Tag Archive for: #wizsnew

Home And Garden Show

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On the Home and Garden Show with Vance Co. Cooperative Ext.

  • Cole crops may need top dressing with nitrogen.
  • Start controlling fire ants.
  • Check cole crops for insects. Ex Loopers, cabbage worms, Harlequin bugs.
  • Planting trees and shrubs? Planting depth is everything!
  • Control weeds in the garden. One weed left to seed out can produce 1000’s of weeds in your garden next year.
  • Sowing tall fescue? Soil/seed contact is essential.
  • Now is a great time to collect soil samples. Avoid the rush this fall. .2 week analysis time.
  • Fertilizing your lawn? Use a slow release product.
  • If you have vacant areas in your garden consider planting a cover crop. Ex Crimson clover

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TownTalk: Foundation Continues The Work Of Mary Emma Evans

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If her mother were still alive, Phyllis Evans said she would not be giving high marks to the city – or to its residents – for its level of cleanliness.

But a foundation named for the late Mary Emma Evans is trying to do its part to make things better and cleaner in Henderson, one litter sweep at the time.

Mary Emma Evans served the South Henderson area as a Ward 1 representative on the Henderson City Council. She died in 2011, and the same year family members formed a foundation to keep her memory alive.

Daughter Phyllis and granddaughter Phylicia spoke with John C. Rose on Monday’s TownTalk to provide an update on what the foundation has been doing and continues to do in her name.

“I know Mama is shaking her head,” Phyllis said, on the condition of many city roadsides that she sees strewn with litter.

Although she and a cousin routinely venture out along roadsides in South Henderson to clean up, the foundation sponsored a cleanup day in late January to come out in force to make a difference. Couldn’t make it to the January cleanup date? Not to worry – they plan quarterly cleanups along the portion of Dabney Road by Aldi’s, extending toward Hicksboro Road near St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. That is the stretch of road that will be designated by NC DOT for the Mary Emma Evans Foundation’s Adopt-A-Highway sign.

Evans’s mother championed, among other things, the efforts of the Clean Up Henderson Committee, during her time on the City Council. “I know my mom would be happy to see our city clean,” Phyllis said.

But the foundation also extends its work to caring for the people that live in the community, too, and it has partnered with other community agencies on various outreach projects over the years.

Now, however, they’ve got their own community basketball team that practices a couple of times a week.

Phylicia said there are probably 50 or more youth that live in the South Henderson area who can walk to the outdoor courts at the former Salvation Army facility.

“They walk to the courts, Phyllis said, “or they’ll meet us at the foundation site on Alexander Avenue and we’ll transport them.” They practice on Wednesdays now at the Henderson Family Y and on Sundays at Aycock Recreation Center.

There may be a dozen or more who show up for practice, but Phyllis said even if there were more, the foundation would find a way to transport them all.

Partnerships strengthen a community, and Phyllis said her mother would be proud of what is being done in her name.

“We’re coming together with love,” she said, adding that Henderson is a beautiful place to live.

She just wants to keep it beautiful – to honor her mother’s memory and for others to have a sense of pride about where they live, work and play.

“We know that’s what mom would want us to do,” she said.

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The Local Skinny! Getting Your Packages Shipped For The Holidays

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Remember the 1980’s slogan “when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight?” As the calendar marches on toward Christmas in less than a week, Mike Moore at Postal Plus has a few suggestions for gift-givers who also must be gift-senders.

“It’s crunch time,” Moore said Monday, but he noted that anything headed up or down the East Coast should make it in time for Christmas Day.

But, as the week goes on, the price for that timely delivery is going to go up.

“We can overnight on Friday, the 23rd, and they have it – in some areas – on Christmas Eve,” Moore said on Monday’s segment of The Local Skinny!

That’s not the case for every location, and it gets more and more expensive as the days tick by, he noted.

Customers who want to send packages will be doing themselves – and Moore – a favor by dropping them off before 3 p.m. so he’ll have time to get the items packed properly and ready for pickup later in the afternoon.

Bring your own box or let the folks at Postal Plus provide the packing materials, Moore said. “We make sure they arrive in time and in safe condition,” he added.

