PaOf 2f W««tCraym MajMrlMt 'V
Vehicular
Outings
With
Petula Mae
Klangston
Gall L. Roberson
Petula Mae Klangston and me have been friends for many
years. What time I’m not getting her out of trouble, she’s doing the
same by me. When we’re not holding pouting sprees and
shouting matches, we’re generally borrowing each other’s
things, plundering the countryside or crying on each other’s
shoulder. Petula Mae is a real good friend. She's the kind of friend
that’s not afraid to teii me that my excess adipose tissue is
showing so don’t wear that pair of pants to the speaking
engagement, or that the back of my dress and siip is caught up in
the top of my panty hose. Oniy thing is, sometimes she tends to
get her kicks by ietting me waik around like that for a wh iie before
she finaiiy informs me that i’m making a spectacie of myself.
But, I still like Petula Mae, and I always get her back for her she
nanigans. We go back a long ways. We’ve learned to take and
expect a lot from each other. We’re as thick and stuck together in
times of heed as my chicken pastry. And, above all else, we’re not
afraid of having a good old "free-for-all" once in a while. It
clears the air, settles the dust, and makes things a whole lot more
interesting for the rest of the year.
However, through all these years of friendship, I’ve come to
realize that Petula Mae does not enjoy riding with me. Maybe it’s
because she gets tired of pacing back and forth while she waits
for me to arrive. Or perhaps it’s due to the fact that she’s fed up
with having to move all the notebooks and stuff on the front seat
in order to settle into her place once I finally do get there. She
denies it, but whatever the case may be, my sixth sense tells me
that Petula Mae looks rather cautiously upon our vehicular
outings withnothing shy of much reserve and concern over the
possibility of her permanent and untimely demise.
I can tell that Petula Mae is uneasy when she travels with me for
several very apparent reasons. First of all, she has ALWAYS
buckled up. However, I’ve noticed that she only buckles up while
she’s riding in MY car. No other car. Just mine.
And then, there’s her feet. That’s right. Her feet. Both of her size
10s are affixed firmly in place at ALL times. I can take you out
there to my car and show you the dents under the metal
floorboard if you don’t believe me.
When I approach a stop sign from half a rnile away, Petula Mae
begins pushing at the flooHbOard with her feet while she braces
herself with one hand on thejdash and the fingers of the other
firmly seizing the back of my seat.
"Stop DOING that, Petula Mae!" I always threaten. "I’m going
to stop this car as best I can at the appropriate point of arrival at
that stop sign. But, if you don’t stop pusing so hard, you’re going
to push me right through it and straight off into the woods on the
other side! So STOP PUSHING, PETULA! Okay. Alright. I’ve got
it now. See? We’re arrived. Safely. You can stop pushing now,
Petula. I SAID, stop PUSHING, Petula!"
And, of course, there are always the mailboxes. I get the
distinct impression that Petula Mae has something against those
metal boxes on short posts that sit alongside the highway and
bear many dents and missing letters. For some reason, every time
we get a little close to one of those things, she immediately
bounces over to the passenger side. I do not like that. It throws
my concentration off and causes me to lose sight of the little
white line along the edge of the highway. It also makes me have
to yell at her again. "If you have some grudge with the postal
authorities, Petula Mae, I suggest you take it up with the
appropriategovernmentalbranch and just leave me out of it!"
We’ve pianned another one of our excursions
tomorrow...Petula Mae Klangston and me, and thattime we’ll be
hunting swamps for a wild flower I’ve been asked to photograph
and write about. It'il be rough terrain, so I guess I’d better drive
the old pickup truck. The brakes don’t work so good, but with
Petula Mae alona. that won’t be a problem.
North Carolina
Literary Notes
by E. T. Malone, Jr.
Make Someone
Happy Todayl
Happy Ads
Dictionary Of North Carolina Biography. Volume II, D-G
Edited by William S. Powell. Chapel Hill; Univ, of North Carolina
Press, 1986, 389 pp. $45.00.
On February 28, the University Press at Chapel Hill published
the second volume in William S. Powell’s mammoth project
designed to narrate the life stories of North Carolina’s most
interesting, notorious, and worthwhile citizens of the past.
