Author: O.Henry Magazine

Simple Life

Sacred Grounds

My Journey with the Three G’s

By Jim Dodson

Illustration by Gerry O’Neill

As I write this, it’s an hour before sunrise on Good Friday of Holy Week.

With my morning meditation behind me for the day – I call it “Coffee with God,” a time when I have frank conversations with the Almighty beneath the morning stars – it seems like the ideal moment to take stock of my “Three G’s.”

In addition to the enduring love I have for my wife, children and brand new grandchild – a baby girl named June; how’s that for timing? — the Three G’s is my simple shorthand for God, golf and gardening, the three defining elements of my life’s journey.

Allow me to consider them in reverse order of importance.

This month, on June 7, my home’s garden will be featured on the annual Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs tour. It’s an honor I never saw coming. That’s because building gardens (and working in them) has been a passion of mine since I was knee-high to a post-hole digger. I hail from rural people, you see, smalltime Carolina farmers who lived off the bounty of the land. So, the urge to grow things is in my bloodstream. Some of my fondest memories are of visiting my dad’s elderly second cousins, Josie and Ida, a pair of spinster ladies in their 80s who shared a handsome old farmhouse from the Civil War era and a giant garden in Orange County.

My dad called them the “Moon and Star Girls.” He called them this because their house had limited indoor plumbing but a pair of splendid outhouses with elegantly carved wooden doors. One featured a half-moon (Cousin Ida’s), the other a shining star (Cousin Josie’s). I was deeply fascinated by both women and their fancy outhouses. Almost every Easter and Christmas of my boyhood, our family would take them a salted country ham, Pond’s Cold Cream, and copies of Reader’s Digest, Life Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.

Ida was the solemn and stern sister who ran the household. Josie was the sweet and talkative one who loved books and storytelling. Their dressing style was pure 19th century, floral dresses with knitted sweaters Ida made by hand and lace-up boots. I like to think part of the verdure in my blood comes from them as well as my great-grandmother, who lived 5 miles closer to Dodsons Crossroads, and grew and collected native plants for making folk medicines. Aunt Emma, my dad’s grandmother, was the beloved “healer” along Buckhorn Road since a real doctor was 20 miles away.

The vast garden of the “Moon and Star Girls” was well-known along Buckhorn Road between Hillsborough and Chapel Hill. The Dodson sisters shared their bounty with neighbors up and down the road. For several summers before a game called golf seized my waking attention, I got to stay with Ida and Josie and help in their garden. Josie would sing hymns and tell me stories about our Colonial ancestors while Ida kept a sharp eye on our progress, sometimes reminding us that the “Lord loves busy hands. Not idle chatter.” Once, Josie stuck her tongue out at Ida’s back and we both dissolved with laughter. Cousin Ida was not amused.

Both my parents were serious suburban gardeners, which is why I grew up to become one, too. I’ve built three ambitious gardens in my life, from a forested hilltop in Maine to a pine-girdled garden I brought back to life in Pinehurst. Number three is the most ambitious, built around the old house we purchased a decade ago on the street where I grew up in Greensboro. Likely, it’s my final garden.

Garden work is good for the soul, Cousin Josie liked to say.

•

Golf came into my life at age 11 after watching Arnold Palmer play in the 1964 Masters Tournament on TV. That’s the year the King of Golf won his final green jacket by six strokes and tossed his cap into the air. I promptly joined “Arnie’s Army.”

I began beating golf balls around our backyard with an old Bobby Jones wedge I still own (somewhere) and quickly progressed to a modest nine-hole golf course I nearly wore out every day after swim practice. I followed my dad into journalism and shared his passion for the cruelly addictive game invented 400 years ago by lonely Scottish shepherds.

In 1997, as a columnist for Golf Magazine, I published a memoir called Final Rounds that told the story of taking my wise old man back to play the courses on England’s Lancashire coast where he learned to play the game as an airman shortly before D-Day.

The book was a bestseller that changed my life. After reading it, Arnold Palmer invited me to write his memoir, A Golfer’s Life, and share the cover credit with him. We remained close friends until his passing in September 2016. During our last visit in Latrobe a month before he passed away, I asked him to autograph my copy of our book. He wrote: “Jim, Thank you for your wonderful words. I couldn’t have a better friend.”

I’ve been deeply blessed by my golf writing, a career that includes four books of the year about the game (two from United States Golf Association and two from International Network of Golf), scores of friends and a lifetime of memories.

Not long ago, just for fun, one of my golf buddies and I even started a podcast on Apple called Sports is Beyond Us that allows us to share the timeless joys, fellowship and low comedy of the game.

•

God is the most important “G” in my life. I once heard someone say there are two paths to God — one is love, the other is sorrow.

I’ve taken both paths in my life and found that the divine force of the universe eventually welcomes everyone home regardless of where they’ve been. We all have a different picture of who or what God is. My belief is that God grades life on a generous curve and small miracles are everywhere if you take time to notice.

Many years ago, I took my highly opinionated Scottish mother-in-law to the daily Evensong service at St John’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England. Kate was probably my best friend during several challenging years, a gifted gardener and educator who never missed watching the British Open Championship with me over gin and tonics. She was the only person on Earth who ever called me “James.”

Kate was also a professed atheist who had one of the kindest hearts of anyone I’ve ever known. Her own parents perished during the German bombing of the docks in her native Glasgow when she was very young.

That summer evening at St John’s, though, when the choir sang the familiar “Old Hundredth” hymn from the Genevan Psalter, I heard Kate softly singing along. As we exited into a beautiful evening, she took my arm and squeezed it. There were tears in her eyes.

“Thank you, James,” she said. “My mother and father loved that old hymn. I haven’t heard it in 50 years.”

Praise God, I thought, from whom all blessings flow. OH

Jim Dodson is founding editor of O.Henry magazine. Find him on Substack at One Man’s Simple Life and on Apple Podcasts at Sports is Beyond Us.

Wandering Billy

To the Moon, Harry

How a seminal local computer science publication and illustrator rocketed a career

By Billy Ingram

Illustration by Harry Blair

(Caption: Original Harry Blair illustration for issue No. 46, March 1984, of Compute!)