In the 32 years Moore’s been in this business, he said he’s seen a little bit of everything get shipped out of the store, from Christmas gifts to barbecue and stew.

Technology has changed the way things get from one place to another, he said. The use of barcodes makes everything trackable, which allows the industry to handle much higher volume.

Customers shouldn’t wait too long, however, if they still have packages to send. Inclement weather can still put a damper on things, Moore said, which can affect deliveries.

The number one question he answers at this time of year?

That’s easy: “Is it going to be there before Christmas?”

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TownTalk: Ghost Hunting With Michael La Chiana

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About this time each year, TVs in living rooms everywhere are filled with scary movies and TV shows about spooky things to entertain viewers. But there’s a big difference in the shows that are designed for entertainment and the shows that Michael La Chiana is producing.

La Chiana, a paranormal investigator and researcher, is dedicated documenting the “real” stuff.

His first show, “The Heritage Hunters: Journey Through the Past” was released last year and he told WIZS’s Bill Harris on Wednesday’s TownTalk that it’s already gotten 900,000 views.

His second show is due out next month, he said. The show can be found on Prime Video he said.

There’s nothing wrong with those scary movies and shows about ghosts, but La Chiana said he reminds folks that there IS a difference: “what you see on TV – unless it’s a true documentary,  is not real.”

When he investigates paranormal phenomena, he said he looks at every angle to prove – or disprove – what’s going on.

“I love to debunk everything that I can so I can find real evidence that’s there,” he said. That unexplained creak or pop could be a loose floorboard or clanging water pipe inside a wall.

He is pretty much a one-man production company – he investigates, films, writes, edits, produces – so his second episode has taken a couple of years to complete.

“I’m very thorough and I dig deep,” he said.

The second episode delves into the history of Tom Dooley, who was a real person hanged for a murder in North Carolina back in the 1860’s.

Yes, that Tom Dooley, that the Kingston Trio sang about in their hit song of the same name. La Chiana found Laura Reed, a Nashville recording artist who covered a rock version of the song, and she said he could include it in his show.

“To have original music is great,” he added.

The upcoming episode investigates the jail where Dooley was held for a long time, and La Chiana said he’s “captured so many things over the years.” He uses sophisticated recording equipment during his research and investigation, and said he especially enjoys hearing what he can capture on the audio recordings.

“What we’ve captured is insane,” he said of the upcoming episode featuring the legend of Tom Dooley. “We’ve asked several times ‘Who killed Laura Foster?'” La Chiana said. “We got a male voice telling us the name,” he added.

There’s VP – voice phenomena – that you can hear with your ear – and then there’s EVP – electronic voice phenomena – those sounds that are best heard on audio recordings.

La Chiana said he prefers to investigate alone or with as few people as possible, to be able to stay focused on the presence or disturbances in a particular place.

Future episodes of the show will feature real places, La Chiana said. “Places you can actually go…and check out yourself,” he said.

When he went to investigation the mysterious Brown Mountain Lights in the western part of the state, he said he was intrigued.

Could those lights be a natural phenomenon – an energy that comes up out of the ground?

“It’s very fascinating,” La Chiana said, adding that such phenomena are “not so ghosty and more of a mystery – I like those types of things, too.”

 

 

 

 

TownTalk: Coming Together To Improve The Community

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The Henderson Police Department’s Tony Mills wears a couple of hats – he’s a detective but he also serves as a liaison with state and federal law enforcement agencies to make sure those strong partnerships are in place among the different entities.

But Mills also is from Henderson, and he calls Henderson home, which just strengthens his resolve to make the city he serves even better.

Mills was one of the speakers at last week’s gathering of business and community leaders sponsored by the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce, and he spoke Tuesday with John C. Rose on Town Talk.

In reflecting on his remarks during the Aug. 26 meeting held at Clearview Church, Mills was optimistic.

“I’m as excited as I’ve ever been, being a resident of Henderson, and calling Henderson home, and being an employee for the city of Henderson and working for the Henderson Police Department…seeing this group wanting to come together with the city and work with the city council,” Mills said he has plenty of hope for the Henderson’s future.

Having business leaders come together to voice concerns as well as offer support and suggestions may be just what the community needs to stay on the path toward progress. Having the business and private sectors working in concert with law enforcement is a positive step.

