Fall colors peaked on Monday, two days ago. The morning view biking up Arnette Street, with red and white oaks rising above old wood frames, was perfect. Then it rained on Tuesday, and today the street was thick with fallen leaves. The views remained gorgeous, not just on the street but high above, in my office suite at Erwin Square, but I'm still calling Peak Day for autumn 2010: November 15th.
The rain raises another issue, which perhaps I should address anyway, as a service to anyone considering bicycle commuting: the mechanics. During my first stint as a bicycle commuter, I avoided rain as much as possible, driving my car when skies threatened, but during my most recent previous round on two wheels, I biked to work without regard to weather: rain, snow, cold… I worked at NC State, and I didn't have a parking pass. I was committed.
Lack of a parking pass was certainly an incentive, but the real difference between my first and last previous experiences as a bicycle commuter was the nature of my destination. The first time, I was headed for an office building, with an elevator ride as the final leg of my journey. The last previous time, at NC State, I worked in an office suite converted from a graduate dorm suite, in a building that still, otherwise, was a graduate-student dorm. I passed no besuited executives on my way in, I had no elevator to ride, and I had a shower right across from my office.
Today, I once again work in an office tower and ride an elevator en route to Duke's leased space at Erwin Square, and I'm reluctant to arrive looking too bedraggled. Thanks to the nearby Brodie gym, I'm freshly showered, at least (though in summer, when the humidity kept my hair from drying, I worried that my wet locks would be mistakenly thought of as sweat-soaked), but the final third of a mile leaves plenty of opportunity for rain to render me quite unpresentable, though the service elevator does offer an alternate route, I suppose.
There are other reasons for my rain aversion. First and foremost, there was my wrist injury during the summer, in a non-rain-related bike accident, yes, but it still makes me nervous about wet roads. I only recently got around to having X-rays taken to confirm there was no fracture, and now I've been given PT exercises to stretch my shortened ligaments. As well, I flash back to my worst rain experience, when I got caught in a downpour on Erwin Road, en route to a meeting at the Lemur Center. I arrived quite thoroughly soaked, which was unpleasant, though I still managed to enjoy walking through the woods with lemurs leaping from tree to tree, following my group.
So rain makes me skip the occasional day, such as yesterday, and skipping calls attention to the mechanics, the procedural issues that are normally second nature, but which become less natural when the routine is interrupted. What's involved? To start with, there're changes of clothes: first, the ones I wear while biking to the gym, then the clothes I wear while working out at the gym (same as my biking clothes in the summer, but different now that it's colder outside), then the change for work, starting with the underwear I change into after showering and before my final leg of biking, then ending with the outerwear I change into at the office. Sometimes the office clothes are in my backpack, other times they're stockpiled at work, and often it's a bit of both. Then there're the toiletries, which come out of my pack when I'm showering at home and driving to work, then go back in when I'm back on my bike and showering at the gym. Today I noticed that I was almost out of soap, so I'll have to remember to replace it. Then there's the locker lock, the bicycle lock, my iPod (for the gym), my towel… It seems like a lot to remember, but I normally put together my pack half-asleep and still get it right, then go through my changes and morning routine with little thought. Skip a day, though, and I find myself arriving at the gym without my toiletries (happened only once, and fortunately I found a bar of soap in the shower), or my towel (again only once, but that was less pleasant), or I leave my iPod uncharged and must listen to the awful TV of my fellow gym goers (did you know MTV still shows videos in the morning?). Today I found myself staring blankly at my locker door, wondering where I was in the process. Oh yes, I've just changed out of my bike clothes, into my workout clothes, and now I must stow my bag and head for the elliptical machines. Then it'll be back to the locker room and on to the showers. And so to work.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Full Durham
Today was a Full Durham day, starting with a walk from my home in Morehead Hill to a meeting about the Pauli Murray House, held at the Lyon Park Community Center, and ending at Fullsteam Brewery, where Jen and I introduced ourselves to their new stout, Workingman's Lunch, served with a Moon Pie on the side. Before that, we had dinner at the Fish Shack, where oysters are once again on the menu. It's been a while.
About the Pauli Murray thing: I've always eschewed the planning process, even though I served three years on the board of a community nonprofit in Raleigh (or perhaps I should say, because of that). But I have to admit I was impressed about how the process caused a plan to come together, as the various thoughts about the Pauli Murray House were organized under various rubrics, and at the end of three hours it seemed there was something of an organized plan for creating a community center and historic site of this old home. The good news is that the Pauli Murray Project now has an option to buy the place, so this plan may actually come together.
For me, another aspect of the morning was getting there. The Lyon Park Community Center is very close to my home, less than a quarter mile, but it's to the west, and living on the west end of Morehead Hill, as I do, I have a tendency to lean east. Going west crosses a racial boundary, of course, but there're other boundaries revealed by the Durham County GIS maps, which I learned well during the home-buying process: home prices and income drop, crime rises. The short walk down the greenway across the north end of Lyon Park from home to the community center took me just south of a crime cluster, revealed in a pox of red dots on Durham GIS, marking the dead end of Rock Street, where lies an apartment complex. So in all these months living within sight of it, I'd never walked that greenway, which proved quite pretty: a short walk through the woods and over a creek, emerging by a baseball diamond in a neat little neighborhood, where lies the center. On the way back, I climbed the steep embankment south of the greenway and checked out the woods in the undeveloped parts of Lyon Park, away from the baseball diamond and basketball court. It turns out they're dominated by a field of kudzu, which is a shame, though there is a little creek running through it, with only one shopping cart to be seen, and I think that's obligatory. All of this just a tenth of a mile from home, and I'd never seen it.
It was a lovely fall day, full of hope for new things in the West End, the return of oysters to the Fish Shack, and a tasty stout at Fullsteam. Thus does Durham lean forward into the new decade.
About the Pauli Murray thing: I've always eschewed the planning process, even though I served three years on the board of a community nonprofit in Raleigh (or perhaps I should say, because of that). But I have to admit I was impressed about how the process caused a plan to come together, as the various thoughts about the Pauli Murray House were organized under various rubrics, and at the end of three hours it seemed there was something of an organized plan for creating a community center and historic site of this old home. The good news is that the Pauli Murray Project now has an option to buy the place, so this plan may actually come together.
For me, another aspect of the morning was getting there. The Lyon Park Community Center is very close to my home, less than a quarter mile, but it's to the west, and living on the west end of Morehead Hill, as I do, I have a tendency to lean east. Going west crosses a racial boundary, of course, but there're other boundaries revealed by the Durham County GIS maps, which I learned well during the home-buying process: home prices and income drop, crime rises. The short walk down the greenway across the north end of Lyon Park from home to the community center took me just south of a crime cluster, revealed in a pox of red dots on Durham GIS, marking the dead end of Rock Street, where lies an apartment complex. So in all these months living within sight of it, I'd never walked that greenway, which proved quite pretty: a short walk through the woods and over a creek, emerging by a baseball diamond in a neat little neighborhood, where lies the center. On the way back, I climbed the steep embankment south of the greenway and checked out the woods in the undeveloped parts of Lyon Park, away from the baseball diamond and basketball court. It turns out they're dominated by a field of kudzu, which is a shame, though there is a little creek running through it, with only one shopping cart to be seen, and I think that's obligatory. All of this just a tenth of a mile from home, and I'd never seen it.
It was a lovely fall day, full of hope for new things in the West End, the return of oysters to the Fish Shack, and a tasty stout at Fullsteam. Thus does Durham lean forward into the new decade.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Ghost Train
Sometimes when I'm biking down South Buchanan in the morning, the railroad gates will go down, the lights will flash and the bell will clang, but no train will come. After a minute or two, the gates will go back up. I realize it's probably caused by the morning westbound Amtrak rolling and stopping as it loads at nearby Durham Station, but I like to think of it as the ghost train.
'Tis the season, after all. Students are back on campus, playing quidditch. (Yes, they were, this evening, during my homeward commute.) I miss some things about summer: the lack of student foot traffic on my route, the American Dance Festival's "Busta Move" bus. But summer is not my season: not anywhere, and certainly not here in the South.
The ADF's "Busta Move" bus on Duke's East Campus.
