What’s good for gown isn’t necessarily so for town.

The latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, which covers colleges and universities nationally and internationally, features UNCG as its main front page story. It offers fairly favorable descriptions of the campus and describes challenges Chancellor Linda Brady faces trying to cut the budget.

What’s not so flattering is the view of what’s off campus.

“Erosion in textile  and furniture manufacturing and in tobacco processing has decimated the Piedmont triad,” the story says.  “With the exception of a small, new restaurant district on the south end of Elm street, the city’s main strip, downtown Greensboro has a feeling of desolation, with anchor building that are decades out of date.”

Wow! This seems excessive.  While the loss of textiles and furniture have hurt, the story makes no mention of Fed Ex, Honda Jet and RF Mico that have entered the area, the expansion of companies such as Replacements Ltd. and Timco and the continued prosperity of VF Corp. VF moved its headquarters here in the 1990s after earlier acquiring Blue Bell, a long-time Greensboro company.

Tobacco?  Maybe Winston-Salem needs a light for its historic tobacco industry, but Greensboro has seen growth in this commodity.  In addition to maintaining the giant Lorillard plant that has been here more than 50 years, the company moved its corporate headquarters from New York to Greensboro not too many years ago.

From the perspective of people who have been watching downtown for decades,  “desolate” seems exaggerated when compared to the real desolation of downtown in the 1970s and 1980s.  Since then, besides restaurants and bars,  there have emerged a baseball park that’s still relatively new, a city center park, a public library, a law school, a children’s museum, condominium complexes and other projects. Anyone who thinks downtown is desolate should go there after 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

And what does the writer mean about the anchor buildings looking dated?  The high-rises,  Renaissance Plaza, the Jefferson-Pilot Building (now Lincoln National) and Wachovia Tower, still look fresh 20 years after being built.

Sounds like the reporter spent too much time on the UNCG campus, and not enough exploring the rest of the city.

Old street names will never die as long as David Craft keeps his mind in the past.

He is about to achieve his goal of bringing back the name Forbis , once one of downtown’s busiest thoroughfares and whose name was lost to street alignment in the 1950s and 1960s..

Forbis Street, named for a Guilford County fighter who died of wounds at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in 1781 and an ancestor of former Mayor John Forbis,  ran from the Southern Railway Station (now Galyon Depot) north to Summit Avenue. It was absorbed into North and South Church Street when that thoroughfare was extended and widened from Summit to the train depot.

“…Thus was lost our connection to this person very important to Greensborough’s past,”  Craft wrote in a letter to the City Council.  “The Forbis family continues to contribute to the sucess of our city as leaders and owners of a give generation family business.”

He was referring to the Forbis & Dick Funeral Home, headed by John Forbis, who was mayor during the 1980s.

He said in an email to me that he spotted  Forbis Street while studying an old map and “thought you don’t name a street after such a significant family and then undo it.” At Craft’s urging the city council has approve “sign toppers” to harken memories of Forbis Street. He says the signs are black and gold ” and look the period.”  They will be placed atop the green Church Street signs. They should be in place soon, he says.

The signs will resemble the Fisher Park toppers that are above the street names in the historic Fisher Park neighborhood, where Craft resides.wo streets.

Why stop at Forbis?   The same map that Craft studied also contains names of other old downtown streets lost to realignment, including Bishop,  Price and Gaston streets. Gaston was the longest, running from Forbis (now Church) west to about the First Baptist Church. It was renamed Friendly Avenue during a realignment.

Kudos to Bill Hancock on his transition from a print publication to an on-line version of his magazine 99 Blocks,  devoted to news of downtown and its environs.

He recently broke several important stories. One was about the  serial  graffiti vandal who is blighting downtown.  The story iincluded  surveillance photos of a man believed to be the perpetrator.   Hancock gave us an update on a proposal for downtown’s first grocery store, Deep Roots. Hancock reported 90 percent of the capital needed to build the store at 600 N. Eugene St., across from the old North State Chevrolet site, has been raised.

Deep roots would be first genuine downtown grocery store since a Kroger on Bellemeade Street, a Colonial at Greene and Washington streets and an A&P on Asheboro Street (now Martin Luther  King Jr. Drive) closed many decades ago.

Finally, Hancock told us about a proposed gateway arch with a clock, presumably in Hamburger Square, the area in and around McGee and South Elm streets.  The archway would arc the street, a clock in the middle. The gateway would seek to unite Greensboro’s two downtowns, the big one north of the South Elm Street crossing and the smaller one the south of the crossing.

The gateway would add meaning to Greensboro’s nickname the Gate City.

