Category: Department

Simple Life

My October Surprise

To be like Blue (and maybe Lao Tzu, too)

By Jim Dodson

At the start of every summer, I vow to my wife, Wendy, that this will be the year I finally make peace with the heat and humidity of my least favorite season.

And every year, I fail miserably.

By Wendy’s birthday in mid-July, I’ve turned into a grumpy gardener who prays for rain that never arrives and shakes his fist at broiling, sunny skies. Even my golf game wilts.

This summer, however, I took a different approach.

I decided to be like Blue. And maybe Lao Tzu, too.

Blue is my dog, a big, black, super-friendly, 65-pound flat-coated retriever with golden eyes, a thoroughly laid-back disposition and a blue-tipped tongue. A friend steeped in Native American lore insists that his golden eyes and blue tongue mean that he is probably descended from wolves and is a true spirit-animal guide. American Indians apparently revered their dogs for just this reason.

Lao Tzu, of course, is the legendary 6th-century Chinese philosopher credited with writing the Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of Taoism. In college a million years ago, I took a course in Eastern religions and developed a shine to the old guy’s wise sayings, as have philosophers and spiritual teachers across the ages. It was Lao Tzu who pointed out that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,” a catchphrase appropriated by every tourism flack since the Middle Ages.

My favorite Lao Tzu aphorism advises, “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

Blue seems to embody these words like no other four-legged creature I’ve ever known except one — my late dog Mulligan. I fondly called her “Miss Mully.”

Three years ago, at the end of another blazing hot summer, Wendy and I said a tearful goodbye to Mully, our soulful flat-coated retriever. She was 17 and failing fast. Our hearts ached as we watched her take one last slow circuit around the back garden she’d watched me build before lying down at my feet and placing her noble head on my shoe. Putting her down was maybe the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do. She truly was this man’s best friend.

As that October arrived, a month that typically brings cool relief and nice surprises, I was still deep in grief. Wendy and I were having a drink in the same back garden, watching the first golden leaves of autumn drift to the ground. She asked me how I was doing.

“Not great,” I admitted. “I hate to think I’ll never have another dog like Mully.”

We have other rescued critters in our home, including a sweet, old Staffordshire pit bull named Gracie, a spunky, young border collie-spaniel mix named Winnie, and a mischievous calico cat named Juno that Wendy found as a week-old kitten abandoned in the Walmart parking lot. I love them all — even if they seem to love Wendy more than me.

As usual, like Lao Tzu, Wendy was one step ahead of me.

She tapped her smart phone and handed it to me. “How about this dog?”

It was a photograph of a young Mully from our adventuring days together. Or so I thought until Wendy shook her head.

“It’s not Mully. This is a young male from Tennessee. Last night I typed ‘flat-coated retriever’ into my search bar and he magically appeared. Can you believe it? He could be her twin brother.”

She explained that he was rescued by an all-volunteer group called Critter Cavalry based in Franklin, Tennessee. The resemblance to Miss Mully was truly incredible, almost spooky.

“As it happens,” Wendy casually added, “he’s going to be passing through Western Virginia two nights from now in case you would like to give this big fella a new home.”

I asked how she knew this.

“Because I got in touch with Critter Cavalry, paid the adoption fee and we’ve been cleared by our vet to get him.” She added that several times a month the organization transports rescued dogs to qualified new owners up and down the East Coast.

She smiled and added, “He’s your October surprise. I think Mully sent him to take care of you.”

•

We drove up to Fancy Gap, Virginia, that Friday evening and, as instructed to do for the rendezvous, parked behind a Wendy’s restaurant off the interstate to await the delivery. I joked that it felt like we were part of an undercover stakeout or waiting for an illicit drug delivery.

Other cars soon pulled in around us. Eventually, a tall, white van with big, purple dog paws on its side rolled up and folks began getting out of the automobiles and heading toward it. Every one of them was smiling with anticipation. We were, too.

There must have been two dozen dogs of every size and breed traveling in neatly stacked crates, all headed to forever homes. Our big, black fella was one of the last to exit the van.

He climbed out of the van and calmly looked at me with glimmering, golden eyes. I let him sniff my hand. He licked it.

“He has a blue-tipped tongue,” Wendy pointed out. So, we named him Blue.

The first thing Blue did in Wendy’s car was take a giant poop on her back seat. We joked that it was a long ride from Tennessee without bathroom breaks and gave him a drink of cool, bottled water during the clean-up stop.

We weren’t back on the road more than five minutes when Blue climbed forward onto the middle console and laid his head on my right thigh.

It stayed there all way all the way home.

Blue turned out to be an extraordinary dog. He leads our morning walks and sleeps on the floor directly beside me. Nothing rattles him. He remains cool and calm in every situation, happily responding with his golden eyes shining. He rarely barks except when he suddenly rolls joyfully around on the floor, yipping with childlike glee at finding his forever home. He loves big hugs and lets life flow past with the ease of an ancient Chinese philosopher.

Methinks Lao Tzu would love Blue — for he seems to realize nothing is lacking; the whole world belongs to him. Our artist friend, Harry Blair, was so taken with Blue’s aura, he decided to sketch him. He captured Blue’s “Tao” perfectly.

As our journey of a thousand miles begins, Blue probably has no idea that he’s become both my best pal and my four-legged teacher. This past summer brought record drought and punishing heat waves, during which our air conditioning even went caput.

But, vowing to “Be like Blue,” I took it all in stride, better than ever, in fact.

