Birdwatch

An Uncommon Visitor

The feisty purple finch is in the hood

By Susan Campbell

If you happen to be maintaining a bird feeding station over the next few months, you will want to be on the lookout for an uncommon winter visitor: the purple finch. These feisty little birds are common to our north but some years, when their numbers surge as a result of above average reproductive success, they head further to the south following the breeding season.

It seems that spruce budworms were abundant in boreal forests in June and July, and this resulted in a bumper crop of baby finches. Like most of our songbirds, nestling purple finches require lots of caterpillars to grow into strong fledglings. The family groups merged into wintering flocks sometime in the last couple of months and are working their way southward, as they always do. Given their numbers, purple finches will spread much farther throughout the eastern half of the United States than they normally would. They’ve already been spotted in forests and at feeders in North Carolina.

Purple finches are robust birds that are larger than the chickadees and titmice, which they often associate with during the cooler months. They appear most similar to our ever-present house finches. Male purple finches are not really “purple” as their name would imply. They are more of a raspberry color. In addition to their coloring, they have a distinct whitish eye stripe and heavier bills than their cousins. Females and immature males that lack color can be overlooked as just another little brown bird at your feeder. But note that they are more aggressive and have that distinctive eyebrow. As so many of our winter feeder visitors do, purple finches love black oil sunflower. But they also will come to nyjer, or “thistle seed.” They, like goldfinches, find this tiny but highly fatty seed irresistible.

Away from feeders, purple finches feed on the seeds from conifers to tulip poplar, maple seeds to ragweed, and even dandelions. They may mix in with local house finches at feeding stations or simply with wintering sparrows in brushy habitat. These birds crush seeds and fruits using their powerful bills and strong tongues. The nut inside is consumed completely; therefore, purple finches are considered to be predatory and not dispersal agents, as many birds are.

You may notice a flock as a result of the males chorusing at the tops of trees. Purple finch song is distinguished by a fast rising and falling series of up to two dozen notes. Interestingly, males may incorporate bits of songs sung by other species where they breed. It is not that rare to hear American goldfinch or rufous-sided towhee notes mixed in.

If purple finches learn to efficiently find food as well as avoid predators, they can live a relatively long time for a small bird. The oldest known individual was documented as living over eight and a half years. It was a banded bird — recaptured right here in North Carolina. OH

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

Home Grown

A Diamette a Dozen

Dialect, diamond chips and decadent desserts

By Cynthia Adams

“There’s someone on the phone saying you won a free Diamette!” Don exclaimed from the kitchen. Grabbing a towel, I clambered out of the tub as he uttered:

“We just need to order a year’s worth of vitamins.”

My South African hubby pronounced this, “VIT-ah-mins.”

He appeared at the bathroom door, a new cordless Radio Shack phone in hand. “She’s on the phone now!” 

Clamping his palm over the receiver he whispered, “What’s a Diamette?”

Slick with bathwater, I visualized a pin-sized diamond chip and mouthed, “NO! Don’t do it!” Did it matter that there was no such thing as a Diamette — it was probably just a clever workaround for some trademark like Diamanté?

Deeply enamored of telephones and TVs, Don emigrated from South Africa, where required government permits for either were challenging. Channeling Elvis, he now wanted them throughout our tiny cottage — so small we could have used cans and strings.

In South Africa, local calls, too, were billed by the minute, so telemarketing was unknown territory.

There were many landmines in the Land of Free Markets. And Don was a total innocent when it came to bogus giveaways and promotions.

“In this country, everything is legal until you’re told it’s not,” he solemnly noted.

I never got the Diamette, whatever it was purported to be.

There was a lot for me to learn, too. Sometimes, our separate realities were exactly as George Bernard Shaw once said: countries divided by a common language.

One evening, we returned from work to a frigid house. The irritable oil furnace, normally belching and rumbling, had gone silent. 

Being handy, Don figured he could fix it. From beneath the house, he shouted, “Bring me a torch!”

I blanched. Wasn’t he from Johannesburg — not the wilds of Borneo?

“That may be something you use back home,” I retorted, “but I would not bring you a lighted torch even if I had one!”

He reappeared upstairs, face smudged, looking annoyed. “I cannot see without a torch!”

We stared, both incredulous.

Don pantomimed, clicking with his thumb: “A torch! A light?”   

A flashlight.

There were more such moments.  “Al-YOU-minium” is his word for foil, the stuff you wrap around baking potatoes.

Born in a land of abundant seafood, Don explained at the market that prawns are a specific crustacean.

“Shrimp differs.” 

The checkout woman bet I “married him for his accent.” I glowered at her.

Afterward, we placed our groceries in the boot (trunk). He patiently explained the bonnet (the hood) and cubbyhole (glove box) as we parsed out automobiles. 

When our furnace died that famous night, Don went in search of a jersey (sweater). My sweatshirt, it turns out, is his sweater. 

“One of those things with a logo on it! Part of a tracksuit,” he explained.  Which I knew, at least then, as a jogging suit. 

Those, I believe, have gone the way of the dodo bird.

We spent months in linguistic bafflement. Just when we were progressing, we visited South Africa for Christmas. Now the tables were turned.

The only snow Don had ever seen was in the Drakensberg Mountains during winter — our summer.  But it seemed South Africans liked nothing better than decorating windows with fake snow and cavorting snowmen as vibrant yellow acacias and tree-sized poinsettias bloomed.   

The family Christmas tree reminded me of Charlie Brown. A pitiable, sorrowful thing.

I resisted snapping a shot to show folks back home, mesmerized by a line of ducks walking a plank into the swimming pool to escape the sweltering heat, while awaiting my first South African holiday dinner. 

For dessert, the tour de force: fruitcake encased in a shell of marzipan, and a flambéed Christmas pudding. Unbeknownst to me, silver heirlooms, lucky tokens, were baked inside. 

I swallowed mine before noting others raking through each morsel.  Mortified, I concealed all evidence and prepared to walk the plank. The Diamette, like the silver token, was a lost cause, and it appeared that in the culture wars between a South African and an overly smug American, so was I.  OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

The Pleasures of Life

Prayers to Santa

The night was bleak, but the Big Guy delivered — sort of

By Ashley Walshe

When you’re 5 and the sole object of your desire can only come from the mythical Dude in Red, Christmas morning is a very, very big deal.

But suppose you spent the night someplace else on Christmas Eve. Could Santa still find you? And if he couldn’t? What then?

These were all very, very real questions, none of which I’d considered until Christmas Eve, 1992, when, at the last minute, I was told we’d be spending the night at my grandparents’ house — three grueling hours away.

My pint-sized stomach was in knots. I wanted to stay strong for my younger brother, I really did. But the further we drove, the bleaker things looked. My breath grew shallow. My mind raced. I could slip into a tailspin at any moment.

Perhaps you don’t understand the gravity of my situation. I’d been waiting an entire year for Santa to bring me a Puppy Surprise. Three-hundred-and-sixty-five whole days. Have you any idea what kind of veritable agony that is for a such a small and anxious human? Each time I saw the commercial — “Surprise, surprise! Puppy Surprise! How many puppies are there inside?” — the pang of desire intensified. I ached to hold that plush toy dog and the — which would it be? — three, four or five puppies packed inside its Velcro tummy. Frankly, my life was incomplete without it.

And yet, as Christmas drew near, I began to see the light. I’d held up my end of the bargain, after all. I’d been good. Very good. I was certain that Santa would reward me. That is, until my parents threw a wrench in our Christmas.

My grandparents’ house was located nearly 200 miles away from our two-bedroom apartment. Small potatoes for a flying sleigh, you might say. But this type of detour could really screw up Santa’s route, especially so last-minute. If only I had time to send him a map.

“Can you call Santa to let him know where to find us?” I asked my mom. “Pleeeease?”

