© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
MP3 file derived from WAV preservation master, which was derived from original analog cassettes.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digitization project, Documenting the American South.
An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Original grammar and spelling have been preserved.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "
All em dashes are encoded as —
Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
K-0246, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
In this interview, Mars Hill town manager Darhyl Boone fondly remembers his childhood in Madison County, which was poor in finances but rich in community values. Boone worries that values—such as charity, hard work, and face-to-face contact—are being eroded by immigration and development and that the construction of the I-26 corridor will accelerate this change. Boone's concern with rural values is obvious, and he tries throughout the interview to describe the values that make Madison County unique. Both he and interviewer Rob Amberg agree that the area has a special quality, bred by its semi-remote location. And both also agree the area is at risk as subdivisions start to pop up and the interstate corridor threatens to bring in waves of new people. Boone shares many memories about growing up in Madison County. A sample of these recollections is included here, most notably those concerning US 23 before its paving and rerouting, but researchers interested in more details on a rural childhood should look through the interview in its entirety.
Mars Hill, N.C., town manager Darhyl Boone fondly remembers his childhood in Madison County but worries that small-town values are being eroded by development.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I'm with the town manager from Mars Hill, North Carolina. Darhyl could you just introduce yourself to me and I want to make sure we're getting you on—
Sure. Rob, I'm Darhyl Boone and as you said, I'm a lifelong resident of Madison County and lived here all my life. I guess that's in a nutshell all I need to say.
How old are you Darhyl?
I'm forty-five, be forty-six here in just about two days.
So Darhyl we were just talking about your family restaurant, and I wanted to just relay quickly just for the tape that your grandmother and grandfather I believe both ran the Little Creek Café out on Highway Twenty-three which is just below Sam's Gap.
Right.
And that has been there since 1951, I think.
'51 yeah. They actually moved there before '51. Grandma, my grandmother was from Arkansas, and my grandfather was from New Mexico.
Is that right? Wow!
He met her in Arkansas. Of course, they had kinfolk here. Some of his
kinfolk had moved here. They lived right back here, Earl Boone, a fellow
Frank Boone. He owned the gas station right here where the flag poles
are at. It used to be a gas station, one of the most unique gas
stations. I wished it had never been torn down. It had an awning out
over it, and you pull up under that awning and get you gas. It was
really unique. But anyhow, yeah, they moved here in the '40s, I think.
They moved here
Wow.
He was a country doctor. I don't know if you knew—
No, now this would be Shelby Boone?
No, Shelby is my grandmother's second husband.
Okay.
Her first husband was Laddie Boone. Of course I was named after him. I'm Laddie Darhyl Boone. I was named after him. He was the first doctor in this area. He was an old country doctor,delivered the majority of the kids. I mean I found his old documents when Grandma died. I went back through some of his, and I found people I knew that live here now who he delivered. He delivered my two brothers. I was the only one he didn't deliver.
Wow.
Every time I run into some old timers as I call around here, they say, 'Yeah, Doc Boone delivered all my young 'uns.' Grandma'd go with him. His health was poor. Grandma would go with him to carry his medical bag. They'd go back into these hollows, and he'd deliver babies, and that's what she had to do. So when they first moved here, they weren't actually running a restaurant. He had his office upstairs.
But that building was there.
Umm. They built the building. He actually built it.
They built it as a house and a doctor's office.
As a house and office, yeah.
What about that.
They went from that, of course, Grandpa died with a heart attack. There Grandma was.
Do you know about how old she would've been about that time?
About the time he died?
Yeah.
No, I've never sat back and calculated that out. I was thinking the other day when I was born, Grandma was about my age.
Okay.
I got to thinking about that, and so Grandpa, she probably would've been thirtyish when Grandpa died, and she was left with two boys. She had to raise those boys. So she was there and ran a café and raised grand-young 'uns, myself, my two brothers, two cousins because her sons died real early.
Both of them?
Yeah. One—
So your father died.
My father, my uncle Berlin died at thirty-four and my daddy died two years after that at thirty-eight.
Wow.
We were all, that's why that café is special to me because that café raised us young 'uns. We were all raised out of that café. She fed us, and she not only ran that café, but when they built that—let me give you this before I forget it.
Please do.
When they built that road through here, the first road, the one we're traveling on now.
Right.
I remember that road being built. I remember the construction of that road going on.
So the two lane, what is now Twenty-three—
Twenty-three.
Before that it was just a—
It was just a real remote road. I mean, it was—you can still see some of the signs of the old road if you get—I still know where some of it is at and can see it.
But it was off the track of where it is now.
Yeah. It just went around the ridges, and it would just wind and went all over the place.
Was it paved?
No.
Okay.
