TCB April 8, 2021 — Rhiannon Giddens and the notes you don't play

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point April 8-14, 2021 triad-city-beat.com

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Honey buns: Greensboro’s sweet spot

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‘I knew the essence of what I wanted to do....’

The future of Winston-Salem city council?

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RHIANNON GIDDENS WHAT, EXACTLY, IS SHE DOING? AND WHY?

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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

A real shot in the arm

April 8-14, 2021

I

got my second shot this morning, not even 90 minutes ago. It was the Moderna vaccine, if you must know, and I

by Brian Clarey got it at the Walgreens on Battleground Avenue. I made the first appointment over the phone, using the buttons, after the website had told me there were no available appointments.

But really, there are appointments everywhere!

I would have thought that after a deadly pandemic year and with the advent of spring, that getting a vaccine would look like soup lines during the Depression, or at least a hot sneaker release. But I was one of a small handful on the day of my first vaccine, exactly four weeks ago, and there were only three of us there this morning.

I brought my daughter to the FEMA vax site at the Greensboro Coliseum after setting an appointment online. It was easy.

They are set up to process thousands upon thousands of shots per day in the Special Events Center. She was one of perhaps a couple dozen getting jabbed; one whole side of the facility was not in use, but it is absolutely ready to go.

My middle child missed an appointment for this life-saving vaccine in Boone, where App State is administering Johnson & Johnson vaccines to all comers.

Missed it! Like it was a monorail or something! I’ll just catch the next one!

But really, it looks as if we have enough for all who want them. So far, 17.6 percent of North Carolinians have been vaccinated, and that number doesn’t include me and everyone else at the Walgreens this morning.

The plan was to have 200 million vaccines out there by the beginning of April; by and large this has happened: More than 219 million doses went out there, more than 163 million administered.

Almost a third of the country has had at least one shot, if we’re believing the CDC these days, and more than 63 million, about 20 percent of the US population, are fully vaccinated.

I do not know what to do with this kind of government efficiency, this orderly national effort, this bit of socialized medicine, except perhaps remind us all of what we’re capable when things look bad and we need to enact a plan.

That and get my shots. Couple more weeks of down time, and I’ll be out there in the sunshine with everybody else.

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I have just the amount of fame I could ever want. -Rhiannon Giddens pg. 10 1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336.256.9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR

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April 8-14, 2021

Coronavirus in the Triad: (As of Wednesday, April 7)

Documented COVID-19 diagnoses NC 924,810 (+10,678) Forsyth 33,645 (+287) Guilford County

42,331 (+734)

COVID-19 deaths

NC

12,212 (+100)

Forsyth

363 (+2)

Guilford

578 (+8)

Documented recoveries NC

887,724 (+11,616)

Forsyth

31,701 (as of 3/20)

Guilford

40,246 (+744)

Current cases NC

24,874 (-1,038)

Forsyth

*no data*

Guilford

1,506 (-18)

Hospitalizations (right now) NC

1,025 (+70)

Forsyth

*no data*

Guilford

56 (+9)

Vaccinations NC First Dose

2,631,691 (+195,657)

Fully vaccinated

1,897,440 (18.1%, +294,553)

Forsyth First Dose

97,507 (+7,809)

Fully vaccinated

73,984 (19.4%, +10,845)

Guilford First dose

152,748 (+9,447)

Fully vaccinated

100,822 (18.8%, +25,738)

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April 8-14, 2021

CITY LIFE April 8-11

If you read

by Michaela Ratliff

Up Front

then you know...

THURSDAY April 8

Pop-Up Produce Pantry @ 733 N Research Pkwy (W-S) 8:45 a.m.

•Where to find vegan sesame chicken •How fees affect driver’s licenses

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•How to fund a taco truck Triad City Beat — If you know, you know

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Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC believes everyone deserves to eat. That’s why they’re hosting pop-up produce pantries on various dates to help provide families with fresh fruits and vegetables. COVID-19 safety guidelines and rules will be enforced. For more info, visit the event page on Facebook.

