Volume 5 • Issue 5 APRIL 2010
The Young, Talented & Unforgettable The Forging of a Blacksmith • Southbound on the AT • The Fastest Car in the World
DI A N N E DAVA N T & A S S O C I AT E S Excellence By Design Since 1979
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High Country Magazine
April 2010
April 2010
High Country Magazine
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Enjoy one of our daily lunch specials! Treat yourself to an old fashioned chocolate soda, a real vanilla coke or fresh squeezed orangeade! Boone Drug Down Town 617 West King Street Boone, NC 28607
828-264-3766
2
High Country Magazine
April 2010
Banner Elk Realty “THE ONLY NAME YOU NEED TO KNOW IN MOUNTAIN REAL ESTATE”
When you get serious about wanting superior, knowledgeable service in buying or selling real estate in our beautiful High Country, then contact Banner Elk’s oldest full time brokerage firm. Put 30 years experience in our local real estate market to work for you!
We are committed to professional service.
John D. Davis, III Owner/Broker
30
A Blowing Rock Tradition...
Hemlock Inn
YEARS
828.898.9756
PO Box 336, 415 Shawneehaw Ave Banner Elk, NC 28604 Downtown • Beside The Red Caboose www.bannerelkrealty.com
Downtown Blowing Rock
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High Country Magazine
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Photo by Two Rivers
32 C O N T E N T S
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Fiddlers Three
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A “Little Piece of Heaven” for OldTime and Bluegrass Music
The Forget-Me-Nots are classically trained teenage violinists who double as fiddle-playing Celtic musicians. Having played their first gig at ages 6, 7 and 8, Willa Finck, Maura Shawn Scanlin and Ledah Finck are embarking on inspired musical careers, providing toetapping rhythms to plenty of locals along the way.
More than 25 years in the making, yet only on the scene for almost five years, the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway acts as an entry point and conservancy for traditional, bluegrass and old-time music. Located just a short drive from the High Country, the center is where the banjo and fiddle meet, showing the history of American music and giving visitors a chance to experience it first hand.
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Photo courtesy Simon Clay / RM Auctions
The Forging of a Blacksmith: A Profile of John Winer All the events that shaped John Winer’s life led him to becoming a blacksmith. Although not considered the crucial trade it was centuries ago, ironworking is John’s passion, and his much-appreciated work can be found throughout the High Country.
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Photo by Karen Lehmann
Is it Easy Being Green? Every April, High Country Magazine features a “Green Section,” which aims to celebrate the local sustainable movement while clearing up some of the confusion surrounding renewable energy. This year, we talked with folks who have adopted and incorporated green products and practices into their lives and asked how it was working out for them. The hope is that by presenting these local success and disaster stories to our readership, the whole community will gain a better understanding of going green in the future.
High Country Magazine
April 2010
on the cover
Photographed by Greg Williams
Shooting the Forget-Me-Nots was challenging only due to the abundance of good material available, said Greg Williams, who enjoys photographing beautiful landscapes, lithe dancers and talented musicians. “Hopefully the images do justice to the talent and professionalism of this great group,” he said. Also high on his list of favorite subjects are old buildings with character and multiple-exposure “ghost” images. Greg’s work has been on display in private collections, galleries and seminars. For more information about Greg and his work, click to www.positivecontrast.com.
READER SERVICES ABOUT US
The first High Country Press newspaper was published on May 5, 2005, and the first issue of High Country Magazine went to press in fall 2005. We publish the newspaper weekly and currently publish the magazine seven times a year. Both are free, and we distribute the newspaper and magazine in Watauga and Avery counties. Our newspaper is packed with information that we present and package in easy-to-read formats with visually appealing layouts. The magazine represents our shared love of our history, our landscape and our people. It celebrates our pioneers, our lifestyles, our differences and the remarkable advantages we enjoy living in the mountains. Our guiding principles are twofold: quality journalism makes a difference and customer care at every level is of the greatest importance. Our offices are located in downtown Boone, and our doors are always open to welcome visitors.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
We are now offering subscriptions to High Country Magazine. A one-year subscription for seven issues costs $40, and we will mail issues to subscribers as soon as they arrive at our offices from the printer. To subscribe, call our offices at 828-264-2262.
BACK ISSUES
Back issues of our magazines are available from our office for $5 per issue. Some issues are already sold out and are no longer available.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography and page reprints are available for purchase. For sizing, prices and usage terms, please call our office. Some photos may not be available and some restrictions may apply.
ADVERTISING
Obtain information about advertising in our publications from our sales representatives by calling 828-264-2262 or emailing us at sales@highcountrypress.com. Contact us at:
High Country Press/Magazine P.O. Box 152 130 North Depot Street Boone, NC 28607 www.highcountrypress.com info@highcountrypress.com 828-264-2262 April 2010
High Country Magazine
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C O N T E N T S
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Photo by Todd Bush
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Photo by Frederica Georgia
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High Country Magazine
April 2010
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The Fastest Car in the World
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SouthBound
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The Mountain Music Jamboree
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Golfing Mount Mitchell
Who knew that the creator of the first car to win the Indianapolis 500, the Marmon Wasp, had ties to nearby Pineola? Howard Marmon’s illustrious racing and luxury car line forever influenced the car industry, and evidence of his works can still be seen in Avery County.
Meet Josey Ellis, who thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia on a quest to calm her restless spirit. A Boone native, Josey accomplished what fewer than 500 people have done since the trail opened in 1937, learning many lessons along the way.
Every Saturday night April through December, Glendale Springs’ Mountain Music Jamboree is the place to be in Ashe County, with live bluegrass, oldtime and country music, dancing, a country-style buffet and friends old and new.
Located in the picturesque Toe River Valley, the Mt. Mitchell Golf Club is situated at the base of the highest peak in eastern America. The dream of two UNC-Chapel Hill college grads, the course is a favorite of many nationally known sports figures.
S E E A D V E R T I S E R S ’ I N D E X O N page 1 0 2
April 2010
High Country Magazine
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FROM T H E PUB L ISH ER
A Publication Of High Country Press Editor & Publisher Ken Ketchie Creative Director Courtney Cooper Production Manager Michelle Bailey Graphic Artists Tim Salt and Patrick Pitzer
Got 15 Minutes? W
Ken Ketchie
e have a wonderful website. In fact, HighCountryPress.com was just honored as the second best newspaper website in all the state by the North Carolina Press Association. You can even find us on Facebook. And like a lot of other offices, our staff pretty much spends the day staring into our computer screens. But please bear with me here, and please read on, because I’m about to give you five good reasons to pick up and read the printed version of our weekly newspaper. If you are one of our regular readers, we can’t thank you enough. For the rest of you, let’s see if I can convince you to join the other 30,000 people who put their hands on a copy of High Country Press every week.
First, let me point out it takes as little as 15 minutes a week to flip through an issue of High Country Press—just 15 minutes to check out an amazing array of headlines, pictures, notices and advertising. Our newspaper is presented in full color, so it’s pleasant and visual appealing to look through. And what you’ll find on our pages every week is quite incredible because...
Second, there’s a hardworking staff of professionals dedicated to bringing you the best. We truly care about this community, and we work very hard every week to bring the stories that keep you in touch with what’s going on around our mountains. It’s a responsibility we take seriously. We’re fortunate to have working with us many incredibly talented ASU and Lees-McRae College graduates with degrees in journalism and graphic design. Three of us have a combined 75 years of experience working with newspapers in the High Country. This is our home. Third, we still believe in the role of a community newspaper as a cohesiveness that keeps a community together. Think about it. Newspapers print the first draft of an area’s history; they keep check on the political process; and they provide a public voice for citizens. A free and vigorous press is healthy for any community. And a newspaper like ours is still the easiest way to track what’s going on locally.
Fourth, the more readers we have, the happier our advertisers are. And the more advertisers we have, the more pages we’ll have and, consequently, we’ll be able to bring you even more stories. Our full-color ads are striking and quite fun to look at. Keeping up with your friends in business allows you to know about more opportunities for excitement, to learn about neat products and services and, of course, to find the best deals. Newspaper advertising has never been an intrusion—it has always been fun to check out the ads. And for reason number five, well, it’s our fifth birthday! Hey, if we made it to five, we must be doing something right. Next time you come across a copy of our paper, check it out. Take 15 minutes—you’ll be a lot smarter in a short amount of time.
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High Country Magazine
April 2010
Advertising Sales Beverly Giles Bryan McGuire Associate Editors Anna Oakes Sam Calhoun Contributing Writers Jason Gilmer Justin Grimes Sally Treadwell Val Maiewskij-Hay Harris Prevost Contributing Photograhers Todd Bush Greg Williams Federica Georgia Karen Lehmann Finance Manager Laila Patrick High Country Magazine is produced by the staff and contributors of High Country Press newspaper, which serves Watauga and Avery counties of North Carolina
HIGH COUNTRY MAGAZINE P.O. Box 152, Boone, NC 28607
828-264-2262 Follow our magazine online where each issue is presented in a flip-through format. Check it out at:
HighCountryMagazine.com Reproduction or use in whole or part of the contents of this magazine without written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Issues are FREE throughout the High Country. © 2010 by High Country Press. All Rights Reserved.
Dreaming of Spring
Prepare the garden Clean out the closets Plan a hike with friends Spend some time in the kitchen Stop by Mast Store Whatever you have on your preparing-for-Spring list, the Mast General Store can help you make the most of it.
Valle Crucis • Boone • Waynesville • Hendersonville • Asheville, NC Greenville, SC • Knoxville, TN • MastGeneralStore.com • 1-866-FOR-MAST April 2010
High Country Magazine
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Calendarof Events 23-24
ARTifacts Preview Party and Yard Sale, West Jefferson School, 336-846-2787
23-25
Spring Alumni Weekend, ASU, 828-262-2038
Early Bird Wildflower Walk and Plant Sale,
24
Daniel Boone Native Gardens, Boone, 828-264-6390
24
Thawout Boone Music Festival, High Country Fairgrounds, Boone, www.thawoutboone.com
24
Fire on the Mountain Blacksmith Festival, Locust Street, downtown Spruce Pine, 828-765-3008
24
Shine to Wine Festival, downtown North Wilkesboro, 336-667-4875
29-5/2 MerleFest, Wilkes Community College, 800-343-7857
30
Tweetsie Railroad Opening Day, Tweetsie Railroad, 800-526-5740
May 2010
1
Altapass, Little Switzerland, 828-765-9531
Sugar Mountain Biking and Hiking Trails Open, May 1
April 2010
18
March of Dimes, Kidd Brewer Stadium, ASU, Extraordinary Players, Farthing Auditorium, ASU, 828-262-4046
20
Ashe County Choral Festival, Ashe County High School, 336-846-2787
21
Sculptor Bill Brown Lecture, Turchin Center lecture hall, Boone, 828-262-3017
21
Sustainability Symposium, Broyhill Inn and Conference Center, Boone, 828-260-4558
21-25
ASU Theatre: Metamorphoses, Valborg Theatre, ASU, 828-262-3063
22-24
Blue Ridge Parkway Symposium, Plemmons Student Union, ASU, www.blueridgeparkway75.org
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High Country Magazine
1
Beech Mountain Town Anniversary, Buckeye Recreation Center, Beech Mountain, 828-387-3003
828-464-8905 19-21
Orchard at Altapass Season Opening, Orchard at
April 2010
1
Sugar Mountain Hiking and Biking Trails Open, Sugar Mountain, 828-898-8395
1
Shag ‘N Wag Spring Dance, American Legion Hall, Blowing Rock, 828-264-6468
1-2
Studio K Recital, Farthing Auditorium, ASU, 828-262-4046
7
Downtown Boone Art Crawl, downtown Boone galleries and businesses, 828-262-4532
7
BFA Exhibition Reception, Catherine J. Smith Gallery, ASU, 828-262-7338
7-8
Student-Directed One Acts, Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, 828-898-8709
7-10
Blue Ridge Community Theatre: Our Town, Valborg Theatre, ASU, www.brctnc.org
DON’T FORGET
EVENTS
MerleFest
CELEBRATING 91 YEARS
The Strength Behind Your Security
One of the best Americana music festivals in the country takes place only half an hour down the mountain from Boone. MerleFest, a four-day festival featuring music, workshops, arts and crafts vendors and food, takes place this year on Thursday through Sunday, April 29 to May 2, on the campus of Wilkes Community College. More than 100 acts are performing on 15 stages, including Doc Watson, the Zac Brown Band, Dierks Bentley, Elvis Costello, Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, the Avett Brothers, Sam Bush, the Kruger Brothers, Taj Mahal and many others.
APRIL 29 to MAY 2
Tweetsie Railroad Opening Day Tweetsie Railroad opens for the 2010 season on Friday, April 30. The Wild West theme park features a ride on the Tweetsie train, live entertainment, carnival rides, a deer park, scenic lift rides, food and shopping. You’ll want to buy tickets in advance for Thomas the Tank Engine’s annual visit to Tweetsie, taking place June 4 through 13. Kids will enjoy meeting Thomas and Sir Topham Hatt, storytelling, live music and more.
FRIDAY April 30
Mountain Valleyfest The 4th annual Mountain Valleyfest at Green Valley Park, located between Boone and Todd on Big Hill Road, is a family friendly festival with live music, children’s activities, food and arts and crafts vendors. Performing on stage will be Moonwater, Folk & Dagger, The Dollar Brothers, Elkville String Band, Upright and Breathin’ and The King Bees.
SATURDAY May 15
828-733-3726••105 105ininLinville Linvilleatatthe theFoot FootofofGrandfather GrandfatherMtn Mtn 828-733-3726 www.mountaineerlandscaping.com www.mountaineerlandscaping.com April 2010
High Country Magazine
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Sculptor Bill Brown Lecture, April 21
8
MerleFest, April 29 to May 2
Beach Bash & Dream Ride, live music, BBQ, hot dogs, ice cream and benefit ride for Ebenezer Christian Children’s Home, CrossRoads Harley-Davidson, Wilkesboro, 336-667-1003
8
Candlelight Ghost Tours, Old Wilkes Jail, Wilkesboro, 336-667-3171
14
4
Blue Ridge Parkway Symposium, April 22 to 24
Concerts on the Lawn Begin, Jones House, Boone, 828-264-1789
4
Charity Wine Tasting, Christopher’s Wine and Cheese, Blowing Rock, 828-414-9111
4-6
Nature Photography Weekend, Grandfather Mountain, 828-733-2013
Hearts of Hospitality House Ball, Broyhill Inn and Conference Center, ASU, 828-264-2733
14
Sunset Stroll, join art galleries, restaurants and businesses for food, drinks and summer fun, Sunset Drive, Blowing Rock, 828-295-6991
15
Art in the Park, American Legion grounds, Blowing Rock, 828-295-7851
15
Mountain Valleyfest, live music, food, children’s activities and arts and crafts, Green Valley Park, between Boone and Todd, www.mountainvalleyfest.com
15
15-16
Ride of Silence, Banner Elk, 828-898-5445 Naturalist Weekend, Grandfather Mountain,
Concerts on the Lawn Begin, June 4
828-733-2013
20
Shadow of the Hills Artists’ Reception, Ashe Arts Center, West Jefferson, 336-846-2787
22
Kody Norris and the Watauga Mountain Boys, Heritage Hall, Mountain City, Tenn., 423-727-7444
22
Night of the Spoken Word, Ashe Arts Center, West Jefferson, 336-846-2787
29-30
Banner Elk Herb Festival, Banner Elk Elementary School, 828-898-6017
30
Mountain Home Music: Bluegrass and Brass, Meadowbrook Inn, Blowing Rock, 828-964-3392
4 4
Downtown Boone Art Crawl: Blue Ridge Parkway Edition, downtown Boone galleries and businesses,
High Country Magazine
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Shriners Parade, Main Street, Blowing Rock, 828-295-7851
5
Mountain Home Music: Skeeter and the Skidmarks, Blowing Rock School Auditorium, 828-964-3392
10-13
Charity Horse Show: Saddlebred, Tate Show Grounds, Blowing Rock, 828-295-4700
11
Gallery Crawl, downtown West Jefferson,
12
Art in the Park, American Legion grounds, Blowing Rock, 828-295-7851
Remarkable Rhododendron Ramble,
828-262-4532 12
800-526-5740
Grandfather Mountain, 828-733-2013
Thomas the Tank Engine, Tweetsie Railroad,
336-846-2787
June 2010
4-13
April 2010
12
Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame, Walker Center, Wilkes Community College, 336-667-3171
18
Horn in the West Opening Night, Horn in the West amphitheater, Boone, 828-264-2120
DON’T FORGET
Experience you can count on.
EVENTS
Art in the Park Created in 1962 by a handful of area artists and craftspeople to showcase local talent, Blowing Rock’s Art in the Park now features 100 juried artisans selling handcrafted jewelry, pottery, fiber works, glass, photography, paintings and more. The first show of 2010 takes place Saturday, May 15, and the show takes place once every month through October. The free event occurs at the American Legion Hall grounds in downtown Blowing Rock. For gifts, additions to your home or garden or a new fashion accessory, head to Art in the Park, now in its 48th annual season.
SATURDAY May 15
Mountain Home Music
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We are dedicated to serving you and your financial needs, no matter what life has in store.
The 2010 season of Mountain Home Music, a concert series featuring local and regional performers of Appalachian music, returns to Blowing Rock this year with numerous performances taking place throughout the summer. Don’t miss shows by Skeeter and the Skidmarks, Jeff Little, the Whitetop Mountain Band, Steve Lewis, David Johnson, Scott Freeman and more—all at the old Blowing Rock School auditorium on Sunset Drive downtown.
All Summer
Concerts on the Lawn Summers in Boone mean free concerts every Friday evening on the beautiful front lawn of the historic Jones House Community Center on King Street. Past performers have included The Lazybirds, Melissa Reaves, The King Bees, the Forget-Me-Nots, Southern Accent, the Lost Ridge Band, The Sheets Family, Amantha Mill, Steve and Ruth Smith and the Elkville String Band. The first concert of the season is on June 4. Don’t forget your lawn chair or blanket.
BEGINS June 4
April 2010
High Country Magazine
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Insider tips, fascinating facts, conversation starters and fun stuff to do
A Wild and Crazy Busy Guy Steve Martin and His Banjo To Stop by MerleFest
F
or a guy in the funny business, Steve Martin is seriously busy. He’s got a new movie coming out, he’s writing a book and—oh
yeah—he’s now a Grammy Award-winning musician that’s on tour with one of the hottest bands in the bluegrass business. Martin—yes, the “Jerk,” the original “Wild and Crazy Guy” and, the perhaps lesser known, consummate banjo player—will headline Saturday night of MerleFest 2010 alongside touring partner and bluegrass juggernaut Steep
the Best Bluegrass Album Grammy Award in
Canyon Rangers. The set begins
January. An album 45 years in the making,
at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 1,
Martin wrote or arranged and performed all of the songs
on the Watson Stage.
on the CD.
Having played the banjo and other instruments for most of his
According to MerleFest Artistic Director John Adair, MerleFest
adult life while charting one of the most prolific comedic acting careers
organizers hoped to nail down the “Dirty Rotten Scoundrel” last year, but
in history, Martin came out of the musical closet, if you will, in 2001,
Martin accepted a movie role and was unable to come. This year, mutual
when he played banjo on Earl Scruggs’ remake of “Foggy Mountain
friends of Martin and MerleFest convinced Martin to sign on and bring
Breakdown,” which won Best Country Instrumental Performance at the
his brand of banjo bluegrass to the Watson Stage.
2002 Grammy Awards.
“I am very excited to begin my banjo tour with the Steep Canyon
In January 2009, Martin released his first all-music album, The
Rangers,” commented Martin on his website. “It has been a long-time
Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo, which included multiple star
dream of mine to travel around the country with a bunch of guys.”
appearances, including Dolly Parton, Vince Gill and Tim O’Brien. The
To listen to Martin’s music, click to www.stevemartin.com/
album was the No. 1 Bluegrass Album in 2009 with 30 weeks atop
stevemartin/music.html. For MerleFest tickets, click to www.MerleFest.
the Billboard Bluegrass charts, and it was nominated for six IBMA
org or call 800-343-7857.
