by Paul deVere
According to “The Red Springs Citizen” (“The Citizen”) it took place on Wednesday morning, April 14, 1936, and changed life in the town forever. Whether it was for better or worse still brings on heated debate for the few remaining citizens who remember it. Thanks to a natural disaster in 1984, and several decades of healing, the dispute may have finally reached a conclusion.
Change doesn’t come easily, especially in a small North Carolina agricultural community like Red Springs. Which isn’t all that bad, some say. Others claim, usually those clinging to the bottom rung of the Red Spring’s socioeconomic ladder, it isn’t all that good either.
In 1984, when a tornado made the town of Red Springs’ once forested landscape resemble the 1930s Kansas dust bowl, it was a tragedy to all, especially to the town elders who had gathered every morning for coffee at the Red Springs Café for as long as anyone could remember. But Mother Nature’s violent winds not only devastated both the wealthy and less wealthy parts of town, it gutted the little eatery. Not even the heavy, white porcelain cups were spared.
But in one of the finest traditions of the town’s patriarchs in a town of fine traditions, the storm’s effects on the daily ritual were deftly finessed when the men moved their klatch out east of town to Hardees, which was somehow spared.
After a week of deliberation about foam coffee cups versus the heavier, chipped, white porcelain mugs back at the Café, the men got down to the business of the day: recollections of the past, including the living but mostly the dead. It was this remembering that kept alive the story of the zippered fly. Even today there are those who consider what was begun that fateful Wednesday in ’36 to have created more havoc for the town than “The Wrath of God” as “The Citizen” named the 1984 storm.
It was on a warm April morning back in 1936, a short time before Easter, when the drummer showed up at Grindstaff’s Department Store that the sociological tempest began. For those who now live in the digital cloud, “drummer” did not refer to the musicality of the person but to a not so kind honorific for “salesman”.
In Monday’s paper — “The Citizen” was published Monday, Wednesday and, depending on Editor Ransom’s whereabouts and his condition Thursday evening, Friday too — the advertisement for Grindstaff’s Department Store featured an announcement that, on Wednesday, there would be a demonstration of a new type of men’s trousers. Mr. Grindstaff had wanted to use the phrase “zippered fly” and include an illustration. But editor Ransom considered the phrase in bad taste and an illustration of the phrase, to quote, “What were you thinking!” Editor Ransom’s rewrite of the copy, sans illustration, read in part, “a demonstration of the latest trouser closure technique.” However, with the editor’s blessing, Mr. Grindstaff assured himself a large crowd when he inserted the line, “No ladies permitted” right at the bottom. Yet even Grindstaff was amazed by the turnout.
To understand the impact of the zippered fly on a place like Red Springs, at least a tacit understanding of the town is helpful. It is located a little over 90 miles south and a bit west of North Carolina’s capital, Raleigh, and 20 miles south of Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, a U.S. Army training base named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, considered one of the least able generals in the Civil War. It is 17 miles southeast is Lumberton, Robeson County seat. South of town Drowning Creek runs into the Lumber River while Big Raft Swamp circles to the north.
Red Springs is fairly safe from today’s travelers whose main preoccupation seems to be getting from “Point A” to “Point B” in the shortest time possible. Red Springs seldom falls between anyone’s “A” or “B”.
Back when “The Wrath of God” ripped through the community, the town’s main business was land. There were farm and textile and turkey and chicken folks, but buying, trading, selling, and losing land was the main event.
The pride of the town of a bit less than 4,000 souls is “The College”, Flora McDonald College, founded in 1896 by Rev. Charles Graves Vardell. Once an academy for daughters of the middle class (Vardell had five of them), then a women’s teachers college, it wound up as a private prep school. The rather glorious name was the result of a visit in 1914 by one Rev. James Alexander Macdonald, a Chief Justice in British Columbia of all places. He suggested the school, first called the rather pedantic “Southern Presbyterian College”, memorialize Flora, the Scottish heroine. Back in the 18th Century Flora McDonald saved the life of Bonnie Prince Charlie, “The Young Pretender” to the British throne and a Scotsman). She and her husband Allan, a British officer, ended up in North Carolina in 1774 where Allan became a POW during the Revolutionary War.