GDPI Wellness: Afro-Rhythms Dance Class @ LeBauer Park (GSO) 6 p.m.

The Greensboro Dance Project is bringing you a fun, energy-filled dance class focused on Afro-Rhythms. Register for free on Eventbrite.

FRIDAY April 9

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Shot in the Triad

Addressing Housing Needs @ Center for Housing and Community Studies (GSO) 12 p.m.

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Join the Center for Housing and Community Studies for an online discussion of current efforts to address housing instability and unhealthy housing conditions in Greensboro. Get registered for free at Go.UNCG.edu/Housing/Hangout.

April 8-14, 2021

SATURDAY April 10

SUNDAY April 11

The breezeway between Footnote, Bookmarks, and Design Archives will transform into an open-air market featuring vintage, repurposed and handmade crafts from local artists. Visit Firefly’s Facebook page for future market dates.

Celebrate spring at Foothills Brewing during the Camel City Craft Fair in which socially-distanced vendors will be selling home decor, art and more! Food trucks like Boho Berries, Que Viva and Lobster Dogs will be on site. For more info, visit the event page on Facebook.

Firefly Market @ Downtown Winston-Salem (W-S) 10 a.m.

Camel City Craft Fair @ Foothills Brewing (W-S) 12 p.m.

Up Front News

HYPE’s Eggapalooza @ High Point Rockers Baseball (HP) 9 a.m.

Pop Up Craft: Pint Glass Etching @ Bull City Ciderworks (GSO) 1 p.m.

Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

Visit the High Point Rockers Baseball mascot Hype the Rocking Horse at this egghunting event. Hunts are based on age group. Spots are limited, so visit Eventbrite to register.

Hard cider tastes better from a glass decorated yourself! Create your own etched pint glass for just $10. Supplies will be provided. No need to register, just show up and be prepared to get creative.

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April 8-14, 2021

NEWS

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Lawsuits demand removal of ex-GSO cop hired by Graham police

by Sayaka Matsuoka

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n March 29, Rev. Curtis Gatewood filed two civil rights complaints in response to the recent hiring of an exGreensboro police officer by the Graham Police Department.

Officer Doug Strader worked for the Greensboro Police Department from 2004 until September 2020, when he was fired for using deadly force against a driver and passengers of a fleeing car.

Strader is also one of the eight police officers who were involved in the death of Marcus Deon Smith, who was hogtied by police in September 2018. Smith died after being restrained facedown using a now-banned device known as the RIPP Hobble. According to Yes Weekly, Strader was hired by the Graham Police Department on March 1.

Strader and other officers who have been previously fired for misconduct and subsequently secure employment at other law enforcement agencies are known as “wandering cops.”

Gatewood, with the Stop Killing Us Solutions Campaign based out of Alamance County, said by phone on Monday that their complaints, which were filed with the state department of justice as well as the federal DOJ, ask for Strader’s employment at the Graham Police Department to be reversed and for an internal audit of other “wandering officers” to be conducted.

“This is not personal,” Gatewood said.

“It’s not just about Strader…. Of course people deserve a second chance, but here, we’re talking about people we’re giving guns to. They have to be capable of making decisions where you can’t take back taking someone’s life.”

In 2017, Gatewood said, the organization came up with a list of reforms for every law enforcement agency to enact.

Among them is a recommendation to ban the hiring of so-called “wandering officers.” Gatewood also mentioned that they called for the ban of “no-knock” warrants and the use of chokeholds —tactics which lead to the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, respectively, in 2020. He said that while the things they are asking for aren’t new, they are more relevant than ever.

“To see this come to our doorstep, especially in the climate we are in now, with the Derek Chauvin trial going on,” Gatewood said, “it just shows that if you look in the backgrounds of these police

Marcus Deon Smith’s sister, Kim Suber, protests outside of a Greensboro City Council meeting.

officers, there’s often something that shows that they had a particular problem.”

