News

Ask Matt looks back on 10 years of answers

By Matt Matteson, Published: July 1, 2023

Editor’s Note: Matt Matteson has had so much fun writing his Ask Matt column for the past 10 years that he volunteered to produce this special lookback. With no hesitation we said yes. Matt pulled some of the 600 stories the Lightning has published since 2013 and, where possible, offer a quick update. Sure, not all were relevant today, like where to watch the 2017 eclipse of the sun or the history of the Jim Barkley Toyota Christmas jingle, but Matt mined the archives for the cool stuff that got ink.

 

Business

 

A reader asked why so many personal injury law firms advertise on TV. We could have replied, “Well, because they can!” We listed 13 such firms, most of which were based in South Carolina. We also dug up some marketing tips for attorneys: get a catchy slogan and memorable phone number, run the ad from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and change it every 10 months. Today, six years after we ran the story, most of those same law firms are still on TV plus a new one, Matthew Yelverton Litigators, which has an office and billboard in Hendersonville.

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After the Blue Ridge Mall lost anchor JCPenney and other retail stores about seven years ago, we were asked “why?” We posted that malls were suffering on a national scale due to competition with downtown shops and strip malls. Plus our own mall had some unique challenges, including franchise store separation rules, poor highway visibility and lack of a “back door” vehicle entrance. Today the mall has 15 vacant store fronts. Moving the Hendersonville Post Office to the mall in 2018 was a godsend.

 

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Eight years ago we snapped WLOS’s suspenders. It seems their field reporters were wearing L.L.Bean brand names on their jackets. We questioned station officials about the practice and were told simply that they had a contract with L.L.Bean and wearing the brand jackets was optional. After our story ran WLOS began posting online credits for the outerwear. Today WLOS periodically runs a “promotional consideration” screen with dozens of business names including Window World and Bath Fitters but not L.L.Bean. I suspect their contract has expired.

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After the fifth credit union in the county opened in 2015, a reader wanted to know how they all can compete. In addition to the State Employees Credit Union we still have Self-Help, Mountain, Telco Community and United Federal. It seems that they can compete because we now have a sixth — Champion Credit Union with locations in Mills River and on Four Seasons Boulevard. That credit union was founded in Canton to serve employees of the Champion Pulp and Paper Mill, which became Pactiv Evergreen and has now closed. Henderson County’s financial institutions boast over $3 billion in assets. Maybe that answers the question about competition.

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We searched hard in 2016 to find any working pay phones in town and found only two. Today there are none, so unless you’re buying a Lightning from the newsrack or shopping at Aldi, there is no need to keep quarters in your pocket. It sort of makes obsolete Travis Tritt’s classic breakup song “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).” We were also asked if the company that tossed those free Yellowbook phone directories in driveways was littering. We said yes, but that company died, too, as did competitor Yellow Pages in 2019. You can still however snag an out-of-date printed copy of The Real Yellow Pages at your local grocery store.

 

Culture

Using numbers in the 2010 U.S. census, we answered the question: Do newcomers outnumber Henderson County natives? We said yes. In fact, less than half of our county’s population (48.8%) was even born in North Carolina. We made a calculated guess that between 35 and 40 percent of Henderson County born residents still reside here. We were unable to update native-born figures from the 2020 census.

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A group of agencies partner with the North Carolina Coalition to end Homeless count the homeless population in Henderson County each year in January. On the day of the count, teams visited known shelters as well as unsupervised facilities such as campgrounds, vehicles and abandoned buildings. In 2017 we reported 112 homeless persons. The just released 2023 homeless count is 193, an increase of 72% in six years.

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A few years ago we chased down a question about whether Steve Martin, the movie star and entertainer, had a house in the area. We reported that Martin did in fact have a home in the Silverstein area of Transylvania County. Martin often plays banjo with the Steep Canyon Rangers when performed in the area. Unlike the other members of the popular WNC-based bluegrass band, Martin wears a tie. He will join the band 11 times this year; the closest venue is Columbia, S.C.

