Threat of OWASA's water development united Cane Creek residents
As churches ceased to serve as a socializing force, Cane Creek residents became more detached from each other. However, the Orange County Water and Sewer Authority's (OWASA) attempts to develop on the land forced residents to unite across cultural, social, and religious lines to unite the residents.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Nancy Holt, October 27, 1985. Interview K-0010. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- FRANCES E. WEBB:
-
And they really weren't before?
- NANCY HOLT:
-
Well, they were on a one-on-one basis. Probably a little, a little group
here that if you, if one of the newcomers came in, they were friendly
with everybody there, but the whole neighborhood as a whole did not even
know these people. So it had the net effect of making it a very, very
cohesive group of very diverse people that ordinarily would not had a
thing in common. And, I would say that it's probably the
greatest thing that's happened to this community in a hundred
years. The positive effect of everybody pulling together and getting to
know your neighbors that lived way on the other side of Cane Creek when
you wouldn't have had - ordinarily have had - a chance nor
any community event that would draw all these people. Because the church
in the last twenty years has stopped being the center, of any activity.
Only those people that goes to this church have these activities. It -
very seldom do the churches throw open their doors and have a community
wide anything. Oak Grove Church right over here will
have you know, fund raising events. But it's not - I guess
it's concentrated in this area. Cane Creek would do this.
Bethlehem would do this. But this bypassed all religious, social,
cultural lines. And it
[mobilized]
people in ways that I just find phenomenal. So we can thank
OWASA for that, that we are all now friendly with, with, everybody
around in the community. And I guess the people felt threatened and so
they moved.
- FRANCES E. WEBB:
-
Why do you think the new people were as concerned about the lake as the
old people were?
- NANCY HOLT:
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Because, they came here for a reason. And that reason most generally was
not to be part of another housing development. They have probably made a
big, lifetime investment and they had planned to stay. And the community
was attractive to them as it was or they wouldn't have been
here. And so all of a sudden the rules were changing - everything is
going to be different? And I think I probably would have been
[mobilized]
just as much had I been a newcomer as I was being a lifelong
resident. Good, it's a good, feeling community. I went away
when Bruce and I were first married and prior to getting married, I
lived other places. And it didn't have the same feel. And I
had always considered it because this was home. That's why I
had this feeling. Now my husband will even admit that this is a good
area; it feels good. The, there's a certain something here,
an acceptance, that perhaps in where he came from in southern Alamance
county there was not. That it took fifty years for somebody to be
accepted. You know, they were viewed as outlanders and, and people that
were just upstarts in the community. And it perhaps
took two generations for somebody to be accepted as a member of the
community. It was never that way here. There was, unless the people were
really, really active in the churches, the newcomers, they never went
beyond their next neighbor which may have been a half a mile away or, or
people that they had bought the land from. So they still maintained ties
with whatever the outside world may have been. Until the community was
threatened.
- FRANCES E. WEBB:
-
So, about anybody that moved here, if they were friendly and joined the
church, could make friends and be accepted.
- NANCY HOLT:
-
Um-uhm, um-uhm. That was, that was never a problem. But you see we never
had an influx of these people here because the only people that
generally came into the community married into it. And so sons and
daughters got some of the family land and they built on it. And then
their children. And so that's the way - it was like a
community population.