According to hiring and salary records provided by the Greensboro Police Department, Strader received 16 pay raises in his 16 years on the force and was promoted three times up to his position as police corporal in 2016. When he was fired from the force last year, Strader was making $61,126 per year.

After the death of Marcus Deon Smith, none of the officers involved, including Strader, faced any disciplinary consequences for their actions within the department. However, they are currently defendants in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed

by George and Mary Smith, Marcus Deon Smith’s parents. Other defendants in the lawsuit include the city of Greensboro and two Guilford County EMTs.

Two years after Smith’s death, Doug Strader was fired after he shot his gun at a car fleeing a crime scene in downtown Greensboro in Sept. 2020, according to reporting by the Burlington Times-News.

A letter to Strader from Greensboro City Manager David Parrish states that Strader was fired because his use of deadly force was “unnecessary.”

And while Strader was terminated for his use of force last year, a report by Triad City Beat published in Oct. 2020 found that more often than not, officers who killed civilians on the job did not face any disciplinary consequences and were most often found to be justified in their actions by attorney generals or district court judges.

Mary Smith, Marcus Deon Smith’s mother, responded to the hiring of Strader by the Graham Police Department on Monday.

“The Smith family is highly disap-

Officers who have been previously fired for misconduct and subsequently secure employment at other law enforcement agencies are known as ‘wandering cops.’

SAYAKA MATSUOKA

pointed that a police officer can participate in a murder, a homicide and be hired in another department without being disciplined,” she said. “I think [the lawsuits] are absolutely the right thing to do for a safe community.”

Gatewood said that they have not heard back from either the department of justice or the Graham Police Department about the lawsuits as of Monday.

However, Gatewood said that he hopes the lawsuits will shine a light on the issue of wandering cops and prevent more deaths from taking place.

“This is becoming a problem where more people are taking notice,” Gatewood said. “Ultimately, we want this to not be happening across the country.

Once we find that a police officer has committed excessive force, we are asking that those persons get terminated and prosecuted and banned from working in any law enforcement department within the United States of America.”

A representative of the Graham Police Department could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

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Up Front News Opinion

A House bill filed by Republicans would add two at-large seats to Winston-Salem’s nine-member city council. Like the mayor, they would be elected citywide.

With an 11-member city council, Winston-Salem’s would be the largest city council in the Triad and the second largest in the state.

the happiness of the city’s residents.

According to a report by the City of Columbus Charter Review Committee in Ohio from 2016, there appears to be an emerging trend showing that the larger a city’s legislature is, the lower on the Best Cities Index the city places. But the converse was also seen in the committee’s research.

During Winston-Salem’s commission research however, one thing appeared to be clear: The addition of at-large seats to the current city council would be beneficial to its residents. During the commission’s meetings, former Durham Mayor Bill Bell and former Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins both spoke in favor of a hybrid system that has district and at-large representation. Two former city managers — Jim Westmoreland who served in Greensboro and Roger Stancil who served in Fayetteville and Chapel Hill — also supported a mix of district and at-large representation.

HB 37 was referred to the committee on election law and campaign finance reform on Feb. 2.

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12 members including the mayor. The new council would also have one of the lowest rates of population per elected official with approximately 22,540 citizens per official based on 2019 Census numbers. To compare, Greensboro’s council rate is approximately 32,000 citizens per official while Charlotte’s is 70,000 residents per elected official.

According to the National League of Cities, there is no national standard of proportion for city councils. Across the country, the number of councilpersons per number of constituents ranges greatly from 6,278 in Albany to more than 250,000 in Los Angeles. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be enough data to show whether there is a correlation between the size of a city council and

Shot in the Triad

craft a new council. In the end, 57 percent of the public — which was made up of 921 responses — stated that they wanted more at-large representation.

