The Fame Statue before it was relocated
Today it was our honor to be core drilling for the Daughters of the Confederacy at the new site of the relocated Fame statue to the Old Lutheran Cemetery in Salisbury, North Carolina. Established in 1768 by John Lewis Beard, the cemetery is located at 515 N. Lee Street. 175 tombstones for Confederate soldiers were installed at the cemetery in 1996 according to a WBTV channel 3, Charlotte, NC news story on the subject.
We ourselves we just proud to be part of any historical site work no matter who it is for. We drilled 14 4-inch holes in the 10-inch slab of concrete that the statue will rest on. the reason for the holes was to install solid ironwork provided by Cornette Ironworks, which is a talented and well-established steel fence and ironwork fabrication company here near Charlotte, NC. The reason is clear these days as to why heavy-duty fencing is needed, as vandals sometimes get giddy and tear things up. At one point I was timed on the amount of time it took to core drill one 4-inch hole through the concrete. Turns out it took 2 min. and 3 seconds. How about that? So in the end we got the 14 holes drilled in about an hour and a half, mainly because I am a yapper once you get me started. The concrete itself was indeed 10 inches thick but was not too tough to drill at all. The diamond core drill bits we sell and also use can cut pretty fast. The total time may have taken 2 hours from job start to job finish. Much of that could be attributed to the comparison of Cornette ironworks and Carolina Precision Core Drilling and the types of work that each of us respective two companies do in the North Carolina and Virginia areas
Fast enough to do a small project like this one in the two hours total time, including yapping, setup, teardown, and back in the truck to go if you put your mind to it. Though we expected some protesters the day that we did the work, amazingly there were none to be found. our position on the subject is as follows: Everybody has a right to live and be free from oppression and to have their own opinions, often walking in the shoes of your foe, adversary or partner will change your opinion, for better or worse.
Anyhow the iron bars that will be built around the new located statue will be strong and it will take more than a few dozen persons to uproot it. For years I had passed the Fame statue as it stood at the upper heart of Salisbury on Innes St. but now it will be tucked away in one of the town's hidden corners for fewer to see. While coring this project probably one of the things I have heard that made me stop and think for the moment is "those people should have picked their own cotton", think how that would have changed things. I wonder if that idea had ever occurred to anyone else. Maybe there is one of those altered reality fiction books that is based on that type of story. If there is I am not aware of it.
The Fame Statue after it was relocated
During the summer month of August we had another small core drilling project in Salisbury, North Carolina. The early morning job consisted of core drilling three 1 1/2 inch penetrations through the back of the new Smoke Pit restaurant, which used to be called Wings, on Faith Rd, just across from the Aldi's grocery store. The holes were to get power into the freezer to provide power to the cooling units.
Afterwards we stopped by the old confederate graveyard to check to see if the Fame statue had been moved yet or not. Alas, indeed it had. So we had to get a picture of it in the new location. The long black 2 x 2 steel posts are embedded into the concrete that we had bored holes for early this year. In between are solid bar pickets and cross-members. Quite a formidable caging to keep the statue safe.