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One of the best Fountain Manor has to offer! Main level master suite with dual vanities & shower. Gracious living & dining rooms-note built in break front. Family room with raised fireplace & wall of bookcases, sunroom with ceiling fans overlooks well established patio flora & fauna. Great kitchen with built in banquet, island & kitchen window. Upper level bedrooms more than generous & updated full bath.
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3506 Bromley Wood Ln $1,750,000
1914 Lafayette Ave $899,900
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4200 Cranleigh Dr $795,000
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4006 Gaston Ct $749,000
1904 Huntington Rd $599,000
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201 N Elm Street $581,280
2810 Lake Forest Dr $549,000
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201 Topwater Ln $475,000
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2314 Elm St $469,000
2910 Round Hill Rd $449,000
314 Lemons Rd $440,000
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208 E Bessmener Ave $225,000
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6108 Morgan Ashley Dr $172,900
4205 Family Ln $172,000
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104 Sunset Circ #103 $133,900
411 W Washington St#101 $119,000
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SEE ONE YOU LIKE?
To arrange a showing or get more information on one of these charming homes, call one of our agents or visit trmhomes.com today.
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October 2017
DEPARTMENTS 17 Simple Life By Jim Dodson 20 Short Stories 23 Doodad By Ogi Overman 25 Life’s Funny By Maria Johnson 27 Omnivorous Reader By D.G. Martin 31 Scuppernong Bookshelf 33 A Writer’s Life By Wiley Cash 37 True South By Susan Kelly 39 The Pleaures of Life Dept. Compiled by Lynn Donovan and Nancy Oakley
43 In The Spirit By Tony Cross 47 Interior Life By Waynette Goodson 53 Evolving Species By Ross Howell Jr.
FEATURES 75 Foggy Morning on 421 Poetry by Karen Filipski 76 Design Lab By Kristy Woodson Harvey
For Catherine and John Adcox, creating home interiors is an ongoing scientific experiment
86 The Craftmen’s Art By Maria Johnson
The warmth and good energy of Michael Walker’s bungalow and greenhouse
94 Your New Cadillac Has Arrived By Billy Ingram As another repurposed architectural gem is rescued by providence and sweat equity a nearly century-old monument to American ingenuity promises to reignite a once vibrant neighborhood
102 Reverie Place By Ross Howell Jr.
Richard Petty’s homage to the love of a lifetime
109 October Almanac By Ash Alder
Sunny spots, Harry Houdini’s tricks and the world’s largest pumpkin
57 The Road Home By Caroline Langerman 59 My Life in a Thousand Words By Brian Faulkener 61 Sporting Life By Tom Bryant 65 Life of Jane By Jane Borden 69 Birdwatch By Susan Campbell 71 Wandering Billy By Billy Eye 1 10 Arts Calendar 134 GreenScene 143 Accidental Astrologer By Astrid Stellanova 144 O.Henry Ending By Cynthia Adams Cover Photograph and Photograph this page by Bert VanderVeen
8 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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M A G A Z I N E
Volume 7, No. 10 “I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com 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, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Ross Howell Jr., Billy Ingram, Sara King, Susan Kelly, Brian Lampkin, D.G. Martin, Meridith Martens, Ogi Overman, Romey Petite, Stephen Smith, Astrid Stellanova
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Hattie Aderholdt, Advertising Manager 336.601.1188, hattie@ohenrymag.com Lisa Bobbitt, Advertising Assistant 336.617.0090, ohenryadvertising@thepilot.com Brad Beard, Graphic Designer Lisa Allen, 336.210.6921 • lisa@ohenrymag.com Amy Grove, 336.456.0827 • amy@ohenrymag.com Allison Shore, 336.698.6374 • allison@ohenrymag.com CIRCULATION
Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488 SUBSCRIPTIONS
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©Copyright 2017. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. O.Henry Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC
For more information about Dr. Olin and surgery visit www.GreensboroOrthopaedics.com
12 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Simple Life
Prayers and Poetry To see inward, first look up
By Jim Dodson
Early one morn-
ILLUSTRATION BY ROMEY PETITE
ing not long ago, as I do most days, I took the day’s first cup of Joe out to the front yard to sit for a spell in an old wooden Adirondack chair that provides a wide view of the night sky. Something about its vast clockwork beauty comforts me. My foundling dog, Mulligan, seems to dig our predawn ritual, too.
October and November’s skies, particularly in the hours well before sunrise, are among the clearest of the year, and this particular morning was outstanding, with Venus shining over my left shoulder and a gibbous moon over the right, casting faint shadows on the lawn. The stillness was deep, the silence broken only by a lone dog barking miles away and the sound of a train grinding over the horizon to its destination. Such peaceful hours — my version, I suppose, of an ancient matins ritual, a venture into thin spaces — always restore something needed in me, a healing sense of optimism and gratitude. Pieces of my favorite poems and prayers waft through my mind. The recovering journalist in me, however, understands that the serenity of a glittering firmament is either a gift from God or a grand parlor trick of the universe, merely the latest quiet before the storms of another day on this beautiful blue planet we inhabit. As I sat there gazing up at the early stars, the largest Atlantic hurricane of modern times was bearing down upon the Florida Straits, a Cat 5 storm with eight million people in its sights. Overnight, an 8.1 earthquake had rocked the coast of Southern Mexico, the largest recorded in that nation in 100 years, killing 96, many in their beds. This was mere days after a Gulf hurricane transformed Houston into a waterland of death and misery, robbing tens of thousands of their homes. There were also record wildfires burning out West and killer floods across India. Suddenly I heard the voice of my old Latin teacher, Professor A. “So, young souls, why are you here?” he asked on the first day of Introduction to Latin and the Classics. This was the Fall of 1971. A girl spoke up to say she believed Latin was necessary for the law career she hoped to have someday. Another, aiming for medicine, concurred. “I heard it was a fun class and I need three credits to graduate,” offered some wiseguy in back. The class laughed. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Around the room it went until it came to me. Truthfully, a freshman English lit and history major, I was there because I’d opted to sign up for three Latin courses in order to avoid a single course in calculus, what my faculty advisor referred to as the “classical death option.” “The second book I ever owned was an illustrated book of Greek and Roman Myths,” I said, hoping that would suffice. Professor A. smiled. “If I may ask, what was your first?” “The Little Prince,” I replied. This brought another smile. “Perhaps someday you will be an astronaut.” Then, a bit of advice. “Anytime you wonder why you’re really here on this Earth, I suggest that you simply look up and let the wonder fill you they way it grounded ancient travelers and sages. The sky makes philosophers of everyone.” Four autumns later, on my way home to Greensboro to take a job as a rookie reporter at my hometown paper, I dropped by Professor A.’s office to say thank you for opening a larger world to me. Because of him, I’d read Cicero and Ovid and a translated Odyssey and come to love the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. If my grasp of Latin wasn’t the best, though a few bits bubble up from time to time, my understanding of the Roman and Greek minds was like a gift from the gods, something I would take with me — and turn to — throughout my life and career. Luis Acevez was a dapper little man, a scholarly son of Guadalajara who favored tweed jackets and striped bowties. His bearing was formal, Old World. He stood and offered me his hand, wished me Godspeed with a hint of a bow and that same Socratic smile. “Any time you lose your way or forget why you are here, just look up and the stars will remind you.” He went to his shelf and pulled out a slim volume, a new Penguin edition of Emperor Aurelius’s famous meditations. “Salve,” he said, offering the classic Roman greeting which meant Hail and Live Well! I saw Professor A. only one other time. If I believed in accidents, this might simply have been a happy one. But life has shown me there’s no such thing as accidents. Many years later, I was briefly visiting the campus to receive an honor for my writing. While killing time at the student bookstore, I spotted him — almost didn’t recognize him without his tweeds and striped ties, not really sure he would remember me. “Ah,” he said with delight, “the young fellow who didn’t become an astronaut after all.” I was touched that he remembered me. He’d been retired for more than a decade. I was even more touched when he mentioned that he’d taken great pleasure in following my career as a journalist. By this point in my still-young working life, I’d written about everything October 2017
O.Henry 17
Simple Life
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from pointy-headed Klansmen in Alabama to serial killers in Atlanta. I’d covered so many misbehaving politicians and so much violent death and mayhem across my native South, I’d finally been force to flee to a winding green river in Vermont to try to sort out the world and find a measure of inner peace. That’s where I discovered arctic winter nights full of glittering stars and a silence so deep and healing, I heard my own pulse slowing down. That’s where I reread the classics, rediscovered that old copy of the Meditations and started my life anew. My presence on the campus was because of a memoir I’d published about my final travels with a wise and funny father, an adman with a poet’s heart who helped me find the way to a more fulfilling life. Though I never mentioned his name, Professor A. had played a part in that eventual rebirth and memoir. So I thanked him again for that new Penguin edition of the Meditations which was still with me, now dog-earred, impossibly marked up and coming apart at the seams. This seemed to please him. Since that time, whenever the world itself appeared to be coming apart at the seams, I have turned to poets and Rome’s Philosopher King for useful perspective. “And anytime I forget why I am here,” I told my old professor, “I simply look up at the stars.” He just smiled. “Salve,” he said. “Salve,” I returned the ancient greeting. This is why I sit beneath the stars most mornings with my coffee and my dog, Mulligan, named for a second chance at life, regardless of season or weather. Even if they aren’t visible, I know the stars are always there. Often I send up a simple prayer of thanks — the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart says a simple thank-you works wonders — and other times I simply think about poets and philosophers who’ve helped me on my long journey from darkness to light, especially an adman with a poet’s heart and a dapper little professor who found his guidance in the stars. “Last night,” wrote the poet Wallace Stevens, “I spent an hour in the dark transept of St. Patrick’s Cathedral where I go now and then in my lonely moods. An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and our responses.” Over supper recently, a friend who described her pilgrimage to see the Summer’s eclipse in totality as “a spiritual experience,” remarked that the record hurricane and earthquake were merely Mother Earth explaining that we have become careless stewards of this marvelous blue planet. I suddenly remembered a passage from the old Emperor that I committed to memory decades ago: “Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that Controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment.” Almost on cue for the gods, another old friend at the table who finds his deepest healing in making music with his one of his six guitars, began quoting a Southern troubadour named Walt Wilkins, whose song perfectly explained my mornings beneath the heavens. I can’t explain a blessed thing Not a falling star, or a feathered wing Or how a man in chains has the strength to sing Just one thing is clear to me There’s always more than what appears to be And when the light’s just right I swear I see poetry OH Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.
18 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Short Stories
Hoedown
There may be a nip in the air and autumn leaves drifting by your window, but it’s not too early to be thinking about spring — especially if you’re a gardener. Lucky for you, the Guilford County Center of the NC Cooperative Extension is offering a series of fall gardening classes covering when and how to plant bulbs that will produce spring flowers (October 8, 11 and 19) and how all those leaves can be used in composting (October 22, 30 and November 2). To register for the classes, held at various times and locations, and to see a list of more gardening courses, go to guilford.ces.ncsu.edu.
Piedmont Opera & HanesBrands Inc. present the Pulitzer Prize-winning production
The Art of the Tart
SILENT NIGHT
We all know that apart from Mom and baseball, there’s nothing more American than apple pie. And since it’s apple season, might as well learn how to make this national favorite. On October 28, take advantage of the latest in a series of tastings and cooking demonstrations at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market (506 Yanceyville Street), and learn to make a rustic apple tart from Chef Steve Terrill of Red Chair Dinners. Once you get rolling — in dough, that is — and slicing and dicing, too . . . you’ll make Mom proud. Info: gsofarmersmarket.org.
Music by Kevin Puts • Libretto by Mark Campbell
A Piece of Peace
For 35 years Bel Canto Company has been making joyful noises with its live (and lively) choral performances. In case you’ve wondered, the Italian phrase “bel canto” translates as “beautiful singing.” But the musical group’s vocal phrasing, inflection and harmonies are altogether something more complex and ethereal. Besides, music critics, musicologists and scholars have never been able to agree on a succinct definition of bel canto. But does it really matter? Just hearing the exquisite blend of voices calling to the soul and stirring the better angels of our nature defines the group’s uplifting sound well enough. Why not experience the sublime on October 7, 8 and 9 when Bel Canto Company kicks off its 35th season with “Spirit of Change?” Held at Ebenezer Lutheran Church (1905 Walker Avenue), the concert will highlight the music of another master of the sublime, Johann Sebastian Bach. The program will have you yearning for more, so keep an eye out for the company’s holiday concert, “Don We Now” in December and its finale, “There Is Sweet Music Here” next spring. Here’s to another 35 years, at least! Tickets and info: (336) 333-2220 or belcantocompany.com.
