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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
K-0280, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Raymond and Eunice English are an elderly Duplin County couple who weathered Hurricane Floyd. They are joined by their son, Wayne, and their nephew, Charles. Wayne and Charles do most of the talking in this lengthy interview, describing their experiences with the flooding and their frustrations with unregulated pollution from hog houses as well as with inadequate and disorganized relief. Like many flood victims, they are trying to rebuild their homes and lives with very little monetary help from the state and federal governments and are relying on volunteer and religious organizations for help. The English family pays particular attention to the effects of the flood on their community. They believe the aging farming community is in decline and worry that the flood may have grievously damaged its self-sufficiency; yet, by the end of the interview seem quite proud of the pervasive ethic of responsibility and cooperation. Many excerpts include Raymond's discussion of the history of his community and/or his personal history. Researchers looking for local history should read the entire interview for some interesting recollections.
Raymond and Eunice English, along with their son and nephew, worry that Hurricane Floyd may have irreparably crippled the aging Duplin County, N.C., farming community.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
—in the Civil War. On the letter he had written to the cousin over here that lived down there in Findley, that he was on guard duty and the war was about over. He was doing all right and hoped everybody back home was. And if nothing else happened he'd soon be back home. Told them not to answer the letter because it wouldn't get to him in time, and just those little chit—chat things that a person would write. But after we found it and got to looking through it, someone made the comment about him on guard duty. In 1865 you didn't have fountain pens. You didn't have ball points or anything like that to write with. And how he must have been writing it with—wasn't it quills?
Quills pen, right, a goose quill, I guess.
He wrote in blue ink. After it was over he had dotted it all over in red ink. Why we don't know.
I wonder if the red ink would have been something like
We have no idea. But it was amazing—as much as, you know,
children ransack trunks way back in those days—why I had never
seen it before until after all my ancestors was dead. And one day I just
opened up the trunk and it seemed like it jumped out at me. I had made
some copies to give the kids in the family. But mine was in a drawer
that went to the river. So I lost that.
Well, for purposes of the tape I'd like to just say we're here in the Northeast community. If I could have people go around and say their names, I think that'll help the one who transcribes to know whose voice is whose. State your full name. And it's on December 8, 1999. I'm Charlie Thompson.
Eunice English.
Raymond English.
Wayne English.
My name is Charles Russell English.
I'm Rob Amberg.
Okay. Thank you. So we were just hearing Mrs. Eunice English describe some of the letters that she had saved from the flood. You had a lot more but you say —
Some —
Probably thirty different pieces here.
Uh-huh.
And who was this person in the Civil War? How is he related to you?
He was my grandmother's nephew or first cousin. I do not know for sure. He was a Lee from over in New Bern area.
Oh in New Bern.
She was from over there. So it was some of her close relatives.
And you grew up in that county over near—.
I grew up in Pender County.
In Pender.
Um-hmm.
Okay. In what community?
Shelter Neck.
Okay. Shelter Neck.
Near Bergar.
Okay. And you and Mr. English are married.
That's right. Soon be fifty years.
Were you always from this community, Mr. English?
Yes, sir.
Where do you live now? How far from this location?
One tenth of a mile.
Okay. Good. And that was Shelter Neck?
Um-hmm. That's where I came from.
Okay.
His mother came from there. My granddaddy came from up here. And his daddy was up here. So they criss-crossed visiting.
Is that how you two met?
Um-hmm.
You want to tell that story, how you met and where it was?
Well, at that time his daddy was sick. His cousin that lived down next door to me came up to see his uncle. So a bunch of us came up with him because it was family connections. So that's how we met, visiting.
That was which year?
Forty-six.
In 1946 when you met.
And married in fifty.
Okay, how is everybody else related here?
That's our son.
I'm the son.
That's our son. This one is his brother's son.
Nephew.
Son and nephew.
Okay, son and nephew. Well with all of these rich knowledges and histories represented, it's hard to get it all on one tape. Often with oral histories, we concentrate on just one person's history. That's usually known as a life history. But what I'm trying to do here is mix in life history with the community and flood history all together. So we'll go backwards and forwards a little bit. I want to include parts of your lives that will enrich this collection about the flood. Because in order to know what was lost and what the community's like, this community that was flooded, I think we have to go back into history some. And so we have those kinds of stories. Your saving of these letters is part of what was lost. So maybe we could talk about that a little bit. How did you get these—.
