According to the General Assembly of the North Carolina state legislature, North Carolina is "the best land, the blessed land, the Old North State!"
Viewed from the windows of the bus, it appears to be all that and more.
Place names like Jamestown, Randolph, and Columbia speak to the state's colonial heritage, as does the colonial architecture of the red-bricked, white-trimmed, Greek-columned downtowns we drove through.
Rolling through the rural countryside, we spotted ramshackle cabins slouching behind split rail fences and remembered that the South can also be hillbilly country, the land of Uncle Remus, Br'er Bear, and Br'er Fox. In testimony meeting this morning, I actually heard the word "cotton-pickin'" used in a sentence. It's a sure thing there are possums hiding in the woods.
But the strongest impression is of a grandiose and genteel South. Names like Winston-Salem and Raleigh evoke big tobacco, to be sure, but also a plantation-era past when cotton was king. The people are warm, smiling, and gracious; we are all addressed as Ma'am and Sir. The pineapple finial, symbol of hospitality, tops many gate posts, and lush, flowering trees dominate the landscape.
If you look just right, as the bus whizzes by, you can almost see the gentlemen in their white suits, ice cubes clinking in the mint juleps they hold in their hands, and the Southern belles in their gowns, strolling in the shade of the magnolia tree, just waiting to sweep you into their embrace and call you Honey.
- Here's to the land of the long leaf pine,
- The summer land where the sun doth shine,
- Where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great,
- Here's to "Down Home," the Old North State!
- Here's to the land of the cotton bloom white,
- Where the scuppernong perfumes the breeze at night,
- Where the soft southern moss and jessamine mate,
- 'Neath the murmuring pines of the Old North State!
- Here's to the land where the galax grows,
- Where the rhododendron's rosette glows,
- Where soars Mount Mitchell's summit great,
- In the "Land of the Sky," in the Old North State!
- Here's to the land where maidens are fair,
- Where friends are true and cold hearts rare,
- The near land, the dear land, whatever fate,
- The blessed land, the best land, the Old North State!
- (North Carolina State Toast, adopted by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1957)
