The Joy of the Journey

**This was originally published on Thursday, November 13, 2014, in my newspaper column, “The Old Paths,” in The Stokes News. Due to a website change a few years ago, the publishing company broke all links to our old articles which were archived online. This was a tragic mistake and resulted in the loss of thousands of newspaper articles. Little by little, I am putting my old columns on this blog so that they can be preserved. Each column may be updated to reflect present times when transferred to this blog.**

We humans always seem bent on getting somewhere. Rush, rush, hurry, hurry, get to where you’re going—eyes on the prize. Sometimes we focus so much on the goal that we take the journey for granted, not realizing that the joy is in the journey.

Before we know it, these present paths become the old paths. I think that often we are somewhat arrogant about life. We assume that “what is” will always be. Then when we come to our senses later, we mentally kick ourselves for not treasuring those old paths while we walked them.

Because they DO end. Times do change. Progress happens. And that’s okay. It’s the way of life. But the realization of the inevitability of change should make us appreciate the present more.

I remember the day Andy Griffith died. How I astounded myself by sobbing for a spell on that July day! Somehow the thought that I had never lived a day on Earth without Andy figuratively presiding as “Sheriff of Mayberry” hit me hard. A very pleasant era of my life seemed to have ended.

I sort of felt the same way last week when L.D. Sutphin passed away. I don’t remember a time in my life when he didn’t run the Cove Grill. That place has become iconic to Walnut Cove, hence rendering L.D. a sort of icon himself.

Many’s the time over the years I’ve walked into Cove Grill to get a cheeseburger on toast—all the way, of course. And I usually got a side order of L.D., too (whether or not I asked for it!)—his wit, his jokes, his genuineness.

One time he brought out his keyboard and wanted me to play “Amazing Grace.” Mind you, he didn’t ASK me to; he TOLD me to. The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass myself by struggling to remember the chords to that song in front of the other customers. But guess who ended up playing “Amazing Grace” in the Cove Grill? Yours truly. It’s a memory I smile at now.

When my Granny Smith was dying of cancer in the mid-1970s, she still loved to eat that trademark cheeseburger on toast from Cove Grill. My five kids grew up loving that same treat that nobody could make like L.D. (or his many children, grandchildren and relatives who worked there and learned from the best!).

Lately, I had taken to ordering the two-hot-dog special, including crinkle-cut fries and a big ol’ sweet tea. And I generally sent one of my kids into Cove Grill to get it. I’m regretting that now. It robbed me of some of the final times I could’ve enjoyed L.D. picking on me.

Yes, I’ll remember the picking and good-spirited teasing, but you know what will stick with me the most? The way he treated me after my first marriage ended. L.D. had been friends with my ex-husband, too, so I was nervous about seeing ye olde “Cove Grill Meister” after the split. Truth be told, I avoided the Cove Grill for a little while.

But one day the lure of those cheeseburgers won out, and I went back. My fears of judgment were in vain. L.D. greeted me just the same as always. He kindly told me he had heard the news and was sorry, then he went right on back to pleasantly passing the time of day with me while I stood there in the narrow space in front of the counter, waiting on my food.

I’ve heard it said that when you die, people won’t remember what you said and did as much as they’ll remember how you treated them and made them feel. Wisdom indeed.

Now that L.D. is gone, the good way he treated me and the multitudes of customers he served over his 40-year career at the Cove Grill are a part of the old paths. We come to expect what we’ve always known, and when it’s gone, we are somewhat taken aback.

L.D. in his happy place—Cove Grill!

That same universal truth hit me at the recent “Back in the Day” festival in Walnut Cove. When I saw the old tobacco buck with a vintage aluminum can holding the ball of twine, I was transported back to a time I had falsely assumed would never end.

Some of you, like me, remember how you spent your toddlerhood sleeping on a blanket under the barn shelter on early summer mornings while your parents primed “baccer.” You recall running on your little legs to catch a ride on the slide as the tractor came in from the field.

You girls might remember hanging around the barn, just itching to be whatever age they told you you had to be to hand leaves. (For me, it was nine.) Oh, the precision of making sure your tiny hand had three leaves in it, with the stems evened up at the top so that the stringer (a person back in the day—not a machine) could grab it and sling it over the stick.

Since that’s all I’d ever known, I thought that was the way it would always be. But by my teenagehood, the bucks were relegated to a back corner of the packhouse, and the barn area was filled with the mechanical hum of an electric stringer. We slapped armfuls of tobacco onto the conveyor belt—gone the precision of three-leaf handfuls. Stringing skills my mother and others had honed their entire lives were suddenly obsolete.

