On the Porch with Jim Williams
Capturing the stories of the folks of Marion, McDowell County, and Western North Carolina. Told by those with first-hand experience.
On the Porch with Jim Williams
Mayor of Marion Steve Little
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The Mayor joins me to discuss everything from the Marriot to convict labor in the mountains between Old Fort and Ridgecrest. The session is full of insights about the Mayor and some really fun things in store for Marion in the near and distant future. And yes...we do get to talk about railroads.
Hello, I'm Jim Williams, and you're on the porch. It is my pleasure today to have the mayor of Marion here with us, his honor Steve Little. Steve, thanks for coming up.
SPEAKER_00Good morning, Jim. It is a delight for me to be here.
SPEAKER_01Well, I have so much stuff to talk about that we're not going to get to it all, I'm sure. You know why I brought you here. I wanted to talk about railroads. So that we'll get to railroads. One of my favorite talks. Um and I wanted to tell you, I don't mean to blow smoke at you here because this is the truth. I have always been fascinated with storytellers. Um course, Native Americans handed their history down orally with storytellers. Right. And here in the mountains, that's kind of a tradition, too, that's really uh lost on us now. Uh but I see you and a few others here in McDowell County as storytellers. And so although you've memorialized your stuff with several books, and we'll talk about that, you're also one of the best storytellers I've heard because I've watched you on YouTube do that convict thing, and and that's great. Let's start out. How did you wind up here in Marion?
SPEAKER_00That's a fun question to answer. Back when I was small, starting when I was eleven years old in 1962, and so nobody gets distracted by the math. I'm 75 right now. So 1962 I went to summer camp at Ridgecrest, the Baptist-owned summer camp for boys. And that was a life-changing thing for me to go to a place that was not a sports camp, because as a kid, and this is a trait that I still have today, I am not an athlete. I there's nothing about me that is athletic, except I played in the band to support athletic teams. But I'm not an athlete. And even at age 11, I was beginning to wonder, what is my purpose? Why am I here? Because there would be so many people who would say, you know, play sports and you look like you could play football. I was kind of a tubby guy, short, but I couldn't catch a ball. I went to Camp Ridge Crest and I learned at Camp Ridgecrest that everybody has a purpose. Everybody. We don't know what that is most of the time. But we've all got a purpose. And I learned that it's okay to be an 11-year-old boy and not be athletic. So that was such a profound thing for me. I continued to come back for five summers to go to camp there and then worked on the staff. So important to my life development that when I finished law school, I wanted to go to the closest county seat to Camp Ridgecrest. Not counting Asheville because that was too big of a city. I'm a I'm a small town fella. Grew up in Smithfield in eastern North Carolina. Marion fit the bill because it was the closest county seat to Ridgecrest.
SPEAKER_01My goodness. And and then over the years you I I don't see you, Steve, as a political person. You're just the mayor. You know, uh, how did that come about?
SPEAKER_00I had been in Marion just about five years, let me think. Actually seven years, because I moved here in 77 and started practicing law. And then after about seven years, and I became active in the community. I joined First Baptist Church. Uh I joined the North the McDowell County chapter of the North Carolina Symphony. Very few people even remember that there was such a thing.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00And we recruited the symphony to come to East, then uh junior high, the the middle school now, to perform in the auditorium. Uh I and I would join the Kowanis Club because my dad was a Kowanian in Smithfield. And uh I had become a, after a couple of years, a trustee of Marion General Hospital, and I was just completely immersed in the community. J. C. Rayburn, a few people living still may remember J. C. He came to me one day just to the law office. I worked with Everett Carnes for the first five years I was here as an attorney, and Mr. Rayburn said, Steve, I think you ought to run for the Marion City Council. Well, that just surprised me immensely. I'd never thought about any such thing. And within a day or two, Philip Tate came to see me and said the same thing. And I thought, what are these guys in cahoots about? And then there was a third person, and I have completely forgotten who the third person was. But within a span of a week, three people came to me and asked me to run for the Marion City Council, saying that there'd been people on the council for quite some time, and there needs to be some fresh ideas. Well, there was one topic that I already was committed to working toward, and that was expanding the city limits, because the city limits ended at the little corner where Steve Jones' realty office was for many years, Joanne Howell Realty for many years, Stone Realty before that. That was the end of the city limits. The entire five lane and in the mid-70s was not in the Marion City Limits. My goodness. And there were restaurants on the five lane that had to have their sewage system pumped out regularly. If you've got a restaurant, you got grease in your pipes.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And it was becoming a problem, and they were asking for help. So I thought, that's my issue. I want to make sure that we annex the five lane so we can provide full city services to these businesses that need it. So I filed and I won. And had no idea. 1985 was the election year. I took office in December of 1985. And the odd thing, Jim, is I've been re-elected 24 years on the Marion City Council, all of which Everett Clark was the mayor, and I learned so much from Everett. He was my mentor on local government. And he told me in 2009 he was not going to run again. He looked at me in the eyes and said, Are you thinking about running for mayor? Since I've told you that I'm not. My goodness. So if you do the math, 41 years as an elected uh person uh for the city of Marion. Never having any idea as a kid, well, a young adult, I'll say it that way, in 1985. I was 34 years old when I was elected. And now at age 75, that's 41 years.
SPEAKER_01It it sounds uh toady-ish, but I'll say it anyway. You've done a good job, in my opinion. Well, thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00I've had good people I've worked with.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I think that's true, but you have always been a part of the community. Even when uh Janet and I first came back to Marion, of course I was born in Marion, uh, right across the street, as a matter of fact. But you've always been you've always had a smile and a handout. Uh the first two or three times I met you, I didn't even know you were the mayor. You were just someone from Marion who was friendly, and I've always appreciated that. But I'm not gonna let you off the hook. So what what's going on in Marion? What's what's good about Marion right now?
SPEAKER_00Oh, everything is good, Jim, about Marion. Now, I say that somewhat facetiously, because of course we have our challenges. But some of the good things that are going on for Marion include the Givens estates coming into the old Clinchfield mill site. Work will start on the renovations this fall.
SPEAKER_01My goodness.
SPEAKER_00On that. And another exciting aspect is the new elementary school, which will be in that large area between Ridge Road and Box Factory. Well, not Eta, but uh it's changed. It's changed names so many times that uh West Rock was the last one I can remember. But anyway, in that area, an old elementary school. Well, we also have one of the most exciting prospects that that really energizes me tremendously for Main Street, and that is in the spot where NCNB and then Nations Bank and then Bank of America changing its name, that site, which had its building torn down about a year ago, will become this year a Marriott Hotel. Four stories tall.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and what did you do to get Marriott to come to Marion? Why would they do that?
SPEAKER_00Two developers, two young men who are from the Morganton area, at least one of them is, built a hotel similar to this in Morganton. Then they did one in another town in the Piedmont of North Carolina, and then they came to Marion. I give credit to Chuck Abernathy for landing this uh exciting venture of having a hotel in downtown. I'm just happy to be here.
