Month: January 2023

O.Henry Ending

Halfway And Home

“Making a life around here”

By John Adamcik

“He ain’t from around here,” my new friend said as she introduced me to others. Although it’s been over 10 years, I remember her smiling just enough to inform me that she was joking. Mostly. After all, I had failed the shibboleth by mispronouncing her town of Sophia (I still couldn’t tell you how to pronounce it). And, in her favor, remnants of my Michigan accent told the tale plainly to everyone I met. Still, I was trying to endear myself to these people.

A few months later I revisit the topic with her. “When will I be here long enough to be from around here?” I ask.

“Never,” she says. She points to her husband. “He’s been here over 40 years, he still ain’t from around here.”

He nods. “It’s true,” he says, nonplussed.

Around here.

Approaching our 20th anniversary of making the Piedmont Triad our home, my family still ponders whether we qualify as being part of “around here.” Admittedly, we’ve been welcomed by the community and engaged in the community. We’ve done our part to strengthen the community. We feel at home.

Our children attended grade school through high school around here. They played sports, joined scouts and made lifelong friends. They worshipped God around here. As our children move forward to new places and new careers, my wife and I reflect on how blessed we have been by all the people “around here” who call this their home and have made us feel welcome.

When we moved here, family and friends asked us where we had planted roots.

“Halfway,” we answered.

It was true. Halfway between family and friends in Michigan and Florida. Halfway between the mountains and the coast. Halfway between the southern and northern borders of our adopted state. Here in southwest Guilford County, we were even halfway between many of the places we frequented in Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem. Halfway between closing on our home and our actual move-in date, a memorable ice storm hit the area and knocked down several trees in our new yard, splitting the Bradford Pear in half.

We were halfway in elevation and in weather patterns (according to our observations and at least one reputable seed catalog). We were also halfway in the biblical tracking of a, “three score and ten years” lifespan.

Reflecting on this milestone, I’m reminded that we hadn’t been here long when we realized this community is not at all halfway. Rather, we are at the center. The center of land and space and culture and dreams and life. The center of the hope of growth and of resolute determination.

Like us, thousands upon thousands will be coming to make new homes “around here” as the legacies left by generations of textile, furniture and agricultural pioneers pave the way for a future of new industry. I look forward to helping others plant roots around here.

My family and I are privileged to be around here and to have invested our time in this community. We have grown in ways we could not have imagined. We will celebrate with neighbors, with friends and with family that we are not halfway. We are home. OH

John Adamcik and his wife Jeanneen live with their family in High Point. John enjoys his role in human resources with a Triad-based nonprofit human services religious organization. In addition to ministry, writing, speaking, and hosting his podcast (Fore Yore Lore), he can be found accompanying Jeanneen to craft shows as public relations for her vintage craft jewelry business.

Wandering Billy

12 Cent Dreams

Remembering a local legend in ink

By Billy Ingram

“Comic books helped me to define myself and my world in a way that made both far less frightening. I honestly cannot imagine how I would have navigated my way through childhood without them.” — Bradford W. Wright

Wright’s not wrong. As a young comic book collector, one of my fave artists was Murphy Anderson. His fluid brushwork bestowed an air of sophistication few artists of that genre possessed. I was surprised to learn, years later, that Anderson was born and raised in Greensboro before moving to New York to work for DC Comics.

Murphy C. Anderson Jr. recognized early on the transformative power that words commingling with pictures could have on the imagination. As a youngster in the 1930s, he’d spend hours lying on the living room floor of his North Spring Street home poring over the comic pages of local papers and, on Sundays, the New York Journal-American, which allowed him to follow the adventures of The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and his favorite strip, the scientifically forward-looking Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Amy Hitchcock, a former classmate, says, “At Central Junior High there were two boys that sat together all the time and they drew in their notebooks all the time. My impression of Murphy was that he was withdrawn, quiet and always did his own thing, but he was pleasant.” Later, Anderson and Greensboro newspaper legend Irwin Smallwood would become co-editors of Greensboro Senior (now Grimsley) High School’s newspaper.

