ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606110004
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MAGGIE VALLEY, N.C.
SOURCE: LIZ DOUP KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Suddenly, North Carolina is being invaded by Florida retirees looking for a haven in the hills. And it's making the natives restless.
The clearest way to show how folks feel about Floridians invading these oak-covered mountains is to listen to Tom Laster, 54, a fifth-generation North Carolinian, as he sells potatoes from his produce stand at the Farmer's Market.
Hearing that a Florida newspaper reporter wants to talk to locals, he puffs on a cigarette and squints warily before he speaks:
``Don't sic her on me.''
Who can blame the guy for feeling like a Florida pit bull bolted into his neighborhood and made an ugly mess in his pretty back yard? Again.
His beloved Blue Ridge Mountains now teem with Sunbelt escapees who are moving here for keeps. Fueled by older folks weary of crime, crowds and concrete, this Florida invasion means North Carolina has moved from vacation resort to retirement mecca. Today it ranks fifth among the states for attracting the biggest chunk of the 60-plus crowd, when 20 years ago it didn't make the top 10. (Virginia ranks ninth.)
The retiree influx, which pours money into this state with the force of a bold mountain stream, also carries a price: crowded roads, higher land prices and a culture clash as bitter as any civil war.
``It's their attitude as much as anything,'' says Buddy Glance, 59, owner of the Old Grouch's Military Surplus in nearby Clyde. ``They act like we're a bunch of drunk hillbillies they need to civilize.''
The most annoying thing Floridians do?
``They don't stay in Florida.''
Though retirees gravitate to Wilmington's sandy beaches and Pinehurst's manicured golf courses down east, Floridians' imprint is clearest on the scenic mountain towns clustered near Asheville in western North Carolina.
Among them is Maggie Valley, where the town clerk guesstimates that half the 8,000 summer population has Florida roots. Here, you can dine at Key West Seafood restaurant, check out Florida license plates in the Cozy Corner Hotel lobby and chat with the clerk at the Blue Butterfly gift shop. Her former address: Pembroke Pines, Fla.
At the Pioneer restaurant in Clyde - population 1,104 - a waitress serves homemade cherry pie, then asks: ``You know what folks here call folks from Florida?''
She smiles sweetly.
``Flor-idiots.''
Add to the list ``Tramp-plants,'' ``Florida Yankees,'' or ``Half-backs'' after in-your-face Northerners who moved to Florida, then moved halfway back home, settling in North Carolina.
And ``Hemorrhoids.'' Because they're a pain in the butt.
Venom flows because flatlanders' free-spending prices some locals out of a future. Almost as bad, some Floridians don't even know how to be gracious about it. The fallout is a rural-urban clash with heartfelt values at stake: openness vs. privacy, friendliness vs. reservation, common sense vs. multiple sheepskins.
``I've hunted and fished these parts all my life,'' says Laster, who talked to a Floridian long enough to complain. ``But these people come in, buy up all the land, then put up a sign that says `No trespassing.' You do and they'll call the law on you. You can't get more antisocial than that.''
In Brevard, a mountain town 35 miles southwest of Asheville, a North Carolina native who once lived in Florida tells this story - albeit anonymously because she doesn't want to offend her Florida customers:
``Sometimes (my Florida friends) forget I'm from North Carolina and say to each other: `How do you understand these people with that accent?'''
She's too polite to voice the thought that follows: Noo Yawk. Joi-sey Shore.
``I think to myself, `Our accent?'''
Even Floridians feel the snub from other Floridians.
``People in Florida ask me, `What do you do up there?' says Alice Pomerantz, 71, who splits her time between Margate, Fla., and Franklin, 75 miles southwest of Asheville.
``And I say, `Anything I damn please.'''
At the edge of Maggie Valley, Charles Cagle sells sourwood honey and boiled peanuts from a roadside stand he built from locust logs and chicken wire.
``I'm not knocking the people because they're my bread and butter, and I'm always happy to see 'em,'' says Cagle, 56, who echoes the often-heard, pro-business mantra: Keep those dollars flowing north. But the flip side is that Cagle's three children, the third generation of Cagles born in Maggie Valley, are priced out of the land market.
``We always asked my granddaddy why he didn't buy land when it was so cheap so we'd have something now,'' Cagle says. ``He said when he was coming up, there was so little money around you didn't even see it.''
Cagle's grandfather saw land prices practically double just a few years before he died in '93 at age 98. In 1996, an 1,800-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house in the Maggie Valley area was appraised for about $120,000, double the amount in 1980, according to the Haywood County Tax Assessor's Office. The price of an acre more than doubled, too, and now sells for roughly $20,000 to $30,000.
How did these hardscrabble towns turn meccas?
Not overnight.
In the '40s and '50s, people abandoned them in search of better jobs in the cities. But during the '60s, tourists discovered the picture-postcard views and cool climate.
About a decade ago, the state began a marketing push. June Barbour, with the Department of Human Resources, remembers reading letters from retirees asking about moving to North Carolina ... and seeing green.