The proposed 8-2 split with two at-large members was by far the most popular choice, against the options of a 5-3 split or a 6-2 split. In the end, the commission’s recommendations closely matched the preference of the public.

In conducting the study, the commission endeavored to be mindful of not diminishing minority representation and to ensure adequate representation for all citizens, according to the commission’s report.

With an 11-member council, WinstonSalem’s would be the largest city council in the Triad and the second largest in the state — just behind Charlotte, which has

STOCK PHOTO

Culture

proposed bill would make Winston-Salem’s city council the largest council in the Triad, if it passes.

HB 37, introduced in the state House on Feb. 1 by reps. Donny Lambeth and Lee Zachary (R-Forsyth), would increase the current city council by two at-large seats. Neither Lambeth nor Zachary’s districts cover much, if at all, of Winston-Salem. Currently, Winston-Salem City Council is made up of nine members, including eight ward representatives and the mayor, who is the only official elected citywide.

Currently, the council has four Black members and four white members, with a 7-1 Democratic majority HB 37 is a result of a compromise reached after Lambeth and Rep. Debra Conrad (R-Forsyth) introduced a House Bill 519 in 2019 which would have redistricted the city from eight to five wards and created three at-large positions elected citywide. That bill caused controversy at the time because the new ward lines included in the bill “would have had the effect of placing three African-American female council members in the same ward,” according to the city’s commission report. The bill was put on hold while Mayor Allen Joines, Lambeth and Conrad helped create an independent 11-member study commission, which reviewed ward structure and election cycles. The commission made the recommendation to add two at-large seats to the current eight-ward makeup of council.

According to the bill, the at-large candidates must be Winston-Salem residents; the two who receive the highest number of votes would serve, like the other councilmembers, four-year terms.

If the bill is passed, it would not go into effect until the November 2024 General Election.

Currently, Greensboro — which has eight city council members and the mayor — has a hybrid makeup much like the one that is being proposed for Winston-Salem. The city has three atlarge members and five who are elected by district. The mayor, Nancy Vaughan, is also elected citywide.

In High Point, two members are elected at-large while six are elected by district. The mayor, Jay Wagner, is also elected citywide.

After the commission was created, multiple public input sessions were held seeking opinions about the best way to

April 8-14, 2021

New bill would make Winston-Salem City Council largest in the Triad

by Sayaka Matsuoka

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April 8-14, 2021

OPINION April 8-14, 2021

If you read EDITORIAL

Coke, woke, rebuffs its home state

•Where to find vegan sesame chicken •How fees affect driver’s licenses •How to fund a taco truck

Opinion

Triad City Beat — If you know, you know Culture

Pushback from the right is feeble: Corporations like it when you accuse them of being “woke” — it’s good for business.

then you know...

News Shot in the Triad

The provisions of the bill — fewer polling places in Black neighborhoods, making it illegal to give water to people waiting in line to vote and the like — don’t matter so much as its unpopularity among those who aren’t still clinging to this failed ideology.

And so the free market spoke.

Major League Baseball — which has a preponderance of Black and Brown employees — pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta, relocating it to Colorado.

Delta Airlines, the state’s largest employer, formally rebuked the law. Most telling: Coca Cola, probably Georgia’s most recognizable corporate citizen, issued a rebuke of the law and the folks who wrote it, but only after protests in the streets and letters from powerful Black executives in the boardrooms.

That is, only after the marketplace forced its hand.

Pushback from the right is feeble: Corporations like it when you accuse them of being “woke” — it’s good for business. Good luck boycotting Delta if you want to fly out of the Atlanta airport.

Trump, who called for a boycott of Coca Cola, went exactly one day before being photographed with a bottle of the stuff.

In some ways, it’s better to be a corporation than a person: more money and power, a longer lifespan. And unlike, say, politicians, all corporations must ultimately answer to reality as measured by the free market.

