Although the car was completely wiped out, nothing recognizable left of it, it sold in predictable rather than unpredictable ways which it failed in a planned fashion and the passenger compartment stay intact and the air bags deploy it, the windshield and the war did not fly off, you walk away concluding whoever is driving a car in that situation had a crack the day no question about it but probably went away from the action. Progress is a doubleedged sword, the 57 chevy is a wonderful thing in the sense you can dive under the load. You can sleep on top of the engine and so close the road on top of view. On the other hand the car that runs like a sewing machine that doesnt seem to have much romance to it has its advantages. Yes, sir . Hello. I have a couple of observations about postwar and the automobile and the american dream. My father coming out of the war like a lot of g is ended up wanting to settle down and aspire to the middleclass suburban dream. Somehow raised enough money for a new car. He had been a musician and there was always the tinge of the bohemian, he bought an early 50s studebaker. He drove it and drove it and loved it and it got raggedy and swore out as these things did and at one point he decided it needed a paint job, 1995 paint jobs and it came back the most horrendous turquoise and it is interesting, wasnt exactly, he was talked into jettisoning it, like they all work out but he always for the longest time spoke of it fondly and only semi jokingly said a head guess this, could have kept that,. He talked about how the car brought us three children from the hospital. Was an actual cultural thing at that time. We had an uncle who was the successful uncle of a family by our standards, a liquor wholesaler and he drove buicks and all the jokes about the hole in the head buicks, that symbolized something that was slightly of scale and one step up from the chevy. Three steps. I had another uncle who was a g i. This guy was also the same middleclass aspiring settle down raise a family, but he was of little more of a sportsman and he ended up driving oldsmobiles and that sort of fit, a slightly sportier version maybe how that nice hood ornament on the globe or whenever it was. Curiously i found out in the last few years he is long gone but i was visiting his and, still my favorite and. The reason he drove those polls mobiles, this would have been the 50s. The first car he had he won with a hole in one at a Golf Tournament and the won and oldsmobile and drove oldsmobiles for ever so there are all these sort of automobiles and cultural i think part of that very nice observation that really resonates with me is the idea that when your dad got rid of the old studebaker he looked on it almost like an old hound dog you had for 20 years. It is that kind of relationship. Real affection. One of the reasons was the car served his venue for Memorable Events in his life. We discount how much time we spend in our cars and how important the times we spend in our cars are. Some of my most vivid memories of my daughter as a toddler are hers sitting in the backstretch into her car seat singing while i am watching her in the rearview enjoying wuxi. Couldnt tell you where i am on my way to but that scene replayed so many times that now it is hard for me to think of my daughter at that age without in imagining the scene as unfolding in a car. We spend so much time in traffic, national has its issues in virginia where i live. It can be just that thick at times, titanic especially if youre trying to get near d. C. There are folks who commute to washington without any compunction sign on for spending two hours a day, at least two hours. The outbound commute is worse. The ids and four hours in your car willingly when there is great Public Transportation up there, has always mystified me a bit and it seems to me the only conclusion that makes sense is people enjoy a bit of solitude that their time in their cars bring them in increasingly busy lives, we are crowded at work, crowded at home, so many demands on our time and attention. One of the few places you can count on and getting your thinking done. When your second traffic in your car. I think it is because the car serves that Important Role as a venue that for instance your dad established the bond with that studebaker to begin with. It certainly explain the bonds i had with my cars. When i think i had 13 cars when i think back through them some of them bring painful memories back to me just because of the nature of the car itself but the few that i actually got running well enough to take me anywhere, important events in my life, some boxes in which memories get put. Another question. I was an engineer with General Motors for 35 years and spent 18 years in the plant working, manufacturing lines, but one point i would like to bring up, you probably heard woodward was the strip outside of detroit that manufacturers take their cars out of and runs a month street to see how they perform. The city limits of detroit, it is basically a one week hot rod, half a million cars on that stretch a usually start driving monday or tuesday nights because you could drive by the time fighting goes around. I had a 67 chevy camaro at the time, i still have the jaguar. The original honor . I am third and the second odor combed everything, easy to keep it clean. When i got it driving i had to get an appraisal so i got it back and got the appraisal at 25,000 and had fun with that and told this year. And watching a car show, the jackson auction in hagerty had this commercial to see the value of your classic car going online to check it out. I was underinsured times 3. Had to go through the whole process again, but the 59 chevy and how lot, probably with 110,000. It is more than nostalgia. There is value to them. In the book spent a good piece of one chapter talking value and authenticity and how odd it is in the automotive world, we place such value on originality and yet this is a machine with interchangeable parts that was designed to be swapped out but let me ask you something if i dont mind. Were you in management . I was under management. Where was the plan . I worked in the heavyduty truck