I think Miss Mully would be pleased. OH

You can learn more about Critter Cavalry’s important work at crittercavalry.com.

Jim Dodson is founding editor of O.Henry.

Life’s Funny

Life's Funny

The Fruit of the Spirit

The legacies of two nature-loving families intertwine

By Maria Johnson

The idea sprouted last year with a text sent in a fit of arboreal passion.

“Hey Ro-Ro,” the message said. “I need to talk to you about trees.”

Ro-Ro, aka Rosemary Kenerly, the communications manager at Greensboro College, was not surprised to hear from her friend and neighbor, David Craft.

She knew him as a devoted naturalist and one who shuns formality, a guy who likes to make things happen, especially when those things involve planting trees.

David’s dad, the late Bill Craft, was the Johnny Appleseed of Greensboro. He planted hundreds of trees across the community. David, the sixth of nine kids, followed in his father’s muddy footsteps, helping to run the family’s insurance agency while staying close to spade and earth.

Now 63, he supports land conservation efforts and rolls up his sleeves with a band of volunteers, sometimes playfully known as the Green Hill Billies, who help to maintain Green Hill Cemetery, a city-owned graveyard on the northern edge of downtown.

David’s pushing to have the 150-year-old cemetery, a jewel box of specimen trees and one of his dad’s favorite planting grounds, certified as an arboretum.

Knowing David’s love of latching onto leafy projects, Kenerly replied to his text with cautious curiosity. She invited him to her office.

There, David, who often turns out in Carhartt work clothes and Merrell boots, unfurled a story about a long-ago Greensboro College professor named Robert Dunstan.

He explained that Dunstan taught Romance languages at GC for more than 30 years, from the late 1920s to the early ’60s. A spry and dapper little man, he was a respected teacher who ambled about campus in a bow tie and beret. But, like Craft’s father, his greatest public legacy came from what he did outside of his official career.

Eaten up with horticulture, especially the cultivation of fruits and nuts, Dunstan pursued his hobby at his then-rural home off Pinecroft Road. Today that land is covered by a mall and convention center.

He tinkered, grafted, pollinated his way to becoming a legend among nursery folk. He came up with a disease-resistant hybrid grape that basically saved the French wine industry. He also developed a chestnut tree that was resistant to a blight that nearly wiped the tree — an important source of shade, food and lumber — from the Eastern U.S. in the early 20th century. The near-extinction is widely considered to be the biggest ecological disaster in this country’s history.

Dunstan’s breakthrough was to cross American chestnut trees that were genetically resistant to the blight, thanks to natural mutations, with Chinese chestnuts — also unruffled by blight — to form a new, hardier variety.

After retiring, Dunstan and his wife, Katherine, sold their hobby farm and relocated to northern Florida to be near their daughter and her plant-geneticist husband. Dunstan passed his secrets and his saplings on to his grandson, Robert “Bob” Wallace, and nudged him to turn the trees into a business, which he did.

Today, Bob Wallace’s sons, Iain and Robert II, run Chestnut Hill Nursery, which sells patented Dunstan Chestnut trees across the country, chiefly to hunters who rely on the nuts to attract deer. In the last 40 years, the nursery has sold enough trees to cover a quarter-million acres, according to Bob Wallace.

A couple of years ago, an ad for the nursery popped up on David Craft’s Facebook page. He remembered a 2016 O.Henry story about Dunstan (ohenrymag.com/the-nutty-professor/). He looked up the piece, refreshed his memory and mail-ordered four small Dunstan trees as a novelty for his Randolph County farm.

The following year, David learned that some Walmart garden centers stocked Dunstan trees seasonly. To save shipping costs and land bigger trees, he drove to Sanford and stuffed his wife’s Audi hatchback with four more Dunstan trees, this time 8-footers.

“They barely fit,” he says of the rolling forest.

He planted some of his Dunstan trees on his farm and some in Green Hill Cemetery. He persuaded a friend in Fisher Park to tuck in three trees around his home.

Now, sitting in Kenerly’s office, David appealed to GC to give Dunstan his due by planting his trees on campus and remembering him with a ceremony and plaque.

“It wasn’t really a hard sell,” remembers David, ever the insurance salesman. “They came back and said, ‘Yeah, we like this idea.’”

So, on Nov. 7, a home game and senior day for The Pride football team, the college will honor Dunstan. That morning, GC officials will oversee the planting of four Dunstan Chestnuts on campus: two in front of the admissions house at the corner of West Market and College Place and two more at the southwest corner of campus along McGee Street, skirting the newly opened Downtown Greenway.

Another pair of Dunstan trees will go in the Fisher Park front yard of the college president’s home on Bessemer Avenue.

For the occasion, Chestnut Hill Nursery will donate young trees to the college.

Planted in pairs for pollination, the trees should bear nuts in three to five years. At maturity, in 15 to 20 years, the trees could reach 50 to 70 feet tall with a spread of 40 feet — big enough to provide sustenance, shade, swings and stories for decades to come. A chestnut tree can live to be 100 years old.

The public is invited to witness the plantings and to dig their own holes. Homeowners can order Dunstan Chestnuts online from the locally-owned Guilford Garden Center.

Bob Wallace says his grandfather would be happy about the recognition and happier yet that his trees are being put in the ground generations after he developed them.

Professor Dunstan foresaw that his discovery would help to repopulate the country with chestnuts, which accounted for a quarter of all hardwoods before the blight. Born in 1901, he witnessed the die-off while visiting the North Carolina mountains as a young man, and he grieved the loss of beauty.

