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CASSANDRA LIUZZO, MULTIMEDIA ARTIST & ENTREPRENEUR RANDY WADSWORTH AND DAMION “DAME” MOORE DAME’S CHICKEN & WAFFLES Randy Wadsworth had known for a long time that he wanted to go into business with his old friend Damion “Dame” Moore from his UNCG Bryan School days. They went all in, leaving behind their corporate gigs to build their first restaurant together. Applying all those business school lessons. They did tons of market research and taste testing before they landed on a favorite from Dame’s time running a catering business: chicken and waffles. “I took one bite and I went back to tiling (the restaurant’s bathroom),” Randy says. “That was the moment I knew we were on to something big.” Today, they own four Dame’s Chicken and Waffles locations in downtown Greensboro, Durham, Cary, and the Duke campus featuring comfort food favorites like mac ‘n’ cheese and collard greens – and, of course, their signature dish. “I look at it as a kind of artistic expression in some ways,” Dame says of recipe development.
When you’re done reading a book, you can resell it at a used book store. If you’re a college student, you can sell your books back at the end of the semester. If you’re an artist though, there has been no option for you. While attending Appalachian State, Cassandra Liuzzo knew there had to be a way to deal with unwanted art supplies.
“I first set up an Etsy account and started selling my old college art supplies. Not long afterward, I was offered my first space underneath Geeksboro, on Lawndale, and opened up in October 2014.”
Shelf Life Art & Supply Co. was born. Now located at 2178 Lawndale Ave., Cassandra sells artist-quality brand-new fine art supplies, in addition to used art & craft supplies. She accepts pre-owned supplies in exchange for store credit, where those are then sold at affordable prices. “I wanted to stay in Greensboro to help create a culture that would attract other young people and encourage them to stay. The way community is developing around our creative culture, people seem to be much more connected, and there are so many more opportunities than there used to be.”
Dame and Randy are also giving back to the community. They’ve created a scholarship fund to help UNCG students. “It’s our way to give back to the school that got us to where we are,” Randy says.
W
e are Greensboro, North Carolina. We are the city of makers. We design, build, create. We roll up our sleeves. We get our hands dirty. We get it done. We make it happen. Made in Greensboro celebrates those makers — the entrepreneurs, the artists, the community builders, the next generation of leaders. Made in Greensboro is an initiative of Action Greensboro and the City of Greensboro.
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December 2017 DEPARTMENTS 17 Simple Life By Jim Dodson 20 Short Stories 23 Goodbye to a Friend By Jim Dodson 25 Doodad By Grant Britt
FEATURES 65 December Poetry by Sam Barbee 68 The Art of Giving
Looking for something a little different — and locally handmade — for gifts this year? These artists have you covered
72 The Night Before Christmas, Y’all Illustrations by Laurel Holden
26 Life’s Funny By Maria Johnson
73 The Mistletoe Bride By Nan Graham
28 Omnivorous Reader By D.G. Martin
78 Tales of Our Favorite Holiday Gone Wrong
30 Scuppernong Bookshelf 33 A Writer’s Life By Wiley Cash
A gothic Christmas story
82 All Rhodes Lead to Christmas By Jim Dodson How Mary Rhodes and husband Bill give new meaning to “Home for the Holidays”
37 True South By Susan Kelly
92 Botanicus By Ross Howell
39 Gate City Journal By Annie Ferguson
94 December Almanac By Ash Alder
43 A Christmas Short Story By Brian Faulkner
Keep poinsettias under wraps
Peppermint, the Geminid meteor shower and stocking stuffers
51 The Hungry Traveler By D.G. Martin 55 In The Spirit By Tony Cross 57 Life of Jane By Jane Borden 61 Birdwatch By Susan Campbell 62 Wandering Billy By Billy Eye 96 Arts Calendar 120 GreenScene 127 The Accidental Astrologer By Astrid Stellanova 1 28 O.Henry Ending By Phil Koch Cover photograph by John Gessner
8 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Join us in sharing the love and making merry this holiday season! Huge love & gratitude, Becky, Marti, Taylor & Brooks
Fine Eyewear, Artwork and Jewelry 327 South Elm | Greensboro 336.274.1278 | TheViewOnElm.com Becky Causey, Licensed Optician Find us on Facebook
Why look further?
336-644-0028 www.BuildingDimensionsNC.com
10
S U N
Santa at the Biltmore Hotel 11:00AM – 2:00PM Tea with Clara Carolina Theatre | 1:45PM Greensboro Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” Carolina Theatre | 3:00PM PTJO’s 4th Annual Holiday Concert Carolina Theatre | 2:30PM & 7:00PM
T U E
Spend the holidays
Downtown all
month
Piedmont Winterfest Ice Rink LeBauer Park | November 17, 2017 – January 28, 2018 Christmas at Blandwood Mansion November 9 – December 31, 2017 Mousetastical Mouse Hunt Greensboro History Museum | December 1, 2017 – January 7, 2018 Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity Triad Stage | December 5-24
12 13
W E D T H U F R I S A T
14 15 16
holiday movies at the carolina theatre Visit www.carolinatheatre.com for the schedule.
S A T
01 02
festival of lights 6:00 – 9:00PM First Friday! Participating businesses at FirstFridayGreensboro.org
Holiday Parade Fun at the Museum Greensboro History Museum | 10:00AM-1:00PM
T H U F R I S A T
07 08 09
Gingerbread Brown Ale Release Preyer Brewing Company Tween Cooking Class: Whole Wheat Sweets, Treats Greensboro Children’s Museum | 5:00- 7:00PM Santa’s Workshop Day Greensboro Children’s Museum | 9:00AM- 5:00PM Santa at the Biltmore Hotel 11:00AM – 2:00PM Tea with Clara Carolina Theatre | 1:45PM Greensboro Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” Carolina Theatre | 3:00PM
Rum Barrel Aged Mexican Milkshake IPA Release Preyer Brewing Company
Teen Cooking Class: Whole Wheat Sweets, Treats Greensboro Children’s Museum | 5:00- 7:00PM Santa at the Biltmore Hotel 11:00AM – 2:00PM Sweet Santa Shop Something BARowed | 12:00-5:00PM
Nutcracker Gala Event Carolina Theatre | 9:30PM
S U N
17
Santa at the Biltmore Hotel 11:00AM – 2:00PM Homegrown Artisan Market Preyer Brewing Company | 1:00-7:00PM Piedmont SongBag Carolina Theatre | 4:00PM
Greensboro holiday parade 12:00PM Christmas at the Carolina Carolina Theatre | 9:30AM-12:00PM
Adult Cooking Class: Sugar Cookie Decorating Greensboro Children’s Museum | 6:00 - 8:00PM
Greensboro Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” Gala Performance Carolina Theatre | 7:30PM
holiday events at the downtown parks Visit www.greensborodowntownparks.org for the schedule.
F R I
Hanukkah Menorah Lighting LeBauer Park | 4:30-6:00PM
W E D F R I
S A T S A T
20 22 23 30
Terrariums on Tap: Edible Gingerbread Preyer Brewing Company
Santa at the Biltmore Hotel 11:00AM – 2:00PM SantaCon Bar Crawl 7:00PM Santa at the Biltmore Hotel 11:00AM – 2:00PM
Rocking Noon Year's Eve Greensboro Children’s Museum | 10:00AM-1:00PM
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M A G A Z I N E
Volume 7, No. 12 “I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com PUBLISHER
David Woronoff Jim Dodson, Editor • jim@thepilot.com Andie Stuart Rose, Art Director • andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor • nancy@ohenrymag.com Lauren M. Coffey, Graphic Designer Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Cynthia Adams, David Claude Bailey, Harry Blair, Maria Johnson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, Sam Froelich, John Gessner, Bert VanderVeen, Mark Wagoner CONTRIBUTORS Ash Alder, Jane Borden, Grant Britt, Susan Campbell, Wiley Cash, Clyde Edgerton, Billy Eye, Ross Howell Jr., Billy Ingram, Susan Kelly, Sara King, Brian Lampkin, Meridith Martens, D.G. Martin, Ogi Overman, Romey Petite, Stephen Smith, Astrid Stellanova
O.H
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Hattie Aderholdt, Advertising Manager 336.601.1188, hattie@ohenrymag.com
Lisa Allen, 336.210.6921 • lisa@ohenrymag.com Amy Grove, 336.456.0827 • amy@ohenrymag.com Allison Shore, 336.698.6374 • allison@ohenrymag.com
Scan to watch an interactive video of a partial knee replacement.
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336.617.0090, ohenryadvertising@thepilot.com
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For more information about Dr. Olin and surgery visit www.GreensboroOrthopaedics.com
12 O.Henry
December 2017
©Copyright 2017. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. O.Henry Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Simple Life
My Pre-Geezer
ChristmasList Wishing for the intangible
By Jim Dodson
Earlier this month, my lovely
grown-up daughter living in faraway Chicago phoned to ask what I want for Christmas.
“Can’t think of a thing, Honey,” I replied, then said what I say every December when we do this routine. “I don’t need a thing, Mugs. Just seeing all of you kids come home is my Christmas present. Oh, wait, I know — a pair of new white socks and a pen that doesn’t run out of ink.” “Dad, be serious.” I was being serious. For better or worse, come winter I go through white socks like tissues, and there’s nothing worse than a pen that runs out of ink when you’ve had a sudden brilliant thought. The trick of living, I’ve discovered over three score years plus four is to know what’s enough and to need (and better yet desire) less and less of this world’s material stuff, whittling down life until you’re traveling light enough to someday join the dust from whence you came. On this same note, it was a shock to discover the other day that I own 23 very nice sports coats. Where on Earth did they all come from? And more to the point, do I really need 23 sports coats in my life, only two or three of which I might wear over the course of a year? Ditto neckties, golf clubs, various hats and caps, even books I used to think I would someday read but never got around to. So I had a brilliant idea. For the first time in decades, I made out a Christmas list, putting “give away at least half your very nice sports coats for Christmas” at the top of it. Like my working hero Thomas Jefferson — who claimed to be an “old man but a new gardener” — I tend to make lists of things I mean to do on any given day. As any pre-geezer knows, the older you get, the better it is to write stuff down before you forget it. Unfortunately, I’m always finding old lists of things I meant to do stuffed in the pockets of my sports coats and gardening pants, things I somehow forgot to do. This is just another good reason to get rid of half my very nice sports coats. That way, I’ll probably only forget to do half the tasks I put on my daily list of things to do. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
In this spirit, I decided to revisit making a Christmas list since I was about 11. That year my buddies and I used to ride our bikes to the downtown Sears and Roebuck store to check out toys we wanted to see under the Christmas tree. I wanted a new Alamo set that year and a Redskins football jersey. Also to kiss Della Hockaday who rode my bus and lived just around the corner. She wouldn’t give me the time of day. But that’s an old story of youthful yearning and unrequited love. Back to my current pre-geezer Christmas List: Time. Don’t tell anyone, least of all my literary agent, but I have at least three novels half-written that I just can’t find the time to finish. I don’t know if the world needs to read my unfinished novels or not. I just know I need to someday finish writing them — though “someday” really has a scary way of creeping up on you. Time is the one thing that always seems to be in short supply, running out like the ink in your pen when you least expect it. I’d also like enough time to see my children settled down and happy with how their lives are working out. While I’m on the subject, wouldn’t mind being in the Grandpa Club some day. But no rush, Kids. Hopefully I still have a little time yet. Those new grandpas seem to have all the fun, though. Something spicy and blue. Thanks to several careers in writing, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel abroard a great deal, exploring faraway places I only dreamed or read about as a kid. Most of my wanderlust has been spent. But there still are a few places I’d like to go before I’m scattered among the wildflowers. One is the spice market and Blue Mosque of Istanbul. I can’t really tell you why — maybe because on an attempt to see the wonders of the ancient world with my 10-year-old son many years ago, we failed to reach Constantinople or explore the Holy Land. In a nice development, next summer that grown-up son — now a reporter for a famous newspaper in northern Maine — plans to marry a beautiful Palestinian Christian girl from Jaffa, Israel. The sacred sights of the Holy Land await. And just maybe, on the return leg, something spicy and blue in old Constantinople. Another rescue dog. Please don’t share this with my wife, but I’d love another rescue dog or two. Rescue dogs make the world a better place. They’re all about love and joy at finally having a home to call their own. Mine found me. December 2017
O.Henry 17
Simple Life
Her name is Mulligan. Best dog ever. I’ll cry like a baby when she’s gone. Then I’ll go get myself another rescue dog or two. A politician to admire. Frankly, I’m tired of the ones we have. All they do is bicker, call names and point nasty fingers at each other. If my mother were running this country, she’d send them all to their bedrooms without dessert until they could learn to speak with a civil tongue in their mouths. If you can’t tweet something nice, she would add, don’t tweet anything at all. We could sure use a guy like Thomas Jefferson or my mom for president. Tickle the ivories. Sure wish I could play the piano. Actually, I can play the piano. It just doesn’t sound like it. Looking back, I should have taken more than two weeks of lessons. You can probably put the blame directly on Della Hockaday. She was all I could think about the year my mom (see above) suggested I take piano lessons. The teacher smelled like moth balls so I quit and took up playing guitar, planning to become the next George Harrison. Sadly, Della wasn’t impressed. More Saturday mornings. Look, I could really use an extra Saturday morning. That’s when I get my errands and garden work done. While the world sleeps in, I get down and dirty. Thus I hereby propose a constitutional amendment introducing the four-day work week and renaming Friday “First Saturday.” Just imagine what we could all do if we had two Saturday mornings! An extra day for golf, gardening, sleeping in, reading a book, meeting a friend for lunch, writing a letter by hand, taking a walk with the dogs in the park, or just doing nothing but noticing what a beautiful world we’re briefly inhabiting. What’s Up, Doc? And since we’re on the subject, would someone please bring back those classic Bugs Bunny cartoons that once made Saturday mornings so sublime – Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety and Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Pepé Le Pew, the whole Looney Tunes gang. Sure loved those guys. They made the world a better place — or at least a whole lot funnier. We should all lighten up, especially the cartoon characters we’ve elected to public office. Besides, I have it on good authority that Tom Jefferson was a huge Rocky and Bullwinkle fan.
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December 2017
A Revised Eleventh Commandment. Here’s a final thing I wish we could do: learn to listen to each other with a closed mouth and an open mind. During the years I wrote about life in Washington, D.C., Ronald Reagan publicly embraced an Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another republican.” I propose we update that to “Never speak ill of another American, even if they look or sound different from you.” We’re the most diverse nation on Earth, after all, made up of a polyglot of souls who mostly came from someplace else far, far away — yet a country constitutionally founded on the timeless principle of free exchange of ideas, civil discourse and respect for a neighbor’s opinions, even if we don’t agree. If we get to know that neighbor, we just might be reminded that far more unites than divides us. So there it is, neighbors, eight modest items on my pre-geezer Christmas Wish List. I can almost hear what you’re thinking — What a dreamer, pal. You must have sugar-plums dancing in your head. I suppose that’s true. But the older I get, the more I dream about such things, not unlike the way, long ago and far away, I wished for a new Alamo set and a kiss from Della Hockaday. One of those things, I can safely report, Santa delivered. In the mean time, can anyone use a very nice sports coat or two? OH Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Short Stories Oy to the World!
Kringle Krawl
Here comes Santa Claus! Here comes Santa Claus . . . in fact, here come hordes of Santa Clauses and you can be one of them. Just don a red hat — or any St. Nick gear you might have — grab a map of participating downtown watering holes and eateries that will greet you on December 22 for the second annual SantaCon. Get stamps from at least four of them to be in the running for a $100 gift card at the one of your choice. And snap selfies of yourself in full regalia and download them to social media for a chance to win a costume contest. Why you ask? For one, to support downtown establishments for another . . . it’s Christmas. Info: downtownindecember.org.
Let’s face it: When it comes to choosing between naughty and nice, the irreverent among us will gladly choose the former. This year, holiday curmudgeons can rejoice — assuming they know how — with Carolina Theatre’s film series, Contrary Christmas in the Crown, an alternative to the heartwarming fare, such as It’s A Wonderful Life and White Christmas. Films range from the cheeky (Love Actually) to the explosive (Die Hard), but for our money, nothing casts a gimlet eye on the holidays quite like The Hebrew Hammer. Riffing on the blaxploitation genre of the early 1970s, the 2003 comedy has protagonist Mordecai Carver (Adam Goldberg), a badass veteran of Israeli Defense Forces, saving Hanukkah from the evil Damian Claus (Andy Dick). Catch the movie on December 20 at 7 p.m. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
Messterpieces
Fiddle and Bow Re Mi
How about a little Gaelic twist to the usual holiday musical fare? Then head over to Van Dyke Performance Space (200 North Davie Street) on December 15 for some Irish craic, as sons and daughters of Erin call “a good time.” Taking the stage is the Grammy-nominated group, Cherish the Ladies, who’ll present “Celtic Christmas,” a take on traditional carols using time-honored Celtic arrangements and harmonies on fiddle, flute, accordion, guitar and keyboard. G’on wi’ ye now! Tickets: (800) 838-3000 or thevandyke.org.
20 O.Henry
December 2017
Or rather, masterpieces, the purpose of ArtQuest’s “Masterpiece Fridays,” in which children age 5 and younger will be read a classic book and then create an art project related to it. Is there any better way to channel their unfettered excitement and enthusiasm for the holiday season? December 1 has the young cubs creating their own bear caves after reading Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. On December 8, tykes get to make animal print tracks inspired by Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Eric Carle, and on the 15th, “magic snow” following a reading of The Snowman. Ice paintings are on tap in tandem with A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats on December 22, and winding up the year on December 29, kids can make clay breakfasts after diving into Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Pig a Pancake. Admission is $6 (free for family members of households) and includes a tour of GreenHill’s current exhibitions. To register: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
A Hot Cuppa Cool ’Tis the season to be jolly, and for some of us, frazzled. Why not do as the Brits do, and trade the brew-ha-ha outside for a more civilized brew inside? Throughout the month of December, O.Henry Hotel (624 Green Valley Road) is offering extended holiday hours for its popular Afternoon Tea, from noon to 5 p.m. every day except Thursday, when it’s poured from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Take a nice cuppa of your choice — black tea, Ceylon tea, green tea, chamomile, among others — and trappings such as scones, clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches, cookies — or “biscuits,” if you prefer. As any Brit will tell you, taking tea is a tradition worth steeping yourself in. Reservations and info: (336) 854-2015 or ohenryhotel.com.
Worth the Drive to Burlington
No, those aren’t angels you’re hearing on high, but close. The Burlington Boys Choir, which, since 1959 has been making heavenly music and racking up, heh, noteworthy appearances including Spoleto and EMF, will make joyful noises during the holidays. On December 1 at 7 p.m. you can catch them at a candlelight, Moravianstyle love feast at Burlington’s Macedonia Lutheran Church, (425 Front Street), or at another on December 15 at 7 p.m. at the Old Brick Church (3699 Brick Church Road), singing traditional tunes such as “The Sussex Carol,” “Il Est Né,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman,” and more. Admission is free, but reservations are required: (336) 266-5067 or burlingtonboyschoir@hotmail.com. The choir will also provide a soundtrack to the Holiday Magic festival in downtown B-town on December 8, if you want to hear more, the boys will perform in Biltmore’s Winter Garden on December 27 — certainly, worth the drive to Asheville.
Sunday, Bloody Mary Sunday
That would be December 31. So why not ring in the New Year with a classic Bloody Mary — using Chef Jay Pierce’s homemade mix from The Traveled Farmer (1211 Battleground Avenue)? With a base of fresh tomatoes, V-8, horseradish, salt and pepper, it’s not meant to be a fire bomb, but you can always spice things up, as the restaurant’s bartenders do, by adding a layer of Worcestershire sauce mixed with a splash or two of Tabasco. (That’s to remind you that the drink’s namesake was likely England’s vengeful Catholic Queen Mary I, known for burning 280 Protestants at the stake.) Just stop by the Market section of Traveled Farmer for a 16-ounce bottle, which will set you back about $8. Also available by the quart. As for which vodka you choose, that can be your secret ingredient. Olives and celery, we’ll leave that up to you. Info: (336) 792-1999
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Ogi Sez Ogi Overman For the diehard live-concert lover, December can be a bit barren, as most of the major acts take some time off for Christmas. But, fear not, Dear Hearts, your intrepid devotee is on the prowl for the best of what’s available and has found some presents under your musical tree.
• December 3, Carolina Theatre (Durham): I’ve never sent anyone to Durham before but, like I say, the cupboard’s a tad bare. And besides, I’ve traveled farther than that to see my Americana hero, Robert Earl Keen, before. Bring a can of fake snow. • December 9, Cone Denim
Entertainment Center: Brent Smith and Zach Myers (cleverly billed Smith & Myers) have taken a break from their hard-rocking band, Shinedown, to record an acoustic album and to tour behind it. The results are not only surprising but astounding. Listen to their version of Adele’s “Someone Like You” if you don’t believe me.
• December 9, Blind Tiger: You
won’t find Fleetwood Mac on tour anytime soon or near, but you will find Rumours, the finest FM tribute band around. Skeptical at first, I’ve become a convert.
• December 11, Greensboro Coliseum: It was bound to happen. Just as The King spawned an endless slew of imitators, so has the King of Pop. There aren’t as many (yet), but the best of the best is Donny Dash Andrews, who brings The Michael Jackson Tribute to town this month. • December 17, The Crown: It
seems incredible, but twisted genius Don Morgan has been doing his Piedmont Songbag once-a-year Christmas show for 37 years. And stranger still, it never gets old. If this doesn’t get you in the holiday spirit, you may be dead.
December 2017
O.Henry 21
A Fond Farewell
The Bard of
Tate Street Remembering Jim Clark
Seven years ago, as we prepared to
would like to thank our advertisers for another wonderful year!