It didn't have any paved. It was real unique. But when they were building that road, I don't know it just came to mind. Grandma and all ran that café, had five grandchildren right under her heels, trying to help raise us. She kept workers that were building the road in the basement of the café. She had the upstairs. She lived upstairs back there where they dine now, she had a bed and all back there. She kept these fellows downstairs and fed them three meals a day and housed them to get extra money.
Man, oh man.
She was a work Trojan. I mean, just a horse. And not only that, I can still remember her making me shirts. She'd fix me shirts. Phew, I'll get emotional here if I'm not careful. Man. I'm sorry.
No, that's okay.
She'd fix me, phew, man, I don't know why that came back so close. She'd fix me winter coats and sew those coats. Man. I'm sorry. I apologize for this.
Now, were your, when your daddy and your uncle died, where were your mothers, your cousins' mother and your mother?
My Aunt Betty who worked the café with her. She worked here for years. Of course, my mother when my daddy died, she had to go to work. So she was working in the factories here in Asheville, in sewing factories. Of course, that sort of put us with Grandma. That was the hub. That was where we went. It was just a unique place because—
That's not so much in a way, an unusual situation.
Not at all.
For around here.
As a kid, that was a congregating place. I know when I was a boy, it was a pretty large community over there then, especially younger. Of course, we had a school over there, Epps Chapel School was where I went to elementary school. They had the school bus. We congregated there at the café, all the kids would ride around that immediate area. There'd be as many as twenty or twenty-five kids there in the morning to meet the school bus. So I'll start giving you all these memories and stuff.
No, that's exactly what I want. We'll hopefully, this will cover a whole
lot
The church right beside the café?
Yeah.
Yeah, I've seen that church there. They've added on and remodeled and bricked over the years. I remember when that church was there, it was much smaller before they added on and had little wood siding on it and all. They had two outside toilets there. That, that's what they had. They didn't have running water. They had outside toilets there. I don't know, that just popped into my head. I can remember those days.
Now were you and your brother and your mom, were you living right there also?
Right where the café sits right now, they have a, if you go
by there sometime look. There's a dumpster sitting there
right—there was a block house that sat there, and that's where
we were raised, in that little block shack house is what it was. We
liked to froze to death, but we survived it. Didn't have any running
water, and we had what they called the pee pot. You had your pot by the
bed, and if we needed to go to the bathroom, we'd go to the
café. So there again, that was the hub where everything
was—we ate out there most of the time, the biggest part of the
time. We ate out there. We were out there eating. Times at that time,
well I'll never forget this were struggling. She was doing everything;
we were doing everything to survive, which we weren't unique. That's
what the whole community did over there. Everybody was just surviving
barely. She'd let us kids, five grandkids, we were only allowed one soda
a week, and we got that soda on Sunday. That's the only day you got a
soda because she just couldn't afford to do that,
Well, that's a pretty good little swap to make there. That's—
She was a good one. She'd teach you how to work.
She taught you how to work I guess.
Oh yeah.
What were your chores when you were growing up? What did you do when you came home from school?
If you came home from school with her, she'd put you to washing pots and pans. You'd sweep the floor. She kept the driveway out there where the cars were parked, we kept that swept, just getting in wood, doing this, doing that.
Were you heating with wood and?
We were heating with wood. She finally got an oil-fired furnace. I forget when that came in. We still, until I was in college, I was actually living over there in the basement of the café when I went Mars Hill. They were still heating with wood then. They had the furnace plus wood but to save money you were using wood and heating the café really with a wood stove.
Now, what was the, was the café busy? I'm thinking it was opened in '51 or so, and the road like you were saying wasn't completed even until mid-fifties or something like that. Was there a lot of traffic? Was it a—
Yeah, you had a pretty good volume of traffic traveling that road, amazingly so, really. There for a while, they stayed open—that was when my father was alive. I can barely remember this. They stayed open at night. They had a twenty-four hour. They were up all night.
Wow.
So apparently it must've been a pretty good flow of traffic going through there, picking up a lot of truckers. I worked out of South Carolina when I got out of college for about a year and a half. The truckers even down there when they'd come in—I worked for a textile company. They would, we'd get to talking, and I'd ask them if they ever traveled Twenty-three. They'd say, 'Oh yeah.' I'd say, 'You ever stop at Little Creek Café.' Oh man they'd say, 'We'd look that one out when we were going.' So she is known by the truckers everywhere because they could get a country-cooked meal. We're talking, people today, my wife says I've been spoiled. But they don't know how to cook country cooking. She knew how to do that. That style of cooking dies with the person because it's hard for them to hand it down for somebody to pick up. I picked up a little bit on her biscuit making. I'm getting better with that, but nothing like that.