You talking about how the community basically started?
Yeah. Should we start with that or—.
I could probably give you the overview on—.
Well let's start with that then.
Well, a personal note: I used to be quite active in doing genealogy
things. I ran into a clinker and I just got it laying aside so perhaps
one day when I retire I'll have the opportunity to pick it back up
again. But our personal family genealogy that I can document goes back
to 1790. I am of the fifth generation, Wayne and myself. Uncle Raymond
is of the fourth generation. And, of course, the other generations are
long gone. The first documented record that I have of the English family
in this country is 1790. And that was in Pender County, which is, as the
crow flies, less than fifteen miles from where we sit here. In
1800—to be brief—1836, our generation came to this
property right here. A gentleman by the name of Stephen English, he had
two marriages, raised two families, of which our generation is from his
second marriage. He had a son and two daughters of which was my
grandfather and Uncle Raymond's father. At the time he came to this part
of Duplin County in 1836, of course, there were
Teacheys—surname Teacheys. That's one of the older names of
Duplin County. And, of course, there were Hancheys of which perhaps you
have interviewed some today. I think Betsy told me they were on your
schedule. The Carters were a very dominant name in the community. The
Batts and, of course, the Cavenaughs, Southerlands, Englishes,
Bradshaws, and each were given territory then. And it's amazing that how
these parcels of property are still in the families
About a quarter of a mile up the
Okay. That was across the creek. Is that the one beside the church or the one up there around Mr. Carlise's before they moved it to the church?
One side of the church.
Okay.
One side of the church.
Okay.
At first it was two rooms. What we called big room and little room. And
they went as far as eleventh grade, twelfth grade. Well, when it got
kind of thickly populated through here, they built on to it. They built
a room onto it. Later on
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine.
Well, no, it was before then. Let's see I graduated in twenty-eight and twenty-nine and went through—. So that was twenty-eight, twenty-nine—about twenty-five.
Twenty-five. That's when they went to the old Clements School in Wallace. Is that right?
The old Clements School in Wallace. There's where I went, continued until I graduated.
From high school.
Yeah. The first year a bus ever went up and down this road, I drove it. I drove for four years. It was an old dirt road at that time. One of them was a Model-T. It was a push and a pull. The last two years I had a different bus. It was a Dodge. It held about four children. So that's about the early part and the later part of my life.
Did you go to the little school up here at Paisley before then?
Yes.
And how did you get there?
Walked.
How far of a walk was it?
I'd say two tenths of a mile or so.
Isn't that the old Annie Mae Hanchey house?
Yeah.
Okay. That was the school was it not?
That school is beside the Northeast Church, which is right over here
across the creek. The church was established in 1828. At that time it
was part of the old original Freewill Baptist Church. As a matter of
fact, we just celebrated our hundredth anniversary last year. To be
brief and summarize, I feel that our community is a strong community
with very, very deep roots. You could interview anybody in this
community and they would tell you basically the same thing. Not to be
derogatory, but to someone outside that would come in here, may consider
us not from a religious aspect but maybe a cult community in that we've
got our little old idiosyncrasies and we've got our ways, as is true in
any rural community. When I say we, I'm saying that collectively. We
don't like a lot of progress. We like things to be the way they were
thirty, forty years ago. It's a general consensus of most people in the
community. You've probably heard that already. We're not easy to accept
growth by any means. I think most of the people, particularly sixty
years and older, would rather see things stay the way that they are.
Several political issues have been brought about in the community that
have been voted down, for instance, county water systems. We're country
folks, you know. We've got our own water. God's given us water. So
that's the type of community that we are. I also feel that as in any
rural community there are patriots that are more domineering when it
comes to civic organizations, religious organizations. Every community's
got to have a spokesman and we've certainly got ours. We've got our
leaders and those that are good followers in the community.
Before you go on, when you say farming no longer exists, many people might think, well, there are all these turkeys that are—. What do you mean by farming?
Well, when I was looking from tobacco I grew in my era—and I'm
fifty-five—we didn't know what chickens were unless you go out
in the yard and kill one for dinner. That's how things have changed over
the last thirty years. Yes. There is a poultry industry here. There is a
hog industry. But in this particular community we don't have any hogs.
Maybe one or two, as the crow flies,
Around here it is.
