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Fleischmann for President!

A man with real intelligence

By Richie Zweigenhaft

Not long ago, one of my geezer b-ball buddies sent me an article about pick-up basketball. I liked it, and I also liked the 31 comments that followed from various readers. I decided to add my own. A few minutes after I submitted it, I received a message telling me it had been denied — either because of inappropriate wording or because I had otherwise not followed the guidelines. I was told I could appeal. So I did, asking what I naively thought was a person just why it had been rejected. 

Too long? I asked. Or was it because I had (shamelessly) included a URL promoting my book about our pickup basketball game? Or was it some other transgression (I was unable to find their guidelines online)? Ten minutes later, I was told my appeal had been rejected, and my question about the cause of the rejection remained unanswered. 

Stubbornly, I attempted to submit my comment twice more, first taking out the URL, and then shortening the comment. Both times, it was rejected. Then I removed “geezer” and, presto, it was accepted. The term “geezer,” which I use affectionately, clearly was not acceptable based on the algorithm. It dawned on me that I had been “communicating” with a machine. 

Subsequently, I had a radically different experience when I submitted an email to Phillip Fleischmann, the director of Greensboro’s Parks & Recreation. I addressed a fairly long (and somewhat rambling) message to him, asking him to forward it to the right person. The gist?  Just some observations I had made on my regular bike rides about the tennis courts, ball fields, basketball courts and the skateboard park I frequently ride by. It also included a query about the removal of planted areas along Buffalo Creek, plus about some renovations near the Latham Park tennis courts. And then I boldly suggested that some pickleball courts be added to the changes taking place in Latham Park. I even included a parenthetical comment informing him that, in 1975, as I was about to leave for a vacation, I had sent the Parks & Recreation department a letter encouraging them to build a basketball court in my Lake Daniel neighborhood. When I got back three weeks later, there was a court.   

I had no idea if I would hear back this time either from a human or via artificial intelligence.

The response was quite human, and more than I could have hoped for. He responded to every issue I raised, with explanations about the tennis courts — why some had pickleball lines but others did not — the reason for the removal of the planted areas along Buffalo Creek, the department’s hopes to increase the number of pickleball courts, and why some basketball courts allow for full court and others don’t. He even congratulated me for my 1975 letter: “Seeing the use of the basketball court at Lake Daniel, it is evident that your suggestion to Parks & Recreation in the 1970s was an impactful one!”

When I shared this email with a friend, his response was “Fleischmann for President!”

It was reassuring, especially in light of my earlier online experience trading emails with a machine. The incursion of artificial intelligence may be inevitable, and may feel like it is pervasive, so responses like the one I got from Phil Fleischmann are increasingly valuable, especially to geezers like me who still value the printed word — written by humans.

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My Roommate

A dapper apparition

By Renee Skudra

I have only seen him once, in profile, passing from the living room into the kitchen: a dapper, middle-aged man in 1940s clothing — attired in a patterned knit vest, double-pleated gabardine trousers, dark brown loafers and a fedora. Startled, as I jumped up from my seat at the kitchen table, he vanished.

I’m a largely rational creature and once considered myself the sort of person who didn’t believe in ghosts. I’ve read in paranormal literature that a ghost sighting is often referred to as an example of “ontological shock,” an event that causes one to question one’s worldview. Believe me. It has.

I have witnessed lights and spigots turning on and off, objects moving or falling, shadows that pass through walls, freezing cold spots with the central heating set at 74 degrees, a voice from my computer screaming “You’ve got mail!” at 3 a.m.

I have had to conclude that a dead person interacting with the living world — aka a ghost — inhabits my house. While you may scoff at that, spending only one night in my house would make you a believer. For the moment, my ghost and I have reached an uneasy peace. Neither of us is leaving.

However, I am in good company in believing that my roommate/apparition exists. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, close to 20 percent of people say they have seen a ghost. That equates to more than 50 million ghosts out there in the U.S. alone. A 2019 Ipsos poll found that 46 percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts.

The idea that the dead remain with us in spirit is indeed an ancient and abiding concept. From the Bible to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, from TV ghost hunting shows to my own kitchen, we’re obsessed by specters. Skeptics keep the debate going. They argue that, if ghosts are real, their existence will be verified through controlled experiments. They posit that reports of ghosts can be explained by psychology, misperceptions, mistakes and hoaxes. According to a 2019 article entitled “The Science of Ghosts” in Science News Explores, scientists found zero evidence that ghosts exist. What scientists have discovered, though, are a multitude of reasons why people might feel they have had ghostly encounters — hallucinations and pareidolia top the list. Pareidolia is a tendency for the human brain to find patterns amongst ambiguous stimuli. Is that a face you see in a cloud? Effectively, the brain finds meaning in the meaningless.

