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National Hollerin' Contest Ermon Godwin's granddaddy loved to holler. "Most every man out in the country in those days did holler," Ermon says. "But some of them were better known for hollerin', and my grandfather, Bud Godwin, was a well-known hollerin' man." One day in 1969, Ermon, a banker in Dunn, asked John Thomas, a friend who worked at the local radio station, if he'd ever heard of the area's tradition of hollerin' as a means of communication in the days before telephones and easy transportation. John thought he was kidding, so Ermon found a hollerin' man, George Demming, and got him to holler for him. John put George on the radio and after he hollered, remarked "We ought to have a hollerin' contest." That was the beginning of the National Hollerin' Contest, one of the most popular of America's offbeat events, drawing more than 10,000 people annually to Spivey's Corner, a crossroads community on US 421, 11 miles south of Dunn. The contest has appeared on the Tonight Show. Lots of screamers and yellers show up each year, but enough of the old-timers to whom hollerin' was an art come to make it interesting. But Dewey Jackson, an old-timer who won the first contest in 1969, wonders how long the old hollerin' tradition can last at the contest. "It's a lot of these here young'uns a-tryin' to holler," he says with contempt. "They ain't much hollerin' to it." The hollerin' contest, held the first Saturday in June at Midway High School, includes a whistling contest, fox-horn-blowing contest, conch-blowing contest, clogging, music, and a barbecue.
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