The story of the Christmas Truce, an unofficial break from combat during World War I, has captivated the human imagination since the event occurred in December of 1914. It inspired the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, which tells the story of soldiers in French, Christmas 1914 Scottish andAsGerman regiments who paused from fighting to celebrate Christmas, sing carnations fought, men chose to share a peace,their celebrating their humanity ols to onemoment anotherof from respective trenches, ultimately exchanging gifts, and by one acin theof worst of tragedies. count, playing a game soccer in No Man’s Land. In 2011 the film’s screenplay by Christian This new opera, recounting the Carion was adapted to an opera, Silent Night, with music by Kevin Puts and libretto by spontaneous Christmas truce of the First World War, Mark Campbell. It debuted at Minnesota Opera to standing-room-only crowds. Expect the has traveled the globe, and now makes its North Carolina premiere. same when Silent Night opens Piedmont Opera’s season (October 27–31) in Winston-Salem, October 27th at 8:00 PM of the Great War that did not, as hoped, end all commemorating the 100th anniversary October 29th at 2:00 PM wars — but for one October brief, shining moment, offered peace. Tickets: piedmontopera.org 31st at 7:30 PM The Stevens Center of the UNCSA in Winston-Salem PiedmontOpera.org or 336.725.7101
Go Figure!
Silent Night, based on the screenplay by Christian Carion For the motion picture Joyeux Noël produced by Nord-Ouest Production Commissioned by Minnesota Opera A Minnesota Opera New Works Initiative Production By arrangement with Aperto Press, publisher Bill Holab Music: Sole Agent OHenrySN.indd 1
20 O.Henry
October 2017
At first glance, they appear to be preColombian artifacts. But the curious sculpted figures bearing happy, angry or pensive expressions are, in fact, contemporary works that comprise the exhibit Kukuli Velarde: Falk Visiting Artist — on view October 28–January 28, 2018 at Weatherspoon Art Museum (500 Tate Street). Inspired by a photograph of a vessel made by the indigenous Huastec people in what is now current-day Mexico, the Peruvian artist, Velarde, set about sculpting her own cast of characters reflecting a range of human emotions, as well as containing cultural, mythical, religious and artistic references. Info: weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
8/7/2017 11:49:11 AM
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
KUKULI VELARDE, “TALLADA”, 1997-2005. LOW-FIRED WHITE CLAY WITH OIL PAINT AND WAX. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Bach Atcha
“A tautly paced and involving work” -The New York Times
Bullish on The Bull City
We at O.Henry aren’t shy about tooting our own horn. So we’re sending a shout-out to one of our valued contributors, Robin Sutton Anders, who’s written about houses, design and neighborhoods for this publication, as well as lending her artistic talents to story illustrations, including last month’s opus on Buffalo Creek. Recently she and writing collaborator Eleanor Spicer Rice produced a striking coffee table book, Becoming Durham: Grit, Belief and a City Transformed, (Verdant Word Press $37.95). Using individual stories of politicos, baseball players, musicians, small business owners and craft brewers, among others, as well as archival and new photographs, and illustrations packaged in a stunning, layered design by Greensboro creative director Ann L. Harvey, the book recounts the comeback of the Triangle’s Bull City, from a downat-its-heels manufacturing town to a forward-looking center of art, tech and culture. Sound familiar? We’d like to think this is just the first of several tomes about other beloved N.C. cities to come. Info: verdantword.com/press/becoming-durham.
Ogi Sez Ogi Overman October has, perhaps more than any other month, many things going for it. But one of them, at least this year, is not the Eagles. Yes, they’ll be in town, but with ticket prices ranging from $270 to $2,700, my advice would be to save your money and go to every other concert on this list, and still come out ahead. Harrumph!
• October 13, Carolina Theatre: One of my most anticipated events every year is the Land Jam fundraiser for the Piedmont Land Conservancy. This year is no exception, with the best banjoist on Earth, Bela Fleck, and his lovely clawhammering wife, Abigail Washburn — plus Laurelyn Dossett. There’s also a surprise on the bill, but I’m sworn to secrecy.
125 And Counting!
• October 15, Greensboro Coliseum:
In June, UNCG kicked off its 125th anniversary and this month, the festivities really get cranking on Founder’s Day, (October 5), which will include a carnival-like celebration with food, entertainment and fun for students, university employees and the public, as well as a concert by Rihannon Giddens in the UNCG Auditorium that evening. Then it’s homecoming week (October 18–22) and at month’s end, on October 28, you, your children and dogs can don a costume to participate in Run 4 the Greenway, a fundraiser for the Downtown Greenway, which will feature a 1.25 mile run along Spring Garden Street to the UNCG campus. Go Spartans! Info: greensboro.com; jonesracingcompany.com. Concert tickets: (336) 271-0160 or triadstage.org.
Now here’s an arena show worth the price of admission. The Foo Fighters bring it night after night, year after year, leaving audiences breathless, sweaty and smiling. Plus, you might still have a few bucks left in your pocket.
Grave Importance
• October 27, Muddy Creek Music Hall: My heart skipped a beat when I discovered that Underhill Rose was going to be in the area. I am a sucker for three-part female harmony, and nobody does it better. They’ve become the darlings of the Americana world, and you need to jump aboard, if you haven’t already.
’Tis the season of ghosts and goblins, and what better way to celebrate it than by communing with the dead — and the living? No, we’re not suggesting a séance, but a walk through Greensboro’s oldest graveyard, Green Hill Cemetery, (901 Wharton Street), dating to1840 and containing the headstones and markers of some of the Gate City’s most prominent residents, such as the Bryans and the Richardsons. But it is the legacy of another long-gone Greensborian, Bill Craft, whose plantings are, in large part, responsible for keeping the green in Green Hill’s 51 acres. In this veritable arboretum, you’ll see gingkos, maples, Chinese oak, rare pines and, appropriate for the occasion, devilwood trees. Just sign up for the last of the year’s walking tours presented by Friends of Green Hill Cemetery (weather permitting), scheduled for October 29 at 4 p.m. and ponder the hereafter as you wander through the here and now. For more information: friends of greenhillcemetery.org.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
• October 20, High Point Theatre: Speaking of power trios with alliterative names, how about one of my all-time faves, Los Lobos? Blending Tex-Mex with rock ’n’ roll, they created a whole new genre. Perhaps a bit of a novelty at first (outside Texas), their sound is now considered timeless.
• October 31, Lucky 32: Halloween
happens to fall on a Tuesday this year, the same night L32 hosts its Music from a Southern Kitchen series. And who better to have a dress-up party with than our own Divine Miss M, Jessica Mashburn, and our reigning pop star, Evan Olson? What to wear, what to wear. . . October 2017
O.Henry 21
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.
PARKER WHITE, 37 YOUTH CRUSADER When Parker White became a parent, she realized a sense of duty that sparked her interest in helping others and ignited her curiosity about the children in her community. Parker reached out to Guilford County Schools to learn about the unmet needs of the county’s students and learned that childhood hunger was one of the most prevalent issues. “It’s hard to be successful and concentrate in school if you are hungry.” Parker created “BackPack Beginnings,” a non-profit organization dedicated to delivering child-centric services to feed, comfort and clothe children in need. “Faith is important to me and I wanted to help.” Parker thought she would help one school, running the program out of her dining room and helping to nourish about 50 kids. Six years later, Parker and her cohort of 200+ volunteers serve over 6,000 children annually. BackPack Beginnings aims to meet all the basic needs of Guilford County youth by providing kid-friendly shelf-stable food to preschool and elementary school-aged children; comfort items including blankets, stuffed animals, books, hygiene products, and school supplies to abused/ neglected, homeless, foster, and refugee children; direct access to free and nutritious food for middle and high schoolers; and school uniforms and clothing.
DR. KENNETH RUFF, 52 BAND DIRECTOR Welcome to “The Greatest Homecoming on Earth” at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University! One of the big attractions at every N.C. A&T event and especially homecoming is the Blue and Gold Marching Machine. And the A&T marching band is the most recognized band in North Carolina and is a top contender in the world of historically black college marching bands. This doesn’t happen by accident. It happens from hours and hours of hard work. And somebody has to direct this legendary band. Dr. Kenneth Ruff, 52, creates drill designs for the band and is responsible for the organization and planning of the entire band program. “Working with the N.C. A&T Band is a dream. We’re never afraid to step outside the box, whether it’s trying new things or setting new trends. We play different genres of music, and our halftime shows always have a fun theme to make them unique.” “I rose from a section leader to drum major and after graduation became the assistant director and now I’ve been the director for 14 years. I am living the Aggie dream every day.”
W W W. M A D E I N G S O. CO M
Doodad
Penn Ultimate You’ve heard Vaughan Penn, whether you knew it or not
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P
erhaps it was preordained or simply a genetic predisposition, but when George and Dixie Penn had their firstborn, she was destined to be involved in music. The couple had formed a jazz orchestra about the time they were married, and before long, baby girl Vaughan came along. By age 3 she was already singing in church and at family gettogethers. Her parents bought her a guitar at 14 and in no time she was not only playing it but writing songs with it, as well. “They’ve probably been inspiring me even before I was born,” says Penn with a hearty laugh. “My mom taught me how to sing and my dad taught me all about harmony. They’ve always encouraged me, so I really don’t know what else I would’ve done.” But they also stressed education (you know, in case that “music thing” didn’t work out), so Penn earned a degree from Appalachian State, before leaving her hometown of Madison for the bright lights and big city of Los Angeles. It seemed at first that the homegrown musician was on the fast track to fame and fortune as she landed an indie deal with Stevie Nicks’s solo label, Modern Records. But before the album was finished, the label lost its distribution deal with Atlantic, and the project was shelved. “The silver lining was that I was able to make all these connections not only in the music business but in the movie and TV industry, and that opened a lot of doors,” Penn recalls. “I began to realize that writing songs for movies and television was a possibility, but they all said, ‘Come back when you have a CD.’” So she formed her own record label, Meepers Music, recorded a CD, and began shopping it around. She soon had her first placement, for the NBC series Providence, which set in motion an unabated string of more than 150 TV placements (most recently one for Oprah’s Hero Effect series) and over a dozen cuts for movies. All the while Penn’s been recording and touring. She moved back to N.C. and co-owns Traffic Sound Studio in Charlotte where she is currently working on her eighth release, titled Acoustic Detour. She tours both nationally and locally, including a stop at Lucky 32 October 24 and the O.Henry Ballroom (with the Penn Family Band sitting in) November 4. “I’ve been richly blessed,” she says modestly. “I give it all to God and ask that I be a worthy messenger.” OH For more info go to www.vaughanpenn.com. — Ogi Overman The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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October 2017
O.Henry 23
Life’s Funny
The Creative Ferment On the Trail of Kombucha and Avocado Toast
By Maria Johnson
I fancy myself an
open-minded person, especially when it comes to matters of the palate.