Up Front

W

To get in front of the best readers in the Triad, contact Chris or Drew.

chris@triad-city-beat.com drew@triad-city-beat.com

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e’ve known since the late 1800s that corporations are people in the United States. That’s when the fine gentlemen of the railroad companies asserted their right to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 2010, we had the Citizens United decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were entitled by the First Amendment to make unlimited political contributions without restriction, accountability or consequence outside the actual free market in which they operate.

That allegedly “free market” is often referenced by Republican lawmakers as the ultimate check against corporate malfeasance, financial indiscretion, bad decisions. And while it’s true that Citizens United benefits labor unions and philanthropic nonprofits as readily as it does corporations and the politicians that enable them, thus far corporate personhood has not been to the benefit people who are not rich and white.

That changed last week when Georgia put into the marketplace of ideas a slate of election laws designed specifically to hinder the Black and Brown vote, which helped award the state two Democrat senators, one of whom was confirmed the same day that domestic right-wing terrorists stormed the US Capitol Building.

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April 8-14, 2021 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

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CULTURE Rhiannon Giddens’ on genius, justice and the fallacy of genres

by Brian Clarey

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t’s too much, all these projects of hers: the writing, the researching, the performing, the acting, the recording.

She knows it’s too much. Everyone knows it’s too much. But Rhiannon Giddens — Grammy-winning recording artist, musical folklorist, single mom and certified genius — is doing it all anyway.

“I can’t stop,” she says. “I want to stop. I’m trying to stop.”

Even before she won a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2017, Giddens was busy.

The founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops spent the years before and after 2010, when the Drops fully blew up, riding the festival circuit. She followed that with her solo years of auspicious appearances, an album produced

by T-Bone Burnett in 2015, the first slew of awards and other projects rooted in that fertile ground triangulated by slave spirituals, Celtic folk, bluegrass and opera.

Since then she’s performed with symphonies and ethnomusicologists, written music for a ballet — Lucy Negro, Redux — and a video game — Red Dead Redemption 2, formed a banjo troupe of Black women, written an opera for Spoleto festival, played a recurring character on the TV show “Nashville” and taken a position as artistic director of Silkroad Ensemble, the chamber group founded

by Yo-Yo Ma. And she’s still set to come home to Greensboro for her star turn in Porgy and Bess at the Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, now booked for January 2022.

It’s ridiculous, really. Her workload comes up in interviews all the time, she says. They want to know how she does it. But no one ever asks her why.

“Wow,” she says. “That‘s a good question.”

She doesn’t need the money. She got $1 million for the MacArthur Grant alone, to use however she wants. Plus she’s still got Chocolate Drops royalties coming in, on top of everything else.

And it’s not for fame.

“I have just the amount of fame I could ever want,” she says. “I’m not Beyoncé. I have enough fans to keep me going if I want to do shows. I am called upon by people I admire, offered platforms by organizations I respect.

“I’m really happy with that, and that I’ve gotten there without compromising who I am.”

And there it is: The reason for it all.

Rhiannon Giddens keeps working, keeps writing, keeps performing, keeps collaborating because she’s still got something to say. And her integrity demands that she say it.

“I started out as a banjo player in a Black string band, you know what I mean?” she says. “There’s a lot of hustle that went along with that, especially when the Chocolate Drops took off. In that world, the message we were telling… it’s not easy. Not like we were looking for a Top 40 hit or anything. I’m just so used to hustling and working and trying to get the message out because there’s such a huge story, such a huge mountain to climb.

“When the opportunities came,” she continues, “I just took all of them. ‘You want to write an opera?’

What am I going to say? No?”

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he recorded the new album, They’re Calling Me Home, with her partner and collaborator Francesco Turrisi in Ireland, where they’ve been riding out the pandemic after a whirlwind of professional commitments.

“By the time the pandemic came,” she says, “I was pretty much ruined.”

