By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
The 33rd annual OctoberTour kicked off Saturday without a hitch, Mother Nature blessing the event with partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures.
Hundreds of tour participants moseyed along Fulton and surrounding streets, talking and laughing and taking in some of Rowan County’s more well-preserved older houses.
“Thank goodness for this nice weather,” said Dale Huffman, who accompanied her husband, Dick, as they toured the McCubbins-Rouser House at 727 S. Fulton St.
The tour, one of the more prestigious in the Southeast, continues today. Tickets are $20 and available at Henderson Law Office at the corner of Church and Fisher streets.
Carolyn DeLay and her husband, Jack, are residents of Atlanta but come to Salisbury every year on the weekend of the OctoberTour to visit Carolyn’s cousin, Sara Kellog.
Once here, Carolyn and Jack always take in the tour.
“It’s so nice to meet the actual homeowners and get to talk to them,” Carolyn said of the event. “It’s one of the nicest tours I know of.”
Mary Kay Forbes was welcoming guests to the McCubbins-Rouser House and sharing with them a bit of history of the property.
“This is like a museum,” Forbes told those who entered.
Down the street a ways, Kelly Fisher and her mother-in-law, Marilyn Fisher, welcomed visitors to the front porch of Dr. Myron Goodman’s house, also on Fulton Street.
The Goodman house wasn’t opened for the tour, but participants were invited to partake of refreshments as part of “Pause on the Porch.”
“They’re going through drinks, cookies and brownies like there’s no tomorrow,” said Kelly Fisher, chairman of Pause on the Porch.
She said she’s a relative newcomer to Salisbury, so she turned to her mother-in-law for help soliciting volunteers. Those volunteers took turns working shifts to manage Pause on the Porch.
Marilyn Fisher said she recruited as many friends ó three high school classmates, included ó as she could to serve as volunteers.
Also on the Goodman property, re-enactors from the 63rd Regiment of the N.C. Confederate Troops camped and offered visitors lessons about the War of Northern Aggression (occasionally mistakenly referred to as “the Civil War”).
Andrew Shores is a re-enactor who bears a striking resemblance to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. He offered details of Lee’s life.
Shores also spent Friday and Saturday nights camping on the Goodman property.
“It’s so much easier sleeping outdoors when the weather is nice,” he said.
In the front yard of the J.W. Zimmerman House at 221 W. Thomas St., Sharon Forthofer, a local artist, worked behind an easel as she painted a picture of the historic home.
The biggest problem Forthofer had working on her painting was that she was also selling prints from a table lining the sidewalk. So many patrons stopped to buy prints that Forthofer had only so much time to work on her painting.
But she admitted it was a pleasant problem to have.
“This has been a wonderful day,” Forthofer said. “I love painting outside.”
OctoberTour isn’t restricted to houses along on and around Fulton Street. It also includes Graystone, an impressive house off Faith Road, plus a residence made out of the former Flowers Bakery building at 122 E. Innes St.
Salisbury Station is also included on this year’s tour.
Trolley rides are free through much of the tour route to those with OctoberTour tickets.