Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This episode of Something Worth Saving Asheville Stories of Resilience is brought to you by. Explore Asheville Asheville, North Carolina is the kind of place where you can spend the morning on a trail with views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and then be back in town for a mind blowing dinner that is an adventure all its own. The food, the art, the music, it's all got this creative energy that just pulls you in and honestly, being there feels good. It's the kind of trip where you come back lighter and more inspired.
If you're looking for a getaway that blends the outdoors with culture and flavor, you need to visit Asheville.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Highland started with my father's unquenchable thirst to build, to connect, to see possibility.
Our thirst for good feels sets us apart. Good times flow as freely as our beer. Grand milestones and intimate moments become unforgettable memories and first visits become lifelong traditions.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: This is Highland Brewing's thirst for good.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Good flavor, a good future, and of.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: Course, all the good feels.
Welcome to Something Worth Saving Asheville Stories of Resilience on this episode you'll hear a little bit more about why Asheville is the city it is today. A little history, a bit more about the arts scene and how it came to be such a thriving aspect of the culture here, as well as more about the asheville tourists and McCormick Field.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: And we'll be hearing more from many of the voices you heard from in Part one, along with some new ones. In this episode we want to dive into the story of place. What went into creating this unique town, why that mattered, why it matters now, and hopefully why it will matter, especially after Hurricane Helene.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: There is a lot of talk in this moment about the concept of placemaking, which is a collaborative, community centered approach to how place both reflects and creates the culture of a specific location, such as a gathering space, park, or any place that promotes social interaction and community well being. We will dive into why this particular place is special and the work the community does to enhance its unique characteristics.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: We got a strong sense in every conversation we had that the person's heart was in this place.
Some people have lived on this land for nine decades. Some can trace back many generations.
Almost everyone is community minded and wants to both celebrate their home and give back to the community in some way.
[00:02:49] Speaker C: Upon meeting Matthew Becote, we were both really struck by sitting with a literal eyewitness to history.
When you first meet this gentleman, he goes to shake your hand and drops a half dollar into it. He tells you it's for good luck and lucky is certainly how we felt having an opportunity to sit and talk with him for several hours.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: I keep that half dollar in my wallet at all times.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: For Matthew, home means living in a city where he was born at 96 years young. And I mean that. He doesn't use a cane or even wear glasses and chalks it all up to eating blueberries and dark chocolate every day.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: I'm definitely taking dietary notes from him.
Matthew grew up in Asheville during the Jim Crow era. Talking to him was like simultaneously opening a vibrantly written book and chatting with a good friend at the same time.
[00:03:41] Speaker D: I was born about five blocks from where we are at this moment in an area called McCormicks Field. Baseball and the streets around it. Mainly white people. Most people had no idea that a Negro lived in the area at any time. We were the only family living in the area which I just described. 1939 my father, father and mother bought their first restaurant on Eagle street which is called the Block. There were over 40 Negro businesses and professionals. On Sundays the Negro business people would meet at 3 o' clock in my father and mother's restaurant and they would have their business meeting. Wasn't the Chamber of commerce. It wasn't one of the new day types of activities for minority businesses.
But they assembled and they talked about the business problems that they had and talked about the good times as well. It wasn't only quick service. My mother and father bought a restaurant and ice cream parlor on the south side of Asheville on Blanton street that day and time. Think about it. A Negro owning an ice cream parlor owned two restaurants. My father was a janitor at one time. During the same time that he owned the restaurants.
My mother went to this building to meet with one of the persons who was an insurance agent. And the insurance person Mrs. Alina Humphrey told my mother said they're having a meeting at the City auditorium.
Negroes are not invited. She was allowed in. Nobody challenged. She.
She stayed through the whole meeting. They were discussing about developing a second rec po park for Negroes in Asheville.
So my mother was able to hear the whole deal. They didn't give an opportunity to speak but she was allowed to stay there and listen.
After the meeting at the City Auditorium everybody went to the S and W which is the major cafeteria downtown.
My mother walked down there and they all ate together.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: What year is this?
[00:05:50] Speaker D: This is 1947. And from that point forward forward she started getting involved in civil rights.
[00:05:57] Speaker C: Was the community of the block. It sounds like it's gone through many many changes.
Some Good, some not as good. So can you talk a little bit about what was that like for you? I mean, you grew up here and then things have changed quite a good bit since then in terms of the.
[00:06:16] Speaker D: Makeup of the neighborhood, the block, the resiliency that was once a part of the block died, waned Right at the civil rights time in Asheville.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Do you see that as being connected at all?
[00:06:34] Speaker D: What happened was integration helped in the demise of the resilient black business community.
[00:06:43] Speaker E: The.
[00:06:44] Speaker D: The handsomely healthy Negro business community of the block and other places that existed gradually diminished as people got accustomed to the civil rights that had been allowed wherein negro people could go to a restaurant, wherein before they had many, many Negro restaurants.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: We were a little surprised to hear Matthew talk about the challenges of integration. I think a lot of the time when we hear about this period, we consider the obvious positives of moving away from segregation. But to hear Matthew and some of the others we spoke with talk about how the vibrant community, from the many businesses to a top performing school, dissolved was certainly an unexpected perspective and one to take note of. When we look at the history of this place to and many places like it.
[00:07:41] Speaker C: We started to dig into how the civil rights movement began to make its way to Asheville and his memories of witnessing demonstrations that happened there.