And then I was a mother myself, and my kids were asking, “What were Papa’s old tobacco sticks used for?”

Well, last Saturday, they got to see firsthand. They learned to hand leaves as my mother taught them right there in Walnut Cove’s Fowler Park. And crowds gathered around to watch, cameras in hand, videocameras rolling—some reliving the memories, others gaping at something they had never witnessed.

As for me? I was hit once more with the universal truth that while we’re in the moment, we tend to think the current way of life is permanent. And when we realize our error, we wish we could go back—even if just for a few minutes.

I’d like to spend just one more Saturday handing leaves to my mama down at Grandpa Bray’s old barn, chatting up a storm to Aunt Sylvia and the other gals. Then I’d like to ride over to the Cove Grill and get me a cheeseburger on toast from L.D. before getting ready for another Saturday night of softball at DeHart Field.

But I walk the paths of the present which will all too soon be old paths themselves, so I’d better enjoy this journey before it’s gone—making precious memories along the way.

****The Cove Grill shut down in 2019 due to coming road construction. It was finally torn down on Tuesday, August 3, 2021, to make way for the planned road. I can’t explain what it did to my old paths heart when I saw the site of one of my favorite eateries now a bulldozed vacant lot. There was a lot of Walnut Cove history in that building. I will confess having shed some sentimental tears over the loss of the Cove Grill.

Cove Grill being torn down on Aug. 3, 2021. (Photo credit: Amanda Brown Sutphin, L.D.’s daughter-in-law)

View from across the railroad tracks where Cove Grill has been a familiar site for many decades. (Photo credit: Tina Martin)

L.D. and the flowers he loved—in front of the Cove Grill! (Photo credit: Amanda Brown Sutphin)

I was overjoyed when I read this sign on the Cove Grill several years ago! I loved their fish sandwiches.

L.D.’s characteristic hat—still with the 919 area code that we haven’t had in many, MANY years! (Photo credit: Tina Martin)

Just looking at the menu there on the wall makes me hungry for some Cove Grill food! L.D.’s prices were very cheap.

I wish I had a two hot dog special that came with those awesome crinkle-cut fries and a sweet tea! You couldn’t beat the taste or the price!

The old Cove Grill “grill” is still in use at L.D.’s son’s house.

The Old Paths: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

**This was originally published in a similar form in The Stokes News in 2009. When the publishers changed websites a few years back, all links to archived articles were tragically lost. I am attempting to republish some of my best stories from my time as editor of that paper. Part I of this story can be accessed on another of my blog posts at this link: 

https://timesofrefreshingontheoldpaths.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/storing-up-stokes-memories-bob-carroll/

Me with Bob Carroll at his 101st birthday party!

It has been nearly 80 years since the 1929 stock market crash that helped send this country reeling toward the pit of the Great Depression. Since then, we’ve heard talk of recessions and economic downturns, but the “D” word has been avoided. I’ve often wondered what would necessitate the use of it.

Some economists say a depression is a decline in the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of more than 10 percent. For example, from 1929-1933, the GDP fell almost 33 percent. There was a bit of a recovery in the mid-‘30’s before another decline—this time only 18.2 percent—in the late ‘30’s. Since then, there has been nothing even close to that. Remember the big recession from 1973-75? The GDP only fell 4.9 percent during that period. Quite a difference from the Great Depression, huh?

The bad news is that the GDP fell 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, after having already fallen lesser amounts in the earlier part of 2008. Many economists predict a further decline in the first half of 2009. It seems we are creeping closer to that dreaded “D” word.

Talking to Stokes County residents who lived through the Great Depression has been eye-opening for me. Most of them agree that the biggest difference between that generation and the present one is the fact that the majority of them knew how to be self-sufficient. As a whole, we have lost that capability.

I’ve heard old-timers talk about being forced to shoot songbirds for food. Rabbits and squirrels were diet staples. Bob Carroll, age 101, told me about eating “possum,” which he stills remembers as a rather distasteful, unpleasant experience. Truth is, if I were left alone without my male relatives who know how to hunt and fish, I would probably starve. I guess I could trap an opossum if need be–they sure show up on my porch often enough to try to eat my cat food–but shooting a bird might be a fiasco for me.

I’ve grown my own garden before, buying my seeds at local stores. What would I do if those seeds were not available? I so desire to learn how to save my own seeds. The predominance of hybrid seeds scares me. We have been lulled into a trap that convinces us to buy new seeds each year, since hybrid seeds don’t reproduce themselves.

Carroll told me of men in the ‘30’s who would hustle all day to sell apples for a nickel, just to put food on their families’ tables. Do we still have that same work ethic—we who have become inured to sitting at desks or working at lucrative factory jobs? Men of Carroll’s generation were willing to walk barefoot from King to Charlotte to be first in line for a rumored job.