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1977

Just two years after mass-marketed personal computers were made possible by a game-changing microprocessor, Robert C. Lock founded Small System Services, the “Corner Computer Shop” on Spring Garden at Mendenhall, in 1979. That little shop of floppy discs served as Lock’s launching pad for arguably one of the most consequential and culturally influential magazines of the 20th century, Compute!, first catering to a decidedly minuscule demographic when it debuted in 1979 — devout computer geeks. The publication spawned a sprawling publishing empire before being sidelined a decade and a half later by the popularity of the very subject it was devoted to.

A UNCG chemistry and biochemistry professor at the time, Harvey Herman was writer and associate editor of Compute! starting with the very first issue. “The magazine was based really on the MOS Technology 6502 chip in a lot of the early computers, the single boards, ones that you could use right off the shelf,” he says. “There was a lot of useful stuff coming out of the magazine.” Every issue offered readers what the soon-to-be-popular publication called “type-ins,” custom-made programming codes to manually type into Ataris, apple ][, TRS-80 and Commodore PET models, cascading rows of seemingly random letters and numbers strung together that must be entered without error or the DIY software wouldn’t Do It, Yo.

Success was immediate and overwhelming. By issue No. 3 in March 1980, Compute!’s crew had grown from publisher-editor Lock and five unpaid stringers to dozens of contributors, columnists and support staff. Leaving the Spring Garden electronics store behind, magazine production was established in a stunning, two-story, gray stone manse on Bessemer and Magnolia. With the addition of spinoff mags and manuals, they began overflowing out of a former heavy-machinery manufacturing plant on Fulton Place and High Point Road (today’s Gate City Boulevard) a year later.

That’s when Fred D’Ignazio, already an accomplished author specializing in robotic programming in 1982 and living in Chapel Hill, began writing for Compute! “It was so exciting,” he says. “I really had the feeling this was going to take off.” However, in mainstream minds, computers were strictly sci-fi fodder: “Maybe others looked at you as a geek, but, inside, you knew you were smarter than everybody around you.” D’Ignazio reflects on his former editor, Lock: “He was kind of a visionary statesman- or chairman-of-the-board type person. Very thoughtful, very nice to me and encouraging. I was on the fringe, thinking of computers in much more of a futuristic and metaphorical sense. Like how do you introduce computers to children?” Yes, that was a radical concept in the early ’80s.

Beginning with issue No. 1, Compute!’s cover artist almost every month was O.Henry’s own illustrious illustrator, Harry Blair. “He’s my favorite cartoonist of all time!” D’Ignazio, who currently resides in Tucson, Arizona, hadn’t heard that name in decades. “Harry drew cartoons of me going off on my different journeys overseas with robots and computers. He was very whimsical.” One of those caricatures “was a bunch of robots chasing me across the globe, just very funny.”

Headquartered in a hangar-sized facility off of Wendover by 1983, Compute! cashed out to ABC Publishing for $18 million. A major redesign was undertaken five years later with cluttered (stock?) photo covers replacing Mr. Blair, whose coup de grace that January depicted a wintery mountain range awash in bluish hues, Big Tech logos crystalizing inside a starry sunset. A stark, frozen terrain devoid of humanity, a suffocating, frosty landscape offering no possibility of connectivity. Metaphorical?

In 1990, the enterprise was gobbled up by General Media, publisher of Penthouse and Omni, the latter consolidating editorial and production with Compute (now sans any “!”), here in Greensboro. Not long after, Compute was folded into, or buried beneath, internet behemoth AOL. Video killed the radio star.

The ’90s had arrived, bringing vastly more powerful processors and sophisticated, off-the-shelf software. Gone was that unprecedented level of kinship twixt a magazine and its subscribers by virtue of the communal coding experience, this pivotal technical and inspirational catalyst that had fed eager brainiacs for a decade. “Microsoft BASIC was just everywhere,” D’Ignazio points out about those intrepid early-’80s code tweakers. “There was no limit to the kind of programs you could create. That early, hands-on experience, combined with tapping into people’s imagination, especially young people, I think it really inspired a whole generation.”

I know that to be true.

I met with one such individual, Keir Davis, in his suite of offices tucked into Latham Park proper. Davis and a phalanx of prodigious programmers at the firm he founded in 2002, Xtern Software, alongside a team of behavioral psychologists from Northwestern University, developed the tools for enhancing interconnectivity between NASA Mission Control and the Artemis II manned voyage recently returned from the moon. Under the confines of Earth’s gravity, Xtern is involved in next-level web and mobile-focused customized software for all manner of industry — furniture makers, an A-list jewelry designer, a manufacturer of military boots, even UNCG, where Davis as well as many of his local workforce have earned degrees, his in computer science. Very high-level, diamond-edge innovation taking place right across from the tennis courts.

As a 10-year-old Pittsburgh (adjacent) youth, Davis was an avid consumer of Compute! “This was prior to my even knowing what Greensboro was.” He once copied those elongated lines of code into a 1982 Texas Instruments computer and recalls “looking at those great Harry Blair covers.” There are those who insist there are no coincidences, but, in the summer following eighth grade, Davis and his mother moved to the Gate City, where he attended a cartooning class at Weaver High taught by . . . I’ll let you guess.

Forty years later, Davis and his wife were out to dinner when they spotted none other than Harry Blair. “I talked to him and he remembered the class, but he didn’t remember doing this,” Davis says, presenting a superbly sketched caricature of himself as a 14 year old that hangs in his home today. “I showed it to him on my phone and Harry lost it. He was like, ‘I can’t believe you would’ve saved that.’ It was a throwaway for him, right? He can do this in his sleep, but to me it was really cool.” I’d bring up the whole “circle of life” concept and all of that but I might owe Disney a royalty.

Over the last half century, personal computers emerged from bit players to major supporting (or starring) roles in our everyday lives. From operating systems scarcely capable of rendering spreadsheets or simplistic, pixelated diversions like Pong and Pac-Man to generating unimaginably complex computations crucial for blasting astronauts into outer space and then returning them safely to terra firma.

