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You may think that hybrid vehicles are a recent development. But folks in eastern North Carolina know better. That’s where the world’s first such vehicle was developed almost 100 years ago. No, it wasn’t some high-tech gas/electric combination. Actually, you might call it more of a grassroots innovation.

In 1932, many people blamed President Herbert Hoover for failing to rescue America from the depths of the Depression. Exasperated citizens in rural North Carolina fumed over the cost of gasoline, which turned their prized automobiles into expensive lawn ornaments. That is, until someone removed the engine from the family car and harnessed a mule to it, keeping one foot in the current century while planting four hooves in the previous one.

Eugene L. Roberts Photography courtesy of North Carolina Yearbooks/DigitalNC.com, Gohisca [1962], Goldsboro High School, Courtesy of Wayne County Public Library

No one knows who that enterprising inventor was, but journalist Louis Graves, a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, narrowed down the list of suspects. In the Baltimore Evening Sun, he wrote, “It was some whimsical fellow in the sticks of Greene or Martin or Pitt County who had a Ford that couldn’t move and a mule that could.”

The contraption galloped across eastern North Carolina. And when newspaperman Eugene L. Roberts cheekily called it a “Hoover cart,” there was seemingly nothing that could rein in the public’s enthusiasm for the invention. The name was a play on “Hoovercrats,” the moniker given to Southern Democrats who’d abandoned their party’s nominee, Al Smith, for the winning GOP candidate in 1928.

“Al Smith was a Catholic, and the South was overwhelmingly Protestant,” explains Gene Roberts Jr., son of the elder Roberts. By transposing two letters, his father was doubly clever: sticking a finger in the eye of the man sitting in the White House while poking fun at the Southerners (including himself) who’d helped put him there.

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Hoover cart parades pranced through Nashville, Wendell, Oxford, and Kinston. But the most spectacular display was the Hoover Cart Rodeo in Goldsboro, dreamed up by the intrepid Roberts and sponsored by the newspaper for which he worked, the Goldsboro News-Argus. Entrants were lured by the promise of a three-pound bag of grits from the Goldsboro Milling Company and a pass to the Paramount Theatre for the Marx Brothers movie named — wait for it — Horse Feathers. More than 300 contestants showed up, competing for honors in multiple categories. Roberts rounded up prizes from local businesses that ran the gamut: five pairs of men’s socks, a dozen oranges, a 100-pound sack of mule feed, five gallons of motor oil, a coffee table, an inner tube for a Ford or Chevy.

As the event approached, the newspaper updated the number of entrants and the prize list daily, leading to a frenzy of building in barns and sheds across the region. The News-Argus interviewed the man in charge of the Wayne County highway system, F.M. Edgerton, who said that “people are so anxious to build carts that they are taking bolts from highway signs to use in the construction of carts.”

Between 10,000 and 15,000 people watched the parade, which stretched for a mile and a half. It would have been longer, but several Hoover cart builders underestimated the time it would take to get their mule-powered vehicles to the starting line. Some contestants took a minimalist approach, their carts consisting of nothing more than a car axle, two tires, and a few planks of wood. Some were pulled by mules, horses, or oxen. Others dispensed with the beast of burden altogether and utilized human power. In fact, one contestant wowed judges by pulling his own cart while playing guitar. A hand-lettered sign on the side of his vehicle proclaimed: “Hoover’s Got My Mule.”

On the day of the event, a banner headline in the afternoon edition of the News-Argus announced, “Thousands Witness Hoover-Cart Rodeo” in a font size normally reserved for declarations of war or announcements of world peace, while the subhead captured the spirit of the moment: “Eastern Carolina Gives Depression ‘Horse Laugh.’” The newspaper crowed that it was the biggest crowd in Goldsboro since William Jennings Bryan spoke there in 1896.

Promoted by Eugene L. Roberts of the News-Argus, the Hoover Cart Rodeo drew around 400 carts and more than 10,000 spectators to Goldsboro. photograph by North Carolina Museum of History

“As much as he deplored the Depression, he thought the ability to laugh at it was important,” Roberts Jr. says of his father. “The Hoover carts were a great way to do that. And it turned out he correctly identified not only his mood, but the mood of the people.”

Soon, the phenomenon reached Virginia and continued to spread. A TIME magazine article in October turned it into a nationwide craze before crossing the border into Canada, proving that political mockery is an international sport. Canadians named their contraptions “Bennett Buggies,” after Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, who was apparently as unpopular in Canada as Hoover was in the U.S.

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The Hoover cart events were a boon to local economies, including, ironically, the businesses most impacted by high gas prices. Regarding the Goldsboro Rodeo, TIME reported: “Filling stations did their best day’s business in many a month — selling hay.” The article also called out Roberts as the “newshawk” behind the event.

After his Hoover cart success, Roberts went on to enjoy a fruitful writing career. He became the editor of the weekly Goldsboro Herald and wrote a column called “Ramblin’ ’Round.” In later years, he taught at Goldsboro High School and gave students lessons on how to operate a printing press. “Everybody loved ‘Pop’ Roberts,” says Goldsboro resident David Weil, 88. “He was like a father figure to all of us. He just radiated goodness.”

As successful as Roberts’s Hoover cart promotion was, it took a back seat to another event that year: the birth of his son, Eugene L. Roberts Jr. The elder Roberts passed on both his name and his love for journalism to his son, whose earliest memories were of his father holding him up so that he could feed sheets of paper into a flatbed press. The younger Roberts began his career at the News-Argus like his dad, before embarking on an illustrious career as a reporter and an editor at a string of newspapers, including the Raleigh News & Observer, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he led a team that won 17 Pulitzer Prizes. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, cowritten with Hank Klibanoff.

Not all Hoover carts were pulled by a mule or ox — some relied entirely on human power.  photograph by North Carolina Museum of History

Politicians were still making hay with the Hoover carts as late as 1948, when President Truman made an election-year campaign stop at the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh. Contrasting the current national economy with the one presided over by the last Republican president, Truman said, “Nowhere in the United States this year have I seen a single exhibit of that famous North Carolina farm invention — that product of ingenuity and hard times, of personal despair and political mockery — the Hoover cart.” Truman went on to state that the opposing party wanted “you to take a ride in the same old wagon.”

In addition to newspapers and campaign speeches, the Hoover cart also made an appearance in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a reference that’s likely lost on today’s readers. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who remembers Hoover carts, such is the fleeting nature of fads. Still, some things never change: During the most trying of times, you can always count on a North Carolinian to look for ways to make others laugh while lightening their load.

More to Explore: Want to learn more about North Carolina’s hidden history? Discover our video series at ourstate.com/hiddenhistory.