“The Henderson Police Department is a small department,” Mills readily acknowledged. But that doesn’t cloud his opinion of its capabilities. “I will put the Henderson Police Department and its men and women that serve the citizens of Henderson against any police department in the continental United States. That’s their work ethic, that’s their drive to make their community a better place,” he said.

As a liaison with agencies at the state and federal levels, Mills has the opportunity to work with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the local district attorney’s office and Drug Enforcement Agency, among others.

“It takes all of us to work together,” he said, to reach those desirable outcomes of getting the bad guys off the streets and making communities safer.

But once an arrest is made, the wheels of justice sometimes turn slowly. State courts and federal courts may view similar crimes in different ways, he said. “You may get more time in state court for just selling heroin,” he noted. “But throw a gun into the mix, and you’re going to get more time in the federal system.”

Routinely, these external partners meet with local law enforcement to discuss the best way to proceed with prosecution. “We come up with a solution and send it up the avenue that’s going to make the community a better place,” he said.

Being a team player with these other law enforcement partners pays dividends for local departments like Henderson’s, Mills said, because they often have resources that just aren’t available or realistic for smaller forces.

Through collaboration, however, smaller departments often can have a bigger impact when it comes to getting bad guys off the streets – which is one thing that is important to business leaders and private citizens. And business leaders and private citizens are a part of the collaboration effort, he said.

“I wish I didn’t have to tell them that we need their help,” Mills said. “I wish we could get it done by ourselves, but we can’t…everybody needs to do their part.”

If you observe something that just doesn’t look right, or makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, he said, you need to report it. Even those seemingly insignificant things could be a missing piece of the puzzle that law enforcement officers have been investigating for a while.

 

 

The Local Skinny! Jobs In Vance 08-09-22

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The H-V Chamber of Commerce and WIZS, Your Community Voice, present Jobs in Vance for August 9, 2022. The Chamber compiles the information, and it is presented here and on the radio. Contact the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce at 438-8414 or email michele@hendersonvance.org to be included.

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Business Name – Central Baptist Church

Job Opening –  Hiring now for a part-time Secretary.  20-25 hours per week.

How To Apply – Email your resume to hal.muetzel@expresspros.com

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Business Name – GFL Environmental (Waste Industries)

Job Opening –  Scalehouse Operator – Full-time clerical position open for Henderson, NC location. Applicants responsible for the scaling of all trucks that enter the landfill or transfer station while providing efficient, courteous customer service. Must have a High School Diploma or general education degree (GED), with 1-3 months related experience and/or training preferred.

How To Apply – Apply at https://gflenv.com (under careers tab) or apply online at Indeed.com.

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Business Name – Vance County Public Schools

Job Opening –  Vance County Schools is hiring now for Music Teachers and Band Directors.

How To Apply – Apply online at www.vcs.k12.nc.us.  Or email resume to Mr. Andrew Markoch at mmarkoch@vcs.k12.nc.us.

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Business Name – Sadie’s Coffee Corner

Job Opening –  Part-time employee opening for responsible applicants, 18 years old or older.  Must be very personable, with good communication skills, and a strong team player.   Must be able to work a flexible schedule including night hours and Saturdays.

How To Apply – Fill out application online at https://www.sadiescoffeecorner.com/ and click on join our team tab or drop by 324 South Garnett Street in downtown Henderson, NC and see Dee.

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Business Name – The Sunrock Group

Job Opening –  Hiring now for and training safety-minded individuals for long term career opportunities.  Immediate openings with Sunrock rock quarries, asphalt plants, concrete plants, maintenance shop, quality control, paving, grading, and trucking. All open positions are local to the region.  Full benefits package available.

How To Apply – Apply online https://www.thesunrockgroup.com/careers/career-opportunities/.

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Business Name – Vance-Franklin-Warren Opportunity

Job Opening –  Hiring now for Weatherization Energy Auditor/QCI Inspector.

How To Apply – Apply through NC Works, at their office, located on South Garnett Street, at the corner of Belle Street (former Bank of America Bank building) or online at www.ncworks.gov.