I’ll taste or drink almost anything once, especially if it claims to keep you healthy. Heck, I’ll even learn to pronounce it. For example, in the early aughts, I dabbled in acai (ah-SIGH). The proponents of this purple berry claimed that it promoted clear skin, a chipper immune system and snappy thinking while reducing various irritations, including the one that comes with training yourself to say ah-SIGH instead of AKAY. Later, I was down with quinoa (KEEN-wah), the high-protein grain that keeps your blood sugar low and your innards marching along. More recently, I was game for matcha (MACHA), the green tea powder that a friend promised would set me afire with energy. Why this seemed like a good idea to me, I’m not sure. I’m a pretty energetic person to start with. But I tried it. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!! BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!! Too mucha for me. So naturally, I was curious when the subject of kombucha (com-BOOCHA) came up a few months ago in a conversation with some twentysomething folks. “Tell me about the kombucha,” I said. From the looks on their faces, I knew that I had crossed into old ladydom. I had placed the article “the” in front of a noun I knew nothing about. It was like my mom asking me to help her with The Google. They were gracious. They explained that kombucha is a fermented tea that a) some people tolerate and b) some people think is vile. They contorted their faces into Mr. Yuk expressions. It did not seem like a great sales pitch to me. At the same time, I learned that kombucha is sometimes paired with avocado toast (familiar words, sigh of relief). I also found out that an Australian millionaire, whom I imagine also puts “the” in front of nouns he knows nothing about, had offended millennials by saying they could not afford to buy houses because they indulged in overpriced avocado toast. I wanted to say, “Well, he does have a point there, about daily spending habits . . .” but decided my cred with The Young People had suffered enough. A few weeks later, a high school student was telling me about visiting her older sister in Los Angeles. “What did y’all do?” I said. “Well, she and her friends are yoga girls, so we drank kombucha and ate avocado toast,” she said with a wry smile. That did it. I had to try kombucha and avocado toast. With someone. But not just anyone. Someone with refined taste buds. Someone who would tell the truth. Someone who would waste a morning with me. Someone like my friend Carter. I appealed to her over a nonhealthy lunch. “Will you try kombucha with me?” I asked.
24 O.Henry
October 2017
“That crap made with algae?” she said. “It’s not made with algae.” “Yes, it is,” she said. “They ferment it with algae, then skim the scum off, and serve it to people like you.” “It’s not algae,” I maintained. “Yes, it is.” “No, it’s not.” “Yes, it is.” “Will you go with me?” “No” “Please?”
“No.” “What if we eat avocado toast with it?” She stopped chewing her sweet-potato fries and fixed me through squinty eyes. “You know what that is, right?” I coaxed. “It’s basically guacamole. Mmmm. Guacamohhhhh-leeeee.” Her gaze narrowed. “OK,” she said. Off we went one Friday morning. I had sniffed out a coffee shop near UNCG that, according to its website, served locally made kombucha. Alas, the young woman behind the counter told us the kombucha queen had left the hive. Also, they did not serve avocado toast. We rolled our eyes in first-world disappointment. “Look, we’re on a mission to be hip,” I told the young woman. “You’ve got to help us.” She studied us, a huddled mass of middle-aged moms yearning to be cool, with a look that said, Am-I-being-punk’d? She suggested that we look downtown. On the way, we tried another place, a neighborhood bakery. Yes, they served coffee No, they did not serve kombucha. Why ever not? “It’s terrible,” the manager said matter-of-factly. We nodded in understanding. And where could we get some of this terribleness? She suggested a tea shop downtown. On the way, Carter read from her phone, educating us about kombucha. An ancient Japanese tea, it’s supposed to impart a host of healthy benefits. Apparently, your intestinal flora, which are a critical part of your immune system, do a happy dance whenever they’re drenched in kombucha, which is brewed with a gelatinous disc of yeast and active bacterial cultures. The disc is known by the acronym SCOBY. “What does that stand for?” I asked. “Stuff composed of bacterial yuck, I guess,” said Carter, only she did not use the word “stuff.” We pulled up to the tea shop, which appeared to be a bar. It also appeared to be closed. “Maybe it’s a kombucha speakeasy,” said Carter. “Go to the door and say, ‘SCOBY.’ “ The Art & Soul of Greensboro
I pressed my nose to a window in the door and cupped my hands around my eyes. The inside did not look like a kombucha-ry. It was time to fall back on an old reporter’s trick: Ask random people. I zeroed in on a guy whom Carter, a devotee of true-crime TV, immediately profiled as a police officer, maybe because he was wearing a laminated badge on his belt and walking toward the police department. Carter shook her head at my folly, staying several paces away in an I-don’t-know-her posture. “Excuse me,” I said to the municipal fellow. “Do you know any place around here that serves kombucha?” He promptly directed us to Scuppernong, the independent bookstore on South Elm Street. He said that he had tried kombucha and liked it, but that some people didn’t care for it. “It’s kind of vinegary,” he said. I rejoined Carter, who was thunderstruck. “Never judge a detective by his cover,” she said as we hoofed it over to Scuppernong. Jackpot. A barista named Rachel opened a cold bottle of UpDog Kombucha, which is made in Winston-Salem in (what else?) small batches. Two Wake Forest University grads, both yoga girls, started the line of flavored kombuchas. Their flavors are named after yoga poses. Rachel filled beer glasses with apple-ginger Wild Thing. Carter and I made Mr. Yuk faces and looked at each other. The liquid was cloudy yellow. Well, here’s SCOBY in your eye. We picked up the glasses and sipped. Carter’s frown persisted. I . . . kinda liked it. It was tart, in an apple cider vinegar sort of way. Slightly sweet. Not bad. I sipped again. Yeah, I could live in L.A. Rachel poured us another flavor. This one, called Happy Baby, was lavender-infused. It was clearer yellow and fizzier.
Carter allowed that it was not disgusting. She said kombucha reminded her of the apple cider vinegar concoction that her husband John drank when his knees ached. Did she want some more kombucha? “No,” she said. “My knees don’t hurt.” Did Rachel happen to be harboring any avocado toast behind the bar? “No,” she said. “But we should. I mean, we have kombucha.” Carter and I turned to our cell phones. A wannabe’s work is never done. Finally, we sussed out avocado toast at Clean Juice, a Friendly Center juice bar that whirls together all kinds of interesting ingredients, including religion and smoothies. “I Run on Jesus & Juice,” said a T-shirt for sale there. I refrained from saying anything about Jesus Christ, king of the juice, as I ordered the avocado toast. A woman ahead of us was getting take-out avocado toast to deliver to her daughter during high school lunch. “It’s really good,” she promised. “You’ll love it.” And we did. The toast was crunchy and nutty, and the spread was buttery and peppery. Conclusion: It’s hard to hurt an avocado. The juicery did not sell kombucha, however, so we were robbed of the heavenly experience of trying them together. Still, we could see how they might go well — the bite of kombucha balanced against the richness of the avocado. Balance, we agreed, was critical in food and in life. I searched the menu for a kombucha substitute. “Wanna do a shot of wheat grass?” I offered. “No,” said Carter. Clearly, I had pushed our friendship to the limit. She got up to leave. She needed to find balance, she said. “Where are you going?” I asked. “McDonald’s.” OH Maria Johnson and her intestinal floral can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com.
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O.Henry 25
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The Omnivorous Reader
Martin’s Mixture A former two-time governor argues that science points to God
By D.G. Martin
What would be
rarer than a total eclipse of the sun?
My answer: a serious book about science or religion written by a former governor of North Carolina or any other state. We had our solar eclipse in August, and our former two-term governor Jim Martin has given us a serious book on both science and religion. As the son of a Presbyterian minister and a Davidson College and Princeton University trained chemist, Martin is a devoted believer — in both his religion and the scientific method. His book Revelation Through Science: Evolution in the Harmony of Science and Religion is his effort to show that the discoveries of science pose no threat to Christianity or any other religion. He is a champion of the scientific method and, without apology, endorses the discoveries his fellow scientists have made, including the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe and basics of the Theory of Evolution. But, as a lifelong Christian, he believes the Bible is “the received word of God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and of any life it holds, on Earth or elsewhere. I believe the Bible is our best guide to faith and practice. “I believe there is, and can be, no irreconcilable conflict between science and religion, for they are revealed from the same God. Even more than that, as a Christian, I believe that God is most clearly revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I firmly believe that a loving God intended us to have the capacity to observe and interpret nature, so that we would grow in understanding the majesty and mystery of His creation and all that followed.” How can Martin reconcile his scientific truths with the biblical account of a six-day creation or with the related belief that the Earth was created about 6,000 years ago? He admits that has not always been easy. When he was active in politics and serving as governor from 1985 through 1993, he would sometimes avoid discussion of these questions. For instance, once during his time as governor he visited the small town of Hobucken on Pamlico Sound. He stopped at the local fishing supply store at R. E. Mayo Fish & Supply and saw a “monstrous skeletal whale head standing right outside the store.” Martin remarked to some of the local people, “Wow! That whale must
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
have lived and died there millions of years ago!” In his book, Martin writes that everything got quiet. Then, one person responded, “No, sir, we reckon she couldn’t have been there more’n six thousand years!” Martin admits, “I did not stand my ground and debate the age of the Earth with these fine gentlemen. I knew what I knew, part of which was that they knew what they knew, and this debate was not winnable.” Now Martin is ready, not to debate, but to explain that science’s conclusions about the time of creation (13.7 billion years ago) and the age of the Earth (4.5 billion years ago) are firmly based. More importantly for him, they are not in conflict with religion, including the creation accounts in the Book of Genesis. In his 400-page book he lays out a seminar for the “educated non-scientist,” explaining the awesome complexities and orderliness of our world. He gives details of the sciences of astronomy, physics, biology, evolution, geology, paleontology, organic chemistry, biochemistry and genomics, including efforts to spark living organisms from inert chemicals. With every scientific advance or explanation of how the world came about and works now, Martin says there is a further revelation from the Creator. Does he assert that these advances prove the existence of God? No, but throughout the book he points out what he calls “anthropic coincidences” that made for a universe that “was physically and chemically attuned very precisely for the emergence of life, culminating thus far in an intelligent, self-aware species.” Recently he explained to me the importance of the power of gravity or the “gravity constant.” “If the pull of gravity were slightly stronger,” he said, “the universe would’ve collapsed. If it was slightly weaker, there’d be no stars, the same, because it had to be precisely balanced with the energy and power of that burst of expansion from the beginning, so astronomers therefore conclude that there was a beginning, just as in Genesis 1:1, In the beginning, Pow.” Martin explained that, like gravity, “there are a number, about a half dozen, physical constants, all of which are precisely balanced for us to be here. One astronomer said, ‘It’s as if the universe knew we were coming.’ All of this implies purpose, and science cannot ask questions about purpose. October 2017
O.Henry 27
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October 2017
Science cannot get answers about purpose, but that doesn’t mean there’s no purpose. It’s clear from this evidence that we didn’t get here by unguided chance. In that way, science points to God. In that way, science tells us that God is. Science does not tell us who God is. It doesn’t differentiate between different denominations, different theological traditions, or insights, or reasonings, but it does support all of them in that sense.” If these discussions of science and religion are too complicated for readers, they should not put down the book before reading its final chapter in which Martin describes his personal journey of faith, study, service, and tolerance and respect for the opinions of those who see things differently. As a political figure and former Republican governor, does Martin share his thoughts on science and politics? He asks his readers, “Which political party is anti-science?” Their answer, he says, would likely reveal their political orientation. Martin agrees with Alex Berezow, founding editor of the “RealClearScience” website. Berezow asserts that partisans in both parties are “equally abusive of science and technology, albeit on different topics and issues.” Martin confesses that several positions held by many Republicans are unsustainable in light of the findings of science. He notes that some Republicans believe global warming is a myth. But, he writes, “Denial is indefensible.” He continues, “Instead of futile denial that excessive carbon dioxide from combustion of coal and oil contributes to global warming, Republicans should let science be science.” Anyone who thinks this statement represents Martin’s complete acceptance of a liberal environmentalist position on clean energy would be misled. His response to the carbon crisis is increased reliance on nuclear power because wind and solar alternatives can only make minor contributions to our energy needs. In bold print he asserts, “If we cannot accept nuclear power as an irreplaceable part of the solution, how serious are we about the problem?” Whether or not you agree with Martin’s views on religion, science or politics, his book is a welcome gift to a country that is in great need of what his book gives us: clear, thoughtful, and respectful discussion of important, misunderstood, and controversial topics. Too bad such books are as rare as a total solar eclipse. PS 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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October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Scuppernong Bookshelf
October Surprises Histories, mysteries and a brand new Green
By Brian Lampkin
About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast’s new graphic memoir is a hilarious illustrated ode/guide/thank-you note to Manhattan as only she could write it.
adult fiction, there’s only one date that matters: October 10, 2017. That’s the day that Dutton Books will release the new John Green novel, Turtles All the Way Down. It’s Green’s first book in five years. The extraordinary success of The Fault in Our Stars left Green wondering if he’d ever write another book.
