Life of Jane

The Sporting Life

How to enjoy nature with a 12-year-old

 

By Jane Borden

Iím not a competitive person. I’m probably the least competitive of people, if you ranked us, if being noncompetitive were something to win. Not that I care.

When my 12-year-old nephew and I shared a small all-terrain vehicle during a guided drive through the woods of Virginia, and he said to me, “You have to pass everyone. We have to get to the front!,” I agreed only for his benefit. This is childish behavior I don’t typically indulge. But I am a good aunt. In fact, I am probably the best aunt of all aunts (or even uncles) anywhere.

We were at Primland, a hunting resort in Virginia, to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. My sister rented five ATVs, each one occupied by an adult driver and one child. We were to drive single file, behind a guide in a lead car, followed by a second guide in the rear. The paths were narrow, the terrain treacherous. It was safer to follow the rules. But impressing a tween is also important. According to some people. So I’ve heard.

Still, I told Franklin we would see how it went, that I would only jump ahead if it were safe to do. I was rational. I was probably the most rational person there. Mostly, though, I didn’t want to initiate the race. If you start it and don’t win it, you’re an even bigger loser because you can’t claim you never cared. Disinterest is key to competitions, including those determining the least competitive person.

Therefore I would wait for someone else to start. While Franklin continued his pleas for me to race, he had no idea we were already winning.

About 10 minutes into the trip, on a stretch of service road, my brother-in-law, Wes, popped out of line, sped up and passed us. He had been in third place — I mean third in line — with my cart pulling up second, and my other brother-in-law, Marc, in the front. Until, in one swift move, Wes passed us both. He led the pack. For a moment. Riding Wes’s energy and capitalizing on Marc’s dejection, I shot out and passed Marc, retaking second place —I mean second position.

Franklin was elated. He hopped in his seat, pumped his fists and squealed like a toddler. I’ve never seen him that happy, and I’ve spent nine Christmas mornings with him. What I’m saying is, “Suck it, Santa.”

But before long, Franklin turned desperate again. If we still weren’t winning, we were losing. I wanted him to understand that this activity was about enjoying beautiful surroundings and spending leisure time with family. Instead, I said, “Technically, we are in the same position we were at the start, so we’ve lost nothing. Borden, on the other hand was in first and is now in third: He’s the real loser.” Franklin’s face took light, and then did mine. The smile of a child enjoying his younger brother’s misfortune is a memory to last a lifetime.

Unlike Franklin, however, I truly was there for nature: to feel the fresh air blow across my face as I sped past my brother-in-law’s vehicle, to hear the sound of crunching leaves as we veered off the road to do so, and, Oh look, it’s a black bear — tricked you, coming through!

But then Marc caught us unaware. Although I slammed on the gas, my peripheral vision had spied the nose of his ATV too late. We couldn’t accelerate in time. Franklin and I were now third in line, and officially losing. Granted, my two sisters were behind us, so Franklin and I weren’t technically last. But Lou and Tucker weren’t trying to race. Like I said, if you don’t care, you can’t lose. Also, since we’re being technical, Lou no longer drove an ATV on account of wrecking hers almost immediately.

Now Franklin became repetitive. “Pass them!” “Get in front!” “Go! Go! Go!” Even on narrow, wooded trails, as the vehicles launched over rocks and logs, he badgered me to race, so blinded by a desire to win, that he couldn’t see the trees we would hit if I tried.

I wanted to ask, “What is wrong with you?” But I reserve that question for losers.

“Franklin, I need you to trust me,” I said. ”I have to wait for the right moment. If we try but can’t get in, and have to fall back in line, we’ll look like fools. If you think you might fail, don’t try.” Excellent advice for kids. I must’ve read it in a children’s book. Or maybe I heard Obama say it.

As we approached a promontory, I saw my window. The lead guide made a huge U-turn on a flat grassy area. Rather than follow the circumference line he’d cut, which Marc and Wes already had, I cut the diameter and pulled into line directly behind our guide. This was one of the proudest moments of my life.

We all exited our vehicles to take a breather and enjoy the view. By view, I mean Franklin crowing and dirt talking Borden and his cousins. Careful, grasshopper, I thought: The game is not yet won.

Back in on our vehicles, I explained to Franklin that our strategy must now shift from predator to prey. Instead of seeking vulnerabilities in opponents we chased, we were the vulnerable ones. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, indeed — because the king’s brother is always trying to kill him, or at least that’s what I learned from English Lit.

As we entered a trail for our last return run, Franklin was the designated lookout. He would shout if someone tried to overtake us. My job? Ride the guide’s tail. All the way back to the parking lot, I kept within a few feet of the guide’s back bumper. Safety first.

Wes made an effort, more for fun than showmanship — surely he realized our defense was impenetrable — and then we were back at the shed. Had we really won? Won the family ATV tour? The pink didn’t return to my knuckles until every ignition was off. The guide exited his vehicle and said, “You guys were rowdy, huh?”