That nickel they sold an apple for would buy enough beans to keep them alive for a day. Would that work for Americans who are used to eating sumptuous meals at restaurants nearly daily, or who, even if eating at home, have grown accustomed to marinated chicken breasts, broiled steaks or at least frozen pizza?

Carroll says Depression-era families went back to the farms—“not to make a living but to live.” Where are we going back to? The family farm is, as a rule, a thing of the past. My daddy has my grandpa’s farm. Since I live next door, I suppose Daddy would let me help him grow enough food for my large family, if need be. But most people don’t have land to go back to.

Unemployment for us has come to mean checks from the government to help us along, as we put in a couple of applications per week. The unemployed father of seven in the Great Depression era had no such checks. If you were unemployed, you had to scramble to eat. This made for a tougher people, in my opinion.

“I’m very pessimistic about the future,” Carroll commented on the state of the nation, adding that the high prices of commodities and growing unemployment worry him. He says that the difference between now and then is that a dollar went farther in the ‘30’s.

Carroll still remembers the hope that came when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought in the “New Deal” in 1932. He credits FDR’s ideas with being the key to the economic turnaround. Crop control measures allotted only so much tobacco, cotton and peanuts to growers. The WPA (Works Progress Administration) brought community work; Carroll cites the example of WPA workers adding to the courthouse in Danbury. He remembers the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) building the bathhouse at Hanging Rock State Park.

Today’s situation is somewhat similar in the sense that we have a new President with new ideas—reminiscent of FDR and his New Deal. “Obama’s touched on it,” Carroll speaks optimistically of the new President’s plans. He believes that already our Commander-in-Chief has made progress by limiting the sumptuous incomes of some: “He’s kinda on the right track. I’m extremely interested in the political situation in this country.”

As to the common perception that people tend to fall back on religion when times get hard, Carroll believes that is true “to some extent but not so much as you might think.” He philosophizes: “I’ve thought so much about it. When you are hungry, would you rather someone say they’ll pray for you or give you a bowl of beans?”

Going even further back in memory, Carroll remembers how Americans united during World War I. Although there weren’t the widespread rations as in World War II, still the country rallied to conserve. The government suggested that people observe three types of days each week—wheatless, meatless and sweetless.

By law, if a family wanted to buy 100 pounds of flour, they had to buy 100 pounds of cornmeal—an equal ratio of both, for conservation purposes. Carroll admits, “I never have liked cornbread much since I had to eat it so much back then,” yet he still did his part to support his country’s efforts to get back on the right track.

If we are entering similar days again, we may be called upon to do our part, whatever that may be. I hope you’ll join me, even if it means sacrifice. Just as great events bind us in unity, so do hard times often knit us together.

I read an email this week that said, “Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas and oil, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.” Although it was meant to be humorous, it was based on what many perceive to be true. Don’t fall for it; there IS light at the end of the tunnel. Keep your head up until you get there, and I’ll try to do the same. Give me your hand, and let’s walk it out together.

**Robert “Bob” Carroll, passed from this life on Tuesday afternoon, Mar. 6, 2012, just a little over a month after he celebrated his 104th birthday. The cause of death is listed as complications of pneumonia.

Storing Up Stokes Memories: Bob Carroll

**This was originally published in a similar form in The Stokes News in 2009. When the publishers changed websites a few years back, all links to archived articles were tragically lost. I am attempting to republish some of my best stories from my time as editor of that paper.**

If he wanted to, Robert “Bob” Carroll of King could just sit back and take it easy after having achieved centenarian status plus one—a milestone most people never reach. Instead he still gets up every day and focuses on what has been his chief interest and hobby for many years—history/genealogy. “I’m almost a fanatic,” he admits. “It kinda gives me incentive to live.”

That interest began when Carroll was still a very young man and studied about some Boyles relatives who fought in the Civil War. The genealogy/history bug bit him, and he has never regretted it. “If I were younger,” Carroll shakes his head ruefully, “there’s so much research I’d like to do.” He leans forward and confides conspiratorially, “I’ve got a sneaking suspicion we’re in royalty.”

Carroll spent many an hour in the local libraries, register of deeds offices, and what he calls “the gold mine”—Raleigh. He often rode to the state capital with Stokes County’s local legislator, Worth Gentry. While Gentry attended government meetings, Carroll researched all day long. “I was in seventh heaven,” he recalls.

