North Carolina - Trunkations

TV Treasure: Goober’s Bronzed Beanie

Monday, September 27th, 2010

If you made a list of iconic props from classic 1960s TV sitcoms — the genie bottle from I Dream of Jeannie, the shoe phone from Get Smart — then somewhere on it would be the Jughead-style beanie worn by Goober on The Andy Griffith Show. Goober Pyle was the cousin of Gomer Pyle and [...]

Winds Of Change For Simpson’s Whirligigs

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

For decades, handyman Vollis Simpson has been making giant “whirligigs” — home-built junk-art contraptions designed to spin in the wind — and mounting them on poles in a field next to his home in Lucama, North Carolina.

Ghost Town In The Sky Isolated By Landslide

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

Ghost Town in the Sky, a Wild West theme park on top of a mountain in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, has had a sometimes bumpy career as a tourist attraction. Its latest trauma has been an impending foreclosure, threatened for as early as June 2010. But that awful fate is now on hold, because the [...]

Punks Disrespect Monster Seahawk Statue

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

In the Spring of 2009 the campus of the University of North Carolina in Wilmington became the home of the world’s largest seahawk. Sculpted out of copper by a local artist, it has a wingspan of 20 feet and weighs a ton (A real seahawk has a wingspan of six feet and weighs about four pounds).