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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0510, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
In this interview, Steve Holland, Republican county commissioner and businessman in Pender County, North Carolina, describes the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd. His business, a store and restaurant, was destroyed, and although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) denied his application for aid money, he is still waiting for adequate compensation from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Holland seems angry about the red tape he and other Pender County residents encountered as they tried to piece their lives back together, and rampant fraud supplemented his frustration. He speaks at great length in the interview about his irritation with big government, property taxes, and freeloaders.
Steve Holland, a Republican county commissioner and businessman in Pender County, North Carolina, describes the personal and bureaucratic struggles he faced the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
So we're here. This is Shelter Creek. What do you call it?
This is Holland Shelter creek. The name of the creek is Holly Shelter Creek.
Holly Shelter. Okay. [We are] here with Mr. Steve Holland who's a Pender County commissioner and a small business owner. It's December 16th, 1999. I'm Charlie Thompson, and we are talking about the flood after Hurricane Floyd—how it affected his business, how it affected the river, this community, and hopefully we can talk some about the county's perspective on it since Mr. Holland is a county commissioner. You were starting to tell us that story about how when you were young you used to come up here. You weren't born right here on the river, on the creek.
I was born right outside of Burgaw. Which is—. I'm probably nine miles from where I was born. Part of my live I was raised over near the Morse Creek Battleground, which is over in the Currie area.
Currie of Pender County?
Um-hum.
Okay.
At thirteen years old I moved to Wilmington, or my parents did and I had to go. At thirty-three I moved back to Pender County, which is where my grandmother and all my aunts and uncles on my mother's side were from.
Now, you didn't want to go?
No, I never could get that mud out [from] between my toes when I got in Pender County.
Because you liked the outdoors, you didn't want to move to town?
Yeah. My grandmother lived in Atkinson. I came up and spent a lot of with her and my step-granddaddy, and [we] squirrel hunted. Then at thirty-three years old I got a chance to buy a little fishing shop on Holly Shelter Creek.
What were you doing then, when you were thirty-three, up to that point?
Well, I'd been a construction worker. I'd been a boat captain. I ran a tractor-trailer. I had a shrubbery business. I'm a boiler maker, pipe fitter, carpenter. My dad told me when I was real young, learn how to do a lot of different things, that way you'll never be out of a job. I took him for his word. I tried to learn as much as I could over the years.
And you went to high school here in—.
I went to high school in Wilmington at New Hanover.
Did you go on to other school after that?
No.
You just started all your mini-businesses?
Yep. I started working when we lived in the country in tobacco and blueberries, and stuff. Then we moved to Wilmington and I went and worked for a contractor when I was thirteen years old. I worked after school and summers, and played ball. Played a little football and baseball. When I got out of school I went into service.
Was that the Vietnam era?
Um-hum. When I came back I went back to work for the same man as I had worked for when I was thirteen. I ended up building nine houses myself. I got into the bulk-head business—piers and stuff—for a few years there. Then, when I was about thirty-three years old, I had been trying to figure out how to come back to Pender County. I was up here on the creek and found a lot right around the corner from this store here. I drove back up here. I didn't know how to get to it by land, but I new how to get to it by water. The guy who had this little fishing shop said, "Instead of a lot, why don't you have a business?" Eighteen days later I leased it for thirty years.
Did he give you the idea of what business, or did he just say—?
Well, all he had here was—. He sold drinks and maps, and sold a little bit of bait and tackle. So I added onto it. I put in a little sporting goods department. After about a year I realized that you can't make it off of hunting and fishing six months out of the year, so I built a kitchen and a small dining room.
What year was that?
I came up here in 1981. I put my kitchen in in '82—the end of '82. In '84 I built the first dining room that's over the wharf, and went into the seafood business. I went from one employee in 1981 to, probably, in 1984 I had three. In 1999 I had twenty-three. I average a little over three thousand people a week for this little restaurant.
Which seats—? You told me already.
Which seats, now, one hundred and thirty-five. It went from twenty-eight seats to a hundred and thirty-five seats over this period of time.
You've got other businesses associated with this restaurant.
Well, then I built a campground. And then in 1998, in the fall, a good friend of mine came in and went partners with me on—not on the store and the restaurant, but we built ten cedar cabins with tin roofs, and bought forty canoes and a fifteen-passenger van, and started running trips on the creek. And the restaurant business just kept growing. We had just started [the creek trips before the flood]. We had the cabins we finished up and opened in May of 1999.
Ten cabins, was it?
Um-hum. They were just starting to pay for themselves. I think we had done thirty-eight or forty-eight church groups and youths groups, as far as running trips on the creek. We were renting quite a few individual canoes out, for people's day trips. Then on September 16th, it all stopped.
That's when the flood came.
That's when the hurricane hit us.
Did you have high winds? You could tell the hurricane was passing through?
Oh, yeah. I had maybe four or five threes that got blown down. Really didn't have hardly any damage—a few shingles off here and there.
Now your house is also here. You own a good bit of river frontage? Much more than that one piece you bought in '81.
Well, I leased this property for thirty years.
That's right.
There's three thousand feet of water front here. There's about seven and
a half acres. A few years back I bought a couple of lots on the creek
right around the corner
And that's all been through floods and hurricanes before, right?
Well Fran, when it came through, I got some water in my garage under my house. That didn't bother me a whole a lot. The store had no water in it. The campground didn't have any water in it. And my farm—. I did get fourteen inches of water in a little camp that I have down there, but it wasn't very destructive. But this September, the water came up, basically, about seven and a half feet higher than Fran did at the restaurant, the store, and the campground, and my house. It didn't rise that much at the farm. We had the back up effect of the water not being able to get out of here—which was no one's fault. It was just that too much water came down at one time.
So back to the fifteenth, four trees blew down and then you got up the next morning it was still possible to live here?
Oh, yeah. The water didn't really get bad until the hurricane hit on Wednesday.
Right. And that was the fifteenth, wasn't it?
Yeah. The fifteenth. And three days later is when we realized that it [the flooding] was going to be worse than we'd ever seen.
How did you start knowing that?
Well, we came across the river bridge and the water was getting so deep
that you couldn't drive a vehicle. Shelter Creek was still dry at the
time, but it [the flood
You were watching on TV, the news about this place.
Yeah. One night I was watching the news and they were showing a boat going down Highway 53. They showed a roof and I recognized it as my business. Some friends came [to the hospital]. They didn't want to tell me about it because I was kind of in bad shape. Then I found out it also went in my house. I stayed, altogether, eleven days [in the hospital]. I was unable to walk or get up. On the eleventh day they found out what was causing the problem [and] they operated on me. I got out of the hospital on a Friday, and on Sunday morning they told me I couldn't ride or drive for six days. But on the second day I told my mother that I had to go see what I was facing. She brought me up here and that's when I saw what was left of my store.
What did you think when you first saw it?
Well, it was devastating. After I saw the store and the campground, I
went to my house. I couldn't go to the farm because I just couldn't face
one more thing in the same day. I'd seen them both. It's not the worst
thing I ever went through. I lost a daughter eight years ago to cancer.