By Sam Calhoun
(International Bluegrass Music Association) awards. The Crow also won
Racing Returns to Wilkesboro
A
to 10,000 fans in a growing atmosphere where
13-year absence of squealing
is using the track to teach
who knows where it can go? We see that as
tires and revving engines will
potential drivers all year.
potential.”
be broken at the North Wilkesboro
Renovations have begun
Races begin in the coming months, as
at the track already, so fans will
the Pro All-Star Series (PASS) is scheduled to be
have a great experience when
there for a 300-lap super late-model race on
shuttered in 1996 after Jeff Gordon
races come to the track, which
September 4, while other events are scheduled
took the checkered flag in the Tyson/
is located less than an hour
for October.
Holly Farms 400, it sat vacant and
from Boone down Highway 421.
Speedway this year. Since the historic short track was
unused.
“Will we see 40,000 people
Now, though, a group of investors
packed into North Wilkesboro
“This is a huge piece of history,” McBride said. “This is where NASCAR started. We aren’t going to let [short-track racing] die here. We’re
have lined up races throughout the year.
Speedway for a race? I don’t think that’s
going to fight the fight and get it back to where
NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick recently used the
realistic to look that direction,” said Speedway
it needs to be.” Click on www.historicnws.com
track for testing, there’s a truck and tractor pull
Associates Inc. President and Director of
for more info.
coming July 3 and the Buck Baker Racing School
Operations Alton McBride, Jr. “Will we see 5,000
14
High Country Magazine
April 2010
By Jason Gilmer
mountain
Mountain-Grown Native Plants for Sale
L
echoes
Saturday, April 24, 9:00 a.m. to noon
et’s call 2010 the year of the refreshed garden. After the winter’s
dogwood and service berry, and trout lily, bloodroot, goldenseal, little
punishing ice and winds, this season will be one of clearing and
brown jug, wood anemones and various trilliums.
hauling. Why not use the opportunity to take a careful look at the home garden, then plant some beautiful new specimens and rejuvenate the scenery? The 3rd annual Early Bird Wildflower Walk & Plant
Officials at Daniel Boone Native Gardens noticed several years ago that the very best early wildflower blooms tended to occur just before the start of the regular season, which begins May 1 and ends October 31 every year. Because all of April is needed for
Sale on Saturday, April 24, from 9:00 a.m. to noon is a
maintenance, the garden managers, rather than change the
great chance to stock up on hardy, locally grown shrubs
operating season, decided to give the public a free peek at
and wildflowers for the yard, as well as ferns, herbs and
the wildflowers once a year.
vegetable starts. The Daniel Boone Native Gardens in
This season the peaceful fern garden is getting major
Boone holds the event to showcase the earliest spring
upgrades, with replanting of some ferns to accentuate their
wildflowers and to let gardeners meet some of the High
beauty, and the rebuilding of a creek bed and addition
Country’s finest nursery growers.
of a circulating pump to support more water plants. New
Admission to the wildflower walk is free, with a portion of plant sales supporting the gardens. Available plants include large field-grown flame
sidewalk allows better pedestrian access. For more information about the Daniel Boone Native Gardens, including guided tours and events, call 828-264-
azaleas and native rhododendrons, mountain laurel, boxwoods, bee balm,
6390 or click to www.danielboonegardens.org. The gardens are located at
irises, sumac and Stella D’oro. Highlights of the gardens may include—
651 Horn in the West Drive in Boone.
depending on weather conditions—redbud and native crabapple,
April 2010
By Nan Chase
High Country Magazine
15
mountain
echoes
High Country Press Turns
F
Help Us Celebrate!
ounded 05/05/05 by Ken Ketchie, High Country Press, headquartered in downtown
Boone, celebrates its 5th birthday this year. In just a few short years, the newspaper has become the preferred read of the High Country because of its comprehensive and relevant reporting, easy-toread, organized format and vibrant, colorful graphics and advertisements. The newspaper has garnered four North Carolina Press Association Awards in its young existence—for design, reporting and its website, www.HighCountryPress.com. In addition to the newspaper, High Country Press brings you High Country Magazine—hands-down the most popular local human-interest magazine—and a full-color Visitor Guide. All three publications serve Watauga and Avery counties. Join the HCP staff and friends in celebrating five years on Friday, May 7, at the High Country Press office during the monthly Downtown Boone Art Crawl. The office is located at 130 North Depot Street. For more information, call 828-264-2262.
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High Country Magazine
April 2010
Banner Elk Herb Festival May 29 and 30
T
he annual Banner Elk Herb Festival will take place on Saturday and Sunday, May 29 and 30, this year. The
festival, presented by Palm Productions, will benefit the Lees-McRae College Summer Theatre program and the Banner Elk Volunteer Fire Department. Taking place from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday at the Banner Elk Elementary schoolyard, the Banner Elk Herb Festival is a family-oriented spring event. The festival will feature thousands of planted herbs for sale, arts and crafts vendors, farmer’s market items, local food, beverages, live acoustic bands and a fun kids’ zone with oldfashioned carnival games and prizes. For more information about the festival, call 828-8986017 or click to BEHerbFest.com.
April 2010
High Country Magazine
17
mountain
echoes
Eat Your Yard
Boone’s Edible Landscapes Featured in New Book
A
new book on edible landscape design and cooking by former Boone author Nan K. Chase will feature photos of several High Country gardens.
The book, Eat Your Yard! Edible Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Herbs and Flowers for Your
Landscape, has just been released nationally. Eat Your Yard! describes 30 landscape plants with year-round beauty that also produce food, and there are about 35 recipes for using garden-fresh fruits and other edibles. Recipe highlights include mint wine, grape dumplings, roasted sunflower seeds, herb popovers
Those numbers are growing,
and crabapple jelly. Surprising edibles include yucca
the report found, and the new
and prickly pear cactus, roses for nutritious hips, and
book is designed to inspire
nasturtium seeds.
gardeners and cooks to try new selections in their yards for the
According to the 2009 Edibles Gardening Trends
most locally grown food possible.
Research Report conducted by the Garden Writers
Chase said she wrote the book to share her garden
Association Foundation in November last year, 38 percent
experiences from nearly three decades in Western North Carolina.
of U.S. households (over 41 million) grew a vegetable
She now lives in Asheville. Eat Your Yard! is available at Black Bear
garden in 2009. Another 18 percent of households grew
Books in Boone.
an herb garden and 15 percent grew fruits.
Sipping Green
E
njoying a brew and discussing all things green—Green Drinks is not just catching
on internationally, but locally, as well. Any interested community member is invited to the monthly meetings. “It’s just a good way to network and talk with other people who are
Boone Green Drinks Meetings Second Tuesday of the month, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. April 13, Char, hosted by Terry Taylor, past president of the High Country Homebuilders May 11, Broyhill Inn, hosted by goblueridge.net and Ivory Tower Brewing Company
interested in green,” said Nancy Harrison, a Boone Green Drinks organizer. “ Based on the way the
February 2009, Boone Green Drinks “sort of died out” again, said Brian Crutchfield, director of sustainable development at Blue Ridge Electric and Boone Green Drinks organizer. “We reorganized last December, [and] now we’ve had four successful meetings so far,” Brian said. The current format, which has proved successful so far, is that a different individual
economy is, it’s a way to maintain business contacts
or company hosts the monthly meeting—providing snacks and giving a
when things are so slow, [and it is] an opportunity
short, informal presentation on their selected topic. RE/MAX Realty Group
for learning and training,” she said.
hosted the March meeting and discussed green realtors, Brian said.
Quint David, coordinator for the Watauga Green
Attendees include homebuilders, realtors, homeowners, contractors,
Business Plan and a Boone Green Drinks organizer, said that interested
ASU Appropriate Technology and Sustainable Development students,
people should not let the bar scene scare them away. “Even if they don’t
people involved in local environmental groups and others—people from
drink, they’re welcome to come hang out and have a soda,” he said. “It’s
sectors of the community who might not meet together otherwise, Brian
really to meet folks.”
noted. “We’re getting people from other counties—Caldwell, Johnson
Boone Green Drinks had its first meeting in fall 2008, organized by Nancy, Quint and Adrian Tait, owner of GreenMan Studios. “It kind of fizzled out, [then] we started it back up,” Nancy said. After two meetings hosted by the High Country Homebuilders Association, in January and 18
High Country Magazine
April 2010
County, Tenn., Avery Ashe—[and] that’s a good sign, as well,” he said. For more info about local meetings, call Brian at 828-262-8336. For more info about Green Drinks International, click to www.greendrinks.org.
By Corinne Saunders
Create . Inspire . Endure www.harmonytimberworks.com
Harmony Timberworks - 800.968.9663 - 828.264.2314 - info@harmonytimberworks.com April 2010 High Country Magazine 19
The Forget-Me-Nots, a local trio of fiddlers playing Celtic music, comprised of 15-year-old Ledah Finck, 14-year-old Maura Shawn Scanlin and 13-year-oldWilla Finck, have been playing music together since 2002. 20
High Country Magazine
April 2010
Young, Talented and Unforgettable
F
our music stands makes travel through the Finck’s living room in Valle Crucis tough to do. The four musicians never really look at the sheets of notes on the stands anyway. There are four chairs, but only two being used. The couch is where 14-year-old Maura Shawn Scanlin and 15-year-old Ledah Finck have positioned themselves—socked feet tucked under their legs and fiddles under their chins. Across the room, but only a few feet away, is 13-year-old Willa Finck in a folding chair. She’s also disregarded shoes on a cold afternoon when the snow blows past the windows and a fire rages in the stove. The Forget-Me-Nots are practicing for an upcoming gig as the band for a contra dance at Legend’s and the three violinists are working on an opening for their first song. Back-up guitarist David Finck, who’s the father of Ledah and Willa, is seated in a chair, too, keeping up with the three violin players as they traipse through the opening. Then he goofs. “Dad, we’re doing four beats, not eight,” Willa reminds him. Finally, the music stands are used, as David picks up a pencil to write himself a note about the opening.
Teenage Violin Virtuosos, the Forget-Me-Nots, Double as Fiddle-Playing Celtic Musicians
April 2010
High Country Magazine
21
Willa Finck
Ledah Finck
Maura Shawn Scanlin
“OK. From the beginning. Everyone remember, four beats and not eight,” Maura Shawn says with a smile. And with a few quick nods, away they go—three young girls on violin and a father on guitar, playing Celtic music that’s become a staple in the High Country.
From the Beginning
Ledah, Maura Shawn and Willa can’t remember a time when they didn’t play violin. At ages when other kids are coloring, changing their dolls’ clothes and getting ready for kindergarten, these girls were learning to play the wooden, stringed instrument. Willa was two, Maura Shawn was three and Ledah was four when their parents signed them up to learn violin in the spring of 1999 from Banner Elk’s Nan Stricklen through the Suzuki method. “Dad wanted us to have something to do and he thought violin would be fun,” said Ledah, a sophomore at Watauga High School. Unlike the piano, the violin is an instrument that can be scaled down for small children, which is who the Suzuki method is geared towards. They all had smaller versions of violins to learn on. Willa’s first memory of playing the instrument is holding a cigar box with a ruler attached. From learning how to hold the instrument to where your feet should be placed, all was taught in the system. They moved through the method’s books and quickly moved on to other teachers and more advanced playing. These days, they spend two to three hours a day practicing classical music and spend one to two hours a practice session with the band. They continue to be attached through their friendship and music. Maura Shawn, a ninth grader who is home
The three fiddlers (above, Willa, Ledah and Maura Shawn, from left) were younger than five years old when they started learning to play the violin. Their first teacher was Banner Elk’s Nan Stricklen, who’s standing with the girls when they are 5, 4 and 3, respectively.
22
High Country Magazine
April 2010
What Is the Suzuki Method?
T
he theory was pretty simple—if children could
learn to speak their native language at a young age, they should be able to play musical instruments at a young age, too. So,
Japanese
violinist
Shinichi Suzuki developed a system for teaching small children to play, using similar principles of learning a language to learning While the girls are serious musicians, they still take time to laugh and joke with each other.
music. He called his method the mother-tongue approach and it’s the method that the three members
schooled and also does studies at Mountain Pathways Montessori School, said she doesn’t visit the Finck’s house without playing music. The music they play sometimes takes precedence in their lives. Homework is put off until late at night sometimes and other possible activities are skipped if practice time hasn’t been completed. Seven years together in a band is a long time. Some groups never make it that long. “They’ve been with each other musically forever,” David said.
of local Celtic music group the Forget-
Life as a Forget-Me-Not
parent learns to play the instrument
The first gig for the band—then six, seven and eight years old—in summer 2002 was at the Old Time Fiddler’s Convention in Laurel Bloomery, Tenn. It also became the spot where they came up with their name. For that show, Maura Shawn’s father Dennis was the back-up guitarist. “I remember asking Dennis what the little blue flower was,” said Willa, who is an eighth grader at Valle Crucis School. That flower soon became how they were known when they played shows across the area. It’s a name that the girls aren’t too fond of. “We definitely have thought about [changing it],” Ledah said, “but everyone knows us as the Forget-Me-Nots.”
Me-Nots learned to play. The three fiddle players—Ledah Finck, Maura Shawn Scanlin and Willa Finck—were 4, 3 and 2 years old, respectively, when they began playing the violin. Parents are a big part of the Suzuki method, as parents attend lessons— which are given by teachers trained
Members of the Forget-Me-Nots
in the method—and serve as “home
may not remember when they
teachers” during the week. Usually, one so to help the child at home and understands what the child is to do,
started playing the violin, but there are photos to show how young they were. They carried their own
according to the Suzuki Association of
cases (from left, Willa, 3, Ledah,
Americas website.
5, and Maura Shawn, 4) and even
There are 10 books that the pupil will learn from. It didn’t take long for the members of the Forget-Me-Nots to
posed together a few years later in one of the earliest band photos.
go through the books. method,
for the violin, there are now materials
students become comfortable with
available for the viola, cello, bass, piano,
the instrument before learning to
flute, harp, guitar and recorder.
Through
the
Suzuki
read music, technique is taught in the
There are 40 teachers of the Suzuki
context of pieces instead of technical
method within a 100-mile radius of
exercises
Boone.
and
students
perform
For more information on this
frequently, individually and in groups, according to the website. While the method was developed
method, click to www.suzukiassociation. org.
April 2010
High Country Magazine
23
Their music isn’t just perfect for enjoying on the lawn at the Jones House, but it’s good for dancing, too. The girls recently were the house band during a contra dance at Legend’s.
For a while, they thought of changing the band’s name when they got older. Now hitting their teenage years, they’ve found that a change is “easier said than done,” said Maura Shawn. People see the girls out together shopping or walking downtown and ask if they are the band. Sure, they could rename themselves and say they were “formerly the Forget-Me-Nots,” but it’s just easier to keep the name. Being without the name isn’t an option. “We’re so used to it, I can’t imagine us not [having] it,” Ledah said. “It would be so weird,” Maura Shawn added.
Gigs Galore
Given a choice, the girls would play more shows. School, though, keeps getting in the way.
24
High Country Magazine
April 2010
“If we didn’t go to school and have homework, we’d be able to do a lot more,” Ledah said. Skipping classes for music isn’t an option, though. Instead, they play 30 to 40 shows a year, mixing festivals with weddings. They play each Friday night for guests at the Mast Farm Inn. They set up in the small parlor and play before the evening meal is served. Three years ago, they were on stage at MerleFest on a Thursday evening. It wasn’t a primetime spot, but it gave the band backstage access for the entire festival. Unlike earlier trips to the event in North Wilkesboro, they spent time absorbing music. David Finck remembers a time when a lot of money was paid for tickets and he had to stay with the girls as they played on the playground.
From Friday afternoon summer concerts at the Jones House to the Sugar Grove Music Festival to Jonesboro Music in the Square, there are plenty of chances for High Country fans to come and listen. For a complete list visit www.theforgetmenots.com
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April 2010
High Country Magazine
25
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New Album in the Works
Tdifferent from their last collection of Celtic
he Forget-Me-Nots’ next album will be a bit
tunes, as the girls have original music to share. The music is done in the Celtic vein, but will have the girls’ distinct flavors, back-up guitarist David Finck said. They will use different recording facilities for the songs, they said, and go into the studio totally prepared to lay down the tracks. “Fiddlers Three” is the album they currently sell and it was made almost three years ago. With their constant practice and rehearsals, violinists Ledah Finck, Maura Shawn Scanlin and
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High Country Magazine
Willa Finck have increased their skills over the years and it should show on the new material. Each girl would come up with an original idea and present it to the other band members. Brainstorming would occur with the other girls determining what they could play in the song. There will also be other classic and contemporary Celtic and folk tunes on the album. One thing that will be similar to the last album is the lack of vocals, even though fans have asked for years if they plan to ever sing. “None of us have an amazing singing voice,” Willa said.
April 2010
1. Boston Urban Ceilidh / Morpeth Rant (2:35) 2. Fisher’s Rant / Jean’s Reel (3:32) 3. Ostinelli’s Hornpipe / Johnny’s Gone to France / Rolling in the Rye Grass (2:37) 4. Inion Ni Scannlain (2:28) 5. Hungry Rock / Kid on the Mountain (4:37) 6. Bluebonnets Over the Border (2:17) 7. Clark Road March / Strathspey / Reel (4:19) 8. Flee as a Bird / Cheticamp Reel (5:01) 9. Trip to Toronto / Betsy Matheson’s / Mike Saunders (3:03) 10. Mick O’Connor’s Reel (2:19) 11. Roaring Water (2:53) 12. Banish Misfortune / Dave’s Jig (2:47) 13. La Have River Waltz (3:29) 14. Footworks / Pinch O’ Snuff / Paresis (3:24) 15. Paddy Fahey’s / Jig in G / I Buried My Wife and Danced on her Grave (3:13) 16. Tommy Tarbuka’s / Jenny Dang The Weaver (2:22) 17. John Rory MacKinnon’s Reel / Horsetigers (2:19) 18. Humours of Lissadell / The Merry Sisters (3:11) 19. Skye Boat Song (2:59) 20. Canyon Moonrise (2:22) 21. When Joy Kills Sorrow (2:58) 22. Dionne Reel / The Mouth of the Tobique (3:37)
“They’ve been with each other musically forever.” ~ David Finck
It’s been a few years since the Forget-Me-Nots recorded an album, but they’re in the process of going into the studio to do so. Some of the songs on the new record will be original tracks.
April 2010
High Country Magazine
27
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High Country Magazine
April 2010
Now, they go and listen and are fans of the music. And people show up to hear them. From Friday afternoon summer concerts at the Jones House to MusicFest n’ Sugar Grove to Jonesboro Music in the Square, there are plenty of chances for High Country fans to come and listen.
Celtic in Bluegrass Country If someone unfamiliar with the band happened to walk into one of their shows without knowing anything, the expectation would be that they were bluegrass musicians. This is the North Carolina mountains, right? Where bluegrass is king? Instead, the Forget-Me-Nots are classically trained violinists who double as fiddle-playing Celtic musicians. “Celtic music, we just do it for fun,” Maura Shawn said. “Classical music takes more of our time.” They know the history of the music they play and know that it was the precursor to some of the music being played by other old-time musicians in the area. “Folks around here play old music, but we play old music—really old,” David said. The Forget-Me-Nots’ style of Celtic music mixes “traditional Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton and Appalachian fiddle music with a helping of contemporary tunes,” its website said. They’ve recorded two albums, but only one that they sell now. The first was a disc they’d listen to just to hear themselves. The second, “Fiddlers Three,” is sold online and at their shows. They are currently getting ready to record another album. While they aren’t practicing Celtic tunes, they play in orchestras and practice classical music a few hours each day. There are lessons and recitals and shows to demonstrate their classical skills. Having the mix of backgrounds works in some instances, as they can play classical numbers during a wedding ceremony and Celtic music at a reception. “I’d definitely like to keep playing, but classical might take precedence over this as we get older,” Ledah said. “This is, like, the basis of our lives it feels like sometimes,” Maura Shawn said. “I can’t imagine my life without this. If we didn’t do this, I don’t know what I’d be doing.” w
A Master Woodworker for 26 Years D to work in minutes or miles, but in
avid Finck doesn’t measure his commute
steps. Like those from the main level of his Valle Crucis home to the basement that houses his woodworking studio. With pieces of East Indian rosewood, Engelmann spruce and Western Red cedar stacked near the wall, two worktables ready for action and a small stereo on a shelf, Finck has the perfect hideaway to work. “I like to tell people that I’ve never had a real job, but there’s plenty of long hours,” he said. Finck has been a woodworker for 26 years and builds high-end furniture, jewelry cases, lamps, tables, desks and guitars. The guitar he plays in the Forget-Me-Nots, a trio of fiddle players that includes his two daughters, is one of his creations. He’s built 26 guitars, some on commission and others to sell at shows. He also has a book about woodworking— Making and Mastering Wood Planes—that is in its third printing. Finck’s website, www.davidfinck.com, shows off his work and is a place where some buyers have found him to do commissioned pieces. A few years ago it wouldn’t be surprising for Finck to fill up his family’s minivan with his creations—packed carefully, of course—and head to Baltimore, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. for a show. When the economy went south, he started to see that the money spent just to get to these shows wasn’t worth it. “Since that dried up, the internet has taken off for me,” he said. Between taking his kids to various orchestra practices and lessons, band rehearsals and other fatherly duties, Finck will spend plenty of time in his shop. A hanging jewelry box currently sitting on his workbench will eventually take 80 hours to complete. If it’s a custom piece and the buyer wants something more elaborate in the ornamentation, the hours will stretch out. According to his website, a Con-Sho sconce starts at $320, a dreadnaught steel-string guitar is $2,400, while hanging jewelry cases cost upwards of $4,000 and other items can be priced higher. He also does work for churches, having built seven pieces for the Church of St. Margaret Mary’s in Parkersburg, W.Va.
