Wake Forest Oral History Film

I won't bore you yet again by telling you how amazing my grandmother is. She's absolutely the best for any number of reasons. Just one of those reasons is her incredible memories of life in the early 20th century. This is a segment of an oral history documentary from her local museum. It's very well put together. She keeps saying that she's not going to do any more interviews, because it makes her maudlin. Still, when you're 95 there aren't that many people around who can compete with your historical insight.

This film also has the memories of some other ladies from this lovely little town. You can find them at their website.

Out of the mouths of babes...

I sing a lot, not just in the shower but in the shower, the car, the kitchen while cooking or doing dishes, folding laundry, spinning yarn, just about anywhere. I've pretty much always been that way. Being a word nerd who loves to sing, I have a high appreciation for a well-written song. So, I tend to treat (they might call it something different) my family to a lot of Jackson Browne and Nanci Griffith among others. I even sang in a choir when I was younger. Although my husband says I'm always slightly off key, I don't think it's entirely unpleasant to listen to. Lately, like most folks I've found myself singing along to a lot of Adele, and my children have very patiently ridden in the car with me while I belted out songs like "Rumor Has It" and "Chasing Pavements". Today, as I was depositing my newly purchased fern on the deck  I was softly singing "To Make You Feel My Love" (Click Play on the video below and listen while reading the rest.)

I got to the line that says, "I can make you happy, make your dreams come true."

My daughter who is 5 was on the deck with me and interrupted, "Mom, is that song true?"

"You mean, can Adele make you happy and make your dreams come true?"

"Yeah."

"No, baby, but she's very entertaining isn't she?"

"My dreams never come true." she said with bottom lip sticking out.

"Well, the only person who can make your dreams come true is you and it usually takes a lot of hard work."

When it comes to these philosophical parenting moments, I try to tell my kids the truth as I see it, and sometimes, it takes a little one's question to remind me of a truth that I aught to be acting on in my own life.  I've been feeling a little adrift for a couple of weeks on the marketing front and I really need to get back in the groove.  In fact, I need to get back in the groove on a number of things. I guess I've had spring fever or something because the last couple of weeks progress on everything seems to have slowed. My novel writing has been a bit like the Little Engine That Could trudging uphill to the end of the second act with agonizing slowness. I've let the frequency of my blog posts slip. I've only promoted my ebook shorts sporadically. In short, I haven't been making it happen. It's not like I haven't known this. I've been castigating myself the whole time for being lazy and unfocused, but it took the innate simplicity of a conversation with my five year old to snap me out of that self-defeating mode and make me get up off my duff.

So thanks, T, you're just the inspiration your mama needed today.

The Inspiration for "The White House"

Years ago on our first trip to Beaufort, NC my husband and I were sitting atop the rather conspicuous doubledecker bus that provided tours of the beautiful historic town. It was a hot July afternoon, and I'm sure we would have been more comfortable in the shade of the first level, but I'm a sucker for historic architecture and was willing to endure the heat to have an unobstructed view. At the edge of the historic district stands a 2 1/2 story white house with a 2 story porch on a slightly raised plot of ground, it's view from the street slightly obscured by trees. The vernacular architecture enthusiast in me identified the "hall and parlor" layout of the first story. It was also clear that this is one of the oldest houses we had seen on the tour. The tour guide called this the "Hammock House" for the slight rise on which it was built.  She also told us some of the many legends attached to the house that had been at that location almost longer than the town. The story that stuck with me the most was also the story that also was the murkiest without many supporting facts or specifics. The Hammock House first appears in a 1789 map of the coast and is prominently identified as The White House. However, it is believed to have been an old establishment by the time that map was made possibly dating back as early as 1713 when the town was first being planned. It is believed to have been an inn or ordinary. According to the earliest of the legends. Blackbeard was a regular guest, as the inn's location and Beaufort's deep natural harbor offered strategic advantages. On one occasion he is said to have brought his "wife" there on a visit. After staying at the inn for a few days, the pirate is said to have left and left his "wife" hanging from a tree in the back yard.

Of the many stories that I heard that day, this is one that sparked my imagination. I immediately began imagining scenarios that would have led to such cruelty, not that a notorious pirate would need much inducement to be cruel. What kind of woman must she have been? How had she come to be with Blackbeard? The story sparked so many questions that I had to learn more about the pirate, the town and the house.

In my research I discovered a couple more stories that further inspired me. Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, ran aground near Beaufort inlet in 1718. In 1996, marine archaeologists discovered a shipwreck near Beaufort Inlet that they are almost certain is the Queen Anne's Revenge. Some believe that Blackbeard grounded the ship on purpose as a sort of downsizing of his crew. I was fascinated by the idea of the pirate intentionally abandoning the ship that had served him so well and on the idea of pirate layoffs. What strategy would drive the pirate whose career seemed to be at it's height to jettison one of his most useful tools?

