Visiting Our Past: Hi, Tom Wolfe — continuing our 1916 stroll through Asheville

Well, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you letting me jabber as we walk through Asheville on this spring morning in 1916. I'll tell you something, I'm filled up with Asheville, and I can't contain it. Look, it got me this job, showing you around.

One moment, got to do something.

What was that? That was my Charlie Chaplin waddle, backward leg kick, and hat tip. That fellow there on the corner, that's Mr. Lynch, he owns the Princess Theatre, where they showed "Carmen," Chaplin's new movie, the other night.

Mr. Lynch considers me a walking, talking advertisement for his shows, but I'll tell you something else. I'm like Chaplin. Act like a fool, make everyone happy, but slip in some serious stuff.

Speaking of serious, see that man and that lad walking this way, coming out of Rogers' bookstore? They're crossing to our side, heading to the man's monument shop.

Hello, Mr. Wolfe, and Tom!

Tom's about to graduate from North State Fitting School. Two Saturdays ago, he played Prince Hal in a Shakespeare pageant, and the tights he got from Philadelphia were 4 inches too short. I won't say anything about that; he's gotten enough ribbing.

Oh, glad to see y'all, Wolfes. This here's a researcher I'm showing around. Oww! W.O., could you loosen your grip a little bit. What's that, Tom — that's what you've been saying?

His dad wants him to go to Chapel Hill, and he's got his heart set on Princeton.

You know — hey, Tom! They just built that amphitheater at UNC in honor of Shakespeare's tercentenary. You're welcome, W.O. Now, mind your dad, Tom, you'll want to be writing about him one day, and his angels.

Tom, he's a bright boy. He won a debate arguing in favor of neutrality in the European war, and he's not the only one. William Jennings Bryan, as you know, resigned as Secretary of State when President Wilson got tough with Germany after it torpedoed the Lusitania.

The word is, Bryan's looking to build a summer house near the Grove Park Inn. I'll be telling you more about him sometime. (Note: Bryan did build a house, which still stands at 107 Evelyn Place.)

Tom speaks German; he loves German culture. It's sad. (Note: Wolfe traveled to Germany in 1935 and 1936 and became disillusioned about it, as he'd write in "You Can't Go Home Again.")

Well, just four days ago, on May 18 — did you see the paper today? — Kiffin Rockwell, an Asheville boy with French ancestry, flew his plane into machine gun fire, got 30 yards from a German plane, and shot it down. He's the first American to do so.

His mother — her family's French Huguenot — lives here now, a widow. Kiffin thinks he's a knight of Charlemagne.

Kiffin's father, James, was a Baptist preacher, and James' father, Henry Clay Rockwell, a captain in the Confederate army. Kiffin heard many times, from his grandfather, how he walked home after the Civil War without having surrendered at Appomattox.

We call that being "unreconstructed."

Speaking of the Baptists, you know, you just missed the crush. There were several thousand here over the past week, from 16 states, for the Southern Baptist national convention. Oh, you haven't missed them all — many can't resist a little vacation to breathe our ozone, and the Southern Railway charged each person just a dollar to extend their stay two weeks.

Some of them will be driving to Mount Mitchell and Chimney Rock, but they first may want to talk it over with Whit.

Let me show you what I mean — this ad. "Talk it over with 'Whit.' While in the city, don't neglect your Christian duties. ... But you are going to have a little time to spare and during that time won't you please talk it over with Whit (Thomas Whitmire) — the man who made Maxwell cars famous in Western N.C. ... Ready for you to drive home — then pay as you drive.'"

The new Maxwell has a mohair top that can be raised or lowered by one person. The shop's at 79 North Lexington. (Note: now it's a parking lot adjacent to Downtown Books & News.) You think you want to buy one? Tom Wolfe's mom has one.

Ha ha, $655 is too rich for your blood? (Note: that's about $14,000 in 2014.) Maybe you'll make a mint on what you're writing, but I get half, if you do.

More: Visiting Our Past: Humorous moments from Asheville's history

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There's something I want to say about the Baptists. They are a fiery, principled lot, and I think it's amusing when they get together in a convention, because they're so independent minded.

"Nobody can ever tell in advance exactly what a Baptist convention will do," Rev. T.W. Chambliss from Missouri said at the convention, "for the very reason that liberty of thought, speech, and action is stalwart Baptist doctrine."

He was referring to a hot debate they had over whether to give money to an interdenominational school in China. Independence won out; they didn't.

Don't think you know this region if you don't leave the city. The Baptists are a powerful force; they represent people who were oppressed by the British government, then shut out by elites.

If you want you can stop in the Legal Building on Pack Square. It's built of reinforced concrete, by the way — how do you like that? The Russell Sage Foundation is there, and it's been studying Southern Highlanders.

There are more Baptists in these mountains than Methodists, now, the study says. Over half are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, but a quarter — colored folk — are part of the Northern Baptist Convention. And then there are the Primitive, United, Free-Will, Duck River and Free Baptists.

Would you like a Chero-Cola? There's none so good.

Sources

Information about Thomas Wolfe's school days is from "Windows of the Heart: The Correspondence of Thomas Wolfe and Margaret Roberts," ed. by Ted Mitchell; about Kiffin Rockwell, from the 1920 booklet, "Kiffin Yates Rockwell" by R. B. House; about the Russell Sage Foundation, from "The Southern Highlander & His Homeland" by John C. Campbell; and about other topics, from contemporary newspapers and directories, and from "Historic Resources of Downtown Asheville," ed. by David Black.

Rob Neufeld wrote the weekly "Visiting Our Past" column for the Citizen Times until his death in 2019. This column originally was published Sept. 15, 2014.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Visiting Our Past: Hi, Tom Wolfe — continuing our 1916 Asheville walk