The pun is mightier than the sword

     We're having a headline party over at my other blog, The Stoneman Gazette.
     Feel free to drop in. Bring your own pun. (Because the pun is mightier than the sword.)

There once was a Wobegon headline

 "There once was a man from Wisconsin"
 How does that headline sound to you?

 Like the start of a naughty limerick?

 Or the unedited demise of a once-trendy newspaper?

 Or don't you recognize Garrison Keillor, the unmistakable voice of ... Minnesota? 

 Not Wisconsin, for heaven's sake.

 That's the woe-begotten headline that USA TODAY published last week for a story on Keillor's retirement after 40 years as the host of the public-radio institution, A Prairie Home Companion.
 I wish I could give the newspaper credit for attempting a limerick, because Keillor would have appreciated that. In fact, he wrote several limericks specifically for Wisconsin when he performed in the beer town of Milwaukee.

There was a young man who loved Pabst
He drank it until he collapsed
He gave up beer
For Lent every year
And on Easter morning, relapsed.

 On his farewell broadcast this past Saturday night, Keillor recited or referenced several limericks, including bawdy verses about men from from Pocatello, Antietam, and Nantucket. This one even had an autobiographical first line:

There is an old man of St. Paul.
Put his desk in a toilet stall.
It was quiet, conducive,
And one had the use of
The plumbing with no wait at all.

 Even at age 73, Keillor still has a boyish love for limericks. "I intended to be a serious poet," he confessed in his final Lake Wobegon monologue. "Instead, I was fascinated by the limerick."
 I felt much the same way about my old medium—newspapers. And after I heard Keillor's farewell show and saw that headline, it got my my words pumping:

Back in the newspapers' heydey,
One called itself USA TODAY.
The going got tough,
Proofreaders laid off.
Wisconsin looks like Minnesotay.

 I feel entitled to pick on USA TODAY because I was associated with the McPaper from its revolutionary beginnings in 1982. They gave me one of most obscure jobs in journalism—contributing the daily sports item from South Carolina for the old Around the USA page. I earned $5 per item, and as I recall, those words were edited and cross-checked relentlessly. That's what newspapers did in the days of yore, when folks up and down the street were willing to pay for home delivery—twice a day, mind you—and newspapers found value in employing copy editors and proofreaders.

 Those were the good old days. In the 1980s (about the same time that Keillor made the cover of TIME magazine) The Greenville News was so ambitious we thought we could take over the state of South Carolina. If we could gain a few thousand readers and establish a semblance of a statewide audience, maybe we could pry the lucrative legal advertisements away from the Columbia paper.
 As part of this campaign, I was given a wonderful opportunity—not to mention a bottomless budget—to expand our high school football coverage statewide and cultivate a border-to-border audience. We catered barbecue for thousands of coaches every year and published special editions that were over a hundred pages. On the eighth Friday night of the 1984 season, we succeeded in getting every score of every game in the entire state in our first edition, which we felt certain had never been accomplished before. And for the next eight years, we never went to press without every score. We had radio ads bragging about it.
 If a coach didn't call in his game—and why wouldn't he, since we offered him $10 to dial us toll-free?—then we would make the midnight call to his house or the firehouse or the Waffle House to hunt down the score.

There once was a coach in St. Matthews.
Who'd rip out the phone if his boys lose.
So we'd call the town cop
Or the local truck stop
Where the quarterback gets his tattoos.

 In a different era and a different state, Keillor might have been the one calling in the game for us. One of the revelations I discovered in all the tributes published last week was that he, like me, began his career as a junior-high sportswriter. When a San Francisco reporter asked him about the happiest memory from his youth, he said: 

"The happiest was when I went out for football in the eighth grade and I took a physical, and the doctor told me I couldn’t play because I had a click in the valve of my heart. I was shocked, but I took this experience as a cue that I have to do something else that was brave, and I went to the local paper and asked if they needed someone to write up sports, knowing they didn’t have anybody. So they let me do it. So instead of sitting on the bench, I sat at the top of stands in the press box with men from the local radio station who were broadcasting the game. I sat with a tablet and a pencil and felt like royalty up there. I was a writer!"

