This past weekend, we left our bubble of Carrboro to celebrate my son becoming a teenager. He wanted to go to the mountains to an area where “we don’t see many cars.” I had just the spot—a secluded cabin owned by a childhood friend in Transylvania County. It was a long drive that began on an interstate and ended on miles of switch-backs past vistas, farms, and mountain streams, just as he wanted.
We first found that we were in different territory with a stop for gas in Burke County. My daughter and I went into the convenience store to find ourselves the only people wearing masks. Not even the clerk had one on. In Carrboro, my kids had barely been outside of our house without masks and everybody wears them in stores.
Not far from the store, a huge Confederate flag flies over I-40. I’m sure the owner and the people who support him believe they are defiantly anti-PC, but my children believe they are racists. Both are probably correct.
Once we turned off the main road, we found a landscape littered with Trump signs and Trump flags. My daughter kept commenting, “The election is over. Biden has already been inaugurated.” For these people, though, the signs are not about the election. They are expressing their allegiances. The Trump flags often shared a pole with a Confederate flag. One was a bastardization of the American flag with the red and white stripes of Old Glory morphing into the the Confederate battle flag.
Ironically, many of these people are descendants of mountaineers who stayed loyal to the Union during the Civil War and more than a few are descended from people who deserted the Confederacy because they believed they had no stake in the fight. The sentiments, though, may be the same. They live back in those hollers and off those winding roads because they just want to be left alone. They don’t want to be bothered by regulators who would limit their hunting and fishing or logging and mining. And they don’t have much use for outsiders whether they are from Mexico or Florida.
After leaving the seclusion and rugged beauty of rural Transylvania County, we traveled to Grandfather Mountain where the stunning landscape and breathtaking views attracts people from across the country. Not only did we see license plates from states both near and far, we returned to the mask wearers. Even crossing the Mile High Swinging bridge, most people kept their faces covered.
We had a great weekend in western North Carolina and experienced the diversity of our state, both in terms of geography and cultures. Those people who keep close to their communities, wary of outsiders, are also disbelieving in the threat of the virus or the ability to control it. They brazenly shun protections and proudly display their loyalty to philosophies held in contempt by people in more populated environs. In contrast, the people who are attracted to this state for its diversity and amenities, whether Grandfather Mountain, the Research Triangle Park, or our world-class universities, embrace the science of vaccines and the protections of masks. One North Carolina represents the future of the state and one is desperately holding onto its past, but neither is quickly going away.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Indulge me! I can’t get your column on going to the mountains out of my mind.
I recall and still carry in my soul a line from my years in the North Carolina mountains: “You can take the man out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of the man.”
Peace.
Thomas,
Thank you for a beautiful column about the land that forever will live in my bones, western North Carolian, the land of my birth and the land for much of my life until corporate newspapering took me away. There were points in the column that brought a tear. I know, as my distant kinsman put it, you can’t go home again. But I wish I could. Blessing to you and your family.
Very telling that Leonard considers people living their own lives in their own parts of the state to be a problem that needs to be solved. We certainly can’t have people flying the wrong flags and putting out the wrong signs. God forbid we leave people the hell alone, like they’d prefer.
Beautifully put. I know the places you mention since I live here in the mountains, and I encounter the same people every day in some context or another. Helpful hint to my fellow readers here: You ain’t gonna change any minds about anything right now, so choose the proper place and time, while also making sure you give your kids the straight skinny. Oh, and continue to hold doors open for women of all ages when you have the opportunity, because a little respect and a simple gesture sometimes nets social gold. That’s what my daddy told me and he rarely steered me wrong.
Thomas, I frequently visit western NC as well and your comments are well taken. How to solve/improve upon the situation? Unclear and not easy to say the least. I should add you dont have to go to western NC to see this. Ilive in the stoneridge/sedgefield area of chapel hill, ride my bike in orange county often. 2-3 miles from my house one can see trump signs often intertwined with confederate flags!
I hope you and you readers will keep in mind that not everyone in western NC flies confederate flags or is anti-science/vaccine. I grew up in one of those western counties and can tell you that there are many in the region who are as disheartened as you and your kids when they see the signs of ignorance and racism surrounding them. Why do you and others have the need to paint everyone with the same brush just because you spent a weekend there and saw these negative images. When you do that, you prejudge an entire region and brand everyone as hillbillies and mountaineers, terms that are usually used in derogatory ways.
Tom, you didn’t need to go that far west to get culture shock. You could have come to Randolph County…………….
Thomas,
The people of WNC voted for Mark Meadows for 4 terms. Meadows was both from Florida and a developer. Neither thought of very highly in many areas of WNC. But he is a Republican , all is forgiven. Just like his replacement, Madison Cawthorn.