Books by Hillsborough’s authors, many of which are signed, are given prominence in Purple Crow Books shop. Photo by Cheryl Blackerby
Historic Hillsborough, N.C., a town to write home about
By Cheryl Blackerby
Special to the Daily News
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — History was on the agenda as I ducked into the little two-story Alexander Dickson House, a humble Quaker farmhouse built around 1790.
I had read that Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston stayed here during negotiations with Union Gen. William T. Sherman in April 1865 before Johnston went to Durham to surrender 89,000 troops to the Union.
But my history tour of the little 18th-century downtown took an unexpected turn when I met Cheryl Sobnasky, a volunteer with the Hillsborough Visitors Center, which is housed in the little farmhouse.
She nodded politely when I commented on the large number of meticulously preserved historic buildings.
And then she said, “You know, Hillsborough is called the Little Literary Town,” a moniker that has nothing to do with history.
The town, founded in 1754, literally has several dozen esteemed novelists, poets, non-fiction writers and documentary filmmakers living here in the present.
Just to name a few: Frances Mayes, whose many books include the best seller Under the Tuscan Sun; David Payne, whose memoir Barefoot to Avalon: A Brother’s Story was published in August; Allan Gurganus, author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All; Jill McCorkle, writer of the best-selling Going Away Shoes; Lee Smith, who wrote The New York Times bestseller The Last Girls, and Randall Kenan, author of the recent The Fire This Time.
Many of them teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, both about 20 minutes away, and North Carolina State University, a 40-minute commute.
“Every other person in Hillsborough is a Ph.D,” Sobnasky said.
Devoted to writers
Purple Crow Books shop on King Street downtown has a wall of books, many of which are signed, devoted to Hillsborough’s local writers. Required reading before a visit here is 27 Views of Hillsborough: A Southern Town in Prose and Poetry, a compilation of short stories and excerpts of novels and memoirs about Hillsborough from 27 local authors.
It’s one thing to tour Venice with Ernest Hemingway’s Across the River and Into the Trees as your guide but quite another to read 27 authors’ wildly different angles on this one tiny Southern town.
“More recently, some ground force is attracting an astonishing number of writers, artists, photographers and musicians,” writes Frances Mayes. “On a stroll along the main street, you’ll likely pass the author of one of your favorite books, the director of a great documentary or a blues guitar player you always admired. Say hello. The natives are friendly.”
When I walked along the town’s Riverwalk, a 2-mile paved path and boardwalk next to the swift, narrow Eno River, I couldn’t help but think of Payne, best known for his novels Back to Wando Passo and Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street.
In Barefoot to Avalon, Payne recalled taking his two young children to play in the Eno, where they “splash off laughing toward the chute where the whitewater rushes between two seal-black rocks and ushers into an amber pool that’s clear and four or five feet deep.” I looked for the pool in this river known for its clean water. Payne described the scene perfectly down to the sycamores that “toss their heads like stallions.”
Author hangouts
On this rainy autumn morning, I walked from the river up Churton Street to King Street and Cup A Joe, where authors often gather for a jolt of caffeine and inspiration.
Back on Churton, I passed a stately two-story house that opened as the Burwell School for Young Ladies in 1837. It was easy to imagine girls in flowing skirts running across the wide sloping green lawn.
Author Lee Smith discovered a diary kept by a Burwell student, which inspired her to write her 10th novel On Agate Hill.
“Mrs. Burwell turned out to be a novelist’s dream. She had stood six feet tall, robustly built, pious, and well read. She had twelve children and could recite ‘Paradise Lost’ by heart,” recalled Smith in 27 Views of Hillsborough.
“Suddenly I realized that I was going to write a novel about a young girl orphaned by the Civil War, and that she would attend a school such as the Burwell School, and … I was off and running.”
A block away was the Old Town Cemetery, and as I walked among Civil War tombstones I thought of Smith again. “Frankly — having grown up in the Appalachian South — I never gave much of a damn about the Civil War,” she wrote. “But then my husband and I moved into an old house smack in the middle of Hillsborough, and it was like walking into history. I found myself musing over those heartbreakingly short dates and ‘C.S.A.’ carved into many of the mossy tombstones in the Presbyterian Church cemetery right next door.”
Allan Gurganus’ house also has a view of the old cemetery, and he wrote that it “offers my fictive inventions an implicit test-audience. Graves become our ship’s crew, lending their names to my invented characters. They give sponsorship to my infrequent garden parties and to the daily labor here at this keyboard.”
Firebombing mystery
After strolling sleepy Hillsborough’s lovely tree-shaded brick sidewalks and chatting with its loquacious residents over the course of several days, I was blindsided by the alarming news of a firebombing in the local Orange County GOP office. It happened in the wee hours of Oct. 16 at the edge of downtown.
Spray painted on the side of an adjacent building was the message: “Nazi Republicans leave town or else.” Fortunately, no one was hurt.
The message was, of course, appalling. But because I had been immersed in the Little Literary Town, I immediately thought the message was also … odd.
For one thing, the wording was over-articulated for graffiti, which is usually reduced to declarative phrases of no more than two or three expletives. And why not just say, “Leave town”; why add “or else,” an old-fashioned term more likely to be uttered in the 1950s by John Wayne? And leaving the phrase without a period suggested someone was considering an ellipsis.
The word Republicans was spelled out instead of using GOP — the culprit was obviously taking his or her time — and spelled correctly. The words were printed neatly in all caps but with a cursive “E,” so likely it was not done by a teenager, and probably by someone over 50. And the phrase was neatly composed and the three lines centered on the wall.
The appalling word Nazi also was strange. I hadn’t really heard it hurled at the Republican Party.
Also, this little liberal enclave is a Democratic stronghold, so why would they care if Republicans are here — 70 percent of Orange County voters (Hillsborough is the county seat) voted for Obama in the last election. Nearly half of the county’s 116,000 voters are registered Democrats; fewer than 15 percent are Republicans, according to The New York Times, which leaves almost 38 percent of the county’s voters scratching their heads.
The case of the Hillsborough firebombing is still a mystery at least at press time. But it’s a mystery that almost certainly will inspire a short story or a novel.
DETAILS
Hotels: The Inn at Teardrops, an elegant inn built in 1769, is popular for weddings. 175 W. King St. in Hillsborough. Rates for the four rooms range from $165 to $185. innatteardrops.com; 919-732-1120
Restaurants: Pretty much everyone in town, including the literati, end up at the Wooden Nickel Pub for a barbecue bacon burger or a grilled pimento bacon melt on sourdough with fried green tomatoes. Saratoga Grilloffers mesquite- and charcoal-grilled steaks and seafood. At Antonia’s, you can start the night with lush red tomatoes, straight from one of the local farms listed on the menu, with house-made mozzarella and basil, and move on to house-made fettuccine with North Carolina little-neck clams for dinner, before finishing up with Bushmills and coffee. I really liked Laplace Louisiana Cookery and Radius Pizzeria and Pub. All five restaurants are on Churton Street.
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