Acres of memories

Sam Witcher can look back on eight decades of growing tobacco in Franklin County.

By Ruth L. Tisdale | ruth.tisdale@roanoke.com | 981-3149
Sunday, October 07, 2007

SNOW CREEK, Va. -- Rip. Snap.

The sounds of tobacco leaves being ripped from a stalk have defined 88-year-old Sam Witcher.

He heard it growing up in the Snow Creek area of southeast Franklin County in the 1930s while his mother washed clothes for others.

He made the sounds when as a 15-year-old boy he pulled the leaves from the plants as a sharecropper to put food on the table for his family.

The sounds grew louder as he bought more and more farmland in Franklin County and Henry County until he owned nearly 1,000 acres.

But although others have sold farms to developers to pay for a better life, Witcher has kept all of the land for himself and his family.

"I didn't want to sell the land," said Witcher, standing outside his home on a 90-degree August afternoon. "I figured my children or their children would make use of it one day."

Humble beginnings

Higher education was not an option for Witcher growing up in the 1930s.

With state-sanctioned racial segregation at an all-time high in rural Virginia, Witcher said his only option was the tobacco fields.

"The buses weren't coming around back then to pick up blacks," Witcher said. "You had to walk five or 10 miles just to get on the bus. We couldn't go to school like the whites."

But segregation wasn't the only motivation for Witcher to pull tobacco.

Torn apart from his brothers and sisters after his mother lost her job, Witcher was forced to be the man of the house at age 14 and dropped out of school in the seventh grade.

"We stayed with relatives for a while," Witcher said. "Times were hard back then. We just did what everyone else did. We pulled tobacco."

Pulling tobacco as a black sharecropper didn't bring in as much income as it did for Witcher's white counterparts, however.

Witcher said he made just 10 cents a day pulling tobacco, making it nearly impossible to buy land of his own.

"They made the quota higher for us than they did the whites," he said. "You had to plant other things just to survive."

Buying land

But Witcher's fortunes began to change in the 1960s. He was able to buy his own land when more and more farmers gave it up for more lucrative jobs in manufacturing plants in Danville and Martinsville.

"There was a time when everyone grew a little bit of tobacco on their land to keep ahead," he said. "But when the manufacturing jobs started coming in, they started moving off their farms and they were selling the land at cheap prices, so I bought it."

Witcher's other endeavors also increased his land holdings.

In addition to growing tobacco, Witcher had a dairy farm, and raised beef cattle. He also grew hay.

Witcher said his late wife, Elsie Warren Witcher, who was a minister at two churches in the area, kept track of all of the expenses of the household as well as the expenses of the business.

"She knew where everything was," he said. "She kept everything going."

Family affair

As his farms grew, Witcher began using his 11 children to help pull tobacco.

"We just had 10 acres at first," he said. "That was good back then. But we would get the girls out there to pull the tobacco, and when the boys got old enough, they would pull it."

Darlene Swain, one of Witcher's daughters, said she remembers pulling tobacco in the morning before going to school and again after coming home.

"There were six girls before there were any boys," Swain said. "Daddy used to always joke that he wouldn't have any boys to help him. We girls were happy when he finally got his boys."

Out of Witcher's four sons, three have continued on in the family tradition, with all three owning more than 400 acres of land each in Franklin County. None of his seven daughters has gone into farming.

Elvis Witcher, one of Sam Witcher's youngest sons, has taken over much of the land that his father used to farm in addition to the nearly 400 acres he owns.

With work boots covered with red Virginia soil and sweat pouring from his brow from bending low to rip tobacco leaves from their stalk, Elvis Witcher said his father's land still produces more than 450,000 pounds of flue-cured tobacco a year.

Witcher said the amount of work to be done to his father's land is so much that they have to hire 20 men to help with the planting and the harvest, which ends in early November.

"We have had only one year where we didn't have a crop, and that was in 2003, when there was a flood," Witcher said.

Witcher said the family hasn't had to take out any loans for machinery and didn't take a buyout from the government. In 2004 the federal government offered such buyouts as part of the end of the federal tobacco-quota program, which regulated where tobacco could be grown and the prices for which it could be sold.

"We've been lucky," Witcher said.

A dying breed

The Witcher family success is a rarity among black farmers nationwide, said John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association.

"Black tobacco farmers are becoming extinct at an alarming rate," Boyd said. "They just don't have the capital to compete in today's industry. They are losing land and are being wiped out."

At the beginning of the 1900s, black farmers owned more than 15 million acres of land; today they own fewer than 3 million, Boyd said.

The number of black farmers also has decreased by 50 percent in the past 25 years, and there is only one other black family in Franklin County that raises tobacco, Boyd said.

Blacks own just 1 percent of all farms, with the number of black-owned farms dropping from 54,367 in 1982 to 29,090 in 2002, according to documents obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization that documents discrimination against black farmers.

Boyd said that while 60 percent of the 11,000 tobacco members in his organization took the 2004 tobacco buyout, the rest did not know about it, and many have since sold their farms.

"Many of these people do not have telephones; some don't even have inside toilets," Boyd said. "It's hard to expect them to go on the Internet and find out this type of information."