And Harry Blair had it covered all along. OH

Billy Ingram’s TVparty! was first to stream videos from television shows over the internet and first to create web pages with text, pictures and embedded media.

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Sazerac June 2026

JOI DE VIVRE

Dear Diego: Elementary school plays a key role in a child’s development, but for shy and reserved Joi, who found it hard to make genuine friends, she spent most of it by herself. That was until I met Diego. “Joi, could you please stop that!” yells Mrs. Perkins, my fourth-grade teacher, during our class walk to the playground. I’m near the back of the line and have, unknowingly, slipped into a daydream, humming a tune the entire walk back — loud enough for her to hear me from the front of the line. A little embarrassed now that my classmates are staring at me, I walk the rest of the way back with my head down. “I thought it sounded good,” says a voice behind me. Diego. He has a Go, Diego, Go! backpack — fitting, isn’t it? — and light-up Skechers he wears everyday. From that moment on, Diego and I are two peas in a pod, never leaving the other’s side. He becomes my first best friend and later evolves into a crush. I am fascinated by his ability to climb the monkey bars just as he is fascinated by my swift running skills — so much so that he brags to all his male friends that I could beat them in a one-on-one race if they dared to challenge me. Sadly, a year later, his father, who is in the military, is stationed overseas, which means Diego has to leave. Now as an adult, I appreciate the love Diego showed little Joi when she needed it the most. I hope he has grown up to impact other people as much as he impacted me. And who knows? Maybe we’ll meet again one day. Until then, I’ll keep an eye out for light-up Skechers. – Joi Floyd

Window on the Past

Photograph courtesy of UNCG’s Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives

Captured here are the 1974 founding members of the United Afro-American Society for Greensboro College’s yearbook, The Echo. Bell-bottoms, bold patterns and enough polyester to make a disco ball nervous, this lineup is as rich in personality as it is in ’70s fashion. Membership may not have come with a written dress code, but a keen eye for the style was clearly part of the deal.

Behind the Scene

Photograph by Curtis & Cort Photography

“Once I started doing film acting at the studio, I just fell in love with it,” exclaims Emi Curia — a Winston-Salem native and actress. A year after graduating from UNCG, Emi’s career continues to rise. At 22, she’s already a veteran of the hit TV series Echoes (Netflix) and Murdaugh: Death in the Family (Hulu). But before she was in front of the camera, she was on stage. “I did dance as a kid, and that evolved into community theater,” she says. After coming to Greensboro for college in 2021, she found in-STUDIO, a nontraditional, Greensboro-based actor training facility that quickly became central to her journey. “That studio is like my home,” she says.

Not only has she made friends who have become family at the studio, but Emi’s instructors have steered her in the right direction: “Having a good teacher who sees you is so important, and I admire teachers for being able to do what they do.” Her favorite teacher there, Lee Spencer, put her at ease, giving her the confidence to pursue her dream. “When it comes to acting, you’re working with someone who’s really bringing themselves and their vulnerability to you.” Isn’t that a little scary? Sure, she says, “It feels like you’re exposing yourself, but when teachers can foster a safe environment for you, it makes you feel like you can do anything.”

Beyond the screen, Emi is a multi-talented performer — skilled in tap dancing, ASL, kickboxing, piano, mezzo-soprano and fluent in Japanese, just to name a few. She has leveraged these abilities to secure leading roles in four plays and 15 films, with her most notable performance as Miley Altman in last fall’s Murdaugh: Death in the Family. Though an exciting milestone, she describes the audition process as tense. “It was really stressful, to be honest with you. I had that audition when I was on vacation.” Just before her senior year spring semester began, Emi recorded her audition from a hotel room. She didn’t think much about it afterward, so she was surprised to see she was pinned for the role. With exams, finals and now a role in a TV show all at once, she felt the pressure. Balancing frequent drives to Atlanta for filming with the demands of her final semester at UNCG meant occasionally missing class. “I had to bargain with my professors for excused absences,” she says. Still, by embracing the meaning of her name — “by the grace of God” — in her daily life, she persevered through the demanding schedule and graduated with two degrees: psychology, and women’s, gender and sexuality studies. “I will always be grateful for that experience,” Emi says.

Ask Emi how post-grad life is and, like many recent college graduates, she might roll her eyes. “Sometimes I get that question, and it just makes me laugh because I really understand now how much it sucks.” As a psychology major, she put value in relationships with friends, coworkers and passing strangers. “I miss my friends. I miss my acquaintances. I miss all of it,” she says, though she quickly adds that she doesn’t miss the pile of assignments. Emi encourages her peers pursuing an artistic career to create a path for themselves and to stay persistent. Work hard and respond to the calling you feel. “You just have to see it through. The tunnel is long, and you’re not going to be able to see the light at the end of it, but you have to be the light to guide yourself.”
— Joi Floyd

Unsolicited Advice

Father’s Day is right around the corner and we’re bracing ourselves for a day where we hold back the eye rolling as the corniest puns ever, aka dad jokes, exit the mouths of our fathers. They’re a comical and fun play on words, but, if your father is like most, he probably feels unashamed when blurting out the same joke over again and again — on repeat forever and ever. And, if you’re not careful — or if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree — you may find yourself in a witty banter battle. This year, we’d like to defeat our funny fathers, so here are some dad jokes to keep in your arsenal, just in case you riff-off against the wizard of wordplay.

Sometimes, it’s better to start slow and simple. Pull out a classic and consider quacking this joke; What did the duck say to the waiter? Put it on my bill.

As descendants of fathers who somehow forget to flush every time, this one always gets us rolling: What did one toilet say to the other? You appear a bit flushed. And, maybe, just maybe, it will remind them to erase the evidence.

Finally, it’s time to pull out the big puns. Though, to be honest, we’re not sure if this joke is entirely accurate — especially since our dads can’t remember the names of our best friends from elementary school. What’s the best way to save your dad jokes? In a dad-a-base.