That's really true what you're saying. I think it is passed down and unless a person is there all of the time watching and studying and just picking up things. Then, now a days too, it just seems like we just don't even have the ingredients that people had for the food back then.
It's different.
Did they, did your Grandma basically prepare her own meats and things like that? Did she butcher hogs and cows, things like that?
Yeah, we kept hogs right across the road there. We had a field there, raised tobacco in some of it and the other parts we raised beans, corn and potatoes, and then right down in the corner of the field, we always kept a couple of hogs over there and killed those hogs.
Those went into the restaurant.
She'd sell that, and we'd cook that. The family would eat, we would get the opportunity. I always enjoyed that time just because we'd get to eat the tenderloin. She'd have tenderloin biscuits until all the tenderloin was eaten. Man, I could eat six biscuits with that gravy and tenderloin.
Fresh tenderloin is pretty hard to beat.
It's good, fresh. Yeah, we did that, raised gardens. She had a, down in the basement, may still be down there, had big potato bins on one side of the basement. On the other side, you had the shelves that canned beans, corn, and all those canned goods. See, that's what she served. No wonder people loved it. You're talking about fresh green beans when they're in. When you're picking them out of the garden, serving them. Fresh corn out of the garden over there, which is a huge garden.
Then canned stuff.
Then we'd can that. My goodness. She'd get apples. She never wasted anything. I remember watching her peel peelings, I mean, peel peaches and some of the best jelly you've ever eaten in your life. She'd take those peelings, and she'd cook those peelings and make peach preserves out of those peelings.
Wow.
Because she wouldn't waste anything. You didn't waste anything. People
She was not only running a restaurant, she was also running a farm in a sense that was producing everything for the restaurant, not everything, but a good bit of it.
A big part of it. Especially when she was younger and able to do more. Yeah, she'd make us and I hated it. Gosh, I hated stringing and breaking those beans. But when she got through, see she'd get up and be in the café by about four thirty in the morning and did that until she died. She was there at four-thirty making biscuits and gravy. Then she'd work the breakfast, and then get the lunch worked. Lunch would be over by around two or three, and she'd get, when we were there, we'd be sweeping and help her do that. Then she'd sit down, and we'd start stringing and breaking beans. So she had to get ready for the next day preparing, so she was unique.
Did she take a day off?
Uh uh.
So y'all were open on Sunday's too.
She'd work a seven-day week. We'd ask her, we'd say, we'd ask her,
'Grandma, why don't you at least shut down on Sundays?' She said, 'Well
I don't know how these people are going to eat. Where are they going to
go to eat?' She wouldn't shut down. I'll never forget her, she got up in
years and there was an old fellow who lived down on Laurel. If you know
where Laurel is, right there, you cut left. His name was Lawrence Whitt.
He was a single fellow, never did get married and lived with his mother.
His mother died, and he was just by himself. She was in the
café one day, and I
That's great.
She. Unique woman.
What a wonderful legacy too that is to leave.
Oh yeah.
That's a great thing, God.
Yeah.
So y'all were raising tobacco too.
Yeah, raised tobacco there in that field, just everything that you could
do to survive. We had, even out there by my little blockhouse, we had a
small tobacco patch there plus more garden area. We'd raise potatoes
over there. We'd raised the best potatoes in the world. As a matter of
fact, I may go raise some over there this year.
Is she from this community?
Yeah, she lived, she was raised right here in Mars Hill. Her father was a professor at Mars Hill College.
Who was that?
Arthur Wood, a physics professor.
Yeah, okay.
He's still, he's a fine man. I was telling her, we all over there, we didn't have anything. We were just barely living, but the rest of the community was just about the same way, there was nobody that had anything. We didn't know we were poor. We were eating, and we had clothes on our back. We felt pretty fortunate.
Well, there wasn't really a whole lot of money in the community period. Just, I've had other people tell me, the real big influx of any kind of cash seemed to be like mid-sixties when the Federal programs started coming in and pumping some money in.
That's the first time you started seeing any money. So I don't want to get off of that one.
Yeah, so your, was your mother from this community also?
My mother actually was from Alexander up here. My father, I don't know
exactly how they met. I've forgotten right now. That doesn't come back
to me how they
But she, it sounds like she maybe had, I mean, was her family a farm family do you think, your mom's? Was it—
Yeah, they farmed and did just survival farm and raise enough to eat and live. Her daddy worked a sawmill. He worked a saw mill job. I remember that. I can't remember what Grandma did. She made, yeah she made quilts. She made quilts.
And sold them?
Yeah. They quilted a lot, her mother and her sister made a lot of.
Do you think that would've been over in Alexander, that was a pretty heavily trafficked road through there at one time.