We're all the butt of a blond joke

     A new poll says that voters prefer Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a margin of 54-41.
     Or to put it in terms my fellow denizens of the AP stylebook will understand: The blonde is leading the blond.
     I'm paraphrasing Jesus' warning about the blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14) because I think He appreciated puns and I trust that He forgives mine. And I don't want to see my country wind up in the ditch.
     For what it's worth, we the people evidently prefer a white-haired President. The poll indicates that Americans favor Bernie Sanders 56-40 over Trump, 57-39 over Ted Cruz, and 50-46 over John Kasich. Let's make America gray again.
     In the most inexplicable and implausible matchup, Americans prefer the cowlicked Kasich 51-41 over the blond* Clinton—despite the fact that on Tuesday night, he got less than five percent of the votes cast in Indiana. (The CNN/ORC poll was completed May 1, before Cruz and Kasich dropped out of the campaign.)
     * AP style, which is the abiding conscience of newsrooms nationwide, is as perplexed as the rest of America when it comes to blonde vs. blond. Here's how the stylebook guides us:

     In other words, Hillary is a blonde with blond hair.
     Is America ready for a blond(e) president? I looked it up, and Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were blond before they were bald. Straight-talking Harry is looking pretty good right now, just as he did in the Nixon era when the band Chicago recorded this ditty: America needs you, Harry Truman (click to listen). It ends with this plea:
     "Harry, is there something we can do to save the land we love?"

———

EQUAL TIME: Thomas Jefferson has been the only redhead in the White House. (By the way, redhead is now acceptable AP style, though it wasn't in the bygone days when Red Parker coached at Clemson.)

———

And if you are inclined to vote brunette, remember that Melania Trump has birther issues.

My all-time favorite headlines

     This weekend marks the seventh anniversary of my all-time favorite headline. Not that one. This one: 

     That's how the Charlotte Observer captured the moment in 2007 when our little Appalachian State football team conquered Michigan.
 Sports Illustrated declared it "Alltime Upset" on a cover suitable for framing. But leave it to the old-time headline writers in Charlotte to make it majestic, just for us. Just like local newspapers used to do. 

 Never has more been said in just 10 counts.
 Of course, App-elation! was the way we felt up here in the mountains after the unbelievable drama and the unimaginable triumph. Mary and I held hands as we listened to the final heart-wrenching moments on radio. That's the only time I can ever remember a football game bringing tears to my eyes.
 App-elation! declared the seismic shock to the rest of the state in a way that no one could miss nor misunderstand. 
 App-elation! was also a pun mocking the way the TV announcers mispronounced Appa-latch-un, a Yankee indignity that only heightened our accomplishment. 
 App-elation! even got the hyphen right, which is more than I can say for Sports Illustrated.
 Maybe best of all, App-elation! was a newspaper loosening its necktie and coming down from its ivory tower to join the party—bringing along a 96-point exclamation point just for fun. Newspapers aren't supposed to take sides, which makes it all the more memorable when they do. (Lest we forget, the Detroit Free Press headlined that game APPALLING.)
 Appellation, appropriately, means a name, or the act of naming. That's what great headlines do. In moments like these, newspapers write history, the front page becomes a keepsake, and a great headline deserves to be autographed.
 Great headlines stick in your mind like a song. The best ones orchestrate multiple messages and nuanced puns.
 I wish I had kept a file of the best headlines I've seen over the years. I've been blessed to be there for the birth of a few of them. One moment, a fine bylined story is lying headless on the page. Deadline is only moments away. Then inspiration bursts out of nowhere, sort of like Armanti Edwards, and suddenly an anonymous ink-stained editor has the opportunity to make memories and express history in one-tenth of a tweet.

 Here are some of my favorites from my Civil War newspaper:

 And from my sportswriting days, here are a few more unforgettable headlines:

Shaw, Shank: Redemption 
 Lots of headlines borrow from movie and book titles. Too often, it's a stretch, like one I wrote about a Georgia comeback: "Dog Day After Swoon." But this headline in The State condensed all the key elements of last year's Missouri-South Carolina football game: a jailbreak performance by wounded quarterback Connor Shaw, a shanked kick that would have won the game for Missouri, and the championship implications for the Gamecocks. 