2026 Department Sazerac

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Gemini

(May 21 – June 20)

Truth: Nobody can rock a floral top with geometric print slacks quite like you can. This month, the new moon in Gemini (June 14) paired with your maximalist tendencies could elevate your dopamine dressing to Iris Apfel status. Try not to let your flashy curations keep you from focusing on your inner world. Beginning June 19, a profound healing can occur if you’ll allow it. Avoid hiding behind your rose-colored retro rounds and face the music.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Don’t let a little rain stop you.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Two words: homemade focaccia.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Reimagine the leftovers.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

“No” does not require an explanation.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Somebody’s meddling.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Read the room.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

May the circle be unbroken.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Shake some dust, darling.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Check the batteries.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Try sitting with the crickets.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Three’s a crowd. OH

Zora Stellanova lives in the N.C. mountains with her wolfdogs, Venus and Lilith. Although she prefers divining with loose-leaf pu-erh, she recommends a mugwort and passionflower blend for those seeking wisdom and clarity from dreams.

2026 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

Birdwatch

Great Big Blue

A North Carolina attention grabber

By Susan Campbell

The great blue heron is a bird that will get anyone’s attention, bird lover or not. It is the largest of all the species found in the Piedmont and Sandhills, and is second in wingspan only to the bald eagle. Great blues are colonial nesters, gathering often very close together in trees in wet environments where terrestrial predators are not a threat.

Great blues can be found across North Carolina year-round foraging in a variety of wet areas. The way it ever so slowly stalks its prey in the open is unique. However, nesting habitat can be harder to find. Many wet areas are too shallow to preclude raccoons, opossums and other climbing animals. Sizable beaver ponds or islands in the middle of lakes with mature trees or large snags are attractive. If a pair or two are successful in raising a brood high above the water, it is likely that the number of nests will grow in subsequent years to form a “heronry.” The female will weave a cup nest from the branches, then add smaller, softer material (such as twigs, grasses, moss, etc.) that her mate delivers.

The bond between a pair of great blues is very strong during the breeding season. Male and female are both involved with rearing the nest generation. The large nest can accommodate up to five eggs, and both adults incubate and then brood the young. The male spends most of the daylight hours at the nest while the female is there overnight. Herons are very good parents, able to defend their young with not only their heavy, sharp bills, but with very powerful wings.

It will take a year or more for the young to reach maturity. During the first several weeks they are fed mainly fish by their parents, but as they begin to forage for themselves, they will become opportunistic, eating everything from large, aquatic invertebrates (such as crayfish) to frogs and even the eggs of other bird species. Some individuals will not breed until their third summer. Sexually mature birds sport long plumes on their neck and back. They may be seen displaying to their mates by raising their crests and clapping bills together at or near the nest site.

The loud raspy croaking of herons is territorial and can be heard day or night at any time of the year. They will defend rich feeding areas as well as their nest from competitors. Great blues also call when in flight, perhaps to maintain contact with family members. In the air, they have a very characteristic profile with slow, deep wingbeats, their necks coiled, and legs trailing out behind them.

These huge birds are amazingly unafraid of humans. Although they seldom tolerate a close approach, they are frequently found feeding from bulkheads, farm ponds and even small backyard water features. Many great blue herons have learned that people may provide an easy meal — even if it is in the form of fish remains or table scraps. So, keep an eye out, one of these birds may be closer than you think. OH

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.

2026 Birdwatch Department

Home Grown

You Break It, He Fixes It

A timeless garage offering everything without the gloss

By Cynthia Adams

There are a few dusty trucks parked outside Gum Springs Garage. Otherwise, there are no overt clues that this is a place of significance, one that has supported the livelihoods of this Pittsboro farming community since the 1950s.

Inside is a glimpse of a rare authenticity as endangered as the hand-written letter.

No money is wasted on appearances. Not even a doorknob on the sliding door to the garage, just a hasp and padlock. Even on a sweltering day, the door is open to the working man’s establishment on Silk Hope Gum Springs Road.

There is no sign stating, “We fix what you broke,” but that is what happens here. Auto repair is the primary focus. But rows of repaired and tagged chainsaws, leaf blowers, weed whackers and edgers await pickup. If, say, a tool or tractor is busted beyond repair and cannot be fixed, then proprietor Randy Kidd can order or help find a new one.

The garage itself, a former service station, is doggedly rustic, with a sphere of influence that blooms far beyond the oil-soaked floors. The place would make a fancy man’s garage — the kind manfluencers show off with vintage cars parked on gleaming surfaces clean enough to eat on — look foolish.

There is no angling for commercial appeal at Gum Springs Garage. Instead, energy and resources are devoted to the locals who work on their farms, land and gardens. Fluorescent lights illuminate shelves of engine oil, Motomix and batteries. Fanbelts, chains, filters and parts hang on rusty nails.

A grimy-faced clock advertising LeakPro piston rings is frozen at 5:05. What paint remains on the shiplap siding is barely winning the struggle to stay put.

The floor is hard dirt, compacted by the boots of generations of farmers who have come there. The rest is concrete or wood, changing as you work your way through the shop’s interior. Everything that Kidd ever repaired seems cemented into the genetic code of the place.

My own father owned a trucking company and farmed. The trucking company kept him afloat.

Although he could manage basic maintenance on Peterbilt trucks himself, he knew what he didn’t know, which turned out to be an important lesson for his five children. When it came to pulling a motor or transmission or replacing a timing chain, he deferred to and relied upon men like Kidd.

“Standing in a church doesn’t make you a Christian,” my old man would mutter, “any more than standing in a garage doesn’t make you a mechanic.”

My father was the youngest son, determined to hang onto his father’s farmland. He wore short-sleeved work shirts and an old pith helmet to protect himself from the relentless sun, astride a rusty, red International Harvester, planting long rows of soybeans, wheat or corn. By lunchtime, his shirt and the khaki-colored helmet were soaked with sweat.

We learned, too, that there were a thousand miseries inflicted upon farmers.

He endured every farming hardship: the cost of seeds, fertilizer, equipment, labor, blight and drought. The cost of ill-timed or too much rain. Of surpluses and ruined crops. Miscalculations. The endless, backbreaking cycle of defeat.