Yeah, they lived right over in the Alexander area there. They moved from, well they moved from Weaverville, Alexander. They were in the Weaverville area and then Alexander. So that's the approximate area. I forget how they came in contact with each other and met.
You're saying when you were younger, and there'd be twenty of you waiting for the school bus out there. That was a small road but there was traffic because again, that route, that's what we're seeing now is really I don't know, I've read where that route has been trafficked since Native American times. Its been a commercial trade route for that long. But there was not so much traffic there that you all felt, it's not like it is out there now.
It wasn't as bad.
You can't even set foot out on the road.
It's funny how you get used to it. When we're living right there at it, the trucks were pretty heavy. But you get so used to that that you don't even pay them any attention. They go by, and you just sort of get used to it. Pretty good volume of traffic, but as the years went by the traffic got more and more and more. You got much more volume.
You were saying you remember when it was paved and when it was changed and rerouted and all that.
I remember when some of the road on toward the Sam's Gap they were still working on that road that I can still recollect because I remember back in behind the café there where the trailer and mobile home and all is, that originally wasn't in there. There was a pond, they had a lake back there right behind—
Wow.
Yeah, had a lake. I've got some pictures, some old pictures of the café, and they had a lake back there. That water that comes off the hills, there's two areas there where you have tributaries that come into it, and they just build a lake there for that water to come in. They had fish. I remember that lake. I remember it well. So when the road, when they started finishing that road on toward Sam's Gap they had excess dirt, just like they're trying to find places now for dirt and rock and all. Well, Grandma decided to go ahead and drain that lake because she just didn't see the need of having it anymore. She drained the lake, and they filled that area in for her.
Okay.
And did away with the lake.
The trailers were put in and the mobile home.
Yeah, I can still remember the lake being there, just a little point there.
Wow.
Yeah, we all gathered. Of course there were a lot of young 'uns. You had the White young 'uns right over, their mother and daddy still live right near the café. They had two, three, four children. Then we had the Englishes. There were two or three of those. The Sheltons right there, I mean, you're talking another two or three. The Whites on down the road. I mean, you can just keep naming. The Cartrettes up here. There were a lot of young 'uns, a lot of kids. It was a big bunch of us around. We'd just sort of congregate there for the bus stop.
When you were, you were saying you went to school at Epps Chapel, where did you as a family go if you needed to go shopping or if you needed to, if you wanted entertainment or things like that. Where did you—?
Shopping, we would come to Mars Hill and didn't go a whole lot, didn't have an opportunity. I know my entertainment when I was a boy mostly, Grandma'd come out here once a week or whatever to the beauty shop, and it's still up here. She'd get her hair fixed, and I'd come with her and just come browsing down into town.
You'd roam around town.
Roam around town, and we knew one of her friends that lived right below
the beauty shop, I mean just a house or two down below it. We were good
friends with her, and we'd go down and see her, and she'd feed us. We'd
visit her, and then we'd browse on down here and check things out. But
every once in a while when I got on up eight, nine years old somewhere
in that neighborhood, we'd every once in a while go to a
Occasionally you did.
Occasionally we would drive in. That was mostly the entertainment. Every once in a while you'd get to drive the parkway. We'd get in an old car and ride along the parkway.
[Unclear.]
Some fond memories.
It's interesting to me that you'd come into town with your Grandma, and she'd be in one place, and you'd be roaming around town, and she felt obviously comfortable enough to let you kind of do that. Just as a young child you know 'Well he's not going to get hit by a car or he's not going, or somebody's not going to kidnap him or-'
You didn't have to worry about it back then. You just didn't, you never locked your houses. You never locked your car doors. Back then, you didn't even take the keys out of your car. That was just something that never thought of it. That was, never came into mind. I don't ever remember locking our doors when I was a boy, never.
Even living right out there on the road.
Yeah. Living right by the road, never had any problems. I don't recall.
I'm sure there were, but I don't recall stealing. No sort. I just don't.
Lot of respect. I remember I'd look and see—I don't know why
I'm getting into this but my wife teaches school, and I see the
difference in the youth now. I was saying there was a lot of respect for
adults, respect for Christian beliefs, and respect for the church. I see
such a change in
Is she at Madison High?
No, she's at North Buncombe, just out here right in Buncombe County. I think that's the one thing that I notice that I think we've missed. Maybe we have come a long ways in our material possessions. We have more. But I think we've missed the mark there somewhere in maybe time with the family is staying together. Mothers and fathers—I don't know why I got off on this. Mothers and fathers, I see these kids now that she's teaching, it's unreal. Since I was there and I haven't been out. Well, I've been out thirty years here in 2002. She's having to deal with things that I would've never dreamed of as a teacher.