There's nothing that can devastate you as much as
Do you understand that process? Can you explain it to us, and how they determine who is eligible for FEMA and SBA, and so forth?
Well, I wish I could explain it. I don't understand it. I watched TV while I was in the hospital [and heard about FEMA]. When I got out of the hospital and I went to them, they said, "Oh, we're going to help you out."
You went to them in Burgaw?
Um-hum. When I finally got out of the hospital [and got to the point] where I could walk, I went in and filled out all the paperwork. I got a letter from them saying that I didn't qualify for anything.
Because you are—?
It really didn't say. It said, "At this time you don't qualify for anything." Since I was turned down by FEMA for any assistance, I went to my bank. My bank told me that whatever it took to get me back in business, they would help. Then SBA showed up. SBA said, "We're going to put you back to where you were before the hurricane."
That was when? What month?
That was in October—the end of October.
And this [SBA] person came out of Raleigh? Out of Washington?
I guess he came out of Atlanta. That or Washington. But the process is—. I still ain't got any money and it's been four months since my place closed down. I think we're getting close to that. As long as you got enough collateral, then they loan you the money. They don't give you any money. They loan it. You pay it back at a lower interest rate.
Can you tell how much you want to borrow and how much collateral they require? That seemed a little bit high when you were telling us before. More than a little bit.
I don't understand how they figured it. They tell me that I qualify for three-hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars in loans on my store and restaurant. The campground did not qualify for anything because it has not been in existence since May, actually. I didn't have a track record back there, even though I owned the campground before and I turned it over to a new partnership.
It's been in business thirty-three—.
Well, eighteen years in this location. But that it didn't qualify for any assistance—loans or anything else. My house qualified for a hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars in loans. I had flood insurance on it. The flood insurance wasn't as high as their estimates were to fix it. The man that built it originally says he can put it back the way it was for a lot less than they estimated. They just started working on it. I also had a farm. It went under water and it didn't qualify for anything.
Say what you raised on the farm.
Well, it's a small game preserve with deer, wild turkey, ducks, squirrels, rabbits.
Are you actually responsible for putting some of those animals out there, or do you just make it attractive for them?
I make it attractive for them. I was probably spending six or seven thousand dollars a year feeding wild game and taking very little. I've been a sportsman all my life and I figured—.
And you have two sons who are [sportsmen] as well, right?
Yeah. I always felt like if God looked out for you and you could afford to do it, that you needed to give something back. That's one of the places that I give back. They don't go hungry at the farm. We plant corn, we plant oats, soy beans. We plant rye and peas. I bought five loads of sweet potatoes last year. I probably bought four or five hundred bags of corn and put it out for them.
You drive your truck out there and just leave these things around the fields?
I put seven fields in on this property and I plant it every year. I built a duck impoundment that's about five acres when it is flooded with water. I put a corn field right in the middle of it. There was one road in, and I have a little more than four-and-a half miles of roads and trails that I've cut and maintained. It's a right unique place.
And people pay to go in there hunt?
No.
That's separate. You don't have that as a business.
No, it's not a business. It's something I did for my children, because we're losing all the land to development. I thought this was a way my kids would learn to respect wildlife and the outdoors. This is what I try to teach them.
How do you get there from here? Do you go on the river?
Well, you can. It's twelve miles by water, but you can't go up and down the creek right now, because there's too many trees across it. The county had just finished cleaning them up about a year ago. Now, all of a sudden, this last storm, or three storms this year, blocked it up again. By land it's only four miles up the road.
So, you've mentioned three storms. How many inches of water does that total?
Right here in our neighborhood, with the three storms, [the water] amounted to forty-one inches. Some places got a little less and some places got a little more. One storm dropped twenty-one inches of rain on us—Floyd—which is kind of a lot of water to dispose of. I think a lot of it's got to do with—. We're doing so much development now. We're cutting so much timber, that there's nothing to soak up the water. The worst part is hurricane season usually hits us when the sap quits rising. Consequently, all these trees are not drinking the water that they drink during the rest of the year. But I don't think if you look anywhere in this nation they've gotten that much rain in that period of time.
Right. Tell me more about that process of how they opened the dams on the main Cape Fear River and so on. You understand that better than anybody I've talked with.
Well, you have [two] locking dams—Riegelwood, and the other one's up in Elizabethtown.
Riegelwood, what county is that in?
That's in Brunswick.
Okay.
I think it's Brunswick. It might be Sampson County.
Okay.
They didn't have a choice but to open the dams. They tried holding it back as long as possible. It was either open the gates, or the gates blow out—which would have been devastating [and would have]caused more flooding in their area than they already had.
So they opened the gates gradually, or just—?
Well, I'm sure that they tried doing it in a reasonable intervals, you know, to let this water off. What happened was, the Cape Fear River filled up.
It backed all the way up from Wilmington back, right?
Well, the Cape Fear River was at forty-foot or something, flood stage. When they let the water out it came down to Wilmington.
So, it hits the ocean, right?
No, what it does [is] it comes down and hits Wilmington.
Okay.
Then the Northeast Cape Fear in Wilmington runs together, and Black River, all down in Wilmington.
Okay.
When the water came down it didn't have anywhere to go. It was such a magnitude of water coming from everywhere that the water started backing up. The reason that we know it was backing up is because up the road from us the water was a lot lower than it was here, and there was no reason for it to be lower. That's where the water started at. The water shouldn't have built up that high. We should have got less. Instead, we got more. It had to be a backup effect that caused the extent of the flooding that we had, but nobody I know of blames them for opening the dams. They didn't have a choice. It would have been nice if we could have foreseen it and they could have let the water out before it ever got that bad, but I'm sure they were doing the best they could. We just had to pay the price this time.
How many people in Pender County have been affected by the flood?
One of the reports that I saw at the county office was thirteen hundred homes, not counting businesses.
Can you name some of the communities where it was worst?
Well, Maple Hill, White Stocking, Stag Park, Burgaw, Currie. Some places
were a lot worse. We had a lot of flooding up near the Penderlea area,
especially Wallace. Wallace is in Duplin County. They had extensive
Rockfish Creek running into the Northeast backed up over the highways
and devastated the people in that area. Probably our worst area was
Holly Shelter Creek, White Stocking, Grooms Bridge Road, on this side of
the county. Stag Park. Burgaw, they're not in a flood zone and they
didn't realize how bad it was for them—or how vulnerable it was. They
were where this water backed up. We also had three industries on I-40.
It completely closed down I-40
What are those businesses?
Chloride, Wheeland, and Leslie Lock.
Okay. Let's talk a minute, since you're a county commissioner, about what the county's role is in the recovery effort or in the rescue effort. How did you see the county taking action? You were in the hospital part of that time, but what's the responsibility of each branch of government, the federal government, and so on? How is that divided up and who knows whose responsibility it is to save people's live and then whose it is to help people rebuild and that sort of thing?
Well, the saving of lives comes up in emergency management. We did have to come in with helicopters and pick up people.
Pender County has helicopters?
No. We had to bring in rescue helicopters.
From?
