Tag: Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

To the Moon, Harry

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

By Billy Ingram

Illustration by Harry Blair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know that to be true.

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

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

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

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

And Harry Blair had it covered all along. OH

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

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Hill Street, Lauren Hutton and . . . William Faulkner?

Returning to that dead-end boulevard of youth to unravel an unsolved mystery

By Billy Ingram

“A lot of modeling is how much crap you can take.”
— Lauren Hutton

Watching a recent CBS Sunday Morning segment on “the original supermodel,” Lauren Hutton, and her improbable path from poverty to becoming one of the most successful businesswomen in America triggered a memory buried in the smoldering rubble of my brainpan. I vaguely recalled that, in the 1970s, Hutton visited someone in Greensboro, but for what I didn’t have a clue.

Soon after word spread concerning my curiosity, I heard from an old friend, Jane Vaughan Teer, who invited me to the home she shares with her husband, John. Wouldn’t you know, the Teers reside on Hill Street. There, she related the curious story behind Hutton’s surreptitious visit to the Gate City, which happened at the very height of her phenomenal career.

You may recall my slightly salacious recollections of the two-block stretch of Hill Street in Latham Park where I grew up, published in O.Henry’s January 2025 issue. (You do collect ’em all, don’tcha?)

My conversation with the Teers began with their curiosity as to exactly where it was that Mrs. Bunn gunned down her hubby before fleeing to Florida with her paramour. And the address where our 80-year-old neighbor sunbathed au naturel. What I didn’t know, that Jane told me about, was the man who shot dead a teen peeping tom still resided across the street when they the Teers moved to Hill Street in 1978 and would randomly speak about it decades later.

The Teers were surprised to learn that the house next door to theirs once belonged to a couple and their two sons — one of the boys let it slip that their parents had filmed themselves making babies then showed it to them by way of explaining the birds and the bees (I’m running out of metaphors, folks). That whisper rapidly went viral, no tweets needed on this street for speedy promulgation. Soon after, that randy fam relocated. At one point, the Teers mentioned property assessments on Hill Street skyrocketing, a common concern of late. “Don’t worry,” I assured them. “After folks get a gander at this, the city will be forced to reassess.” But I digress. When wisps of 50-year-old reminiscence subsided, discussion turned to my memory’s mystery — why Lauren Hutton ventured to Greensboro.

“I had to give up my bedroom for her,” Jane, 27 at that time, recalls of Hutton’s overnight stay in their home at 2018 Pembroke Dr. that, by her best recollection, took place late summer 1974. “It was supposed to be a very quiet thing, no publicity, but Mama had to have a party . . . of course.” Mama being the indomitable Bee Vaughan, a tentpole presence in my life I equated with the Unsinkable Molly Brown. “Mama told Lauren, ‘We’re going to have a little cocktail party.’ Lauren said she wanted to take a nap first, so she goes back into my room to rest.”

As folks began arriving at the cocktail hour, Jane was enlisted to awaken Ms. Hutton who, remember, was one of New York and Europe’s most sought-after socialites. “Lauren said, ‘This early?!? I don’t guess anywhere else in the world they have cocktail hour at 5 o’clock!’”

If you weren’t around for the so-called Me Decade, it’s difficult to unpack the impact Hutton, a small-town girl from the South, had on the fashion world globally. In 1973, she signed the first exclusive contract in modeling history and the most lucrative at $250,000 a year for 20 days work (an almost $2 million payday today) as the fresh-scrubbed face of Revlon cosmetics. That was just six years after landing her first Vogue cover in 1966 at age 23.

“From the very beginning I wanted to see the world,” Hutton told the Today show in 2016 about why she left the South. “I heard that models made this enormous amount of money, ‘a dollar a minute,’ and I said, ‘I have to do that!’ And everybody laughed.” With a gap in her teeth, a “banana-shaped nose,” standing only 5-foot-7 (in heels), she possessed none of the qualities associated with 1960s glamor gals typified by Elizabeth Taylor’s cat-eyed Cleopatra caricature, Catherine Deneuve’s icy glare or Twiggy’s pixie-like androgyny.

Her preppy-chic visage was splashed across some two dozen major magazine covers by 1974. Hutton’s unspoiled, Gulf Coast-casual resting face best expressed what modern, independent women were thirsty for from fashionistas: allure without artificiality.

Just how glamorous was one of the world’s most photographed fashion icons? “She was regular, just plain folks,” Jane insists. That comes through in the photo reproduced here of Hutton taken alongside Bill “Hoot” Roane, the very fellow she came to town to see.

A longtime companion of Bee Vaughan’s after her husband passed, Hoot (a nickname bestowed in childhood) was blessed with a gift for gab that came in handy as a sales exec for WBIG Radio, popular as any of the station’s on-air personalities.

Hutton had come to Greensboro to query Hoot about his adolescent days in Oxford, Mississippi. Back then, Hoot was a close friend of Lawrence Bryan “Cut” Hutton, the father she never knew. “They were in a little gang together,” Jane explains about the pirate-themed crew Hoot and Cut hung with, their ship a treehouse fort for secreting cigarettes and liquor. “You can count on the fact that, however long [Hutton] was here, Hoot kept her entertained. She heard a lot about her father and about their close friendship with William Faulkner.”

The writer William Faulkner? “They were neighbors,” Jane comments casually. “Hoot used to give talks about him. Not about his writing but about neighborhood things, like Faulkner dating the school librarian.” Faulkner was around 20 years older than those boys. But then, as a youngster, I was friendly with older neighborhood folks, too.

There was a small café in Oxford where, daily, Faulkner sorted through his mail. “Hoot had some kind of a job there,” John Teer recalls. The year was 1939 when Hoot was 22. “One morning Faulkner came in with all these magazines, letters and so forth. One of them was Time magazine with his picture on the cover.” Faulkner didn’t even open the magazine, couldn’t have cared less what they said about him in it, laughingly autographing the mag before handing it over to his pal.

“After Hoot’s father passed away, the family gathered down in Oxford,” John continues. “Somebody came in and said, ‘There’s an old man at the back door. He’s kind of sketchy looking, I don’t know . . .’ Hoot went to look and it was Mr. Faulkner. He’d come over with a fifth of [Four Roses] as a gift.”

It’s reassuring that Lauren Hutton reemerges frequently, her look being timeless. Only Princess Diana, and few others, have similarly embodied Hutton’s rarified air of vulnerable likability. Asked by Harper’s Bazaar in 2023 about regrets, Hutton replied: “I would give anything to meet my father, my real father. I didn’t ever get to meet him.” Whether or not her journey here provided meaningful insight or connection, she can’t say Greensboro didn’t give a Hoot.

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

A Multi-Storied House

If these walls could talk . . . occasionally, they do

By Billy Ingram

“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart!” – Eliza Cook

Rarely do time, temperature and opportunity coalesce to create conditions rife for recapturing carefree memories of sunshiny, youthful afternoons. In this instance, it’s an unplanned springtime saunter through Fisher Park — a frequent footpath in my teenage meanderings when hoofing it from Latham Park to First Presbyterian or onward Downtown, sketchbook and graphite at hand for rendering fascinations like that bulbous Weeping Willow billowing at the entrance (long since withered away), those cobblestone arches crossing creeks, masonry stairways and hardwood hickory trees.