We children knew about the Farm Bureau and debt before we knew how to count the coins in our piggy banks. Farmers operated on razor-thin margins.

When a tractor broke down, farming halted. When a mower, harvester, baler or cultivator broke, it shredded profits. The Kidd family, farmers themselves, understood this.

Although Kidd is the third family member to run the garage, do not expect him to jabber away, thrilled to talk about himself, or to brag about his reviews. Online, effusive customers give his garage five stars — the top rating.

“I’m a redneck from nowhere,” he replies without a trace of irony, a ball cap over a full head of gray hair.

Untrue, it turns out. Customers praise that he is an authentic fix-it man, having worked in the garage since boyhood.

They file in, nodding in the younger Kidd’s direction, who, like his father, Roy, before him, fixes or makes work the tools of their trade. The things made whole here — a farmer’s lifeblood — are the reason many have endured.

A loyal customer posted online that he “supported even wannabe farmers” like himself.

Kidd has also served his community in other ways, as a firefighter and veteran.

He farms like Roy, who understood the urgency when a tractor stopped working. Asked if there is anything that his garage can’t fix, Roy paused a beat and replied, “Did a man make it?”

The garage is also a certified STIHL dealer. On a quiet Wednesday, Kidd figures up a bill for first-time customer Susan Harrell, there to pick up a new chainsaw.

“I’d like to buy an all-electric, but have to watch costs,” mentions Harrell, staring at one hungrily.

Kidd nods. He places the new saw on a worn counter in what is designated as the office, demarcated by an actual wooden floor, with a filing cabinet and aging swivel chairs.

Harrell steps into the office and picks up the saw, assessing its heft. She tells Kidd she learned manual skills helping her brother with home renovations.

Clad in jeans with a knife-edge crease and a jean jacket, she nods appreciatively as they chat and he answers her questions. The proprietor wears a loose-fitting blue work shirt with an embroidered name tag along with Wranglers.

Wire-rimmed specs are pushed up on the bridge of his nose as he calculates the tax on the invoice.

There is no AC in the summer, but a fan hangs over the separate customer lounge, which occupies the second bay of the garage. Cast-off chairs, two school desks and a rump-sprung navy Naugahyde seat salvaged from an old car are angled around a wood stove.

A Pepsi machine near the office, boxed in by racks of supplies, may or may not work.

“I do have a place for cold drinks,” Kidd points out, without looking up.

Perhaps the drink machine does work.

When he was younger, a boy, really, he sometimes left his father’s garage at closing time and headed home to bale hay. It is back-breaking labor that keeps high school boys flush with gas money in the summertime.

No longer young, Kidd still bales hay.

“Round or square bales?” another customer asks.

“Both,” Kidd answers, riffling through the filing cabinet. Too busy to glance.

For now, he will keep fixing things, selling things and satisfying his customers tomorrow and the next day, until his fingers can no longer do the work. And if another Kidd does not want to step in, he might one day slide that garage door closed for good.

And then, continue farming, growing things. Like our daddy did, until heart problems stopped him.

Some things even a guy like Randy cannot fix. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.

2026 Department Home Grown

State of Mind

Batter Up!

It’s our game, the American game

By Tommy Tomlinson

Illustration by Gary Palmer

My wife and I had our first date at a Hickory Crawdads game.

Well, OK, I already need to backtrack. Alix says to this day that it was not a date. At the time I didn’t think it was a date, either. But somewhere between the first inning and the ninth, I started to feel that tug of attraction. A little more than a year after that night, we got married. Nearly 28 years of marriage later, we’re still together.

The point here is not to settle the question of whether it was or was not a date. The point is to make our way, eventually, to Brad Pitt’s question from Moneyball: “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

North Carolina gives baseball romantics so many places to fall in love.

Best I can tell, there are 22 professional baseball teams playing in North Carolina this summer. Nine are farm clubs of Major League Baseball teams. Eleven teams play in summer leagues for college players — they use wooden bats instead of the aluminum bats in college games. Two more teams play in the independent Atlantic League. You could drive around the state and see a different game in a different park every night for three weeks straight, with a game left over.

Minor league team names are sports poetry. Here in North Carolina we have the Gastonia Ghost Peppers and the Edenton Steamers, the Greensboro Grasshoppers and the Holly Springs Salamanders, the Forest City Owls and the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, the Boone Bigfoots and the Greenville Yard Gnomes. (Should it be the Boone Bigfeet? Sounds like a discussion for the ballpark, between innings.)

Some teams choose names with a local angle. The Kannapolis Cannon Ballers name-check the Cannon Mills textile company that basically built the town. (The Cannon Ballers’ logo also features a mustachioed figure who looks suspiciously like Kannapolis-born Dale Earnhardt.) Asheboro has the North Carolina Zoo, so their team is the Zookeepers. My favorite, along these lines, is the Winston-Salem Dash. I’ll let you figure that one out — although if you’re strict about grammar, you might not like the answer.

Alix and I have been to minor league games all over the state. Every park has its own quirks and charms. A few years ago, as part of a baseball vacation, we went to see an Asheville Tourists game. I hadn’t been feeling great that week. We had to park at the bottom of a hill, and the stadium was at the top. I was dreading that climb. But then a guy rolled up in an extra-long golf cart. It turns out the Tourists will give fans a lift up to the stadium if they need one. That day, I needed one. I felt like a VIP as the cart zoomed us to the gate.

By the way, if you ever take a book to the ballpark — lots of people do! — my suggestion is Ryan McGee’s Welcome to the Circus of Baseball. It’s about the summer he spent as an intern with the Tourists, and it is jam-packed with stories. I will never forget his tale of the mountain man the team sent into the woods behind the outfield fence to retrieve batting practice homers. He always returned with a bagful of balls — and another bag full of squirrels and such for his supper.

Speaking of supper, the range of what qualifies as ballpark food is so much wider than it used to be. The Durham Bulls, for example, offer pretzels with hummus, gourmet popcorn, Impossible Foods veggie dogs and a ton of local brews. Even the smallest parks often have fancy burgers and IPAs. They still have the classics, too. Nothing says the eighth inning at a minor league park like ice cream in a little batting helmet.