We wish you all a safe and happy holiday season! 22 O.Henry
December 2017
After hearing out my hopes and plans for a very different kind of magazine, one deeply rooted in the cultural life and history of the city, Jim gave me one of his sage and beardy smiles, and lifted his drink in a kind of Socratic salute. “You know,” he said, “I’m old enough to have been part of a couple commercial magazine projects that started up in this city. Unfortunately, none of them actually lasted long.” That said, he paused and added with a wry twinkle: “But I have a feeling O.Henry may just be the proverbial third charm, the real keeper — what O.Henry himself called the voice of a city. I wish you the best of luck and would be happy to help out in any way.” Indeed, if this magazine has enjoyed any good fortune, it’s due in part to the spirit and guidance of Jim Clark, who passed away on the penultimate day of October. His encyclopedic knowledge of the city and diverse storytelling gifts enriched our pages and provided us with half a dozen fabulous tales over the years, highlighted by his unique memories of UNCG during its most colorful decades. T. Gilbert Pearson, aka “Citizen Bird,” and the eponymous Clacker King of Greensboro were some of the most memorable local figures Jim brought to life. Needless to say, our lives as writers and editors were deeply enriched by our warm association with the Bard of Tate Street, as I will always think of Jim. The hundreds of students and gifted writers whose lives he touched and careers he help shape will be this gentle sage’s greatest legacy. He was a true Voice of the City and will be greatly missed by us all. — Jim Dodson The Art & Soul of Greensboro
PHOTOGRPAPH BY SAM FROELICH
launch O.Henry magazine, one of the first souls I sought out to talk about the prospect of an arts and culture magazine for the Gate City was Jim Clark, a friend of many years, longtime editor of the esteemed literary journal The Greensboro Review and director of UNCG’s vaunted M.F.A. program. I was secretly hoping he would join our growing, merry band of contributors.
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December 2017
O.Henry 23
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Doodad
Greensboro’s Mighty Fairlanes Built For Comfort
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MARK HARRISON
S
ince 1985, Mark “BuddyRo” Harrison’s vehicle of choice has been a Fairlane. But Harrison’s version didn’t have a cool stainless steel racing stripe down the side or a tinted transparent plastic roof like the ’55 Crown Vic Skyliner. The Greensboro-based guitarist didn’t opt for the drag racers’ ’64 427-cubic-inch Thunderbolt model either. His machine was more middle-of-theroad, built for cruising with top 40 tunes blowin’ in the breeze. His fellow drivers for that initial ’85 custom model were Harrison on guitar, Gary Collins on drums, Chris Carroll on bass and Kevin Wilson on keyboards. The Fairlanes retooled in 1990, with Chip “Memphis” Click on drums and Ken Graham on bass. The engine’s sound changed as well, with covers becoming fewer and the vehicle now tuned up with some of Harrison’s originals. The current Fairlanes driver’s roster has Colby Jack replacing Graham on bass and the addition of Glenn Bickell on keys and vocals. Some have tried to slap a blues label on his machine, but Harrison says it won’t stick. “It’s all the blues to me,” he says. “Even if I’m playing a Johnny Cash tune,” he explains. “I’m saying it from just a pure guitar standpoint. It’s all the same progressions, it’s just the spirit of the song and the vibe that you emit on it.” Their latest, “The Longer I Live,” is a gumbo of ingredients — rockabilly, outlaw country and rock. The record is dedicated to their former bassist Carroll, who passed away in August. “It’s hard losing so many of ’em, Harrison says. “The longer I live,” he growls on the title cut, over a twangy rockabilly framework, “the more I think about dyin’./ So many gone/ seems like I never quit cryin’,” he laments, before taking on politicians in another song. “Hypocrite,” sounds a bit like Bob Seger backed by the Allman brothers. “What I had in mind was a jam band feel. Once I got the melody going I said ‘OK, I see some hippies in tie-dyes boppin’ around,’” Harrison says, laughing. The record is all originals, but the band still does some obscure covers live. Tab Benoit’s “Make Your Mind Up,” and Lightning Hopkins’ “Got Love,” for instance. And then there’s a little tune The Band used to perform: “Ophelia,” Levon Helm’s poignant centerpiece in later years after he’d regained his voice following surgery for throat cancer. For Fairlanes fans it’s a favorite. “People are like, you gotta play it,” Harrison says. Harrison is a meticulous mechanic, keeping the engine fine-tuned. Overall, he’s very pleased with the high performance his vehicle delivers. “The Fairlanes are very consistent, some nights better than others, but I never, not anymore, got to the place of sayin’, ‘Well, we sucked,’” Harrison says wryly. “Been many years since I’ve said that.” The Fairlanes are an all-terrain vehicle, versatile enough for any challenges.“We do a big variety of gigs, old country club dinner type gigs where you’re playin’ really soft — fake jazz, is what I call it,” Harrison says. “Next night might be a hippie party, where it’s just wide-open. That’s fun ’cause it keeps the band on their toes.” Harrison believes the secret to keeping his vehicle humming all these years is selling the band on his songs. “If they ain’t on board, it ain’t gonna happen. They’ll move on. So they bought into these tunes on the record, and they enjoy playing ’em.” — Grant Britt The Art & Soul of Greensboro
December 2017
O.Henry 25
Life’s Funny
Caught in the Act Methinks the fool’s a wit
By Maria Johnson
It’s a wonder
I didn’t cause a rubbernecking wreck when I first saw Terry Odom.
There I was, motoring through Guilford Courthouse National Military Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon, when I glimpsed something I’d never seen before: someone juggling while jogging. I hit the brakes and did a double take. Sure enough, there was a guy in a sweat-soaked T-shirt, huffing along while keeping three clubs aloft in the air ahead of him. I turned around and found him in the parking lot, getting in his van to leave. I said, “Hey! You were just juggling. And jogging. At the same time!” This was not news to Terry Odom. He smiled and said yes, he’d been “joggling.” “Can you do it again?” I asked. “So I can take your picture?” And so he did. He joggled past me several times until I got a decent pic. We chatted for a few minutes. Terry said he was training for a 5-K race in March in Wrightsville Beach, where he hopes to set a time record for jogglers who are 60 and older. Later, I sat down in a restaurant with him and his wife, Susan, and they explained how Terry, an ophthalmologist, became Doc Joggle. Basically, it started when 64-year-old Terry, who lives here and practices medicine in Danville, was about 32. He’d been jogging to stay in shape, but running was incredibly boring to him. “I thought I’d take up juggling for the fun of it,” he says. I wondered if Terry had grown up in the circus. Nope. He traced his interest back to med school at Wake Forest University, where a bunch of other future docs juggled for stress relief.
26 O.Henry
December 2017
As I always say, who needs fiction? At that time, Terry was not in the juggler vein, but the idea appealed to him later. He bought a kit called “Juggling for the Complete Klutz,” which included a how-to book and three balls. Just to be clear, Terry, who by then was performing microsurgery on people’s eyes, did not consider himself a klutz. He bought the kit because he thought it would make juggling simpler. It did, and Terry caught on. He joined the International Jugglers’ Association and became a devoted reader of Juggle magazine. He started juggling random items around the house. Apples. Basketballs. Toilet plungers. Eggs. Yes, eggs. “He limited the eggs to outside, which was very thoughtful,” says Susan. Is it just me, or can you see a halo over Susan’s head? Anyway, Terry was eaten up with juggling. He performed at all three of his daughters’ birthday parties, at office parties, at fundraisers. Then he read about a guy who set a world distance record for joggling. Eureka! Terry Odom had found his passion. Joggling was the perfect hybrid of fun, fitness and skill. “Joggling is for those of us who are pretty good jugglers, but not elite jugglers,” he says. Terry challenged himself by joggling around the track at Danville High School. Then he entered races. He joggled through his first 5-kilometer race in Greensboro. He signed up for more races: 5-Ks; 10-Ks; half-marathons, even a full marathon. He got better at joggling. He also became a better athlete, he says. A native of tiny Robbinsville in Western North Carolina, he’d played football and basketball in high school. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Life’s Funny He was no star, but he was fairly coordinated. Joggling sharpened his eye-hand coordination, he says. “If I’d started juggling when I was 13 instead of 30, I’d be retired from the NFL by now,” he says, chuckling. “I guarantee it makes you a better athlete.” Terry says that’s because joggling — which requires you to throw the clubs slightly ahead of your body with just enough spin so the skinny end of the club lands in your hand — pushes the body and the brain at the same time, multiplying neural connections. Researchers say an abundance of neural connections — especially those forged by learning something new — sharpens thinking and helps to fend off diseases like Alzheimer’s. Here’s the other thing: Joggling has made Terry good medicine for everyone he meets. It’s hard not to smile when you see him joggling, whether it’s in the park, on the road near his home, or at the Alex Spears YMCA in Greensboro, where he goes to joggle on the treadmill on foul-weather mornings. People clap as they watch him. They shout “Way to go!” They whip out their cell phones to click-and-grin at his feat. “Can you chew gum and do that?” some bystanders want to know. Terry has taught one of his daughters — and two of his sons-in-law — to juggle. He and his daughter Kelly Walters delighted the guests at Kelly’s wedding reception. During the father-daughter dance, they started out swaying slowly to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” They broke into juggling act when the music quickened. “It was totally her idea,” Terry says proudly. I ask Terry if he ever fears looking silly while joggling. He shakes his head. “I don’t mind looking foolish,” he says. “I want to entertain people.” Which brings us back to how I met Terry. It seems I’m not the only motorist who’s been captivated by his skill. In 2011, Terry was joggling on a bike path in Sanibel Island, Florida, when he heard a crash on the road next to him. One car had rear-ended another. The driver of the car in back told Terry that he’d been watching him instead of the car ahead. Terry, ever the good doctor, checked to make sure everyone was OK. Then he skedaddled. With clubs churning. “I didn’t hang around to hear what he told the police,” says Terry. OH Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. You can reach her at ohenrymaria@gmail.com
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
December 2017
O.Henry 27
The Omnivorous Reader
A Carolina Classic Revisiting Cold Mountain
By D.G. Martin
Charles Frazier’s
classic novel, Cold Mountain, was published 20 years ago and more than three million copies have been sold. The book inspired a popular epic film and an opera staged in Chapel Hill in September. As North Carolina’s most admired work of literary fiction since, perhaps, Look Homeward Angel, it should be on the bookshelf of every home in our state.
The book’s great success has made its story and its characters familiar and memorable. When the name of Inman is mentioned, we think of a tired, warworn, wounded Civil War soldier walking across the Piedmont and foothills determined to make his way back home to Cold Mountain and to Ada, the lovely Charleston-reared Ada, whom he hardly knows, but deeply loves. She is out of place, struggling, and starving on a mountain farm. Ruby, an uneducated mountain girl, full of energy and grit, rescues and restores Ada and the farm, where the two women await Inman’s poignant return and the accompanying tragedy. As in Homer’s Odyssey, the returning soldier’s travel toward home provides the framework for a series of adventures and contacts with a variety of compelling characters. The book opens with the battle-wounded Inman recovering in a Confederate hospital in Raleigh. Outside the hospital a blind man is selling boiled peanuts. When Inman asks what he would give for just a few minutes of sight, the peanut man replies, “Not an Indian head penny.” He explains there are things he would never want to see. Inman understands, because he remembers vividly the horrors of war and the battles he experienced and wishes he had never seen them. As Inman’s condition improves, he resolves to desert, leave the hospital, and begin his walk toward Cold Mountain. Not long after his trek begins, in the woods near a river, he sees a fallen preacher bent on killing a woman he has impregnated. Inman rescues the woman and brutally punishes the preacher. Soon afterwards, he encounters and angers some armed and dangerous locals. They follow him to a river crossing. As he canoes across the swollen river they fire a barrage of bullets that destroy the canoe and almost kill him. After Inman’s escape, he meets a deceitful redneck named Junior, a farmer
28 O.Henry
December 2017
and bawdyhouse keeper, who drugs Inman and sells him out to the Home Guard. After marching its prisoners in chains for several days, the Home Guard loses patience and executes its captives. Inman survives miraculously and goes on the road again, but only after returning to extract vicious revenge on Junior, whom he finds salting ham in his smokehouse. Frazier describes the brutal details. “Junior raised up his face and looked at him but seemed not to recognize him. Inman stepped to Junior and struck him across the ear with the barrel of the LeMat’s and then clubbed at him with the butt until he lay flat on his back. There was no movement out of him but for the bright flow of blood which ran from his nose and cuts to his head and the corners of his eyes. It gathered and pooled on the black earth of the smokehouse floor.” The fight with Junior is only the beginning. Along the way to Cold Mountain are encounters at every stop, many of them bloody. Inman’s travel home, like the Civil War battlefields, is marked by violence and death. Frazier writes, “He could not even make a start at reckoning up how many deaths he had witnessed of late. It would number, no doubt, in the thousands. Accomplished in every custom you could imagine, and some you couldn’t come up with if you thought at it for days. He had grown so used to seeing death, walking among the dead, sleeping among them, numbering himself calmly as among the near-dead, that it seemed no longer dark and mysterious.” But Inman has another, softer side. He loves nature and carries with him Bartram’s Travels, William Bartram’s description of his travels in the American South in the 1770s. In Inman’s view, “the book stood nigh to holiness and was of such richness that one might dip into it at random and read only one sentence and yet be sure of finding instruction and delight.” Bartram’s description of a mountain scene that reminded Inman of Cold Mountain was his favorite selection. “Having gained its summit, we enjoyed a most enchanting view; a vast expanse of green meadows and strawberry fields . . . companies of young, innocent Cherokee virgins, some busy gathering the rich fragrant fruit, others having already filled their baskets, lay reclined under the shade of floriferous and fragrant native bowers of Magnolia, Azalea, Philadelphus, perfumed Calycanthus, sweet Yellow Jessamine and cerulean Glycine frutescens, disclosing their beauties to the fluttering breeze, and bathing their limbs in the cool fleeting streams; whilst other parties, more gay and libertine, were yet collecting strawberries, or wantonly chasing their companions, tantalising them, staining their lips and cheeks with the rich fruit.” When Inman read this passage aloud to Ada at their reunion, “he could not wait to reach its period for all it seemed to be about was sex, and it caused his The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Reader voice to crack and threatened to flush his face.” Alternating with the chapters describing Inman’s travels are reports of Ada’s and Ruby’s growing friendship and success in managing the farm together. The superstitious Ruby gives us a picture of farm life 150 years ago. Frazier writes, “The crops were growing well, largely, Ruby claimed, because they had been planted, at her insistence, in strict accordance with the signs. In Ruby’s mind, everything — setting fence posts, making sauerkraut, killing hogs — fell under the rule of the heavens . . . November, will kill a hog in the growing of the moon, for if we don’t the meat will lack grease and pork chops will cup up in the pan.” Inman finally makes his way back to Cold Mountain. His homecoming and reunion with Ada are joyful, but short lived, as Inman dies in a firefight with the Home Guard. Giving away the closing is not a spoiler. After 20 years in print, the book’s ending is no secret. But people still ask Frazier, why didn’t you let Inman live and make a happy ending? Frazier explained to me that the real Pinkney Inman died in a gunfight with the Home Guard. Therefore, he said, “having that knowledge in my mind, I wrote the character to go with that ending without really fully accepting it. But at that point, where I had to decide, then I realized, it’s going to feel fake if I come up with a way for him to survive this.” Frazier continued, “I got to the point toward the end of the book where I had to decide. And I drove all the way from Raleigh up to Haywood County. There’s a cemetery there, in a little town called Clyde, where Pinkney Inman is buried, but there’s not a marker. And I just walked around, looked at the view, and I just thought, you know, there’s only one way to end this, that I knew what happened from the first page of writing this book, to the real character, and it’s built in.” Frazier’s decision resulted in the classic that has stood the test of time. Reading it cover to cover is still a moving experience. But also, like Bartram’s Travels for Inman, we can pick up Cold Mountain and “read only one sentence and yet be sure of finding instruction and delight.” OH Charles Frazier tells much more about Cold Mountain and his experiences writing the book in his interview on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch at: https://video.unctv.org/ video/3004954333/ D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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December 2017
O.Henry 29
Scuppernong Bookshelf
Top Ten for 2017 Some of our favorite books that make you think
We read a lot of books here at Scup-
pernong. Our health probably suffers because of it. But a sedentary life also has its rewards. For instance, with a modicum of credibility, we can offer a top-10 list you can believe in. We’ve queried the staff, and here are our compiled favorites — without any further hierarchy — but largely created to start a good argument. We expect to hear about what we overlooked and why we’re wrong. So have at it, O.Henry readers, let the holiday disagreements begin here! The Blood of Emmett Till, by Timothy Tyson (Simon & Schuster, 2017, $27) Initially mischaracterized as an apologia for the woman who falsely accused Emmett Till in 1955, this National Book Award longlister is more an ode to the strength and conviction of Till’s mother, and of an entire movement in Mississippi facing down the psychopathology of Jim Crow. (BL) Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee (Grand Central Publishing, 2017, $27) Pachinko is a stunning generational saga whose immigrant characters will sweep you into their lives with ease. It is a story of hardship that never feels downtrodden, of searching without feeling lost. Lee’s intimate prose flows like breath in this deeply human tale. (SJ) We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World Publishing, 2017, $28) The eight years of the Obama Administration are denoted by single extended essays in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. These essays don’t always directly address the President and his two terms; they move over a number of nominal subjects, but the essential concern throughout is race in America. The essays are held together both by subject matter and by interstitials on Coates’s life in each year: we watch him in the first as a struggling, directionless writer searching for his voice, supported
30 O.Henry
December 2017
by his wife, then follow year after year as he finds that voice and rises to prominence. You won’t find a more topical, compelling, and provocative collection of essays this year. (SM) The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, by Megan Stielstra (Harper Perennial, 2017, $15) Reading Megan Stielstra is like drinking wine with that one insightful friend who is honest about all the things we’re not supposed to talk about, the one with whom you can laugh and sob at your corner table. Like all the best books, these essays hold a nugget of something true. (SJ) The Bright Hour, by Nina Riggs (Simon & Schuster, 2017, $25) There are many people around Greensboro who will hand you this book with haunted delight and tell you how much you will laugh as the author steadily (or unsteadily) approaches her own death from cancer. Nina’s grace in the face of pain and loss becomes a guide for how to live. And you’ll cry, of course, you’ll cry, because it all matters so much. (BL) Stephen Florida, by Gabe Habash (Coffee House, 2017, $25) There won’t be another novel from 2017 that’ll make you as uncomfortable, but that’s OK. Habash doesn’t want you to feel good, he just wants you to feel something, and this debut novel of obsession, mania and Midwest wrestling will have you feeling paranoid, contemplative, skeeved, spooked, smart and grateful to have read it. (BE) Theft By Finding, by David Sedaris (Little Brown, 2017, $28) A collection of diary entries, this book inspired me to tune into the strange and funny moments of my own life that I might have otherwise missed because I was staring into my phone all day. Try the audio for Sedaris’s classic delivery. (MT) A Simple Story, by Leila Guerriero (New Directions, 2017, $14.95) Nothing explains fully, or in any kind of satisfying The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Bookshelf way, why we become obsessed, engaged, enthralled, with the things we do. Attempting to construct a foundation, we create stories, but beauty, like love, is contradictory, mysterious, impenetrable. Our only role is submission. Only, it’s not submission to the lover, the one obsessed. It’s only submission to the outsider. To the lover, it is complete engagement, an immersion. It’s a form of bliss. A Simple Story by Leila Guerriero, translated by Frances Riddle, really is simply a book about a man who dances the malambo. (SM) Why Poetry, by Matthew Zapruder (Ecco, 2017, $24.99) Zapruder was recently the poetry editor at The New York Times, which placed him, somewhat uncomfortably, in the center of the poetry mainstream. This book embraces his position in the eye of the maelstrom (there are actual anti-Zapruder books of poetry being written), and tries to make the case that the perceived elitism of poetry is wrong-headed. Poetry might still matter to all of us. And in case you’re wondering, he’s the grandson of Abraham Zapruder of JFK assassination film fame. (BL) Basketball (and Other Things), by Shea Serrano (Abrams, 2017, $19.99) Really? Yes, this book is a gem. With illustrations by Arturo Torres, it’s beautiful to look at, and Serrano’s strange devotion to the arcana of NBA life is endlessly interesting. These folks brought us The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song from Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed in 2015, and the charm is in the obsession. My favorite chapter: “What’s the Order of the Fictional Basketball Player Draft.” Jesus Shuttlesworth is No.10. (BL). OH This month’s column was compiled by Brian Lampkin, Shannon Jones, Steve Mitchell, Michael Thomas and Brian Etling. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Thankful
I appreciate all the support that the Triad has shown to Tom and me over the past thirty years, and I look forward to continuing Tom’s legacy of compassionate professionalism in all that we do. On behalf of Tom Chitty Associates, God Bless, and Merry Christmas to all!
Barry S. Hardeman Direct Line: 336-420-2837 Email: tomchitty@tomchitty.com Website: www.tomchitty.com
December 2017
O.Henry 31
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32 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
A Writer’s Life
Have Yourselfie a Merry Little Christmas In search of a family tradition
By Wiley Cash
Our oldest daughter was
only 2 months old the first time we made her cry while showing her the importance of family traditions. It was a chilly late afternoon on the day after Thanksgiving in 2014, and my wife and I had already unloaded all the Christmas decorations from the attic while our daughter napped. Now we sat on the living room sofa in nervous silence, watching the daylight slip away and wondering if we should dare commit the cardinal sin of waking a sleeping baby. After all, we were going to get our first Christmas tree as a family, and we needed high-quality photos to prove that a tradition had been forged.