I knew she had his number. In fact, she’d once used it to rat me out for squabbling with my brother. It was a close call, but the Big Guy kept me on the Nice List when, sobbing, I repented. I dropped to my knees, vowing to forsake my naughty ways forevermore.

“He knows where to find us,” Mom replied.

“But how?” I asked. And how could she be so sure? It was Christmas Eve, after all. Had she considered that Santa was a bit preoccupied with the list-checking and whatnot? A change of address seemed like something that could easily slip through the cracks.

I felt helpless, lost and scared. And so, I did what any young Catholic child might do. I closed my eyes and prayed to Saint Nicholas.

When we pulled up to my grandparents’ house, Papaw greeted us outside with Charo, the cream-colored teacup chihuahua whose apple-shaped dome was slowly breaching my grandpa’s breast pocket.

“Merry Christmas, grandbabies,” said Papaw, eyes twinkling.

As I wrapped my little arms around his great, round belly, Charo suddenly emerged from his pocket, growling and gurgling like a tiny, adorable demon.

I loved all dogs, but that 4-pound terror was the very worst kind of puppy surprise.

She bared her teeth at me. I cried. Christmas Eve couldn’t have gotten any worse. 

I must have stayed up half the night fretting. Puppy Surprise was all I’d ever wanted, and quite possibly all I’d ever need. If Santa couldn’t find us here, what would I do? Would I have to wait another full year for my fur baby and her darling litter of three, four or five? I wasn’t sure my tiny heart could take it.

Fortunately, I worried myself into a deep and peaceful slumber. In the morning, I discovered the miracle of all Christmas miracles: Santa had come!

I woke up my brother, and the two of us sat in the dark, tails wagging. We knew better than to wake the adults before 6 a.m.

Well, perhaps you know how this story ends. I tore open my Puppy Surprise and pulled out one, two, three little bean bag pups from the mama dog’s underside. It was thrilling, but surely there were more. I dug my small hand deep into that Velcro pocket, but — surprise! — it was empty.

Rats. I’d asked Santa to stuff five puppies in there. I don’t know why he didn’t. It was really all I ever wanted.  OH

Ashley Walshe is a longtime contributor and former editor of O.Henry.

O.Henry Ending

Dreaming of a White Dog Christmas

Learning a lesson in holiday expectations

By Cassie Bustamante

I’ve heard it said that the key to happiness is to lower your expectations. No one knows that better than a parent who has carefully plotted a Big Christmas Surprise.

Christmas morning of 1988, dressed in my ruffled flannel nightgown, I bounded down the stairs, making a sharp left turn into the living room, where our tree glistened with presents underneath. And there, like a beacon of light, I spied the gift I’d wanted with my whole 10-year-old heart.

My mother stood behind me, her permed curls askew from sleep and her excitement about the brand new 10-speed Santa had delivered written on her face. I ran towards the bike and quickly snatched Fievel, the squishy, behatted, floppy-eared mouse from An American Tail, off the seat and swung him in my arms with a squeal. I hadn’t even noticed the bike.

Now, as a mother of three, I fully understand the disappointment my parents must have felt, anxiously awaiting my thrill over the “big gift” they’d saved up to purchase, only to have it trumped by a seemingly silly object. Because it’s happened to me.

As all life-changing events in our household, it began with a conversation with my husband, Chris.

“This might be the last Christmas Emmy believes!” I insisted. “Just picture how magical it will be when she comes down the stairs to see a puppy of her own under the tree.”

“But we already have two dogs,” he reminded me.

“Well, what’s one more?”

It’s rare that Chris tells me no, especially when it comes to his only daughter.

A couple of months later, I crawled out of bed at 4:45 a.m. on Christmas morning to sneak away to a friend’s house a half hour away, where, as a favor to me, she was fostering the rescue I’d chosen for Emmy. The puppy was mostly white, a calico miniature schnoodle — a “designer” cross between a miniature schnauzer and a miniature poodle, a really prized breed. However, because this fancy little mutt was born deaf, the breeder had rejected her.

As I raced home to beat the kiddos’ inevitably early wakeup, the curly-eared pup snuggled in my lap, blissfully unaware of the stress — and utter excitement — I was feeling.

With about 10 minutes to spare, I made it. We set the puppy’s small carrier in the living room next to our tree and put her inside while we anxiously awaited the pitter-patter of footsteps from above. Meanwhile, the puppy had found her voice, sounding the rise-and-shine alarm throughout the house.

Soon enough, Emmy’s face appeared in the doorway as I beamed, hands clasped at my heart. It was finally here: the moment I’d been picturing for months!

“A sled!” She shrieked, dashing to the tree where the cheapest orange plastic saucer Walmart sold sat. “Santa got me the sled I wanted!!!”

Despite the high-pitched yelps and commotion, she hadn’t noticed the puppy. 

The moment wasn’t at all what I’d imagined. While I was initially disappointed, perhaps in the end we got something better. Just like my own parents, we now have a story we retell — and laugh about — each Christmas as a reminder that the kids will be happy, no matter how big or small the gifts. And we, as parents, will, in fact, discover that holiday magic if we just let go of our expectations.

As for Snowball, the fluffy white pup, she just turned 7, and our family’s love for her has long outlasted that traffic-cone orange sled. And while she can’t hear it, the bell still rings for the rest of us, as it does for all who truly believe in Christmas magic.  OH

Cassie Bustamante is managing editor of O.Henry magazine.

Poem

Chime

We were birds then

at thirteen, a chime

of wrens chirping,

carbonated goddesses

blowing bubbles,

spilling secrets,

dancing the latest dances,

we did each others’ hair,

practiced kissing,

gossiped (a girl’s

first step toward insight),

we shook the magic eight ball,

could not imagine

a path toward our future —

 

we only knew we didn’t want

our mothers’ lives,

taking dictation,

cleaning up messes,

hiding tins of money,

 

we were angels falling,

wingless, trusting

the wind to lift

our bodies of light

far above the silver

water tower,

to let us down kindly

somewhere, anywhere

wild and broad and new.

— Debra Kaufman

Debra Kaufman’s latest collection of poetry is God Shattered.

A Cressman Christmas Carol

A historic Irving Park house glitters with Christmas present and the stories of those past

By Cynthia Adams

Photographs by Amy Freeman

    

“The house spoke to me,” the expression goes. If it speaks, what does it say? Does it whisper of families past, who have infused the very walls with memory and meaning?

Lisa Cressman, who is passionate about the story of her family’s home, knows as well as anyone that houses have a dynamic all their own. Case in point: Add a rich backstory to a beautiful house, surround it with neighborly people and you’ve got a powerful elixir. Next, add a dash of serendipity. For good measure, add a dusting of Christmas sparkle — courtesy of Lisa’s favorite time of the year. All combined, you’ve got true magic within — and without — those walls.

But for years, Lisa didn’t know the Colonial Revival house she adored was truly meant for her all along. As soon as it became hers, a cast of characters worthy of Dickens’ Christmas Carol walked straight out of its past.

Lisa’s story begins in the stifling heat of July 2019 — with Christmas six months away. Her heart suddenly raced with the realization that this particular house was meant for her family. It was a wedding cake of a house: perfectly, pleasingly symmetrical, filled with character, and beautifully maintained.

The Cressman family moved to the Triad 21 years ago, relocating from Canada. Nathan, president of Magnussen Home Furnishings, worked in the company’s Greensboro offices. The family business was established by Lisa’s grandfather, Ingwer Magnussen, a carpenter who immigrated to Canada from Germany in the late 1920s. Lisa had long admired a particular Irving Park charmer when cutting through the neighborhood. She considered it “the most beautiful house in Greensboro.”

