North Carolina
12/13/2020 | 4m 22sVideo has Closed Captions
Paul's dream of owning a home came true, but moved from North Carolina to to pay for it.
Growing up in a shack in the Jim Crow South, Paul Gunter dreamed of someday owning his own home. Although his dream came true at the age of 20, he soon had to move from North Carolina to New Jersey to make enough money to pay for it. Twenty-one years later, after his wife passed away, Paul finally returned to the house he built and the state that had always felt like home.
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Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
North Carolina
12/13/2020 | 4m 22sVideo has Closed Captions
Growing up in a shack in the Jim Crow South, Paul Gunter dreamed of someday owning his own home. Although his dream came true at the age of 20, he soon had to move from North Carolina to New Jersey to make enough money to pay for it. Twenty-one years later, after his wife passed away, Paul finally returned to the house he built and the state that had always felt like home.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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- [Crew] Four.
- Four miles an hour?
- [Crew] Yep.
- Well that's my top speed.
(laughs) (calm atmospheric music) (wheelchair motor whirs) I consider myself a North Carolinian.
Feeling nice when we're back home.
I was glad to get back to a slower pace.
(slow piano music) I was born about six miles east of here, in 1933.
It was a one horse town, that's what they called it back in those days, a one horse town.
It used to be a older house was sitting here.
I can take you right over here, there was all fields, now it's all town right there, far as you can see is homes.
It's not bothering me, it's great to see it.
We used to live in a shack back in those days.
Air's comin' through, you couldn't get warm.
And they had old fireplaces, and you get hot in the front, and freeze in the back.
(laughs)so it was a rough life.
Makes you belong somewhere, after you build a house.
Just to say you got somethin' of your own you're building.
That made a great feeling, that you were able to get somethin'.
When I was 20, I moved to New Jersey, to pay for my house here, wasn't makin' no money down here.
Up north, is everybody's in a rush, I mean rushin', like they're trying to get somewhere, then they're not getting there.
I knew I had to be there for at least five years.
But it wound up 20, 21.
(laughs) It was '75, I lost my wife.
It was too many memories there.
So I said "Well, I'll move back home."
(calm atmospheric music) (wheelchair motor whirs) So I thought it was gonna kill me when Amusia died, but I survived it.
She died three months before our 25th anniversary, but I guess that's life, yeah.
(machine beeps) (door creaks open) (door slams) North Carolina is a slow paced state.
People just got time to stop and talk to you.
Everybody's friendly.
I've sat on my porch and they, you know, they come by and talk.
I sit out there every day when the sun is shining.
(slow atmospheric music)
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Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.