kchaffin@salisburypost.com

Potter Brent Smith didn't have to worry about keeping the attention of Salisbury Academy first-graders while demonstrating on a pottery wheel at their N.C. Heritage Fair on May 21.

It was everything he could do to answer all their questions. One — "How come it's just magically moving?" — brought a smile to Smith's face. A few years ago, he told them, a student asked, "Are you doing that with your mind, just spinning it around?"

"I'm not that good," he assured them.

Allen Cook asked, "What are we going to do?"

"Watch me," Smith responded with another smile.

Some students made shapes out of Smith's clay. "I made a pinch pot," said Stephen Timbinaris, who shaped it with pinches.

When students asked Smith if he could put handles on the pot he was making, he said the first graders who came before them wanted him to put a giraffe on the pot. "They were into giraffes and bananas," he said.

The questions continued: "You have your own little knife? Do you use that to carve stuff in pots?"

Smith said he could or he could use it to cut the top off the pot, demonstrating as he talked.

"Could you stop it and carve a rose on the front? Can you make a rose?"

Smith noticed the rose bud Aneesa Hanchey had shaped out of clay and attached it to the pot.

He said he was probably in the first grade when he began digging up clay with his brother and making shapes out of it. They found it on the creek banks, he said.

It wasn't until he was around 22 that Smith said he began taking art and pottery classes. He had been taking business classes, he said, when his brother encouraged him to take art.

More questions. "Can you make it not straight at the top?"

"You want it wobbly?" Smith responded. "I'll see how wobbly I can make it."

He used his hand to push the pot from the inside out. "I used to make wobbly pots when I was learning," Smith said.

Near the school entrance, eighth-graders lined up to dip their candle wick in a can of hot wax. "They get two dips three or four times," said Ashley Graham, public relations and communications consultant for the academy.

Susan Waller of Horizons Unlimited sat beside the can of hot wax, smoothing out lumps on the candles when students pulled them out.

Waller shared other tidbits about North Carolina heritage. Instead of Band-Aids, she said people used to cover their wounds with cobwebs.

Behind her, Sgt. Bob Price of the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office showed students how to clean, load and fire a cannon. Price said the cannon was shot over the weekend at a Revolutionary War re-enactment in Charlotte.

Graham said Price's patrol area includes the school, so the students and staff see him on a regular basis.

Teachers, parents and volunteers from the community manned stations around the school as part of the Heritage Fair. Parent Cheryl Vanderpoel helped students experience washing pieces of cloth using a scrub board in a wash tub.

"They're enjoying it," she said, adding that they especially enjoyed getting the cloth dirty so they would have something to clean.

Vanderpoel said the male students seemed to be trying on the oldtime clothes Waller brought more than the female students, even the women's bonnets.

Also at her station were dried apples and apple butter for students to try. Most of them seemed to like them.

They also got an opportunity to play oldtime games such as Tom Walkers, corn cob throw, hoop races, Jacob's Ladder, gourd drop and ball and cup.

Inside, volunteer Zach McClary gave a presentation on medicinal herbs, and students tasted original North Carolina snacks provided through donations from Cheerwine, Mt. Olive Pickles, North Carolina Peanuts and Frierich Meats.

David Bloom, social studies teacher, said he had been teaching about North Carolina heritage leading up to the fair. The week of the fair, Storyteller Robert Jones of the Rowan Public Library shared North Carolina Grandfather Tales and Jack Tales with the students.

Also in previous weeks, the various classes went on field trips with various North Carolina connections,

Fifth-graders went to Junior Achievement BizTown in Charlotte, where they learned about the economy of North Carolina and how to run a business. They also participated in a walking tour with Terry Holt through downtown Salisbury, where particular emphasis was placed on local Civil War landmarks.

First-graders had a chance to enjoy the artwork of North Carolina artist Earle Kluttz Thompson, who has been involved in the creation and restoration of murals throughout Salisbury during their walking tour of murals and ghost murals throughout the town.

The sixth-graders traveled to Linville Taverns, and second- graders visited several Rowan County landmarks such as the Old Stone House, Thyatira and the Bell Tower.

Graham said the N.C. Heritage Fair is going to be an annual event at the academy, focusing on a different time period each year.Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.