Our State

Stories in Our State Magazine

Fried Chicken Champion

Jamie Wade rings up a scratch-made biscuit with buttermilk-fried chicken and Cajun-spiced honey for a customer at the cash register. She then swings around to the drive-through window to deliver a Bowl of Goodness: deep-fried stone-ground grit cakes with homemade breakfast sausage, eggs, cheese, pico de gallo, and a spicy sour cream.

A Cup of Nostalgia

On summer evenings, sitting on the front porch overlooking farmland in Lake Lure, Sherry Arlena Waters remembers her grandmother, Pauline Freeman Whiteside, used to serve her Lipton tea and milk in a chipped teacup and saucer. Grandma Pauline used a Lipton bag and a bit of milk. “(The chipped cup) made it seem special,” Waters says. Our State, March 2022, page 48.

Native Healing in Pembroke

Each time Cherry Beasley walks into the Weinstein Health Sciences Building at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, she steps across a tiled image of a turtle, a sacred Lumbee symbol. Its round shell is a Native American medicine wheel split into four colors — black, red, yellow, and white — that represent the stages of life, as well as the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual parts of a person. PHOTO: Alex Boerner

The Honey Hog Restaurant Raises & Amazes

Tyler Jones jumps into the driver’s seat of a black-and-green John Deere Gator as his business partner, John “Johnny Ray” Bousselot, hops onto its tailgate, surrounded by buckets of grain. Their destination is a woodland paddock holding hogs that they raise for The Honey Hog Restaurant in Cleveland County, just six and a half miles away.

A Warm Community

Elsie Bennett’s face brightens when she explains the stories behind the vibrant barn quilts hanging beside locally handmade birdhouses, pottery and soaps in her roadside shop in Mount Ulla – West Rowan Farm, Home & Garden Inc. People are intrigued by the barn quilts, says Bennett. They’re more than beautiful colors and patterns – there’s a story behind each one. Find this article in the March 2021 issue of Our State Magazine.

Bicycle built for two

Joel Honorate lugs a three-foot square cardboard box through the front door of South Main Cycles in Belmont and scans the shop for the manager. The worn wood floors are uneven, and sprinkles of old coal dust still drift down from the rafters sometimes.