Borden fell apart in despair. We told him it was all fun and games, that no one actually wins an ATV tour, and that winning isn’t all that important anyway. But everyone knew it wasn’t true.

Borden wouldn’t speak to anyone. He sulked the whole drive home. And then he hid in his room. I felt for him. But at the same time, he should have ridden with me. Next time, pick a winner.   OH

Jane Borden grew up in Greensboro and lives in Los Angeles — not that it’s a competition.

The Omnivorous Reader

The Last Ballad

Wiley Cash creates a model for other writers

 

By D.G. Martin

Readers of this magazine have come to know and admire Wiley Cash as a regular contributor of poignant essays about his family, his work, and his writing.

In the October issue, he gave us a very personal report about the origins of his latest novel, The Last Ballad. He told us that for the past five years he had been “living in a 1929 world of cotton mill shacks, country clubs, segregated railroad cars, and labor organizers with communist sympathies. Everything I know about the craft of writing and the history, culture and politics of America, especially the American South, has gone into this novel.”

Now that the book is out and Cash’s promotional book tour is drawing to an end, it is a good time to take another look at this remarkable story of blended fiction and important history.

When Cash takes us back to 1929 Gaston County’s textile mill country, he forces us to confront real and uncomfortable facts about the brutal conditions workers faced. All the while Cash uses his storytelling gifts to create a moving tale about a real person, textile worker and activist, Ella May Wiggins.

On the frame of this real character, Cash builds a moving story that puts readers in Wiggins’ shoes as she walks the 2 miles every evening from her hovel in Stumptown to American Textile Mill No. 2 in Gaston County’s Bessemer City, works all night in the dirt and dust and clacking noise, and then walks back to tend to the children she has left alone the entire night.

Cash follows her decision to support the strike at Loray Mills, where her ballad singing at worker rallies mobilized audiences more than the speeches of union leaders. He relates how her actions also provoked negative responses from union opponents that led to her death.

In the book’s powerful fourth chapter, Cash compresses the conversion of Ella May from oppressed textile worker to inspirational union hero into one evening. As she rides in the back of a truck from Bessemer City to a pro-strike rally at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, she tells Sophia, a union organizer, about her family’s struggles, the death of her beloved son, and “the weight of her children and their lives upon her heart.”

“Hot damn,” Sophia says. “And you sing too?

“Hell, girl, we hit the jackpot with you. You might be the one we’ve been looking for.”

That evening in Gastonia, in the shadow of the “colossus of the Loray Mill . . . its six stories of red brick illuminated by what seemed to be hundreds of enormous windows that cast an otherworldly pall over the night,” Ella May tells her story to the rally’s crowd and sings a song from her mountain youth that she adapted on the spot.

She began,

“We leave our home in the morning,

We kiss our children good-bye.

While we slave for the bosses,

Our children scream and cry.”

And after several more verses of struggle and woe, she concluded,

“But understand, dear workers,

Our union they do fear,

Let’s stand together, workers

And have a union here.”

When it was over, “people cheered, whistled and pointed, called her name and chanted union slogans. Flashbulbs popped and illuminated ghostly white faces as if lightning had threaded itself through the audience.”

By the end of the evening and the conclusion of the fourth chapter, Ella May has the makings of a legend and a target of the anti-union forces that will bring about her early death.

In the book’s other chapters, Cash introduces us to people who shaped Ella May’s life: her no-good husband John, her no-good boyfriend Charlie, the Goldberg brothers who ran the mill where she worked, her African-American co-worker and neighbor Violet, the union strike leaders, a 12-year-old worker who loses half his hand when it gets caught in the mill’s machinery, and Wiggin’s children as they struggle through hunger and illness.

We also meet an African-American railroad porter, Hampton Haywood, a communist union organizer. Ella May makes an unlikely friendship with Katherine, the wife of mill owner Richard McAdams. Katherine persuades her husband to sneak Hampton out of town to save him from a racist and anti-union lynch mob, risking Richard’s place in the elite social order — and his life.

The picture Cash paints is an ugly one, showing conditions of Wiggins and her fellow workers to be only a step or two away from serfdom and slavery.

Education for the workers or their children was a pipe dream, as Wiggins explained to U.S. Senator Lee Overman, when the union sent her to Washington to tell the union story. Overman had told a striker she should be in school.

“Let me tell you something,” Wiggins shouted at Overman. “I can’t even send my own children to school. They ain’t got decent enough clothes to wear and I can’t afford to buy them none. I make nine dollars a week, and I work all night and leave them shut up in the house all by themselves. I had one of them sick this winter and I had to leave her there just coughing and crying.”

In his first two best-selling novels, A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy, Cash had wide freedom to develop compelling stories and fashion endings that would surprise and satisfy his readers. But he lost this freedom with The Last Ballad. Historical fiction binds its authors to certain facts. There can be no surprise ending. Cash’s readers know from the first page that Ella May is going to be killed.

In Cash’s case, however, the genre does not restrict his great gifts in character development or in developing rich subplots that give his readers a satisfying literary experience. As a bonus they come away with a deeper comprehension of Ella May’s experiences and those of the people on all sides of the Loray labor conflict.