SPEAKER_01Uh well, yeah, and along with any time a hotel comes in, especially of Marriott quality, there's gonna be an eatery somewhere. Absolutely. Um and whatever uh pertinent businesses that are associated with hotels are gonna come in. And and the Marriott will bring in a probably, and I don't want this to sound wrong, but it'll bring in a decent class of people. But I've wondered, uh uh well, we have leaf season and we have Bigfoot. Yes, um, and we have Mountain Glory. So I I maybe I've answered my own question there. Maybe that's why they'd come in.
SPEAKER_00They have a business model that they didn't ask me to produce for them. So they determine they do know what they're doing. But there's even more exciting things. Just yesterday afternoon there was a gathering at the community building to introduce to the community the fun prospect of determining what will happen to the former Drexel plant location here in Marion that had become a brownfield and has now been cleared, and it will be developed in some way, and we were seeking input from the community, whether it will be mixed use with residential and res and uh commercial or recreational. Uh there's uh a strong push for an amphitheater, for example, but one portion of this tract, it's almost 16 acres, would be, and it's right beside the railroad tracks. So a new depot to accommodate passenger service when passenger service starts, when we are officially a part of Amtrak, which I predict will be approximately seven years from now. So that's coming on. The the West Marion Hub uh is another exciting. I could talk for a long time, Jim, about the exciting things that are positive for Marion.
SPEAKER_01Well, while we're on that part, tell me again what you just told me about some the possibility of train passenger service, and we'll we'll probably touch on this again, but the possibility of passenger service from uh in in our case Marion to Asheville.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01That's coming.
SPEAKER_00That that is coming. Now, that is not without a lot of background for 35 years. An organization was formed 10 years, no, 10 sometime, maybe between 10 and 20 years after the last passenger service train left Asheville heading into the Piedmont of North Carolina, and that was in 1975. So after passenger service left, a group of people from a variety of municipalities along the track line formed a committee called the Western North Carolina Rail Committee. I was not one of the formative beginning people of that organization. But they got together and by the late 90s I was affiliated with that. Freddie Killow, our wonderfully talented Marion Business Association executive director. She's here next week. Oh, great, the developer of the gym program. Freddie has been a member of that organization as a secretary for about 30 years. Wow. And the goal for years was this group to continue to advocate for the return of passenger service. I became, along with former State Representative Ray Rapp of Mars Hill, co-chairman of this group about 10 years ago. We changed our scope to include promoting greater utilization by freight under the theory that Norfolk Southern's not going to bring back passenger service until they make enough money on their freight operations. Because railroads don't make money on passenger service. Correct. They make money on freight. So we had this organization and we developed a close working connection with the rail division of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, to the point where we became the most vocal, most visible grassroots organization supporting the return of passenger rail in the entire state of North Carolina. And the state rail division helped us by gathering demographic information and usage data and projections. And we then made connections with Amtrak. Fast forwarding in December of 2023, Amtrak announced that they were selecting seven corridors of rail in North Carolina to include, either to enhance or to add to the Amtrak network. And the top one was a segment from Raleigh to Richmond for a high-speed train. Beyond that, the number one choice was our corridor between Salisbury and Asheville. Now people have sometimes said, why Salisbury? Do you ever wake up in the morning and say, I am so excited I'll be able to go to Salisbury on the train? Well, in a way, yes, because of what that means. That doesn't mean you're going to Salisbury necessarily, although it's a wonderful little town. Certainly. That's where the Amtrak rails are already. Yes. That's the closest connection point where the rails exist. This rail section from Salisbury to Asheville is very historic. And I've done a lot of work on that. You made reference to my video that was made when I spoke at Morris Hill dressed in the convict costume, telling the story of the convicts who built the loops going up Ofort Mountain. But all of this came together and we were chosen. And since then, our committee continues to work to advocate. We sponsored a one-day conference just last week that was attended by state legislators, attended by representatives of the U.S. Senators, congressmen who serve areas along this corridor between Salisbury and Asheville, mayors, and a lot and people from Amtrak, people from Norfolk Southern, from CSX. It was a fascinating information-packed event. And we are making ourselves known. And our goal now is to raise the funds, hopefully through the state legislature, to constitute the match needed to supplement the $165 million price tag on this upgrade of this track. Big price tag. Yes. But the result is passenger service. Now Amtrak has not yet said where the train stops will be along the route. But I just have to believe in my heart of hearts that Marion is going to be one of the stops. Some people can walk to the train station and get on the train and go to Asheville. They can go to Raleigh. They could go to Washington, D.C., go to New York City for the weekend, make some connections, go to Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver. On and on and on. And by getting on the train in Marion and not having to drive, nowadays, whenever I go to Raleigh for meetings, I don't like to drive in the outskirts of Raleigh. It's congested and lane changes and and uh confusion and and sometimes there are backups of four lanes of traffic you were set at a standstill. I drive from Marion to Charlotte. I take the train from Charlotte to Raleigh.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really?
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir. I did that just last week. The price tag for a ticket from Charlotte to Raleigh is $24. It would cost you more in gas to drive. And if you did, you'd be having to put up with slowdowns and annoyances and congestion and traffic and irritation and frustration. And you ride the train and you just smile. Oh, yeah. Because it's delightful.
SPEAKER_01There's nothing like train travel.
SPEAKER_00And there are four Piedmont trains, they call them Piedmont, from Charlotte to Raleigh, round trip every day. They give you free coffee, they give you free water, and it's a big wide seat. You can stretch your legs out and not touch the seat. Oh, yeah. At least I can. Yes, I think. Tall person, maybe not, but plenty of leg room. It's a great thing to do.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's the advantages of a train, and we've always liked train travel. Janet, when we lived in San Diego, she had to weekly go to uh Los Angeles for her work and would take the train. The Pacific Surfline. Yes. Yes, and that was a beautiful ride. Yes. Now I'll tell you what heartens me and that is that after the hurricane we we went up through Oford and up through up around Ridgecrest. And those tracks I told Janet I said that's the end of the railroad. They'll never come back. But they have you know the they are building that back and that that tells me somebody wants to do something.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_01Uh because they're coming back with a vengeance and I don't know how far but just Steve just the other day we had guests here from uh Lincoln Nebraska we're sitting uh in here and we heard the train whistleblow my it was my niece and her husband and he said wow what a great sound to just be able to hear the train. Yes yes oh well that would be fantastic to get okay well what what do you think is your biggest challenge in Marion? Put the railroad aside for the time being do we have anything I I'll just tell you up front I'm pretty happy. Do you see anything that's uh detrimental to our lifestyle?