October 10: The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, by Thomas Childers (Simon & Schuster, $35). By 1932 the Nazis had become the largest political party in Germany. Although Hitler became chancellor in 1933, his party had never achieved a majority in free elections. Within six months the Nazis transformed a dysfunctional democracy into a totalitarian state and began the inexorable march to World War II and the Holocaust. Sounds like necessary reading for our times.
For readers of young
In 2016, he said of his time between books: “Somewhere in that period, my job stopped being Person Who Writes Books, which is a present-tense job title, and became Person Who Wrote That One Book, which is a past-tense job title.” His thousands of fans had begun to despair: There might never be another emotionally wrenching, radically inspiring, real-life-revealing John Green novel. In a tearful YouTube post, Green added, “I don’t know if I’ll ever publish another book and even if I do, I don’t know whether people will like it.” But here it is, finally, another book filled with “shattering, unflinching clarity in a brilliant novel of love, resilience and the power of lifelong friendship,” according to Dutton Books. Scuppernong Books will host a Midnight Release Party of Turtles All the Way Down immediately after a showing of The Fault in Our Stars at the Carolina Theatre at 9 p.m. on October 9. Other October New Releases: October 3: Origin, by Dan Brown (Doubleday, $29.95). As excited as the YA world is about John Green, there remain equally dedicated readers of Dan Brown (surely this is not what is meant by the term “writers of color”). This novel will “navigate the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion.” Sound familiar? October 3: Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York, by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury, $28). From the No. 1 NYT bestselling author of Can’t We Talk The Art & Soul of Greensboro
October 17: Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, by Amy Tan (Ecco Press, $28.99). The author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement delves into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother and gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. October 17: The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1: 1940-1956 (Harper, $45). A comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote. Intimate and revealing, this compilation offers fans and scholars generous and unprecedented insight into the life of one of our most significant poets. October 24: I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street, by Matt Taibbi (Speigel & Grau, $28). In America, no miscarriage of justice exists in isolation, of course, and in I Can’t Breathe Taibbi examines the conditions that made an infamous tragedy possible. Featuring vivid vignettes of life on the street and inside our Kafkaesque court system, Taibbi’s kaleidoscopic account illuminates issues around policing, mass incarceration, the underground economy and racial disparity in law enforcement. October 31: The King Is Always Above the People: Stories, by Daniel Alarcon (Riverhead, $27). A slyly political collection of stories about immigration, broken dreams, Los Angeles gang members, Latin American families, and other tales of high-stakes journeys, from the award-winning author of War by Candlelight and At Night We Walk in Circles. OH Brian Lampkin is one of the proprietors of Scuppernong Books. October 2017
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A Writer’s Life
Writing The Last Ballad The story behind the story, and an excerpt
By Wiley Cash
When I began writ-
ing my new novel The Last Ballad, an excerpt of which is printed here, my wife and I were living in Morgantown, West Virginia. It was the fall of 2012. My first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, had been published in April, and I had recently completed the manuscript for my second novel, This Dark Road to Mercy. I had two novels behind me, but that fall I was staring down a story that I did not believe I had the talent or the heart to tackle. That story was the story of the Loray Mill strike, which unfolded over the spring and summer of 1929 in my hometown of Gastonia, North Carolina.
Although I grew up in Gastonia, I never heard a word about the strike or about the young woman who became the face of it. Ella May Wiggins was 28 years old when the strike occurred. She had given birth to nine children, but only five of them survived poverty-related illnesses. Her husband had abandoned her for what looked to be the final time. She earned $9 for a 72-hour workweek in a mill in Bessemer City, North Carolina. Like many people on the eve of the Great Depression, Ella and her children were barely hanging on. After learning about the strike at the nearby Loray Mill, Ella joined the National Textile Workers Union and wrote and sang protest ballads that were later performed by Woody Guthrie and recorded by Pete Seeger. She traveled to Washington, D.C., and confronted senators about working conditions in Southern mills. She integrated the labor union against the will of local officials. But these bold actions that Ella took were not without consequence. The decisions she made would alter the course of her life and affect her family for generations. I first learned of the strike and the story of Ella May Wiggins after leaving North Carolina for graduate school in Louisiana. I considered writing about her over the years, but each time I sat down to write I struggled to tell Ella’s story for two reasons. First, not much is known about her. She was born in The Art & Soul of Greensboro
east Tennessee in 1900. She lost her parents and married young and had children with a no-good man. She left the mountains for the good life promised by the mills in the South Carolina upstate and North Carolina piedmont. She lost children. Her husband disappeared. She joined the strike. Then her tragic life spiraled further toward tragedy. Details of her life are scant, and I knew that if I were going to write about Ella I would have to be comfortable telling a story that I could not learn. But that is what writers do: We allow the germ of an idea, be it the idea of a story or the idea of a person, to infiltrate our minds, and we attempt to meet that idea with our own creations. I was prepared to do that. What I was not prepared to do was face the second thing that made writing about Ella’s life so difficult: How could I possibly put words to the tragedies in her life and compress them on the page in a way that allowed readers to glean some semblance of her struggle? I began working on the novel in earnest in the spring of 2013, and then my own life got in the way. My wife and I left West Virginia and returned to our beloved North Carolina after being away from home for 10 years. We had a daughter in September 2014, and then another daughter in April 2016. I lost my father a month a later. While attempting to chronicle the tragedies, as well as the many triumphs, of Ella’s life, I was blind to the goings-on in my own. When my wife and I returned to North Carolina it gave me the chance to revisit the sorrow of my leaving it a decade earlier, and I thought about Ella leaving the Tennessee hills, a place she would never see again, for the linty air of a mill village. Unconsciously, each time I held one of my newborn daughters in my arms I wondered how Ella had managed to continue on after losing four children. When I lost my father at 38 I found myself wondering how Ella had weathered the deaths of both parents before even turning 20. While I knew I could never understand the power of Ella’s life, perhaps I could harness it by exploring the depths and pinnacles of my own. In the following excerpt, which opens the novel, you will meet a young woman named Ella May Wiggins who is still reeling after leaving home over a decade ago. She has lost a child, and she fears she may lose more. She is struggling to survive and keep her children alive. But she is tough, tougher than me for sure, probably tougher than anyone I have ever known. It was an honor to write about her and put words to a story that has been untold for far too long.
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34 O.Henry
October 2017
Ella May knew she wasn’t pretty, had always known it. She didn’t have to come all the way down the mountain from Tennessee to Bessemer City, North Carolina, to find that out. But here she was now, and here she’d been just long enough for no other place in her memory to feel like home, but not quite long enough for Bessemer City to feel like home either. She sat on the narrow bench in the office of American Mill No. 2 — the wall behind her vibrating with the whir of the carding machines, rollers, and spinners that raged on the other side, with lint hung up in her throat and lungs like tar — reminding herself that she’d already given up any hope of ever feeling rooted again, of ever finding a place that belonged to her and she to it. Instead of thinking thoughts like those, Ella turned and looked at Goldberg’s brother’s young secretary where she sat behind a tidy desk just a few feet away. The soft late-day light that had already turned toward dusk now picked its way through the windows behind the girl. The light lay upon the girl’s dark, shiny hair and caused it to glow like some angel had just lifted a hand away from the crown of her head. The girl was pale and soft, her cheeks brushed with rouge and her lips glossed a healthy pink. She wore a fine powder-blue dress with a spray of artificial, white spring flowers pinned to the lapel. She read a new copy of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and she laughed to herself and wet her finger on her tongue and turned page after page while Ella watched. How old could that girl be? Ella wondered. Twenty? Twenty-five? Ella was only twenty-eight herself, but she felt at least two, three times that age. She stared at the girl’s dainty, manicured hands as they turned the pages, and then she looked down at her own hands where they rested upturned in her lap, her fingers intertwined as if they’d formed a nest. She unlocked her fingers and placed her palms flat against her belly, thought about the new life that had just begun to stir inside her, how its stirring often felt like the flutter of a bird’s wing. She didn’t know whether or not what she felt was real, so she’d decided not to say a word about it to Charlie, not to mention a thing to anyone aside from her friend Violet. Charlie had blown into Bessemer City that winter just like he’d blown into other places, and Ella knew that one day he’d eventually blow out the same way he’d come in. He didn’t have children or a family or anything else to tether him to a place where he didn’t want to be. “I hadn’t never wanted a child,” he’d said after they’d known each other for a month. “I just never found the right woman to care for a child the way I want it cared for.” He’d come up behind Ella and spread his palm over her taut belly as if The Art & Soul of Greensboro
A Writer’s Life trying to keep something from spilling out. She’d felt his hand press against the hollowed-out space between her ribs and her hips. She was always so racked with hunger that she found it hard to believe that her body offered any resistance at all. “But who’s to say I’m always going to feel that way?” he’d said. “I might want a family of my own just yet.” Maybe he’d meant it then, and, if so, she hoped he still meant it now. Perhaps it was the soft thrash of wings against the walls of her belly that made Ella think further of birds, and she considered how her thin, gnarled hands reminded her of a bird’s feet. She placed her palms on her knees, watched her knuckles rise like knobby mountains, saw her veins roll beneath her skin like blue worms that had died but never withered away. What was left of her fingernails were thick and broken, and it was laughable to imagine that someone like Ella would ever spend the time it would take to use a tiny brush to color such ugly things. She resisted the urge to lift these awful hands to her face and allow those fingers to feel what waited there: the sunken, wide-set, dark eyes; the grim mouth that she imagined as always frowning because she did not believe she had ever smiled at herself when looking into a mirror, and she had only seen one photograph of herself in her lifetime, and she was certain that she was not smiling then. She recalled the photograph of a younger version of herself taken more than ten years ago; she and John and baby Lilly posing for a traveling photographer inside the post office down in Cowpens, South Carolina. John with his arm thrown around Ella’s shoulder, his face and eyes lit with the exaltation of the gloriously drunk, Lilly crying in her arms, what Ella knew to be her own much younger face blurred in movement as it turned toward Lilly’s cries at the exact moment of the camera’s looking. John had purchased the photo, folded it, and kept it in a cigar box that rattled with loose change and the quiet rustle of paper money when and if they had it. Ella had removed the photograph and gazed upon it from time to time over the years, but never to look at her own face. She’d only wanted to see the face of her firstborn, the girl who was now a tough, independent young lady who mothered her little sister and brothers more than Ella had the time or the chance or the energy to. John had left her — left them all, for that matter — over a year ago, and Ella assumed that he’d taken the cigar box with him because Lord knows he’d taken all that money, but the only thing that Ella missed now was the photograph. OH Wiley Cash lives in Wilmington with his wife and their two daughters. His forthcoming novel The Last Ballad is available for pre-order wherever books are sold. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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9/15/2017 1:43:16 PM
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36 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
True South
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? And guess who has to cope with it
By Susan Kelly
A friend called
ILLUSTRATION BY MERIDITH MARTENS
me in a panic. “Sally is bringing her boyfriend home for the weekend. Tell me what to do. You do this all the time.” Having older and more children than my friend, I did have significant experience with Significant Other visits. But I’m here to tell you: You never get used to them.
