Southern Connections

by Charlie Wright

How can someone born in the North have a Southern connection? My dad, David Wright, was born on March 28, 1948 in Southampton, New York. However, his connection to the South and his close ties to the land provided the basis for the Southern culture that he believes influenced his closeness to family, his values of tradition, and even perhaps his self-reliance.

Although one might question how someone from New York could have any bit of Southern culture in him, a strong Southern influence was passed down to him (and ultimately me) from both his parents and grandparents. Both sets of my father’s grandparents (maternal and paternal) hailed from North Carolina. On his maternal side, the family resided in Henderson, North Carolina. My dad’s mom was also born in Henderson. As a young woman she moved to the small town of Eastport, New York, where she worked with her mother in a duck packing plant.

My father’s paternal grandparents came from Greensboro, North Carolina, where they made their living as farmers. His grandparents moved to the rural town of East Quogue, New York where they purchased a farm. My great-grandfather (whom I was named after) worked as a state highway foreman, in addition to farming. My grandfather helped farm with his father, and later my father helped his dad on the farm.

My father grew up on the family farm, about thirty minutes from where he had been born. The farm was used to grow potatoes, cauliflower and lima beans, which were sold to Birds Eye, a flash-freezing vegetable company. Other things that were raised on the farm were milk cows, beef cows, fruits and vegetables. The crops and the livestock from the farm supported his parents and siblings (five), making them almost completely self-sufficient. This strong connection to the land and its agricultural importance was a way of life for my dad. To this day, my father has always been an ”early to bed, early to rise” person. Work had to be done during daylight, so all other schedules revolved around what was happening on the farm.

When I asked my dad what it was like growing up on the farm, he said to me, “It was hard work.” For his whole life, he worked at hard jobs and he has always worked outside. I asked if he remembers his jobs on the farm, and he related a story about the first “job” he remembers. When he was eight years old, he was given the task of driving a truck through the rows of the field while his father and other workers picked and sorted lima beans by hand. He said, “I couldn’t reach the gas pedal or brake, so when I got to the end of a row, I would throw the clutch into neutral and my father would run over and turn the truck around, and I’d do it again.” He told me that he drove the truck all summer long and later during the year, he drove the truck to pick up hay and straw. When he got a little older, his father would let him plow the fields. He told me about how everyone in the family did their part on the farm in one way or another. His brothers and sisters would be helping with the cooking or planting or weeding or feeding. His mother would sometimes drive the truck when my dad was in school and with each season canned the fruits and vegetables that were ripe.

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My dad also said it was “hard” because as he got older, he was interested in doing other things. He really wanted to play baseball, but that was planting season. He wasn’t tall enough to play basketball (winter sport) so he wrestled. His nickname at school was “Farmer.” Not many farms (or farmers) were still being operated by the early 1960s. The year before my dad graduated from high school (1965), his dad decided to rent his farmland to other farmers, and he bought a cesspool cleaning and building business. My dad worked with his father for over thirty years after that. Although my dad said work was hard, there was a closeness from working with family members that has remained to this day. Work was hard, but there was a satisfaction in completing a job and there was food on the table as well.

The last topic that we talked about was family tradition and as soon as he started to answer, I recognized the Southern ties. He told me how every summer, in the month of August, they would have a huge family picnic, similar to a hog roast. The picnic included all members of his extended family and friends who came together to spend time. He told me about some of the foods, including cold watermelon and lots of corn.

My father may have grown up in New York, but he grew up with close ties to the land. Now living in North Carolina, he is always out digging in the dirt. When we first decided to move to North Carolina to live, he said, ”I’m just returning to my roots” – back to slow and easy, big front porches, NASCAR racing and barbeque – all things he’s always liked, but didn’t realize it was because of his “Southern connections.”

Work Cited

Wright, David. Personal interview. 13 Sept. 2010.

Note: Charles E. (Charlie) Wright, who lives in Whispering Pines, is a university transfer student at Sandhills Community College where he is pursuing an associate in arts degree.