Which is military, and there were some private ones, too, but not from Pender County. Camp Lejeune, Fort Bragg brought in amphibious vehicles to help move people out and to gather up dead animals from farms and all. The county was basically more of the focal point where they did the assessment where the water was rising, where they needed more assistance, helping with food banks. And then the Red Cross came in.
You have a chapter in Pender County?
No, but we're in a district area. They came and gave out things and tried helping as many people—. A lot of assistance went through social services and the governor and all sent in supplies and stuff out here.
But some of that just didn't work as smoothly—. I mean, part of this history is about the recovery effort, and if it just didn't work well, if it didn't get to the right people in every case, then I think history deserves to know that. Often in our media coverage and the announcements we get from Governor Hunt's office, it seems as though everyone is getting equal shares of all this, and counties are getting it, you know. Where does it go? It goes directly from the governor's office to social services?
Well, like I say, I was in the hospital during the crucial time, but my understanding was that just about all of the assistance came down from Raleigh, from the state.
From that governor's emergency fund?
Right. [It] came through social services. I think a lot of people were left out of the loop because flood victims were displaced. They lost their homes. They didn't have anywhere to stay.
And they were gone to other counties?
Yeah. They had to find shelter somewhere else. We tried to get the mobile units in here as fast as possible. It seems like a lot of people that needed them didn't get them. A lot of people still haven't got any help. I think there is a better way to do it. They need to assess the damage in other ways.
Can you give recommendations for how that could work?
I think a lot of people that got assistance weren't hurt and didn't deserve it, but they took it anyway because it was free. It really put a bad taste in a lot of other people's mouth. Here I am, I lost everything I had, and I'm not getting any assistance, or any answers, and people that weren't even affected by the flood—I mean they were affected by the hurricane, but they didn't lose their homes and didn't have water in them, or their businesses, or anything else— were standing in the lines getting a lot of this stuff that should have went to people.
Food? Money?
Everything. I think that when all is said and done and they start looking back at it, some of these people are going to be sorry they did what they did. I hope they'll feel responsible for taking things that they shouldn't of took—that they didn't deserve. There's a lot of people in Pender County that got hurt a lot—lost everything. A lot of people didn't lose anything benefited from it. A better way is to assess the damage of who got hurt, and keep a record of who got the services. I just don't feel like a lot of the that people deserved it got it.
As county commissioner, is there any way that you can see the county doing a better job?
I think the county did an excellent job. The breakdown came when the stuff was sitting in here. It was sent to be distributed, maybe not in the fairest way. I think that the ball got dropped between the state and the federal government. I don't think the county dropped the ball. We did everything financially that we could do. There's only so much money in a county. You do not have the resources that the state and federal government has.
About how much money can a rural county like this put together to help people? And how did you use that money?
Well, a lot of the money which the county puts up initially is reimbursable through FEMA or through different agencies that help in these disasters. But the county, and the state—. One of the things that the state did do this time was that they took over the debris removal. Right now the problem that I see is they're going to quit picking up debris. Well, a lot of the neighbors here still haven't got any money, so consequently, they haven't been able to do any work.
In other words, removing debris costs money?
Right. We front a lot of it and then hope that we get back part of it. We set up areas to haul debris through waste management or waste industry. We use the resources that we do, but they have to be paid.
And that includes the county landfill?
Well, we don't have a landfill any more. They closed ours down.
Where do you take all this?
We have some staging areas that it's taken to initially, and then we have to have a contract to haul it to a landfill by somebody that's licensed and can take the kind of material that we have.
Is that in a close-by county, or do you have to go out and—?
I think it's over in Sampson County, the closest one. Hauling costs is
not cheap. You're talking about a lot of debris when you're talking
about thirteen hundred homes and then businesses that have to be gutted
or tore down. One of the biggest things that we lost was a lot of
trailers, which were people's homes. Like you say, even when
In order to borrow money, you had to have had flood insurance?
No, you didn't have to have flood insurance. You have to put flood insurance on it if you borrow the money.
Okay. You have to buy the insurance in order to get the loan.
Right.
From SBA, a least. From the bank, too, probably.
Yeah. It makes no difference. The rates are better, but the parameters of what the loan are for cost you a lot more through SBA then it does through the bank.
That's the first I've heard that. It costs more to borrow from SBA?
Well, it does because of all the loopholes. By the time you hire a lawyer to do title searches, deed of trust, and then you get flood insurance, that's a continuing expense, through the life of the loan.
You figured it up? How much is that money going to cost?
Well, just on this store loan, if I ran it for thirty years and made the payments like they set up, it's going to cost me about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, extra, just in insurance premiums, above what I'm already paying.
Just to borrow three hundred and thirty some thousand. So you're spending more than half to borrow the money.
Right.
If you didn't have this money set aside, some sort of nest egg, there would be no way you could rebuild.
Well, to start with, to qualify for loans you have to have the insurance in place. Most people aren't sitting around with a nice nest egg, or they've got it tied up in a retirement program, or something, that when you take it out, you have to pay taxes on it. That leaves you without a whole lot of money, but you have to do these things to qualify for your loans. I had to prove that I had insurance on everything that was being used for collateral. Consequently, if I hadn't had the money to buy the extra insurance that they require, I couldn't have borrowed the money. Then, I have to continue paying that every year as long as you have borrowed money. And the difference—. My house and my farm, there was no question about those. My store—. The problem is, on commercial property, it's not—. I don't pay twenty-two cent on a hundred, like a do for a house. I pay a dollar and seventy-eight, I think it is, a hundred on the store. Well, that mounts up to a lot of insurance. The difference is my house is worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or two hundred and twenty-five thousand. The store is worth two hundred and twenty-five thousand.
The store slash restaurant.
Yeah. So, my insurance on my house is going to cost me, three hundred and eighty dollars. The insurance on my restaurant is going to cost three thousand three hundred and twenty six dollars a year.
So how are you doing on time?
Oh, I'm fine.
Still okay. This tape is probably going to run out, and we'll turn it over. But, these fellows are moving this mobile home. Is that something that was on your property?
No, that's a new one. They must be taking it to somebody.
Okay. Looks like they're going through debris. Well, I'm thinking of different levels. We've talked some about the county. We talked just slightly about Governor Hunt's sending money to social services. What do you think about all these millions of dollars? There's a lot of controversy right now in Raleigh between legislators, say, from the mountains—particularly Republicans who say, "We don't want to pay for this." Then there's Governor Hunt's side that says, "Well, we don't want to raise taxes to come up with money. We're going to take it from the other programs." His statement in yesterday's news was, "If you have a leak in the kitchen you have to stop building your deck on the front of your house to go and fix the leak." He's saying the leak is like the flood, and the deck on the front of the house is like all these other social programs, Smart Start, and some of those. Where do you stand on those kinds of issues? What should the state do?
I don't know how much the state can do. They work on basically seven
percent—that is what our tax rate is. I think there's a lot of programs,
because I'm a [Unclear.] [Background noise of car driving by.] [Unclear]
Explain what you mean by that.
Well, you pay unemployment taxes on a sliding scale of what your rate is, or how dangerous it, whether it's a tree man, a line man or a cook, right on down to if you've got clerical work going.