Their forced exile resulted in this collection of American, Irish and ItalKAREN COX Rhiannon Giddens and her partner Francesco Turrisi recorded They’re ian folk that has been reimagined, Calling Me Home over six days in a studio outside Dublin. instrumentalized and otherwise run through Giddens’s singular process Gaelic lilt with banjo and viola. “Waterbound” is a song she and Turrisi’s eclectic instrumentation. used to perform in Greensboro with Laurelyn Dossett. “I Shall “It all kind of correlates around the interests that I have,” Not Be Moved” is presented under a country-western idiom. she says. “Obviously most of my career has been excavating Her Italian in “Si Dolce Él Tormento” is flawless, thanks to a and illuminating and finding things that have been covered decade of opera training. The title track, “Calling Me Home,” over or erased. A lot of that has to do with African-American becomes a dirge inflected with the soul of a Black spiritual. history, that African-American piece of But it’s not a folk album, not a country American history — it is all American hisalbum, not opera, not an academic work tory, you know? of Black history, and yet it is all of these.

Rhiannon Giddens’ newest “The classical world, Porgy & Bess, “People who want to listen to music,” project, the album They’re it’s all the same idea of: Who’s telling a she says, “they want to listen to good story? Where are they coming from? I try Calling me Home, with music. They don’t really care about to represent a lot of layers and I don’t shy genres. partner Francesco Turrisi, is away from things that complicate that “Genres were always fake, anyway,” available everywhere April 9. story.” she continues. “They were always Though the sparse arrangements come rhiannongiddens.com crafted, and they were crafted for very largely from her partner’s musicianship, particular reasons, crafted for capitalGiddens lends her banjo and fiddle to a ism and crafted for white supremacy. It’s couple instrumentals on the album, the that simple.” best of which might be “Niwel Goes to Town,” which sounds a There it is again: the insight, the message, the point of it all. bit like acoustic-era Grateful Dead.

Giddens can talk about the ethnocentrism of the music “Amazing Grace” comes across as a chant over African industry all day, its roots planted between the Emancipapercussion. In “When I was In My Prime,” Giddens delivers a tion and the advent of Jim Crow, its similarities to real estate

April 8-14, 2021 Up Front News Opinion Culture

redlining and separate but unequal schools, its inherent injustice.

“They catered to who they thought was listening,” she says. “And it dovetails neatly into the idea of ethnically pure groups and who [they thought] was the American voice.” hey recorded the album over six days in a small studio outside Dublin. Occasionally, she says, she will get recognized on the streets of Ireland, where they’ve been living since last March.

She never thought she would get this big, never imagined she would get to make these choices, never planned for a reach that would span the globe.

“When I was in Greensboro Youth Chorus, I wanted to work for Disney,” she says.

“Even when I thought about a music career, it was as an opera singer. I didn’t know how to make it as a musician. Just sing at some concerts and I’d be happy.”

There’s no playbook for a career like hers. For guidance, she remembers something her mother told her long ago: “Know the essence of what you want, but don’t put a

form on it.”

It’s metaphysical. Spiritual. Transcendent.

“You have to be open to the possibility that there is an organization of the world that is bigger than you think,” she says. “The way things are organized. The way things flow.

“All we can do is focus on the essence of what you want to do,” she continues. “The forms it comes in, you may not expect. There is no way I could have planned this out.

When the opportunities came, I knew what I wanted to do at its essence.”

When she talks to young artists, she asks them to think long and hard at what “making it” means to them, to find purpose in their art and be ready to sacrifice for it, to be willing to walk away when things don’t align.

“When the machine stops,” she says, “all you got is yourself and your music. And if that’s not enough, you really need to think about what you’re doing and why. Because that’s the only thing you can take with you. Everything else is a house of cards.”

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EBRU YILDIZ

Shot in the Triad

“I started out as a banjo player in a Black string band, you know what I mean?” Giddens says.

