Durham Tales

by Jim Wise

  There was Jerry Markham, the former slave who operated a crossing gate and lived by the tracks. If you got cold walking to school, Markham would let you come into his house and get warm. There was the big, eighteen-inch snowfall: “It lasted forever, looked like. Had no way to clear the streets or anything. That was the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, 1927.”

  In those days, the town ended at Maplewood Cemetery. There were five banks uptown and a livery stable between Main and Chapel Hill Streets, right where Belk’s would build a department store one day. Where those streets crossed at Five Points, there were five hot dog stands around the area. Amos ’n’ Andy’s was the best. “Go in there and sit down on a Co’-Cola crate in a back room, you might be sitting next to a bank president.”

  Public Service Company ice plant, about 1920. As a boy, Tom Phipps sold ice around town during the summers. Courtesy Durham Public Library.

  Hot dogs cost a nickel, six for a quarter. A bath at the barbershop would run you a quarter, and a shoeshine was a dime. Phipps sold ice in the summer. On a good day he could move maybe fifty blocks, and after the first ten he got a quarter’s commission on each. Come winter, he sold coal off the back of the same wagon, but if a warm spell came along he might put in a week’s labor and have but seven dollars to show for it.

  Electric refrigerators killed the ice business. Phipps became a bus driver, then a mechanic. He retired in 1974 and became a fixit man and carpenter. He lived with his son out on what had been the town’s outskirts. While he wished Durham could be like it was again, he knew that couldn’t happen and it really didn’t make much difference to him. “This world isn’t my home anyway. I’m just a stranger passing through,” he said, but all in all he had had a pretty good run.

  “I guess I’ll have a little bit more with me when I go than I came in with,” he said. And laughed. “I figure, I’ll have a suit on.”

  THE WEEKEND THAT WAS

  It was just one of those weekends.

  Thanksgiving 1903.

  Way back then, in the good ol’ days their very selves, it would be years and years before A Charlie Brown Christmas was a germ in anyone’s imagination (the cursed Red Baron was still more than a decade from takeoff), much less anybody fretting about the “commercialization” of the holiday. “Consumer culture” was decades away from formal recognition (people were making purchases, but back then they just thought of it as buying and selling). Still, hardly had Thanksgiving dinner been rendered into hash and stew than the gas company was raving about the ultramodern gas range that would be just the thing for Mother’s “Xmas Cooking.”

  Same day, a man could get a $15.00 suit of clothes for $9.75, and a lady could get a $0.40 corset for $0.23 during the “Special Sale” at Gladstein’s.

  Even with the advent of the most wonderful time of the year, some people just wouldn’t get into the spirit of giving. The very night before Thanksgiving, somebody broke into the Standard Oil Company office and left the safe “a shattered wreck” after relieving it of $160.00 in cash and the manager’s personal gold watch. Someone, perhaps the same villain, took $2.59 from the Durham Paper Box Company and “a quantity of beer” from the Hoster bottling shop.

  “The police have practically no clue,” the Durham Sun reported.

  No doubt, some people weren’t into the spirit of giving thanks, either.

  When Will Parrott was driving his buggy across the railroad, the horse spooked and pushed Parrott and his conveyance backward—right into a train that happened to be going by right behind him. The buggy was unsalvageable. Parrott was unharmed, but Goldy Mitchell was not so fortunate. Having just arrived from up the line in Creedmoor, he failed to notice the headlight and whistle of an approaching locomotive.

  The Sun reported, “The top of his head was mashed into a pulp and his brains were scattered around on the ground…besides he was terribly broke up.”

  Whether the train that did in Goldy was the same attacked by Parrott’s horse was not made clear.

  Our town had been able to enjoy a white Thanksgiving, as snowfall began Wednesday morning and continued long past daylight, caressing the burglars having their way with the beer, the watch and the $162.59. For another scofflaw, there was good news and bad news that night: Page Warren managed to get out of the county workhouse, where he was doing time for stealing chickens; unfortunately, he died of exposure while walking in the winter wonderland. Those on duty at the workhouse were apparently much into the holiday spirits, for two nights later Mamie House, a familiar offender, made her escape as well and, with apparently a better sense of direction than the unfortunate Warren, reached a railroad, caught a train and was out of local jurisdiction before anybody in charge noticed she was gone.

  According to the local press, “It looks like negligence.”

  We may only hope that Mamie was able to take advantage of the railroad’s special Christmas excursion fares—or perhaps she was in on the split of that $162.59.

  THE DAY THAT WAS

  While particulars do change a bit with the times, some generalities stay the same, generally speaking.

  It was just one of those days. Durham Day 1977. The third of November. It was cloudy in Durham, but it was festive and gay, with a holiday feel in the air. At least, that was the idea. November 3 had been decreed, by those who went in for local boosting, to be an occasion to commemorate the largely abandoned central business district’s elevation to the National Register of Historic Places. It also tied in quite nicely with the “Durham First” campaign that the chamber of commerce was running to improve the city’s image. It was also the 153rd birthday of the man for whom the town was named, Bartlett Durham.