Madonna and the babe truth story

 My aunt Viola Griffin played in the girls' professional baseball league that inspired the movie, "A League of Their Own." While our sports editor Dan Foster was on vacation, I wrote a column about her experiences on the movie set and in Cooperstown. The headline is a play on "The Babe Ruth Story," a 1948 biopic that some critics call the worst movie ever made.

E Pluribus Union
 Monte Dutton once wrote an essay for The Greenville News about high school football in Union County, S.C. Two of the county's three schools were state champions, and the third program was on life support. That headline turned prophetic just a few years later when Union, Jonesville, and Lockhart consolidated into one school. Then they truly became the Latin we all know from the penny, E Pluribus Unum—Out of many, one.  

Tigers are 10-8-cious

 The Greenville News immortalized the score of Clemson's tenacious victory against Lawrence Taylor and North Carolina, the pivotal game on the way to the 1981 national championship. 
 And speaking of LT … 

Plunkett Plucks Theismann's Heisman

 Thanks to this headline, I remember the results of the Heisman Trophy voting from 1970 better than 2013. I've always attributed this one to Phil Batson at the Anderson Independent, but now that I think about it, in 1970 Phil was probably still down in Due West serving as manager for Red Myers, Elmer "Skip" Goley, and the Erskine College Flying Fleet. (There's some raw material for headlines.)
 Phil wrote some fine headlines and talked me into staying in the newspaper business when I was thinking about becoming a computer programmer. 
 One rule Phil taught me: If it's a good headline, it fits. Rearrange the page if you have to, but always make room for a good headline. 
 Times sure have changed. No matter how much we pull for the underdogs, newspapers and headline writers have no better chances anymore than Appalachian State does in Saturday's rematch with Michigan. But this remains true:
 Good headlines always fit.
 They always will. 

#LASTPRINTISSUE
     It's not so often that the news guys get to sprinkle sarcasm as liberally as we did in sports. Newsweek's last cover was like a bloody note scrawled by a murder victim, hash-tagging the villain.

Miracle: 327 survive
      A plane in Spain fell mainly into the cliched clutches of old-school headline writers, who dwelt on the death toll: "55 die in Spain crash."
      But on the day USA TODAY was born, an editor there had the wisdom to headline the real story: "327 survive."
      That headline set the tone for the early years of USA TODAY, when it revolutionized journalism. Now, the company has laid off almost all its headline writers.

The Elephant in the Room

     This was TIME magazine's epithet for Gov. Chris Christie, weeks before he blew his E-ZPass for the Republican presidential nomination. Even his own pachydermic party treats him like a fat kid. Nobody likes him but voters. 

Pardon these puns

     You've heard of the fellow who entered a pun contest, sending in ten of his best, hoping that at least one would win. Alas, no pun in ten did. 
     Sometimes I wonder what puns were on his "list of likely losers" (as Leonard Post-Toasties used to say). 
     What if he squeezed and tortured the disclaimer "no pun intended" for all ten?
     His couldn't have been any worse than mine, right? 
     Pardon me while I get these out of my system:

Asking for trouble in Washington Square

     10. My daughter Marta often lunches in Manhattan near Washington Square Park, where the chess players hang out. There are some slick cheaters in that crowd, and if you're not careful, they'll swipe your pieces in a New York minute. Leave no pawn untended. 
     9. The street vendor at the fish-and-chips cart tells Marta to ignore any stray shrimp she may find in her basket. No prawn intended. And what if she wants a fish sandwich instead? Fuhgeddaboutit! No bun intended. 
     8. Your dollar bill declares that it is legal tender for all debts, public and private. But nobody wants your pennies anymore. No penny tendered.

     7. A pun walks into a Caribbean bar. The bartender shakes his head and points to a sign that says: "No puns in Trinidad." (or) A pun walked into a bar and shot 10 groan-ups. Pun in, ten dead.
     6. Noah's favorite animals on the ark were two small horses. He made his family take care of all the other animals, while Noah pony-tended.
     5. Puns are a lot like ponies. You can only ride them so far, and you have to put up with an occasional stinker. No pungency did.

