HISTORY+CULTURE
If you've spent time in older Southern homes, there's a good chance you've encountered a toilet like mine. Tucked under the basement stairs of our 1927 foursquare in Roanoke, Virginia, it's where the help used the bathroom, and the help, back then, was almost always Black.
I wince whenever I walk by it, on the way to our basement fridge or getting Christmas decorations. It's a grim reminder of a mean-spirited era, one none of us created but we all inherited. The folks at Practical Preservation podcast recently invited me to talk about how we can face the full histories of our homes — the good stuff and the grim stuff.
"The trend I see in preservation is to acknowledge all the history," Danielle Groshong-Keperling said during our interview. She's the host of this weekly preservationpalooza, which covers everything from old smokehouses to historic gardens. It's been named as a great podcast for historic preservation fans by The National Trust for Historic Preservation.
We also chatted about my family homeplace and tough choices we make to save money during the restoration process. When replacing long-gone steel casement windows, I once replicated the originals using wood rather than steel.
"We took it as close as we could," I said, "without going broke and having to sell our cars!"
If you've ever restored an historic home, we'd love to hear about your trials, joys, and discoveries. Please be sure to leave a comment below.
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A NEW DAY: RESTORING MY FAMILY HOMEPLACE
I didn't even know I had a cousin Edna until my mid-thirties. As my interest in (perhaps obsession with) our old family farm grew, my grandma said I had to meet Edna and her twin sister Elma. They were raised in Stewartsville, Virginia, near the farm my husband and I now own.
When I first visited the twins in 2008, they regaled me with old stories for three hours — who was kind, who was difficult, who plowed their land stark nekkid in the height of summer!
These ladies remembered it all.
Sadly, Elma has since passed, but Edna is going strong and on tech's cutting edge. At age 101, she began making TikTok-worthy videos, in which she sings tunes learned from older relatives. This one — "The Texas Rangers" — was taught to her when my great, great grandfather William Byrd Ferguson visited.
This man came of age during the Civil War and remembered hiding his daddy — a soldier who deserted his post more than once to help his destitute family. When the military came looking for Byrd's father, the family would spirit him off to the woods until the search party gave up and moved on.
To have a first-person account of Byrd's life is downright remarkable, and to have Edna alive, kicking, and recording her memories is a true gift. Please consider sharing her video because this lovely lady deserves to be internet famous!
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ONE SONG: THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE
After a decades-long ban on black bear hunting in North Carolina's bear sanctuaries, residents there will be permitted to hunt in three different bear sanctuaries later this year.
North Carolina’s Wildlife Resources Commission voted tooverturn the state’s bear hunting ban in designated sanctuaries that was first enacted in 1971 when the black bear population was fewer than 1,000. Since then, the species’ numbers skyrocketed, and the black bear population is now estimated to be at 15,000. TheUniversity of North Carolina Charlotte Urban Institute said that over the last 30 years the population has expanded at an estimated rate of 6 percent per year.
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