Recently I've been walking - and biking - to Maplewood Cemetery, where I quickly found the elaborate grave of Julian Carr and family. In an early blog entry, "Durham Palimpsest," I mentioned the sign on Chapel Hill Street, due north of my house, noting that Carr's grave was "1/4 mi. S." Well, it's a bit further than that and at least as much west as south, but there it is, of course, in Maplewood Cemetery, which is pretty much one-stop shopping for Durham history geeks, when it comes to graves: Blackwell, Duke, Hill, Morehead, Parrish, Watts, Wright, and all the rest, very nearly. They even have Bart Durham, though they had to dig him up from his family plot west of Chapel Hill to get him.
Carr's family plot:
This creepy maternal tableau lies at the south end of the Carr plot...
...while this even creepier angelic scene is found to the north:
(don't blink)
Carr was the big advocate for this ghoulish bit of civic boosterism, though it wasn't until nine years after the "General"* died that they pulled it off. I sense a certain false modesty in Carr's promotion of Durham as "founder" of the city that came to bear his name: commissioning a portrait of Bart Durham (from a photograph) after the city commissioned a portrait of him, then going on to promote the idea of re-interring the long-departed doctor in Maplewood.
In the end, Durham's Maplewood marker says it all: They managed to get both his birth and death years wrong, as well as his middle name (1824 - 1859, and it was Leonidas, not Snipes, though the latter was his mother's maiden name). They didn't care about him as a person at all; they just wanted his body.
*Julian Carr was a 19-year-old private at the end of the Civil War. "General" was an honorary title accorded him by a Confederate Veterans group he headed.
'Tis the season, after all. Students are back on campus, playing quidditch. (Yes, they were, this evening, during my homeward commute.) I miss some things about summer: the lack of student foot traffic on my route, the American Dance Festival's "Busta Move" bus. But summer is not my season: not anywhere, and certainly not here in the South.
The ADF's "Busta Move" bus on Duke's East Campus.
Recently I've been walking - and biking - to Maplewood Cemetery, where I quickly found the elaborate grave of Julian Carr and family. In an early blog entry, "Durham Palimpsest," I mentioned the sign on Chapel Hill Street, due north of my house, noting that Carr's grave was "1/4 mi. S." Well, it's a bit further than that and at least as much west as south, but there it is, of course, in Maplewood Cemetery, which is pretty much one-stop shopping for Durham history geeks, when it comes to graves: Blackwell, Duke, Hill, Morehead, Parrish, Watts, Wright, and all the rest, very nearly. They even have Bart Durham, though they had to dig him up from his family plot west of Chapel Hill to get him.
Carr's family plot:
This creepy maternal tableau lies at the south end of the Carr plot...
...while this even creepier angelic scene is found to the north:
(don't blink)
Carr was the big advocate for this ghoulish bit of civic boosterism, though it wasn't until nine years after the "General"* died that they pulled it off. I sense a certain false modesty in Carr's promotion of Durham as "founder" of the city that came to bear his name: commissioning a portrait of Bart Durham (from a photograph) after the city commissioned a portrait of him, then going on to promote the idea of re-interring the long-departed doctor in Maplewood.
In the end, Durham's Maplewood marker says it all: They managed to get both his birth and death years wrong, as well as his middle name (1824 - 1859, and it was Leonidas, not Snipes, though the latter was his mother's maiden name). They didn't care about him as a person at all; they just wanted his body.
*Julian Carr was a 19-year-old private at the end of the Civil War. "General" was an honorary title accorded him by a Confederate Veterans group he headed.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Ghosts
When I was a child, the scariest thing in the world to me was the 1963 movie, "The Haunting," based on Shirley Jackson's novella The Haunting of Hill House. One detail of the film is that the lead psychic investigator is a professor of parapsychology at Duke University. I failed to note this fine point until watching the film as a young adult living in Raleigh, and only some time after that did I learn that Duke once had such a person in reality: Joseph Banks Rhine. I eventually saw his Rhine Research Center where it now stands on Campus Walk, at a discreet distance from the university, and having heard that Rhine parted company with Duke in the early 60s, I assumed his relationship was a brief, early countercultural misstep by this prestigious school. Only very recently did I learn that this was far from the case - that, in fact, Rhine's psychic research is deeply entwined with Duke history, down to its very roots.
Preston Few, the president of Trinity College who became first president of Duke University, "staunchly backed" faculty member William McDougall when he brought Rhine to Duke and established the parapsychology program, according to Jean Anderson in her history of Durham. This was in 1927, when Duke was but two years old and West Campus still a twinkle in a stone mason's eye. Ten years later, Duke University Press began publishing The Journal of Parapsychology. The fact is that, from 1927 until some point shortly before its move to a building near Duke on North Buchanan in 1965, Rhine's parapsychology lab was based at the West Duke building on East Campus, which I now bike within sight of as part of my twice daily commute.
Rhine was led to his search for psychic abilities by his fascination with the prospect of an afterlife. Can the dead speak? Can anyone hear them? Oddly, for a lifelong secularist, I grew up with a terrible fear of ghosts. I was scared as that kid in "The Six Sense" to get out of bed to pee in the middle of the night, whether at my 50s vintage suburban residence near Cleveland or my maternal grandparents distinctly creepier turn-of-the-last-century home on Martha's Vineyard, though by all indications, no one had ever died in either place.
Today I live in a home where I know at least one person died: former Esquire editor and Durham Herald columnist Bob Sherrill, who retired from an evening of sitting on his (our) front lawn on the night of July 4th, 2007, and was found in his (our) bedroom several days later. However, though I now sleep each night in the room where he died, I awake and pee fearlessly. I catch a glimpse of myself in the darkened bathroom mirror and think how once this would have terrified me. But now, despite this known death and possible others in a house 80 years old, despite my daughter and her friends recently scaring themselves silly with a Ouija Board in the family room, despite the strange way the neighborhood fox barks at our house most every night, despite having an empty old mansion called Hill House just down the street, despite all this, I no longer feel at risk of visitation. Perhaps it's the dim view Sherrill took of death's approach, but I think it's more that I'm older and I've seen death, particularly my mother's piecemeal departure over twenty-some years, and I am no longer capable of belief.
It's sad, I suppose, but at least I get a good night's sleep.
Preston Few, the president of Trinity College who became first president of Duke University, "staunchly backed" faculty member William McDougall when he brought Rhine to Duke and established the parapsychology program, according to Jean Anderson in her history of Durham. This was in 1927, when Duke was but two years old and West Campus still a twinkle in a stone mason's eye. Ten years later, Duke University Press began publishing The Journal of Parapsychology. The fact is that, from 1927 until some point shortly before its move to a building near Duke on North Buchanan in 1965, Rhine's parapsychology lab was based at the West Duke building on East Campus, which I now bike within sight of as part of my twice daily commute.
Rhine was led to his search for psychic abilities by his fascination with the prospect of an afterlife. Can the dead speak? Can anyone hear them? Oddly, for a lifelong secularist, I grew up with a terrible fear of ghosts. I was scared as that kid in "The Six Sense" to get out of bed to pee in the middle of the night, whether at my 50s vintage suburban residence near Cleveland or my maternal grandparents distinctly creepier turn-of-the-last-century home on Martha's Vineyard, though by all indications, no one had ever died in either place.
Today I live in a home where I know at least one person died: former Esquire editor and Durham Herald columnist Bob Sherrill, who retired from an evening of sitting on his (our) front lawn on the night of July 4th, 2007, and was found in his (our) bedroom several days later. However, though I now sleep each night in the room where he died, I awake and pee fearlessly. I catch a glimpse of myself in the darkened bathroom mirror and think how once this would have terrified me. But now, despite this known death and possible others in a house 80 years old, despite my daughter and her friends recently scaring themselves silly with a Ouija Board in the family room, despite the strange way the neighborhood fox barks at our house most every night, despite having an empty old mansion called Hill House just down the street, despite all this, I no longer feel at risk of visitation. Perhaps it's the dim view Sherrill took of death's approach, but I think it's more that I'm older and I've seen death, particularly my mother's piecemeal departure over twenty-some years, and I am no longer capable of belief.