In his October article for this magazine, Cash, who grew up in Gastonia, explained what made writing about Wiggins a difficult task. “How could I possibly put words to the tragedies in her life and compress them on the page in a way that allowed readers to glean some semblance of her struggle?”

Recently he told me, “I wanted to write a novel that was not only true to the facts, but I wanted almost more importantly to write a novel that felt true to the experience as I understood it. When I was writing this novel I was perfectly aware that these are real events. And the facts are all there. The facts in this novel, are indisputable. And I felt like, by getting the facts right, it allowed me a scaffolding to let the characters come alive.”

So how did Cash do?

I agree with Charlotte Observer writer Dannye Romine Powell, who called The Last Ballad Cash’s “finest” novel, one that she suspects “will serve as a model for any writer who wants to transform fact into fiction.”

In creating this model for other writers of historical fiction, Cash met his challenge of putting into words Wiggins’ tragic life and the oppressive times in which she lived.

And those words and the story they tell confirm Cash’s place in the pantheon of North Carolina’s great writers.  OH

D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

Scuppernong Bookshelf

Re-emerge!

Re-engage! Re-read!

The mighty groundhog heralds the season of rebirth

 

Compiled by Brian Lampkin

Letís, for once, truly celebrate the groundhog. On February 2, or thereabouts, Persephone (probably no accident that the sonically similar town of Punxsutawney is the home of the modern rodent stand-in for Persephone) returned from the dead to grant the Greeks another spring. Now it’s up to Phil and his shadow. How many books would a woodchuck read if a woodchuck could read books? Probably quite a lot: Groundhogs are solitary, stick close to home, like to nap in the sun and I imagine hibernation is excellent for reading. One might even finish Finnegan’s Wake.

February 6: North on the Wing: Travels with the Songbird Migration of Spring, by Bruce Beehler (Smithsonian Books, $24.95). It turns out that birds may be better harbingers than groundhogs. Beehler engages readers in the wonders of spring migration and serves as a call for the need to conserve, restore and expand bird habitats to preserve them for future generations of both birds and humans.

February 6: The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures, by Antonio Damasio (Pantheon, $28.95). One of our pre-eminent neuroscientists offers a landmark reflection that spans the biological and social sciences, offering a new way of understanding the origins of life, feeling and culture. We are not separate from the Greeks or from our one-cell origins.

February 6: The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream, by Bryan Mealer (Flatiron Books, $27.99). A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of how America came to be.

February 13: The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, by Bart Ehrman (Simon & Schuster, $28). Ehrman is a professor of religious studies at UNC, and a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity. The American religious historian Elaine Pagels calls it “a vivid, nuanced, and enormously readable narrative.” Groundhog’s Day is one of the few important holidays not absorbed into the Christian calendar.

February 20: The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth, by Michio Kaku (Doubleday, $29.95). Whether in the near future due to climate change and the depletion of finite resources, or in the distant future due to catastrophic cosmological events, we must face the reality that humans will one day need to leave planet Earth to survive as a species. World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku explores in rich, intimate detail the process by which humanity may gradually move away from the planet and develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. Will there be groundhogs on Mars?

February 27: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven Pinker (Viking, $35). Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom. Bill Gates calls it “the most inspiring book I’ve ever read.” The groundhog has seen its shadow!

February 27: The Hush, by John Hart (Thomas Dunne Books, $27.99). OK, I can’t conjure a groundhog connection, but the Edgar Award–winning Hart’s latest book has been getting lavish praise: “The Hush is too captivating, too thrilling and simply an amazing feat of storytelling. I started reading at 4 and finished by 9. I marvel at John’s talents.” — Sally Brewster, Park Road Books (Charlotte). John Hart will appear at Barnes & Noble on February 27 and at Scuppernong Books on February 28.

And don’t forget that these important books from 2017 re-emerge in paperback this month. In a way, these titles come back from the dead as the publicity engine reignites enthusiasm for the buried hardcovers:

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders (February 6), The Bright Hour, by Nina Riggs (February 6), and, of course, Shadowbahn, by Steve Erickson (February 13).  OH

Brian Lampkin is one of the proprietors of Scuppernong Books.

What’s Old Is New

How the historic Guilford Building was reborn as the
most wired structure in downtown Greensboro — and possibly the South

By Billy Ingram     Photographs by Amy Freeman

Shortly before midnight on April 13, 1985, the 200 and 300 blocks of Davie Street, both to the east and west, were almost entirely engulfed in flames. Construction materials located in front of Greensborough Court and directly behind the Guilford Building were fueling much of that conflagration while simultaneously raining fireballs on severely overwhelmed firefighters. Raymond Holliman was one of the men assigned to protect the Guilford Building on the corner of South Elm and Washington, knowing that if they failed to hold the line, commanders on the ground were prepared to move their troops and equipment back to the Carolina Theatre and allow Hamburger Square to burn unabated. Firefighters were successful in their heroic effort, but what Holliman couldn’t know then was that, within a few years, he’d be one of the owners of the very high rise he was instrumental in saving.