   

But the Cressmans, including Lisa and husband Nathan, plus college-aged children, Ty, 22, and Georgia, 21, were already settled, having just “built and moved into our ‘forever home,’” she says. 

The Cressmans’ Summerfield house was set on five acres, with high ceilings built to accommodate their son’s height — 6-foot-7. And, yes, he plays basketball — for Auburn, which his younger sister also attends.

But everything changed one summer’s day.

“Nate was looking on Zillow,” Lisa recalls, on a Saturday in late June, “when he noticed a nice house for sale in Irving Park.” Lisa stepped over to the computer to look at the listing, feigning interest. “I had no desire to move,” she admits. And then she changed her mind.

“I said, ‘Oh, that’s, like, my favorite house in Greensboro!’” Even so, she didn’t want to move, but was curious. “I acted like I was interested,” she confesses, wondering if the interior equaled its exterior. Realtor Marti Tyler scheduled a showing of the recently vacated house. Lisa and Nate arrived for the appointment with their daughter, Georgia. “But I stepped into that house and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I love this house!’ You could feel the soul,” says Lisa, describing her surprising, visceral reaction.

Lisa whispered to her daughter, “I could live here.” Georgia replied, “I could, too.” She describes the moment in the way one describes a great love match: with a shock of realization and recognition.   

An excited Nathan asked Lisa, “Are you for real?” Lisa was already aware he was ready to leave the country and move into town. When she nodded yes, Nathan wasted no time.

“OK,” he replied. “Let’s put in an offer.”

Turned out the Cressmans’ Summerfield home wasn’t forever after all. But this was! And what a contrast between the two houses. The historic Mebane house, listed on the National Register, was over a century old. According to Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro, it was among the earliest constructed in Irving Park, quite possibly the second built.

   

“I can say with confidence that the Robert Jesse Mebane House was built 1912–1913 and designed by A. Raymond Ellis,” says Briggs. (The first, at 301 Wentworth Street, is profiled in “Southern Revival,” in the October 2016 O. Henry. See ohenrymag.com/southern-revival/.)

The stars had aligned — something that was to happen again once the Cressmans entered the house’s magnetic force field. Lisa sensed that the seller’s Realtor, Marti Tyler, loved the integrity of the house and was pleased to learn the couple wasn’t interested in a teardown. The three-story house had already been expanded by prior owners, was recently updated and was spacious by any standard

Lisa recalls assuring Tyler that she didn’t want to tear the house apart. “We wanted to preserve the house. I’ve always loved that Gilded Age, turn-of-the-century era,” she stresses.

By August 19, a home she had admired but never guessed she would possess became her own. And that “forever home”? It was on the market.

Not all the Cressmans were thrilled. Although “Nate and Georgia were with me on the decision,” Lisa says, “Ty was so annoyed that we moved. He wasn’t very happy when he came to visit. He did hit his head in several places . . . The house wasn’t built for people so tall.”  He quickly adjusted.

Lisa discovered a neighbor, Chip Hagan, grew up in the house and now lived only blocks away. The Hagan family had lived in the Mebane house for the longest tenure in its provenance. In the 1960s, the Hagans had acquired the house from Robert Edward Holt’s widow, Frances Garner Holt, after his death.

     

As neighborhood block parties became a way to connect with others during the pandemic, the Hagans and Cressmans soon met and became friends.

Then Lisa met Frances Taylor during Christmas holidays in 2021. Taylor’s mother, Martha (Marty) Holt Ruffin, had grown up in the Mebane house. Ruffin’s mother was Frances Garner Holt, the same widow who sold the house to the Hagans. That connection led to a chain of discoveries, including a trove of vintage photos of the Holts at home over years.

“Through the preserving of the house, we got reconnected with the house,” marvels Lisa.  “There are stories, histories — connection with the people who lived here. That has been the joy of living here, honestly!”

Slowly, the Cressmans unearthed more about the home’s unusual beauty and condition. It had always been lovingly maintained, as photos and history revealed. With the trusted assistance of Canadian transplant and longtime friend, Magnussen designer Sil (Silvana) Lewis, the historic Mebane house received the Cressmans’ personal imprint.

“It’s a house loved by generations of people,” says Lewis, who is also involved with decorating the home for the holidays.

The Cressmans moved in during September three years ago. Before long, Lewis was planning the first Christmas decorations in the family’s new house.

By Christmastime each year since, the house is completely decked out in strands of twinkling lights. Windows and entryways are wreathed in greenery.

The exterior trees, shrubs, windows and doors are infused with more glimmering lights, and bedecked with ribbon and holiday sparkle. And it is magical to behold.

The setting itself was planned to best effect — over a century ago. And the park-like neighborhood, populated with elegant homes set on generous lots, was designed for a pleasing impact.

Irving Park was intended as the “urban ideal,” set a mere mile from city limits, soon after the development of nearby Fisher Park. According to Briggs, it was created in 1911 by the Irving Park Company. Alexander W. McAlister, Alfred M. Scales and R. G. Vaughn were central to the neighborhood’s planning.

   

At that time, Briggs writes, the once rural development was created as a “planned, heavily restricted and landscaped community that set a standard for suburban development in Greensboro for the next century and establishing it as Greensboro’s most exclusive neighborhood.”

And executives responded to the luxury of spacious lots and homes. The original owner of the Cressmans’ home, Robert “Jesse” Mebane, was a busy executive who juggled multiple roles.

“At the time of construction, Mebane was assistant manager, Southern Life and Trust Company, though later acquired new titles and interests [developer of Durham’s Hope Valley and owner of Mebane Motor Company.] “In the 1920 Census he lists himself in the automotive industry as a distributor, and he lived next door to Aubrey Brooks . . . which was true,” says Briggs. “Around 1924 he sold the company to his brother-in-law, Rossell. The company was renamed Mebane, Rossell, Cress, Inc.” The house remained Mebane’s for 10 years, before buying another and moving just around the corner. 

Yet the Mebane Colonial Revival was graced with a balanced design and pleasing symmetry. A steep, slate-covered gambrel roof, front and rear shed dormers, tapered brick chimneys, and a central, classical entrance porch combined for charming effect. The west side featured a sun porch and symmetrical boxwoods lined the front walk.

A century later, the home is in fine fettle, thanks to the ministrations of the families who once lived there.

The Cressman family would come to know some personally. Three years later, Lisa smiles thinking of eureka moments. But first — back to August 19, 2019, when the Cressmans’ offer was accepted and the home became theirs.

The house had six baths and five bedrooms, unusual for the period. The third floor was once servant quarters, according to Marty Ruffin, who moved there in 1947 as an 8-year-old with her brother, Ed, and her parents.

“Then the Hagans bought it,” confirms Marty. “My father had died, and so my mother built on Lafayette.” Thereafter, she says it became best known in the present era as the “Hagan house.” After Lisa met Martys daughter, she urged Frances to bring her mother for a holiday visit. The house, which featured countless confection-colored tabletop trees and too-many-to-count full-sized trees, twinkled like a star ready for its close up.

Lisa welcomed Marty and Frances for tea last December, igniting an immediate friendship. Marty, now 83, was overwhelmed with nostalgia. She had not returned to her childhood home since her marriage in the early 1960s. “I never had gone back,” says Marty.

“It was such a delight to go — sixty years later,” she muses. “I cannot even believe it!”

Marty laughs, “And, I did not realize my room was so small!” As they explored the house together, Lisa plied Marty with questions, curious about the diminutive closet doors and other idiosyncrasies. Like all old house lovers, she mentioned often visualizing the house and those who had lived there in years past. Marty brought photos to share with Lisa, and they happily pored over them, spread across the kitchen counter.

In an extraordinary way, both women expressed love for the house. And it was especially beautiful when all dolled up in holiday finery. “We believe Christmas is much more than Christmas lights,” says Lisa, who chose to be a Christmas bride in 1996, when she married Nathan. Of course, she had long known Nathan, as their parents were best friends.

