Fast Food for All

An hour and a half drive north-west from Holly Springs took us to several libraries and ultimately to Greensboro, North Carolina. It was here, on February 1st, 1960, that four male freshman students of NC- AT University sat down at a segregated, whites only, lunch counter in the downtown Woolworths and tried to order food. On July 25, 1960, the 

                                      counter was officially de-segregated by the F W Woolworth 

                                      Company.

This first successful sit-in created a snowball effect of others which also began, some peacefully, and some violently, to integrate many public businesses all over America.

Today that same Woolworth building, and its entire block of other stores, have been turned into the International Civil Rights center.

Not unlike other museums and foundations that have been formed at other historic civil rights sites around the country which we have visited (See our blog posts on Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee this summer. And our Facebook pics of January last from Birmingham, Alabama) this facility is centered on the heroic efforts of a few ordinary people who decide or are called to do extraordinary things.

While the exterior and lobby of the museum are able to be photographed the interior is not.  This prohibition includes the original entire lunch counter inside where for over 6 months college and high school students, black and then also white, demanded that blacks be served and segregation be stopped. But photos of the counter are available online.

As one slogan so aptly said it, “Sometimes you have to stand up for your rights by sitting down.”

We left Greensburg and drove to King, NC, where we met Mona’s brother Marty at his home.  He led us over to the King Library where we met his wife Shelby who was working till near close as a polling volunteer for North Carolina’s midterm early voting elections. Marty will serve here in November on the regular voting day.

Since Shelby had to stay the three of us, joined by Marty’s son John’s motherinlaw, to visit one of the most unusual houses in America.  There we met John and wife Christie for a tour by Marty.

The house is called a cabin by Marty, though by any standard it is way too big to be that. But that was Frank’s plan when he began building it several decades ago. Once he hand dug the well and enclosed it inside his first roofed four walls, he just never stopped 

                                              adding on.

Built with a native ingenuity and learned skills by Frank and his brother Oscar, even the flying beams and pole uprights were cut and placed by hand.

The source of all the lumber was the Halsabeck farm.  Even before the well Frank bought and moved a portable sawmill onto the property.

Oscar is in a nursing home today. Frank had a stroke and died two years ago.  Their niece Lindsay inherited the house and much of the farm and now opens the place up for tours and several mountain music family events each year. Uncle Frank loved mountain music.

At Frank’s death he was getting ready to complete an enclosed deck and it looks like he intended to build in a spa!

We ended our evening with a trip to the local (really local. There is this one in King and one other in Stanleyville) DAIRI-O restaurant. Great food, great selection. Ask Mona what a SLAW DOG is if you don’t know.

Tonight Mona is catching up on news with brother Marty.  We sleep here and visit tomorrow, then we drive to dinner with niece Lori and husband David’s family and  John and Christie.  We stay at John and Christie’s for Friday evening before turning south once again, back to FROG.

TOAD is already shivering a bit in these higher elevations far from the sea. The low tomorrow here is still projected to drop into the thirties. And snow is coming to the mountains for the first time this year.

This was Mona’s favorite find on Facebook today:

-Ken