Mt. Airy & Greensboro, North Carolina

Thur, May 5th - Wed, May 12th

Shazam! We are in Mayberry. The guide book said to go to Wally's service station and get a tour of the local sights in Sheriff Andy's patrol car. So off we went to get our tour. We didn't see Gomer or Goober anywhere.

Here are some folks getting ready to take their tour around town. When we pulled out, our guide turned on the old siren. He said the local cops don't like it when they blow the siren, but he did it several times during our tour anyway.

Next to the service station sat the Darling's truck and the old taxi in front of mock movie sets of the mayor's office, sheriff's office, and court house. The Darlings probably came to town to complain about Ernest T. Bass again.

Otis Campbell was named after two local Mt. Airy police officers, Otis and Campbell. He wasn't here today. He said, "I'm dead sober Andy...but I expect I'll get over it".

This is the Andy Griffith Playhouse and Museum. It used to be the school where Andy first stood on stage in the third grade and sang "Your Old Gray Bonnet". The kids laughed at him, but his dream was to be an opera singer. Notice the TV Land statue on the right of Andy and Opie going fishing.

The museum has lots of stuff collected by an old friend of Andy's. There are two of Barney's suits, Otis's suit, Matlock's suit and a Thelma Lou display. Did you know that Andy once had a line of canned foods, such as black-eyed peas and collard greens? Maybe that's where Paul Newman got the idea. There is also a room in honor of the Old Time Surry County musicians who played and sang what they call Round Peak music, unique to this mountain area (referred to as "The Hollows"), very snappy style with banjo, fiddle and mandolin.

There was a sign downtown for $8.00 haircuts at Floyd's Barber Shop. So of course John got a haircut by an 87 year old man who went to school with Andy and used to cut his hair. He said he might work another 10 years or so and then try retirement to see if he likes it. The barbershop was absolutely a hoot! Several locals stopped in while we were there with gossip and ribbing in there mountain drawl. I could have sworn we were right in the middle of filming. They were just perfectly and naturally in character. We could have stayed there all afternoon being entertained. We also had lunch at Snappy Lunch where Andy used to go for a pop and a hot dog when he was a kid. It is also mentioned on the show a few times. But we didn't make it to the Bluebird Cafe where our driver said they have the best onion rings.

Then our driver took us by Andy's homeplace where he was born in 1935 and grew up. His father was a foreman at a furniture factory. His mother grew up in the mountains nearby. He remembered visiting his grandmother at Maybry, a small village in the mountains where there is still a gristmill and a few other things. Our driver said he thought a lot of the characters were based on local people and perhaps Andy's relatives who lived in the mountains around Maybry.

Then he drove us by the Gertrude Smith home. She was an elderly woman with no heirs, so she left her home and money to the city to keep it as a museum. While we were there, they had an exhibit of "Gone With the Wind" dolls on display.



The tour was free and the volunteer guide was very interesting. There were a couple other old homes in town that you can tour, but we didn't get there.

Our next stop was the world's largest open surface granite quarry which has been in operation since long before the railroad came thru in 1888. They made crypts for two of the largest mausoleums in early 1900s in Lancaster, Pa. and Chicago with over 2,000 crypts and many Egyptian sphinxes which were in style at the time.


"They call it that good ol' mountain dew-ew-ew, and them that refuse it are few. I'll shut up my mug, if you fill up my jug, with that good ol' mountain dew." Just one of the songs these guys sang, as I sat and enjoyed the free entertainment. They were awesome! Every Saturday morning they have the Merry-Go-Round (their version of the Grand Old Opry) live on the radio. It's in the local downtown theater and the musicans are whoever shows up. They have anywhere from a half dozen to as many as 100. They take turns and it is free to sit in and enjoy.

Back at the Mayberry Campground on Rustic Village Drive, we passed Andy Taylor Street, Barney Fife Boulevard, Opie Taylor Lane and drove down Eng & Chang Way to our campsite. Our campground is actually located on part of the homestead that belonged to the original Siamese Twins, Eng and Chang Bunker. They were celebrities, like the Justin Bieber of their time. When they quit touring, they came here, bought a farm, married sisters (a minister's daughters) and raised 21 children. Their parents objected to the marriage because of their yellow skin, not their physical condition. They started out living together in one home, but as their families grew they needed more room and built two homes and rotated every three days from one home to the other.