SPEAKER_00Well we have issues involving homeless folks. Yes that's true and I set up a a task force because I felt there was a need for it to have people from different points of view come together. I selected uh 15 people with different backgrounds and different perspectives to form a task force. I went to the first meeting just to explain what I hoped they would accomplish namely some issues some perhaps even some recommendations of things that could be done and I told them after I finished giving you this explanation and thanking you for serving you will not see me at one of your meetings Marion is paying for a facilitator and a note taker to meet with and make sure things are staying on track. They've had their fourth meeting already. This started in January and four meetings and they continue to meet. I'm very delighted by that it it's it's very satisfying to see people willing to give their time to talk about controversial issues. Business people, non-business people just all sorts people who had experience being homeless some of them on this group they will come when they finish and I did not give them a deadline I said you you keep working until you have something you want to say but one condition that I put on it was in order for there to be a recommendation from the task force to the Marion City Council, it has to be something that receives a 70 at least 70% approval by the task force. Not a 51% that's that doesn't reflect deep enough commitment from a wide enough that's a good point variety. So if it gets 70% or more then that will be an issue brought back to the city council. And then we'll have to evaluate whether it's something that we can do or whether it isn't we don't know yet. But we're trying that's the thing every community in the United States our size is dealing with the same challenges. Oh yes and and I thought we're not going to sit around and wait for somebody else to tell us here's your silver bullet because there's not one but or your wonderful solution we're going to work it out ourselves. So I'm very pleased with that. But the other issue that is looming for Marion is an invisible issue. It's the underground water and sewer we have had an engineering firm identified $49 million worth of improvements to our water and sewer system. Now we don't have that kind of money. Right. So we're going to have to get grants and funds from the state from the feds any source we can get and there are some sources of money available not as many as there used to be but we will be trying to to obtain the funds and make as many changes as rapidly as we can because we still have water lines that break.
SPEAKER_01Yes I know often I know that substructure is i is just in a state of decay I mean let's face it.
SPEAKER_00Most of the lines were put underground a hundred years ago. Yeah. So that's not a surprise they're not meant to last forever and they won't.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And we're finding that out a hundred years is just about the life expectancy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and we just happen to be the people that are going to wind up paying the price. Well let's get to something more fun. You threw me a curveball because when you came in here and thank you so much you gave me your newest book I had no idea the one you were going to give me this and but I now I want to talk about it.
SPEAKER_00The newest book is called Hello Earth I'm glad to get to know you and it is just loaded with pictures that you said that most of which you took but some were uh by Annette Bryant that's right Annette is a master bird photographer she is the ultimate she is the best so I asked if she would allow me to publish some of her bird pictures in the chapter in my book on birds and she very kindly agreed and my challenge was limiting the number because I I couldn't pick as many as I wanted but they are so beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So and now I'm gonna I'm gonna be obnoxious about it and ask if before you leave if you'll autograph this for me. I'd be delighted I would certainly love that. Why'd you write this book?
SPEAKER_00I wrote this book I started writing on this book when all I was doing was just making some notes to myself that I might want to use and and just in conversation or and going on hikes I have led hikes for decades uh in the mountain trails up near Ridgecrest. After I looked at a video during COVID that was made by a park ranger in Virginia talking about wildflowers. And I thought yes wildflowers as he so well explained they don't exist for people to enjoy that's a byproduct they exist to attract pollinators to maintain the life cycle of the plants to keep them alive. The fact that they're beautiful helps attract the pollinators but gives us untold joy just looking at them. So I thought well I'm gonna write about that and when I finished I added more to it and made it several pages long and then I realized you know I I could I could write about some more things I could write about fungi mushrooms uh I could write about uh other plants I could write about water the water cycle uh rocks what's underground I write another book by Doug Tallamy talking about the importance of native plants we have so many non-native plants who will just take over the Bradford pear is a prime example you see Bradford pears they're blooming about now and some in the past few weeks they're lovely to look at but what folks perhaps had no idea about I did not until a couple of years ago is that they're not native to the United States which means the predators that control them did not evolve along the same time that they did. In their native country where they did evolve so did the predators that would keep them in check. Well when they're brought to a new area the United States there are no predators that grew up over the generations to keep them under control. Same thing with kudzu. Kudzu's a killer and in the Orient there are bugs that will eat kudzu. Those bugs don't live in the United States they just it just doesn't work. And nothing else controls kudzu. So two examples of nonnative plants Jim Talamy I mean Doug Talamy wrote about that and using what one of another person had written about that the little things rule the world in the form of bugs. That is insects arthropods little creepy crawly things that if we didn't have little creepy crawly bugs that eat the decaying dying or dead plants our world would have stopped being livable and habitable thousands of years ago because it would have turned into nothing but a big garbage dump. So what happens with these garbaged dead plants and trees well they're little critters that eat them that's why our world isn't a garbage dump now. So when you see a little creepy crawly bug don't have the knee-jerk reaction of stomping on it but it's not bothering you. Now if it's in your living room uh you probably I could understand we still take them outside yeah well that's even better take them outside let them do what they do what they're supposed to do yeah and that helps us as humans as we continue to survive.
SPEAKER_01Well you know these Bradford pears it's funny you brought that up because some people plant Bradford pears right down here at the shopping center. They're all planted in a nice long row and in spring that's the first bloom you see. Yes and it is it is very nice it lets me know spring is here but they're almost like weeds uh you know once they get started.
SPEAKER_00That's right and I have to tell you you you may know this but some of the people who listening to this podcast know it that before we had our ginkgos on Main Street we had Bradford pears in Main on Main Street Marion. Oh really I did not know at the time when I was first told that and first learned that Bradford pears are not native which also means the insects won't go on those trees. Birds don't make their nests in those trees they don't want to hang out in those trees. So when when I learned that I was mortified that we as a city had planted non-native trees in our downtown and we cut them we voted quickly to cut them down I credit Heather Cotton she's the one who told me about that and I am grateful that Heather knew that and told me and I was stunned because I thought I knew a fair amount of stuff about nature but I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_01Well we did remove some Bradford pears from our property both here and our property down south because of that reason. Yes they're they're not native and we like to support the native plants. Yeah I'm I'm glad you did that I I didn't know that that was the case. Okay tell me a story.
SPEAKER_00I guess that's where we are now I I uh well is there anything else you want first off where could a person get this book right now it is available at my law office and at Maca. Oh okay yes up uh they have them at Maca for sale and you can order it online I have a website booksbystevelittle dot com. Booksbystevelittle.com now at I have to have GoDaddy to update my website to add this book this book just came out right before Christmas and I haven't had I haven't followed through with GoDaddy yet to this is absolutely beautiful the color in these photographs I'll probably never read the words Steve I I'm not good with words but the the photographs oh look here at the sweet bubby yes you know how sweet bubby got its name no I do not sweet Bubby is is the the more proper name is Carolina Allspice but Sweet Bubby because this is oral history of course the tale is that before women or girls would go out on a date with their bow they would rub the blossoms of the sweet bubby in their chest area to produce a nice fragrance. Oh my goodness and uh so that's why it's called sweet bubby you can figure that out how about that I will tell you the first time I smelled a sweet bubby before I knew what it was this was more than 50 years ago I thought there's somebody because I was out in the woods by myself hiking and I thought there's somebody else around here and they are chewing juicy fruit chewing gum because I smell juicy fruit chewing gum. And I stopped and I looked around and there was nobody there. And then I saw this beautiful maroon flower that was close by and the a little breeze was blowing it in my direction and I went closer and I realized it's that blossom that smells like juicy fruit chewing com.