     4. Theodore Roosevelt wanted to keep a journal on his safari, but Tarzan neglected to pack one vital item. No pen in tent, Ted. 
     3. TV political commentators trip over themselves trying to get in the last word. Too often, these debates end pathetically. No pundit ended.
     2. (Rerun alert) I once wrote a blog about a clever billboard in Columbia that used bricks to tell puns. I lamented the phrase "no pun intended," which should never be used by any writer with a functioning backspace key. In conversation, it's an acceptable apology. But in publication, it's as vain as this post. I have only a few readers, and it has never been intent of my blog to pun-ish you. Nope, unintended. 
     1. Think you can do better? Do you know punchy endings? Or do you have no pun incentive?     

Columbia's unforgettable brick mimes

     Watching that blockbuster LEGO movie reminded me of just how much silly fun you can have riffing on bricks.
     You thought bricks were just a bland facade of suburban affluence? Bricks never made you laugh? Then you must not have driven across South Carolina toward Myrtle Brick, back in the days when you might play a golf course designed by Jack Bricklaus, sing along with Brickney Spears, or go deep-sea fishing for Moby Brick.
     Those were the kind of visual puns portrayed by cartoon bricks we used to enjoy on one perpetually clever billboard along I-20 near Columbia. On the long drive from Greenville to Myrtle, it was a welcome sign of comic relief that could keep our family entertained for miles.
     Bricks can't talk, but they sure can mime. On that billboard in Columbia, a brickture could be worth a thousand words.
     Like this one from the 1980s:

     Once you take time to study the details, it's not hard to figure out that this is brick-dancing. But try to decode it with a quick glance at 70 mph.
     The billboard advertised the Richtex Brick factory near the Broad River Road exit. The signs were never sales pitches, and the Richtex logo was the only wording I ever saw. Yet that solitary billboard did its job so well that the Richtex brand remains engrained in my mind long after Brits bought the brickyard.
      That campaign must have been a marketing challenge. How do you advertise bricks—a once-in-a-lifetime purchase that involves no customer loyalty, no price breaks, no free installation, no sentimental values, and no distinctive qualities? Has anybody ever built or bought a house based on the brand name of the brick?
     What's an ad agency to do?
     "Exit here for bricks"? I don't think so.  
     "Lifetime warranty"? That goes without saying. 
     When all else fails, drop back and pun.
     Hey, we're all groan-ups here.
     Stop, you're kiln me. 

     Here comes another one: 

     When I searched for these masterpieces on the Internet, I hit a brick wall. All Google could find were a few old chats and a 1987 newspaper clipping.* That's not surprising, since the brick ads date way back to the 20th century, long before Picasa and camera phones became so ubriquitous. 
     It's a rare treat when you get to discover something that Google didn't know and couldn't find—something a newspaperman could declare "Scoop!" The last time this happened, I was searching for Alfred Adams' long-lost biblical proof that Boone is the second Garden of Eden. That one I eventually found offline through the Boone Chamber of Commerce.
     This time, I found a clue on LinkedIn that led me to Cynthia Gilliam, the advertising artist with Columbia's Semaphore agency who developed the campaign for Richtex. She directed me to an old Facebook wall where a few of the billboard images survive. I am reposting these here with all due credit and gratitude.
     Gilliam obviously took delight in that campaign, and she shared how it "went viral" way before social media, sparking discussion on morning radio shows and hometown newspapers across South Carolina. I wonder if all that spontaneous buzz/free advertising might be one of the reasons why brick houses are so popular in the heart of Brixie. 

"Tunnelvision" on brick. Marion Street, Columbia

     Personally, I think the brick ads might be the best thing to come out of Columbia since my dear wife. In fact, bricks and billboards may represent the pinnacle of Columbia's creativity, considering Blue Sky's "Tunnelvision" mural, along with the recent tourism billboards with the self-depbrickating slogan, "Famously Hot, Surprisingly Cool."
     Mary and I were headline writers when we met, so you can understand why we still enjoy twisting phrases and playing with words. Our kids ought to be thankful we didn't name them Ben Joe and Amanda Lynn. They might cringe at our hee-haw humor, but they can't deny that they are ...

     I think this one is more idiom than pun. However, you get bonus points if you bricognized a bricket fence or brickberry cobbler. Shame on you if you guessed son of a brick.
     By the way, did you know that the holes in bricks are called frogs? (Google knew.) I think this goes back to the Bible. The endless demand for bricks was the last straw for the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, so to leverage their freedom, Moses called down a series of plagues, including a plague of frogs. And the Lord said to Pharaoh, "No more mason with My peeps." 