Still ghost stories persist. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and First Lady Grace Coolidge swore they saw Abraham Lincoln in the Yellow Oval Room. George Washington is said to have regularly revisited the historic chamber at Mount Vernon where he died in 1799. The ghost of former N.C. Governor Daniel Fowle has been haunting the Governor’s mansion. 

As I’m writing this, the light suddenly flickers in the den and once again my volume of Black’s Law Dictionary has fallen from its shelf and lies, open, in the middle of the floor. I replace the book, as I have so many times before, and calmly say, “Please leave the law books alone.” When you live with things that go bump in the night, you have to give them a modicum of respect and hope they do the same for you.

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Southern Idioms Live On

You can’t understand us, we know it, but we just can’t help it

By Cynthia Adams

Personally, I’m tickled that YouTubers — such as former art teacher Landon Bryant — can make a living doing pure T nothing. (There’s a Southernism for you, Landon.) That is, nothing but talking, then explaining whatever was said.

This native son breaks down such terms as “mash” (as in the brake, button, alarm or gas pedal) versus “press.” He explains “liked to” (as in “liked to die” or “liked to have gone to meet my Maker”) to those beyond his hometown, Laurel, Mississippi — population 17,000.

Southerners have our own linguistic mashup. For example, I married a ferner, Southern for anybody who isn’t a native. Technically, a ferner could be from, say, Yonkers.

A primer: Yes’m is a contraction for “Yes Ma’am”

Bob wahr is just “barbed wire.”

Tin cints is just a dime. Except when “putting your tin cints worth in,” meaning offering your opinion. (Tin cints is about what most opinions are worth.)

There are directional Southernisms, too. “Over yonder” and “right cheer,” for example. In this context, cheer means here.

In another context, cheer means a seat.

“Why dontcha take a cheer?” doesn’t mean you are being offered a chair as a party favor. It means sit a spell.

Slang also perplexes. Nabs. Not the verb, as in “help me nab the bank robber.” Originally, short for a Nabisco snack, anybody who knows Sheetz from Shinola knows we’re talking about Toast Chee, a homegrown Lance snack.

Perversely, Southernisms aren’t always shorthand but sometimes longer. A form of linguistic face saving. Example: “I might coulda done things your way, but it warn’t up to me.” (A roundabout admission of messing up while passing the buck.)

Oftentimes, just more colorful. My grandmother was driven to distraction — meaning infuriated — by a neighbor who was “careless with the truth.” She declared he’d rather “climb a roof to tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.” Such deceit nearly caused a “conniption fit.” A conniption fit exceeds being driven to distraction.

Euphemisms exacerbate and blunt truths: A chronic screw up is “a day late and a dollar short,” or “a brick short of a load.”

Southerners especially evade mortality, finding death unnatural. “Elmer died” seems callow. Softening the blow: “Elmer went to his reward.” “Was called home.” “Met his Maker.” Or, “Elmer passed.” Just try to find a Southern obituary containing the word “died.” If you do, show me.

“Who’s laid out at the funeral parlor?” translates thusly: “Whose death requires paying our respects?” (An open casket not only invites but demands it. Custom dictates praise: to wit, “I can’t believe he/she looks so natural.”)

Thanks to “extreme embalming,” socialite Mickey Easterling presided unnaturally over a New Orleans wake, cocktail and ciggie in hand. Mourners “held up” well.

In the South, our favorite sons and daughters linger longer, thanks to TV. Singer Jimmy Dean, DOD 2010, still pitches sausage that is just as smoky as his voice.

Memphian Leslie Jordan’s YouTube soliloquies considered all things Southern from sweet tea to mullets. Jordan died in 2022, yet his videos? Never.

Dearly departed Julia Reed (2020) gaily mined Southern speak and culture. My friend, John, and I delight over Reed’s bon mots.

Over a stack of her books — But Mama Always Put Vodka in her Sangria on top — we recently raised a glass. We took her passing hard.

That death? Well, it liked to have killed us.

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Daniel Wallace is the author of six novels. He is the
J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater.