Only once did I attempt drawing any of the surrounding houses, and that was 106 Fisher Park Circle, a majestic, two-story Neoclassical Revival with inviting slate steps that lead to a grand portico canopied by a tympanum accented with a whimsical lunette window that, even then, I suspected had witnessed its share of illustrious people and familial felicity. This graceful home is a centerpiece of Greensboro’s very first residential development, one that broke ground in the 1890s then grew exponentially throughout the Roaring ’20s.

If every picture is worth a thousand words, then, surely, every vintage home has potential to inspire an entire novel. In theory, one could select randomly any period property and undoubtedly uncover countless intriguing untold — or untoward — tales, walls eagerly awaiting listening ears. That recent midday wandering into wistfulness led to wondering: Why not honor 106 Fisher Park Circle for this “novel” experiment?

Knowing little more than that 106 had been dubbed “R. D. Douglas House,” I began researching in my own library of local lore. Tucked into unread recesses was a nondescript paperback inscribed to my mother on her birthday in 2005 entitled The Best 90 Years of My Life, written and self-published two years earlier by Robert Dick Douglas Jr. Born in 1912, the author’s chronicle commences with recollections of growing up with his three siblings at . . . 106 Fisher Park Circle. In his opening paragraph, Douglas Jr. describes the stately five-bedroom manor his parents had built back in 1906: “The house was high above the street and had four large cement two-story columns in the front. On the north side of the house was a concrete driveway leading from the street up the hill to a red wooden barn at the back of the lot.”

That barn originally housed a horse that pulled the family’s four-wheeled carriage. Before long, the Douglases were motoring in touring cars (with Eisenglass curtains, no less) east down North Park Drive to arrive at 480 Church St., where the children’s great-grandmother lived in the estate known as Dunleith. The striking three-story mansion had been built around 1858 by her husband, N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert P. Dick. One of the nation’s earliest examples of Italianate architecture, it was briefly requisitioned for Union Headquarters as the Civil War drew to a close. Descending into disrepair, that elegant dwelling was demolished in the late 1960s. More recently, the former Aycock neighborhood was renamed Dunleath (close enough, right?) in its honor.

In the 1910s, public transportation was incredibly convenient for citizens of the newly-named Gate City. “We had electric trolleys running on rails in the street and getting electric power from overhead trolley wires,” Douglas Jr. writes. “Streetcars ran from downtown out North Elm Street to about where Wendover crosses now. Later, they went all the way out to Sunset Drive where you could walk to the Greensboro Country Club.”

Douglas Jr.’s youth revolved around the single Catholic Church in town, St. Benedict, within easy walking distance. “Father Vincent was a great golfer and a member of the Greensboro Country Club,” he writes. “I think a lot of anti-Catholic prejudice was dispelled by his charm and golfing ability.” The Parish’s Sunday School was taught by the Sisters of Charity, who established St. Leo’s, Greensboro’s first hospital in 1906.

As an Eagle Scout, Douglas Jr. spent a summer hunting big game alongside Serengeti natives, about which he wrote a book, Three Boy Scouts in Africa: On Safari with Martin Johnson, published by Putman. He followed that up with a second memoir published one year later in 1929 about bear hunting on Kodiak Island, A Boy Scout in the Grizzly Country. He later returned to Alaska, exploring steaming volcanos, graduated Georgetown Law School and, by 1941, was rounding up Axis collaborators as an FBI agent. In 1945, he resettled with his wife and toddler son in Greensboro to specialize in labor law. Multiple cases he argued were heard before the Supreme Court. Douglas Jr. passed away in 2015 at age 103, remarkable in itself. The Best 90 Years of My Life was republished in 2007 by Vantage Press but remains elusive to locate.

In 1936, 106 Fisher Park Circle welcomed Dr. Luther L. Gobbel, the same year he was appointed president of Greensboro College, where, two years later, he presided over the school’s centennial commencement. My mother was an undergrad there during his tenure, her 1945 sophomore yearbook fronted by an appropriately placid portrait of Gobbel as an archetypical, armchair-seated academic doyen projecting an air of professorial steadfastness.

Gobbel relocated around 1941, when this Fisher Park landmark was purchased by Dr. Samuel F. Ravenel, founder of one of North Carolina’s first pediatric practices in 1925, positioned on the third floor of the Jefferson Standard Building.

In 1948, Ravenel rallied city leaders to raise $100,000 (roughly $1,350,000 today) in just 12 days. The funds were needed to convert a former rec hall on the recently-vacated Army Air Corps base, located off Bessemer, into an emergency, M.A.S.H.-like triage infirmary where he and new associate, Dr. Jean McAlister (pioneer female physician), risked their lives combating — and promptly conquering — a polio outbreak crippling Guilford County’s children by the hundreds.

“Dr. Jean” was our beloved family pediatrician in the ’60s. When she was away, it was Dr. Ravenel’s stethoscope pressed to our chests in their modest, rectangular office suite on East Northwood Street (improbably still standing among Cone’s expansions). What those well-healed patients’ parents likely didn’t know was that Dr. Ravenel spent spare hours at Children’s Home Society charitably attending to some 9,000 infants that would otherwise have gone untreated. Revered across every community, his 51-year devotion to the health and wellbeing of Greensboro’s most vulnerable ended tragically with a 1976 car accident.

A mere three chapters in, if we do indeed have elements necessary for an intriguing historical novel, it’s going to need a satisfying wrap-up. Turns out my old pal, Bill Baites, along with Stephen Dull, restored this gem to shine anew while residing there in the 2000s, undertaking a million-dollar renovation recognized with a Preservation Greensboro Award for excellence in 2006. I had no idea!

Then again, many casual readers crave conclusions couched in cloying profundity. The epitaph engraved on Dr. Jean McAlister’s monument at Green Hill Cemetery could decisively serve as a suitable swan song for those selfless souls once resting their heads at 106 Fisher Park Circle:

Good and faithful servant of God

Well done

Rest from thy loved employ

The Battle fought, the victory won

Enter thy Master’s joy.

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

How Great Thy Art

Not all masterpieces come mounted in museums

By Billy Ingram

“How lovely is Thy dwelling place, O Lord, mighty God.” – Psalm 84:1

As president of Jefferson Standard Life Insurance beginning in 1919, Julian Price was renowned in Greensboro as a paragon of philanthropy. In the early 1940s, Price set up a meeting with Most Reverend Vincent S. Waters, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, to propose funding the design and construction of a praiseworthy home for the Catholic faithful. Price wasn’t Catholic, but his beloved wife, Ethel, was. Her death in 1943 inspired his desire for establishing a glorious sanctuary to serve as an enduring tribute to her memory.

As Price and His Excellency pored over photographs of revered tabernacles from around the country, they kept coming back to the stunning Gothic Revival edifice belonging to Our Lady of Refuge in Brooklyn. It wasn’t long before that house of worship’s architect, Henry V. Murphy, was commissioned by the Bishop.

Two cataclysmic events forestalled their efforts. First, the 1942 outbreak of World War II led to a severe shortage of raw materials. That was followed by Julian Price’s own untimely demise in an automobile mishap in 1946. With only $400,000 set aside for this ambitious undertaking, it fell to the Price siblings and others to raise additional funds for what sacral architectural experts agree is one of the most majestic sacred sites in the nation. In 1952, it was dedicated as Our Lady of Grace, the Ethel Clay Price Memorial.