     And that, dear children, is where holy bricks come from. Behold!

     Speaking of peeps, puns sometimes hit you out of the blue. This one is from the Reagan era, when some of us were convinced the sky was falling:

     I assume that's Henny Penny with the pink purse, aka Mrs. Cocky Locky. (That reminds me of another Columbia icon, the Troll Ball Coach, who once was a pun-ter as well as a quarterback and has now mastered the faked pun and the brick-handed compliment. Lots of orange-clad folks around Clemson and Knoxville have other sobriquets for him, some that rhyme with brick.)
     When budgets are tight, an agency may be able to squeeze multiple messages out of the same scene. These two holiday billboards feature the same silhouetted house, presumably made of brick, as well as the same moon, presumably made of bricotta cheese. I see five or six more briquettes, depending on whether those fluttering hallowingers are really brickbats. How about you? 

 

      Puns have an undeservedly bad reputation. Some snobs say they are the lowest form of humor. Yet Shakespeare and Jesus dabbled in puns, and Hitchcock called them the highest form of literature. 
     I will admit that too many puns may spoil the blog. And if you haven't had too many already, you soon will. Before you censor me, just remember: If puns are outlawed, only outlaws will have puns. 
     As far as I'm concerned, the only thing wrong with a pun is when the author writes, "No pun intended." If you didn't intend it, then backspace and change it. More often, "No pun intended" means exactly the opposite—I not only intended it, but I want to call it to your attention because you might be too brick-headed to get it on your own.
     No such intent here on my blog. 
     Nope, unintended.

_______________________

THE BRICKS START HERE
*The Richtex billboards begin in 1979, according to a clipping of a 1987 AP story that Google found in the archives of the Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News. (Gilliam's Semaphore Agency took the account in 1982, and all the examples I posted are from Semaphore.) The AP story included a wirephoto of Chip off the Old Brick, so we can confidently date that one to 1987. Other first-generation illustrations mentioned in that story were Brick Dancing, Bricken Little, Aerobricks, Brick of the Litter, and Brickfast of Champions.

Worth his weight in goad

     Steve Spurrier and Dabo Swinney have so much fun coaching football that they would probably do it for free. But because they take their rivalry so doggone personally, they won't do it for less than $7 million.

Defending national champions are 0-3 in Death

Valley, as my son-in-law Pat and son Hall

witnessed in 2011 against Auburn. Here's

hoping that USC will make it 0-4 in 2016. First,

Spurrier has to win the 2015 national title.

     The stakes were raised after South Carolina and Clemson decimated the Big Ten in their recent bowl games. In a poll of their coaching peers, Spurrier's Gamecocks wound up ranked fourth in the nation, their highest finish ever. Swinney's Tigers were seventh, their best since 1981.

     Even in the nationally televised glow of their crowning victories, the coaches couldn't leave each other alone. 
     "Two Capital One bowls are pretty nice," Spurrier told Gamecock fans, "but the state championship ain't bad, either." 

     Two days later at the Orange Bowl, Dabo had his say: “We’re the first team from the state of South Carolina to ever win a BCS game."

     Dabo should know by now: Never try to outwit Spurrier. He unwittingly walked right into the Old Ball Coach's trap—the same way his teams have for the last five years.
     “I called Danny Ford," Spurrier responded, "and said, ‘Danny, does Dabo forget that Clemson in 1981 went down to the Orange Bowl, won the national championship and went undefeated?’ They didn’t call it a BCS bowl back then, but it was the same bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Orange Bowl has always been a major bowl.”