SPEAKER_01That I I I'm glad you said that because I have had that almost exact same experience and I thought well you're just going nuts being out here in the woods by yourself but I'm glad you said that Steve now I'm not as crazy as I thought I was well thanks again for the book. How many how many books have you written about the railroad do you know? About the railroad four and then you wrote a book about hiking in the Blue Ridge.
SPEAKER_00That's right that's right that's a a nature book that identifies some of the most predominant plants and trees in the Blue Ridge Mountains and limited my area my eco niche that that book deals with to a south facing slope with no water source. That's the environment of the trail of Mount Kittezuma which is the mountain at the if you go up Old Fort Mountain and with the truck pullover on your left at the top of the mountain on the right is Mount Kittezuma and there's a trail you take that Ridgecrest exit in parallel coming back up beside the interstate little parking area and you can go up it's a fantastic trail.
SPEAKER_01I have hiked it often Steve Pierce was here last week and we were talking about that trail which has kind of been taken over by bicyclists it has it has uh but as Steve said he hikes it I I I don't hike much anymore but uh Steve said he hikes it in the morning and has never had any trouble with bikers. And and I have to say that when Janet and I hiked the trail uh we did like Steve we hike it from Old Fort up to the top and oh and uh that's the more challenging way it's a workout it's a workout and uh uh but you're facing the the bikers uh usually and and even if you're not facing them uh any biker coming up the hill behind you you'll hear them breathing a long time before they get based so you get you get a chance to get off of the road but that is a beautiful trail. Well now you've got me off on something else. In the Blue Ridge you got any favorite trails?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely all right let's hear it Kitizuma Trail is my number one favorite trail. I bet you I have hiked up uh to the top of Mount Kittezuma a thousand times. My first time hiking it was in 1962. It's easy when at the beginning it's kind of steep but once you get past the initial 50 yards it it gentle it's a gentle hike climbing with switchbacks.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00But what you can see and and this is what I do when I like to lead hikes I tell people many times we're doing an ankle hike and I get a curious response kind of like what you just gave me this facial expression of what? Well an ankle hike because what we're going to be looking at particularly in April and May is what's growing around our ankles. Oh the small the small plants if you go on a hike that I lead be prepared for it to take longer than you think it would otherwise because I stop and I talk about I get on my knees and I point and I show and I illustrate things. One of my favorite plants is the Indian cucumber root plant. It grows prolifically in the mountains around here often it's if it's a one year old plant it has stalk with a whirled pattern of leaves coming out from the center making sort of a circle individual sort of like a daisy would do. Right if it's two years or older there are two layers and it it's a fun plant to look at a a thin stalk and then up five or six inches a layer of leaves another thin stalk and a smaller circle of leaves with a little flower that a tiny little flower that is sort of greenish yellow very faint pale color but what is fascinating about that is the root I mean the plant is called Indian cucumber root but you can't just pull on the stalk and think you're going to pull the plant up to expose the root. It'll break off every time because the root grows parallel with the earth's surface. Oh okay so you have to dig down three four inches and you have to predict it goes in one direction only. So you you dig around till you find it but you dig gently very very gently and it is brilliant white it's like these movies I see with people who've used all this tooth whitening toothpaste and their teeth are so white that you think that looks ridiculous. Why are they so white? Anyway it's a it's a bright white root and usually it's the thickness of a number two pencil and they vary in length from an inch to three inches.
SPEAKER_01And why would I want that root? Is it edible?
SPEAKER_00Yes sir oh you pull it up and unlike most roots where the dirt clings to them the dirt doesn't cling to these roots you just wrap it on your finger now sometimes they're little thread like projections you can just pluck those off and it's like a crunchy cucumber. It tastes just like a cucumber. Now what I always do is I tell people Eat about three-fourths of the root, don't eat the whole thing, and then replant it. Because the plant will survive with that and it will grow more. Okay. So you can you'll see areas where there'll be dozens and dozens, hundreds perhaps, of Indian cucumber roots. So you can get a pot full and just have a meal of Indian cucumber roots. It's delicious, it's easy, and you don't even have to cook it.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00I wouldn't cook it. I mean, why would you cook it? You don't cook cucumbers unless you can make zucchini or salsa or something. But uh just like you wouldn't cook the cucumber plant that we eat, you don't cook that one either. That's one of my favorite plants.
SPEAKER_01And wouldn't that be refreshing on a hike? Yes. I I could see why you'd want to take a group and find that plant and introduce them to the root.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01That has to be fun.
SPEAKER_00And then the sour wood is another tree that I love to show people. When I used to work at Camp Ridgecrest and would teach outdoor living, uh I would tell the kids, my nickname for the sour wood is the lemon drop tree.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Because you chew on that leaf and it's sort of like a lemon flavor. It will uh it's an expectorant, I guess you could say. It makes you salivate. So if you're hot uh and you chew one of those, it just was refreshing. Now, I don't swallow the leaf. I swallow the juice, but I spit the leaf out. But that's a fun one to know. Uh and the black birch or betulant uh nigra is another one worth knowing because that, if you bite into the to the small little stems of the black birch, sometimes called cherry birch, that's the flavor of wintergreen.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And people historically would use a twig, maybe not quite as big around as a number two pencil, just sort of make the pound on the end, and that becomes sort of like a toothbrush.