The new volume of the long-delayed Dictionary of North
Carolina Biography covers the letters "D" through "G". The first
volume, published in 1979 and including letters "A" through "C",
contained 708 entries and was 497 pages in length. This second
installment in the projected multi-volume series is 389 pages tong
and contains 523 sketches.
Powell, now in semi-retirement from the History Department at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, began this project
in 1971. It had been discussed for some years prior to that time,
of course. One thing that became readily apparent was that
personally researching and writing all the necessary sketches
would be too much of a task for anyone, even the prolific Powell,
who has published over seventy books and articles about North
Carolina.
Therefore, Powell spent a good deal of time recruiting
volunteer writers who would be qualified to produce biographical
essays based on specific guidelines he provided them.
Eventually almost seven hundred people-teachers, journalists,
students, public officials, and ordinary citizens of many
professions—became involved. Obviously the writing skills and
ability to gather research information of such a heterogeneous
group varied tremendously. Some sketches were excellent,
whereas some others had to be almost completely rewritten.
As the years rolled along, Powell probably often wondered If
the struggle were worth It. Many sketches were promised and
never written. Some writers took much longer to complete their
jobs than they had promised. Just the sheer bulk of paper and
organization involved would have been enough to daunt most
people, but Powell stuck to it.
UNC Press at first projected eight volumes when volume I was
published. The introduction to volume II says that there will be
seven volumes, but an early 1986 letter to contributing writers
stated, "We now anticipate a total of five or six volumes for this
series." Given the unforeseen complexity of the project, this
shrinkage should come as no surprise.
. It would be difficult to find anyone in North Carolina,
professional or amateur, with a strong interest in history, who has
hot written something for "Bill Powell’s Dictionary."
One of the cardinai rules of book reviewing is that one should
not review a volume written by a friend or a title with which one
was in any way assoiciated. This rule has to be brokenwith the
Dictionary or there would be virtually no one left in the state to
review it.
No other state has anything like it. The closest series
comparable is the Dictionary of American Biography, edited over
the years by Dumas Malone and others, and it has obviously been
one of Powell’s models. The sketches cover literally thousands of
men and women, all now deceased, from presidents and royal
governors to Siamese twins, Blackbeard the pirate, and a man
who weighed a thousand pounds. Researched to professional
standards, the volumes in this series provide information that
students, historians, journalists and genealogists will find in no
other place.
A number of well-known Tar Heels have died since publication
of the first volume. Paul Green, who died in 1981, is in this new
volume, as is the beloved U.S. Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr. Ironically
Ervin, who died in 1985, wrote severai sketches in the volume that
contains his own final notice.
On the back page of the dust jacket there is even a quotation
from a review Ervin wrote, calling volume I, "a monumental effort
to rescue from oblivion those North Carolinians of the oast who
deserve to be eternally remembered."
Place A
HAPPY ADI
Wish Dad A Happy
Birthday, pass along an
Anniversary Graetingl
Price of Happy Ads
1 X 1 - $2.50
1 X 2 - $5.00
1X3- $7.00
1 X 4 - $8.00
Happy Ads Must
Be Paid In
Advance and
Signed
West Craven
Highlights
Craven County’s Family
Weekly Newspaper
P.O, Box 404/711^ MainJ
Street Across from PosP
Office Vanceboro
North Carolina 2SSB6
Phone (919) 244-0780
(919)244-0805
Publisher a ^
Business Manager
R. L. Cannon, Jr.
TypeseHer/Layout
Mary Ann Morris
Circulation Manager
Edith Hodges
Published
Every'Thursday
Second Class Postage
Paid at Vanceboro, N.C.
(Permit entered March 1,
1978)
UPSP 412-110
SUBSCRIPTION PRICES
Single Copy 204
1 Year Subscription ..$6.27:
2 Years Subscription $10.45:
3 Years Subscription $14.631
Above includes N.C. Tax.
(Payable in advance. Subscribers!
desiring their Highlights
terminated at expiration should i
notify us of this intention, otherwise!
we will consider it their wish tol
continue to receive the paper and|
they will be charged for it).
f
I
(
V
F
r
c
F
'*11