In Greensboro, we cheered for one of the team’s bat dogs who retrieve bats tossed aside when players get a hit. In High Point, we spotted former World Series MVP Frank Viola serving as pitching coach for the Rockers. In Wilson, years ago, we happened to show up on Pint Glass Night and brought home a Wilson Tobs glass we use to this day.

The Tobs (a nod to Eastern North Carolina’s tobacco roots) have moved to Smithfield, where they’ll start playing in 2027. Wilson’s team is now the Warbirds — they’re a farm team for the Milwaukee Brewers. They replaced the Carolina Mudcats. The old Mudcats’ stadium in Zebulon is now home to the Zebulon Devil Dogz, which will feature Australian players. As they say in baseball, it’s hard to keep track without a scorecard.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what the teams are called or who’s playing. I’ve been to dozens — hundreds? — of minor league games over the years. The only surefire star I remember watching is Jim Thome, who mashed baseballs for the Charlotte Knights and went on to hit 612 home runs in the majors. I’m sure there have been other all-stars somewhere in all those games, mixed in with the guys who made it to the bigs for a bit, and the ones who never made it at all. But I don’t remember the players. What I remember are the warm nights and the cold beer and the good company.

I still have my ticket stub from that Hickory Crawdads game back in 1997. I have no idea who won that game. I just remember the fireworks that almost set the woods on fire beyond the outfield fence, and the slow dawning, as I talked to my seatmate, thinking that this might not be just another night at the ballpark.

We still don’t count that night as our first date. But we’ve spent a lot of nights at baseball games since then. And you can bet every one of those counts. OH

Tommy Tomlinson is the author of two books, The Elephant in the Room and Dogland. He was a longtime columnist for the Charlotte Observer and has written for Esquire, The Atlantic, ESPN the Magazine and many other publications. His online newsletter is called The Writing Shed. He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Alix Felsing.

2026 Department State of Mind

Omnivorous Reader

Against All Odds

Characters living on life’s edge

By Anne Blythe

If you’ve ever felt caught in one of life’s undertows, fighting overwhelming currents seemingly beyond your control, you might find a kindred spirit among the cast of characters in Jared Lemus’ debut short story collection, Guatemalan Rhapsody.

Lemus, a Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC-Chapel Hill, has compiled 12 vignettes portraying men and boys living in Guatemala or the United States. The protagonists are barely making ends meet, either caught in low-paying jobs or living on society’s edges through illicit means. Many of them are struggling to break free from generational poverty, Byzantine bureaucracy and emotional vulnerabilities.

The ache of unfulfilled possibility unites these principal characters — a healer, a van taxi driver, a long-haul trucker, a night busman, an aspiring tattoo artist, a laundryman, a builder, a once-celebrated soccer player turned middling middle school coach, teenage highway robbers and kids left to fend for themselves in this country after their parents were deported or returned home to Guatemala.

There is a machismo and toughness that permeates these protagonists that rarely masks their underlying vulnerability and tenderness. There are females in their orbit, but few are as fleshed out as the central male figures. The women often provide the unvarnished truth with warmhearted mercy.

Lemus shows a flair for different writing styles throughout the collection. In the opening story, “Ofrendas,” he gives readers a taste of Guatemalan pacing and dialogue, using Spanish-style inverted opening and closing marks throughout the lyrical English. The story kicks off the collection with a nod toward indigenous Guatemala and the Mayan tradition of people bringing cigarettes, candies, flowers, alcohol and monetary offerings in search of relief or protection from San Simon, a saint known to be a trickster representing both light and dark. In this story of second chance seekers and human sacrifice, you can almost feel the fires crackling as the healers greet the petitioners at the pits they’ve built and hear the owls hooting their ominous calls in the highlands beyond the gated monastery.

In “Bus Stop Baby,” a story about a busboy/dishwasher who rides a bus all night for warmth because the damp mattress he rented was in an unheated garage attached to a house filled with cocaine addicts, Lemus gives readers a chance to choose their own adventure mapped out in two columns, Option A or Option B.

There’s traditional storytelling, too, always with vivid descriptions. In “Heart Sleeves,” a story of an aspiring tattoo artist seemingly “opting for weed and heartbreak” over fulfilled potential, you can almost hear the bee-like buzz of the tattoo guns.

In “Saint Dismas,” a story of amateur highway robbers scheming for food and motel money, your fists might clench in pain as Lemus describes the rope-burned hands of the teens posing as construction workers whose plans went awry when a car sped through the thick cord they stretched across a Guatemalan road to force passersby to stop.

While it might sound like Guatemalan Rhapsody is all doom and gloom, there is wit and light humor amid the darkness. The collection is a true rhapsody, made up of many different riffs on stories of people swimming against the tide, striving for validation, love and survival.

The most pleasurable note among the variations is how Lemus treats his protagonists with dignity and compassion, traits that could go a long way in the world today. OH

Anne Blythe has been a reporter in North Carolina for more than three decades covering city halls, higher education, the courts, crime, hurricanes, ice storms, droughts, floods, college sports, health care and the many wonderful characters who make this state such an interesting place.

2026 Department Omnivorous Reader

Life’s Funny

Life's Funny

Cycles of Life

To everything, turn, turn, turn

Story & Photograph by Maria Johnson

She’s in the fifth grade.

She wears braces.

She loves math.

And dance.

And if you want to learn how to ride a bicycle, 11-year-old A’laa Boufenouche is your girl.

Half-hearted pedal pushers need not apply.

“You have to have a will to do it,” the brown-eyed, ponytailed A’laa says calmly. “You have to have patience.”

She is folded into a camp chair under a pop-up canopy on an early spring day when the warm sunshine evens out the cool breeze.

Almost every Sunday afternoon, from 1–4 p.m. when the weather is nice, you’ll find A’laa and her family volunteering at the Greensboro Community Bike Shop in Barber Park.

Part walk-in repair garage, part picnic, part bicycle library — all free — the shop is run by volunteers with the Transit Alliance of the Piedmont, a nonprofit group that pushes the power of cycling to boost transportation, health and personal connection.

