This old postcard shows Loafers Glory, a community with one of the more evocative place names in Mitchell County. It’s located at the intersection of Highways 226 and 226A, near the confluence of Cane Creek and Toe River. Close by is the distinctive old Master’s Mill.
The community still has a few businesses, including Bonnie and Clyde’s, home of what a young friend Amanda calls “the best hamburger around.” Loafer’s Glory Rafting and Tubing occupies a building that once housed Garland’s Store, which is shown on the postcard, and later a fabric store.
Toby Webb Forbes wrote in 1989 that Loafers Glory’s name arose because men in the area would bring their corn to the grist mill and gather in the shade of big oak and poplar trees, chewing on twists of tobacco and local gossip. Forbes wrote that men could “get a haircut for a quarter.” Wives needing their husbands for chores at home knew they were wiling away their time at that “loafer’s glory!”
Charles Kuralt, noted “On the Road” broadcast journalist, featured a visit to Loafers Glory in his “On the Road” broadcast on CBS; he learned some history of the place and interviewed its long-time residents. Recorded in North Carolina Is My Home: Commemorative Edition (1998) is Kuralt’s verse: “I know a crossroads named Loafers Glory; Oh, how I’d love the know that story! To have met the loafers, to have known their faces, To know all the stories of the Tar Heel Places…”
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