They were joined by a small band of flesh at the breastbone about wrist size and 3 to five inches long. They were born in Siam (Thailand) in 1811. Haley's Comet made an appearance about that time and people thought it was an evil omen. The King of Siam had originally ordered them put to death, but later changed his mind when he met them. They were brought to Europe and America by a ship's captain and his business partner. They educated them and dressed them well for showing them on tour. While they were in London, a young woman fell in love with them and wanted to marry them both, but it wasn't allowed. They were never in the circus, but did do a few shows for Barnum and Bailey at their New York venue. At age 21 their contract with the captain and his partner expired. They then toured on their own with a manager who was a friend. They did well financially and decided to settle down in Mt. Airy.

From our campground it is about a half mile hike up a switch back trail thru the woods to the church and cemetery where they are buried, along with quite a few of their over 1,000 descendents. There was originally a lot of shame associated with being part of their family, but over time that has changed. Now they have huge reunions with the heirs of both families. Lots of them still live in the area and have streets named after them. It is one of the great-granddaughters who spent two years researching and preparing their exhibit at the Andy Griffith Museum. One of the wives is actually not buried here, because she felt someone should be buried with the slaves (and possibly infant babies who did not survive) who were buried on the farm. There was a set of grandsons who were twins. On one of their graves (1980), it proudly says "Grandson of Siamese Twin Eng". Their middle names were Eng and Chang. Eng's wie had a baby 9 months after the wedding and Chang's wife had one six days later.

During their lifetimes they didn't talk to each other a lot, because what one did or saw so did the other, so there wasn't much to say. They didn't get along the best all the time either. One liked to drink and the other did not. They sometimes got in violent fights with each other and were even known to take each other to court over issues. When the Civil War was coming, Chang sold his slaves to Eng and Eng paid him with Confederate dollars. So in the end they both lost. They had 60 slaves to work their 1000 acre tobacco farm and they were gone. Two of their sons fought for the Confederacy and one was born after Lee's surrender and was named Robert Edward. One of their slaves, Grace Gates, was a wedding gift in 1843. They called her "Aunt Grace" and she served as a wet nurse for the children. She was believed to have died in 1921 at the age of 121. The twins went back on tour for several years to recoup their finances. n 1869 they had an audience with Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. She gave them two gold watches with chains. Chang died of a stroke at 63. The doctors were on their way to try separating them, but Eng died within a couple hours.

Their regional history museum was well worth the price of $3.00. I liked this collection of 2,800 cars in 8 cases like this. The cars ranged from the very first cars ever made to 1960s or so.

How many museums would have an actual still along with a picture of the guys who ran it and directions on how to make corn mash whiskey?





This is the flags of the original 13 colonies after the Revolutionary War in the order in which they ratified the constitution. They also had a Donna Fargo Exhibit. She grew up just a few miles from town. Tommy Jarrell, famous Round Peak musician from here, also has an exhibit.

For a community whose economy used to depend mostly on tobacco (they had a bunch of cigar making shops), they have surely filled the gap with a lot of tourist attractions. The downtown seems to be hopping all the time.

One afternoon we drove down to Pilot Mountain, the town and the state park, Mount Pilot in the TV show.

They were having Mayfest in town, arts and crafts. We went out to the state park and hiked around the knob. The woods were just full of rododendrons blooming everywhere.

They get 400,000 visitors a year. Probably because it's beautiful and free.

North Carolina is beautiful. We will be heading to Lexington, Viginia next.

On Mother's Day we went to the Depot Restaurant just a couple miles outside Dobson. John said, "Order anything you want. I'm sending the bill to the girls." I'm not sure he had discussed that with them. It used to be a water park, but was made over into a rustic resort-like venue. There is this church (the prettiest little church I've ever seen), an outdoor stage, a gazebo, restaurant with general store decor on the outside, a big dance hall/entertainment building and a half dozen or so rustic cabins. It would be a great place for a wedding, family reunion, etc. The meal was excellent and reasonable. We enjoyed walking around the beautiful grounds until our name was called.