Blake Brown, a tobacco economist, said that even those who took money from the 2004 federal buyout have had problems financially.

"It is a free market now with buying tobacco," Brown said. "Many of these small farms don't have the land or the capital to keep up with these bigger manufacturers. All of the African-American farms fall into this category."

Boyd said the disappearance of black farms has a lot to do with discrimination against black farmers.

Boyd's claims are supported by a February 1997 U.S. Department of Agriculture report that found when minority farmers applied for loans, they were mistreated and that some complaints filed about the mistreatment went missing.

"Many times black farmers get loans late if they get them at all," Boyd said. "To a farmer, not being able to start planting on time puts you behind other farmers. Black farmers won't report it, because many of the people they report it to are the ones doing the discriminating."

Boyd said for a family such as Witcher's to have long-lasting success in the farming business is an accomplishment.

"With everything that's going on, it shows a tremendous amount of dedication and strength to survive and last this long," he said.

The next generation

But Sam Witcher doesn't feel that way.

On his porch in September, Witcher stood and looked over his 200-acre homeplace.

He saw the idle tobacco barns that he used to cure tobacco and make it ready for the market.

He observed the fields that once touted rows upon rows of tobacco but are now just used to produce hay.

He remembered the day when his wife, Elsie, suddenly died of a heart attack in 2000 and the years that followed when gradually he tilled fewer and fewer of the tobacco fields on his homeplace.

With a tearful eye, Witcher said he doesn't feel like the same farmer he once was.

"I don't know why you all want to do a story on me," Witcher said. "Everything around me is dead."

But a smile and then a laugh arose from his lips when discussion came to his children and the way they care for him.

"They come by and see about me all the time," Witcher said. "I didn't want so many girls at first, but I'm glad I have them now."

Witcher said he had thought about selling his land, which has become prime real estate with the burst of growth at Smith Mountain Lake, but decided to keep it, and the sounds of tobacco harvests past and future, for his family.

"Daddy always said that he was going to keep the land so his family would always have a place to live," Swain said. "No matter how far we go, we would always have some place to call home."

Spend some time on Sam Witcher Sr.'s tobacco farm.

Holidays on Display

The main aisle of Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, circa 1955. (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)

Holidays on Display examines the art, industry, and history of holiday display across the United States. Focusing on parading culture and department store retail display, primarily between the 1920s and 1960s, when holiday displays were considered commercial endeavors equally rewarding for the American public, the exhibition showcases numerous photographs, postcards and rendering illustration of parade floats and window displays—including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Marshall Field & Company Christmas windows—as well as objects relating to the early creation of these displays.

“Holidays on Display” will be on view at the National Museum of American History through November 2010

Link to Smithsonian Institution
Online Exhibition
Press Realease
Asked and Answered | Holidays on Display

on the closing of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Bookseller

One of the joys of my childhood was going to Tanglewood Mall on a Saturday afternoon and checking out what was new at Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Bookseller. It’s hard to remember in a post-superstore and internet world how good these stores were, but they actually were decent stores with good selections in their heyday. They were at least as good as a typical Barnes & Noble and Borders, just smaller and lacking the chairs and coffee.

IMO what killed them was the shifting of corporate focus by their parent companies. After Barnes & Noble and Borders took of in the ’90s, both B. Dalton and Waldenbooks became de-facto outlets for their corporate families and started filling the fronts of their stores with worthless bargain book sections: poorly conceived clearance aisles filled with low quality books that should never have been published in the first place. The over-abundance of loss leaders shrunk the traditional book selections to a shadow of their former selves and ruined the two chains’ reputations as sources for quality books.

Even though Barnes & Noble corporate eventually saw the light and integrated the Barnes & Noble search and order capabilities into their B.Dalton mall stores, Borders corporate steadfastly refused to bring Waldenbooks in line with Borders search and order capabilities until Waldenbooks got so small they couldn’t support their own system.

It doesn’t take a retail genius to figure out that the companies were de-emphasizing the mall stores in favor of a larger, more profitable format and that the reduced selection of a modern Waldenbooks and B.Dalton would eventually make they easy to dispose of if the mall business never recovered (and it hasn’t so far).

It’s sad to think of how many small and medium sized cities will now have no new general-interest bookstore thanks to B. Dalton and Waldenbooks’ closures. Danville, Va. and Bluefield, W.Va. immediately come to mind: somewhat isolated cities that don’t have enough college-educated customers to be considered for a book superstore but yet have enough population to support one. Cities like these will be solely at the mercy of Walmart and the like, which only stock books they figure will sell to a mainstream audience and little else.

This is an embarrassing and depressing situation. Why should people in typically sized American cites have to travel 60 miles or more just to buy a non-New York Times bestseller book in person? I just hope that a company like Books-A-Million will step up and bring some essential choice and selection back to these towns.

Malls of America: R.I.P.

As of today, the much appreciated Malls of America blog has been removed from Blogger. Keith Milford's work over the past several years chronicling the history of retail was legendary and remarkably thorough. The commentary was always informative and fun, and the photo quality was consistently good.

Malls of America was around for a couple of years before new posts came to an abrupt, unexplained end about a year and a half ago, but it served as the inspiration for at least a half-dozen blogs and websites. I was a supporter to the end, and I kept going back to the site for a while hoping to see new posts. Alas, it was not to be.

