[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

Martha Baldree 0:00
Baldree recording with Hutton Cobb and his office at what cobia bank on red banks Road in Greenville, North Carolina. It is November the 27th? 28th 28th 2003. And first can you just tell them a little bit about yourself. Your background?

Hutton Cobb 0:21
Yes. I'm 35 I have a wife and three kids and I'm a financial advisor with the bank. With East Carolina. Go ECU, go Pirates. And I love to hunt fish and all that.

Martha Baldree 0:48
And you grew up in Lake Wood Pines,

Hutton Cobb 0:50
I grew up in Lake Wood Pines

Martha Baldree 0:52
How was it to grow up there?

Hutton Cobb 0:53
It was a blast.

Martha Baldree 0:55
What made it fun?

Hutton Cobb 0:56
The woods, the trestle, friends.

Martha Baldree 1:01
And when you were growing up? What kind of neighborhood was this? In terms of at school, like I always have been there. Or when you have the...?

Hutton Cobb 1:10
Was it the kind of neighborhood that all my friends lived in? No. It was more professors, different types of folks, folks that work in the blue blood type of Greenville crowd. So no it wasn't a bad neighborhood to be in.

Martha Baldree 1:29
Did you have a lot of friends in the neighborhood?

Hutton Cobb 1:31
I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood.

Martha Baldree 1:32
There were a lot of kids there?

Hutton Cobb 1:33
Yeah, it was probably 15 kids at the time, my age. We all went to school together.

Martha Baldree 1:40
And you live in Lakewood Pines now?

Hutton Cobb 1:43
I bought the house I grew up in.

Martha Baldree 1:45
And what made you want to buy that house.

Hutton Cobb 1:49
Honestly, we looked and looked everywhere in Greenville for a house that size. And we wanted a certain type of atmosphere woods and trees and quiet and convenient. And all the other neighborhoods we were looking at were in a cornfield with no trees and kind of a cookie cutter type of setting. And my mom was not married and thought the house was too big for her. And it was just right for us. So we made a deal.

Martha Baldree 2:26
What are they a lot of children now like that. What about that makes it a good neighborhood to live in now as an adult,

Hutton Cobb 2:32
It's the same. The difference is it's mostly older folks. And there's not a lot of kids and everything now. So that's the downside. Now. There's some newer couples moving in now. But it's a real it's a different mixture. It's more olderpeople, more retired folks than they used to be. And like I said, there's very few children. There's no children, my my kids age in the neighborhood at all.

Martha Baldree 2:58
How old are your kids?

Hutton Cobb 2:59
They're eight, six and four.

Martha Baldree 3:02
And no young kids

Hutton Cobb 3:04
I don't have any, no. That's why they have there's babies. And then there's older kids and that's we're in the middle. But it's still growing. It's still beautiful and quiet. Lots of trees still have the woods and the trestle and everything. So

Martha Baldree 3:21
Has it changed much since you were younger? Like physically?

Hutton Cobb 3:24
Oh, yeah. We used to be able to play in the woods back across the Greenville run. And we used to be able to run the woods and it wasn't overgrown and you can run off in the woods and play and it was great. But now you can't even really get back to here because it's too Marshy. too. Too wet, too overgrown. You can't do anything that used to could do.

Martha Baldree 3:54
And what caused this?

Hutton Cobb 3:56
I don't know, but we played all over the woods. I mean, there was no it wasn't moment. It wasn't wet. It wasn't soft. It wasn't overgrown. You liked it you can get back there anymore.

Martha Baldree 4:13
And when you were growing up the shopping center, the Kroger none of that was there.

Hutton Cobb 4:17
It was an it was a plant. There was a plant there. Right, evergreen, I mean ever, ever, Eveready? Thank you Yeah. Thank you. [Inaudible]

Martha Baldree 4:33
So how long do you see yourself living in the neighborhood?

Hutton Cobb 4:36
Well, now that you ask. We always wanted to not be in the neighborhood forever. I mean, we wanted to be there. It's a great place to be but we wanted to live out in the country. So probably the next year or two we'll be moving somewhere else.

Martha Baldree 4:52
You just want more land.

Hutton Cobb 4:54
Yeah we want more land. What I used to have and that's the place to play and that kind of thing.

Martha Baldree 5:01
You are involved with neighborhood association?

Hutton Cobb 5:04
Yes, I am. I'm on the association. And its, I think they've got a good thing going on. And they've actually got their act together.

Martha Baldree 5:17
And what do you see is the primary goal,

Hutton Cobb 5:21
whether that's the primary goal is to prevent right now to prevent that. There's apartments going up in the adjacent land. But I think the ultimate primary goal is to change the way Greenville builds and allows building. They want to, they want Greenville to be more intelligent about the way they allow buildings to go up and allow farmers to go wherever they want to control the environment a lot better than anything they're doing now. Right now, I think Greenville just allows anybody to build wherever they want to if the zoning seems right. They might not jive with the area. I think a lot of times money comes before smart growth in the area.

