In Raleigh, North Carolina,
With my foot all jammed up from
Driving fourteen hours;
And my body can't sit upright,
Hanging around watching the TV on mute..."
- 'North Carolina',
Melissa Ferrick
Now I've done some research here, and fourteen hours from Seneca Falls, New York, to Raleigh, North Carolina, actually sounds about right. Maybe Melissa Ferrick is taking the same journey as us...
After a month in the 'News' (Hampshire, Jersey, Mexico and York) we now have a fortnight in the 'Norths'. But before we get to North Dakota we have North Carolina to look at. And there's plenty in the state's history to be interested in. Raleigh is named after Sir Walter, who brought back to England the potato and tobacco from here (after he'd figured out which one to eat and which one to smoke). The Roanoke Settlement was somewhere on the coast in North Carolina, and the state witnessed the first birth of an English child in North America (Virginia Dare). Tobacco remains important as an industry to this day. But Kitty Hawk out on the Outer Banks also saw the Wright Brothers make the first successful powered flight. And there are major universities and research institutions in the inland triangle made up of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.
From the shoals and sounds of the sand-banked Atlantic coast, through the fields of tobacco and studenty cities and all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west there is a lot to cover in North Carolina. And I only have three films to do it in. So let's turn the TV off mute and get started. My North Carolina movies are:
- Cape Fear (1962)
- Nights in Rodanthe (2008)
- Bull Durham (1988)
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