I see the same thing, and I wonder how much of it is, what that's all about. I, some of it to me it seems like would be, I'm not really sure. I think times have just gotten, are so different then when we were growing up. I grew up outside of DC. It was in the suburbs. It was a fairly fast place even back then. It was certainly much slower than it is now, but it was still faster than ever was going to be around here. I grew up the same way though with really good manners and respect for things, respect for people and all that kind of stuff. It's not that my children don't do that, but you can tell that just the whole atmosphere is different. I—
I don't know. It's just real strange though in just that short a period of time how it could get—I don't know. I didn't mean to get off there.
No, that's fine that we did. That's okay because I think, I wonder
partially one of the things that I really wonder about is like the
affects say of the I-26 corridor
I've seen a lot of change in the community in my time, but time does change things. It does. Its been a whole different, the pace of living is faster. The crime, we're seeing things here now that we didn't used to see. A lot of this is brought on by the traffic. The motel down here now, it breeds some things we didn't used to see. I think as you get more and more traffic especially off an interstate like that, you're going to have things that we didn't. You'll have robberies and other things. But the crime rate has gotten up somewhat, not panic level. You're going to get things. You've got more people, more people coming through.
I guess that's more, well, more people. I mean, I was talking to Sam this morning. We were talking about the fact, I've been in the community twenty-eight years now. There was a time when I moved here when you, Sam and I were both saying, when you not only knew everybody's truck but you knew the sound of everybody's truck. It didn't matter—
That's pretty good.
What time of night, you knew that that's so and so coming through.
You do.
Oh, yeah that's John coming home or whatever, that kind of thing. Now like you were just saying, there's such an increase in traffic, an increase in people and new people constantly moving into the community.
It's not the same, never will be, and can't be. What I still like about,
I'm still real partial over there in that area. I still go to church
over there at Upper Laurel, still
That's remarkable.
I got to talking to June and Clyde White about that, and Clyde said
something one night at church or something. Just talking about you don't
realize you, he said, 'I thought I had everything in the world and I
didn't need anybody.' Then he said, 'And then my house burned down, and
I didn't have anything.' He said, 'Then I realized how bad I did need
people.' He said, 'It was amazing how that community came to me.' Then
he said something about my grandmother taking them in. Then other
people, people bring you this and somebody'd hand you money and
somebody'd bring you
You know, I think, I wonder, it seems to me it's like that in a lot of the smaller communities. I know when you get over to—I live over on Little Pine area and have lived on Big Pine. I know how it's basically the same over there.
I think your smaller communities, well you know everybody.
Exactly. It's still—.
You just get to, well, you get close to them is what happens.
Well you're always throwing your hand up, or you're stopping and visiting and things like that. It's one of the things I love around here is just the sense of people coming over to see you and visiting. People are very open that way here I think.
We don't seem to have time to do that like we used to when I was a boy. Of course that was your entertainment a whole lot though when you were younger. You'd visit. That was, we were talking about entertainment earlier. That was your entertainment. You went and visited people and see people and talk to them. That was the entertainment. Play with their kids' kids, and so that was your bulk of your entertainment because it didn't cost anything.
It was close at hand too.
It was close.
You didn't have to travel a lot into Asheville or something like that. Well, people just couldn't travel back in those days. It was a long way.
It took you so long. I remember when we had the car, and we'd go to
Asheville. Good gosh. From over there it was over an hour to get to
Asheville on a
I have a clear memory of when I first moved here, and it was still
two-lane all the way from Asheville on out. The old road was still there
past [Unclear.] [Unclear.]
It was a pretty big hassle wasn't it then?
Yeah. Just that old winding, windy road. Then they put the four-lane in; it must have been '77 or so.
I believe they were working on that—
'76
In '75, '76ish somewhere around there they put the four-lane in.
That was a big change I think. It really—
Oh, that was real big yeah. That was real big. We're seeing a lot of people that are moving to this area, and I think we're going to see that a lot more. They're working in Asheville and these areas, but they like living because they like the style of lifestyle here. They like what you and I were talking about, what we like. They'll sacrifice driving thirty or forty minutes to work to be able to have that lifestyle.
It's interesting. I think one of the things that a good road brings is
not only brings people in, but it gives people who are already in the
access to get out and work someplace else. That changes the relationship
of that person to where they live. So if you live on Upper Laurel or
something or out there on Foster Creek or somewhere, but if you're
working in town, if you're just hopping on the interstate now and
getting into
I think we're seeing a lot more of that. I mean, where I live, which is out on Gable's Creek, just right out here. I don't see anybody out on Gabriel's Creek. I mean, I just don't. I come to work, and I get home in the evenings, and I've got my chores to do and get those done, and I don't visit. That's just what you do. You don't seem to have time. We entertain ourselves now with other things, TV and other stuff instead of visiting.