SPEAKER_01That was the old uh I can remember, because I am a child of the a true child of the Appalachian Hills, and uh that's what my grandmother used as a toothbrush. Yes. And it was not only did it, you know, in a sense, brush her teeth, but it was a breath freshener.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Uh all part of nature. It was it's kind of funny to me, and that's kind of why I have the podcast now. When I think back about all those days, I can still remember uh that all of the things that the people did and you how they use nature, it was just part of their lifestyle. You know, right. My grandparents would go out in the woods and they they knew how to use the plants and what to do and harvest the plants sometimes. Uh by the way, I'm gonna have uh Martha Jordan here in a few weeks. Good. And we're gonna talk about maybe what went on up there in in North Cove. Well, I I I keep burning up the time. Can can you just give me a give me a railroad story? Sure. Sure. Let's uh let I'll set the scene and you pick up the story. Okay. All right, it's uh it's after the Civil War. The Piedmont area is doing quite well because the farmers are able to move their uh does this sound familiar? Yes. The farmers are able able to move their goods to sell them, but here in the mountains the farmers aren't doing as well. Now a railroad needs to be built. But but no wait, don't tell me that, Steve. I I am so interested in the human toll that that railroad took. Uh, I don't know how you're gonna get into it, but can you tell us a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_00Oh, sure. Sure. After the Civil War, so many men and boys were killed in North Carolina that the workforce was decimated. There was no longer a workforce from which workers could be recruited to work in factories that were just starting to form. And the state of North Carolina was financially busted. There were so many bridges that were destroyed, most of which were railroad bridges in the East and the Piedmont, and other bridges for carts that would go across them. So many other things that needed rebuilding. The state had no money. But since 1837, it had been the public policy of this state to have a railroad to go all the way from the port city of Wilmington all the way to this foreign, undiscovered land full of riches and treasures unknown that was referred to as Tennessee. Nobody knew what was in Tennessee, but the leaders thought it's gotta be good, and it'll be minerals, and it'll be fantastic lumber and other raw materials, might even be some gold, who knows? But we want that to come through North Carolina, to our port city. But to do that, you gotta have a railroad that goes to Tennessee. Well, they came through Marion, and they came as far as Ofort, and then it stopped. The Civil War broke out, and then for years after, five to ten years after, they would piddle, do a little bit here, a little bit there, but it was just going nowhere. And then in 1875, the state of North Carolina purchased the assets of a company called the Western North Carolina Railroad that was chartered by the state to start at Salisbury because that was the closest point, and then head straight west, coming across the straight, the state. From Salisbury to Statesville to Hickory to Morganton to Marion to Ofort to Black Mountain to Asheville, and then at Asheville to Fork and go southward all the way out to Murphy and go northward up to Tennessee. Well, on paper that was great. And then when the railroad got as far as Ofort to a spot called Henry Station, today you can take Old 70 west of Old Fort about two miles, turn onto Mill Creek Road, opposite the entry to the uh U.S. Forest Service picnic area. You go right, and on your right, immediately there's a blue house. It's painted blue. That is in the spot where Henry Station Depot sat. That was the end of the line in North Carolina for several years, end of the rail line, also end of the Western Union Telegraph. There was no telegraph west of there because the telegraph lines followed the rails for convenience. Well, the state really wanted to do this, but they had no people to build it because of the deaths of the Civil War. They had no money, so what do they do? They made one solution to deal with both problems. They chose to use convict labor to do the work and pay them nothing.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I did not, I hadn't gotten that out of the book.
SPEAKER_00Pay them nothing. Okay. Nothing. So the first group of convicts, this was authorized by the legislature. The first group of convicts was a group of 35 men, and they were put into a boxcar, shackled together in groups of five, shackled at the wrist and at the ankle with a person beside them in groups of five. The ones on the end were the lucky ones, because they had a hand that could scratch and itch. Huh. Yeah. For example. And they were put into a boxcar, not with seats, an empty boxcar. There may have been some straw on the floor, but there was nothing. It was on October the 17th of 1875 when they left Raleigh and a boxcar. It took two days. These men stayed in that boxcar for two days. In the corner, there was a little hole in the floor for necessary purposes. But imagine it's in the middle of the night, and you have the call of nature that you need to get to that hole in the floor. Well, you're shackled to four other men. And it's dark. And there are people all over, and you've got to clamber over who knows how many people who were also trying to sleep and are not happy that they're being disturbed. And you've got to get to that hole in the floor.
SPEAKER_01My goodness.
SPEAKER_00Every part of the life that these men were subject to was dreadful. It was horrible. It was brutal. For food, they had hoe cakes, which is a hard biscuit, a large hard biscuit, and buckets of water with a dipper. Well, even that, you're still shackled together, and someone has to be helpful to pass it to you. And then you've got to pass them around. This requires a level of cooperation that was not a particularly well uh seen character trait for these men. Well, I gotta I gotta point out a lot, a lot. It is hard, it is impossible to quantify exactly, but it has absolutely been proven, and I've got a lot of research that supports this. A lot of these convicts were black men from eastern North Carolina whose crime was breathing while black.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00Now they were charged with lautering or looking at a woman improperly, or larceny, or whatever. And many I'm not saying that all of them were innocent. I'm sure there were some who were not innocent and who should have been convicted, but there were an awful lot who were convicted on inadequate evidence, non-existent evidence, and they were sentenced to two to five years of hard labor because the State needed a workforce.
SPEAKER_01Well, Steve, then, didn't we just go from one form of slavery to another form of slavery?
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. And and this kind of slavery was worse than the original kind of slavery. Because when a farmer, a a landowner owned slaves that he had purchased, he had an investment to protect. He wanted to get a lifetime of work. Right. So there are certain weather conditions that they would not send their slaves out to work in. When you're a prisoner and you've been shipped up from Central Prison in Raleigh to work on a brutal project, if you get killed, all they've got to do is send a telegraph back to Raleigh to say, send us a few more convicts. You see, the convicts were treated horribly. And in my book, Tunnels, Nitro, and Convicts, I talk about that a lot. There were two legislative study commissions that were formed, one in 1877, one in 1879, with the objective of trying to sniff out corruption, because some of the legislators were political enemies of those who were in charge of doing the work on the mountain. And they were just looking for some reason to charge them with crimes. So they sent these legislative study commissions to come to Ofort and go up on the mountain and find out information and interview people. Well, I found those Legislative Commission reports doing my research back in when I was a junior at Wake Forest University for my history major thesis. And I use that a lot in my material because that gives detail of the amount of food that the convicts ate, the amount of money that was spent for them, the clothing that they wore. They wore cotton outfits that were made in Raleigh by other convicts. In the wintertime, they got to wear underwear as well as their shirt and their pants. Their shoes were made in Raleigh by other convicts. They weren't great shoes. And you think, well, many convicts really don't need great shoes. Well, if you're doing this kind of work on the mountain, you do. For example, when when work would take place on the seven tunnels within the O Fort Loops between O Fort and Ridgecrest, these tunnels are all made from solid rock. Yeah. There's no dirt in there. This is solid rock. And the process that they had to use was mainly muscle. They had sledgehammers. And of course, not all convicts were able to use the sledgehammers because they were larger than the typical ones we see today and heavier. And they would pound their way through. Now the title of my book, Tunnels, Nitro and Convicts. The reason I named that is because of the tunnels, of course. But nitro, that's referring to nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin, it was originally called Nobel's Blasting Oil because it