Visit to Lenoir, NC

Lenoir seems like an ideal place to live. It looks like the home of the American Dream. This is the town we all planned to return to and build a dream house someday, complete with picket fence and ramblin’ rose. Unfortunately that dream did not comprehend how a carnivorous capitalism would eventually send this city’s furniture industries and their jobs overseas to China, leaving Lenoir more suitable for a role in an Edgar Allen Poem.


Downtown Lenoir apparently fell into a web of abandoned stores on Main Street. All that remained of its proud history was the 22 year tradition of downtown sculptures. Each year a new piece of outdoor three dimensional art is added after a contest which includes contestants even from overseas. Early this year an additional new 3-D sculpture was landed for Lenoir – is it named “Google”. A distribution plant will be built on a 22 acre site downtown to provide as yet unknown work for the Google Corporation. Other large corporations are rumored to be headed in too. Downtown Lenoir is now rebuilding dramatically and becoming a beautiful city.


A new tradition has begun with live music downtown on Friday evenings. A pavilion has been added to a new open lot with greenery and substantial stage and acoustical equipment. Too bad the audience has to look at the performers by squinting into the afternoon sunlight. Maybe that’s only a problem in May, June, July and August. But it is a beginning. Now they need another place or two a block or two away. Meanwhile the curious happily come to sit beside other sculptures and watch the show, and smile and clap and tap a toe or two



Downtown there are watering holes. None more welcome than the one seen in the picture below. Look down in its lower left corner and see a bright silver pan filled with water. Venti’s Bookstore owner puts a fresh bowl of water out a time or two each day for the hard working doggies of downtown Lenoir. The guy in the red shirt is leading (being led by) a snazzy poodle (behind the sign) who is charging down on his hard-earned drink.

Away from downtown there is a place called Hannah’s. New York Times apparently wrote it up as a great place to eat southern barbeque and Brunswick Stew.
I tried the pork plate with french fries and some of the stew. It was OK. A sign in front of Hannah's carried a message saying "If God brings you to it, He will lead you through it", I didn't know if it referred to God in general or life and its problems or to Hannah's barbecue. I couldn’t figure it out. But then, just a little farther down the road, on the edge of a great mall called Lenoir Crossing, there were a lot of signs from God or somebody.

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Back downtown there is an old abandoned, boarded-up movie theater. Its marquee reads “Come home solders make us proud!” I had to look up “solder” and found it is pronounced “SOD-er”, and defined as any of various fusible alloys, usually tin and lead, used to join metallic parts.” Well, the puzzle grew. Maybe they were referring to the outdoor art that graces the downtown. I asked someone and they told me I had misread the sign. It actually read “soldiers”,not “solders”. But even then the mystery grew. Why put such a sign on what had once been a main part of town perhaps, but had obviously been long ago shut down and boarded up. What soldiers were they supposed to be referring to, and what war? Vietnam perhaps? I looked again at the theater, and figured it must have been Korea. Of course when you are part of an imperial empire you will get it fight in many wars, all of them with small countries, and so the possibilities grew. Perhaps it could have been Granada, or Laos, or El Salvador, or Cambodia, or Haiti, or Guatemala, or Columbia, or Somalia, or Lebanon. Probably not Yemen or Afghanistan or Iraq, because this theater of war had clearly been shut down long before that. Could it have been WWII? Or I? Or. . . . Well, there was another monument downtown that finally supplied the mental solder necessary to make this connection: Indeed, gray matters.





The Caldwell County Library showed it was open to all. Even to a flag-draped coffin, of sorts, which was found positioned inside. Its occupant seemed to be trying to focus into a computer screen. His companion lay outside the front door asleep with a pit bull chained to his tattered dungarees. Didn’t know if I should salute or not, so I went back downtown.




Here I found a tiger stalking through Hogwaller Outfitters, apparently ready to head down the canyons of Lenoir. Perhaps he was lying-in-wait for thirsty doggies. Hogwaller outfits Boy Scouts and serious campers and hikers with all the most famous brand names of equipment in stock





Next to Hogwaller is Venti's Bookstore. This is where we can find the answers to our questions, here in this window into reality. What does the future hold for Lenoir? Of course the future is always full of tricks, and a one-day visit to anywhere is often misleading, but this city shows solid craftsmanship everywhere you look. You come away with the feeling that here is a strong city that is well laid-out and located fortuitously. Its foundations seem strong, and its inhabitants are used to creating well-built useful objects that reflect the eternal presence of art. I sense that whatever comes to Lenoir will be interesting to watch.

© John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved.