Viewing entries tagged
north carolina
Preeminent Southern folklorist Bill Ferris has spent the last 40 years documenting the South in print, photography and film by interviewing some of the region's most influential people.
Bostic, North Carolina, is a sleepy little town in Rutherford County nestled in the shadow of the mountains. There’s a town hall, a post office, some churches and stores. There’s also the Bostic Lincoln Center. Lincoln. As in Abraham Lincoln. The center’s whole purpose is to tell the controversial and disputed story that our 16th president was born in North Carolina.
White lighting. Hooch. The original mountain dew. It’s hard to talk about moonshine without evoking winks and smiles. It carries a mystique. If you own some, you whisper about it. If you don’t, you can bet someone you know does. It’s probably stored in the back of their freezer. Moonshine also carries a certain romance. Because the truth is, there’s a story sealed in every Mason jar of the stuff. Those stories are still celebrated in Wilkes County, NC, where old time bootleggers and retired revenuers met to swap tales. They told about fast car chases, witty judges, and big still busts. There was a lot of laughter. And rumor has it there was even some sipping.
In this interview with CBS correspondent Mo Rocca, we talked about his cynicism surrounding political party conventions. He also described the quintessential public radio groupie.