From Azaleas to Zydeco: My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South

Dobbies and Pout Houses

Dobbies and Pout Houses Warren County, North Carolina, sits near the Virginia border. Its county seat is Warrenton. Jonathan Daniels stopped here in 1937, supposedly to locate a poker game said to have been going on since the Civil War. Evidently, the city fathers played poker while letting progress pass them by. Downtown Warrenton consists mostly of a quaint little courthouse, an old hardware store which now houses a café, and the Warren County Restoration Center which ironically resides in a tumbledown , unrestored building. Just off the square, I saw a sign in the window of a hair salon advertising “Relaxer and a Dobbie—$50.00.” Turns out a relaxer is a process in which a chemical, lotion, or cream is used to make hair less curly— the opposite of a perm. I had never heard of a dobbie. The shop was closed so I couldn’t go in and ask. With my straight hair I don’t need a relaxer treatment, but a dobbie could be a good thing for a balding middle-aged guy. Questioning the across-the-street restaurateur and a few of his customers yielded no information about the subject. Since there was no one else downtown this Saturday afternoon, I guess dobbies will remain a mystery to me. Founded in 1789, Warrenton is about the same size today as it was a couple of hundred years ago—a little less than a thousand people. It has an impressive number of historic structures for such a small town, which indicates that sometime in the last 230 years, Warrenton must 47 have done pretty well. Not now though. Now there are a lot of abandoned buildings—well-built buildings which now have no useful purpose. In a state which has come to typify the New South, Warrenton missed out. It appears to be one of the many stagnating farm towns you can find in most any state. With little local industry, there are no good jobs nearby. It’s too far from Raleigh for its inhabitants to commute to the good jobs there. As I drove around this little town, I wondered whether the twenty-first century will be kinder than the last two have been. Could the Internet change a town like Warrenton from its downward trend? Will people come here for the housing stock and the slower pace of life if they can connect to work by the Internet? I wonder if the schools are any good. Would that make any difference? It’s at least twenty-five miles from Warrenton before any newly constructed housing is visible from the highway. It’s another twenty to twenty-five miles past that before the urban sprawl of Raleigh comes into Warren County Restoration Center 48 view. Raleigh must be growing toward the south or west and not northeast toward Warrenton. I wondered if someone else documenting the South in seventy years will find Warrenton’s population remaining about 1,000. Driving toward Raleigh, I saw a billboard admonishing travelers: “Don’t let fancy stores overcharge you.” Another advertised a new inventory of “pout houses.” Underneath the sign were small buildings which looked like oversized doll houses. Later, in Greensboro, I discovered that pout houses are little sheds, outbuildings, usually unheated and with no running water where the man of the house can pout (that is, smoke) without the woman of the house complaining. It’s also used when he is out late and needs to sleep off a night’s revelries without bothering the wife. Since I don’t smoke, I’m not sure I need a pout house unless I can get a dobbie there. 49 ...