Hancock’s magazine can be found at http://www.99blocksmagazine.com

Ever so often, a once busy but now mostly empty downtown railroad freight yard bustles again with a reminder of the days when hearty men worked on the rails.

A Norfolk Southern locomotive backs in a long row of “camp cars” – modular units with bunks, baths and restrooms – onto a siding.

downtown railroad camp

The cars are sleeping quarters for a work crew that stays on the go for Norfolk Southern. The men drive long distances from their homes, arriving Monday morning, work  until Thursday evening, then return to  hometowns for a three-day break.

While here,  they eat their meals in one of the camp cars that serves as a mess hall.  Another contains a kitchen. A flat car that’s part of the camp totes a bus that takes the workers each morning to locations along the railroad and returns them at night.

Since March, the crew has been putting in crossties  and resurfacing ballast – the rocks that support the tracks – between here and Spencer, 50 miles away in Rowan County.a

Many railroads have abandoned railroad camps.  Instead workers are put up in hotels and motels.  Norfolk Southern clings to the old practice, which in bygone days amounted to no frills living.  Converted box cars with holes drilled in them for windows served as bunk cars.  Today’s modular units are air-conditioned and have satellite TV.

Forget the old concept of “gandy dancers,” men who drove spikes in crossties, swinging and singing in unison.  Heavy machinery that’s part of the camp does the hard work now.

The camp will soon break up and move on to another location on the vast Norfolk Southern system.  The old downtown rail yard will become empty again, except for the storing of an occasional box or flat car.

Where was lawyer Barry Scheck, the lawyer who frees innocent men from death row. He may have been needed when a convict was taken by buggy sitting on a coffin to the gallows in Greensboro in 1861.

The man from Davidson County was convicted of murder, although he fiercely protested that he was innocent.

I learned of his predicament while researching a story on what Greensboro was like in April, 1861, when the Civil War began with the attack on Fort Sumter. One primary source of information was the diary of the Rev. Jacob Henry Smith of First Presbyterian Church, a man who favored secession and wrote often about his daily observations in his diary, much of them about the growing crisis between the North and South.

The planned execution had nothing to do with Fort Sumter and the Civil War, but it provided insight on how people accused of high crimes were put to death back then. Smith’s account left one wondering if an innocent man was hanged.

“He is not more than 19 or 20,” Smith wrote. “Some efforts were made to get a pardon, but a counter-petition was sent from his own county.”

Then came a strange sentence.

“He will not be hanged until the mail train comes through tomorrow.”

What possibly could the mail train’s passage have to do with the timing of the execution?

Smith visited the condemned man in jail, observing, “He wept a good deal as I talked and prayed with him.”

On may 17, Smith noted the governor rejected a request for a pardon.

“I rode with him to the gallows on his coffin,” Smith wrote.

Most likely the gallows were in what’s now east Greensboro, about where the N.C. A&T State University football practice field is now. That’s where hangings occurred up until the 1890s, with large crowds watching.

The public executions ceased in the ‘90s because they had become such a morbid public spectacle. From then on until 1910, until the state took over executions and carried them out by electrocution in Raleigh, hangings took place in the county jail.

“At the gallows I read the Palm, preached a short discourse,” the Rev. Mr. Smith wrote. “Mr. Hendron (the local Baptist preacher) prayed and I then declared at his (the condemned’s) request his public profession of faith in Jesus. He protested to the last moment that he was innocent of the crime. Just before he was swung off, I asked him if he had anything to say.. ‘Nothing except to thank you for your kindness>”

Most condemned men, seeing their situation hopeless, often confessed their crimes at the last moment and asked God’s forgiveness. The fact the man didn’t confess raises questions about his guilt. But the time between trial and execution was swift in those days. There was no time for an examination of whether the man was truly guilty.

Tom Magnuson down by the river

Reedy Fork Creek or as some say river

“I could still get across here, ” said Tom Magnuson, whose hobby is finding traces of long-abandoned roads in North Carolina, dating to Colonial  times,  “but the water would slow you and make you a target for a long time.”

He was projecting himself back 226 years when British soldiers were indeed targets as they forded Reedy Fork Creek, which as it flows through north central Guilford County off N.C. 61,  looks like a river.

Magnuson was leading a tour of the Trading Path Association, a non-profit group that he operates from his home in Hillsborough.  Each first Sunday of the month, he leads members and anyone who wants to tag along on a hike to places where he has found evidence of 18th and 19th  century roads. Where he finds them he usually finds fords. He says roads in those days didn’t lead from one settlement to another but from one ford to another.