I cannot quite remember what my wife or I were wearing, but in my memory it seems that we were decked out in our winter, Christmas tree-searching finery. I picture myself in a red flannel shirt with one of those leather hats with the flaps folded down over my ears, and I imagine my wife was wearing a cream-colored sweater with a beret that matched, but these are just bits of speculation. I do, however, remember our daughter’s outfit, can still picture it where it was laid out on the coffee table: a white onesie with a Cubist-inspired Christmas tree on it and, of course, a tiny red Santa hat that we planned to perch perfectly atop her bald baby head. At the first sound of her stirring, we flew upstairs. We slipped her out of her non-holiday clothes and into the Christmas tree onesie with ease, but we hit a serious speed bump once the Santa hat was installed on her head. She shook it loose, and when we put it back on she actually reached for it and removed it. My wife did her best to distract our daughter while I fumbled with The Art & Soul of Greensboro
the tripod so we could snap a few casual photos in front of our garlanded, lit fireplace before setting out in search of a tree. By the time the camera was ready, our daughter was in tears. The photos show our strained faces, her tearstained cheeks and a tiny Santa hat that is alternately atop her head, in midair as it falls toward the floor, then absent altogether. With dusk coming on and our normally relaxed newborn newly fitful, we made a dash for the closest Christmas tree lot we could find, which, unfortunately, sat on a narrow strip of grass between the fire department and a busy road. The sun had sunk below the tree line and an icy chill had settled over the late afternoon by the time we arrived at the lot. We immediately set about the task of having and photographing our tree-hunting experience instead of actually hunting for a tree. Our daughter showed no more interest in wearing her Santa hat than she had shown at home, and the cars and trucks that sped past us only a few feet away did not assist us in our attempts to keep the hat on her head. However, what the speeding automobiles did do well was force the cold air deep into our eyes so that tears streamed down all our faces. After we had taken all the pictures the three of us could stand — none of which actually featured the three of us together — we realized that we had not yet spent a moment considering any trees on the lot. We made a hasty selection, tied a tree to the top of the car and headed home. We got the tree inside and set it up in its stand, but we did not decorate it that evening. We did not decorate it the next day either. Perhaps we were not yet in the Christmas spirit. Perhaps we were busy decorating other parts of the house. But what is most likely is that we were silently pouting due to the fact that the experience of getting the tree had not been captured in a way that felt sufficient to memorialize it as a family tradition. A few nights later, after an early dinner, I found my wife going through a box of ornaments. Many of them had been given to us while we were dating or during the first year of our marriage. We considered each ornament, talked about the people who had given it to us, recalled the first Christmas tree we decorated as a couple when we were living in the northern panhandle of West Virginia in 2009. December 2017
O.Henry 33
A Writer’s Life
Homes for the Holidays
From our homes to yours, Happy Holidays from the TR&M team. Marti, Katie, Alec, Charlotte, Elizabeth, Frank, Hilburn, Jessica, Jill, Joanna, Karen, Kelli, Kristen, Leslie, Lori, Maggie, Mary Ed, Meredith, Patty, Preston, Rodney, Shane, Stacey, Wendi
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34 O.Henry
December 2017
That year, my wife had come home late from work, and snow had begun to fall. It was early December, and there was already a thin layer of snow on the ground. Both of us being Southerners, we were excited by the idea of getting a Christmas tree in the falling snow. Although we had not yet unpacked ornaments or even considered decorating our tiny apartment, we set out on the dark, snow-covered roads that wound through our mountain village and headed for the small town of Wellsburg, where it sits on the banks of the Ohio River. The only Christmas trees we could find were in the parking lot of a Rite-Aid, and there were only a few trees available. But we took our time, imagining each one crammed inside our living room in front of the window that looked out on the main street of the village. We talked about how high our ceiling was, what kind of tree topper we would buy, which ornaments would hang where. The snow kept falling, and I have vivid memories of seeing flakes caught in my wife’s dark hair. I can remember reaching out and touching the pine boughs on the various trees where the soft snow had settled. We finally agreed on a short, fat tree, and as we paid for it and loaded it onto the roof of our car we discovered that the owner of the tree lot knew some friends of ours. We had only recently moved to West Virginia, and we were thrilled by the knowledge that we had just met someone who was friends with our friends. We felt like we belonged in this distant place that was so far from our lives back home in North Carolina. We were forging a life together. Five years later we stood in a new house with a new baby and looked through old ornaments. I opened a few boxes of lights and began snaking them through the tree. We made a fire and hung our old ornaments one by one. We were so caught up in our decorating that we did not notice that our daughter had fallen asleep on the little pillow where she often rested, the light from the fire and the light from the tree causing her soft baby face to glow. I looked at my wife. She reached for her cellphone, and I reached for our daughter’s tiny Santa hat and, as carefully as I could, placed it on her head. We knelt behind her, gazed down upon her with all the love one could ever feel for such a sweet, innocent thing. And then we looked up at my wife’s cellphone and snapped a selfie. That night, I knew that we were a family with a Christmas tradition. But I also knew something else: We always had been. OH Wiley Cash lives in Wilmington with his wife and their two daughters. His new novel The Last Ballad is available wherever books are sold. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 35
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36 O.Henry
December 2017
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
True South
Did She Say That Out Loud? Favorite utterances I have known and used
By Susan S. Kelly
Southerners are big on sayings that are
peculiar, well-worn, and whose origins — never mind meanings — are vague. “Bless her heart” comes to mind. We also love our book-or-movie lines that translate well to reality: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
For my money though, nothing beats the casual comments friends and family have unwittingly uttered in the presence of a writer — me — who keeps entire notebooks of minor observations such as new wallpaper smells like Band-Aids, and what people have in their Costco cart. Herewith, a few of my everlasting favorites. Scene: Driving my 87-year-old mother on the Interstate. Mother: “Do you ever use the left lane?” Me: “When I need to pass a car, but otherwise, you’re supposed to stay in the right lane. The left lane is for speed, and for passing.” Mother: “I drive in the left lane all the time.” Pause. “I consider it my privilege.” Ensuing jaw drop. Scene: Discussing acquaintance X with my friend Trish. Trish: “Anyone with hair that long at her age is bound to be tough.” Ensuing fall off the chair laughing before wryly agreeing.
Scene: Charlestonian pal Ginny visiting Greensboro, wandering through the rooms of my house: Ginny: “I forget how much stuff y’all have up here.” Interpretation: It’s so tropical in Charleston that rugs and objets are superfluous and just make you feel even sweatier. Ensuing anxious reassessment of household décor previously considered cozy and now viewed as cluttered. Scene: Someone my friend Sarah and I slightly knew in college moves to town. Me to Sarah: “You and I should probably have some kind of welcome get-together for her. Sarah, with slow blink: “I have all the friends I need.” Ensuing appreciation of Sarah’s chop-chop ‘tude freeing me from entertaining responsibility. Scene: Dressing room of bathing suit marathon try-on with sister Janie. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Janie: Big sigh, followed by: “I just look better with a few clothes on.” No interpretation needed. Scene: Discussion with friend Marsha about recent debatable behavior of hers, mine, and others’. Marsha: “Well, who cares? I’d rather be controversial than boring.” Ensuing decision to be controversial rather than boring. Scene: My great-aunt comes to pick up my grandmother for a luncheon in early April. My grandmother is dressed in a lavender crepe suit and, as frequently happens in April, it’s 48 degrees outside. Great-aunt: “Jewel, aren’t you freezing?” My grandmother Jewel: “Sure, but I look good, don’t I?” Ensuing decision upon being told this story: Never to name anyone Jewel. Scene: My mother-in-law telling her friends that her son is getting married to “just the nicest girl.” Friends: murmurs of assent and congratulations. Mother-in-law: “And the best part of it is, she’s already Episcopalian!” Ensuing gratitude for whatever makes my mother-in-law happy that I didn’t have to work at. Scene: Famous writer turns to me at a dinner party, and out of the blue asks, “Have you ever had a serious operation?” Scene: Friend Anna’s withering riposte to being wronged by others: “I have a big mouth and a wide acquaintance and intend to use both to your detriment.” Ensuing decision to: 1. Stay on Anna’s good side, and 2. Adopt this adage myself. And, in the spirit of the season, a couple of Christmas-themed favorites. My older son to his sister: “I’m outsourcing my Christmas thank-you notes this year. Interested?” His sister: Withering look. My sister to me: “I’m giving my children electric blankets for Christmas this year. Do you think it will give them cancer?” Me: Withering eye-roll. Morals: 1. You can’t make this stuff up, and 2. Sooner or later, a writer is going to bite the hand that feeds it, and use your unforgettable utterances. OH Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud new grandmother. December 2017
O.Henry 37
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38 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Gate City Journal
The Little Church That Could The D.I.Y. restoration of a historic local parish
By Annie Ferguson
The story of Saint Benedict Catholic
PHOTOGRAPPHS BY BARBARA MARKUN. AND COPHIA KNICK.
Church is certainly worth a feature-length film. For one thing, it’s the type of small, tight-knit parish lovingly depicted in classic Christmas movies such as The Bells of St. Mary’s and The Bishop’s Wife, which yearn for simpler times. Plus, Saint Benedict’s has an added ingredient — a storybook origin.
The first Greensboro Mass was celebrated sometime around 1870. In those days, Catholic services were offered in the homes of practicing families who had moved to Greensboro. Seven of the families banded together to raise funds for a church. In 1877, Bishop James Gibbons of Richmond, Virginia — later Cardinal Gibbons — laid the cornerstone of Saint Agnes. The parish was under the care of traveling Benedictine monks from Belmont Abbey for 10 years until a resident pastor was assigned. Then, in 1898 as they worked to gather funds for a new church building, an heiress-turned-nun-turned-saint came to the rescue with a key donation. She also imbued the parish with a spirit of inclusiveness. Saint Katharine Drexel, a Pennsylvania heiress who had taken her vows, gave away millions to philanthropic causes, including her work in education and championing the rights of Native American and African American people. She donated $1,500 to Saint Benedict — enough to build the church. However, she included an important stipulation: Pew space must be reserved for black Catholics, and so it was. With this declaration — more than 60 years before the famous sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter just down the road — a glimmer of an integrated Greensboro could be found at the city’s first Catholic parish in a part of the nation locked in segregation. That same year, the parish had bought a piece of land on the southwest corner of North Elm and Smith streets and started construction of the church that stands today, naming it Saint Benedict after the order of the faithful monks who had been serving the spiritual needs of the city’s first Catholics. (In 1899 the parThe Art & Soul of Greensboro
ish sold the original church building to the city, and it was turned into the city’s first high school — Greensboro Senior High School, later renamed Grimsley.) Soon other Catholic ministries started to form. A parish school opened in 1926, merging 30 years later with the new St. Pius X Catholic School. Father Vincent Taylor, the fifth pastor of Saint Benedict, was instrumental in bringing to the city one of the directors of the Sisters of Charity, which eventually led to the opening of St. Leo’s Hospital in 1906. It served the Greensboro community for nearly 50 years, ran a top-rated nursing school, and was the first hospital in North Carolina to have telephones and steam heat in every room. Along the way, around 1930, an unknown parishioner photographed the sanctuary of St. Benedict, which would prove to be a blessing 87 years later, as parish families once again banded together — this time to restore the church to its original splendor. “The objective was to bring Saint Benedict back to its original look from 1898. In the 1960s, the altar was removed and the sanctuary transformed to a much simpler look. Now we’re going back,” says Father James Duc Duong, pastor of Saint Benedict since 2004. “We’re restoring sacredness and reverence. Often, people go to Mass for one hour, and they don’t feel anything. I wanted to change that.” Starting on June 5 and completed in time for the Saturday Vigil Mass on September 16 and later, a rededication of the altar by Bishop Peter Joseph Jugis of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, the $200,000 restoration of the church featured a renovated sanctuary, installation of tile floors, painting, new lighting and statues, including a refurbished 1921 Pietà sculpture found in the church basement. After the Vigil Mass, like any other evening, the church lights were left on a timer from sunset to 10 p.m., illuminating the striking beauty of the Gothic church through its large stained-glass windows. Yet unknown to the casual passerby, there was a difference that night. For the first time since the 1960s, the church’s interior once again paralleled its exterior splendor. Just ask Bill McCutcheon. Upon entering the downtown church, he could hardly believe his eyes. “I purposely stayed away and didn’t look at it [the restoration] at all,” says McCutcheon. “I wanted to be surprised.” Reflecting on the project, the decades-long parishioner says, “It’s enough to reduce you to tears.” He wasn’t the only one welling up at the sight of the restored sanctuary in the 1898 church. Lynne McGrath, a parishioner of 18 years, recalls seeing multiple parishioDecember 2017
O.Henry 39
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December 2017
ners with tears of joy in their eyes. “It’s breathtaking and truly elevates what we’re doing,” she says. “The atmosphere now matches who we’re worshipping.” Perhaps because something much deeper than a little movie magic was at work: The parishioners had restored the interior almost by themselves. Using funds from a monthly collection for monthly church maintenance along with accumulated savings, the parish raised an additional $90,000. Because the pastor, church members and area contractors pitched in and helped with the restoration, they saved $100,000 based on the quotes for contracting out the entire project. “To me, it’s special because we did it internally,” says parishioner and restoration project manager Tom Garcia, a custom homebuilder who appears regularly on WFMY News 2’s “Good Morning Show.” “We managed it ourselves. We didn’t just write a check,” says Garcia, also the CEO of Southern Evergreen. A true Renaissance man, Garcia has a degree in engineering and is a regular cantor at the church. Using those old photos from 1930, he and the rest of the restoration team achieved a remarkable re-creation of the church’s first sanctuary. He used his computer to get a better look at the details in the photos. The zoom feature was particularly helpful in recreating the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Once again, it adorns the top of the niche to the left of the altar. The medal has a special meaning to the parish. For as long as anyone can remember, Saint Benedict churchgoers have prayed the Perpetual Novena in Honor of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. Parishioner and graphic artist Bob Nutt painted the corpus of the large crucifix that hangs above the altar as well as the Pietà sculpture, the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Christ. Carpenter and parishioner Don Tredinnick crafted the base of the statue. The Communion rail is the original, and the palms that sit in front of the altar are a nod to the ones in the 1930s photograph. Flanking the Italianmade tabernacle are sculptures of two cherubs, an idea of Father Duong’s. Garcia and his team developed the overall look and design of the altarpieces in Greensboro with High Point’s Church Interiors. A millwork firm in Nebraska transformed them into shop drawings for the build-out. Once completed, all the parts were put on a moving truck and transported to Saint Benedict. The carpentry crew at the church did the final install of all the pieces, and local artist Gwen Ware touched up the wood that’s painted to look like marble and gold. Ware and her husband, Dave, also painted stenciling in 3-foot increments around the church’s stained-glass windows — by hand. They carefully matched the paint with the colors in the windows using multiple layers and shades of blue The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Gate City Journal and burgundy. “That’s why it really pops,” Garcia says. The extensive stenciling even encircles two stained glass, rose windows in the uppermost part of each transept. These windows were brought to the United States from Munich for exposition at the 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago and later given to the church. The sanctuary also includes 100-year-old recovered chairs, plus a wooden lectern and cantor stand with intricate carvings of liturgical symbols such as the crown of thorns. The lectern was originally crafted in the shape of a hexagon with one side that opened. For a more modern walk-up design, the back was removed and fashioned into the cantor stand. Bob Hunt, a parishioner who owns Illuminating Technologies, created a new lighting design, which includes energy-efficient LED lights. These lights are now in the pendant lamps and those on the refurbished ceiling, which was lightly sanded and returned to its original color and sheen. To the right of the sanctuary stands the statue of Saint Benedict, the founder of Western Monasticism and patron saint of the church. In his research, Garcia found out the mold for the statue in the 1930s photo still exists, so the current one is nearly the same as the original. “The new sanctuary brings such joy,”says parishioner Leslie Ann Brown. “The statue of Saint Benedict blows me away. It’s just so meaningful.” On the other side of the sanctuary is a statue of Saint Katharine Drexel, who would no doubt be pleased to see how the diversity of the church’s congregation has grown over the course of 120 years. Today, the people of Saint Benedict hail from countries all over the world such as Nigeria, Togo, Croatia and the pastor’s native Vietnam — about 270 parish families in total. “We are small but tight!” Father Duong likes to point out. The church also serves parishioners from churches throughout the city by offering daily Mass at the lunch hour — which is well attended by Catholics who work downtown. Though the major restoration work is complete, maintenance such as the repointing of bricks and electrical work continues. “Saint Benedict is a special parish, going all the way back to a nun who made it so all Catholics no matter their color could come to Mass. We have a beautiful history, and we wanted to have the altar and the rest of the church match that history,” Garcia says, getting a tad misty eyed. “We want to make sure Saint Benedict is here for another 120 years.” OH Annie Ferguson loves resplendent churches, most notably her own Our Lady of Grace Church, part of Greensboro’s vibrant Catholic community started by the pioneering parishioners of Saint Benedict and the faithful monks who served them. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 41
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42 O.Henry
December 2017
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A Christmas Short Story
Jake’s Mountain
By Brian Faulkner
It was one of those nights. The
wind was prowling around outside, and Jack’s father wasn’t home yet. A storm was coming, and he would be on his way from work. As soon as the dark crept up the mountain and chased the last pale shards of December sunlight from their tin roof, Jack began listening for the beat up Ford to come chugging up the hill, the truck they used for everything from hard work to Sunday-best. But tonight, its familiar note would be drowned by the wind. So Jack sat with his back to the sparse rooms of their cabin, looking out the window and down the road as the first heavy raindrops hammered the roof like impatient fingers tapping on a steel drum.
Jake guided his old pickup along the familiar — but tricky — dirt road. He had to be careful not to let his mind wander. The storm’s tempo was increasing, and the road had a washboard surface and deep, muddy ditches rimmed with early flecks of ice on both sides. Either one could rear up and bite him. Even
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
so, the man couldn’t help but think about his boy as the truck slowly clawed its way toward home. Jack was an only child and becoming more of a handful at 14 than Jake had anticipated. Since his mother’s death two years ago on the cusp of Christmas, it was about all Jake could do to keep up with him. There were impulses driving Jack that Jake didn’t understand. The son was a dreamer, at least that’s what other folks said, and Jake was anything but. Life was simple: You either were or you weren’t, you did or you didn’t. Jack, however, seemed to slip from one dream to another, held captive by the next possibility. Anything could happen, to Jack’s way of reasoning; all you had to do was think it, and it was likely to come about. With every pass of the wipers across the Ford’s chilled windshield, Jake saw his son’s image in the glass. Now that Jack was a teenager, he thought, maybe it was time . . . a thunder crash to his right, surprising for the time of year, jarred Jake rudely from his reverie, and he reflexively twisted the steering wheel to the left. The truck’s worn tires, the ones he had been saving to replace for several months now, tried their best to grip the slick surface, but the road easily won out, sliding the battered pickup into the ditch. The engine quit, and the dark fury of the growing storm embraced the truck like a ravenous lover. There were only two things that truly interested Jack, and they were connected at the heart: dogs and motorcycles. Both had possibilities. Jake, however, didn’t have much regard for either one. His interest was keeping food on the table — and keeping his son from sliding into the side ditches. Dogs and motorcycles were somewhere “out there,” in a world he didn’t have time for. His pronouncement on the subject was that anything that takes too December 2017
O.Henry 43
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December 2017
11/7/2017 8:12:22 AM
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
A Christmas Short Story much work for too little return when every nickel counts, isn’t worth a passing thought. Jack had seen what might be described as a real motorcycle only once. It wasn’t one of those dirt bikes some of the locals rode crashing through the woods, but a new Harley-Davidson. It had been parked outside Scooter’s Garage one day, as unlikely an apparition to appear in front of that decrepit establishment as could be imagined. The Harley was all muscle and chrome and looked like it was going a hundred miles an hour standing still. Jack promised himself that if he could get up the courage, he’d walk over there to Scooter’s just as cool as could be and “check it out” when they were done shopping, but by then it was gone. So he just stood there, milk jug in one hand, bag of potatoes hanging from the other, staring at the empty spot, a vision of himself and that magnificent machine hurtling through his mind, hunkered down against the slipstream, the song of the road and the lure of endless opportunity playing in his head. His father knew all about that. There had been a time for dreams — once, before the realities of family life had enveloped him like a cloud and corralled his thinking. Life was like this old truck, he mused with a long sigh, releasing his seatbelt; it couldn’t help but be what it was. Things just happened, and you got on with what came next. Jake reflected briefly on that private wisdom, then thrust the door open and climbed out into the cold rain, determined to face the mean edge of the storm the same way he faced everything else. Jack was thinking about “his” motorcycle as the weather marched around the cabin. He imagined himself riding it to distant places — like the scenes he had seen in expensive color magazines at the doctor’s office, his faithful dog running beside him in his mind’s eye, conveniently neglecting the fact that no dog God ever made could keep up with a Harley. To him, the dog and the bike were one, fast and powerful and slightly out of control, throbbing with energy, heavy with potential. The wind charged up the road, slinging rain and wrath against the window, returning Jack’s attention to concern for his father. The old Ford’s headlights cast ghostly images in the frigid water that sloshed around its front end, which was wedged hat-tight in the ditch, and the regular swish-swash of the wiper blades receded into the distance as Jake trudged up the road. The storm seemed to sense the strength of his will, responding with an impressive slash of lightning and a formidable peal of thunder that rolled through the valley in ever diminishing protest as it moved away from their mountain to seek, perhaps, another more easily intimidated audience. Nothing — no storm, nobody, no situation — not even God himself, Jake declared with grim satisfaction, could faze a man who had looked every storm life could The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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A Christmas Short Story throw at him in the eye and stood his ground. As the rain began to slack and water continued running in small waves down the road to meet him, Jake increased his stride toward the cabin. Jack had become slightly fearful of his father in recent years. There was a raw intensity under Daddy Jake’s surface, something rough and unfinished that seemed like it could break loose at any minute. But love was there, too, deep and central. He felt it most during the quiet times, when each alone with his thoughts required that no talk pass between them. Some nights Jack had seen Jake on his knees, in the darkened room that still held his mother’s things, head bowed toward the dressing table where she used to sit in front of the mirror, hands on the back of his neck, fingers entwined, twisting strands of thinning hair, as if sifting through his concerns one by one. The rain was about played out as Jake came within sight of the cabin; staccato drops falling from the trees added to the undercurrent of sound that can enliven Piedmont nights, even in December. Jack, too, realized that the life had been beat from the storm. The house seemed to settle and breathe again. Something stirred in Jake, and he was momentarily overwhelmed with a realization that the night was about to take a different turn. He had known such a feeling only once before. It had been early on an October morning when the old truck had refused to start, and the only solution, he knew, was to wait ’til it had a mind to, giving Jake the unexpected gift of five minutes without a task. The dawning sky, which he ordinarily would not have noticed, seemed painted with the Creator’s very hand as the sun burst forth in glory, drenching the mountain in liquid light and torching the trees with orange gold, as a red-tail circled overhead, its piercing cry heralding the coming day. That was as close to a religious experience as he had ever come. God words had never worked for Jake — he never got farther than the part about still waters and green pastures. Then they would fall to the floor like ice shards and shatter into a million pieces. A noise stopped Jake short. A whimper. Two glowing eyes reflected in the weakening flashlight beam. Just a varmint, Jake thought, and almost went on, but a strange impulse compelled him toward the roadside, where the noise became the sometimes off, sometimes on thump of a tail beating against icy leaves. A pup, small and bedraggled and half frozen, had taken refuge in the undergrowth. Her ears were warm to Jake’s touch, however, and generously populated with burrs, but she gave up her guard as if waiting for this man and this moment. Thin and not much promise, he thought — and two collars, noticed Jake, as he scooped up the tiny wayfarer, turned, and walked The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Tis the Season
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O.Henry 47
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A Christmas Short Story back toward the Ford. If somebody who knew what they were doing tried real hard to fix up this little pup, he reflected, snuggling her securely in a pile of worn blankets in back of the front seat, you’d just about have half a dog. Jack bolted toward the door, snapped to attention by boot steps on the step, knowing with absolute certainty that he had not missed the approaching sound of his father’s truck. “Time to get the tractor,” Jake said, nodding at his son and already moving toward the shed across the yard. The Ford gave up its peril slowly, and as Jake worked the tractor’s clutch and gas to gradually increase tension on the chain between them, it yielded to the insistent old Farmall. With a loud sigh and a sudden release of water from its innards, the truck was freed from the ditch. “Let’s go,” said Jake, and father and son ferried their convoy of ancient vehicles up the road toward the beckoning light of the cabin. Possibility, they say, creeps up on you slowly. But sometimes it just knocks unannounced on your door and, as if in answer to some prayer you’ve all but forgotten, invites itself in and makes itself at home. That’s the way it was with Harley. “It’s got to be Harley,” said Jake, after presenting the pup to his son. “It says so right here on one of these collars: ‘Harley-Davidson,’ so it looks like Mr. Davidson might be missing one of his dogs,” he added, a slight smile playing on his lips. “Somebody cared enough for this little one for it to have two collars,” Jake declared. “Been out in the woods for a while though, so that means fair game for us.” Jack’s mind turned with confusion. A dog! And a little one at that. “Harley.” He said the name aloud just to test it. All at once, something seemed to click and fall into place, something that felt good and right, as if in an instant the glue had set on that particular bond between boy and dog, man and boy, that rarely happens more than once in a lifetime. Harley seemed to sense it, too, the tension of not quite belonging yielding to the ease that comes with finding out who you are and where you ought to be. “She’s a girl dog, Son,” Jake announced. “Yeah Dad, thanks — thanks a lot . . . Jake,” Jack said in a voice that barely could be heard, stroking the pup’s fur and feeling somehow different. Jake settled back into the old chair that had stood in that room for what seemed like a century. It’ll be nice to have a lady around the mountain again, he thought — especially here at Christmas. OH Among other things, Brian Faulkner is a five-time Emmy award–winning writer of magazine-style programming on UNC-TV.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
December 2017
O.Henry 49
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The Hungry Traveler
Tipples and Take-Out Barbecue, Old Fashioneds and Ice Cream in Wilkes Country
By D.G. Martin
Sunday. 201 Wilkesboro Blvd., North Wilkesboro; (336) 667-9464; brushymtnsmokehouse.com
tween Winston-Salem and Boone, I invited readers to sit down at five eateries in Yadkin County where they can meet with local people and eat the same vittles they do.