“My mom so loved decorating for Christmas, so I inherited it from her,” she says. “It’s a time to bring the people you love together. I love Christmas for that reason . . . I think that is when we do make a house a home!”

She was only 19 when she married Nathan during Christmas 26 years ago. She wore a fur-lined cape that kept her warm in the midst of Canadian cold. Of course, she would marry at Christmas, she smiles. “It’s my favorite time of the year.”

As has long been the case, the spirit of Christmas manifests early in the Cressman household. Lisa decorates before Thanksgiving. (Canadian Thanksgiving falls earlier.) “The lights on the tree at night — I decorate early so I can enjoy it! I have people over for tea, and we’ve had neighborhood parties. And connect again, with neighbors who share stories about the house . . .”

The holidays are the starting point of so many things the owners hold dear: family, tradition, even their wedding anniversary.

“A home is who lives there, and the memories that are created,” says Lisa. “I am so happy. That was the draw; I don’t know why, but she (the house) felt like a grand old lady to me!”

Over three years, the serendipitous has become the norm for the Cressmans as people continue to enrich the story of their home.

“Even people who would walk in to do the renovation, would say, ‘Oh my gosh, I remember when my dad did the floors 50 years ago,’ or, ‘My parents used to come here when they were teenagers.’ There is a thread through the neighborhood about this house,” says Lisa, “and fond memories. And you’re a part of the story. Preserving the history.”  OH

Socially Skilled

Profile of an up-and-coming Greensboro influencer

By Maria Johnson

Photographs by John Gessner

As they prep for a podcast called “The Chewing Grounds,” host Luan K. Do (just call him Loon) and his guest, Griffen Glover, are hanging out in the show’s green room, which is actually the living room of Loon’s brand new, three-bedroom, two-bath, still-smells-like-paint home in southwest Greensboro.

The guys are pumped, literally, having just returned from an upper-body workout at the gym where Griffen, Loon’s friend since first grade, used to work as a trainer. The chat turns to social media and how many followers Loon has across all platforms.

Instagram? Probably 21,000 or 22,000 people, Loon estimates.

His YouTube channel? Maybe 5,000 subscribers.

“Does Facebook count?” Loon muses. “I really don’t use Facebook or LinkedIn any more.”

“Do you have TikTok?” Griffen quizzes.

“I have the app, but I don’t really focus on it,” says Loon. “I need to, but I want to pay someone to do it . . . Dude, it’s the future. It sucks, but it’s the future.”

Loon consults the invisible calculator in his head. Yeah, he confirms, he definitely has fewer than 40,000 followers/friends/contacts, which lands him squarely in the territory of “micro-influencer,” meaning he makes money — an average of $200 a month — by posting social-media content that attracts viewers and thus advertisers, but not as much money as a “macro-influencer,” or someone with an audience of 100,000 or more, a status that Loon, at the ripe old age of 25, hopes to reach.

“Maybe in a couple of years,” he says. “If I could do that, it would be amazing.”

But first things first. It’s time to record the podcast. The guys walk a few steps into the studio, aka Loon’s kitchen. They perch on low-backed stools, facing each other across a breakfast bar and pull on headphones. Two cameras — iPhones mounted on tripods — are trained on them. Later, Loon will edit the video into a split-screen view for YouTube. The audio will be uploaded onto multiple podcast platforms.

To start recording, Loon hits a button on the digital mixing board in front of him, pops an energy drink next to a microphone — fizzzzzz — pours the contents into a couple of ice-filled glasses, hands one to Griffen, offers cheers, and slides into the unscripted frolic that begins with recollections of an elementary school field trip, sidesteps into a promo for their “strawbango” flavored drink  — “This would go good with alcohol,” Loon offers — and pivots into a long gym-bro discussion of fitness.

“How much you weigh right now?” Loon asks.

“One seventy-three.”

“What’s the biggest you ever got?”

“One seventy-five.”

Loon exhales with admiration. “Do you ever get, like, sweats?”

“No.”

“That’s immaculate,” Loon says. “The highest I’ve ever, ever pushed myself was 165, and I felt like dog shit. I was sweating, and the sweat smelled bad, like pizza grease.”

 

 

Online life comes naturally to Loon, who spells his name like the bird because it’s the correct pronunciation of his given name, Luan, which most Americans butcher along with his last name, Do, pronounced “dough.”

Born in 1997, at the dawn of Gen Z, Loon remembers seeing his family’s first computer in the early 2000s. He was 5 or 6 years old. The machine was an outdated desktop, probably bought at a discount, with a monitor that reminded Loon of a humungous human head.

“The keyboard was dinky-dinky,” he says. “We’ll go to a museum where they’ll talk about technology, and I’ll be like, ‘That was in my house.’”

He played video games such as “Galaga” and watched turn-of-the-century movies, including Shrek and Rush Hour, on pirated CD-ROM disks provided by a family friend.

When he was about 10, he got his first cell phone, a hand-me-down Nokia that looked like a small calculator. It had a screen, buttons and offered one game, Tetris, in black-and-white.

He also created an account on Myspace, an early social-networking site.

“It was a dumpster fire of the randomest things ever,” he laughs, adding, “You could make your background really cool.”

At age 12, he owned an Xbox video gaming console and started a YouTube channel to post tutorials on how to build teams with bargain-basement players in the FIFA video soccer games. He drew a lot of negative feedback.

“They could tell I was a kid, and that I had no actual knowledge of soccer,” he says. “And I couldn’t pronounce anyone’s name.”

With his father working as a licensed plumber and his mother working in a factory that made car parts, Loon says he and older sister Thao were spoiled — with an asterisk.

They got as many material things as their parents could afford on a limited budget.

They also got spanked and grounded if they brought home disappointing grades.

“Asian-spoiled is not like American-spoiled,” Loon says. “I got to struggle, but I didn’t get to struggle like my parents.”

Loon’s father, Quang, was one of nearly a million “boat people,” refugees who fled war-ravaged Vietnam after America ended its presence in 1975.

He spent seven years in a Malaysian refugee camp known as “Hell Isle” before the camp started repatriating refugees. Quang went back to Vietnam, where he met Loon’s mother, Suong Tran. They started a family and finally got a chance to immigrate to the U.S. in 1998, after a Lutheran church in High Point agreed to sponsor them. Loon was 13 months old.

The family lived in a string of apartments before buying a small home off of Merritt Drive in Greensboro. Loon made it through Western Guilford High School with minimal corporal punishment at home — thanks to a combination of charm and cheating in class, he says. He took a student loan to attend UNC Wilmington, where he majored in business and pledged a fraternity.

“I was trying really to be an American white kid,” he says. “I found myself later.”

After selling insurance for a summer.

After becoming a personal trainer.

After figuring out that he wanted to work for himself.

“I don’t like working for someone who’s working for someone who’s working for someone,” he says. “Everyone is only looking out for themselves. They’re like, ‘Oh, you need to do better so I can look good.’”

His role model for self-employment, he says, is his sister, Thao, who’s 10 years older and whom he describes as “a superstar,” “a beast,” and “a juggernaut.” A graduate of UNCG, she owns two nail salons, a waxing studio and a beauty school. She hired her little brother to help manage the businesses about the time he rediscovered the magic of YouTube — as both a consumer and producer.

“I learned everything I know from YouTube,” he says flatly. “I don’t read.”

In 2016, he started posting fitness video blogs, or vlogs. Some focused on body-building. Some focused on healthy food. The nutrition pieces got more clicks.

Viewers also gobbled up the restaurant scenes he shared from a Los Angeles trip.

“I actually got, like, 7,000 views, which is high for my channel. I usually get, like, 2,000 or 3,000,” he says.