So I'm speaking in terms of just this community. I think—this
is my opinion—but, yes, the flood has definitely changed the
community. Now this is my opinion. Because of the devastation, neighbor
can't help neighbor anymore because everyone is so preoccupied in
getting their own affairs back together. Before we had the church to
fall back on, we had neighbors to fall back on. But with the devastation
there's nowhere to turn. And people are too in tuned to trying to get
their own affairs back together. I think the consensus of the community
is that those that can afford to make their repairs are getting aid,
while those that cannot afford to make their own repairs aren't getting
as much. So I think there's a spirit of enviousness or perhaps
competition. Some will restore on a short-term basis, some will restore
on a long term basis. Some may not ever. My Uncle Raymond is at a young
age of ninety plus living on a fixed income, as most people of
retirement age are in this community. And without relief—. The
biggest
Going back, speaking of the early days, the way that we farmers made our
money was with strawberries. Well, as time progressed I remember when
tobacco first come into this neighbor. My father and Mr. Johnny McNettis
over here built a barn, and they put out a little tobacco and they grew
it. And they sold it out here to Wallace
Did you grow strawberries?
Yes. My father grew strawberries. While I was in the war I was working in
the shipyard. I was first drafted into the war and stayed in there at
Camp Landry, Florida. When I left there I come to
In Wilmington? Where in Wilmington?
In Wilmington shipyard. I worked there three years and six months, five
days. And the war broke
And how many children did you raise by farming? That was your main income, I assume?
Two.
Two children? There's Wayne and you have another—.
One is deceased.
Okay. And Mrs. Eunice, were you working off the farm or on the farm as well?
Helping him and busy raising the boys and keeping things going.
Okay. Somebody mentioned earlier that there was a strawberry market in Wallace. How did that work?
It was the strawberry market of the world.
The world.
The radio station here is WLSE, world's largest strawberry exchange.
An old water tank out there—on the old water tank, Strawberry Capital of the World.
I don't know how true that is.
1930, 1940.
For a ten-year period it was the largest strawberry producing county?
No. World's largest strawberry exchange. It would be like the largest
produce market that there was, certainly in the United States. When they
said the world back then, you know, the United States was the world. But
it did carry the title of the world's largest strawberry exchange.
That's where everybody took their strawberries,
This was before California found out about strawberries apparently.
It must have been.
So do you know how far your strawberries went in the country?
New York, Baltimore. They shipped them all over the place. At that time it was by rail. But later on, it got by trucks. Naturally, the rail lost out and they finally quit running.
I haven't seen a railroad track here anymore. Is that gone?
Well it's in Wallace.
There's one goes into Wallace to the wholesale place there.
Mr. English, how many acres of strawberries were you growing?
Well at that time we were two to three, sometimes four acres.
You mean it took a lot of people to raise those.
It took a lot of work. It took a lot of rake and straw, too.
They didn't have tractors back then.
We wouldn't have but a full four acres in but one year. But we would rake the straw over them of an evening, rake it off of a morning. That would keep the bloom from getting killed. So you couldn't do very many that way. But after a while it got to the place that if you took the weather as it come, you could increase your acreage.
That's one reason they called them strawberries, wasn't it? Now when you went to pick them who all participated in that?
Well people in the neighborhood. The last years I had them I went over at Maple Hill and got colored people and put them in an old house that we had back over there. They lived there and I paid them. I don't know if it was five cents a quart.
They used to pay—I picked them for five cents a quart and they would give you a little token, a little tin token every time you would pick a quart. You had to pick them with the little stems on them. They had to be so long. Had to have them stems on it for some reason. I haven't figured out why. They couldn't be too ripe. As a child I remember picking strawberries right out there. They give you a little token. At the end of the day they would count your tokens. I can remember getting a nickel for every quart that you'd pick.
I can go back further. I remember them being a cent and a half.
I can go back further than that being a penny. The first money I ever made in my life I made picking strawberries for Mr. Billy Duff. I asked him if I could pick his strawberries. He said, "You reckon you can do it?" I said, "Yes, sir." I was small back then. "You take the outside row." I said, "Uh-oh, I'm whupped now." But anyway I picked enough strawberries off that row to get me a dime. So I had money. Could go to the store and buy one of these long sticks of candy.
How long would your picking season last when you had a couple or two or three acres of strawberries?