If you've never seen the site, check out the archived version before it's too late.

Robert Henry (Chilly) Childress: 1941-2009

I can't say enough good things about my friend. Chilly was a very special person and I'm going to miss him dearly.

When we worked together at LMW, he was always willing to listen and offer advice and he told some of the funniest and most memorable stories I've ever heard. Even after I left the company and his hours got cut, he would look me up wherever I was and even had a bus driver stop a Valley Metro bus just so he could say hi to me when I was walking down the street! No one would have done that but Chilly; he was that kind of person.

Robert Henry (Chilly) Childress, of Roanoke, Va., the oldest of 12 children was born on October 10, 1941, to the late Isaac H. Childress and Julia M. Millner Childress in Roanoke, Va. After a brief illness he departed this life on Friday, March 13, 2009, at Salem VA Medical Center in Salem, Va. Robert was educated in the Roanoke School District and upon graduation from Lucy Addison High, left to serve for seven years in the United States Army. While stationed in Valley Forge, Pa., he met and married Shirley Coleman on July 31, 1965 and resided in Norristown, Pa. From this union were two children, Denise Michelle and Robert. Chilly worked for many years and was said to have been one of the best bartenders in the North. He had many skills and the last was with LMW Engineering Architecture Surveying Corporation, who stated "he was very diligent in his employment and a philosopher." Robert will be remembered by his son, Robert H. Childress Jr. (Valarie); siblings, Calvin E. Childress, Martha A. Childress, Harry T. (aka Joe) Childress, Roszella Cunningham, Lynwood Perry Childress, Wayne M. Childress (Yolanda), of Roanoke, the Reverend Helen M.C. Jones (John), Theresa L. White, of Norristown, Pa., Julia M. Childress, of Tampa, Fla., Teresa C. McClendon (Rev. Michael) and Timothy E. Childress, of Palm Beach, Fla.; three grandchildren, Troy Childress, Tyler Childress and Tamra Childress, of Norristown, Pa.; two aunts, Martha G. Williams (Bill), of Washington, D.C., and Della Millner, of Roanoke, Va.; a host of relatives, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends; and family friends, Melvin Saunders, James Bryant, Steve Stewart, Nilda Sierra, and Patricia Cooper. He was preceded in death by his parents, Isaac H. (March 1980) and Julia M. Childress (November 1997); daughter, Denise Michelle Childress (August 13, 1999); and brother, Isaac N. Childress (July 1965). Memorial services will be held 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, 2009, at Trinity Community Baptist Church, 1814 Carroll Ave., Roanoke. Arrangements by Lotz Funeral Home, Roanoke, Va.

Appreciation: Carlin, from straight comic to icon

By JOHN ROGERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When he shucked the coat and tie for black T-shirts and jeans, grew his hair long and began to riff about those "Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV," George Carlin became more than just the countercultural comedian.

Carlin, who died Sunday of heart failure at 71, took comedy itself in a whole new direction.

No longer were nightclubs the territory of guys in suits telling harmless mother-in-law jokes.

"He was more than just a comic. His routines became part of the American lexicon," fellow comedian Paul Rodriguez told The Associated Press on Monday. "They came to say a lot about America and its times."

Indeed, when Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight boxing championship for refusing induction into the U.S. military, Carlin noted that Ali, who made his living beating people up, had refused service because he opposed the Vietnam War.

"He said, 'No, that's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up. But I don't want to kill 'em.' And the government said, 'Well, if you won't kill people, we won't let you beat 'em up.'"

Arguably his most famous routine, though, was simply called "Seven Words."

More than just an outpouring of obscenities, it was — as almost all Carlin routines were — a clever play on the sound and meaning of almost every word Carlin used.

One word in the routine, for example (not one of the offending seven) was what he called "a two-way word," explaining: "You can prick your finger. But don't ... "

"Some people think the routines were all about saying dirty words, but it wasn't about that at all," says Jamie Masada, who as owner of the Laugh Factory comedy clubs knew Carlin for more than 20 years.

"He had a different motivation," Masada continued, "and the motivation was free speech. George believed when he was on stage that was like being in his church and he could say anything he wanted there."

It's only appropriate, then, that Carlin's name is attached to a key U.S. Supreme Court free-speech ruling, albeit one limiting the right.

The 1978 decision, the result of a radio station playing "Seven Words," upheld the government's authority to issue sanctions for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," Carlin told the AP earlier this year.

Other than that, he said at the time, he had very little interest in public affairs. He claimed to have not voted in a presidential election in decades.

"I was always out of step," he said. "I left school in ninth grade, I got kicked out of the Air Force, I got kicked out of the choir and the altar boys and summer camp and three schools and I was a pot smoker when I was 13 in the early '50s. I was always a lawbreaker and a kind of outlaw rebel."

One thing he was good at, though, was doing funny voices and making funny faces like his boyhood idol, Danny Kaye.

"When I was 10, 11, I was watching MGM movies with Danny Kaye," he said. "I kind of looked at that and thought, `Gee, I can do that.'"