With an impressive seam-face, granite exterior, Murphy’s creation reflects that old-world, French Gothic verticality, as was his style, married immaculately with Art Deco detailing. Above the main chapel doors is a life-sized stone diorama of Mary holding the Divine Child, flanked by praying angels. Tympana atop entrances also pay tribute to the Blessed Virgin. A tower rises from the rear, crowned by a graceful copper flèche pointing heavenward. The largest Catholic Church in North Carolina at that time, the chapel’s interior, fused with blanched brick, granite, maple and marble, is quite simply breathtaking.

After blueprints were approved, there was the matter of engaging an artist to create the 14 predominant stained glass windows Murphy made ample accommodations for. When asked for a recommendation, it’s believed the architect already had the perfect candidate in mind, Guido Nincheri, despite the fact that few people outside of Canada and Upstate New York had ever heard of him.

Educated in Italy and a deeply devoted Catholic, Nincheri discovered his love for stained glass after immigrating to Canada in 1914. Over a nearly 60 year career, he became recognized as the most prolific religious artist in North America, painting frescos across church ceilings and crafting stained glass masterworks for over 200 churches until his 1973 death. Pope Pius XI declared Nincheri the Catholic Church’s greatest renderer of religious motifs in 1933.

Inspired by Botticelli, Michelangelo and Art Nouveau, Nincheri’s stained glass tableaux become translucent rather than transparent, eschewing the predominant style preferred by American churches. This method allowed for unprecedented depths of detail: flowing folds of fabric, glints in eyes, luminescent sacred crowns, starry nights, cascading ribbons of hair, a radiant heart. The portrait soaring above Our Lady of Grace’s altar, one modeled after his own wife, is only slightly smaller than the artist’s largest glass masterpieces that reached as high as 25 feet.

In all, 30,000 separate stained-glass elements were delivered to the corner of West Market and Chapman streets. It took Nincheri’s representative from Belgium and a couple of local craftsmen two years to assemble everything on site.

As an example, Nincheri’s Virgin Most Prudent, illustrating The Parable of the Ten Virgins from Matthew 25:1–13, which recounts the five “wise” virgins surrounding Mary with lamps burning, awaiting her son’s resurrection. Below, the five “foolish” are asleep. “This is a true gem,” notes parish photographer Gilbert Kolosieke. “But it is hidden from the human eye at ground level. As one ascends the spiral stairs to sing God’s praise with the angels, Virgin Most Prudent is the first stained glass window at eye level with the organ loft. It is here that the Queen of Heaven offers you a warm greeting at Heaven’s Gate.”

Among these spirited renderings are potent portrayals of The Ark of the Covenant, Seat of Wisdom, Mother Inviolate and Refuge of Sinners, where, if you look closely, you may detect what was then a recently deceased despot with a familiar mustache begging for God’s forgiveness, a reminder that all are offered salvation through the Holy Spirit. (I read that somewhere . . .)

Parishioners got their first good gander at the grandeur that Murphy and Nincheri wrought during the first Mass, celebrated on July 13, 1952, and again the following September on the day of dedication attended by the architect and other dignitaries, in particular Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, the Vatican’s apostolic delegate to the U.S.

Admittedly, most of my knowledge concerning the Catholic Church comes from observing the papal peregrinations of Sister Bertrille and the less aerodynamically inclined nuns of Convent San Tanco. And working on the movie poster for Sister Act. But I recognize fine art when I see it.

Trouble is, it’s been almost 75 years since these intricate visions of divinity were installed, so there’s a pressing need for cleaning and refurbishment for their continued posterity.

The church has recruited a consultant to circumnavigate which approach will be most effective for the windows’ preservation — whether they will require painstaking removal before trucking them up north for restoration or whether the task can be accomplished leaving most everything in place. Either way, the cost involves lots of zeros.

Demand for divine intervention is greatly outpacing supply this season, so Rebekah Zomberg has stepped up as fundraising coordinator for the stained glass window restoration. The church is taking a grassroots approach, hosting an evening gala on April 11 at Starmount Country Club, with a goal of raising money for restoration and awareness of these historically and spiritually significant works of art. “We’re going to have music, heavy hors d’oeuvres, a carving station, cocktails, just a lovely evening for fellowship, Zomberg says.” Plus, you’ll have an opportunity to marvel at a slideshow of Nincheri’s manifestations of holy scripture, lit from above — a fragile congregation of tiny shards and brushstrokes collectively representing redemption and adoration. And the chance for assisting in the continued illumination of these ecclesiastical exaltations of eternal life and liturgy for future generations. For more info go to olgchurch.org or call the church office at 336 274-6520.

I don’t attend church that often anymore. I suppose you could say I’m a lapsed Presbyterian, but my sentiments track with what Nincheri’s biographer Mélanie Grondin once stated: “I’ll never look at a church the same way. Now, whenever I happen to enter a church, I walk around and take the time to look at the windows and art that adorn it, even if it wasn’t decorated by Nincheri.” To that I say, Amen!

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Greensboro Is Your Oyster

And The Pyrle aims to cultivate Elm Street

By Billy Ingram

“I regarded home as a place I left behind in order to come back to it afterward.” – Ernest Hemingway

Game-changing.

Will that jaundiced misnomer ever cease being bandied about when depicting every precious pearl newly strung to downtown Greensboro’s asymmetrical necklace? Fifty years ago that meant widening sidewalks to create a mall-like experience; truly a game-changer in that it caused retailers to hightail it elsewhere.

Equally emblematic yet undeniably more effective are 21st-century sparklers lit with optimistic expectations for jumpstarting the heart of a city: LeBauer and Center City Parks, the Downtown Greenway pedestrian path, a $22-million baseball stadium, free shuttle-bus rides and Lewis Street’s impressive redevelopments. A new hotel here, a refurbished dry cleaners serving shoyu there — I delight in them all.

While downtown nightclubs light up late nights, there are scant advantages for nearby businesses. Tanger has been a boon, but its positioning at downtown’s outer edge results in attendees transacting predominantly with municipal parking decks. Sauntering southward on Elm reveals vacated storefronts with restaurants rarely slammed. I’ve witnessed first-hand downtown’s glacial evolution from a zip code to be avoided three decades ago into an uneven periphery, one that is populated with pulsating pockets of genuine excitement tucked in and around a central business district seemingly adrift, lacking a metaphorical pair of jeans, if you will, to stitch those pockets onto.

A seismic shift in that dynamic is all but assured as The Pyrle emerges from its makeshift shell later this month, a 1,000-person-capacity music venue and event space at 232 South Elm, just south of Crafted The Art of the Taco. Its mission? To cauterize that chasm currently preventing performers with audiences too zaftig for Ziggy’s from gigging here but lacking in fannies needed to pack Tanger’s 3,000 seats or top off the Coliseum’s 23,000-capacity arena.

The Pyrle (named for Pyrle Gibson in honor of her contributions to our local arts scene) is a total and consummate reimagining of a palatial, dearly-departed department store built almost a century ago for Montgomery Ward; a four-story monument to 20th-century merchandizing that was, for decades, a darkened abyss until Triad Stage stoked some semblance of life into its cavernous maw beginning in 1999 and lasting through 2023’s le scandale. Over the last year, the entire 35,000-square-foot interior was gutted then reanimated, arising not only as a rarified, state-of-the-art performance platform, but also encompassing staging areas for community events and even two unrelated office spaces.

