Whig Hill

YeeeeHawwwwww

Homeboy finished FOURTH in the Bristol night race!!!!! And he did it after racing the #24 hard and clean for the last fifty laps and digging in and passing him on the very last lap. (WTF was Gordon whining about on the radio!?!?!?!?!?)

This week Ray Evernham said

The 10 car [Scott Riggs] is right on the schedule we put it on. Look back over the notes, try and find me a first-year team that's done as well as they're doing.

I'm feeling real good about Richmond right now.

"Let Buffalo gore Buffalo and the pasture go to the strongest"

[Note: Originally posted at the old Whig Hill on August 24, 2005. I have made some minor textual editing for clarity.]

Bright Leaves is typical Ross McElwee: droll narrator, charming serendipity, interviews with utterly unselfconscious bystanders, and above all, a meandering story bouncing between an ostensible endeavor and McElwee’s personal life.

McElwee’s exploration of his family’s connection to

North Carolina

’s tobacco industry is grounded in two assertions. The first is a McElwee family history that maintains great grandfather John Harvey McElwee originated the renowned Bull Durham brand smoking tobacco only to have it stolen by James Buchannan Duke and his ruthless lawyers, paving the way for a grand legacy for the Dukes and a footnote for the great grandfather. (Well put, here.) Secondly, McElwee decided that a 1950

Hollywood

melodrama, Bright Leaf, was the story of his ancestor’s tangle with Duke.

The second assertion is easily refuted, but not before serving its purpose as a means of whimsy asides (interviews with Patricia Neal, for instance.) Bright Leaf, the movie or the novel it was based on, is decidedly not about McElwee’s great grandfather and he abandons the notion as easily as he apparently adopted it.

The first assertion is used to great effect as McElwee compares the towering spires and regal crypt of Duke Chapel to John Harvey’s humble and askew headstone; the Duke legacy in Durham to forgotten and rundown McElwee landmarks in Statesville. This provides the film and its central character the appealing aura of a star-crossed underdog. (Measured as a success by the number of questioners at the screening who inquired with dark glee about the university’s reaction, as if Buck Duke's lawyers still lurked.)

At a screening with McElwee at the Carolina Theater, I asked my own question after the film: “were you able to check the veracity of the relationship between your great grandfather and the Dukes?” McElwee (rightly) lept on my bad word choice and answered with protestations about the meaning of veracity and the value of historical truth--and really, who can honestly tell what really happened.

In fact, the travails of the elder McElwee are easily uncovered. In 1864 John Ruffin Green purchased a small tobacco factory from Robert Morris and partners. A glorified shed, actually, in the skanky hamlet

Durham

. Morris had produced Best Flavored Spanish Smoking Tobacco, a name Green changed to Genuine Durham Smoking Tobacco, a brand of (pipe) smoking tobacco notable for using the locally grown bright leaf tobacco. Green attached a bull’s head to the brand as a logo. After the Civil War, the new product, known eventually as Bull Durham, but still marketed as Genuine Durham Smoking Tobacco, began to gain a national reputation, and the ailing Green sold his company to William T. Blackwell, James Day, and Julian Carr in 1869. Blackwell and Carr dramatically grew the brand and were rewarded by long sojourns in various state and federal courts defending their patent against pretenders.

Dozens of hopeful tobacco merchants had begun to market bright leaf smoking tobacco across

North Carolina

and

Virginia

with such copy-cat names as: Durham Smoking Tobacco, Best Spanish Flavored Durham Smoking Tobacco, Original Durham Tobacco, and countless others containing either the words, genuine, original, and

Durham

. Among Blackwell and Carr’s most persistent competitors was John Harvey McElwee of

Statesville

, who, in 1877 began marketing a brand called Genuine Antebellum Smoking Tobacco, with a view of a bull for a logo. Only ten years of contentious litigation compelled McElwee to cease and desist.

The genius of the early

Durham

tobacco manufacturers and their imitators was the use of a bright leaf tobacco in their product. Genuine Durham Smoking Tobacco was the first, but W.T. Blackwell’s Bull Durham succeeded so magnificently because Julian Carr pushed so much money into innovative national advertising campaigns. Carr is responsible for building Durham as a national tobacco manufacturing center, and for bringing electricity, cotton mills, banking, and (in part) Trinity college to the town. But what is missing?

The Dukes.

In 1867 Washington Duke moved his sons and business into town and struggled alongside a dozen other manufacturing upstarts to make a name for his brands, Duke of Durham and Pro Bono Publico. In the 1870s,

Washington

--McElwee never really distinguishes between Washington and son James--and his contemporaries all ran distant seconds to the powerful Bull Durham brand. The Dukes eventually succeeded, by leasing and improving the Bonsack rolling machine, a device to mass produce cigarettes. On the path to magnate, James Duke did many things, but he never battled John Harvey McElwee and not until late in his tobacco career (1897) did his monopoly acquire the Bull Durham brand.