A college dropout facing certain military service in 1944, Anderson borrowed $100 from his skeptical father to make the rounds of New York City’s funny book publishers. Unknowingly, he was marching into what has become known as the Golden Age of Comics, so christened because sales were so astronomical, upwards of 6 million copies per title.

Anderson landed a gig illustrating for Planet Comics, whose main selling point seemed to be the undulating breasts belonging to whichever curvaceous blond was being snatched up by salivating bug-eyed monsters that month. He continued slinging ink for Fiction House while serving two years in the Navy, stationed in Chicago, where he met his soon-to-be wife, Helen. Completing his military stint in 1946, he happened upon a notice from the National Newspaper Service in search of an artist for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Anderson took over daily art chores in 1947. “I grew up on Buck, it was a dream come true,” he related decades later.

Anderson left Buck Rogers in 1949 just as the golden age of comics was drawing to a close. He and his bride made their way to Greensboro, where, during the day, he served as office manager for his father’s fledgling business, the Blue Bird Cab Company.

Before long, Anderson was once again canvassing the concrete jungle. Julius Schwartz, editor for National Periodical Publications’ (as DC Comics was known in 1951) new line of science fiction comics, recognized Anderson’s work as compositionally superior to and more finely rendered than many of the company’s slickest artists. Schwartz met with him and sent him home with a script to illustrate.

Schwartz allowed Anderson, now with children and not ready to give up his Carolina roots, to mail his contributions in from Greensboro, an unheard of arrangement. Still trafficking for Blue Bird Cab, Anderson spent his nights conjuring up compelling covers populated with pointy-eared giants capturing fighter jets in butterfly nets, radioscopic weirdos from other dimensions invading and terrifying the tourists, and genetically superior gorillas confounding the laws of man and nature. Stories were then written around his phantasmagorical scenarios.

The family relocated to New York in 1960 in order for Anderson to work full-time for DC, a company undergoing an unexpected resurgence. On a whim four years earlier, editor Julius Schwartz had re-imagined one of the brand’s dead-as-a-doornail superheroes from the 1940s, The Flash. With this act, the Silver Age of Comics was born. Anderson’s meticulous flourishes defined DC Comics’ house style of the ’60s and early ’70s — so much that Schwartz preferred to have him inking others’ pencilled art, most notably Carmine Infantino (Adam Strange, Batman) and Gil Kane (The Atom, Green Lantern).

Meanwhile, years of poorly drawn short stories with Batman, Robin, Batwoman and Ace the Bathound confronting bulbous-bodied aliens and overcoming silly transformations (“Batman Becomes Batbaby!”) led to sales so dismal that cancellation of the entire Batman line was all but certain. Schwartz was yanked off the sci-fi comics in 1964 and given six months to save the bat-franchise. The result was a monthly onslaught of playfully gripping covers sketched by Infantino, the best of which were inked by Anderson, re-introducing The Joker, Riddler, Catwoman and Batgirl to a new generation. By 1966, business was booming when the Batman TV show sent DC’s sales into hyperdrive.

When Schwartz rebooted Superman in 1970, Anderson was teamed with Curt Swan. So meshed were their styles that the duo took to crediting their art as “Swanderson.” Then, in 1972, the Greensboro native’s dynamic portrayal of Wonder Woman graced the first issue of Ms., becoming one of the most striking and culturally significant magazine covers of that decade.

In a twist not unlike those found in the comics, it was Anderson’s one time schoolmate Amy Hitchcock’s son, John, who organized Greensboro’s first major comic convention in 1983, featuring Murphy Anderson as a guest of honor. “Murphy was here in 1985 when Jack Kirby was here,” John Hitchcock (owner of Parts Unknown: The Comic Book Store) says, a significant moment since the only controversy in Anderson’s career came when he was asked to redraw Kirby’s Superman faces to more closely conform to the DC style. “[Anderson and Kirby] were in the kitchen of my apartment when Murphy went up and apologized to Jack. He was always embarrassed that he had to change his artwork because he had so much respect for Kirby. Jack went out of his way to thank him and say, ‘Murphy, that’s OK. That’s the way business was back then. I have no ill will,’ and they shook hands. That shows you what a great guy Murphy was — it bothered him all those years.”