The strawberry season? It would last around three to four weeks.
You paid a penny or as little as a penny and a half or five cents. What were you selling those strawberries for at that point?
Well they were taking them out to Wallace for about three dollars a thirty-two quart crate.
S when you were growing two or three acres you were selling a lot of quarts. Do you remember—?
Made a trip or two a day.
And when you shifted over to tobacco, what sort of a size allotment did you have?
Well about three acres at that time. It was an old log barn. I remember that the logs was drug out of the river swamp down here, a Cypress log. I went out there and I just couldn't crawl up on that log. So they had the tobacco right behind the place there and some over there. When they moved it was to Hickory Pryor.
Hickory Pryor?
Hickory Pryor. Yes, sir.
P-R-Y-O-R?
I guess.
Was that the type of tobacco or was that the name of—.
That was the name of the tobacco.
Name of the tobacco.
Yeah.
Variety mainly that you were planting.
Right. But it didn't make much
And when did you stop growing tobacco?
About ten years, I guess, now.
At least that long.
You grew tobacco for about forty years. And made the majority of your living by tobacco then for that long? Where were you selling your tobacco?
Well, I carried some as far as Georgia. I carried some to South Carolina to Jasmine. And sold in Wallace. Sold in Wilson. Sold in Rocky Mount. Sold in Kinston. Sold wherever I heard that it was a good price. That's where I went and sold my tobacco.
There was no tobacco market in Duplin County.
Not in Duplin.
Not in those early days.
Then later there was one in Wallace?
Yes, it came to Wallace. Langston and Fairger built a tobacco warehouse up on Main Street in Wallace.
Is it still there? Is that warehouse still there?
No. A Wal-Mart's there now.
This was about the fifties, wasn't it Uncle Raymond?
Huh?
That was about in 1950 wasn't it when they built that warehouse in Wallace? Was it earlier than that?
It was earlier than that.
It was earlier.
Uh-huh. It didn't stay there I'd say a period of eight or ten years. The town began to progress. It had to get going.
Well as the town began to progress, what was making the town grow if tobacco had to go?
Well, tobacco was coming in strong.
Oh, tobacco was strong.
Yeah.
But the tobacco warehouse had to go.
They built more.
Okay. In Wallace?
Um-hmm. They had—how many tobacco markets were there up there in the hay day like?
There was Langston and Fairger, Sheffield—.
Bill Hussey.
He had an early warehouse.
So there was about four or five—.
The industry began to change drastically in Duplin County in 1951 when the textile industry came to Duplin County. I spent thirty-five years and twelve days there. Plant closed—.
J. P. Stevens?
Started out at J. P. Stevens. I started there in 1962. In 1986 they sold out to the Cosan Group, which was knit fabrics. They were later bought by Delta Woodside Corporation in 1986 and they closed that facility March the fifteenth 1998.
And when you got out of school when you first started working you went directly into the textile industry?
Directly into textiles as an industrial engineer.
You went to NC State?
No. I went there right out of high school. Graduated from high school May the 22nd 1963 and started there June the 6th 1963. I worked there all of my working life until a year and a half ago when the company shut down. I spent twenty-eight years in research and development. The last five years I was there I was a planning manager. When they closed the doors I had to seek employment.
Where did that plant go? Where did that company go?
It closed.
Closed completely?
As [did] twenty-eight more plants across the southeast.
They didn't go to another country?
No. That's what cost us the company, this off shore products. We couldn't compete with foreign labor and that's why the company shut down.
Then what did you go into after textiles?
Well I had some offers in textiles. But the apparel business due to the
NAFTA act that was passed in this country, we can't compete anymore. I
elected to
Okay.
And I'm office manager of a local heating and air company. Hard road to
handle. Then a year and a half after that, having to adjust to half of a
salary, then the flood comes. I'm
No. I understand.
But, that was the leading industry in Duplin County up until about a year and a half ago.
What is the leading industry today?
Pigs.
Pigs. Do you call that progress? Is this progress for most of the people here?
Personal note. Well I'd have to say from a political aspect, yes, it would be growth. However, growth has a price to pay. That kind of growth, I think, has been detrimental on our environment. I don't want to sound like an ecologist or one of these people that gets out and totes signs. But it's had a devastating affect on our environment, to our rivers, to the pollutants, to a well right out here in my yard that has been chlorinated four times and we still don't have drinking water. It has wasted the water. We never had these problems before so they came from somewhere.