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Business Name – JR’s Restaurant 39

Job Opening –  Looking to hire a dishwasher for the hours of 8 am – 2 pm, Tuesday-Friday.  Also hiring for waitresses and a fryer cook (4 pm – closing between 9-10 pm)

How To Apply – Apply in person at JR’s Restaurant 39 at their Crossroads Shopping Center location, located on West Andrews Avenue (Hwy 39 North) beside the DMV office.

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Business Name – Maria Parham Health

Job Opening – Athletic Trainer.  Position will provide clinical outreach at local high school.  $5,000 sign-on bonus for qualified candidates.

How To Apply – Apply online at MariaParham.com/Careers

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Business Name – Autobrite Car Washes/Autobrite Express

Job Opening – New Team Members Wanted. Car Wash Attendants, Full and Part-time positions open.

How To Apply – Inquire at business, located at 211 North Cooper Drive in Henderson, Apply online at https://www.autobritecarwashes.com/.

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Some of these businesses are present or past advertisers of WIZS.  Being an ad client is not a condition of being listed or broadcast.  This is not a paid ad.

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Home And Garden Show

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On the Home and Garden Show with Vance Co. Cooperative Ext.

  • Start planting your fall garden. Ex Collards, yellow squash, turnips, broccoli, squash
  • Freezing is a great way to preserve many summer fruits and vegetables that requires no special equipment. For many vegetables, it’s simply a matter of blanching them in boiling water and then storing in plastic freezer bags. Others such as peppers and fruits can simply be cut up and frozen.
  • Keep weeds and grass under control. Use straw mulch to shade out the weeds
  • Harvest vegetables at their peak of flavor. A common newbie mistake is to leave cucs, beans, squash, okra and other fruit on the plant for too long.
  • With recent rains your garden soil maybe too wet to work check moisture by taking some soil and rolling it into a ball then drop it if it completely breaks up the soil is dry enough to till.
  • Any time you use a pesticide, check the instructions for rainfastness.
  • Avoid the rush and start taking your soil samples now!
  • Keep grass clippings out of the compost pile.

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TownTalk: RCAPS And Cruise In Continues To Support Animals In Need

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Ask Brandon Boyd about his favorite things to talk about, and chances are good that two of them are cars and Ruin Creek Animal Protection Society – not necessarily in that order.

And it’s exactly those two things that will take center stage at this Saturday’s Ruin Creek Cruise-In event at the former Charles Boyd car dealership on U.S. Hwy 158 bypass.

The Cruise-In is being sponsored this year by the Vance County Tourism Authority and Boyd told John C. Rose on Town Talk Tuesday that he’s looking forward to a safe, fun family event – complete with food, live music, and – of course – classic and collector vehicles from near and far. Collectors may begin registering their classic cars and finding their parking spot at 1 p.m.; the event is from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

It’s a way to say “thank you” to all those who help to work tirelessly to fulfill the RCAPS mission of reducing the number of unwanted pets in Vance County.

In the past six years, through a close collaboration with RCAPS, the local shelter has almost cut in half the number of pets that end up at the animal shelter – from more than 3,000 to between 1,700 or 1,800.

“It feels great,” Boyd said of the achievement. “But as we all talk about, there’s still work to be done.” Animal services staff, under the direction of Chief Frankie Nobles, and dedicated shelter and RCAPS volunteers spend untold hours finding rescues who can hopefully find foster homes or adoptive homes for the animals, mostly dogs, Boyd said.

And the animals who do come into the shelter are spayed and neutered before they take that Friday evening “Freedom Ride” to what everyone hopes is a loving home.

Over the last month or 45 days, though, Boyd said the shelter has been “packed full.” Rescue and adoption partners are working around the clock to place the animals in homes and get them out of the shelter.

Boyd said plans are underway to convert the former animal shelter on Vance Academy Road into a low-cost spay and neuter clinic for the community. Although there is not a hard and fast timeline for completion right now, he said that they’re pricing medical equipment now and recruiting veterinary staff to come in to perform the procedures.

“It is in the works and is going to happen,” he said, adding that the clinic will be a tremendous asset for the community to gain the upper hand in the battle to further reduce the demand on the animal shelter and its resources.

