- Title
- Our State
-
-
- Date
- February 2001
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
Our State
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tar heel people
by Jimmy Tomlin
photography courtesy of Gene Daughtridge
Off the Record
Come along for a journey through the record books — literally —
of North Carolina's tallest and smallest, longest and strongest, oldest and coldest, first and worst,
fittest and fattest, most edible and most incredible.
Considering ih.it \ve boast
-First m Flight" on ever)’
license tag issued in this
state, it's clear that we North
Carolinians take our
superlatives seriously.
It should come as no surprise, then,
that the Tar I leel State has been well
represented through the years in that
annual published tribute to the tallest and
smallest, longest and strongest, oldest and
coldest, first and worst, fittest and fattest,
most edible and most incredible —
otherwise known as the Guinness World
Records hook.
Oh sure, we've had North Carolina
celebrities mentioned in the book, such as
Michael Jordan (at one time Guinness'
most marketable athlete) and Billy
(■raham (biggest radio audience for a
regular religious broadcast. "Decision
I lour." averaging 20 million listeners).
F.vcn Asheville's famed, 250-room
Bilimore I louse has been listed regularly
as the world’s largest private residence.
But it’s in some of the more offbeat
categories that North Carolinians have
excelled through the years. Come along
with us for a journey through the record
books — literally — as we look at a few
of North Carolinians' most unusual
claims to fame.
Growth spurt
Not surprisingly, the Old North State
has fared well in agricultural endeavors
recognized by Guinness. In 1986. for
example. North Carolinians held the
world records for the largest collard (35
iikIh-n tall, 59
1/4
inches wide, grown by
Bobby Rackley of Rocky Mount in
1980), largest lima bean (a 14-inch pod
22 Our Slate February 2001
grown by Norma McCoy of Hubert in
1979), largest cantaloupe (55 pounds,
grown by (iene Daughtridge of Rocky
Mount in 1982), and largest peanut (3
1/2
inches long, grown by Ed Weeks of
larboro in 1978).
Daughtridge eventually topped lus own
cantaloupe record with a 62-pound
melon, and Weeks' prodigious peanut
was surpassed by an even more
gargantuan goobet; a 4-inchcr grown by
vet another North Carolinian. F. Adkins
of Enfield.
North Carolina also became home to
the world's longest green Ivan, a 48-
inchcr grown by Bill Rogcrson of
Rohcrsonville in 1994. Unfortunately.
Rogcrson made the mistake of sharing
some o! his seeds with Fuquay-Varinn's
I larry I liirley, who subsequently stole the
record with his Ivan of 48
3/4
inches,
and then broke that record with a Ivan
of 5 1
3/8
inches.
"The trick is to start with the lx*st
genetics that you can." explains Hurley,
who has also grown some weighty
watermelons and plump pumpkins,
including a 560-pound pumpkin that just
missed being a world record.
"My advice to people if they want to
get m the Guinness book is to compete in
something that not a lot of people arc
competing in," Hurley says. I or example,
thousands of people grow giant
pumpkins, he says, but not that many
grow whopper green beans.
Few people string together chili pepper
pods, either, and that's how Rocky
Mount's James Johnson got into the
hook. I lis world-record chili pepper
string, spanning 1,039 feet and consisting
of 20,150 chili pods, isn't featured in the
recently published 2001 Guinness book
— after all, with tens of thousands of
records in the book's database, there's
lust not room for everything — hut
lohnson is featured on the website
(www.guinnessworldrecords.com).
Daily double
The longevity record for appearances
in the record book — among North
Carolinians, at least — belongs to
identical twins Billy and Benny McCrary
(later known as McGuire), who have
been featured since 1968 as the world's
heaviest twins. Bom in 1 946 in
I icndcrsonville, Billy and Benny weighed
in at 743 pounds and 723 pounds,
respectively, in November 1978, less than
л
year before Billy's death; each had a
waist measurement of about 7 feet.
According to Benny, the twins were
normal size until about age 4, when they
began to put on weight because of
pituitary problems brought on by
German measles.
Speaking of weight, another pair of
North Carolinians appeared in the record
book because of their size. Mills Darden
and his wife Mary, of North Carolina
(city unknown), were listed for having
the greatest weight differential for a
married couple. He tipped the scales at
1,020 pounds to her 98, yielding a
weight differential of 922 pounds.
Despite her size, though, Mary bore her
husband at least three children before her
death in 1837. according to the 1986
Guinness book.
Other Tar Heels have appeared in the
book simply because of circumstances
surrounding their birth. Consider the
curious case of Wilmington's Williams
