Carolina Country Reflections
Looking at the Way We Were
Edited by Michael E. C. Gery

North Carolina Association of Electric Cooperatives
978-1-57864-325-7
$28.00 hardcover
8 ½ x 11 
160 pages
Published in 2005
Gift & Holiday, History, North Carolina, Photography & Art

Remember when youngsters made mischief outdoors, grown-ups dressed up indoors, and you bought pickles and shoes at the general store?

Whether you are young or grown-up, Carolina Country Reflections will take you on an engrossing trip back in time across rural North Carolina. This compilation of more than 200 treasured photographs taken before 1970, along with personal captions by their contributors, presents a way of life almost forgotten today.

Divided into five chapters entitled “At Home,” “Working,” “Fun,” “Gatherings,” and “Familiar and Forgotten,” each section offers distinctive images and homespun stories that capture the feel of old-time North Carolina. Here are engaging pictures of men, women and children, along with rare glimpses of old cars, tools and farm equipment, vintage clothes and hairstyles, sports uniforms, tobacco harvests, family picnics, and community landmarks. The photographs, provided by readers of Carolina Country magazine, are arresting and original. Most have never been published before, and are a new depiction of an old way of life.

Album-style captions reveal the stories behind the pictures. Through the contributors’ down-to-earth anecdotes and recollections about family, neighbors, and friends, readers learn specifically how rural North Carolinians lived and loved, how they made molasses, amused themselves, and left for war. Like the snapshots, the captions in Carolina Country Reflections capture a vanishing or long-gone life and are, by turns, touching, somber, affectionate, matter of fact, humorous, and insightful.

The result is an entertaining, absorbing collection of priceless memories that will stir your own.