People, he said,  measured a journey by the time they would get to the fords.  For example, a trip from what’s now the historic town of Hillsborough to Charlotte took six to seven days.  The Deep River was forded at Jamestown.  The Yadkin River had several fording possibilities.

Another fording place was known during the Revolutionary War as Weitzel’s Mill Ford (sometime spelled with two ls)  It had three fords. The mill used one, the public crossed the water on another and cattle and horses forded on a third.

It was here on March 6, 1781, in a battle – not a skirmish, Magnuson insists – British and Americans clashed in a prelude to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, which would be fought on March 15.

Each side would suffer casualties at Weitzel’s. The British put a hurting  on a group of militiamen from Virginia , South Carolina and Georgia. The militiamen occupied the south side of the stream to slow the British from reaching and crossing the ford. That gave the Americans, one of whose commanders was Col. Lighthorse Harry Lee (father of Robert E. Lee) , time to ford the stream. On the other side, they fortified themselves in the mill beside the creek  and  in a school house atop a hill overlooking the ford.

From the school house, the Americans picked off British as  Red Coats crossed the mill ford. Earlier, the British successfully beat back the attempt by American militiamen to stop the Red Coats from reaching the ford.

The strategy worked for a while. At least 10 British were killed, some shot to death, others drowning.  They had to tried to duck fire by veering off the ford. They wound up under water in the mill pond.  After the Revolution,  slaves working a second mill, Somers Mill, near the same ford,  found remains of the British.

The British wised up, reassessed the situation and left the mill ford and sneaked across the creek – or river as some locals today call it – at  the horse and cattle ford. They then opened fire on the American fortifications and forced a retreat.

The battle later had ramifications for both sides in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. The British lost manpower and used ammunition at Weitzel’s Mill that were needed at the bigger battle.

American Gen. Nathanael Greene, in turn,  was denied a strong militia force at Guilford Courthouse. The  Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina militiamen became angry at Weitzel’s Mill.  They felt they had been positioned to make them easy targets for the British. They suffered casualties.  They decided to go home rather than join Greene forces and move toward Guilford Courthouse.

Their departure weakened Greene and led to his retreat at Guilford Courthouse,  Magnuson says.   Still,  Greene’s forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British. Guilford Courthouse has been called a victory in defeat for the Americans.  The British were so weakened they  surrendered six months later at Yorktown.

Manguson believes, however, a Greene victory had been possible at Guilford Courthouse. It  could have forced a British surrender there.

“I think this was the most important battles of the war,” Magnuson said as he went along the hillside that slopes from the old Somers  house on the hill, built in about 1818 and now being restored.

Magnuson used the remains of one road bed to get down the river, where he tried to pinpoint other roads through the area.  Road-like openings were obvious, but Magnuson wasn’t sure if they were roads or the remains of  “races,” man-made streams that drew water into the mill and then released it back to Reedy Fork Creek.

A heavy  rain didn’t stop him and about 20 followers from searching. Earlier that morning, before leaving home,  he had studied maps and thought he was he knew where Weitzel’s Mill had stood and the location of the road that passed it.

“But then I was reading the maps again and I said,  naw, I’m not so sure,” he said.

He has an idea of the school house’s site atop the hill, a spot that gave shooters an excellent view of the ford.  But then again he says he’s not that sure. One way to find out would be through metal detectors. They would uncover lead from musket fire British marksmen fired at the building.

“I change my mind everyday,” Magnuson said.  “There are so many possible explanations.”

Someone asked how Americans could aim effectively at British crossing the ford when so many trees saturate the hill?

Foliage would be an obstacle now, Magnuson replied, but not then.

“There would have been no wood here in the 18th century,” he said.  “Wood was cut and used for everything.

Manguson  would like academics to come study the battle site.  He wishes Guilford Courthouse National Military Park would acquire the property. Both battles are closely related.

He can say for sure about the Weitzel’s Mill site that  “a great deal of misery was created here,” he said.

(People who want to know more about  Magnuson’s Trading Path Association can do so by calling 919 644-0600 or through info@tradingpath.org    There’s also a web site, http://www.tradingpath.org)

Former News & Record columnist Bill Morris was right on in his recent N&R story about how commercials and other interruptions make televised college basketball games last an eternity. The other night, when the North Carolina Tar Heels were playing the Marquette Warriors (whoops, Golden Eagles) commercial time added to more minutes than length of a basketball game, 40 minutes. commercial time outs lasted anywhere from 2 minutes and 45 seconds to three minutes.  When a coached called a time out, the break was usually shorter, but one called by Marquette Coach Buzz Williams went for  2:45.  Then when the game resumed, a few seconds of basketball was stopped because it was time for the scheduled TV time out, which are spaced at intervals.

