A BIRTHDAY PARTY WITH THE GOVERNOR.(SERIES: THE FULTZ QUADS A true story of childhood celebrity)(GENERAL NEWS)

Publication: The News & Record (Piedmont Triad, NC)

Publication Date: 05-AUG-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 News & Record

Byline: LORRAINE AHEARN Staff Writer

INTELLIGENCE -- This farm went to ruin years ago.

It never came to much in the first place, if you want to know the truth. And now it's so overgrown, the only way to reach what used to be the Fultz place is to follow the power lines back through the trees and the vines and the buzzing June bugs. Carl "Joe" Lowe doesn't recommend it.

He's lived here all his life among the tobacco fields south of Madison, went to school with the older Fultz kids, and used to drive their mother, Annie Mae, to town back when she was the only one left at the old place. But without a doubt, the biggest thing that ever happened here, before or since, was the day the governor came for the Fultz Quadruplets' fifth birthday party.

"Pet Milk sent three trucks up here, and they threw the doors open. You could take all the ice cream you wanted. I was carrying armloads of it," Lowe, 68, recalled.

"But back then, we didn't have a Kelvinator (refrigerator) or an ice box, so you had to eat it right then and there. It was a hot...

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