He’s also built a kneeler and alter for the Valle Crucis Conference Center chapel and collaborated with local metalsmith Mark Read on a Celtic cross that is in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Another piece that received national attention—even though Finck didn’t get credit—was a wood box he did for the Richard Gere and Diane Lane movie Nights in Rodanthe, based off the Nicholas Sparks book. Finck said he went to Wilmington to teach Lane, whose character does some woodworking, how to look like she knew what to do. His woodworking tools were used as props and his wooden boxes were used, too. He’s made four similar boxes for customers and is still getting inquiries about them. “It obviously touched some people,” Finck said of the movie and his box. “It’s made of driftwood and incorporated some dovetailing. It’s a very rustic wood with a very refined technique.” Finck’s house has a smattering of his work, from the kitchen table to the light in the kitchen to display cabinets on the wall. Guitars, though, are what Finck really wanted to build. He got “stoked” about woodworking in college when he built his first guitar. “I’m thought that I’m going to finish my degree and I’m going to be a guitar builder,” he said. “Somewhere over the next year and a half, I figured out it probably wasn’t completely realistic to just go out in the woods and start building guitars.” He enrolled at the College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program in California and began his career. Now he works on one creation at a time, making sure the details are right and making sure his customers are happy. Trying to do David Finck has been building guitars for more than more than one item at the same time isn’t his 20 years and currently plays one of his handmade style. guitars as the Forget-Me-Nots back-up guitarist. “I’m not approaching it strictly as a craft, where you’re producing something traditional and doing lots of it or making multiples,” he said. “Most of what I’m doing is a process of discovery. I start with a rough sketch of something and then it’s working that and designing it. It’s really an organic approach to it and you end up with a creation. You can’t work that way with multiples.”
w
April 2010
High Country Magazine
29
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High Country Magazine
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High Country Magazine
31
t h o e t y e n r u o J Blue Ridge Music Center
Big-named artists like Del McCoury, Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder have played during the summer concert series at the Blue Ridge Music Center. The center is located in Galax, Virginia, only two hours from the High Country and can be reached by driving up the Blue Ridge Parkway to mile post 213. Photo by Two Rivers. 32
High Country Magazine
April 2010
A “Little Piece of Heaven” for Old-Time and Bluegrass Music Photo by Two Rivers
Story by Jason Gilmer • Photography by Frederica Georgia
W
hen the sun goes down behind the stage at the Blue Ridge Music Center it tinges the sky with tones of pink and orange. Look past the stage, where a national, regional or local act will be performing old-time or bluegrass music, and into the surrounding mountains and you might feel like the concerts’ organizer does. “It’s a little piece of heaven here in the summer,” said Erynn Marshall, music program manager for the center, which is located six miles south of Galax, Va. at Milepost 213 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Marshall took over the job last May and has planned her second concert series, which begins on May 28. The concerts are just one focus of the Blue Ridge Music Center, which is located about two hours from the High Country. A project devised more than 25 years ago, the center has only been open for about five years, produced concerts for six years and still hasn’t reached its envisioned potential. Still, there is a 3,000-person capacity amphitheater, a 17,000-square-foot space for an exhibit, a 100-seat indoor theater and plenty of others unique elements for music fans to see and hear.
Ground broke on the first phase of the center in 2001, when construction of the amphitheater began, and in 2003 work began on the museum. Now, more than 30,000 visitors come to the facility each year and the center is only open from May 1 to the end of October. The center is where the banjo and fiddle meet, showing the history of American music and giving visitors a chance to experience it first hand. “One of our plans was to have a place where the traditional music of the mountains could be seen on a regular basis and especially through the summer,” said Joe Wilson, director of the center. “We have a major show there every week and you can see people who are big names and you can see great local bands.”
Constructing History It took Wilson more than 25 years to see his vision for the Blue Ridge Music Center come to fruition. Wilson had put on music festivals, written books and worked with the National Council for the Traditional Arts for years. This center is his baby. He said it took so long to come to fruition because he had to deal with the government to make it a reality. The center is a cooperative between the National Council for the Traditional Arts, the National Park Service and Eastern National, which is a National Parkcooperating association operating sales outlets in more than 130 national parks and other public trusts. The Town of Galax donated the 1,000 acres for the center. Along with the amphitheater, indoor theater and exhibit hall, the center also boasts walking trails, the Luthier Room for jam sessions and parking for the concerts. With the tradition of old-time music in Galax and the surrounding areas, Wilson knew that this is where he wanted to place the center. “There is a huge history here,” Wilson said. April 2010
High Country Magazine
33
Blue Ridge Music Center music program manager Erynn Marshall normally has a fiddle sitting in her office so she can walk upstairs and play a tune or two with the mid-day musicians at the center.
A Guide to the Crooked Road
One of the first recorded country music songs, “The Wreck of the Southern Old 97,” was sung by Henry Whitter, who was born in Fries, Va., just 25 minutes from Galax. The term “hillbilly music” was coined after a group of musicians started playing in a downtown Galax barbershop and named themselves the ‘Hill-Billies.’ Galax is on the Crooked Road, a 253-mile stretch in Southwestern Virginia that helped give birth to American music in the early 1900s. Wilson has written a book, A Guide to the Crooked Road, about the stretch of road and its history. It only made sense to place a center about that music in one of the 10 counties of the Crooked Road. “This is one of the most musically potent areas of old-time music anywhere. This is Mecca for old-time and bluegrass music,” Marshall said. “That’s why they built the center here. It’s not the most logical place to try and run a state-of-the-art music center that does all it’s own fundraising, though.”
Hearing History From Doc Watson to Ricky Skaggs to a multitude of local acts, the center’s Saturday night concert series has brought lots of people closer to old-time music. The amphitheater has a top-notch lighting and sound system and attracts music fans from Virginia and neighboring states. Each of the concerts are recorded and archived with the National Council for the Traditional Arts. Music fans show up with their lawn chairs and picnic supplies and listen to the music wash over them. Some get up and flatfoot dance a tune or two in front of the stage. “It’s probably the best in this region in terms of sounds and lights and those types of necessities needed for a good performance hall,” Wilson said. This summer’s concert series will end with the Gala 75th
If you want to experience the Crooked Road, a 253-mile stretch of highway in Southwestern Virginia that gave birth to American music, there’s a book to help you. Joe Wilson, director of the Blue Ridge Music Center, wrote A Guide to the Crooked Road in 2006 to give music fans details on how to enjoy the famed music highway. The book will help music lovers plan a trip from Piedmont Plateau to the Blue Ridge and Cumberland mountains and, as Wilson writes, it will lead you on a road that “connects some of America’s most musical communities.” The road travels through 10 Virginia counties—Carroll, Dickenson, Floyd, Franklin, Grayson, Lee, Patrick, Scott, Washington and Wise—as it winds through the state, and you can follow the road by the special road signs that dot it along the way. Three cities—Bristol, Galax and Norton—are along the road and the book tells you sights and sounds to take in while in these cities. Towns like Big Stone Gap, Clintwood, Fries, Haysi, Jonesville and Pennington Gap are also along the road. Most of the Crooked Road is along Highway 58, a curvy road that goes across the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The road begins on Route 83 in Dickenson County, where the Ralph Stanley Museum is located, and ends where Route 40 meanders into Rocky Mount, home of the Dairy Queen Jam Sessions. Along with a history lesson on how music became prevalent in the area, Wilson’s book includes two CDs with examples of music from the region. Artists on the CDs are musicians such as Lost and Found from Franklin County, James King from Carroll County, Ted Lundy from Galax and Big Country Bluegrass from Grayson County. The bulk of the book, though, is about the counties that make up the Crooked Road. From information about musical events in these areas, lists of craft and arts shops, places to eat and sleep and the area’s attractions, Wilson gives you the basis for a journey into Virginia’s musical heritage. For more information and/or to purchase the book, click to www.thecrookedroad.org.
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Joe Wilson, the director for the Blue Ridge Music Center, was awarded the Living Legend Award by the Library of Congress last year. He’s produced 42 large-scale music festivals in 11 states, 21 national tours by musicians and dancers and has been involved in American music for many years
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“[The amphitheater is] probably the best in this region in terms of sounds and lights and those types of necessities needed for a good performance hall” Del i vering Yo u Q ual ity, Val ue , an d Pers onal S e r v i ce Turning Nature's Beautiful & Rare Gemstones into Your Fine Jewelry for Over 20 Years
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Fans have different ways to hear music at the Blue Ridge Music Center, as they can sit
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music being played by local artists in the breezeway (opposite page, bottom).
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April 2010
on the large hill at the amphitheater (above), they can walk to the front of the stage and dance a little (opposite page, top) or they can show up during the summer and listen to
Blue Ridge Parkway Anniversary Concert, featuring Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys along with the Round Peak Boys. One of Marshall’s jobs is lining up the concert series each year. “We’re trying to represent, in large, music of the Blue Ridge,” she said. “We have primarily traditional old-time music and bluegrass music, gospel music, some blues and every now and then we’ll throw in a related tradition. Last summer we had Scottish and Irish music represented. This year we have a Cajun group.” She books the shows, promotes the shows and serves as the concert emcee. On a shelf in her office is usually a fiddle and she puts it to good use. During the summer, there are musicians playing at the center almost daily, and knowing her abilities on the fiddle allows Marshall to join in every once in a while. Rocking chairs are set up in a breezeway so visitors can sit and listen while enjoying the breathtaking beauty of the mountains that surround them. This is the perfect place for people who don’t know much about this music to get a taste. “We have some great local musicians who come there and play,” Wilson said.
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The current exhibit on display in the Blue Ridge Music Center (two photos on opposite page) are part of an exhibit being borrowed from Ferrus (Virginia) College, but construction on the new exhibit will soon begin. Workers at the center have already begun to compile artifacts, like a poster for the Virginia band The Original Hill-Billies and instruments used to play and produce American music.
Seeing History The gleaming wood floor, exposed metal beams and bright lights make the exhibit hall an inviting place for travelers on the Blue Ridge Parkway to stop and learn about the region. A temporary exhibit from Ferrum College in Virginia is currently on display, but construction will soon begin on a permanent exhibit. For now, visitors can look at Whitter’s guitar, a 1920s Brunswick phonograph, Uncle Eck Dunford’s Sears-brand guitar that was used in his 1927 recording session,
plenty of photographs of important early artists and records that they recorded. The new exhibit, though, will be bigger and much better. Renowned exhibit architect firm Ralph Applebaum and Associates, out of New York, are working with Wilson on the project. Applebaum’s firm has worked on the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and the World Golf Hall of Fame. “This will be a classy exhibit,” said Wilson, who’s writing a lot of the display material. “We’ll have a stunning exhibit that will deal with American music and who the people
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This 2010 Blue Ridge Music Center Concert Season All shows for the 2010 Blue Ridge Center concert season begin at 7:00 p.m., with seating open to the public beginning at 5:30 p.m. Advance tickets will become available soon by calling 276-236-5309, extension 112, or by clicking to www. blueridgemusiccenter.org. Children aged 12 and under are admitted free. Concertgoers are allowed to bring lawn chairs, blankets and picnic supplies to the events, but pets and alcohol are not allowed. Concessions will be available onsite.
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May 28—Red Stick Ramblers, Backstep, $15 June 5—Ginny Hawker & Tracy Schwarz, Benton Flippen Band, $10
June 12—Appalachian Songsters: Nat Reese,
Melissa McKinney, Tina Liza Jones and more special guests, $15
June 18—Hot Pickers Guitar Concert: Wayne Henderson & Friends, $10
June 26—Gandydancer, New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters, $10
July 3—Holiday Concert: Crooked Road Ramblers, The Wolfe Brothers, $5
July 10—Claire Lynch Band, The Barr Family, $15 July 17—Clack Mountain, Zephyr Lightening Bolts, $10
July 24—Larnell Starkey & The Spiritual Seven, Pathway Bluegrass Band, $15
Larnell Starkey & The Spiritual Seven
July 31—Kruger Brothers, John Lilly & the Cheating Hearts, $15
Claire Lynch. Photo by Mike Melnyk
August 8—Tony Rice Unit, Rich In Tradition, $20 August 21—Piano Concert: Daryl Davis, Gary Patton
While the outdoor facility is where the majority of concerts take place at the Blue Ridge Music Center, there is a small theater on the premises, too. That theater sits only 100 music fans but has great acoustics.
and guests, $15
August 28—Paul Williams & The Victory Trio, Carl Jones & Beverly Smith, $15
September 4—Family Traditions Concert: TBA, $10 September 11—Gala 75th Blue Ridge Parkway
Anniversary Concert: Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, Round Peak Boys, $20 (early bird ticket price is $17 through August 31)
were that came here and the music they brought with them. It’s not just bluegrass and old-time music, though that’s probably what people expect. It’s where those styles were derived from.” Marshall said that the building won’t be expanded for the new exhibit, but there will be “much, much more in there.” The exhibit, which is scheduled to open later this year, possibly
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in September, will be interactive, with music and video. There will be oral histories given by musicians from the community. “It so ingeniously put together to put as much as possible in the upstairs area,” Marshall said. Currently, there’s a room down the hall from her office where memorabilia is being collected for the exhibit. Instruments, posters, eight-tracks and tables full of other items are there; other parts of the exhibit are off being cleaned. The exhibit will give visitors plenty of chances to learn about the history of American music and the people who helped make it so well known. “People passing by might not know what’s in store for them [when they come],” Marshall said. “This is a little gem in the mountains and people don’t always know about it nearby.” For more information, click to www.blueridgemusiccenter.org.
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The Forging of a
Blacksmith A Profile of John Winer Photography by Karen Lehmann
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Story by Val Maiewskij-Hay
J
ohn Winer is a local blacksmith, an artist who works metal into beautiful and functional objects. Almost magically, he transforms raw iron and steel through the heat of the fire and the hammering of iron. Blacksmithing is a fundamental craft in the development of civilization and although the origin of ironworking is uncertain, some historians believe it began in the Caucuses around 4,000 B.C. Ironworking spread widely and quickly as iron weapons and tools proved to be superior to those of bronze. They were stronger, faster and easier to make and were made from a more readily available material. In battles, those with iron swords, axes, knives and spearheads typically conquered those with bronze weapons. Historians felt that iron was so central to civilization that they named the years 1,200 B.C. to A.D. 400 the Iron Age in Europe. “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker” of childhood rhyme fame were essential to village life. The blacksmith worked metal to form almost all needed tools and objects, from candlesticks to knives and hinges to horseshoes, and also replaced metal parts of previously formed tools or objects. The blacksmith’s craft ranges from the most functional and utilitarian to pure art. Examples of functional ironwork art can be seen in the churches and castles in Europe, or in remnants of the Gilded Age, the peak of artistic ironwork in the United States, in Philadelphia, Penn., Charleston, S.C. and New Orleans, La. The Crash of 1929 and the following Depression ended the prominence of artistic architectural ironwork, and since blacksmithing was no longer needed to make most tools and objects, the craft almost died out. It was kept alive by a few blacksmiths and hobbyists until the 1970s, when it began to go through a renewal. John is a much sought-after artist who has a client waiting list of years. He was featured in The Anvil’s Ring (fall 2007), a publication of the ArtistBlacksmith’s Association of America, and has appeared in other publications. He began blacksmithing 13 years ago. Most of his life he has been a musician, playing the banjo and guitar in a variety of bands across the country. Although he loved playing music, he felt that there was
John checks the iron bar for straightness and proper thickness. He repeats this process of hammering and checking the bar many times. Blacksmithing combines the artistic with the practical. After years as a muscisian, John found blacksmithing to be his favorite creative outlet 13 years ago. He has since distinguished himself in the trade and has a client waiting list of years.
something else for him—another way of expressing his creativity. He found his avenue in blacksmithing. “To me, blacksmithing is one of those ‘I was lost but now I’m found’ moments. I prayed for years to find something I could do. I’m grateful to God to have shown me
the way. Blacksmithing is interesting and I can be so creative. I never found anything like that—not even in music, as much as I enjoy playing music.” John continues to play guitar in the John Woodall Band and toured and recorded with the band in the summer of 2009.
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John draws the design for a driveway gate on paper and then on the concrete floor of his shop. He will check the formed pieces of steel against this pattern. Precision is vital to make certain the gates function properly.
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After bringing the iron up to heat, he hammers it into a taper. The sound of hammering can be deafening. He checks the symmetry of each arc on the platen table. At every stage, precision is of utmost importance.
John grew up in the Northeast—a lost youth of the 1970s. When he was 16, he fell in love with the sound of the banjo and was drawn to the Southeast. John went to the University of South Carolina for one and a half semesters, pursuing an art major, before he decided that college was not for him. He began a life of travel as an itinerant musician, playing at the Myrtle Beach Pavilion as a street musician and at bars in the area. Restless and searching for his place, he spent time in Virginia Beach, Va., New York, Montana, California and New Orleans, La., where he learned to play jazz guitar. During his travels he came to Johnson County, Tenn. in 1981. He loved the area and the music scene, and throughout the 1980s returned, playing on the street and in restaurants and bars in Boone and Blowing Rock. Life was difficult on the road--often John lived on the street as well as played on it. He continued to grow as a musician and played in a variety of bands of different genres including bluegrass, reggae, gospel, blues and jazz. While playing in a bluegrass band, John met his future wife, Colette de Ribert, who was a dancer performing at the same club as John. Wanting to live a simple, self-sufficient life close to the land, they moved to a farm, Deep Run, in York County, Penn., where many likeminded artists, musicians and craftspeople lived. Deep Run was owned by George Shumway, a scholar of the flintlock rifle and an enthusiast of fine tools and hardware crafted in the 17th to 19th centuries. The farm used many of these tools and made many of its own. While living on Deep Run, John visited an active blacksmith shop in Indiana and first saw a blacksmith at work. John remembered, “Seeing this 75-year-old man hammering in his shop made me feel a connection to the past. I understood how essential this process was to civilization—it was the basis of everything else. This is how
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“I felt more connected to the farm and to the activity when I made something or repaired something. The process of making something increased my enjoyment in the use of it. It was all part of the whole.� - John Winer
Top: The iron bar glows hot. Bottom: John begins the initial bending of the metal bar.