Dooley’s Grill & Tavern Dooley’s is a local gathering place in the middle of downtown Wilkesboro. But even though Dooley’s is located in the historic Smithey’s Hotel, there is nothing old-fashioned about it, except for the Old Fashioned mixed drink you can order at the bar. Founder and owner Seth Cohen is very proud that his menu contains locally sourced natural meat. He says everything is gluten-free except for the hoagie roll. A big attraction is the wide variety of sandwiches and salads that make for a perfect lunch or light supper. Seth is active in local preservation efforts in the downtown. Next-door is the old courthouse. Now converted into The Wilkes Heritage Museum, it is one of the most popular places to visit in the county. The $6 admission fee includes guided tour through the old jail and a historical home. In that jail Tom Dula, a Wilkes County Confederate veteran, was imprisoned in 1866, charged with the murder of Laura Foster. Dula was convicted and hanged. The song, “Tom Dooley,” made famous in the 1950s by the Kingston Trio, is based on the Dula story. In Wilkes County, Dula is pronounced Dooley. All that just in case you were wondering how Jeff Cohen’s grill and tavern got its name. Open for lunch and dinner every day; 102 E. Main St., Wilkesboro; (336) 6670800; www.facebook.com/DooleysWilkesboro/
Last month, on U.S. Highway 421 be-
But the culinary tour doesn’t end there. In Wilkes County there are four more places along the way where a stop for a meal is could prove that the Hungry Traveler’s journey can be just as rewarding an experience as the activities planned for trip’s final destination.
Brushy Mountain Smokehouse and Creamery When I walked in the door of the clean and full dining room at Brushy Mountain, I learned two things. There is a warm welcome for visitors, and there are a lot of options to satisfy any hungry visitor. As for me, I will never leave without a good helping of their pulled pork barbecue cooked slowly over wood coals and a large cone of their luscious ice cream from the separate dairy section in the front. One of Brushy Mountain’s cheerful servers introduced me to Jim and Jodi Swofford, who were eating at a nearby table. Jim and his brother Carl founded Brushy Mountain after they sold their Hardee’s franchises. Carl’s son, Jeff, had been an enthusiastic barbecue cooker, and he took the lead when Brushy Mountain opened. Jim and Carl have another brother, John, who is too busy as commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference to be a part of the barbecue business. I enjoyed the museum-like displays of Wilkes County history including a moonshine still, mementos from Brushy Mountain apple orchards and photos from stock car racing days at the North Wilkesboro Speedway. Just outside is a great stone arrowhead that marks the Daniel Boone Trail. Open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and on The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Glenn’s Restaurant Glenn’s has been a fixture in downtown Wilkesboro for more than 50 years. Its founder, Glenn Johnson, was also a fixture until his death in 2011. He was active in politics, serving as a county commissioner, operating his ice cream store and restaurant, and collecting Western-themed memorabilia. His widow, Marilyn, is the current owner and operator. From the outside the business looks like a drive-in operation, but there’s a very warm setting inside. Under the glass tops on the tables, there is an December 2017
O.Henry 51
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The Hungry Traveler assortment of historic clippings and background information about Glenn himself. The walls are covered with pictures of restaurant patrons and western theme posters because of Glenn’s longtime interest in cowboys and the American West. Observant visitors will find memorabilia of Dolly Parton’s visit to the restaurant. If they look up, they might even get a glimpse of actor Zach Galifianakis, who sometimes drops by when he is visiting his hometown. Locals gather for breakfast until 11 and come back for lunch and dinner. The meals, especially the “Big Glenn Burger” and breakfast ham biscuits, get a very good grade. But the highest praise goes for their ice cream. The restaurant started as a TasteeFreez franchise operation. It is now completely independent, but ice cream is still a big drawing card. Cash only (there is an ATM machine); Closed on Sundays; 800 River St.; Wilkesboro; (336) 838-2541; glennsrestaurantwilkesboronc.com/ Tipton’s Bar-B-Que The sign above Tipton’s Bar-B-Que says it all. “We do it Lexington style!” The modern building that houses the comfortable restaurant did not remind me of an old-time barbecue, but Tipton’s owner, Richard Grissom, is an adherent of the Lexington barbecue religion and a student of how to get the best results from a pork shoulder. He can tell you about the cooking time, the management of the wood coals and the best temperatures at each stage of the process. Richard grew up in Elkin where his dad was a legendary football coach. After playing some college football himself and working in other businesses, Richard opened Tipton’s about 10 years ago and named it after a friend who backed the then-new restaurant. Tipton’s is located where the Interstate-style U.S. Highway 421 merges with the old road to Boone. That makes for a good stopping off point for travelers who want to take a meal on the road. Tipton’s will sell a take-out meal for four with barbecue, chicken, fixings and iced tea for about $25. Open daily for lunch and dinner; 1840 Winkler St.; Wilkesboro, (336) 667-0669; www.facebook. com/tiptonsbbq/ Sometime soon I will take you on another trip along another section of U.S. Highway 421. I am looking at some local eateries in Chatham County. If you have suggestions, write me at nceateries@ yahoo.com. OH D.G. Martin is the host of UNC-TV’s Bookwatch, a contributor to The Omnivorous Reader column in this magazine and author of North Carolina’s Roadside Eateries: A Traveler’s Guide to Local Restaurants, Diners, and Barbecue Joints (UNC Press).
52 O.Henry
December 2017
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In The Spirit
A Bitter Little Christmas Treat your cocktail enthusiast to the perfect stocking stuffer
By Tony Cross
I first met Craig
PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY CROSS
Rudewicz two years ago at Fair Game Beverage Company’s spirit release party. Craig and I (along with two other bartenders from Raleigh) were asked to create cocktails with FG’s Apple Brandy and Sorghum Rum. Craig was in his third year running Crude Bitters, North Carolina’s first cocktail bitters company. We briefly chatted, and he sent me off with his staple bitters to see what I thought. Since then, we’ve both been busy boys, but finally reconnected at this year’s Pepperfest in Chapel Hill. A few weeks later, I was able to drive up to Raleigh, and check out his new facility, as well as his new cocktail supply shop and classroom, The Bittery.
Craig and his wife moved to Raleigh six years ago from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent the next few years slinging behind a few restaurant bars, while managing as well. “It was a wonderful way to associate cocktails with food and the relationships with the kitchen,” Craig says about how he gained inspiration for coming up with his first bitters recipes. You see, bitters is usually an enigma to those that aren’t into cocktails, or are just learning. It’s pretty simple, actually. Bitters is to a cocktail like salt and pepper are to food. Bitters can also bring cocktail ingredients together that, without it, wouldn’t be a perfect fit. Bitters is used in food too, but I’ll save that for when I start a food column. In addition to creating bitters at the restaurant bar he managed, Craig and his wife started making their own syrups and extracts at home. “To get away from using products with high fructose corn syrup, chemicals and preservatives,” he says. “We appreciate a good cocktail, and wanted our drinks to be just as great as our meals . . . so Crude grew from that. I wanted bitters to be appreciated as a craft product just as much as spirits and beer.” Crude Bitters was launched in 2012 while Craig was still working his restaurant gig; he started selling his homemade bitters at local farmer’s markets. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
If you head over to their website, www.crudebitters. com, you’ll see that Craig takes every step to make sure his bitters are as authentic as possible. “Our bitters are crafted in small batches from 100 percent maceration in organic, non-GMO alcohol, with no glycerin, chemicals or dyes,” he says. “Glass pots or wood barrels are used exclusively in the storage and aging of our products.” His attention to detail on all fronts hasn’t gone unnoticed. He’s won many awards, including the Good Food Award (twice) and the Southern Living Food Award. His bitters also found its way into Mark Bitterman’s Field Guide to Bitters and Amari that came out in 2015. In it, Craig explains the origin of his company’s name. “The name is in reference to the rudimentary origins of bitters. Exotic (and undocumented) roots, herbs, and spices were aged in various liquids and beneficial (and unverified) claims attached to them. Hence, crude,” he says. When Craig is coming up with a new elixir, he focuses more on what blend of flavors will work with a certain spirit or cocktail than narrowing in on a single flavor of bitters. “It can be difficult putting the right blend of flavor and aroma together,” he says, “but I always start with what spirit I would like the bitters to be used in.” This shows in his Rizzo bitters, with flavors of citrus, pepper, and rosemary — perfect for a gin and tonic, or even someone who is cutting calories with a vodka soda. Personally, I love adding his Sycophant Orange & Fig bitters to my Old-Fashioned. It pairs well with an aromatic bitter, giving the cocktail a slight candied orange and vanilla undertone. Crude is the first North Carolina bitters company, but Craig foresees growth from other businesses with bitters and mixers on the horizon. “There is not much competition (at the moment). There are a couple of small companies around the state, and bars/restaurants always have great bar programs that produce their own house bitters,” he says. “I expect there to be a boom of cocktail bitters and mixers soon.” It’s amazing what bitters can do for a cocktail, and the more you understand this, the better you’ll appreciate Craig’s passion. Don’t take my word for it, stop into his new space and take a cocktail class. In addition to being educated on bitters, and doing tastings, Craig will guide you on how to use his bitters in cocktails, and why different ones work better with different spirits. You can go online and subscribe to his mailing list, where you’ll be privy to Crude’s up and coming classes. OH Tony Cross is a bartender who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern Pines. December 2017
O.Henry 55
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Life of Jane
What Not to Wear Dressing up usually requires a committee
By Jane Borden
ILLUSTRATION BY MERIDITH MARTENS
The long arc of life bends toward self-
sufficiency. In this arc, one gains the right to dress oneself relatively early. Sometime after holding your own spoon but before blowing your own nose, you receive the liberty of choosing your clothing. Unless you join the military or a cult, this right is inalienable. My case, however, is a little muddier, somewhere in between. To use another metaphor: I may be the editor of the fashion magazine of my life, but my mother is the publisher, and the holidays are a special annual issue.
I was in high school when I first lost the responsibility to pick out my clothes. I won’t say the privilege was taken from me. I’m pretty sure I surrendered it. Because I went to boarding school, whatever I packed in my suitcase would constitute my entire closet for the Thanksgiving or Christmas break and Mom didn’t trust me to choose wisely. I’d given her reason not to.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
My sense of style in high school is best described as technical. For example, if a plaid skirt contains a bright orange stripe, and you pair it with a hideous, bright orange turtleneck, you technically match. Similarly, if one succeeds in her goal of collecting jeans in every color of the basic ROY-GBIV rainbow, it is technically accurate to describe her wardrobe as complete. Whether Mom anticipated my inability to pack appropriately or simply discovered it the first time I traveled home from school, I don’t remember. All I know is that some time around the age of 15, I started receiving phone calls in advance. She asked what was in my closet, I told her, and then she said either yes or no. Repeat per every dressy item in my closet. Meanwhile, I jotted notes on a list, attaching outfits to events, as we went. Because our family is both social and large, there were always several holiday events to consider, and each required a different level of formality. I should have appreciated the outsourcing of such a huge undertaking. But I was 15. Gratitude conceded to adolescence. I groaned and sighed. I took great offense. What was wrong with yellow jeans? The proletariat will rise! She started requesting that certain items of clothing simply remain on hand in my closet at home. Somehow we got through high school. When I went to college at Chapel Hill, however, the suitcase-packing phone calls followed me. I’m sure I rolled my eyes, but by then we were following routine. Besides, the cold war of our December 2017
O.Henry 57
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December 2017
fashion stalemate produced spoils in the form of free dresses. To be clear, I’m sure mom took me shopping in order to be generous, and to spend time with me doing something feminine, frivolous and fun. If I also walked away with something appropriate for the Christmas Eve cocktail party, then bonus for her. Bonus for me too, of course. Although these were items I never would have bought for myself, don’t get me wrong, I liked the non-Jane dresses very much. In fact, I still do — fancy clothes hold up well when worn only a few times per decade. After college, when the annual accounting continued, I began to feel uneasy with our routine. According to my diploma, my rent receipts and Uncle Sam, I was an adult. Adults dress themselves. Then again, Uncle Sam is also grown up, and he could use a stylist. Still, I was finally developing a fashion sense of my own. And I wanted to show it off. I was a New Yorker. New Yorkers have style! But invariably, my choices were deemed too casual. Of course they were, I walked everywhere. The proletariat does not take taxis! It only took a couple of nights of my sisters helping me build Frankenstein ensembles from unworn pieces in their own suitcases — more of a calculus problem than you’d think — for my mother and me to slip back into our routine. Bonus: this time when she took me shopping for things I would never buy myself, the stores were in New York. Sometimes, we even took taxis. Did I ever intentionally bring home ugly clothes, just so she would see a need to buy me more? No, but only because I never needed to, on account of doing it naturally. In my 30s, I finally gained a sense of the kind of garments appropriate for my family’s holiday parties. I could be trusted to bring home what was needed for specific events. Occasionally I even took risks that paid off. Mostly, though, I recycled items she had purchased in the past. Either way, I stopped needing her advice as much. But habits have inertia and we mostly continued per usual. The day before my engagement party in New York, however, when I reached for my phone to call her, I stopped short. In a moment of self-awareness, I finally said to myself, “I am a 33-year-old woman. I’m getting married. I can pick out my own damn clothes.” The proletariat needs no ruler! This stops now, I thought. Then I called her anyway. OH
Jane Borden grew up in Greensboro and lives in Los Angeles, where she occasionally attends a fancy brunch in a classic cocktail dress from the early aughts, and always stuns. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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December 2017
O.Henry 59
Birdwatch
Northern Bobwhite
Diminished in number, the bird with the distinctive call is making a comeback
By Susan Campbell
For those fortunate enough to
live in open piney woods or adjacent to large farm fields, the whistled call of the bobwhite quail may be a familiar sound. But, as with so many of our bird species, this once prolific songster has diminished in the Piedmont. And anyone in search of winter partridge for the table is increasingly likely to be disappointed.
Bobwhite quail measure between 8 to 11 inches beak-to-tail and have very cryptic brown, black and white markings that make them all but impossible to see in the grassy habitats they call home. The male has a bright, white eye-stripe and throat marking, and is the one who announces his territory through a repeated “bob-white” call. The female is not only smaller but drabber, with an eye-stripe and throat that are a buffy color. This stout bird’s short sharp bill, strong legs and feet with sharp claws, make it well adapted to foraging at ground level for insects, berries and soft vegetation. Northern bobwhite males attract a mate using their loud repetitive calls in the spring. The female will reply with a four-syllable whistle of her own. Following breeding, the pair creates a domed nest concealed in tall grasses, and the hen lays up to 20 pure white eggs. It takes about 25 days of incubation for the young to hatch. Hens will renest if the eggs are eaten or destroyed. Upon hatching, the chicks will immediately follow their parents, learning how to hunt bugs and which shoots are the most nutritious. As a group they are referred to as a covey. They will stay together through the winter and may join The Art & Soul of Greensboro
other families to form coveys of thirty or more birds. When alarmed at an early age, the young will scatter and freeze to avoid predators. Once they can fly, they will take to the air in a loud blur of wings if they are startled by a potential predator. Quail were a very popular game bird throughout North Carolina until not that long ago. Since the 1980s, when their numbers began to decline, they’ve been much harder to find. A combination of factors is believed to be responsible. Not only have open woodlands and agricultural fields with hedgerows become more scarce but ground predators such as foxes, coyotes, raccoons and free roaming cats have increased. Also, the timing of rainfall can significantly affect breeding productivity. Too much rain too early may inundate nests and dry conditions when chicks hatch may result in insufficient food. These days, hunters search for coveys in the forests and fields that comprise the patchwork of Game Lands in our portion of the state or they go to private game reserves. Their pursuit requires a well-trained bird dog and a good deal of patience. However, active quail management is occurring locally. Two strategies are at work: opening up forested habitat using prescribed burning and replanting undesirable vegetation with quality cover. Recent efforts by biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and at Fort Bragg (along with assistance from local Quail Unlimited chapters) are resulting in gradual increases in northern bobwhite. We certainly hope this trend continues so that in the not too distant future, sightings of winter coveys will be once again commonplace throughout central North Carolina and the song of the bobwhite will return to the South. OH Susan would love to receive your wildlife observations and photographs at susan@ncaves.com. December 2017
O.Henry 61
Wandering Billy
Saved by the Newman and the Bell Remembering teachers who inspire
By Billy Eye “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” — Mario Andretti
I feel lucky to have attended public
school here in the 1960s and 1970s. We had some great teachers and amazing administrators.
While researching something totally unrelated, I wandered across a 1988 interview with longtime Page High principal Robert Clendenin, who passed away just last year. “Mr. C” transferred from Aycock to Page High in 1970 during a period he described as, “Total racial unrest. I call it DMZ sometimes. We had a 10-minute break in the morning between second and third period, which was total hell. As soon as I could, I eliminated that. We had open campus for lunch, which means all could leave campus if you wanted to. I added the 10 minutes on for lunch, which gave [students] 40, 45 minutes. And we had absolutely not any problems.” I was attending Mendenhall at that time and can recall several instances where our campus was on lockdown between 1968 and 1970 because of riots at the nearby high-school. By the time I arrived at Page in 1971 those
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problems had been largely solved, although Clendenin recalled an incident that year: “I had a confrontation between blacks and whites out in front of the auditorium, and I found myself in the middle, the DMZ zone, along with one of my assistants. And interesting enough, nothing really happened but the bell rung to go to homeroom, and everybody left.” That was the unique thing, he remembered, “The bell said, ‘Go to homeroom,’ and they did. So nothing went wrong.” Two career educators in particular at Page made a huge difference in my life. Jean Davis Newman sparked my lifelong interest in Shakespeare and creative writing. In fact, she’s the only reason you’re reading this now. For that I’ll be eternally grateful. In her 50s in the early 1970s, back when that was considered old, she was a diminutive fireball energetically darting from one side of the classroom to the other. She was that excited about teaching. Sporting horn-rimmed glasses, smart suits and a wide smile, she had previously taught at Grimsley and was awarded Teacher of the Year honors both there and at Page. One afternoon in English class she veered from her lesson plan to regale us with stories about being a part-time stenographer while she was in college near Virginia Beach. She had worked for Edgar Cayce, who has been called the Sleeping Prophet. Cayce would enter a trance state to offer diagnoses and cures for people in far-away places. She witnessed this (what some folks call) miraculous process firsthand and became convinced this otherworldly phenomenon was genuine. Mrs. Newman joined Cayce in The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Wandering Billy the afterworld in 1990. Ms. Elizabeth Bell’s classroom was and is the only formal art training I’ve ever had. Yet, preposterously, her tutorage prepared me for a career in Hollywood as a movie poster designer, where I worked elbow-to-elbow with cutting-edge graduates from Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design and CalArts on blockbuster films for Paramount, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and other major studios. Ms. Bell (I always called her that because she dressed so hip) insisted that those of us who were serious about art be as adept in as many disciplines as possible — markers, painting, printing, rapidograph pens, collage, sculpting, etching, silk screening, enameling, photography. She also instilled in us a sense of art history so that when an art director years later would ask me to render something in the style of Georgia O’Keeffe or Cézanne, I knew what the heck they were talking about. By far, I wasn’t the best artist in her class. Brian O’Kenka and Suzanne Hughes (whom I ran into last Christmas) were much better than I was, across the spectrum. Still, a decade after leaving Ms. Bell’s classroom, finding myself in that artistic pressure cooker, I retained a certain amount of confidence that I could operate in whatever medium was thrown at me. Before computers became practical for daily graphics, we’d spend all day air brushing, drawing, Xeroxing, rubbing down type, cutting out pretty pictures of movie stars and pasting them together — all the while dealing with a room full of petulant brats fighting over the glue and pictures. Come to think of it, working in that Hollywood bullpen was a lot like art class at Page. Thank you for that very rewarding career, Ms. Bell!