One is more likely to cause disability than the others.
Right.
Okay.
So you try and get your rate down as low as you can by not having accidents, by working safe—by teaching your employees to work safe. The state came along after the hurricane and said, "Okay. We're going to let your employees draw unemployment, but we're not going to let them draw against you. That will keep your rate from going up." Every person that draws makes your rate go up. I have a very good safety record here. I've had two accidents in ten years, and none of them were real bad.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
What the state did was say, "Okay, you estimate when you're going to be back in business." My estimation was the fifteenth of January. That was under the assumption that my SBA loan, and all, would come through where I could do more work. Well, this is on the fifteenth or fourteenth?
Today?
Yeah.
Well, I have the sixteenth on my watch.
I think it is the fifteenth.
Oh, it is? Well, my watch was wrong. Well, okay.
Well, it is the fifteenth of December, and I'm about thirty per cent through my building. I'm at the point now where I've just about depleted what I had saved up, and now I'm waiting on the federal government.
That makes it exactly three months, really. September, October, November, December. Okay.
Until the money starts coming in, which you have to jump through all the hoops and send in receipts, and all, of what you're doing—. And most businesses or homeowners, even homeowners, aren't as lucky as I was. I had saved some money to pay off some debt. I've used that money to get started. I'm probably not going to hit my target date of January the fifteenth, but hopefully I'll make it back, say February the first. But come January the fifteenth, my employees have to start looking for a job. If they don't find one, then it starts going against my unemployment.
So for four months, exactly, they would not put it against yours.
Right.
Okay. But then you think for two weeks you're going to have to start paying—.
Well, if, if—I'm still waiting on my SBA loan. I've been approved. I've done all of the things they told me I had to do, but the check's not in the mail yet.
And what all did you have to do? You had to get insurance, we went through that.
Insurance, you had to get title searches, you had deed of trust. You had to have an opinion on your property.
Um-hum. Appraisal, right?
Appraisal.
And all that you pay for?
Oh yes.
Okay.
And I was lucky because the lawyer that I used was the one that I used when I bought the things that I had. So consequently, none of it had changed over the years as I made payments. I just paid it down. But a lot of people aren't as lucky as I was. And a lot of people weren't as lucky as I was by having my ( ). I was a lot further along that most businesses or homeowners. And I'm just hoping and praying that I make it at least by February the first. Because I need these people back to work, and I don't need my employment rate to go up to where I have to pay more. I'm already paying enough. I don't need to be paying more.
Now, these twenty-three are just for the store and the restaurant, or are they also for your camp?
That's just the store and the restaurant.
Total, how many people do you employ in the season when you're open with the cabins?
Well, we just opened it up, my partner and I, and we have one contract ( ) that comes in and cleans cabins, a cleaning service. And the rest we do ourselves.
[Aside to someone who enters room.]
Hello.
What do you say?
Do you want me to ( )?
Six or seven cases of ( ), back there in my office. We had to throw them away, salt, pepper. Everything that was plastic had to be thrown away. Now we find out that there wasn't any pollution hardly in this water. Well, it's too late now. Everything's been thrown away. Tee-shirts. I probably had two hundred and twenty-five tee-shirts hanging on racks back there, rods and reels, coolers. I mean just, it's unbelievable all of the stuff that was in here. And stuff on the walls. I mean, there were three Terry Revlin prints hanging on the wall that I bought at either Ducks Unlimited or either the Wild Turkey Federation, that anywhere from three hundred to six hundred dollars. All of them are gone now. Wildlife that was hanging in here. My bear is going to survive. My old wooden Indian is going to survive, and those bass out there are going to survive. But, I mean, probably half the stuff that was in here people gave me. They were in Saudi Arabia and brought me a can back with the letters of Saudi Arabia, or whatever.
( ).
Yeah, yeah. Just all kind of stuff in here that was—and that you can't
replace. Some paintings and stuff that local people did. There were two
wall over in there that were covered with nothing but hunting and
fishing pictures from, it started eighteen years ago, that were people
that were five and six years old and fishing with their
Why do they like coming?
Well, just the way it looked and the food. Plus, I've got some of the best employees you'd ever want to have working for you. Not all of them are that way, but a—I have five that went from nine years to fourteen years with me. You know, when people stay with you that long you must be doing something right.
You get the schematic?
Shucks, no.
Ain't got it yet?
Nope. It didn't come in the mail because I checked it last night. I don't know why it didn't come. ( ). They was going to bring that refrigerator and that beer cooler, Monday, and bring the schematics for the coolers. And I got the new door hinges and all. Do you know how much a set of hinges for that walk-in cooler is? Two hundred and fifty collars for two hinges. A hundred and twenty-five dollars a hinge.
That's probably a good hinge, ain't it? [Laughter]
Now you ( ) fixing?
They were a God-send, the volunteers that came here. They gutted this place in four days.
Where were they from?
Well, I say volunteers, but not volunteers. It was that president, our wonderful president, had a deal where they pay them seven dollars an hour.
Oh, Ameri-Corps.
Right. And, but I'll tell you what, they're workers. They came in here and gutted this whole place. The only problem was, just like the door hinges, when the ripped it out, instead of saving them they threw them away. I mean, they didn't save anything. They threw everything away that was in here.
Now they were saying to some people in some communities, "Throw everything away because it is contaminated." You were saying something about that. Is that what they were telling you?
Oh yeah. They told us if you had any clothing, anything that got wet with this water, throw it away. You can't wash it.
Why? I mean, why did they tell you that?
Because of the pollution in it.
Pollution from—?
Well, the first reports were is that all these hog farms, and turkey farms, and all the dead animals, and all the e-coli, all this stuff.
Someone said it was dead hogs.
But, I went to the Health Department and I was talking to the head, the
health director. And he told me that out of three thousand that they
only had like, twenty-six that had e-coli in the water. And all you had
to do was Clorox it, and they all cleared up. I think they got three
left in Pender county that hasn't cleared up. You know, so, where's
Yeah. We've heard that time and time again.
Well, and a lot of people got more than they deserved. And a lot of people that deserved more got nothing.
Um-hum.
It's like Mr. King over there, wanting to loan him money at seventy-four years old with a bad heart. You know, that's not helping anybody. I mean how many years did he pay taxes, and look out for his country? And there's nobody here to help him. He's never used social services. He's never used the Health Department. He worked and paid his way through. Now that he's at an age that he can't do it again, they want to loan him money? Huh. It's just not right. I don't know what the answer is. The one thing that happens with all these disasters is the government keeps growing. You know, that's the one thing I see is that every time you turn around we have a disaster, they hire another five thousand people. And once they put them on the payroll, they don't ever get off. So government just keeps growing. The one thing they did here in Pender County, and I don't know a lot about it. You can talk to our county manager about it. But they did come up, the Feds, with some of the people that are out of work, and I have two of my employees that are doing it. They hire through the Federal government to do assessments. And go out and take pictures of every flood house. Put it all on maps and stuff like that.
These are Federal employees or contractors? How does that work?
This is people like the people that work for me.
Okay.