I think that the major problem with the devastation was not really the
water but the actual contaminants that were in the water. Used to be
when they had floods, as I think I've mentioned before, the water would
recede and people could go on
Well obviously the contamination is still here, isn't it?
The contamination is still here. Wells are still contaminated. Our clean water and clean air acts are just being mocked in this community, not only state but federal, clean water and clean air acts. It's just a mockery the way it's being treated. Most of the things that people lost could have been saved if runoff water hadn't come through here. But due to the amount of bacteria and everything, everything was just so contaminated that it had to be got rid of for health reasons. And we still don't know what the future affects of that will be. There's been a lot of illness in the community, a lot of sickness, a lot of sores that won't heal, a lot of upper respiratory problems. According to one doctor I talked to, they don't know really what to plan on six months from now, but they do expect a lot of respiratory problems
In 1962 we had a flood in the community. It doesn't compare to this at
all. It didn't go in Uncle Raymond's house. I think it lacked six or
eight inches for getting in his house in '62, but I'm using that to say
that when the waters receded in 1962 I think people still harvested some
of their tobacco. The soybean crop, they harvested it. The corn crop,
they harvested it. To reiterate what Wayne has said, go look now.
There's no green vegetation at all even to trees. We had planted some,
over a thousand pine trees down on mine and my brother's property down
in the Creek Swamp, what we call the Creek Swamp. The trees
Pesticides. Could there have been herbicides in that water?
I'm sure there was.
I think a lot of it is contributed to—and here again, this is a personal opinion—from the chemicals that are used in some of these swine industries, perhaps poultry as well, that have gotten into our wells and into our drinking water, and certainly in the streams. My sport is canoeing. The northeast Cape Fear River runs about—I believe it's ninety miles from its point of origin down to Wilmington.
Where is the point of origin?
Ghossen Swamp is actually where the northeast Cape Fear River would start, which would be up in the Goldsboro area.
Okay.
Going towards Goldsboro.
Can you describe that river? Have you floated it all the way down? I mean, can you just kind of go through in your mind from leaving that swamp all the way to the ocean? Do you know the river that well?
I have only made the trip all the way to the ocean one time in my life.
When we canoe we will go up to a little town called Beulahville, which
is about fifteen,
About how wide?
The widest point there would not be over probably twenty-five, thirty feet.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Anyway, I have canoed the river in low water where you would have to drag
the canoe at times, and I have canoed the river when the water would be
receding, I mean, would be out of the banks. You really couldn't tell
where the run of the water would be or the run of the river would be. It
is a beautiful river. As a matter of fact, I have met canoeists on that
river that would come as far as Pennsylvania just to canoe the northeast
Cape Fear River because of its natural and scenic content. There's
beavers. There's otters. There's deer. I've never seen a bear, but there
is just about any kind of wildlife you want to find on that river. To
say the river is clean, no, it's not. Not compared to what it was
fifteen years ago. You can tell every time that you get close to a hog
house, as we call them, a swine producing facility, because you can
smell the stench from the river. I have actually canoed the river when I
would see suds coming from ditches that would be coming from a hog house
up on the hill. I have tried to attack it on a political level in going
to our county commissioners, making complaints and it didn't seem to do
any good. About a year and a half ago there was funds appropriated to
clean that river. Somewhat over—how many million? Don't quote
me, but well over a million dollars to clean that river, which, in my
opinion, caused more devastation than it was before the
Let's go back to Beulahville area, the Goshen Swamp. Is that right?
Goshen Swamp and go back down through here. A lot of times we've heard
through this flood story in other communities, it's all the development
that's occurred: housing and new roads and so forth. When you look at
the watershed starting up there at the swamp,
I think the change is locally. I think a change in the farming system has hurt the rivers more than anything else. Yes, we do have a new facility right down the road here, River Landing, that big golf resort.
Well the logging industry runs that.
Yeah. The logging—. Everybody has sold—.
Every bit of tree that—.
Yeah. There's very few trees standing there.
I heard one the other night that a tree could absorb, I think, it was well over two hundred gallons of water a day. People that we've talked to that have dealt with floods before has told how much affect development does have. Like I say, in this community you can just keep seeing the logging industry. I heard one report the other day that they have just logged out this part of the country—that you had to go up to where the mountains or the northern part of the state now to find good tracts of land.