     So the Old Ball Coach goaded Dabo into dissing Danny.
     Well played, sir.
     Two weeks later, they made headlines again. On Jan. 16, after going 11-2 for the third straight season and 6-3 against Clemson, Spurrier got a $700,000 raise to $4 million. On Jan. 18, after going 11-2 for the second straight year but 1-5 against USC, Swinney got a $1 million raise to $3.1 million. And if his paycheck doesn't beat Spurrier's, at least his contract does, eight years to five.
     Tell me those deals had nothing to do with each other.
     And tell me this: Did Spurrier just goad Clemson into a long-term commitment with a coach he knows how to beat? Or in his own wincing words: "They're a good team that continues not playing very well against us."
     We don't need to debate whether a football coach is worth all that money, compared to the 150 teachers you could hire for $7 million. This is show-business. Coaches pay for themselves. Tickets sold at one home game will pay the head coach's salary.  After that, it's almost all free money, right? 
     Nor am I here to raise doubts about the longevity of the perpetually boyish Old Ball Coach, who will be 73 when his contract is up. He is already older than Woody Hayes was at his demise or Danny Ford is on his farm. Next year, Spurrier will be as old as Bear Bryant was when he died.
     Bobby Bowden was 70 when he won his second national championship. Reckon Spurrier would like to one-up him one more time? 
     The next time he beats Clemson, Spurrier will have as many victories in the state championship as Ford did. And he already told us he has Danny's number.
     Don't misunderstand my fascination and grudging respect for Spurrier. My heart is with Clemson, where I grew up. I believe in what Dabo's doing. I admire his passion and values. Someday he will put USC in its place. But right now, Spurrier owns the stage. He has earned the last word.
     It's not like he's just picking on Clemson, of course. Spurrier still loves to needle Tennessee, where he grew up as the son of a Presbyterian preacher. Even his own players are not spared. 
     Enjoy this list of Spurrier's zingers from the past season, and these revealing comments at his daddy's funeral. 
     In the out-of-proportion world where Spurrier rules, there is never a shortage of fresh material.
     Here's some more: Over the next eight years, Clemson will pay Dabo $4 million just for the license to use his trademarked nickname on coffee mugs, poker chips, and other merchandise. That's the same price USC will pay Spurrier to coach next year.
     Tell me the Old Ball Coach won't have a field day with that.
     Tell me which is the better investment.
     Or as they say down at the Capital One Bowl: What's in your wallet? 

—————————
LEST WE FORGET

• The Capital One Bowl seems a lot nicer to Spurrier now than it did back when the game was called the Citrus Bowl (the stadium still is) and Peyton Manning was playing there. You can't spell Citrus without UT? Well, the same goes for USC. I was surprised Dabo let that one pass, especially since Tennessee is a sore spot for Spurrier and ruined his shot at the SEC and BCS championship. 
• Anybody remember the last coach to beat Danny Ford at Clemson? Yes, Spurrier got the last word there, too. He was 4-2 against Ford, 1-2 while at Duke and 3-0 at Florida.
• The best record of any long-term coach in the state championship is 7-2 by Bobby Bowden's boy. Tommy Bowden went 5-1 against Lou Holtz and 2-1 against Spurrier. And it was his team (under Dabo's interim command) that owns Clemson's last victory against Spurrier. He beat the Gamecocks so often that he got taken for granted, and then he lost to Wake Forest and got fired. 
• Coaches' records in the state championship (updated through 2014 and ranked by winning percentage; counting ties the same as losses): Pell 2-0, Bowden 7-2, Hatfield 3-1, Ingram 2-1, Enright 9-4-1, Ford 7-3-1, Spurrier 6-4, West 3-2, Dietzel 4-5, Parker 2-2, Howard 12-16-2, Bass 2-3, Morrison 2-3-1, Woods 2-4, Swinney 2-5, Carlen 2-5, Scott 1-3, Giese 1-4, Holtz 1-5, Bell 0-1. 

—————————
Frank Howard once told me the most he ever made at Clemson was $25,000. That would have been about four times what teachers like my mom earned during his final year, 1969. Coach Howard used to joke that he had a lifetime contract, but after he lost his last two to USC the administration declared him dead. We remember the Baron of Barlow Bend as an old man, but he was just 60 when he stepped aside as coach. 
—————————
Here's a bit of Tim Bourret-esque trivia: William Christopher Swinney was born just two days before Coach Howard's last game in 1969. They would have liked each other. I often heard Coach Howard refer to "dat boy," the same Alabama colloquialism that got Dabo his nickname. 

Welcome to the Garden of Eden

The Green Park Inn's green horse faces south on the Eastern Continental Divide, as if he might sip from the Pee Dee and piddle-dee-dee into the Mississippee.

 Four of America's more poetic rivers descend from the mountains where I live: the Mississippi, Pee Dee, Santee, and Tennessee. The first two can be traced to springs under the stately Green Park Inn, which straddles the Eastern Continental Divide in Blowing Rock. Headwaters for the other two are within walking distance.