“This takes everybody,” Boyd said. He’s proud of the presence RCAPS has in the community – and beyond = and of the efforts to raise awareness of reducing the unwanted pet population. Thanks to social media, RCAPS has received donations from all 50 states in the U.S. and from 13 foreign countries.

RCAPS is not only working to change the lives of animals, but it also is promoting the power of positivity in the community, he said. “That’s the mission and the movement,” he said. “And that’s what we want Saturday to be about. – we’re doing our part to make this a better place.”

 

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The Local Skinny! Around Old Granville: Place Names

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What’s in a name?

So many places within the four-county area got their names as a way to honor prominent families of the day; landowners who donated land for the railroad to come through back in the late 1880s, for example, resulted in town names like Stovall, Townsville and Stem.

An area hit the “big time” when it got a post office, and local historian and Thornton Library’s North Carolina Room specialist Mark Pace said the names that postmasters chose resulted in names like Dabney, Epsom and others. Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris combed through a list of townships and communities – some still in existence and others lost to time and progress – during Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of The Local Skinny!

Take Dabney, for instance. When a post office was established there, the postmaster renamed the community of Herndon (president of the railroad)to Dabney to honor William Dabney, a state geologist who “found some pretty neat things” in the 1880s and 1890s. Dabney later moved to Texas and became a prominent professor and university president.

And the community known as Mobile, for example, never had its own post office, but got its name because of the ties to Mobile, Alabama that the Hawkins family, a prominent African American family in Henderson, had.

More recently, the Granville County town of Butner gets its name from Camp Butner, an Army base constructed in 1942. Maj. Gen. Henry W. Butner, from Stokes County, NC, had died just a few years earlier and officials thought it fitting to name the base for someone from North Carolina, Pace said. Butner served in World War I and was noted for developing artillery for the Army, he added.

“It was run by the state of North Carolina until it was incorporated in 2007,” Pace said, making it the third newest town in the state.

The Umstead brothers – John and William B. – used their political influence to get the government to building the base in Granville County, where land was cheap and the camp could be relatively secluded but in close proximity to a large city (Durham).

The origin of Butner’s next-door neighbor, Creedmoor, isn’t quite so clear. There are several theories out there, Pace said, but he suspects that the town got its name from a famous gun range on Long Island, NY called Creedmoor Gun Range. There were a lot of gun enthusiasts in the area when Creedmoor was incorporated in 1911, he added.

The Lyons family established a post office in 1886 and there’s a Lyon Station Road located nearby.

William Thomas Stem was a big farmer in Granville County and he gave land for the railroad to come through. The name Stem replaced an earlier community called Tally Ho, which was a stagecoach stop. Tally Ho Road and Tally Ho township serve as reminders today.

There is a similar situation up in the northern part of Granville County, in the Sassafras Fork township. That name, Pace said, goes back to the late 1700s, but the town name was changed to Stovall to honor John W. Stovall who donated the land for, you guessed it, the railroad to come through to connect Clarksville and Oxford.

Communities like Gela near Stovall, Zacho near Wilton and Woodsworth near Townsville are just a few examples of communities that just sort of died off, Pace said. In the case of Woodsworth, Pace said, the family for which the community is named, moved to Arkansas but the name stuck. Zacho had a post office, and was located south of Wilton going toward the Tar River. Until just a few years ago, there had been a one-room shed that served as a post office.

There may have been only one Zacho, but several counties claim communities called Sandy Creek, Pace said.

There’s one in Vance, one in Warren and one in Franklin, he said. And they’re located near each other geographically, which could muddy the waters for genealogy researchers who are trying to find where ancestors lived or where they may be buried.

The oldest place name with European origin is Nutbush creek. William byrd doing dividing line between nc and va. Surveying in 1722.

Came to a creek in northern vance co. had a lot of hazel nut. So they just  called it Nutbush creek.

“The oldest place name with a European origin,” Pace said, “is Nutbush Creek,” located in the general area of Williamsborough north of Henderson. William Byrd was surveying the area that created the North Carolina-Virginia state line in 1722.

“He came to a creek in northern Vance County that had a lot of hazel nut trees,” Pace explained. “So they just called it Nutbush Creek.”

Sometimes names come about as a matter of practicality.

 

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