During its heyday as an educational institution for ladies, and according to graduates who still remain in Red Springs, the college maintained the spirit of its namesake, including pride in womanhood and self-reliance. A Flora McDonald student didn’t let anybody push her around.
Presbyterianism, to go along with its Scots-Irish population, held reign over the majority of the white citizens who cared to participate. On the south end of town the black population comforted itself with a combination of AME and Baptist communities. The Lumbees (the first citizens of Red Springs and Robeson County by will over a thousand years) had their own ways of Christian worship and were represented by the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association which was more or less out of sight of the other residents of Red Springs.
Talk at Hardees is of crops, weather, and sports – baseball in particular. National politics and world affairs, while clearly understood, are seldom mentioned due to the fact that everyone at Hardees feels the same way or so the assumption goes. Small things are important in small towns. Like zippers.
While the first pair of long pants signaled the coming of age for many a young man back in ‘36, a more subtle test of destiny, handed down through multiple generations of Scots-Irish, was common in Red Springs. It had to do with the buttoned fly. It concerned an activity that told much about a boy, a fact that was lost on the citizens of big cities like Fayetteville or Raleigh.
In Red Springs, there was a certain art to buttoning the fly. First of all, you always buttoned upwards. Second, you didn’t look downwards. For a certain, elite group of boys this seemed to come naturally. They didn’t have to look. While the technique was seldom discussed, Vardell “Chub” Bender once let onto his girlfriend Maude, after a bit too much muscadine wine at the high school’s 1931 homecoming dance, the elite groups’ prowess was simply “a matter of feel” which “Chub” foolishly encouraged Maude to do. The doctor told “Chub” to be more careful on the high school’s new pommel horse (which everyone knew Chub had never used) and the soreness between his legs would be gone in a week or so.
“Naturals” never had to look down. They could button up as naturally as they drew breadth. Naturals always became bankers, lawyers, land owners or baseball players. That left the majority of young men in Red Springs, who had to look down to successfully accomplish the task (aka “Lookers”), predestined to a sorrowful and meaningless life. A deep socioeconomic chasm separated them from the Naturals.
When a boy got his first pair of pants with a buttoned fly his parents would test him, seeing whether they would have to send him to school or if he should just go out right away and get a job as a clerk or sharecropper. Knowing this, many young boys borrowed their father’s pants late at night and practiced in front of a mirror, often until their little fingers bled.
According to Mr. Grindstaff’s advertisements the first demonstration of the new “trouser technique” was to be held in his store at 9 A.M. “The Citizen” reported large numbers of men began to assemble in front of the popular emporium at 7 A.M., spilling out onto East 4th and Main. Hurriedly, Mr. Grindstaff stationed the drummer in the back of the store on a display table cleared of a “fine collection of ladies purses” according to “The Citizen”. The salesman’s name was Bob Bottle and Mr. Grindstaff claimed he came from a wholesaler in nearby Lumberton though most of the older farmers and townsmen were quite sure he was from Fayetteville, even Atlanta. “Had to be,” some of the older “naturals” said, “promoting such a God awful thing.”
Understandably the “naturals” took an immediate dislike to the zippered fly. They realized in their soul that the distinction between “naturals” and “lookers”, those destined to greatness and those who would always play second fiddle, was in jeopardy. They knew what happened when you tampered with such basics as buttons. No good could come from efforts to alter the natural order. A few of the more cosmopolitan citizens, after the zippered fly demonstration, compared this false attempt at equality with the experiment going on in Communist Russia at the time.
“It’s an abomination,” sneered Malcolm “Red” McMillan, a large land owner who had somehow maintained a hint of a Scottish brogue even though he was five generations removed from the Scottish Highlands.