[00:07:49] Speaker D: The most encouraging and brave demonstrations we had was 1965, when Katherine Cunningham, a school teacher at Mountain Mountain Street School, took her students and taught them during lunchtime how to peacefully go into a restaurant and try to be fed.
But in order to do this, she had to get school bus and permission from the principal. School bus to bus the kids out to A and W restaurant on Merriman Avenue.
And they out there debarked the bus and went to the A and W restaurant to try to get in. And of course they were turned down.
Well, Catherine, the other three teachers that was with us, they knew that just got back on the bus and back to school, the same person. In 1968, kids again went to Pritchett park here in the city.
And she went through the training process with the students again and told the principal that she's training them for a field trip.
So she gets a bus and bring them down to Pritchard's Park. They debark and they get off the bus and they walk from Pritchard's park down to the Yhaemi Culture Center. No incident whatsoever.
But these were two instances where kids were utilized for a some demonstration.
I was so emotional as I walked along and saw them walking down Patton Avenue across The square there. And these were kids.
And I'm thinking, what about the damn adults?
Afraid to lift a finger, afraid to approach such thing as contesting the system here.
I couldn't speak to him because I have been a real stickler for making things better between Negro and white people. And when I witness so much bravery, so much heart by children and none by adults, that's heartbreaking to me.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Matthew had told us he grew up near McCormick Field, the minor league stadium built in 1924.
We were captivated by his memory from 1947, when the color barrier in major league baseball was broken and the first player to integrate the game came through Asheville.
[00:10:38] Speaker D: Jackie Robinson came here in 1947.
That was right at the beginning of his recognition and him going into the Dodgers real deal.
And I went to McCormick's Field to be on hand when Jackie came out of the dugout to play.
But I had to go to the back of the baseball field because I was sneaking in.
And I did, and I was thinking and worked all the way down to the dugout to see Jackie Robinson.
So that's one story that I love that happened during the time.
But Mr. C.L. moore and the Asheville Blues, he put Asheville on the map because it also.
The Asheville Blues is one of the top baseball teams in the Negro League.
He was able to bring them to the point that they were nationally known. Now we move forward into the days when they're allowing Negro players to come to, oh, let's see, Willis Darjo, the big name. Well, he stayed across the street.
He was here. There are three players that went on to the major leagues who played in their farm teams that came here and were staying at the Ritz Cafe across from where we are.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: To hear the history pour out of Matthew's mouth was legendary. As the son of a historian, it was an incredible experience for me to hear those stories from someone who actually lived them.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: I was struck by how vividly he remembered every detail.
Byron Ballard of the Mother Grove Goddess Temple is another person with deep roots in the region.
She shared a great deal of personal and family history and how connected she is to her Ashvillian ancestors.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Honoring the ones who came before us.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Honoring the ones who came before, before us.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Honoring the ones who came before us.
Honor them with song.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: Can you tell us first, are you from Asheville?
[00:13:11] Speaker F: Yes. Five generations.
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Five generations. Okay. We've noticed is that people are so proud to be from here, to really trace their lineage back. Now, obviously we know that there are a lot of things that have happened Here that maybe are not so proud. But pretty much everyone we've talked to has a deep sense of their history here.
[00:13:32] Speaker F: I think a lot of the people who are here are from here. For instance, my immediate family has been five generations in the same neighborhood, Haywood county, in the late 1800s, and then moved into the neighborhood where I live now, and it's called West End of the Downtown Area.
There was the railroad there, there was the river. There were all of the manufacturers along the river.
And so that generation, and then my grandmother's generation, my mother's generation, all were born in that same neighborhood. And we are right above. We're right above the River Arts District.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: We've obviously done a lot in the River Arts District and just seen how devastating that area is.
[00:14:19] Speaker F: And my family was here in 1916.
[00:14:22] Speaker C: When the first flood. Yeah.
[00:14:23] Speaker F: And I wrote a series of history plays about these through my family in that area. And the first one I wrote was called 1916. And it was the story of how the flood affected my family.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:14:35] Speaker F: And on the Sunday before the. The new flood, the 24 flood, I kept thinking about that play and thinking about how I should pull that out and rewrite it and kind of updated a little bit. And I know the stories of what happened to my ancestors during that flood.
And I realize now that I was thinking about that flood because another flood was coming.
So I stood on the river, on the bridge overlooking the River Arts District and watching the water rise. And I felt an immediate kinship with my family, who were sitting on the balcony on the second story of the house they lived in on Robertson, watching the river rise. And they knew there was nowhere else to go.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: There's nowhere to go. I mean, that's the thing that's so remarkable. So you were standing on the bridge on the other side, like, been standing.
[00:15:29] Speaker F: On the bridge nearest their house because it flooded. The water was over the bridge. It was an extraordinary event. And I know you've talked to a lot of people about the 27th and 28th of September, but I have never experienced anything like it because it was silent, the river. There wasn't a sense of the rushing, roaring river, which is what you would think when a river system is 27ft above its flood stage. And you would think it would be this massive roaring. And it wasn't. It was silent. I mean, it wasn't silent because there were a whole bunch of people on the bridge with me going, oh, my.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: God, oh, my God, oh, my God.
[00:16:08] Speaker F: But it was as though the river just heaved itself up and Spread out silently. It was extraordinary.
[00:16:17] Speaker C: It sounds eerie. And also just witnessing the power of nature in a completely unsurreal way that you never expect to have to see.
[00:16:26] Speaker F: But because at that point, the river has already. So the pigeon has become the French Broad and the Swannanoa has met the French Broad. So it was all three of those rivers coming together.
