“You can write a history of the South through these apples . . . not just the facts but the people and the lives they led.”

Mildred "Mama Dip" Council passed away on May 20, 2018, at the age of 89. This is a condensed and edited excerpt from her oral history with the Southern Oral History Program, conducted by Donna Clark in 1994. Listen to the full interview at sohp.org.

My name is Ricky Moore, I’m the chef, owner, and chief rocker of Saltbox Seafood Joint located in Durham, North Carolina—Bull City, U.S.A. My family came from Riverdale and they all moved to New Bern—a little small town, very historic, it used to be the capital of North Carolina way back when. New Bern is situated on two rivers—the Neuse and the Trent.