Bøker av Doug McGuinn

The Wilmington, North Carolina firm of Bannister, Cowan & Company, in its glowing report titled, just as glowingly, The Resources of North Carolina: Its Natural Wealth, Condition, and Advantages, as Existing in 1869. Presented to the Capitalists and People of the Central and Northern States, wrote that "[t]he three most noted copper mines in the northwestern part of the State are the Elk Knob, Peach Bottom, and Ore Knob. ... In the southeast corner of Ashe County is another mine of some note, known as Gap Creek [aka the Copper Knob Mine]." THERE'S COPPER IN THEM THAR HILLS! contains the histories of those four mines, which, as Bannister, Cowan & Company pointed out in its report, were all located in the mountains of northwest North Carolina: the Elk Knob Mine in Watauga County, the Copper Knob Mine and the Ore Knob Mine in Ashe County, and the Peach Bottom Mine in Alleghany County.

"To hell with the ET&WNC, we'll start our own railroad!" Those words were spoken in anger by Lewis Gasteinger, general manager of the newly formed Pittsburgh Lumber Company in Carter County, Tennessee, to William Flinn, president of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania construction firm of Booth & Flinn, which had recently, in 1909, purchased 12,00 acres of virgin-timber land in the Dennis Cove area of northeastern Tennessee. The lumber company needed a way to take the finished wood to market. They approached a local railroad called the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina (aka "Tweetsie"), seeking to build a spur from the firm's sawmill, located about one-half mile east of the Carter County village of Hampton. No satisfactory arrangement, however, could be agreed upon. So the Pittsburgh Lumber Company decided to build its own railroad. Incorporated in April 1910, the railroad ran from Elizabethton to Laban, Tennessee, a distance of 14.9 miles, the mainline mostly following the Laurel Fork of the Doe River.

THE "VIRGINIA CREEPER" is a historically accurate (although the author admits having to use his "poetic license" a few times) novel about the rise and fall of the lumber/railroad town of Elkland (present-day Todd), N.C, the rise and fall of a lumber/passenger train, the Virginia-Carolina (aka the "Virginia Creeper"), and the rise and fall of a lumber company (the Hassinger Lumber Company) and the company town (Konnarock, Va.) the lumber company created.

Writing this book has helped me psychologically. It was, in part, written to help me deal with the death of my eldest son, Jamie, who was killed at the age of 23, on October 5, 2006, the day before my 59th birthday. The seed for this book was planted in my head while I was practicing my kick with a kickboard at the swimming pool at the gym I go to. For some reason, I had this crazy idea of quitting teaching and becoming a lifeguard. The idea of sitting high up there in a lifeguard stand and thinking great thoughts between heroic rescues of saving people from drowning, really appealed to me. This book is sort of a reverse coming-of-age story; maybe a going-of-age story. In it are a series of essays about my growing up and my growing old, as well as an on-going novella based loosely on my swim clinics.

Lonnie-Lew Hensley, a likeable, but sometimes short-on-common sense "good ol' boy" type, ends up marrying Daisy Faith Grogan, a big-breasted vocalist/keyboard player in a four-piece country/Western band, who specializes in performing cheatin' songs. Lonnie-Lew and Daisy Faith's marriage--all two months, twelve days and eight hours of it--is, to say the least, a rocky one. Lonnie-Lew learns the hard way that Daisy Faith regards the lyrics of the cheatin' songs she sings as just make-believe; Daisy Faith makes it clear that "If I ever catch a man of mine cheatin' on me for real, I gar-un-damn-tee you he'll never cheat on me again!" Lonnie-Lew is visited by the ghost of his uncle Norville "Knock 'em Through the Wall" Lewis, a former dirt-track racecar driver, who, in 1961, mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again.The hilariously funny Sing Me a Cheatin' Song, Daisy Faith, which is set in the North Carolina foothills and the mountains of northwestern North Carolina and northeastern Tennessee during the summer of 1983, is Doug McGuinn's third novel.