“The mountains were white with chestnut blossoms,” he told his grandson. David never met Dunstan, but he’s confident that his dad’s mom, Eva Phelps Craft, a local public health officer and well-connected naturalist, would have known Dunstan and his wife.

His grandmother would be proud, David says, that he carries on the family’s activist bent and their Earth-loving labors.

Bob Wallace says the same of Dunstan. Like his grandfather — and everyone who plants a tree that likely will outlive them— Wallace sees a day beyond his own horizon.

He trusts the fruit.

“The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree,” the 70-year-old Wallace notes.

Or in this case, the chestnut. OH

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

2026 Department Life's Funny

Birdwatch

An Unexpected Guest

The wandering little blue

By Susan Campbell

Late summer can be an especially exciting time for birders — we need not travel far to find unexpected visitors. Sometimes weather events cause individuals to be blown off track and show up in the neighborhood. These lost birds may stick around for mere hours but, in other instances, it may be a more deliberate response to environmental conditions that brought them our way.

One bird that frequently appears in wet areas later in the summer is the little blue heron. And it may be more than one who show up. Furthermore, they’re not usually blue. Young of the year, which these inland wanderers almost always are, are actually white. Except for the very tips of the wing feathers — usually a challenge to make out — these birds are covered with white feathers. Unlike the great or snowy egret, which also may turn up in the Piedmont or Sandhills this time of year, the bill of these small herons is pinkish or grayish, and the legs are greenish.

All of these white waders may be spotted in shallow wet habitats: streams, small ponds, water hazards, retention areas, etc. Little blue herons may be by themselves, mixed in with other white, long-legged waders, or even seen with the much larger great blue heron. Little blues can be identified by their more upright foraging posture, their slow, deliberate movements, and a downward angled bill as they stalk prey. Unlike other smaller waders, they will hunt in deeper water, often all the way up to their bellies. Little blues watch not only for small fish but frogs and crayfish as well as large aquatic insects. It is thought that their coloration allows them to blend in inconspicuously with similar white species, allowing the association to provide protection from predators. Also, it has been found that little blues are significantly more successful predators when foraging alongside great egrets. These larger birds are likely to stir up the water as they move after underwater prey, which can flush a meal in the direction of nearby little blues.

It takes these herons at least a year to develop adult plumage — not unlike white ibis, which also breed along our coast (but who sport dark plumage their first summer and fall). They may have a pied appearance for a time in late winter or early spring. By April they will be a slatey blue-gray all over with a handsome bluish bill. Unlike our other wading birds, they lack showy head or neck plumes. They are also unique in having projections on their middle toes that form a comb, which is used as an aid when grooming.

Unfortunately, this species has experienced an alarming drop in population numbers over the past half-century across North America. Loss of coastal wetland habitat, continued declines in water quality, as well as being eliminated as a nuisance in fish hatcheries, all are thought to contribute to the decline. So, be sure to stop and appreciate these stately birds should you come across one. 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

Wandering Billy

Grindhouse Comes to Greensboro

Dick Clark’s descent upon the Carolina Theatre

By Billy Ingram

“I don’t make culture. I sell it.” — Dick Clark

My pal, Nathan Stringer, casually mentioned that his grandfather, Clint Stringer, was in a major 1960s motion picture that happened to be shot in Ramseur, between Greensboro and Asheboro, and it starred American Bandstand’s Dick Clark and country music legend Merle Haggard. Curiosity caused me to delve into what is a most bizarre story.

Ramseur holds a funky footnote in motion picture history, harkening back to 1939 when Lexington-based itinerate filmmaker H. Lee Waters positioned his silent 16mm camera downtown, for recording just plain folks scurrying around. All in all, Waters’ six-year-long effort chronicled over 250 Depression-era Southern communities, including our own fair city, in a series he called Movies of Local People.

Jump cut three decades forward to the summer of ’68, when Clark and Haggard made their acting debuts in Killers Three, a moonshine-fueled, hicksploitation flick filmed entirely in Ramseur (population then 1,200, maybe up to 2,000 today!), nearby Coleridge and Asheboro. Set in 1947, it’s a cinematic melee of rednecks, leathernecks, roughnecks and revenuers grinding gears at breakneck speeds, eating dust and chasing modified Mopars and Ford flatheads down backroads caked in Carolina clay.

Killers Three was produced and co-written for American International Pictures (AIP) by TV DJ Clark. With a budget of $400,000, Clark intentionally took the low road. “I saw Bonnie and Clyde before it became popular and told the writer [Michael Fisher], ‘Let’s go to work and do something like this right away.’” While originally conceived to be more bloodstained and murderous, Hollywood was taking considerable heat for promoting violent content causing producers to downshift a bit following the assassination of Robert Kennedy that summer.

Clark, euphemistically known in the ’60s as “America’s Oldest Teenager,” is just plain goofy in this misguided acting foray; bespectacled and sporting an ill-fitting pornstache, he delivers a stupefyingly monochromatic performance as Roger, an old Army buddy of the film’s protagonist, Johnny. In the leading role of Johnny (are all B-movie reprobates named Johnny?) is Robert Walker Jr., seen two years earlier as a raging teen with psionic powers in “Charlie X,” the second episode of Star Trek. Despite being the son of a Southern California movie star, Walker is surprisingly believable as a post-war Southerner.