Murphy C. Anderson Jr., universally respected as both draftsman and gentleman, passed away in 2015 at the age of 89. He left behind his wife of 67 years, Helen, two daughters, a son, grandkids and an indelible impression on millions of thrill-seeking comic book lovers everywhere. OH

Billy Ingram still has comic books he purchased from a spinner rack located next to the back entrance of Woolworth’s downtown.

2023 Department Wandering Billy

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Aquarius

(January 20 – February 18)

You’ve heard the tale of the two wolves, right? The good wolf and the bad wolf at battle within each of us? The one you feed is the one who wins. This wisdom is particularly applicable for you this month, Water Bearer. Although your wolves may have different names — visionary and fool, perhaps — the message is the same. Which animal will you feed?

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

It’s time to shake some dust.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Rainbows and sunshine, baby.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Say it with flowers.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Probiotics with the assist.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

You can’t rush your own spring.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

The cake is not done.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Just use what you’ve got.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Trust your inner compass.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Don’t forget to claim your prize.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Sometimes the shortcut isn’t a shortcut.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Shake it and start over. OH

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

2023 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

Birdwatch

The Eagles Have Landed

America’s bird is on the rebound

By Susan Campbell

Anyone who has had the good fortune to spot a bald eagle, whether soaring overhead or perched along a waterway, cannot help but be awed by their handsome appearance. This large raptor is not only our national symbol but the only eagle found solely in North America.

Benjamin Franklin supposedly lobbied for the wild turkey, the only endemic bird species to the United States, to be our national bird. But Congress decided on the bald eagle in 1782, as a result of its perceived fierce demeanor. In actuality, bald eagles are mainly carrion eaters but will attack wounded mammals, birds and aquatic animals as well. They are very opportunistic and will also snatch prey from crows if they get the chance.

During the first half of the 20th century, eagles were erroneously persecuted by raptor hunters, often by ranchers who were attempting to protect their investments. They were also affected by metal toxicity as a result of feeding on game containing lead shot. Additionally, during the period of broad-scale DDT application, as most people know, the toxin accumulated in carnivores at the top of the food chain. And, as was the case in several bird species, it caused eggshell thinning such that eagle eggs broke long before they could hatch.

Bald eagles were declared an endangered species in 1967. Following the ban on DDT and the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, their numbers began to rebound. On June 28, 2007, the species was declared recovered. Here in North Carolina they are being closely monitored by state biologists. Although the number of nests and young has been increasing, they are still considered threatened here.

In the Sandhills, there are year-round sightings of individuals, most commonly on larger lakes such as Lake Surf (Woodlake) or Lake Pinehurst. At least one pair has been nesting in Moore County for a few years now: in (wait for it) Eagle Springs. Farther north, they can be frequently spotted around Falls or Jordan Lake in the Triangle or Lake Townsend in Greensboro.

In mid-winter, birdwatchers and endangered species biologists are on the lookout for eagle nests. Bald eagle pairs return to their breeding territories and lay eggs ahead of most other raptors (the exception being great horned owls, which begin breeding activities a bit earlier). Their sizable platforms of dead branches and large sticks may or may not be easy to spot. Eagle nests, if they are reused from year to year, will be gradually enlarged but not massive affairs. Newer nests can be well concealed in the top of a live evergreen or large snag.

Eagle young, who typically fledge in April, take three to four years to mature. They will not successfully attract a mate until they have a fully white head and tail. Should you see an adult in the weeks ahead, keep an eye out for a second bird. A pair of adults may mean there is a nest somewhere nearby. If you suspect that you have found a nest, definitely give me a holler! OH

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.