Durant Bell is one of five active investors in this high-stakes venture. “I grew up in Greensboro, went away for school, lived in D.C. for about four years and then moved back about 20 years ago,” he says. In fact, all of The Pyrle’s principal players are longtime Gate City residents and/or boomerangs such as general manager Dominick Amendum, who attended Greensboro College then “moved away, had the first stage of my career before returning about six years ago. I jumped on board with these guys in March of 2024.” One keen interest all of these principals have in common? “We love music,” Bell insists. “One of the great connectors amongst us was finding ourselves going to a lot of shows outside of Greensboro.” And, they thought, why not bring those shows here?

Lacking a mid-plex like The Pyrle has resulted in indie, post-punk, R&B and EDM fans making weekend exoduses, sometimes hours long, just to see their favorite acts. The Pyrle partnered with The Knitting Factory, a well-established national talent broker. What that means is that Greensboro will become a logical stop for touring bands. “Coming from Richmond to Wilmington to Asheville, we can pick up a lot of these regional bands that are already on that pathway,” says Amendum. “So we got really excited about this opportunity to be a catalyst for Elm Street and for the city.”

Let’s face it, a vibrant live-music culture is one major reason Durham is booming, yet Greensboro, despite numerous well-intentioned pavings, remains perpetually tethered to the proverbial starting gate. “To have a healthy music ecosystem,” Bell claps back, “you need a continuum of venue sizes so that you’re attracting artists at all different [levels].” Initially, The Pyrle will mount around two shows a week, ramping up to a goal of about 150 shows a year. “Officially, we are a genre agnostic,” Amendum adds. “We’re going to try a lot of everything over these first couple of years.”

Those in the know can snag tickets to four free February shows (visit thepyrle.com/events). Then, after Americana singer-songwriter Anders Osborne closes out the month, early bookings continue to reflect that refreshingly eclectic POV — reggae royalty The Wailers, country crooner Ricky Skaggs and alt-rockers Silversun Pickups, for instance. Sprinkled throughout are North Carolina-rooted headliners such as Southern pop-rockers The Connells and the so-called “most underappreciated band on the face of the planet” Watchhouse. Plus, hop over to catch the tantalizing twang of Chatham Rabbits with Holler Choir opening.

•

What impact will this have for the mother lode of unparalleled creative artists undergirding our scattershot music scene? Amendum’s answer is encouraging: “That’s a big thing on my radar right now, how we bring the community onto our stage. Whether it’s monthly showcases featuring two or three local bands or as openers for some of these national acts.”

VIP sections, cozy alcoves and aerie overhangs provide for a surprisingly intimate setting with no bad sight lines. “There’s not another venue like this in the Southeast,” says Bell, who even queried touring acts for what amenities they’d like, then implemented those suggestions. “When you look at the hospitality suite we have for artists, people’s minds are going to be blown. The Knitting Factory, who manage venues all over the country, were here last week and they were like, ‘No other venue has an LED screen this size.’ In five years, they will all have them, but we’re on the cutting edge.”

Planning to be open six days a week, The Pyrle’s polish is its cosmopolitan cocktail lounge at the entrance, lacquered in leather and wood grain. “We’re going to do a bar differently than your typical music venue,” Bell says. “People can go back out to the bar and enjoy basking in the afterglow of that awesome show they just saw. Maybe the band is feeling frisky and wants to come down from the green room and have a drink.” Ambient screens are tuned to the stage during performances, but on non-show nights, says Amendum, “I love the idea of an ’80s MTV music video night on Tuesdays or maybe Wednesday nights they’re playing some live show that was taped at Red Rock.”

Won’t be long before word gets around, up and down I-85 and 40, that Greensboro’s got game (for a change).

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

This Girl Is On Fire

Kennedy Caughell brings heat to Hell’s

By Billy Ingram

“The road is there. It will always be there. You just have to decide when to take it.” ― Chris Humphrey

It’s becoming increasingly commonplace for leading actors in the Tanger Center’s Broadway Series productions to have significant local community connections. In November 2024, UNCG graduate D. Jerome infused heart and soul into The Wiz’s Tin Man and, earlier last year, Elon University alum Fergie Philippe proved roaringly romantic in Beauty and the Beast’s mane role.

One of Broadway’s brightest luminaries, Kennedy Caughell, 35, former Oklahoma farm gal who’s become another incendiary lit locally, alights into town next month in New York’s hottest property, Hell’s Kitchen. In its very first season, Hip-hop hitmaker Alicia Keys’ semi-biographical coming-of-age musical garnered an astonishing 13 Tony Award nominations and was a boffo box-office smash from day one.

Caughell’s portrayal of Jersey, emotionally embattled matriarch of the Keys-inspired character Ali’s family, is reaping rave reviews. In Chicago: “A powerful portrayal by Kennedy Caughell;” in Cleveland: “Caughell impresses again and again in big, emotionally impactful moments and with powerhouse vocal efforts;” in Pittsburgh: “The woman can belt! She crushes every musical number, especially ‘Pawn It All.’” You get the idea.

Her cruise across The Great White Way began, oddly enough, on Broadway. “My mom brought both me and my sister to New York,” Caughell recalls about her elementary school epiphany. “Annie was playing on Broadway at the time. Mom says I turned to her at intermission and said, ‘I could do that!’” Coincidence that her first professional acting job at 8-and-a-half years old was hamming it up in Annie? Starting in a supporting role, she soon took the lead. (This would kick off a recurring pattern.)

When consideration for college came, Caughell selected Elon University. “It was on the list of top 10 musical theater programs in the country,” she explains. “My mom and I visited to audition and I just fell in love with the place. It was so beautiful.” Situated between Greensboro and Burlington, Elon is known for exemplary acting, dancing and vocal training. “I feel like I really got a good ‘triple-threat’ training there. They encourage originality because that’s really what gets you hired as leads in the business, what makes you unique.”

Class of ’12 grad Caughell says, “I had a job before I even left college.” Discovered by Jillian Samini, she was cast as the jilted pregnant girlfriend Heather, one of the three female leads in the international Broadway tour of Billie Joe Armstrong’s and Michael Mayer’s American Idiot, which expands on the storyline delineated in the Green Day album of the same name. “I remember graduating, then, the next day, I was on a plane [to the United Kingdom] headed to the first day of rehearsal.” Her solo was a zippy, angst-free arrangement of “Dearly Beloved.” American Idiot’s Ireland/UK tour culminated after four months at London’s HMV Hammersmith Apollo, leading into the show’s second stateside run, which ended in the summer of 2013.

No rest for the wicked, you say? The next year, Caughell was swept into the twisted world of Wicked, broomsticking across the nation for two years as a member of the ensemble while understudying that wickedest of witches, Elphaba. “I would love to return to Wicked and play a full stint as Elphaba one day,” Caughell says.

In 2016, she made her Broadway debut in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 alongside two other Broadway neophytes, Denée Benton and Josh Groban, understudying two supporting characters that she eventually stepped into. Following the folding of that show, she pirouetted into Broadway’s Beautiful: The Carole King Musical in February 2018 as King’s childhood friend, Betty, while at the same time understudying three roles, including the titular star.

