By Katie Scarvey
kscarvey@salisburypost.com
If you were in the right part of Salisbury in the 1940s ó not too far from where Salisbury Motor Company is today ó you might have seen a young Butch Farmer riding a goat, while his buddy Ken Carroll looked on.
“His daddy had goats, and I’d go down there and ride them goats,” Butch recalls.
He’d hold on to the horns of the billy goat ó and when the goat would reach the end of its chain, Butch would come to the end too ó abruptly.
Goat-riding might have seemed a bit odd, but what was also unusual for the time was that the two friends were of different races.
“Back then, there was a black community and a white community,” Butch says.
But when the two 10-year-old boys ó born two months apart in 1937 ó got together, “it was all the same,” Butch says.
“Black or white, it didn’t matter.”
“We weren’t caught up in that,” Ken says. “Whatever was out there that adults or other people were dealing with, we didn’t even bother with.
“It was just a friendship thing.”
Their fathers were friendly, too, getting together from time to time to tip a jug.
Apparently, Ken ó a well-known musician locally who played bass with the PCS Trio, was experimenting with music as a boy when Butch met him the first time.
“One day, I heard the awfullest racket,” Butch says. When he explored the source of the noise, he realized Ken was banging on cans, as if they were drums.
The boys’ friendship, however, was not to survive in those days of segregation.
“When we started school, the white kids went to Wiley and Frank B. John,” Ken says. “The black kids went to Monroe Street School and Price.”
Segregated schools were what separated them, he adds.
And so for about 60 years or so, Butch and Ken didn’t see one another.
Not too long ago, Ken, who has a neurological condition, began coming to Abundant Living Adult Day Services. Butch, who has had a stroke, also attends the center.
“Both of them are such assets to Abundant Living,” says Barbara Garwood, the executive director of the center, which is a ministry of Lutheran Services for the Aging and a United Way agency.
Butch is known as the Greeter, saying hello to every participant and staff member each day, Barbara says.
“When I started down here,” Ken says, “he greeted me and made me feel welcome” ó even though the two men did not yet recognize one another.
But the name “Butch” kept ringing in his ears, Ken says.
“I have never run across another white guy by the name of Butch,” he adds.
One day, after sharing some horseradish with Butch, Ken asked him, “‘How long have you lived in Salisbury?'”
All his life, Butch told him. He grew up in the West End.
“And then he mentioned Mary Lash’s store,” Ken says. “Not too many folks remember Mary Lash’s store and Dan Woods’ Metal Shop.”
Ken’s family lived behind Mary Lash’s store.
“Once that name came up, Lash, it was home free,” Ken says. “And we got to talking about goats and everything.”
“It just clicked right off the bat,” Butch says of their renewed friendship.
“It sounds so unbelievable, after all these years, and after what we have been through, Butch and I come together again,” Ken says.

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Watch Ken & Butch speak about their friendship in their own words.

The two men had to fill each other in on what had happened in their lives over the 60 years they hadn’t been in touch.
Ken had a career in education working as a teacher and principal, beginning at Aggrey Memorial in Landis. He moved to Charlotte and later to New York. He returned and taught at Barber-Scotia College for a while and finished his career teaching at Piedmont Correctional Institution.
Butch graduated from Boyden High School in 1957 and spent four years in the Air Force. He worked at Kosa for 35 years, retiring in 1999.
A year later, he had a stroke.
“I’m still lucky that I’m able to sit here and talk to y’all and carry on a fairly decent conservation,” Butch says.
“Both of us like this place right here,” says Butch, referring to the comfortable surroundings at Abundant Living.
“I like to talk to my peers,” Butch adds. “I don’t like to talk to a banker or a lawyer…I don’t care a plugged nickel for talking to anybody but my peers. All these people here, I’m the same level as they are.”
Ken, he allows, is the only schoolteacher he can get along with.
They like to talk about things from the old days ó like those goats.
Ken recalls that Dr. Woodson had told his parents that goat’s milk would be good for his health, and that’s why they kept goats.
“We had about three goats,” Ken says. His favorite was a brown and white one named Pancho.
Ken recalls how he found out that Pancho had been butchered for meat.
“Pops said, ‘Old Pancho sure tastes good, don’t he?’ ”
“That broke me all to pieces,” Ken recalls. “Ever since then, I haven’t had a taste for goat.”
He and Butch talk about how things have changed over the past 60 years.
“The neighborhoods have changed. There’s not this separate thing as pronounced as it once was,” Ken says.
“The idea of integration brought about a lot of things.”
“We were talking the other day about a guy who worked at Dan Woods’ metal shop,” Ken says.
He looks over at Butch.
“You go ahead,” Ken says. And so Butch takes over.
“That was one-armed Ike, a black guy that worked in the tin shop, and he done about all the work because his boss stayed drunk about all the time.
“And Ike could do more with one hand than the average person could do with two.”
Talk turns to how Innes Street has changed.
“We used to play baseball on Innes Street,” Butch says.
“Right in the middle of the street,” Ken adds, “because there wasn’t no traffic.”
“We’d say, ‘Uh oh, here comes a car,’ and we’d stop and go to the side,” Butch said.
“We had second base out there on the yellow line.”
Of course there are some things they don’t really talk about, like politics.
Ken found himself following the presidential campaign pretty closely.
“I was hoping that I would see a black president in this lifetime,” Ken says, “but I never banked on it.”
He’s seen a lot of progress in his lifetime, he says.
When he was in the service, Ken says, “They had just started to integrate the barracks.
Race wasn’t much of an issue, he says, although he recalls a little friction when he was stationed in Oklahoma.
For his part, Butch says he can’t remember any problems when he was in the service and points out that the servicemen tended to divide themselves more by geographic location ó north and south ó than by race.
Ken and Butch are glad that their 60-year separation is over.
“We lost contact as a result of the social aspect of it,” Ken says. “And as a result of the social aspect, we meet again 60 years later.
“So it’s beautiful.”