It's sad, I suppose, but at least I get a good night's sleep.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Road That Goes to My House
Tonight, as I was sitting in the parlor of my home, reading Jean Anderson’s history of Durham, I heard that familiar hoarse bark I hear so often around the neighborhood, and which I have come to think of as the local fox’s bark. This time, though, it was right outside my western window, and as I looked out, I saw that it was indeed the fox barking. He saw me and moved away, coming to a stop in the middle of Cobb Street, looking back toward my home. I grabbed my camera and headed outside to take his picture, but he trotted away down the driveway of the abandoned modernist house across the street, where he appears to have a den.
So I didn’t get a picture, but I was motivated to write, for the first time in a while. I took a spill on my bike last week, after hitting one of the many potholes along South Buchanan, though now I think an accessory on my bike may have contributed to the accident: a red blinker electro-magnetically powered by the turn of my back wheel. That’s what it’s supposed to be, at least – it worked for only the first few weeks after I bought it, many years ago, and now, because of its need to hover near my wheel, it’s prone to being jostled between the spokes and bringing my bicycle to an abrupt halt, as happened last week. Or so I have reconstructed, seeing it nearly happen again this morning. I really must remove that broken bit of failed green technology from my vehicle. You’d think, given the several road-rash scabs I now sport, and the pain in my right wrist reminiscent of when I fractured it in another bike accident years ago (though not as bad, and getting better), you’d think I’d’ve removed the offending device as soon as I realized its likely culpability, but I’m a procrastinator when it comes to such practicalities.
The mechanics of bicycle commuting do intrude, even for a veteran. This morning, for the first time since I started my new commute in June, I had to bike in real rain: not a slight drizzle, nor a downpour I could simply out-wait, but a steady rainfall that left me soaked by the time I reached Brodie gym. With my wounded limbs emerging from wet clothes, I was not an advertisement for bicycle commuting.
But it gets better. It’s surely good to be so close to things. Last weekend Jenna and I walked from home to Durham’s new brewpub, Fullsteam. Sadly, they were out of their beer I really like, the Rocket Science IPA, but we stopped by Tyler’s at American Tobacco on the way back, and they had it on tap. Such are the consolations of the Urban B/Hiker lifestyle.
So I didn’t get a picture, but I was motivated to write, for the first time in a while. I took a spill on my bike last week, after hitting one of the many potholes along South Buchanan, though now I think an accessory on my bike may have contributed to the accident: a red blinker electro-magnetically powered by the turn of my back wheel. That’s what it’s supposed to be, at least – it worked for only the first few weeks after I bought it, many years ago, and now, because of its need to hover near my wheel, it’s prone to being jostled between the spokes and bringing my bicycle to an abrupt halt, as happened last week. Or so I have reconstructed, seeing it nearly happen again this morning. I really must remove that broken bit of failed green technology from my vehicle. You’d think, given the several road-rash scabs I now sport, and the pain in my right wrist reminiscent of when I fractured it in another bike accident years ago (though not as bad, and getting better), you’d think I’d’ve removed the offending device as soon as I realized its likely culpability, but I’m a procrastinator when it comes to such practicalities.
The mechanics of bicycle commuting do intrude, even for a veteran. This morning, for the first time since I started my new commute in June, I had to bike in real rain: not a slight drizzle, nor a downpour I could simply out-wait, but a steady rainfall that left me soaked by the time I reached Brodie gym. With my wounded limbs emerging from wet clothes, I was not an advertisement for bicycle commuting.
But it gets better. It’s surely good to be so close to things. Last weekend Jenna and I walked from home to Durham’s new brewpub, Fullsteam. Sadly, they were out of their beer I really like, the Rocket Science IPA, but we stopped by Tyler’s at American Tobacco on the way back, and they had it on tap. Such are the consolations of the Urban B/Hiker lifestyle.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Pin Hook Part 2: What Is Lost
A “pinhooker” is someone who buys something cheap for purposes of repackaging and reselling at a higher price. Look the word up online and most of references you’ll find relate to thoroughbred horses, but the term was also used historically for those who bought tobacco that went unsold at auction, repackaged it, and managed to turn a small profit reselling it. There’s a lot of speculation about the origin of the word, and suggestions that it might have been derived from a place name.
Pinhookers were the rag-and-bone men of the tobacco industry, so naturally it was a profession that drew the most marginal elements of society, as Pin Hook, the place in Old West Durham, reportedly exemplified, with its population of alcoholics, gamblers, and prostitutes. So, did the place take its name from the profession, or vice versa? I’m confident it was the vice versa, actually, since the first tobacco auction in Durham took place in 1873, and I’ve seen a reference to Pin Hook, by name, in print, with a date in 1871, and that was in a newspaper article looking back nostalgically on Pin Hook. Specifically, the Hillsborough Recorder was fondly recalling a race between a man and a woman, both naked, for the prize of a quart of liquor.
“Pin Hook,” the place, probably took its name from the bend in the railroad that marks the spot. The folks who inhabited this demimonde, making some money repackaging low-grade tobacco leaf, then gave their place name to the profession, which would suggest that the horse traders of today, still known as pinhookers, owe their occupational appellation to the bend in the tracks near what is now Erwin Square.
After work yesterday, I left my bike parked at Erwin Square and hiked across the street to explore the narrow greensward between the tracks and the Durham Freeway. I found little sign of past habitation, but I have posted a few pictures below:
Here’s a piece of wood from some past structure. As with every old artifact I saw here, I could imagine it dated from Pin Hook, but more likely it’s left from the later mill village that sprang up across from Erwin Mill in the early 20th century.
A length of iron pipe emerges from the ground, just outside the Durham Freeway fence.
Mysterious iron.
This was the most evocative find: an old, brick-lined well, since Pin Hook famously had a well, frequented by travelers on the old Raleigh-Hillsborough Road.
Unlike most narrow stands of woods in the midst of development, this one was dominated by mature hardwoods, not scrawny pines. There was plenty of poison ivy, however, and I had to bathe in Tecnu when I got home.
Looking across to Erwin Square, where I work. 150 years ago, this view would have been the heart of Pin Hook.
On a final note, last weekend Jen and I walked from home to The Pin Hook, the latterday downtown Durham bar, to see John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and opening act Midtown Dickens. In between was a band we’d never heard of, Mount Moriah, which is fronted by the woman who runs the bar (and also co-owns the record label whose benefit the event was). Now, I’m enough of a (nascent) Durham history geek to be bothered by the fact that The Pin Hook is located not in Old West Durham, where it should be, but downtown, and that it has a pointless “The” in its name. That said, I don’t want to romanticize what was no doubt a very unromantic past, and I’m sure I had a much finer time listening to John Darnielle pour out his heart with the articulate passion of a poet, and all the added power of his fine singing voice and acoustic guitar, then I would have had drinking grog with antebellum Old Southerners in some ramshackle roadhouse.
Still, I wish I could see that old place, and I keep trying to imagine it better than information allows.
Pinhookers were the rag-and-bone men of the tobacco industry, so naturally it was a profession that drew the most marginal elements of society, as Pin Hook, the place in Old West Durham, reportedly exemplified, with its population of alcoholics, gamblers, and prostitutes. So, did the place take its name from the profession, or vice versa? I’m confident it was the vice versa, actually, since the first tobacco auction in Durham took place in 1873, and I’ve seen a reference to Pin Hook, by name, in print, with a date in 1871, and that was in a newspaper article looking back nostalgically on Pin Hook. Specifically, the Hillsborough Recorder was fondly recalling a race between a man and a woman, both naked, for the prize of a quart of liquor.
“Pin Hook,” the place, probably took its name from the bend in the railroad that marks the spot. The folks who inhabited this demimonde, making some money repackaging low-grade tobacco leaf, then gave their place name to the profession, which would suggest that the horse traders of today, still known as pinhookers, owe their occupational appellation to the bend in the tracks near what is now Erwin Square.
After work yesterday, I left my bike parked at Erwin Square and hiked across the street to explore the narrow greensward between the tracks and the Durham Freeway. I found little sign of past habitation, but I have posted a few pictures below:
Here’s a piece of wood from some past structure. As with every old artifact I saw here, I could imagine it dated from Pin Hook, but more likely it’s left from the later mill village that sprang up across from Erwin Mill in the early 20th century.
A length of iron pipe emerges from the ground, just outside the Durham Freeway fence.
Mysterious iron.
This was the most evocative find: an old, brick-lined well, since Pin Hook famously had a well, frequented by travelers on the old Raleigh-Hillsborough Road.
