January 13, 2023 Coats Museum News by Tommy Coats, Guest Author
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas /Holiday.
The reason I am writing this is so that there will be a written record of this event.
We live in a time of modern conveniences that we think we cannot live without. Fact is that if the air conditioner/ heater makes a funny noise we are on the phone to the repair man. We don’t wait for the system to stop..just make a noise..
It has not always been that way. Just in my lifetime I remember my Aunt Ora’s out house…now a few years later we carry a device in our pocket that contains roughly all the knowledge acquired by mankind to this day. Our phone can call anywhere in the world. It allows us to purchase things we cannot afford.
Lets go back in time a little ways …around 1960.
There was an elder gentleman who lived in Coats and he rode a bicycle everywhere he needed to go. His name was Samuel Robert Moore Sr.
You know his son as Dr. Donald Moore and his grandchild as Dr. Linda Robinson. Oh, by the way I verified this story with Dr. Robinson.
We always called the old man “Old Mr. Moore.”
From this point I will call him Mr. Moore.
Mr. Moore was old school. He was a Missionary to China before the communist took over. In his younger days he was a great swimmer and rather short in stature. He has many adventures in his life, but I only want to highlight one.
After many years Mr. Moore’s wife passed away and as time when on he found himself a girlfriend. At the time of this event he was 81 years old.
Let me stop here and give you some relevant facts
Age 81
Has girlfriend
Rides 36 inch Bicycle (no Gears)
Wants to see girlfriend
Girlfriend at Beach in Wilmington
Mr. Moore asked around on Friday trying to find a ride to the beach…..Didn’t find one….
So Saturday at day break Mr. Moore got on his single speed bicycle and went east. No one knew of his departure or destination.
Later that day on the 421 bridge going into Wilmington
some folks from Coats were going to Wrightsville Beach on vacation. As they topped the bridge someone noticed that there was an old man on a bicycle crossing the bridge and that he looks a lot like Old Mr. Moore. They went ahead and stopped at the end of the bridge and waited for the old man to cross and sure enough it was Mr. Moore.
They stopped him and questioned his motives and discovered that no one would give him a ride to see his girlfriend, so he took care of it himself.
They had to aggressively encourage Mr. Moore to abandon his efforts and that they would take him where he wanted to go.
They don’t make them like that anymore.
While I have your attention I want to pass along an interesting, unrelated fact:
Has anyone ever noticed the distance between Wilson, Smithfield, Four Oaks, Benson, Dunn, Wade, Fayetteville, Angier, Coats, Erwin?
All of these towns are 6-7 miles apart. The railroad determined that if you got up in the morning, loaded your wagon, hitched your animals to your wagon and started down rut filled roads, arrived at the town, unloaded, reloaded, drove back home in one day that 6-7 miles was the correct distance to place railroad depots. After the depots went in that is where the small towns started.
I’ve said my piece…..Have nice day …
Tommy Coats
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas /Holiday.
The reason I am writing this is so that there will be a written record of this event.
We live in a time of modern conveniences that we think we cannot live without. Fact is that if the air conditioner/ heater makes a funny noise we are on the phone to the repair man. We don’t wait for the system to stop..just make a noise..
It has not always been that way. Just in my lifetime I remember my Aunt Ora’s out house…now a few years later we carry a device in our pocket that contains roughly all the knowledge acquired by mankind to this day. Our phone can call anywhere in the world. It allows us to purchase things we cannot afford.
Lets go back in time a little ways …around 1960.
There was an elder gentleman who lived in Coats and he rode a bicycle everywhere he needed to go. His name was Samuel Robert Moore Sr.
You know his son as Dr. Donald Moore and his grandchild as Dr. Linda Robinson. Oh, by the way I verified this story with Dr. Robinson.
We always called the old man “Old Mr. Moore.”
From this point I will call him Mr. Moore.
Mr. Moore was old school. He was a Missionary to China before the communist took over. In his younger days he was a great swimmer and rather short in stature. He has many adventures in his life, but I only want to highlight one.
After many years Mr. Moore’s wife passed away and as time when on he found himself a girlfriend. At the time of this event he was 81 years old.
Let me stop here and give you some relevant facts
Age 81
Has girlfriend
Rides 36 inch Bicycle (no Gears)
Wants to see girlfriend
Girlfriend at Beach in Wilmington
Mr. Moore asked around on Friday trying to find a ride to the beach…..Didn’t find one….
So Saturday at day break Mr. Moore got on his single speed bicycle and went east. No one knew of his departure or destination.
Later that day on the 421 bridge going into Wilmington
some folks from Coats were going to Wrightsville Beach on vacation. As they topped the bridge someone noticed that there was an old man on a bicycle crossing the bridge and that he looks a lot like Old Mr. Moore. They went ahead and stopped at the end of the bridge and waited for the old man to cross and sure enough it was Mr. Moore.
They stopped him and questioned his motives and discovered that no one would give him a ride to see his girlfriend, so he took care of it himself.
They had to aggressively encourage Mr. Moore to abandon his efforts and that they would take him where he wanted to go.
They don’t make them like that anymore.
While I have your attention I want to pass along an interesting, unrelated fact:
Has anyone ever noticed the distance between Wilson, Smithfield, Four Oaks, Benson, Dunn, Wade, Fayetteville, Angier, Coats, Erwin?
All of these towns are 6-7 miles apart. The railroad determined that if you got up in the morning, loaded your wagon, hitched your animals to your wagon and started down rut filled roads, arrived at the town, unloaded, reloaded, drove back home in one day that 6-7 miles was the correct distance to place railroad depots. After the depots went in that is where the small towns started.
I’ve said my piece…..Have nice day …
Tommy Coats