Another day we drove over to Greensboro to see the Revolutionary battlefield of Guilford Court House. General Nathanael Greene was the hero of the battle. Even though Greene was defeated, Cornwallis suffered many losses, which led to the victory at Yorktown. On the 125 acres there are lots of trails to walk around and picture the progress of the battle plus 32 monuments.

Downtown there is a little plaza dedicated to O. Henry (Wm. Sidney Porter) who was born here in 1862, went to school and worked in his uncle's drugstore. He published 274 short stories and 12 poems in 14 volumes, including "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief".

These four brave freshman college students did the lunch counter sit-in at the Woolworth store in 1960, which inspired similar protests across the nation and is remembered as a defining moment in the civil rights struggle. The Woolworth store is still there and houses the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

Whistlin' my way down to the fishin' hole.

Have a great day!

Tarra

Ashvillle, NC. (Biltmore & Blue Ridge Parkway)

Mon, May 2nd & Wed, May 4th

Sunday we drove to Asheville, North Carolina. Monday we toured Biltmore, the largest privately owned home in the country with 250 rooms. Our tour took us thru 41 of the rooms. There are 33 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 66 servant rooms, and a bowling alley, swimming pool and gym in the basement. There are three other specialized tours you can take of the house and three more of the grounds. The grounds are 8,000 acres including the original dairy farm which is now a winery and a small resort village with a hotel, pub, novelty shops, blacksmithing and woodworking demos, kitchen gardens and goats, chickens and horses for the kids.

This is a view of some of the surrounding forest from the vine covered patio. In 1891 there was no forestry management in the U.S. Biltmore was the first to implement scientific forestry management and conservation, the beginning of practical forestry in this country. Landscaping the grounds was the last project of Frederick Law Ohmsted, famous for doing Central Park in New York among others. About three million plants were planted on the grounds during the initial landscaping. The home was completed in 1895. Below is the Italian Gardens just down the steps from the patio. There are also Shrub Gardens, Walled Gardens, Rose Gardens, the Conservatory, the Spring Walk down to the Bass Pond, lined with azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwoods, spirea, lilacs, etc. Absolutely magnificent. It's worth the admission price just to walk the grounds.

Biltmore was completed in 1895 and was self-sufficient with all kinds of animals and gardens. They had one of the first modern milking parlors. The dairy had 1,000 cows and they had 400 delivery trucks going out every day to supply the surrounding area needs. They made butter, cottage cheese and ice cream.

After the death of Biltmore, his wife managed everything until their only daughter married and took over. In 1930 they decided to open it to the public to help support maintainance costs and draw tourists for the local economy in the depression.

This is the conservatory with about six greenhouses extending out behind it. In front of this building is about a four block area of rose gardens surrounded by wall gardens. Below are a couple of flowers in the greenhouses.

By the 1950s the dairy had grown to 1,800 and was eventually sold to PET in the 70s. The dairy barn was then converted to a winery. It is the most visited winery in America with 600,000 guests per year. They produce 50 varieties and sell 200,000 cases per year.

There are 48,000 grape vines in the 92 acre vineyard, which provides about 15% of the grapes they use. They are hand picked by a crew of 60 to 70 employees in Sept. & Oct. The rest are bought from surrounding vineyards.

Biltmore also had the historic village of Asheville designed by the men who designed his home and grounds. The streets fan out from the entrance of his estate where he had a church and depot built. He also built a school, infirmary, post office and cottages which he rented out to workers who did not live on the estate.

The estate is still owned by the family and one of the grandsons manages it with about 1,800 employees. They are hoping one of the descendents will be interested in taking over.

One last view from the top of the hill before we leave. On the right side of the mansion, what used to be the stables, is now restaurants, gift shops, restrooms, etc.

On Wednesday we spent a few hours driving another portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Brrr, was it ever cold! About 38 degrees and the wind was howling, but it was very pretty. It had rained where we were camped, but they got snow and frost.


