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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Renaissance Festival returns for 15th year

From staff reports
To celebrate its 15th anniversary as the Carolinas’ biggest kingdom of outdoor entertainment, the Carolina Renaissance Festival has planned two months of non-stop entertainment, feasting and games, Saturdays and Sundays, Oct. 4 through Nov. 16.

At the Carolina Renaissance Festival, the entire 22-acre kingdom forms the set for comic adventures, in which you can be both audience and part of the fun. With a cast of over 500 costumed characters, the festival is like a Monty Python movie come to life.

Festival fans can leave their cares behind and enjoy the pleasures of a simpler time in a storybook town where you can choose from continuous music, dance and comedy shows, shop for wonderful arts and crafts; plus games, rides and a feast of exotic food and drink. 

You can throw tomatoes at the insulting fools locked in the stocks at Vegetable Justice. Cheer for your favorite mounted knights (or pirate) at three jousting tournaments each day. Or test your skill at games like the Dragon Climbing Tower, the Archery Range and the Maze.

In the festival’s vast 16th century European village, an expected 160,000 revelers will find shows on 10 stages of continuous entertainment, including fan favorites back for the anniversary celebration:

• The sharp wit of the Ded Bob Show.
• All three Tortuga Twins.
• Zilch the Torysteller.
• The dangerous balancing theatrics of Dextre Tripp.
• The dashing swordsman Don Juan and his zany servant Miguel.
• Birds of Prey demonstrations of majesty in flight.
• And hundreds of minstrels, dancers, jugglers and jesters. 

New entertainment this year includes:

Cast in Bronze – America’s rare traveling carillion.  Weighing over 13 tons, this unique musical instrument features 48 bronze bells.  It is the only musical act of its kind in the world.  Cast in Bronze has been invited to perform for both Pope John Paul II and the Presidential Inauguration.

The Pirate Joust - While searching for a new ship & crew, landlocked Pirate Captain Ben Black stumbles into the tournament arena and discovers a passion for jousting. 

Hither, Dither, & Yon – This musical trio of maidens will tickle your fancy and your funny bone.  You’ll laugh then you’ll laugh harder; a lot of naughty, a little nice, the perfect mix of sugar and spice.

Families will enjoy the King, Queen, and there Court (where kids can be knighted by royalty), Mother and Father Goose brought to life with their costumed flock, rides on the people-powered Da Vinci’s Flying Machine, Christopher Columbus’ Voyage to the New World, the Slider Joust, and the Piccolo Pony (a rocking horse bigger than an elephant).

The food is as spectacular as the entertainment. Festival kitchens cook up an endless feast of Scotch eggs, bread bowl stews, steak-on-a-stake, gourmet sausages, and the festival’s famous giant roasted turkey legs.

For dessert, try the fresh crepes, the cakes and cookies from the Monks Bakery, candy delights from the Chocolate Shoppe, and a favorite of all renaissance wanderers: a bag of cinnamon-roasted almonds.

Festival pubs offer soft drinks, beer, wine, champagne, ale and Medieval Margaritas. 

When the Carolina Renaissance Festival was introduced to the Charlotte area in 1994, the shows took place on three stages amid six acres of village attractions. Now 15 years later, the event has grown to become one of the largest renaissance festivals in the country. 

In addition to purchasing advanced discount tickets at Harris Teeter stores region-wide, Festival goers can now print their own discount tickets in advance online at RenFestInfo.com.

Horse-and-buggy mail carriers

By Janet Morrison
Did you know?

Did you know that prior to the advent of the automobile the mail was delivered by horse and buggy in Harrisburg? Rural Free Delivery (RFD) began in the United States in 1896, but it is not known when free mail delivery started in Harrisburg.

The “Harrisburg Items” column in The Concord Times newspaper on June 30, 1887, included the following: “The contract for carrying the mail on the White Star Line has been let.” Perhaps that was a route between Harrisburg and another community.

According to Harrisburg’s Footprints on the Sands of Time, researched and written in 1966 by the Stephen Cabarrus Junior Historical Association of Harrisburg School, sometime after the War Between the States, Alexander Newton Harris of Harrisburg carried the mail on horseback between Harrisburg and Monroe, North Carolina. That same source says that a Mr. Bumgarner was thought to have been Harrisburg’s first RFD mail carrier.

James Walter “Jimmy” Taylor, Mack Barbee and Zeb Stafford were the next known mail carriers in Harrisburg. They all delivered the mail by horse and buggy and each one served a different route. 

Mr. Taylor’s route took him all the way to N.C. 27 (Albemarle Road) and back to the Rocky River Community. It is thought that his route was 27 miles long.