2023 Birdwatch Department

Life’s Funny

HOT DOG!

Our intrepid reporter goes for a whirl in the Wienermobile

It was the perfect evening for a winter festival.

The air was pleasantly chilly — or perhaps I should say chili — and spiked with the smell of fried dough and the bump of live music.

Revelers lined up to try their luck aboard a mechanical, bucking Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In another particularly American display of affection for the holiday, children in padded red suits and headgear tried to knock each other down in spirited rounds of Sumo Santa.

Yes, it really was shaping up to be an ideal Festival of Lights as my husband and I threaded our way down Greensboro’s Elm Street, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but curvilinear gleams of orange and yellow.

“Wait, is that . . . ?”

“What?”

“Oh, my God.”

“What?”

“It is!”

“What are you looking at?”

“It’s the Wienermobile!” I said, breaking into a trot.

I stopped in front of a bubble-shaped windshield, giddy at the fact that I was in the presence of an American icon.

I can’t say for sure when the Wienermobile first entered my consciousness. As a child of the ’60s and ’70s, I’m sure I saw it on TV, in holiday parades and Oscar Mayer commercials.

I have a vague memory of our family car passing a huge rolling wiener on Interstate 75, but I could be confusing that with a colorful tanker. Or it could be the result of wishful thinking and an excellent jingle.

Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener,

That is what I truly want to be—ee—ee,

‘Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener,

Everyone would be in love with me.

Obviously, all these years later, seasoned by life’s experiences, I believe . . . that’s still true.

Everyone loves a hot dog, even a mostly plant-based foodie like myself. Wave a Carolina dog — slaw, chili, onions, extra mustard — in front of me, and I cannot be responsible for what happens next.

And now? There I was, standing next to the Wienermobile, all 27 feet of it, parked curbside with its gull-wing door lifted so that gawkers could marvel at the luxurious interior, which included six bucket seats upholstered in bright red and yellow, as well as a squiggle of yellow painted on the floor.

In Wienermobile culture, red equals ketchup. Yellow, mustard. That’s why the keepers of the wiener, two young dynamos named Keagan Schlosser and Chad Colgrove, were dressed in red and yellow pullovers. They invited the crowd to stick their heads inside the Wienermobile, pose for pictures and take home individually packaged, red plastic Wiener Whistles.

I asked Keagan if I could, for journalistic reasons, arrange for a ride in the Wienermobile during their stay. She said that would be “bun-derful.” Two days later — after the Festival of Lights and the Christmas parade — I climbed aboard for a Sunday morning spin.

Keagan asked where I wanted to go.

In a perfect world, we would have picked up my 90-year-old mom from church, the Wienermobile’s jingle-horn tootling just as the postlude faded.

My mom would have been slightly — OK, a lot — aghast, but also flattered. Ultimately, I thought, she’d cave to peer pressure from church pals who would want a ride, too.

As it turned out, my mom stayed at home with a mild illness that morning. Damn it.

My second choice was the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park because it, too, represented a significant piece of American history. Plus loads of people walk there on Sunday mornings. Off we went, as Keagan and Chad, both 23, shared how they became regional wiener drivers.

A native of Carbondale, Illinois, Keagan — who is no relation to the Greensboro Schlossers, sorry, guys — was about to graduate from the University of Wisconsin last spring with a degree in journalism. She’d interned at a local TV station. But the news biz was too serious, she felt, so she started looking into Hotdogger jobs, one-year gigs offered to recent college graduates by Madison-based Oscar Mayer.

Her journalism professors encouraged her to go for it. I repeat: Her journalism professors urged her to shun the Fourth Estate in order to pilot a giant fiberglass wiener around the country for a year.

I could not argue with their advice.

Chad, on the other hand, had known about the Wienermobile from the time he was a tyke in Boise, Idaho. Every year since he was 6, his family would sniff out nearby Wienermobile appearances and snap a picture of Chad grinning beside the seven-ton sausage.

