There is a story they tell about the people of Western North Carolina. For a great many years they were considered to be the toughest of the tough, especially those mountaineers living in the vicinity they called Shelton Laurel. They tell a tale of an old feller going to Asheville for an appendicitis operation. They put him in the hospital and operated on him. The following morning the physician went in to see how he was getting along, and instead of finding him in bed, he found him sitting in a chair hovered over a radiator. The physician said to him, “Ah-ah! You ought not to be sitting up. You’ll tear your stitches out.” And the old feller looked up at the doctor and he said, “What’s the matter, doc? Ain’t your thread no good.”