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Illustrations by Harry Blair

What started as a fun creative undertaking inspired by his own Henderson Road neighborhood dogs turned into a furry fury of ink across illustrator extraordinaire Harry Blair’s desk. He certainly gave these pups paws-onality plus! Coming soon to a Greensboro near you, Blair plans to draw precious pooches for their humans at a small charge, half of which will go to local rescue operations. De-tails to come.  OH

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The Gift of the Fan Belt

What goes around . . .

By Harry Roach

Note from the editor: This was second place in our 2023 O.Henry Essay Contest.

In the summer of 1969, I was driving a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair. Yes, a Corvair, not a Corvette. Manufactured from 1960–1969, the Corvair was America’s first and only automobile with an air-cooled, rear-mount engine. That engine was the heart of the vehicle, and near the center of this story.

After a long day trip to a state park in southeastern Missouri, my wife and I were in the Corvair, engine off, waiting in line for a ferry to carry us across the Mississippi River to southern Illinois. We chatted and laughed, recounting the highlights of the day.  From the ferry landing, fields of corn flowed north and south to the horizon, filling thousands of acres of bottom land between the river and the levee. I could say that the scene reminded me of that ominous Stephen King story, but he didn’t write it until 1977.   

With the late afternoon sun behind us, we could see the ferry crossing toward us from the east bank, slow as a tortoise on vacation. It was carrying its maximum, just nine cars. On our side, the Corvair was seventh in line and, because the ferry did not operate after dark, ours would be the final crossing of the day.

As the ferry maneuvered toward the slip, drivers ahead of us started their cars. I turned the key in the ignition, the engine immediately fired up. Bang! What was that? Red lights on the control panel lit up like a Christmas display. I got out and opened the hatch over the engine. The Corvair had thrown its fan belt. Late on a Sunday afternoon. Miles from nowhere. We were stuck.

The fan is essential to an air-cooled engine, and its belt also runs the generator and the power steering. I was thinking maybe we could coast down the incline and onto the ferry, then, after the crossing, get help pushing the car up the ramp onto the Illinois shore. Where we’d probably have to sleep in the car. Not a bright prospect.

“Can I help you, buddy?” It was the guy in the truck behind us. Who happened to be a Chevy mechanic. Who also owned a Corvair. And had a Corvair fan belt in the back of his truck. What were the odds? Our miracle mechanic installed the new belt so quickly that we were ready to roll just when it was our turn to board. My wife and I were two very thankful people.

Years later, I was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, driving a different vehicle with an air-cooled rear-mount engine: a Volkswagen bus, the vehicle of choice for happy hippies, van campers and large families on a budget. By then, I had learned how to install a fan belt, change the plugs, adjust the timing, and other rudiments of amateur automobile maintenance. A quarter mile ahead, a red VW bug sat sadly on the shoulder of the road, its open engine hatch gaping at three perplexed women. Their bug had thrown its fan belt. I got out my tools and spare belt and in 15 minutes had those very thankful people back on the road. And I, too, was grateful for the opportunity to return the gift of a fan belt bestowed by that miraculous Samaritan so long ago.  OH

Harry Roach and his wife, Liz, live in downtown Greensboro, where they spend a lot of their time dancing.

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A Fairytale Ending

I Think That I Shall Never See Myself as Other Than a Tree

By  Christine Garton

Our fourth-grade Christmas pageant offered an opportunity I yearned for — the role of a fairy! While I dreamed of wands and sparkling wings, I knew I would face competition from my pixie-like classmate, Anne. For days I practiced flitting about while singing, “I’m a fairy, so light and airy.” Alas, Anne received the fairy assignment, and our teacher proclaimed that “a big ol’ healthy girl” like me would play . . .  a tree. “Well,” Mother said, “maybe you will be draped with tinsel and wear a star on your head.” No. I was to wear my blue velveteen Sunday school jumper, stand in one spot and utter one line.

I first met Anne when the black taxicab picked us and the other 4-year-olds up for delivery to Mrs. Teensy Davis’ in-home nursery school. Memories of that year consist mainly of finger painting and two horrid little boys who terrified me by saying they were going to climb under the hood of Daddy’s car and kill him. For some reason my father did not take this as a serious threat, but Anne consoled me and thus became my friend.