That they're going to be out of work for X amount of time. Well, they, they said, okay, the county can hire these because we need the maps updated, we need to know where every house is. So, we'll let you pay them X amount of money, and they'll come to work, and they can work for six months. And then the job ends. Which is a good deal. It's, at least a few of my employees took advantage of it. And the day that I open back up, then their job ends and they come back with me. Or it can run until June. Well, they're not going to be able, mine won't work through June because I'm going to get opened back up one way or another. But, so it gives them—they feel better about themselves instead of laying around the house drawing unemployment. Now I have some that are just as happy as they can be, going down there picking up that check once a week for doing nothing. But then I've got some that just, they're workers and they're not going to sit around and take and do nothing.
So that's an example of people getting on the Federal payroll and then getting back off. But then there's some, you're saying, that get on and never get off.
Oh, of course.
Are they FEMA people, or what's the story?
Well, I'm sure it's FEMA, SBA, all of it. It seems like the few times I went to an SBA office and FEMA, they always had new trainees.
In Burgaw?
Um-hum.
Okay. I want you to describe that office in a bit, but go ahead and say what you're going to say.
Well, every time you go in there they got new trainees working. And just from listening to conversations with them, you know, I said, "How long have you worked here?" "Well, I'm training." "Well, how long have you worked here?" "Well, oh, I've been traveling around doing disasters for nine years. I did it just for one of them and now I've ended up, I've worked, you know, now I've been here nine years, going all over the country." Well, that's what happens. They hire them. They, you know, it keeps growing. The government keeps growing. You know, Pender County is the same way. There's state and federal mandates, programs, that we have to do. And then they'll fund them for about three years, and all of a sudden the funding goes away, but we have to keep the programs. So then we have to pick up the dip. And social services is the fastest one there is in the state. I mean, all the social services are growing. Because they keep coming up with these programs. Instead of cutting out programs that don't work, they just let them stay there. Just mold around it. And then they have these new programs, and they say, "Okay. We're going to fund this. We're going to fund it eighty thousand dollars a year. It's going to take care of this, two staff members, a part-time one, and this and that and the other." And then at three years, all of a sudden the come and say, "All right. We're not going to fund it any more, but you've got to keep it." So what do you do? You have to raise taxes. Because we hadn't raised taxes in Pender County in five years. The reason we hadn't raised taxes is because the, the, we were in bankruptcy. We had less than fifty-thousand dollars in fund balance six years ago.
The county was bankrupt.
Yeah. The state wrote us a letter and said, "You've thirty days to come up with a business plan or the state is going to take over Pender County. It is the worse run county in North Carolina." This was six years ago. For the last three years we've won the most distinguished award in Pender, in North Carolina as the best innovative, best run county there is. That's what happens when you get a good county manager and some good commissioners.
Is that what you all did, you re-elected, I mean, elected some new people and rehired a manager?
Oh, and not because they were Republicans, but we went from a board of five Democrats that took, they spent, they spent more money in a month than the county commissioners we have now spent in a year, traveling.
Traveling.
They went all over the United States. Every conference they came down and stayed in a three hundred dollar a night rooms. County manager that was here spent money just like there was no tomorrow. And then, got to send this back. We hired a good county manager. They elected three Republicans. Turned around and elected two more. We ended up with, five years ago, we ended up with more than four Republicans and one Democrat.
And when were you elected?
Five years ago.
Okay. That's more than I thought. Okay.
But, we said, "All right. No more growing. We're going to get rid of all
the fat. You're going to start doing your jobs, or you're not going to
work here." And we
Um. That represents a huge change for local government, doesn't it? Changing over to the Republican party majority is that, in this part of the state—.
Oh, that was a—listen, the first Republican was elected seven years ago.
First Republican ever?
Ever in the history of Pender County.
Okay.
And not, we had some good Democrat government, too. Problem is we didn't have enough, good ones. We had too many that were too easily lead and ( ).
So they lead them to bankruptcy, to near bankruptcy.
Well, we had fifty thousand dollars in fund balance, which you're supposed to keep between eighteen and twenty percent of what it takes to operate. Which means that you need about two and one-half million dollars. And we had fifty thousand dollars.
That sounds like my billfold.
Yeah. Sounds like mine, too. [Laughter]
I'll see you tomorrow, Steve.
All right.
Okay, let's go back to the FEMA office now. You went in there, you saw these trainees and people. Where did they set up the office, and how many people where there, and how long did they stay?
Well, they're still here.
Okay.
In fact, I think they're getting ready to extend it another month.
That's right. January fifteenth.
They were in the corner building, in the Westwood Building when I went to see them.
Is that in downtown Burgaw?
Um-hum. Right across from the court house.
Okay.
And you couldn't ask for nicer people to talk with. The, the ones that wrote all the letters that said you don't qualify for anything are not the people that were here that you dealt with. They were the bureaucrats sitting in Washington, or in Atlanta, or somewhere else.
So these people come down here and they sit in that office, or do they go out around and look at your homes, or what do they—.
Well, these people sit in the office. And you go in and you fill out all these forms and papers and stuff. And then they tell you whether you qualify for FEMA or whether you qualify or you don't. You get a letter on it. And—.
They just process the papers and send them to Washington or Atlanta.
Right. So the ones that you deal with here are not the ones that give you
the final okay. I just did my final on the store loan last week, and a
lawyer from the SBA came for the closing. And I was lucky, because the
law firm that I've always used had all the records and everything of
what I'd bought, and how much I owed, and all this. So it
You mean as in lawyers and so forth?
Yeah. I mean, how do you do all these things, buy insurance and stuff, if you don't have any money? You know, there's got to be a better system as far as at least coming up with a reasonable amount of money that you can get to start with to get your life started back. And then work into your long-term goals or whatever. But it's, I mean, there is no program that I knew of that you walk in, except a certain group of people—somebody was told that they were giving away seven thousand dollars. I have a guy—.
Per family, is that what you mean?
Yeah.
Okay.
And, I was like, "Seven thousand dollars. Now how did you qualify for
that?" And these were either farmers or, I mean, all of them were just
like I was. Well, why do they qualify and I don't? I'm still out of my
house, you know, so why do I not
Right.
It doesn't matter, it's just a different set of numbers. But when you lose, you lose, you know. So I don't see how one can qualify any better than the other one. But in the programs that they've got set up, they, when I got to my mother's house after I got out of the hospital, there was a check there for three hundred and fifty-four dollars for assistance.
For her?
No, for me. She lives in Wilmington.
Okay.
For me, for being out of my home. And then about, and so I called and
asked them what it was for because I hadn't put in for anything because
I was in the hospital at the time. And they said, "Well, that's for, we
understand you flooded, your house flooded, and all this." And I said,
"Yeah." "So this is to help you rent a place or get your place started
back." And I'm like, huh? Three hundred and fifty-four dollars. Let's
see my mortgage payment is eight hundred and fifty a month. There's no
housing left in
That's a one-time payment, that's not—.
Well, see, I, and they told me that I, if, if—that they might want the
money back in the loan. If this money is not used for that, then they
might want the money back. And I'm like, huh? [Sigh of exasperation.]
Where are you living?