Diane Varsi, a 1957 Academy-Award nominee for Peyton Place, plays Johnny’s love interest, Carol. She also starred in another 1968 AIP release, counterculture cult classic Wild in the Streets.

Cast against type, Haggard, former inmate and founding icon of Outlaw Country, portrays a heroic highway patrolman. Haggard wrote two tunes for this project. One of which is Mighty Merle’s signature anthem, “Mama Tried,” an autobiographical tale about turning 21 in prison despite a mother’s best efforts. “Mama Tried” became a smash pop and country single while Killers Three was in post-production.

Bruce Kessler was hired to direct on the basis of serving as second-unit director for Howard Hawks’ 1965 film, Red Line 7000. In that movie, he captured high-speed stock car paint-trading and cyclonic, fiery spinouts, his cameras trained on racing superstars Junior Johnson, A. J. Foyt and even Richard Petty steering his No. 43 ’64 Plymouth.

Dozens of residents in and around Ramseur were rounded up as supporting characters, like the tipsy blonde lady downing shots in a honky-tonk saloon and lamenting her ex: “I keep tryin’ to remember what he’s got that I don’t. And then I remember . . .”

The aforementioned Clint Stringer landed a plum role as corrupt Sheriff Homer Brown. Photographed leaning against one of two 1942 Chevrolet Fleetline Aerosedans destined to be flung forcefully off a bridge and into the Deep River’s muddy waters, Clint popped up in newspapers around the state, making him somewhat of a local celebrity already.

Edited with a tire iron yet beautifully lit and photographed, the movie comes across as a dead-end attempt at a low-rent Thunder Road. As a date night Drive-In attraction, however, Killers Three scores with boisterous bursts of action juxtaposed with romantic interludes for inciting car-lot canoodling. There’s an abundance of banjo plunking by The Strangers and a feature-length ballad performed by Haggard, serving as narration that peppers the indecipherable saltine-noir storyline.

What isn’t apparent, aside from hinted-at military service shenanigans, is what a cocksure country boy like Johnny finds attractive about a shifty, narcissistic city slicker like Roger, the kind of repressed personality who takes a gal out for a wilderness row-boat ride dressed like Niles Crane. Before long, women in Johnny’s orbit begin whispering. Loudly.

Five months after filming wrapped, Clark and his Tinsel Town contingent checked into the new Sheraton Motor Inn at South Elm and I-85, on Monday, November 11, one day before the Carolina Theatre’s world premiere of Killers Three. Normally, when Hollywood-types blow into town bringing snow along with them, that powder is measured in grams. This time, it was measured in inches. With rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning throughout the night, Greensboro awoke Tuesday to 4 inches of sleet and snow, leaving 20,000 homes without power.

Undeterred, Tuesday morning began with a press conference held at the Sheraton, followed by a catered affair for the media. Downtown that afternoon at 4:30, an aroma of roasting peanuts, room temperature taffy and faint wisps of patchouli permeating the air, a throng of Bandstand fans eagerly greeted Clark as he strode toward Sears’ record center. He flashed his collegiate Colgate smile and spent over an hour scrawling autographs across Killers Three soundtrack LPs.

Following that, cast members and dignitaries were feted at a pre-premiere barbecue-and-beer hoedown at Smith’s Ranch Motel on Battleground. At 7 p.m., attendees were transported to Greene Street, where arc lights strafed the skies and a musical pre-show was already underway outside the Carolina Theatre.

Clark walked the red carpet alongside Tony York, the 5-year-old cast as Johnny and Carol’s love child. Despite his every line of dialogue being ineptly overdubbed, the preschooler was inexplicably signed to a five-year contract by Clark, who gushed, “If ever a star was born in North Carolina, it will be little Tony York.” Ava Gardner wasn’t available for comment.

The actual breakout star was none other than Clint Stringer, besieged by autograph seekers following the screening. “I’ll tell you something though,” he confessed to the crowd, “I sure didn’t think I looked that ugly and stupid.” Stringer was already well known to Greensboro residents as the “Ice Cream Man” who began peddling frozen treats down neighborhood streets in the 1950s, riding astride an Indian Motorcycle with a refrigerated sidecar.

The afterparty at the Sheraton wailed into the wee hours. Stringer and his wife, Josephine, freely imbibed at the open bar before returning to their home in Level Cross. He had professed a desire to pursue acting — he clearly had the talent — so AIP arranged for him and his wife to fly to Hollywood and explore that possibility. The couple got blotto the night before and missed their flight. In true Grindhouse fashion, during one of their frequent drunken brawls just a few years later Clint fatally found himself on the wrong end of Josephine’s ire/gun, according to Nathan.

In 1992, another feature, Children of the Corn: The Final Sacrifice, was filmed extensively in Ramseur and Coleridge, utilizing many of the same locations as Killers Three.

Despite being a close-knit textile town whose primary employer folded over six decades ago, one gets the feeling that photogenic Ramseur remains camera ready for her next closeup. To paraphrase Norma Desmond: It’s not the towns that got small, it’s the pictures! OH

Billy Ingram’s book about Greensboro, EYE ON GSO, is available wherever books are sold or pulped.

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Alamanc September 2026

By Ashley Walshe

Here it comes, that slow, sweet kiss. That luscious ache. That dance that leaves you breathless.

September is a fleeting lover. You know in your bones that she’ll leave you wanting, but you’re here for it. Agony and ecstasy are intertwined.