As a teen, Chad rolled his eyes at this tradition, but his mom insisted, saying, “You never know. You might want to drive it one day.”

Naturally, Chad submitted all of those pictures with his job application, and he was chosen as one of 12 Hotdoggers from among 2,000 applicants.

“My mom literally started crying,” he said.

“I think my family was a little more confused,” said Keagan, explaining that they’d been pulling for graduate school, but they softened when she told them that it was harder to get into Hot Dog High than to be accepted at Harvard University.

Among the things Keagan and Chad learned in weenie school:

*The original Wienermobile was created in 1936, in Chicago, by Oscar Mayer’s nephew Carl. The open-cockpit novelty car gave out samples. After a fleet of Wienermobiles was deployed in 1988, they stopped dispensing free hot dogs.

*There are six Wienermobiles cruising America’s “hot dog highways,” stopping for gatherings such as car shows, sporting events, parades, festivals, as well as promotional appearances at stores that sell Oscar Mayer products. (Track the Wienermobiles at https://khcmobiletour.com/wienermobile)

*Built on GMC cab-forward truck chassis, Wienermobiles are powered by 8-cylinder gas engines. They get roughly the same gas mileage as a large SUV. The bodies are fabricated 40 miles from Greensboro at a Pfafftown company called Spevco Inc.

*Jay Leno drove the Wienermobile for a 2017 episode of Jay Leno’s Garage. Actor Tim Allen blew a Weiner Whistle in the 1994 movie, The Santa Clause. Bible-thumping Ned Flanders, of all people, drove the Wienermobile in a 2019 episode of The Simpsons. Inexplicably, Jerry Seinfeld has not asked to borrow the Wienermobile for Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

*The best place to wash a Wienermobile is a fire station. “We ask them if we can use their scrubby brushes and water to clean our wiener,” says Keagan. So far, they have not been refused. “Firemen love the Wienermobile,” she adds.

You could argue that a Harvard degree would better prepare a young person to serve the world than a hitch in the Wienermobile, but after tooling around the military park with Keagan and Chad, I’m not so sure.

You’ve never seen such immediate and whole-hearted smiles, followed by cell-phone fumbling and picture taking.

By the older guy in the San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt.

And the supercool driver of the Tesla stopped at the crosswalk.

And the young guy with the topknot. And the middle-aged couple walking two big white fill-in-the-blank-a-doodles.

And by 11-year-old Layla Jordan and her mom, Mojgan, who quickly waved her daughter into a photo beside the Wienermobile when we stopped at a light.

Keagan and Chad popped the hatch, jumped out and handed Layla a plastic Wiener Whistle.

“Your brother is going to be so jealous,” Mojgan said.

They handed mom another whistle and invited Layla to pose for a picture with them.

“Say ‘Cheeeeeeesy Wieeeeener!’” they coaxed.

Back inside the Wienermobile, Chad and Keagan mused about what would come next for them. Chad hopes to land a corporate wiener job with Oscar Mayer. Keagan, who has successfully driven the Wienermobile around Manhattan several times — and therefore feels, justifiably, that she can do anything — dreams of a big-city job with one of the marketing firms that contracts with Oscar Mayer.

“We’re relishing this while we can,” said Chad with a face as straight as a foot-long. OH

Applications are now open to become the next hotdogger. For more information, visit oscarmayer.com/wienermobile.

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Contact her at
ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

2023 Department Life's Funny

Almanac

February knows you’re weary.

She can tell by the longing in your eyes, the ache in your chest and shoulders, how you carry the cold like a burden.

On these frost-cloaked mornings, you dream of soft earth and tender blossoms, spring peepers and swallowtails, songbirds and sunny afternoons.

February knows. She cannot give you what she does not have. And yet, she offers hope.

At dawn, the frigid air nips your face and lungs, stuns you with its jarring presence. It’s hard, at first, to see beyond the dense clouds of your own breath. This is where you start: Breathe into the mystery. Let the formless take form. Watch your own warmth shape the world around you.

As the pink sky slowly brightens, two silhouettes appear in the glittering distance.