Unlike most narrow stands of woods in the midst of development, this one was dominated by mature hardwoods, not scrawny pines. There was plenty of poison ivy, however, and I had to bathe in Tecnu when I got home.
Looking across to Erwin Square, where I work. 150 years ago, this view would have been the heart of Pin Hook.
On a final note, last weekend Jen and I walked from home to The Pin Hook, the latterday downtown Durham bar, to see John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and opening act Midtown Dickens. In between was a band we’d never heard of, Mount Moriah, which is fronted by the woman who runs the bar (and also co-owns the record label whose benefit the event was). Now, I’m enough of a (nascent) Durham history geek to be bothered by the fact that The Pin Hook is located not in Old West Durham, where it should be, but downtown, and that it has a pointless “The” in its name. That said, I don’t want to romanticize what was no doubt a very unromantic past, and I’m sure I had a much finer time listening to John Darnielle pour out his heart with the articulate passion of a poet, and all the added power of his fine singing voice and acoustic guitar, then I would have had drinking grog with antebellum Old Southerners in some ramshackle roadhouse.
Still, I wish I could see that old place, and I keep trying to imagine it better than information allows.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Pin Hook Part 1: What Remains
As I’ve made clear by now, I live in Morehead Hill, in the house that was the long-time home of the “Urban Hiker” himself, Herald Sun columnist and former Esquire editor Bob Sherrill. More about that later. I’ve said less about where I work, and where I work is – or was – Pin Hook. At least, the parking lot of my building, Erwin Square, was part of it, while most was across the tracks in what is now a narrow woods between the railroad tracks and the Durham Freeway.
P.S. Fellow geocachers, though I shouldn't need to say it: Dibs.
Pin Hook is part of Durham’s salacious reputation, perhaps the most important part for Durham history geeks (a surprisingly large group). It is like the pepper used in some Thai cooking, the one you’re not supposed to eat, but that adds so much to the spicy flavor. Before the railroad track, it was there, on maps, under that name: Pin Hook. A stop along the Raleigh-Hillsborough road where you could tie up your horse, get a slice of watermelon, some gin, and a hooker. I mean to go exploring this site soon, in those woods across the tracks from my office, but today I went to look for what remains, also across the tracks, but further west: Cedar Hill Cemetery, aka Erwin Mills Cemetery. You see, Erwin Mills, the cotton factory, was what came along to replace Pin Hook, and Cedar Hill was the cemetery the mill owners established for their workers, in the best spirit of corporate paternalism. (Those owners, by the way, were Benjamin Duke and William Erwin.)
So, today I went exploring down a largely forgotten stretch of Pettigrew St., which re-emerges in West Durham as a gravel path through the woods along the railroad track, and I found this old cemetery. Below are some pictures I took:
P.S. Fellow geocachers, though I shouldn't need to say it: Dibs.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Day 25: Train of Thought
So, my daughter called me yesterday from Amtrak, to say she was crossing Ninth Street, heading east. A moment later, I heard the train, passing a few blocks north of our house, heading in to Durham Station. I hear the trains all the time, living in Morehead Hill, working at Erwin Square, biking in between. I heard them a lot in Cary, too, living near tracks, but they mean more here. Durham, after all, is a child of the railroad. Many cities resulted in railhoad stations, but here it was the railroad station that resulted in the city.
Back when there was no Durham, just Durham's Station, General William Tecumsah Sherman got off the train here, following a short ride from Raleigh. He was headed to meet General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, who had recently moved his command from Greensboro to Hillsborough to be closer to his worthy apponent. They each got on horseback - Sherman at Durham's Station, Johnston in Hillsborough, and met near a farm belonging to James and Nancy Bennitt, the so-called Bennett Place where they ultimately negotiated the surrender of Johnston's Confederate army. Meanwhile, a mix of Northern and Southern troops mingled in the neutral zone around the train station, looting J.R. Green's tobacco warehouse nearby. Green thought he was ruined, until the post-war orders started coming in. He was quick to think about branding (things really weren't so different then), borrowed his identity from a mustard jar, and the rest is history. The Bull City was born.
Investors in the state-sponsored NC Railroad contributed labor to its construction and earned shares of ownership in exchange. Of course, it wasn't generally their own labor. Paul Cameron of Stagville Plantation, for instance, put his slaves to work on the line. Here, the law was on his side. During the war, however, his slaves were conscripted for the construction of fortifications at Wilmington, and he ultimately lost them all, as Jean Anderson documents in her history of Durham County. What combination of liberation, casualty, and disease may have been involved is not stated in her book, which simply concludes the account by noting it was a loss Mr. Cameron calculated at $443,000.
It strikes me that if you want to see who benefits most from any given social order, simply check to see who has most of the benefits. One can only hope that they also pay most of the costs. The war, however, was an unsettled time, when winners and losers changed places. Washington Duke, though a veteran of the Confederate Navy who ended the Civil War as a POW, became a Republican thereafter. Maybe this was a poor choice, given the impending end of Reconstruction and the ultimate busting of his tobacco trust at Republican hands, but he did all right.
We were at a Durham Bull's game again tonight (another loss - hard to believe they're #1 in the division, based on what I've seen thus far). This time we drove the half mile or so from home, and as we walked across the American Tobacco complex to our car, after the fireworks, past the milling urban crowd, Tyler's Tap Room, Zen Sushi, Cuban Revolution, and so forth, it struck me: You're not even allowed to smoke here now. This cultural carpetbagger felt a little thrill of victory at that.
Back when there was no Durham, just Durham's Station, General William Tecumsah Sherman got off the train here, following a short ride from Raleigh. He was headed to meet General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, who had recently moved his command from Greensboro to Hillsborough to be closer to his worthy apponent. They each got on horseback - Sherman at Durham's Station, Johnston in Hillsborough, and met near a farm belonging to James and Nancy Bennitt, the so-called Bennett Place where they ultimately negotiated the surrender of Johnston's Confederate army. Meanwhile, a mix of Northern and Southern troops mingled in the neutral zone around the train station, looting J.R. Green's tobacco warehouse nearby. Green thought he was ruined, until the post-war orders started coming in. He was quick to think about branding (things really weren't so different then), borrowed his identity from a mustard jar, and the rest is history. The Bull City was born.
Investors in the state-sponsored NC Railroad contributed labor to its construction and earned shares of ownership in exchange. Of course, it wasn't generally their own labor. Paul Cameron of Stagville Plantation, for instance, put his slaves to work on the line. Here, the law was on his side. During the war, however, his slaves were conscripted for the construction of fortifications at Wilmington, and he ultimately lost them all, as Jean Anderson documents in her history of Durham County. What combination of liberation, casualty, and disease may have been involved is not stated in her book, which simply concludes the account by noting it was a loss Mr. Cameron calculated at $443,000.
It strikes me that if you want to see who benefits most from any given social order, simply check to see who has most of the benefits. One can only hope that they also pay most of the costs. The war, however, was an unsettled time, when winners and losers changed places. Washington Duke, though a veteran of the Confederate Navy who ended the Civil War as a POW, became a Republican thereafter. Maybe this was a poor choice, given the impending end of Reconstruction and the ultimate busting of his tobacco trust at Republican hands, but he did all right.
We were at a Durham Bull's game again tonight (another loss - hard to believe they're #1 in the division, based on what I've seen thus far). This time we drove the half mile or so from home, and as we walked across the American Tobacco complex to our car, after the fireworks, past the milling urban crowd, Tyler's Tap Room, Zen Sushi, Cuban Revolution, and so forth, it struck me: You're not even allowed to smoke here now. This cultural carpetbagger felt a little thrill of victory at that.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Day 16: Vickers Woods
My daily commute on South Buchanan takes me past one of the Pauli Murray murals, with quotes from Duke’s Karla Holloway, among others, paying tribute to the civil rights activist Episcopal priest who grew up in Durham. I can see another of her murals while I’m waiting to cross Chapel Hill Street, one block west, on the wall of the erstwhile Durham Co-op. You can see some of these murals and learn more about the Reverend Murray on the Pauli Murray Project website.
Murray wrote about growing up in Durham in the early 20th century in her book Proud Shoes. She spent at least some of her childhood on the edge of Morehead Hill, in an area then called “the Bottoms,” where the land bottomed out along what is now known as Carroll Street (then Cameron and Shaw Streets). I live more-or-less in the Bottoms, myself, on the last block before Carroll, though Cobb Street didn’t extend that far yet (the earliest map I’ve seen with my block of Cobb dates from 1925).
Nonetheless, she writes about this part of the neighborhood in her book. She called it “Vickers Woods,” a name broadly applied to the undeveloped parts of Morehead Hill owned by William Gaston Vickers. By her time, this would have been a pretty small area, since Morehead Hill was mostly developed and Forest Hills had also come along, just a few blocks below. In any event, she describes an incident that occurred in Vickers Woods in 1917. She and some other children entered the woods below her friend’s house on Morehead Avenue, at the point “where Arnette Avenue ended abruptly in a dump heap.” Pursuing the sound of a child crying, they found where another boy had been shot and killed, apparently by a white man who thought the two boys were stealing watermelons from his patch (the boys, like Pauli Murray herself, were black). I say “apparently” because the crime was never investigated, such being the times.
She called the area from Arnette east “Swelltown Heights,” another common moniker of the time. This was the wealthy, white area. She mentions a color line that appears to have run just west of Arnette, and still does, to some extent. Twenty years later (in 1937), the North Carolina Department of Public Works published a map delineating the “White” and “Negro” sections of Durham, and it holds up surprisingly well to this day, even the bit about how Carroll south of Cobb is white, while north is black. In fairness, these lines are no longer near so firm as they must have been back then. There has been progress, after all.
Murray wrote about growing up in Durham in the early 20th century in her book Proud Shoes. She spent at least some of her childhood on the edge of Morehead Hill, in an area then called “the Bottoms,” where the land bottomed out along what is now known as Carroll Street (then Cameron and Shaw Streets). I live more-or-less in the Bottoms, myself, on the last block before Carroll, though Cobb Street didn’t extend that far yet (the earliest map I’ve seen with my block of Cobb dates from 1925).
Nonetheless, she writes about this part of the neighborhood in her book. She called it “Vickers Woods,” a name broadly applied to the undeveloped parts of Morehead Hill owned by William Gaston Vickers. By her time, this would have been a pretty small area, since Morehead Hill was mostly developed and Forest Hills had also come along, just a few blocks below. In any event, she describes an incident that occurred in Vickers Woods in 1917. She and some other children entered the woods below her friend’s house on Morehead Avenue, at the point “where Arnette Avenue ended abruptly in a dump heap.” Pursuing the sound of a child crying, they found where another boy had been shot and killed, apparently by a white man who thought the two boys were stealing watermelons from his patch (the boys, like Pauli Murray herself, were black). I say “apparently” because the crime was never investigated, such being the times.
She called the area from Arnette east “Swelltown Heights,” another common moniker of the time. This was the wealthy, white area. She mentions a color line that appears to have run just west of Arnette, and still does, to some extent. Twenty years later (in 1937), the North Carolina Department of Public Works published a map delineating the “White” and “Negro” sections of Durham, and it holds up surprisingly well to this day, even the bit about how Carroll south of Cobb is white, while north is black. In fairness, these lines are no longer near so firm as they must have been back then. There has been progress, after all.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Day 12: Bull Durham
So we walked to a Bulls game tonight, my family and I. The fireworks are loud enough at home to scare the cats; we might as well see them up close. Jen got our tickets from a season ticket holder on the Old West Durham listserv, which thus far has proven way cooler than the Morehead Hill listserv, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. Anyway, we wound up down in front in right field, able to put our beers right atop the Bulls' dugout.
Our bullpen was off to the right, while the visiting bullpen was way off in left field, below the "Hit Bull, Win Steak Bull." I've always heard, during my twenty-something years in the Triangle, that our bullpens were the origin of the word. Makes sense, though it's not quite the case. Assuming you buy the theory that the old Bull Durham ads were responsible for the term, which seems probable, they weren't just used here in Durham; they were found along the outfield walls in ballparks all across the USA in the early 20th century. But, yes, they did originate in Durham, it being Bull Durham Tobacco. But where exactly did that come from?
The American Tobacco Company had something close to a monopoly on tobacco by the first decade of the last century, a monopoly eventually broken up under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Company head James Duke was hell bent on acquiring his competitors, and one of them was Liggett & Myers. Now, Liggett & Myers got Bull Durham Tobacco when they bought out W.T. Blackwell & Company, which acquired the brand from J.R. Green, who got the idea for the brand from his friend James Whitted, who was inspired by a jar of Colman's Mustard, which has a bull's head for a logo (still does, to this day). It's called English mustard now, but it was sometimes known as Durham mustard, since the style of mustard was invented by a woman in Durham, England. The bull logo was presumably a reference to John Bull, a symbol of Britain at the height of its popularity in the mid-19th century, when Colman's adopted it. John Bull's surname, in turn, is probably a reference to the derogatory use of the phrase "les rosbifs" by the French to refer to the British. So, that is the chain of associations that led to me and 10,000 other people screaming, "Let's go Bulls!" time and again tonight (to no effect, alas), while a man in a Bull costume danced in front of me on the dugout.
Our bullpen was off to the right, while the visiting bullpen was way off in left field, below the "Hit Bull, Win Steak Bull." I've always heard, during my twenty-something years in the Triangle, that our bullpens were the origin of the word. Makes sense, though it's not quite the case. Assuming you buy the theory that the old Bull Durham ads were responsible for the term, which seems probable, they weren't just used here in Durham; they were found along the outfield walls in ballparks all across the USA in the early 20th century. But, yes, they did originate in Durham, it being Bull Durham Tobacco. But where exactly did that come from?
The American Tobacco Company had something close to a monopoly on tobacco by the first decade of the last century, a monopoly eventually broken up under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Company head James Duke was hell bent on acquiring his competitors, and one of them was Liggett & Myers. Now, Liggett & Myers got Bull Durham Tobacco when they bought out W.T. Blackwell & Company, which acquired the brand from J.R. Green, who got the idea for the brand from his friend James Whitted, who was inspired by a jar of Colman's Mustard, which has a bull's head for a logo (still does, to this day). It's called English mustard now, but it was sometimes known as Durham mustard, since the style of mustard was invented by a woman in Durham, England. The bull logo was presumably a reference to John Bull, a symbol of Britain at the height of its popularity in the mid-19th century, when Colman's adopted it. John Bull's surname, in turn, is probably a reference to the derogatory use of the phrase "les rosbifs" by the French to refer to the British. So, that is the chain of associations that led to me and 10,000 other people screaming, "Let's go Bulls!" time and again tonight (to no effect, alas), while a man in a Bull costume danced in front of me on the dugout.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Day 10: Durham Palimpsest
On the ride in today, I just beat the morning Amtrak. I wasn't playing chicken with the train, exactly, but I could hear it coming, pulling out of Durham's lovely new station at West Village, so I pushed harder on the pedals. The crossing lights came on just as I was riding over the rails, and this gave me an inordinate sense of accomplishment.
Most of my short commute is on South Buchanan Blvd. This little stretch between Chapel Hill Street and Main is a cross section of the ridge line that runs between Raleigh and Hillsborough, a geologic formation that attracted the North Carolina Railroad back in the 1840s, when the necessities of wood-burning steam engines forced them to consider a midway stop in this vicinity. There was no Durham then. Durham, they say, is the young city of the Triangle: younger than Chapel Hill or even Raleigh, and nothing compared to Hillsborough. So the city's story begins with the tale of two men, one good, one bad, like the story of The Island on "Lost." In this case, we have William Pratt, the tavern keeper whose "grog shop" acquired a reputation as a place where "evil-disposed persons of evil name and fame and conversation... come together," and Bartlett Durham, the country doctor who donated the land for the railroad depot, which was then given his name, an appellation later applied to the new town that sprang up around it (and I always figured we were named for Durham, England).
As the tale is usually told, Pratt held out too long for too much money, and so lost the deal, though G K of the "Endangered Durham" blog (recommended) suggests naming rights mattered little to him, compared to what he was eventually able to sell his land for, as property values rose after Durham Station opened in the early 1850s. The City of Durham wasn't actually established as such until 1869, with the County to follow in 1881 (torn from the right shoulder of Orange).