Martha Baldree 6:07
That they're gonna be going after. Not only that particular development, but zoning laws in general.

Hutton Cobb 6:13
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's smart. I mean, I think Greenvile needs to look at that. Anyway. I think that brings better things down the road. From Corporation, I like the idea that there is more fluid environment than there is now, more to actually allow too many things to go on. That probably shouldn't be that way.

Martha Baldree 6:38
Then I'm gonna go back to when you moved out where you grew up until you graduated high school in the neighborhood, right? And then why did you move that?

Hutton Cobb 6:48
Oh, shoot. I live in apartments all around Greenville. Condos and Greenville. Yeah, I tried to leave Greenville. I couldn't leave anywhere. I'd come back. Maybe. Raleigh. Tried to make my way in Raleigh, and I just kept getting pulled back to Greenville. So that's all right. But I came back and when I came back, I got married and all that stuff started to change.

Martha Baldree 7:17
Where were you and your wife living?

Hutton Cobb 7:21
We lived in an apartment, two bedroom apartment in Greenville. And then we live in a condo and we live in another house in Aiden then moved back to this house. We moved like seven times in like five years.

Martha Baldree 7:42
What makes like what would you describe as an ideal neighborhood?

Hutton Cobb 7:46
I think ours is fairly ideal. Because it is right in Greenville. It's beautiful. They didn't sacrifice the surroundings to build a neighborhood. And houses are nice. Likes is quiet. Someone like our neighborhood or BrookGreen, which is similar neighborhood across town Lyndale type setting where it's in? It's not in a middle of a cornfield. I mean, there's not there's some atmosphere to go along with the neighborhood.

Martha Baldree 8:24
And is there a lot of interaction in the neighborhood and the neighbors,

Hutton Cobb 8:28
there's now there used to not be it used to be the kind of neighborhood everybody kept themselves. And that was what was appealing to it for some folks. But because of the association and because of the kind of objective, it's brought the neighborhood more together. And there's a lot more communication amongst one another a lot more hanging out, get to know one another. And it's it's changed a lot in the last 12 months.

Martha Baldree 8:55
They do that they have specific times for meetings?

Hutton Cobb 9:01
They set meetings frequently, once or a couple of times a month. They have meetings. And it's not the whole neighborhood but then they try to do things with the entire neighborhood as often as they can maybe a couple times a year.

Martha Baldree 9:15
And what kind of things that they might have?

Hutton Cobb 9:17
Social type things like parties. I went on Christmas party.

Martha Baldree 9:22
Is that the same person's house?

Hutton Cobb 9:24
Oh, yeah. Beth Ward who is on the county commission, she's the head of the commission. And I live in a neighborhood the whole time.

Martha Baldree 9:39
A lot of the people that you grew up with will they come back for the parties?

Hutton Cobb 9:42
Yeah, because some of their parents still live in the neighborhood. So yeah, they'll come back from that most of the guys I grew up with moved out of town. And the others come back

Martha Baldree 9:53
If I was to move into the neighborhood, How would, how would the people in the neighborhood Get to know me and let me know how things went in the neighborhood.

Hutton Cobb 10:05
In today's world or the way, today's world they would they would greet you they would, all they would know who you were and they would all come to your house

Martha Baldree 10:15
individually?

Hutton Cobb 10:16
individually you know they make it a point now to come and see if you need anything talk to you about what's going on see if they get you involved recruiting so to speak in terms of you know that they need people to help because we cannot do it ourselves and probably get offered some supper and some coming over and having some supper and that kind of thing. Grilling or whatever but yeah, it's more than it's a lot better than used to be about that kind of thing.

Martha Baldree 10:47
Like are there, are there any unsaid rules about the neighborhood that everybody goes by, but

Hutton Cobb 10:58
Probably but I broke all of them so for instance, don't cut down a tree and I did a lot of that. I still have 100 trees but I cut down a bunch to make the yard they did not like that at all.

Martha Baldree 11:12
And how did they let you know?

Hutton Cobb 11:13
they just let you know it doesn't necessarily come out in their mouth but they absolutely are disgusted with that. You know they are this is a natural neighborhood and the people that live there mostly be there because they liked the natural environment. But I hadn't have a younger so you know, but it's not said was just kind of assumed.

Martha Baldree 11:41
And I forgot what it was. I'm gonna get you to sign a consent form. Is that okay?

Hutton Cobb 11:56
Sure.

Martha Baldree 11:57
It's gonna go in the archives at the university when it's all done.