Small is Possible. Lyle Estill
rented videos in Sanford. I became a well-known customer at the scrap yard, and the local welding store.
I traded sculptures for large lunch tabs that could sustain a handful of us dining in style every day. When it was time for a fancy dinner on the town, I would book the window of the Italian place downtown and fill it with my family of six.
The deals Clyde and I struck made me a member of the local business community, involved me in the artistic revitalization effort, and caused me to re-circulate my money in the effort.
Mac and Jan opened an art gallery downtown and sold my work. We headed to Sanford for plays at the remarkable Temple Theatre, and we spent summer nights in front of the band shell kicking a soccer ball with the kids and listening to the local bands.
It was a wonderful and heady time. I was making a living as an artist, and playing the role in Sanford, and Sanford was thriving.
But the pottery festival never managed to surpass its big first year. Part of the problem was structural. Sanford built its convention center on the edge of town, rather than downtown where the revitalization was in full swing. Don and Clyde were successful at attracting thousands of out of town guests to Sanford, but they came to the edge of town, and left again, without spilling into the shops and restaurants and other venues.
Dollars collected at the festival itself left town the moment the potters closed their booths. And the event never went on to become the economic anchor that it was intended to be.
The five-star restaurant closed, and Mac and Jan folded up shop. A deathblow to the cause came when the city leaders closed Depot Park in the heart of things, for a two-year renovation. Clyde sold some of his buildings, and the giant toys came down, and Sanford slipped back into Sanford as usual — which is an industrial town with an amazing scrap yard, and a vast amount of abandoned brick buildings.
The renaissance never really took, and Sanford — like Moncure — never really went on to become an artistic Mecca.
Nowadays I see Jim at the farmer’s market. I recently started an evening primrose collection based on his offerings. I vanished into biodiesel, and he is still anchoring Haywood — just on the other side of Moncure. He has moved an old Post Office onto his lot and stocked it with an amazing collection of outsider art. His Haywood Museum of Art stuck — perhaps inspired in some way by my efforts to spawn an artistic re-creation–of the village.
It’s hard to evaluate Chessworks as a project. From a financial prospective it was borderline. It did bring some artists to town. There was something to the SOHO effect, but it would be hard to describe Moncure as a vibrant community of artists — despite the signs the Department of Transportation erected on three sides of the village, which read: Welcome to Moncure, Community of Artists.
I spent about six years as a full time studio artist, and managed to build a sustenance for one person. Chessworks stood for a decade, and remains a pleasant roadside attraction. Many have fond memories of great parties and romances and pieces of work gone by. And Moncure has become known for its artists. But self-reliance is a long way off, and I am not sure where to plug Moncure Chessworks into the framework of the possible.
I left Chessworks in the hands of Tuesday Fletcher, with whom I have fabricated hundreds of sculptures. She is an accomplished welder, who stayed with me for the construction of our biodiesel plant. She elected to close Chessworks in the fall of 2007, bringing an end to a remarkable ten year run.
It could be that the soil in Moncure might have been too thin for an artistic renaissance. And it could be the experience informed me. And caused me to head to the other end of the road — to Pittsboro where there are more resources and deeper cultural soils.
THERE ARE A FEW RHYTHMS to the Pittsboro-Moncure community, and those of us who have been around long enough plug into all of them.
One of the rhythms is set by BLAST, in which everything is electronic all the time. Another is set by a series of cell phone providers, the coverage of which tends to end on the Pittsboro-Moncure road. Whenever my signal is lost, I know I am getting close to home. The oldest rhythm is none of the above, and does not even include the telephone network.
Nobody telephones Wilbur the Woodman when they need firewood. The way we order a load from Wilbur is to visit him at one of his usual haunts. He might be selling pumpkins off the back of the truck at the dog wash on Hwy 87. Or he might see you at the Jordan Dam Mini-Mart and hand you more collards than your family could eat in several generations.
“Wilbur, I’m glad to see you.”
“Good, good, how are you? Good, glad to hear it, good.”
“We are cold Wilbur. We need a load of wood.”
“I have some. I can get it to you. You know you are blessed to have a roof over your wood. Not everyone has that.”
“Can I get two loads?”
After which you wait. He might come the next day. He might come the next week. There is no tracking number, no “Thank You For Ordering” auto-reply, and no invoice. You pay Wilbur when he comes, and if you arrive home at night and find two glorious loads of wood stacked in your shed, you pay him later, when you see him.
I probably should note that I am a big fan of wood as an energy source, and have visited the subject many times in Energy Blog:
Revisiting Wood
These days we are anticipating cold nights ahead, and among other things, our thoughts turn to heating the greenhouse.
Last year we tried to fire a waste oil burner on vegetable oil and biodiesel, but we never got it working properly and lost a greenhouse full of bedding plants. It was heartbreak, and a big setback for the farm.
This year we have decided to install a woodstove. Firewood is something we have in abundance, and there are a bunch of us around who have plenty of experience heating with wood.
The other day I found myself in conversation about North Carolina’s electrical mix, and I mentioned the 4 megawatt wood fired generator over in Craven County.
I always include them in my thinking because they are the state’s largest renewable energy installation.
And I was cautioned not to think of wood as renewable.
Whoa. If wood is not renewable, we are in deeper trouble than I thought. I know it is fashionable to think of trees as “the lungs of the planet,” but as someone who heats with wood, I prefer to think of them as batteries. They sequester the carbon, which I release with fire, to keep my family warm.
I spent one summer in the timber business. After Hurricane Fran decimated our place, I built a swimming hole with a couple of friends. My role was on the chainsaws.
I would liberate twelve foot rounds, and skid them up into piles, which we would then ship to market.
I would fetch one price for a load of southern yellow pine which would go to the construction markets, and another price for a load of gum which would go off to pulp and paper. My highest dollar load was hickory, which went off to be made into pallets.
Most of America’s hardwood goes into making pallets. We need pallets to ship “stuff” around on.
And as anyone who has ever run low on firewood knows, pallets make for great heating.
Call me old fashioned, but I’m going to leave wood on the renewable side of the energy ledger...
One of the people who operates on the same wavelength as Wilbur is Screech. He lives at the Bus Farm on the Lower Moncure Road, and the way to do business with Screech is when you bump into him.
Screech is an accomplished builder of greenhouses. He helped build the one down at the Land Lab at our local community college. And he has rescued more than his share of derelict greenhouses over time. He built our greenhouse