This criticism is not historical nit-picking--though it may seem because this film is more about McElwee’s father and his son and the familial and community necessity of accepting the consequences of giving cigarettes to the world. John Harvey McElwee and Washington/James Duke never had anything to do with each other and in over ten years of filming this documentary, I can’t possibly imagine that Ross McElwee did not find this out. But he went with it. In all productions, whether a book, an exhibit,

Hollywood

blockbuster, or humble documentary, the author makes choices to shape the story. I am a historian who will tell you up front that my exhibits and publications are crafted using carefully selected evidence and elements to convey the most accurate story the way I see it. Perhaps McElwee sat down and imagined a film comparing John Harvey’s legacy to Julian Carr’s--no named university, no globe-spanning tobacco trust, no cathedrals, no crypts--and chose to maintain the foggy family memory in service to theatrical drama.

This week

(This post has HTML problems. I've tried to fix them and can't figure it out.)

I should have taken advantage of the big link I got (see below) this week and posted some high-speed history. But I didn’t. Instead, the following things have happened.

Went to Rocky Mount for the NCMC meeting. Fairly uneventful.

I fell asleep while carpooling and didn’t realize we had sat through an hour-and-a-half traffic jam.

Had two excellent conversations about the role/nature of (history museum) curators. Because of my time at the Museum of History, I’ve been privileged to work as a curator who can focus exclusively on building and interpreting collections, creating exhibits, and generally being a historian—while not having to perform collections management, educational, fund-raising, and operational functions. But even then, the position required skills seemingly related, but in fact quite divergent. Namely, academic history, pop history (of the History Channel/gun show variety), connoisseurship, and the education/psychology/sociology aspects of visitor studies. In a sealed room, each of these would run to separate corners and glare at each other, not speaking. But in the museum, each has to have the respect of the other.

My laptop has completely crapped out. (That’s a technical term, btw.) It’s been freezing up lately and the Genius said it’s a logic board problem. Whatev. But he said it would be big money to fix so it’s basically a paperweight while I raise the coin and I’ve taken to borrowing this here scrappy little Dell machine…and…well… I can’t wait for my laptop back. I just don’t understand Windows anymore. Why? Why can’t you just do what I want without so much fuss and otherwise leave me alone, Windows? Why?

Took dog to the Eno River where she once again swam quiet laps in a nice deep hole for about twenty minutes.

Ernie and I visited Tryon Palace and I hate to say, had a very listless tour and uninspired visit. Among other problems, not once did I hear the word: Regulator.

And finally… Jeff has moved in. He’s starting the M.A. in Folklore program at Carolina. Having him be around the house and so studious has forced me to be the same and that is good. History Geekitude, Ahoy!

wake up.... WAKE UP!!!!!

Wow. A link from Ralph Luker to Whig Hill. I've been slacking off lately (a broken computer and a bad internet link at home will dampen one's self-publishing desires quickly), but I suppose I should get serious here. I do post history writing and I flatter myself to think it of some value...to me, at least.

While I scramble to compose a few more posts, I'll leave you with this disturbing result of a counterfactual exercise some friends and I performed this weekend.

Wow

Jonathan Worth
Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

This man took me to school today.

I might explain later.

Part of the problem

It was so hot this afternoon, after work, that--instead of going for a walk--I just put the dog in the car and we drove around with the air conditioner blasting.

A long, new, dog

About two weeks ago I pledged to myself to write a post a day.

How am I doin'?

Lizzie went to the doggie chiropractor today. This dog hates being poked and prodded at but she bore it well. The doctor said she had quite a bit of "stuff to fix" in her spine owing to the displaysia, her old frisbee injury, and the slipped disk. She twisted and cracked and when we were done we both noticed quite a remarkable change. Lizzie's back had been arched, but now it's straight, if not actually bowed down a little--like it's supposed to be--almost sleek like when she was a pup. The real test will be if her slipped disc slips again. But she should feel better already.

We celebrated by going to the Cole Mill access on the Eno. We haven't been there for a year, since Lizzie's run-ins with the law. She went swimming. I went in water and it was so cool and pleasant that I just sat down on an underwater rock, submerged to my shoulders. I got drowsy and almost fell asleep. (I bet I could win a Darwin Award for that: Man drowns while napping in river.) Anyhow, the dog just swam laps in the little swimming hole we had. We luxuriated like this for about thirty minutes.

Damn, I wish we lived closer to that park.