The following year, Anne cut through her backyard to meet me, and together we walked to kindergarten. Anne was a tiny girl with blonde, Alice-in-Wonderland hair she wore in braids. At her temples I saw delicate blue veins, like rivers on a map. Mother said Anne was born “premature,” which I interpreted as “dainty.” Built like a fireplug with a Dutch-boy bob, I longed for braids like Anne’s, so I nagged Mother into allowing my hair to grow. Although the resulting plaits were so thin that rubber bands slipped off the ends, Scotch Tape worked just fine.

I coveted the sleek, black penny loafers Anne wore in first grade. I hated my spud feet, clad in sturdy, lace-up, tan Hush Puppies, and hooked my ankles around the legs of my desk to keep them out of view. I campaigned to convince Mother to buy me loafers. “You’d tear them up in a week,” she said. In retaliation, I rode my bike for an hour, dragging the toes of my Hush Puppies along the pavement, but the shoes were indestructible.

The after-school YMCA program yielded no outlet for my inner Thumbelina. President Kennedy had determined that America’s youth were soft, so an intense fitness regimen was inflicted upon us: “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!” We performed sit-ups and jumping jacks. Bird-like, Anne flew to and fro in the potato relay as I plodded behind on turkey drumstick legs. I could barely hoist myself halfway on the climbing rope, while Anne skittered up and down like a spider.

I mostly gave up any notion of being like Anne. I worked at kicking a ball hard and swinging a softball bat. I beat up the runty boy across the street who called me “Moose” and eventually outgrew my stocky phase.

Years later, reeling from an abrupt end to my marriage, I found myself rearing a son on my own. No time for fairies, daily life was consumed with his care and paying the bills. But I was determined to make sure my boy was rooted securely by his mother’s love.

In his early teens, my son applied for a job at the boys’ summer camp he had loved throughout childhood. One day, I received an unexpected phone call from the camp director wanting to discuss a junior counselor position. “You know, Grey had to describe his hero on the job application,” he said. “His hero is you.”

My perplexed silence prompted him to continue.

“He wrote about the big tree in your backyard where you hung his swing. He said like that tree, you are strong and give him support, but with the swing, you also let him fly.”

After thanking him and hanging up, I pondered this revelation: Was I wrong all along? Perhaps being a tree was not the indignity I’d thought.  OH

Christine Garton is a staff writer for UNCG’s Advancement Communications. She holds great pride in the fact that her son earned the rank of Eagle Scout, albeit with her foot planted firmly on his derriere . . .

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Hog Wild

…and happy as a pig in mud

By Cynthia Adams

Early life on a farm taught me this: Never get caught swimming with the hogs.

Especially wearing a brand-new swimsuit. 

Hearing titters in a children’s shop, my folks pivoted from a rack of Easter dresses to discover me in the display window wearing a blue-and-white “swimming soup” taken straight off the mannequin. My father conceded. “Look, if she wants it that badly, I say we buy it.”

At age 4, that would be the last time I found a new bikini joyful. 

Mind you, we had no swimming pool. My grandmother had a pond replete with water moccasins. Where snapping turtles tangled fishing lines. The best I could hope for was a sprinkler.

It was wonderful being a child on a small farm with goats, milk cow, horses and hogs. Our father raised Landrace hogs, which prolifically produced white piglets. Whenever a new litter was born, which was often, Daddy would take me to the barn to admire them, wriggling and pink beneath red heat lamps. I adored them long before discovering Charlotte’s Web.

With the first fine spring day, inspiration struck. Donning the new swimsuit and a tiny, cherished diamond birthstone ring, I headed straight for the hog pond. And sank right in.

The muck pleasantly sucked at my bare feet like a welcoming, living thing. My ponytail floated behind me as I joyously heaved handfuls of mud from the pliable pond, exultant. 

As for the hogs? I knew them since birth as gentle, intelligent creatures, much like E. B. White’s Wilbur. They watched on as if to say, “See? See why we like it so much?”

At some point, my older sister, six years my senior, appeared at the pond’s edge wearing her cowgirl boots. “ARE YOU CRAZY?” she screamed. Seldom a tattletale, mine was a crime demanding to be reported. She shot away, black pigtails flying behind her, hollering, “MAMA!”

Before I could extract myself from the muck and broker a deal, Mama came running faster than I had ever witnessed. She was at the pond before I could fully balance, hair streaming, streaks of red mud dribbling down my chin.

Staining my brand-new swimsuit.

Confronting the spectacle before her, Mama shuddered, then glowered.