Downtown Greensboro was expanding skyward in 1927 when the opulent Guilford Building opened for business. Jefferson Standard’s headquarters had been completed four years earlier. Both skyscrapers were the work of architect Charles C. Hartmann, who outfitted this, the second tallest building in the city at the time, with an exterior consisting of a bold gray terra-cotta base, scored to resemble marble, with the upper floors wrapped in locally sourced brick, all crowned with an impressive terra-cotta cornice.

No one disputes that this Renaissance Revival style superstructure was originally envisioned as a hotel, reflected in the sumptuous imported Italian marble lined lobby and hallways on every floor. It’s perhaps apocryphal but at least one old-timer remembers the Guilford Building as the intended location for the King Cotton Hotel — until the owners quickly realized noise and soot from 100 trains a day pulling into the new depot then under construction would make sleeping there untenable. As the story goes, another King Cotton, similar in design but much less fanciful, was erected two blocks away.

A total of 14 levels, each of the 11 upper floors of the Guilford Building encompasses more than 8,000 square feet of office space. The original main floor tenant in 1927 was Greensboro Bank & Trust, a relatively new concern that started on this very block in smaller digs. Unable to withstand the ravages of the Great Depression, it went belly up after depositors panicked and caused a run on the financial institution. It was replaced by United Bank and & Trust in 1931. When United collapsed three years later, Guilford National Bank moved in, hence the current name of the building.

Earliest tenants included R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Smith & Corona Typewriters, Doctors Fred Patterson and Wesley Taylor, Montgomery Ward’s district offices, the Atlantic and Yadkin Railroad, along with numerous cotton and insurance brokers. A number of prominent lawyers practiced at the Guilford, so a fully furnished law library was installed to serve attorneys on site. What is now the guard station in the lobby was first the Hole-In-The-Wall then, beginning in the early 1930s, the Guilford Soda Shop, which continued selling hot dogs and confectionaries well into the 1980s.

During WWII, at least one seedy massage parlor was situated on the premises, no doubt serving the hundreds of randy Army Air Force soldiers being trained and outfitted at the Overseas Replacement Depot, alongside the IRS, the US Office of Price Administration (setting commodities prices during the war), and the folks in charge of the fuel tank farm by the airport.

Future state senator Elton Edwards had an office on the sixth floor in the 1950s; that’s when Coca-Cola was one floor up, directly above that were General Electric and Edgcomb Steel, while Western Auto could be found on the 11th floor. You could also cash in F&S Gold Stamps shoppers collected from the grocery store for appliances and knick-knacks in their showroom, send telegrams via Western Union, and purchase men’s clothing at The Slack Shop.

In the 1960s, NCNB took over the space Guilford National Bank had occupied, while Carlyle Jewelers got underway here as The Jewel Box. Better Business Bureau, WQMG Radio and around a dozen insurance companies had offices on the upper floors. Northwestern Bank moved in when NCNB relocated in the 1970s, installing a side entrance where the National Theatre used to be, while longtime merchants The Slack Shop and Guilford Soda Shop continued to anchor either side of the lobby.

As retailers began their exodus from downtown to the suburbs, the Guilford Building was similarly in a state of flux. Within a decade, this once premier banking and business center was as much a derelict as many other downtown establishments. The skyscraper was donated to Guilford County by Jefferson Pilot, the largest gift in our county’s history, then put up for public auction.

Bob Poston grew up in Greensboro but was living with his wife, Diana, in New Jersey in 1993, running his software business when, he recalls, “My sister and her son Raymond Holliman, who were here, said they wanted to buy the Guilford Building. I couldn’t remember which one it was!” he recalls. “So many people who might have wanted to buy it, didn’t want to touch it,” Bob says, remembering considerable concern about possible asbestos levels. “Fortunately for us, Raymond had worked for the fire department and had been trained in the asbestos problem. He investigated the building and found out there were just a few tiles on a few floors,” all of which were removed.

The Postons figured on being silent partners in the deal. “My sister was trying to talk us into moving down here,” Bob says. “When we came down to visit she showed me this office, it sort of clinched the deal for me because it has so much personality.” Today, Bob is retired while Diana serves as leasing agent, chief financial officer and overall majordomo. “Diana kind of grew into managing and developing.” Bob explains, “The more she did it the more she liked it.”

First order of business was resuscitating the decaying tower, a painstaking floor-by-floor heavy construction job. Only a few scattered tenants occupied offices when the families took possession of the building. Television receivers  bouncing signals from mobile news vans to both WFMY and WXII sat on the roof along with a whole lot of other ancient infrastructure with frayed wiring, some of it dating back to the 1920s. 

This enterprise was a tremendous leap of faith as Diana recalls. “Those were dark days for downtown,” she remembers. “There was actually a young prostitute out front and drug dealing. It was terrible.” Other than a few disparate watering holes, nobody was seriously looking at downtown to locate any sort of business. Diana adds, “It took vision, mostly from Raymond.”