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by Maeve Sheehey as part of the UNC Media Hub

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April 8-14, 2021

CULTURE Honey buns: Greensboro history with a sweet, sugary glaze

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NATALIE HUGGINS

he humid smell of chlorine lingers package. in the air at the pool while you “Honey buns are kind of a metaphor,” says William Damsweat through yet another North eron, who grew up in Greensboro, “for that sweet, sort of Carolina summer. innocent time.”

The air-conditioning blasts you at the The honey bun evokes in Dameron memories of the snack grocery store as you pass aisles of shimstand at swim meets as a kid, not long after microwaves were mering, highly-processed snack foods. invented.

The sound of a wrapper crinkles as It was the 1970s, when the swimmers thought sugar — the vending machine’s metal coil slowly sometimes Jell-O mix, sometimes a frozen Snickers bar, somerelinquishes its wares. times a honey bun — would provide an added boost of energy At the center of it all: a honey bun. during races.

Introduced in Greensboro more than Dameron ordered one and the girl working the counter laid six decades ago, it on a plate before popping it in the this plasticmicrowave. He watched the plastic encased, glazed, around the honey bun balloon as it UNC Media Hub is a collection of sugary pastry heated up. students in the Hussman School remains a fixture “And they were so good that way,” of Journalism and Media who of gas stations, he said, “because they were just so grocery aisles sugary and warm.” create integrated multimedia and snack bars.

The rush of a championship swim packages covering stories from It’s also a fixture meet, combined with the rush of around North Carolina. of so many childanticipation for a warm honey bun, hoods, especially was unmatched for Dameron — “kind in North Caroof magical,” even. He’s moved to lina.

Maine, but next time he visits his mother in Greensboro, he’ll A honey bun is a calorically dense, transport back in time by seeking one out. endlessly sugary snack with swirls of • • • pastry covered in glaze. The gritty sugar espite its status as an iconic childhood snack, North glaze is delicious or cloying, dependCarolinians tend to be surprised by its Greensboro ing on personal taste — but regardless, roots. it evokes deep-seated nostalgia for Glenn Perkins, curator of community history at the Greensconsumers as they hearken back to a boro History Museum, figured it out when he saw a post on time when they didn’t bat an eye at the city of Greensboro’s social media in January. The post said more than a dozen grams of sugar in one the honey bun was invented in the city by Howard Griffin, of

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the Griffin Pie Company, in 1954. Perkins had no idea.

“I wrote to them and I said, ‘What are you guys talking about? Send me what you know,’” he said.

Since then, Perkins and his Greensboro Public Library colleague, Morgan Ritchie-Baum, have found more sources to fill the gaps in the snack’s history. They found a 1972 newspaper article which cited that Mrs. WL Griffin began frying pies in her kitchen to sell in drug stores in the 1920s.

By the 1940s, Griffin Pie Co. was operating in Greensboro, renamed Griffin Baking Co. in 1954 under proprietors Howard L. and Mrs. Mary H. Griffin. General consensus is that honey buns were introduced into production that same year.

Honey buns later became part of Flowers Foods in Georgia and haven’t been made in Greensboro for years. In the 1980s, an office building moved into the location where the now-defunct Griffin Pie Co. factory on West Market Street once stood.

• • • ex Alexander, who grew up in Charlotte during the 1960s and ’70s, also associates honey buns with memories of pool snack bars on days spent roasting in the sun. But it wasn’t about winning a swim event for him.

His family belonged to Olde Providence Racquet Club, a sprawling complex with a pool. While he was there, he got a honey bun from the snack bar almost every day, usually in the afternoon.

Sitting poolside and slathered in sunscreen, with no obligations and a honey bun in tow, was its own sort of bliss.

“It was just something about the combination of the setting and the sunshine that just made it all perfect,” he says.

As an adult, Alexander still bought the occasional honey bun from a vending machine, including from the one at the News & Record, where he worked for 22 years.

As for Georgie Kerber, who grew up in Cherokee County, the memory of honey buns brings him back to the classroom.

