Page 2, West Craven Highlights, May 17, 1984 Tips For Tourists By JONATHAN PHILLIPS Consider the following items which have appeared within the last 12 months in northeastern newspapers. 1. The New York Times ran a Sunday article on the good life down in North Carolina, citing how wonderful y’all have it in terms of recreation, education, jobs, and quality of life. Despite the fact that you may live in a leaky-roofed shack and make minimum wage at Hardee’s the Times thinksyou all have itgood and all but urged every urbanite from Trenton to Hartford to pack up the Volvo and move on down. 2. The Newark Star-Ledger travel section ran a series of articles similarly touting southern Virginia as a sort of Utopia- on-the-James-River. 3. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a travel article on the joys of spending your summer down south, enjoying minor league baseball by night and exploring the scenery and culture by day. This piece made it sound like watching the Kinston Blue Jays and Durham Bulls in the evening and watching a tobacco auction in Greenville in the morning is the next best thing to, and maybe better than, staying at a luxury hotel in Monte Carlo. 4. In an article reprinted in many N.C. newspapers, the N.Y. Times food section sent a writer to Lexington and Goldsboro, N.C., in search of good old Carolina pork barbecue. In the past I have reacted to these journalistic celebrations of life in the homelands by bemoaning the possibility of carloads of Yankee urbanites blasting down U.S. 17 in search of barbecue, baseball, and bucolic living. Now I’ve had a change of heart. It is time to go with the flow. I’ve been to my share of Kinston Blue Jays games (except they were the Kinston Eagles then), and I love N.C. and Virginny. But if these Yankees will believe that hanging out at the Kinston ballpark is worth driving down from Kingof Prussia for or that Charlotte and Suffolk are the next best thing to the promised land, well, they might be made to believe more than that. And we, dear friends, might make a profit. ♦ ♦ ♦ If they’ll believe that there is something romantic about a doubleheader between Greensboro and Lynchburg, just think what a dose of North Carolina high school basketball would do for them. If Yankees want to partake of a little local color, let them jam in with all the local residents into an incredibly hot, poorly- ventilated gymnasium and drink watery sodas as they watch some real southern-style hoops. More About Hog Island By LELA BARROW Due to lack of space for my article in the Highlights last week I cut “my visit to Hog Island short. Now I will tell you some more. Today I called a Vanceboro man around seventy years of age, thinking he could tell me something interesting about the Island; he said he had never been there. “Where is it?” It is between Vanceboro and New Bern to be sure - it isn’t gone and forgotten. When I was there in 1907 it was a nice, clean place to go fishing the year round. Take a fishing pole and a few worms dug out of the ground, catch a string full of fish, go home dress and cook them for supper, and bake a big pan of crusty cornbread with plenty of homemade butter. Just maybe a big apple-pie for dessert. That’s good eating! Ducks were plentiful there. There wasn’t any telephone on the Island. I had to go out to the mainland to call my mother that we wouldn’t be coming home on Friday as we had planned we would come on Monday. Ray Brewer said he’d take me to the telephone. When he drove up to the house for me to get in the buggy, his sisters were there to see us off. Believe me they went ”in the air”—Ray got a “tongue-lashing” from them. Instead of the real buggy-broken, gentle horse, Ray had hitched a colt, not broken to any vehicle. They said: “You are not taking Lela out behind that horse - you don’t know what he will do.” Talk did no good. Hold them I wasn’t afraid of the horse. Remember how it had rained and how high it was in low places - the marshland full of muddy water also full of reeds, brushes knee high on the side of this narrow road, roots to run over before getting to the narrow board bridge across the river - then more marsh, reeds the other side of the bridge. That pony felt good and went lickety-split all the way except when he had to slow down for deep water. Ray had trained the horse by talking to him as well as using the reins. Before going on this visit I made a white shirt-waist and trimmed it in yards of insertion and tucks, very pretty. I was wearing this shirt waist with a navy skirt this morning. After making the call home on our way back to Hog Island the pony decided he could get there faster running than he could trotting. Regardless of mud, water or Ray talking he did it his way but he got us home safe and sound. Now-truly-you could not tell what color my shirt-waist and underclothes were. Everything - even to Lela - had to go in the tub. But it was fun, and the pony enjoyed it immensely. So did Ray and Lela. Thank the Lord for homemade fun. A A. i mmmi Receives Honor Once they’ve seen D.H. Conley at West Craven or Aurora at Chocowinity, they’ll realize they’ve never really known what excitement is. Even as they sell off their Celtics season tickets. West Craven and Chocowinity can put their game tickets into northern Ticketron outlets at wildly inflated prices and make a bundle. * IK * •> Or how’s about this idea: If that N.Y. Times food writer, could not, as he suggested, tell much difference between western N.C. barbecue in Lexington, and eastern Carolina barbecue in Goldsboro, then there is a great potential for pulling a few more gastric fast ones. If the Yankee Palate can’t tell east from west barbecue-wise, then you could probably unload chit’lins or most anything else on ’em and tell ’em it was real Carolina-style barbecue. And since Caviar is made of fish eggs, maybe we could pass off shad roe as Russian caviar and make another killing. I hate to waste good shad roe on Yankees, but sacrifices must be made in the name of profit. * t if * * The average New Yorker, living amongst crowds and filth, with no elbow room, would probably relish the thought of getting a little exercise in the wide open spaces. Since most of these folks aren’t too bright, why not combine this desire with the desire to soak up local color and have “Pick Your Own Tobacco Flowers” stops for Northern tourists. Sell’em on the idea that tobacco plant floristic components are attractive, that working in a tobacco field is quaint, and that it is good exercise in the fresh air. Presto! Not only do you get your ’baccer topped without having to force your kids and wife to do it, but them New Yorkers will pay you for the privilege. ***** The way I see it, the northern press is already doing most of our advertising for us. If we just pick up on it, go with the flow, and make a few creative adjustments, we’ll all be in good shape. In a few years you’ll be sitting in the shade on your front porch, sipping a mint julep as New York tourists work your flue-cured for you. When they’re done, you serve up some chit-lins and shad roe at 15 bucks a head. They’ll have such a good time that they’ll be back in January to take in the West Craven-New Bern game with 12-dollar tickets, with maybe an after-game cocktail or Swift Creek Mineral Water. See you on Easy Street. Tyanne Williams Tyanne Williams, daud^ of Bobby T. and Anne tHI Williams has won first seat in the Pitt County School Band. This is the third year in succession she has made this accomplishment. The band performed at D.H. Conley, High School April 19, at 7:30 p.m. 'Tyanne was featured in two clarinet solo parts. She is a student at G.R. Whitfield School in Grimesland where she is a cheerleader and involved in many other school activities. Tyanne is the granddaughter of Ruth Mae Hill of Vanceboro, N.C. THE HIGHLIGHTS Craven County’s Family Wsskly Nswsftapsr P.O. Box 404, Milin St., Across from the Post Office Vanceboro, North Carolina, 28686 Phone (818) 244-0780, (018) 244-0808 W.L. Cannon, Jr Publisher & Business Manager ChrleUne HIH Office Manager Sharon Buck Production Manager Bdith Hedsos Circulation Manager Circulation Zeno IvoieMo, III Paste Up PUBLI8HID BVERY THURSDAY elage Paid at Vanceboro, N.C. 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