During rehearsals, Caughell became acquainted with King. “An example of yes, you can meet your heroes and they exceed your expectations,” she says of the Grammy Hall-of-Famer who wrote or co-wrote 118 hit songs. “She walks in and lights up a room and everyone just feels peaceful and joyful around her.” In 2019, she hit the road with Beautiful, occasionally called on to channel Carole King under the spotlight. Her fave number? “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” natch.

All About Eve aside, it’s exceedingly rare for understudies to emerge from the wings and assume the leading role for the run of a major show. “When they asked me to take over on the road, how could I say no?” Crooning Carole King’s compositions is an absolute joy for her. “Her style is very set and driven like a glockenspiel. It all sits in a really warm part of my voice.” Don’t you just love the way performers speak?

Broadway’s bright lights beckoned again in 2022 for Paradise Square, a star-crossed production that, despite an impressive 10 Tony nominations, resulted in a truncated time on the boards beset by backstage back-stabbery and a recorded but unreleased original cast soundtrack.

Which brings us to the present, where, in the role of Hell’s Kitchen’s Jersey, Caughell portrays an overly-protective single mother raising a street-level prodigy navigating life in a turbulent mid-1990s New York City. “She loves her daughter fiercely — she works two jobs so that she can give her a better life.” Caughell says of her character, who is overwhelmed by conflicts and consequences related to “what happens when love goes out of alignment and leans toward controlling. And what it means to be a mother and learn to let Ali grow up.”

From tech rehearsals through opening nights and beyond, writer/producer Alicia Keys was very much present in mounting both the Broadway and touring companies. “She had a big hand in casting each and every one of us,” Caughell points out. “It’s very evident how much heart and connection she feels to this show and it’s so wonderful to have somebody like her at the helm, just leading with grace and peace.” Keys is known to surreptitiously slip into seats along the tour route, even offering notes afterward, “but that’s a good thing, right? She’s really good at steering us in the right direction.”

Again succumbing to that siren call of the open road, Caughell says, “I’m missing a lot of family events with my niece and nephew right now. There’s a lot we sacrifice that people don’t realize.” Remaining centered and in peak form is a priority. “You’re kind of in an isolated bubble where everyone has to find their own pathway.” Of former Elon classmate and rising Broadway star Fergie Philippe, wheels up under similar circumstances, she says, “We text on a regular basis — he’s a wonderful human being.”

While Caughell loves exploring new cities, there’s the delight that comes from reengaging with familiar faces in faraway places. Edging closer to the Triad, she says, “I’m looking forward to seeing all of my professors and visiting the campus at Elon. It’s been years since I’ve had time to come back and visit, so I’m excited.”

Granted, it’s a hard knock life nightly for her tempest-tossed character in Hell’s Kitchen, but, for Kennedy Caughell herself, the sun’ll come out tomorrow… in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Greenville, Durham and, on February 24, in Greensboro prior to opening night at Tanger, where no doubt she’ll shine like the top of the Chrysler Building.

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Do You Hear What We Hear?

It’s all about knowing where to listen

By Billy Ingram

“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.” ― Sarah Dessen

This Christmas Eve yule find me swinging and swaying on Summit Avenue when the world-renowned Sam Fribush Organ Trio unfurls their firehose of funky jazz gyrations at Flat Iron.

Fribush has proven to be a truly transcendent analog-tronic trouper luxuriating in that funky Philly sound of the ’60s and ’70s with no hint of nostalgia. Nimble fingers soulfully sweep across the keys of antiquated electric Hammond organs, manifesting sounds soaring with vibrant verve typified by Booker T. and the M.G.s’ Green Onions or Billy Preston’s organic tracks, “Outa-Space” and “Will It Go Round in Circles.” In my estimation, Sam Fribush promises to be the most exciting musical talent to surface from our city in this century. Back on American soil after touring Europe, this melodic maestro originally graced our pages in September 2024, you may remember.

Additionally, there’s an embarrassment of musical riches downtown this December at Flat Iron, a rousing roster of folk performers with deep Southern roots dabbling in a variety of genres. Fribush and company aren’t the only confirmed crowd-pleasers at Flat Iron delivering some sizzle to this time of tinsel and tensile kinfolk.

Originally an A&P grocery store in the late 1920s, the Flat Iron building was a derelict by 1997 prior to being done-over by developer Dawn Chaney, who told me, “It was boarded up when I bought it.” For a decade or so, The Flatiron (one word back then) served, and famously overserved, as a dive bar for day drinkers and clipped-winged nighthawks. After a dormant period, Common Grounds’ Dusty Keene resuscitated this space in spectacular fashion to become a live music venue in 2019. Josh King and his wife, Abby Spoon, took over three years ago.

Over a couple of decades, Josh King established himself as a distinguished, singularly gifted local singer-songwriter. When very few area bands were attracting national attention, King and cohorts scored successfully with House of Fools, formed in 2004 after a demo he and Matt Bowers recorded on the fly landed them a deal with California-based Drive-Thru Records. “They had some bigger pop-punk bands on the label and we weren’t that at all.” King confesses he reluctantly hopped on board. “We took the opportunity and ran with it and were able to do some cool stuff.”

That eponymously titled album’s reception, coupled with criss-crossing the country DIY style, resulted in Alternative Press magazine declaring House of Fools one of the “100 Bands You Need To Know in 2006.” Band lineup musical chairs and label leaving preceded House of Fools’ self-released second album in 2011, Versus the Beast. Subsequently, members have since migrated over to other projects.

As for owning a club, that was a concept confined to dinnertime discussions,“not something we actually thought would happen,” King admits somewhat sardonically. “The timing just sort of lined up.” A notion not so far-fetched, given his wife’s years of experience bartending, followed by a considerable career in mental health, both indispensable skills handy for handling honky-tonk habitués.

Small, intimate performance spaces like this, geared toward local and touring up-and-comers, constitute the core of any city’s musical milieu. Flat Iron is where our indie scene beats best. A few December bookings on my list to check off:

Promoter Tim Coleman sponsors a night of full-throated folk on December 11, headlined by Bob Fleming and The Cambria Iron Co. One of my favorite singer-songwriters of all time, Fleming’s solo strumming of his punkish confessions caught my ear and eye a decade ago. He possessed a stage presence shrouded with uncharacteristic shyness, a charismatic reluctance belying his Bukowski-esque runes. Now content sharing the spotlight, Fleming is decidedly more relaxed, jaunty even, since settling in with his muse (my supposition, anyway), co-vocalist Dawn Williams, and three fellow travelers. He’s a vocal powerhouse, pouring forth electrified, country-fried, soulful Southern rock.

Raised in Appalachia, Cliff B Worsham opens the evening. A founding member of Asheville metalcore sensation Secret Lives of the Freemasons before launching RBTS WIN, his hip-hop-inspired melodies were once vaguely reminiscent of Elliot Smith. “Then he got sober,” Coleman confides about Worsham’s return to his folk-music roots, “and he’s been doing his Appalachian Americana thing for a couple of years now.” Sandwiched ’twixt those two will be Johnson City’s Jacob Danielsen-Moore, strumming the style of porch music Andy and Opie might be relaxin’ to until Aunt Bee gets wind of his lyrics and chases that stranger back into the hills. Through darkly personal and occasionally twisted scenarios, for the last several seasons, he’s enthralled audiences on the Old Gods of Appalachia tour. “He’s just authentic when it comes to his music,” Coleman rightly declares. “There’s an honesty to what he does that you can connect with.” He’s right.