[00:16:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:38] Speaker F: To flood through that little. That little valley, that was amazing.
[00:16:41] Speaker C: To hear Byron connect her experience on September 27, 2024, to the flood of 1916 made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. And as she went on to define the very concept of home, it resonated with me a great deal.
[00:16:58] Speaker F: All of that keeps bringing us back to home. However you define home, I don't know. We are a massively dysfunctional culture and we have to move all over the place for jobs and for whatever reason. But that idea that there is a home place, that there's a nest for all of us somewhere, and that you just stay there, you just dig your heels in, and maybe that so called first home you buy is your home.
And that's how it was for my parents and grandparents. They bought a house and they stayed.
[00:17:32] Speaker C: There and it was good enough for.
[00:17:34] Speaker F: Them because it was better than the one they grew up in. Probably.
It's certainly better than anything their ancestors had. But we are so mobile as a culture.
And in October, part of my spiritual tradition is that you go to the graves of your ancestors and you leave them food, you sing them songs, you remember them, you bring them pictures of the babies, you know, stuff like that.
And it takes me a while to do that because there are five cemeteries that hold my people that I know of.
So that is not true for a lot of people. So when I say I am the fifth generation of my family in the same community, people are astounded. What do you mean by that?
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Honor them with song.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: That strong pull of our ancestry is something I feel being a fourth generation Pittsburgher whose relatives are all buried in the same cemetery. It's a rare gift in this country in this day and age to have so much family history in one place. It's something I really don't take for granted.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: While I don't have those kinds of generational roots, I think the concept of home can mean a lot of different things to different people. Like is home where you're from or somewhere you've made your home?
[00:18:55] Speaker C: I think home is a little bit about feeling rooted somewhere. I guess for most people in this country at least, that doesn't necessarily mean Having a direct connection to the history of a place or even to your family or your people.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Right. Maybe it can be something as seemingly simple as music that can connect you to a place. That's clearly the case for David Cody, who grew up in the small town of Swannanoa, about 20 minutes from Asheville. You can't discuss the region without talking about the history of music. And David's whole life in life intertwines with the unique culture of southern Appalachia.
[00:19:29] Speaker E: I've always loved where I was raised, had fun there. As a boy, my world was perfect in every way. My life was filled with joy.
I ran and played every day. My friends were always near.
As I look around our hometown, my eyes well up with tears.
We were really poor growing up.
I didn't live in a house with running water until I was 11 years old. I could tell you a lot of stuff about how we were raised. And I tell my kids to this day, and they don't believe it. They can't believe that we were that poor. But the thing about us, we never felt poor. My mother never allowed us to feel poor. We felt like we were the richest kids in town.
We didn't have anything, but we didn't feel that way. I guess the first show that I ever did was the first real show.
Back in those days, when I was about 10 years old in the fifth grade, each school in the county had a talent show at each school would compete, and the winner from those schools would compete for the county.
And whoever won the county competition got to go play and be part of the Mountain Dancing Folk festival. It's still going on to this day, over a hundred years later. And so here's my younger brother Tim, holding his mic, and I'll never forget what he said. I remember it just like it was yesterday. He elbowed me in front of 2,000 people and our mother sitting right on the front row and said, get to play, and our fans are waiting.
And so he shook me out of that frightful stage.
And so I started playing. And it's the first time in my whole life that I ever experienced a standing ovation.
And at that moment was the moment that I got bit by the music bug. And I knew at that moment that that was all I ever wanted to do.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: I'm sort of fascinated by this Mountain folk dancing festival.
[00:21:36] Speaker E: Yeah, it's a. It's a gathering, basically. What it's. Everything has to do at this festival has to do with Appalachia, you know, mountain music and mountain tradition. Like, you'd never get away with going out there and playing a rock and roll song or playing, you know, it had to be, you know, something that basically went along with the people and their lifestyle and that type of music. Bluegrass would have been fine.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: It's a cultural sort of phenomenon of this particular place. And just so people know, tell us a little bit. Swannanoa, like, I don't think everybody knows where that is.
[00:22:11] Speaker E: Well, Swannanoa is a little town that sits east of asheville, west of Black Mountain. Population 5,200 people.
It's a little town that, up until, I mean, when I was a kid growing up there, we didn't even have one red light. And so it's a small community, but it is a great community.
You know, your neighbors, they know you. If you. If you get in trouble, you need a hand with something, chances are your neighbors are going to show up or somebody's going to show up and come and help you. That's kind of the way small community is, especially Swannanoa. I'm proud to call Swannanoa home. It's kind of ironic. Swannanoa's Cherokee for peace. Beautiful river.
And the river was so beautiful September 27th, but I remember. I remember it. And it was. It was part of our, you know, childhood, wading in the river, learning to swim out there and jump in the water. And we kept. We had a cow. We put all my. My uncle bis built a rock box. Really? It just had a opening in this end. Water go out this end and milk the cow, put the milk in the rock box, and the water would keep it cool enough that it wouldn't go bad for a few days.
And so, yeah, it's those things.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Do you think people feel like a different relationship to the river now?
[00:23:38] Speaker E: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I saw pictures of me wading the Swannanoa river with my twin daughters holding my hand. And my older daughters, he's just a couple of years older. I mean, they were young, real young. And she's out there pretending that she's fishing. And we're in that beautiful little river behind where my grandmother's house was. Well, all that got washed away.
My niece was living there now when the storm hit, and it took her house and everything down the river. She lost everything she had.