I trace my trauma to visits to my mother-in-law. It’s one thing to have stacks of Southern Living magazines on the den window seat. In 1981, it was quite another to have stacks of Southern Living from 1966, and 1969, and 1971 in your den. Who does that? (My husband’s decades-long calming chant to me — “You have got to stop being incredulous” — began about then, and is a particularly helpful mantra if you have sons.) But back to significant other visits. You know that Bible verse: Judge not lest ye be judged? Well, hello girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse. Hello, judgment day. Understand that your kitchen is a veritable minefield. My personal greatest slovenly/discovery fear is the refrigerator produce bin. Celery limp as yarn, parsley gone to mulch, unidentifiable runnels of pale yellow liquid at the bottom — few vows can withstand produce gross-out. Wrestle bin from runners, and scour. Pitch anything in Tupperware or tinfoil, lest the SO become curious and unearth leftovers — like I once did — that resemble the dog’s dinner. This cannot be unseen. When it comes to meals, breakfast is the most delicate issue. Setting a table for breakfast? Too weird. People want coffee at different times, drift to the kitchen at different times. They want a newspaper, they want a run, they want their social media. Stock the larder, stack the cereals and utensils attractively on the counter, and leave a DIY note. Eliminates the fret for all those Do I set the alarm, appear fully dressed and perky, spatula in hand? concerns. Besides, depending on the SO age — and therefore their likely The Art & Soul of Greensboro
hangover status — the lovebirds will decamp for the closest fast-food biscuit joint. Note: If the SO claims to be something complicated like vegan or gluten free, commence subtle bust-up procedures. You’re in for a lifetime of culinary misery, never mind boring table conversations. There are plenty of fish in the sea, even if the SO won’t eat them. Next to the fridge, the bathroom is the most vulnerable chink in your “like my child, please like me” armor. So sit on the guest bathroom toilet. You heard what I said. Stare at the walls and cabinets. Get to those scuff marks and thumbprints you see, because she’ll be staring at them too. For the shower, go ahead and sacrifice the Moulton Brown products you stole from the Eseeola or Umstead and ditch the Dial. Dig your thumb into the scrubby. Glimpse any brown? Replace instantly. Snip stray strands from towels evolving to strings. Iron the sheet, but you can get away with just the counterpane. Make bed, then start all over upon realizing the monogram is inside out. Spray with scented sheet spray, a must for significant other hostessing. Cover pillow drool with pillow covers, then add the regular pillow case, making sure zippers go in first so she doesn’t scrape her fingers when she shifts at night, and in case her mother taught her to do the same thing, and she checks on you. (Like I once did.) Provide Kleenex. Do not make her take off her mascara with toilet paper. She will never, ever forget. (Like I never have.) Make sure that the significant other’s significant other is as equally represented in framed photographs around the house as your other children. Note: If SO is male, slash all effort by 50 percent. In retrospect, the above can be summed up by (another of) my mother’s edicts: Spend a night in your own spare/empty nest/guest room now and then. Flaws will be self-evident. Alas, however, what’s relegated to history are the folded bills she used to stuff into my palm when I visited anyone: Money For The Maid. Me. OH Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud new grandmother. October 2017
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The Pleausres of Life Dept.
The Carolina Theatre at 90 In the words of those who loved it most
Compiled by Lynn Donovan and Nancy Oakley
the best popcorn.” Linda Greene Cruciano
“There was the National, the Carolina, the Imperial, the Criterion and the State.That’s all there was uptown. As kids we used to go to the Carolina on Saturday mornings. I remember the big organ up there on the right that was always playing.” Alan Cone
“Early in my clown career, I worked with Sam Hummel on a tribute to Vaudeville that was a huge success! Wonderful memories of the magical space that is The Carolina.” Jeff Darnell (former Livestocker & Ringling Brothers Circus Clown)
“My father always read Kipling to me. The Jungle Book was one of my favorites when I was little. When Elephant Boy with Sabu was coming to the theater and I said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to see that.’ So my mother took me, and it was very sad. And I was just hysterically weeping, and I remember her telling me, ‘You wasted your money on this!’ Another time, she and some friends went to the Carolina to see Rudolf Valentino in a revival of The Sheik, which she had loved as a young girl. By then it was so dated, they broke into a fit of giggles. The ushers asked them to leave because they were laughing so hard.” Ann Y. Oakley
“Great memories of Circle K at the Carolina Theatre. My hand was first held by a boy at Circle K! 6th grade, 1958! Remember it like it was yesterday!” Meegie Guy
“As a middle school and high school student, I was involved several summers in local summer stock performances. The Livestock [Players Musical] Theatre shifted its summer theater performances and rehearsals from a literal cow barn to the Carolina Theatre when I was in high school in the late 1970s. Although I don’t remember the specific musical we were rehearsing that particular summer, I vividly recall one day when some cast mates and I were bored and decided to explore the lovely, but aging, theater. We were stunned to find a “Negroes Only” entrance around the corner and to the left of the main entrance, and even more stunned to find that this entrance led to a separate staircase to an upper level balcony. I felt that this was a telling moment for me personally, witnessing first-hand what others had been faced with not very many years before.” Carol Lutz “I worked there for a few months while in high school . . . around 1970 . . . at the Carolina Theatre in concessions. There was a man who made the popcorn fresh every day in a little spot in the side of the building. It was The Art & Soul of Greensboro
“Had my ballet dance recital there.” Ellen Hinshaw “My uncle who is 75 says they had to go in the side door and could only sit in the balcony. He says at the time he was a kid and segregation was just the norm. He says the crazy part was that as he got older and times changed and he could sit where he wanted, he realized the best seats were in the balcony. He also said as a kid they took delight at throwing popcorn at the white people below just to annoy them. My memories were of watching all the blaxploitation and kung fu movies of the ’70s. I knew a guy who didn’t take a single martial arts training lesson. But through looking at every kung fu movie at the Carolina Theatre, I saw him get in a fight and take the guy out better than Bruce Lee. He got suspended but he was a local hero from that day forward.” Paul Swann “Me and my brothers would ride the Duke Power bus early Saturday and go to Circle K with McDonald’s wrappers then ride home. I guess we were 10 to 12 at the time. . . . Can’t do that these days.” Bob Taylor “Had my ears pierced there in the ladies room with a needle, rubbing alcohol and concession stand ice when I was 16.” Elaine Grantham March “The time when my entire class at GHS [Grimsley High School] went to October 2017
O.Henry 39
The Pleausres of Life Dept. see Romeo and Juliet. And the gorgeous chandelier!” Dale Wilson Fulton “The last movie I saw at the Carolina was Moby Dick, it was to be the last time I went to a movie with my dad, as he was killed by a drunk driver. I loved the Carolina it was so beautiful. I remember the huge chandelier, and the graceful staircase. I always felt like a princess when I was little walking down the stairs.” Cindy Alvis Goad “Some of my very best childhood memories were the movies shown at the Carolina. I was 8 years old and the year was 1956 when my grandmother, Lillie Kirkman, took me to see The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. She took me in 1959 to see Ben Hur, again Charlton Heston starred. By 1963, I was old enough to go to downtown Greensboro on the bus that picked up on Walker Avenue in front of my house. That was the year I saw The Birds and I will never forget the images in that movie. I cannot count the number of times I have seen Gone With the Wind. I am so happy to have old memories of this wonderful place. I cannot wait to bring my 3-year-old grandchild to the next showing of The Wizard of Oz.” Susan K. Evans “One of the best at the Carolina was The Sound of Music singalong! People dressed in costumes, with props, singing along with the words scrolling on the screen, major hissing when the baroness appeared on screen.” Carrot McClure “Performing in Pippin as a dance partner with my then new husband Johnny King. We met through the Livestock Theatre group and our mar-
riage has now lasted 40 years. I had the joy of taking my daughter to see the remake of Pippin recently and got to tell to her about her dad and I doing the show together at the Carolina. Wonderful memories!” Karen King “I enjoyed so many amazing Livestock Theatre productions at the Carolina Theatre but my most memorable was Secret Garden in 1997. This breathtakingly beautiful show was dedicated to our brother who died from melanoma a few months later.” Laura Michael “December 25th, 1969, my parents took me to see Disney’s 101 Dalmations. (We used to always go to a movie Christmas night.) When we came out it was snowing.” Tara Dingus “My next-door neighbor, Tim Johnson, was about five years older than me. He played in a band that played sometimes at Circle K on Saturday mornings. He would give me drumsticks to carry and say I was part of the band and I would get in free! Felt really “cool” being part of a band!!” Lisa Martin Streat “I always enjoyed going to the Carolina Theatre. Growing up, on Saturdays Mother would take my two brothers and me to the Carolina to see mostly Disney movies, but thanks to my brothers we also got to see tons of cowboy movies. Once, when I was old enough to go without Mother, I went with a friend. When we went to the water fountain outside the Ladies room there was a sign on it that said ‘Beware of the Triffids,’ so of course neither one of us would drink the water. Later on we found out it was an advertisement for
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40 O.Henry
October 2017
8/21/2017 12:25:34 PM
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Pleausres of Life Dept. an upcoming movie The Day of The Triffids. . .” Charlene McGrady “The Carolina Theatre was built in 1927 as a Vaudeville house. David, who works there and takes great care of the place, told me locals still pack the house during Christmas movie season when the theater shows classics. He said It’s A Wonderful Life still always sells out. Experiencing something you love with others who love it too is a powerful and reassuring experience. These great old theaters are like churches in that way. Thanks to the people of Greensboro for keeping the Carolina Theatre going for all of us.” Lyle Lovett “I have so many memories of the Carolina Theatre both on and off stage that it is hard to pick a favorite. I performed on that wonderful stage for many years as part of Livestock Players, Razz-Ma-Tazz Musical Revue Company and CTG [Community Theatre of Greensboro]. Highlights of the many roles I played include flying across the stage as Peter Pan, tap dancing as Nellie Cohan in George M!, and living through 50 years of marriage’s ups and downs as Agnes in I Do! I Do!. I have also been privileged to photograph many of the stage’s stellar talents for the theater. However, my most special memory has to be the one when Razz-Ma-Tazz performed a number from Jelly’s Last Jam to open a show by Gregory Hines. He watched our number, then performed his phenomenal show. At the end, he called us all back up on stage, borrowed a vest from one of the guys and told us he was going to do the number with us. He not only performed the number but did not miss a step after seeing it one time. Director Carole Potter took a photo showing him watching my feet as we tapped. Years later when he returned to the Carolina, I took that photo to show him and he autographed it. Not long after that, the world lost one incredible talent.” Lynn Donovan Party On, Carolina! To celebrate its 90th anniversary, the Carolina Theatre will host a number of events into next year. This month: a screening of the 1931 version of Frankenstein, part of the Decades of Film series (October 10th, 7 p.m.). Sorry Halloween buffs, but the Carolina Paranormal Lock-in on October 21st is sold out, but as a consolation, you can see the cult classic, Rocky Horror Picture Show on the 27th at 7 p.m. On October 28th at 8 p.m. catch The Spirit of Carolina: Celebrating 90 Years, a one-night performance of dance, music, drama, history, magic and more. For information on subsequent events, visit carolinatheatre.com. OH The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
In the Spirit
Zombie
Quick history on a walking dead classic
By Tony Cross
In my selfish quest to explore the
PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY CROSS
myriad rums out there — drink the myriad rums out there — I’ve actually figured out a way to tie it into October with a brief history lesson on the Zombie cocktail and its original 1934 recipe. There have been many different specs for this drink, and many bartenders (myself included) have built and served it incorrectly. That’s all changed now, thanks to one man, and his never-ending search for the earliest recipe.