Loon saw a market for city-based food vlogs. Ahead of a trip to Atlanta, he arranged for restaurants to give him free meals in exchange for exposure.

In Cary, a pizzeria gave him food and $50 to boot.

In Raleigh, he did a four-part feature and asked each place for food and $100.

“I did 16 restaurants in Raleigh, and I made, like, $1,400,” he says.

 

As his YouTube subscriber base grew, YouTube started placing targeted ads in his vlogs and paying him based on the number of views.

He expanded his audience, calling ahead to establishments in Chicago, Cleveland, Miami and New York. He did the same when traveling abroad.

In vlogs full of jump cuts, spastic camera work, overlaid music and occasional segues nicked from the Sponge Bob cartoon — “twen-ty minutes lay-tah . . .” — viewers watched him eat, drink and be merry in England, France, Italy and Greece.

His focus wasn’t entirely commercial, though.

Some vlogs amounted to home movies.

“Carolina Beach Travel Blog 2021” captures a family trip to celebrate his niece’s sixth birthday.

“Guess What I Got!” focuses on opening Christmas presents and making cookies at his sister’s house a few months later.

Those are the vlogs he shows his parents, whose grasp of English is limited.

“I want to make my family proud,” he says.

His parents were happy, he says, when he showed them an Instagram video he produced for Crest toothpaste and Reach toothbrushes. The mini-commercial shows Loon forgetting his dental kit on a trip, then jumping for joy when the self-propelled toothbrush and toothpaste — they’re being pulled by a barely visible thread — catch up to him.

He made more than $1,000 for the spot.

“They paid you that much — for that?” his mother said in Vietnamese when he showed her.

His father smirked his approval, Loon says.

They also beamed when they saw him earlier this year on I Can See Your Voice, the Fox network’s TV game show hosted by Korean-American comedian Ken Jeong, who spent some of his formative years in Greensboro.

Loon is pretty sure his Instagram numbers — along with his age, gender and race — caught the eye of the show’s casting agent. The Greensboro connection probably didn’t hurt. Loon lasted for one episode and brought home $15,000, which he promptly applied to his home’s mortgage.

The outstanding balance is not as much as you might guess. Loon’s down payment was more than a third of the home’s cost because he cashed out part of his investment in the electric car company Tesla. Loon learned about the company and its founder Elon Musk — whom Loon jokingly calls “Daddy Elon” — by watching YouTube videos.

Still a shareholder, Loon says he has doubled his Tesla money since 2019. He also holds blue-chip stocks like Apple and Microsoft.

“I’m not book smart,” Loon says. “But I’m really street smart.”

To share the secrets of his financial success, he launched a YouTube channel devoted to personal money management in 2020. Shedding his earrings and covering his tattoos with a white shirt, suit and tie, he told the story of how he paid off the loan for his slightly-used car in three years.

“I’m a very frugal person, very minimalist,” he explained, exhorting viewers to follow his example. “Do anything you possibly can to lower your expenses. Don’t worry about the now. Worry about the later.”

The financial channel never caught on, but Loon is still devoted to building his coffers.

He plans to buy another house, move into it and rent the one he occupies now. He wants to repeat the process until he owns several homes and lives off the rental income.

At that point, his payments from social media will be gravy. A bigger payoff will be a heightened profile — he’s easily the most visible Asian person on social media in this area — and more connections to other influencers, brands and communities.

“I see it as a means to everything,” he says. “It satisfies my need for attention, but it also gives me so many fun adventure opportunities.”

He’s cutting back on food and travel vlogs to focus on other projects. One is stand-up comedy.

“I have material. It’s just a matter of time,” he says. “I’m also getting a license to tattoo. These are all side quests.”

He plans to continue the podcast, which sports a mouth-and-tongue logo strikingly similar to The Rolling Stones trademarked “hot lips” emblem.

Loon says he had no idea about the resemblance until his then-6-year-old niece Lana was shopping and saw a phone case bearing the rock band’s logo.

“Oh, my God,” she told her mother. “Uncle Loon is famous.”

With more than 70 podcast episodes completed — most running at least one hour — Loon dips into a reservoir of people he knows well, those he barely knows and those he wants to know. Conversations range from raunchy to wonky, from sketchy to touching.

Previous guests include former Greensboro mayoral candidate Justin Outling; Asian country singer Travis Yee of Las Vegas; and Loon’s best friend and roommate, Zoran Kulic, whom he has interviewed at least three times.

“He’s the perfect person when I can’t find another guest,” Loon says.

Then there’s Griffen, his friend from first grade, who is featured in episode No. 62.

The topics swing wildly, touching briefly on what Loon describes as Griffen’s “really good morals.” Loon wonders aloud how Griffen was affected by his dad’s death at an early age.

“I just know, him looking down on me, he’d want me to continue going,” Griffen says.

“Dude, that’s immaculate,” says Loon, speaking so quickly it’s almost indecipherable.

Then they’re off to trendier pastures.

One week later, the show appears under the provocative title, “Guns, Cults and How to Lose Weight Easily.”  OH

Christmas from the Garden

Deck the halls with boughs from your own yard

Story by Ross Howell Jr.

As a boy, I enjoyed bringing the outside inside for the holidays.

On our mountain farm, I’d cut a white pine tree, gather running cedar, snip hemlock and rhododendron boughs, and harvest black pinecones and spicewood.

Nowadays, these native wild plants aren’t readily available to most of us. But we can cultivate our gardens and yards for holiday decorations.

My go-to person on this subject is Shirley Broome of Farmland Flowers in McLeansville. Shirley started selling plant sundries at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market as a little girl alongside her mother, Margaret Rumley, fondly remembered to this day by marketgoers and vendors as “Mom.”

Shirley mulls my question about growing plants for Christmas.

“Well, back in the day I worked a lot with holly and pyracantha,” she says.

“But those stickers and thorns,” Shirley adds. “They just got to be too much for my fingers.”

These days a favorite of Shirley’s is black cryptomeria, a compact evergreen tree. New foliage emerges in bright green shades and gradually darkens until it’s nearly black. The dark needles and layered branches provide attractive landscape contrast, and cuttings are great for your holiday table or mantel.

There are the old standbys, of course — boxwood, red cedar and juniper. These plants are available in a wide variety of sizes and shapes to fit the design of your garden. And regular winter pruning for a wreath or an arrangement can help them stay healthy and happy.

And I love using magnolia branches and leaves for decoration. Their litter can be too much for some gardeners, but, for me, their beauty and wildlife value are well worth the work.

Magnolia grandiflora is a big tree that needs lots of room, but the little gem varietal is a compact tree that can even be planted as a border.

Both provide heavenly white blossoms in spring, glistening, dark foliage year-round, and, if you beat the squirrels and birds to their fruit, velvety, brown,
cucumber-shaped pods sparkling with red berries.

And who hasn’t marveled at the spectacular scarlet berries of nandina shrubs?

“My favorite is the dwarf nandina,” says Shirley. “It keeps its foliage year-round and changes color with the seasons.”

She cautions that while dwarf nandina is pretty in the garden, it doesn’t grow as symmetrically as its larger relative.

“Sometimes it will sort of clump here and there,” she adds.

I mention aucuba, since my wife, Mary Leigh, has fond memories of her mother arranging its shiny and speckled foliage to decorate the fireplace mantel for Christmas.

“It wants to spread,” Shirley answers. “I just didn’t seem to have the space for it in my garden.”

Shirley likes working with American beautyberry, a fully deciduous shrub that sheds bright yellow fall-like foliage completely in winter. But its gorgeous purple berry clusters remain well into the colder winter days. There’s also a white variety that produces pearl-like berries.

A floral favorite of Shirley’s is the single or signet marigold, Tagetes tenuifolia.