Looks like a Christmas card. We hiked from here up to the peak in our flimsy little wind breakers. Suddenly I remembered why we have been going south for the winter.

There were icicles hanging from the ramp at the top. The man who originally measured the peak, never returned from a hiking trip up here. He was later found lying in a creek where he died and is buried here at the top of Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi 6,684 feet.

Glad to be back in my warm and cozy little camper home.

Tarra

Atlanta History Museum, Aquarium,Coke & CNN

Thur & Fri - April 28th & 29th

Just a couple of artworks I found interesting at the High Art Museum in the Woodruff Art Center. This one is just flourescent bulbs with colored stripes around the bulbs.

This one was by a Nigerian artist made by joining discarded bits of aluminum from necks and tops of local liquor bottles forming a glittering textile in the tradition of the strip-woven cloth made by men in West Africa for over a 1,000 years.

Just a few pictures from the world's largest aquarium. They had an awesome dolphin show, but no pictures were allowed.

Dolphin playing with a sea lion.

Two Manta Rays.

Shark.

Whale shark. Not a whale, but the largest of all fish, gets 33 feet or longer.

Great hammerhead shark. Eyes on either side help it to see very well.

Sea Horses. I had some of these when I was a kid. I ordered them from a magazine and they came in a bag of water in the mail. I always thought they were cool.

Lionfish, of the scorpionish family, has spines on it's back and belly like hypodermic needles that are packed with a venom causing sting. Hot water is the most effective pain relief. They are native to Pacific coral reefs and have rapidly spread up the Atlantic seaboard. They are effective predators of small fish and have no known predator to slow their spread.

Albino Alligator about 6 or 7 feet long.

The stadium where Hank Aaron hit his record setting home run is now a parking lot for the new stadium, but they have marked out the outline of the old Atlanta Braves ballfield on the parking lot to memorialize him.

This is the infield for the parking lot facing the new Turner Field stadium.

We stopped in the world famous Varsity Drive-in for lunch. They have been in business over 80 years, sell 8,000 hamburgers a day, go thru a ton of onions a day, etc. You get the idea. They have a long counter with about 20 or so stations to walk up and place your order, plus outdoor car order, a two story parking lot and two stories with 6 or 7 very large dining rooms.

We did a tour of CNN. This is an eight story free standing escalator in the center of their complex.

This is the cafeteria in the food court. The floor tiles show all the continents of the world and all of CNN's locations around the world are marked on the tiles.




Guess where we are. Yup, the Coca Cola Museum. Coke was created by Pharmacist, John Pemberton, in 1886. The first polar bear appeared in their ads in 1922 in France. It was first bottled in 1894 and the bottling rights were sold for $1.00. The company does the concepts, recipes, advertising & marketing and produces the concentrate that bottlers use to make all the drinks. The bottlers package and distribute. Together they make up the world's largest distribution system. It was first bottled outside the U.S. in 1906. By 1930 they had 64 plants in 27 countries. This delivery truck was ordered in 1939 to do deliveries in the narrow, busy streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina.


They had a slowed down bottling line so we could watch how it's done. It was running about 200 bottles a minute. The fastest plants can run about 2,200 bottles per minute. This shows the robot lifting a case of bottles onto the conveyor belt.

This shows a little of the memorabilia. I liked the shelves supported by coke cans and the lettering above made out of bottle caps. They have used Santa Claus in ads for over 75 years. It cost only 5 cents from 1886 thru WWII. They guaranteed that all of our service men in WWII would be able to buy a bottle for 5 cents no matter where they were, and set up bottling plants overseas wherever needed to make it happen. For 70 years Coca Cola was the only brand they sold. They started adding brands in 1950. Today they offer nearly 500 brands worldwide. They operate in over 200 countries and their beverages are enjoyed 1,600,000 times a day. Since 2007 more than 5 million plastic bottles have been recycled or re-used in Coke apparel or accessories. They opened the world's largest bottle to bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, SC. in 2009. They offer over 750 low & no calorie beverages worldwide. Diet Coke is the #1 selling diet soft drink in the world and they are #1 in sales of juices and juice drinks globally. They have four of the top five nonalcoholic sparking brands, Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite. They have been the largest continuous supporter of the Olympic Games since 1928. At the end of the tour, there were 170 different beverages from all over the world on tap for tasting in new computerized machines. You can taste as long as you wish and you get a free bottle of coke on your way out.