And the house beside her, it was gone. The house beside her on the other side, it was gone. It just completely came through there and took it all. And. Yeah. And so now I see the river and I look at it, and it upsets me.
It's not the same as it was before. It does something to you. I can't explain it now. When it rains, especially if it's raining hard for a little while, I start getting a little nervous, you know? And I know I'm not the only one that was affected that way. Has to be that a lot of other people were, too.
And so, yeah, that beautiful river as they, you know, as it was named, it's not as beautiful as it once was.
I knew every twist and turn. Down where the river be where the.
[00:25:01] Speaker F: River be be.
[00:25:06] Speaker E: Down where the river.
[00:25:07] Speaker G: Be.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: David's journey is an amazing one, and meeting him was one of those you meet this one person and they tell you you need to meet this other person kind of stories. We've been lucky enough to start calling David a friend and were able to visit with him and hear him perform live. On our second visit to Asheville, Another.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: Person who felt like a friend right away, and in fact, she's the one who introduced us to David, was Jennifer Pickering of leaf global arts. She welcomed me onto her sprawling property at lake Eden in black mountain. Jennifer has done more than run an arts organization.
She has led a movement by bringing large festivals to her property, which include both indoor lodging and camping opportunities. She shared with me what it was like to travel the world, experience the arts of other cultures, and bring that world back home to Black Mountain. And in doing so, she discovered more about the artists in her own hometown.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: I have been here by the same lake and stream for almost 59 years, and I've left here and there, traveled all around the world, and I work in global arts, and this is where my home is. And I've been grateful to be able to create an experience that has been transformative for families and artists and locals where we have brought the world to the valley here over the past 30 years.
[00:26:42] Speaker C: So tell me a little bit about Leif global arts.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Okay. So I had moved back here and never expected to end up back in my hometown, like many people feel. And then all of a sudden you're there and it's like, oh, whoa. And at the time, 1995, it felt really removed from the rest of the world, and it felt a little bit like a cultural desert. However, the other piece was I hadn't really connected with all of the arts that were here locally.
So my passion was global cultures, and I accidentally ended up starting a festival, and it was, I call it my little red riding hood experience. You'll have to read my book living or experience my book living life like a festival. Festival to Hear that one.
And when I started, when I started creating Leaf, I wanted to be where you got to sample the best of western North Carolina. Because there's so many different hidden arts that really I had not grown up with. And as I started more stepping out into my own community and seeing what was in my own backyard, from poetry to healing arts to, to all different types of crafts, to folk artists, to folk singers, to, you know, whatever you wanted, there was some version of it here in these mountains. And at the same time, I wanted to create an experience where you would bring your babies to your grandma and be able to travel the world through music and arts.
And my personal belief and experience has been when you step into somebody's culture, whether it's through music or through arts, which is the easiest and the cheapest and doesn't need a plane ticket, or if you're actually there in their countries or villages or wherever that may be, when you dive into the arts, all of a sudden you have this connection and this experience of rooted traditions which so much of our American life, we're disconnected from our roots.
[00:28:48] Speaker C: When you think about how often in our country, things that are right underneath our noses, we're taking for granted because we don't realize the, the, the treasures that are right there. Can you do me a favor and just for our listeners, can you define what a culture keeper is? I love that term.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: You know, the term culture keeper and is something that I started using because it made sense to me. It is someone within the community that is keeping that particular tradition and culture alive and then passing it forward, hopefully is the hope. But it's the person who knows the songs. They know the stories, they know how to make the instruments, they know how to play the instruments, they know how to make the bread.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: So often we look at like the homogenization of our culture and how people sort of assimilate to kind of blend into the culture.
But there's something sort of countercultural about reclaiming your own culture. And then there's something about what you're talking about is sort of the folk traditions, oral traditions, musical traditions, dance traditions, which I know are also a huge part of this area.
And even, you know, sort of in the, the mystical sense that like people are really connecting to what makes this place unique and special, but also to the things that they bring to this place.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Several of my friends have remarked that I've always been traveling globally or working globally or thinking globally. And the irony is, is that within a three mile radius of Lake Eden, I am surrounded by so many countries and so many extraordinary people who have made the journey to get here by means unimaginable. And they're within a three mile radius. And so they were like, yeah, you just didn't realize that you were already living in a global community. And that's also a challenge and opportunity of when you're creating place making and community spaces. So one of the taglines we use is cultivating cultural curiosity. So we're part of a puzzle piece.
And that's how I see communities is so many different pieces that come together to make that whole piece.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Another piece of the puzzle. I have long believed that is one of the best models for creating that kind of community and bringing people together is the ballpark.
We brought that sensibility with us during our first trip to McCormick Field, where we met a kind of local legend.
Obviously, I couldn't wait to spend time at this historic ballpark, home of the Asheville tourists. And I was amazed by the amount of knowledge of the team's past one person could have. When we spoke with Dorlin Winkler, I.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: Have to say, as someone still getting acquainted with the uniqueness of minor league baseball, I was really struck by Dorland's hardcore dedication to the tourists.
[00:31:51] Speaker H: Born with a baseball and a bat in his hand Daddy had him swinging.
[00:31:58] Speaker I: From the town he could stand out in the Sandy.
[00:32:03] Speaker H: He was king at the play.
[00:32:06] Speaker I: He kept his eye on the balls.
[00:32:09] Speaker H: I've been coming to games here for about 45 years, I guess, and I've probably missed, I don't know, maybe a dozen games in that length of time. And you know, you do have.