Alfred Adams

 As far as I know, the only other place that stands at the head of four great rivers is the Garden of Eden, as described in the second chapter of Genesis.

 Alfred Adams (1911-2002), a patriarch of Boone, wrote a little essay about this, harking back to the simpler days before Boone had a Five Guys, four-lane highways, or a three-time national champion football team. 
 I couldn't find this anywhere else on the web, so I put it here just for you:

Boone, the Second Garden of Eden

by Alfred Adams 

    There’s been a certain amount of research done to locate the ancient Garden of Eden. It’s been discovered to have been forty miles east of the city of Damascus; the Damascus where Saul had his vision. From the Garden there rose four rivers. One flowed north, one south, one east, and one west.

    Boone, North Carolina, is located forty miles east of the city of Damascus, Virginia, and from the base of Grandfather Mountain rise four rivers, flowing one to each of the cardinal points of the compass—-which gives you all the physical evidence necessary to convince you that it is indeed the second Garden.

    Now with it being 3,333 feet up here to the courthouse yard, depending upon where in the courthouse yard you measure, because it ain’t level either, we have no air and water pollution problems here. The air you breathe here is just as pure as any breeze that ever chortled down a country lane before the advent of the combustion engine on civilization.

    The water that bursts out of the breasts of these majestic mountains and cascades down over the rocks, over the logs and on out into the rivers of the valley below has been tested to be 100.00001 percent pure, which makes it a good place to live.

    But eventually, the shadows lengthen and twilight falls and you can no longer ignore the clear call of the tolling bell. You’re now 3,333 feet closer to the abode of the righteous. You’ve got a running go on heaven from up here.

    And look at the other side of the coin. Suppose you fail to walk circumspectly before the world, and the keeper of the Golden City frowns upon your application and supplication. Heaven forbid! But in that event, you are 3,333 feet farther from the kingdom of the Satanic majesty. You can delay your entrance into that unwanted and unholy land by that much travel time.

    And the way traffic gets in Boone, it’s worth considering.

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HEADWATERS:

• Raindrops that fall in Blowing Rock actually have five ways to go to the beach. The New River heads north to the Ohio, the Watauga winds west to the Tennessee, and a thousand miles downstream they merge and feed the mighty Mississippi on the way to New Orleans. Meanwhile, the Yadkin flows east to the Pee Dee, and the Johns River goes south via the Catawba and Wateree to the Santee. Separated at birth, these two rivers eventually run parallel and are reunited in the end—emptying into the Atlantic through the Georgetown harbor in South Carolina. In addition to these three natural outlets, there are also canals that divert waters from the Santee to Charleston and from the Tennessee through Alabama to Mobile. Click here to see the drainage animated.
• A patch of rhododendron at a house across the road from the Green Park Inn in Blowing Rock is one of 53 "triple divide points" in the United States—where the watersheds of three major rivers begin. Technically, the Santee, Pee Dee, and Mississippi define this triple divide, while the Tennessee starts three miles west in the Moses Cone Park. The nearest triple divides along the Blue Ridge are on Sassafras Mountain, S.C., (head of the Santee, Savannah, and Mississippi) and in Carroll County VA (the Pee Dee, Roanoke, and Mississippi). Click here for the list.
• The Blowing Rock News published a story about the head spring of the Pee Dee, which is now hidden in a manhole at the Green Park Inn. See the postcard below. 
• You'll occasionally read that the New and the Nile are about the only rivers in the world that flow north. I've also heard Asheville's counter-culture ascribed to the fact that the French Broad runs north—as if there is something strange about that. Let's dispense with this nonsense forever: Five of the 13 longest rivers in the world flow north. So do many of our more famous rivers, including the Rhine, Niagara, Monongahela, Shenandoah, Snake, and St. Johns. Just because they go toward the top of the map does not mean they defy gravity or social norms.
• On the other hand, why do we say that rivers "rise"? They only rise when dammed. 

Antique postcard shows the springhouse that once guarded the head of the Pee Dee.
The house in the background still stands on Green Hill Road just off U.S. 321.
A thousand captured Confederates drank here the evening of April 17, 1865.