  And a grand occasion this official Durham Day was. In the morning, there were hour-long walking tours of the officially historic downtown—registered in recognition of its early twentieth-century commercial buildings that had survived the city’s attempt at urban renewal. In the evening, paying homage to the county’s rustic past or some popular notion thereof, there was bluegrass music and clog dancing in the 1926 art deco Carolina Theatre. In between, there was speechifying by very important people, and a parade complete with Uncle Sam, color guards, marching bands, antique cars, horseback riders in cowboy hats, mule-drawn wagons and street sweepers bringing up the rear. Some of the very important people wore plastic derbies to look authentically historic. Chamber of commerce CEO Bob Booth would say in later years that this was the low point of his career.

  “Durham First” was a chamber of commerce effort to boost Durham’s image and civic pride in the late 1970s.

  The parade made its way down Main Street beneath an overcast sky. Some people on the sidewalks watched. A little old lady pelted very important people with hard candy. The drums drummed, the drill teams drilled and Uncle Sam shook hands as the dignified entourage made its way past vacant offices, boarded shop windows, “Going Out of Business” signs and the pile of historic rubble where Belk’s department store had been before it moved to the mall.

  Elsewhere, life went on. At the same time the very important people were parading, a disgruntled elementary school principal was holding a shotgun on thirty-two people at the school, including the county superintendent. The incident occurred during a meeting called to announce the principal’s replacement. He may have been put out that he was not invited, but he had been under a lot of pressure. His job performance had been called into question several times, and earlier that fall he got the blame when the school was found to be infested with lice.

  After four hours, with assurance of future support from the captive teachers, the principal put down his shotgun and turned himself over to the authorities. His neighbors said they’d thought he was a fine man. His wife signed commitment papers. The principal was taken to Duke Medical Center, where, later that day, a man dropped off his wife for a mental evaluation and, when he came to pick her up, found her also brandishing a loaded shotgun. Police took her back for further evaluation.

  A city council c
andidate running on a platform of open government was accused by a rival of covering up the disappearance of $700 from the vice squad’s expense fund. A tobacco warehouse owner announced that the Durham market would probably close early that year due to declining prices. An African American city councilman said he was disgusted by the lack of black faces among the very important people downtown.

  “This is a special day for Durham,” said historian John Flowers, who did most of the work getting the National Register stamp of approval.

  In some ways, it was indeed. In other ways, it was much like any other. The very next day, Friday, a fellow got off the bus from Nashville, proceeded to a downtown corner and began to whistle. “God has given me this peculiar ministry,” he explained between tunes and repeated calls. “Help me, mighty God.” The whistles sounded like bird calls. He spent the night at a downtown hotel, then caught the bus to a gospel convention in Raleigh.

  THE IMAGE

  Durham is kind of touchy about its image.

  Image, after all, is a big deal these days. It affects a community’s “brand.” Durham’s brand, as of 2006, is “Where Great Things Happen.” But those who concern themselves with such things get frustrated because outsiders continually bad-mouth the place. They say it’s crime-ridden, that the schools stink, that the inmates are running the asylum. “Not true! Not true!” declare those who concern themselves with such things, producing statistics that prove the town is not that bad at all, as towns go.

  This image thing is taken seriously and has been for some time. In 1996, the county commissioners went on retreat to talk about the budget but instead spent most of their time talking about the image problem: in particular, Durham’s lack of self-esteem. Some blamed internal critics; some blamed outside agitators; some blamed the media. They made a list of good things.

  Candidates in that fall’s elections promised to make the image better, but the problem evidently resisted all efforts because people were talking about it through the rest of the decade and into the twenty-first century. An enterprising merchant introduced “Durham Love Yourself” T-shirts. The Convention and Visitors Bureau created a volunteer Image Watch team to look out for misrepresentations and slurs.

  Nor is Durham’s perceived image problem a product of today’s marketing and consumer culture. It has deep roots. Around 1890, the good Baptists of North Carolina were seeking a place to locate an academy for young ladies. Many communities made generous overtures to attract the school, including Durham. But when the Baptists chose Raleigh for what would become Meredith College, the burghers of Durham felt sure their town had been spurned as a disease-ridden, rum-soaked den of iniquity unfit for the elevation of Christian womanhood. Even the local press remarked, upon the settling in town of a young matron of distinguished pedigree, that she might have had a brilliant social career had she gone anywhere but Durham.

  Whether or not Durham is victim of a vast disparaging conspiracy, the truth is that Durham’s reputation literally preceded it. Long before there was a town, upstanding, industrious folk set roots in fertile ground: to the north, near the bottomlands of the Flat, Little and Eno Rivers that fed into the Neuse River; and to the southwest, near New Hope Creek and its tributaries, which fed into the Cape Fear. The dusty ridge that crosses the middle of the present county and separates the watersheds was good for little except a rude wagon road between Hillsborough, twelve miles west, and Raleigh, the state capital twenty-five miles southeast.

  “The Cool Continues” banner advertises the West Village apartments, reflecting the twenty-first-century effort to bestow Durham’s inner city with an image of hipness. Courtesy of the author.