Every now and then you'll have a death in the family. So you do have to miss a game. And this is the hundred and first year that the park's gone through, as you see it's going through. It's really the third renovation. Now the old wooden park that we had here that was demolished in 91, sometimes you'd walk along and your foot would go through a rotten board.
[00:32:42] Speaker C: But.
[00:32:42] Speaker H: But it had some character because all the greats played here at one time or another. I mean, Ruth and Garrig played here. Ty Cobb hit a home run in the first game here in 1924, April 3rd. And the three outfielders were Minouche, Heilman and Cobb and center.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: Now you don't know this because you weren't here that day.
[00:33:03] Speaker H: I was not here that day. No, I won't. It's just that I've got pictures. I've got a picture, picture of that game of the cob standing out there in. In the center field. Yeah, I do. History is just. Just all over the place here. You know, you walk out here and, you know, this is. I mean, Dizzy Dean pitched on this mound. Roberto Clementi played here in this thing.
Duke Snider played here. Jackie Robinson hit a. Hit a. A inside the park.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: Home run here and the home of the.
[00:33:38] Speaker H: All right, nice job.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: When. When did you get season tickets for the first time?
[00:33:44] Speaker H: Oh, probably 30, 35 years ago, I guess, something like that. And that's when I could afford them. I got to make my season ticket payments by the month. It's like buying a refrigerator or something, you know.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Now we're about to.
About to see first pitch here. We have a setup here where you've got both lineups, you've got positions here. Is this your usual setup?
[00:34:10] Speaker H: That's my. That's my thing here. Yeah.
I don't know whether it's.
I don't know whether it's OCD or what. It's just being so taken with baseball. I like to kind of dissect each game.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: I don't want to keep the flow of it. You can keep score while we're talking, by the way. I don't want to keep you from. I don't want to keep you from.
[00:34:36] Speaker E: From your usual routine.
[00:34:37] Speaker H: No, I'm fine. Oh, I enjoy talking, talking about the park here because it's just. There's just so many. So many immortals here that spiritually are still walking this. Walking around this field.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: No one at the time. McCormick Field was built in 1924, when was larger than life than Babe Ruth. And he did eventually play in the stadium. But perhaps the most famous story about the great Bambino in Asheville was the bellyache heard round the world when he wasn't able to take the field. Leading to a globally spread rumor they.
[00:35:08] Speaker H: Had stopped off and played a game in Knoxville, Tennessee. And then on the train ride over here.
The legend is. The legend of the talk is different. Reports have varied a little bit that Ruth probably consumed about a case of beer and a dozen hot dogs.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: And then the second inning happened.
[00:35:26] Speaker H: And when the train arrived here in Asheville, obviously Ruth was in no shape and he was carried off the train in a stretcher. But they reported that Babe Ruth had died here. Now you can look that up, look up the bellyache heard round the world. They carry him off the train. And a doctor. I can't remember the physician's name, they called on him and he. And of course, all the people were asking well, what's wrong with Ruth?
But he did survive. And the doctor came out and told the people that Ruth was suffering from intestinal flu.
[00:36:06] Speaker C: I feel like we're sitting next to a baseball historian. This is amazing, but I'm sort of wondering, like, part of the premise of our book is about how minor league baseball creates community. And with somebody who's been coming to these games for so long, I'm just sort of wondering if you can speak to that a little bit.
[00:36:22] Speaker H: This ballpark in here was part of the community, and it was named after Dr. Lewis McCormick. He was the Asheville's first and only bacteriologist. And he really.
He set up rigid standards for milk sanitation.
And that's when, you know you had horse and buggies going up and down, down the street there, and there's lots of flies. And he set up a swat that fly campaign in there, and he did. And school kids participated in it. No pun intended, but people have been swatting flies here ever since.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: But it was not too long ago when it was not a guarantee that the tourists would remain in Asheville. Tony Farlow, a longtime baseball photographer, and I chatted about what could have happened, but thankfully didn't. When Major League Baseball contracted the minors, it was a very real chance that baseball would have been gone. What. What were your emotions at. At the time and what would have been the. The void had the tourists gone away? I watched what they did to the Appalachian League, and I was worried that with the shape of our stadium was in that. That we weren't going to get a team. I've lived here my whole life, and I've never lived anywhere else. And it's. I had already told my wife, I won't retire somewhere that doesn't have a ball club. I mean, this is just part of. Been a part of my summer since I was a kid. It's my happy place. It's like, this is just a place that I don't want to hear anything negative. I don't want to. I just.
We come here sometimes. People come from work, and one of the guys that sat with me one time and we had another guy from work come and he wanted to start talking about work. We both looked at him and were like, nah, we don't do that here. And for a few minutes, he started and we looked back at him. We're like, we're not playing. You know, you can either get up and go somewhere else or stop talking about work. We're talking about the baseball game. This is a Leave your troubles at the door kind of play. Absolutely. For me it is. It's like there are a lot of people like that here. So it's always been like that for me. You know, a lot of times you hear these stories about the need for renovations for a ballpark and, you know, some owner sticking the bill with the public or something like that. This was obviously different. And it sounds like every avenue that needed to be involved made sure that what needed to happen to keep the tourists here happened. If the Dewines hadn't put come out of their pocket, it wouldn't have happened. And nobody can say anything bad about the Dewines in this town. They've backed this team and put more back into it than anybody that's ever owned it.
[00:39:01] Speaker H: You know, there are two people that.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: I say there wouldn't be baseball in this town if it wasn't.
[00:39:05] Speaker H: One was Ron McKee. Absolutely.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: If it wasn't for Ron and Carolyn and the kids wouldn't be here.