It turns out to have been fortuitous timing on their part, however, as cell phone use and something almost no one had heard of in 1993, the Internet, were poised to explode. “We had a stroke of luck,” Diana confesses. “Just about the time we were signing the paperwork to buy the building the telecommunications industry started to deregulate.” Rather than just leasing offices as originally planned, she allows, “Early on, I got a phone call from a company in the Midwest and they said, ‘You know, you’re in perfect coordinates for our antenna and, by the way, do you have any inside space we could use for support equipment?’ Then it was one [tech center] after another after another after another.”

The heavy equipment and massive refrigeration units the telecommunications industry employs for switching centers and server farms requires secure locations with maximum load-bearing concrete and steel flooring, qualities the Guilford possesses in abundance. At present, there are some 60 high-tech firms operating within its confines. Familiar communication firms like AT&T Mobility, Sprint/Nextel, and Carolina Digital likely made one of your recent phone calls possible through their sophisticated routers and relays while Web hosting and design firms like Forcefield and Carolinanet provide essential online connectivity. “We call it co-opertition,” Diana says. “They’re in fierce competition but share fiber and battery backups.” Raymond tells me that the backup generator in the basement, two V8 turbo diesels bolted together, “Could run the whole block if we wanted to.” So it came to pass that one of the oldest structures downtown is also the most modern.

Tenants love the building’s retro features: It’s the many original, fully restored details that lend so much excitement to this nearly century-old landmark. Cartoon depictions of General Greene on the elevator buttons, the layout of the offices with interior walls that don’t meet the ceiling and glass transoms above mahogany doors with pebbled glass inlays, imbue these workspaces with an open feeling. “Historic chic, people call it,” Diana notes. “We’ve developed this building all the way, all by ourselves.”

One of the striking features, located next to the elevators, is the brass mail chute that descends from the top floor to the lobby. Diana explains why it’s no longer in use: “One day our mailman was picking up in the lobby and somebody put a sharp object down the chute and it cut his wrist.” That mail apparatus is actually property of the U.S. Postal Service. “The supervisor from the main post office came over and said, ‘I don’t want you to get rid of these but let’s block them.’”

The former bank lobby is right out of a 1930s gangster movie with a giant brass clock; extinct San Daniele Italian pink marble teller stations, baseboards, and two-story pillars; dark wood panel accents; ornately fashioned plaster molding on the 16-foot high ceiling; and rows of picture windows backing the two balconies. Diana tells me, “It was the Roaring 20s and everyone thought there was no end to our prosperity.” Only one of the delicate brass-and-green glass hanging lamps remains. “By the time we got in here thieves had taken the rest. We saw where they might have been auctioned off somewhere but we didn’t get there in time.”

Raymond Holliman points out the circular embedded medallions on the ceiling, which he says weigh around 300 pounds each. “We had a craftsman who worked on the Governor’s mansion come down and he worked on that ceiling for about two years,” he adds. When they were investing all that effort into this dazzling showplace, a five-star restaurant must have seemed like a good fit. And yet, in the end, the space was used for heavy equipment storage by Duke Power and wouldn’t be accessible to the public.

Overseeing reconstruction of the only floor left to develop, Raymond explains the meticulous process they go through: “We take it all out, everything. We take the moldings from around the windows down, remanufacture them, then put them back.” When it comes to the authentic accents, from the individual mail chutes to the distinctive doorknobs, “We go to a great deal of trouble to restore those, get them polished and corrected.” The panorama view is stunning from this 10th-story high perch. Raymond says, “I come up here on July 4th to watch the fireworks downtown, High Point, the water park; you can watch like six fireworks at the same time.” The shot of downtown you see on News 2 is from the top of this high rise.

One of the perks of occupancy is the shared glass enclosed conference room on the mezzanine level, looking out over South Elm, featuring state-of-the-art interconnectivity for every participant no matter what device they’re using. Bob tells me, “There’s free Wi-Fi in this room so if you’re on Skype or FaceTime and have a client in China, you can talk to them and present it on the [wall-sized] screen.”

The row of storefronts lining Washington Street have been home over the last nine decades to beauty parlors, jewelry stores, dentists and optometrist offices, civil service organizations and various men’s clubs. The two longest-running businesses there today are Howard’s Barber Shop and Locke Alterations. When the Hollimans and Postons acquired the building in 1993, barber Howard Cleveland had already been clipping and shaving customers in this location since 1981.

Jesse Locke has even deeper connections to this corner. While studying at A&T University, Locke began working at the Guilford Building performing alterations part-time for The Slack Shop in 1961. He met his future wife, Dorothy, when she was working the counter for Austin “Jimmy” James at the Guilford Soda Shop in 1972 before he relocated his own business here from across South Elm in 1994. He’s kept the city in stitches ever since.