Although he hasn’t been out for such research since he moved to Arbor Acres United Methodist Retirement Village in Winston-Salem when his wife passed away in 2000, Carroll has drawers full of folders which are stuffed with historical information. His desk is littered with worn census records he has pored over for decades. Those records were the source of Carroll’s book, Old, Odd and Other Stuff, which is a treasury of Stokes County history. The book and the multitudes of articles he wrote while working for The Danbury Reporter for 27 years as a weekly columnist detail many family histories.

This love of study goes back to the early 1900’s. Carroll, born on February 1, 1908, attended Mt. Olive School in King—a two-teacher school—through seventh grade. Since that was as far as he could go, he stayed in seventh grade for four years. Then King High School was established to provide further education, and Carroll went there for another four years, graduating at the age of 21. Of the 20 members of the King High School Class of 1929, only Carroll is left.

“I loved to go to school,” he still sounds enthused as he recalls his boyhood. “I’d walk a mile to borrow a newspaper to read.”

Finding time to study and read was quite a challenge for young Carroll. His life was not an easy one and was full of heartaches and disappointment. Although his family roots are in Stokes County, he was born in Winston (no Salem at that time), about three miles from where he lives now. His father was a revenue officer for the Fifth District. When Howard Taft was defeated in 1912 and Woodrow Wilson elected to the Presidency, the elder Carroll lost his job in the changing political climate.

In 1915, the Carrolls moved to King for work. In December of that year, the father of four young children—young Bob was the oldest at seven years old—developed appendicitis and then pneumonia and died suddenly. Carroll remembers the event vividly, “I was lost. I didn’t know what to do.”

His mother moved her young brood into a one-room log cabin on Carroll’s grandpa’s farm. The family hired themselves out to work for other farmers in the area. “I got so tired of picking peas,” Carroll recalls. They lived in poverty throughout his childhood.

Carroll states firmly, “One thing I learned—how important good neighbors are.” He has never forgotten the good people—none of them well-to-do either—who told them to come pick the extra apples or to glean the roasting ear patch. Some donated hand-me-down clothes for the young Carrolls. The family was given wood chips for heating and would sometimes have to carry them a mile or more.

Still, Carroll says he saw no long-term damage. His mother lived to be 104, one sister died at 97, and his youngest brother is still alive at 93.

Amidst those hard years of growing up, somehow Carroll found time for his schooling. He even got a student loan of $400 to attend Guilford College but still had to labor to pay his way—working as a janitor for the auditorium and men’s restrooms. Carroll’s goal? To become a newspaper reporter. He worked on the staff of the campus newspaper, The Guilfordian, but after two years at the college, was forced to leave. The Great Depression had struck.

“There was nothing to do,” Carroll assesses the job situation in that era. “I was so disappointed and so disgusted. I couldn’t find anything to do. I’d have taken a job digging ditches for 10 cents an hour.” He heard that Ford Motor Company would give jobs to the first 100 men who would walk to Charlotte, and figured if he could go barefoot, he could run and get there quickly. The rumor of jobs proved to be untrue.

For a while, Carroll hired out to work in tobacco. Finally, in 1934, he got a job in crop control, measuring tobacco land.

For the next 11 years, Carroll worked that job as well as three others, in a seasonal fashion. He raised tobacco himself, worked the tobacco market (a total of 30 years) and did income tax preparation. In 1955, he became a tax collector for Stokes County but was fired when “the political picture changed,” in a situation reminiscent of his father’s firing. Carroll then worked in the tax office of Forsyth County before coming back to King after 2½ years.

As a citizen and public servant of Stokes County, Carroll was a visionary. When he served on the board of education for four years and the county wanted to expand South Stokes High School, he voted against it. Carroll wanted a school in the Yadkin Township since 40 percent of the county’s population lived there. “I regret I didn’t push it,” he admits.

And Carroll is still a visionary. His passion for history—“I just feel like local history’s important”—keeps him writing articles to this day, some of which will be published in future editions of The Stokes News. “We can improve the present if we know the past,” he philosophizes. Future generations of Stokes County residents will owe debts to Bob Carroll that they can never repay. Family memories and Stokes County history have been preserved for posterity, thanks to this visionary who looked backward to see forward and who never let hardship keep him down.

**Note: Bob Carroll’s memories were so extensive that they cannot possibly be adequately presented in this brief article. More of his memories are highlighted in another blog post called “The Old Paths: The Light at the End of the Tunnel,” specifically his memories of the two World Wars and the Depression, as well as his thoughts on the future of this nation. This is the link: 

https://timesofrefreshingontheoldpaths.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/the-old-paths-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel/

**Robert “Bob” Carroll, passed from this life on Tuesday afternoon, Mar. 6, 2012, just a little over a month after he celebrated his 104th birthday. The cause of death is listed as complications of pneumonia.