[00:39:11] Speaker H: But if Brian hadn't have been here.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: And worked positively with the community and the politicians here and they put their money into it too. Tony is referring to Brian DeWine, the owner of the tourists who bought the team back in 2010. We'll hear more from Brian in future episodes. But suffice it to say, his efforts to keep baseball in Asheville went above and beyond your typical sports franchise owner, ensuring the Tony Farlows of the world could keep coming to the ballpark. This is home for you? Absolutely. My wife has.
[00:39:44] Speaker H: My ashes will be scattered here if they'll let her.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: It's just always been my place to come and enjoy the people and baseball.
It is a community.
[00:39:57] Speaker C: McCormick Field is a place with a storied history, but art making spaces often come and go, especially when they are experimental. Our conversation with Susan and Giles Collard, co directors of the Asheville Contemporary Dance Theater, gave us a window into into how Asheville became the artists mecca it is today. While there has always been a strong craft, music and dance tradition in this city, this 1960s, 70s and 80s were a pivotal time in terms of creative risk taking and cementing Asheville as a bustling arts community.
[00:40:35] Speaker H: We've got our wires all crossed.
[00:40:43] Speaker C: The tubes are all tight and I'm straining.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: To remember.
[00:40:55] Speaker C: Just what it means to.
[00:40:57] Speaker H: Be alive, you guys. Later. It was created in 1979, so it's 46 years old.
Started touring internationally and doing exchanges in 1990 and we built our own theater in the year 2000. Then among other things, you know, we toured the US do shows and we still do shows here and abroad.
[00:41:21] Speaker C: You were talking a lot about, like, that collaborative spirit that was here in the 60s. We were all really struggling.
[00:41:28] Speaker G: We were all trying to follow our passions.
[00:41:31] Speaker C: None of us had any money.
We were sharing spaces.
[00:41:36] Speaker G: We were creating out of our homes, out of our basements and, you know, places that were offbeat.
[00:41:43] Speaker C: We did everything for free.
[00:41:46] Speaker G: We wanted to build up the downtown.
[00:41:49] Speaker C: Area because it was in shambles. There were a lot of boarded up buildings and they were for sale and.
[00:41:57] Speaker G: They were dirt cheap.
[00:41:59] Speaker C: And we decided we were going to.
[00:42:02] Speaker F: Rebuild Asheville, and we did, to a point.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: We really did.
Architects got involved.
There was a group called the Asheville 100.
And we'd all get together and party like hell and we all collaborated like.
[00:42:22] Speaker F: Hell and supported each other and we.
[00:42:25] Speaker C: Didn'T have any money. You were kind of here at the creation of a lot of that vibe, so to speak. So what else can you tell us about how the community started really forming? You said it was a really magical time. It sounds like for me, it was magical because we all were involved. It wasn't the city government telling us we had to do this.
[00:42:52] Speaker G: It wasn't some outside entity saying that the city needs to be changed.
[00:43:01] Speaker C: And we decided, the artists decided that Asheville was their place.
[00:43:09] Speaker G: And we had celebrations on the street.
[00:43:14] Speaker C: Nobody stopped us.
We just did it.
[00:43:18] Speaker G: They were going to tear buildings down.
[00:43:20] Speaker C: And we protested and nobody got put in jail.
[00:43:26] Speaker H: Doing dance performances about the building being, you know, smashed.
[00:43:30] Speaker C: Dances, protests.
[00:43:32] Speaker H: Yeah. And also created festivals and things that actually later on the city took over and they eventually went bankrupt. But, yeah, but the artists were performing. The artists would perform for the artists.
[00:43:42] Speaker C: Yeah, we see that dynamic happening in a lot of cities. I think it's the general that things start to kind of decay. Nobody comes in to take care of it. Artists get it for cheap and say, great, there's this spirit that we can do this thing. They make it nicer. They start doing things. And then all of a sudden the developers come in or other people come in and want to monetize it.
[00:44:03] Speaker H: Yeah, they kick out. The buildings are now in use and all that, and people are going to that street.
So then the owner is like, whoa, yay.
And at that point they say, sorry, we're going to close your theater, we're going to close your dance studio, we're going to close your whatever.
[00:44:17] Speaker C: As our conversation went on, Giles explained some of his theories about both artistic and economic decisions that have been made in the past 90 years in Asheville that have served as a Cultural foundation for the city.
[00:44:31] Speaker H: So Asheville is different, I think, because it's mountain folk who have mountain ethics.
So two examples, they used to have the Bravo concerts here. The Bravo concerts were the people who lived here who had just a little bit of money, right? There was not much art happening. They would pull all their money together and bring the Bolshoi here and they would do the show here. Everybody had the same amount. There was no expensive tickets and cheap tickets. Everything was the same price.
Everybody came in first come, first serve, and they brought in stuff from all. So that was the thing. Everybody is equal. We want to have art, so we're going to get together and do this. So this is just Asheville population doing this Also. Another thing about mountain ethics is when the crash happens, you know, in like in the 30s, the big dip, the big depression, what people did around the country is they went bankrupt and then they restarted their life later, right? And then in the 50s and the 60s, they were restarting that piles of money. They smashed all the buildings and they built the downtowns and stuff. Ashforth Mountain.
They did not renege on their debt. They paid off the debt in 1987.
[00:45:52] Speaker C: Yes, we heard. That's why all the art deco buildings are still here. And it's gorgeous.