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The city’s Oakdale Cemetery has a Jewish grave section where stones are set atop many of the headstones. We were dispatched to find out why. Our rabbi source said that this is a long-standing Jewish tradition and one theory is that placing stones on a grave keeps the soul of the departed down in this world. Not wanting to lose an opportunity for a personal observation, I suggested the City erect a handsome black ornamental fence to separate Oakdale Cemetery from U.S. 64. That idea went stone cold.

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A few years ago the nickname “Hendo” started becoming popular in local parlance. In fact, it was quickly replacing the nickname “Hooterville,” which this columnist attributed to the highly visible neon sign at Harry’s & Piggy’s restaurant. So a reader asked, how did Hendo get traction and was it taken from HenDough Restaurant on Kanuga Road? Nope. Hendo was probably first used at Hendersonville High School. A self-appointed student historian attributed the nickname to local musicians who might be heard saying, “Yeah, we’re doing a gig in Hendo this weekend, bro.” Bill Humleker, the Lightning’s Stuck in the Late Middle columnist, coined “HendoRock” for the greater Hendersonville-Flat Rock community.

Environment

 

Back in 2014, when drones (officially “unmanned aircraft”) were becoming all the rage, someone asked where they could be used legally. We said that drones are regulated by the state and can’t be used for surveillance without the property owner’s consent. Recreational drone operators do not need a license but may need to take an FAA safety test and get the drone registered. As of January of this year, new drone models must meet product safety standards. Their weight and capability determines how and where they can fly.

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We did an extensive story about the condition of the lagoon in Pisgah Forest on the former Ecusta Paper Mill site upstream from Henderson County. The lagoon, technically an aerated stabilization basin, lies adjacent to the French Broad River. The paper mill used the 72-acre basin to treat industrial wastewater. The basin has not been cleaned up but is still fenced. Renova Partners, the current property owner, tests the river periodically for 16 chemicals including mercury and arsenic. It was recently learned that the Hendersonville Water Department plans to use the French Broad River as a backup water source. Asheville already has an intake on the river.

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When there is a heavy rainfall event in Transylvania County, how long does it take the French Broad River to crest in Henderson County? We reported that crest predictions depend on how much rain fell, where it fell and the moisture content of the soil at the time. A hydrologist with the National Weather Service feeding assumptions into a computer model estimated that a 12-hour long, 5-inch rainfall in the headwaters of the French Broad River would crest at 10 feet at the N.C. 280 bridge in Fletcher 36 hours after the rain stopped.

Roads & Highways

 

In 2014 we researched the then-new diverging diamond interchange on Airport Road known in NCDOT parlance as a DDI. The French-born backwards traffic configuration made its way to Missouri in 2007. The DDI is more efficient, cheaper, and safer than traditional intersections. Completed in 2016, the $9 million I-26-Airport Road DDI was the first in our state. The NCDOT has since built a dozen more.

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Four years ago, we did a lengthy piece about the widening of I-26 and the need to replace the Blue Ridge Parkway Bridge. We reported that the bridge was owned by the feds but our state highway funds had to pay for it since the bridge was still functional. The new two-lane bridge will be 606 feet long and constructed with precast concrete segments at an initial projected cost of $20 million. That figure has now dropped to $14.3 million. Almost 20 years ago, with some “unused” highway money in hand, the state attempted to widen I-26 beginning the project in Henderson County rather than Asheville. A federal judge blocked the widening after agreeing with a lawsuit that activist Eva Ritchey and others filed, contending that the NCDOT had cut corners in its environmental impact analysis.

 

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One reader pitched the question of why can’t they paint the rusty guardrails along U.S. 64 East, a main gateway to the city? We reported that the state highway folks who maintain the guardrails were concerned with road safety and not appearance. Also paint does not easily adhere to rusty galvanized metal. Under the state’s “betterment program,” the old guardrails can be replaced at $30 a foot but the city of Hendersonville would have to cover the entire cost.