After a brief pairing with comedian Jack Burns, with whom he would remain friends the rest of his life, Carlin went out on his own in 1962, inspired, Burns said Monday, by a Lenny Bruce show the two saw in Chicago in 1961.

By the end of the 1960s, Carlin had grown his hair long, added a beard that he joked covered his acne and began to embrace the countercultural ethos of the time.

"I finally did the right thing, which was to get in touch with my own real voice, and that made me happy for the first time," he once said.

From there, he would go on to record 23 comedy albums, win four Grammys, do 14 TV specials for HBO, write three best-selling books and appear in several movies. Just last week it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

"None of that would have happened if I had remained imprisoned in a suit," Carlin said.

As his humor became more observational, nothing was off-limits, from politics to sports to religion, with war and other atrocities frequent targets.

"The very existence of flame-throwers," he once joked, "proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, `You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'"

At the same time, his humor could be gentle when the moment called for it.

He appeared as Mr. Conductor on the children's show "Shining Time Station" in the 1990s and was the voice of Fillmore, the hippie van, in the popular 2006 children's movie "Cars."

From a nightclub stage, however, his humor could always be expected to be scatological. And although his penchant for funny voices and faces might soften it some, it could still be in your face as he ridiculed God, joked about televising suicides and did things like simply ending a routine with a recitation of every synonym for penis.

"He made us look at things, look at ourselves. You won't find too many comics with the kind of chops to do that," said fellow comedian Tommy Chong. "You're only allowed to do that when you've paid your dues."

And indeed Carlin had. Early in their careers, Burns recalled, the two were so broke they shared a one-room apartment with a pullout bed.

"Two guys lying next to each other for three months. You can bet we made jokes about that," he laughed.

Carlin went on to develop a serious cocaine addiction, and as recently as 2004 he entered rehab to break what he called a dependency on vicodan and wine.

Despite those struggles, Carlin, who suffered the first of several heart attacks when he was only 41, said the coronary artery disease that finally killed him was the result not of drugs but of genetics.

"My father gave me this disease," he told the AP in 2007. "But he also gave me my gift of gab, my sense of humor. So what the ... . It was a good trade-off."

Nike set to release 23rd Air Jordan

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) -- It's gotta be the shoes, right?

No other basketball shoe has changed the face of business, athletics and marketing like the Air Jordan. This month, Nike releases the 23rd edition, and it is expected to be just as venerated as its predecessors.

The sleek design and link to Michael Jordan's jersey number make it a touchstone in the line. It's also Nike's first basketball shoe designed under its "Considered" ethos, which aims to reduce waste and use environmentally friendly materials wherever possible.

The Air Jordan XX3 will be released in three hyped-up rounds from January to February, starting with a limited edition to be sent to only 23 retailers to be sold for $230 and concluding with the national launch at $185.

There had been talk at Nike about retiring the shoe at No. 23, because of his iconic jersey number. But company officials won't say whether this will be the last of the line. Neither will Jordan.

"You'll just have to wait and see," Jordan said in an e-mail to The Associated Press, responding to questions about the upcoming release.

Before launching the first shoe in 1985, Nike had just signed Jordan for $2.5 million over five years. Nike won't say what Jordan's current contract with the company is worth.

Jordan's deal with Nike opened the door for sneaker manufacturers to chase after athletes, signing them up --sometimes just out of high school-- for multimillion-dollar contracts in hopes of being able to cash in on the next superstar. It sent sneaker prices to new heights, which has since generated a backlash against selling pricey shoes to basketball-loving kids.

"The Air Jordan franchise created the most coveted basketball footwear in the world and changed the basketball landscape forever," said Nike Brand President Charlie Denson.

Unlike most basketball shoes to date, which were often white and utilitarian, the Air Jordan was a shock of black and red. It was initially banned by the NBA for not conforming with other players' shoes.

Jordan continued to wear them and was fined $5,000 a game, which Nike paid.

"Nobody expected the mass hysteria created by its release," Jordan, who has been a part-owner of the Charlotte Bobcats since 2006, said in his e-mail to The AP.

A new edition was launched each year, and release dates had to be moved to the weekends to keep kids from skipping school to get a pair.

The frenzy got dangerous. People were mugged and even killed for the shoes.

The Air Jordans helped spawn a subculture of collectors, who line up at stores to buy the shoe's latest edition.

Jordan said he never expected that the shoe would become an icon.

"Like every kid growing up, I dreamed of making winning shots at the buzzer and I was fortunate to live out that dream, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever entertain the idea of the success of the Air Jordan franchise," he said.

The Air Jordans moved basketball shoes from true high-tops or low-tops to a middle range and used unheard of styles, such as patent leather toes and elephant print.

As Jordan's success grew on the courts, so did Nike's in the shoe industry.

People from the streets to the suburbs were wearing $100-plus basketball shoes, which was unheard of at the time.

That price is the norm today, but it has launched a backlash, such as the partnership between New York Knicks player Stephon Marbury and the Steve & Barry's store chain to sell basketball shoes for $14.98 -- a direct stab at pricey sneakers like Air Jordans.

At that time, the Air Jordan captured a mix of design, marketing, athleticism and player charisma that hadn't been seen before in the industry -- everyone wanted to "Be Like Mike."

"Athletes had been endorsing products for years prior to this," said Tinker Hatfield, Nike's Vice President of Innovation Design and Special Projects.

"But they were just signing their name to the shoe. I think there was a very understandable difference...Michael's personality and even the changes in the game and inspiration from other walks of life were all sort of being designed into this product and that made it more interesting."

Jordan and Hatfield work together on the design and function on many of the Air Jordan shoes. Jordan has final say on design matters.

Air Jordan was the lightning in the bottle that every company hopes for.

Advertising images of Jordan soaring across the sky were ubiquitous. Spike Lee could be heard hollering "It's gotta be the shoes" on television. And Jordan's outstretched arms with the swoosh nearby adorned walls across the country.

Nike quickly moved from a running company and newcomer to the basketball category to the market leader. Some industry estimates put Nike's current share of the basketball shoe market at about 85 percent. Far behind are Adidas and Reebok.

The idea of adding such unusual style to a product or so closely aligning with a personality was novel at the time, but it paid off.

Other companies tried to follow suit but it was like trying to come up with the next Harry Potter or iPhone for basketball.

The relationship completely changed the idea of sports marketing. Companies now make athlete sponsorships the centerpiece of their business, spending millions signing them and designing product lines and marketing platforms around them.

Jordan's original deal seems like a pittance compared to multimillion-dollar contracts inked these days, such as Nike's $90 million agreement with LeBron James.

"The beginning of the Jordan era marked a new and more sophisticated approach to leveraging an athlete," said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

Like any bet, athletic companies take their risks -- some pay off, like Tiger Woods or LeBron James. But some don't, a la Michael Vick. Nike terminated its contract with Vick last August after his plea agreement on dogfighting charges.

Jordan was spun off into its own division in 1997, a move that some high up in Nike questioned when Jordan retired.

But the business is a key component, with new players signing on under the brand. Nike has spun that Jordan swagger into performance and luxury apparel for men and woman.

The Air Jordan remains the pinnacle piece for shoe collectors. The original Air Jordan 1 can sell for thousands of dollars, depending on various factors.

Jordan said: "It blows my mind that even after five years removed from the game the shoe would be stronger than ever and I would still be greeted by fans as if I had just won a championship all over again."

Happy Smurfday!

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — They're turning 50 without a hint of gray.

Just blue. Lots of blue.

The Smurfs are hitting the half-century mark, and Papa Smurf and Smurfette helped kick off a year of celebrations Monday with sarsaparilla juice and — naturally — Smurfberry cake.

The late cartoonist Pierre Culliford — best known by his pen name, "Peyo" — first introduced the tiny blue figures in a comic strip in October 1958. He called them Schtroumpf; they became known worldwide as the Smurfs.

The Smurfs, forest dwellers who live in little white-capped mushroom homes, developed their own "Smurf" language in which nouns and verbs were interchanged.

Their debut on U.S. television in 1981 launched their global rise to stardom and made the Smurfs a household name. A Smurf is a Pitufo in Spanish, a Schlumpf in German, Nam Ching Ling to the Chinese, a Sumafa in Japan and Dardassim in Hebrew.

"I think that if he could see all that has been done with his characters since his death and the success and interest that the Smurfs still attract, he would be very, very, very, very happy and very proud," said Peyo's son, Thierry Culliford.

To mark 50 years of Smurfdom, organizers are planning everything from a 3-D animation feature film expected to be released next year to new comic book collections and a remastered release of the popular 1980s television animated series, Peyo's family said.

Peyo's widow and two children will help kick off a European birthday tour in Brussels. The Smurfs celebration will continue in Paris and Berlin.

The Smurfs also will team up with the UNICEF to promote children's rights and education worldwide, said Yves Willemont of UNICEF Belgium.

"The Smurfs and UNICEF have a lot of values in common — values about joy, happiness and respect," Willemont said. "We also have in common the fact that we are dedicated to the cause of children and to the promotion of every child and the right of every child to survive."

UNICEF and the Smurfs joined forces two years ago to raise the plight of ex-child soldiers in Africa.

Born in Brussels, Peyo worked as a movie projectionist before entering the world of comic strip drawing.

The Smurfs appeared as a supporting cast of characters in Peyo's 1958 "Johan and Pirlouit" cartoon, which was set in the Middle Ages.

The Smurfs quickly grew in popularity and by 1960, the Smurfs had their own comic strip series and. With the help of the Hanna-Barbera Productions, the Smurfs became an animated cartoon in 1981.

Thierry Culliford said the Smurfs promote love and friendship. He said many who grew up watching the Smurfs on TV during the 1980s and 1990s now are parents and want to introduce the Smurfs to their children.

Demand for Smurf stories continues, said Hendrik Coysman, managing director of IMPS, which controls the rights of the Smurf brand worldwide.

"Thousands of fans are asking for more stories and these will be based of course on the fantastic asset that Peyo has left us," Coysman said.

Peyo, who died 15 years ago, "would be very happy if he were here today" to see Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Handy, Jokey and the troop of 96 others celebrate 50 years of Smurfmania, daughter Veronique Culliford said.