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He checks the arc against the layout, making sure it is exact. Blacksmithing requires a great deal of artistic ability, coupled with the engineering precision.
woodworking, stoneworking and farm tools were made. History made sense to me as it never had. The simplicity of fire, metal and hammer coming together to create was beautiful.” While living on the farm, John gained an appreciation for making things, especially functional ones, with his hands. “I felt more connected to the farm and to the activity when I made something or repaired something. The process of making something increased my enjoyment in the use of it. It was all part of the whole.” In 1991, John, Colette and their young daughter Laurel moved to an organic farm outside of Mountain City, Tenn. They hoped to grow and sell organic produce but were not able to make a living farming. Friends of John’s helped him get a job as a millwright, and he worked in paper mills, as well as in sawmills and aluminum mills in the Southeast. The work was difficult and meant that John had to be away for weeks at a time. He decided that he needed
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Charleston Forge, located in the Boone Industrial Park, is a locally owned and operated manufacturer of fine handcrafted metal furniture. In 1974, Art Barber and his wife Susan started the business that became Charleston Forge. John Winer in 2005 began designing furniture for the company. These are examples of his work. Top: The Omega Console Table, in a neo-classical style, features transverse bars with the omega symbol in the center and scrolled legs. It has a mosaic top. Bottom Left: The Legacy Round Dining Table is in a contemporary style with metal chairs , three side and one armchair. The wood top was crafted by John Davis. Bottom Right: The Davant Console Table is a collaborative effort of local interior designer Diane Davant, John Winer, woodworker John Davis and Charleston Forge. The table is in a neoclassical style with scrolled legs and a thick herringbone sassafras wood top. Photos are provided courtesy of Charleston Forge.
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After more than 60 hours of work, the custom made driveway gates are at this stage. There is still much more work to be done until they are complete. Half of the gate is standing and the other half is on the pattern on the floor.
to expand his skill set and so took a job as a welder in Johnson County. There he welded oil barrel stands, did prep work and made repairs on a variety of machines. One day when the shop was closed, John made a table stand for a glass top. He immediately knew he wanted to be a blacksmith, although it took two more
years before he could realize his dream. John and two millwright friends of his put together an ironworking company, Mountain City Fabrication, which built and repaired sawmill machinery. Meanwhile, John started his blacksmith shop, Laughing Crow Forge, on his farm. When Mountain City Fabrication was dissolved
in 1998, John focused on building up his shop—he bought blacksmith tools and an anvil, collected scrap steel and took a blacksmithing class at John C. Campbell Folk School. For a while he made candlesticks, fireplace sets and knives, selling them at local craft fairs such as the Woolly Worm Festival and Art in the Park. Barely breaking even, he continued to hope for an architectural ironwork job while he made small blacksmith items and began to design and build custom-order furniture for friends and neighbors. His first architectural job was a small traditional rail at Hound Ears Club. A few years later, he got his break building a 30-foot rail and a bridge all of forged iron in a traditional style
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for a house in Banner Elk. After this architectural blacksmith job, he never lacked for work. His next major work was in Johnson County in an organic style, inspired by vines, flowers, leaves and berries. “I want my ironwork to look like it grew, whether it’s the shape of a leaf literally or the design of something organic that doesn’t have leaves or bark, a more figurative approach. I want it to look alive.” Working in three major styles, traditional/gothic, organic and contemporary, he has designed and built architectural features—rails, hinges, fireplace fixtures and chandeliers—in homes and restaurants in Boone,
Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, Johnson County, Winston-Salem and elsewhere. John’s first step in designing something for a client is to discuss what they want and their budget for the project. He tries to bring out the client’s vision and to interpret it in steel. John first draws out the design. When working in the organic style, he bases it on nature, “Some scroll work is too tight, making it boring, frilly, but if you loosen it up like in nature you have something beautiful. Just like a tree or vine would grow.” His designs also have to work. They’re functional pieces of art—the gate must open and close properly—everything
The installed rail in the house on Watauga Lake and detail of rail is shown. John likes his metalwork to have an organic feel, as if it were alive, and uses designs based in nature. His work can be found throughout the High Country.
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“Some like it hot. Welcome to my insanity zone.” To John, blacksmithing is more than a job; it is fulfillment. His work is labor-intensive and timeconsuming, but he would not have it any other way.
must be calibrated precisely. (John took mechanical drawing classes through high school.) After he draws the design and consults with his client, John draws it to scale on the concrete floor of his shop. He heats, hammers and forms a bar of steel into a section of the design and lays it on top of the drawn pattern. John continues this process and then joins the pieces of steel in a traditional way, using forging techniques such as collaring. Depending on the client’s wishes and whether the ironwork will be inside or outside, John finishes it accordingly. Architectural blacksmithing is timeconsuming, labor-intensive work that requires artistic ability and engineering precision, and John loves it. “To me, being a blacksmith is a spiritual happening. I feel very blessed to be part of this. It’s a profession that’s thousands of years old and I try to play by the older standards of quality. I look for something I can grow with, with my clients, and I’ve been very
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fortunate in finding that.” In 2005, Art Barber, owner of Charleston Forge, a local company that makes handcrafted iron furniture, approached John about designing furniture for the company. Art explained, “We were looking for designers who had a higher level of artistry than what we had before. Our customer base wanted that. John’s work has a uniqueness and a sense of hand in every piece. You can tell an artist made it. Not only is he a wonderful artistic talent, but he is also so generous—he came in and worked with our people to teach them new skills and our skill level increased.” John likes designing furniture and continues to design for Charleston Forge. He considers it to be a “great company to work with and a rewarding collaborative effort.” For the past three years, John has been working on an architectural blacksmith project in a house on Watauga Lake. He has crafted railings in different styles
for different rooms, hinges, fireplace fixtures, driveway gates and other features. Future projects for this house include chandeliers and vine-work that will wind through the house from room to room and floor to floor. All of the paths that John has taken have led him to this place. His description of designing is a metaphor for his life. John said. “What I look for in design is that quick fluid motion, the motion that’s going to govern it all. It’s what can be accomplished in just a moment if enough focus and preparation have been on that moment.” John has spent his life preparing: taking mechanical drawing in high school, crafting items by hand in Deep Run, being drawn to the South by music, working as a millwright and welder, taking blacksmith classes and learning from other blacksmiths and designers. That was the preparation, but the focus came from within. To see more of John’s work, click to www.laughingcrowforge.net.
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Going Green—How’s It Working Out For You?
G
oing Green” has certainly become the buzz-phrase over the last couple of years, and it seems everyone is rushing out to do their part. We’re bombarded with messages from corporations and businesses about how they are incorporating green into their business models and the products they sell. Our newspaper has done a lot of reporting on local green efforts by builders and environmentalists. We’ve learned about windmills, solar power, recycling, biofuels and many other local green practices and initiatives. Following up from our debut in last year’s April issue of our “Green Section,” where we delved into the long history of local entrepreneurs involved in the green economy, this year we thought we would talk with folks who have actually adopted and incorporated green products and practices into their lives. The question we wanted to focus on was, what are the people who have made the investment of time and money in green technology and lifestyle saying about the results of their efforts? That should be an easy answer… right? But as we started making a list of how local individuals can go green, we were surprised to find that our list was actually kind of small. What can an individual do that can make a difference for our earth and for our pocketbooks?
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Our conclusion—it isn’t easy to go green and the opportunities are limited. It’s not like we can throw up a windmill in our backyards. Something as simple sounding as changing our light bulbs to CFLs or LEDs can be expensive. And the idea of using solar panels has had shocking results—most people who have installed them are not finding the payback they would expect. Even our recycling efforts seem small in the big scheme of things. So, what can we do to go green? It seems like just taking baby steps for the time being. Buy recycled paper; use your own bag at the grocery store; use a rain barrel; recycle oil and cleaning products; turn lights out; ride mass transit. Perhaps the biggest action we can do as individuals right now is to use our wallet to force big companies to go green? The truth could be that the green movement can be compared to the internet when it was in its infancy— perhaps the green movement grew too big, too fast, like the internet, with little effort to enact checks and balances along the way. That being said, how will we tame the green movement, which currently seems a bit like the wild, wild west? While you think on that, here’s our report on what individuals are saying about their efforts to go green…the good, the bad, the obvious and some interesting angles you might not have thought about before.
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How is Community Supported Agriculture Working for You? …We Asked a Local Farmer and Consumer
O
ver the past two decades, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. CSAs are “green” on many levels—unlike most produce at the grocery store, food from CSAs is local and doesn’t have to be shipped thousands of miles across the country, using lots of fuel in the process. And there’s no need for excessive packaging. And CSAs help support and sustain local business and keep farms viable—which helps conserve farmland. In a CSA, farmers sell a certain number of “shares” to the public. Consumers pay upfront and receive a variety of vegetables every week during the growing season. Some farms ask that CSA members also volunteer for a few hours at the farm or at the distribution location. The CSA model has taken a strong hold in the High Country in the past few years, with multiple farms offering CSA shares for purchase individually and the formation of the High Country CSA, a cooperative of more than 20 local farms and food producers. “It has really exploded as far as eater interest and farmer interest,” said Franya Hutchins, coordinator of the High Country CSA, which Maverick Farms of Valle Crucis launched in 2009. “Not only has interest in connections with farms grown, but more farms have been participating in that direct relationship with eaters.” High Country CSA sold out of all 50 shares last year and this year doubled the number of shares. Its future goal is 200 shares. Shares include an average of eight different vegetables each week, with more in peak season. Add-ons include eggs, chevre, meat, organic bread and fruit, and monthly orders of vegetables, dairy, meat and bread are also available in the winter. All farms in the CSA produce by organic standards. “It seems like four or five years ago, a few farmers were trying [CSAs] for the first time in the region,” said Richard Boylan, a N.C. Cooperative Extension agent in Watauga and Ashe counties. “Now multiple farms are taking it on and
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Springhouse Farms is one of more than 20 farms and food producers involved in the High Country CSA in 2010.
“There’s just something about the sense of community of knowing who your grower is and the reassurance that goes with that,” said Luminy Merced. finding it really successful. It’s gone from theory to practice.” The benefits for farmers, Richard said, include a direct connection to consumers— eliminating costs of middlemen and marketing. CSAs also encourage farmers to diversify their crop offerings. Consumers enjoy food that is as fresh as possible and are encouraged to try new foods and recipes. Bill Moretz, owner of Moretz Mountain Orchard and Farms near Todd, is launching his first full produce CSA this year after offering apple CSAs in the past. Bill’s farm produces a large variety of apples, including heirlooms. “That’s been very helpful because… it really helps introduce people to old apples,” he said, adding that CSA members also help promote the farm to their friends by word of mouth.
Sales of CSA shares are going well this year, he said. One of the biggest benefits of CSAs for the farmer, he noted, is getting some money upfront at a time when farmers really need it— farmers have to shell out a lot of money before the first crops are harvested. “It’s nice to have that money upfront so you don’t have to borrow,” Bill said. “Really it’s the only thing that’s going to provide survivability for a lot of farms in the county.” Luminy Merced, 50, first joined Yellow Wolf Farm CSA in 2008 and bought a share from the High Country CSA in 2009. She’s buying a share again this year. “I like to be mindful about where my money goes, and who I’m supporting—one of the best ways to spend your money is to support locals,” said Luminy. Another reason for joining a CSA “is just the quality of the produce,” she said. “You can’t get
anything fresher than something’s that been picked that morning or the day before.” Luminy said she also wants food that is free from pesticides and preservatives. Before CSAs, Luminy got her produce from Earth Fare, Bare Essentials or from her own garden—“a far less reliable source,” she joked. Luminy also enjoys knowing who grows her food. “There’s just something about the sense of community of knowing who your grower is and the reassurance that goes with that,” she added. Being part of a CSA has encouraged Luminy to be more creative in the kitchen and to try new foods. “It has helped me appreciate the natural harvest cycle for each vegetable—eating them at their peak freshness.” And when there’s an abundance of a particular type of vegetable, Luminy dries or freezes it to build up her pantry. By Anna Oakes
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How Is Solar Power Working for You? …We Asked Local Homeowners and Experts
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void the green rush—learn from your neighbors’ mistakes. That’s the gist we’re hearing about solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. While trying to find a local solar success story, we found that multiple residents who installed solar systems during the green rush aren’t discovering the payback and energy production they thought was coming. In fact, of the 20 homeowners we came across, 18 were not satisfied with the results, granted the technology is still in its infancy and more education on the matter could help us all. Some didn’t do back research on how much daylight is needed for proper energy production; some just couldn’t part with a stand of trees that shaded the solar panels; some were unhappy when they learned the payback wasn’t coming as fast as they thought; and some were too green greedy to install a sell-all system and instead chose to feed the power directly into their home, ending up paying more for their power than they would if buying regular coaldriven power. But it’s not all for naught. We talked to some local solar energy experts to troubleshoot some solutions. “On PV in particular, shading on any portion of the panels can offset the production of other panels that aren’t in the shade,” an anonymous expert said. “PV works as a series, as opposed to solar thermal where only heating of some of the panels is needed. With solar thermal, if three-quarters of the panels are in the sun, it will still work well—not so with PV.” With a PV system, smaller cells work in a series. If a small portion of the cells is in the shade then output is reduced for the entire series of cells. According to the expert, homeowners should make sure less than 5 percent of a PV system is exposed to shade for the system to perform at optimum levels. Who knew you needed
allows room for expansion and locates the system closer to the ground for ease of servicing. What’s more, by installing the system on the ground and not on the roof, shingle and any other roof repair will be less cumbersome because the panels will not have not be moved or worked around. Another anonymous solar expert recently quipped, “The financial engineering [of solar systems] is as challenging as the technical engineering.” Other than the sustainability factor, solar systems are attractive because of the many tax credits that are available to homeowners installing and operating the systems—but make sure you are on the right end of the profit margin. Blue Ridge Electric provides a 3-cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) credit and NC GreenPower provides a 15-cents/kwh credit for small-scale home solar systems. An expert recommended that homeowners “don’t oversize the system so you are producing more energy than you need. Build what you can afford so you can be paid back quicker,” they said, further recommending that homeowners choose a sell-all system as opposed to directly using the green power. With a sell-all system, solar panels are hooked directly into a local power grid, so the green power is not fed directly into the home. The expert said this was a safer bet because homeowners would almost always receive an 8-cents/kwh profit (18-cents credit from Blue Ridge Electric and NC Green Power minus roughly 10-cents/kwh for regular, coaldriven energy). If a homeowner just uses green power, then they would pay 18-cents/kwh for any energy produced but not used by the home. “Most people are doing a sell-all system. They’re trying to get tax credits and payback as soon as possible,” they said. By Sam Calhoun
“On PV in particular, shading on any portion of the panels can offset the production of other panels that aren’t in the shade,” an anonymous expert said.
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above 95 percent exposure to sunlight? So can solar work in Boone? Does the area receive enough average sunlight? According to a local expert, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory provides solar data for many regions of the country. The only problem is that Boone is not one of those regions—specifically, that is. The expert said Boone’s average sunlight data is based on averages from Asheville and Bristol, Tenn. That data suggests that Boone receives an average of 4.5 hours of sunlight daily—but it’s only an educated guess because Boone-specific data is not kept. Also, for a PV system to operate effectively, the system needs to face south. The expert recommends installing PV systems on racks in the yard away from the house. This practice allows the panels to be moved to achieve optimal sunlight,
April 2010
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High Country Magazine
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How Is Land Conservancy Working for You? …We Asked a Local Farmer
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ric Hiegl, High Country Conservancy’s acting executive director, didn’t have to think long to come up with Jim Henson’s name as a local resident with “strong conservation ethics.” Like a growing number of local residents who are sensitive and aware of over-development and its swelling presence in the region, Jim chose to forever protect his land using the skills of a local land trust. “I’ve always been interested in preserving the mountains; there are very few tracts of mountain land left undeveloped. If we don’t protect that land then there’s not going to be any left,” said Jim. “I wanted this protected.” But that’s not to say he gave his land up. Quite the opposite actually—although the conservation easement will always be attached to the 139 acres Jim protected six years ago, he uses the land to grow Christmas trees, to manage timber, for recreation and to create wildlife habitat. “In retrospect, I’m very happy with everything,” said Jim. “What people need to understand is that they still retain ownership of their land [after creating a conservation easement] and can designate how they want to protect the land and what is to be preserved. They can protect the land from now on in the exact state that it is in.” Jim lives in his personal home on the property and uses about 20 acres for his Christmas tree farm. He grows Shiitake mushrooms in the woods and, in other areas, he has started wildlife plots where a diverse offering of wildlife feed, from birds to bears to bobcats. With his two sons, he has built “miles and miles” of hiking trails that weave through the hills and meadows. “The easement allows us to continue to farm [Christmas trees], but it limits any development,” explained Jim. “On the 139 acres, we can build only one home and it has to be in a certain area—no development can occur on the mountaintops or mountainsides.” Jim said the process of protecting his land was “easy,” and he hopes to dispel some myths about what happens after a conservation easement is put in place. “A lot of people hesitate because 60
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If we don’t protect [mountain] land then there’s not going to be any left,” said Jim. “I wanted this protected.”
Blue Ridge Forever Members The Blue Ridge Forever Coalition is comprised of 10 land trusts in Western North Carolina. In 2009, the coalition protected 10,257 acres in Western North Carolina, the equivalent of 7,770 football fields.
Blue Ridge Rural Land Trust
Land Trust for the Little Tennessee
Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy
National Committee for the New River
Conservation Trust for North Carolin
Pacolet Area Conservancy
Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina High Country Conservancy Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust
they think [protecting their land with a conservation easement] will limit them too much. They need to know that the land is still sellable, though the easement will always stay on there,” he explained. “I’ve heard some people are scared that an easement will decrease the land’s value. Some, however, look at it as an increase in value because people may be interested in buying protected land in the future,” said Jim. “I’m real happy with how it worked
April 2010
Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy National Advisors: The Conservation Fund The Nature Conservancy (NC Chapter) Trust for Public Land out—I may even give more,” Henson continued. Henson owns more acreage near the original conservation easement. He said he wanted to wait five to six years after protecting the first parcel to decide if he wanted to protect more. Because he is pleased with the first easement, Henson said, “At this point, I’m considering another easement.” By Sam Calhoun
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How Is Recycling Working For You? …We Asked a Shop Owner
“
I
’ve always cared about where all the trash ends up and wanted to limit that as much as I could for environmental reasons,” said Kristen Hall, owner of Gladiola Girls, located in downtown Boone. Kristen has recycled for at least the past 20 years, regularly taking her cardboard, plastics, glass, paper, magazines and cans to recycling bins at the landfill. And at her store, she makes sure to recycle paper and cardboard, which the town picks up once a week, she said. Recycling is more commonplace than it was a decade ago, Kristen said, and she is excited to see that it has become a mainstream practice. “At least we [as a country] are moving in the right direction,” she said. “Recycling may not be most effective means of limiting the use of resources, but it still has great merit, as opposed to just throwing something away,” she explained. “It’s the first step in a wider commitment in a person’s life to make more steps in the direction of using less resources.” Kristen practices another form of recycling by composting all her kitchen waste—putting food scraps in her garden beds to break down instead of throwing them in the trash can. “I actually made a worm bin this past weekend,” Kristen said, explaining that she took soil from her garden that contained worms and put leaves and shredded newspaper on top of that bottom layer in a plastic bin with holes poked in the top. “It’s supposed to break things down a
Breanna Brown, an employee of Gladiola Girls, helps with the store’s recycling efforts.
