Names

My mother’s parents can be fairly described as “characters.” Even as a small child, I found them fascinating, fun, and a treat to visit.

The thing that is most distinct about them—Harold Sowers and Edith Mize—was that most people called them Slick and Deed.

Slick and Deed moved a great deal; my mother attended at least 4 high schools. But they had a family home on Sowers Road in Linwood, NC, a small plot of land remaining from a much larger area once belonging to that family, near the Yadkin River just north-west of Charlotte toward Winston-Salem.

But despite where they were living, visiting them was always a trip and sort of childhood vacation.

My namesake, however, was my father’s father, who everyone called Tommy. My Dad’s parents lived in our home town so we saw them often. And always at the same house just down the hill from my father’s grandmother’s house where he was born in what became the kitchen of that house.

The naming on this side of the family is a maze. I have Tommy Thomas’s given name, Paul Lee Thomas, so I am Paul Lee Thomas II. My nephew was named Tommy, from my grandfather’s nickname.

And then over the years with dividing families and shifting worlds, my nephew has two names, both Tommy and Steven, depending on which family he is around or when people came to know him.

My own name journey had one moment of confusion that remains with me today. My second-grade teacher announced the first day as she called roll that I was Paul Thomas, named after my father (whose full name is Paul Keith Thomas, though he went by Keith).

When I corrected her with a polite “no, ma’am”—that I was named after my grandfather—she said his name was Tommy, and promptly sent me into the hallway for talking back.

Places: The Many Homes of Slick and Deed

While I do have fond and nostalgic memories of the two houses where my father grew up, I am especially drawn to the places of my mother’s parents.

Well into adulthood, I came to realize that Slick and Deed were often quite poor. The Sowers house we visited had a wood-burning stove for heat and cooling, and there was an outhouse on the property.

Slick and Deed stayed at different times on that small plot of land, moving eventually into a trailer behind the older house.

I will always carry with my the Sowers’ small homestead, memories of my grandfather Slick (who I called TuDaddy) sitting outside beneath the one tree in the front yard. He is shirtless and barefoot, deeply tanned and just quietly sitting alone.

But my nostalgia today sits in the two places where Slick and Deed helped manage motels—one in Myrtle Beach, SC and another in Asheville, NC.

The remnants of hurricane Helene as a tropical storm ripped through where I live now, Spartanburg, SC on September 27, 2024—the eastern edge of the eye making a direct hit—before devastating Asheville and western NC.

The French Broad River and other rivers in that area flooded many places I love and have visited since the 1960s, and the small town of Chimney Rock, NC—southeast of Asheville and just west of Lake Lure—has been essentially erased by the historic flooding.

The child inside me has always held onto Asheville and Chimney Rock as the “mountains” where my parents loved to go (many day trips to Chimney Rock from Woodruff, SC) and where we went as a family to be with family, the many homes of Slick and Deed.

Myrtle Beach

There is one place that likely has the most consistent memories for me with family—Myrtle Beach, SC. It was about a four-hour drive from Woodruff in the Upstate of SC, and for most people, Myrtle Beach was a somewhat expensive vacation destination (but, to be fair, this was a working class and middle class beach with the beaches for wealthy people further south and near Charleston).

My working-class parents visited Myrtle Beach in off seasons; I mostly recall the beach in December, in fact.

Slick and Deed loved Myrtle Beach, but as a family with very meager resources (often as a result of Slick’s alcoholism), they were also resourceful.

Usually in the off season as well, Slick and Deed arranged to help manage the Victory Motel in Myrtle Beach as a way to be there often.

Myrtle Beach snow is a rarity but we have many, many pictures of being there in the snow—an ironically warm reminder for me of the off-season trips of our working-class families who always felt drawn to the ocean.

[In 2018, my nephews and I took my mother’s ashes to Myrtle Beach because we know how much she loved the place.]

I believe I could post hundreds of pictures of Myrtle Beach with Slick and Deed as well as almost all of our extended families, but I want to end with what brought me to this blog post: Asheville 2024.

Asheville

It sweeps over me, more than a memory, more like a flashback, every time we drive into Asheville on Hwy 25 and pass through a tunnel.

The rock tunnels of Asheville and the very distinct area of West Asheville are buried in my child’s brain from trips in the 1960s and 1970s.

As an adult, much of my life included the close mountains of Tryon and Saluda, NC as well as frequent trips to Asheville—for MTB trails, gravel riding, and the explosion of breweries that many people now associate with the bohemian city.

Asheville has become gentrified, and the South Slope introduced the town to tourist beer drinkers. I know locals and long-time Asheville folk (my aunts and uncle included) likely regret these changes, but my life has spanned both Ashevilles in almost completely positive ways.

But with the help of my aunt Lynda (second oldest of five children by Slick and Deed, my mom the oldest by several years), I have reassembled some of what my fractured memory holds.

Slick and Deed moved the remaining family (my mother was married and living in Enoree, SC) from Roanoke Rapids, NC to Asheville in 1963. Moving was normal for the Sowers family; as I mentioned, my mother attended 4 high schools, including in Pendleton (SC), Concord (NC), Lumberton (NC) and Union (SC), graduating finally from the latter.

Slick had trouble keeping work, although he mostly moved the family from mill town to mill town.

Asheville proved to be some stability for Lynda, Buddy, Mary, and Patsy. However, they lived in four different houses, and Deed eventually secured the managing job at a motel on 690 Merrimon Avenue, Sunset Court Motel.

My aunts and uncle lived through the often violent integration era for schools in Asheville, some attending Asheville High (which was named Lee H. Edwards High School from 1935 to 1969).

Uncle Buddy was eventually expelled from there and moved in with my parents in Woodruff where he graduated high school before serving in Vietnam.

Two of the most traumatic events for the Sowers family occurred in Asheville. Slick fell and broke his leg while drunk, but Deed refused to help him.

I recall my mom talking on the phone and finding out he had a compound fracture and had to drag himself inside to call for help while Deed sat on the porch.

Soon after, Slick, drunk again, threatened Deed with a gun.

These extreme events, it seems, prompted Deed to seek the motel managing work to help provide the family some stability.

In many ways, the Sowers’ world was volatile like the 1960s, but eventually, they arrived at the old Sowers house (which in my memory was much earlier).

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I’m in the crush and I hate it
My eyes have fallen
I’m having trouble inside my skin
I’ll try to keep my skeletons in

Is it weird to be back in the south?
And can they even tell
That the city girl was ever there or anywhere?

“Slipped,” The National

This is my second day of trying to recreate my memories of Asheville and my mother’s family.

I understand this is an attempt to hold onto all that has been washed away in the wake of Helene. I scroll through social media and discover more and more places destroyed, many likely never to return.

The weight of loss due to time is often more than we can carry.

We cry.

We recall.

We try to recover, to hold on to the ephemeral.

Everything is there, nothing is there.

Names and places define us as we define them.

I am afraid the many days we have sat at Zillicoah Brewery next to the French Broad River cannot be recovered so I have begun trying to rebuild my memories.

That place and that river were often beautiful and peaceful. And we could not have known.

Names and places.

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NOTE: Images were scanned by my nephew Tommy and Lynda kindly emailed and texted with me today to help me recreate shattered memory. I will update and edit as I find out more.

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris Goering (University of Arkansas), the name of the Asheville hotel was located through his search at newspapers.com.