But of course our history does not begin with incorporation, or the railroad. Pratt and Durham were already there, after all, and the ill-famed region was known as Prattsburg before it became Durham. Before that it was Dilliardsville, for William Dilliard, from whom Pratt bought his land. Dilliard ran a post office along the Raleigh-to-Hillsborough Road, which he started after buying the land from one Absalom Alston. And who before Absalom? Eventually the Indians, like Eno Will, whom we encounter twice in history: first as a vigorous native guide in John Lawson's A New Voyage to Carolina (1701), then as an aging alcoholic in William Byrd's Journey to the Land of Eden (1733). So it goes.
It seems Durham has always had a taint to it, from Eno Will, to William Pratt, to, well, today: always the poor corner of the Triangle. Way back when Julian Carr started his cotton mill here (1884), the Durham Morning Sun rejoiced, "In place of this dark hole of iniquity and infamy, there will be a busy, bustling manufacturing community." But then, of course, manufacturing declined, both textiles and tobacco, and today all the mills and cigarette factories are gone from Durham. I'm often reminded of my native Cleveland here, as I am in no other part of the Triangle.
On the way home tonight, near the corner of CHS and S. Buchanan, I saw an historical marker for Julian S. Carr (the "S" stands for Shakespeare, by the way). According to this marker, which is located on the berm by the accounting firm in the converted church, Julian's grave lies "1/4 mi. S." This places it right in my neighborhood. But where? I paid close attention as I biked, especially when I figured I was "1/4 mi. S." of the marker, but I saw only the houses lining Yancey Street. So, there's a mystery to be solved, another day.
Most of my short commute is on South Buchanan Blvd. This little stretch between Chapel Hill Street and Main is a cross section of the ridge line that runs between Raleigh and Hillsborough, a geologic formation that attracted the North Carolina Railroad back in the 1840s, when the necessities of wood-burning steam engines forced them to consider a midway stop in this vicinity. There was no Durham then. Durham, they say, is the young city of the Triangle: younger than Chapel Hill or even Raleigh, and nothing compared to Hillsborough. So the city's story begins with the tale of two men, one good, one bad, like the story of The Island on "Lost." In this case, we have William Pratt, the tavern keeper whose "grog shop" acquired a reputation as a place where "evil-disposed persons of evil name and fame and conversation... come together," and Bartlett Durham, the country doctor who donated the land for the railroad depot, which was then given his name, an appellation later applied to the new town that sprang up around it (and I always figured we were named for Durham, England).
As the tale is usually told, Pratt held out too long for too much money, and so lost the deal, though G K of the "Endangered Durham" blog (recommended) suggests naming rights mattered little to him, compared to what he was eventually able to sell his land for, as property values rose after Durham Station opened in the early 1850s. The City of Durham wasn't actually established as such until 1869, with the County to follow in 1881 (torn from the right shoulder of Orange).
But of course our history does not begin with incorporation, or the railroad. Pratt and Durham were already there, after all, and the ill-famed region was known as Prattsburg before it became Durham. Before that it was Dilliardsville, for William Dilliard, from whom Pratt bought his land. Dilliard ran a post office along the Raleigh-to-Hillsborough Road, which he started after buying the land from one Absalom Alston. And who before Absalom? Eventually the Indians, like Eno Will, whom we encounter twice in history: first as a vigorous native guide in John Lawson's A New Voyage to Carolina (1701), then as an aging alcoholic in William Byrd's Journey to the Land of Eden (1733). So it goes.
It seems Durham has always had a taint to it, from Eno Will, to William Pratt, to, well, today: always the poor corner of the Triangle. Way back when Julian Carr started his cotton mill here (1884), the Durham Morning Sun rejoiced, "In place of this dark hole of iniquity and infamy, there will be a busy, bustling manufacturing community." But then, of course, manufacturing declined, both textiles and tobacco, and today all the mills and cigarette factories are gone from Durham. I'm often reminded of my native Cleveland here, as I am in no other part of the Triangle.
On the way home tonight, near the corner of CHS and S. Buchanan, I saw an historical marker for Julian S. Carr (the "S" stands for Shakespeare, by the way). According to this marker, which is located on the berm by the accounting firm in the converted church, Julian's grave lies "1/4 mi. S." This places it right in my neighborhood. But where? I paid close attention as I biked, especially when I figured I was "1/4 mi. S." of the marker, but I saw only the houses lining Yancey Street. So, there's a mystery to be solved, another day.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Day 8: Attention
Trumpet flowers are in bloom - blood orange flutes jutting out up and down the many trees they've entwined. Silk trees are blooming, too, and crepe myrtles. Non-natives call attention to themselves: invasives and, in the case of the myrtles, ornamentals. Back when I first bike commuted, along the greenways of North Raleigh, I focused on the native species, and took notes: when the bluets bloomed (it's now too late for them), and when the tickseed sunflower (too soon). Here, in this urban setting, while the big trees are native, the understory and and herbaceous flora are dominated by alien species. I hope to plant a native garden behind my house, and I encourage my neighbors to do likewise.
Certain native fauna, on the other hand, have drawn our attention. We spied a second fox this weekend, smaller than the first fox we saw. This was in the adjacent neighborhood of Lakewood, but still less than half a mile from home. Jen, my fiancee, pointed out that the vacant Army Reserve base that sits along the Morehead Hill - Lakewood border provides potential den sites, as does the wooded border of the creek below Carroll Street. So, even if the abandoned house across the street is re-occupied (and Durham Water & Sewer was up to something there yesterday), our local vulpine population may stand a chance, as might our tomatoes, threatened as they are by rabbits.
Attention must be paid to see the Wheel of the Year enacted in an urban setting, to discover the geography and culture of place, to know one's home. I bike in the morning half asleep; I come home in the evening anxious to get out of the heat. I need to remember to look. I need to read the history of Durham. I need to remove the English ivy from a hackberry tree, and the elm branch that threatens my roof. I should have noticed the bag of water bottles I left on our kitchen floor from when we were still painting, which now, having leaked, created a mold spot on our hardwoods that we must clean, and sand, and refinish.
Biking does help one pay attention. Of course there's the whole being-out-in-the-elements aspect, but even more important, perhaps, is the rise in energy, the waking up that comes along the way. I may start out half asleep, but by the time I reach the gym that's down to about a quarter, and if I have the time to work out before going to work, then I arrive, as I did today, fully awake.
And that seems to last all day.
Certain native fauna, on the other hand, have drawn our attention. We spied a second fox this weekend, smaller than the first fox we saw. This was in the adjacent neighborhood of Lakewood, but still less than half a mile from home. Jen, my fiancee, pointed out that the vacant Army Reserve base that sits along the Morehead Hill - Lakewood border provides potential den sites, as does the wooded border of the creek below Carroll Street. So, even if the abandoned house across the street is re-occupied (and Durham Water & Sewer was up to something there yesterday), our local vulpine population may stand a chance, as might our tomatoes, threatened as they are by rabbits.
Attention must be paid to see the Wheel of the Year enacted in an urban setting, to discover the geography and culture of place, to know one's home. I bike in the morning half asleep; I come home in the evening anxious to get out of the heat. I need to remember to look. I need to read the history of Durham. I need to remove the English ivy from a hackberry tree, and the elm branch that threatens my roof. I should have noticed the bag of water bottles I left on our kitchen floor from when we were still painting, which now, having leaked, created a mold spot on our hardwoods that we must clean, and sand, and refinish.
Biking does help one pay attention. Of course there's the whole being-out-in-the-elements aspect, but even more important, perhaps, is the rise in energy, the waking up that comes along the way. I may start out half asleep, but by the time I reach the gym that's down to about a quarter, and if I have the time to work out before going to work, then I arrive, as I did today, fully awake.
And that seems to last all day.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Day 4: A New Voyage to Carolina
Nineteen years ago, when I first became a bicycle commuter, I discovered the Piedmont bioregion and fell in love. The whole idea of "bioregion," the bioregional movement, the sere, the seric cycle - all these things were new to me. I read Godfrey's Field Guide to the Piedmont, and I read John Lawson's A New Voyage to Carolina.
Lawson hiked The Trading Path (roughly, the route of I-85 across the Carolinas) between late 1700 and early 1701, reporting on a climax hardwood forest with scarcely a pine to be seen. He also noted the signs of recent native disappearance: fields and villages fallen into abandonment. It's not clear if he knew about the small pox, though later in the 18th century the British would use it for germ warfare against the local population surrounding Fort Pitt, and still later George Washington would insist on the inoculation of his rebel army against it.
