In 1797, work was completed on a road through Saluda gap between Greenville and North Carolina (I believe this is the present Rt. 276) . According to Greenville, A History by A.V. Huff, Jr.:
An annual event was the passage of thousands of turkeys, driven in flocks of four hundred to six hundred. The birds were kept together by drovers carrying long whips with pieces of red flannel attached. By night the turkeys roosted in nearby trees, and by day they could travel about 8 miles. Both flocks and herds required large amounts of feed on the journey. The drives occurred every fall and continued until about 1885 when the railroads made them obsolete.
The goal of the drive was Travelers’ Rest, so named because it was a day’s journey from Greenville. ” Horses, mules, cattle, sheep and hogs from Kentucky and Tennessee came over the same road in large herds.” So there must have been quite a market going on in TR.
Happy Thanksgiving!
tbentley Ancient life, Uncategorized
Pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles:
But he was equal on every side and quite without end, spherical and round, rejoicing in his circular solitude.
How he know about Chris Christie?
tbentley Ancient life, general rant, politicas
It was a long weekend. We piled into the remtal car, and drove north out of Manhattan.
But not to go to Woodstock. Already we knew that was going to be mass confusion (by the time we were on the road, it was already impossible to get to the site). No, we six young gay men were going to Vermont. East Burke, specifically.
So we had our own Woodstock, right there in East Burke. We thought about going to Woodstock, NY; but it seemed to us to be so totally, well, straight.
August 1969–this was just after the Stonewall riots. Nothing loomed larger in importance, that gay lib; which is what we talked about, what we did, in Vermont, and could not have done in Woodstock. It was simply so important to establish our identity as gay men, we were in the vanguard of that movement, and identifying with the great mass of young people, who were still floundering around, establishing their own identity–no, ours was a different cohort.
A year later, we were at the front of the first Gay Pride Day parade.
tbentley Ancient life, Personal History