It's a great affect to the—.
The outcome of that instant money-making business is never realized. Same
way with when you try to pack two million hogs in one county. You go to
figure up that a hog puts off four times the amount of nitrogen and
maybe forty times the amount of ammonia of human waste. When you've got
two million hogs in a county, you're figuring, well, you've got two or
three New York cities dumping their waste in
A big erosion problem.
You said open and untreated waste. Is that in the hog industry line? Is it that lagoons are a way of treating—?
There's no way to treat the lagoon waste other than—.
Well, it's open air. I mean you've got nitrogen and such components of the waste are absorbed into the air. Then it rains back down. So they can say it lays on the bottom all they want, but, you know, it's absorbed into the air and then it's carried over to the mountains. I'm sure everyone's seen pictures of the trees in the mountains now from the acid rain affect it's having up there. You just can't dump that. All these ponds—. My father's had a pond for years and years and years. The last ten years the pond stays green all summer long because of nitrogen based algae that grows. It just won't go away. There's just so much nitrogen. It used to be a nice place with beautiful water. People would go fishing. I've looked at ponds around the neighborhood and all around the county. Even running water, the mill pond bridge, the famous grist mill—one of the oldest in this area. I looked at it the other day when I went by. It's running water and it's still eaten up with green algae.
The creeks are the same way. The creeks are filled with green algae.
I heard a little kid the other day. His grandfather was showing him the river. The river was real low back in the summer and the bottom of it was a black, murky—some kind of substance with green algae just growing all over it. The grandfather was telling his grandson how he used to swim in that river and that when they got real thirsty they'd take a swallow or two of water. The grandkid couldn't believe it. That's just two generations. He has seen now that it's impossible. Well it's possible, but very unhealthy or unwise for the grandkid to enjoy that. Another generation it'll probably be the same with the fish. I mean, you know, the stories of listeria and everything else. Not too many people eat fish out of the river. That's been going on since time started. People caught their food and ate it, but now it's got to a point around here that—.
Not since Hurricane Fran.
It's too dangerous.
I'm a bream fisherman and it's not unusual at all in bream season to see the fish that you catch have sores on them. I wouldn't eat that.
In the ponds around here?
No, in the river.
Northeast Cape Fear River.
Wayne do you remember swimming on the river as a kid?
Oh yeah. That's where I got my Saturday bath.
So would you go down there with your family or friends? Describe a swimming trip for us.
Well back in the sixties it was just a—. Well being in the country you weren't privileged to the city extra curricula activities, so what we had was basically farm work and swimming. All the kids would gather up and go to the river. You had good, cold, clean river water to swim in. Now it's a whole lot different. It was a big social event, really. Going swimming was a big deal especially for kids who didn't have their driver's license, you know. They could go not too far in any direction and catch a swimming hole. It was a big social gathering place.
Tie a rope to a tree and built a makeshift diving board and that's where
you spent Saturday afternoons and Sundays if your parents weren't too
religious.
When you come to the house you were clean. Mother used to make her own
soap. We'd kill hogs and she'd take all of the skins and the loose parts
of the—I call it the lard part. She'd seize it. She'd make her
a pot of stew and she'd put some of that old grease in the pot and boil
it. Then she'd put lye in there and she'd cook it down and when she'd
take it up, it'd be just a little bit of real dark looking water on the
bottom of the pot. We used to have a little swimming hole down there in
this creek and when you took a piece of that and went in there and
jumped in and all like that, you were clean.
Come out right red, didn't you?
Yeah. It near about make you bald headed.
It was, especially as a kid, one of the more favorite
things—part of the summer. It was the community spirit in
going swimming and just having a good time.
You know, that's part of my earlier comment. We're not susceptible to change around here. Even myself at my age, I wish I could go back to those days when, to borrow a line from Junior Sample, when pot was something that you used for the bathroom. We didn't know what pot was. A pot was a commode as a kid. We didn't know what drugs was. Even when I was in high school if you drunk a beer, you had done something big time. People just didn't do that. We never locked our doors in this community until maybe five years ago because now we don't know who our neighbors are anymore. The things that's happening, that was happening in Wilmington ten or fifteen years ago have caught up with us on the rural mart now. We know what crack is down here in Northeast community now. We know what alcohol will do now. Like I say, ten, twelve years ago, we didn't worry about that kind of stuff. That was something for somebody else. So, yes, there's some of that in me that I would love to see things back the way they were, not only before the flood, but farther back—.