was developed by Alfred Nobel of Sweden, for whom the Nobel Priest Prize is named. He was so heartbroken at the way his product, which he developed to help create roads and passageways, it was become using and being used in bombs. It became a weapon. A weapon of war. And he used his fortune that he made to develop the Peace Prize to promote peace. Sort of a way of saying, I'm so sorry that what I did has been used so badly. Anyway, the fellow in charge, Major James W. Wilson, heard about no bottles no bells blasting oil. It was very volatile, unsafe. But he got some and it was shipped in to Henry Station. And at a shed about 300 yards away from the depot, the convicts mixed this liquid nitroglycerin with some sawdust and a little bit of cornmeal to make sort of a paste or a mash that they used inside the tunnels to make explosions to help get the thing built. Well, imagine you are a convict and your whole life you have been in eastern North Carolina. Suppose you were from the Wilmington area and you were would go down to the beach to try to catch fish for your meals sometimes or for your master's meals. And you see what happens when there's a storm and the waves get big. The waves r swell, they come up real tall, and then they fall down. And this happens over and over. So the only experience that the convicts from the coastal area had with things in nature being tall that weren't trees, is they would get big and then they would fall over. Imagine also, you are one of these, and you get off that boxcar after a two-day trip from Central Prison in Raleigh, and you get off and you look up and you are horrified because it looks like the world has exploded. And yet the rocks and the trees and the bushes and the dirt, it stays up in the air. Sort of like a frozen wave at the beach. And at some moment it's gonna fall back down, just like the waves do. That's what they figured. Why not? That's all that they knew. They were terrified that at any point these mountains could collapse on them. So they were that's just one dimension of the horror that they experienced. But if they had to go in to the tunnel after an explosion to pick up broken rock and bring it out. Keep in mind that as the rail worked its way up the mountain from Old Fort to Ridgequest, not only were they clearing away dirt uh in places, rock in many places, the the track had to continue a an increasing grade going uphill. So you're going inside a tunnel, but you're really not going inside a tunnel. Because until it's finished, it's nothing but a deep, dark, damp cave. Yes. And it's been noisy with an explosion, and you're going into the middle of the earth, it looks like. And you are one of these black convicts, and you are afraid that the explosion woke up Satan from his sleep. Oh my goodness. And if I go in that hole in that cave, I'm afraid Satan is gonna snatch my soul away from me, and I'm doomed. And they're going in this, and they're walking, wearing these shoes on broken rock with ridges and sharp points, and and their feet are just destroyed in doing that, and they're carrying a rock that's between 20, 30, even heavier, with their arms against their belly, and they're walking on this uneven, jagged floor of rock coming out, and as you get closer, it gets brighter and and it hurts your eyes just to see that. And you get out, and Bossman doesn't say put it down there, he says, carry it about another 300 yards to a low spot. That's where we need to fill in. And they would carry that. The convicts who did that job were spotable at great distance because all over the belly area of their shirt and on the inside of their arms, it was red because these sharp points pierced their skin and they would bleed and it would get on their shirt. This was brutal, brutal, heavy work. And do you think they could say, excuse me, Mr. Guard, can I sit down? I'm hurting. Uh no, no, they could not do that. They would have been flailed or whipped if they had done that. Life was horrible for these men. We have documented, when I say we, I'll tell you about that. If you want to go that much into it. But it has been documented that at least 139 convicts of the roughly 3,500 who worked on this four-year project died. 139 deaths. Today there is at Andrews Geyser and at up at Ridgecrest, there's a monument in each location. The one at Andrews Geyser is very close to Mill Creek Road on the north end of the big field right there at the geyser. This monument was dedicated in October 2021 to all of the convicts who worked on the project. On one side, there's some commentary about the project. On the flip side is a listing of names, some of whom we know worked on this project. But within this four years approximately 3,500, because some were sentenced to a year and they would do their work and they would go back. Others two years or three years, and they were constantly being replenished and going back. Some would be injured to the point where they couldn't work. Well they if if they didn't die, they would ship them back to Raleigh and replace them. So a a constant turnover. At Ridgecrest, there's another monument. It's a two-ton boulder that was placed in memory of the 139 convicts who died doing their work. The Andrews Geyser memorialist to all them, all those who worked. At Ridgecrest to those who died, gave their life while they were doing this project, which opened up Western North Carolina to development and growth. But at the cost.
SPEAKER_01Well, just so I can get the stage set here, these guys, the bosses. Yes. The boss man. These are the these are the guys that are coming home could be were not, but could be my great-grandparents, really, or great-great-grandparents probably. Sure. And they were coming home into the community, going to church, having a a good old North Carolina hillbilly lifestyle, and then going back to work. Is that that right? They didn't bring in or maybe they did. Did they just bring in a bunch of tough guys to do this?
SPEAKER_00Well, some of both. There were some who were local, who were hired, uh because they needed some local information about the people and the conditions and the superstitions. And someone who could talk down a group that wanted to come. We want to show those convicts that we don't like what color they are, and we want to beat them up. You had to have someone to say, leave them alone. They're doing a job that you don't want to do, but they're going to create a condition that will help you. So leave them alone. Let them work. Their work is not easy work, it's hard work.
SPEAKER_01Well, that is uh that's hard to fathom. When I think about my heritage, which is in the mountains, and the people that I've known, and they were hardcore people, but to think of the cruelty, did they did they think they were being cruel to these wor and there must have been some white workers too. There were. There were. They must have known that was cruel to those folks. I mean that is oh yes. That is slavery.
SPEAKER_00Because at that time in history, convicts didn't matter. The the life of a convict, if if he couldn't perform work, was sort of like the life of a pigeon. There was no value to it. A pigeon could be shot and eaten, but uh maybe it had more value. But convicts didn't count.
SPEAKER_01I I find that difficult to not to believe, but to just digest. Right.
SPEAKER_00I guess. It's a terrible story. But I'll but it's a critical story.
SPEAKER_01One of my early memories as a child here in Marion, I must have been four, probably. We were out driving and and saw what they call chain gangs. And you know, they were shackled together. Uh not their hands were not shackled because they needed to cut the roadway. Uh but I it's funny that the thing I remember is not seeing them, and I couldn't tell you the percentage of black or white men that were in the chain gang. But the thing that I remember is the sound of that scythe cutting through the grass and those shackles. Yeah, I think that's weird that that sticks out in my mind.
SPEAKER_00But that was a sound that you were not accustomed to hearing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, I I did not have that kind of feeling toward the railroad going up the mountain. I didn't know that that's that's the kind of labor that they use. I guess that's the way things were at the time, but you know, when we when we think about slavery, we think about uh antebellum, of course, and all the way back to the founding fathers and the slaves working out on the plantation and some worked hard and were under cruel conditions, some were not. This uh, you know, naively I thought that after the Emancipation Proclamation and the war was over, that that didn't happen. Well, it didn't happen under the title slavery. Right. They just called it convicts.
SPEAKER_00They they they called it convict leasing. My goodness because the prison system would lease convicts, rent convicts to companies that had jobs that were either so dangerous or so difficult that they couldn't afford to hire people to take those risks. So the company would then pay to the state money to have them send so many convicts to do these terribly difficult, hard, dangerous jobs. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01It's obvious. If you will, I'm gonna ask you to just plan on coming back because we got more to talk about.
SPEAKER_00Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01Uh because I'd like to talk about the design of the railroad. I know there's those big loops there and uh the grade had to be maintained at a certain there's so much of this story that is not dark.