That's stuff we didn't have back in the '40s and the '50s, things like
that. [Unclear.]
Sure is. Sure is.
I wonder what effect this new highway is going to have on all that. How that is going to, what the effect of that will be on all these things. Like all the things that we were talking about earlier to me are kind of cultural things that we're really—. Like you were saying, everybody in the community was poor and kind of did this. How then does something like an interstate coming in affect those cultural values, affect those cultural traditions?
I'd say you have a hard time hanging on to a lot of that. I think you're
going to lose a lot of it because probably the ones coming in, they
don't know anything about those cultural values, and it doesn't mean
anything to them. Some of the things that means something to me, that's
close to my heart about the things that I value, doesn't mean a whole
lot to them unless they would really be interested in finding out. It's
not, so you're going to, like you say some of these old people they die
out, not only do they,
Yes.
Well, you'd worked like a dog and then come in and get that, and boy that'd get you through the rest of the day.
Some of the time, well I've worked a lot of tobacco when I first moved
here. It was a similar kind of experience. When you work for somebody,
and you're out with a crew of people working, cutting and hanging [Unclear.]
Found out that she's been preparing a lot of food.
She hasn't been sitting down watching the stories. She's been doing something else.
I guess we lose some of that. But not always all those good old days are, not all that's good old days either. There are some of the good old times back there that I'd just as soon not have anymore.
Like what? Give me a sense of examples.
Well, what I was telling you there about only cold water running in the house. A pot by the bed, the cold house, not being able to go to and fro like you'd like. It's things like that you'd just as soon, getting wood in all the time. It's things like that that today the lifestyle is a lot better. There's—
So you as a person kind of raised and born up here, you can appreciate being able to get into Asheville now.
Oh yeah.
As quickly as you can.
Oh yeah. You've got to admit, it's nice. There's some disadvantages, yes. I mean, I'm sure there's disadvantages, but there are a lot of advantages too. So it maybe it's a weigh here, you weigh it out with the good and the bad. There will be change. There has been. When I really started seeing a change I think around here was when Wolf Laurel started developing. You saw the cost of your land starts skyrocketing. Used to you could buy a huge farm around here for a reasonable price. Once they came in and started paying the prices they did for some of the land, that value just really started getting up there quickly. Since Wolf Laurel—
That would've kind of been early, mid-seventies I guess Wolf Laurel.
Let's see. I worked up at the restaurant in at Wolf Laurel when I was about fourteen. I bussed tables and cleaned, I guess it was about fourteen. So that would've been in the '60s. That was when they first started just really cranking up pretty good. Used to have a restaurant up there, built a restaurant.
Yeah, Sam was telling me I guess there was an unpaved road for part of
the way up there and, then you got up to it, and it was this little
thing going on. It was just
It was just going good. Yeah it was, a part of it was gravel and a part of it was paved. I can't even remember how far it was. I mean, that's not important. But that's when I started really noticing the change. You have a lot more people coming in then. Of course lot more money started coming in then too.
Does that seem kind of amazing to you that growing up here, working the restaurant, bussing the tables, stuff like that, and it's kind of like gosh who are these people up here out in the middle of nowhere on top of this mountain.
Yeah, it was quite different because I remember going up there when I was a boy, and good gosh that was remote. My goodness, go up there. We'd go camping up there on top of that. That was another entertainment we did, camping. We'd go over to Twin Springs there and camp out up there at the Bald Mountain. Man, you couldn't get back in there. It was so remote. Yeah, that was quite different for a fellow of my age seeing those people. You'd see people that actually had money. Boy, they had some money. You didn't see that, and there's a lot of work that started happening then. A lot of people were working and building houses. I'd say some of those fellows over there in that community now that are heavy equipment operators. Wolf Laurel is probably where they got their start. They've done real well. Some of them have made real well with it. Without that they would've been struggling.
Right.
They'd have been hurting. So there again, there's some good from all this too. Yeah, you do lose some of your culture. You lose that. But there's some good out of it too.
What, how would you, I know we're seeing—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
There was a demographic shift from [Unclear.]
You see a little mix of everything. We're seeing some families coming in. We're seeing a lot of people that have already made their living per se and coming in. They've probably sold their house or whatever and are coming. I'm seeing quite a bit of that. They don't have to worry about employment very much. They're coming in. We're not getting as many families. This one here is a little nerve. We're not getting as many families coming in here. Our, the setup on our school system, this is running that away. We're seeing that in the Mars Hill area here.