Well, my farm—.
Okay.
—had forty inches of water in it, and I'm running two humidifiers trying to draw water out of the walls. But when, there were steam cleaners, some friends of mine, and gutted it, as far as, we didn't have to tear the boards off, but steam clean it. And then the furniture, I only got about ten, eleven inches up here in this house. So it only got up on, it didn't ruin all the furniture at my house. So I had to throw all that furniture away down there, and I moved the furniture out of this house down there to have a place to live. Which I didn't do for the first month because it took that long to get it cleaned up. So I lived in Wilmington and drove back and forth.
So you were just saying about, so you got that one letter that said you might have to pay it back. And then you were getting ready to say something about another letter.
Well, and then the next letter I got was that you don't qualify for any
assistance from FEMA. So I'm like, all right. So that's when I went to
the bank because I
Which bank is that? Is it a local bank?
Yeah. Bank of America. It was NationsBank.
Okay. Right. That's ( ), too.
I couldn't ask for better people to deal with than them. I had six or seven loans with them. I pay off my loans early. I mean, this loan I'm getting, I, if I get my money back that I've already spent here, I borrowed eighty thousand dollars a year, a year and two months ago. And I was going to pay it off this January. Which the bank probably doesn't like it as much as I do. But, you know, instead of taking and spending the money, or putting it in retirement, I believe that you retire your debts first. And then when, this year was going to be, finally, where I could start saving toward retirement. Which ain't going to happen now.
Well, can I ask you a few questions about Pender County and, I mean, there are some people who don't know anything about it, I'm sure. Maybe a little bit of history of the county. The types of people who moved here. And then what's changing. You talked about development, and so forth. Would you tell a little story about how it was when you were growing up? What people were doing for a living.
Well, when I was growing up there wasn't nothing but farming here. There was no industry of any kind. And there's still not hardly any industry.
What kind of farming?
Tobacco, corn, soy beans, blueberries, strawberries, and that still
continues here. They've about cut out all the tobacco farming. They just
cut them yesterday
Not even blueberries?
No, nothing. Plus, it takes certain land to grow blueberries, strawberries, or anything else. It's, and there's not that much of that type land around. But, for years and years, all the taxes just about was derived from farming, one way or another. Other than farming, you went out of the county to work. My father worked for Big Star Colonial for thirty-forty years.
In Wilmington?
Um-hum. And he drove back and forth, I guess, from the time I was like five or six until I was thirteen, he drove back and forth from outside of Currie. Finally, back then he was working six and seven days a week. So, finally they decided they needed to move to Wilmington to be closer to his job. And we did.
I see.
Farming up until, oh gosh, I guess it really started changing about fifteen years ago. It, farming started taking a back seat to tourism. Not on a grand scale to start with, but it's changing a lot more now.
You go all the way to the coast, right? And it takes in certain beaches down there.
Surf City and Topsail Beach, and then you got Hampstead which is more of
a retirement community now. There are a lot of Northerners moving down
along the coast area for retirement. It used to be that this side of the
county paid the majority of taxes
That's here?
Yeah, that's, it's going toward Wilmington. It's the border line.
It's a golf community?
No, no. It's not a golf community, but it's going to end up being that.
Okay.
A lot, Pender County is like the third largest county in the state, area-wise. But a lot of our money now is coming from the Northerners moving into the eastern part of the county which is the beach area. We also, the tourism is growing by leaps and bounds. Because we have Topsail Beach and Surf City. This side of the county, we're finally getting a few smaller plants in here, but no DuPont's, or GE's or anything like that. We're kind of becoming a bedroom community for New Hanover. New Hanover has most of the industry. It also has a large tourism. And a lot of people in Wilmington are moving out into the suburbs, which is the rural part of Pender County.
Hum.
Taxes are a lot cheaper up here compared with New Hanover.
What's—?
It's a wonderful place to live.
What's your tax rate, say, compared to Wilmington?
Well, the tax rate here is sixty-one cent. And I'm not sure what it is in
Wilmington, but, just like the property value. If you took my house,
where it was sitting
The stereotypical Republican at the state level is usually anti environmental regulation, against those policies. That's the stereotype, right? But you're not that way at all. You're obviously a Republican who cares about the environment and even wants to put in land use planning and so forth, regulations. Is that—?
Well, our chairman, who just got elected, is a woman. And she's a
Republican. And she has done everything in the world to try to get the
rest of the county commissioners, we have three of them, to do
something. In fact, Mr. Connors here is on the planning board. That we,
to free them up, to give them more time to save this county. Jim and I
hunt together. And Jim is also on the planning board. He's a farmer. And
he's a retired pilot of USAir. And he lost his home. And these two
houses right next door
I ain't no Republican.
I know. You're a Democrat. [Laughter]
So you just want to manage well what you have instead of—.
Yeah. If we could manage what we've got, we could do all right. The problem is that we're not doing all that great a job managing what we got. Like I say, development is one of our things. They're getting ready to put a new one in right on the other side of Burgaw. And, where are they going to run the water? They don't have anywhere for the run off to go now. But yet, they just approved, what is it, a thousand over there, units?
Well, either a thousand or twelve hundred.
Yeah, and they didn't even make them come up with a ( ) waters plan, I mean a drainage plan or anything. I'm like, wait a minute boys. And this is in the town of Burgaw, this isn't the county.
Look at what it's going to do to the school.
Oh, yeah. It cost eight hundred dollars a child in Pender County to educate, one a year. My house, about a thousand dollars a year is what I pay. But we've got, probably, two thirds of our neighbors live in trailers. And their taxes are seventy, eighty dollars a year. And they got three kids they're putting in the school system. How do you pay for it?
And you don't want to raise taxes.
No. Well, you know, right now they've got a big commotion going on in the
state about giving the school boards the right to levy taxes for
schools. Well, listen, that would make me so happy I wouldn't know what
to do, to put that monkey on their back. Because the monkey is on the
commissioners' backs right now. And, which, myself, it really doesn't
matter to me whether I get elected again. I just won the last election.
My opponent spent ten thousand dollars, and I spent three hundred. He
went to everything [Laughter] [Laughter]
By a pretty good percentage?
What?
Was it by a pretty good percentage this time?
Twelve hundred votes.
Um-hum. Significant. Well, how about these Northerners who are coming down. How do they stand politically? What do they want out of the county, or are they helping, or—?
Well, in fact, two guys from the beach were in here not long ago and talking about them damn Yankees.
Um-hum.
And I said, "I'm going to explain something to you all that you probably
don't know." If it wasn't for all them Yankees moving down here—the one
thing that happens is, they move down here. They build a home, two
hundred, three hundred thousand dollar house. They're retirees. They
have no children. They don't need social services, and they don't need
the health department. The only thing they ask for is good
And why are they moving here?