Mr. Bottle had all the physical attributes of a “looker”: slight, short, balding and already slightly stooped, though he looked rather young. He was, therefore, suspect by the “Naturals” from the beginning of the demonstration.
“With thumb and index finger, firmly grasp the ‘pull tab’. An upward motion of the ‘pull tab’ will cause the ‘slide’, within which is concealed a ‘divider’, to mesh the zipper’s ‘ teeth’ together to close the fly. A reverse action will have the opposite effect,” Mr. Bottle instructed in a high-pitched voice. He pointed to each component, sketched in minute detail on a large display board positioned to his side. The artist responsible for the display, Eva Lang, Mr. Bottle’s girlfriend, detailed a rather fulsome bulge behind the fly that, among other things, highlighted the zipper’s features.
“Darn thing’s got about as much chance as a Lowry getting to be mayor of Red Springs!” Bill Duncan, a manager at the nearby textile mill, hooted. “That happens, I’ll buy me a pair!” All the successful farmers, lawyers and civic leaders had a good laugh and agreed they’d do the same.
Lowry is a Lumbee name. The Lumbee are a Native American tribe that, back in 1936, made up about half of Robeson County. Except when you needed somebody for grub work or a jug of sweet muscadine wine, most Lumbee around Red Springs went unnoticed. The unnoticing had been going on for well over a century. Except for one tough Lumbee named Henry Berry Lowry.
During the 1840s the Lumbee began to lose their property and voting rights, a Tar Heel version of “Manifest Destiny”. These troubles came to a head toward the end of the disturbance between Northerners and Southerners. In 1864 the Lowry family was known to assist escaped POWs headed north from Confederate prisons further south. The Robeson County Home Guard didn’t much like that and wacked Henry’s daddy and brother. Henry didn’t much like that and seeking revenge started the Lowry War. Henry and his gang paid special attention to members of the Home Guard.
For the Lumbee, Henry Berry Lowry became a kind of Robin Hood, distributing food and money, albeit stolen by his gang, to his poor neighbors hiding out in the Big Raft and Little Raft Swamps. To the Home Guard, the U.S military and pretty much all the reasonably well off white folks in the area who were trying to hunt him down, Henry was evil incarnate. At the height of a massive manhunt in 1872, he disappeared. Even in 1936, Henry’s family name was still an anathema to the Caucasian citizens of Red Springs. White mothers would say, “I’ll send you down to Henry Berry!” to straighten out wayward children.
Though the “naturals” were, as was expected, the most vocal at the demonstration, the majority of those who showed up were “lookers”. A delicate, feeble ray of hope had entered their miserable souls. They could somehow sense it. A change. The possibility, they said to each other in hushed voices, of freedom. They would no longer be singled out to do odd job and mow lawns. They could be men through and through. They could finish school. They might not have to give up their seat at the soda fountain nor their girl friends to a “natural”.
The “lookers” remained silent as Bob Bottle replaced the cardboard with a huge cloth and metal zipper, an extremely exaggerated version of the real McCoy. Bottle raised and lowered the tab on the zipper, mysteriously locking and unlocking it metal teeth.
Word of the demonstration spread. Mr. Grindstaff had to schedule three more that day. Stores in Red Springs closed. Farmers forbade their field hands from attending but they went anyway, so strong was the call.
The sheriff towed off four high school girls and, to the shock of the entire town, a Flora McDonald junior by the name of Mary Ewin McEllis, for trying to get a peak at the demonstration through a crack in the delivery door in the alley. The high schoolers were released in their parents’ custody but it was another matter for Miss McEllis. Upon questioning by both the sheriff and headmaster of the college, Mary Ewin McEllis told them she just wanted to know what all the fuss was about, which was half true. The other half was that Mary Ewin had come close to an experience with a buttoned fly and wanted to know if the zippered fly was safer.