WE ARE NOW ACCEPTING NEW PATIENTS Dr. Ryan Kraska and staff work together to provide patients with excellence in dental care in a professional and comfortable environment.
***
Perhaps you’re from out of town reading this magazine around the holidays, wondering where you can go to escape the hubbub and get liquored up on Christmas night. Besides booze, College Hill offers a great selection of craft beers, as will nearby New York Pizza. Westerwood has a comfortable vibe, Wahoo’s is pretty divey, both attract an interesting clientele. Boo Radley’s Tavern in the Lawndale Shopping Center is cozy cool, and a holiday tradition for many in the surrounding neighborhoods. Jake’s Billiards, with its early bird opening at 3:00 p.m. has 69 brews on tap and delish bar food if somehow you’re not already satiated. Your Uber driver will know where these places are. I don’t get paid by the word. OH Billy Eye will be celebrating Christmas with a Kentucky Gentleman unless Colonel E.H. Taylor bivouacs under his tree. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
502 North Elam Avenue, Greensboro, NC Phone: (336) 292-0863 | Fax: (336) 292-2583 www.kraska.com
December 2017
O.Henry 63
Sa me Icon Ic Bu I l dI ng ToTal ly ne w R o om S
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December 2017
December
December orphans the dove permits growing pains flight whispers this is why you fought —
in a wrap of bright cerements weans solstice with a mutter and a kiss bestows sparkle to ruined promises.
December lends diamonds spins a symphony in crackling trees waltzes us to the whistle of sleet —
seizes the ripple in my weary stream warns a feral life knows no end argues reasons to abridge the verdict.
December chaperons chill points out the joy in an ashen sky bends all light across the gaunt branch —
she liquors my lips with her tongue allows secrets loosed on a smile re-pours the bitter vintage till it is gone.
December is a confession knocking down the tell-tale curtain promising weakness will set you free —
directs congealed communions palming our dead leaves as wafers proffers intinction in a frosty spirit and glazes gravestones so I can sleep.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
— Sam Barbee
December 2017
O.Henry 65
The Art of Giving Looking for something a little different — and locally handmade — for gifts this year? These artists have you covered
HANDMADE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Bill Johnston’s Clay Art By Cynthia Adams Photograph by Mark Wagoner
B
ill Johnston was raised in North Wilkesboro, where his grandfather founded American Furniture Company, later American Drew. “I grew up with an appreciation for the mountain wilderness and the forest,” says Johnston. “We cut timber and made furniture, and we were stewards of the land. So a lot of my pottery has leaves and acorns and symbols of the wilderness, the N.C. forest and Blue Ridge Mountains The former designer took up his art after visiting a pottery festival in Virginia, where he retired in 2000. By the time he returned to Greensboro in 2014, he had acquired a pottery wheel. His early pieces were functional, — cookie jars and such — decorated with those signature acorns and leaves, and other organic themes. He moved toward pure sculpture, influenced by classical elements. Johnston joined the Northeast Artists League. “The next year I got second place in sculpture. The art gallery invited me to do a show and they sold 75 percent of my pots,” he continues. In 2018 he will have his seventh show at Wilkes Art gallery in North Wilkesboro. In his shop, Johnston is experimenting with “slip trailing.” Johnston applies watery clay onto the pot. As he wipes it off, he sculpts it into shapes. “It’s innovative for me,” Johnston says. “Slip trailing gives me a way to sculpt and create interesting surfaces.” The vase in his hands takes on a painterly quality, with copper red glaze showing through on the inside and on the foot. In the background, Opera, usually Verdi or Mozart, fills the studio while he works. “When something is good, my heart rate goes up and I get so excited,” he says. For info: WilliamJohnstonPottery.com or phone: (336) 707-6500.
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
HANDMADE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Gary Fischer’s Fused Glass Creations By Maria Johnson
Photograph by Mark Wagoner
G
ary Fischer was vacationing in the Bahamas in the mid-1990s when some colorful fused glass platters caught his eye in an art gallery. “I’d never seen anything like it,” he says. “This was kind of like stained glass, but it didn’t have the lead between the glass pieces. It was like a freeform stained glass.” Back home, Fischer, a radiologist, tried to research fused glass, but found little information; the Internet was still new. Then he noticed a newspaper item about a fused glass class at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston-Salem. He took the course, and his imagination was fired. What started as a hobby blossomed into a passion. Now retired, 71-year-old Fischer spends several hours a week happily immersed in his art. He works in the garage studio of the Hamilton Lakes home he shares with his wife, Ellen Fischer, an accomplished children’s book author who has written some Jewish-themed stories. Gary Fischer focuses on Judaica in his glass art. His best sellers are mezuzahs, finger-shaped covers that contain small pieces of paper inscribed with prayers. Observant Jews mark their homes with mezuzahs on doorframes; the mezuzahs tilt toward the inside to welcome guests in. Fischer creates menorahs for Hanukkah and plates for Shabbat and Seder meals. He also makes jewelry. His pendants, rings and earrings bear Hebrew words and symbols. He crafts secular pieces, too, and some Christian jewelry. The ancient art of fusing glass — essentially melting pieces of glass together — taps Fischer’s understanding of science and aesthetics. The glass, which he buys in sheets, must be fired in a kiln at precise temperatures ranging from 1,100 to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooling must occur very slowly. One clue you’re looking at fused glass: Tiny bubbles form when pieces of glass are melded. You can see this in pieces made with see-through, or cathedral, glass. Other fused glasses are opaque. Some have iridescent sheens. Dichroic glass shimmers with different colors when held at different angles. Fischer uses all of these glasses in his works, which he sold at the National Folk Festival during its three-year run in Greensboro. He also sells at the local Jewish Festival, on Etsy, and from his studio, by appointment. Info: Gfisch25@ yahoo.com.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
December 2017
O.Henry 67
HANDMADE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
The Deeply Felt Art of Jerry O’Donnell By Maria Johnson Photograph by Mark Waggoner
L
ooking for a heartfelt gift? How about a gift of artsy felt? Greensboro’s Jerry O’Donnell has been creating one-of-a-kind felt works for nearly a decade. He’s best known for his earth-tone wall hangings that whisper landscape, but he also creates table runners, scarves, shawls, bags and felted soaps, which are exactly that —felt-covered bars of soap that act as gentle washcloths. O’Donnell’s love affair with felting began in 2008, though it wasn’t his first fling with fiber. A native of Buffalo, New York, he’d learned to weave cotton and wool cloth during the arts and crafts renaissance of the 1960s. A fan of abstract expressionism, he longed to weave blocks of color with blurry edges similar to the paintings of Mark Rothko. O’Donnell, a registered nurse, lugged his looms with him as he followed jobs to Florida and finally to Greensboro, where he discovered Gate City Yarns, a hive of fiber art. One day, he explained his holy grail — the ability to weave diffused edges — to someone in the shop. “Have you tried felting?” she asked. “No,” O’Donnell said. “I teach felting classes here. You should come to one of my classes,” she said. The teacher was Victoria Clegg, whom O’Donnell describes as the premier felter in this area. From her, O’Donnell learned to conjure the effect he’d been after. He arranged wispy tufts of dyed animal hair — usually from sheep, goats, camels or alpacas — sprayed it with an alkaline solution (warm soapy water) and applied heat and pressure so the fibers would grab each other and draw nigh. You know that cashmere sweater that went into the Maytag as your size and came out as a perfect fit for your cat? That’s felting. Only O’Donnell does it on purpose. As art. His work was recently included in Cut & Dyed, a show at the Center for Visual Artists in Greensboro’s Cultural Center. He sells at Elements Gallery on South Elm Street. Now retired from nursing, O’Donnell, 75, teaches felting where he learned it, at Gate City Yarns. Next year, he’ll lead a class at the Randolph Arts Guild in Asheboro. From time to time, he shares his knowledge through the nonprofit Creative Aging NetworkNC, based in Greensboro. With a master’s degree in applied gerontology from UNCG, O’Donnell is interested in helping seniors like himself be active and creative. Felting, he says, provides immediate results and an outlet for expression. “I can paint with it, in a sense,” he says. Rothko at last. Info: elementsgso.wixsite.com
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
HANDMADE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Andrew Saulters’s Handstitched Books By David Claude Bailey Photograph by Mark Waggoner
G
o to one of Andrew Saulters’s favorite coffeehouses — The Green Bean, Coffeology or Tate Street Coffee House — and it’s easy to spot him, hunched over a table, looking a bit rabbinical with his full-on beard and crumpled Homburg hat. What on earth is he doing over there with a needle and thread? Why, he’s sewing another handmade book for Unicorn Press, which he took over from Glenwood Community Bookshop founder Al Brilliant last year after working with him for several years. After launching the press in 1966 in Santa Barbara, California, with his thenpartner Jack Shoemaker, Brilliant “published hundred and hundreds” of poets, along with his late wife, Teo Savvoy — aided, over the years, by 40-some other women and men who worked at the press. Such as Greeensboro’s Sarah Lindsay, who says she once “swept the floor and served tea at 4” there, in addition to setting type, printing pages and binding books by hand — before becoming a National Book Award finalist in poetry. “Poets use small presses like a minor league,” Brilliant once told local writer Deonna Kelli Sayed in a podcast. For instance, Brilliant published Philip Levine’s Pili’s Wall in 1971 — before Levine, who died in 2015, snagged the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1995 and became U.S. Poet Laureate in 2011. Saulters, who earned an M.F.A in poetry from UNCG after completing a degree in aerospace engineering (as in rocket scientist) at Georgia Tech, stresses that Unicorn “seeks to publish excellent works of poetry that are unlikely to find a home elsewhere.” And so he has for the past four years, with a competition that publishes books by previously unpublished poets. Saulters’s cover designs are striking, his typography eclectic and solid, and his bindings handsome and well-crafted. And softcover books range for a remarkably reasonable $10-18. Still, he insists, “even though I spend a lot of time making these books, they only exist because of what’s inside them. They are objects that exist to be read.” And also to be given as gifts — because while you’re giving someone something that’s made locally, one-at-a-time by hand, you’re also supporting undiscovered poets. And small bookshops such as Glennwood and Scuppernong that carry Unicorn books. And Andrew Saulters, a craftsman, poet and binder of books you can watch — while discussing the state of literature and the world over a cup of java. Info: www.unicorn-press.org
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
December 2017
O.Henry 69
HANDMADE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Skip Koscher and the Art of Bonsai By Maria Johnson Photograph by Mark Waggoner
S
ometimes, folks become artists on purpose. Sometimes, it’s by accident. Put bonsai artist Skip Koscher in the latter category. Forty years ago, a friend saw one of Skip’s potted plants growing cockeyed on a shelf. “Where’d you get the bonsai?” the friend asked. “The what?” said Skip. An artist was born. Koscher read up on the ancient Chinese-and-later-Japanese art of bonsai. “It’s pronounced BONE-sigh,” says Koscher, ‘Bone’, as in chicken bone; ‘sigh,’ as in ‘I gotta do my taxes.’” He learned that bonsai isn’t a particular kind of plant; it’s the practice of shaping a plant, usually a woody shrub or tree, into whatever the artist wants it to be. Typically, the plant is potted in a shallow dish to stunt growth. Most people picture bonsai as a small tree that swoops to one side. That effect is achieved by careful training and pruning. Koscher, who was making his living in the ancient American art of copier repair when his friend mentioned the bonsai-bychance, started teaching himself the craft. “It was a hobby that became an obsession that required funding,” he says. For years, he sold his manicured creations on the side of U.S. Highway 220 between Lake Higgins and Lake Brandt in Greensboro. He also parked his truck, emblazoned with “BONSAI,” up the highway in the town of Madison. He quit the roadside business about the same time he retired from his repair job eight years ago, opting to sell bonsai from the greenhouses behind his home in Stokesdale. That’s where you’ll find him most days, grooming his verdant pets. Sometimes, he coaxes them into shape with wires and weights. He’s been known to set a plant on its side to induce curved growth. His most popular works are made from juniper, but he sculpts
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a wide variety of shrubs and trees: sarissa, Fukien tea, podocarpus, azalea, ficus, natal plum, acacia, osteomeles, bougainvillea, Texas ebony and others. Koscher, now 70, is hooked on making art that’s alive. His vision for every bonsai is unique. “It keeps changing, depending on what the plant presents,” he says He’s not the only bonsai artist in the area, he says, but he’s the only one who sells to the public. He has sold thousands of plants ranging in cost from $35 to hundreds of dollars each. Even then, he’s picky. He vets potential owners, asking questions about where the plants will be located. One couple wanted a bonsai for a windowless office. Koscher refused to sell to them. Most bonsai need full sun to filtered sun and an owner who pays close attention to watering needs. Koscher sends every plant home with a care sheet. “It’s a responsibility,” he says, noting that bonsai can live 20 years or more if they’re well tended. Thinking of giving bonsai as a gift? Pick a plant person, maybe one who has expressed a desire to have a bonsai by leaving you this magazine. With this page marked. And this story circled. Hey, there’s nothing like giving a sure hit. Info: bonsainc.com OH The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Mistletoe
Bride
A gothic Christmas story By Nan Graham
T
he Brits have a very different Christmas than ours. First, they say “Happy Chrimbo” for “Merry Christmas.” Then there’s the wearing of paper crowns by all at the Christmas dinner, Christmas pudding instead of pecan pie and Father Christmas . . . not Santa Claus. Even more bizarre, there are ghost stories. And I was reminded of one gothic Yuletide tale years ago in Charleston. I was startled by the enormous scale of the image. The imposing oil painting was at least 8 by 6 feet, covering almost the entire wall of my favorite Charleston antiques store. I was drawn to the picture immediately not only by its size, but the immediate recognition of its subject: the Mistletoe Bride — just as I always pictured her. Beautiful. Young. Her radiant face full of mischievous cheer. Her long white veil, attached to the wreath of mistletoe on her dark hair. She tentatively looks over her shoulder as she lifts the trunk lid in front of her. The background behind her is a darkened attic. The moment is frozen. The shop owner had never heard of the Mistletoe Bride, so I told him over a cup of hot tea. It was a favorite in Victorian England, where Christmas ghost stories were a pervasive custom and still are. It goes something like this: The couple were to be married in the groom’s castle on Christmas Eve. After the ceremony and wedding breakfast, the happy guests and newlyweds decided a game of hide and seek would be great fun. The groom was “it.” Everyone hurried to closets and nooks within the great house while the bride, competitive to the max, decided the attic would make her the last to be found. She would win the game and remain the star of her own wedding day. She found her way to the attic, gloomy with castoffs from the great house. Then she saw the large oak trunk in a dim corner. It was huge, and she lifted the heavy lid with some effort. She looked around and listened for a moment to see if anyone were coming to the attic. Silence. She smiled and climbed into the trunk, excited at the thought of her young husband’s amazement when she pushed open the lid to reveal herself. She stepped in, tucking the long skirt of her dress beneath her, her wedding veil falling like a cloud around her. After she pulled the lid down, she heard it. The thud of the heavy metal lock as it clicked. The guests searched until everyone was found. All but one. The bride. They looked everywhere. The groom frantic, the guests scurrying to check every cranny in the house. Nothing. They searched through the night and as the next day wore on, it became obvious that they would not find her. Years later, the old man decided to move out of the manor house where he The Art & Soul of Greensboro
had married his beautiful bride and had lived alone for decades since her disappearance. Cousins were helping empty each room of its contents. The last task: the attic. The ancient trunk was opened and disclosed its grim secret — the skeleton of a young woman, her disintegrating veil falling from the wreath of mistletoe around her skull. A horror story! At Christmas? Horrors! The traditional story gained wide distribution when it appeared in Thomas Haynes Bayly’s printed ballad around 1830 titled “The Mistletoe Bough”: “O sad was her fate! — in sportive jest She hid from her lord in the old oak chest. It closed with a spring! . . . and, dreadful doom, The bride lay clasped in her living tomb!” Every household in England is said to have sung this ballad at Christmas in the mid-19th century: The Victorians were obsessed with this early urban legend. So taken were the English with the morbid story of the bride’s disappearance and grim discovery that country castles around the island even today claim the story as theirs: Castle Hornbeck, Basildon Grotto, Marwell Hall, Bramshil, House Brockdish Hall. And the reported most likely site of the tragedy was Minster Lovell Hall, built in 1440, and pretty much dismantled in 1747 by Baron Lovell. Its ruins remain a tourist attraction. Was this the Lovell mentioned in the ballad? His son, the devastated widower? Or the baron himself? No castle or attic or trunk to explore, so we will never know the truth of the matter. Ghost stories on Christmas Eve were an English tradition long before Dickens wrote the most famous Christmas tale of multiple ghosts, A Christmas Carol, with a happy ending. The English, as well as the rest of the world, cherish being frightened out of their wits on Christmas Eve with visions of Marley’s ghost or Scrooge himself, who was truly scared straight by the three apparitions of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and the Christmas yet to come. But the haunting Yuletide tale of a wedding and young love forever lost remains a favorite. The Brits remain the Mistletoe Bride’s staunchest supporters, but Christmas ghost stories? Rarely in America. So Happy Chrimbo! Merry Christmas! and God Bless every one, y’all . . . as Tiny Tim and I say! OH Nan Graham is a regular Salt contributor and has been a local NPR commentator since 1995. December 2017
O.Henry 71
The Night Before Christmas, Y’all Illustrations by Laurel Holden
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the towns, Not a creature was stirring, not even the hounds; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of barbecue danc’d in their heads, And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap- When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash. When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, with briskets and beer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than beagles his sauces they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name: “Now! Salsa, now! Garlic, now! Curry, and Poblano, “On! Chili, on! Cumin, on! Mustard and Diablo; “To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! “Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!” As pine needles before the hurricane fly, Twist in the wind and mount to the sky; So up to the house-top the sauces they flew, With the sleigh full of ribs - and St. Nicholas too: And then in a twinkling, I heard up above The clatter and clang of a labor of love. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound: He was dress’d in an apron, from his head to his foot, And the front was all tarnish’d with grease marks and soot; A sack full of ribs was flung on his back,
And he look’d like a smoker just opening his stack: His eyes - how they twinkled! his dimples how merry, His cheeks were like RedHot, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pick he held tight in his teeth, And the aroma of smoke hung around like a wreath. He had a broad face, and a little round belly That shook when he laugh’d, like hot soup in a deli: He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laugh’d when I saw him in spite of myself;
A dash of wasabi and a twist of his head Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And laid out the ribs; then turn’d with a jerk, And putting his finger aside of his nose And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprung to his sleigh as fast as a missile, And away they all flew to the Pig and the Whistle: But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight- Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night. OH
TALES OF OUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY GONE WRONG
Christmas in
C
hristmas was not my family’s long suit. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. There was the requisite twinkly tree (fresh only, never “arty” as my mother would say.) There were hand-made evergreen wreaths and swags, fashioned by my grandmother’s clever hands. There was a modest amount of packages under that fresh tree. More about the packages later. There was even, God help us, homemade fruitcake (two varieties, one called an icebox fruitcake, and then the bourbon-soaked variety that over the years became more a bourbon fruit mash, thanks to liberal drizzling of spirits). Slosh enough liquor over fruitcake, and you will find takers, I promise you. Namely, my father’s devoted employee, Howard. It is hard to identify exactly what went so wrong with Christmas. Perhaps it was because we were not living on Walton’s Mountain, home of homilies and happy endings. We lived in Hell’s Half Acre, which is instructive. And the hard fact was, most years Christmas was a bust. Did we try too hard? I don’t think so. We were a tribe of misfits, who knew what the holidays were supposed to be like thanks to the Waltons, but couldn’t find the damned manual. Even a kid could see we got it wrong. There was the year that my father gave my mother a mailbox, which he bought at the hardware store on Christmas Eve. He never wanted to go Christmas shopping until late on the 24th, when the hardware was the only establishment open. Even my child self knew enough to warn him it was a bad idea; Dad said he would write Mom a nice letter and put it inside. One of us wrapped the thing, but this bad idea wasn’t something that stiff cheap wrapping could improve. There was the clear outline of the mailbox flag, undisguised by dancing reindeer and made more lurid by the liberal use of Scotch tape. When my mother saw us maneuver it under the tree she was so pissed off she slung a red high heel across the room as she heard the front door open, thinking my father was home. The heel struck Howard squarely in the head just as he entered the foyer. Howard, a painful introvert, required a shot of courage just to make a friendly visit. He was a fixture at our house come the weekend, and although our mother tolerated him, he clearly got on her nerves. My father, a teetotaler, hid Howard’s Wild Turkey in the dishwasher, which hadn’t worked for years, and served as a bar. (Dad seemed to think we wouldn’t know where the liquor was if he put it somewhere related to kitchen chores.) Howard was one of those drunks who had a compulsion to tell the truth. Once under the influence,
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Howard alone had the guts to tell our mother what he thought of her cooking after a trip to the dishwasher for a swig. Ho-ho-ho. While my mother didn’t carp, “Why didn’t you duck?” after clocking Howard, I don’t recall her exactly cringing at what she had done. Howard the Melancholic took it well. Fortified with the right amount of spirits, he touched his forehead, took a look around and asked us kids if we wanted to go to the drive-in for a cheeseburger. Oh, yes. We did. (Forget how drunk Howard was; we eagerly climbed into his Oldsmobile.) It seemed that Christmas brought out Howard’s deepest angst. He aired his personal regrets concerning his wife, Ruby, the woman Howard felt he had deeply wronged by marrying. His was existential, grinding guilt. She was, he said again and again, too good for him. And he was not being ironic. “Now, Ruby is a God-fearing, good woman,” he would slur, as we chewed French fries, slurped milkshakes and nodded without comment. The little dive had the best burgers anywhere. And there was no point in interrupting, which even our baby brother grasped in time. Howard was stuck on one channel — the Guilt Channel — and it played 24/7 in his heavy head. “Ruby doesn’t drink,” he intoned. Won’t touch a drop. A Christian woman.” What we saw was a shriveled, humorless woman, who never smiled. But he praised how she kept a clean house and a plate in the oven for whenever Howard found his way home. “She knows the Bible, too. You ought to hear that woman quote the Bible.” We listened, even though we squirmed, but stayed with his wandering monologue until he tootled with us back home. Although Howard dusted a few ditches, he largely kept in his own lane. We would have taken a bullet for Howard. It wasn’t just the burgers. He screwed up. And that is where our lives intersected with his. It was the remorseful screw up, Howard, whom we identified with, not the Scripture-quoting Ruby. Childless, he was unfailingly kind, buying magazines when we hawked them for the school, as well as boxes of World’s Finest (and most overpriced) candy bars. Sure, Howard was a mess, but he was our loving mess, and much more complex than Otis on The Andy Griffith Show. Otis was a TV character. Howard was real: a kindly, hard-working failure. His Ruby reminded him of that fact throughout their married lives. Howard was also our guide to the perils of adulthood, which actually looked a lot like the perils of childhood from the backseat of the Olds. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR
Hell’s Half Acre
By the age of 10 my siblings and I understood that bad marriages happened to good people. Our own parents took 35 long years to finally divorce. After marrying at the reckless age of 17, my parents’ divorce was like climate change: Nobody wanted it to happen, but if you had eyeballs you surely saw it coming. But Howard and Ruby, bound inexorably by good old Christian guilt, never split. In stark contrast to the miserably silent H&R were Deanna and Olin from next door, whose fights were so legion their young son Beau would knock on our door and ask to spend the night. Deanna was no long suffering Ruby. She was a leggy blonde who walked around barefoot in Daisy Dukes. Olin, also easy on the eyes, was golden tan and built to wear jeans. Equally beautiful and jealous, both accused the other of the worst. They were volatile. Deanna threw a steak knife at Olin and hit him. Without a word, she packed Beau and the baby, Josh, into her convertible and split for Vero Beach, Florida. I cried bitterly, not only because we could no longer snitch cigarettes from Deanna and watch any TV we liked while babysitting the kiddos, but she was my friend. And Deanna was a member of the Book of the Month Club(!) She shared summer reading that was much more interesting than what the Bookmobile offered. Vero Beach sounded pretty damn good to me. I looked it up on the map; my father’s trucking company routinely hauled loads of Indian River citrus fruit. Vero Beach was just too far to consider spending Christmas there. Once, Howard had taken a flight to Los Angeles, then got right back on a return flight without leaving LAX. (He had always wanted to see the West Coast, Howard explained between hiccups.) But I vowed something to myself. If I lived to be 16, which sometimes looked dicey given my riding with a drunk driver for a cheeseburger, I would haul ass, too, and find my friend Deanna and the kids. Later I watched as Olin sat on the back steps and cried, his broad shoulders The Art & Soul of Greensboro
shaking. It was too much to take, and I went to my room, fell onto the bed, and did the same. That year was an especially bad Christmas. No purloined ciggies, books nor trash TV. No fun, really. So, we kids turned to our drug of choice: Stuff. I yearned for something useful, like a tape recorder. A book. A cowgirl outfit like my sister’s. Anything but a doll, please, Baby Jesus! When I tore away the wrappings, what I found was a blonde Revlon doll in a black cocktail dress and stilettos. I am unsure what I did with that bimbo, but I do recall devoting much of my childhood to wrenching a doll’s head from the torso faster than the boys could solve a Rubik’s cube. Which is why I pried away my younger sister’s Chatty Cathy explaining that I could turn it into two useful things: a tape recorder and a doll. I set to work on Chatty with my father’s screwdriver, and after destroying the doll discovered the box played inane phrases but could not record. Kim, robbed of her new doll, turned blue from holding her breath after first screaming bloody murder, and has not, not even today, forgiven me. Was it my worst Christmas? It was up there in the annals of worsts. Chatty Cathy was expensive, and I knew there would be hell to pay for my destroying her. Anticipating corporal punishment, I found the buggy whip my father kept in the garage with an ancient carriage and hoisted it far into the attic. My Dad hated heights. If, in a fit of anger, he thought a buggy whip would be just the thing to teach me a lesson, I would remove all temptation. If things had been different I might have gone to Deanna and Olin’s house. But it was dark, and nobody was there, which I knew because I checked often, hoping. I sat in the garage, hugging my knees, shivering with the knowledge that not everything works out just because it’s Christmas. Not expecting much, but still, hoping to hear Howard’s Olds crunch across the gravel. — Cynthia Adams December 2017
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TALES OF OUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY GONE WRONG
Gone to the Dogs
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY BLAIR
W
hen your worst Christmas ever is also your best, calling it bittersweet would wrap it up with a tidy little bow. But as we all know, life isn’t that cut and dried — in fact, it’s rather messy most of the time (like my gift-wrapping skills). The year was 1989, and, at 9 years old, all I could think about was having a puppy to call my own. But not just any puppy — one that I circled at the top of my dog-themed stationery — the absolute living end of cuteness: small, golden, with floppy ears. I woke up Christmas morning bright and early and heard something I thought might be a radio. It turned out to be the yipping of my heart’s desire: a cocker spaniel puppy. My siblings and I could hardly believe it. Santa had come through. We were also given Hungry Hungry Hippos that year. When Sandy the puppy wanted to play, he pushed one of the levers with his paw, and a single white marble rolled into the middle of the gameboard. The three of us kids melted instantly. Once school started up again, it was back to reality. I impulsively told the friends who sat near me that Santa had given me a puppy. I received some blank stares. Nobody said anything. And in my heart of hearts, I knew they didn’t need to. “Santa doesn’t really exist . . . does he?” I stammered. Wow. Guess I was a little slow on the uptake, but I got over it quickly. As the days went by, Sandy showed a less-than-adorable side, including lots of ankle biting, carpet staining and who knows what else. I was so in love I tried not to notice. One day after school, my mom told me she gave Sandy away to an “old lady” and that it was all for the best. I was in a state of disbelief. My sister and I went to the basement to see if our puppy was there. No dice. When my brother heard the news, he took off on his bike. As children, it was hard to understand why it happened that way. Like puppies, life has its ups and downs, but as the title of one of my childhood books advises, It Could Be Worse! But why would you do that? Why didn’t we get to say goodbye? And why on God’s green earth would you unleash Sandy on a nice old lady?! Not to mention, our rounds of Hungry Hungry Hippos were never the same. — Annie Ferguson
TALES OF OUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY GONE WRONG
A Dickens of a
Christmas
A
few days before Christmas of 2001, I jettisoned my Web design business, fired my clients, chucked everything into storage and relocated to London. Thanks to a not-so-honest cabbie (“Do all the parks in this city look alike or are we driving in circles?”) I made it to my flat with exactly £10 to my name. My Website, TVparty.com, was churning out tens of millions of page views every month, one of the Internet’s first multimedia sensations, but there was no way to monetize that traffic. So I engineered a system whereby users could pay $5 for premium content (radical idea, huh?) resulting in deposits of between $0–60 a day to my debit card. Not much dough for living it up in one of the most expensive cities in the world but my future was so purposely uncertain I couldn’t have been happier. Not knowing anyone in the city (my roommate was out of the country), I banged away at the keyboard with happy abandon in a top-floor flat overlooking Brixton, Europe’s melting pot (and home to a notorious prison.) When the morning of the 24th arrived, I gathered all the cash I had, a single £1 coin, and walked to the green grocer up on the high street where I came across a Florida grapefruit selling for exactly that amount. Returning home, I placed that juicy orb on the mantel above our nonexistent fireplace. It became both my Christmas present and tree. The next morning I savored that grapefruit (sprinkled with salt not sugar) while watching reruns of Bewitched and Sgt. Bilko that aired weekday mornings on the BBC. Around 10 that night, a Christmas miracle occurred—I banked a staggering £3! So I jauntily headed out for a nightcap at one of the many pubs that lined the high street. The thoroughfare was eerily quiet, no cars moving about, with only one pedestrian in sight, a lady of the evening (it was cold that night so let’s call her Prosty) who asked if I, wanted a go. Which I rightfully reasoned was Londonese for, “You new in town, sailor?” Respectfully declining her offer, the only holiday invitation I received that year mind you, I arrived at my destination only to discover all of the pubs were closed. I now had to walk back past Prosty again; naturally she propositioned me once more because, of course, I’m behaving just like a ‘John’ would. I again politely begged off. As I’m nearing my flat, I hear a commotion behind me. Prosty’s pimp had emerged from the shadows to physically berate her in the middle of the empty street. I yelled back to him, “Hey, it’s not her fault! I only have £3, and it’s on a card!” The story’s not entirely bleak. In a nice Dickensian/O.Henry twist, it turns out living in London that year helped me land my first book deal, which led to writing and performing on five hours of Christmas Specials for the Bravo network from 2004–05. — Billy Ingram
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TALES OF OUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY GONE WRONG
Heave Ho! Ho! Ho!
I
t was so festive, the sanctuary of the Episcopal church my family and I attended, adorned with
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY BLAIR
greenery, poinsettias and flickering candles. I was 16 at the time and, clad in a sleek knit dress and my first pair of high heels, I felt oh-so-grown up, as I sat wedged between my two college-age sisters. Except for the butterflies in my stomach that came with a the opening notes of a trumpet blasting out “O, Come All Ye Faithful,” while the “faithful,” convivial late-night revelers donned in gay apparel packed the church’s pews after making the rounds of holiday cocktail parties. The service, which is to say, 30 minutes of calisthenics — standing, sitting, kneeling, sitting and standing again — got underway, and midway through, the lights dimmed while the congregants lit small tapers and knelt while singing “Silent Night.” Long about the last stanza about “radiant beams,” I was enveloped by the miasma of Johnnie Walker emanating from the gent enthusiastically swaying on the prayer bench behind me, fearful that he might send the congregation up in a conflagration as he warbled out, “Jesus Lord, at thy bi-irth,” with gusto ill befitting the carol. I began to feel a little over-radiant myself, the sweater dress becoming uncomfortably warm, as the butterflies fluttered anew. The lights came up and it was time to stand again. And as I began to rise, so did a tide in my stomach, causing me to wobble in my high-heeled shoes, while tiny beads of sweat formed on my brow. The butterflies were in full migration. How could this happen? Then I remembered: “I’ll fix you an omelet,” my bossy eldest sister had announced earlier in the day. “You’ll love it,” she had assured me. Famous last words from the family Shakespeare scholar who could expound on the differences between the First and Second Folios but historically had trouble finding her way around the kitchen. Tonight it was Omelet’s revenge. To heave or not to heave? That was the question. The answer came upon this midnight clear beyond the blurry pages of my prayer book and filled me with panic. For there, on the seat of the pew in front of me lay a swath of shiny, thick, dark fur with a satin lining splashed with a single word, “Blackglama.” Its owner, a carefully coiffed duena had cast the mink aside during the heat of “Silent Night.” Little did Glama Girl know that her luxurious wrap, perhaps a wedding anniversary gift that had no doubt seen countless Christmas Eve services, cocktail parties and opera galas, was about to witness a baptism — its own — in of a morass of semi-digested Large Grade A eggs, cheese and onion. Luckily, came a true Christmas miracle I sank back down into the seat of my pew, hand clamped over my mouth, fearing what an “Ahh-men,” might produce, while my mother shot daggers at me for my presumed act of sacrilege. And then came the peal of the trumpet again, signaling the recessional, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Or in my case, a barely avoidable “Hock.” But for the grace of God went I without incident, down the aisle and into the cold December night, bypassing the rector’s outstretched hand. Later, in the wee, small hours of Christmas Day, the holy spirit moved my troubled insides, and the tide that I had successfully held back in church, came forth, leaving me weak as a kitten during the ensuing merriment and gift-giving. While everyone else in the family devoured my mother’s delicious cranberry bread, I nursed a flat ginger-ale and tentatively bit into a Saltine cracker. Then came the shriek of “Eewww, gross!” It was my middle sister, the true culinary whiz among us three, who had reached into the refrigerator and produced the carton of eggs. “Has anybody checked the expiration date on these?” she asked. Looking up from the book she’d been engrossed in, our eldest sister paused as the implication of the question registered. “Oh,” she said. “I guess I forgot.” — Nancy Oakley
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
TALES OF OUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY GONE WRONG
Trailer for the Horror Film:
The Attic {Fade in tight on a coal-burning fireplace. {Camera pulls back slowly to reveal the living room of young Harry’s grandparents’ home. It is 1953 and the scene is in full Christmas Eve mode. Eight-year-old Harry sits in a chair next to the decorated cedar tree. His parents and grandparents are generally ignoring him, their attention is focused on Harry’s new baby sister. This is an after-supper rest period, the hour or so for socializing before bed. Harry is eyeing the wrapped presents under the tree and getting sleepy. His mother notices.} MOTHER: Ready for bed, Honey? HARRY: Mmm. Yeah. Guess so. MOTHER: Well, your father and I and Mary Jane are sleeping in the back bedroom this year. And you’re going to be sleeping in the attic. Won’t that be fun? {Close up of Harry’s supershocked face.} {Cut to Harry’s father in the hall, pulling down the folding ladder to access the dark attic. {Point of view: Harry. His father gesturing for him to go on up. He climbs the ladder to the blackness. He turns to see his mother climb halfway up. MOTHER: What an adventure! You’re so lucky! Please don’t mess with those toys in the corner. They belonged to Douglas, our little brother who died when he was 4. {pause} Nighty-Night! {We see her climb down and close up the folding stairway, plunging the attic into total darkness.} {Cut to close-up: Harry’s wide-open eyes in a sea of black.} OH — Harry Blair
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All Rhodes Lead to Christmas
How Mary Rhodes and husband Bill give new meaning to “Home for the Holidays” By Jim Dodson • Photographs by John Gessner
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“H
onestly, I don’t know why we do this every year,” says Mary Rhodes with an exasperated chuckle, glancing around her house. A coy smile appears. “This is just something we love doing, I suppose, kind of a tradition now.” Unless one’s eyes deceive, this is a woman who clearly relishes everything about the Christmas season, including the annual task of decorating every room of the handsome three-bedroom family home she shares with husband, Bill, in the pasturelands south of Greensboro. Beginning with the wreath on the door and 6-foot Santa who stands like a North Pole doorman on her stately, fourcolumned side porch, Christmas is everywhere you look in the form of lavishly decorated Christmas trees, ornate gingerbread houses, garlands, angels, reindeer, figurines of carolers and at least half a dozen renderings of Father Christmas, both ancient and modern. Warm shades of red dominate throughout the house from the bittersweet on the
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mantel to the strands of beads artfully draped on her late mama’s silver service. An heirloom family dining room table is already set with Christmas china for waves of holiday entertaining, and the vintage Steinway grand piano — look closely and you’ll see it’s signed by Mr. Steinway himself — is simply a key staging area for choirs of carolers and snowmen, candles and bowls of candy. Even a pair of mature Christmas cacti are in radiant full bloom for the holidays. Welcome to a joyful tradition that began in 2003, a year after the Rhodeses sold their Irving Park home and moved out to occupy and redo Mary’s childhood home on Davis Mill Road south of the city. The traditional beige brick ranch house where Mary and her two brothers, Alex and Lawrence, grew up sits on 500 acres their grandfather acquired over half a century ago in order to keep horses for his Lee Street firm, Greensboro Coal and Ice. His son, Mary’s daddy, Calvin Ross, transformed the holdings into a 300-head dairy farm, becoming the top milk producer for Flav-O-Rich Dairy. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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. . . this is a woman who clearly relishes everything about the Christmas season . . . The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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The idea of transforming her tastefully decorated home into a living tableau of Christmas really got started when, as Mary Rhodes recounts, “friends of ours in Carlson Farms gave up hosting their annual Christmas party. Bill and I decided we would take up the party out here in the country.” With festive touches such as the several figurines that had belonged to her mother, the party was a “big hit,” Mary recalls. “I began adding to the decorations a little bit more every year. The collecting never stopped.” Fifteen years later, the party is still going — and has grown to three different parties during the first two weeks of December. The process begins when Bill Rhodes lays out the stored
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decorations on tables in the garage, allowing Mary and her longtime friend Myrna Robinson, a decorator from Southport, to work their magic piece by piece. “Every year is a little different. We add things and move stuff around. Myrna really has lots of great ideas and sometimes we go a bit over the top,” Mary allows, “but somehow it all comes together surprisingly quickly. It looks like a lot of work but it only takes us a couple of days.” Maybe more amazing is that Mary “Christmas” Rhodes does all of her own food preparation for the trio of fêtes that follow in quick succession beginning the second week of December . . . feasts that largely come from the Rhodeses’ bountiful veggie garden. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
“Every year is a little different. We add things and move stuff around.” The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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“The menu is a little different every year,” Mary confirms, “but I usually make a chicken-and-rice casserole with green beans, fresh corn, roasted beets and crowder peas and apple sauce made from trees right out back — everything from our summer garden. Everyone seems to love the food. I also do lots of baking — all sorts of cookies and brownies, rolls and several kinds of cakes — strawberry, chocolate, carrot and pound cakes. I just bake up a storm.” The first of the annual gatherings is hosted for what Mary calls “our Greensboro people,” her former Irving Park neighbors and golf chums, numbering anywhere from 30 to 40 guests. Among her many social gifts, Mary is two-time women’s golf champ at Greensboro Country Club and holder of several amateur titles including a recent North Carolina State Super Senior championship. Her trophies line shelves and her daddy’s vintage desk in the study. “The Greensboro crowd always comes on Wednesday for lunch,” she explains. “They love fresh country food. The next day, Thursday, is for our friends from over at Colonial Country Club [in Thomasville]. That crowd is about the same size, always lots of fun to be with. They seem to love the food, too.” Finally, on Friday of the same week, the Rhodes host friends and choir members from Greensboro’s Buffalo Presbyterian Church. You do the math. More than one hundred folks, many of whom begin checking in even before Thanksgiving, just to confirm they’re on the guest list. All of which raises a polite question: Who helps Mary Christmas with the monumental food prep and cleanup? She waves it off and laughs again. “We have a friend named Jim Eskridge who loves to do dishes. He’s a big help. But I do most of it myself. It’s really no big deal. Like the cooking and the decorating, it’s just part of the fun.” Husband Bill, she quickly adds, helps with the cleanup but mostly attends to the open bar in the garage, dispensing his own version of holiday spirit. To complete the festive schedule, all Rhodes lead to the house on Davis Mill on the Saturday before Christmas when the couple hosts a family that includes five children and 10 grandchildren. A second family gathering follows on Christmas Day with the addition of two aunts in their 90s for gift-giving and Mary’s beef tenderloin. “We do this to share our love with friends and family. It makes everyone happy. We live in such a difficult world full of bad news, but for a few days out of the year, Christmas makes everyone slow down and smile at each other,” Mary reflects. “Sharing music and good food and beautiful things reminds you of the real meaning of the holiday. It’s been a blessing in our lives.” Which raises a final question: How long does it take Mary Christmas to undecorate her amazing home for the holidays? “Not as long as you might think. Just a day or two. Bill helps. We’ve got it down to a pretty good routine. Everything goes back in the garage for next year.” Here she pauses and smiles coyly again. “That’s when we head to Sebring, Florida, for the new year and a golf tournament called the Harder Hall Ladies Invitational that I’ve played in with friends for a long time. It’s the perfect way to end the year,” she allows. “But by then I’m already thinking about next Christmas — on the lookout for something to add to our decorations!” OH Jim Dodson — and Wendy — deck their own halls with natural decorations, vintage Santas, antique white Christmas lights and stuffed armadillos.
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- Botanicus -
Their Darkest Hours
For brilliant red poinsettias, keep them under wraps
By Ross Howell Jr.
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F
or years as a grad student and later as an itinerant bachelor, I put off buying Christmas decorations because I didn’t want to move them from one apartment to the next. Holiday decorating for me meant buying poinsettias — usually in foil-wrapped containers — to get instant seasonal cheer with minimal effort. Besides, poinsettias have a cool history. Indigenous to Mexico, Euphorbia pulcherrima owes its popular name to Joel Poinsett. Born in 1779 to a wealthy family in Charleston, South Carolina, Poinsett was a world traveler. President John Quincy Adams appointed him as the first Minister to Mexico in 1825. While visiting south of Mexico City, Poinsett saw a plant known among locals as Flor de Nochebuena, or “Christmas Eve flower.” An amateur botanist, Poinsett sent samples back home. Propagated and sold, the plants by 1836 had become known in the States as “poinsettias.” So what did I do with my once-lovely poinsettias after the holidays were over? I dumped the then-desiccated plants into the trash. As time passed, my lazy approach to
holiday decorating left me feeling guiltier and guiltier. All those plants I’d tossed. What if I’d tried to winter them over, do whatever mysterious things needed to be done to have them erupt in scarlet again the following Christmas? Then one evening a message popped up on my neighborhood listserv. “Is anyone in the area trying to force poinsettias? We are trying to do it but have to travel during the ‘dark time’ and need someone to tend them for us.” The sender was Tom Krissak. Surely Krissak could give me a shortcut to poinsettia success. I mean, he already knew there was something called “dark time.” Turns out, Krissak — retired from the funeral business — had sent the message on behalf of his partner, Samuel Johnson, who’s the gardener in their household. Krissak gave me Johnson’s number. “Oh, I really just took up plants after I retired a couple years ago,” Johnson confesses over the phone. He tells me he grew up in northern Virginia but has lived all over the world. A mathematician, Johnson first came to Greensboro to teach at Guilford College. After years at Guilford, he left Greensboro for a time and studied the law, became a practicing attorney and returned to Greensboro for a second time. “I like trying to keep plants alive,” Johnson says, “but I have just the opposite of a green thumb. If you want to talk about poinsettias, you need to call Esther Maltby.” Maltby is a neighbor who recently stepped down after seven years as director of the Dunleith Community Garden on Chestnut Street. “Esther and I worked out a deal,” Johnson continues. “She’s caring for the poinsettias while we’re away. If they live, we’ll split the plants between us.” So what’s Maltby’s take on the poinsettia project? “It’s really Samuel who’s done all the research,” Maltby says. “I just agreed to babysit.” Maltby tells me she grew up in Pakistan, the daughter of Protestant missionaries. Her father was an engineer; her mother a teacher. Poinsettias were prolific where they lived in Pakistan, growing into bushes 8 to 12 feet tall. “I never gave a thought to cultivating little ones,” Maltby says with a laugh. Her strategy for forcing the poinsettias to bloom is to keep them in light— but not direct sunlight — for eight hours a day. Then she plunges them into darkness — under cardboard boxes covered by blankets — for the remaining 16 hours of the day. When Maltby sees red bracts sprouting, she’ll stop the “dark time.” She began the process in mid-October, a little concerned about having enough time to bring the plants to full Christmas glory. “Samuel messages me every day, asking how the poinsettias are doing,” she says. “I tell him they look good; they’re putting out lots of green leaves.” She pauses. “I sure hope this works,” she says. Me, too. Regardless, I realize now keeping poinsettias holiday-to-holiday requires way more mindfulness than a lazy guy like me can muster. OH Ross Howell Jr. is getting ready for Elon University’s January term, when he’ll be teaching a general studies course entitled “A Brief History of Truth.”
