My Story: Ashley McGhee Whittle

TITLE: My Story: A granddaughter’s memories of Paul Brigmon, whom she called Daddy

AUTHOR: Ashley McGhee Whittle

PERMISSION TO PUBLISH granted by the author.  All rights reserved.

One of the earliest memories I have is being up there at their house. I couldn’t have been more than three or four years old, 1987, 1988. It was summertime, and I’d been in there on the bed asleep, taking a nap.  He had been working down in the garden. He had a huge garden; it was probably a half-acre garden. He and Nana put vegetables and food up, canned and preserved.  Every fall Nana would stand in the kitchen and raise hell about it, because it was hotter’n hell in that kitchen.  They put up corn, they put up okra, they put up tomatoes, they put up spaghetti sauce, they put potatoes in the basement to have potatoes in the winter.  Daddy brought grapevines from Barnardsville down to Old Fort that we still have. The grapevines are older than I am. We still make wine off of them, every year.  It’s usually ready about Christmastime.  Anyway, he’d been in the garden, and I was in there on the bed asleep, and a thunderstorm had started.  You could hear the thunder rolling and stuff, and they always told me when I was little and growing up, to make me not afraid of it, that it was wagons rolling across the sky from people moving west to the frontier.

And I remember crying. Nana came in there and got me, and we went out on the porch.  Daddy was sitting in a rocker out there, and he had on his usual uniform, as I call it. He had a pair of jeans on that was rolled up about halfway from working in the garden, and a pair of old work boots that were caked in dirt.  When he went to a union meeting, he wore a pair of nice jeans, short-cuffed, and penny loafers that were shined, a white T-shirt, and white socks. That’s all he had was white socks. He had a jacket that he would often wear; it was black corduroy material, and it had Norfolk Southern UTU [United Transportation Union] on it. He gave that to me when I was about 17.  I still have it. So Nana got me up and took me out on the porch, and he was sitting in a rocker.  He was dirty, he’d been working in the garden. She went to sit down in the porch swing with me, and I wanted to sit with him.  He was my comfort. I was his little girl; he loved me. And I remember her handing me to him, and me sitting there cradled in his arm, and it was thunderstorming and raining, and me being a little bit whimpery because it was so loud, and they were like, “It’s OK.”

One of my other early memories, he had an old Chevrolet. It was a big black sedan car.  The interior of it was like crushed red velvet. This was before child car seat regulations were in place.  We’d go across the mountain to Black Mountain to go to the grocery store or pick up a pizza on Fridays.  I can remember being five or six years old, and I’d sit up on that console in the center, and I’d lean across on him and he’d let me steer the car. I mean I’d steer the car over on the interstate and into Black Mountain, and he’d sit there and sightsee and look around.  I learned to drive early.

When I was young, nine or ten, he and I and Nana would go over to Cherokee on the weekends.  We’d stay at the Qualla Boundary Motel over there, get us a balcony on the river.  He and Nana would sit out there on the balcony on the Oconaluftee River. I’ve got some pictures of us riding the Parkway and going for picnics, getting Kentucky Fried Chicken. We’d pull off on the side of the road, not an overlook, just the side of the road. We’d get out and we’d have fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits.  And I remember him taking me to where they pan for gold there in Cherokee. I have some great pictures of me and him standing there panning for gold and gems.  That’s the happiest I can remember, is when it was the three of us and we were doing stuff like that.

Some of my other memories of him were Daddy and Nana both pushing me about education.  They constantly read to me.  By the time I was 10, 11, 12 years old, I was devouring huge chapter books.  It was because of them.  They gave me the space and the quiet time to learn and to read, and they reinforced how important school and education were.  This is all in Old Fort.

I remember on Sunday mornings him sitting at the dining roomtable.  He had a subscription to the Asheville Citizen-Times, and I can remember on Sunday morning him getting that paper and he would split it out into categories. He would read the entire paper front to back, every single word.  He was well-read in current events. Being well-read like that, and being open to taking in credible news sources, were what helped him become Democratic and unionized.  

If I pestered him about it, he would talk about politics.  One of things he always told me was politics was private.  But I always knew who he and Nana voted for. They always voted Democrat. They were some of the few Democrats in McDowell County.  I think his background had something to do with that.  His grandmother was a quarter, half Black. And his great-grandmother was Black.

He took me into Asheville to a couple of the last Bel Chere festivals.  He liked going downtown on the one hand, and then on the other hand I think he absolutely despised it. I think he had good memories from going down there with Bud, and going to the races, and going to the clubs. I think he had bad memories from working at Grove Park Inn and being discriminated against. I think the Vance Monument was a slap in the face to somebody like him.  I can remember being down there at the Bel Chere festival, and just watching his face whenever we went by it.  Bel Chere was right there on Pack Square, right there where the Vance Monument was, and I remember him looking at it that one summer when we went.  I was maybe 13 or 14 years old and just seeing the anger. His face was an open book.  His eyes would give him away.  He had one of the most dangerous expressions.  It took a lot to make him angry.  He was one of the most easygoing, level-headed people that I can remember.  He was so gentle and so easy – which is a complete and total contradiction to what I have heard my mom talk about. She said that he and Nana used to fight like cats and dogs.  But when I was growing up, I got all the mellow in him.  When I was 16, I backed my car that he and Nana gave me into the front of his truck.  It put a little scratch on the back of my bumper, but it tore his front bumper off of that truck.  That’s one of the first times I can remember him being as angry as he was.  When he got angry, he was scary.  He got that angry at the Vance Monument, and I didn’t know why.  I just remember seeing it in his face tha tday, and in his eyes, just sparking mad. And now, knowing what I know about the Anderson clan, and knowing what I know about his being excluded from school because he had Black in him, now it makes sense.