A pair of rabbits.

Something about their gentle presence softens the very landscape, softens your edges and your gaze. Weeks from now, their quiet stirrings will have conjured the first of many quivering litters. Something deep within you stirs.

February offers contrast.

Suddenly, you notice early crocus, jewel-like petals drenched with more color than you’ve seen in months. For now, this luscious purple is enough.

But there’s more.

When the first golden daffodil emerges from the frozen earth, a sunbeam lights upon your face. You close your eyes, basking in this subtle warmth, this fleeting glimpse of what’s to come.

The cold becomes quiet. As you walk the icy bridge between the harsh clutch of winter and the tender kiss of spring, you carry yourself differently. Hope is gleaming in your eyes, glittering on the horizon, tucked inside your chest like a sacred gift.

Bridge Between Seasons

The ancient Celts looked to the Wheel of the Year to celebrate and honor nature’s cycles, drawing wisdom from the turning of each season. Imbolc (observed on Feb. 1) marks the midpoint between the winter solstice (Yule) and the spring equinox (Ostara). In other words: Imbolc is a bridge between death and rebirth. Also known as Candlemas or Brigid’s (pronounced Breed’s) Day, this festival honors the return of the sun and celebrates the Celtic fertility goddess Brigid.

The days are growing longer. The sun, stronger. The earth opens to a quickening rhythm.

Soon, the seeds from last year’s harvest will be sown. As spring awakens within and around us, the great wheel turns and turns.

While it is February one can taste the full joys of anticipation. Spring stands at the gate with her finger on the latch. — Patience Strong

Crocus Pocus

Perhaps you know that saffron, the complex and costly spice, comes from the red stigmas of the autumn-blooming saffron crocus (C. sativus), not the snow crocuses you see now, bursting through the frozen earth. And yet, these winter-blooming beauties offer something of even greater value: the ineffable promise of spring.

Plant your own corms this fall. They’ll need full sun, moist but well-drained soil and a quiet winter to unlock their incomparable magic. OH

2023 Feature

Simple Life

Where Does the Light Go?

Reflections on a beloved friend’s passing — and growing older

By Jim Dodson

In an early time, according to the late Irish bard and spiritual thinker John O’Donohue, Medieval mystics loved to pose the beguiling question: Where does the light go when the candle is blown out?

I couldn’t help but think of this conundrum one recent Saturday morning as I sat in a pew of the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Atlanta, having taken a redeye flight from Los Angeles in order to attend a dear friend’s funeral service.

Celetta Randolph Jones — Randy as she was affectionately known by hundreds, if not thousands of people — was one of my oldest and closest friends. She walked into my life in 1977 at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution two days after I arrived at the oldest Sunday magazine in the nation. Editor Andy Sparks believed we needed to meet because we were both single, students of American history and Randy knew the city like the back of her most elegant hand.

I’d just turned 24, a wide-eyed bumpkin from North Carolina. Randy was almost 30, the sophisticated media officer of The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. I think perhaps Editor Sparks believed sparks might fly between us, which they did. Just not the kind he envisioned.

We discovered instead a friendship for the ages. During my nearly seven years in Atlanta, Randy became my frequent dinner companion during which no subject was out of bounds — God, politics, my literary ambitions and her string of colorful boyfriends who could never keep up with her.

By the time my career carried me off to New England, Randy had started her own public relations firm and was quickly becoming a megastar representing the likes of Coca-Cola, British Airways and dozens of other A-list regional and international clients. Despite the distance, our friendship only deepened and grew. When my daughter, Maggie, was born in 1989, Randy, who never married, was delighted to become my daughter’s godmother. She came to New England and North Carolina many times for holidays and family occasions, and I never failed to stay with her whenever I passed through Atlanta. She truly was one of the great lights — and gifts — of my life.