American Songwriter magazine proclaimed Greensboro’s own Abigail Dowd’s “eager vocals are accompanied by toe-tapping instrumentals that create a package of sonic warmth. It’s a friendly reminder that life’s blessings are happening in the here and now.” Dowd’s monthly Singer-Songwriter Series happens every third Tuesday, a fortuitous occasion for those interested in exploring the creative process by sitting in on conversations between working, folk-oriented tunesmiths.

King says Dowd, a self-described “song catcher,” is “bringing in artists she meets out on the road or at conferences. Top-notch talent, they’ll drive here just to do this with her.” Past participants include Dawn Landes (The Liberated Women’s Songbook), Ordinary Elephant, Demeanor, and Gold- and Platinum-record-selling artist Jason Adomo. On December 16, it will be Josh King joining Dowd on stage. “I was writing songs as soon as I learned my first two chords on guitar, in fourth grade,” says King. For an example of his resonate recordings, visit Youtube: Josh King’s Into the Blue.

The aforementioned funktastic Sam Fribush arrives on December 23, chock full of Chuck Pinckney’s dynamic drum beats bolstering Will Darity’s spellbinding guitar flourishes, all three freestyle jazz masters. This triumphant triumvirate just returned after 16 packed performances barnstorming across 27 European and U.K. cities. Thanks to Vince Guaraldi, over the last 60 years, jazz has become sonorously synonymous with our holiday soundtrack, on par with Dean and Bing, so the lucky 100 or so attendees can expect a funk-infused feast casually wrapped in rapturous ribbons of radiant tonality. Tickets for this will sell faster than a 1999 Furby.

This year, Flat Iron landed a grant from Live Music Society, a nonprofit providing support for smaller venues — “also giving North Carolina artists an opportunity to obtain free assets like a new bio, photo shoots, and live audio and video recording,” Spoon explains. Everything is produced on-site, “so they can do as many takes as they want and both of our engineers are really good at mixing.”

As for Josh King’s extracurricular activities, he recently hosted a House of Fools reunion and periodically jams with The Finns, a highly sought after wedding and corporate confab party band cultivating a sizable fan following.

On the flip side, despite an ideal location and enthusiastic following, that thin line between thriving and barely surviving is minuscule but crucial. Flat Iron would undoubtedly benefit from a benefactor with business bonafides. Leaping into the exciting, every once in a while profitable world of live music? Discuss over dinner.

For other events, visit flatirongso.com.

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Seas the Moment

Andy Zimmerman heads windward with a new documentary

By Billy Ingram

“That’s what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don’t tell her.” ― Michael Morpurgo

Andy Zimmerman has performed a Herculean feat in transforming the downtown area south of the railroad tracks around Elm Street. What was once a losing hand of forgotten, abandoned buildings languishing for untold decades is today a royal flush of vibrant hubs where you’ll now find SouthEnd Brewing, transform GSO, Fainting Goat Spirits and Forge Greensboro among other former eyesores he’s renovated elsewhere.

I met with Zimmerman to explore his latest effort on the largely unfinished but impressive second floor of yet another recovery mission, the original Blue Bell jeans plant on South Elm and Gate City Boulevard (rechristened Old Greensborough Gateway Center). The hat he’s wearing today is not that of downtown developer but executive producer. He’s been working on an upcoming documentary entitled Mavericks & Multihulls, a tribute to the multihull legends of seafaring, those amazing young men and their sailing machines.

That’s not a non sequitur. The company Zimmerman founded and retired from before arriving in Greensboro a couple decades ago, Wilderness Systems, was a leader in the production and design of kayaks, “probably the No. 3 manufacturer in the world,” he notes. “Certainly No. 1 as it relates to brand. Between the companies that I owned and started, we made over a million kayaks.”

Under the WindRider label, Wilderness Systems fabricated more trimarans, a variation on the catamaran, than anyone anywhere. “The catamaran, as one of the designers likes to put it, is kind of a condo on the water — it’s commodious.”

“The trimaran has three hulls, the main hull, which is where you live,” Zimmerman points out for those who know little about watercrafts, aka me, “and then the two outriggers. You can call them training wheels,” making them faster and more stable than most other boats.

WindRider also manufactured hydrofoil sailboats, the cool, sleek models where the hull rises up out of the water at top speeds. “For me, it was a manufacturing accomplishment of a lifetime,” Zimmerman remarks about the difficulty of the build, which required some 800 components. The America’s Cup speedsters, he notes, “have trimmer ends, they’re doing 50 plus miles an hour in hydrofoils. The other boats we made money on, but the hydrofoil? No. It was the joy of creating.”

Questing for the creative is what led to his collaboration with Jim Brown, multihull sailing pioneer and high seas adventurer, as well as the impetus of this documentary. Mavericks & Multihulls chronicles the extraordinary lives of six sailing-world superstars, the aforementioned Brown, Woody Brown (no relation), Rudy Choy, Arthur Piver, James Wharram and Dick Newick.

Besides a shared connection with wind, waves and salty spray, Zimmerman points out that every one of the watermen spotlighted in this film was an extreme risk taker. “I met Jim [Brown] and was immediately attracted to his way of life,” he says. “Jim built a boat in his backyard. He took his two kids and his wife in Santa Cruz and said, ‘I don’t like the druggie scene here. I don’t like the Vietnam scene here. I wonder when the world’s going to blow up?’ And he said, ‘We’re getting on a boat.’” Brown and his family sailed the seas for three and a half years. “Went to Central America, South America and homeschooled his kids. Then came back when his wife said, ‘OK, I’m ready to get off the boat.’”

United Kingdom subject James Wharram was polyamorous, and some would call that alone off-the-charts bravery. “He’d have two, three women on his boat, they switched nights, they’d sleep together. This was back in the ’60s. Peace, love and waterbeds,” says Zimmerman. But the ultimate waterbed? “He turned people on to living on the water and adventure, traveling.”

While Wharram was all wild wanderlust — and just plain lust — Dick Newick was all about speed. “If he could take a pound out of the boat, he’d do it to make it go faster.”

Woody Brown, on the other hand, was a self proclaimed nature boy. “‘I want to be out in nature,’ he said,” quotes Zimmerman. “‘I don’t want motors, I want to sail.’” In that pursuit, he devised the first modern catamaran. “He reinvented the fin. He was a big surfer, too,” legendary, in fact. Living to the ripe age of 96, in his later years residing in Hawaii, Brown was a pioneer in chartering catamarans, taking groups of 40 or 50 people out on short oceanic sunset-viewing voyages.

Zimmerman recruited local filmmakers Michael Frierson and Kevin Wells, both with impressive documentary bona fides, to translate these stories to the big screen. To begin with, they conducted multiple interviews with Jim Brown, dating back to 2015. Many others who are passionate about sailing are featured, including Steve Callahan, who survived 76 days adrift in the Atlantic, and multihull designer and Mainer John Marples.