[00:45:57] Speaker H: Suddenly in 1987. So Ashe was really dead up until 1987. But all the buildings stayed because nobody had any money. They weren't going to smash buildings. They didn't have any money to do anything. So all these buildings were saved by mistake, sort of. Right. And then in 1987, suddenly they have all this money because the debts were paid off.
And suddenly they started funding stuff.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: Funding stuff, particularly in arts arenas, has never been easy.
[00:46:28] Speaker C: Well, yes, that's because it's not always going to make money. It's a riskier endeavor. But the arts are really how a culture gets built in many ways.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: And maybe who gets a say in what that culture will look like, Right?
[00:46:42] Speaker C: So many of our conversations led to discussions around artists buying up cheap and in many cases, condemned property in areas that were not highly desirable. And then once the cool factor was established, others discovered it and started moving there. And then inevitably, prices started going up.
[00:47:01] Speaker A: Someone who has a really firm grasp on how the arts, community, minor league baseball, and the balance of maintaining Asheville's uniqueness with ever growing gentrification is Mickey Pondl of Explore Asheville.
[00:47:13] Speaker C: We spoke at length about what life is like for him, both as a resident and from his perspective of trying to boost tourism without adding to the problems that Come along with moving a small city towards being a tourist destination.
And how do you see the arts as being essential community builders? I mean if you could talk a little bit more about sort of your experience with that here in Asheville.
[00:47:39] Speaker I: Yeah, I mean for me, I think moving to a new place, the arts were immediately the first thing that I latched onto.
I.
One of the first things I did actually even before I got my first job in Asheville, I tried out for a play at the community theater. And it was like I didn't realize actually that it was.
It's called the Autumn Players and it was like a reader's theater series for like, you know, like retirees and like older people. But I didn't know that. And so I was like 24 but. But they let me audition and I got in and so, so I did this wonderful like Agatha Christie, you know where like the ingenue was like a 55 year old woman and stuff and it was actually super fun.
And so, you know, and I think that that's how lots of people, I have lots of friends that have plugged into the music scene or the comedy scene. There's so many open mics around town.
Even in little tiny. I was just at this little tiny coffee shop called Heywood Famous. That's a late night Cuban coffee shop. And oh my gosh, you, you can maybe fit like 20 people in the whole space. But they, but we will pack in for you know, an open mic music or comedy. So I feel like that's just always happening in Asheville. Like any person you meet is likely to be whatever they're doing for their actual job. They're also likely to be an amazing like painter or musician or poet or whatever. It just, it really seems to burst out of people around here. We were just talking today about. It's about to be the hundred year anniversary of what were called the okay Sessions, which were essentially the first country music that was ever recorded in the US Was actually recorded here at wwnc which was the radio station that served the entire region because we're in the mountains. And so the tower, it was the only tower that could be high enough to reach the whole area. And so you know, there's that legacy of country music. And then even today, you know there's.
There's always been a huge culture of busking and street music in Asheville.
[00:50:14] Speaker A: Of course I had to get Mickey's impressions of how the tourists, the team, not the visitors factor into the economy, the community and what needed to happen in order to save McCormick Field.
[00:50:25] Speaker I: So the Asheville tourists. And you know, like insert joke here, right, because our team is literally called the Tourists, which goes to show how important it is to the history of Asheville.
Yeah, we, this community loves the Asheville tourists. McCormick Field, as you mentioned, is the oldest minor league stadium. And major league baseball let us know that. And in fact told us that we had to upgrade the stadium or we would no longer be a team. When. When we heard that there was a chance there might not be the Asheville tourist, this community really stood up and said, you know, whatever has to happen.
And. And there was. And there was a first of its kind collaboration between city, county, our organization, other private entities out there. And we. We made it happen.
[00:51:20] Speaker C: Later in our conversation, Mickey shared another only in Asheville story with us that involved the community standing up in a different way.
[00:51:29] Speaker I: There's this famous story about in the 80s when they were. There was a plan to bulldoze most of downtown and build a mall, because that's what most cities were doing at that time.
Every people were not going to department stores downtown anymore. They were. Downtowns were emptied out. They were going to the mall, this new thing. And this community really stood up and they did this kind of unique work protest where they kind of joined hands and like literally like circled the downtown area and said, you know, it's. This is not going to happen. And now, years later, it's like, thank God, because these, these old buildings and this art deco architecture is so precious to us now. But so I feel like that's, you know, that's a kind of a proud Asheville tradition of standing up for what we value as a community.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Well, the people of Asheville continue to find creative ways to unite. There are some forces that come into play as a city experiences growing pains. I would imagine from your vantage point, growth is good and development is good, but the other side of that coin can be gentrification and people being pushed to the outskirts. So I'm just wondering from your vantage point. I mean, I know Asheville prides itself on being very inclusive. You talk, you know, especially as you were pointing out some of the things. Queer rights and things like that.
[00:52:57] Speaker I: Yeah, that. Yeah, that's. I feel like that's like the crux of the.
[00:53:04] Speaker H: The.
[00:53:04] Speaker I: The biggest problem, the biggest opportunity that anybody in travel and tourism faces because, you know, a city is either growing or it's dying and both have problems. I think you would much rather be a city that's growing as Asheville is. But that is not to say that There aren't problems with rapid growth and development, as you mentioned, gentrification, cost of living skyrocketing. We're definitely seeing that in Asheville, particularly in housing, which of course is. Is not a unique problem to Asheville. Black owned businesses, Latin owned businesses, queer owned businesses, celebrating the Cherokee influence in Asheville and, and. And the Afro Lashan influence. Because there's a myth that black people have never lived in Appalachia, and it's patently untrue.