I first read about Jeff “Beachbum” Berry years ago when my newfound love for rum began. His recipes were in Imbibe magazine, and I’d seen his name pop up in references from other bartenders across the U.S. Berry graduated from UCLA film school but, after minimal success, found himself committing full time to bartending and uncovering lost recipes from the early to mid-1900s. He’s opened a bar, Latitude 29 in New Orleans, and written a handful of books with extensive coverage on beach drinks. And if that’s not enough to make you break out in a hula, he recently developed an app for your phone, Total Tiki, that makes cocktailing easier, especially when you’re on the fly. Berry’s search for the authentic, original Zombie recipe began with the man responsible for its creation, Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, otherwise known as Donn Beach. In 1934, Beach opened up Don the Beachcomber’s in Hollywood. The tiki craze began. All of Beach’s creations were the real deal: fresh juices, intricate syrups, and different rums. FiftyThe Art & Soul of Greensboro
plus years later, Berry was having quite the time hunting down the Zombie ingredients. Apparently, Beach kept his creations a close secret, and it seemed next to impossible for Berry to unearth the original specs. Beachbumberry.com recalls: “In 1994 the Beachbum began a quest to track down Donn’s original Zombie recipe. Ten years and several blind alleys later, he was still none the wiser. But then the gods finally took pity on him. In 2005 their messenger, in the form of Jennifer Santiago, appeared with the drink recipe notebook that her father, Dick, had kept in a shirt pocket during his 15 years at Don The Beachcomber’s. Several of the notebook’s recipes had been reworked, renamed, or cut altogether from the Beachcomber’s menu by 1940 — proving that Dick’s notebook dated from the 1930s, possibly 1937, the year he was hired. Which meant that the notebook’s Zombie could very well be the original 1934 version. “O cruel Fate! But there, on the last page of the notebook, scribbled in Dick’s own hand, was a recipe for New Don’s Mix: two parts grapefruit juice to one part . . . Spices #4″? Another code name! “Bowed but not broken, the Bum asked Mike Buhen of the venerable Tiki-Ti bar if he’d ever heard of Spices #4. Since Mike’s dad, Ray, was one of the original Beachcomber’s bartenders in 1934, if anyone knew, Mike would. ‘Ray would go to the Astra Company out in Inglewood to pick up #2 and #4,’ Mike told the Bum. ‘A chemist would open a safe, take out the ingredients, and twirl some knobs in a big mixing machine, filling up a case while Ray waited. Then they’d close up the secret stuff in the safe. Ray took the bottles — marked only #2 and #4 — back to Don The Beachcomber’s.’ All well and good, but what did #4 taste like? ‘I have no idea,’ Mike shrugged. ‘Astra was owned by a guy named John Lancaster, who died of cancer in the ‘60s. The company’s long-gone.’ “And so the original Zombie Punch recipe sat, Sphinx-like, the solution to its riddle so close we could almost, well, taste it. Months went by. A year October 2017
O.Henry 43
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In the Spirit went by. And then the Bum made the acquaintance of a veteran Tiki bartender named Bob Esmino. Did he know what #4 was? ‘Oh, sure, from John’s old company,’ chuckled Bob, who hadn’t thought about the stuff in 40 years. ‘It was a cinnamon syrup.’” Berry used to say that he’d never serve his guests more than two of his prized prescriptions at a time. That’s marketing at its finest, true or not. Though there’s more than one way to create this cocktail (Total Tiki has six different recipes that range from the 1930s to 2007), I’ll leave you with the original. You’ll see that a few of these rums are hard to obtain locally. May I suggest ordering online? As for glassware, there’s always cocktailkingdom.com. More recently, I stumbled upon a shop in Oregon that creates unique and beautiful tiki mugs: munktiki.com. The Zombie is a high-test treat; imbibe responsibly, and be even more careful if you’re playing host. Playing babysitter shouldn’t have to be a prereq in your party syllabus.
Zombie
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October 2017
1 1/2 ounces Gold Puerto Rican Rum (I use Bacardi 8, flavors of tropical fruit and spice) 1 1/2 ounces Gold or Dark Jamaican Rum (I use my trusty Smith & Cross. That being said, Smith & Cross is Navy Strength, clocking in with a 57 percent ABV. I use 1/2 ounce. Otherwise, I’d use Appleton Estate Reserve.) 1 ounce Lemon Hart 151-proof Demerara Rum (distilled in Guyana, this big boy is a must-have ingredient for this cocktail; flavors of vanilla, caramel, and dried fruits) 1/2 ounce Falernum (a syrupy, very low-proof liqueur with flavors of clove, lime,and almond) 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice 1/2 ounce Don’s Mix (two parts white grapefruit juice and one part cinnamon syrup*) 1 teaspoon grenadine (Rose’s Grenadine is not grenadine, it’s corn syrup — Google it) 6 drops pernod or absinthe (I opt for the latter) 1 dash Angostura Bitters 3/4 cup crushed ice *Cinnamon syrup: Create a simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar) and add 10 ounces of syrup to a blender along with 8 grams of cinnamon sticks. Blend on high for 20 seconds. Pour into a container, sealing it, and leaving in the fridge over night. The next day, fine-strain out bits of cinnamon. Keep refrigerated. Blend all ingredients for 3-5 seconds. Pour into a tall glass (again, very cool Zombie chimney glasses that Berry created are available online), and add ice if needed. Garnish with mint. Put on a “Cramps” record, and go to town. OH Tony Cross is a bartender who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern Pines. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Interior Life
Broad Brush Strokes A new chapter for prolific painter William Mangum
By Waynette Goodson
ORIGINAL ART BY WILLIAM MANGUM
The great F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “There are
no second chapters in American lives.” But that’s not the case in the life of one proud North Carolinian — William Mangum.
After spending four decades mastering the art of watercolors and painting realistic landscapes, particularly of his home state, Mangum recently put down his tiny brush, capturing the twigs on the trees, and picked up a cup to pour — yes, pour — bright acrylic paint over large canvases in a sweeping contemporary style. It would be as if Bob Timberlake woke up one day and decided to paint like Georgia O’Keeffe. With 3,000 paintings under his palette, exhibited everywhere from the New Realists Show in Chicago to the International Exhibition in London, Mangum is an accomplished artist. So why would he make such a dramatic change? Simple . . . a challenge.
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In 2013, Mangum partnered with Klaussner Home Furnishings to create Carolina Preserves — An Artist’s Inspired Home Collection. Four distinct groups, Blue Ridge, Sea Breeze, Southern Pines and Riverbanks, celebrate the state’s diverse seasons and topography — and they’re right in the artist’s wheelhouse. Then, a new furniture trend emerged: midcentury modern. And for the fifth collection, Klaussner debuted Simply Urban in October 2016. “It was time to take the country boy to the city,” Mangum recalls. “To celebrate urban topography and to get me out of my comfort zone. To be honest with you . . . it was not a comfortable transition.” To top it off, he didn’t have much time. The conversations about the new collection started in October 2015, and at the end of the holiday season, Mangum “began to tack,” with just a year until the launch. So he got into the studio every day — he typically paints every morning for five to six hours — and taught himself the new style. “After six months, I went through many failures,” Mangum admits. “There were many sleepless nights.” The intrepid artist compares the new approach to a roller coaster ride. “It’s definitely full of surprises,” he says. “This is not as controlled of a techOctober 2017
O.Henry 47
Interior Life nique . . . some pieces are heavily textured,” he says. Painting with acrylic involves using a pallet knife, scraping and layering. “It’s like being a cook and mixing all these ingredients that you apply to give you different flavors. And you don’t know the end result until you come back the next day, and it’s cooked overnight. The paint changes and you get some pleasant surprises.” Klaussner was pleasantly surprised with the results: “Bill’s artwork and inspiration have been the catalyst for four of our most popular home collections,” according to Geoff Beaston, Klaussner’s senior vice president of case goods. “His ability to capture nature with its distinct textures and diverse palette of colors has been the basis for storied collections from the mountains to the coast.” That was the old Bill, before acrylics. “With his newest collection, Bill has taken an exciting turn as he celebrates urban living. The result is an exceptional collection that is simultaneously modern and classic,” Beaston says. Some pieces such as Coral Reef have as many as 30 layers that can take a week or two to dry. In another, Awakening, which resembles a bright blue flower, Mangum took cups of paint and raked them across the canvas. Other substrates include wood and even masonite. When compared to his first love, watercolors, other major differences include not having to frame the contemporary works, and well, just knowing when to stop. When painting a tree, it’s pretty obvious when it’s finished, but
that’s not the case with abstract art. “It’s intuitive,” Mangum says. “It’s hard to walk away. But you sense it’s at an ending.” After a year of trial and error, he was able to present 54 original works last May at his gallery on Lawndale Drive, which underwent a redesign to stage the new paintings with their coordinating Simply Urban furnishings. Now, it looks as if the cast of Mad Men could make their entrance at any moment. “The newest originals show broad, masterful handling of a variety of mediums and techniques,” says Joy Ross, Mangum’s gallery director. “From traditional watercolor, to transitional acrylics and contemporary works featuring everything from brush and pallet knife to poured paintings, this is a bold body of work. For those that feel they know his work, this collection is bound to be a bit of a surprise.” In fact, that was Mangum’s No. 1 fear: acceptance. Would his 20,000 buyers and the thousands who come to his annual Open House connect with his contemporary art? “Or would people believe it’s just frivolous?” he asked. So far, many of his collectors have invested in the new pieces, which have also found homes in corporate offices. In addition, Leftbank Art is interested in the new collection. “They like that it’s a portfolio and not a single piece — not just one vase of tulips,” Mangum says.
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Interior Life Just as a classically trained ballerina easily transitions to modern dance, he has mastered the basic competencies to allow him to sidestep so nimbly. But the humble artist puts it in plainer terms. “I’ve been driving a Jeep for 25 years,” Mangum explains. “The new Jeep I have is not a Jeep; it’s a Lexus. It’s got more dingbats and whistles and hot and cool seats, but within that, the core is still there; only the icing on the cake is different.” Ross continues: “The reason it works so well is that he has a long career, and he understands balance and composition and color, and that translates to the new medium . . . I want people to know that this is a sincere body of work. Bill puts his heart into every piece.” That heart, that emotion and energy, shine through in the hopefulness of the bright blue Blossom, the tension in the black-and-white Storm, and the romance of the indigo Starry Nights. For those who still yearn for his original watercolor and landscape techniques, no worries; Mangum will continue to paint both. “I still love my watercolors,” he assures. “That just feels like breathing. That’s like riding a bicycle.” At the October High Point Market, Klaussner will debut the sixth edition of the Artist Inspired Home Collection, but Mangum isn’t giving any hints. “It’s done,” he says. “It’s very cool; it may be the best yet.” While the next collection is done — Mangum is not. An accomplished author, publisher, gallery owner, keynote speaker, golfer and philanthropist,
the 64-year-old is showing no signs of putting away the paint. Sporting impeccable penny loafers, sharp navy slacks and a classic gingham Oxford the same color as his blue eyes, Mangum appears perplexed at the thoughts of what he might do next. “Why should I retire?” he asks. “It’s going pretty well. I guess the day I come in and there’s no one here and nothing to sign, maybe I’ll go home.” We predict he’ll need more pens: this second chapter could be a long one. OH Waynette Goodson is the editor of Casual Living magazine.
Come On In!
