by Sarah Bowman
Are all the towns in the South similar? As my grandmother, “Ahmoo,” and I discussed her experiences as a Southerner, we compared the Sandhills to other “typical” southern areas. The “outside changes” here have made the Sandhills a most uncommon, un-southern, “Southern” area.It comes full circle between generations; for example, Ahmoo and I walked the same path to school, only many decades apart. If not for a northern influence of the Sandhills area, we may not have been able to share that neat experience. Our family has been in the Sandhills since the eighteenth century, and according to Ahmoo, “Not much had changed in those 200 years. I suppose before this wave of change, the majority would agree that the area was indeed an established, typical town of the South, by and large an agricultural area, and during that time, most surrounding areas in North Carolina were just that.”
However, Ahmoo told me that when the “money culture” from up North came to the Sandhills, the locals began to notice just as many similarities as differences. The two intellectual communities were similar. “Everybody had a Bible, a Shakespeare, and some other classic.” Because the area had a large population of writers and poets, publishers and press from up North frequently visited the Sandhills. She also told me, “I knew this because my mother’s cousin was a publisher of The Sandhills Citizen,” which was one of many local papers.The new resort and the local farmers had other common interests such as card games as well as hunting with their horses and dogs. One example of a benefit gained was transportation; the railroad now had the ability to support both the local shipping of produce and transporting of tourists to and fro. The outsiders brought new foods, religions, and entertainment. My Ahmoo said, “There was either home entertainment or church entertainment. Suddenly, we could go have fun in public at the theater or whatever.” With similarities come differences. In this case, it was imaginably difficult to make such significant adjustments.
“With the establishment of Fort Bragg in 1918 came a lot of displacement in the agricultural industry, and it brought many different cultures from all over America.” Following the Great Depression, people went to work in textile mills, which changed the culture from agricultural to industrial. As for politics, the South was essentially Democratic with few members of the Republican Party. “There was not usually a primary local Republican candidate at all until the outside influence brought in the Republicans.”Furthermore, the Sandhills was greatly influenced by northern outsiders, as well as money. Prior to the “invasion,” “The Sandhills was used to a classic way of life; priorities were to go to the feed store, the drug store, and the bank — a farmer’s life.” That soon changed to a more relaxed lifestyle entailing golfing and horseback riding. The area was manipulated to say the least. While it is still considered a southern town, it varies from what we typically know as “Southern.” “In comparison to other small southern towns, Sarah, the Sandhills has character unlike most others; this area is more of a vacation location with seldom, old, southern charm. If this is the ‘Southern’ one is used to, then it may not be outrageous to consider it just as equally southern.”
In doing this assignment, Ahmoo and I made fantastic connections to our pasts, and we learned that our two very different generations ultimately came a full circle. Perhaps, had it not been for the outside changes made to the Sandhills, she may not be living two doors down from the house she grew up in, which is next door to the house my dad built when I was a baby on his grandfather’s land. Although we might lack certain values or morals, she and I have many things in common, possibly an effect caused by the environment we grew up in, an old, originally southern town that was almost entirely revamped by outside entities. We shared lots of wonderful stories, and I learned how incomparable the Sandhills was to most usual towns of the South, and Ahmoo had a chance to revisit her past growing up in the most uncommon, un-southern, “Southern” town.
Works Cited
Bowman, Gay. Personal interview.13 Sep. 2012.
Note: Sarah Bowman, who is from Robbins, NC, is pursuing an associate's in arts degree at Sandhills Community College.