In the center of CNN, the Coke Museum and the Aquarium is the Centennial Olympic Park. This is a statue of Frenchman, Baron Pierre De Coubertin, whose dream of a world united in peace thru sport, re-started the modern olympics in 1896. He is honored at every Olympics and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta was the 100 year aniversary of the modern olympics.

Here children are playing in the Olympic Rings Fountains on a hot day. This place was swarming with people and children in the fountains on Easter Sunday.

This display in the Atlanta History Museum shows all the Olympic torches used from 1896 to 1996. There were 53,540 workers, including 47,466 volunteers, to pull off the Olympics in Atlanta. They set new records in assembling the largest ever peacetime gathering of nations---athletes 10,318, women athletes 3,512, and participating delegations 197.

Governor's Mansion and grounds.

The governor's wife came up and introduced herself when we were touring the house. When she found out that we were not from there, she invited us to move there. She said we would love it and they would love to have us there.

This is the Swan House on the grounds of the Atlanta History Museum. It was built in 1928 by heirs to a post-Civil War cotton brokerage fortune. After the surviving widow's death in 1965, the Atlanta Historical Society bought the house and 28 acres for the new museum.

This is the backside of the home. The 1920s and 30s was a time of servant-based lifestyles for the elite in Atlanta. There was an 1890s Victorian play house, statues, gardens and hiking trails on the grounds. What a way to live!

This Tullie-Smith plantation home and out buildings were moved from nearby to the museum property to demonstrate the plantation life with slaves.

They had an 1850s barn with 4 horses, 6 milk cows, 4 oxen, 12 cattle, 15 sheep and 70 swine plus a corn crib and blacksmith shop. In the rear of the house was a separate kitchen (to prevent fires burning the house down), a smoke house, dairy and two cabins for the 11 slaves they had in 1860.

By 1860 four million people were held as slaves in the U.S. Cotton was the most valuable product in the country. In 1733 Georgia was unique in that it prohibited slavery. However, it became a lost cause to try to enforce it, and it was legalized in 1749. The slave population grew from 500 in 1749 to 18,000 in 1775. In 1793 the cotton gin increased production by 400% in 5 years making a dramatic demand for labor. By 1800 the slave population was 59,699 and increased to 105,218 in ten years. U.S. Congress banned slave trade in 1808. By 1820, 149,656 out of a total population of 340,000 were slaves. 1840 - 280,944 slaves, 1860 - 462,198 (44% of the population). Robert Smith's will stipulated that his slave families were to be kept together in familiar surroundings. He directed his heirs to offer a choice to the slave woman, Winnee, "to live with either of my sons whom she may select, and I enjoin upon such son that he may take care of her and treat her well during her life." In 1860 Geogia's large plantation owners comprised 15% of the state's slaveholding population, far out-numbered by the 20,077 slave holders who owned fewer than 6 slaves. Output of work expected was calculated by the slave's age and physical ability. Based on the amount of work they could accomplish, they were labeled as 1/4 hands, 1/2 hands, 3/4 hands or full hands. Under this system, a full hand could pick 150 pounds of cotton per day. What slaves feared most was being separated from family members when owners sold off individual slaves.

The museum had exhibits on the 1996 Olympics, golfer Bobby Jones, author and photographer Eudora Welty, folklore and culture, history and development of the city and the Civil War. Before the war, most nurses were men, but during the war most people began to think of nursing as a woman's job. By the end of the war 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and 50,000 southern civilians had died of combat, disease and starvation. Another 500,000 were wounded. The majority were never identified and buried in mass graves. By 1930 Atlanta had the unique experience of being home to the revived KKK, the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and the Commission on Interracial Cooperation to Improve Race Relations founded in 1920. Due to poverty and illiteracy FDR named the region "Number One Problem" during the Great Depression.

Heading to North Carolina,

Tarra