So a decrease kind of in the number of students or you're getting—
No, what I was getting at was families with children of school age, they're not locating here in this area like they would had we a better school system. Now I don't say our school system as far as the education, I think we're doing decent. But the way we've got our school system set up is the parents come in here and they say, 'Well, my kid's going to go over here to Mars Hill K Five. Then it's going to go down yonder for six, seventh and eighth.' What we're seeing happen is instead of locating here and staying here, they're just easing out here into Buncombe County.
Into North Buncombe or something.
North Buncombe because they've got pretty much the same thing. They're
paying a little bit more for land than house out there but not too much
more. Yet they've got a school system that's compact. They can send
their kids right here K Five, and they
Yeah, it doesn't seem to be, I think the high school that just opened maybe when I moved here I remember. The thing that's so unique about this county is it's so spread out geographically. I mean, think about going from Laurel, Upper Laurel out by the café out all the way over on the other side of Spring Creek up Meadow Fork or something.
It's so spread out. Like I say—well, I guess there's no use elaborating on that one, but we, the committee that was formed to study this consolidation. There again dollars have a lot to do with what you do. They recommended we do a two-school set up, lower upper. I guess ideally that's probably what should've been done. Then I think you probably would've had a better growth on both ends.
On both ends.
I think you would've had. Whereas now we may have hurt ourselves as far as if we're looking for some growth of business, industry because a lot of that tails right into your schools because these industries are not going to come if you don't have schools here for their children. If you have to bus all the children like that you think, then it's easy to shift over here. That could be good, and that could be bad. Like I say there's a way out there. Industry has some good but it also has some negatives. Oh well.
Mars Hills, seemingly there's the new retirement center that's opening in town or opened in town. So you're seeing older people too, retirees and Wolf Laurel, the set up initially kind of is second homes and retiree types. There's more families moving up there, aren't there than there used to be?
You're seeing some more of that. You're seeing, still don't see too many families. You see a little, you are seeing some as I say instead of second homes; you're seeing people that have gotten their children out of the home. They can live there, and they are. We're seeing more of that now. We're seeing more full-time people up there.
Permanent residents and—
Yeah, you're seeing more permanent residents up there than we had.
Still seems out in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, it is. I'll tell you. It's a different world over there. Totally. I was raised over in that area. It's a whole different world, I mean, weatherwise and all that. It's rough especially if you've got to go out, and I've done it and go to work. It's a little rough getting over those mountains.
Well it's so high up there. It's just, Wolf Laurel itself is what, forty-five hundred feet or something like that. It's—
I'd hate to be in there and have to come out. A lot of people don't. A lot of ones that are staying in there I don't know what their employment is. But not many I would think are having to travel in and out of there everyday. I think you're seeing more of that. It's the full-time people. Then there are some people in there that are full-time that probably aren't working mid-age, and they've apparently financially—
Like you say maybe they've made some money elsewhere.
I think so. I think so.
I wonder if, it's almost, it seems like that's happening too in a lot of the county. I know a number of people over on the other side of the county in those kind of situations too. A lot of people too are running business; you're able to run a business out of your home if you're on the Internet and things like that.
I'm sure we'll see more of that as years go on. That'll increase. I'll have to tell you this funny because this came to me, and I'll forget it. This is priceless. I tell it when I can think of it. My grandmother, they always called her Miss Boone. I mean, everybody called her Miss Boone. But she married Shelby Hamlin her second husband. Some people called her Miss Hamlin but not many. When they got married, they hadn't been married too awful long, there was a little bootlegger that he used to have a, he bootlegged liquor and all up at the top right when you started to cross into Tennessee. He had a little mobile home there, and he lived in it. He had beer and liquor, and you normally weren't supposed to have it. He had had it. The fellows would get up there, and they would gamble around a little and drink. Shelby, he liked to drink a little. He got up there, and he apparently got drunk. He could do that every once in a while. He couldn't drive home. Clindon, Clindon Honeycutt's a fellow. Clindon called, he called down there at the café, and he got hold of my grandma and he said, 'Edna,' He said, 'Shelby's up here, and he's so drunk.' He said, 'There ain't no way he can drive home. You're going to have to come get him.' She goes up, and I'm sure she's a little hot. She's goes up and gets him, and they're coming down the road. Well, right before you get to grandmother's there's a two unit apartment complex up there now. That used to be a country store, a gas station and all. Jasper Jenkins ran that. Jasper Jenkins.
He told me about that.
Old Jasper's a good one. They were coming back down, and they got right there, and Shelby and this is what I've been told. He was sitting there. And he would, his head would get to bobbing when he'd get drunk, and his head's a bobbing down there. He saw where he was at, and he looked over there and he saw he was about at Jasper's and was getting close to the café. He was so drunk that he looked over and he said, 'If you don't mind there, you can drop me off down there at Miss Boone's.' He said—
[Laugh]
He didn't know who had him. He was just talking.