“I really like its pungent fragrance,” she says. These small, delicate flowers can also be eaten, so you can use them to garnish a holiday plate.

Sedum, along with Christmas or Lenten roses, are other late plants Shirley likes for the holidays. In addition to their blossoms, the stiff foliage of the roses provides excellent foundation in arrangements.

“For support and contrast,” Shirley continues, “I like adding bare branches from dogwood or river birch.”

Another tree Shirley uses in her arrangements is eucalyptus. If you plant it in your landscape, put it in a sunny spot, and select a cold-hardy variety.

But the most overlooked Christmas plant?

“I’d say moss,” Shirley answers. If you have a shady, moist spot in your landscape, try propagating it. “Moss is wonderful for covering your potted Christmas bulbs, like amaryllis and narcissus,” she adds.

Year-round for Christmas, think outside inside, gardeners!  OH

Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer. Contact him at ross.howell1@gmail.com.

Almanac

December is a frosted window, a singing kettle, the busying of hands.

Beyond the glass, the breath of winter settles upon the still earth like a blanket of glittering lace. The garden withers. The air grows bitter. The cold sucks the life from the glistening landscape.

Yet, for a few precious hours, the wild ones stir.

As the sun thaws the silvery earth, critters emerge from their hideaways.

Birds flit from feeder to swinging feeder.

Deer feast on turkey tail mushrooms; paw for acorns; chomp on chicory and sunchoke roots.

Mice sniff out seeds. Rabbits munch on winter buds. Hawks watch from the naked trees above.

Inside, time is measured by cups of tea — earthy, dark and sweet. The fire crackles. The kettle sings. Quiet hands ache to make things:

Sourdough loaves studded with walnuts and dried figs.

Gingersnap cookies thick with blackstrap molasses.

Stovetop potpourri swirling with pine, orange and warming spices.

Winter wreaths woven with wild grape and honeysuckle vines.

Beyond the window, night comes early. The air grows frosty. Critters disappear with the dwindling light.

You stoke the fire, tend the kettle, nurture an ancient knowing growing wilder in your winter bones.

 

Long Nights Moon

The Cold Moon rises on Thursday, Dec. 8. Also called the Long Nights Moon and the Moon Before Yule, this month’s full and luminous wonder will share the limelight with a bright and strikingly visible Mars. With the Red Planet at opposition (meaning the Earth is positioned between it and the sun), Mars will appear brighter than all the stars.

Speaking of lustrous marvels, the Geminids meteor shower will peak on Dec. 13 and 14, illuminating the night sky with up to 120 meteors per hour. As its name suggests, this celestial pageant will emanate from the constellation Gemini, but here’s a hint: Just look up.

The final meteor shower of 2022 happens in tandem with the winter solstice on Dec. 21 — the longest night of the year. Although it’s hardly as eventful as the aforementioned Geminids, a dark sky makes conditions favorable for the Ursids, a minor shower that peaks with up to 10 meteors per hour.

May your nights be merry and bright. And your New Year, full of light.

 

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.      — Mary Oliver

 

Where the Sunchokes Shine

’Tis the season for Jerusalem artichokes, which are not, in fact, from The Holy City. Nor are they artichokes. These tasty tubers, also known as sunroots, sunchokes, wild sunflowers and earth apples, were first cultivated by indigenous peoples. When Italian settlers discovered this yellow-flowering plant, they dubbed it girasole, the Italian word for sunflower. The blossoms do look a bit like sunflowers, but they are actually more like daisies. Anyway, “girasole” became “Jerusalem” over time. You know how it goes.

Assuming the ground isn’t frozen, the tubers can be harvested all winter. Then what?

Scrub them, slice them and toss them with oil and spices.

Roast them until tender. Sauté them with garlic. Pan-fry them with butter and sage. You’ll figure it out.

A root by any other name would taste as savory and sweet.   OH

Fashion-ating Rhythm

When it comes to Greensboro’s sense of style, past is prologue

By Billy Ingram

Photograph © Carol W. Martin/Greensboro History Museum Collection

In 2009, I opened the newspaper to see an enormous color photo taken on State Street of my mother, Frances Ingram, doing what she loved most: shopping. How apropos, I thought. Mom made the rounds to her favorite shops, an ever dwindling number as she grew older, every single day.

As a youngster in the early-1960s, one of my earliest memories was Mother getting all dolled up to cruise the downtown department stores for clothes to wear the next time she went out shopping. A holiday highlight was a trip to Ellis Stone to meet Santa, who handed out wrapped gifts from under a fireplace made from shoeboxes and wrapping paper. Department store windows at Belk, Meyer’s, Montaldo’s and Ellis Stone were glittering, snowy greeting cards come to life.

Julian Wright, one of the brave souls who stormed the beaches of Normandy, found his post-war calling staging those lavish, dioramic window displays for Ellis Stone in the 1950s throughout the ’60s and, then, after the store was rebranded as Thalhimers. Wright’s idealized snapshots of American life, defined and enhanced by the products being peddled, became genuine tourist attractions with adults and children alike nose-to-glass, eyes awash in every vivid detail.

Little did little-me know I was witnessing the beginning of the end of shopping as a spectator sport.

By the early 1900s, men could buy off the rack, but there was no such thing as ready-to-wear women’s clothing when Vanstory and Belk opened their small, downtown Greensboro dry goods stores alongside a newly brick-and-block paved street called Elm. Both carried everything a woman required — silk, cotton, wool, buttons, laces and lacings — to construct her own frocks and even undergarments.

For society doyennes, the fashion of the day was pleated, flared skirts down to the floor with tight-waisted bodices and Leg o’mutton sleeves. That level of intricacy required the services of Mrs. T. W. Hancock, a renowned dressmaker on West Fourth Street in Winston-Salem. “Miss Molly” purchased fabrics and finery on her frequent forays into New York City, paying a handsome price for the latest Parisian haute couture patterns. She employed a retinue of seamstresses and cutters to fabricate exquisite wardrobe pieces for everyone who was anyone in the region.

    

Ellis Stone was well-established in Durham before launching a Greensboro location in 1902. Today the name is enshrined above the entrance at 226 South Elm. Foreshadowing the dawn of the full-service department store, Ellis Stone began taking ladies’ measurements, then dispatching them to New York for tailor-made suits and dresses. As it gained a reputation for being the epitome of taste and style, Ellis Stone made its home across the street (most recently Elm Street Center) in a $1.5 million, starkly modern 78,000-square-foot shopping mecca with a spectacular winding marble staircase, 20-foot tall mirrors and richly appointed sales floors.

Just down the street, in 1924, the city’s first enclosed shopping mall opened on the ground floor of the Jefferson Standard Building in 1924 with a barber, dentist and clothiers including Vanstory Clothing Co., founded across the street around the turn of the century. Vanstory catered to the city’s elite, offering Botany 500 suits and Don Roper ties. Flanking Vanstory’s entrance were some positively surrealist window displays, overly-starched shirt sleeves folded meticulously into tightly wrapped geometric puzzles, everything in frame cocooned in a warmly lit, thickly lacquered wooden cavern. Very European.

Vanstory rented out a portion of its storefront in 1933 to Montaldo’s, a small chain specializing in high end, ready-to-wear dresses run by two sisters out of Kansas. “When Montaldo’s came to Greensboro, that kind of upped the game,” fashion maven and owner of Design Archives Kit Rodenbough says. “Before that everybody had custom dress makers. Montaldo’s would have an outfit from a designer modeled in the store and women would order it in a custom fit.” Montaldo’s became a beacon of elegance on the corner of Elm and Friendly in 1942 when it moved into its curvaceous, two-story white-brick building. The front door looked more like a modern home than a commercial enterprise. And its wide windows displayed a dazzling array of wedding gowns, lingerie, millinery and cosmetics.