Times were more innocent.
Yeah. We were innocent and perhaps a little more naïve than what we are now. I think that's the consensus of the community as well.
Could we talk about two specific things that I've heard more about from
other people? But I'd like to hear more about them from you. One is the
global transfer.
With global transfer, basically—we knew what that was.
I think it's proved itself.
It's proved itself. It was an excuse to raise taxes and to throw away money on somebody's pet project. Nothing's going to mature. It'll never be anything. It's just like the one out in Texas that he tried to tell me years ago that's sitting out there empty, several million dollar airport.
What did they say it was going to do for the community?
Oh, it was going to make us the Atlanta of the eastern seaboard, you know, bring business and industry and the higher tech industry to replace the textiles that were leaving. Open up eastern North Carolina to be—. I guess they were going to make a Research Triangle area out of it or what they thought—. But what we saw was a tax increase first.
I was somewhat an activist in that, which there have been some
repercussions, so I want to be careful what I say. We asked the same
questions now that we are victims of today. Primarily, what will it do
to the environment? The property was part of the Kenan estate, who were
very influential in this community—Thomas Kenan, UNC, the
Kenan family of Guilford County. Their roots are here in Kenansville.
They have a place right down the road here less than three or four
miles, known to us in the community as Kenan Quarters. There are several
hundred acres
Will you go back and
I think it was politically motivated on two parts. And I think the Kenan family was very active in the planning stages of it.
Yeah. There was talk at one time of settling it right down here on this old—which would be about two miles from us.
I heard it called the Kenan Plantation since we've been down here. Is that the same place?
Well, we refer to it as Kenan Quarters. The plantation itself was in
Kenansville. But the property that the Kenans owned—we're
going back now to the 1700s—actually run down here in the
Northeast community. It was Lochland. It referred to the Scottish loch
lands of that era. I'm going back now into the middle 1800s. That's how
this precinct in here gets its name, the Lochland precinct. It's our
voting place, where we go to vote. It got the name from the loch land
For the purpose of—.
For the purpose of draining those loch lands that were up in the
The old Kenan house that Richard dated from was just across that ditch.
The old Tom Kenan place, was it not?
Yeah. That was the Kenan's home.
Which was James's brother.
And there is a slave cemetery on that land that we saw?
I've heard some of them call it a slave cemetery. But that cemetery is
still being used today. It may have started out as a slave cemetery. But
there is some—. Lord I don't remember those black people's
names. Turn right there past
Just across that Kenan ditch.
Yeah. Right across the Kenan ditch. What's the name of that cemetery up there? Do you remember?
No.
There's some Kenans buried in there with black Kenans.
Yeah. There's some of the black people that were Kenans.
Right.
And they're in there. Well, all of these now that we know now from
Yeah. There were some inter-racial things going on there with the Kenan family.
Uh-huh, which was common.
Which was common, right, right.
Well back to the transpark. When you say we thought such and such about it. Who was we? Was there a community organization?
The consensus of the community, yes. A community program started out that was called RANT. Was it called RANT?
I know everyone around here was against it because we did not want to
The idea wasn't too bad. But everyone knew from the start, it was all politically motivated. They knew the money was going to be wasted. And just—. North Carolina—this side of North Carolina, especially this area of North Carolina is the last to get anything. I mean the people down here realize that Mecklenberg County, RDU, Research Triangle Park, basically, that's where the money goes. So they started off with it and said you might as well put it around Raleigh, you know, where it can be used. It's not going to work in Kinston. Who goes to Kinston? Who needs Kinston? There's not even interstate access hardly. So it looked like a dead horse to start with. And no one could convince anybody any different. So the—.
They go up to five dollars on our licenses. Is it this year or next year?
They did it last year. It's off now.
Off now?
Yeah.
Well you take every car there was, truck in North Carolina and add five dollars to it, see where it goes.
That was the main
If you write and ask—. If you ask the right politician they will tell you. As a matter of fact, I got a letter to this extent that the reason we're suffering in the swine industry now is because we, of this community, elected not to have the global transport here, if you can imagine that mentality.
Do you think you stopped it?