She was driving. That's great.
You can just drop me off. And he called her Miss Boone too. She'd married him then, Hamlin. 'Just drop me off down there at Miss Boone's.' I don't know why that one came to me. Oh goodness.
That must've been a really wonderful thing for her though to find Mr. Hamlin, Shelby and just be married again and just be able to do that. I would think that's—
I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was a lot of help to her over the years. He was. He took us in. He and I got real close. We were close out in the field working with him, I'd follow him around, and we got real close.
Was he from this community?
Yeah. Yeah, he's actually raised in this area right here. So—
Farmed most of his life.
Farmed. He worked with an electric company here for a few years, but I
Right.
Worked a few years with the electric company though. That was probably on up when he was in his fifties I guess.
You probably always had power over there from when you remember I would guess.
Yes. I remember as long, as far back as I remember we had power. I do remember when the phones first came in. I can remember that. We had those old party lines. That was something. Had eight or ten houses on one line. You'd pick it up and see if anybody was on there and use it. You'd get on, and they'd pick up and listen to you.
Finding out things.
Oh yeah. That was priceless. I can remember that. That was fun.
That must've been a real—I've always thought that telephones coming in around here probably were as a significant a change as anything because it allowed people to talk on the phone instead of making that walk down the road to go visit somebody. You could call. I would think that that was a really big change.
It was big I'm sure to be able to call I mean Mars Hill.
Exactly.
That was a big thing to be able to call out here. Yeah, that was a big one. I still remember, I still remember our first TV set. I can still see that thing. I remember those days. Of course, we were probably behind a lot of the area on things like that. I'm sure we were a few years behind.
Although I remember, I'm a little bit older than you are. I remember certainly party lines even in the DC area. I remember having those as a kid for a few years and thinking that that was pretty funny too. If you were a mean kid, you could really get yourself into a fix on those things.
Oh boy yeah. My brother stayed in a little bit of trouble on those party lines. He was all the time into something.
Is that Larry?
No, no. It was the middle one. Larry wasn't too bad. Bruce, he was into stuff. He was all the time doing something.
Now did you go to high school at Mars Hill?
Um hmm.
Okay.
We moved, see we had K-7. Well you didn't have K then, but we had one through seven and then eighth grade we came out here. So we transported from over there out here to eighth. We went eighth through twelfth over here. This was a K-12.
That must've been a pretty good little bus ride in and of itself.
Yeah, it was not a lot of fun. It wasn't great going over those mountains and all. But I can imagine now, some of those kids like I say down on the Foster and some of those areas going all the way down here to Brush Creek.
Right. Right.
Man, that's a haul.
Right.
I can't imagine.
Yeah, we have some friends that are way almost on the Yancey County line. They've homeschooled for years, but their oldest daughter decided she wanted to go to the middle school, and it's close to an hour for her to get out to the middle school.
There's some of those kids over at Ebbs Chapel way, some of them have got as much as a two hour, a two hour morning and evening.
I can't imagine that.
That's a ten-hour day. For a kid, that's tough.
Yeah, it is tough.
You've seen, as I say, you don't see too many people locating with school aged children over in an area like that. They won't do it. They'll move into an area.
Unless they're determined to homeschool or something like that.
Yeah, they won't do it. A majority won't.
I have a nine-year-old. She goes to Walnut. We generally, we carpool in the morning with a couple of neighbors and take them out, and they all ride the bus back together in the evening. That works out pretty well.
That's not bad. That's not too bad.
We're fifteen or twenty minutes from the school. It's splitting it three ways; it's not bad at all.
That's not bad. If they just have to hop on it for either a morning or evening run, that's not bad. They can handle that. Have some good, really, back when I was going through, you had some pretty good social time on the bus.
Exactly.
It wasn't bad.
It's a real education in itself, really I think.
It really is. You learn to deal with a lot of things.
That's one thing about this new highway. You get out on Twenty-three the way it is now and increase traffic that's out there. Just, I was talking to Stan Hyatt last week, and he was telling me it's ten thousand vehicles out there.
It's unreal. That's where I go. I go to church. I just sort of mentally as the years went by, I sort of kept a mental track, and my wife and I were just talking about how the traffic has increased. Goodness gracious. It's unreal. I mean, I know it's tripled. It has to.
You think about kids on the school bus. There are still busses out on that road. There's a lot of elderly people using that road and—
The interstate had to happen. I mean, it just had to be. I don't see any way around it. It just had to come.
Do you remember as a child hearing talk that one day there was going to be a big new road going through there?
Yeah.