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A L M A N A C
December n
By Ash Alder
December is here
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. — William Blake
Deadhead the rose bush. Prune the wild muscadine. Move the front porch pumpkins to the compost pile. The days grow shorter, yet from darkness comes light. Behold phlox and hellebores, snowdrop and iris, camellia and winter-flowering crocus. This month, while the soil is cool, plant spring bulbs and fruit trees, harvest edible weeds and winter greens, and when the work is done, create sacred space to enjoy the season. And beaucoup peppermint. First cultivated in 1750 near London, England, as an experimental hybrid between water mint and spearmint, this perennial herb has long been used for its magical and medicinal qualities. According to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, however, the candy cane came before its flavor. Sometime around 1670, a choirmaster in Cologne, Germany, asked a local confectioner to come up with a special candy stick to help pacify the young folks during the live Nativity on Christmas Eve. Shaped like a shepherd’s staff, this sugary creation surely kept them quiet (and buzzing) until the Magi arrived. Want to grow your own? If you’re going for potency (read: high oil content), go with black peppermint, named for its dark purple-green leaves and stems. White peppermint has a milder flavor, but crush the leaves between your fingers and feel an instant calm throughout your entire being. Because this aromatic herb can quickly take over an entire garden, and because it craves rich soil and good drainage, container gardening is recommended. Full sun increases its medicinal qualities (and makes for stronger, spicier tea).
Stocking Stuffers • Pear tree seed • Bird food • Binoculars
It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. — John Burroughs
Peppermint Tea for Two 2 cups water 14 peppermint leaves 2 teaspoons honey
Bring water to boil Place leaves in teacups; cover mint with hot water Steep for 5 minutes Remove leaves (or not) Add honey Steep with fresh tarragon leaves and a quarter-inch slice of vanilla bean to enter a new realm. Add lemon wedge to continue the journey.
Celestial Shower
As we approach the winter solstice — the longest night of the year — we look to the stars to celebrate a new season, and the final hours of the year. The Geminid meteor shower peaks on the night of Wednesday, Dec.13, until the earliest hours of Thursday, Dec. 14. Sky-watchers may see as many as 60 to 120 shooting stars per hour predawn. Watching with friends or loved ones? Steep a pot of peppermint tea or keep the cocoa simmering on the stovetop for this enchanted celestial event. OH
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GROW HO! HO!
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December 1 ILLUMINATING. 6 to 9 p.m. The Yuletide season officially kicks off in the Gate City at downtown’s Festival of Lights, with carolers, Santas galore and the traditional lighting of the community tree in City Center Park. Downtown Greensboro. Info: downtownindecember.org. SHOP FOR A CAUSE. 6 to 9 p.m. While you’re enjoying the downtown festivities, get a jump on your holiday shopping at Willows by Goodwill, a pop-up store selling designer clothes, jewelry,
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A Christmas Carol
1-24
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It's a Wonderfu Life
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shoes, handbags and more. Elm Street Center, 203 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: Facebook.com/ TriadGoodwill.
Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
STEP TO IT! 10 p.m. Pop-Up Dance Club thrums along, thanks to the grooves spun by DJ Jessica Mashburn. Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or printworksbistro.com.
DOWN TO THE CHOIR. Catch A&T Theatre’s heartwarming comedy, Sanctified, about a small black church’s efforts to punch up its choir’s repertoire in time for a revival. Performance times vary. Paul Robeson Theatre, N.C. A&T Campus, 1602 W. Market St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 334-7749 or ncat.edu.
December 1–3 PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW. Last chance to see 2017 UNCG Faculty Biennial.
DIZ THE SEASON. Be a good skate and take your little ones to Disney on Ice Presents Dare The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar
Muppet Christmas Carol
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to Dream. Performance times vary. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
December 1–22 HOLIDAY FISHES. Or Fishman. The extensive exhibit of explosive Abstract Expressionist works, Louise Fishman: A Retrospective, ends its run on the exhibit’s only tour of the South. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
Dreaming of a White Christmas
13&19
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December 1–24 SPIRITED PERFORMANCE. The holiday season would be incomplete without it: A Christmas Carol, Triad Stage’s Twin City production based on Charles Dickens’s classic, beloved novel. Performance times vary. Hanesbrands Theatre, 209 N. Spruce St., Winston-Salem. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
December 1–31 HISTORIC HOLIDAYS. Step back in time for a
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Don't Shoot Your Eyes Out
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simpler Christmas experience, with candlelight tours, historic demonstrations, arts, crafts, visits with St. Nicholas and more at Holidays in Salem. Old Salem Museum and Gardens, 900 Old Salem Road, Winston-Salem. Info: oldsalem.org.
December 1– January 1, 2018 TANGLE(WOOD) UP IN BLUE. And red, green and gold. Get thee to Tanglewood Festival of Lights. Admission is $15 for cars, vans and trucks; $35 for limos, minivans and minbuses; $100 for buses and motorcoaches. Tanglewood Park, 4061 December 2017
O.Henry 97
Arts Calendar Clemmons Road, Clemmons. Info: (336) 7066400 or forsyth.cc.
December 1– January 7, 2018 NOT A CREATURE WAS STIRRING . . . Except for a mouse! Make that several mice made of felt and dressed in gay, holiday apparel for visitors to find on a Great Moutastical Mouse Hunt at Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Ave., Greensboro. (336) 373-2043 or greensborohistory. org.
December 1– January 8, 2018 FEET OF CLAY. And heads, faces, arms and legs, too. See sculptures inspired by vessels of the Huastec peoples of present-day Mexico. They’re the focus of Kukuli Velarde: Falk Visiting Artist. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
December 1– February 11, 2018 TEMPUS FUGIT. It’s all relative: Catch For All Time: Interpretations of the Fourth Dimension from the Collection. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
December 2 PHYLLO TO-GO. 9 a.m. Grab some spanikopita, baklava and more at the Annual Craft Show and Greek Pastry Sale. Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church, 800 Westridge Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 292-8013 or dormition. nc.goarch.org. CAROLINA CHRISTMAS. 9:30 a.m. Or more
appropriately, Christmas at the Carolina, a free celebration that includes popcorn, soft drinks, a singalong, a screening of The Search for Santa Paws, and Mr. and Mrs. Kris Kringle. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 3332106 or carolinatheatre.com. ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE. 11 a.m. High Rock Farm explains all things chestnuts — and sells some seasonal goodies, too. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org. HIT PARADE. Noon. Grab a spot on the sidewalk and be on the lookout for cars, floats, balloons, Santa and the ever-popular A&T marching band at the Greensboro Holiday Parade. Downtown Greensboro. Info: downtownindecember.org. PARADE PARTY. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Come out to see Santa, sip hot chocolate and make some crafts. Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2403 or greensborohistory.org. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 2 p.m. Meet Coon Rock Farm’s Jamie DeMent, author of The Farmhouse Chef: Recipes & Stories from My Carolina Farm. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
GROW HO! HO! Noon. Kids and pets are invited to “In the Garden with Santa,” an afternoon of craft-making amid decorated Christmas trees, with special guest of honor, the guy in the red suit. Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs, 4301-A Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. (336) 282-4940 or thegreensborocouncilofgardenclubs.com.
December 3 GOT IT MADE! 11 a.m. It’s time for Made 4 the Holidays, the seasonal arts and crafts extravaganza featuring local artisans’ jewelry, soaps, pottery, foods and new this year, an Honor Card by local artist James Canady, benefiting the homeless and hungry in the community. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2402 or gsofarmersmarket.org. IN THE HOUSE. 1 p.m. Annual Holiday Open House, that is. Come celebrate the 45th with food, music, crafts and historic demonstrations. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org. PAS DE GRINCH. 3:30 p.m. Wut? Believe it or not, a dance interpretation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas comes to the stage. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce St., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointtheatre.com.
OPUS CONCERT. 7 p.m. Halleuja! Greensboro Oratorio Singers perform Handel’s Messiah. Christ United Methodist Church, 410 N. Holden Road, Greensboro. Info: gsomusiccenter.com.
NUT-TEA. 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Have a nice cuppa and some eats, and join Clara at a reading of The Nutcracker round the tree at the annual Nutcracker Tea. O.Henry Hotel, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. To reserve: (336) 854-2015 or ohenryhotel.com.
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December 2017
December 2 & 3
ARTY PARTY. 7 p.m. Raise money to support the arts by attending Collector’s Choice, a preview of Winter Show, an exhibition featuring the works of 100-some N.C. artists. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
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98 O.Henry
twangy sounds of the bluegrass sensation fire up the stage. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce St., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointtheatre.com.
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December 3– January 13, 2018 A REALLY GOOD SHEW. As in, Winter Show, which kicks off with sips and nibbles on 12/3 at 2 p.m. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
December 5 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet C. Wess Daniels, author of A Convergent Model of Renewal. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
December 5–31 STELLAR PERFORMANCE. See Triad Stage’s twist on The Nativity story set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity. Performance times vary. Pyrle Theater, 232, South Elm St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
December 6 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet John McNally, author of The Boy Who Really, Really Wanted to Have Sex: The Memoir of a Fat Kid.
December 7 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7:30 p.m. Meet local poet Michael Gaspeny at the launch of his latest volume, Re-Write Men. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. STRUMMIN’ AND HUMMIN’. 7:30 p.m. The bluegrass sounds of John Cowan, with Brooke and Darin Aldridge, fill the air. Van Dyke Performance Center, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 838-3006 or thevandyke.org.
December 8 SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. WINS-BORO. 7 p.m. Veterans of the Winston-Salem music scene crash the Gate City in Camel City Takeover 2. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
December 8–10 HOLIDAY PLAY. Catch Drama Center’s production of Angela Williams Tripp’s Remembering Christmas. Performance times vary. Caldcleugh Multicultural Arts Center, 1700 Orchard Street, Greensboro. Tickets and info: (336) 335-6426 or thedramacenter.com.
December 8–17 NUT JOB. As in the lush production of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Nutcracker, courtesy UNC-School of the Arts. Performance times vary. Stevens Center, 405 W. Fourth St., WinstonSalem. Tickets: (336) 721-1945 or uncsa.edu.
December 9 ARM AND HAMMER. 10. a.m. And forge, too. The Blacksmith is ready and waiting. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org. VINTAGE CHRISTMAS. 2 p.m. Decorations from the 1940s, holiday music, food and at 3 p.m., a visit from Santa. Check out a festive Canary Cottage. Admission: $10 or $5 with a canned food donation. Charlotte Hawkins Brown Musuem, 6136 Burlington Road, Gibsonville. Info: (800)
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Arts Calendar 745-3000 or nchistoricsites.org/chb. BALL RUN. 6 p.m. Or, officially, The Running of the Balls, a road race for runners and walkers under fanciful, lighted spheres hanging overhead. Bring a donation to help the Second Harvest Food Bank. Sunset Hills neighborhood, Greensboro. To register: therunningoftheballs.com.
December 9 & 10 GAEL FORCE. 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.; (Sunday: 4 p.m.) The Christmas story as told through Irish eyes will have you smiling at the Greensboro Christmas Spectacular. Lawndale Baptist Church, 3505 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 288-3824 or lawndalebaptist.org.
December 9 &10; 16 & 17 CRACKERS FOR ’CRACKER. It’s time for toy soldiers, sugar plum fairies and waltzing flowers at Greensboro Ballet’s production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
December 9 & 11 VOX AND SOUNDS. 8 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Get the, er, lo-“Don” at “Don We Now,” Bel Canto Company’s holiday concert. Christ United Methodist Church, 410 N. Holden Road, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2220 or belcantocompany.com
December 10 A JAZZY LITTLE CHRISTMAS. 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. The Piedmont Triad Jazz Orchestra cranks it up for its Fourth Annual Holiday Concert. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com. ROCK HOUNDS. 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. It’s time for smoke and mirrors and over-the-top guitar riffs at “Ghosts of Christmas Eve,” TransSiberian Orchestra’s annual yuletide rock concert. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
December 11 JACKSONIAN. 7 p.m. The King is reborn! No, not the King of Kings, but the King of Pop. Beat it to the Michael Jackson Tribute Show. Greensboro
Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
December 11 & 20 THE OLD BAILEY. 7 p.m. and 1 p.m. George Bailey, that is, protagonist of Frank Capra’s 1946 tearjerker, It’s A Wonderful Life, the first of the Carolina Classic Holiday Movies. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com. INN-VITING. 7:30 p.m. Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire sing, dance and hurl one-liners in the lighthearted Holiday Inn, the first of the Contrary Christmas in The Crown film series. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
December 12 BAH ’UMBUG! 7 p.m. Kermit the Frog plays Bob Cratchit to Michael Caine’s Scrooge (edging out Oscar the Grouch for the role, obviously) in The Muppet Christmas Carol. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Victoria
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100 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar Gilbert, author of A Murder for the Books: A Blue Ridge Library Mystery. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St. Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. RUV IS ALL YOU NEED. 7:30. Cheeky, attractive Brits tug at your heartstrings — assuming you can keep up with multiple plot lines — in Love Actually. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
December 13 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet poet Michael Smith, author of the memoir, And Then There Was Evening, And There Was Morning. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. CONN ARTIST. 7:30 p.m. In a precursor to fake news, a hard-bitten writer poses as a housewife for a magazine publicity stunt in the 1945 rom-com, Christmas in Connecticut. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
December 13 & 19 MERRY AND WHITE. 7 p.m. and 1 p.m. Bing and Danny Kaye yuk it up with help from Vera Ellen and Rosemary Clooney in lurid 1950s Technicolor. Yup. It’s the return of White Christmas. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
SHOP SECRET AFFAIR. 7:30 p.m. Two shop clerks carry on an anonymous, passionate correspondence — until the big reveal. See James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 comedy, The Shop Around the Corner. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
December 13–19
December 14 & 15
SPLASH MOB. Nearly 150 of the country’s top divers take the plunge at the 2017 USA Diving Winter National Championships. Competition times vary. Greensboro Aquatic Center, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 315-8498 or greensboroaquaticcenter.com.
HPU-VILLE. Now in its seventh year, HPU’s Community Christmas Celebration is bigger and better than ever, with marching bands, a life-size Nativity, “snow,” hot dogs, train rides and more. For a shuttle to campus, park at Oak Hollow Mall, 921 Eastchester Drive, High Point. Info: highpoint.edu/Christmas.
December 14
December 14–17
GLORY BE! 7 p.m. Hear the soulful lineup of Casting Crowns, “For King and Country.” Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
SCROOGY-DOO-BE-DOO. High Point Community Theatre presents A Christmas Carol: The Musical. Performance times vary. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce St., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointtheatre.com.
POINTED. 7 p.m. Will Ferrell stars as Buddy the Elf in Elf. ’Nuf said. Carolina Theatre, 310 S.
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December 2017
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Arts Calendar December 15
BOYS-TEROUS. 7 p.m. The Burlington Boys Choir lifts their voices at a candlelight Moravian Love Feast. Old Brick Church. 3699 Brick Church Road, Burlington. Reservations: (336) 266-5067 or email burlingtonboyschoir@ hotmail.com.
Arts & Culture
SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster. com. GAEL APPAREL. 8 p.m. Enjoy the high-Eire musical act, Cherish the Ladies, for “A Celtic Christmas.” Van Dyke Performance Space, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 838-3006 or thevandyke.org.
December 16 WHAT’S COOKIN’? 10 a.m. Find out with a visit to Hoggatt House, where costumed interpreters will demonstrate cooking over an open hearth. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.
NOVEMBER 21–
DECEMBER 31, 2017
THE VOX AND THE SOUNDS, PART DEUX. 3 p.m. Bel Canto Company offers up sounds the kiddies can enjoy with “Don We Now — Family Matinee.” Children, high school–age, and younger are admitted for free. Page High School, 201 Alma Pinnix Drive, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2220 or belcantocompany.com. OPUS CONCERT. 7:30 p.m. Conductors Anne Doyle and Teresa Allred lead Greensboro Youth Chorus. St. Francis Episcopal Church, 3506 Lawndale Road, Greensboro. Info: gsomusiccenter.com.
Fridays at 2:45 p.m. N OVE M B E R 24 – D E C E M B E R 2 2
C A R O L I N G F R I D AY S Tuesdays D E C E M B E R 5 , 12 , A N D 1 9
D AY T O U R S : A 1917 CHRISTMAS 5–8 p.m. Friday, D E C E M B E R 8 Saturday, D E C E M B E R 9
December 17 MERRY (CHRISTMAS) PRANKSTERS. 4 p.m. That would be Don Morgan and crew, the twisted minds behind the comedic, irreverent Piedmont SongBag. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com. AUTHORS, AUTHORS. 7 p.m. Meet Deidra McAfee and BettyJoyce Nash, authors of Lock and Load: Armed Fiction. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernong.com.
December 18
EVENING TOURS: A 1917 CHRISTMAS
RED RYDER REVERIE. 7 p.m. Ralphie, the air rifle, the leg lamp . . . you know the rest. Catch a favorite among the fellas, A Christmas Story. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
W I N STO N - SA L E M , N C Tickets at reynoldahouse.org/holidays
YIPEE-KAY-AY. 7:30 p.m. Bruce Willis plays badass John McClane taking on badder ass Alan Rickman as terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
December 19 N
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C H R I S T M A S
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December 2017
AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Dave K, author of The Bong-Ripping Brides of Count Drogado. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. NOT SO SAINTLY NICK. 7:30 p.m. Billy Bob Thornton is Bad Santa. Say no more. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
(800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
December 20
December 24
MAZEL TOV! 7:30 p.m. Contrary Christmas in the Crown winds up with The Hebrew Hammer (see page 20) The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-3605 or carolinatheatre.com.
JAZZY CHRISTMAS. 6:30 p.m. A special Christmas Eve jazz concert with Sheila Duell, Randy Craven and Neil Clegg adds a little sparkle to the holiday. O.Henry Hotel, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboto. Info: (336) 854-2000 or ohenryhotel.com.
December 21 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 6 p.m. Meet Brittani Hunt, co-author of HerSpaceCo’s Layered Living Planner. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
December 22 SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
December 23 SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets:
December 26 SWARM UP. 2 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
December 28 SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800)745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
December 30 STAGE AND SCREEN. 8 p.m. Greensboro Symphony pays tribute to popular classics at “From Broadway to Hollywood.” Westover
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Arts Calendar
Church, 505 Muirs Chapel Road, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, ext. 224 or greensborosymphony.org.
December 31 TWOFER. Early birds and night owls can ring in the New Year at their choice of two jazz concerts featuring Jessica Mashburn at 5:30 and AnneClaire Niver at 9 p.m. O.Henry Hotel, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboto. Info: (336) 854-2000 or ohenryhotel.com.
WEEKLY HAPPENINGS Mondays BUZZING. 10 a.m. Your busy little bees engage in a Busy Bees preschool program focusing on music, movement, garden exploration and fun in the kitchen, at the Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Preregistration: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com. CHAT-EAU. Noon. French leave? Au contraire! Join French Table, a conversation group. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
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December 2017
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Arts Calendar Tuesdays
READ ALL ABOUT IT. Treat your little ones to story times: BookWorms (ages 12–24 months) meets at 10 a.m.; Time for Twos meets at 11 a.m. Storyroom; Family Storytime for all ages meets at 6:30 p.m. High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com. PINT-SIZED GARDENERS. 3:30 p.m. Instill a love of gardening and growing edible things in your kiddies at Little Sprouts (ages 3 to 5 years). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. To register: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com. PICKIN’ AND GRINNIN’ 6 until 9 p.m. Y’all come for Songs from a Southern Kitchen, featuring Karon Click (12/5), Abigail Dowd and Jason Duff (12/12), Joey Barnes and Courtney Leigh Hudson (12/19), Crystal Bright and Jeremy Haire (12/26). 1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-0707 or lucky32.com/greensboro_music.htm.
Wednesdays
CREATIVE KIN. 5 to 7 p.m. Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins: Enjoy a free evening of artistic expression at ArtQuest. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 greenhillnc.org. MUSSELS, WINE & MUSIC. 7 until 10 p.m. Mussels with house-cut fries for $15, wines from $10–15 a bottle and live music by AM rOdeO — at Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or printworksbistro.com/live_music.htm. ONCE UPON A TIME. 2 p.m. Afterschool Storytime convenes for children of all ages. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.
Thursdays TWICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Preschool Storytime convenes for children ages 3–5. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.
ALL THAT JAZZ. 5:30 until 8 p.m. Hear live, local jazz featuring Dave Fox, Neill Clegg and Matt Kendrick and special guests: Jessica Mashburn (12/7), Diana Tuffin (12/14), Angela Bingham (12/21), Lia Dames (12/28). All performances are at the O.Henry Hotel Social Lobby Bar. No cover. 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or www.ohenryhotel.com/jazz.htm. JAZZ NIGHT. 7 p.m. Fresh-ground, freshbrewed coffee is served with a side of jazz at Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 275-2754 or www.tatestreetcoffeehouse.com. OPEN MIC COMEDY. 8–9:35 p.m. Local pros and amateurs take the mic at the Idiot Box, 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 274-2699 or idiotboxers.com.
Fridays MINI MAKERS. 11 a.m. Let your child (age 5 or younger) bring out his or her inner Van Gogh at ArtQuest’s Masterpiece Fridays, which melds tales from classic storybooks and artistic activities. Cost is $6 per person. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St. Greensboro. To register: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
Arts & Culture
TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. Until December 20, the produce will be fresh, the cut fleurs belles and Honor Cards will
be for sale. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2402 or gsofarmersmarket.org.
Join us for the
Mouse Hunt
December Tue-Sat 10-5. Sun 2-5 #museumholidaymice GreensboroHistory.org 130 Summit Ave. Greensboro 336 373-2982 104 O.Henry
December 2017
Holiday Parade Day Fun
Saturday December 2 from 10 am-1pm Before the parade, visit with Santa!
