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Dateline: North Carolina


Just two days ago as my plane touched down at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport I had no idea what the quintessential North Carolina experience is. I now learn that it can be summed up in a very real and tangible occurrence, potholes. You see, North Carolina has, according to their board of tourism, the most miles of paved road of any state in the Union. If this is true, it must be contending for most potholes as well. So while this jarring sensation reminds from time to time about the suddenly svelte looking roads of California, it’s probably one of the few things that make the place feel southern.
Sure, there are great wooded patches and the occasional Bojangles restaurant. However, in the Triangle the African American population isn’t as downtrodden, jobs are remarkably based around technology, not everyone’s brother is in the armed forces and I have yet to see a trailer park. Campbell, my friend from many a year suggested on Monday we tour the local area and then on Tuesday we would check out the campus as we had class that day.
Monday began with a beautiful tour of the airport. You figure out really quickly where you are…after all…there are trees everywhere. Also, no mountains of any real size are visible, which doesn’t seem right after living in California. Regardless, Campbell and I set off to see the biggest tourist attraction in the entire Durham County. It is called Bennett Place and it looks like a 19th century log cabin in a big, muddy field with a visitor center. Of course, I know you have never heard of this place, but it’s important because after Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered, other Rebel forces still were giving chase to the Union army. Of these was the Army of Tennessee which had brought pitched battles into North Carolina for the only time in the Civil war. Bennett Place just happened to be the place that Confederate commander Joe Johnston and William T. Sherman met and ended the civil war. After the Army of the Tennessee surrendered to Grant, this effectively ended pitched fighting. And yet, when Campbell and I rolled into the site…we were the only people there. It was ominously empty, and it’s only a few miles down the road from Duke University.
Still curious about historical things we drove northeast of town to Stagville, a resurrected plantation house that at one time was the largest plantation in all of North Carolina. It was so large that it covered four counties and employed 9,000 slaves at its height. When Campbell and I arrived we saw a white farmhouse that looked unimpressive. The tour guide, who also had seen no one all day, told us that in the 18th century all the wooded pasture would have been cleared and the house would have been the only thing higher than a row of cotton for miles around. The house itself is a minor attraction: a Thomas Day couch and period design. However, the tour guide then offered to have us accompany him and see the slave cabin and barn. Campbell and I hoped back in the car and drove to the slave cabins, which were huge and state of the art for 1860. There were several of them, and the light filtering through the Carolina pines gave things a particularly menacing quality. The barn was also a marvel, at the size of 130 feet long. It purpose was largely to house the army of mules requires for the more taxing labor. Intimidating to me was that this was not a place of splendor. This was not Baton Rogue, Louisiana or Charleston, South Carolina.
We decided to end the evening by seeing “Gods and Generals”. I warned Campbell the film would be four hours. He was undeterred and we went in. Of course the combination of jet lag and insomnia meant I fell asleep during Bull Run and woke up around the start of Fredericksburg. I managed to catch the cameos by Ted Turner and Bob Byrd and enjoy the battle cinematography. I noticed all the cute touches from the Zouave units traipsing in the background to Stonewall Jackson’s love of lemonade. Nevertheless, the dialogue is painful and the DVD is supposedly longer. Assuming “Full Measure” the last of the Shaara family trilogy, is this long the three movies will run as far as Ken Burns’ documentary.
In the middle of the night, Campbell got a phone call informing him his grandfather passed away. He immediately made plans to depart on Wednesday, so I had to move up the date to my initial run through Boston by a day. I narrowly escaped paying a king’s ransom, but Campbell had the more unappetizing itinerary. He would have to connect twice, once in Chicago, once in Tokyo and arrive in Taipei only to spend 36 hours for the funeral and then fly back to school. I’m not flying that many hours on all my flights combined.
Tuesday began late as I forgot that Campbell no longer had his bioethics presentation to deal with so we both leisurely awoke and prepared for the rest of the day. After lunch, we set off to the Duke campus. I got a tour from Mr. Chiang known as the “functional tour”. I saw the lockers, the Blue Lounge, the library…the admissions office….the Loggia…the….okay so I went to the main undergraduate campus for the afternoon and then came back to the law school before they locked the doors for a presentation.
The Duke campus itself is rather enjoyable to hike around. The centerpiece of the campus is a stone-brick Methodist chapel that reminded me of the Niewe Kerk in Amsterdam. Of course, I understand completely if you have no idea what the Niewe Kerk is but my advice is to see it when you do visit Amsterdam. I also viewed the quadrangle of the Duke campus, which is also stone-brick. The sororities and fraternities are on the west side of the quad while the liberal arts departments are on the east side. The north side is the chapel and to the south is the Garden. I had been told there was an Asian arboretum there. I was severely disappointed to learn that in North Carolina this means a few native plants scattered around some Eastern architecture in the Carolina pine forest. I mean, I doubt they were all Okinawan pines here…but…I digress.
The student union was very attractive, laid out with a country club atmosphere and the main library was also impressive. Furthermore, the paper which sold the most on campus? The News Observer perhaps? The Herald Sun? Nope. The New York Times. And as I walked around campus it became even more clear that the main campus at least was a playground of Tri Staters and other non-Suddern folk who either like the weather, the basketball team, the chapel, or the fact that on campus they fill in those naughty potholes.
I went back to the library only to fall asleep reading the US News. I awoke and went to the presentation called “Looking Like the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment Cases in Perspective”. The speakers were Dr. Peter Irons, who was responsible for overturning the Korematsu case, the darkest chapter of Asian-American history, and Eric Muller, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Both of them didn’t focus on the same tired bit but instead the combination of social circumstance and legal precedent that utterly rocked constitutional law to this very day. What impressed me the most was that Irons brought up Ex Parte Milligan which more or less prevents the federal government from trying terrorists in a secret military tribunal if the charges are not military in nature. This ruling has been on the books since 1866, and yet if Zacarias Moussaoui is not allowed to have his civilian trial continue it will be tested and our notion of due process could be destroyed. This, and the free wine and hors d’ oeuvres after the presentation made me realize all my kvetching about Durham was premature.
So even though I only ended with a two-day tour of the greater metropolitan Triangle, I realized I had seen all I need to see. I had felt the consistency of holes in the road. I had seen the ravages of time consume the odes to the past. I hadn’t seen a basketball game or visited the Research Triangle Park. I never even went into Raleigh. Did I have to, however, as I had already seen the ugly past of slavery and tobacco being replaced brick by brick by Mike Kryzewski, a first rate medical campus, and other development. All this and more to ponder as I head north to Boston only to route myself towards Minneapolis, Minnesota. One down, six to go.

posted by Thomas at 10:17 PM 0 comments