[00:54:05] Speaker C: Someone creatively building upon Afro Latin culture, as it is called here is Alexandria Ravenel and her adult child, Ajax, who run the Noir collective in the YMI Cultural center in the historically black neighborhood of the block.
We began our conversation by learning more about the Young men's Institute, or YMI, which opened in 1893.
[00:54:29] Speaker G: There was a jazz band here. There was a swimming pool and a mortuary. And people used to say anything you needed, you could, from birth to death, you can get in this area. It was a hub for the black community. This street, South Market street that we're on, and the cross street, Eagle street, this is considered the block. And, and it's a part of East End Valley street, which was the first established black neighborhood here in Asheville. And so I don't know, like, I. I met someone a couple of months ago from Charlotte. He said he grew up here and he thought Asheville was a black city.
That's just because there was. So, you know, it's this. You think about segregated south, also think about the slave quarters were here before that. And so this is where black people were. Like, they couldn't go anywhere else. And so it became a thriving community of businesses and homes.
[00:55:18] Speaker A: Stories we heard earlier, Matthew, later echoed by others we interviewed, often led to the topic of how poorly integration was handled both in the south and everywhere else in the country and the lasting impact this has on communities today.
[00:55:31] Speaker G: The truth is, black cities around the entire country, whether it's north or south, suffered the same kinds of things, right? So you're sequestered, you're oppressed, you. And then gentrification happens. And so Joy degree we call this serial force displacement. It's just the same kind of thing with a different name. And Asheville suffered the same. And studies would say that Asheville has the largest footprint of disaster due to urban renewal than anywhere else in the country.
So when you're in this neighborhood, you don't see black people.
You see Noir collective, you see YMI Cultural center. But everything else is gentrified. So first urban renewal, and then Gentrification. The question everybody asks when they come to visit were the black people. Particularly because our city is good about showing black folks in the literature. And so I would say that they're around, they're generally in the outskirts. And we think about the time of urban renewal.
The government told folks, listen, we're going to build this neighborhood back up. They didn't talk about the divestment of the neighborhood. Right.
Why it turned to ruins. And you could call it something like blight. They moved people out. They built about 10 affordable housing complexes, which in New York we call them the projects. They don't use that name here. And so folks were moved into those housing complexes and they never came back to their neighborhoods.
So it was 2020. It was the summer of riots, protests and demonstrations.
And my youngest child had this idea to open up a retail operation.
We started off as a art gallery. And so Ajax had gotten a grant from one of the.
I don't know who they were, but some of the artists here developed this fund and they wanted artists of color, particularly youth who identified as lbgtqia, to then respond to the summer of riots, protests and demonstrations through their art.
Ajax won this grant, invited about six other artists. This space happened to be empty. And so YMI director at the time said, yes, have your show here in this space. So Noar Collective is situated inside of YMI Cultural center, which is about 18,000 square feet of a black cultural center. It's the oldest African American cultural center that is still operating in the United States. And it served as a hub for the black community.
And so everywhere you looked in this community, there was nothing but black owned businesses. And so when Ajax learned that story and then got this grant, they had this idea, let's open up a retail operation for black entrepreneurs. I thought it was a terrible idea.
[00:58:21] Speaker C: Not, not, not the black entrepreneur part.
[00:58:23] Speaker G: But it was 2020, so it was Juneteenth was the opening of the gallery. I don't know, I think people came in and they were really inspired by the art. They saw the T shirts and then they started asking, can I bring my earrings? Can I bring my hats? Can I bring my. Can I bring my. And so the answer is always yes, because we're here for black entrepreneurs. Five years later and still going strong.
[00:58:47] Speaker C: Asheville, like other cities in the US is layered in complexity. And Alexandria helped us dig more deeply into the black experience of the city historically and her role in creating a piece of the patchwork quilt that makes up current day Asheville.
[00:59:03] Speaker A: Our conversation with Alexandria leads us beautifully into our next episode, which will focus on community.
When you get down to it, the places where people live, either because their families are from there or they choose to move there, guides which communities they are a part of or intentionally seek out.
[00:59:19] Speaker C: And so it is in that seeking that we continue our journey. So stay tuned for our next episode of Something Worth Saving Asheville Stories of Resilience Wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:59:34] Speaker F: Going.
[00:59:34] Speaker D: Nowhere.
[00:59:35] Speaker H: Guitar packed in a trunk Somewhere around my mark of 112, Papa started humming the phone.
[00:59:43] Speaker E: I got a jones in my bones.
[00:59:45] Speaker C: Before we knew this episode of Something Worth Saving Asheville Stories of Resilience was written by Sarah Stock Mayo and produced by Sarah Stock Mayo and Jonathan Mayo. It was executive produced by Ross Gavon. Editing and engineering were handled by Cindy Guevara and Nina Jackson of RCG Digital Media. Our original music is by David Cody. Special thanks to Matthew Becote, David Cody, Byron Ballard and the Mother Grove Goddess Temple, Jennifer Pickering and Leaf Global Arts, Dorland Winkler, Tony Farlow, the Asheville Tourists, Susan and Giles Collard and Asheville Contemporary Dance Mickey Pondl and Explore Asheville Alexandria Ravenel and the Noir Collective.
We'd like to thank Kira Bursky for our cover art.
Stay tuned for Episode three of Something Worth Asheville Stories of Resilience. Thank you for listening.
[01:00:50] Speaker A: It.