lot faster [than directly composting in the garden],” she explained. Although she does not consider herself a “purist,” Kristen said she does her best to take steps beyond recycling to reduce her environmental impact. Limiting the use of resources is “about the choices you make”—choices that include buying local foods. “I buy local cheeses. I have an organic garden and have for many years,” she said. “I believe in producing your own food when you can. “It’s time-consuming to live a simpler life,” she continued. “You have to give up some other busyness to devote time to [for example,] growing your own garden.” A timer on the hot water heater turns it on a few hours before she gets home, instead of allowing it to run all the time, she said. She drives a hybrid car, uses natural cleaners when possible, does all her errands in one trip to further reduce fuel usage, takes reusable shopping bags to the store and more. “We are a consumer-driven country, and the amount of resources we use is off the charts compared to other countries,” Kristen said. “We’re in a reactive state rather than proactive, and that’s what’s frustrating. Part of being a good human being is doing your best to limit that.” If people do not make the first step and recycle for altruistic reasons, recycling is a practice that “still makes sense in the larger economic picture,” she noted. By Corinne Saunders
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Green Efforts at Gladiola Girls “I’m exploring more eco-friendly [clothing] lines,” Kristen said. “My goal is to incorporate more into the store.” For more information, click to the web store at www.gladiolagirls.com. In addition to recycling at the store, her green efforts at work also include the following:
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• in the summer, an all-organic cotton clothing line • recycled plastic “jelly” shoes • a bag line of bags made of repurposed leather (formerly vintage leather garments) • earrings featuring leftover pieces of wood from the furniture industry
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How Is Compact Fluorescent Lighting Working For You? …We Asked the Broyhill Inn
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hen an ASU physical plant worker informed Doug Uzelac, general manager of the Broyhill Inn and Conference Center, that the Broyhill was one of the on-campus buildings selected as a recipient of a grant to replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, “I was delighted,” he said. The $15,000 grant allowed about 98 percent of the Broyhill’s bulbs and ballasts to be replaced, Doug said, adding that ASU provided the labor, which saved them significant money. Along with several ASU dormitories, the Broyhill was selected because it is a public-use building that is open 24 hours a day, Doug explained. About 20 different types of light bulbs were in use prior to the “streamlining” that occurred with the installment of about 2,000 CFLs. The “complete conversion” took about six weeks; work began in December 2008 and wrapped up in January 2009, Doug said. He added that he saw an “immediate drop” in electric bills, and the $15,000 light bulb conversion “probably paid for itself in eight months.” Besides a reduction of approximately 13 percent in annual electricity costs, the CFLs “easily last three times longer” than did incandescent bulbs in most of the building, Doug said. He must replace the bulbs more regularly in the Duggins Club Lounge, located in the lower level of the Broyhill, than in the rest of the building, because the temperature is slightly colder downstairs. “They don’t like the cold,” he said, noting that the lifespan of CFLs is significantly shorter when they are utilized in basements, garages or outdoors. Another installation consideration is that, unlike incandescents, the bulbs require air circulation. “The base unit of the bulb basically comprises the starter [and] the fixture has to allow some air to be around it,” he said. The most frustrating part of the conversion was learning that dimmable chandelier CFLs are not manufactured, for the simple reason that demand is not high enough, Doug said. He could not, therefore, replace the dining room chandelier bulbs, because too many events
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“[CFLs] are an investment, [but] if you’ve got the capital to get yourself a one-year loan, it will pay back.” Doug Uzelac, general manager of the Broyhill Inn
Considerations When Using CFLs • temperature • limited dimming capabilities
• air ventilation • initial expense
Benefits of Using CFLs • savings on electric bills • longer bulb life
that require dimmed lighting take place there, he said. In other areas of the building, where he could and did put dimmable CFLs in standard lighting fixtures, staff will just have to be careful when dimming the lights; at the lower settings, bulbs go out at different times, and “there are dim points you have to be careful with…they’ll strobe at a certain point,” he said. The upfront cost for installing CFLs
April 2010
• decrease in building’s environmental impact
can dissuade people, he said. CFLs run about $6 to $7 per bulb, as compared to the 30 or 40 cents each incandescent bulb costs when purchased in bulk, Doug said, and the dimmable CFLs cost $13 per bulb. “[CFLs] are an investment,” he said. “[But] if you’ve got the capital to get yourself a one-year loan, it will pay back.” Guests generally appreciate, and in some cases, expect, that hotels use CFLs. “Guests like the idea of a hotel converting, [and some] choose properties based on [their green initiatives],” Doug said. “We have had some guests complaints, [because a CFL bulb] takes a while to warm, and [after] 20 to 30 seconds, it’s brighter than when you first turned it on.” Nonetheless, “most people are very pleased we’re doing it,” said Doug, who added that he is likewise enthusiastic about the Broyhill moving forward with its green initiative. By Corinne Saunders
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High Country Magazine
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The Fastest Car
in the World As you zoom along Highway 221 through tiny Pineola, spare a
thought for a ghost, tinkering endlessly with plans for ever faster, ever more beautiful cars.
Story By Sally Treadwell
“This thing just took off like mad. I remember thinking, my God, I never felt anything like this,” said car collector Brooks Stevens after taking a ride in the prototype of Howard Marmon’s swansong, the HCM. But even this extraordinary car couldn’t save the Marmon Motor Company, whose cars had won the Indy 500 and multiple speed records, when it fell victim to a combination of the Depression and 66
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Ford’s economy of scale. The only HCM ever produced was wrapped in cellophane and stored at Hemlock Hedges in Pineola. After Howard died, Martha Marmon refused to sell it to opera singer James Melton, but gave it to Marmon’s former VP. The literally unique HCM has had six owners but only two have paid for it—$810,000 last time around. Photo courtesy of shooterz.biz / RM Auctions.
Quick, look in the rear-view mirror.
T
here. See those gates, heavy with rust? Back behind them, choked in a tangle of jewel weed and sassafras, lie the rapidly decaying bones of what local children once called “the mansion on the hill.” And there too, pottering in his basement workshop, you might find the clever, busy ghost of the man behind the wildly
innovative Marmon Wasp of 1911—the first car ever, the most extraordinary car ever, to win the great Indianapolis 500. Howard Carpenter Marmon. What cars that man made! That acid yellow Marmon Wasp with its stinger-shaped tail. The ill-fated HCM, light years ahead of the competition and doomed by the Great Depression. The ultra-powerful Marmon
Sixteens, each one tested on the Indianapolis Speedway. Oh yeah, and the rear-view mirror you’re looking in? That originated on the Wasp. And Howard was the first to use a light-weight aluminum body on a car, and he snapped speed records like they were green beans, fresh from the garden, and as for the Glidden Tour of 1906…but hold on. I’m getting ahead of myself.
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The wildly innovative Marmon Wasp of 1911— the first car ever, the most extraordinary car ever, to win the great Indianapolis 500. The Marmon family could trace its ancestry directly to the Duke of Reguse, Auguste Frederic Louis Viesse de Marmont, but dropped the final t when they came to the U.S. Howard C. Marmon
Howard, born in 1876, grew up in the Gilded Age of industrialization and the rising super-rich. If any other beloved child of a wealthy family had been named chief engineer of his father’s company with the ink barely dry on an 1899 mechanical engineering degree from UC-Berkley, knowing whispers of “nepotism!” would have ricocheted across the country. Not so with Howard Marmon. He was, quite simply, a mechanical genius. Virtually from the cradle, Howard was fascinated with the workings of locomotives. The minute he could physically reach the machinery at Nordyke, Marmon & Company in Indiana, he began experimenting; he even sneaked onto the back of his father’s carriage when he was forbidden a trip to the factory. He might have got away with his illicit visit had not the sound of a train whistle caused the enthralled boy to pop up out of his hiding place to investigate. Ellis Nordyke founded the firm in 1851 to provide French buhr stones to grain mills. Daniel Marmon, Howard’s father, bought into it in 1866, and the new company rapidly became a major international player in the milling business. Its products were known for excellence and reliability—some are still used today— and gave Howard a ready outlet for his expertise and curiosity. For a while. Then he bought his first car. It was… disappointing. “It was a terrible piece of machinery. It did everything but run consistently,” recalled Howard’s brother, Walter. He was an engineer, too, and later the president of NM & Co. So in 1901 the brothers built a radical experiment. Their car featured an air-
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cooled V-twin engine, a three-speed transmission, a cast-aluminum tonneau body, a pressure oil system, an integrated trunk in the back, hinged doors on both sides and—imagine this—the engine at the front. Their friends were impressed, and in 1904 the Marmons sold a whopping seven models of a redesigned version with a V-4 engine.
The Glidden Tour Now they had to prove the durability of their car. Think you’re a fine off-roader? You should have tried one of the early Glidden Tours. This was before smoothly tarmacked roads; heck, it was before road maps. The fledgling AAA was determined to dispel the image of the automobile as a “toy of the idle rich,” and it vowed to draw attention to the deplorable state of America’s so-called roads as well as the incomprehensible, inconsistent state-bystate legislation that governed passage across them. The Glidden did that, alright. On the 1906 tour, competitors for the $2,000 prize broke axles, blew tires, burned out clutches and brakes, got lost, sprang springs, overturned, found themselves mired in mud, and became horribly stuck on a 30 percent grade hill. Sixty-two vehicles started on the route from Buffalo to Quebec and back to New Hampshire, 18 were lost along the way, and just 13 finished with a perfect score. And only the Marmon suffered not a single mechanical problem, enduring 1,153 bone-shaking miles at an average speed of 21.5 mph; it was also the only car to make it up one particularly muddy hill near Quebec without chains. Now that was good publicity.
April 2010
The Incomparable 32 and the Indy 500 Then, in 1909, came the storied Marmon 32. Astonishingly advanced for the time and featuring a gear-driven pressurized pump that delivered oil to all the bearings, it was just one hell of a car. It hit the racecourses—“win on Sunday, sell on Monday” was the adage of the day— spitting gravel in its opponents’ faces. It won everywhere. With Marmon engineer and race driver Ray “the Bedouin” Harroun at the wheel, it had survived the notorious first weekend of racing at the brand-new Indianapolis Speedway in 1909, dodging the multiple accidents and five fatalities caused by the crushed stone and tar track. As if Harroun had lit a fuse, the Marmon marque won the Elgin road race, the Wheeler-Schebler and Cobe trophy races, the Remy Grand Brassard and Trophy Race. Marmons won at Wheatley Hills, at the Atlanta Speedway, on the hair-raising new board track at Los Angeles Motordome. One even nipped Ralph de Palma’s legendary heels on the fearsome Giant’s Despair Hill Climb in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. By August of 1910, Marmon held 61 out of 70 official racing speed records. And then it was time to sign up for the inaugural Indy 500. Some 3.2 million paving bricks had earned the deadly speedway the promise of greater safety and a new nickname, “The Brickyard.” Ray insisted that he’d retired from racing. But Howard kept at him—“they were real good friends,” said his son— and Ray agreed on one final run. He and Howard decided to add two cylinders to the regular 32 and overhaul the engine.
It won everywhere— “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” was the adage of the day— spitting gravel in its opponent’s faces. Top: The Marmon Heritage, by George and Stacey Hanley, is a treasure trove of information about the Marmon Motor Car Company. Left: Morrison Library in Newland honors the fortune that founded it with a display case of memorabilia, including this model of the Wasp. Bottom: The acid yellow Marmon Wasp with its sheet metal-covered wheels, blazing around the Brickyard to its historic win.
They streamlined everything they could to reduce wind resistance, even covering the wooden wheels with sheet metal. Then, concerned about reducing the Marmon’s weight to compete against speedy new European cars, they hit on the smart woman’s secret to losing 150 pounds of ugly fat: they simply ditched the co-pilot. And thus, the rear-view mirror was born. Co-drivers were both mechanics and spotters, vital for adding copious amounts of oil to less sophisticated cars and literally watching the rear. The Wasp’s single seat and strut-mounted mirror on the hood caused quite a flap with racing officials, to put it mildly. Ray held yet another ace. He’d noticed that the faster cars ran, they more tires they blew. Ray and Howard devised what’s thought to be the first ever “tire strategy,” calculating that if he kept to 75 mph, he’d have to change fewer tires and thus lose less time.
The tortoise/ hare idea worked. Staggering out of the Wasp, exhausted from completing the grueling race at an average speed of 74.6 mph over six hours, 42 minutes and eight seconds, and with three of the original tires still on the car, Ray claimed the $14,000 prize. It had been an incredible run of speed records and wins. But, realizing that it was impossible to improve on such a fantastic record, Howard more or less took the brand off the track. Not entirely, of course—publicity always calls. In 1916 a team of drivers sped across America in a Marmon 34 lightened by an unprecedented use of hard-to-work-with aluminum alloy in both body and engine. They made it from New York to San Francisco in five days and 18.5 hours, to win the TransContinental speed record, beating “Cannonball” Baker’s time in a Cadillac by an impressive 41 hours—and tripling sales.
In 1968, the editors of Automobile Quarterly wrote “Marmon and Mille Miglia. What could link the two? It is simply the pursuit of the ultimate. Just as many of us who love racing consider the Mille Miglia the ultimate road race, there are those who have driven countless classic cars who consider the Marmon 16 the ultimate touring car.” This 1933 Marmon Sixteen Convertible was first owned by Martha Marmon and recently sold for $300,000. Photo courtesy of Simon Clay / RM Auctions.
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By August of 1910 Marmon held 61 out of 70 official racing speed records. Racing great Jimmy Murphy drove for Duesenberg—but here we see him with his personal Marmon 24. Marmon roadsters were beloved by everyone from speed-crazy silent film vamp Bebe Daniels to bootleggers and Bonnie and Clyde. Courtesy of
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Marmon Goes to War
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Then World War I intervened. In 1914, Germany boasted 1,000 aircraft, France had just 300, and England 250. By the time the U.S. got into the fray in 1917, the military had taken delivery of a scant 142 airplanes—not one of which was suitable for use on a battlefield, or even for training. As one of the country’s foremost engineering experts, Howard Marmon headed for Europe as part of Col. Boiling’s six-man military expedition, charged with identifying suitable engines for a scratch air force. Marmon turned its factory almost entirely over to manufacturing the chosen V-12 Liberty engines for combat aircraft, and the company fulfilled its mission superbly. It alone produced two absolutely distinct types of engine, and in 1918 it was ceremoniously handed the first award of Champion Liberty Engine Builder for having shipped 246 percent of its quota of test-perfect engines. Howard finished the war as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Hemlock Hedges
But what on earth does all this activity in Indianapolis have to do with Pineola, North Carolina? Well, Howard’s grandmother was from North Carolina, and as a kid he stayed both in the Eseeola Lodge in Linville and at the Union General John T. Wilder’s famed Cloudland Hotel on Roan
Mountain. Then, when he developed tuberculosis, his parents sent him to live with the Sherman Pippins family back on Roan Mountain for a year. He simply fell in love with the area. You never forget first loves, of course, so in 1923 Howard and his second wife Martha bought 5,000 acres covered in virgin timber in Pineola. They remodeled the Ritter Lumber Company’s old country club to create a spacious, friendly house and filled it with books, and they invited friends like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone to come visit. Libby Watkins still lives next door to the estate on her family’s land and vividly remembers running in and out of the house as a child. “I remember the big, long dining room table, and they had a bearskin rug at the top of the stairs, with its arms outstretched and its mouth wide open,” she says. “Mrs. Marmon was gone a lot; she loved to travel, but he spent hours on end down there in the basement, working away.” Howard became a one-man stimulus plan for little Pineola, even while keeping one eye on business in Indianapolis. Ever passed Linville Land Harbor’s lake? Well, that was originally Lake Anthony, named for nearby Anthony Mountain after Howard damned a creek to create his own lake. He built a boathouse and a hatchery with 250,000 trout, the first German brown trout in
Although up to 22 Marmon Sixteen Convertible Coupes were built, this exquisitely restored example is one of only eight remaining. Built in 1931 with an all-aluminum engine, it could “almost effortlessly” accelerate to 100 mph. Photo courtesy of shooterz.biz / RM Auctions.
the area, says Libby’s husband Ray. He began mining for feldspar, kaolin and mica. He developed one of the world’s largest evergreen nurseries and gave it over to Sam Mortimor to run. He gave money to build Pineola’s pretty shingled Presbyterian church, and he brought indoor plumbing to Pineola with a water tower—you can still see the skeleton of it. During the worst of the Depression he was there for his neighbors, putting more money into the nursery, offering Martha Guy’s father money to help the Avery County Bank through the hard times if he needed it. And of course he worked away in his basement, planning, improvising, devising.
The Roosevelt
Marmon had developed a sterling record for comfort, durability and speed, plus a little naughty glamour—silent film vamp Bebe Daniels made headlines in 1921 when she was thrown in jail for speeding in her beloved Marmon roadster. And one expert shot from the roadside into a speeding Marmon’s gas tank had famously netted lawmen a bonanza of illegal liquor hidden in maple syrup bottles. But even for a bootlegger’s dream car, sales were still slow. In 1924 Walter Marmon stepped aside and George Williams, former president of the Wire Wheel Corporation,
bought into the newly formed Marmon Motor Company. He made a perhaps illconceived attempt to achieve profitability by downscaling the marque; at one point Howard actually left his own company, frustrated with its direction. First came the unexceptional Little Marmons; then in 1929, the Roosevelt debuted as the first 8-cylinder car in the world to sell for less than $1,000. That earned it a spot in the Guinness Book of Records—another Marmon record in 1929 was for the first factory-installed radio— but it didn’t serve the marque well. Oh, the Roosevelt looked fabulous—its elegant lines came from noted sports car designer Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky, and renowned industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague consulted on colors. The engine underwent rigorous testing and performed well. The Roosevelt was a hit; more than 22,000 were sold. So why did Road & Track write in 1932 that the low-priced “Straight 8” had proved to be “one of the most miserable automobiles ever offered to a gullible and unsuspecting public?” Because the car suffered horribly from low oil pressure and severe bearing knockings that only appeared at around 35,000 miles. Marmon’s reputation for absolute reliability was seriously tarnished.
The Glorious Marmon Sixteen
Howard was determined to return Marmon to what it did best—making wellengineered luxury cars. He’d been working on designs for the Marmon Sixteen since 1926, and he got it oh-so right: the car wowed ’em at the Chicago Auto Salon in late 1930. Shortly afterwards Howard received a medal for outstanding achievement from the Society of Automotive Engineers. “We will state without equivocation that the Marmon V-16 is the finest and best all-round luxury car on the market today,” wrote Road & Track. No kidding. With a V-16 engine delivering 200 horsepower and an almost totally aluminum alloy engine weighing only 930 pounds, the Sixteen was powerful and light enough to out-accelerate the famed Duesenberg J (ever wonder where the phrase “it’s a doozy” came from?). And the car looked utterly distinctive, with clean, art moderne lines that were a world away from any other car on the market. Howard had tapped Walter Dorwin Teague for the bodywork design; but although the designer waxed rhapsodically in Automobile Topics Magazine about designing a car as a setting for a woman’s beauty and reducing wind resistance, in truth he had no interest whatsoever in cars. He largely turned the project over to his car-mad teenage son. Almost every April 2010
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From time to time, though, you can still catch a glimpse of Howard’s legacy at Hemlock Hedges.
The comfortable, book-filled house in Pineola where Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone used to come to visit Howard and Martha Marmon is now near to collapse. Courtesy of Morrison Library
weekend, Walter Dorwin Teague Jr. flew the fledgling Colonial Airlines—always having to swear he wouldn’t sue, should the plane crash—between MIT in Boston and New York to work on the Sixteen. People loved the Sixteens, and still do. Amelia Earhart and her husband rode in a convertible Marmon 16 sedan when New York threw her a ticker tape parade after her groundbreaking transatlantic flight. According to some accounts, Bonnie and Clyde made one of their bullet-riddled getaways in a powerful Marmon. And Arthur Miller used it as a symbol of the upper classes for his 1940 play, “The Man Who Had All the Luck.” But it wasn’t enough. True, Cadillac had beaten the Sixteen to market the year before, albeit with an inferior V-16. But Marmon workers had already suffered two 10 percent pay cuts in 1930, and as the Depression deepened in 1931, the company laid off all its engineering personnel. It took 300 skilled workmen with 27 different specialties two days to build just one Sixteen; the $5,000 it cost to buy a Marmon is equivalent to about $85,000 today. “It became unfashionable for wealthy people to be seen driving luxury cars,” says Mike Fairbairn, co-founder of RM Auctions, which sells perhaps two or three rare Marmons—fewer than 500 remain— every year, along with Duesenbergs, PierceArrows and other glorious pre-war relicts. 72
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“And then the gap became much narrower between fine cars and cheap ones. In the late ‘20s, if you drove a Ford, it rattled and banged and was incredibly uncomfortable and under-powered; then you’d get in a fine car and it was like riding on a cloud—it had a radio, it was a world apart from a normal family car. But by the end of the ‘30s, a V-8 Ford had a cloth interior and 90 hp. No one would pay six times as much for a fine car.” Howard Marmon made one last, desperate attempt to save the Marmon Motor Company.