It was lovely to learn from the words of remembrance from her adoring brothers, Harry and Powell Jones, that “Aunt Randy” actually had a dozen or more godchildren she faithfully lavished attention and wisdom upon over the decades, even after a freakish illness destroyed her immune system and forced her to sell her thriving company. She moved to a high rise apartment in Atlanta’s Four Seasons Hotel where she became a tireless fundraiser for Emory University Hospital, The Woodruff Arts Center, her church and many other charities. According to brother Harry, everyone in the building, from the hotel doorman to her neighbor, Charles Barkley, considered Randy their best friend. Her generosity to friends and strangers alike knew no bounds.

I saw Randy a month or so before she passed away. She was frail but mentally vibrant and connected to people as ever, wanting to hear about my latest book project and her goddaughter’s life in L.A. We sat together for almost two hours. When I got up to go and bent to kiss her cheek, she remarked, with her wonderful, sultry, deep Georgia accent, “We have traveled pretty far together, haven’t we?”

“And we’re not done,” I replied. “You helped light the way.”

She patted my hand. “Don’t worry. That light will never go out.”

I think she knew we would never see each other again in this world. But had no doubt whatsoever about the next.

So where does the light go when the flame is blown out? I’ll leave that debate to the Medieval mystics and take my friend Randy at her word that the light will never go out.

The passing of one you love, however, inevitably calls up thoughts of your own brief mortality.

This month, with not a lot of fanfare, I reach my Biblically proscribed threescore years and ten, a phrase popularized by Psalm 90, which was read at Randy’s service. Seventy was considered a ripe old life in ancient times.

Fortunately, I have two best buddies — Patrick and Joe — who are also reaching 70 around the same time I am: Joe in January, Patrick in March. At our regular luncheons of the Stuffed Potato Philosophy & Adventure Club, we often talk about how pleased we are to be “older” dudes who are still working at jobs we love and appreciating life more than ever. True, body parts don’t work as fluidly as they once did, but it’s amazing what we never worry about anymore, including death, taxes, career ups and downs, and the inevitability of growing older. This spring, Patrick and I plan to celebrate 58 years of playing golf together in America and Britain by setting off for a final roving match across Ireland, Scotland and England for perpetual bragging rights. Our legs may grow weary, but, I assure you, not our spirits.

A recent study shows that we are not alone, revealing that the vast majority of older Americans are as happy — and busy — as they have ever been in American society. As anti-ageism activist Ashton Applewhite recently pointed out in her outstanding TED Talk, older people tend to become more optimistic as they age, worry far less than younger folks, and really only have two things to be concerned about — that someday the people you love will die, and that parts of your body will eventually quit working. Fear of death doesn’t even make the list. Remaining open to new adventures and connected to people turns out to be a path for a long and meaningful life. Applewhite calls it the U-Curve of Happiness.

Was it simply the hand of sweet synchronicity that I happened to hear her inspiring TED Talk on the radio during the long drive home to North Carolina following Randy’s memorial service, or maybe something only a mystic could explain?

I’ll probably never know. But in the meantime, I’ll happily follow the flame wherever it leads next. OH

Jim Dodson is the founding editor of O.Henry.

2023 Department Simple Life

Art of the State

Just Working

Antoine Williams forged his own path to bring his art to light

By Liza Roberts

Left: There Will Be No Miracles Here, printed material and acrylic on wood panel, 2021

Antoine Williams was in his early 20s when he made an important decision: If he wanted his work to be seen, he’d have to take matters into his own hands.

He’d earned a fine arts degree from University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2003 and was busy making mult-media work including drawings, paintings and collages that responded to the world around him: about politics, about the war on terror, about “how ridiculous all of it was.” But to Williams, the traditional gallery route seemed impenetrable. Not only to him, but to the other young artists he knew, many of them also young, politically active Black men without a network in the established world of art. “People were literally afraid of us. We were walking into galleries, and I remember one gallery. I asked: Can we do an art show? And they were like: We don’t have metal detectors,” Williams says.