“Cynthia Anne! Get. Out. Of. The. Hog. Pond. NOW.”

As any child knows, Mama Justice requires no reading of rights; no legal representation, no cooling off period before judgement is rendered. 

There are only two possibilities: Guilty as charged, or asleep.

I was marched to the spigot for a vigorous hosing down after stripping off my beloved swimsuit. (“Well, I hope you’re happy,” Mama seethed. “That’s ruined.”)

I remember being plunked into the white porcelain bath. She declared war on my skin and nails, doggedly persisting even after the muddied bath water ran clear. 

Suddenly, with a sad shiver, I sneaked my right hand behind me: The suit wasn’t all that was lost.

Of course, Mama saw. “Cynthia Anne. Where’s your ring?”

Gone. 

Her lips stretched into a disapproving line. “This is what happens when your Daddy spoils you.”

Afterward, an imposed bedroom confinement, meant for contemplating of crimes.

Later, the trooping before my father for a full confession. (A sympathetic smile flickered, but, once charged, even Daddy couldn’t overrule Mama Justice.)

There were my sister’s snickers to endure. 

During my exile, springtime rains began, forming beguiling puddles in the graveled driveway. As if custom-made just for me. 

I thought of my barnyard friends, free to abandon themselves to the embracing muck! How I longed to do the same.

Helpless against all that pleasure, a 4-year-old with the perfect outfit snuck out into the rain to claim the perfect puddle.  OH

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The Razor

A clean-cut remembrance of a gentle soul

By Tim Swink

It was on the front steps of the YMCA in a steel mill town, where I’d rented a room, that I first met him. I had followed a pretty girl who’d come south for a two-week stay at the coast back to Northeast Ohio. I was smitten. I ended up staying until the end of August, when I returned home to begin my fall semester at Guilford College.

Picking up work on a construction site as a carpenter’s helper or a laborer, the summer job for many college guys down South? No problem. But the problem here was being able to walk through the barbed-wire fences that surrounded worksites without a union membership card. After being unceremoniously asked to leave, I realized that this was a steel town where the world was hard, as were its men. Manpower Temporary Services became my employer, assigning me jobs nobody wanted to do.

After a day’s work for Manpower, I’d sit on the front steps of the YMCA, waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up so we could spend the evening together. It was on those granite steps that I first saw him. Back then, he was labeled “gimp-legged” since he walked with a very bad limp. I later learned that his leg had been crushed in an incident while working in one of those steel mills, leaving him disabled, with a meager monthly check and a room at the Y. Later on those evenings, when my girlfriend would drop me back off, a dread would fill me. As I entered the lobby and could hear shouting and curses echoing up and down the halls, I’d run up the stairs, two at a time, to my third floor room and immediately lock the door. When the noise would die down late in the night, making way for me to tiptoe down the hall to the communal bathroom, where I’d finally wash up.

The Y was a daunting place, where rough men with rough lives resided. But there was one exception: “the man on the steps.” He had a kind, gentle nature. A contradiction in the given environment. A wounded man, physically, against a backdrop of hard men and their hard living. Through evening conversations at the Y, I came to know him. I don’t recall what we talked about. And I don’t recall his name. I wish I did. He deserved that. But I felt a connection with him and I can still see him to this day, just as he looked when he’d gaze up into the soft twilight glow. He’d fixate on jets that periodically streamed across the sky. One day I heard him say to himself, “Man, I’d give anything to be on that jet, going wherever it’s going. It wouldn’t matter. Just outta here.”

During one of our evening talks, I rubbed my hand across my stubbled face and mentioned that I’d either lost or forgotten my razor. The next evening, there on the steps, he reached into his pocket and extracted a worn razor and held it out to me saying, “Here. Take this.” I resisted, but he insisted. “You need it more than I do, to stay handsome for that pretty lady.” Looking down at the razor, I noticed he’d colored the base of the handle red — to identify it, I assumed. You had to protect what was yours in the YMCA.

As I type this piece, a used razor with a red handle sits on my writing desk. A simple gesture that said so much. A remembrance of a kind, gentle man from so long ago, who wanted me to stay handsome for the pretty lady who later became my wife. The kind, gentle man who just wanted to fly away. To anywhere. I hope he did.  OH

Tim Swink resides in Greensboro and is the author of three novels: Curing Time, Madd Inlet and a sequel to Curing Time, Where the Flowers Bloomed, released in February 2024.