Memorial Day in the Mountains
Hendersonville, NC
May 31, 2021
An advantage of going to college a few hours from home is you are able to return on short notice, without much trouble. Among the disadvantages is that home can easily come to you.
This week, a part of it dropped in on Alexander. Tuesday, his father stopped by, to spend a couple nights and catch up with his son. Alexander finished spring semester several weeks ago, but is spending his summer in Auburn…living on his own, working at a bowling alley, and becoming quite good at the game.
He’s collected a coterie of friends, joined a couple leagues, and on Wednesday night won their local championship. During the day, his father worked, but found time with his son to discuss summer plans, review fall classes, and to remind him how simple and cost-effective it is to prepare an occasional meal at home. After all, pasta takes only a few minutes to boil, and peanut butter several seconds to spread.
On Thursday, the father left, returning to his son the carefree pleasures of independent living. Then, he and his wife indulged in some of their own.
While their older son remained in Auburn, their younger one finished his sophomore year in high school. He then joined a friend for a long weekend at Lake Burton…high and deep in the north Georgia mountains.
With our nest empty, Rita and I flew away. We’ve been many times to the North Carolina mountains, but never to Hendersonville. We’d heard good things about this small town twenty miles from Asheville, so decided to sample it ourselves.
At 2,150 feet, Hendersonville is not quite as high…or high-end…as Highlands, nor as quirky and weird as Asheville. But its air is crisp and cool, and its charms considerable.
The attractive Main Street is filled with historic buildings housing shops, bars, cafés, and restaurants. And, this weekend, it was cordoned off for the annual Garden Jubilee Festival…a six block fair featuring accessories and examples to and from domestic floral landscape. As added ornament, colorfully sculpted bears adorned every street corner. The bears will be auctioned this fall, with proceeds from each bruin going to distinctly designated charities.
At the north end of Main Street is the Charleston Inn. For a hundred and forty years, it has occupied a Victorian home that is now on the roster of the National Historic Registry. For the last two nights, it hosted us.
The place is pleasant, but our suite is terrible. Upon our arrival, live music and complimentary wine beckoned us to a lovely outdoor deck. Only a single large window separates it from our first-floor room, which is without doubt the worst one in the place.
It is just off the entry parlor, which makes us feel as tho’ we’re in it. Thru our door, which is just inside the front porch, every external step or word can be heard. The old walls and hardwood floors shield sound like a chain link fence prevents mosquitoes. Till late evening, and from early morning, the noise is upon us like a Biblical plague.
Our mattress, which is no doubt original with the house, has the lumpy firmness of a bowl of oatmeal. It’s the perfect cure for a healthy back, and ideal relief from sound sleep.
But breakfast, like the happy hour, was great. After eating it yesterday, we spent a few hours along Main Street sampling the jubilee.
We then drove to the Sideways Farm and Brewery…just west of town, in Etowah. In front, a food truck dispensed sausages, brat, and kraut. Out back, a small tent covered several speakers, one singer, and a lone guitar. Within, fresh ale, lager, and kombucha flowed into eager glasses. Ours being filled, we settled outside to let the songs wash over us as the beverages washed down.
Last evening, after happy hour at the Inn, we strolled back up Main Street to enjoy the cool evening, and to ultimately find some dinner. As we walked past the Henderson County Courthouse, we were reminded why we are not working today.
Like Thanksgiving, Memorial Day as we now know it germinated in the North. It washed up in the commemorative wake of Gettysburg. Similar ceremonies previously or simultaneously sprouted across the South, to honor the Confederate dead. These started during the war, as local ladies decorated the proliferating graves within expanding or multiplying cemeteries.
Days of remembrance persisted thru the nineteenth century, dotting Dixie with local reflections on those who gave their lives to protect their homes. Southern states soon dedicated specific days to commemorate their noble dead.
April 26, 1866…the anniversary of the last Confederate surrender, at Bennett, NC…became the first, and most common, Confederate Memorial Day. As tradition has in recent years rapidly faded or been aggressively effaced, in only three states does it remain an official holiday. In five others, including this one, it is still recognized.
What is now universally known in the US as Memorial Day was long viewed skeptically in the South, as a Northern occasion to honor the Yankee invader. After the turn of the 20th century, and particularly after the First World War, that began to change.
As in most modern wars, southerners were disproportionate among the wounded and the dead. At Arlington and elsewhere, their remains multiplied, and mingled more extensively with those of their former foes.
As twentieth century calamities continued, and American fatalities mounted, commemorative sentiment slowly combined and congealed across all sections and states. It eventually solidified on the last Monday in May, as an official holiday in every state.
On the south side of the Henderson courthouse plaza are documents encased in glass, replicas of those to which citizens on either side of the Mason-Dixon line once proclaimed uncontroversial allegiance.
In the center is the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, which prescribed and proscribed powers of the central government. Beside them is the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming and justifying the rightful secession of sovereign states from an aggressive power that refused to let them go.
In front of the Henderson County courthouse, moving monuments commemorate local victims of the First World War, the fatalities in the Second, the fallen in Vietnam, the casualties of Korea, and (for the time being at least) the Confederate soldier in the War Between the States.
We are always pleased to return to western North Carolina, and look forward to doing so again. But as we reflect on the those honored by solemn stones around this stately edifice, we are humbled to recall the many men who ever did.
JD