By Friday over 400 men and boys had witnessed the phenomenon. Saturday broke all records for any gathering in Red Springs, when over 600 tried to crowd into Grindstaff’s to get a glimpse of Mr. Bottle’s wonder, besting the 1927 Fourth of July parade by more than 50, “The Citizen” reported. Sunday, Reverend Hugh Downey spoke to the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church of Red Springs about the vanity of man but everybody knew he was referring to Bob Bottle’s pants. In his study after service Reverend Downey and several of the elders sat drinking coffee laced with a local Lumbee whisky. The preacher confided that what he feared most was what the zippered fly might do to connubial relationships to say nothing of the danger it presented to men and women still outside holy matrimony.
“Buttons,” Reverend Downey proclaimed, “gives everyone time to think, to reflect on what they’re doing. The zipper,” he admonished, “is obviously quick to open and quick to close.” The he roared, “Reflection be damned with that ‘new wonder!’” and pounded the table where the elders were seated. The coffee cups jumped from their saucers. Reverend Downey took a deep breath and apologized for his profanity but he knew from the expressions on the men’s faces he had made his point.
The following Monday was the first day Mr. Grindstaff allowed the sales of the pants with zippered flies. Sales were brisk. His entire stock was gone in under three hours. With each pair of pants went a four page instruction manual Grindstaff had printed at his own expense. The manual, to the shock (and a local wag suggested, to the delight) of some of the men who purchased the trousers, included the illustration of the zippered fly that Editor Ransom would not allow in “The Citizen”.
“The Zippered Fly combines the tradition of modesty with the achievements of modern engineering,” the brochure’s introduction began. “With its arrival a new breed of men and pants walk the earth.”The pamphlet included step-by-step directions on use, with words of advice (“Household paraffin applied generously to the back side of the zipper will smooth the action.”) and caution (Be wary of shirt tails, skin, hair and other obstructions near the teeth.”).
Monday evening the town council met in emergency session to discuss what Reverend Downey called “an abomination” and a “danger to the moral fiber of the community.” Mr. Grindstaff was the only person there to defend the new fly. He countered Reverend Downey’s protests by saying the zippered fly was indeed faster than the buttoned fly and that was its virtue. “Idle fingers lingered for a much shorter time in the area obviously causing the Reverend such anguish,” Grindstaff stated.
After a few hours of heated debate, the town fathers decided the matter should be settled in one of the most time honored traditions of Red Springs: a sporting event.
The council members, all “naturals”, were confident in the champion they selected that night, Ralph “Magic Hands” McNeill, son of Judge Ottis Grey McNeill. The McNeill family had been leaders in Red Springs as long as any of the council could remember. Ralph’s record of strike outs while he was at Red Springs High School had yet to be broken. “Magic Hands” was in his third year at Chapel Hill and pitched for Bunny Hearn’s Tar Heels. Ralph, home for Easter break, was their man.
The selection also satisfied Mary Ewin McEllis who was hiding in the women’s lavatory of the First Presbyterian Church and listening to the heated exchanges of the council through the heat vent. Mary Ewin, and a few of her friends at the college, knew where “Magic Hands” really got his nickname and it had nothing to do with baseball.
The selection of the “looker” was left to Mr. Grindstaff. He first approached Bob Bottle who immediately declined the opportunity, saying he was due in Raeford that day and he felt the organizers might balk at his status as a professional when it came to zippers. After several days, and in something of a panic, Mr. Grindstaff selected the young fellow who swept the floors at Grindstaff’s Department Store several evenings a week once he finished clerking over at the mill store for Mr. Saunders. Henry Applewhite was a nice young man, Mr. Grindstaff thought, and he did play on the mill’s baseball team as shortstop. Or was it right field Mr. Grindstaff asked himself, thinking he had made a horrible mistake.
The council members suspected the zipper fly was probably faster so they created an appropriate, they said, scoring system. The zipper’s champion would be given points for speed only. The buttoned fly contestant, “Magic Hands” McNeill, on the other hand, would be judged for dexterity, rhythm, and subtlety. Each attribute could garner a maximum of 10 points. The partiality was obvious to all, but only Mr. Grindstaff complained.
