Naval stores, whirlygigs and an update on NCBBQ

One of the things I really like about eastern North Carolina are the clouds.

Also, the crepe myrtles are fabulous.

When the dust finally settles (assuming it ever will) on our quest to visit all of the National Park Service’s 400-plus units, Moores Creek National Battlefield (MCNB) will not rank in the top ten, or make the 50 favs list. 

This our travel trailer home site in MCNB. As the next photo demonstrates, if the trailer had been here when Hurrican Mathew came through here last October, it would have been nearly covered with flood waters from Moores Creek.

MCNB is a very pretty place and it has a lovely, one-mile walking path sprinkled with an array of excellent interpretive signs and occasional, randomly-placed monuments that pre-date the establishment of the national park in the late 1920s.

So one thing I want to accomplish in this post is to share some photos of the trail to show readers what a lovely “home base” we have (all to ourselves after 5 p.m.) for “really getting to know” North Carolina. Another objective is to report on our trip to historic Halifax in the northern part of the state. Finally, at the end of this blog post, after recapping the highlights of our latest mini-trip, I will provide an update on, and “partial mea culpa” of, my previous comments in this blog about North Carolina barbecue.

Before I get to the walking path photos I need to provide readers with some additional historical information. Like probably everybody else reading this we knew before we got here that the early North Carolina economy was built on tobacco and cotton. But what we did not know about North Carolina history is the importance of something called “naval stores”; a term that includes the pine tar, pitch and resin used to treat and protect the rigging of sailing ships plus the wooden masts for those ships.

In the 18^th and early 19^th centuries one of the best sources in the world for naval stores was the long-leaf pine trees that grew here in eastern North Carolina in such great abundance that, by the mid-18^th century, most of the naval stores used by the British navy – the largest navy in the world at the time - came from right here in North Carolina, were produced mostly by slave labor and shipped mainly out of Wilmington which is just 20 miles or so down the Cape Fear River from MCNB.

Naval stores; now you know why North Carolina is called the Tarheel State.

When steam and iron replaced sails and wood the naval stores industry quickly faded and the hardwood, long leaf pine was replaced with the faster-growing, much softer loblolly pine that is used primarily for pulp to make paper products. Thus, today, most of the millions of ubiquitous pine trees that we see everywhere we go in North Carolina are of the loblolly variety and long leafs are relatively rare.

However, MCNB has made a concerted effort to re-establish long leaf pines in the park and has created a beautiful trail with interpretative signs explaining the important role these beautiful trees – and the naval stores industry – played in North Carolina history.

An up close view of the long leaf pine.

Long leaf in the foreground, loblolly in the background.

We’ve also noted that in at least two mid-18^th-century homes we have toured the original floor boards – still looking good after nearly 300 years – were cut from long leaf pines.

This weekend we traveled to Rocky Mount, east of Raleigh, to use a rental condo as a home base to explore some of the state’s early history along with some of Betsy’s family history.

Of course, we had to start it all off with another “high-A” Carolina League minor-league baseball game between the Carolina Mudcats and the Winston-Salem Dash (the same team, alert readers may recall, that opposed the Buie’s Creek Astros in the game we attended there last month).

Betsy went noodling for Muddy the Mudcats Mascot and got him by the tail. Do any of my readers catch what I'm saying?

The Mudcats play in the town of Zebulon which is sort of like a suburb of Raleigh, in the nicest of the five stadiums we have been to so far. The game itself, however, was probably the worst of the five; a long, grueling duel of walks, errors, sloppy play and pitching changes that goes a long way toward explaining why baseball is no longer the national pastime; 24 runs, 25 hits (at least two of the extra-base variety resulting from the right fielder losing an otherwise easy-to-catch fly ball in the sun), seven errors, lots of walks and a bunch of homers, including one that bounced around the top of the large, elevated scoreboard at least 450 feet from home plate. To summarize the game more succinctly, it was not a pitching duel and the Mudcats right fielder probably isn’t going to the majors.

Fortunately, the Mudcats won so the game only lasted 8 ½ innings.

Last week, after I had posted the blog, we went to a Wilmington Sharks game so, even though it is out of sequence, I am posting mascot photos from that game here.

Looks like Betsy has made a new fin.

A loyal Sharks fan.

 

Yesterday we headed up the road toward the Virginia state line to the historically important but – according to comments posted by the President of the United States – “declining” town of Halifax.

Poor Halifax. The town was already going through a tough stretch, and maybe it is true that its best days were in the rear view mirror by the time the president visited. Certainly it is true that Clinton walloped Trump by 26 points here in the 2016 election. Still, it seems like a low blow for the President of the United States to use a well-known communication medium to lash out and denigrate Halifax by telling readers that Halifax; “…seems to be in a decline & does not it is said contain a thousand souls."

Folks, I’m not making this up. This is not FAKE NEWS! And, believe it or not, it was not POTUS 45 tweeting out criticisms of Halifax (that I am aware of). Rather, it was POTUS 1 who wrote those scathing words dissing Halifax; in a diary entry on April 16, 1791.

Endeavoring to make a personal visit to every region of the country, George Washington set out from Philadelphia in March of 1791 and passed through eastern North Carolina on his way south. Weeks later, on the return north, Washington traveled through the central piedmont region of the state. Although he occasionally complained about the sandy roads in South Carolina and Georgia Washington was generally complimentary of the places he stayed. When he finally got back to Philadelphia, Washington summed up the trip in words that may shock current Americans, saying that the citizens he met; “appeared to be happy, contented and satisfied" with the federal government! Wow, those were the good ole days, huh?

Halifax alone seems to have drawn the ire of POTUS 1. Sad!

POTUS #1's 1791 Southern Tour stops.

Naturally, we have set our sights on visiting all of the places in North Carolina where Washington stopped on his tour and, to help us accomplish this objective, Betsy has purchased a t-shirt that has the Southern Tour route and major stops printed on the back. However, that’s not the only reason we went to Halifax.

Halifax (which is on the banks of Roanoke River in the northeastern part of the state) is the place where the North Carolina colonial government met in April of 1776 and “resolved” for its representatives to the Continental Congress to vote in favor “independency” from Great Britain later that summer. Also worthy of note, in his 1824 tour of America Marquis de Lafayette unexpectedly spent the night in Halifax after the locals threw a party for him at the local tavern that included 15 toasts. Perhaps, the origin of the word “toasted”?

They are not sure where Washington spent the night on his stop in Halifax in 1791 but Lafayette definitely slept here in the Eagle Tavern in 1824, quite soundly no doubt.

Not a bad place to be on July 4, 2017.

But Halifax is also historically significant as the place where Betsy’s great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Jesse Pendry Read chose to move to from Virginia prior to the Revolution and where, in 1774, he established and served for 45 years as pastor of the Rocky Swamp Baptist Church.

200-plus years later, a 6Gs granddaughter pays a visit.

Although much-altered the original church building is still standing and Jesse Read is buried, apparently in an unmarked grave, in the cemetery adjacent to the church. Betsy was disappointed we couldn’t find her grandfather’s grave marker but I pointed out that they guy has been dead for nearly two centuries (he died in 1820). Read also had a long service as a lieutenant in the Continental Army, seeing action at several major battles in the south. He was also held as a prisoner of war for several years.

On the drive down to North Carolina from Virginia we noticed an exhibit at the visitor center on I-95 touting the new “Whirlygig Park” in the town of Wilson. Apparently a farm machinery repairman named Vollis Simpson needed a hobby when he retired so he started making gigantic kinetic sculptures, which he called “whirligigs”, at his farm in Wilson County. And he did it seven days a week until about six months before he died at the age of 94 in May of 2013.

According to the Whirlygig Park’s website Simpson’s whirlygig farm was; “11 miles outside the City of Wilson and already attracted the attention of local people.  After the rise of the Internet, visitors from out-of-state made their way to Vollis’ farm too. Without any advertising, Simpson’s farm became one of Wilson County’s top tourism destinations. His work began to be discovered by art collectors. At the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland you will find his 55-foot-tall, 45-foot-wide “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” on permanent display.  His works are part of several other collections, including the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan and once featured in a popular window installation at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store.”

The website says that the City of Wilson sought to turn its; “most unique cultural assets into an economic engine of entrepreneurial job creation and tourism” adding “vibrancy to its Historic Downtown.”

Now, to some readers, this may sound like the desperate final throes of a hollowed out, semi-rural community caught in the vortex of an economic death spiral grasping at the thinnest straw to stave off the inevitable. And, after walking around the downtown area full of empty buildings and closed-down businesses, I’d say that sounds about right and I hope it works. (Betsy wanted me to add that Wilson does have a functioning court house).

Unfortunately, the construction of the park is behind schedule. Completion can’t seem to come soon enough.

Not too far from Wilson is the town of Ayden which is home to the Skylight Inn BBQ, a barbecue joint that has been in business for 70 years and is said to be the one of the best purveyors of Eastern North Carolina barbecue in the state.

Supposedly intended to represent the U.S. Capitol?

Supposedly, some of North Carolina's best barbecue. Note, that square thing with the bite taken out of it is fried cornbread and it was darn tasty.

With considerable trepidation I agreed with Betsy’s insistence that we give North Carolina barbecue one more try (she correctly pointed out that we had only tried barbecue at two places and one of those was a booth at a county fair). So, after eating at what is supposedly one of the best barbecue joints in the entire state of North Carolina, I am pleased to report that it wasn’t too bad. It did not suck and I did not throw any of it in the trash.

One of the things that probably helped was that the meat was served without any sauce, which was provided at the table. That allowed us to dress the barbecue to our own taste and to mix and match the vinegary Eastern North Carolina sauce with the sweeter, ketchup-based sauce favored in the western parts of the state. I think that went a long way toward making the stuff edible.

Hopefully, this re-assessment and partial mea culpa of my earlier comments regarding Eastern North Carolina barbecue will soothe any feelings among my legion of blog readers that may have been inadvertently bruised when I said that North Carolina barbecue sucks.