``They were in their 50s, healthy and with half-million-dollar portfolios. They weren't going to move here and fill up our Medicaid beds.''
Though Florida and California consistently rank first and second in attracting the 60-plus set, North Carolina has made a remarkable leap. It ranked 27th in 1960, 17th in 1970, seventh in 1980 and fifth in 1990, according to Charles Longino Jr., whose 1995 book, ``Retirement Migration in America,'' charts 35 years of relocation trends.
(EDITORS: NEXT 6 GRAFS OPTIONAL)
Most come from New York, New Jersey and Florida respectively, says Longino, a former University of Miami professor now teaching at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.
Longino moved to North Carolina in 1991 for a better job after 14 years in Miami. He misses South Florida's melting pot - the mix of people, languages, food.
``But in North Carolina, there's a small-town civility that doesn't exist in Miami, not in any big city,'' he says.
Christene Boyes, clerk at the Blue Butterfly gift shop in Maggie Valley, once found that ``small-town civility'' in Pembroke Pines, Fla. By 1980, she was ready to retire to the mountains.
What does she miss about Florida?
``Nothing. I'm afraid to go back down there. Somebody might shoot me.''
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
(EDITORS: NEXT 3 GRAFS OPTIONAL)
Leo Fullwood, born in Coral Gables, Fla., 75 years ago, now lives near Clyde, on 28 acres he bought 10 months ago for a quarter of a million dollars. The tennis-court builder was already sick of break-ins when Hurricane Andrew hit. It was the last straw, and he and wife Barbara, 58, moved two years ago.
Enjoying the space, he has planted a few hundred trees, and, in summer, his garden overflows with corn and tomatoes. Still, he hopes he never sees another long, icy winter like the last one. Something else he could do without: some locals' daredevil pastimes.
``A lot of them get drunk and ride horses on the property,'' he says.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
(EDITORS: NEXT 3 GRAFS OPTIONAL)
Barbara Fullwood misses Miami's striking beauty, the sweep of Biscayne Bay and the city lit at night. She misses the closeness of old friends. But she finds pleasure in how sunlight plays on the mountains, constantly changing their look. And she appreciates her new neighbors.
``They're country,'' she says. ``They were raised to be good neighbors. You treat them nicely, they treat you nicely.''
When their moving van couldn't maneuver a sharp curve up the mountain, a half-dozen neighbors - unsolicited - arrived in their pickups, which they filled with the Fullwoods' furniture and moved on up the mountain.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Pomerantz, the part-time Margate, Fla., resident, found the same friendly acceptance when she and husband Lewis, 83, moved to Franklin in 1979.
``I have never seen any anti-Semitism here,'' says Pomerantz, who attends the Mountain Synagogue, which meets at a local Episcopalian Church in Franklin. ``If you worship, if you're a spiritual person; people respect that.''
Over the years, changes have made mountain life a tad easier for transplants. In the beginning, Pomerantz imported cans of white tuna in water because the grocery only carried the packed-in-oil variety. No more. Now she buys her tuna, plus kosher hot dogs and pickled herring, at a local Winn-Dixie.
``We've even got a Wal-Mart now,'' she says. ``But I don't know if that's bad or good.''
Indeed, everyone's concern, locals and transplants alike, is how much change paradise can endure before it's paradise no more. Many locals, of course, think it has changed too much already.
Concerns about paradise lost are neither unique nor unfounded, says Alan Fox, publisher of Where to Retire magazine. Big influxes of people year after year mean more congestion, more crime and higher prices, precisely what many retirees thought they'd escaped.
(EDITORS: NEXT 3 GRAFS OPTIONAL)
Already, the numbers point to a more populated and grayer North Carolina. In Haywood County, for instance, home of Maggie Valley, 24 percent of the population was 60 and older in 1990. By 2020, when boomers reach retirement age, it will be 38 percent.
But for now, North Carolina's retiree contingent appears robust. At least financially.
The medium income of those 60-plus who moved there between 1985 and 1990 was $27,576, highest of any Southern state and eighth highest in the nation, according to a Longino study based on '89 incomes. For nearly a third, the household income was $40,000 and up.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Meanwhile, there's no sign that the flood of newcomers, old and young alike, will slow to a trickle any time soon. In the first two months of 1996, the Asheville Chamber of Commerce tallied 2,364 requests for newcomer guides. Half those requests came from Florida.
For those making the move, retiree Pomerantz offers this advice: ``Don't be pushy, loud and arrogant because you're from Florida. Nobody is impressed by that, and if you say you're from Florida, you'll get nothing fast.''
Once members of the Franklin Florida Club, Pomerantz and her husband dropped out after a few years because they wanted to spend more time with locals.
``You shouldn't want to go up there and make it Florida,'' she says. ``If that's the case, please, stay in Florida.''
LENGTH: Long : 193 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Stinson. color.by CNB