Frierson and Wells were busy editing when I spoke with them. “There’s an immense amount of footage shot by [Canadian cinematographer ] Scott Brown [again, no relation to Jim or Woody Brown]. That’s the primary source material from the current period,” Frierson says. In addition, Jim Brown contributed thousands of photographs along with 250 hours of footage he’d lensed over the decades.

The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Norfolk, the largest maritime museum in the country, made available their archives of motion-picture reels dating back to the dawn of the 20th century. “The footage is in every format known to man,” Wells notes. “Super 8, 16 mm film, DV cam video. So dealing with all the different resolutions has been challenging.”

Documentary filmmaking is like assembling pieces of a puzzle, or maintaining that fine line between devil and the deep blue sea, a rewarding yet daunting task crafting a narrative from random clips and pics shot by a multitude of unrelated individuals. “You’re finding the story out of all this,” Wells says about the challenging process to achieve an even keel. “You know there’s a story there — there’s probably a hundred stories there — but where is your focus? That part has been a lot of fun.”

What surprised Frierson and Wells most after diving into Mavericks & Multihulls (mavericksandmultihulls.com)? “That these guys were fairly accomplished carpenters,” Frierson replies. “They’re building their own boats and sailing them to Tahiti before GPS . . . The sense of self-reliance and guts that they had is just amazing.”

Wells concurs. “I think that’s representative of what a lot of these people think. They’re doing things, that to me, are extraordinary, but they think it’s very ordinary. Building these contraptions and sailing off with their family in the middle of the ocean is still crazy to me.”

“Jim Brown is 92. He lives life so large and he’s writing a book,” Zimmerman remarks with obvious admiration for the film’s unlikely leading man. “He just wants to stay busy and engaged in life. And I’m not sure I know anybody more engaged in life than Jim.” Legally blind now, Jim Brown can no longer navigate, but he’ll never fully surrender his life aquatic. With his own hands, no surprise, he’s constructed a tiny house on top of a trimaran, one manufactured by Zimmerman’s former company. “So he can keep his boat right there on the water at his house in Tidewater, VA. And he goes and stays in that when it’s not too hot or too cold.”

As for Zimmerman’s future, his mainsail is set for steering into the calm blue yonder. “I’ve got one big project left in me.” After that, his licked finger is in the wind. “I wouldn’t mind living on a boat. I’m a minimalist now. It goes back to the overwhelming sensation I had as a young man when I realized that freedom is actually available. I frickin’ love it!”

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Picture This

Mac Barnett’s illustrated children’s books draw on connections between generations

By Billy Ingram

“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.”
— Marcel Proust

Is there a beloved storybook you fondly recall being read to you as a child? For me, it was Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt. Credited with being the very first interactive book, it offered tots a “touch and feel” experience in lieu of a narrative. Bound with white plastic ribbing, each turn of its pages reminded toddlers of everyday experiences, like feeling Daddy’s stubble (a schmear of sandpaper), inhaling the scent of wild flowers, playing peek-a-boo with a patch of cloth and patting an upright, bunny-shaped fluff of faux fur.

For lovers of children’s pictorial storybooks, there’s something really special happening this month. Out of 380 proposals submitted by cities around the nation, Greensboro was one of only five boroughs selected to host the Library of Congress’ National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Mac Barnett. The ninth to hold this title, he will be presenting Behold, The Picture Book! Let’s Celebrate Stories We Can Feel, Hear, and See, his tribute to the colorful legacy of children’s literature.

Barnett has authored 62 books for youngsters (he estimates) and has received two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Awards, three E.B. White Read Aloud Awards — the accolades go on and on. Now in its second season on Apple TV+, he’s the co-creator, with illustrator Jon Klassen, of Shape Island, an animated series based on their New York Times-bestselling graphic novels for toddlers, The Shapes Trilogy, cloud-seeding infantile imaginations while simultaneously encouraging critical-thinking skills.

Barnett’s The First Cat in Space series, in collaboration with illustrator Shawn Harris, is rendered in a sparkling, modern style with a subtle hat tip to comic artist Jack Kirby’s square-fingered, forced perspective. “Shawn and I have been friends since we were 6 years old,” the author reveals. “And now Shawn is one of the finest children’s illustrators working today. When I was a kid, I loved comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield.” Admittedly intimidated by the superhero genre, he says, “Shawn read all that stuff and he would explain to me a run of Spider-Man or what was happening to Superman and I would get it all filtered through him.” No dust on these jackets, infectiously fusing a Calvin-ism whimsy with 1980s Marvel super-heroic showmanship, the resulting outta-sight escapades of this far-out feline are what The New York Times proclaims “hilarious.”

For early readers eager for enigmatic entertainment, Barnett’s Brixton Brothers whodunnits serve as a mod nod to circa 1960s Hardy Boys mysteries. School Library Journal declares Brixton Brothers’ premiere volume, The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, “one of the funniest and most promising series openers in years.” The author’s attraction to those juvenile novels written long ago is rooted in the macabre. “As a kid, I was terrified of being kidnapped,” he quips, “and the Hardy Boys get kidnapped like three times per book.”

Barnett was especially fascinated by the sleuthing siblings’ escape strategy after being tied up. “They would flex their muscles, the bad guys would leave the room; then, they would relax their muscles and the ropes would just fall to the ground,” he recalls. “And I was like, this is what I am going to do when I get kidnapped.” To test this technique, in second grade he convinced Harris to secure him with a jump rope using knots Harris had learned in the Boy Scouts. “I relaxed and, of course, the ropes just stayed there. And I realized the Hardy Boys worked out a lot harder than I did at age 7.” This eventually formed the genesis for his Brixton Brothers’ exploits “about a kid who tries and fails to be a Hardy Boy.”

There is unambiguous, statistical information that reading to children has a lifelong educational impact. “The picture book is one of the great American art forms,” Barnett insists. “And reading out loud to kids is an intergenerational, artistic experience — an adult and a kid coming together over artwork, experiencing it, having feelings about it, and then, hopefully, talking to each other about whether they like it, what they think it means.”

According to Barnett, the first illustrated storybook for kids was Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats in 1928. “There were books for children before that, primarily though, they were illustrated nursery rhymes, Bible stories, folk tales.” Gag pioneered the use of text and pictures in tandem to tell a story.

“The first book that I really remember living inside of was In the Night Kitchen.” Barnett discovered the absurdist dreamworld of Maurice Sendak as a youngster in the early 1980s. “It just made perfect sense to me. This is what it’s like inside my brain, that recognition of a kindred consciousness. And you read it as an adult and you’re like, this is such a wild experimental text.”

If offered the opportunity, I think just about anyone would write a children’s book. What advice can Barnett offer? “You’ve got to learn how picture books work,” he contends. “This is a way of telling stories in a very specific way. It’s easy to write a picture book, it’s very difficult to write a great picture book. And the first step is to learn the history of the art form to really understand how stories are told this way.”

Here’s an opportunity to do just that. The free event, Behold, The Picture Book! Let’s Celebrate Stories We Can Feel, Hear, and See, will be held at 10 a.m, Saturday, October 25, in N.C. A&T State University’s Harrison Auditorium. While he’s in the ’Boro for two days, Barnett will also host programs at area schools, where every student will receive one of his endlessly engaging picture books donated by Candlewick Press (as will the young ones attending the Harris Auditorium celebration, courtesy of Greensboro Bound).