The light has washed everything golden. In the garden, long-tailed skippers flit from ironweed to aster; butterfly pea to goldenrod; late-summer bloomers to early autumn wildflowers. Never mind that the zinnias are fading. Coneflower skeletons whisper of what’s to come.

At the forest edge, muscadine vines drip with fruit, dark and plump. You pluck one, sun-warmed and pungent, and hold it in your palm. Can you feel the wild pulse of summer? Allow it to sync with your own beating heart.

You don’t yet know that the whippoorwill has departed for warmer climes; that the mantis has released her mass of eggs and, in her final act as mother, swaddled them in a papier-mâché womb. The bees are humming tunes of natural wonders, and you’ve anchored yourself here in this sun-soaked moment.

Indulge your senses. Press the warm grape to your eager lips. Sink your teeth into its tart, leathery skin. Taste the bitter punch, the earthy musk, the pleasant burst of sugary-sweetness.

When you open your eyes — no, you hadn’t realized you’d closed them — a tidal wave of swallows casts a shadow on the quiet earth. This is the moment you remember: summer is slipping from sight.

You reach for another muscadine, willing time to slow. Let the bitter punch linger as summer fades. Let the juicy pulp sweeten the sudden ache. Let it all be true at once.

Apple Season

Galas, Honeycrisps and Ginger Golds. Red and Golden Delicious. Cortlands and Crispins. Jonagolds.

When life gives you ripe local apples by the bushel and peck, bust out the cinnamon for sauces, pies and chutneys. And when it comes to cooking with your favorite autumn fruit, keep in mind: Not all apples are created equal. As their names suggest, some stay firm and crisp (essential for baking), while others cook down quick for bright and smooth sauces (Golden Delicious, Cortland and Jonagold).

Experiment with firm-and-soft combos to up your pie game, but save Red Delicious for snacks and fresh salads, as the heat will make flavorless mush of them.

All the months are crude experiments,
out of which the perfect September is made.

— Virginia Woolf

Goodbye, Hello

Summer farewell is blooming in the pinelands and coastal plains. Bull elks are bugling in Cataloochee — a quiet valley nestled in our state’s Great Smokies. And somewhere between them — perhaps your own garden — a praying mantis has just devoured her mate. Such is the season of endings and beginnings. Farewell, summer. Welcome, wild and whistling autumn. OH

2026 Almanac Department

Pleasures of Life Dept.

A Hoot in the Neighborhood

The owls of Nottingham come home to roost

By Ed Hines

Photographs by Shelton Styers

Shelton Ayers Styers and I became next-door neighbors on Nottingham Road in the fall of 1954, just weeks before Hurricane Hazel hit Greensboro. While we both grew up and left home, we eventually returned to our respective childhood homes, she with her husband, Stan, and I with my wife, Carolyn. Then, in the spring of 2022, we found ourselves unexpectedly involved with another family altogether.

Somewhere around mid-March of that year, Carolyn and I were out in our front yard when we heard quite a ruckus coming from crows who were perched in the magnolia tree in the park, just across the creek. Almost immediately after, the crows chased a sizable bird into one of the two large beech trees in our yard. That bird was a barred owl.

In the days that followed, we determined that activity had been taking place in a cavity high up in the beech nearest our driveway. Shelton and Stan grew interested, too, and Shelton, an excellent amateur photographer, began taking snapshots with her trusty Nikon D700.

She captured the mother owl, filling the opening to the cavity itself. Later, we noticed, that owl began leaving the site regularly, often returning with something in her beak for feeding. Once, while she was away, we spotted the downy feathers of a baby owlet for the first time, halfway back in the cavity. Soon, a second owlet was seen lurking behind the first.

By the middle of April, the owlets were preparing to leave their nest, boldly but barely emerging from the cavity and testing their wings. Soon, our driveway was a neighborhood hotspot as daily walkers passed by and, along with us, checked in on the owlets’ progress.

When they finally made the leap out of the tree, it was not a pretty sight! Barred owlets, we’d read, can’t just fly out of their nest. They typically do something called “branching,” where they make their way to lower, smaller limbs of their host tree before falling to the ground below. In this case, that was our driveway.

Owlets, we learned, then have to go through an arduous process of making their way to other trees, where they climb their way upward once again. The mother owl is always nearby, following her brood’s every move! Flying lessons follow for several weeks after that. Papa owl, also very involved, delivers meals around the clock and is a very feisty protector. We’ve often seen him ward off disruptive crows.

We were all so invested that it felt like a personal victory when those owlets flew the coop for good. We waited and watched excitedly the following year after learning that owls often return to nest in the same tree.

But nothing happened. We’d all but given up hope when, this past February, Carolyn spotted the mama owl.

Once again, neighbors came together to witness the wonder of nature in our driveway. We watched as a single owlet matured and eventually took that first leap; old friends reconnected and new ones were made. Shelton, ever the photographer, documented it all.

We’re hoping it won’t be another four years before the owls make their nest in our front yard, but, as Shelton and I both know, you can always come home to old friends. OH

Ed Hines, a Greensboro native, recently completed a memoir dating back to the early 1940s when his parents and Shelton’s parents, who were close friends, bought adjoining Nottingham lots for $1,000 each.

2026 Department

Home Grown

Another Piece of Poundcake Please

No judgment here

By Cynthia Adams

The path wending through pine, oaks and scrubby cedars from my grandmother’s house to her neighbor Mildred’s was worn smooth by heavy usage. My grandmother — “Miz Pat” to others and Mama Patty to family — would wrap a freshly baked pound cake, cookies or pie in a fresh tea towel and set off for a visit.

