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Oral History Interview with Sam Parker, December 5, 2000. Interview K-0252. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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  • Abstract
    This interview is more about a lack of industrialization in North Carolina than the state's development, but offers an interesting perspective on growth. Sam Parker, Madison County Probation and Parole Officer, praises rural life in the interview. Parker left a job at an insurance agency in the 1960s to settle in the hills of Madison County, where he lived for a while without electricity and grew his own food. In this interview, he discusses his decision to leave the comforts of suburbia and the appeal of living a somewhat ascetic lifestyle, where community connections take the place of Internet connections. Parker sees this lifestyle declining, but does not condemn development or mourn its passing.
    Excerpts
  • Living in remote log cabin affects residents
  • Electricity arrives in remote home
  • Impulse to leave suburbia for a rural lifestyle
  • Life in rural Madison County
  • Efforts to settle into rural life, and the efforts of most of his neighbors to move to the suburbs
  • Difficulties of child abuse investigation in a closed society
  • Different values in urban and rural settings
  • Remote communities are in decline
  • Advantages and disadvantages of the I-26 highway running through Madison County
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Resources for Educators
  • Change in the Mountains
  • Subjects
  • Farm life--North Carolina
  • Madison County (N.C.)
  • Express highways--North Carolina
  • Parker, Sam
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.