While the interior of William Mangum Gallery has changed, one thing has not: you’ll still find the artist helping customers most every afternoon. He particularly enjoys sharing insights into the inspiration, locales and techniques employed in his paintings. “There are few true art galleries these days, and an artist-owned gallery is an even rarer commodity,” says Joy Ross, gallery director. “Nothing compares to having the chance to spend time with the artist and learn about his artwork.” Comfortable and inviting, the gallery features original works of art, furniture, prints and gift items — all curated by Mangum. Don’t be surprised if he asks if he can gift-wrap your purchase or carry it to your car. That’s just the essence of this affable artist who’s excited to share his new works. Info: williammangum.com
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October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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52 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Evolving Species
Unfriendly Florida Natives Gardening’s perilous hissyfits
By Ross Howell Jr
ILLUSTRATION BY ROMEY PETITE
Although my home is in
Greensboro, for a couple of years I’ve been working on a landscape project on the Florida Panhandle between Panama City and Destin, by the white beaches and turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
My wife, Mary Leigh, and I are upgrading a home we call our “grown-up house,” because it has a foyer — a first for us. Our plan is to rent the house to vacationers in the high season, then spend some of the off-season there ourselves. Mary Leigh has given me free rein on the landscaping, I expect because she feels the mischief I can create outdoors will be less pernicious than
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the mischief I might create inside. (Though one day she scurried outside after my new neighbor buddy and I had just felled a pine leaning ominously over his two-car garage. Her sigh of relief was audible when she saw that neither of us was injured and the garage stood intact. But I digress.) Until recently our visits have been short, so my work was limited to spreading pine straw, grubbing out tree-choking vines, pruning limbs, and cleaning dead fronds from a sea of palmettos. (On my first bloody foray I learned they don’t call them “saw” palmettos for nothing — the teeth on those fronds are as effective as the blades on a good set of steak knives. Sorry, I’m digressing again.) Lately I’ve been able to stay longer, giving me time to water things in, so I’ve been planting some natives — yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria; muhly grass, Muhlenbergia capillaris; and Southern magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora. October 2017
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54 O.Henry
October 2017
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Evolving Species It occurred to me as I was crawling about on my hands and knees — especially with the warmer weather — that it might be prudent to learn something about other Florida natives I was sharing space with. In the Panhandle there are six species of venomous snakes. First is the cottonmouth moccasin, an aquatic snake. Not good. Did I mention there’s a creek at the back of our lot, and much of the area nearby is designated wetlands? Florida cottonmouths are about 3 feet long, dark in color, or completely black. When agitated, they hiss, revealing the white maw that gives them their name. Young moccasins may be reddish in color and easily confused with copperheads. Copperheads also like streams and wetlands. They’re around the same length as cottonmouths, with a relatively thick body. Their color is gray to brown, with dark brown bands in a distinctive hourglass shape across their backs. Their camouflage is remarkably successful in the habitat they prefer — namely, our backyard. I’m going to have to keep a keen eye out for these guys! Next on the venomous list is easier to spot because of its coloration. The skin on coral snakes has bright black, red and yellow bands. The snakes are small — rarely more than 30 inches in length — and they’re reclusive, spending much of their time underground. Some nonvenomous Florida snakes have similar coloration, but if red and yellow are juxtaposed, watch out! Now for the rattlesnakes. The Eastern diamondback is described as the most venomous and dangerous of the snakes in Florida, growing to more than six feet in length. While they prefer dry habitats, like pineland or scrub, I certainly can’t rule out their presence in the yard. At least their rattles make a loud buzzing sound when they’re threatened, and they issue this warning before they strike. Usually. Timber rattlesnakes prefer pinelands, river bottoms and low-lying ham-
mocks. That’s a good description for what our neighborhood must have been like before it was a neighborhood. Timber rattlers are pinkish-gray to tan in color, with dark markings, and a distinctive reddish-brown stripe running down the spine. Five feet long, they have large rattles and big heads. Fine. All the better to bite me with. Last is the pygmy rattler. Adaptable little fellows, they’re “one of the most commonly encountered venomous snakes . . . in residential neighborhoods,” notes the University of Florida Extension Service. Fortunately, they’re not likely to carry enough venom to kill me. Problem is, shaking their little rattles with all their might, they probably can’t make enough noise to warn me off — my hearing’s not good. I thought writing this would be therapeutic. It’s good to know your adversary, right? But in fact my anxiety has grown. And there’s the matter of the native plants. This spring, a lovely carpet of native ferns emerged on our property. Wherever I find them, I encourage them with a dose of composted cow manure and topsoil, then carefully mulch with pine straw. Just last week on the internet I was able to identify them. They’re Botrychium virginianum, a hardy native species found all the way from Florida’s southern tip to Canada’s northern reaches. But the common name is a problem. Rattlesnake fern. OH Thanks to Mary Leigh, who found them in a catalog, Ross Howell Jr. now has a thick pair of leather gloves reaching nearly to his elbows. He can now face unfriendly Florida natives without trepidation, though the same can’t be said of Hurricane Irma, which veered east avoiding the Howells’ home.
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The Road Home
The Bonnet Blues Having a second baby was a dream come true — though a bit of a challenge at first
By Caroline Hamilton Langerman
The summer I moved from New
York to North Carolina with a 1-year-old boy, I was already eager to have a baby girl. It was all about the bonnets. Here in the Old North State, parents still embraced the traditional style of pastel day-gowns and smocked jumpers. My son was wearing a little white bucket hat that tied under his chin; he needed a sister in a sundress. Babies, my Southern grandmother had taught me, should wear soft colors. Baby Gap might try to trick me with its tiny jeans, orange onesies and mini sneakers, but my new city was protected from fads by a population of sleek, tailored mothers. “Yummy Mummies,” I had heard someone call them, and while the expression made me gag a little, I couldn’t help but hear it in my head every time I pulled into the preschool parking lot and saw a tall blonde hopping down from a Chevvy Tahoe in yoga pants. She often had two — sometimes three! — babies, all in matching sailor suits or gingham jumpers. I was not blonde, and I felt naked in yoga pants. But I had a strong set of biceps; surely I, too, could lift well-dressed babies out of an SUV. My baby boy was fairly easy: He ate, he slept. Once, we brought him in a bassinet to a work function and a colleague asked if he were a waxen doll. But the new baby, who arrived in the middle of a snowstorm, was not a waxen doll. The new baby screwed up her little red face and wailed. The new baby made my other baby cry. I didn’t even take the pink Feltman Brothers gowns out of the wrapping paper; she was spitting up like a professional. One by one, friends and family uttered the word “colic.” I was thankful that my 18-month-old liked siren sounds. At her 2-month checkup, I hoisted the 30-pound car seat and my 30-pound toddler into the examination room, both kids bawling. They cried so hard that the doctor and I could not hear each other say hello. They cried so hard that when the doctor said, “Do you have any questions?” I crumpled up my list and said no. They cried so hard that when the doctor left the room I almost started crying, which made my older son cry harder. I bit my lip as I plugged him with Goldfish. When I opened the door, three nurses peered in, as if upon a petri dish. “We couldn’t believe,” one of them said in a gentle Southern accent, “that all that crying was coming from the same room.” “Yes,” I said numbly, and lifted the car seat with an aching bicep. “Come to the beach and get some help,” my parents said from the coast in Wilmington. I packed the criers into the car and listened to them wail down Highway 74. We arrived exhausted, soaked through with milk and pee and drool, and as I handed the miserable baby to her grandmother, my son yelled the names of vehicles: “Log loader! Dirt digger!” At the end of night two, my mother said sympathetically, “You weren’t exaggerating.” My dad, more agitated than sympathetic, pressed pause on the nightly news and requested to know the next day’s plan. The word “plan” sent me to a mental state somewhere between fuming and hysterical. Here was my plan: I stuffed the little baby into her baby-backpack and chased my son through their un-baby-
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
proofed home, which now appeared less a beach retreat and more a haunted house of spooky staircases and hidden outlets. “At least,” I said to my husband from the passenger seat on the way back home, “they are each a week older now.” We returned home to a front porch of packages: silver spoons and crystal picture frames and gorgeous dresses that were, to our miserable new mammal, entirely unusable. Previously I had considered gift-giving as an exquisite form of Southern hospitality; but in my delirium I was starting to understand baby gifts as tiny apologies from people who felt sorry for us. My husband beat the cardboard boxes into our recycling can. I quivered over my thank-you notes. Month four arrived and she was still shrieking in the night. Sometimes she woke her brother, who called out into the darkness, “Mommy! Wheels!” I was unable to attend story hour at the public library read by the man with a monotone. I skipped the Musikgarten class that I had paid for. I was too busy living out the human condition. Cavewomen had no need for a 3-month-size smock. And neither did I. I now looked at the other moms in the parking lot a little more closely. Did they have spit-up all over their blouses? “We were wet,” one mom confided, “for seven months.” How, I asked a young woman who was in a book club I had attended in another lifetime, do you get a cute picture to post on Instagram? “You take a video,” she said matter-of-factly, “and take a screen-shot of the one second when she’s smiling.” I could have broken her with my grateful hug. Month five rolled around and I was still not, as the Bump.com site suggested I should be, “enjoying my baby.” Exasperated, I booked a plane ticket to New York to visit some friends. This break was something I deserved, something I needed, something that would be, I told myself as I took off my shoes and, thinking of my son, admired the wheels on the conveyor belt, “good for all of us.” In New York, I walked down the city sidewalks at the speed of light — not weighted by my stroller. I sat down (in a clean blouse!) with an old friend outside a charming West Village café. No sooner had we air-kissed and taken a sip of our iced coffees than a firetruck sounded on the next block. To my friend’s bewilderment, I craned my neck to see it. “Firetruck!” I said, as the shiny red engine came into view. And then, unable to stop myself: “Here it comes!” She laughed, unsure why this was remarkable. “They don’t have those in North Carolina?” Next, a mom came into the coffee shop wearing a little baby-backpack. “How old is she?” I cooed. I listened with rabbit ears to her answer. I nodded with kindness. “I have two!” It seemed imperative to me that she know. I realized that the tiny noises and smells and chores I had tried to escape were now calling me home. I was thankful to be on the sunrise flight home. My sweet girl — whose colic is long gone — is finally bonnet-ready. When I tie the bow under her double chin she grins like the Cheshire cat. Strolling around the neighborhood in the sunshine, I catch myself enjoying my baby. We peer at each other, still knowing so little about each other except this: There’s fire behind her façade; and being a Southern mother will require so much more than tying her bow. OH Caroline Hamilton Langerman has written for many publications, including Town & Country and The New York Times. She is an essay specialist at the Charlotte Latin School. October 2017
O.Henry 57
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My Life in a Thousand Words
Saturday at Home
By Brian E. Faulkner
They come unbidden, frag-
ments of time lost, then found. Fleeting bits of memory: the plink-plink of water dropping on a spoon in the kitchen two rooms away and one floor down remains fresh 60-odd years later. So, too, the hiss of our radiator and the clank of pipes on a sharply cold New England night, window wedged up to let the crisp air have its way with any children’s toes that may have dared poke themselves out from under the comforter. Season after season, my brothers and I fell asleep listening for the deep night sounds: a barely perceptible dog bark floating like a vapor through the neighborhood and then gone; the sudden surprise of a car going by so late; the distant swoosh and clatter of steam engines sorting themselves in the rail yard a couple of miles off. On winter mornings, snow covered with specks of soot was proof that we’d heard them and not dreamed it.