Marmon’s Masterpiece
At his own expense—estimates range from $50,000 to over $200,000—Howard built a prototype of his dream car. It’s the HCM, and yes, the only one ever built still exists. In fact, RM Auctions sold it for $810,000 in 2007. Howard had sketched it out at the Columbia Club, where he stayed when he wasn’t home at Hemlock Hedges. According to the engineer who was assigned the job of making the HCM a reality even as the receivers moved in on the company, the sketch was “exceptionally detailed, quite accurate.” Walter Dorwin Teague Jr. had made a model of “what a car really should look like” for his own amusement. One look, and Howard knew he’d found his designer; this time the son officially got the job. Teague had wanted, he told Automobile Quarterly, “to
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eliminate as many excrescences as possible,” and his model was totally unlike any other car on the market—absolutely free of fuss or frills. Although Teague was reportedly furious when he found out that the final version had acquired a hood ornament and exterior horns, and that the original faired-in headlights had been moved from the grille to the fenders to cut costs, the HCM was still one long, sleek, growl of a car that should have propelled Marmon to the forefront of the market. With independent suspension on all wheels, a central tube chassis, and a more economical V-12 engine, the HCM delivered a smooth ride and a surprisingly strong kick. It was tested on the track by racecar driver Wilbur Shaw and went from 10 to 50 in 12.77 seconds—this was 1933, remember—and topped out at 113 mph. “This thing just took off like mad. I remember thinking, my God, I never felt anything like this,” car collector Brooks Stevens, who’d coveted it for the styling alone the instant he saw it, told Special Interest Autos. But without backing—the Marmon Motor Company was by then fully in receivership—Howard couldn’t get the HCM into production. He and his chief engineer George Freers schlepped it from manufacturer to manufacturer, but found no takers. The HCM was swathed in plastic and stored forlornly at Hemlock Hedges. And that was that.
The Roosevelt’s body was designed by noted sports car designer Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky and according to the book The Marmon Heritage, it was tested extensively before winning a spot in the Guinness Book of Records as the first 8-cylinder car to sell for under $1,000. Officials from the AAA selected a Roosevelt randomly and then observed it being put to the test on the Indianapolis speedway. That car ran 13,457 miles over 440 hours without once stopping; a chase car was used for refueling and switching drivers. The test only ended because of a cloudburst that made driving impossible. Doug Clark sometimes brings his Marmon Roosevelt out to Christmas Corner in Pineola, where you can buy your trees in Howard Marmon’s old garages.
Oh, the Marmon name lived on, of course. Actually, it’s now worth billions. Walter joined forces with Arthur Herrington to create superb four-wheel drive vehicles used for building the Iraqi oil pipeline. In 1963, Marmon-Herrington sold for $2.7 million; the company merged and grew and merged again. In 2007 Warren Buffet paid $4.5 billion for just 60 percent of the Marmon Group. But the glorious Marmon automobile was officially dead. Howard, defeated, was still busy working on a whaleback design for a unified body and chassis when he died at
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a sadly young age in 1943. His only child, Carol, had moved to Switzerland with Florence Marmon and married a Russian prince, so when Martha died in 1959, the estate went to Martha’s nephew, Robert Morrison. The Marmon money eventually funded Newland’s library and an airfield. The house, though, is now rotting gently into the scrub of its once magical gardens. Despite past attempts to restore the estate, the kitchen building and the game room have collapsed, the old growth trees have long been harvested, and the friendly old house with its Deco beehive fireplaces is almost past saving.
From time to time, though, you can still catch a glimpse of Howard’s legacy at Hemlock Hedges. Doug Clark, whose family retails Christmas trees from the old estate garages, whimsically tracked down two of the last remaining Marmons—there are fewer than 500 left in the world—and on a sunny day in December, you might find one purring gently at Christmas Corner. And if you hold still for a second as you move through the spruces, maybe you’ll hear a tapping coming from the basement. That’ll be Howard’s kindly shadow, still working on the fastest, most beautiful car in the world.
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South Bound Story by Justin Grimes Photography by Todd Bush
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“Tell others what they mean to you before they move on.”
~Josey Ellis
When taking the step at 19, the first of five million to come, her heart pumped noticeably, an extra beat. The sun came out spontaneously, an omen. The journey began. It had rained for a solid month. Maine’s rivers were roaring. This isn’t supposed to happen this late in the season, July 9. Avoid fording rivers when foaming and gushing, didn’t you read the sign? Was she ready? Yes. Prepared? On the ground, no way, she had too much by 15 pounds. Her pack, 45 pounds; Josey, 105 pounds, and the 100-Mile Wilderness lay ahead full of rivers, creeks, knurlyslippery-roots and mud; blood-curdling mud.
H
The Main Mountain
er mind steeled itself against the insult. How dare the shuttle driver to the trailhead demean her in front of the other aspirants? Those unlike her who had spent a long time preparing and had the ‘right’ equipment. “You don’t know what you are doing; you don’t have the right gear,” the shuttle driver barked at Josey and her partner while saying nothing to the other passengers. Nine people set off to the Northern terminus to begin the southbound thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail (AT) the same day Josey launched. Five finished. Fewer than 500 have made it hiking the 2,178 miles south to Springer Mountain, Ga., the Southern terminus, since the AT opened in 1937. Around 10,000 have thru-hiked northbound. Several of the gear-heads the driver didn’t growl at quit within a couple of weeks. Most people choose to hike the AT northbound, and many reasons exist for this, the general consensus being that southbound is far more difficult. Although both ways offer a dynamic and challenging experience, the experiences of a southbound hiker— by their very nature—differ significantly from the experiences of a northbounder. Was the pony-tailed shuttle driver an AT sage? How many seekers had the old man delivered to the trailhead? Had he spurred Josey on at the critical moment? “What’s the big deal,” Josey was thinking. “Why train for something that you are going to be doing for the next six months?” That thought preceded scaling Mount Katahdin and the excruciating knee pain Josey was about to walk into—pain so severe she wouldn’t sleep. “You need cash and you don’t have any cash,” the old man scolded Josey and her partner again. Baxter State Park has a $10 fee and “they don’t take plastic.” Josey cringed, “The what-ifs are trying to stymie me once more.” Her spirit whispered, “It doesn’t matter.” Josey forged ahead having unknowingly placed the admonishments of the old man’s in her unconscious lockbox. Revered by the Native American Penobscot Indians as the Greatest Mountain, Mount Katahdin is the first place on the United States mainland to receive sunlight in the morning during the summer solstice and vernal and autumnal equinoxes. It grew into a beautiful day. Josey’s heart
Josey Ellis: Boone native, an AT 2000-Miler, and one of the fewer than 500 people to have successfully thru-hiked the AT southbound since the trail’s opening in 1937.
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recovered and soared as she set off climbing. The five-mile, straight up, boulders climb to Katahdin’s summit and the Northern terminus of the AT was an enduring task. Upon reaching the summit at midday, Josey exclaimed to her partner, “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Her reward was rich. In breaks through the fast moving clouds, Josey saw more water than she had ever seen before, with lakes stretching to the horizon. Weeks of nervousness and anxiety eased from her with each footfall. The sun had blessed her. It had birthed her in its image. Later on the trail it would warm her. Finally, she was walking with the sun, her genuine partner. Months later on the trail in the flat, well, reasonably flat country, at a campsite frequented by day hikers, Josey and a fellow thru-hiker shared a few logs with a 50-plus-year-old crowd 76
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eating goat cheese and filet mignons and drinking heavily. And as the evening grew boisterous, the conversation from one side became, “What are you young people going to do with your lives?” The wilderness was quiet.
“If You Don’t Mind, It Don’t Matter” “What the hell are you doing? You’ve never done anything like this,” Josey’s dad said two weeks before her departure. She was online purchasing a plane ticket to Bangor, Maine when he chanced by. “Go and try it first, you’ve never really backpacked.” For some time in the beginning, her mom and dad ignored Josey’s talk of hiking the AT. They pretended not to notice her new boots and stuff sacks. “They saw me buying all this equipment, but they didn’t want to talk about it. I had always dreamed of hiking the AT, but when I decided to go I was flying by the seat of my pants.
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Mount Katahdin is the highest mountain in Maine and its summit is the Northern terminus of the AT. Southbound thru-hikers must first climb the mountain to begin their journey. Mount Katahdin is the first place on the United States mainland to receive sunlight in the morning during the summer solstice and vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Photos courtesy of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
“I had always dreamed of hiking the AT, but when I decided to go I was flying by the seat of my pants.” The Appalachian Trail, Completed in 1937:
• Is a privately managed unit of the national park system.
• Is the nation’s longest marked footpath, at approximately 2,178 miles. • Is the first completed national scenic trail, designated in 1968. • Crosses six other units of the national park system. • Traverses eight national forests. • Touches 14 states. Houses more than 2,000 occurrences of rare, threatened, endangered and sensitive plant and animal species at about 535 sites. • Crosses numerous state and local forests and parks. • Is maintained by 30 trail clubs and multiple partnerships.
Fun Facts about the Appalachian Trail:
• Lowest elevation: 124 feet, near the Trailside Museum and Zoo at Bear Mountain, New York • Highest elevation: 6,625 feet, on Clingmans Dome in Tennessee • There are 165,000 blazes along the length of the Trail
• More than 10,000 people have reported hiking the length of the Trail • It takes approximately five million footsteps to walk the entire length of the Trail • More than 6,000 volunteers contribute about 200,000 hours to the Appalachian Trail every year
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Josey didn’t carry maps, only her trusted guidebook, Appalachian Pages, which she referred to each morning. In the beginning, her pack weighed 45 pounds. In fairly short order, she got the pack weight down to 30 pounds. “I grew to respect other thru-hikers who carried additional weight, that precious something, they didn’t have to carry.” Josey wrote to and received messages from her fellow thru-hikers in trail registers. After her first pair of boots blew out, she wore them for a week before purchasing new boots and a hammock, which she enjoyed, in Hanover, N.H. She changed to a zero degree sleeping bag and added hiking poles in southern Virginia. “Now I know what kind of lifestyle I do best with, what I can live with and without, mostly without. I’ll never stop adventuring now.” 78
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I’d never backpacked, hadn’t planned, and was totally out of shape. I bought some gear at Footsloggers and the Mast Store in Boone and my sister Murphy took me to an outfitter in Greensboro just before my flight to Maine.” Coming around to the notion that independent Josey was going, dad was the first close person to support her. His advice was, “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” Later on the trail when magic whoopee pies made breakfast one hungry morning, dad’s refrain returned, as it would countless times on the journey. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter. Bobby Ellis is an avid outdoorsman, hunter and fisherman and the original spark of Josey’s inspiration. He manages a local land trust where Josey grew up and worked in the summers, the genesis of her love for nature. Relenting, he said, “If your mom can bike 500 miles then I guess you can walk 2,000.”
The trail breaks you down to what you really are. Your most human characteristics come out, it’s primal. You got to have heart; it’s all about heart. In fall 2008, Josey’s mother, Roni, biked more than 400 miles across North Carolina. Roni is a part of the Watauga Leisure Bike Club, a group that explores the county’s back roads on two wheels for fun. After graduating from Watauga High School in Boone in 2008, Josey studied clay at Penland School of Crafts in Spruce Pine, which gave her supportive insight to her natural go-ahead spirit. She believes that, “Artists must be bold. You have to put yourself out there and do what you want to do.” Following Penland, Josey attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville; enjoying her class work, but having few conversations with her suite mates, she
longed for more. “If you don’t know or have anything to do, a goal, life can be pretty meaningless.” Providence answered her desires in Asheville. She found a kindred spirit in a young man dreaming of thru-hiking the AT, a hall-mate she had become friends with, and a partner for the beginning.
The 100-Mile Wilderness and Parting of Ways The sign at the edge of the 100Mile Wilderness says: “You must be well equipped and have food for 10 days.” Josey didn’t. These 100 miles are the longest remote section of the AT and not recommended for the inexperienced. On the AT, you must find an improvising rhythm. Josey was winging it, learning the customs of the trail along the way. She was scared at first. The early northbounders she met in the wilderness, the frontrunners who had set off from Springer Mountain in February and early March, offered little advice. “I was a novice. They didn’t give me the time of day. They had little packs and were as fit as gladiators. They were jogging compared to me, with heads down.” They intimidated Josey. The trail through the 100-Mile Wilderness is mud. For nine days, Josey was falling in, slipping in, tasting, smelling and moving through mud, falling and falling more. She resorted to tree hugging and leaping from exposed root to exposed root. When not making the distance, Josey would become what she coined submudged, her new term of endearment. All through the wilderness and for the next two months, Josey’s body agonized. “My entire body ached for the first two months. Every time I would stand up or start moving, I felt like the tin man. Maine and New Hampshire were so difficult that the struggle seemed to be physical. Once I hit Vermont I realized that it would be about the mental strength it took to wake up every day and continue walking.” But Vermont was two months ahead. Tales of previous adventurers being swept downstream inhibited each fearfully calculated step she made upon the slippery rocks providing tenuous footholds as she forded swollen streams and rivers alone. Her shoulders forced their way tensely up her neck. This was dangerous work. Josey found solace from her anxiety in the majestic moss covered pine forest that canopied the wilderness. Visions from childhood and the pine forest at home danced in her head. Mossy rocks
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Definitions:
• 2000-Miler - Either a thru-hiker or a section hiker who has hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. • AT - Appalachian Trail. • Bald - A mountain with no trees on top. • Bearbagging - The practice of storing anything that smells like food or contained food (as well as the food itself) in two bags, and hanging them over a tree limb that a bear can’t reach by climbing or stretching. Other items that must be put in a bearbag include toothpaste, soap, deodorant and scented sunscreen. • Blowdown - A fallen tree across the trail. • Day Hiker - Carries very small or no backpack. • Flip flopper - Hikes part of the trail going south to Springer Mountain, (or north to Mount Katahdin) then returns to starting point and hikes north to Mount Katahdin (or south to Springer Mountain), insuring the best weather conditions. • Purist - A hiker who decides to pass every single white blaze on the AT. Many hikers choose to take alternate routes, marked with blue blazes, because they may offer an easier terrain or better views. • Thru-hiker - Attempts to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in one continuous hike. • Trail Angel - A kind-hearted individual who performs a good deed (for example, gives a ride into town or back to the trail) for a hiker. • Trail Magic - “The term used by thruhikers to describe small, unexpected, remarkable events that lift a hiker’s spirits and inspire awe or gratitude. Trail magic comes in two forms: the magic created by nature and the magic created by the kindness of strangers.” • Trail Name - The new identity AT hikers assume while on the trail. • Trail Register - Usually found in shelters, hikers use these notebooks to write messages for others who will come after them. • Yellow Blazers - Move down the trail hitch hiking. • Zero Day - A no-hiking day. Nero Day – A partial day of hiking. • For more information, click to www.appalachiantrail.org.
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provided relaxing armchairs; nature’s comfortable seats from which to breathe in the forest grandeur, hear the quiet. It was an enchanting, humbling and magical place to Josey. She had previously tried to read Walden. But Thoreau’s writing was too dense and she couldn’t get through the first chapter, titled “Economy.” Yet, like Thoreau, she relished her freedom from the clutter of society. In the woods, she would enjoy the purest thoughts she’d ever had. During this early stage, Josey was slowly transitioning to understanding that she needed to take one step at a time but think two steps ahead. She didn’t want her daily experiences to feel like exercise. On average, thru-hikers walk 15 to 21 miles a day. But 21 miles a day for most people is pushing too hard. The body needs rest. Hikers who push themselves every day are forced to take a zero-mile day rather often to recuperate; usually staying overnight in towns or hostels along the way. Josey was about to make that first off-the-trail overnight choice. The last thing on the trail you want to do is backtrack. Josey and her partner, with little food, had
no choice. Having missed the small business card signaling the offshoot trail to Whitehouse Landing, the only oasis about 45-miles into the wilderness, the two had to turn back. It was an infamous place that all thruhikers find out about; the place where veteran hikers advise is to “Only blow the horn once or risk the damnation of the owner.” Three long miles back and down the side trail Josey came upon the lake’s edge and there it was, hanging on a tree, the horn of plenty. Across the way she could see the proprietor weed-eating on the island. Walking out onto the rickety dock, Josey hungrily blew the horn. Damn, what if he doesn’t hear the horn’s first call? After gorging upon homemade pizza and purchasing way overpriced trail items from a small cabinet, her first zero-day choice confronted her. The oasis had overnight accommodations and Josey’s body longed for bed rest. Two things motivated her decision. Ringing over and over in her head was the old man’s admonition to stay on the trail for success, to avoid the town’s sirens and the oasis’s high prices.
“Which way do I go in the real world?” Her thoughts trembled as much as her knees. She chose to walk on as she mostly would for the next 2,000-plus miles preferring neromile days—partial days of rest and town excursions—to zero days. Worn-out from being submudged, Josey could almost taste civilization. Nearing the southern end of the 100-Mile Wilderness, she could hear the roar of the highway ahead that began as faint rumblings two miles before. She could see the cars. Splash, she fell sideways and full-bodied into the mud. She had doomed her chances of hitching a ride into Monson. She backtracked to a lake to clean up. Monson, Maine, a general store, gas station and post office is heaven to southbounders. A sense of accomplishment crept into Josey. In retrospect, she would have tempered her celebratory feeling had she known the difficulty of the trail ahead, the rest of rugged Maine and the up-and-down rock cliffs of New Hampshire. A fellow southbounder best described the feelings Josey shared by exultantly declaring that he would name his first son Monson.
Not only did the wilderness drain Josey physically, it tested her relationship with her college partner. Living with someone in the ‘real world’—as Josey calls that which is natural—24 hours a day, day after day, strains most relationships. When covered in mud and walking in wet feet, challenged and exhausted, it’s easy to push one another’s buttons. “The trail brings out the best and the worst in people. You can have really bad days on the trail. People become irritable. You can’t agree on anything, even the trivial.” After Monson, Josey and her college mate parted ways. She was on her own and the journey had hardly begun. Instead of feeling alone and helpless, Josey felt liberated. “I knew within three day’s journey that our partnership was destined to fail. Our paces disagreed.”
Comrades Josey was cautious when crossing highways alone, prearranging to meet up with other hikers, when possible, before intercepting civilization and its accompanying dangers. “I
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tried to arrange my trips into towns with other hikers. I didn’t want to hitch rides by myself. And I almost always returned to the trail to spend the night.” She spent many nights alone, sequestered away at safe, non-seeing distances from the trail. Because northbound thru-hikers greatly outnumber southbounders, traveling northbound, you can hike at your own pace and meet up with people almost every night, but southbound you have to make friends, hope you have similar paces and discuss where you’re going and when; hiking along in fluid groups choosing to meet-up at specific places and shelters when necessary. One of Josey’s fellow travelers wrote, “We were running as a pack.” “You get to know people on a different level on the trail. After a couple of days, it’s like you are friends for life.” Josey met almost all the northbounders, and once the frontrunners had passed, most were willing to share news of the trail and strike up casual conversation. “Going south and meeting northbounders who were close to finishing that were normal people like me lifted my spirits, normal people making it.” The camaraderie of the thru-hikers is legendary. Walking in the same steps with others on the trail, they become souls with heightened senses sharing nature in a bonding pursuit.
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The Blow Out We all walk life’s trail to the end. Some fall a lot, some race through, some timidly step, many are handicapped from the beginning; others are along the way; most follow the leader and into hell quite often. A few strike out alone. Not everyone hikes the AT the same way either; yellow blazers hardly hike at all. They move down the trail hitch hiking, some take rides when they’re convenient, some people can’t miss a step. If there is a loop trail to the shelter they must go back the way they came and walk that tenth of a mile they would have missed. Josey harbored no hostility towards people who didn’t hike the entire trail, as some do. “Everyone deserves their own adventure and can do it however they please.” She always began walking where she left off. Why take every step? Why choose to inflict pain upon the body and mind? Isn’t life difficult enough? Josey was driven by a desperation; she hadn’t chosen a major in school. She told a friend on the trail that she was kind of between a rock and a hard place before she left, with no guidance. To her, the AT was a last minute hope to calm her restless spirit. She had been investigating travel and volunteer projects when her friend suggested hiking the trail. “I was beating myself up. I was disappointed in myself, I wasn’t focused…sitting around wasting
April 2010
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with more than 70 miles of crestline Trail, features the highest elevations of the entire footpath, well above six thousand feet. Clingman’s Dome is the highest point on the entire AT, where the Trail reaches an elevation of 6,625 feet near the summit. The Trail through the Smokies also has the most rainfall and snowfall on the AT in the South, and many hikers are caught off-guard by the snow and cold temperatures that the high elevation causes. from the
Appalachian Trail Conservancy
time…and the energy I was expending was on meaningless things. My life felt mundane. I want to live it. Not watch it pass by. And when he said, ‘let’s hike the AT,’ it felt like the right thing to do.” Now she was sitting in shock. She had just finished descending a steep mountain in Maine’s Bigelow Range and her knees were shaking uncontrollably. On the valley floor, she painfully reasoned with herself. Should I go back? Should I go forward? All the northbounders told her that she was going the wrong way. “Which way do I go in the real world?” Her thoughts trembled as much as her knees. From her position in the V and looking up, each way promised physical hell equally matching her mental agony. So many of the aspirants had given up already and many more would join them later. Josey witnessed the travails of those thru-hikers who attempted to hike the trail and live at home, too, through cell phones and computers. They didn’t succeed. “You must take it one day at a time and really live in the moment.” People quit all along the trail for a multitude of reasons. The numbers can’t tell the whole story, but it appears that a small percentage of those who strikeout actually finish. “The trail breaks you down to what you
really are. Your most human characteristics come out, it’s primal. You’ve got to have heart; it’s all about heart. I didn’t want to return home with my tail between my legs. That desperation, the part of me needing fulfillment drove me forward. You have to occupy your mind out there. If you don’t, one bad thought leads to another. It’s important to keep the good vibes going, the law of attraction. I became shameless, brave. I wanted to succeed, to finish most of all.”