There weren’t any bridges over the creeks in the early days of Mr. Taylor’s work as mail carrier. He had to ford Back Creek and Reedy Creek. The ford on Back Creek was a couple of hundred yards to the left of the bridge on Hickory Ridge Road as you travel out of Harrisburg. 

If the creeks rose due to heavy rains during the day, sometimes Mr. Taylor was unable to return home. When that happened, he would stay overnight at one of the farms along his mail route.

Mr. George Govan remembers Mr. Taylor delivering the mail in a horse and buggy when the roads were dirt. On occasion, he would sit at the mail box and wait for Mr. Taylor to come with the mail. He recalls ruts in the road “half a leg deep.”

One of Mr. Taylor’s grandsons, Ira Lee Taylor, remembers his grandfather having two horses which he always took good care of, feeding them oats and good hay. 
He alternated them from one day to the next to rest them. The one that was home to “rest” was available for working on the farm. 

The younger Mr. Taylor remembers taking the wagon to the grist mill as a young boy. One of his grandfather’s horses, “Old May,” would see a mailbox and start pulling the wagon toward it.  Taylor would have to pull on the reins and try to keep the horse from automatically going to every mailbox.

Mr. Taylor recalls that his grandfather had a brick of coke (a coal residue product) in his buggy to keep his feet warm in the winter and a blanket or lap robe. 

With the advent of the automobile, Mr. Jimmy Taylor bought a Model A Ford in which to deliver the mail. Just learning to drive the car, Taylor roared out of his driveway one day and ended up in the ditch near where Bill Price now lives on Stallings Road. Taylor never drove the car again. After the accident, he would give Vic Harris or one of the other local boys a nickel to drive him somewhere. The car was never used for mail delivery.

Zeb Stafford’s mail route extended into Mecklenburg County. In the “News Items From Harrisburg” column in the Aug. 15, 1907, Evening Tribune newspaper of Concord, there was the following note: “Mr. Zeb Stafford is off on his vacation.  Mr. J.F. Harris is serving in his place.”

The mail route of Mack Barbee, the other Harrisburg mail carrier during “horse and buggy days,” was closer into the village of Harrisburg than Zeb Stafford’s.

Early in the 1900s, William McCleary “Claid” McCachren was a mail handler in Harrisburg. All mail was delivered by passenger train in those days. Mr. McCachren carried sacks of mail from the post office to the depot, met the trains, and loaded the mail on the trains. He also unloaded the mail, meeting three trains everyday and served as a substitute mail carrier.

The next two “Did You Know?” columns will be about Harrisburg’s mail carriers in the age of the automobile.

Bibliography:
• Harrisburg’s Footprints on the Sands of Time, by The Stephen Cabarrus Junior Historical Association of Harrisburg School, 1966.
• Mr. George Govan, interview, Sept. 25, 2006
• Ira Lee Taylor, interviews, Feb. 1 and May 27, 2008
• “Harrisburg Items” column, Concord Times newspaper, June 23 and June 30, 1887
• “News Items From Harrisburg” column in The (Concord) Evening Tribune newspaper, Aug. 15, 1907.
• We Have Identified Thousands. Enough! by Adelaide M. and Eugenia W. Lore, 1966.

Fast start lifts Sun Valley past Bulls

By Jonathan E. Coleman

After rain delayed Sun Valley’s trip to Hickory Ridge Friday, the Spartans wasted no time getting into the action Monday, easily defeating the Bulls 41-14.

Sun Valley scored five touchdowns on its first six possessions to take a 34-7 lead into halftime. The only blemish of the half came on a fumble in the first quarter of play.

Hickory Ridge answered the offensive pressure early, scoring its only touchdown of the half just four plays after Spartans running back Darious Kirtz ran in from nine yards out.

The Bulls evened the score with a four-yard touchdown run by senior quarterback Brett Lilly. 

Then, Spartan quarterback Andy Capone took over, going 8-for-11 with 211 yards passing, including three touchdowns in the air in the half. Capone tossed a 58-yard pass to Dustin Cook and then hooked up with Andre McManus for a 65-yard touchdown with 4:33 to play in the half. His third passing score came on a 12-yard pass to Tony Davis.

“We feel like we’ve got one of the best quarterbacks in North Carolina,” said Spartans’ coach Scott Stein.

It was big plays by the Spartans – including a 90-yard kickoff return by BJ Mosley to start the second half – that put a win out of reach for the Bulls.

“We figured if we could stop their big plays we’d do OK,” Hickory Ridge head coach Marty Paxton said. “Obviously by the score, we didn’t do that. Once they started making big plays, I think some of our players got their heads down.”

