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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with John Ledford, January 3, 2001. Interview K-0251. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Desire to retain small-town values

Ledford hopes that even as Madison County grows, it will retain its small-town values.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with John Ledford, January 3, 2001. Interview K-0251. 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

Well, like you say the new people coming in too. There'll be a point in time where that population will overcome the Baptist population that is kind of restricting the sale of alcohol.
JOHN LEDFORD:
Sure. And you know-
ROB AMBERG:
But that adds a whole 'nother level of problem.
JOHN LEDFORD:
It does. It's an amazing amount of problems. It's also going to require that the sheriff of the county is going to have to be educated. The county commissioners are going to have to be educated because of a different set of issues. Used to be I think, my father is a very, he's a very quick study. If you've ever been around my father, he would amaze you with his ability for numbers and memory and read something and grasp what it says probably much in excess of my ability. Don Anderson is just phenomenal. He also had the ability to stand at that store behind that counter, and the farmer could come in and tell him his problems and concerns were and dad would keep that in the back of his mind. Always when he got in these meetings, that problem was in the back of his mind. So he could balance it out. There's going to come a point in time though where as you say, retail's going to come up. New people coming in. Farming land is going to go down. It's going to maybe be a tourist type economy, that type thing. So the decisions that the commissioners are going to make may not be influenced by native Madison County people who were fifth generation or whatever it is. Somewhere I hope somebody will keep that in the back of their mind and be here at that store, a man can still walk in and lay that number down and they'll still say, 'I may be busy but I'm still going to call and make an appointment for you.' That's what we can't lose. If we lose that, we've really lost everything. It's a shame. I think it's a shame.