“People relate to you on a different level when you’re on a bike,” says Treva Whitmoyer, a retired nurse and alliance volunteer.

This month, the alliance plans to open a repair-only bike shop on West Market Street, alongside the Downtown Greenway. The Barber Park site will remain open through this month, longer if the city renews the lease for the bike library where A’laa gives free instruction to beginning cyclists. She works with people of all ages, but the young ones pick up skills the fastest, she says. They’re more open to instruction, less bogged down by ideas of what they can and can’t do, and less afraid of falling.

You wanna learn to ride? You gotta be ready to fall, according to A’laa (pronounced Ah-LAH).

Most important, you gotta be willing to get up and go again.

She knows this from experience.

Back when she was 3 and her family lived in Algeria in Northern Africa, she rode bikes with her mom, dad and older brother. She had a balance bike with no pedals. As long as her feet touched the ground, she was good to go.

Then her family entered an immigration lottery, a chance to come to the United States. Her mom, Fawzia Moussouni, who taught several languages and American civilization to high school and college students, applied on the last day possible.

“I said, ‘OK, I will take this chance,’” says Fawzia.

A few months later, her husband, Mohammed Boufenouche, called her. She was in class, testing students. He told her to leave class for a minute.

“We won!” he exulted.

A friend vouched for Greensboro as a good place to raise a family, so Mohammed, Fawzia and their kids settled here in 2019.

“I wanted a quiet place,” says Fawzia, who works as a teaching assistant in a middle school. “I love it here.”

A’laa got a new bicycle here, one with training wheels. Her brother, Omar, helped her to get the hang of it. Then Omar took off the training wheels, and they went to a sidewalk near their apartment. A’laa fell. A lot.

“I got mad because I couldn’t do it,” she says.

Her mom put Band-Aids on her scraped knees and elbows.

Her brother told her it would take time and practice.

“I went right back,” A’laa remembers. “If you don’t have patience, you’re probably going to be angry all the time.”

One day, A’laa found her balance. She was riding a bike. By herself.

“I was happy and excited and proud,” she says, beaming from her camp chair. “I felt really optimistic in that moment.”

She wants other people to know that feeling, so when 9-year-old Asher Warfield walks up with his grandmother, Mary Pettway, asking if someone can teach him how to ride a bike, she hops up, gets Asher a helmet and picks out a three-wheel bike for him.

They start on a stretch of asphalt beside the Simkins Indoor Sports Pavilion. The narrow lane leads to the bike shop, a small, brick building that used to house the controls of a sewage treatment plant before Barber Park took its place.

Asher stares at his feet as he pedals.

A’laa encourages him to look up and fix his eyes on where he wants to go.

He turns around, cruises past the shop.

“Grandma, look!” he says.

Other people trickle in. Cars weighed down with bike racks pull in to donate cycles, which the Transit Alliance reconditions and gives to people who need transportation.

Visitors dig into the chicken and rice dish that Fawzia has set on a table; she always brings food and snacks.

Two young women walk by.

“You wanna ride bikes?” says Sheldon “Shel” Herman, who calls himself the “chief bicyclist” of the Transit Alliance.

“Where?” one of the women asks.

“Here,” says Shel.

“How much?”

“Free.”

The women sign release forms, grab helmets and go.

A young man, an engineering student at N.C. A&T, brings his bike by for repair. One tire has a slow leak. Shel shows him how to replace a tube.

Others watch and learn from Shel and the other volunteer bike mechanics. Ten-year-old Nuwaib Farooqui’s father, Shadab, brings him to the bike shop to learn new skills, interact with people and get away from electronic screens.

“Any excuse to take him outside, I’m game for,” says Shadab, who develops apps for mobile phones and admits to a love-hate relationship with technology.

“I want him to know what’s real and what’s not,” he says.

That’s fine with Nuwaib, who just wants to know how to fix his bicycle when it breaks down.

“It’s the closest thing I have to a car until I’m 16,” he says.

It doesn’t take long for Nuwaib and A’laa to connect. They take off on the park loop. As they pedal away, I’m watching more than bicycle wheels turn. I’m watching time turn.

I remember the moment I caught my balance and my dad, who was running beside me, turned loose of the seat of the little red bike that I learned to ride on.

I remember swooping down a hill at Country Park on a Peugeot bike at breakneck speed about 40 years ago and feeling a wave of happiness and freedom.

I remember my first date with the guy who’s now my husband, a bike ride through southeast Guilford County.

I rode, for fun, for almost 60 years.

I stopped a few years ago, after a wreck left me counting my lucky stars and reckoning with the hard truth that I don’t bounce like I used to.

Recently, my husband and I gave our mountain bikes to the Transit Alliance. That’s how I found out about the bike shop and met A’laa.

Now, as I watch her and Nuwaib pedal away, eyes fixed on where they want to go, I feel no regret.

Instead, as A’laa would say, I feel really optimistic in this moment. OH

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

2026 Department Life's Funny

Almost Heaven on Buffalo Lake

Mike Fowle’s boats create a ripple effect on quiet waters

By Cynthia Adams

Photographs By John Gessner

The motor catches, a muted, whispery sound, as Mike Fowle casts his boat off from Dana Smith’s lakeside dock. “It uses the most cutting-edge battery technology on the market right now,” he says, watching our surprised faces. “Lithium phosphate.”

Three of us glide across Greensboro’s private Buffalo Lake in a modified version of the 1982 vintage Pelican skiff, aptly named Almost Heaven.

Almost soundlessly.

Fowle grins. “That’s what you want.”

On a perfect spring day on the water, the most impressive aspect is what you do not hear. You do not hear the unmistakable roar of a standard-issue outboard motor. In fact, even with my hushed voice hoarse from allergies, conversation flows easily as Fowle describes retrofitting this small cedar-and-mahogany craft (outfitted with an electric motor) for owner Dana Smith.

If you think EVs on the roadways are remarkably silent, try an EV-powered watercraft. Practically noiseless — plus, it does not chew up gas, spew oil or foul the water. And the motor seems up to the task as three adults skirt around the lake’s edge, as pleased as children.