When the panel that does the half-time show was finished, the scene shifted back to the arena in Newark, but first there had to be a break for a commercial. Then  announcer Jim Nantz spoke one sentence before yet another commercial segment started.

It seems like TV producers could get together and find a way to weave in commercials,  say,  at the bottom of screens while the game continues. After all, a commercial’s goal is to create name recognition for a product. That could be done nicely at the bottom of the screen, just as it is none by those ever-changing panels that stretch along  side court  table where the public address announcer, timekeeper and others sit.

Otherwise,  college basketball and especially the NCAA tournament risk becoming an excuse for showing commercials, which get boring after five or six viewings.

Bradford Pears.  They have about blossomed out and thank mother nature.  Peweeee!  Their blossoms stink.  What’s more, they don’t yield pears (neither do the more fragrant ornamental cherry trees) and their timber has the strength of a toothpick.  Tree experts have for the most part quit recommending the planting of Bradfords.  It is hope the day will come when Greensboro’s landscape will be blessed with the absence of Bradfords.

We see and talk about the beautiful dogwoods that are starting to bloom, but little affection is shown to the Japanese cherry trees that have been in bloom all over the city for several weeks.

I remember years ago when what’s now the Wyndham Championship golf tournament was being played at Sedgefield Country Club (it moved to Forest Oaks for 31 years and is now back at Sedgefield),  people talked of the dogwood trees blooming on the right side of the ninth hole, which in those days was the 18th hole for the tournament.   Actually, those were – and are – cherry trees.  Both have white flowers, but otherwise are easily discernible.

No sign of azaleas blooming yet.  Look forward to one of the prettiest azaleas at the southwest corner of the intersection of West Market and Mendenhall streets.  It’s at the top of the steps of a beautiful Victorian house on the corner, called Boxwood.   The azalea bush is rather small, but in bloom it becomes a brilliant red, a treat to look at while waiting at a red light.

Recent news reports have been about the possibility of  a downtown trolley.  In essence,  it would be a large functional gas-powered toy hauling people through the center city and looking pretty in photographs.

Once upon a time when Greensboro  had real trolleys running four or five routes from downtown and to the suburbs,  no one seemed to notice.  If the trolleys showed up in photos it was by accident. The photographer was shooting a downtown scene and a trolley happened to pass by.

I was fortunate to have ridden one of those trolleys in 1951, five years before Duke Power Co. ceased running trolleys in favor of gas-powered buses, which were already operating on most of Duke’s routes.

I lived on Westover Terrace at the time and had just started third grade at Aycock School (my parents were getting ready to move into the Aycock district).

I took a Duke Power gas-powered bus from Westover Terrace to downtown. I believe it stopped at Jefferson Square, the intersection of Market and Elm Streets. There I transferred to the White Oak Trolley.

The city’s trolleys, which ran about five routes, were trackless and had poles extending from the roofs  to double electric wires above. Occasionally, the pole would fall from its power source. The trolley driver would have to get off the dead vehicle and use another kind of r pole to hoist the other back in place.

The White Oak Trolley hummed its way out Summit Avenue, where I remember going down the hill leading to the railroad overpass and bumping over street car tracks for a short distance. The tracks were all that remained visible of the  street car system that Duke Power terminated in the 1930s.

I got off the trolley at Summit and Dewey streets, next to the hospital, Sternberger, where I was born in 1943. The site is now Sternberger Park.  I walked two blocks to Aycock, while the trolley continued out Summit and turned on 16th Street.  Beside the White Oak cotton mill, the trolley turned around by following a gravel strip that wound around a tree, with the double electric wires lines following above.

I can only remember one trolley driver,  Pete Ferrell. The reason I do was because he and his wife, Blanch, lived near my grandparents and were their best friends. Pete’s brothers, Rick and Wes Ferrell,  had a few years before completed successful careers in baseball’s Major Leagues.  Rick, a catcher, is now in the Hall of Fame;  Wes, a pitcher, should be because he won 20 games a season about six times.

Maybe one of those Greensboro trolley cars still runs somewhere. San Francisco’s transit system operates electric trolleys,  some modern, but others are antiques that once ran in other United States cities during the heyday of trolleys.

Think of the gas savings had Greensboro and other cities had had the foresight to continue trolleys. People who live in the old White Oak village that’s near the mill would have the joy of riding the White Oak Trolley to and from downtown.