(828) 526-0173 | [email protected] | Copyright 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Postmaster Baxter White
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2021/05 – May
Highlands Postmaster Baxter White brought a healthy dose of Mountain Fortitude to his responsibilities.
Baxter White
Part of the charm of 1870s Highlands was its seclusion. But living high above the problems of the down-below had its own challenges.
When Ulysses, in the film Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou, was stuck in a remote town and needed a part for his jalopy or a tin of Dapper Dan hair pomade, he was told he’d have a 2-week wait. He growled, “Well, ain’t this place a geographical oddity …two weeks from everywhere.”
But Highlanders were a tough lot and knew what they were in for. They strong-armed boulders into enough submission to expose a patch of loamy soil to plant a summer crop.
One of the most important things they didn’t have was reliable mail delivery.
I recently learned a new word: rezarfrez. It’s urban-slang for grumbling under one’s breath. Think of all the rezarfrezzing residents uttered in a three-mile wrestling match with Mother Nature down to Horse Cove (the nearest post office).
You couldn’t even surrender to gravity and roll down the mountain for all the switchbacks. Fahgeddabout rolling back up. Of course, as the crow flies it was about 100 yards here-to-there (kidding). Too bad they couldn’t teach crows to deliver mail. But have you ever heard a crow complain? They’d be rezarfrezzing rural routes all day long. Best you hitch up your mule and whistle up your dog and rezarfrez-it yourself.
In 1876 a unanimous Hallelujah reverberated throughout river gorges and granite cliffs. Postmaster Baxter White made the trip up the winding stretch of rocky road to his Highlands home/grocery/post office all under one roof. It was there you picked up your mail. The rezarfrez-level dropped significantly that day (except maybe for Baxter) and stayed that way for the next 14 years under his purview.
To learn more about the evolution of Highlands’ postal delivery, read Ran Shaffner’s Heart of the Blue Ridge, visit highlandshistory.com, or email [email protected].
