Tradition could wilt with retirement of `flower ladies'

Chapel Hill Herald, May 16, 1999

By Ray Gronberg

CHAPEL HILL -- Franklin Street regulars are starting to wonder where all the flower ladies have gone. And the answer, unfortunately, seems to be that age is catching up with them.

Some worry another Chapel Hill tradition is about to fade away, a gnawing fear that has grown in inverse proportion to the number of active flower ladies. For now, only one still plies her wares on a regular basis.

"It looks like it's a dying breed," sighed Manning Outen, manager of NationsBank Plaza. "We need somebody to pick up the tradition."

Outen's building -- soon to be renamed the Bank of America Center -- served as the daytime base of operations for two of the last flower ladies, Mary Farrington and Betty Jones.

Neither is active.

Outen and hotdog vendor Ed "Squeaky" Morgan believe Jones is out of the flower business entirely after an early evening auto accident about a month ago.

Until then, Jones "was here any day it wasn't raining," said Morgan, also a Franklin Street fixture. "She didn't get hurt, but she was shaken up. Her son came and took her back to Texas. I don't think she'll be coming back."

Farrington seemingly hasn't set up shop in the lobby of NationsBank Plaza even once this year. Health is believed an issue, though she has told patrons she'll "be coming back now and then," Morgan said.

One other woman, Moselle Pratt, is holding up the flower lady tradition by night. She prefers working outdoors, and Police Department Sgt. Steve Riddle said people can find her near the Sephora perfume store most any time the weather is nice.

Morgan and Outen are not alone in suspecting that the curtain is about to close on Chapel Hill's flower ladies.

"It is probably not a profession that anybody's looking to go into," said Robert Humphreys, executive director of the Chapel Hill Downtown Commission. "Once our existing flower ladies are gone, it may be something that falls by the wayside."

If that's the case, time will have done something the town bureaucracy couldn't.

The flower ladies -- and Morgan -- are the last vestiges of a sidewalk vending trade that Chapel Hill essentially outlawed during the 1970s.

The ban targeted a small group of peddlers "whom one might call hippies," said Joe Herzenberg, a local historian and former town councilman.

"It wasn't exactly an effort to get rid of the flower ladies, quite the contrary," he said. "It was an effort to get rid of other people, and the flower ladies were gotten rid of in the process."

The hippies sparked complaints, he said, from people offended by their views and their appearance. Town officials tried briefly to exempt the flower ladies from the ban, but they soon fretted that the attempt would draw a court challenge.

In any case, the exemption gave the town's real targets a way to evade the ban.

"Vendors would sell you a daisy for $30 and give you a pair of sandals for free," Planning Director Roger Waldon said.

Several of the flower ladies eventually found a home in the NationsBank Plaza lobby -- safe on private property -- as did Morgan, who briefly defied the vending ban in 1993.

The final flower lady may fall victim to simple economics. "I don't think business is great, to tell you the truth," Herzenberg said. "She doesn't sell that many, but she likes coming and talking to people."