This monument to the optimism of those who came before us, recast as a thriving high-tech portal, is poised yet again to lead us into the future. With the reinvigoration of the South Elm corridor, “We’re almost full. People like being in the middle of everything,” Diana says. “And they like having access to the high speed connections and data we have on site. There’s a lot of networking going on around us.” Ninety years of networking . . . and counting.  OH

A native of Greensboro, Billy Ingram enjoys nothing more than writing for O.Henry. Which usually indicates he’s about to get fired.

Wandering Billy

Poole Party

Remembering a family friend and local radio icon

 

By Billy Eye

When you reach the end of your rope, hang on.” — Bob Poole

Attended a fab book launch party for Dr. Tomi Bryan’s book, What’s Your Superpower? (written under the pseudonym Tomi Llama) at the Divine Llama Winery. This is a terrific read, gathering all the most effective techniques allowing one, as Dan Holden states in the intro, “to align more fully with our authentic strength, purpose and power.” Tried and true coping mechanisms and superior lifestyle enhancements that anyone can benefit from. Look for it on Amazon. You’ll love it! We enjoyed a fun-filled Saturday afternoon. If you haven’t experienced Divine Llama, besides their luscious wines, you’ll be amazed at the dozens of llamas in every conceivable size, shape and color roaming the property.

The only hitch, a minor one for sure, was the super tricked-out luxury party bus that didn’t show up to ferry us there. Which served as a reminder of a mid-1950s mobile rumpus room piloted by my parents and Greensboro’s No.1 morning radio jock of all time, Bob Poole.

Stoneville native Bob Poole was WBIG’s booming baritone for 25 years beginning in 1952, having come from the Mutual Broadcasting System in New York where he’d won the TV-Radio Mirror Award as “America’s Favorite Disc Jockey” in 1949. He was also awarded Billboard’s “DJ Award” for three successive years. He even appeared as himself in the 1951 cult motion picture Disc Jockey. Literally the first post-Modern radio personality, every morning deejay you’ve ever heard has unknowingly adopted and adapted his style. “Poole’s Paradise” was a local sensation from day one.

For whatever reason, perhaps because they were all extremely witty and loved to imbibe, Bob and Gloria Poole and my parents hit it off early on. In 1955 they, along with some of Greensboro’s finest families, cruised to the Bahamas aboard the MS Stockholm where Bob and my father Bill, who’d gotten mightily smashed that first night at sea, spent the next day heaving over the side of the ship.

Also in the mid-’50s, years before liquor could be served legally in a bar, my father and the Pooles retrofitted a sidelined city school bus into a rolling speakeasy equipped with comfy sofas, drapes, side tables and throw pillows. Gloria Poole recalled to me in 2014, “I decorated it, we painted it turquoise and orange, we had all the seats taken out and had banquet seats and a bar put in.” Once aboard their rolling liquor cabinet, complete with a built-in refrigerator freezer, “We’d go to football games or drive around to people’s houses, park in their driveway and throw a little cocktail party.”

The days of Old Grand Dad on wheels and diesel fuel were a thing of the past by the mid-1960s when I was old enough to remember Bob and Gloria unexpectedly dropping by our humble home on Hill Street. There’d be so much commotion emanating from the living room, everyone laughing so volcanically, they’d be in tears. Being of the seen-but-not-heard generation (we weren’t even supposed to be seen!), I would eavesdrop from the hallway steps. Hearing me chuckling along with everyone one evening, Bob insisted I join them. None better in the art of the bad pun, Master Po taught Grasshopper how to spar verbally.

In my teen years Bob took a liking to me, perhaps because I was such an unabashed fan. I’d pass along jokes, trivia books and oddball magazines for show fodder, either at his home at 718 Dover Road or at the old radio station where Lowe’s is now on Battleground. Genuinely grateful, he’d credit me on the air when he knew I’d be listening, driving to Page High. I was reluctant to tell my friends, though. Bob Poole was considered decidedly square by the mid-1970s; WBIG was the station your parents listened to, while WCOG-AM and WRQK-FM dominated the youth market. When someone said they’d heard my name mentioned on the radio on the way to school, surprisingly classmates in Ms. Bell’s art class were in awe that I knew the man. We’d all grown up eating breakfast while listening to “Poole’s Paradise.”

My first contribution to his program had been when I was around 3 years old. My father hoisted me above his shoulder to visit Bob in his “Poole Room” studio as he was beginning a broadcast early one morning. Warbling his familiar theme song, I began whistling along with Bob, which caused him to burst out laughing.

Heroes have feet of clay. In the ’70s, Bob’s boozing got out of hand. Not that it affected his work, so far as I know. Alcoholism was, as one radio veteran informed me, an occupational hazard. Bob would take a half gallon of vodka and turn it upward, all alone, atop the then vacant hilltop lot at 707 Blair Street. As Gloria put it, “Bob thought no one could see him there but everybody could.” That spot was only two doors away from where we had moved, yet I don’t recall his ever visiting despite the fact my parents had a cocktail party attended by family and friends every evening.