The judges were Editor Ransom, who promised to show up with his photographer, Circuit Court Judge Ansel McQueen, and J.R. Campbell, a local attorney. The event was to be held at the newly erected baseball stadium on the west end of town the following Saturday afternoon. Again Reverend Downey made it clear that no women would be allowed to attend.
Ralph McNeill, tall and husky, with reddish-brown wavy hair, spent the entire week riding around the streets of Red Springs in his high school graduation present, a 1932 Chevrolet Confederate Coupe. It was packed with fellows he had known since they were all in short pants. Ralph also seemed popular with the girls. Judge McNeill thought Ralph ought to go into politics when the time was right.
Henry Applewhite, representative of Mr. Grindstaff and Bob Bottle’s zipper, was slender, short, shy, and had straight black hair. “That boy’s got Lumbee blood in him sure as shootin’,” people said if the boy’s name ever came up. It seldom did.
Saturday came and the new stadium filled. For modesty’s sake the contestants stood on either side of the pitcher’s mound, quite familiar ground for Ralph, facing the outfield. The judges sat on tall stools in the infield facing Ralph and Henry.
That’s just how Mary Ewin McEllis figured it. She had positioned herself out in the tall grass just beyond left field with a pair of opera glasses. She took this daring course of action for three reasons. One, she was curious to see if there was any truth to Ralph McNeill’s brag about the similarities between himself and a horse as it pertained to a certain appendage. Two, she personally knew that Ralph McNeill was no gentleman. And three, she had money on Henry Applewhite.
The organizers chose the high school coach to act as referee. When it came to sports people claimed he was “as honest as the day was long”, people bore witness that he was a “natural”, and he was the only person in Red Springs who owned both a starting pistol and a stopwatch.
To begin the event the coach was to fire his pistol while simultaneously mashing the button on his watch. When the gun sounded the judges were to consider the contestants and score the “natural” on slips of paper. The coach would fire off a second shot when the first of the two young men finished opening and closing his fly. The coach would then tabulate the “natural’s” score in relation to the seconds the “looker” took to accomplish his task. There would be three heats.
A balmy, dry spring breeze stirred up the sandy loam that made up the infield. Small dust devils formed and vanished almost instantly. No one in the capacity crowd moved. The judges, contestants and coach were ready. The men in the bleachers were tense. Mary Ewin McEllis dialed in her opera glasses on Ralph McNeill’s fly.
Due to Mr. Grindstaff’s indecisiveness Henry Applewhite had only practiced two days with his new pants, donated by Bob Bottle. His hands shook. They always shook when Ralph McNeill was on or near the pitcher’s mound. No one seemed to remember how often the opposing batter smashed a liner to the shortstop when Ralph McNeill failed to strike the guy out. Those screaming balls came right at Henry and he caught every one of them.
Ralph, no stranger to the pitcher’s mound or his fly, remained calm.
The coach announced the rules to the throng. At exactly 12 noon the starting pistol went off and the first round went to the “natural”, 9 to 2. The crowd around Judge McNeill thundered their approval. Ralph turned and gave a slight bow to the cheering multitudes. The “lookers” remained silent. “Lookers” were like that.
Logic dictated the “looker” should have racked up a better score. But for all his assumed frailties and faults, being a “looker”, the young clerk-sweeper had one attribute few people had ever noticed: his superior eyesight, an inheritance, he was told, from his ancient ancestors. What had made Henry Applewhite a great if unnoticed shortstop cost him the first round.
Just as the gun went off Henry saw the Flora McDonald girl toss her long, golden locks as she focused on the proceedings and his fingers slipped off the zipper’s tab. He knew who it was immediately. Henry had seen that lovely hair bouncing off her shoulders as she giggled down Main Street with her friends on the way to the movie theater. She was beautiful, curvy and popular. He sensed the girl was out there due to the rumors he’d picked up at the mill store.