The shortcut spared them the hazards of walking along a narrow asphalt road and creeping along the verge. In the warm months, farmers on combines and tractors dominated the former dirt road my grandmother had entreated Gov. Terry Sanford to pave in the 1960s. Once paved, she was overjoyed, convinced that her one-woman letter-writing campaign was successful.

More curious, still, given such activism had taken root in her. For Mama Patty never once drove on a public road.

My father mopped tears of laughter from his eyes, telling us kids how she once rammed my grandfather’s lumbering, black Plymouth straight through the sturdy wall of the barn as he watched helplessly on, snuffing out all desire to become licensed. She swiftly sold the Plymouth to her preacher.

Alternating their visits, Mama Patty and Mildred would wait until Mildred’s young daughters had caught the school bus before trekking through the woods for a cup of coffee and chat.

Mildred and Mama Patty shared their bounty. They also shared the happinesses and pains of their many neighbors.

Typically, they were first to prepare meals for the bereaved. The first to help when there was hardship in Goose Creek, a farming community and namesake of the nearby creek, which threaded past fields of soybeans, tall corn, cotton, wheat and alfalfa.

Spring and summers, with planting, gathering and harvesting, presented little idle time. In the colder months, the fallow fields that lay outside their houses grew brown, as stalks crumpled along the rows. Even then, the resilient pair of women seldom rested, helping each other preserve something with every passing season. Come autumn, there would be vegetables and fruit to can, sauerkraut to prepare in a stone churn as the cabbage came in, and hominy made from corn in the same washhouse with a heat-fired basin where my grandmother had long ago made lye soap.

Baking was never-ending. Mama Patty’s kitchen was heavily imbued with the honeyed perfume of butter, vanilla and sugar. The white-enamel GE oven barely cooled before she began peeling knotty Granny Smith apples picked from the orchard and rolling out another pastry.

She was a substantially sized woman who preferred simple housedresses and aprons, along with navy slip-on Keds. Mama Patty kept her short, tightly curled hair dyed blackish-blue by her hairdresser daughter at Franklin’s Beauty Shop in Monroe. Her glasses would be Warby Parker-hip today, but they were owlish at the time, magnifying lively, black eyes. She never left home without a fresh hankie and a pearl-handled pocketknife in an apron pocket alongside a tube of Revlon — her sole concession to vanity.

Mildred, at least 20 years younger than my grandmother, preferred capris and blouses, favoring white Keds that were kept spotless. She, too, wore her brown hair cropped short and little makeup on her tanned face. While not a conventional beauty, Mildred had an expressive, open face with deep dimples. Indigo-blue eyes, crinkled by her constant smile and quick laughter, made her deeply attractive.

She was too young to have weathered the hardships Mama Patty had survived — the loss of a child, the premature death of a spouse, the ravages of cancer and the pangs of a cozy nest emptying. She was inclined towards a sunny, empathetic nature.

Mildred’s modesty, like her baking, even rivaled my grandmother’s.

They had instantly adored one another, although Mama Patty was more serious in nature.

Both women were Baptists, albeit one was a Primitive Baptist and the other, a Missionary Baptist. I loved it best when the two argued religion. I’d sit in the child’s rocking chair in the kitchen, near my grandmother’s Kennedy Rocker, and eavesdrop.

They discussed predestination and the particulars of the afterlife. Primitive Baptists, a Calvinistic tradition, grew out of the many Scots-Irish who settled in the South. Theologically, they accepted predestination, unlike Missionary Baptists, who emphasized free will and evangelism.

“Miss Pat, if I believed as you do, I don’t know what I’d do,” Mildred, a Missionary Baptist, would murmur, a smile curling her lip. “I probably would never sleep another wink.”

Mama Patty would gently counter as they argued the “doctrines of grace.” Their voices would always be even as they graciously disagreed. And so, it would go: pondering, parrying.

The two would proceed in this way, hearing each other out. It was a powerful life lesson in what neighborly love actually meant.

Eventually, one or the other, usually my grandmother, would announce, “Let’s have some poundcake!” and the give-and-take would end.

Mildred would pour strong coffee from the well-worn percolator on the stove as my grandmother served.

It was years before I understood that, ideologically and politically, these women were poles apart. My grandparents were FDR standard bearers; educated and bonded over a love of stringed instruments. My grandfather became an educator and community leader.

Mildred and her husband, Hughlan, were none of those things. Yet nothing but goodwill had passed between them all.

I think of their ongoing kitchen table diplomacy as remarkable in a world where people seldom seek to bridge differences. Such neighborliness, such kind and generous acts of spirit, rarely make headlines or inspire television programs (except for Steve Hartman’s Kindness 101).

And yet, Miz Pat and Mildred forged a lifetime of pleasures while discussing life’s mysteries. The two remained devoted neighbors until their respective ends.

As my grandmother lay dying, Mildred’s warm hand sought hers, and they clasped.

Now, I, too, seek such a path through a dense wood, in search of such connection. Especially when we believe in divergent things.

And I imagine a Ted Talk, featuring Miz Pat and Mildred, two masters of communication, explaining how such wondrous things can commence with the simplest of gestures.

They can begin with a poundcake. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine. Email her at inklyadams@aol.com.