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar THE HALF OF IT. 5 p.m. Enjoy the hands-on exhibits and activities for half the cost of admission at $5 Fun Fridays ($2 on First Fridays). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
Fridays & Saturdays NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET. 8 p.m. A 90-minute, historical, candlelit ghost walking tour of Downtown Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 905-4060 or carolinahistoryandhaunts.com/ information.
Saturdays TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 7 a.m. until noon. The produce is fresh and the cut fleurs belles. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: gsofarmersmarket.org. THRICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Hear a good yarn at Children’s Storytime. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. WRITE IS MIGHT. 3 p.m. Avoid writer’s block
by joining a block of writers at Come Write In, a confab of scribes who discuss their literary projects. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. JAZZ ENCORE. 6:30 p.m. Hear contemporary jazz cats, Ariel Pocock, Steve Haines and Chad Eby (12/2), Brenda Morrie (12/9), Melva Houston with Roberto Orhiuela (12/16), Lynne Goodwin with John Trotta (12/23), and Zen Poets with Nishah DiMeo (12/30) While noshing on seasonal tapas at O.Henry Jazz series for Select Saturdays. O.Henry Hotel, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or ohenryhotel.com. IMPROV COMEDY. 10 p.m. on Saturday, plus an 8 p.m. show appropriate for the whole family. The Idiot Boxers create scenes on the spot and build upon the ideas of others, creating shows that are one-of-a-kind — at the Idiot Box, 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 2742699 or idiotboxers.com.
$10, will allow you entry to exhibits and more. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com. MISSING YOUR GRANDMA? 3 p.m. Until it’s gone, tuck into Chef Felicia’s skillet-fried chicken, and mop that cornbread in, your choice, giblet gravy or potlikker. Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, 1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-0707 or lucky32.com/fried_chicken.htm.
To add an event, email us at
ohenrymagcalendar@gmail.com
by the first of the month
ONE MONTH PRIOR TO THE EVENT.
Sundays HALF FOR HALF-PINTS. 1 p.m. And grownups, too. A $5 admission, as opposed to the usual
Exceptional, Innovative & Engaging Choral Performances for All
Don We Now
Saturday DECEMBER 9 8:00 pm Monday DECEMBER 11 7:30 pm
Christ United Methodist Church
Arts & Culture
35th Anniversary Season
410 N Holden Rd, Greensboro
“Articulate precision followed by infinite warmth and expressiveness... A colorful and engaging journey...Breathtakingly beautiful.” - Nicolas Rich, Greensboro News & Record, 12/14/15
Holiday Family Matinée Saturday DECEMBER 16 3:00 pm
Page High School
201 Alma Pinnix Dr, Greensboro
“Yellow and Pink”
Acrylic On Paper
40”x60”
A special edition of our holiday concert, perfect for kids of all ages! Featuring Twas the Night Before Christmas & your family’s favorite holiday tunes.
(336) 333-2220 or belcantocompany.com December 2017
Arts &
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
O.Henry 105
Arts & Culture
January 12 & 14, 2018 Tickets on Sale Now (336) 272-0160 www.GreensboroOpera.org
January 12 & 14, 2018 Tickets on Sale Now (336) 272-0160 GreensboroOpera.org
106 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Featuring Laurelyn Dossett, Riley Baugus and Faye Petree in the Beautiful Star Band!
DECEMBER 5-24, 2017
Arts & Culture
: Experience the joy and wonder that has made Beautiful Star the biggest hit in Triad Stage’s history. Presented by The Carroll Companies
BUY TICKETS TODAY! 232 SOUTH ELM STREET | GREENSBORO | 336.272.0160 | TRIADSTAGE.ORG
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O.Henry 107
Carriage House Antiques & Home Decor 336.373.6200
2214 Golden Gate Drive • Greensboro, NC Monday-Friday 10-6 • Saturday • 10-5 Sunday 1-5 Carriage_House@att.net
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108 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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935 boston drive burlington
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534 S. Elm St. • Greensboro, NC 27406 www.antlersandastronauts.com 336.510.8708 hello@antlersandastronauts.com
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December 2017
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Recipes fRom the old city of
JERUSALEM December 9-10 • December 16-17 at the Carolina Theatre
Ask about our beloved Tea with Clara pre-events December 9 & 10 at 1:45pm *Don’t miss this year’s Nutcracker Gala Event on December 16th! Ticket sales at 336-333-2605 www.carolinatheatre.com Event Info: www.greensboroballet.org
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Dr. John Wehe 120 W. Smith Street • Greensboro NC | 336.338.1840
ww w .do w n t o w n gre e n sbo ro an ima lhospital. com 112 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
220 North Church Street Greensboro, NC 27401 p 336.574.2898 f 336.574.3810
modern furniture made locally
www.gcmuseum.com
Whole Wheat Sweets & Treats
Tweens (ages 9-11): Friday, December 8 | 5pm—7pm Teens (ages 12-14): Friday, December 15 | 5pm—7pm GCM Members $30, Non-members $35
Santa’s Holiday Workshop
Saturday, December 9 | Festivities from 11am—5pm | Santa arrives at 3pm GCM Members Free, Non-members $10
Adult Sugar Cookie Decorating Class (ages 21+): Wednesday, December 13 | 6pm—8pm GCM Members $35, Non-members $40
Be Well: Yoga, Food, & Mindfulness Workshop
Tweens (ages 9-11): Thursday, December 21 & Friday, December 22 9am—2pm | GCM Members $75, Non-members $90
Rocking Noon Year’s Eve
Saturday, December 30 | Festivities from 10am—1pm GCM Members Free, Non-members $10 511 S Elm St. | Greensboro NC 27406 | 336.370.1050 areamod.com
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
register at www.gcmuseum.com December 2017
O.Henry 113
Voted Best Menswear Store 2015, 2016, & 2017
Business & Services
We stock over 500 pair of pants
Bill’s KhaKi Ballin TROUsERs JaCK ViCTOR haRT sChaffnER MaRx BERlE MfG. BaROni ManZOni CORBin
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Cris Collinsworth Western & Southern Spokesperson
GET A FREE N O- OB LI GATIO N FIN A N C IA L REV IE W
We Service What We Sell & Offer Personal Attention 336-854-9222 • www.HartApplianceCenter.com
2201 Patterson Street, Greensboro, NC (2 Blocks from the Coliseum) Mon. - Fri.: 9:30am - 5:30 pm Sat. 10 am - 2 pm • Closed Sunday
Look good riding and working in the barn this winter with stylish and high functioning pieces from Horse and Rider Mention this ad and receive 10% off your entire purchase.
English Riding Apparel and Equipment 5549 W. Market St. Greensboro, NC 27409 336.852.0906 horseandrider@bellsouth.net Monday-Friday 10-5:30 Saturday 10-4:00 • Sunday Closed
Sandy Shelton Financial Representative 7025 Albert Pick Rd Greensboro, NC 27409 office 336.289.7384 email cell 336.543.3843 website
sandy.shelton@wslife.com www.westernsouthernlife.com
The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company Western-Southern Life Assurance Company
The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company operates in DC and all states except AK, CT, ME, MA, NH, NY, and VT. Western-Southern Life Assurance Company operates in DC and all states except AK, ME, NH, NY, and RI. Cincinnati, OH. Spokesperson is a compensated endorser.
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114 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
get your
eyoenbrows ONLY way to get the FUZZ off your face
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Bill Strickland, CCIM Commercial Real Estate Broker/REALTOR 336.369.5974 | bstrickland@bipinc.com
Gateway Mortgage Group is a registered service mark of Gateway Mortgage Group, llc nMls 7233. Greensboro Branch: 5 A Oak Branch Drive, Greensboro, nc 27407
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
STYLE SHOWN: KA’A POINT
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December 2017
O.Henry 115
8/14/17 4:14 PM
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116 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
shops • service • food • farms
support locally owned businesses
Celebrating 10 yearS In BuSIneSS
MoviNG To Dover SquAre iN JANuAry 2018 1616-H Battleground ave 27408 • greensBoro, nC
Simply Meg’s Savvy Style. Purely PerSonal.
The Shops at Friendly Center 3334-123 W. Friendly Ave. Greensboro, NC 27410 P: 336.272.2555 www.simplymegs.com
o u r c u Sto m e r S a r e yo u nG a nd t h e yo u nG at h e a r t. they are the c l aSSi c a m e r i c a n b e au ty o r t h o Se lo o k i nG fo r t h r e a d S th at a r e u ni q u e ly o n tr e nd.
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boutique boutique 8 0 9 G reen Valley r oad Sui te 101
| 336-944-5335
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Tuesday- Saturday 10-5pm 3500 Old Battleground Rd. Suite A (336) 617-4275 • www.aubreyhomedesign.com
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
December 2017
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
O.Henry 117
shops • service • food • farms
support locally owned businesses
For Yo Friendly Shopping Center, Greensboro, NC | 800-528-3618 ● 336-299-9767 | www.extraingredient.com
Contact us for Holiday Ideas
HanD cRaftED, cuStOm WOOD itEmS RED DOG WOODWORKS - Bill HiER
Summerfield, N.C. 27358 | 267-566-4574 www.reddogwoodwork.com | reddogwoodwork@gmail.com etsy.com/shop/reddogwoodwork | pinterest.com/reddogwoodwork facebook.com/reddogwoodwork | instagram.com/reddogwoodwork
118 O.Henry
December 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
shops • service • food • farms
You Take Care Of Your Holidays, Let Webster’s Take Care of Your Car!
support locally owned businesses
wE wisH you a
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& HEaLTHy Holiday Season
• State of the Art Diagnostics • ASE Certified • Free Shuttle • 3 Year / 36K Mile Warranty
1052 Grecade St. • GreenSboro, nc 27408 Conveniently located in Midtown
306 Grumman Rd , Greensboro WebstersImportService.com
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dr. Janine M. oliver
www.BAHpetcare.com
Sometimes it’s smarter to lease than to sell your home. Call us when you think you’re there! Michelle will be pleased to discuss how Burkely Rental Homes can help you. -Sterling Kelly, CEO Burkely Communities
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
December 2017
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
O.Henry 119
GreenScene
Noor Alojails, Emily Marohn
Lisa Riester, Marijana Mikic, Melanie Layler
UNCG Founders Day Festival 125th Anniversary Thursday, October 5, 2017
Photographs by Lynn Donovan
CeCe Crudup, Dee Milisic David, Nola & Emily Phillips
Jacquie Gilliam, UNC President Margaret Spellings, UNCG Chancellor Frank Gilliam, Jr. Jasmine Palmer, Makenna Matthijs, MacKenzie Winslow
Wilfred Alhambra, Hannah Eure, Jared Burch, Lauren Oliver, Derricke Allen
Aimee Withrow, Tori Shoemaker
120 O.Henry
Gabriella Muinde-Pires, Amanda Aileru, Candace Ramsey
Anthony Roque, Goydi Gonzalas, Linda Osorio, Jacqueline Lopez
December 2017
Chance Mullis, Jessenia Robles
Mukund Nuthi, Pawan Kumar Gandham
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene
Effie Varitimidis, Doris Tanger
Jack Horner, Sue Cole
Power of the Purse Donor Reception Sunday, October 15, 2016 Women to Women Luncheon Monday, October 16, 2017 Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Clem Clement, Bill & Leslie Buschmann
Robin Elder, Wanda Ladd
Lori Fernald Khamala (Rising Star), Soledad O’Brien (Keynote Speaker), Shirley Frye (Woman of the Year)
Carol Levin, Dave Reich
Sean Chen & Lori Fernald Khamala, Shirley & Henry Frye
Erica Parker, Andy Bunn
Tammy Sharpe, Paula McMillan, Sameera Kenney Ginger Griffin, Carolyn Maddux
Donna Griffin, Phelps Sprinkle
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Ashlee Wiley, Misty McCall, Walker Sanders, Ann Lineweaver, Claudia Reich
December 2017
O.Henry 121
GreenScene
Robin Holtz, Charlotte Barnes
Hillside Sip & See
Preservation Greensboro Benefit Thursday, October 26, 2017 Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Benjamin Briggs, Mary Beth DeLoache
Liz Rights, Hazel Johnson,Kay Quinlivan
Linda Lane, Judith Cushman-Hammer
Kathleen Whitmire, Ninevah Murray
Isabella Migliarese, Zachary Hodgin, Tyson Howlett, Amber McCullough
Jill Weber, Judth Kastner, Kathy Ramsay
Laura Redd, Kerstin Leigh, Joanne Galo
122 O.Henry
December 2017
Cynthia Holzheimer, Anne Bowers, Susan Uzzle
Sam & Jennifer Daley, Kathy Menold
Tierra Rascoe, Mirha Basellos
Ann Stringfield, Joe & Anne Csuku
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
online ➛
DANCE like nobody’s watching
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www.ohenrymag.com The Art & Soul of Greensboro
celebrate the
HOLIDAYS wItH uS Positano has been proud to bring a little bit of Italy to Greensboro and Asheboro. With our generations of traditional Italian family recipes and the freshest ingredients available, we are sure that you will have the most enjoyable dining experience possible.
Tuesday-Thursday 11-10 Friday-Saturday 11-11 Sunday 11:30-10 Monday Closed
3 3 6 . 2 8 8 . 4 9 0 0
•
PASTA | SEAFOOD | CHICKEN & MORE TARGET SHOPPING CENTER ON LAWNDALE
w w w. p o s i ta n o. c c December 2017
O.Henry 123
GreenScene Jewish Foundation of Greensboro 21st Anniversary Gala Celebration Sunday, October 29, 2017 Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Caroline Panzer, Kate Panzer, Arlene Gutterman
Hal Corin, Dahlia Gutterman
Jon Glazman, Rabbi Joshua Ben-Gideon
Joyce & Bob Shuman
Susan Gutterman, Freddy Robinson (Honorees)
Lois & Howie Mezer, Cathy Levinson
Marsha Glazman, Victoria Milstein
Sarah & Freddy Robinson, Julie Sheffer
124 O.Henry
December 2017
Mark Caudill, Sara Lee Saperstein, Ellen Gefen
Bill Cassell, Debbi & Neil Aberman
Norman & Sylvia Samet
Gene & Gail Lebauer
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
A Real Joy of the HOLIDAY Season is the opportunity to say
Thank You
And wish you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah And the very best for the New Year Kay and Xan
Chesnutt - Tisdale Team Xan Tisdale 336-601-2337
Kay Chesnutt 336-202-9687
Xan.Tisdale@bhhsyostandlittle.com Kay.Chesnutt@bhhsyostandlittle.com ©2017 BHH Affiliates, LLC. An independently operated subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, and a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.® Equal Housing Opportunity.
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
THEDOGS.COM 32 STATES 540.593.DOGS
December 2017
O.Henry 125
Your Complete Needlework Store Since 1972
Holiday gift ideas * Versatile bags for needle
work or traVel * Hand-painted needlepoint canVases * gift certificates * so mucH more come Visit us!
1614-C West Friendly Avenue Greensboro, nC 27403 336-272-2032 WWW.stitChpointonFriendly.Com mondAy-FridAy: 10:00-6:00 sAturdAy: 10:00-4:00
Set Them. Don’t just follow the trends
Visit us in Gibsonville or online at Wadesjewelers.com 101 EAST MAIN STREET • GIBSONVILLE, NC 27249
336.449.4949 | wadesjewelers.com
126 O.Henry
December 2017
PerfectGift the
This Holiday Season!
Specializing in customized and pre-made gift baskets
Shops at Friendly Center 3354-141 W. Friendly Ave. Greensboro, NC 27410 336-315-6000
Oils Vinegars Gifts Gourmet Foods Skin Care Linens and More!
Midtownoliveoil.com Mon.-Fri. 10:00 am to 7:00 pm Sat. 10:00 am to 6:00 pm Sun. 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Accidental Astrologer
Mixing It Up Sagittarius brings a merry, motley crew
By Astrid Stellanova
Happy Holidays, Star Children!
December births make me think of Forrest Gump’s good ole chocolate-box. Born in December: Crooners Frank Sinatra, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift; politicians and criminals, like Winston Churchill and drug lord Pablo Escobar. Then, everybody else that is waaaay outside the box: Pope Francis and Walt Disney, Larry Byrd and Mary Queen of Scots. Stephen Spielberg and Richard Pryor. Beethoven. Nostradamus and Bruce Lee. Woody Allen and Samuel L. Jackson. Keith Richards and Jamie Foxx. Joseph Stalin and Benjamin Disraeli. . . Ad Astra — Astrid Sagittarius (November 22–December 21) There ain’t nothing old about you but your money! And Honey, you know you are feeling the rush of being flush since a minor crisis passed this year. You escaped just fine with your wallet, hair and teeth intact. Now, the cake is ready, friends are gathering and birthday wishes are all coming true. Have faith. Your life is the sum of a lot of struggle but nothing was wasted — not even your dryer lint. (We can talk about that hoarding thing another day.) Capricorn (December 22–January 19) You don’t need to keep looking in the rearview mirror. All good things lie ahead, Sugar. Memory lane is closed. And what you have lying straight before you is worth focusing on. Meanwhile, there is a great opportunity for investing in yourself and a new idea in the new year. Don’t let that escape you — take the off ramp! Aquarius (January 20–February 18) Well, look at you social caterpillar! You have broken into a tough circle of friends that only took about a thousand forevers. But you were patient and they finally saw that one of you was worth ten of a lot of people. You’re well loved, Honey Bun. Pisces (February 19–March 20) You sayin’ your Jaguar can’t make it up the driveway at your mountain place? Or you’re allergic to all metals but platinum? Sugar, that is something called a humblebrag. Nobody else has told you, so I have to. It is true you have been prosperous. And that you have especially fine taste. Just say a little bit less about it. Aries (March 21–April 19) Somebody bamboozled you pretty good. Looked like you couldn’t tell a skunk from a Billy goat. Well, they reckoned wrong. You’ll get your chance to settle the score but don’t let it concern you. The view ain’t worth the climb, Honey Bunny. Taurus (April 20–May 20) There is one somebody who gets under your skin and makes you lose your everloving mind. You know who and when. You have got to stop the blame game, hurling insults faster than Kim Jong-un. It might be a game to them but it is bad for your constitution, Sugar. Gemini (May 21–June 20) You’ve been showing too many teeth. Makes people nervous, and that completely The Art & Soul of Greensboro
undermines you. Stop trying so hard to be liked. You don’t have to work that angle. If you can stand in your truth, they will admire you, anyhow. You are likeable enough, Sally Field. Cancer (June 21–July 22) Let’s get some lumbar support for you, since you’re having a lot of trouble with your backbone. The thing is, you let a situation get out of control because you felt a lot of misplaced sympathy. But what they need from you is leadership. That might require you to be a lot firmer than your Beautyrest mattress. Leo (July 23–August 22) Yep, your little plan fell into place, which either puts you in the catbird seat or the litter box. You were cunning and scored a win. But is this a game you really want to win? Ask that question. Also, a friend from your past needs a pal. It would be good karma just to let them know you remember them. Virgo (August 23–September 22) Can’t never could, Sugar, but don’t kill yourself. It is also true that flop sweat ain’t becoming. During the holidays you may be asked to step up and take on a social role that you have never especially wanted. But it will be growth for you. And a toehold inside a door that has been closed for a very long time. Libra (September 23–October 22) You speak Southern? Then you know not to look over yonder for something right under foot. Focus is all you need to find your heart’s desire. And even though you feel like you have given all you have for a mighty big goal, you have something important and don’t even recognize it. Scorpio (October 23–November 21) Hunh? Darling, you brought a cup of Ramen noodles to a knife fight? I don’t know what got into you lately, but you have had this idea that life is a spectator sport. Well, what are you planning to do with the rest of this special life? This month is a good time to ask yourself if you are going to keep chasing after unicorns. OH
For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path. December 2017
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O.Henry Ending
December Diploma The other gift of the Magi
By Phil Koch
America, ended his one-room schoolhouse education in Ireland at age 12. My own father, a product of the East Side of New York City, quit grammar school before graduation. In each case they were expected to go to work early in life to help their large families and younger siblings survive. Little wonder that both bright men placed a high value on education, imbuing their children with its importance. “A good education is something no one can ever take from you” became the mantra for my wife Anne and me, and for our family.
When Anne, a registered nurse, decided to resume college at age 61, she mused, “Do you realize how old I’ll be when I finish?” I replied, “How old will you be if you don’t?” Being old can easily be a state of mind. Satchel Paige, the great baseball pitcher, once said, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” Anne graduated at age 70 with a double major in history and English, Phi Beta Kappa. No less chronologically advantaged, I wrestled with the same challenge and wrote about it in O.Henry two years ago. It was a story of an impatient old man who, burnt out after two years of chasing a history degree, decided to end the pursuit. Health questions, and the required study of a foreign language, motivated the decision to stop at the time. With an irony that O.Henry himself would appreciate, I found that I missed college even before the story had been published. I missed the stimulation from classmates that I interacted with. All were hardworking, some commuting and holding down part-time jobs while taking 18 credits a semester. I missed the fascinating subjects, the discipline of study, and the research and the writing.
128 O.Henry
December 2017
After personal reevaluation, I decided to return. UNCG let me study other subjects — German history and literature — in lieu of a language requirement. That helped encourage me to return once more to college at age 80, this time at a slower and healthier pace of three or six credits per semester. No longer in a hurry, I realized that the pursuit was more rewarding than the goal! The last two years have been delightfully stimulating. Topics included “A History of North Carolina,” “The Berlin Blockade and Berlin Airlift of 1948,” “The History of Voting Rights in America,” and my senior thesis, The Influence of Gilded Age Music on Racial Stereotyping. I loved the challenges, the satisfaction in completing the papers. Sometimes I hear, “I’ve thought about going back to school but never acted on it. Maybe I will . . .” I tell people, education is a gift that never ceases to give back. At last, my Bachelor of Arts History degree is here — 65 years after my 1952 high school graduation. At age 82, I’m finished with school. And it doesn’t look like any college will come forward to use my remaining few years of athletic eligibility. I am the last of my family, which includes four children, their spouses and six grandchildren, to complete my college education. Anne’s dad, Tom Burke from County Mayo, Ireland and my dad, Phil Koch Senior from New York City, would agree that it is the best gift anyone can give to oneself. Merry Christmas, Phil. OH Now that he’s graduated, Phil Koch is preparing the next item his bucket list. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR
My father-in-law, an immigrant to
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