Thanks to Baltimore, Air Force 1 still flying

Nike sneaker boasts 25 years of loyal fans

By Tanika White
Baltimore Sun reporter

BALTIMORE - In the 2002 hit "Air Force Ones," the rapper Nelly extolled his love for the sneaker in the song's title: "I need two pair," he drawled. "Give me two pair."

Clearly Nelly is not from Baltimore. If he were, he'd have far more than just two pairs.

Nike is launching a major promotion for the 25th anniversary of its Air Force 1 - a sneaker that Baltimore had a major role in saving and helping to become an urban fashion sensation of the past generation.

In contrast to the product hype often manufactured on Madison Avenue, the sneaker's following grew initially by word of mouth, before the Internet and with little TV advertising. The shoe originated in 1982, when Nike sales were one-15th what they are now and its future endorsement king, Michael Jordan, was still a freshman at the University of North Carolina.

Curiously, the buzz for the Air Force 1 centered in Baltimore, far from the major fashion centers and the only place where the model was sold for a time after it was all but discontinued.

"No city is as important to the Air Force 1 as Baltimore," Nike acknowledged in a booklet it sent to retailers recently for the 25th anniversary promotion. "The city rebirthed the shoe and set in motion a series of events that would change the way sneakers were perceived in the marketplace."

Nelly's two pairs wouldn't suffice for Melvin Bartee, for example. He has amassed at least 100 pairs of the $80 sneakers over the years, their orange boxes stacked to the ceiling in the basement of his East Baltimore home. "I don't even go down there to look for a pair anymore. I just buy new ones," said Bartee, 41, a youth basketball coach at the Cecil-Kirk Recreational Center.

Keith Holly of West Baltimore said he has at least 50 pairs of Air Force 1's. He buys them two at a time, wears them twice, maybe three times, then gives them away.

And even a trans-Atlantic distance couldn't stem Michael Boateng's passion for Air Force 1's. When he attended high school in West Africa, Boateng, now 29, said, "My parents mailed me the new ones when they came out."

While Nike helped shape the modern athletic wear industry with its line named for Jordan, the lesser-known Air Force 1 model has been the Oregon company's biggest seller, footwear expert John Shanley said. The shoe generated roughly $1 billion a year for the company at its peak, about $600 million in more recent years.

"I remember going to the malls at 7 a.m. and kids would be in line for those shoes," said Shanley, a New York-based analyst who covers the athletic wear industry for Susquehanna Financial Group. "There's no other shoe that ever created that kind of thing. Maybe some of the Jordans."

In 1982, Nike introduced the Air Force 1 as a high-performance basketball shoe. Moses Malone, who became the first basketball player to go directly to the pros from high school after declining an offer to play at the University of Maryland, was one of the first to wear the sneakers, starting a fad in urban areas.

"Back then, shoes had a limited run," Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said. "They'd come out and then they'd go away forever."

By 1983, Nike was ready to discontinue the model for newer styles. But three Baltimore-area retailers at the time - Charley Rudo Sports, Cinderella Shoes and Downtown Locker Room - banded together to implore Nike executives to reconsider.

"The shoes were blowing out of my store," recalled Harold Rudo, then the footwear buyer for his father's store, Charley Rudo Sports. "I flew out to [Nike's headquarters in] Portland, Oregon, and met with the second-in-command."

Rudo and cohorts from the other two sporting goods stores persuaded Nike initially to continue selling two styles of Air Force 1's - white with royal blue, and white with chocolate brown - but only in their stores in Baltimore.

The first weekend the sneakers were re-introduced in Baltimore, Rudo said, he sold more than 100 pairs.

"Then, we started popping out new styles, color by color by color by color. We brought out one to two colors a month," said Rudo, who is known even today as "Mr. Shoe." "We were exclusive, the Three Amigos."

In pre-Internet days, word of mouth propelled sneaker-heads along the East Coast to Baltimore for Air Force 1's.

"We had people coming from New York, Washington, D.C.," Rudo said. "They were coming from all over Pennsylvania. They knew we had 'em, and they'd all come running to Baltimore to buy them from us."

Eventually, Nike concluded that Baltimore was on to something. About 10 years after the shoes' exclusive run in Baltimore, the company re-released the Air Force 1 nationally in the mid-1990s.

"This is something that is now on a global level," said Wilkins, the company spokesman. "People in Japan love the Air Force 1. People in Brazil love the Air Force 1. To think that it really started in Baltimore is kind of amazing. ... It has moved from being a performance shoe to a cultural icon."

Until Nike announced a 25th anniversary promotional campaign for the Air Force 1, only a select few were aware of Baltimore's role in popularizing the model early on.

"So often you think of L.A., New York, Chicago for this kind of thing," said Mike May, spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

While Nike poured millions into promoting its Jordan line, it barely advertised the Air Force 1, lending the sneaker an underground appeal. Like Converse's canvas Chuck Taylors and Adidas' Superstar model, Nike's Air Force 1 became a phenomenon with a clean, simple look. As more colors were added, buyers continued to clamor for the shoe because no matter the outfit, there was an Air Force 1 to go with it.

"You can basically get any color to match your clothes, whatever you feel like wearing," said Boateng of East Baltimore. "I've worn 'em to church. I'll be wearing a blazer and then I'll have on my Air Forces."