After the Spartans’ kickoff return, Lilly lead the Bulls down field and scored his second rushing touchdown of the night from five yards out with 1:39 to play in the third quarter. It would be the final score for either team. Lilly finished the game 9-for-16 passing for 89 yards and with seven rushes for 91 yards, including the two scores. 

The Spartans controlled the clock in the second half, opting to run the ball, largely behind Kirtz. The senior finished the game with 15 carries for 143 yards and two touchdowns.

Despite the 27-point win, Stein said his team still has some work to do, especially on the defensive side of the ball.

“I would have liked a little more focus defensively,” he said. “That’s continues to be an emphasis for us. We’ve got to do a better job of tackling.”

One advantage of the rain delay, Paxton said, is that it doesn’t give his team time to dwell on the loss before getting ready to travel to Anson County Friday.

“There’s no time to look back at this one,” he said.

Sun Valley hosts Porter Ridge.

• Contact reporter Jonathan E. Coleman: 704-789-9105.

County’s first EcoBuilder

By Josh McCann

By her own admission, Leigh Brown is no tree hugger. Even so, the 33-year-old Realtor recently became Cabarrus County’s first EcoBroker.

The designation, which she earned about a week and a half ago, certifies her to provide education on energy and environmental issues and strategies for capitalizing on the growing green market.

Brown said she wanted to become an expert in the subject even though she doesn’t believe in global warming and thinks Al Gore is “full of junk.”

“We’re getting more and more questions every day from home buyers and home sellers,” Brown said. “I had to get over my personal prejudices.”

Colorado-based EcoBroker International has offered the designation since 2002. Real estate professionals earn it by taking three six-hour online classes with a four-hour annual update and paying a $129 membership fee per year.

About 4,200 people have done so worldwide, and Brown is one of a handful in the Charlotte region.

The classes started small, but interest has grown rapidly in the past four years, said John Beldock, EcoBroker’s CEO and founder.

Buyers and sellers are drawn to EcoBrokers by both environmental consciousness and the economic benefits of reduced energy bills and tax incentives, Beldock said.

Improved technologies and increased competition have also helped fuel the emerging niche market, he said.

“There’s no question that our growth is in the right direction,” Beldock said. “That bodes well for society.”

EcoBrokers understand the costs and benefits of energy efficient appliances and windows, for example, and can help consumers systematically assess homes to find which upgrades will prove cost effective.

Such advice can help consumers avoid falling prey to false claims, which Beldock calls “greenwashing.”

In some cases, however, not employing new technologies can be “tantamount to leaving money on the table,” Beldock said.

Brown has swapped appliances and upgraded insulation in her own home, changes that she said have led to a 40 percent reduction in energy bills and should pay for themselves within 20 months.

She hopes her new knowledge will help to differentiate her from competitors, and she said others in her office are considering following her into the program.

“I think we’re going to see an incremental shift,” Brown said. “As a movement, we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

• Contact reporter Josh McCann: 704-789-9152.

Wachovia deal hits close to home

By Ben McNeely

It was only days ago that Wachovia Corp. appeared headed toward a deal with Morgan Stanley, a merger that would have moved a piece of staggering old Wall Street south and further established the Queen City as a new hub of the American financial system.

Instead, only Wall Street’s pain came to Charlotte’s Tryon Street.

Crushed by its disastrous 2006 acquisition of mortgage lender Golden West Financial Corp., Wachovia succumbed Monday to the global financial crisis, agreeing to sell its banking operations to New York’s Citigroup Inc. for a mere $2.1 billion in a deal arranged by federal regulators.

It was business as usual at the eight Wachovia branches in Cabarrus County, but it didn’t stave off the feeling of insecurity about the Charlotte-based bank’s troubles.

Wachovia spokeswoman Christina Shaw said customers could still access their accounts and deposits. As for layoffs, there was no news.

“The impact locally, I have no information about that,” Shaw said.

Wachovia has about 160 employees in Cabarrus County, Shaw said, 20,000 employees in the Charlotte region.

Cabarrus Chamber CEO John Cox said he was at Afton Ridge Shopping Center Tuesday morning, cutting the ribbon on a new Wachovia branch in Kannapolis.

“It is a serious cause for pause in the Charlotte region,” Cox said. “Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of experience as a county dealing with job loss.”

Neither Wachovia nor Citigroup commented on any job cuts Tuesday, but Cox said the Wachovia acquisition has the potential to increase the number of highly-trained professionals looking for jobs and would “diminish the number of jobs absorbed in the region.”

Branches were open for business Monday and customers were in and out of the banks, making transactions.

When asked, many did not want to comment on the Citigroup buyout, but one couple from Kannapolis said they were scared.

“All this affects us,” they said, not wanting to release their names. “We don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

• Contact reporter Ben McNeely: 704-789-9131. AP contributed to this report.