Gossips said young Ralph dated the girl a few times but was openly rebuffed for his ungentlemanly advances in the back of his Chevy Coupe the previous Thanksgiving vacation. In response Ralph let it be known rather explicitly that Mary Ewin McEllis was a “cold fish” and tease. Henry knew the Flora McDonald girl was seeking retribution.
Henry quickly grasped the situation. The rules dictated a three minute interval between contests and, without letting the judges or crowd know, Henry whispered, “Ralph?”
“Henry, reason you lost is your lack of concentration. I am concentrating and I wish you’d allow me to do so,” Judge McNeill’s son said.
“Thank you for the advice, Ralph. It’s just I was looking out yonder, along the left field line,” Henry mumbled.
“Where?” Ralph asked, squinting his eyes.
“Well I sure don’t want to point her out to you,” Henry replied.
Just before the gun went off for the second round Ralph caught sight of the blonde hair. She waved. He fumbled. Henry got a 6 the second round. Ralph got a total of 5. The men in the bleachers around Judge McNeill groaned.
As the third shot went off Mary Ewin McEllis did something to a button on the front of her dress that only the two young men could see. Henry took the third round with a perfect 10 while Ralph got a humiliating 3. The crowd was silent.
One of the reasons the debate continues to this day, so many generations later, as to which boy won was because Judge McNeill said the scores should have been cumulative rather than best of three. The argument has been passed onto grandsons and great grandsons though now it usually involves a game of golf. However, back in 1936, by the Monday following the contest, subtle changes began in Red Springs.
The rumor that Mary Ewin McEllis went to the movies with Henry Applewhite up in Fayetteville following the contest gradually subsided. Three weeks on there was a short article in “The Citizen” about Red Springs’ first reported zipper injury, a difficult story to write considering the young man and woman involved.
The following year Mary Ewin McEllis graduated with honors from Flora McDonald and quickly rose as a top fashion designer of men’s clothes in New York City, still considered a historic accomplishment in the fashion industry. In an interview with Vogue in the early 1960s Ms. McEllis said her initial interest in men’s fashions began in a small North Carolina salon called Grindstaff’s. She attributed much of her success was due to the long and constant emotional support of her husband and successful stock broker, Hank Applewhite.
World War II came and went. Ralph McNeill served with distinction in Washington and was one of the first Army lawyers to move into the brand new Pentagon in the old Hell’s Bottom DC neighborhood. Due to his small stature Henry Applewhite volunteered to be a tail gunner in a B-17 and, upon his return home, chose ground transportation for his subsequent journeys. Soldiers returned home with zippered flies. The Sears and Roebuck catalogue offered both but seem to be pushing the zippered version immediately following the Japanese surrender. Ralph McNeill never entered a Sears store for the rest of his life.
A few weeks after the 1984 “Wrath of God” tornado, as the elders sat around their table at Hardees sipping coffee, a rather short brown-skinned man in his late 30s walked through the door. Everyone admitted he was the spitting image of his uncle – straight black hair, bright smile and moon face, all his trademark.
Everyone appreciated what he had done during the tornado, how he got things all organized, got neighbor helping neighbor, doling out food and ice where needed. Prior to “The Wrath of God” he had pursued economic development for the struggling community. The men at the table grumbled about the attention he gave to the poor and unemployed, but admitted he had the confidence of the people.
He waved at the men, “Morning, boys.”
They nodded gravely in his direction.
“Morning, Liana ,” he said, greeting the girl behind the counter.
“Morning, Mayor Henry,” the girl replied with a smile, pouring his black coffee.
The mayor liked people to call him by his first name. It was one of the best traditions of Red Springs. He had never liked formality. When he was a boy and mean kids would tell him to go back to the swamps, he would run to his grandmother in tears. She would reassure him with tales about his ancestor, Henry Berry Lowry and his uncle Henry Applewhite.
The mayor toasted the men at the table, raising his Hardees large coffee as they raised theirs. He noticed every one of them was wearing a pair of overalls with a zippered fly. The elders of Red Springs, in keeping with one of their finest traditions – though they didn’t particularly like it – were good to their word.