Meyer’s Department Store got underway around 1910, but it wasn’t until 1924 that it welcomed customers for the first time into a magnificent five-story showplace on the corner of Elm and Sycamore (now February One Place). Most striking to modern eyes would be the spacious aisles, neat glass and wooden cases, and finely dressed men and women standing at the ready to offer assistance. Sweaters and slacks in various colors and sizes lay neatly on tabletops with wardrobe essentials like dress shirts, gloves and undergarments displayed inside transparent enclosures. There was very little you couldn’t find at Meyer’s with its story after story sales floors staffed by over 500 employees. The operation eventually took up an entire city block, comprising a veritable shopping mall before such a thing existed, with 700 brand names under one roof, everything from “bobby pins to refrigerators.”

        

Left & Middle: Meyer’s
Right: Brownhill

Best of all, department stores had their own credit system. Customers need only scribble their names on the bill of sale and be on their way, merchandise in hand. Itemized bills arrived in the mail at the end of each month and were generally paid by mail.

In 1925, decorated in canary-colored walls and upholstery, primary-colored plaid curtains adorning floor-to-ceiling windows lining the Sycamore Street side, Meyer’s Tea Room opened on the second floor for afternoon light lunch. For the 53 years of its existence, the decor changed, but the menu not so much — everything prepared fresh, never canned. “My mother was a hairdresser so she always had Mondays off,” Charlie Hensley recalls of his childhood, circa 1960. “Often we would have lunch with my grandmother at Meyer’s Tea Room. The shopping experience was a lot more civilized back then, especially with the Tea Room, like an immersive experience. My mother was still wearing hat and gloves to go shopping then.”

The Belk brothers of Charlotte christened their first store in Monroe in 1888. A decade later, they opened a Greensboro branch. In 1939, they cut the ribbon on a Charles C. Hartmann-designed palace at Elm and Market. An exterior of glass and stone on the street level, glass brick detailing on the second and third floors, it took three boxcars worth of walnut to construct the hundreds of display cases, accented with birds-eye maple and primavera. Besides clothing, Belk offered a full-service beauty salon, candy counter, and cosmetics department.

Hensley’s first job as a teenager was as a sales associate at Belk downtown in the late-1960s. “It was the first time that I realized if you worked retail that you got a discount,” he told me. “The guy who ran the store was Mr. D.O. Tice, who looked a little like J. Edgar Hoover. I always thought he was a bit of a bulldog. When he would come through, the crowd would part. I don’t remember him being unpleasant ever, just formidable.” Hensley’s clients were very well-dressed matrons. “Part of what they expected from me as a 14- or 15-year-old was to be the expert advising them about what their husbands would like or what their sons might want.”

       

Two clothiers, Sam Prago and Adolph Guyes, joined forces in 1940 to create what would become an empire with four Greensboro locations and multiple stores scattered across the state by the 1970s. Down the block from Belk at the Dixie Building, across from Woolworth’s, Prago-Guyes’ lit-from-behind, emblematic logo glowed atop an entranceway bathed in color and light. Surrounding customers as they arrived were wraparound windows adorned with the latest ensembles. Another glass casement stood in the center of this impressive frontage. Their vast shoe department tickled the air with the scent of leather and vinyl. If you wanted to be hip to the latest gear, Prago-Guyes bragged, “We’re In Touch.”

     

Laurie’s Sportswear, popular with the Jet Set since opening on Elm in 1951, became the first major downtown retailer to close up shop and head for the suburbs when Laurie Queen and her three brothers signed on as an original tenant of Friendly Shopping Center in 1957. “I just thought it was beautiful,” Carolyn Andrews-Allred says of the spacious showroom, since repurposed for Harper’s restaurant. “I started working for Laurie’s my last year at Grimsley in the spring of 1972. It was the only place I wanted to work.” Harland Pell was its window designer, “I learned how to ‘fly the merchandise.’ That’s what they call it, to make garments hang in the air kind of magically with fishing wire.” Managers and brothers Edward and Marshall Simon had taken over operations by then. “Very strict business people,” Andrews-Allred says. “If somebody came in two minutes late, they were fired immediately.”

Salespersons were instructed in an almost mathematical method for moving merchandise. “We used it to sell not just one item, not just a dress or a blouse,” Andrews-Allred notes, “but you could figure out how to sell an entire set of clothing.” Very effective, at least in one sense. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, these people are buying so much — this is great,’” only to discover customers returning a large percentage of their purchases. “That’s just the way the fashion business was. You bought a lot and returned a lot.”

    

Left & Right: Montaldo’s

After leaving Laurie’s, Andrews-Allred took a sales position at Brownhill’s downtown in the mid-1970s. “It was much tinier, very much upscale,” she recalls. “Much more formal, like Montaldo’s.” Brownhill’s was established in 1927 when Elmer Brownhill arrived from England to open “a shop for stylish gentlewomen.” Before long the image of the “Brownhill’s lady” became iconic. Lewis and Adele Rosenberg bought the store in 1945, instituting Breakfast at Brownhill’s, a catered Saturday affair with models in the latest outfits strolling the aisles. Longtime employee Jack McGinn took ownership in 1963, his refined taste further cementing Brownhill’s impeccable reputation. Plushly carpeted throughout, there was a posh mezzanine level shoe emporium that the well-heeled accessed via a curved stairway.

While Brownhill’s added a charming storefront at Friendly, they remained downtown until 1987, long after every other upper-cruster had fled the scene. Over the years it gained the reputation as the primary go-to spots for prom dresses and debutante gowns. “They made sure if they did sell a gown to somebody that they weren’t attending the same gala as someone else who bought the same dress,” Andrews-Allred says.

For decades, consistency and uncompromising quality were the hallmarks of Younts-DeBoe located across from the Jefferson building since 1929. As a pre-teen, I can recall tagging along with dear old Dad once a year to be fitted for a new spring sport coat. With ladies’ tailored clothing at ground level and men’s and boys’ on the second floor, what is most memorable to me was the elevator operated by a gentleman who greeted us with a wide grin, “Good morning Mr. Ingram, watch your step.” An anachronism by 1970, long after others automated their lifts, Younts-DeBoe steadfastly refused to break with tradition.

    

Left & Right: Meyer’s

Younts-DeBoe was home of the Greensboro Nettleton, a prestigious soft leather loafer that will set you back about $600 today. “The shoe originated out of New York,” says long-time fashion consultant Dan Dellinger, who bought his first pair as an eighth grader at Kiser Junior High in the ’60s. “At that time they were $27.95. It’s not the same shoe. Today it’s fully leather-lined and has a thicker sole than the original, which had a canvas lining with partial leather, a much lighter weight.” Still, adjusted for inflation, a pair of Nettleton loafter purchased in 1965 for $27.95 would cost the equivalent of $258 today.

Younts-DeBoe was acquired by Henderson Belk in 1980 with the stated intention of leaving this downtown mainstay open. Regardless, just a year later, it fell upon previous owner Hank Millican, who had been with the store from the very beginning, to oversee the dismantling of the solid oak showcases built in 1929 for a short-lived relocation to Four Seasons Mall, about which the less said the better. You can still see Younts-DeBoe’s logo inlaid in the marble flooring in the lobby and embossed into the sandstone exterior at 106 North Elm.

In-store fashion shows were heavily attended events in the 1940s and ’50s. By the late-1960s, Greensboro’s Fashion Week came in October with a runway show held in the main room of the Coliseum. “It was a huge thing for a few years,” Charlie Hensley told me about his brief fling as a model. “Sandy Forman used to direct this thing and it was very posh, high production values, very well mapped out.” Staging was constructed for the event and a live band accompanied the show. “Backstage they gave you boxes of clothes. Everything was racked according to the model.” A representative from every store was standing in the wings to review everyone’s look before they strutted forward. “I modeled for Joel Fleishman who had a store at Friendly. My God,” Hensley gasps, “those were beautiful clothes.”