Fowle assures us the boat is sufficiently powered to carry four, smoothly cruising at the allowed 5 miles per hour.

An egret is unruffled when we slip past the shoreline, not even a wake betraying us.

With the tousled blond hair and energetic brio of a younger man, Fowle is now 44. He is a man who loves water, but is more often wending Greensboro roadways for UPS, as he has for the last 25 years.

But his spare time is devoted to twin passions: cars and boats. His latest score is a 1958 red Corvette convertible.

While delivering packages on his route, he affably notices which customers are into cars. Occasionally, he will return on his days off to take the lucky ones out for a spin in a vintage car.

Since his teenage years, Fowle has tinkered. He repairs, paints and undertakes car and boat restoration projects in his free time. Fowle learned much of what he knows from his father and the family’s wood-finishing business, which manufactured varnishes and finishes.

In 2020, he began Fowle Garage. The garage bursts with projects — a new boat he is working on awaits completion, and various car projects wait in the queue.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, he estimates having a day’s worth of tasks ahead. “I have — let’s see — there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven projects here,” he counts as he walks through the garage and grounds.

Fowle and Smith became acquainted through previous boat restorations, he notes, “when I worked at a wooden boat shop.”

Smith contacted Fowle to help him find an electric Pelican. He already knew what he would do with it.

“He had bought this new house, sight unseen, with the idea that he was going to get one of these little boats and put a dock in.”

The house Smith had bought unseen? It was exactly where he wanted to be, Fowle explains. It was on a cul-de-sac at Ascot Point, with the advantage of having Buffalo Lake at its back door. “It gave him water access.”

By coincidence, Fowle knew about such a boat for sale — the exact model Smith was searching for — and it happened to need work. He connected the owner with Smith, who then worked out the sale.

The thoroughly modernized vintage boat was ready to glide in April 2025.

But homeowners on the lake did not own land on the lake perimeter.

Enter Jess Washburn, who did.

Washburn made headlines in 2017 when he became co-owner of two Greensboro private lakes, Buffalo Lake and Lake Jeanette. (His own party pontoon was featured just last month in O.Henry.) The former, smaller lake, only 69 acres, had disallowed lake access. But the much larger Lake Jeanette, at 270 acres, allowed restricted boating access via the homeowner’s private marina. Both lakes had buffer zones; neither had historically allowed docks.

One workday, Fowle took his lunch break at home when his meal was suddenly interrupted.

“I get a knock on my door. It’s Dana and this other gentleman named Jess Washburn.”

Washburn, who also lives on Buffalo Lake, was working with various homeowner associations around the lake regarding access for residents.

Traditional motorboats and Ski-Doos were strictly disallowed. The Pelican, an electric boat, had Washburn’s attention. He had wanted to put electric boats into service on the lakes from the start, given strict speed limitations and other homeowner association restrictions.

The two men told Fowle, “We want more of these boats to go on this lake because they’re quiet.”

Electric-powered boats were a logical answer to the puzzle posed in 2017 by John Hammer, former editor of Rhino Times, concerning the fate of Buffalo Lake and Lake Jeanette after their sale by textile concern ITG.

“What do you do with a couple of lakes, particularly since the land around them has largely been developed?” he asked in his publication.

An adapted version of the Pelican proved to be Washburn’s solution.

Fowle says the new version far exceeds the original. “The idea came from Dana’s boat. I retrofitted his boat with a keel and steering system, and the electronics for the motor.”

He further modified Smith’s boat, adding a foot in length and 4 inches in width, changing the shape. Originally, he says with a laugh, it “looked a bit like a kayak.” He added stability by redesigning the keel, devising a pocket for the propeller drive unit and adding a tiller steering mechanism. “Everything was handmade to steer the rudder.”

In the eight months since Almost Heaven was altered and put into service, Fowle and his team have created a fiberglass mold for a next-generation hull. They now have the capacity to reproduce a boat adapted from the 1982 original in a matter of days.

Once encased in wood and painted, the fiberglass boat appears to be a dead ringer for an original Pelican. It’s upscaled without sacrificing the good, traditional looks of a wooden boat now that Fowle has worked his magic. And fiberglass is not prone to leaks.

You would not know the difference visually, Fowle assures us. “This has all the appeal of a yacht in a super small package.”

Fowle’s passion doesn’t wane when it comes to refining restoration projects. At present, his grandfather’s 1931 Ford Model A pickup sits in his garage awaiting repairs. He says affectionately, “I basically got it running and learned to drive on it when I was 14 or 15.”

Just for fun, he borrows his father’s 1930 Ford Model A De luxe Tudor, driving around town, honking the goose-like horn for appreciative motorists. The 1930s car earned its “deluxe” designation, with handsome detailing, tweed upholstery and upscale finishes, such as a custom-made wooden trunk on the rear. When he stops to dash into a grocery store for a Gatorade, admirers stroll over for a look and flash a thumbs up. Kept in mint condition and fully roadworthy, it recently made an appearance at a Gate City Rotary Club Great Gatsby-themed function.

Now, thanks to Fowle, Smith’s new-and-improved Pelican is proving relevant.

And it appears to be a win-win for all parties, plus water and nature enthusiasts who are equally environmentally interested.

Invariably, bottles and trash end up in the bodies of water he owns. Washburn adopted a stretch of Elm Street near his lake, where he cleans litter.

Smith and his wife, Zell, keen nature lovers, are often found trolling Buffalo Lake, fishing out ugly debris to ferry away.

“They are creating a positive impact on the environment, carting away as much trash as they can manage,” says Fowle.

Almost Heaven, agile and maneuverable, makes cleanup fun for the citizen environmentalists. It weathers the winter just fine, says Fowle, allowing the Smiths to keep it docked behind their home.

As residents and lake owners have worked through the approval process, more docks are reportedly pending on Buffalo Lake. Access remains carefully restricted to kayaking, paddleboats and quiet boats. Fowle anticipates a growing demand for more electric boats.

“Don’t you think that’s cool?” he asks, an enormous grin on his face.

It’s Almost Heaven. OH

2026 Feature