2026 Department Home Grown

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Virgo

(August 23 – September 22)

We all know you’re good at putting things in tidy little boxes. But not everything is meant to fit. Let things get a bit messy this month. The world won’t end. In fact, with the new moon in your sign on Sept. 10, get ready for a system reboot sure to reveal a higher perspective. Control is an illusion. Pump the breaks on the color-coded spreadsheets and take inventory on what really matters. You’ll be delighted by an unexpected shift of priorities.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Take the back roads.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

It’s time to get your groove back.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Loosen your grip, darling.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Hint: Ace of Base.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Keep them guessing.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Step away from your comfort zone.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Experiment with box breathing.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Just put yourself out there.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Double the recipe.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Stop hitting replay

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Stop thinking the fun out of it. 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 the dream realm.

2026 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

State of Mind

Our Unique Beauty

The greening of home

By Tommy Tomlinson

Illustration by Gary Palmer

This year my wife and I drove to Michigan for summer vacation. (July is way cooler up there than down here.) One day we were cruising on a highway somewhere south of Mackinaw City, headed for the Upper Peninsula. We rolled through mile after mile of farmland and trees. There was no way to count every shade of green.

In some ways it felt familiar. I’ve been down similar roads all over North Carolina. But it wasn’t . . . quite . . . right, like a picture that had been run through the copier one too many times. The shades of green up there weren’t the shades of green back home. My GPS — not the one on the screen, the one in my gut — told me I was somewhere else. I would’ve known that even if I had just awakened from a Rip Van Winkle nap.

It got me to thinking: What makes a landscape distinctive? And in particular, what makes North Carolina’s landscape distinctive? What are the clues that tell us where we are?

I’m not really thinking about pride of place, although maybe that’s part of it. I grew up in Georgia, down on the coast. When we go back to visit, and we cross the Savannah River coming down from South Carolina, I look over at Alix and say: Ahhhh. We’re in God’s country.

(Sometimes I say it if I’m the only one in the car.)

But the North Carolina marsh is different than the Georgia marsh — and the South Carolina marsh, for that matter. North Carolina marshes, to me, feel smaller and more scattered. They play peek-a-boo with you as you drive down toward the coast. They even smell different. Every marsh has a salty funk — it comes from dead plants and animals decaying in the mud and washed by the tides. North Carolina’s marshes smell a little cleaner somehow. Maybe it just feels that way to me because I grew up near pulp mills in Georgia. Millworkers like to say it’s the smell of money. I guess that’s possible, if money smelled like rotten eggs.

North Carolina beach sand is its own thing, too. The sand on the Outer Banks is what I think of as sandbox sand — tan and clean. Georgia sand is grayer and a little muddier. Florida Gulf Coast sand, down around Panama City, is sugar-white and crunches under your feet. I would not bet money on this, but part of me thinks that if you put me on one of those beaches blindfolded, my toes would be able to figure out where I was.

(FYI, the Michigan beaches were nicer than I expected . . . they reminded me of North Carolina’s. Lots of rocks in the water, though.)

Coming off the coast, the natural feature I think about most in North Carolina is the longleaf pine forest. The strands we have in the Sandhills and down toward Wilmington are the northern edge of the longleaf habitat (it stretches south and west in scattered spots all the way to Texas).

Most of the woods we see from the highway are dark and thick. A longleaf pine forest feels like a planned community. The trees are spaced wide, giving one another room to grow. The wiregrass underneath is a tasteful carpet. That orderly design depends on fire to come through every so often — a spring cleaning of sorts. When the natural cycles line up, what’s left is astonishing.

Years ago, a guide walked me a mile or so into a longleaf pine forest down in the southeast corner of the state. We were looking for Venus flytraps. You might know that a little circle down there — maybe a 75-mile radius from Wilmington — is the only place on earth where Venus flytraps grow naturally in the wild. We got to a tiny pond — no more than a big puddle, really — where clumps of flytraps grew a few yards off the bank. Not too dry, not too wet. If all you know of flytraps is Little Shop of Horrors, you might walk right past one without ever seeing it. They’re small and close to the ground. In the wild, most of the traps are no bigger than dimes.

You might also know that the tiny pond I described was probably a Carolina bay — one of thousands of shallow depressions strung along the East Coast all the way up to Delaware and New Jersey. Most of them are ovals aligned northwest to southeast. There are many scientific theories about how they came to be; the most intriguing theory is that they’re the result of a long-ago meteorite shower.

Of course, those are the scientific theories.

But when you’re standing next to one, surrounded by Venus flytraps, inside a longleaf pine forest that looks like it was designed by an interior decorator . . . your mind does start to wonder if North Carolina is some sort of Del Webb development for future retiring aliens.

I realize, at this point, that we have wandered far afield. This started out being about what makes North Carolina’s natural splendor distinctive, and ended up being about what might make us the next Area 51.

Let’s just leave it here for now: Our beauty is unique. If you’ve lived in North Carolina long, you can smell it and feel it and taste it. It doesn’t mean we’re better than everybody else — although if you want to claim that, go ahead. It just means that there are some things our bodies just know. And when we’re in North Carolina, we’re someplace special.

I hope the human race is not the only one to have figured this out. 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

Simple Life

Sweet September Lessons

From freshman tomfoolery

By Jim Dodson

Illustration by Gerry O’Neill

During the years we lived on the coast of Maine, I was always amused by the visible relief and joy locals expressed over the arrival of September.

Every year like clockwork, it marks the departure of summer tourists in Maine when tens of thousands of vacationers pack up and head home to the lower 48, leaving Maine bank accounts flush and pockets of local merchants brimming with cash.