Well, most of them are going to work in New Hanover County. Like I said, this is going to be a bedroom community, is what it's setting up. But, what they don't understand is, if it wasn't for them Yankees, our tax rate would be two dollars and something, because the school system would need that much more money, if it wasn't for all these Northerners coming here. And the local people need to realize how much they put into this economy as far as tax-wise. Now, a lot of them don't want to hear it, but it's the truth. They come down here, and they're looking for a nice, green place to live. And they play golf, boat, or whatever, and they don't ask for hardly anything. But they pay them taxes. Every time you send them a bill, they write a check and send it in. Well, that's what's paying for our school's education right now. Because they don't bring kids down here because they're all retired. Their kids are up and gone, you know. You know, it would be nice to go back to the way it was thirty years ago, where Hampstead was a quaint little village, and, you know, everybody was farming, and we all were doing well. Problem is, times have changed.
Well, if you have a few more minutes, I'd like talk about how farming has changed. We hear a lot about, particularly because of the flood, hogs, pollution. I mean, you said, everybody thirty years ago were farming, was a farmer, and, things weren't polluted then. Is anything changing? Maybe there really isn't pollution as a result of the farming.
Well, there is some pollution from farming, in fact, Jim's a hog farmer. But, the thing that people don't understand, every lagoon had to be approved by the state. They said, This is what you need to do to be safe and not hurt our environment." So that's something what them boys did. It was all approved by the state. Well, they come in. They build the hog farms. They build the lagoon. Now, all of a sudden, what really happened is this circle we got into as far as the weather, and, I mean—I never remember when I was growing up of having twenty-one inches of rain. Or fifteen inches of rain in twenty-four hours, and stuff like this. All of a sudden we're going through this period of time where it, those lagoons, when they did it, it was based on rainfall, the levels that you had to keep, and all that. Well, nobody ever expected for, all of a sudden, bam. You're going to have a shower drop through and drop eight inches of rain in four hours. I mean, we just never had any of that in Eastern North Carolina. So, and your older farms are phasing out now, the ones that couldn't do the—what was it, oh—two thousand, Jim? Well, a lot of them couldn't upgrade. So they were going out of business anyway. They had X amount of years, and then—.
These are hogs or turkeys, or what?
Hogs. Hogs. Turkeys are a little different thing.
All right.
The main thing you've got to do with turkeys is have a place to get rid
of the litter. Well, like my farm, that's all I use is litter. He brings
it down in a truck, spreads it, and I ditch it in that day. Well, the
animals love it. It puts up some pretty corn, or pretty beans, or
whatever you plant. That old turkey mess will do the trick. And there's
a lot of farmers around that do use it as fertilizer. But the hog thing,
I think that Pender County,
Three.
Three.
They didn't overflow. The river went over them.
Yeah. But, now, Duplin County. I think they over did it, building too many hog farms up there, Sampson County. But Pender County, somebody, being a commissioner, boy, I've had to listen to it all.
I'll bet.
And, I got, Jim's got, let's see, one, two, three, four, what five houses down here?
Yeah.
And they're less than half a mile from this restaurant. They never bothered this restaurant. It's, but a lot of it's got to do with who the farmer is.
Management.
Yep. Jim goes out of his way to make sure it's done right. We got, we got one neighbor around here, I want to give him a kick in the butt, and I hope to put him out of business because he's not a good farmer. And maybe this hurricane might have cleaned his, they might buy him out now. Because he was too close to the creek anyway. But—.
That's what they're doing with some of the hog farmers, buying them out?
Um-hum.
Not to relocate, just buying them out, period.
Well, and problem is, is like Jim, Jim could probably qualify on the one
that he had, like down the road. But, what they want to give him only
pays off the house. What is that, the amount of money that you make for
the next then years, or whatever, it's, it goes right back to being
fair. You know, if you want to take something away from somebody, or you
want to give them something, be fair about it. And a lot of times state
and federal are not. And the county is not, we can't, we don't generate
enough money to be able to, I mean, we had to chip into these pipes
they're putting under I-40 now, because three industries there have
flooded twice now. So, one of the solutions was to put bigger pipes
under I-40. I-40 worked like a dam. Well, it helped a lot. They still
flooded last time, but where the water was up like six days after Fran,
the water was only up about twelve hours and then it pushed on through.
But, the county had to come up with a hundred and seventy-five thousand
dollars of the seven hundred thousand dollars to put the ( ) pipes in.
Well, you know, I don't believe in property taxes, because I don't think
it's fair. I think there ought to be a national sales tax, or state
sales tax that takes
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Here. I just paid my taxes for this store, the farm, and everything, fifty-seven hundred dollars I paid this year in property tax. The problem is, everything, when I get it paid for, I'm still going to be paying that fifty-seven, or sixty-seven, or whatever the taxes go to. So, it's never, it's never going to actually be mine. It's going to be mine and the county's.
And if you don't pay it, all of it is the county's.
Oh yeah.
Just for not paying it.
And it's not right.
Right.
And they keep saying it's going help the, hurt the poor. But, I hate to
tell you this boys and girls, but the poor don't pay any taxes. When
they go to the grocery store, and they pass out those chits, they don't
pay any taxes. And if you're below a certain income in this county, we
forgive you your taxes on your property if you live in a house.
So, who's carrying Pender County, then?
Pender County, nobody's carrying it. You know, it's just like—we have a hundred dollars a year solid waste fee. Well, if you make below a certain amount, you don't have to pay that. But I have to pay it on my farm, my house, the campground and the store. But yet, I have a dumpster sitting back here, and so that's four hundred dollars a year I pay the county, and not one piece of my trash goes in the dump down here. I pay two hundred and fifty-eight, two hundred and fifty-two dollars and eighty-eight cent a month for that dumpster sitting out there, and that's where all the garbage goes from my place, and I'm paying to dispose of it. But I still have to give the county four hundred dollars for solid waste. But if you make less than a certain amount of money, you don't have to pay that solid waste fee. You don't have to pay any property taxes.
So you're saying those are the same people who FEMA helped?
Not only them, but a lot that didn't deserve it.
Um-hum.
I shouldn't tell this story, but we just went through it, with the county, and I was the culprit on most of it—.
Well, maybe you can leave out the names, or something, in telling it.
We'll it's CB, CB, B, is that what it is?
What?
Grant money.
I don't know what it is.
It's for helping low income families and old people. We did a program up here in Maple Hill, spent seven hundred and fifty thousand, did thirty-one houses, and these were people with no electricity, or outdoor plumbing, and every one of them were Blacks. Which, there wasn't any whites that qualified right there in that area. So then, we finished that project and we put in for another one. So, we're doing it at Rocky Point. Well, they had twenty-one houses that qualified. And everything was going along fine, and all of a sudden, we found out that one family has got seventeen of the houses. And one of the things that I'm against is fixing rental property. If you, if you yourself is renting it, then you ought to pay to have it fixed. Well, one of our commissioners, happens to be Black, seventeen of them came to him. Eleven of them were his nieces and nephews. Nine of them were rental property. And they spent to the tune of three hundred and thirty thousand dollars on his family out of five hundred and ten thousand dollars. And had six more qualify. That's where your tax dollars is going.
And you all found out about it, and what happened then?
Well, our federal government says it's not a conflict of interest if it's
a need for ( ). But, the company that was administrating it, you can't,
the way it works is that
This is before FEMA, of course, before the flood. But similar things, you're saying, are happening as a result of FEMA's aid. People who don't pay taxes have gone in—.
