be a sign of a state wide problem.

The Environmental Management Commission says potentially dangerous levels of mercury have been found over much of the walk among the River drainage areas in Bladen Columbus and Brunswick counties. High mercury levels have been found in parts of high rock Lakes since 1981. Officials believe the contamination stems from farms industry and household septic systems. Today it was partly cloudy across most of North Carolina the northeast had mostly sunny skies and highs in the mountains where in the 60s and 70s but the rest of the state enjoyed highs in the 80s. Tonight skies will be clear statewide levels in the mountains will fall into the 40s. But elsewhere it will get down only into the 50s. Tomorrow will be mostly sunny and breezy everywhere. Highs will be in the 70s except in the northern mountains there it'll only get into the 60s and 11 County Coalition in the Triad could become the state's second small business health care

alliance under this program small businesses ban together so they can get a better deal on health insurance. A group representing 21 chambers of commerce throughout the triad is interested in creating this insurance purchasing group. It is believed that smaller employers will have more leverage in negotiating premiums as one large group than they would as smaller individual companies. A similar alliance centered in Nashville is already beginning operation. Continental Airlines is expanding its service at Piedmont triad International Airport. The airline is adding 24 daily departures to its schedule. That will give Continental more than 80 flights from the triad. The stock market was mixed today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 12 points to close at thirty six seventy one point fifty. But decliners lead gainers by almost five to four. Trading was fairly quiet as two hundred thirty nine million shares changed hands. The Standard Poor's 500 index was ahead fractionally and the Nasdaq composite index lost five points. Now for some stocks of

North Carolina interest. Yes. How much are we polluting the air we breathe. A program airing tonight at 9:00 on UN

CTV explores this question and here to give us a preview. The search for clean air is the show's scientific adviser Dr. Robert Brock. Thanks so much for joining us. Well thank you for having me on. All right the search for clean air is a one hour documentary airing on a clock Monday night. What was the impetus behind this trial. Well it's been a long time coming. Fascinatingly about 10 years ago I was working up on Mel Mitchell North Carolina. And Hugh Morton along with several representatives of the Environmental Defense Fund came up to look at my work and he was really moved by what he saw and started asking me many more questions about where else these problems were taking place. We struck up quite a friendship and one thing led to another and we had to stop traveling half the world together in the production of the show. And indeed you do travel all over the world and the situation is just as bad in fact worse than some other countries that it is here. But let's focus on North Carolina we'll let them watch the program tonight to find out what's happening in the rest of the world. How bad is it here.

Well North Carolina unfortunately is undergoing a problem on our high mountains right now. Fortunately it's confined to our high mountain areas as far as we could tell this time but unfortunately beginning in about 1983 a very severe decline began across all our high altitude ridges generally above 5000 feet. And right now we're looking at about 70 percent of those ecosystems having been destroyed. Looking at the pictures comparing what it looked like then and how it looks now it is so depressing and distressing. Well it's has come apart it's very interesting only when we study ecological systems trees most of the things out in our environment are very resilient to stress. But when they begin to fall apart if you will the straw that breaks the camel's back they do come down very very quickly and that has been really quite a shock to many people who've been up there. What were the specific areas of focus of this problem. Well this program was very interesting for a number of reasons. We began to the title is very appropriate to the search for clean air. It was more of an adventure than it was a

documentary we really didn't know exactly what we were going to find as you said ended up traveling across three continents in order to find things. And lo and behold a thread seems to be going through all of the places that we visited. And that was where we had heavy unmitigated industrialization. We have severe problems even in ecosystems. Hundreds of miles distant from those areas. And there is such a reaction to physically on the people who live in those areas I was really struck by that the child who have asked my and in the problems that he was experience. Well you know for a long time physicians throughout the Western world have noticed a great increase in such things as your infections bronchitis asthma. This has been chronicled in many scientific journals. Very often I wonder why. I mean what's the difference between now and say 50 years ago. It seems again that the common link in these heavily industrialized areas is air pollution. It's gotten to the

point in many areas where frankly the EPA is saying and announcing nationally it is simply on healthy to breathe the air particularly during the summer months. This this program is somewhat technical it's interesting but it's technical do you think the average person is going to be able to. And I think so. I think so. You know one of the things that we were very careful about I believe the lead last count there was about 400 hours of video shot to produce the show. Yes that got whittled down to 58 minutes of blood that's a lot of things that we had to look for was exactly that point. You know you cannot reduce it to the point where the scientists are not making sense and talking about the data that they've collected. On the other hand I think anybody can watch the show and pretty much understand what's going on. Well now we have regulations the Clean Air Act and we have other state regulations designed to alleviate a problem like this. They're just not working. Well you have to remember that the Clean Air Act the strengthening of the Clean Air Act just took place in 1990. Most of the laws or provisions of that I don't even kick in

until the turn of the century. And that's probably correct. It takes time for business industry the automotive industry to be able to adapt to many of these new regulations so you have to wait for these things to happen. So as of right now we do not see any real major changes although we hope that if all the provisions of the Clean Air Act are in fact enforced we will see some bettering of the situation. Is there one really urgent message that you want that to try to get across this problem. Well the urgent message I think the one thing that comes out more than anything else it really was quite a shock to us while we were producing this show was the effect of ambient air the air we breathe every day on children. That's something that struck all of us when we had some of the top world renowned medical epidemiologists pulmonary specialists talking about their findings from many studies pathological and epidemiological. We're learning that in many of these urban areas kids who are five and 10 years old obviously not smoking cigarettes

or anything else like that or having lesions in their lungs simply from breathing the air that are going to affect them from now on. That's the other thing that comes about is that many people when you cut your finger for example it feels it grows back. Many of the organs in our body including unfortunately our lungs never completely heal when we damage that tissue when we've lost lung tissue. It is for life. You know somehow if people started having that problem when they were 50 or 60 we put up should we worry about it so much but when you're talking about pre-teen kids losing long tissue it really is alarming. Well the program is the search for clean air tonight at 9 o'clock. Please watch it. Thank you Rob. My pleasure. Now we'd like to get your response to North Carolina now and your suggestions as well. Simply call our viewer a comment line at 9 1 9 5 4 9 7 8 0 8. Or write us at P.O. Box 1 4 9 0 0 RTP NC 2 7 7 0 9. You can fax a

message to 9 1 9 5 4 9 7 0 4 3. Or try our Internet address. You and CTV at AOL period com whatever you do please give us a daytime phone number in case we need to reach you. And once again we do want to remind you of the two very special programs on the Miami all night on public television is a special but at 9:00 o'clock the search for clean air. And then at 10:00 when doctors get cancer to bury I think very important programs that you won't want to miss and you won't want to miss North Carolina now tomorrow night when our features will be on eastern North Carolina style barbeque for those folks. Didn't don't go along with the Lexington spawned on the other end of that and a western North Carolina cultural icon Richard Petty will have a feature on Richard Richard. Yeah he said they have an exhibit on him at the museum. Very nice. Now we need your help. We are going to have a special segment

that celebrates the 50th anniversary of D-Day. So many of you watching probably have some D-Day memories we hope you'll share with us that we can then share with the rest of our viewers so we want to hear from you. We're particularly looking for people who might have participated in the D-Day invasion but all the folks who have strong memories of loved ones there we'd like to hear your stories from stateside or serving in the war we want to hear from you. Until then we want to hear from you OK. Call us write us let us know. That's all for now I watch your case Bailie. John you know you can.