With Labor Day weekend done and dusted, the annual sight of the Maine Turnpike backed up for 25 miles — folks “from away” creeping through the southbound tolls in vehicles loaded down with suitcases, bicycles and kayaks — is a sign of liberation to many Mainers.

Within days of the annual exodus, the price of the average shore dinner drops by at least 30%, town traffic returns to its sleepy pace, and locals begin to venture out from their hiding places to shop and greet neighbors and friends they haven’t seen since Memorial Day.

Up on our forested hill west of town, I had my own way of welcoming September. Afternoons were visibly shorter and the abundant wildlife around us — like their counterparts in town — became much more visible and active. A herd of white-tailed deer and a lady porcupine that terrified our dogs never failed to waddle into my garden, finishing off my daylilies, hosta plants and ostrich ferns. And almost every time I walked down our long, gravel lane to pick up the mail, a gorgeous ring-necked pheasant or a congregation of wild turkeys would cross my path, unconcerned by my presence in our peaceable September kingdom.

Down here in North Carolina, the autumnal equinox that arrives around September 22 is a far more subtle affair, as white bucks and seersucker are put away even before the intense heat of summer begins to fade. Swimming pools close for the year, and the young ones — to mom’s delight — go back to school while the older kids trek off to college.

Last September, a former university suite-mate passing through town invited me for coffee. His grandson was headed off to college. With a smile, he reminded me of my chaotic start as a freshman at East Carolina in 1971. It briefly became something of a freshman dorm legend.

My folks dropped me off at my College Hill dorm with a window fan, my bicycle and 50 bucks for the student dining program. The first thing I did was hop on my bike and follow a winding country road to New Bern, mesmerized by the flat green landscape of eastern North Carolina. I had no idea that it was a 40-mile trip each way, however, and it wore me out like an old shoe. As a result, I slept through the first day of mandatory freshman orientation.

A few days later, I foolishly allowed new friends in the dorm to convince me to try out for the school’s club football team. There was a rumor that incoming football coach Sonny Randle was looking to find a handful of walk-ons to use as practice squad dummies. In a galaxy long ago and far away (junior high days), I’d been the starting cornerback on a city-league championship team. Foolish sports dreams die hard.

Not 10 minutes into tryouts, I stepped on a rubber kicking tee and tore the cartilage in my right knee. One of Randle’s highly regarded recruits on an adjacent practice field helped me hobble to the fieldhouse. His name was Danny Kepley. The coaches were already taking notice of him. We chatted a bit and he wished me well.

I returned to school on crutches after Labor Day, just in time to commit my third stupid act that faraway September. A pair of friends from back home and I met a trio of cute girls at Greenville’s (in)famous Elbow Room that Friday night, and they invited us to a party down the road in Little Washington. Freshman couldn’t have cars at school in those days, but these girls had a new VW Bug because they were sophomores.

On the way to Little Washington, our “dates” demanded beer. So, we purchased a couple six-packs and wound up at a gorgeous house overlooking the Pamlico River. My date’s name was Trisha. Suspiciously, her parents, who owned the home, were away. As my buddies and their dates wandered off to other parts of the house, Trisha and I settled on the couch, my sore leg propped up, to watch the Miss America Pageant. Suddenly, Trisha’s annoying little brother appeared, announcing, “Trisha, Jerry is outside. And he’s really mad!”

Jerry turned out to be Trisha’s boyfriend. She hadn’t lied. She was indeed a sophomore — in high school. Jerry had brought along half a dozen beer-buzzed pals to defend his girlfriend’s blemished honor. Having realized our horrible mistake, I hobbled out on crutches, hoping to smooth things over. The negotiations did not go well and took a worrying turn when Jerry snapped the antenna of Trisha’s VW Bug and waved it at me. At that point, my college buddies appeared and Trisha burst into tears, wailing that her daddy was going to murder her when he got home.

Mercifully, a police car rolled up. When the officer learned that we were just a trio of stupid college freshmen, he ordered us into his car, probably saving us from getting murdered.

He drove us to the edge of town and put us out. It was a nice September night and only 23 miles back to campus. We walked for several hours until the sun began to come up. Somewhere after sunrise, a drunk in a weaving Cadillac picked us up and dropped us at the bottom of College Hill. I got back to my dorm as my new roommate was heading out for breakfast. He wondered where I’d been all night.

“Learning I’m not a good party guy,” I said. A few days later, I swore off beer, joined the school newspaper and soon became The Fountainhead’s columnist and features editor.

Forty years later, on another memorable September Southern evening, I was about to give a fundraising speech at Wayne Community College in Goldsboro, when my host said, “There’s a guy who wants to say hello to you.”

It was Danny Kepley. During his playing years at ECU, Danny became an All-American linebacker known for crushing tackles, earning the nickname “Captain Crunch.” Drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, Danny chose to join the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League and went on to lead them to six Grey Cup championships as MVP of the league.

I asked him if he remembered helping a foolish fellow freshman off the practice field way back when.

“I think so,” he replied, pointing out that his memory was a bit foggy from a career of issuing crushing hits. “What I remember most is your stories in the school paper. I liked them. And now, you are a famous sportswriter about golf.”

And then Captain Crunch added with a smile, “So, we both did kinda OK, I guess.”

“Yes, we did,” I agreed. OH

Jim Dodson is founding editor of O.Henry.

2026 Department Simple Life