His friends, including multimedia artists and illustrators Marcus Kiser, John Hairston Jr. and Wolly Vinyl, had another hurdle, too. Traditional art venues weren’t the obvious places for the audiences they sought. They wanted to connect with like-minded people who were also influenced by art, comics, music and culture. They were eager for dialogue and weren’t sure they’d find it in a traditional venue. “A museum can be a scary place if you’ve never been there,” Williams says.

Williams knew that from experience. A first-generation college student from “rural, working-class, conservative” Red Springs, North Carolina, Williams never knew an artist or much about art growing up — but his imagination was allowed to flourish. “It was cool to be a creative kid growing up in a place where you could run outside and go in the woods and play,” Williams says. “I was always daydreaming, and I was always either drawing or making stuff.”

He tapped into that wellspring when he cofounded the art collective God City in 2005 with Kiser, Hairston, Vinyl and a few other artists. The group rented industrial spaces, put together pop-up shows and got the word out with flyers. “We were really into hip-hop, politics and comic books,” says Williams. “We would do exhibitions . . . in any place that would take a bunch of young Black dudes.” Over a seven-year run, the group forged collaborations with poets, filmmakers, dancers and DJs. “It was all these groups of Black and brown people making art outside the major institutions,” says Williams. “It became a community in Charlotte . . . It was this really beautiful time.”

Left: There Will Be No Miracles Here, printed material and acrylic on wood panel, 2021

The establishment took notice. Kimberly Thomas, a curator at the Mint Museum, became a God City regular. In 2008, she included work by Williams and Hairston — as well as art from nationally recognized Black North Carolina artists like Juan Logan and the late Romare Bearden — in a 2008 exhibition about contemporary portrayals of Black masculinity called Scene in America. The exhibit included Williams’ I Wanna Kill Sam, a graphite and acrylic representation of a Black man shouting before a backdrop that could be part of an American flag. It’s about “the frustration of being caught within the system, the system that you don’t fully understand, but that you do know is not working,” says Williams.

Since then, Williams has not struggled to get his art seen. Addressing cultural identity, signifiers of class, race and power, and the stories and myths society tells about them, his work incorporates drawing, painting and collage. Most recently, Williams says, he is focused on “Black folklore and other narratives” and is making art that “relates to Black people and movement to spaces of liberation.” The works shown on these pages incorporate these themes and will be exhibited at the Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, later this year. Also in 2023, Williams will have four murals installed in Washington, D.C,. as a recipient of the National Academy of Design’s Abbey Mural Prize.

Left: Putting Breath in the Body #1, ink, printed material, transfer, acrylic, 23.5″x 28″, 2022

Right: Putting Breath in the Body #2, ink, printed material, transfer, acrylic, 23.5″x 28″, 2022

A Moment of Rest While Convincing Monsters That I Am Human, a drawn mural created for a giant wall at the entrance to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem last year, was made following the nationwide uprisings over the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, an effort to depict both the injustice and the exhaustion of that fight. “Those marches were for the bare minimum, just so that the justice system would work,” Williams says. “Not that it would do anything extraordinary — just work.” The mural depicts a man hunched over beneath a mountain of clothes, which Williams says indicates “how absurd it is, but also how exhausting it is.” Hoodies, jeans and sneakers refer to the distorted, negative stigma society puts on these signifiers of young Black men; the enormous pile indicates how they “constantly have to deal with the piling on of these perceptions.” The burdened figure persists, but pauses, “needing to take a break, and reclaim humanity,” says Williams.

Williams’ work has been exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Greensboro’s Weatherspoon Art Museum and at Raleigh’s Contemporary Art Museum (CAM). He has had prestigious residencies and fellowships at Duke University and the McColl Center. Most recently, he was an artist in residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, where he created sculptural work inspired by a quote from the author Octavia Butler: “There’s Nothing New / Under the Sun / But There Are New Suns.” Last July, Williams took a tenure-track job teaching art at the University of Florida. OH

This is an excerpt from Art of the State: Celebrating the Art of North Carolina, published by UNC Press.

2023 Art of the State Department