L

April 8-14, 2021 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad

The honey bun is a metaphor: simple and sweet, and you can find one everywhere you look.

• • • till, the history of the honey bun’s creation in Greensboro isn’t pieced together quite so comprehensively. For now, historians rely on news clippings and scattered accounts of Griffin’s wares to unravel what happened since the advent of the treat.

The story isn’t neatly processed and packaged, wrapped in cellophane and ready for consumption — but the honey bun is. And its clear, plastic casing holds more than honey-flavored swirls and airy pastry.

It holds the hazy, distant memory of coming of age in North Carolina.

It holds a little piece of Greensboro history.

S

Puzzles

As a fifth-grader, Kerber ate a honey bun almost every day. One day, while heading to lunch, he realized he’d left one in his math class. He ran back to grab it, muttering: “Where is my honey bun?”

He left the room without realizing his teacher was still in there. She was taken aback, thinking Kerber was talking about her.

“Did you know I was in there?” she later asked.

“No, I was looking for my honey bun,” he told her.

Kerber and his teacher kept the nickname, calling each other “honey bun” from then on.

The honey bun’s story is alive in these personal histories, tiny landmarks on the map of a North Carolina childhood.

NATALIE HUGGINS

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April 8-14, 2021

Chestnut Street, Greensboro

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Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

1 Dental degree 4 “Pygmalion” author’s initials 7 Big name in keyboards and motorcycles 13 Green Day, for one 14 Key on either side of the space bar 15 Lack of interest 16 Song activity #1 18 Senator Kyrsten 19 Linguistic suffix with “morph” or “phon” 20 Admit, as a guest 22 Director Grosbard with a palindromic name 23 Song activity #2 28 Filipino dish 29 Dock workers, at times 30 Actress Daly of “Judging Amy” 31 Capital in the Andes © 2021 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 34 Harry Potter sidekick 35 Song activity #3 38 ___ de los Muertos 41 Gently prods 42 Rough file 46 Integrated set that allows you to browse the Internet, e.g.

48 Seasonal gift giver 49 Song activity #4 53 Play a part 54 Knock it off 55 Aussie hopper 56 Difference in a close ballgame Answers from last issue 59 Song-based trick wherein the things the singer’s “never gonna” do to you describe the 24 “___ to differ!” theme answers, in order 25 Greek vowels 61 Extremely ___ (addicted to Twitter, say) 26 Indian restaurant basketful 62 “Thrilla in Manila” result, for short 27 Channel that airs frequent reruns of 63 “Black Swan” actress Kunis “Family Feud” 64 World leader whose name is repeated in 31 “Arrested Development” surname Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” 32 Venerable London theater 65 “___ alors!”

33 Band booking 66 ‘60s activist gp.

36 Poker dues 37 Abbr. on folk music lyrics Down 38 Broadband internet alternative 39 Unequivocal refusal 1 Serious-and-funny show 40 Very small power source 2 Had for supper 43 Mobile phone choice 3 Landscaping purchase 44 Leisurely walks 4 ___ damn (cared) 45 ‘50s music scandal cause 5 “Expletive deleted” sound 47 Vacation while stationed in parks, perhaps 6 Runway 48 Canine : “doggo” :: serpentine : “___” 7 “___ queen!”

50 “The Neighbors” actress Jami 8 Bee-fix?

51 17-syllable verse 9 The Red Devils of the Premier League, when 52 Neckwear worn by Fred on “Scooby-Doo” abbreviated (the team uses this as their website) 56 Alley-___ (basketball maneuver) 10 Artist’s workshop 57 Card game with four main colors 11 Author better known as Saki 58 Badminton divider 12 “You’re the Worst” star Cash 60 Abbr. in a rental ad 13 Casey’s place, in a poem 17 ___ buco (veal dish) 21 2010 Eminem song featuring Lil Wayne

April 8-14, 2021

CROSSWORD ‘Never Say Never’—just click the link, I promise. SUDOKU

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