line, we supplied all the trucks for the alaska pipeline. Was there a recognition by the guys in the line, the men and women who put these trucks together . That they were building more than just a machine . I descartes people . Do you think it is indeed with this emotional attachment . There were many that were loyal but also for vehicles in our parking lot and stuff and when eccentric engineer bought a Lincoln Continental and superintendent took exception to it. Out of the parking lot. The personnel told him to drive anything and contacted the general superintendent. We would build yellow freight, trucks and custom order. These guys would specify the airline and build them in a block and these guys would see work on the interstate and stuff. Very enjable time. Thank you. We have a couple minutes left if anybody else has one. Do you have anything to ask . My baby sister by the way. I will tell you a little about the story. I wont give away the way it ends. The book open from 2010 as you heard when the cars fate hangs in the balance at this point there is a complete beater, could wind up not sure it qualified as the parts car at that point. If you look to this car in 2010 you would have said there is nothing there, walk away from it. And it falls into the hands of this gentleman, who has been arrested 70 times, he is a felon. He is also an incredibly charming guy. If you were to meet him, people who hang out with him are either having the time of their lives or getting their ass whipped. There is no middle ground. He is the very charming, engaging person and incredibly smart displayed his lack of schooling. He again, despite lack of schooling and because he is a car guy deeply inculcated in this idea of the car as a cultural touchstone, the idea that is a repository of memories, there is more than metal, there are dreams woven into the upholstery, the lives and loves of past donors etc. And he finds this car with complete prominence and decides he is going to try to save it displayed the enormous amount of money this will entail and so launches the attempted restoration of the car and the book, the narrative is braided with the threads of the cars history from the moment it was built through its first 12 owners and tommy are anys history because tommy came off the line at the same time the car did. He is exactly the same age and want up in norfolk, va. Tommy in a squalid apartment. Those two stories travel in parallel two thirds of the way through the book when upgrades, the threads break to become one narrative as tommy attempts to rescue this car and along the way the story of these 12 otherwise unconnected previous owners really to amount to kind of a portrait, more mosaic postwar america. So that is hopefully grounds you in the car enough and invests you in the cart enough in whether it is revived, whether tommy is successful in fixing it that the last chapters where he face a host of serious distraction and an fbi investigation and all sorts of other terrible things, economic collapse, you are invested enough that you dont care whether he finishes and at the ending carries a great bit of tension for u. S. To whether he gets to the finish line. Whether he gets there i cant say because the whole ball of wax. Anybody else . Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for braving the weather. [applause] [inaudible conversations] booktv coverage of the 2014 southern festival of books continues with a panel on southern history featuring Blain Roberts, author of pageants, parlors and pretty women and Marcie Cohen Ferris, author of the edible self. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. Welcome to our session on creating southern identity, studies of food and beauty. I am kathy grant willis, and a member of the board of humanities in tennessee and i am thrilled to see you come out here in the rain. I think we are going to have an interesting discussion this afternoon, both of them have a 20 minute power point presentation and when they conclude we will take questions and i ask when you go to ask questions please come to the mic so everyone is able to hear you. The first author i want to introduce to you is Blain Roberts. Blain roberts is going to go first. This is her book. It is pageants, parlors and pretty women race and beyond the 20th century south. Blain roberts is an associate professor of history at california state fresno and her opeds have appeared in the New York Times and the huffington opposed. The other author we have with us today is Marcie Cohen Ferris and this is her book. I think she is going to go second in our presentation. I failed to say she is a north carolinian, she went to un seat chapel hill. I did fail to say that. Oh wait. I messed up my pages here. Marcie cohen ferris is associate professor of american studies at the university of North Carolina at chapel hill and former president of the Southern FoodWaste Alliance and her book is the edible self the power of food and the making of an american region. Thank you to both of you. Thank you for coming. Especially on this rainy day. Can you hear me ok . I think the fact the we are on the same panel, it is faith as far as i am concerned. I had an interest in the history of Southern Food waste. And interest that was probably sparked by the fact that my great grandmother, florence mcman roberts published a cookbook back in 1934 called dixie meals and i brought it. Once you meet marcys book and you will understand why this is so strange. She obviously had a sense of herself as a southern cook, her food is the daring coup and was a covert in the interwar years tried to claim this regional identity for their food. In a really weird coincidence, dixie meals was published write him in nashville by the parthenon press which i imagine she discovered during her trip to nashville because one of her sons was enrolled at vanderbilt and her daughter was at belmont. That is how she found the parthenon press. The other reason i think our pairing is so fitting is i know that you have experience something i have experienced when i talk about my topic to people. I say i am talking about women and beauty, like it is so much fun and to be honest