Technology

 

The very first column we did for the Lightning answered a question about those goofy-looking Google cars. We explained that Google’s “street view” cars have a multi-lens roof-mounted camera that shoots in nine directions and that most of Henderson County was shot in 2012. Today, after 16 years of use and development, the newest cameras are 30 times more powerful, lighter and even portable. Google stays up to date. The search-engine giant has already rephotographed the newly renovated Hendersonville High School on Oakland Street.

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We penned another story in 2013 about the Hendersonville Water Department’s new water meters that could be read remotely, thereby eliminating house-to-house meter reading. We checked back to see how that $12 million investment has worked and learned that the investment was paying big dividends with 32,000 electronic water meters now in use.

History

Digging into the origin of the name Tuxedo, we uncovered two theories. One suggests the name came from the Cherokee phrase “p’tauk-sutt-ough” meaning “place of bears.” Another says the name was pulled out of a hat and that “Tuxedo” was taken from Tuxedo Park, a village in Upstate New York. In either case, the Tuxedo name was not the first choice. In 1911, the community surrounding the old cotton mill was named “Lakewood” but because there were too many similarly named towns, the Post Office insisted on a re-do.

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We did a story about movie star Burt Reynolds and his local connection. Reynolds, of “Smokey and the Bandit” fame, once performed at the Flat Rock Playhouse. His fondness for the area drew him back and he and wife Loni Anderson, the tall blonde who played in the sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati,” bought property in Kenmure. They never built on it and Reynolds may have lost it in a nasty divorce. Reynolds filed for bankruptcy in 2011, sold his home in Florida and began auctioning his personal possessions. Once a sex symbol in the ’70s, Reynolds died of a heart attack in 2018. Deliverance.

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Another historical piece that we covered was about two prisoner of war camps in Henderson County — one at the old fairgrounds (now East High) and the other on a farm off Haywood Road. Most of the prisoners were from Field Marshal Rommel’s Afrika Korps, captured in 1943. Our camps supplied farm laborers. There were subtle conflicts between the German POWs who remained true to the Fatherland and those conscripted Nazi soldiers such as Poles and Czechs who felt no allegiance to Hitler. None of our POWs escaped, probably because the war in Europe was at an end in 1945 and prisoners knew they would soon be heading home.

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How did Rugby Road get its name? Here is a short version of a story we posted. In 1835, a young Swede named George Westfeldt sailed to New Orleans, got into the coffee trading business, married an Irish lady, and sailed to England to sit out the Civil War. Three of his sons were enrolled at Rugby School, a two-century-old prep school famous for inventing a brand of football. Westfeldt and family returned to the U.S. and bought a large farm in Fletcher. They built a road to connect the farm to what is now N.C. 191 and named it Rugby Road. More of the family history is chronicled by Lightning editor Bill Moss in his book “The Westfeldts of Rugby Grange.”

Potpourri

We searched hard in 2016 to find any working pay phones in town and found only two. Today there are none, so unless you’re buying a Lightning from the newsrack or shopping at Aldi, there is no need to keep quarters in your pocket. It sort of makes obsolete Travis Tritt’s classic breakup song “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).” We were also asked if the company that tossed those free Yellowbook phone directories in your driveway was littering. We said yes, but that company died, too, as did competitor Yellow Pages in 2019. You can still however snag an out-of-date printed copy of The Real Yellow Pages at your local grocery store.

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Ten years ago a reader was peeved that the art work on Apple Festival T-shirts was always designed for granny. We agreed but just last year we found an exception. The red, white, and blue shirt was titled “Apple Spirit in 76” and it had a patriotic look well-suited for men or women. OK, you may not see another manly T-shirt for another ten years.

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No one came forward to answer a reader’s question about how much does our County’s population increase during the summer months, so I took the job on myself. I used three years of measurable commodities including water usage, solid waste tonnage, EMS calls, ABC store activity and paper towel sales. I came up with a 21.6% summer increase. Sure it was bad science but my number has never been challenged. If you have a better idea, go for it!