One of the things I prize most about the Nugget story is how unique it feels compared to many other well-known startups. How it hasn’t involved the usual investor-pitching, advisor-courting, PR-hiring, etc. that one typically reads about, but rather a whole lot of humble, unsexy behind-the-scenes work that feels, to me at least, like a direct result of the place we’re from. But you might wonder, in practice, what that really means. What does fast-growing, direct-to-consumer entrepreneurship look like in North Carolina? I hope this story helps to provide some answers.
The year was 2018 (state election results and police records will confirm this), and I was returning from lunch to Nugget’s brand new headquarters in Hillsborough, NC, the sort of small, “up-and-coming” Southern town where one might see a craft beer festival one weekend and a Klan rally the next.
As I walked from the parking lot towards our building, I noticed a political sign lodged in the grass in front. Inside the silhouette of a pistol, it read: “It’s A Right!” The text surrounding the pistol revealed the proud sponsor of this sign: Kenneth “The Rock” Rothrock, a candidate (R) for NC House District 50.
The sign was great: visually arresting, impossible to argue with (it literally is a right), and dripping in conspiratorial InfoWars-style paranoia. But it didn’t belong—in my view—in front of a children’s furniture company. Without thinking much about it, I yanked it out of the ground and continued walking to our front door.
One thing to know about our front door: it wasn’t really a front door. It was more like a side door, at the end of a lengthy, sidewalk-paved alley bookended by our building on your right, and a restaurant to your left. Halfway to our door, the left side wall of the alley briefly parted, revealing an entryway to the restaurant’s back garden. The restaurant (a brewery as well) was more of an evening place; most days around this time it was empty. But on this particular day, as I marched past with the “It’s A Right!” sign in my hand, someone was sitting down for lunch.
It was the Rock.
Before we continue, some things to know about The Rock. The Rock is/was an attorney at law, specializing in traffic citations and DWIs. In 2010, the Rock had too much apple brandy with a high school buddy and was arrested and charged with a DWI. The Rock has the exact Facebook presence you think the Rock has. The Rock likes comedically large cowboy hats, Donald Trump, apple brandy, and guns.
Because of the angry voice hollering to “come back over here,” I returned to the beer garden entryway. If it hadn’t been obvious before, it was clear now: I was face to face with the Rock.
I don’t appreciate it when writers or storytellers present years-old, lengthy exchanges as perfect dialogue, as if the narrator really remembered them verbatim, so I won’t do that here. I can’t claim to remember much of what was said, just that the Rock immediately knew that I was not one of Donald Trump’s flock. “I know your type,” he sneered, obsessed with ratcheting the conflict higher even as I tried to talk him down. Eventually, the frenzy crescendoed into the threat of real violence: “I might be 67, but I’ll put you in the hospital,” he said, getting up from his chair, looking surprisingly serious about fighting me right there in the beer garden over a yard sign.
A woman he was with, who I presume worked for his campaign, asked him to relax—she seemed a bit embarrassed by the senior citizen and political candidate threatening to fight a 27-year-old in broad daylight. Having given back the sign, I went back to the Nugget factory, shaken not only by the argument, but by the very intimate depiction of what we—and here I mean the decent, reasonable-minded folks of this country—are up against in trying to salvage democracy.
The day ended without further incident, and the entire situation had more or less faded into the background of my life when a few weeks later, a handful of police officers showed up at the factory, looking for me. It turned out that the Rock had contacted law enforcement about our beer garden conversation. He hadn’t told them about his threat to assault me, but he did say that I had stolen his sign. He hadn’t shown them any proof or evidence, but for some reason that I think has something to do with small Southern towns like Hillsborough, he didn’t have to. So now, it was these officers’ solemn duty to hand me an official court summons—I was charged with misdemeanor larceny. On it, right there in black and white, was the financial damage of my crime: $6.
I am being completely serious when I say that over the ensuing weeks and months, this became an actual legal battle that consumed the time and resources of real lawyers and public servants at the DA’s office. I ended up with a plea deal for 10 hours of community service. The Rock (and Orange County) had won.
As I walked out of the courtroom, The Rock—the same Rock who had threatened to put me in the hospital, the Rock who had hidden the election sign from police and lied that I still had it, the Rock who turned a “he said, he said” situation into a misdemeanor—told someone from the DA’s office, “Don’t be too hard on him now. He’s alright.” The Rock was a man of mercy.
I don’t mean for you to come away from this single data point of a story thinking you have the full picture of Hillsborough, North Carolina. But you have most of it.
One more fact about the Rock. He lost the NC-50 House race in a landslide to my friend Graig Meyer, managing 37% of the vote. As a proud and outspoken Trump evangelist in northern Orange County, he couldn’t have done worse. He hasn’t run since. But any day now, he might grab his cowboy hat, print up some yard signs, and hit the campaign trail, with a pistol on his person and a hankering to get into an altercation.
After all, it’s a right.