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
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Across from the Post Office
Vanceboro,
North Carolina, 28686
Phone (818) 244-0780,
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