SPEAKER_00What we've talked about today largely is the dark side. Yeah. But there's a lot more that uh is fascinating that would be uh fun to talk about.
SPEAKER_01Well, I and I want to do that. I'm I uh we're already into we're we're well over an hour already of talking. I should have stayed on some subject, but I didn't. You're an interesting guy. But I got a little bit more. So they finished the railroad. About what year did they get to Ridgecrest, let's say?
SPEAKER_00They got to Ridgecrest. And it's it's it's a temptation because I'm gonna tell you a whole lot more. But March 11, 1879 was the day that the work crews on both sides of Swannanoa Mountain, who were working toward the middle, this was so long, 1,862 feet long. That's six foot ball fields, end to end. That's how long that tunnel is. Wow, or was when it was finished. And it was so long that they had to work from both ends to try to meet a deadline imposed by the state legislature. March 11, 1879 was the date that the two crews met under now it that that was the day that they that they met. There was more additional work called bench work to clean it up and widen it out and get it ready. But approximately the end of 1879, it was drivable by a train all the way to the top to Ridgecrest.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Now, it took a little bit longer. The day that the first train came up the old Fort Loops through the tunnels, past into and past Ridgecrest, past Black Mountain, and into Asheville was October the 2nd, 1880.
SPEAKER_01Wow, 1880. I'll tell you what, that must have been one heck of a ride, that first ride.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. Because interestingly, Asheville was best known in the 1860s and 70s, and in the 80s for a year or two, as a pig path town. The number one agricultural commodity in the mountains of that area in that time was raising pigs. And there would be pig droves where farmers would walk their pigs into South Carolina because the natural valleys led them into South Carolina, not east into North Carolina because they had to go over the ridges as opposed to going through the valleys. Right. But there were two major pig drove pathways that met at Asheville. And Asheville was a village, a tiny village, in 1880, a pig path village.
SPEAKER_01My goodness. Well, that's and here's another thing I wanted to talk about. Well, I'm going to talk about it. You got a minute? Sure. All right. Tell me a little bit about that big hotel down there by the by the fountain.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. Yes. That was called Round Knob Hotel. That was built in approximately 1884, perhaps 83. It was the largest hotel west of Greensboro in the state of North Carolina. The dining room of that hotel, which was, by the way, five stories tall, reachable only by train, maybe by a small wagon trail, but but not a not a road. The dining room would hold a hundred people. That was huge, huge. But it was kind of interesting because when the train would leave Marion headed west, they would telegraph, we've got so many passengers on board. The train would stop and I mean, truly, stop, and everybody would get off and go into the dining room of the Round Knob Hotel, and they'd eat their meal. And then they'd get back on the train and they would finish their journey. Same thing for when it was headed east. They would telegraph, I mentioned to you that the westernmost telegraph was at Henry Station. Right. Or when the tracks got up a little bit further, the telegraph went further as well. And when the Roundknob Hotel was built a few years after the railroad was finished to Asheville, there was a telegraph station at the Roundknob Hotel. So they could telegraph the kitchen and say, we got so many people, so prepare this many meals, whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And they would do that. And they would get off and they would go in and eat. That hotel, I've got some really fascinating pictures. There's a couple of pictures in my book of that. It burned in 1903, but during that spell of roughly 20 years, it became a hunting lodge in the hunting seasons, and people from all across the country would come down and they would stay there.
SPEAKER_01Now these got to be rich people.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. It was a high-class spot. Right. And then the Battery Park and these other fancy hotels in Asheville were being built. So Major Wilson, my hero, who was the man in charge of the railroad construction, was a co-owner of the Round Knob Hotel.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's coincidence.
SPEAKER_00So he knew we gotta compete. We gotta do something to compete with people going to Asheville and staying in these fancy hotels, even a hotel that has this newfangle thing called an electric light bulb. Oh my goodness. And this other newfangle thing called an elevator. Oh, how can they compete with that? So, I don't know if it was Major Wilson personally, but somebody came up with the idea. Let's make a fountain. Let's make the world's tallest fountain. That's what they called it. And they promoted it. That was built as a marketing technique.
SPEAKER_01Son of a gun.
SPEAKER_00And to make this fountain, they went up the mountain about a mile, built a dam where there was a stream, laid an underground six-inch pipe all the way down to the spot where they were going to put the fountain. And it was simply a round basin at the base of that fountain, as long as the hotel was there. And they put a half-inch nozzle to funnel the water from a six-inch pipe. Right. And the water went up 250 feet into the air. And the mist would be so all-encompassing when the wind would blow it, it would blow it onto the train. And of course, back then there was no air conditioning. And any warm or hot weather, those windows were down. And the little mist would come in. And just imagine the delight, the squeals of the children getting a little bit of mist on their faces as they're riding on the train. And because of the loops, they could see from their train, they could see the fountain seven different places. Oh, really? And when they would finally get to it, oh, the I mean the excitement kept building and building and building as they got closer and closer and closer. And then they there. And imagine that the parents want to come back. Maybe they want to go to Asheville, and the children say, No, no, we want to go where that fountain is. Right. And not just the children. So that was a very effective marketing campaign gimmick that was used to attract people, customers, to stay at the Round Knob Hotel. It burned in 1903. Uh-huh. Right beside Mill Creek, but it was five stories tall, 100% wood, of course. Even a bucket brigade couldn't put the fire out.
SPEAKER_01Why do you think they didn't bother to rebuild it? Just times had moved on, or Probably so.
SPEAKER_00Right. And it would have been difficult to imagine their ability to compete anymore. Right. Unless they built a hunting lodge, which would be a different type of a structure.
SPEAKER_01But that must have been something.
SPEAKER_00I mean, and in our next conversation, I can tell you how that led to Andrews Geyser. That's a story all by itself. Okay. But it is connected. It is connected, obviously.
SPEAKER_01Well, we've um we've blown through an hour and a half already. Um and I I've I've kind of just scratched the surface. Uh we didn't go any direction that I really wanted to go in.
SPEAKER_00So uh I'll be glad to come back and talk some more.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I would appreciate that, Steve, and I appreciate you coming up. Is there anything you want to I usually at this point I ask my guests, well, how do you like Marion? Well, I don't need to ask you that. I think that's kind of obvious.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Is there anything you want to say?