Lawson wasn't the first European to report on wild Carolina, however. The oldest report I found, back in my first flush of bioregional love, was by a Spaniard who sailed up the Cape Fear as far as Raven Rock in the mid-16th century, noting the sounds of cougars howling in the night, which didn't scare him near so much as the lights of humans, which were still a common sight then.
We live in a naturally lush land, and there's something to love in that. Ed Abbey birthed eco-radicalism in the desert and had no use for anything east of the 100th meridian, but others have brought his kind of commitment to the hardwood forests. Here it is more fragmented, but also more insurgent. Even here in the city, the view out my windows is dominated by green. Cicadas sing in the trees, and I know that owl will be starting up shortly. You can't keep an eastern hardwood forest down.
I hope.
Lawson hiked The Trading Path (roughly, the route of I-85 across the Carolinas) between late 1700 and early 1701, reporting on a climax hardwood forest with scarcely a pine to be seen. He also noted the signs of recent native disappearance: fields and villages fallen into abandonment. It's not clear if he knew about the small pox, though later in the 18th century the British would use it for germ warfare against the local population surrounding Fort Pitt, and still later George Washington would insist on the inoculation of his rebel army against it.
Lawson wasn't the first European to report on wild Carolina, however. The oldest report I found, back in my first flush of bioregional love, was by a Spaniard who sailed up the Cape Fear as far as Raven Rock in the mid-16th century, noting the sounds of cougars howling in the night, which didn't scare him near so much as the lights of humans, which were still a common sight then.
We live in a naturally lush land, and there's something to love in that. Ed Abbey birthed eco-radicalism in the desert and had no use for anything east of the 100th meridian, but others have brought his kind of commitment to the hardwood forests. Here it is more fragmented, but also more insurgent. Even here in the city, the view out my windows is dominated by green. Cicadas sing in the trees, and I know that owl will be starting up shortly. You can't keep an eastern hardwood forest down.
I hope.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Day 3: Owl City
I’ve been a bicycle commuter off and on all my adult life. Starting one bicycular period (round two) in the early nineties, I researched the topic on the nascent Internet, and read the account of a four-season bicycle commuter in Ottawa, who once nearly endoed off a bridge into a frozen river after slipping on ice. If he could manage, surely I could in this more temperate climate. I often thought of him when biking in the teens on winter mornings, as ice rimmed the mouth hole of my ski mask. And I thought of him on my ride home tonight, still in the mid-nineties after 6 p.m., heat and humidity unbroken by any afternoon storm. And that’s all I’ll say about this weather.
My first stint of bicycular commuting was in the days before the Internet, at least as a matter of common usage, and the only research I did involved my field guides: to trees, to wildflowers, to birds… My route was along the greenways of North Raleigh, from Crabtree Valley to near Strickland Road, over six miles each way. Mostly off road, I traveled a narrow wildlife corridor, a riparian route that followed Leadmine Creek for much of the way, including the part where it expands into Shelley Lake. I carried my field guides in my pack, and I often stopped to study leaves and seed pods. I made a big deal about the distinction of species among hickories. I took notes.
Now, here in Durham, I own a small lot of trees I’m not entirely sure of. Those white oaks in the backyard are easy enough to ID, but I’m not sure what sort of elm it is on the east side of the yard, and I just tonight concluded, using both field guides and Google, that the three tall, wart-barked trees with elm-like leaves that grow along our western frontier are hackberries. But that’s a whole genus; species remains elusive. I’ll have more chance to study them as I hack back the invasive English ivy that constantly threatens to kill them all, and the other trees, too. English ivy and bamboo run rampant in Morehead Hill.
Fauna, do as well. The abandoned house across the street has a wild yard, where a barred owl is hooting, even as I write: “Who cooks for you?” Recently we’ve even seen a red fox, trotting down the street, barking hoarsely, like a canine cough, then disappearing into the overgrown yard. While I’ve been happy, as a homeowner, to see signs of possible restoration of this property, the amateur naturalist in me worries what might happen to fox and owl if humans move in.
My first stint of bicycular commuting was in the days before the Internet, at least as a matter of common usage, and the only research I did involved my field guides: to trees, to wildflowers, to birds… My route was along the greenways of North Raleigh, from Crabtree Valley to near Strickland Road, over six miles each way. Mostly off road, I traveled a narrow wildlife corridor, a riparian route that followed Leadmine Creek for much of the way, including the part where it expands into Shelley Lake. I carried my field guides in my pack, and I often stopped to study leaves and seed pods. I made a big deal about the distinction of species among hickories. I took notes.
Now, here in Durham, I own a small lot of trees I’m not entirely sure of. Those white oaks in the backyard are easy enough to ID, but I’m not sure what sort of elm it is on the east side of the yard, and I just tonight concluded, using both field guides and Google, that the three tall, wart-barked trees with elm-like leaves that grow along our western frontier are hackberries. But that’s a whole genus; species remains elusive. I’ll have more chance to study them as I hack back the invasive English ivy that constantly threatens to kill them all, and the other trees, too. English ivy and bamboo run rampant in Morehead Hill.
Fauna, do as well. The abandoned house across the street has a wild yard, where a barred owl is hooting, even as I write: “Who cooks for you?” Recently we’ve even seen a red fox, trotting down the street, barking hoarsely, like a canine cough, then disappearing into the overgrown yard. While I’ve been happy, as a homeowner, to see signs of possible restoration of this property, the amateur naturalist in me worries what might happen to fox and owl if humans move in.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Day 2: Watershed
A neighbor told me that Morehead Hill is the crux of two drainages: to the north, the Neuse; to the south, the Cape Fear. At the time she told me this, I couldn't picture the critical point of inflection, but after just two days' biking, I know it well: Chapel Hill Street, on our northern frontier. We are all on its downside, altitudinally, at least. Atmospherically, it seems a distinct drop to that strip of tired storefronts, though I do like the mural on the long-closed Durham Food Co-op, and I'm amused by the accounting firm in a converted church. A commercial zone could be a highlight, as Ninth Street is to Watts-Hillendale, but the only nightlife I've seen on CHS is the coterie of ink aficionados that tends to gather by the tattoo parlor. If I wanted to walk (or bike) for dinner or drinks, I'd head to Bright Leaf Square or American Tobacco.
Watershed was very much in action today, I'm sure, since so much water was shed when the near-100 degree heat broke in a Florida-esque cloud burst. My office has no window, so I was very much taken by surprise, having last seen sunny skies in early afternoon, to find a deluge about an hour before I was due to get back on my bike. However, by then, again in Florida-esque manner, it had cleared, though not before taking down one of the stately East Campus oaks.
We are among hardwoods here. Two large white oaks dominate my backyard, while some sort of elm leans in from the east. The whole neighborhood appears a veritable forest from Google Satellite View. This is much different from the scrappy pines that pass for woods in most of Cary - loblollies. Inman called them "trash trees" in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, and he would have seen a lot of them. By the 1860s, the North Carolina Piedmont had been pretty much stripped of its original hardwood forest cover - oak, hickory, chestnut - and it's the loblollies that come first in abandoned fields. They're weedy trees. They grow fast, provide sparse cover, and die once shaded out by the hardwoods that slowly come up to replace them. It's the seric cycle, and somehow enough of it passed since the last time this land was cleared for tall oaks to rise up all around us.
There's hope in that, like the hope I feel when I see ailanthus trees sprouting up all along the edge of Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh. Aliens, I know - aggressive invasives - but given hardly half a chance they will advance upon that mall and destroy it, clearing the way, again, for oak and hickory, if not (alas) chestnut. And, speaking of watersheds, we've seen time and again how quickly Crabtree Creek would reclaim its river bed, from Sears to Belks by way of Lord & Taylor, if it were not held at bay in a ditch to the west.
This is the hope that motivates this Urban Biker lifestyle, though it seems absurd as the news continues regarding BP's hole in the bottom of the sea, and while 100 degrees in June starts to seem normal, which it really isn't, not even on the NC Piedmont. At times I feel like the old eco-radical in TC Boyle's A Friend of the Earth, in a near future where the Earth is clearly a lost cause. Though we're not quite there yet, and Boyle seems to suggest that even his hero isn't yet, either.
