Our latest guest post is from Claire Hart, a fellow Brit and who has been recording her travels in North Carolina. She has kindly agreed to share some of her insights, and how her status as a European visitor offers a unique and interesting perspective.
In his short story You can’t kill the Rooster, David Sedaris narrates the trials and tribulations of a family of New Yorkers who relocate to Raleigh, the state capital of North Carolina. The Yankee parents watch their North Carolina-born son morph into a cussing, Mountain Dew swigging young man who takes on the moniker of Rooster. If North Carolina seems like a foreign country to East-Coasters, a British girl like might have expected to experience more than a little culture shock!
The state of North Carolina is reached by heading down the East Coast from New York, past Philadelphia and Washington DC until you are far south enough that you can legitimately claim to be in ‘the south’. In Britain we associate the south with high house prices and rounded vowels. In the USA it’s all about the food you eat ‒ Bojangle’s chicken biscuit anyone? ‒ the way you talk ‒ abbreviating ‘you all’ to ‘y’ all’ is the key thing here ‒ and lots of country music.
Cruising around Charlotte after leaving the airport, I turned on the radio and tried to attune my ears to the heartbroken warbling of men who all seem to be called Kenny. I felt like I could have been in any neatly compacted and compartmentalised, American sky-scraper city. Then I saw the gleaming reflective glass walls of the recently-opened NASCAR Hall of Fame and I knew that I was a long way from Newark New York International Airport.
My sole reference point for NASCAR racing had been British Formula One champion Nigel Mansell’s transition to the sport in the nineties after coming to the end of his first career. In the UK this development was greeted with interest, but little awareness that NASCAR is widely viewed, on both sides of the pond, as Formula One’s red-haired little brother, indeed it is seen as a typical red-neck sport.
The concept of red-neck was initially alien to me, but I have now come to understand it as a lifestyle choice where one throws caution to the wind and embraces life in a very pure and raw fashion, paying little attention to how the mainstream media tells you that you should be living your life. Looking at it from this point of view, I can’t help but applaud it, and neither could the creators of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, proudly billing it as the place where visitors can come to ‘live the legend’ that is NASCAR for themselves. Even if you have no interest in motor sports, it is worth visiting just to experience this aspect of American culture which appears to be saying: we know it’s uncool, but we don’t care ‒ we like it!
The next day we drove down to New Bern and during the six hour journey I attempted to perfect the art of eating and drinking a chicken burger combo meal from my lap while driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour. Being able to perform a range of tasks whilst in a car seems to be a necessary skill in a country where there are drive-thru banks!
Although New Bern is extremely proud of its 300 year history, as a European I did feel that I was probably less impressed by this heritage than the average American was likely to be, but I could appreciate the sincerity of New Bern, a little town near the Atlantic that gave us Pepsi Cola in 1889. Not long ago the only occupants of New Bern’s seafront were the city’s poorest inhabitants, predominantly African-Americans, living in projects because no one else could tolerate the pervading smell of fish. Now property developers are keen to buy up the land and build luxury condos on it.
These kind of socio-economic undercurrents are, of course, not unique to the US though. I tried to put this to the back of my mind as I jumped off the motor boat into a stretch of wide, green water which snakes along banks edged with lush, green vegetation. The next day we headed down to Atlantic Beach to splash around in the warm, salty sea. I felt very much the tourist as I tried to make up my mind about what type of sausage (I hadn’t even heard of a couple of them) I wanted in my hotdog and what I wanted on top of it. I then proceeded to spend about half an hour trying to work out how much the array of nickels and dimes I had accumulated were actually worth.
Sun-burnt and covered in mosquito bites, but far from defeated, I headed on to Greensboro where I was introduced to an American whose mantra was: “you can do anything you want here, this is America!” I can’t imagine anyone back home ever saying: “You can do anything you want here, this is the European Union.”
I was told that I could leave the Carolinas without experiencing barbecue. My previous experience of barbecue consisted of dodging rain out on the patio while your Dad attempts to render some burgers and sausages edible for human consumption, so I was surprised to learn that, in the Carolinas, barbecue is something quite different ‒ a culinary work of art no less. At the Greensboro branch of Stamey’s Barbecue, I struggled a little bit with the menu (as far as I was concerned Hush Puppies were a type of dog!), but I was impressed by the delicious sliced pork sandwich I ended up eating ‒ and what good value for money it was, while the hasn’t-changed-since-the-fifties ambience of the place definitely added to the experience. Before or after you’ve filled yourself with either chopped or sliced pork sandwiches, you can also visit the International Civil Rights Movement and Centre, whose archival and educational resources focus on the Greensboro sit-ins of the 1960s.
My final destination was Asheville, or Ashvegas as the locals like to refer to it. Asheville is where North Carolina’s peace-loving folk have congregated to eat organic Himalayan food, try to get their hands on some moonshine and open contemporary art galleries and independent boutiques. It reminded me of a more wholesome version of Camden Town in London, minus Amy Winehouse. Asheville is the kind of place where just walking its streets gives you a sense of well-being, and if you enjoy walking you’ll love the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Easily accessible from Asheville are a myriad of pathways gradually taking you higher and higher until you reach a clearing with a rocky enclave where you can take in a breathtaking view of the smoky-looking mountains surrounding you. Asheville-born writer Charles Frazier was inspired to write Cold Mountain, the novel which was then adapted into a movie, by this landscape. The town’s reputation as a literary centre is reinforced by the fact that the classic American novelist Thomas Wolfe was born and grew up here. His most famous work Look Homeward Angel was heavily influenced by his Asheville days and above all what he experienced living in a nineteenth-century boarding house, which is now open to the public.
It can be easy for Europeans to forget that, while America clearly doesn’t have the ancient history Europe does, it certainly does have sights of historical interest just as capable of beguiling us as any English country house. For me, the Thomas Wolfe memorial house was just such a place. I was pleasantly surprised by the one-dollar admission fee, intrigued by the gentleman with the ‘Resist Socialism’ sticker on his camera bag and appreciative of the vast knowledge our tour guide displayed.
Few Europeans seem to be venturing down to the Carolinas, but this only serves to make it easier to have an authentic experience of life in America here and to discover a place where traditions specific to this part of the world haven’t been as diluted by the passing of time. You don’t have to be a redneck or a hippy, a beach bum or a literary expert to have a good time here ‒ you just have to know how to enjoy the simple things in life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire got itchy feet three years ago and decided to move from England to Bavaria in southern Germany. She enjoys the benefits of living right in the centre of Europe and being able to hop on a train to just about any country on the continent. When she´s not busy exploring Germany and her neighbours, Claire teaches English to business people. She has a passion for foreign languages and cultures, but also enjoys yoga, art, hiking and a good German beer. Previously, Claire has written several articles on travelling in Bavaria.