Another character that I came across in researching was Israel Hands, a person that not much is known about. As a writer that gave me a bit of freedom with which to flesh that character out. I also found intriguing, a story from Daniel Defoe's "General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates". During a card game, Blackbeard is said to have attempted to shoot another crew member, but hit Hands in the leg instead. When asked why he had done it, the pirate is said to have responded that “if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.” which is to say "the BOSS". This sent my mind down the line of questions about how a man maintained rule over a crew that at it's zenith numbered around 300 cut-throats. By all accounts, Blackbeard was notoriously ruthless, not just with the people of the ships and towns he terrorized but also with his own crew. We can only speculate that it was that kind of behavior that inspired loyalty out of fear, but also inspired the kind of pragmatism that cause Israel Hands to testify against the corrupt officials along the North Carolina coast who helped Blackbeard elude the colonial authorities for so long.

All of these different aspects of the Blackbeard and Hammock House legends went into the creation of my story "The White House". I have tried to weave these loose bits of legend into characters and a narrative that attempts to answer some of those questions inspired by what we know of Blackbeard, his crew and this one of his many wives.  Although the story is set in 1718, the questions that it attempts to answer about power, love and humanity are timeless.

The White House is now available via: Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Passionate Stitches

The striking young woman in this photo is my great great aunt Mattie Verb Minga. That's right her middle name was Verb, and it fit. Aunt Matt was a woman of action, a woman of passion. Sometimes it lead her in the wrong direction like marrying and divorcing the same man twice. Sometimes it lead her to great joy. When Mattie was in her forties and single she adopted the infant child of a cousin who had died in childbirth. Everyone thought she was crazy, thought the boy would need a father, wondered how a single woman working in the mill could support a child. But she did it anyway, and my cousin Gene grew up to be a well respected policeman, veteran and a great father himself.

Our family was large and tight-knit, as families that spend several generations in the same small town usually are. Still Aunt Matt was at every family function. Christmas, summer trips to the beach, anytime we all got together, someone went over to the little house next to the old company store to fetch Aunt Matt. For some folks we might do that out of a sense of duty. My great grandmother, Mattie's sister, did ask my grandmother to take care of Mattie before she died. But the truth is it was because we loved having her around. She's been gone 23 years now, but I can still hear her gregarious laugh. She always had a way of finding things to laugh about, be happy about, even in her late eighties when she rarely left the house. I remember going with my grandmother to visit Aunt Matt in her little house in the mill village and sitting on the ottoman next to her chair and watching her crochet. She was so practiced that she sped through the stitches and rarely had to look down at her work. Even late in life when her health was waning, she never stopped making things.

Aunt Matt's hands were never idle. My grandmother's house is full of things that she made from a plarn (yes, 1960's plarn from bread bags) rug on the threshold in the kitchen to a lace canopy and bedspread on the double canopy bed upstairs. Every Christmas the stairs are lined with crocheted snowmen, and Santa Clause dolls and the tree is hung with lace snowflakes and angels that she made. When my children were born I was gifted with jackets and blankets and hats that I had worn as a child that were made by Aunt Matt and that I am keeping for my grandchildren. She didn't just crochet. Here is a photo of her working on a quilt that spent years on my parent's bed and that I'm sure my mother still has. Aunt Matt was always making something, and everything she made was a beautiful expression of the love that she had for the people around her and of her passion for life.

I've made a lot of really beautiful things in my years as a crafter, but I don't think I've ever been more proud of the work that I've done than I was at Aunt Matt's 90th birthday party, an event so big that we held it at the church. I had made a pillow out of yarn that my grandfather had brought home from his job at the NC State Textile Engineering dept. It was just a big white granny square tacked to a big white pillow, but it meant everything to me as a crocheter and it still does. Now, whenever I finish a project, I can almost feel Aunt Matt patting my hand and laughing with joy the way she always did when we did something she liked.

Sadly, my cousin Gene passed away last November and his bright beautiful daughter years before that. The little house by the company store belongs to someone else now as the mill village is becoming gentrified. There aren't very many of us who remember Aunt Matt, but the beauty of the things she made and the abundance of her work will show for generations.

*This is a re-post of an article I wrote for a now defunct blog about my craft business.

Fiber in the Blood

This grainy photo is one of the few that I have of my grandfather smiling. It's kind of odd, because with his grandchildren he was often joking and laughing. But he didn't care for having his picture taken. He wasn't much for crowds or meeting new people. What he was was a good hearted, incredibly strong and smart individual but he didn't broadcast it. He just was all of those things and more.

My grandad was a weaver. He started working in the Glen Royal textile mill at the ripe old age of 12, and worked in textiles most of his life. He worked his way up to being a weaver at the Royal mill and when the mill closed he found jobs at other mills and eventually worked in the Textiles School at NC State. He found a home there and worked there even part-time after his retirement. Having worked to support his mother and younger siblings through much of the depression, he was always thrifty and as the textile students experimented with spinning yarns of different materials and textures, Grandad salvaged most of that yarn the would otherwise have been tossed and brought it back to my Aunt Matt and others who would find uses for it. To this day my grandmother, mother and I have cones and cones of yarn that was saved in crazy colors or unexpected textures.

I am not a weaver, but I have always been fascinated by the workings of large looms, their speed and complexity. There can be something hypnotic and fascinating in a well woven fabric. That's something that I'm sure I come by honestly. I was lucky enough to have my Grandad until I was an adult, and I wish every day that my husband and children could know him. The many photos of him unsmiling or looking away from the camera just don't show the kind of open-hearted goodness that he spread to those of us who knew him. I still feel it every time I feel thread slide through my fingers.