The morning
after we arrived we headed into Wilson to visit the Visitors Center to obtain
more information on where to find Lucama and the whirligigs. As our luck would
once more have it the town of Wilson was busy setting up the Vollis Simpson
Whirligig Park (Mr. Simpson died in June of this year in his mid-nineties) for
a weekend " whirligig festival " event; over we trotted and watched workmen
busily hanging pieces onto an enormous whirligig, there were four other whirligigs
already erected with another sixteen to follow. A multimillion dollar project,
the park will be landscaped to become the focal point of the town. The
whirligigs are in different sizes with some as high as street lamps with
enormous additions, sometimes as wide as 25ft hanging vertically and
horizontally from them; when the wind blows the different components turn in opposite
directions. At the park we learned that a refurbishment facility was a couple
of blocks away so we walked over and started chatting to a gentleman named Mel
who invited us in and gave us a personal grand tour explaining how difficult it
was, due to age and corrosion, to dismantle the whirligigs, the challenge of
sourcing the correct paint and how they replaced some very rusty moving pieces
with newly fabricated pieces. He had photos of what the whirligigs looked like
when Vollis Simpson originally made them. The town is also opening a museum to
display and archive the smaller pieces that are beyond repair.
The next day
we drove out to Lucama a farming community about 15 miles from Wilson and where
Vollis Simpson had his home and workshop. On arrival at the farm we parked beside
a gate to a field where four geese set up an almighty racket – particularly the
male, the other three were female. They made so much noise that their owner
came by; he happened to be Michael Simpson one of Vollis’ sons. He told us some
interesting anecdotes about his Dad Vollis who went to his workshop every day
right up to a few weeks before he passed. The field the geese were in had
several enormous Whirligigs (Vollis called them Windmills) as Michael was
feeding the geese he invited us to admire them and then gave us a tour of the
workshop; it was like a scrap metal barn full of all sorts of knick-knacks,
small, big and gigantic, there were lots of little Whirligigs dotted around on every
surface. Vollis made these when he got too old to climb up the enormous poles; this
was his pastime hobby, to make his living Vollis farmed and moved houses and
barns.
Four
whirligigs commissioned from him for the Atlanta Olympics are still on display
in Atlanta with other pieces in Baltimore, Raleigh and Greensboro. The US Embassy
in Moscow has a whirligig in its lobby.
This was a
very enjoyable stop made all the more so as everyone was so welcoming.
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