it is fun. It has been fun. In what other endeavor will one try to be cash of photographs. Show young beauty queens, and tobacco leaves like this. Bizarre. I ran across that in the archives but just as Southern Food is Serious Business which i imagine you will tell us, so is southern believe. Both are deeply political. In my book, i argue that the popularity of the south miss america queens dominated the pageant in the 50s and 60s, all about racial politics. I wont tell you how or why that is the case which is not so subtle way to get you to buy the book. As is showing you there is a somewhat bizarre photograph. What i do want to do today is to explore another way in which southern beauty was political. Here is a picture of a black beauty shop. I want to tell you how beauty among africanamerican women was connected to efforts to destroy segregation. Throughout the 50s and 60s black beauticians were amazingly effective grassroots leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. It was their activism along with the activism of countless other everyday people that kept the movement going on a day to day week to week basis and help facilitate the movements most important successes. To understand how women wielding brushes and hot irons and homes took on segregation i want to first look at this whine of work. And the advantages it offered. And everything i am about to say let me make it clear that doing hair in the segregated south was just like Everything Else and separated along racial lines so black beauticians would have served black women and white beauticians would have served white women. Black beauticians who worked in the early to mid 20th centuries south were not unlike hairdressers today. They wanted their clients to look good but we also need to consider issues related to specific circumstances of being a black woman in the segregated south. Negative stereotypes about black woman hood, black women, abounded. Many white southerners were prone to seeing black women as dirty, disheveled, incapable of being reputable and respectable. Black women were more vulnerable to hair loss because of a low protein diet and also the sun exposure that went along with fieldwork. Black beauticians hoped to help their patrons overcome these challenges by presenting themselves as embodiments of femininity and respectability. It is important for us today to appreciate it that this goal was really fundamentally political in nature. A beauticians job was to change unflattering perceptions of africanamericans. Black beauticians of course also wanted to make money but on this issue is it is worth thinking about why working as a beautician was so desirable for black women in the segregated south especially. Most black women were confined to the lowest rungs of the southern labor market. Working long days for low pay as sharecroppers, domestics or factory hands. Here is what a woman named blanche scott said about the prospect of following the same path of her parents and grandparents all of whom worked as factory hands in tobacco factories in North Carolina. My grandmother got up and the 6 30 was growing and she was late, she got up in a hurry, she went running and i looked at my grandmother and wanted to do better than that as i grew up. I wanted to have something because my people didnt dont their homes but i wanted something before i died. Blanch scott became a beautician charging women around 1. 50, with low overhead if they work out of their homes. And she eventually made enough money to buy her own house. Blanch scott did not say this directly in that recollection about the 6 30 a. M. Whistleblowing. Underlying grandmotherss anxiety was the fact that she worked for someone else. And in the segregated south almost always meant a white box. Beauticians were self employed. They were not economically dependent on whites. This would end up being crucial. The freedom to determine their own work hours. Few other jobs afforded black women such flexibility. Alice adams who worked as a domestic for a white family in atlanta from the 19 teams to the 1960s said this about her dais. The hours were long. Just long hours. I worked from 7 00 to 7 00. I couldnt go to church because i had to work. I wanted to go to church and wanted to visit friends and take care of my house and you didnt have time, you just had to work. By contrast beauticians could adjust their work hours according to their financial needs, their social and church outings, child care obligations and volunteer activities. Take for examples this woman here, ruby parks blackburn. Blackburn was also an at landon, a contemporary of alice adams and yet because she was the beautician her daily schedule was quite different. Blackburn was a woman in control of her work load and her work hours. Some days, she took one or two customers, some days she was booked solid from the Early Morning until late late at night. She earned as much as 57 and as little as 11 a week depending on what else she needed to get done and we know that is because her wonderful appointment books in the auburn Avenue Research Library in atlanta, in short being a beautician was quite appealing to black southern women. Federal census data revealed how appealing. Here is what you find if you look at the 1920 census. I pulled out three samples southern states. In georgia, alabama, mississippi the number of black beauticians, 898 in georgia, 695 in alabama, 535 in mississippi. A lot of beauticians. By contrast look at this, a number of white beauticians leading georgia 167. In alabama 102. In mississippi the entire state of mississippi had 22 white beauticians. White women eventually caught up. Eventually there would be many more. What these 1920 numbers indicate is how this line of work confered benefits to black women in ways to benefits of white women in the same era. These are really revealing numbers. To route the parks, she offers a fantastic example of lack beauticians use their unique occupational physicians to do more than fix hair. This is a brief rundown of her remarkable civic work. In the 1930s she found it to be tee i see club, to improve conditions. Under her leadership the club successfully lobbied