It Was A Hot Summer - The Summer of '70

The Vietnam war was still going on, Congress was talking about giving the vote to 18 year olds, The Beatles had broken up and their last song, The Long and Winding Road, was at the top of the charts, and the class of '71 was preparing for the upcoming year in a still relatively new school building. Susan Rutledge was getting the cheerleaders ready for  camp in Leesburgh Florida and the football captains were getting the team ready with work-outs at Harmon Field. Most boys got a nickel post card from the football coaches like this:

Several football players had been running 5 miles a day at Harmon Field on a course that Shank Hipp had marked off with his car (to verify the distance). We thought we were in pretty good shape and talked about demonstrating our ability with a run to Spartanburg........and back!

Talk about frontal lobes not working!

Anyway, with the arrival of the post cards, time was running out. Michael Burns and Jim Vining took off on a Saturday a little before noon to make the trip. No water - no id - very little money - and they didn't tell anyone what they were doing.

The route was to be down US-176 to Heron Circle (in Spartanburg) and back - about 50 miles.

The pair made it to Landrum and stopped in Tasty Freeze for something to drink. Then to Campobello to a peach packing shed for water (out of a hose) and a peach. By the time they made it to the I-26 bridge, they knew a round trip was not going to happen. The choice became - turning around or going forward.

What would be the achievement in turning around? The honor of saying we had run to Spartanburg won out (where were those frontal lobes?).

When we finally made it to Heron Circle, it was late in the day - we had no money, no way to call anyone, and no way back except the way we had come. We did what everyone did back then - started thumbing our way back to Tryon.

Remember, we had just come 26 miles on a hot day, we were not in the best condition to catch a ride.

Surprisingly, we got a ride pretty quick which took us from Heron Circle to Pine Street. From this point, the wait was a little longer. Finally, a car headed toward Spartanburg (with 4 people), crossed over the median and pulled up beside us - asked us if we were going to Tryon (one or both of us was wearing an old Tryon Jersey) - they said they recognized the jersey. We said yes, they told us to get in - which we did.

On the way back, they invited us to go to a dance with them to the "Moon-Lite Grill" in Tryon. They said they would set us up with some girls. The Moon-Lite Grill was in the old Edmund Embury School - a former all black school.

We declined because we were in no shape after going 26 miles on a hot summer day.

Take aways from this experience - You are never in as good a shape as you think, I doubt either of us has ever run a long distance since, distances seem much shorter now, we were extremely lucky that day and - maybe this was an omen of the football season to come.

Everything Must Change

Has It Really Been 40 Years?

On the night of June 3, 1970, the class of 1971 became Seniors when the class of  '70 completed graduation. It is hard to believe the time has gone by so quickly. It is also hard to believe some of the items I have saved - and am now throwing away. The next few posts will be a collection of those items - some of them pieces of newsprint, yellowed by age and falling apart. Of course, those scraps tell the same story today, as they did in 1970 and 71 - much different than my recollections of those years. I will add some of those thoughts - and encourage you to add some of yours (and pictures). You can send them to me, or just respond to the posts.

It was the best of times and the worst of times, but it was our time to shine.

1970 Tryon High School Graduation Program

1966 8th Grade Graduation Program

Oak Hall Hotel in 1905

Books On Tryon

Tryon Architecture & Landscape

by Michael J. McCue.
This forthcoming volume presents a new approach to the heritage of architecture in Western North Carolina, a region of surprising cultural diversity.  A team of photographers with diverse artistic approaches are recording and interpreting buildings in the vicinity of Tryon, a mountain town with an especially rich architectural heritage.  The emphasis of the work is not only to show the exterior building design, but how these structures relate to natural topography and designed landscape.
Interior photography, also, is a major objective of the book.  In total there are six images of each selected property, which allows for developing an understanding of its landscape context, exteriors, and interiors as well.  The images, however, are not like Architectural Digest.  Each property is photographed candidly as it is lived in or worked in, without artificial arrangement for the camera.
The places selected are a balance of grand and small, typical and atypical. The time period is from the eighteenth century through the beginning of the twenty-first.  While the book includes vernacular designs typical of the region and the times, there is emphasis on unusual architecture and on structures designed by architects who can positively be identified.  Examples of work by many of these architects have never before been published, and some of the Tryon structures are by nationally-known architects whose work in North Carolina is not widely known.  A few of the places are easily seen by a casual visitor but, like much of the region’s most interesting architecture, most are hidden away from public view.  Some of these places are unfamiliar even to people who have lived in Tryon for a long time.
The volume is a generous format 9.5 x 11 inches, four pages per property.  Michael McCue, historian and design scholar, is authoring essays about each place to point out key architectural features, the historical significance, and how these properties enable us to understand the cultural heritage of Western North Carolina.  Some of the photographers working on the project are Christopher Bartol, Elaine Pearsons, Chris Talbot, Brenda Gray, Brooke Sanders, Carolyn Ashburn, Chuck Hearon, Mara and Ford Smith.  Vintage images are used to supplement features on historic properties, and to explicate the original designs of several Tryon structures that have been significantly altered or that are gone.
Price:  TBA
Projected publication date:  2010
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Tryon Artists: 1892 - 1942