SPEAKER_00I'm just glad to be here. This I I feel like that it is the hand of God that brought me here. You know, I don't I don't try to get too religious about it, but but I'm convinced that it is. I'll tell you one little teeny vignette that is a good wrap-up. I met Alice while I was working at Camp Ridgecrest. Her brother Warren had was on the staff, and he invited his friend Nancy Walker, who is now Nancy Walker Talbert, uh, to come up and be the lifeguard, or one of the lifeguards at the lake at Ridgecrest. Well, one evening up there, Nancy Walker and Warren were talking about Alice. Well, I didn't know who Alice was. And finally they said, because I think I asked them that, well, who is Alice? And Warren said, it's my sister. And Nancy Walker's eyes got big and said, You've not met Alice yet? And I said, No. So the wheels began to turn. I could just see uh Nancy thinking, I'm gonna do something about that. And so with Nancy's help, I met Alice. But before I met her, I had decided already I wanted to move to Marion after I finished law school. So I thought, with my personal background being raised in a Baptist church in eastern North Carolina, the most logical source of information for me to go to in Marion to find out if there's a lawyer who maybe would hire me as an intern for the following summer and see if that would lead to employment would be to go to see the Baptist preacher. Well, that was Dewey Hobbes at that time. Well, Dewey was the father of Alice and Warren, and I didn't know that either at that time. So I went, I scheduled an appointment, and I came to Mary and met with Dewey Hobbs, and we talked a long time about my background and my hopes and all of this, and then I wanted to, I was looking for a lawyer, preferably one who went to Wake Forest and who might be willing. So Dewey Hobbs said, Well, Everett Carnes is a Wake Forest grad, and he might, well, that worked out, and I did come to work for him the following summer. It was that following summer that I met Nancy Walker and she arranged me to visit Alice or meet her. Well, the way we were going to meet was I was going to come at the end of the summer back from Winston-Salem to Marion Labor Day weekend of um gosh, 1976, I suppose it was, or five, and it was hot as blazes that day, and I drove back, and at that time in my life, I had one jacket, and it was a corduroy coat. And so I wore my corduroy coat to church, and and uh of course I knew Dewey was the pastor, and Atlas's daddy had called her on the phone, said, I want you to come home this weekend. Uh I've got somebody I want you to meet. And Alice herself says, Huh. When my daddy says he's got a young fella that he she that he wants me to meet, that makes me concerned I should run the other way. So you may still say that. But but she but she came home and I met her that weekend, and we hit it off quite nicely, and she was teaching school in Lexington, North Carolina.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really?
SPEAKER_00And she'd been there just a year, maybe two, and I was in law school at Wake Forest, just 30 miles up the road. So I would go courting with Alice during the year, and our relationship developed. And by the way, our second date was a hike on the Appalachian Trail.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00From Lemon Gap to Hot Springs. Two other three other couples were supposed to go with us, two of whom backed out at the last minute. So we went with a couple of newlyweds on this uh overnight hike anyway, because Alice knew I loved the outdoors. But our relationship developed and I took the bar exam and I thought I need to know before I propose if I will be supporting her or if she'll be supporting me when we if we get married. So I took the bar exam that summer, and the day that I learned that I passed the bar exam, we took a hike the next morning out to Cotawba Falls, which is my second favorite hike in McDowell County. But from the Old Fort end, my favorite part is from the Ridgecrest end coming down to it Oh really?
SPEAKER_01Oh yes.
SPEAKER_00Okay, we'll be able to do that. But we went from Old Fort. And when you go to the falls, when you're at the base of the Lower Falls, on the far side on the left, there's a huge flat rock that probably is eight feet in diameter. Not totally round, but sort of. Well, we took a blanket and we had our picnic lunch at the base of Catawba Falls, and I proposed to her there. And she said yes, and then I said, Well, we've got to go back, and I have to ask your parents for their permission uh to marry you. So we went back and her mom and dad were in the kitchen when we went in the house. And we said and I told them I wanted to had proposed to Alice and I would like their permission. And that's when Alice's mother said, Well, I've got a little story for you. So she said, Do you remember the day that that you came to Marion and you met Dewey for the first time t to learn about Marion? I said, Well, sure. That was a big deal for me. Of course I remember it. She said, Well, I do too. Because Dewey came home that evening and he said, Jenny, you will never guess who I met today. And she said, Well, of course I won't. You meet people all the time, and I have no idea who you met today. And Dewey said, I met Alice's husband.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. That is amazing.
SPEAKER_00So at that point, I didn't even know there was an Alice. Dewey pegged me instantly when we met.
SPEAKER_01Talk about Providence.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And when I moved in to my first place that I lived, which was that little brick house that is now a little florist behind Westmoreland Funeral Home. That was my first house in town. When I I I told Alice everything that I owned would fit into my 1962 Volkswagen van. I'd make one trip from Winston-Salem. And she put a little sticky note on the door. She said, Give me a ring and I'll and I will help you move in. So when I got back, I called her and she came in to help me move in. Well, I kept that little note. And when I proposed to her, I said, I had it in my pocket, and I said, Do you remember when you wrote this note? And she said, Yeah. And I said, Well, us lawyers would call that an offer. Give me a ring and I'll help you move it in. And I said, Well, I called and you helped me move in, so therefore I have to give you a ring.
SPEAKER_01And that was good timing.
SPEAKER_00Sorry.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. So everything I'm where I'm meant to be, and I love it here.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think most people, I th I think I can speak for most of the people I know. We certainly enjoy having you here. Thank you. And like I said in the beginning, I you have welcomed us here. It's just been a pleasure. But you are definitely not off the hook if you'll come back, because when you come back, we're gonna we're gonna forego all of this that we talked about today. I want to get right into some more railroad stuff. Sure, sure. Because I I promised everybody, hey, I got this railroad show coming up, and uh we're gonna talk about all the things about how the railroad went up the mountain, and we barely got to it. Right. There's a lot more to tell. So, Steve, I I once again thank you for coming and th thank you for the book. Very soon, very soon, I'd like for you to come back and and we'll do it again. I would love that. All right, I'd I want to say, oh, uh let me say again that uh Steve's website is books by Steve Little.com. You can get the books at Maca. That's right. Really, this uh the Tunnels uh Nitro and Convicts book, uh I've enjoyed reading that. I I mean I actually looked at the words. Uh but this book that he brought me today, we is it is it available now?
SPEAKER_00It's available at my office and at Maca.
SPEAKER_01Okay, at Maca.
SPEAKER_00I have not yet got it on my website. I plan to get it on there soon, but it's not there yet.
SPEAKER_01If you're listening to the podcast, here's a chance that uh you can it's a it's a softbag book. It's it's just great. Uh, you know, really, uh I'm I've just gotten it and I've just glanced at it, but this is the kind of book, see, that I would put in my backpack and take out on on my hikes, and it would help me to identify some plants. So I recommend that you get it. I also want to mention that you can contact me now. Uh my um email is on the porch with Jim Williams. That's one word, on the porch with Jim Williams at uh gmail.com. So if you have any ideas, uh you know Steve's coming back, so if you have any questions that you want me to ask him, email me. I'll be sure to get that. If you know of anyone, or you are someone that wants to come up and uh we'll talk about Marion, or maybe we'll get in a ghost story or a Bigfoot story, please email me and we'll do that. Thanks to Steve, and most of all, thanks to you for listening. And join me next week on the porch, you know.