THE RAIN AND THE ROADS

In 1933 there still were a lot of unpaved roads in rural North Carolina, especially around the part where we lived, and to drive anywhere people had to learn to master "wash-board" trails in dry weather and soft gooey loam when it rained.

The rain was the worse.

An elderly fellow died a couple of houses up from us, and though we lived only about 300 yards from the "new" town cemetery, they planned to send him off in the undertaker's brand-new hearse.

It rained for three days before the burial service, and when the hearse picked him up from the house on the side street and tried to make the corner at the main road to the cemetery, it slipped and slid and became hopelessly stuck in the muck.

Luckily, there still were some mules around. Two of them were pressed into service at the front of the new hearse and they pulled it and him all the way to the graveyard.

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CONQUERING CONNARITSA

My brother Stanley was an ingenious fellow even when he was a little shaver.

When I was 16 and he was 13, I was awarded a driver's license so I could haul newspapers printed in Ahoskie to their home postoffices in Gatesville and Windsor.

There was a lot of dark, dismal forest between us and both those towns, and since the job required a late-afternoon start from Ahoskie, I was always glad to have him come along for company. Especially so one rainy evening in the middle of Connaritsa Swamp just outside Aulander, when a tire went flat on the pickup truck.

We searched the truck and found the spare tire but were unable to find a jack and any tire-changing tools. We did find a screwdriver and a big monkey-wrench.

At Stanley's suggestion, we took bundles of newspapers from the back of the truck and wedged them under the axle on the flat side.

Then we took the screwdriver and removed the license plate, which we used to scoop the soft, wet dirt from under the flat.

Then we used the monkey-wrench to loosen the lug bolts and change the tire.

Then we stuffed dirt back in the hole and drove the truck off the newspapers.

I was puffed up kind of proud the next day when I told the boss how we had managed.

He was worried that we might have messed up some newspapers. And he took me to the truck, lifted the seat, and showed me where the jack and lug-wrench were stowed.

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Sometimes it really rains hard in East NC.
After their sixth washout in Little Washington in three years,
"The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature"
went looking for a new location.

Photo by Valerie MacEwan
Find DEAD MULE'S URL under "Quick Links"
at the Poor Town book titles

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TRAVELING LIGHT

For years, North Carolina agonized over what to do about its coastal landmark, the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.

With the fast-eroding shoreline, it seemed doomed to fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

The options considered included (a) letting it go, (b) building a rock-jetty island around it or (c) moving it further inland while there still was some "inland."

The proposal to move it was met with considerable skepticism and was the object of jokes from people who were certain that any such effort would result in crumbling and collapse of the brick structure. Who would think of trying to move the tallest lighthouse in the United States a half-mile?

There were some fellows who said they could, and they were given a chance.

Not only did they succeed, but having developed an ingenious new method of clamping push-jacks on the rails where they put the lighthouse, they finished the job in less than half the time originally projected.

When they finished the big shove, their equipment nudged over a "stop" sign that had been placed at the new site.

While most of the state was cheering, newspeople said a park ranger gave them a "ticket" for "exceeding the speed limit for lighthouses" and for "going through a stop sign."

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Becky Pearce photo
May 1999

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National Park Service
photo
July 1999

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STARKEY'S STORY

Starkey Copeland was my mother's oldest brother.

He had been in service in WWI, though not in any fighting, and after he got out of the army he landed a good job in Washington, D.C., with the General Accounting Office. He never married, maybe because of a bad scar on his face which my mother said he received when he fell into a fireplace as a child.

The combination of bachelorhood and a good government job served him well financially, and he was very generous and quick to help any members of his extended family who happened to be in need.

Of course a lot of them did need help in the '30s. He had at least 28 nieces and nephews, and he never forgot any of them on his frequent trips to Hertford and Bertie County.

He salvaged and repaired children's riding toys such as tricycles etc., and he would load his "machine" (which was what he always called his automobile) inside and out with them for distribution on his visits.

He also distributed nickels, but with the admonition that if we bought any bottles of "pop," we should only buy 7-Up, because everything else contained caffeine and he said that was bad for us.