by Michael J. McCue.
Published in a numbered, limited edition of 500, in conjunction with the 2001 exhibition at The Upstairs Gallery in Tryon, North Carolina. Hardbound 8.5 x 11, 192 pages, 79 color and 90 black and white illustrations. Includes exhibition checklist of 130 works exhibited, by 34 artists with portraits who worked in the artists' colony. Individual biographies of these painters, sculptors, illustrators and fine art photographers, plus six others who lived or sojourned in Tryon before World War II, 37 portraits of artists.

Appendix briefly describing 30 other visual artists known to have spent time in Tryon during the period. Essay by Michael McCue, presenting an overview of Tryon's place in the cultural life of North Carolina and the nation, and suggesting why its artists' colony previously has not been recognized in the scholarly literature. He shows that it was the state's most important artists' colony for fifty years, and one of the most cosmopolitan and eclectic art communities in the South. This edition is out of print. Information about many of these artists, and illustrations of their work, is contained in Paris and Tryon available now.
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Homer Ellertson (1892 - 1935)

Published in conjunction with the 2000 exhibition at Tryon Fine Arts Center. Thirty-six pages, with 5 black & white and 29 color illustrations, together with biography and commentary on Ellertson's art by Michael McCue.
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Paris & Tryon:
George C. Aid (1872 - 1938) and his Artistic Circles in France and North Carolina

by Michael J. McCue.
ISBN 0-9726801-0-1
8.5 x 11, 230 pages, 255 black-and-white illustrations, 39 color illustrations, reference bibliography, index, Smythe-sewn hard binding, dust jacket.
The American artist George C. Aid was born at Quincy, Illinois in 1872. From the St. Louis School of Fine Arts he went to Paris for study at the Julian Academy.
He lived in Europe, first in Paris, then in Bordighera, Italy, for a total of fifteen years. He was visiting in the US when WWI broke out; he never returned to Europe.
He settled in the artists community of Tryon, NC. He owned and operated a vineyard there for eight years, painting all the while.
In the 1930s Aid was invited to teach and work in Charlotte; over a two-year period prior to the onset of heart trouble, he made a major impact on the city's emerging art community.
Aid's art was exhibited in Boston, Chicago, and the Paris Salon. He took a silver medal at the 1904 St. Louis world's fair and a bronze medal at the 1915 San Francisco exposition. At the time of his death he was one of the most respected artists in North Carolina and the South.
His early work was largely oil on canvas or etching. After moving to Tryon he worked in oils and in French chalk on paper.
The first retrospective of his work was held in Tryon, NC, in 2002.

• The art of Aid, his friends and contemporaries in Europe and America
  
  
• Period photographs of artists, their studios, and locales they depicted in their art.
  
  
• Publication date: February 2003
  
  
• Winner of the 2003 Willie Parker Peace History Book Award of the North Carolina Society of Historians

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Tryon Toy Makers and Wood Carvers 1915 - 1940

by Michael J. McCue.
In 1915 Eleanor Vance and Charlotte Yale, the co-founders of Biltmore Estate Industries, moved to Tryon and founded a new craft industry that flourished for the next quarter century. In the mountain village they trained young people to make some of the finest hand-carved wood objects and hand-painted toys ever produced in the United States. The operation became nationally recognized; it was one of the original members of the Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild. The sophisticated designs and remarkable execution of the Tryon toymakers and woodcarvers are not typical of Southern "indigenous" highland craft. This introduces collectors and cultural historians to the uniquely cosmopolitan design influences of this distinctive oeuvre. Published in conjunction with the exhibition at Tryon Fine Arts Center in 2004, this monograph is now out of print.
A new hardcover book is forthcoming which will incorporate the material in this out-of-print publication, and add biographies of the crafters, numerous photographs of their work, and serve as the definitive reference for the subject. The book will be an oversized volume, with Smythe-swen binding, dustjacket, and index. Price $75. If you wish to be notified when the new Tryon Toy Makers and Wood Carvers book is published, kindly supply your contact information to Condar Press.