December 23, 2007

Iredell poet’s verse full of controversy

By O.C. Stonestreet

Iredell County has had and continues to have its quota of people one might describe as “characters.”

Occasionally, you run across such a person when reading old issues of the local papers. Case in point: Sydney LeRoy Dixon, poet.

Dixon, whose first name was also spelled “Sidney,” lived in this area and occasionally contributed columns and poems to The Landmark. As far as it is known, no one has yet attempted a compilation of his works.

Dixon was blessed by the Muse of Poetry, if not by the gods of commerce. Unable to support himself with verse alone, he often took to the country roads of the day as a peddler, or in the terminology of the day, a “drummer” of small dry goods, mostly in Barringer and Coddle Creek townships.

The Rev. J.I. Goodman, writing to Mooresville from Colorado in the 1930s, recalled Dixon, whom he had befriended, and his gift for rhyme.

Said the Rev. Goodman, “His life was simple. At first he drove a stack of bones called a roan mare (hitched) to a one-horse wagon, which was a home to him, and in which he carried numerous items of trade. These items included garden seed, needles, pins, thimbles, etc., which he exchanged for chickens and eggs with the housewives. He was square in his dealings, polite to customers, but so shaggy and unkempt that many women would have nothing to do with him.”

His horse, it was said, was so well-trained that when Dixon, wrapped up in a blanket on cold days, left his hack to walk several hundred yards to an isolated farm house with his wares, his horse would proceed to the next house, stop and wait for him.

In January 1886, Dixon opened a general merchandise store in the Spring Grove community near Prospect Presbyterian Church, but this did not apparently last long, as he did not sell whiskey.

“His mind was well educated and given to the poetic,” continued Goodman. “He might have been a real poet but for some early hindrances. Indeed, he did write lyric verse, some of which was worthy to be called poetry. His effusions were printed by the Statesville Landmark when he would permit.

“One night, he and I were talking across the counter when I told him of a ridiculous episode in the life of one of our citizens, and suggested that he put it to verse,” Goodman added.

“After a few moments thought, he rolled his quid of tobacco to one side of his mouth and out flowed the rhythms, verse after verse. Spontan-eous? Absolutely so.”

Dixon was supposedly born in or near Huntersville and was a Davidson College graduate, although the college has no record of him in its archives as a student nor as a graduate.

Perhaps he attended a country school in the vicinity of Davidson.

Mooresville Tribune founder, editor and publisher Tom McKnight thought he was a Davidson College graduate and stated he was a brother of Thomas Dixon Jr., author of “The Clansman,” which was made into the controversial D. W. Griffith movie, “The Birth of a Nation.” Research has not borne this out, but Dixon could have been the brother of the Rev. Thomas Dixon Sr., a Baptist minister.

Robert A. Lowrance of the Prospect neighborhood remembered Dixon in the 1930s. Lowrance believed shortly after his supposed college days, Dixon had been disappointed in an affair of the heart “and rapidly degenerated into a tramp, utterly indifferent to his personal appearance.”

Dixon, Lowrance said, first came into Iredell and Rowan selling cotton-planting machinery manufactured in Huntersville.

“As an old man,” said Lowrance, “with tobacco juice running out of both corners of his mouth, he was vain about pretty girls, and any pretty girl who would kiss him could have a dress free.”

Dixon supplemented his meager income by occasionally working as a poet-for-hire, dashing off verse for young men to send to their sweethearts. And it is his verse that has kept Dixon in memory. Regrettably, much of his opus has been lost.

His greatest work, at least if greatness can be equated with length, was a 66-verse poem titled, “A Sketch of the Life of Smiley J. Brown, the South Iredell Swindler.”

It seems poet Dixon and Brown had become archenemies, probably because of a debt owed by Brown to Dixon.

It is believed that 100 copies of the 66-verse slanderous poem were printed, with the result that Brown took Dixon to court for libel.

The Oct. 30, 1890, Landmark told more: “It is well-known to our readers that S.L. Dixon, as poet laureate of Barringer Township, has a grievance against the truly good Smiley J. Brown, formerly of Mooresville but now of Charlotte, and that he took his pen in hand some time ago and blew a blast of about 50 verses which shook Smiley up for the first time in his life.

“The poet had his production printed in pamphlet form and circulated it. Smiley claimed that some of the transaction with which he is charged in rhyme took place before he was converted and on these, he pleaded the statute of limitation.

He denied his guilt of the other charges and indicted Dixon in the criminal court of Mecklenburg County.

“The trial came off week before last and The Charlotte News says that the defendant (Dixon) submitted, defendant took the insolvent debtor’s oath and was discharged. He was warned by Judge Meares that if he repeated the offense, he would be put on the chain gang.”

Tribune editor McKnight admitted that he had sought a copy of the (in)famous poem for 15 years, and when he finally located a complete copy, he printed the entire work in his “Community Chaff” column of the Mooresville Tribune in February 1956.

As McKnight explained, “But not until last week have we ever had any success in getting our hands on anything written by Dixon. Fred Gray Deaton of Statesville knew a man in Charlotte who had once possessed a copy of Dixon’s famous poem on Smiley Jetson Brown. Sure enough, the man had it and sent it to Mr. Deaton.”

Dixon passed on while a resident of the state Confederate Soldier’s Home in Raleigh on March 23, 1902, at age 80. He served during the Civil War as a private in Company “K” of the 30th North Carolina State Regiment. He is buried in Raleigh’s Oakwood Cemetery.

* * *

One of Mr. Dixon’s shorter works was published in the Landmark of Feb. 21, 1891, that perhaps presages the annual balloon festival, here given with a few editorial changes:

THE AIRSHIP
By Sydney LeRoy Dixon

An airship I would wish to see,
But do not care to ride.
For it will sail too high for me
To suit my lowly pride.
Old terra firma suits me best,
Without aerial fame,
By railroad I would feel more blessed
And get there just the same.
I know I would uneasy feel
And when the ship did stop,
She surely then would smash her keel
And strike the ground, “Kerplop!“
And when we pass the cotton fields
Where farmers hoe the crop
They fast would run, take to their heels,
And where, then, would they stop?
The farmer would quickly drop his hoe
And then would throw his hat.
And then would halloo,“Don’t you go
And leave me with this brat!“
The horses, too, would run away,
The mules would kick for home,
The tenants, too, would run and say
“Old Nick has surely come!“
The old bell cow would see the sight
And with the herd would sail
Then round the field would take her flight
With lofty head and tail.
The buzzard bird away would fly
And then for food would lack.
And when a hog or horse will die
They never will come back.
The men below, upon the ground,
Will look like they are tricked,
For there, quite low, they all are found
And when they walked, they kicked.
I once was in a steeple high,
High Trinity, you know-
And it was pleasing to the eye
To see the things below.
The forest trees with fringe appear
With limbs spread on the ground,
While everything, both far and near,
So strangely will be found.
The growing wheat and growing corn
Will spread their carpets green
And clover fields help to adorn
To make a pleasant scene.
Oh, who would walk upon the deck
When they are sailing high,
And if the ship perchance did wreck,
Oh, whither could we fly?