The Name Killer The feeling inside, it dizzied her, she didn’t understand it, what direction to take it, what to do with it or who to trust it with. It was power, primordial power, her life force and too many on and off the trail wanted to share it or force their will upon it. It’s a tradition for thru-hikers to adopt a trail name. Josey was having none of it. What’s in a name? Your identity; and if you are looking inward to find who you are, why label yourself as someone you are not? As a fellow thru-hiker observed, “Josey doesn’t like that which is popular.” “Give me a break, I’m only 19,” was Josey’s response to awkward moments. She used the term so often that her traveling pack attempted to tag her with the trail
name, Nineteen. And every hiker had a trail name and couldn’t believe that Josey didn’t. Other thru-hikers she shared time with called her Pygmy and the Outlaw Josey Wales, an adept description of her, but theirs was a futile attempt to get her acceptance. Hikers knew her as the Name Killer because she constantly called her fellow travelers by their given names. She rejected Name Killer, too. “Most of us on the trail would never have been friends had we met in real life because we all came from such different backgrounds, regions, families and understandings. We probably would have prejudged and misjudged one another and never thought twice about it. On the trail we had such true bonds and so much in common; especially in mind.” Having endured the 280-mile, 28-day rugged hike through Maine and the 160 miles and 16 days of New Hampshire— about two months into the journey—Josey relaxed into a comfortable cadence. The trail was easier, too. She replaced her first pair of blown out hiking boots, which she wore for a week in a crippled state; purchased a hammock and had walked herself into physical shape. She learned to pack in the calories eating dry
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oatmeal, lots of junk food and cheese. Unlike almost all thru-hikers, Josey didn’t carry a stove. She’s a finicky eater. And at long last, the debilitating knee pain was gone. Growing respect for the absurdity of the pilgrimage to nowhere, Josey was reciting the old AT mantra, “When you wake up everyday; you know what you are going to eat, what you are going to wear and what you are going to do, walk.” She had a simple, solid goal and she knew how to achieve it, growing closer to the reward every day with each step. “It was cool to see a mountain and know that’s where I’m going or that’s where I’ve been.” Vermont was next. Hiking alone across the mountains and bogs of that beautiful state and meeting its good people is archived under a joyful adventure in Josey’s memory. She was walking across America now enjoying a protected slice of wilderness, a stone’s throw away from the population centers of the country. To her, the lifestyle on the trail had become more attractive and easier than real life.
Walking With The Fall, Her Favorite Season A soft wind caressed her white blond hair. She was beautiful and in an introspective place with nature’s womb fluidly protecting her. A chuckle rose to her lips. The kids in Pennsylvania around halfway called her and her thru-hiking companions heroes, taking photographs of the “great travelers.” Memories cascaded through her senses, matching the tempo of the falling water: the wounded bald eagle her Dad taught to fly—her first memory—the story of the Blue-Winged Dragon from elementary school. She mused, “The children were spry, free spirits and full of dreams.” Josey didn’t consider herself a hero; she was thru-hiking for selfish reasons. “The trip was about me, it was so important to me.” The tranquil spot was in the long state of Virginia, four months into the journey. Josey was an old hand of the trail. Tendonitis was a thing of the past and she was happy. The anxiety of real life had taken a back seat to a moving, improvisational lifestyle with everything on her back and nowhere to be, a trail of deep conversations and weathering storms. Those close to her at home saw the quality in her at a young age, her sense of well being matured beyond her age, and 84
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We all walk life’s trail to the end. Some fall a lot, some race through, some timidly step, many are handicapped from the beginning; others are along the way; most follow the leader and into hell quite often. A few strike out alone.
now she was feeling it for herself. Over her shoulder Kirtley, the Mississippi Madman and Southern gentleman, stirred. She thought of the wounded eagle from childhood again. Kirtley, 27, returned to the AT after taking two weeks off recuperating from a staph infection he apparently picked up from stagnant water on the trail. They met at a shelter in southern Vermont. “We were the only southbounders there that day.” The two frequently saw each other and over time became traveling companions, meeting up at shelters, having lunches and often walking together. He became a best friend. Glancing back to the waterfall and its swirling kaleidoscope, her breath shortened. The leaves disguised dangerous pitfalls along the trail. Cold nights numbed her in Pennsylvania. The big mountains of North Carolina and the Great Smokies lay ahead and winter was already curling her hair. She knew the ferocity of those peaks. She grew up in them. Hikers died from hypothermia and dehydration. She shivered at the thought of the flip flopper’s words, the middle-aged, cocksure, retired federal agent she met in a horrendous thunderstorm, “You should have started in June. It’s been a nasty year for weather, and I just don’t think you’ll make it, I really don’t.”
April 2010
Being There, The Trail Provides Having cleared the forest and reaching the summit of a bald, a day’s hike north of Damascus, Va., Josey raised her hiking poles and stretched. In the long distance the mists vaporized and Grandfather Mountain rose up. She could see home. Deep emotional tides rose from the earth. The unmistakable profile of her bed, her roots, Dad’s preserve, Mom’s lectures and hot food materialized. Peacefully, she whispered, “I’m here.” All was not well at home. Skin cancer had attacked Daddy Don, Josey’s grandfather, the loving, honest farmer from south Georgia. Daddy Don had a map of the AT. He was anxiously plotting Josey’s progress and when he received news of her whereabouts on the trail, he forwarded a weather report to her mom. Josey was not told of Don’s challenge, as the family feared it would interfere with hers. It was the ending of fall. “I knew that Thanksgiving was a sensitive spot for most of us on the trail and since my home was relatively close, I wrote messages in the trail logs to thru-hiking acquaintances I saw occasionally and guessed were in the vicinity.” On November 25, from Damascus, Va., to Roan Mountain Tenn., 75 trail miles, drivers went to road crossings of the AT to
The anxiety of real life had taken a back seat to a moving, improvisational lifestyle with everything on her back and nowhere to be, a trail of deep conversations and weathering storms.
More than 250 backcountry shelters are located along the AT like the Roan High Knob shelter.
intercept southbounders Josey had invited. They picked up Josey and 10 other thruhikers and drove them to Josey’s home. The next day, Mississippi Madman, Brave Little Toaster, Homefry, Lefty, Checkers, Chunky, Tutu, Just Joe, Rapid Fire, Bugman, Josey, Murphy, Roni, Bob and closest friends enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast. They talked of how the trail provides. Oh the memories that table of travelers share, they are inexorably entwined forever.
Nessun Dorma: None Shall Sleep Back on the trail, leftovers filled her tummy and love squeezed her insides. Standing on top of Roan Mountain and
looking southwest, Josey could almost see her rendezvous point across the Unaka mountain range—a three-day hike ahead, where her oldest friend would greet her for a 20th birthday celebration on November 29. Afterwards, good feelings propelled her forward for days through the Bald Mountains until she entered the Great Smokies, where light was a problem. The days were short. Snow had fallen, and the trail was ice for long distances. One day during a particularly bad winter storm, Josey struggled to control her hiking poles in the cold, pounding rain. All morning, for 10 miles, her head down and turned away from the wind, she lumbered forward. “I want to go home,” she said to herself for the first time. Chancing a glance upward, she thought, “I can’t be far away from the shelter, the guide book said 10 miles.” Kirtley was already there with four other southbound friends taking refuge from the storm—the tri-corner Knob Shelter; only 220 miles from the AT’s Southern terminus. First she heard the rain sounding off the shelter’s tin roof and then she saw it. She ducked between the two heavy tarps of the open faced, three-sided shelter to join her comrades. “You can do what you want. I’m not going any further.” She was spent. Winds were clocked at 107 miles per hour that day. Muttering that rain gear is an expensive joke, Josey tucked her wet body into her zero-degree bag shivering until the sound of sheeting rain gave way to exhaustive sleep and reality gave way to a cavernous world of dreams. Like Emily in Our Town, Josey looked down upon her 20th birthday celebration; laughter cheered her sleeping consciousness. “I’m not 19, I’m 20.” Moving scenes of past enchantments played out as visions of trail towns rolled by: the restored Bennington, Vt., full of artists, educated and friendly people;
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“I have never been as happy as I was on the trail. Maybe I should turn around and go north...another day.�
The Southern terminus on Springer Mountain, GA. Victory photo by Roni Ellis.
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camping by the river in the outfitter’s backyard in the Berkshires with the church steeples of North Adams poking through the mountains; pillaging through the bookstore in the ritzy little town of Kent, Conn.—sipping coffee and reading for hours; picking the free fruits of the ultimate trail town, Palmerton, Pa.; finding lighter after lighter, after lighter, after lighter in her pack; laughing with the good-ole-boys while enjoying the regenerative water in Hot Springs, N.C., where the AT is Main Street. Her sleep deepened and the dream changed from black-and-white to color. Laughter faded to opera—dah de rah, splenderà. “Are you going to the Mayor’s house, the thick mustached pick-up driver barked from his window on the unpainted road? She was in Unionville, N.Y. again in the modest living room of the ex mayor eating hamburgers and French fries with the chain smoking Butch and Bill and watching a video playing an aria,“Nessun dorma,” from Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot. The mayor cried. As the music crescendoed, Josey’s lips moved, singing, “Vincero, Vincero, I will win, I will win, I will win!”
Josey remembers dreaming that day in the storm, “I kept falling in and out of sleep. Weird, I was at peace with the trail in its harshest conditions and it’s funny that I relived the generosities bestowed upon me by caring people all along the trail. “The whole journey was full of meaningful coincidences; I seemed to be in the right place at the right time, like Thanksgiving and my birthday. It was as if the whole universe was pushing me forward. The trip restored my faith in humanity. Without the generosity in people’s hearts to help me, I would not have succeeded. “I didn’t tell all those wonderful people how much they meant to me before moving on and I regret that; although, many lived vicariously through us hikers, claiming that we inspired them to do that something special that had been waiting on the back burner. “The experience, it’s humbling. I’m just so lucky. I can’t even explain how much I learned, out there. There were too many lessons. I have never been as happy as I was on the trail.”
The Last Mile “The closer I got to the end of the trail the more nervous I was about returning to real life.” Thru-hikers often return to the trail after a few weeks of being back in society. “I met several thru-hikers who were back on the trail. They weren’t comfortable in their old lives anymore.” Roni, Bobby, Daddy Don, his wife Dee and Uncle Jack were waiting at the last road crossing in Georgia, walking beside her the last triumphant mile. After embracing Josey, Daddy Don took off his cap and said, “Cancer took my hair.” The combed-over silver locks were gone. Josey laughed with grandpa. She stepped onto the Southern terminus and the sun cast her silhouette on the ground. Photos were taken. She wrote in the register, “Maybe I should turn around and go north…another day”—Josey Ellis. Her world tipped upon its axis, and the sun began its daily hike north towards Mount Katahdin. It was December 22, 2009, winter solstice.
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Ashe County’s
Mountain Music Jamboree
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sually, Patsy Miller’s table is full. But it’s a slow night at the Mountain Music Jamboree in Glendale Springs, on account of it being winter, and probably also having a little something to do with a certain college basketball tournament that weekend. Still, there’s about six or seven seated ‘round Pat’s table—a handwritten tent sign reserves the table for “Miss Pat” and her friends—and by 8:30 p.m., some 50 or 60 people have gathered in the room, with about 30 of them scuffing and digging on the wooden dance floor. Crossroads, a country and rock cover band hailing from nearby Creston, cranks out the dance tunes from the Jamboree’s elevated stage. Since its beginnings as a fundraiser 23 years ago, the Mountain Music Jamboree has evolved into a social institution in northwestern North Carolina. Located on Highway 16, the Jamboree appears to be a modest gray warehouse building on the outside, but inside, it has the look and feel of a country barn. And, though it’s not mandatory, many of the regulars come looking the part, wearing their finest cowboy boots and hats, western shirts, denim jeans and oversized belt buckles. Every Saturday night for most of the year, the Jamboree features live bluegrass, old-time and country music, dancing and even a home-cooked buffet. On busy nights in the summer, about 200 people come through the doors for an evening of entertainment, making new acquaintances and socializing with old friends. “It’s a great place to bring guests to the area to show them a good time for the whole family,” said Arvill Scott, the man behind the operation. “You don’t have to like the music to have a great time at the Jamboree.” Arvill has been with the Jamboree since the beginning. That was back in May 1987, when his old-time band, the Walnut Hill 90
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TOP LEFT AND RIGHT: The Rock Bottom Bluegrass Band from Lansing played its farewell concert at the Mountain Music Jamboree last year, drawing a crowd of more than 300 people. ABOVE: Arvill Scott serves as host and emcee at the Jamboree and is the owner and operator. His jokes and antics put smiles on faces. Photos by Kim Hadley
Band, and the Whitetop Mountain Band from just across the Virginia state line started performing at the old Laurel Springs School as a fundraiser for a local travel organization. Both bands had cultivated loyal followings and were looking for a local venue to play on a regular basis. “Both of our bands were beginning to get enough people to follow us to where we thought it would stand on its own from that standpoint,” Arvill said, “but also to promote and give musicians in this area a place to showcase their talent.” The travel organization dissolved three or four years later, but the Mountain Music Jamboree continued to grow. Attendance averaged
April 2010
Arvill Scott, owner and operator
around 100 when the music outfit first started and after five years increased to an average of 150, outgrowing the old schoolhouse. The Jamboree then moved to the Burgiss Barn in Laurel Springs, where it remained until 2001, when it once again outgrew the building. “It looked like it was going to come to an end there with the person who owned that facility, or I was going to have to do something on my own,” Arvill said. “So I studied about it, and I prayed about it.” And from there, everything started to fall into place. Arvill arrived home one day to hear a message on his answering machine from someone who said they had some land that might be suitable for a new Jamboree building. Arvill looked it over and decided that it would work. “It just sort of came to me that way, and there have been a number of things
that happened along the way to sort of pave the way.” After deciding to build a new facility for the Jamboree, a number of friends and community members volunteered to help make the dream a reality. Alan Nichols, of Deep Gap, for instance. “Me and my wife helped build the place—we helped put the floor down,” said Alan, 53, a Jamboree devotee since its Laurel Springs School days. “We helped, because we love it.” As Alan remembers, his first trip to the Jamboree was simply to sit—on the back row, minding his own business—and listen to the music. But to Dewey Wells, a regular from Sparta, that would just not do. He kept hounding Alan, insisting, “You’re not having a good time ‘til you get up here and dance.” “I did, and I haven’t sat down since!” Alan laughed.
Patsy Miller (foreground) and Wanda Adams line dance to the beats of the Crossroads band. Adams teaches weekly dance classes at the Jamboree.
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Alan Nichols of Deep Gap
Arvill designed the new 7,200-squarefoot building, which opened in 2002, with acoustics and dancing in mind. In the center, in front of the stage, is the wooden dance floor, which stretches all the way to the back of the room, surrounded by enough tables and chairs to comfortably seat about 350 people. The plywood floor is built upon 2-by-4s, with plenty of bounce, which is good for the legs, Arvill explained. “It really makes for a good dance floor,” he added. “I wanted to have that atmosphere of a country barn dance.” The Mountain Music Jamboree is 92
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open every Saturday night from April to December from 7:00 to 10:30 p.m. This past winter, the Jamboree opened every second and fourth Saturday—when the weather would allow. The buffet, added four or five years ago, is served up by Winner’s Circle Restaurant from Jefferson. Heaping plates of fried chicken, baked ham, creamed corn, green beans, baked apples, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits and pie are $12 for adults and $8 for kids. It’s available May through October. “It’s country cooking; it fits in with country-style music,” noted Arvill.
April 2010
While line dancing is the popular favorite at the Mountain Music Jamboree, square dancing, waltzing and other social dances are also common on the dance floor.
From the beginning, the Mountain Music Jamboree has always maintained a family-friendly atmosphere where kids of all ages are welcome. Photo by Allison Canter
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n this particular Saturday night in mid-March, about a dozen people are locked in step, line dancing to a Johnny Cash tune, while another couple dances together closer to the stage. As the songs end, the line dancers appear to take a few sauntering steps in the direction of their seats, maybe even sneaking a quick sip of water, but then the next song begins, the dance leader starts again and the rest of the dancers hurry back to the floor to join her. Arvill, the host, is his own sideshow, wearing an assortment of ridiculous hats and wigs, sneaking up behind people and occasionally jumping on stage to crack a joke—anything for a laugh or a smile. “I’ve tried to be funnier—be the comedian. Try to lighten everybody’s spirits,” he said. Patsy, dressed in a lavender westernstyle shirt with fringe and matching purple cowboy boots, finally takes a break from line dancing when the band takes a set break. A regular for more than a year now, Patsy was coaxed to visit the Jamboree by her friends. Widowed about six years ago, she had been spending a lot of time alone at home. “My friends made me come out with them. I was staying home doing nothing,” said Pat, who hadn’t been dancing since high school. “I got hooked. I’ve not missed a night. Now I go dancing everywhere.” Patsy goes to dances in Sparta when the Jamboree isn’t open. “I wish it would stay open all the time in the winter—I miss it when it’s closed,” she said. Patsy, and Alan, too, listed Big Country Bluegrass of Mouth of Wilson, Va., as one of their favorite bands to hear at the Jamboree. Other frequent acts include bluegrass band
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As if music and dancing weren’t enough, the Jamboree also offers a country-style buffet from May to October, with fried chicken, baked ham, creamed corn, green beans, baked apples, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits and pie. The facility, which is also available for special events, can comfortably seat 350 with the dance floor. Photos by Kim Hadley
Amantha Mill, old-time and folk musicians Laura Boosinger and Josh Goforth, classic country outfit the Buck Haggard Band, the Dollar Brothers bluegrass and gospel band, country band Old Dogs-New Tricks, bluegrass gospel group Southern Accent, the Neighbors Bluegrass Band and young bluegrass outfit Surefire. The Mountain Music Jamboree stage has also featured the Kruger Brothers, Doc Watson, Wayne Henderson, Jeff Little, George Hamilton IV, Roni Stoneman of “Hee Haw” and many, many others. “We have such a wealth of entertainers, performers, musicians in this area that it’s not hard to find really good quality,” said Arvill. Last year, the Rock Bottom Bluegrass Band from Lansing played its farewell concert at the Jamboree, and more than 300 people came to say goodbye—the Jamboree’s largest crowd ever. These days, line dancing is king at the Jamboree, but it wasn’t always that way. Clogging and flatfooting used to be more common on the Jamboree floor, but in recent years, those old traditions have started to fade away, remarked Arvill, with a hint of lamentation. Every Saturday night also features a square dance or two, and sometimes other social dances, like the 94
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broom dance. Contra dancing, although not native to the Appalachian region, has become increasingly popular here, and so twice a year—Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends—the Jamboree hosts contra dances, which are typically well-attended affairs. Wanda Adams and Marion Miller teach dance lessons at the Jamboree on Thursday and Friday nights from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday lessons are for beginners; they move at a slower pace. U.S. and world maps hang on the wall near the entrance to the building, freckled with pushpins denoting the hometowns of the Jamboree’s thousands of visitors over the years. They’ve come from all up and down the Eastern seaboard, from Maine to Homestead, Fla., from all over the country, and from Finland, France, Uruguay, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Sri Lanka, Poland, Ireland, Greenland and Mexico. Years ago, the Jamboree was mentioned in National Geographic. “I have met a lot of people from all the world. They come from all over,” Alan said. Arvill was particularly touched by a visit from a group of hearing-impaired children, whose family members signed the dance calls to them. “It’s wonderful to
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Arvill Scott, owner and operator
see those kids dance,” he said. “One of the things it’s always been… it really doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive or what kind of clothes you have or what color you are, when you come through the door, we’re all there for the same purpose—to have a good time,” explained Arvill. The Jamboree facility is available for other events, as well, including wedding receptions and rehearsal dinners, reunions and parties. A church group meets at the building on Mondays. In keeping with the family atmosphere,
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the Mountain Music Jamboree has always been alcoholand tobacco-free. It’s important that kids and families feel welcome. “I think we’ve got one of the youngest crowds on average,” added Arvill. Running a live music venue isn’t easy, and it hasn’t meant a lot of money for Arvill, who also works full-time in Watauga County. The Jamboree takes up at least three days of his week, though—even more in the summer. “Like anything you’re passionate about, it’s always on my mind,” he said.