     

Right: Belk’s Department Store, 1951
Left: Montaldo’s, 1953

In the ’70s, the program migrated over to the Carolina Theatre where 15-year-old John Shepherd walked the runway wearing clothing from his parents’ store, Bernard Shepherd, “which I hated but I got roped into it.” Shepherd says, “Mom would come up to all the male models and slap a Kotex mini pad under our armpits so we wouldn’t perspire on the shirts because they were going back into stock.”

My family frequented Bernard Shepherd at Friendly ever since the grand opening in 1967. It’s where the menfolk bought all of our suits while my mother was often outfitted from the ladies’ section up front. John Shepherd began working for his parents, Bernard and Eleanor, in 1987 at 19 years old. Primarily a men’s outfitter, Bernard Shepherd carried high-end traditional menswear lines with the option of being measured for a custom fitted suit. “We had a box full of swatches you could go through to pick your fabric, lining, your buttons, everything,” Shepherd says. Clothing manufacturing reps with their goods hanging on racks rolled into the office at the rear of the store, “Or they showed up in big motor homes parked behind the store. They had all of their latest styles displayed inside.”

The malling of America had a chilling effect on traditional mom-and-pop retailers. To combat this phenomenon in 1976, Starmount, Friendly Center’s owner, introduced Forum VI nearby with a promise of being Greensboro’s climate controlled, bougie apparel and dining destination. Anchored by Montaldo’s after they finally closed what had become their downtown tomb on Elm and Friendly, the city’s fashion shows were now held at the Forum.

Shopping malls were fully open on the sabbath, which is why, beginning in 1990, Starmount required all tenants at Friendly Center to conduct business seven days a week. The Shepherds were against doing so on religious grounds. They sued and won what was a pyrrhic victory. “Starmount threatened to padlock the store,” John Shepherd tells me, which they apparently had a right to do. An agreement was forged in 1990. The store could stay closed on Sundays, Shepherd recalls, “but Starmount would pay to outfit a new store and build it out at Forum VI.”

       

Right: Belk’s Department Store, 1951
Left: Meyer’s Department Store

That same year and for the same reason, Brownhill’s was redirected into Forum VI. Both stores experienced a steep decline in sales. For a multitude of reasons, Forum VI never really caught on. Montaldo’s liquidated all of its stores in 1995, and Bernard Shepherd was shuttered a few months later. After almost 70 years in Greensboro, Brownhill’s sold everything, down to the fixtures, in 1996.

In terms of fashion locally, it became a race to the bottom when Cone Mills instituted dress down Fridays in the 1990s. Around that same period, VF downtown went every-day-casual, with others quickly following. “As it progressed,” Dan Dellinger points out, “some people looked like they were mowing yards when they came in to buy clothes.” Employee standards dropped so low at VF, it had to initiate a dress code. “Casual Fridays at the office, that was the beginning of the end,” Kit Rodenbough says with a sigh. “Once the men didn’t have to wear neckties and suits every day, the women were like, you know, [forget] this!”

Downtown, Meyer’s intricately detailed, monolithic 1924 castle is intact, serving a useful purpose as headquarters for the Chamber of Commerce and others, but Belk and Montaldo’s former residences long ago succumbed to the wrecking ball. Ellis Stone/Elm Street Center has a date with one, having already been stripped clean of every sumptuous design element.

Laurie’s at Friendly Shopping Center, 1970s-1980s

Seeking continuity? At 530 South Elm, Laurie’s original 1951 location, you can pursue your passion for fashion at Vintage to Vogue. Plaza Shopping Center and the cluster of 1950s era bungalows behind it on Pembroke remains a fashion-forward location for women and children just as it was in the 1960s and ’70s when Prago-Guyes had a storefront there and Lollipop Shop was a long-time tenant. On Pembroke behind Plaza in the ’50s, my grandmother enjoyed the ambiance at Helen Mulvey’s Handicraft House, which sold Yankee Peddler cotton dresses and country shirts.

Locally sourced panache still bubbles over in boutiques at Plaza Shopping Center: The Feathered Nest for ladies and Polliwogs for the kiddos. Steps away, next door to the former Handicraft House, is my late mother’s favorite place in town, Carolyn Todd’s. “They have the correct cheese straws,” she would remind us every holiday season. Her last Christmas, I accompanied Mother to Carolyn Todd’s, where she procured a major portion of her presents that morning. As we were checking out I watched bemused as — this was just a few years ago — she signed for her purchases and we were on our way.  OH

Billy Ingram’s fave article of clothing is a 1960s Sy Devore short-sleeved, striped knit shirt once worn by Frank Sinatra.

World War II brought shortages of everything from denim to nylon, essential goods diverted to shore up our troops. At war’s end, when word got around that the first shipment of nylon stockings in four years would be available at Meyer’s on a morning in 1946, a line of nattily attired ladies began forming as the sun rose. It would, over the next few hours, stretch around the corner and down the block.

Cigarette Pants

Scraps of History

One clothing retailer stubbornly remained downtown until the ground underneath became far more valuable than the business on it.

In 1926, Blumenthal’s got underway in a cubby hole at 358 South Elm. “The store with a heart” expanded into a new building built on that spot and adjoining properties in 1945 to create an 8,140 square-foot footprint specializing in denim jeans, work boots and hunting knives. Big and tall with extra, extra large sizes — a huge pair of bib overalls often on display to everyone’s amazement — could be found inside. Plus, they peddled cigarettes at prices so low, they were practically being given away just to get customers in the door. It worked. With 60 brands on hand, Blumenthal’s sold more smokes than any 10 stores combined.

Stacks upon stacks of Wrangler and Levi’s jeans, and the easy availability of Converse sneakers made Blumenthal’s back-to-school central for generation after generation. Suspended from the ceiling were three gigantic neon accented metal signs promising a free dollar bill if your receipt was incorrect or a complimentary pack of smokes if any of the numbers on your receipt matched numbers inscribed on the sign.

I won’t say this place was déclassé, but, for a time, there was a loudspeaker that allowed Abe Blumenthal to admonish people who parked too long out in front of his store. Blumenthal’s relocated to West Market in 2005 and closed its doors for good seven years later. The original location was supplanted in 2012 by an apartment complex named after the store.

Fashion Flare

Scraps of History

Proprietor John Mitchell began folding shirts and assisting his father and his uncle at Mitchell’s Clothing across the street from the Cadillac dealership when he was 12-years old. He’s a spry 95 today. In business since 1939, John Mitchell bought the place in 1962. “I changed things,” he tells me. “We were selling work clothes, work shoes, but I went into high fashion and men’s dress clothes.” Mitchell’s clientele has traditionally been and remains about 80 percent African-American.

Sales went through the roof when Mitchell picked up on an emerging unisex fashion trend out of Europe via New York City: bell bottom pants. “Belk and Meyer’s had ‘em first,” Mitchell admits. “But they couldn’t sell ’em so they quit. A year or two later, I got big into bell bottoms.” That was around 1970, when flared legs suddenly became the hot, hip-hugging style for both men and women. “For a while I was the only store in Greensboro selling bell bottoms and the Tom Jones[-style] rayon shirts with big, wide collars and stack shoes with the high heel.”

Besides Stacy Adams’ Madison shoes and crisp dress shirts, Mitchell’s is known as the place in town to find funky chapeaus from Stetson, Kangol, and more obscure designers. “People come from all around the country to buy my hats,” he says. Does he have any polyester era bell bottoms or platform shoes still hanging around? “A guy came in from California looking for those things and he bought all those old fashioned shoes and men’s clothes.”