Here's to that, then.
Watershed was very much in action today, I'm sure, since so much water was shed when the near-100 degree heat broke in a Florida-esque cloud burst. My office has no window, so I was very much taken by surprise, having last seen sunny skies in early afternoon, to find a deluge about an hour before I was due to get back on my bike. However, by then, again in Florida-esque manner, it had cleared, though not before taking down one of the stately East Campus oaks.
We are among hardwoods here. Two large white oaks dominate my backyard, while some sort of elm leans in from the east. The whole neighborhood appears a veritable forest from Google Satellite View. This is much different from the scrappy pines that pass for woods in most of Cary - loblollies. Inman called them "trash trees" in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, and he would have seen a lot of them. By the 1860s, the North Carolina Piedmont had been pretty much stripped of its original hardwood forest cover - oak, hickory, chestnut - and it's the loblollies that come first in abandoned fields. They're weedy trees. They grow fast, provide sparse cover, and die once shaded out by the hardwoods that slowly come up to replace them. It's the seric cycle, and somehow enough of it passed since the last time this land was cleared for tall oaks to rise up all around us.
There's hope in that, like the hope I feel when I see ailanthus trees sprouting up all along the edge of Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh. Aliens, I know - aggressive invasives - but given hardly half a chance they will advance upon that mall and destroy it, clearing the way, again, for oak and hickory, if not (alas) chestnut. And, speaking of watersheds, we've seen time and again how quickly Crabtree Creek would reclaim its river bed, from Sears to Belks by way of Lord & Taylor, if it were not held at bay in a ditch to the west.
This is the hope that motivates this Urban Biker lifestyle, though it seems absurd as the news continues regarding BP's hole in the bottom of the sea, and while 100 degrees in June starts to seem normal, which it really isn't, not even on the NC Piedmont. At times I feel like the old eco-radical in TC Boyle's A Friend of the Earth, in a near future where the Earth is clearly a lost cause. Though we're not quite there yet, and Boyle seems to suggest that even his hero isn't yet, either.
Here's to that, then.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Day 1: Little House in the City
Moving to a new place means giving birth to a new self. Along the way you’ll go through mixed bouts of grieving and celebrating, trepidation and anticipation, and gradually the incipient becomes the actual, and you find yourself in a once-strange locale feeling just a bit at home, and everything’s different.
I lived six years in Cary. Don’t judge me, please. It had to do with my divorce and my custody arrangements. Moving there ended a brutal triangular commute from inside-the-beltline Raleigh, to my daughter’s school in far western Cary, then up to Duke, where I work. I’d been a bicycle commuter years before, when I worked at NC State, and before that. And now I am again. Today was day 1.
Until I bought my house in Morehead Hill, in central Durham, I’d never heard of the neighborhood, despite 13 years spent working so close. I’m put to mind of Oakwood, in Raleigh, where I lived when my daughter was a baby – old wood frames, ranging from gentrified to hip to dodgy, with downtown hard by. Tonight, the night after day 1, my fiancée and I walked from home to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the American Tobacco Historic District, the Durham Performing Arts Center… We were, to borrow a phrase from the erstwhile owner of our home, Bob Sherrill, urban hikers. Though I’ve often enough visited American Tobacco, emerging at an unfamiliar angle onto a vista of old downtown brick building backsides, I felt myself moving in a new life, in which such a thing is possible: to walk from my little house in Morehead Hill and stand before this view I’d never seen, in the heart of this still-strange city.
And today, I rolled out of my gravel drive and cycled the short distance to Duke. I’d just gotten my old hybrid mountain bike back from the shop. It’s a bike shop that happens to be right along my route, close to my office, but with the disadvantage of seeming, at least at first blush, rather purist in their approach to bicycles. Their first estimate for repairing my vehicle came to roughly what I’d paid for it originally, and while I talked them down to the bare bones, I sensed the work was done resentfully. In fact, I overheard as much: that my repair man had grumbled and fussed his way through the business of restoring my gear shifts. This morning, pedaling up the slight rise of Arnette Street toward Morehead – apparently, the eponymous Hill itself – I discovered only one of my two shifters actually worked, but it was the important one, giving me seven good options, with the chain sitting on the middle of the three front gears. Good enough.
In about ten minutes I was on campus, and after a short spell of being lost at my own place of work, I found the East Campus gym, which I’d reconnoitered the night before. Despite the new façade, it’s mostly old brick, with tight stairs leading to hallways emerging into small rooms in which a few cardio machines have been placed, with weights and showers on the main floor, and a pool somewhere I’ve yet to discover. It was mostly the shower I needed, in any case, though after such a short ride, I felt the need to lift some weights first, to justify it.
Not much of a workout, but this is a southern summer, so there were sweat-soaked clothes to deal with, and the old question of where to put them in ones office. I picked my most obscure corner, and decided I’d better start brewing coffee in my room, to mask any locker-room odor. Several changes of shirts and pants hung from the back of my office door, so I was covered in that respect, at least. I figure I drive past work often enough on weekends to keep my clothes restocked, though careful folding in my pack remains an option, allowing room for my laptop, toiletries, towel, and such. Past experience is a handy thing; the mechanics of this will not be such a challenge. I’m more curious now about how my life will continue to emerge, on these streets, on two wheels.
I lived six years in Cary. Don’t judge me, please. It had to do with my divorce and my custody arrangements. Moving there ended a brutal triangular commute from inside-the-beltline Raleigh, to my daughter’s school in far western Cary, then up to Duke, where I work. I’d been a bicycle commuter years before, when I worked at NC State, and before that. And now I am again. Today was day 1.
Until I bought my house in Morehead Hill, in central Durham, I’d never heard of the neighborhood, despite 13 years spent working so close. I’m put to mind of Oakwood, in Raleigh, where I lived when my daughter was a baby – old wood frames, ranging from gentrified to hip to dodgy, with downtown hard by. Tonight, the night after day 1, my fiancée and I walked from home to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the American Tobacco Historic District, the Durham Performing Arts Center… We were, to borrow a phrase from the erstwhile owner of our home, Bob Sherrill, urban hikers. Though I’ve often enough visited American Tobacco, emerging at an unfamiliar angle onto a vista of old downtown brick building backsides, I felt myself moving in a new life, in which such a thing is possible: to walk from my little house in Morehead Hill and stand before this view I’d never seen, in the heart of this still-strange city.
And today, I rolled out of my gravel drive and cycled the short distance to Duke. I’d just gotten my old hybrid mountain bike back from the shop. It’s a bike shop that happens to be right along my route, close to my office, but with the disadvantage of seeming, at least at first blush, rather purist in their approach to bicycles. Their first estimate for repairing my vehicle came to roughly what I’d paid for it originally, and while I talked them down to the bare bones, I sensed the work was done resentfully. In fact, I overheard as much: that my repair man had grumbled and fussed his way through the business of restoring my gear shifts. This morning, pedaling up the slight rise of Arnette Street toward Morehead – apparently, the eponymous Hill itself – I discovered only one of my two shifters actually worked, but it was the important one, giving me seven good options, with the chain sitting on the middle of the three front gears. Good enough.
In about ten minutes I was on campus, and after a short spell of being lost at my own place of work, I found the East Campus gym, which I’d reconnoitered the night before. Despite the new façade, it’s mostly old brick, with tight stairs leading to hallways emerging into small rooms in which a few cardio machines have been placed, with weights and showers on the main floor, and a pool somewhere I’ve yet to discover. It was mostly the shower I needed, in any case, though after such a short ride, I felt the need to lift some weights first, to justify it.
Not much of a workout, but this is a southern summer, so there were sweat-soaked clothes to deal with, and the old question of where to put them in ones office. I picked my most obscure corner, and decided I’d better start brewing coffee in my room, to mask any locker-room odor. Several changes of shirts and pants hung from the back of my office door, so I was covered in that respect, at least. I figure I drive past work often enough on weekends to keep my clothes restocked, though careful folding in my pack remains an option, allowing room for my laptop, toiletries, towel, and such. Past experience is a handy thing; the mechanics of this will not be such a challenge. I’m more curious now about how my life will continue to emerge, on these streets, on two wheels.
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