Well, even the one's that's paying taxes. If you go down there, and say you were on the other side of the river bridge, none of that between there and I-40 flooded.
Okay.
And you go down there, in fact, a couple that works for me, and he's legally blind and deaf and he's been working for me for four years. And his wife, and she's legally, I mean she has to walk with, she's got braces on, and they work for me in the mornings. They go down there to get some bottled water, and they had to fill out three sheets of paper. And twenty-five people walked passed them, and go over there, and just pick up cases of food, water, and everything, and load it in the back of the car. And they drive off.
Had they already filled out those papers, or what's the difference?
They didn't fill out nothing.
Huh.
But they had to fill out two sheets, or three sheets, of paper to get three gallons of water.
Did they get their water.
Yep. After they filled out the three sheets.
They obviously came back and talked about it.
Oh yeah. They went to FEMA, too, and said, "I don't understand this. We stayed there two hours filling out forms to get three jugs of water. And these cars just backed up here just loaded with cases and cases of food and water." And they weren't even in the flood area.
I knew you would know some of those stories from the local level, county management. But it was not the county as much as—.
They're federal. They're federal programs.
Right.
Federal and state, but they're administrated through social services.
And social services' employees are state employees, or are they county and state?
Well, they're county, state, and federal employees. The federal pays a certain amount of their salaries, state pays a certain amount, and the county pays a certain amount.
As with county extension, and so forth.
Um-hum.
Well, before we end, tell us about what kind of experiences people have when they come here to your cabins, and so forth. Why do they come, and what kind of food do you serve? I don't think I got that on tape at all. You told us earlier.
Well, we serve—people who come to the cabins, mostly, are, I guess you'd
call it yuppies. You know, that work in Raleigh, Greensboro, Wilmington,
wherever. And they come down and stay a couple of days, or come in on
Friday, leave on Sunday. They'll go canoeing. We have a drop off
service, or we did until our van went under water. [Laughter]
That's the furthest extent you can go, six miles?
No. We got one other place, but what we found out, ninety percent ours are novices. Because, most of your experienced canoers or anything, they've got their own boats. And we've hauled quite a few. There's another place up that's twelve miles. So we've done some hauling for other people, too. But we've done Boy Scouts, Four-H Club, church groups. And for children, is what we've mostly been dealing with, about four, three to four hours is about as long as you can have them sit in a boat. And then over here we sell hunting and fishing supplies, and tee-shirts, and hats, and that. And we serve catfish, and frog legs, and shrimp creole, and catfish, too, and then all your seafood, deviled crab, clam strips, flounder. Then we also serve hamburgers, and pork chops and stuff like that. But the main thing that's sold here is seafood.
Do you cook, yourself?
I used to do all the cooking. I'm probably getting ready to start doing a
lot of the cooking again. But, I got some good people to work for me,
and been with me a long
Now if we were to come back here and go canoeing and then come back for a meal, what would you say would be your specialty.
It's all specialty. [Laughter]
Is it country ham did you say, or just boiled ham?
Boiled ham. But if you ever eat seafood here, you won't ever eat anywhere else. I mean it's—.
Is it fresh from the coast?
What?
The seafood.
No, it's quick freeze and IQF. Do you know what IQF is?
No.
For years and years people put seafood and ( ). For one thing, seafood is
seasonal. So you can't find fresh seafood year around. And you can't do
business unless you can continue to have it. You put a piece of fish in
your freezer. What it does is freezes from the inside out. As it freezes
it pushes all the nutrients and all the juices out. IQF, it goes on a
conveyer belt, and freezes from the outside in. So the day that thing
You told us how many oysters, too. How many?
Forty, forty—well, according to the time of year, but the average for the year is fifty gallons a week.
And that's shucked oysters.
Um-hum. You use probably ten to twelve cases of catfish a week, which is basically like a hundred and eighty pounds a week of nothing but catfish fillets.
Speaking of the local economy, and so forth, and farming, are any of those able, is any local supplier able to provide any of those?
Well, we had a catfish farm over on 421, and his problem was he couldn't
find enough people to grow. We're right at the break even, as far as
climate. Catfish take eighteen months here to grow out to where they
weigh about three pounds, which you end up with a—where you can get
enough for your fillets off of. In Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and
all, their turn around is twelve months. So it's a lot most expensive
feeding
Is that person trying to go back and—.
Oh, I'm sure he is.
I mean, do you have his name? Maybe we could get in touch with him sometime.
Carolina Classics is the name of the company.
Okay. Okay.
And they also have a restaurant and all, right next—plus, they got, I think, forty some farmers growing for them, too.
And where is that?
Up near Ayden. But they also raise beef, and serve their own beef and the catfish, right in their own restaurant.
Sounds good. But in terms of the seafood, that doesn't come from the Pender County area?
Well, the oysters come from here at certain times of the year.
Oh, they do.
And the catfish could come from this area. But you're shrimp, most of
them come from the Gulf. North Carolina doesn't produce enough shrimp to
furnish a third of
Is that more results of over development and pollution?
Well, see, just like Georgia. If you go down there, you don't see a bunch
of houses built on the waterway, so you don't have the pollution. You
don't have the run off and all. North Carolina is real bad about, our
state government has been real bad letting—filling in wet lands. And
Federal government's let them slide a lot of times when they shouldn't
have. But building all these developments and all. And asphalt, a lot of
oil, I mean, you're talking about a lot of oil. Our oyster areas,
they're destroying. You know, the, one of the big things out of this
flood, and Floyd, Fran, too, was they were talking about it was killing
Pamlico, which is the largest body of, for shrimp and oysters and
everything else on the whole east coast. But the run off coming down
from the Tar River and coming down the Neuse, that it was destroying it.
But I have a friend that's got a house up at ( ), and after the flood,
you know, about a month later, he said there was more fish than you knew
what to do with. He said. And they talk about how bad the water was up
there. They had one of the biggest bumper crops this year they ever had.
And clams, and crab and stuff. And he said, "Where's all this pollution
they keep talking about?" Because it was such a magnitude of water up
there. I mean, it would be hard to pollute it. Where, our little creeks
running out of, down in our area here, it's not hard to pollute them,
especially when they go subdivisions all the way around the creek.
Well, let's close by saying what you think we need to do in terms of preparations and land use, and so forth, for the future. You've said a lot of it, maybe you could say sort of like what you would say as county commissioner. Here's what we need to do.
Well, we just need long-range planning. There's nothing wrong with
development, but make sure that they leave plenty of green areas. They
have to come up with a drainage plan before we give them any permits.
Not give them a permit and then say, "Oh, okay. Well, that's not any big
deal." We need to have stricter regulations, where we don't pollute our
creeks, our waters, and our oyster areas. And I guess we were so happy
to see people come here, because farming has gone down hill so far. We
were losing our tax base is what happened. And so, consequently, our
past commissioners, a lot of them, just kind of said, "Oh, well, this
development is more important than worrying about that creek out there."
Well, he's biting his own tail in the long run. Well,
Okay. Well, thank you very much. That's a big education for me.
END OF INTERVIEW