Today, there are more than 1,700 different styles of Air Force 1's, although the shoe is essentially the same as in 1982 - unusual for Nike sneakers, even Air Jordans. There are versions in patent leather, multi-colored styles and some designed by graffiti artists. Wealthy rap artists and celebrities often take a pair of Air Force 1's and upgrade the "swoosh" with designer monograms, such as Louis Vuitton's signature LVs.

After-purchase customization of the Air Force 1 has become a cottage industry for some city artists and retailers.

Dwayne Gillard, 27, of West Baltimore, had one of his five pairs of white-on-white Air Force 1's professionally decorated at Mondawmin Mall with "Hundred Grand Federation," the logo for his side business as a rapper.

"You gotta have a pair of Air Force 1's. You put 'em on at night, and I swear you look like your feet are glowing," Gillard said. "Then you gotta have a second pair. The second pair you gotta get somebody to customize 'em for you. The third pair is the backup for that first pair. And the fourth and fifth is for when nobody's selling them no more. I got five right now because I know come May, I'm not gonna be able to find 'em."

Baltimore retailers sometimes struggle to meet demand, said Jeffrey Bowden, a spokesman for DTLR, formerly the Downtown Locker Room, which now operates from Atlanta to Chicago.

"It's absolutely a phenomenon," Bowden said. "It's clearly the Baltimore shoe. There were times there where it was hard for us to keep them in stock, through all sizes, from kids' all the way up to men's.

"That real hard-core demographic, they're like, 'Hey, I need a new pair of Airs,' just because they got a scuff on them. And they've got to have every color when they come out," he said. "I'm even guilty of that. I've had hundreds over the years."

Nike officials can't explain why the shoe has had such a foothold in Baltimore, but they are grateful for the love.

To promote the 25th anniversary version of the Air Force 1 - and the just-released Air Force 25 sneaker - the company built a pricey in-store display at DTLR in Mondawmin Mall, one of the first stores to originally sell the Air Force 1, Nike said.

The display shows players of the past in flight jumpsuits, such as Malone, beside a "second coming" of current stars such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, who are promoting the new Air Force 25s.

Local sellers don't expect the relationship to wane anytime soon.

"Twenty years from now ... it's going to be the same thing," said Greg Vaughan, manager of Mondawmin Mall's DTLR and a former salesman at Charley Rudo Sports, one of the three stores that saved the shoe. "I'm watching generations of kids growing right into it."

The Bergen Mall on myspace

LiveMalls fan Jordan Berson sent me a link to his myspace tribute to New Jersey's iconic Bergen Mall. There are lots of great pictures and commentary about the Paramus mall, one of the first large suburban shopping centers in America.

I think if you like this site and LiveMalls, you will love his page.

myspace.com/bergen_mall

Culture at the counter

By Jan Whitaker
originally published in the Boston Globe

JUST AS THEY pioneered modern escalators to carry crowds of shoppers upward, department stores encouraged their customers' social mobility. The big stores grew up with a burgeoning American middle class that they provided with its tastes, habits -- and consumer goods.

As full-service department stores continue to disappear, it becomes clear just what influential organizations they were in shaping the lives of millions.

With concerts, lectures, style forums, art shows, science exhibits, and book festivals, the big stores showed Americans how their lives could be richer and more gratifying. Sometimes employing deadly earnestness and at other times circus-like antics, they caught the public's imagination and sold them an American way of life, complete with gold-rimmed dinner plates, pianos, prom dresses, and engraved invitations.

Along with the goods came lessons on child psychology, galleries hung with oil paintings, symphonies, author teas, and countless other edifying sights and sounds. Salvador Dali designed show windows at Bonwit-Teller; Leopold Stokowski conducted an orchestra at Wanamaker's in Philadelphia; and William James discussed philosophy at Filene's. The Federal Children's Bureau worked with department stores to instruct parents on the health and well-being of infants.

For decades the largest booksellers in many cities were department stores. In 1904, The Wall Street Journal reported that Wanamaker's in Philadelphia ran the largest book shop in the world. Although many early department store books were cheap reprints of first-run editions, their lower prices put books in the hands of a wider spectrum of readers than ever before. Jordan Marsh boasted of a ``colossal book display" in 1897, featuring ``Quo Vadis" selling briskly at half the regular price. The store also claimed to have an ``enormous stock of juvenile books," a true department store merchandise stronghold. Department stores' professional book buyers dominated the American Booksellers Association through much of the 20th century, as well as hosting some of the first author tours and book festivals.

Museums in the 1920s looked to department stores as models. At a style forum at Kaufmann's Department Store in Pittsburgh, Stewart Culin of the Brooklyn Museum declared, ``The department store stands for the greatest influences for culture and taste that exist today in America." The director of the Newark Museum, John Cotton Dana, acknowledged that a first-class department store was more like a good museum than any of the actual museums of 1928. The stores were judged far more skillful at display, less intimidating to the public, and better overall at drawing crowds to view art works and exhibits of modern industrial design. They attracted thousands to symposiums on style, such as Macy's 1927 Art in Trade show that presented a weeklong program of talks by designers, scholars, and museum curators.