  According to oral histories collected from local elders around 1906, the ground that would be Durham was known as a “roaring old place,” populated by drifters and dregs from respectable settlements who catered to the needs and whims of the teamsters driving freight wagons on the road. Inns and taverns along the way gained reputations for gambling, cockfighting, hard drinking, loose women, thievery and even murder. Besides the wagoners, that business district of the early 1800s attracted students from the university at Chapel Hill, nine miles southwest, who wanted to have their fun out of sight of their faculty’s prying eyes.

  The roaring carried on even after Durham became a name on a map in 1853, with establishment of the Durham’s Station post office, as the railroad arrived in 1855 and as a village developed into an incorporated town of around two hundred souls by 1869. Durham grew and prospered with the post-bellum success of its tobacco manufacturers and merchants, but still its saloons outnumbered its churches, and when one clergyman had the gall to preach prohibition, the saloonkeepers got his landlord to raise the rent so high that the minister had to leave town to find a place to live. Pigsties lined what passed for streets, the local press (the Tobacco Plant) chided gentlemen for spitting tobacco in church and disease proliferated from contaminated ponds and shallow wells.

  The “roaring old place” endures: Durham street scene, circa 1880. Courtesy Durham Public Library.

  Colonial Hillsborough, the feeling went, looked down on the upstart tobacco town. Elevated Chapel Hill found it uncouth. Establishmentarian Raleigh had the assumed dignity of state government, negating the inconvenient truth that the capital started out as Isaac Hunter’s Tavern.

  Image, though, is what you make of it, and a perceived insult once was turned to Durham’s favor. The Baptists may have snubbed the town, but about that same time the Methodists were looking for an urban setting to relocate their struggling Trinity College from the wilds of rural Randolph County—about eighty miles west as the railroad ran. Durham industrial barons Julian Shakespeare Carr and Washington Duke, good Methodists both, put together a package of cash and real estate that won the school, notwithstanding that the basis of both benefactors’ fortunes, cigarettes, was regarded by most North Carolina Methodists as the devil’s own debauchery.

  Later, in 1924, Trinity College became Duke University under the considerable patronage of Washington Duke’s youngest boy, Buck. Today, Duke University is Durham’s biggest employer, with about thirty thousand on its payroll, and has brought the city a cosmopolitan degree, although some undergraduates yet subscribe to the campus folklore that Durham is the “Armpit of the South.” Townsfolk, in turn, say “Dukies” are snotty, pampered and given to obnoxious partying. Turnabout’s fair play, the saying goes, but we have an image problem here.

  PART II

  ORIGINS

  The earliest documentary record of the region that would be Durham is from 1670, when an explorer named John Lederer, commissioned by the royal governor of Virginia, made an expedition into the wild country beyond the reach of settlement. He reported thick forests where resided “all sorts of beasts of prey,” as well as natives who made their cultivated lands “pleasant and fruitful.” Thirty-one years later, another European, John Lawson, commissioned by the governor of South Carolina, passed through, finding “rich soyl” and large flocks of turkeys. The extent of foreign incursion to the region is little known, though Virginia governor Alexander Spotswood described the Carolina backwoods in 1714 as a wretched region to which “loose and disorderly people do daily flock,” and gentleman William Byrd, a member of the party sent to survey the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, found the Carolinians as wretched, shiftless and heathen as “the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope.”

  By the mid-1700s, though, English law and English clergy were bringing in some measure of English civilization.

  THE MERCHANT

  Those who know the location of William Johnston’s grave take care to keep it hidden. If a historical fellow traveler can be trusted with the knowledge, they’ll show the way and—always after some careful inspecting of the ground, because it really is hard to spot—clear the leaf litter left as camouflage, and naturally deposited since the last visit, and let the old stone have a moment in the light. But before going on, it’s covered over again. Just a precaution, you know.


  Not that potential vandals would be too likely to stumble upon William Johnston’s resting place. It’s on the slope of a forested knoll, between a stream and a long-abandoned farmyard, down the remainder ruts of an almost-forgotten trail, through an unused pasture where the grass grows high, off a lightly traveled road through yet-undeveloped country. Make that country that once was developed, in the manner of the time, but has passed back to nature’s keeping until there’s call for changing it again.

  To the memory of WILLIAM JOHNSTON

  AND ANN HIS WIFE

  A Worthy pair

  This Monument is Erected

  BY

  WALTER and AMELIA ALVES

  She died in 1769 Aged 42 Years

  He died May the 3d 1785

  Aged 48 Years

  Here also lie Interred

  Five of their Children

  Who all died very Young

  For children to die “very Young,” and their parents in what we now think of as middle age, was common in what was called the Carolinas’ “Back Country” two and a half centuries ago. Most people lived in isolation and passed on to anonymity, their remains gone back to earth and long since covered by grass or woods, if not asphalt or concrete. Indeed, beyond Lederer’s account from 1670 and Lawson’s from 1701, there is little to document those who lived beyond the Tidewater and coastal plain from the time of English arrival at Jamestown in 1607 until the incursion of English authority into what is now central North Carolina around the 1750s.