In 1977, George Perry (as WFMY’s kiddie show superstar The Old Rebel) and Bob Poole hosted a live Saturday morning radio broadcast from the Piccadilly Cafeteria inside Carolina Circle Mall. Though it was radio, George Perry was still fully decked in his top hat and Southern Gentleman garb. Neither looked terribly comfortable in this format; Bob had just completed a months long hospital stay that almost did him in. He was thin, wan and performing before an audience of middle-aged mall rats wolfing down biscuits and gravy. That show lasted only a few weeks before Bob found himself once again bedridden. His medical bills were so extraordinary — hundreds of thousands of dollars — Joe Bryan and a bunch of local businessmen raised enough cash to wipe them out and more.

Mere weeks after signing off for the last time, Bob Poole passed away, almost 40 years ago today. He was 61. I visited him at Cone (back when it was just a hospital, y’all) on several occasions. The final time he greeted me with, “Great . . . probably the last time you’ll ever see me and I’m coming out of the bathroom!” Through it all, he never lost that quick wit or his innate curiosity.

Three years ago this month, I contacted O.Henry magazine out of the blue with a submission about, you guessed it, Bob Poole. I consider it an honor to tell you his story. Sometimes I don’t think it’s a pure coincidence that it was Bob who led me to such a happy association.  OH

Born and raised in Greensboro, Billy Eye can be reached at Billy@tvparty.com.

Birdwatch

Love Bird

For the American woodcock, February is mating season

 

By Susan Campbell

February is the month for love — and for the American woodcock, this is certainly the case! By midmonth this pudgy, short-legged, long-billed denizen of forest and field is in full courtship mode. Almost everyone, however, will miss its unique singing and dancing since it occurs completely under the cover of darkness.

American woodcocks, also called “timberdoodles,” are cousins of the long-legged shorebirds commonly seen at the beach. Like plovers, turnstones, dowitchers and other sandpipers, these birds have highly adapted bills and cryptic plumage. Woodcocks, having no need to wade, actually sport short legs, which they use to slowly scuffle along as they forage in moist woods and shrubby fields. This behavior is thought to startle worms and other soft-bodied invertebrates in the leaf litter and/or just below the soil surface. Their long, sensitive bills are perfect for probing and/or grabbing food items. And camouflaged plumage hides woodcock from all but the most discerning eye.

And, speaking of eyes, American woodcocks have eyes that are large and strategically arranged on their heads. They are very high up and far back such that they can see both potential predators from above as well as food items in front and below them.

Beginning in late winter, male American woodcocks find open areas adjacent to wet, wooded feeding habitat and begin their romantic display at dusk. Their elaborate come-hither routine begins on the ground and continues in the air. Typically, the male struts around in the open area uttering repeated, loud “peeent” calls. He will then take wing and fly in circles high into the sky, twittering as he goes. Finally, the male will turn and drop sharply back to the ground in zigzag fashion, chirping as he goes. And like a crazed teenager, this is followed by repeated rounds of vocalizations.

Where I live along James Creek in horse country in Southern Pines, displaying begins on calm nights in December. Some of these individuals are most likely northern birds that have made the journey to the Southeast retreating from colder weather. They may just be practicing ahead of some serious hanky-panky in early spring back up North. Regardless, females are known to visit multiple spots where males are known to do their thing before they choose a mate. So it behooves the males to display as often as possible to impress as many females as they can during the weeks that they are on the hunt for a mate.

Although long hunted for sport, it was Aldo Leopold, the renowned conservationist, who implored sportsmen to better appreciate these little birds. They are well adapted for a forest floor existence, hidden from all but their mates come this time of the year. And, on rare occasions, from birdwatchers keen on getting a glimpse of the American woodcock’s antics come late winter.  OH

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

O.Henry Ending

The Unkindest Cut

Married life on the razor’s edge

 

By Cynthia Adams

As the narrator of educational TV programs droned on about the Foucault pendulum or the mating habits of sloth, my husband, Don, loved having his thick hair tugged and pulled.

His barber, Mr. Burgess, actually thinned it. Don would always return from his shop with stories about Mr. Burgess’s investments — and a peculiarly militaristic haircut. Then, Mr. Burgess hit 100 and closed shop. 

After sitting in the company of unhurried men who let stories fall out of their mouths as clipped hair fell around their draped shoulders, Don and his fine head of hair were adrift after Mr. Burgess hung up his clippers.

Patronizing walk-in shops, Don became experimental after a persuasive female barber convinced him it was more stylish. Stylish was a new possibility! The longer length was all well and good until Don snagged an interview with a conservative firm. He purchased an interview suit, tie, shirt and wingtips, but decided to fly unshorn to the interview early Monday morning. As Don polished his CV, I started thinking.

I had plunged into dog grooming with a new pair of dog clippers. Admittedly, our dogs looked a bit off. Mottled skin shone through in a few unfortunate places on their withers, rumps and legs. But they wriggled and protested, so the outcome in no way reflected my grooming skills. 

After convincing Don he couldn’t go off on this job interview looking shaggy, he perched tensely on the toilet seat. The razor thrummed against my palms, ticklish and heavy. 