“I’m thankful to be associated with it. It’s gone on as long as it has, and I’ll continue it as long as I’m supposed to.” For more information about the Mountain Music Jamboree, contact Arvill at 336-384-4079 or 800-803-4079 or info@mountainmusicjamboree.com or click to www.MountainMusicJamboree. com. The Mountain Music Jamboree is located at 9331 N.C. Highway 16 in Glendale Springs.
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Mount Mitchell st
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Mountain Golf Treasure
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he popular Mt. Mitchell Golf Club is widely considered one of golf ’s finest treats. It is located in the beautiful Toe River Valley, on the southern edge of the North Carolina High Country, and at the base of the mountain that gave it its name—the highest peak in eastern America, which rises to 6,684 feet. The golf course came to be as the result of an incredible series of events. Two UNC students in the mid-1960s lived in the same dorm and became best friends. Lee King was from Hickory and Jim Floyd
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from Raleigh. Jim taught Lee how to play golf and, according to Lee, “We spent a lot more time playing golf than we should have.” Their dream while skipping class and playing golf was to own their own course. Jim’s father, Vern, had a background in renovating golf courses, but his primary career was as a real estate broker selling large tracts of land. Some members of the Deyton family were Raleigh neighbors, and the family had been long-time landowners in Yancey County. They, along with the
(above) The par five fifth hole, with its narrow fairway and trouble lurking on both sides, presents golfers with one of the most intimidating tee shots in the mountains. (below) The short but dangerous 11th has dramatic views, both up and down—down to a postage stamp green with steep drop-offs and up to Mount Mitchell and the hightest mountain range in Eastern America.
Bowditch family, owned a prime piece of property they leased to hunting clubs that they decided to sell. They asked Vern to sell the property, but after several years, he had no takers. Meanwhile, Jim and Lee graduated from UNC, entered military service and served in Vietnam. After returning, they were ready to build their own golf course. They checked out the Mt. Mitchell property and felt it was a perfect place for a course. The success of Hound Ears and Grandfather Golf & Country Club convinced them that a new course in the mountains would work. Lee, his father Buck, Jim and Vern went in together to buy the property and build the course. Lee’s father was instrumental in securing initial bank financing for the new development. Vern was a successful golf writer in addition to his real estate and golf course renovation work. He wrote for Golf and Golfdom magazines. One assignment was to travel to England to write an article on Frederick George (F.G.) Hawtree, the designer of Royal Birkdale, one of England’s best courses and a part of the British Open course rotation. There, he met F.G.’s son Frederick William (F.W.), and they became good friends. Vern asked F.W. to design their new course. The Hawtree firm began in 1912 and is the longest continuous practice of golf architecture in the world. F.W.’s son Martin (M.G.) runs the firm now. The Hawtrees have designed or renovated more than 200 courses on every continent on Earth except Antarctica. Mt. Mitchell was their first of three American courses with the second, The Links, coming a year later in New Jersey. The third, Reems Creek, was designed by Martin in 1989. Construction on Mt. Mitchell began in 1972 and in 1975, the course opened. Governor James Holshouser and UNC football legend Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice helped open the course. Justice loved Mt. Mitchell so much he built a home on the 11th hole. The course was an immediate success. Jim and Lee were able to sell enough property early on to pay back their loans and build the course. With the success of Mt. Mitchell, Jim and Lee, along with Bill Robinson April 2010
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Mount Mitchell Golf Club’s Spectacular Setting
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he beauty of the Toe River Valley and its diverse plant life was well known from the time of its earliest settlers. In 1787, French botanist and explorer Andre Michaux was sent to the area by King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette to bring back specimens of trees, shrubs and plants to help with the restoration of French forests. About the same time, Englishman John Fraser was in the valley collecting plants for England. Fraser’s favorite was a beautiful fir tree that now bears his name and is called “the Cadillac of Christmas trees.” Michaux and others were convinced that Grandfather Mountain was the highest peak in the state, if not the country, but a UNC science professor named Elisha Mitchell believed otherwise. He explored and measured the height of a mountain he felt was higher. In 1835, he figured its height to be around 6,400 feet, then after climbing the mountain and measuring its height in 1844, he upped his altitude to 6,672 feet (only 14 feet off the true height measured with modern instruments). One of Michaux’s students, Thomas Clingman, who later became a general in the Civil War, challenged Michaux’s claims, claiming that Smoky Dome on the North Carolina/Tennessee border in what is now known as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was higher. In response to the challenge, Mitchell went back up the mountain in 1857 to verify his measurements. Unfortunately, Mitchell slipped next to a waterfall and fell to his death. He was honored posthumously the next year by having the mountain he loved named after him. Smoky Dome, the third highest peak in eastern America at elevation 6,643 feet, was later changed to Clingman’s Dome. In the early 1900s, forces were at play that would have destroyed the towering trees and virgin forests that line the course’s fairways. The lower slopes of Mt. Mitchell and its neighboring peaks, which comprise the Black Mountain range, as well as 98
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(above) The par four 18th, played from an elevated tee, provides an exciting finish to a great day of golf at Mount Mitchell. (below) The South Toe River is great for catching trout and golf balls.
the valley floor on the eastern side of the range, were the target of loggers determined to clear cut the entire area. Local residents of the affected area, which includes the site of the Mt. Mitchell Golf Club, asked North Carolina Governor Locke Craig to help stop the clear cutting onslaught. Craig
was appalled with what was happening, and he acted quickly to form a state parks system in North Carolina. Then he made Mt. Mitchell the first state park. For his efforts, the 6,647-foot peak next to Mt. Mitchell, the second highest peak east of the Mississippi, was named Mt. Craig.
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Discover the Best of Regional Craft
Jewelry: Barbara Joiner
from Orlando, decided to buy a second course, Kenmure, in Flat Rock in 1985. That course was successful, too. It was designed by Joe Lee and was named a “Top 50 Developed Course in the Southeast” by Golfweek magazine. They built Reems Creek, located in the Asheville suburb of Weaverville, to make their third course. Lee ran Kenmure and Reems Creek while Jim ran Mt. Mitchell. A few years later, the two added former CBS golf commentator Ben Wright to their partnership for the Kenmure and Reems Creek courses. In 1977, Mt. Mitchell hosted a regional high school golf match and during the match, Lee and Jim met the golf coach (who also was the basketball coach) for Owen High School in Swannanoa. The coach was very impressed with the course and would return often to play. The three became good friends. After he accepted a position as an assistant basketball coach at UNC in 1978, the coach gave Lee and Jim UNC basketball tickets. When the coach became head coach at Kansas in 1988, he brought his Kansas friends on golfing excursions to North Carolina, and Mt. Mitchell was always on the schedule. One day that coach, who we all know by now is Roy Williams, told Lee, “If anything opens up for me to be partners with you on your golf courses, let me know.” Sure enough, when Ben Wright decided to sell his 25 percent interest in Kenmure and Reems Creek, Lee knew who to contact. Roy said, “Do you mind if Dean Smith and Eddie Fogler come in with me?” Lee said, “I thought about it for a split second and said YES!” Dean Smith, of course, is Dean Smith. Fogler was an assistant at UNC with Williams and went on to become head coach at Vanderbilt and South Carolina. The three coaches have all been named “National Coach of the Year.” Dean Smith sold his ownership in the two courses to ASU head basketball coach Buzz Peterson, also a UNC guy, two years ago. The partners sold Reems Creek in 2009. Jim said, “Lee and I are both
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Water comes into play on 11 holes at Mount Mitchell, both enhancing the beauty and shot values of the course. (top to bottom) A pond guards the short par four 17th. The South Toe River makes approach shots to the signature 14th hole and the par three 15th an exciting challenge.
63 years old. We needed less to do, not more, so we lightened our load.” Mt. Mitchell is a fun course to play. It measures only 6,495 yards from the back tees and 6,125 from the middle tees, so length is not the problem. “The problem” is a very attractive one: the South Toe River winds its way through the course and gobbles up stray golf shots on several holes. On the 520-yard par five fifth hole, the Roaring Fork Creek borders the right side of the fairway until about a hundred yards from the green, where it crosses the fairway to switch to the left side of the green. The fairway looks about as wide as a bowling lane with the creek on one side and woods on the other. Many a good start to a round has abruptly ended here. On Mt. Mitchell’s second nine lies a stretch of holes that are simply as good as golf gets. The 11th is a 145yard par three that drops steeply from an elevated tee. Miss to the right and you drop off even further. The 12th is a 530-yard par five with a narrow fairway that arcs to the left. Stray just a little bit, and you’ll be pitching back into the fairway from the trees. The 430-yard 13th is almost a 90-degree dogleg left that requires a good, well-placed drive to be able to hit a clear approach to the green. The marquee hole on the course is next. The 450-yard slight dogleg left 14th requires the second shot to carry over the South Toe River to reach the green. Talk about an intimidating shot—you have no choice but to hit a great shot to carry the river! The stretch of “as good as it gets” holes ends with the 180-yard par three 15th, which requires a carry over the cascading South Toe River to a small, undulating green. The rest of the holes on the back side, as well as those on the front, are no slouches. All are interesting designs with their own unique challenges, and all play against 100
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The 430-yard 13th is almost a 90-degree dogleg left that requires a good, well-placed drive to be able to hit a clear approach to the green.
the massive backdrop of Mt. Mitchell and the rugged Blacks, the highest mountain range in eastern America. Mt. Mitchell is recognized as a great course by Golf Digest magazine, receiving 4.5 stars out of a maximum of five in its course ratings. The North Carolina Golf
Panel’s 2010 rankings place Mt. Mitchell in the top 10 public courses in the state. Considering both public and private courses, Mt. Mitchell is ranked #14 in Western North Carolina and #72 out of more than 550 courses in the state. “Because I have been here 35
years, I sometimes take for granted the view of Mt. Mitchell,” Jim said. “Sometimes people driving by stop and come out on our deck and take a picture of the mountain. They rave about how beautiful the view is. That reminds us of what a great place we have. I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else during the summer.” Mt. Mitchell is open late April through October. Its 2010 rates are $58 Monday through Thursday and $88 Friday through Sunday. The course is located on N.C. Highway 80 about 10 miles south of its intersection with U.S. Highway 19-E and two miles north of Blue Ridge Parkway Milepost 343. Contact the course for more information at 828-675-4923 or click to www. mountmitchellgolfresort.com.
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ADVERTISERS INDEX Please patronize the advertisers in High Country Magazine, and when you purchase from them, please be sure to mention that you saw their ad in our pages. Thank them for their support of this publication by giving them yours! Without their support, this magazine would not be possible. To all of our advertisers, a most sincere thank you. All Area Codes are 828 unless noted. ADVERTISER
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A Cleaner World . ............................................ 265-1888 ������������������������� 27 Abbey Carpet & Floor . .................................... 265-3622 ������������������������� 48 Advanced Realty.............................................. 264-5111 ������������������������� 99 An Appalachian Summer Festival................. 800-841-ARTS ����������������������� 83 Antiques on Howard ........................................ 262-1957 �������������������������� 85 Appalachian Energy ........................................ 262-3637 ������������������� 37, 57 Banner Elk Herb Festival...........................www.beherbfest.com ������������������ 59 Banner Elk Realty............................................. 898-9756 ��������������������������� 2 Bayou Smokehouse & Grill............................... 898-8952 �������������������������� 93 Bear Creek at Linville........................................ 733-5767 ���������������������������� 1 Bistro, The....................................................... 265-0500 ������������������������� 91 Blowing Rock Properties, Inc............................ 295-9200 ������������� Inside Back Blowing Rock Resort Rentals & Sales............... 295-9899 ������������������������� 95 Blue Ridge Realty / Todd Rice......................... 263-8711 �������������������������� 31 Blue Ridge Vision ........................................... 264-2020 ������������������������� 53 Boone Drug Down Town................................... 264-3766 ���������������������������� 2 Boone Mall...................................................... 264-7286 �������������������������� 73 Broyhill Home Collections................................ 295-2965 �������������������������� 25 Cabin Store, The.............................................. 295-8005 �������������������������� 17 Café Portofino.................................................. 264-7772 ������������������������� 81 Canyons.......................................................... 295-7661 ������������������������� 61 Capua Law Firm, PA......................................... 264-0260 �������������������������� 65 Carolina Timberworks, LLC............................... 266-9663 ������������������������� 65 Casa Rustica ................................................... 262-5128 ������������������������� 49 Celtic Building Company, Inc........................... 963-6229 �������������������������� 65 Deer Valley Luxury Condos............................... 264-5583 �������������������������� 30 DeWoolfson Down .......................................... 963-4144 ������������������������� 26 Dianne Davant & Associates . .......................... 898-9887 ������������Inside Front Doe Ridge Pottery............................................ 264-1127 �������������������������� 53 Echota......................................................... 866-861-4150 ��������� Back Cover Fabric Shoppe, The.......................................... 355-9153 �������������������������� 95 Forget-Me-Nots Landscaping & Gardens.......... 297-5479 �������������������������� 59 Framing by Lori................................................ 262-0033 �������������������������� 63 Fred’s General Mercantile................................. 387-4838 ������������������������� 70 Gamekeeper..................................................... 963-7400 ������������������������� 38 Gems By Gemini.............................................. 295-7700 ������������������������� 36 Gladiola Girls................................................... 264-4120 �������������������������� 13 Glidewells........................................................ 295-9683 �������������������������� 70 Green Leaf Services, Inc................................... 737-0308 �������������������������� 16 Greenmother Goods........................................ 262-33535 ������������������������� 65 Haircut 101...................................................... 262-3324 ������������������������� 93 Harmony Timberworks...................................... 264-2314 �������������������������� 19 Hawksnest Zipline........................................ 800-822-4295 ��������������������� 101 Headwaters at Banner Elk, The...................... 866-200-3290 ������������������������� 7 102
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Hemlock Inn.................................................... 295-7989 ���������������������������� 2 High Country Energy Solutions......................... 265-2683 �������������������������� 63 High Country Home Builders Association......... 297-6566 �������������������������� 85 High Country Timberframe............................... 264-8971 ���������������������������� 5 High Mountain Expeditions............................... 262-9036 �������������������������� 73 Isley Construction Company............................. 898-7544 �������������������� 31, 38 Jo-Lynn Enterprises, Inc................................... 297-2109 ������������������������� 79 Knox Group Realtors......................................... 963-7325 �������������������������� 91 LifeStore Bank.................................................. 265-2580 �������������������������� 13 Linville Land Harbor..................................... 888-909-8333 ����������������������� 50 Logs America, LLC........................................... 963-7755 ������������������������� 47 Makoto’s Japanese Steak House & Sushi Bar... 264-7976 �������������������������� 30 Maple’s Leather Fine Furniture ........................ 898-6110 ������������������������� 39 Mast General Store ......................................... 262-0000 ���������������������������� 9 Mountain Construction Enterprises, Inc............ 963-8090 ������������������������� 63 Mountain Home & Hearth................................. 262-0051 �������������������������� 65 Mountain Land............................................1-800-849-9225 ��������������������� 30 Mountain Top Golf Cars, Inc............................. 963-6775 �������������������������� 61 Mountaineer Landscaping................................ 733-3726 �������������������������� 11 NC Welding Solutions...................................... 381-4598 �������������������������� 28 Neighborhood Yoga.......................................... 265-0377 �������������������������� 57 Outdoorsman Inc., The..................................... 268-1313 �������������������������� 53 Page Denistry................................................... 265-1661 �������������������������� 31 Parkway Craft Center........................................ 295-7938 �������������������������� 99 Pet Place, The.................................................. 268-1510 �������������������������� 81 Pioneer Insurance Agency, Inc.......................... 355-9612 �������������������������� 28 Planet Tan........................................................ 262-5721 �������������������������� 53 Precision Printing............................................. 265-0004 ���������������������������� 2 Pssghetti’s....................................................... 295-9855 �������������������������� 79 Shoppes at Farmers Hardware.......................... 264-8801 ������������������������� 87 Stick Boy Bread Company................................ 268-9900 �������������������������� 91 Stone Cavern................................................... 963-8453 �������������������������� 31 Sugartop Resort Sales...................................... 898-5226 �������������������������� 87 Sunny Day Homes, Inc..................................... 265-4123 �������������������������� 61 Superior Spas.................................................. 963-6624 ��������������������������� 6 Tatum Galleries & Interiors............................... 963-6466 �������������������������� 15 Tynecastle Builders.......................................... 387-7192 ���������������������������� 3 Village Realty Group / Yvette Teeples................ 478-1058 �������������������������� 41 Watauga Green Business Plan.......................... 262-8336 �������������������������� 59 Watauga Insurance Agency, Inc........................ 264-8291 ������������������������� 11 Watauga Solar, LLC............................... info@wataugasolar.com ���������������� 61 Watsonatta Western World................................ 264-4540 �������������������������� 95 WNC Renewable Energy Initiative..................... 262-3045 �������������������������� 59 Wren’s Nest..................................................... 963-8864 �������������������������� 65
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Parting Shot...
By
Kyle Beckmann
Trick (Switch Lead Mute 540, to be Exact) and Treat (Most Snow in Years)
K
yle Beckmann, a freelance photographer based in Beech Mountain, took this shot of talented Boone local Charlie Owens performing a trick called a “switch lead mute 540” at the Appalachian Terrain Park at Appalachian Ski Mountain. The trick entails going into a spin backwards and doing a “mute grab”—using the right hand to grab the left ski, Kyle explained. This parting shot was a combination of many photographs taken in a short period of time. “It’s using the frames per second to your advantage and layering [the photos] in Photoshop,” he explained. “It’s all postproduction. It’s a lengthy process, but it’s fun.” The process involves cropping out circles from each photograph, placing
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them sequentially and then deleting the unneeded parts of the picture. Finding a willing participant for the photo shoot was easy, however, as Appalachian Ski Mountain, as well as the region’s other three snowsports resorts, received epic proportions of snow over winter 2009-10; you couldn’t throw a snowball this winter without hitting a local enjoying the stellar conditions. Charlie, like thousands of other skiers and snowboarders, didn’t have to long for the copious snowfalls of out West this winter as nearly seven feet of snow fell in Boone in a matter of three months, and more than 11 feet of snow fell on Beech Mountain. “We’ve been recording for the U.S. Weather Service for 15 years, and this is
April 2010
the [most snowfall] we’ve had,” said Fred Pfohl, owner of Fred’s General Mercantile on Beech Mountain. The immense amount of natural snow, coupled with the highest number of school days cancelled because of inclement weather since winter 1977-78, meant the local ski slopes were packed with perfect conditions and students all winter, which provided plenty of time to practice new tricks, such as the Charlie’s switch lead mute 540. Kyle graduated from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla., in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and photography. He has been shooting as a freelance photographer since then, he said. To see more of his work, click to www. kbeckmannphoto.com.
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www.BlowingRockProperties.com April 2010
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Actual morning view from Echota on the Ridge overlooking the Watauga River Valley.
Second Home. FirSt cHoice.
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