“Greenboro just had an incredible proposal,” Barnett says about the selection process coordinated between The Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader, a literacy charity. “They were looking for communities with strong libraries and bookstores to make sure that these events were of value to the community. A big part of this is talking to adults about why kids’ books matter, why they are real literature and how to make sure that kids have good books to read.” He believes that, for Greensboro, “it’s just a great opportunity to talk to educators, families and even kids about the value of children’s literature in a young person’s life.”

Award-winning American (and sometimes) children’s author Emilie Buchwald (Gildaen: The Heroic Adventures of a Most Unusual Rabbit) once observed, “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” True, it’s never too soon to fold back colorful covers and expose spongy youngsters to worlds of wonder and limitless curiosity. Or just to pet the fluffy cartoon bunny.

For information about the free public event, visit greensborobound.com. Registration is strongly encouraged.

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

The Right Puffs

All aboard for a goo-goo-googly good time

By Billy Ingram

Chalk it up to DNA?

Being born and raised in the Gate City undoubtedly fostered in me a lifelong love for trains, so christened by our proximity to a railway hub that, from 1851 until the present, has served as a vital artery mainlining material goods and shuttling fine folks from point A to point G. Low moaning emanating from nearby locomotive horns, in unison with an underlying soundtrack of discordant notes struck by squealing, steel wheels straining against their railings, invokes an elemental tonality closely associated, in my mind, with home.

In that spirit, I wandered over to one of the twice-weekly open houses at the Carolina Model Railroaders’ studio, located above downtown’s J. Douglas Galyon Depot. There, aficionados of miniature trains, whether teens or senior citizens, were engaged in laying tracks, assembling aesthetic surroundings and, with the turn of a dial, sending scale-model boxcars, carriages and cabooses speeding around their humble hamlets, surrounded by handmade houses and fake, plastic trees affixed to mossy, green plywood.

I first visited CMR, organized over a half-century ago, in 2016, when participants were simulating an Atlantic & Yadkin ride by rail from Greensboro to Winston-Salem, complete with familiar landmarks recreated with an impressive degree of accuracy. The current layout isn’t as elaborate, but the topography is in constant flux. It’s the journey, not the destination, that keeps everyone committed to continuing this all-American activity.

Brannon Carty is a young filmmaker I met recently who trained his documentarian lens on a different manner of miniature railroad, one criss-crossing the mythical island of Sodor, fluffy-clouded home to Thomas the Tank Engine: the stop-motion animated, toddler-oriented series touting morality tales that fuel youthful imaginations, wherever he whistles ’round the bend.

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends made its United Kingdom debut in 1984 before crossing the pond in 1989, when it was integrated into PBS’ Shining Time Station, starring George Carlin. The show is based on a series of books that first appeared in the U.K. in 1945, written by Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry. Awdry’s idea was to entertain his son, Christopher, the Thomas tomes’ succeeding author. Currently, the television program is broadcast in over 121 countries and translated into over 20 languages, suggesting an undeniable universal appeal.

“My older brother was into it when I was a young kid,” Carty says, explaining his budding early-2000s tele-crush. “He grew out of it, I didn’t.” Internet forums fueled his fascination, first in elementary school, then chuffing along into later years. “I was talking to all these other people about Thomas and it kind of evolved into being this community, which is really huge.” Part of the allure, Carty believes, comes from playing with the TV tie-in train sets sold in stores. “It’s the perfect storm of merchandising,” he says, paired with the show’s unique production. “It was shot on 35 millimeter so it doesn’t look like any other kid show.”

Carty earned a bachelor of arts in media studies at UNCG. “2019 was my last year. I was doing an independent study with Professor Wells, who was into documentaries. He said, ‘Hey, do a doc over this semester and, that’s it, you graduate.’” Not sufficiently interested in anything sociopolitical or overly serious, Carty says, “I knew a bunch of adult Thomas fans — I am one. So, I filmed them.” After completing his 45-minute digital dissertation and graduating, Carty decided to continue filming his story. Railroading five fellow filmmakers into his roundhouse, he says, “We wrapped our last interview in 2022 and finished the edit in November 2023.”

Carty recently returned from London, where his Kickstarter-funded documentary, An Unlikely Fandom: The Impact of Thomas the Tank Engine, was screened at a Thomas festival. The film focuses on the peregrinations of a cadre of likable lost boys, newly found, whose one-track minds refuse to apply brakes to a fervent reverence gleaned in earliest childhood memories. That adorable choo-choo with the goo-goo-googly eyes chugging full steam ahead into their hearts.

This local locomotion picture also tunnels into the making of the television series, featuring extensive interviews with key contributors — the music producer, prop master, animators, picture book author, even Britt Allcroft, the clever British woman who created the original 1984 Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends animated series. The assembled cast of characters are all clearly enchanted yet somewhat surprised by their grownup fans’ keen interest. Superbly shot, edited and paced by Carty and his crew, the film even landed Alec Baldwin, the American narrator for a few seasons.

Allcroft especially comes across as a very sweet, ordinary lady who had the foresight to purchase Thomas’ television rights when no apparent market existed. While it took three years to complete that first season, it was a chance meeting at one of the recording sessions that led to Ringo Starr becoming the program’s original narrator. Also of interest is how divergent, yet alike, the TV version is compared to the 1940s series of books it was based on.

Carty, an avid hiker and climber who’s into fitness, admits that Thomas doesn’t gel well with his less passive pastimes. But “a love for old movies, that’s what led me down this path.” An Unlikely Fandom premiered in November 2023. “Go big or go home,” says Carty ruefully. “We all pulled together to premiere it in the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, which ended up costing so much money.” They flew in creator Britt Allcroft. “She was a little bit surprised that there were so many adult fans. I don’t think she expected it to be so normalized.”

The flying monkeys bestowing awards of excellence have yet to carry this one to heights it deserves, nor has a distributor picked it up yet. Carty, who also narrates the documentary, notes it’s still early. “We’ve just been sort of touring [the film] for the last couple years. I know The Guardian is about to do a piece on it, which we hope will get someone interested.”

A theory posits that tots tuning into Thomas harbor a latent interest in model trains. Probably should’ve asked when I was down at the Depot watching those young-at-heart men putting their HOs through the paces I imagine Thomas feeling right at home clacking the tracks at Carolina Model Railroaders’ meetups. You may also; new members are welcome at cmrgreensboro.org.

Meanwhile, the erstwhile engine’s 80th Anniversary celebration will be pulling into nearby Spencer, when Day Out With Thomas: The Party Tour puff-puff-puffs up to the N.C. Transportation Museum, arriving September 26–28, then steaming into view again the very next weekend. It’s a genuine bargain at $30 a head, especially considering admission includes a ticket to ride the real Thomas the Tank Engine.

An Amtrak departure from GSO to Spencer will likely be a final opportunity for today’s young’uns to experience what catching a passenger train was like during the golden age of rail travel, to hear “All Aboard!” after entering our breath-taking, magnificently restored, 1927 Beaux-Arts-designed terminal, seemingly frozen in time. For now, anyway. Plans are afoot for the almost century-old Depot’s opulent lobby to be reimagined as a hip entertainment venue, for which I’m not on board.

2025 Department Wandering Billy