“Just a little overall,” he reminded, his eyebrows arched downward. I aimed the clippers straight at the very top of Don’s forehead to establish a baseline — and cut a 3-by-3-inch swath. A hunk of black hair fell to the floor and pink skin peaked out from beneath the razor’s trajectory.

“Hunh!” I blurted out. 

Don’s eyebrows flew up.  “What did you do???” he shouted.   

“Sit back down,” I reproached. “You would never jump up like that if Mr. Burgess was giving you a cut.” 

But this wasn’t a baseline; this was a tragic miscalculation. The beginnings of a Mohawk.  “It’s just a little short. For you.” I explained. (It would be short by anyone’s standards, unless, say, you were an aboriginal into ritual scarification.) 

“How short?!”

“Oh, a little shorter than Mr. Burgess’s cuts.” That was the first of a rapid series of lies. Don looked in the mirror. “Oh. My. God.” he sputtered. I laughed. Which I’m prone to do when something goes tragically wrong.  He touched his scalp with a tentative finger. 

“Wait, let me fix it! It’s just the first baseline cut.” I protested.  “This thing didn’t cut that close with the dogs,” I argued.  (The only true thing I said that Sunday afternoon.)

Don rounded on me, snatching away the vibrating razor.  “You turned it the wrong way!  You turned it downward to shave and shaved a strip of hair off the top of my head! In the very middle of my forehead!” The gash atop his forehead matched the spreading pink of his face.

“But I like it,” I lied instantly. What a fantastic lie this was.

He scowled.

“You could wear a hat!” 

“To a job interview?  Seriously?”  Don was apoplectic. We discussed barber options on a late Sunday afternoon.  I sprinted to find the phone book. Only one salon was open.

Cowardly and embarrassed, I waited in the car as Don went inside.  He returned unrecognizable. His fine, luscious thick hair was now a few centimeters long. What would the interviewer think?  That Don had head lice?  That he was into gangsta chic?

So I lied again. “I love it!” I exclaimed. Don glowered.

On Monday morning, Don wore a new suit, crisp shirt and Windsor-knotted tie for the Big Deal Interview. His “I’m game!” gait was off.  But when he returned home on Tuesday, a smile wreathed his face.

He dropped his bags. “No big deal,” Don said.  “I don’t think I’m actually a very good fit for that place.” 

I had undercut him. Short cut him

Fifteen years passed.  Don developed his father’s receding hairline. His hair is no longer dark or lush. Of late, though, he has been growing it. Last Sunday, I eyed him as he shaved. 

“I could even that up, just a little,” I ventured, touching his graying locks.

“No,” Don flatly replied.

“Just with scissors,” I added.

“No. Nope. Never.” 

“Well, that was an unfortunate thing about the razor,” I mumbled.  A final, stupefying lie.

“You know,” Don added, searching my face, “I was wrong for that job. I wouldn’t have liked it.” We stood inside the sweet silence.

We both understood that sometimes half-truths are the only way to super glue a relationship back to the sticking place. 

And we smiled.  OH

Greensboro-based, frequent O.Henry contributor Cynthia Adams has been a storyteller all of her life.

Doodad

It all started with a newspaper column yours truly wrote a year ago. The story involved a couple of guys from Toronto who were organizing mass singalongs in acoustic-friendly buildings and posting them on YouTube. So intrigued was I that I wondered whether this could be a worthwhile endeavor for Greensboro.

The response was virtually unanimous that, indeed, we possessed the talent and wherewithal locally to replicate it here. So, I took the idea to my musician friend, Jessica Mashburn, who sits on the board of the Carolina Theatre, and she, in turn, took it to director Brian Gray, who gave it an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Next we organized an all-star committee, who agreed that we had been afforded a chance to do something far more meaningful than a fun afternoon harmonizing among 1,100 of our closest friends. At a time of societal divisiveness and polarization, we had been handed an opportunity to bring the community together, in all its mosaic beauty. So, to make the point, we capitalized on the “U” in community when we named the event, resulting in This CommUnity Sings.

We set the date for Sunday, February 18, from 2–5 p.m. (carolinatheatre.com/event/community-sings) In a nutshell, here’s what’s in store:

The event is free. Anyone can come. Once there, everyone will divide up into one of four vocal ranges and be taught their parts by musical directors Bill Young and Ron Jones, department heads at UNCG and N.C. A&T, respectively. We will learn three songs: “Carolina on my Mind,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “What a Wonderful World.” We will have stationary and roving cameras videotaping the performance, to be posted on YouTube streamed live.

Eric Chilton, weatherman and host at WFMY-TV, and a noted singer and bandleader in his own right, will be our emcee.

Getting us in the festive spirit, the drum lines from Grimsley High and A&T will perform outside, and no fewer than four eclectic bands will serenade inside the theatre. The bar and concession stand will be open. There is no admission charge.

Most important, do not be deterred if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket. We will have enough trained vocalists there to put on a stunning show. All you need is a smile on your face and a song in your heart.

Oh, and if this goes as well as we anticipate, it may become an annual event.  OH

— Ogi Overman