Art galleries in the big stores dated back to the late 19th century. Jordan Marsh proclaimed its new 1894 exhibit space had good lighting, perfect for displaying work ``from the studios of Boston's best artists." Local artists were always popular, as were sentimental subjects, but department stores also showed paintings by Picasso, Rosa Bonheur (at Watt & Shand in Lancaster, Pa., in 1908), the ``ashcan school," European cubists, and social realists.

The wonders of science and technology were demonstrated in stores' lighting systems, pneumatic tubes, elevators, and escalators, all of which fascinated the public at a time when most people lacked modern conveniences at home. But the stores also presented natural history exhibits, expositions on how electricity worked, and attractions such as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and, later, space suits worn by the first astronauts.

The stores' attractions were free and open to all. Of course department stores are businesses that must focus intently on the bottom line, but they built their fortunes on the notion that as their customers prospered and developed more artistically discriminating tastes, they would buy better merchandise and profits would rise accordingly.

By the 1960s, a large US middle class took it for granted that local department stores were reliable links to the mores, manners, and material accoutrements of mainstream American life. But, despite success as social arbiters, the big stores' high cost of distribution -- due in part to special events and lavish services -- undermined profits. In city after city they closed or were consolidated in buyouts.

The department store represented a historic confluence of merchandising creativity and social aspirations that may be impossible to replace.

Jan Whitaker is author of ``Service & Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class."

mama and what's left of greg brady

I was pretty beat today after work, so I fell asleep watching Mama’s Family on the new ‘I” TV network. There was nothing else on but reality shows, and I actually like Mama’s Family in doses, especially the older ones that still had the Carol Burnett Show influence.

It was a pretty good episode tonight. Vinton and Naomi were celebrating their first wedding anniversary when a series of events led to Mama ending up in their “Honeymoon Suite.” Not exactly Emmy worthy, but not bad.

When I awoke, an infomercial for Time-Life’s ‘70s Music Explosion was on. All those songs brought back great memories, but one of the hosts was TV’s Greg Brady, Barry Williams, and time has not been kind. It was ironic that as they played these old songs, the singers on the videos were so young, while the guy I’ve been seeing all through his youth seemed really worn out.

But anyway…

A New Perspective on the Past

History Museum Gets Air and Space Digs During Closure

By Bravetta Hassell
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History closes next month for almost two years of renovations, but some of the museum's most beloved artifacts -- Dorothy's ruby slippers, Kermit the Frog, "Star Wars" droids -- will reappear in the fall.

Beginning Nov. 17, 150 objects from the shuttered museum will be part of the "Treasures of American History" exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

American History Museum Director Brent D. Glass said yesterday during an exhibition preview that the show will include recent acquisitions that have never been displayed before. The idea, he said, is to remind people that "the museum's work in collecting continues" during the renovation.

In addition to seeing Dorothy's sparkly slippers, "Wizard of Oz" fans will also get a chance to view the Scarecrow costume worn in the movie but rarely seen since. The original script from the 1939 film and the historic Technicolor camera that brought Dorothy out of two-tone Kansas and into full-color Oz will be there, too.

The exhibit will have four themes: creativity and innovation, American biography, national challenges and American identity.

Glass said that the national challenges section would include the Woolworth's lunch counter from Greensboro, N.C., where four black students staged the first sit-in during the civil rights movement, and the NBC microphone President Franklin D. Roosevelt used to deliver his "fireside chats" during the Great Depression and World War II.

The American History Museum, which attracts about 3 million visitors each year, owns about 3 million objects. "It was so difficult to choose," Glass said.

Recent acquisitions will be in a display case near the exhibition entrance. First up: artifacts from the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The acquisitions display will change every two months.

Elsewhere, visitors will see the red Everlast boxing gloves Muhammad Ali wore defending his title as world heavyweight champion in the 1970s, a yellowed page of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" score and "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," the bible Thomas Jefferson created in the early 19th century to reflect his deistic beliefs.

At yesterday's preview, conservator Beth Richwine, wearing white gloves, gingerly opened the cylindrical bodice of R2-D2, revealing that, yes, "there were people in here" during the filming of "Star Wars." C-3PO, also from the 1977 movie, will be in the exhibit, too.

Many things in the "Treasures" show haven't made an appearance in years, such as the silver-tipped baton John Philip Sousa used to lead the "President's Own" U.S. Marine Band.

"In my mind this is one of the unique opportunities we have had to bring together these iconic treasures in a way that has never been seen before," Glass said.

Officials announced in April that the history museum would undergo "major architectural transformations" ending sometime in summer 2008. In preparation for the work, which includes construction of a state-of-the-art gallery for the Star-Spangled Banner and enhancements to the building's interior, the museum will close its doors to the public on Sept. 5.

"Treasures of American History" will occupy 5,000 square feet on the east side of the Air and Space Museum's second floor.

Fill 'er up at Belk!

How about a gas station at Belk? This is a photo from the "Belko" service station at Belk, Parkhill Mall, Tarboro, North Carolina, circa 1975. You could even use your Belk/Leggett charge to fill your gas tank. (Pat Richardson)

Find more Belk memories in The Belk Archive