Back when the old pufferbellies started giving way to diesel-powered engines that looked like the future, my dad shot and edited an 8-millimeter movie that froze our family in time. Saturday at Home started at dawn, stopped at bedtime and in between captured our family’s end-of-summer, beginningof-fall minutiae in extraordinary detail. It began with paper titles hung on the clothesline, shirts and pants and diapers with letters clipped to them spelling out Saturday at Home (clever fellow). Dad forever captured kids, parents and pets during his late-1940s production, including one memorable image of my younger brother tied to a tree after riding his trike into the street. New-old cars populated the background along with shots of our yard before the trees got thicker and the lawn got thinner. There we were, playing with Bootise the cat and riding our bikes up and down the sidewalk. There was Dad, in a cameo appearance, showing off the dark hair and movie star looks that caught the eye of a feisty redhead he met in high school and eventually married. He sets a beer down on the grass beside a huge Westinghouse radio placed there to beam Red Sox play-by-play his way as he takes down the summer awnings and lugs heavy old wooden storm windows up a ladder to the second-floor bedrooms, an onerous task we kids would inherit in later years. As day morphs into evening, we read Slappy the Duck on Dad’s lap. Then it’s bunk-bed time. And finally their time. Closing scenes show Mom stretched out on the couch with Time magazine as Dad reads in his easy chair. That’s how it was in the The Art & Soul of Greensboro
waning years of civilization without TV. And cigarettes! It’s easy to forget how pervasive (almost glamorous) smoking was in the ’40s and ’50s. Saturday at Home still plays in my mind during those rare moments free of today’s demands, along with fragments from Dad’s other home movies: me leaving home, me coming back, me moving to North Carolina and becoming just an occasional visitor. It took a long time to sort out where home was vs. where home used to be. North Carolina has been home now for the greatest part of a lifetime. Our four children have grown up in and around Winston-Salem and also spent a great deal of time with their maternal grandparents down toward the coast, where you can “still hear the soft Southern winds in the live oak trees,” to quote Don Williams. That other Faulkner, the famous literary one, once wrote a line about lying “beneath a strange roof thinking of home.” I get that. And sometimes, six decades-plus gone from that Saturday at home, I recall with uncommon clarity how it felt to lie in bed during the deep of night, listening to the sound of steam trains assembling in the distance. Mom and Dad have been gone for near half a generation after leaving New England in the late ’80s for a dream home in South Florida. (She begged him on her knees to buy that house, and they moved so decisively I never got to see the place again). Now I have box after box of my own photographs, profuse with memories of offspring who grew up minute-by-minute at the speed of light — plus five grandchildren spread from here to all-toofar-away, each of whom provides this growing oldster with a full measure of wonder and delight as they grow and change. Best of all, I sometimes get to tell them stories of rascally children and ancient days that somehow get more generously painted each time told. Two of my brothers inherited the folks’ photographic treasures, including Saturday at Home. Some of the old snapshots are dog-eared and faded, but others seem ready to jump out of their borders and say hello, how are ya, where ya been . . . it’s been a long, long time. I look forward to getting one or two of these Faulkner Moments tucked into one brother’s Christmas card every year, which I put in my own boxes, companions to the gazillion slides I took of my children as they sprouted wings, stumbled a time or two, finally got the hang of it and flew off to make something of their lives. “What is your life?” asks James in the Bible. “For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Memories float in and out of that mist. But sometimes the fog lifts for a span and they come back to us, unbidden. Then they vanish, retreating to wherever it is treasured spirits go to rest, revive themselves and wait for the next time. If we truly are fortunate, the moment these fleeting bits of memory reemerge from the mist, a grandchild — or two — may find us dozing in an easy chair or stretched out on the sofa like a lizard in the sun and say, “Grandpa! Grandma! Tell me a story about what it was like . . . back then, when you were a kid . . .” OH Among other things (most having to do with writing or marketing) Brian Faulkner is a five-time Emmy award–winning writer of magazine-style programming on UNC-TV. October 2017
O.Henry 59
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Sporting Life
Silver Pride Airstreams have gone mainstream
By Tom Bryant
PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM BRYANT
Joel Kilby is
exactly the All-American, cleancut individual I would expect to be managing the Out-of-Doors-Mart, just off Interstate 40 in Colfax, a mile or so from the Piedmont Triad International Airport. His is one of the oldest Airstream dealers in the country. I was in his office on a whim recently, talking to him about his operation and Airstream travel trailers in general. “Our business is actually one of the leading RV dealerships on the East Coast and, as a matter of fact, we’ve been selling and servicing Airstreams longer than any dealership in the world.” That got my attention. We were in Joel’s office, and like any busy executive in the country today, his phone was ringing and computers were beeping. It seemed that a lot of business was going on that required his time. “In the world?” I questioned. “Yep, Airstreams have become popular all over the world — Japan, France, all of Europe. It seems that everybody wants to own what has become an icon in the travel trailer industry.” The Out-of-Doors-Mart is truly a family affair. Grady Kilby, Joel’s father, who turns 86 in November, started working with the existing company in 1962. Later, he and a partner bought the operation and brought it to where it is today. Joel said, “Dad comes in three or four times a week. He’s what I call my watchdog.” “When did you get started with the company?” I asked. “I was just a youngster and would work after school and weekends washing The Art & Soul of Greensboro
trailers and cleaning up. Anything my dad would let me do. I graduated from UNC Wilmington in ’92 and came to work full time after that.” Joel and his wife, Alyson, have two daughters, who are now in college. “The business is really a family affair. Speaking of that, you’re going to have to talk to Ben, our parts guy. He’s almost family.” At that point, we took a break so Joel could send off an email, and I walked over to see Ben Goslen, the parts manager. He has been with the company for 33 years and is a fixture in the business. He has the “aw shucks” personality of the actor Jimmy Stewart, and I could tell he was proud of the part he has played in the company’s success. “We have one of the best and most fully stocked Airstream parts departments in the country. If we don’t have it, we can get it in a day or two.” I told him it was a pleasure seeing someone who really liked his job. “After 33 years, I’d better,” he replied, laughing. I went back over to Joel’s office to finish our conversation before getting a photo of the three: Joel, Grady and Ben. “You’ve got quite a number of Airstreams on the lot,” I said as I pulled up a chair in front of his desk. “That has become something of a problem,” he replied. “Not our Airstreams, but getting more. They’re producing them in Ohio as fast as they can and can’t make enough because the demand is so strong. When the big recession hit back in ’07, Airstream had only 189 employees. Today, there are over 800 workers at the plant in Jackson Center (Ohio), working as hard as they can. Something else has changed since you bought your little Bambi. The demographics of Airstream buyers have turned around dramatically. Once it was mostly older, retired folks or people trading up who would buy a unit, but now over 50 percent of our customers are first time buyers and are relatively young.” I’ve been an Airstream fan for many years, having been first introduced to October 2017
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Greensboro builders AssociAtion
Saturday & Sunday October 14-15 & 21-22 • 1-5 pm PA R A
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October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Sporting Life the travel trailer in the 1950s, when my grandfather bought a small one to use as a base camp when he fished in Florida. He parked it on land he owned on the St. Johns River, and he and my grandmother lived in it during the colder months. When the winters, even that far south in Florida, got too frosty for him, he pulled up stakes and towed the Airstream farther south to Everglades City. Again, it was home for him as he fished Chokoloskee Bay and the Ten Thousand Islands. Later, Granddad bought a big 32-foot Airstream and parked it semi-permanently on his land on the St. Johns. He added a front screen porch and outbuildings with storage for boats and fishing gear. All of this was good for early in the winter months, but he still had the little Airstream to use in the Everglades when it turned colder. Those early days when I would camp with him on his fishing expeditions reinforced my desire to someday own an Airstream; and the year I retired from my day job, Linda and I drove up to the Outof-Doors-Mart, looked at a spanking brand new Bambi and bought it. The folks at the shop did everything to get us hooked up and rolling. I dealt with Jason, a super salesman and, of course, the ever-present Grady overlooked the sale. It was a pleasurable experience. Our first major trip in the Bambi was from Southern Pines to Alaska. It took us two months up and down the Alaska Highway, and we drove over 11,000 miles with only one punctured tire on our towing vehicle. The trip was a real testament to the reliability of the Airstream. Joel and I rounded up Grady and Ben for a photo outside the building in front of a new Airstream for sale. Grady, always the salesman, said, “I remember you. Aren’t you that newspaper guy from Southport?” “No, Grady. I’m from Southern Pines.” I replied. “Oh yeah, I remember, got the little Bambi. You ready for a new one?” “It would be like getting rid of one of the family,” I said. We went out to the front of the building, where I made my photo, said goodbye, then walked past a big new Airstream on my way to the car, where Linda, my bride, was waiting. “You know,” I said to her as I fired up the Cruiser, ready to leave. “That big new one sitting right there would look great in our backyard.” “Only if we can keep the Bambi,” she replied, smiling. OH
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Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and a regular columnist from O.Henry’s sister publication, PineStraw.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
October 2017
O.Henry 63
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Life of Jane
Celebrating Samhain with the Bordens From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity teenagers in Mr. T costumes, oh Lord, please deliver us
By Jane Borden
On October 31 — the night between
ILLUSTRATION BY MERIDITH MARTENS
summer and winter, the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and winter solstice — the barrier between the realms of the living and the dead grows thin and flimsy. Spirits sneak through.
Or so believed the Celts and their Druid priest class, who lived more than 2,000 years ago in what is now Ireland, northern France and the U.K. To appease the spirits, and secure health and safety through the coming winter, the Celts celebrated the festival of Samhain. Eventually, Samhain traveled through the lenses of the Romans, the Catholic Church, and the American consumer, and became Halloween. Based on my childhood memories of Halloween in the 1980s, though, Samhain is still alive and well in Greensboro. Here are five eery similarities between my family’s celebrations and those of the ancient Celts. Either nothing ever really changes, or my parents were Druids. You decide.
CROP DESTRUCTION Spirits are tricksy. The Celts believed that the dead crossed into the realm of the living with a purpose: to wreak havoc on crops. One year, my dad grew pumpkins in our backyard. Rather, he grew pumpThe Art & Soul of Greensboro
kin. His crop yielded one, which we carved in time for Halloween. But when we rose on November 1 — hours after the spirits returned to their world and the barrier closed again — we found our pumpkin in pieces, smashed and left on the sidewalk. My eldest sister, Lou, cried. But Dad was like, “Well, it’s a pumpkin.” Spoken like a man accustomed to giving the dead their due. APPEASING THE SPIRITS These other-world residents not only destroyed crops, according to the Celts, but came to engage in all manner of nefarious shenanigans. As an insurance policy for themselves and their belongings, Celts tried to keep the spirits happy. I remember seeing some marauding specters firsthand. They terrorized Country Club Drive, moving on foot in small groups. Fearsome were their Tretorn sneakers and homemade Mr T costumes! Lo, how they sprayed shaving cream on foliage! My gods, what happens to boys in puberty?! One year, a group of these teen ghosts chased us on the golf course. They bullied many children that year — and even stole trick-or-treating candy. There is no greater sin than taking candy from a child princess. Only an evil spirit (or adolescent male) could execute such an atrocity. Mom was prepared to call the cops. But then one of the victims recognized one of the perpetrators, a football player at Aycock, at which point we begged Mom not to turn them in. Come to think of it, maybe instead of a Celtic community, I just grew up in a patriarchy. AVOIDING POSSESSION Another way to keep spirits out of your body: disguises. The Celts wore costumes on Samhain to throw off the spirits. Some historical accounts depict October 2017
O.Henry 65
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October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Life of Jane
the Celts in animal skins and furs. Others have the Celts wearing white and painting their faces black. My sisters and I often wore the same costumes, as a result of their being handed down. We especially remember a little Dutch girl costume, which had been brought home from a visit to Holland by my mom’s uncle Britt. It was worn not only by my sisters and me, but also by my mom and her sister. I now realize how dangerous this was. What ghost would see a Dutch girl five times — in Greensboro, N.C. — and not recognize her? And not think, “Huh, that Dutch girl hasn’t aged in 35 years. I better check it out by possessing her.” Being dead doesn’t make you dumb.
PREDICTING THE FUTURE Divination was among the Druids’ primary jobs. The priests were especially busy on Samhain. Celts believed the future could be more easily accessed on the night the living mingled with the dead. On Samhain, even regular Celts went around telling each other’s fortunes, as part of the fun. Similarly, one of my family’s friends made a keen prediction one Halloween night. Every year, Dad took us on the same trick-or-treating tour, stopping by the homes of a handful of family members and friends, including that of Louise Miller, my preschool teacher (and my sisters’) at First Presbyterian Church. One year, Mrs. Miller pulled up in a taxi just as we arrived. My parents can’t remember the details exactly. She suddenly realized that she’d either left her pocketbook at the airport or at the hospital. Regardless, she didn’t have keys to her apartment or a wallet, and upon realizing as much, had directed the driver to continue taking her home anyway. So Dad paid the driver and drove Louise to retrieve her purse. My sister Tucker remembers that when Louise got out of the taxi, she said to Dad, “I told the driver you’d be here, you always come.” Dad paid the driver and drove Louise to retrieve her purse. SACRIFICES Whether to appease the gods or the spirits, ritual sacrifices were a common Celtic practice. On Samhain, the Druids burned crops. During war, they slashed throats and, some believe, cannibalized the victims ceremoniously. Anything would be given over, if it made the gods happy. Similarly, most of our Halloween candy mysteriously disappeared every November 2nd. But in our case, the gods lived in a trashcan. So, maybe my parents weren’t Druids after all. Maybe they just worshipped raccoons. OH Jane Borden now lives in Los Angeles, where, hopefully, her daughter will wear the Dutch girl costume on a Halloween soon. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Birdwatch
Fast and Furious
In spite of its name, the nimble American redstart usually appears as a flash of orange By Susan Campbell
What’s in a name? For one,
misleading descriptors, especially where bird names are concerned. Take, for instance, the American redstart. Although it is indeed found in the Americas, it is hardly red. Nor is it related to redstarts found in other places across the globe. The adult male is mostly black with splashes of orange on its breast, wings and tail. Females and young birds have corresponding yellow patches but are a more muted olive and gray. Both males and females blend in well against the foliage of the hardwoods they frequent in spite of their striking plumage, it can be quite tricky to spot the males. Their rapid movement, as they flit to and fro after insects, certainly adds to the challenge.
American redstarts have an unusual strategy for finding food. These tiny insectivores display what appears to be nervous fanning of their tail and wings. But the flash of color is apparently an effective means of startling prey, which they will then swiftly lunge at and consume with incredible speed and precision. Redstarts are common migrants through the Piedmont and Sandhills of our state. The rare redstart that breeds in North Carolina can be found as early as
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
the first week of August. Migrants on their long way to Central America will still be trickling through in late October. You can spot them clustering in small groups or mixed with migrant vireos, tanagers or other species of warblers. As with so many of our songbirds that winter in the tropics, these birds follow the southern coast of the United States down into Mexico in the fall. However, come spring, they head out and cross the Gulf of Mexico on their journey back north. They need to almost double their weight to survive the trip. Twelve or more hours of nonstop flying over open water is certainly a grueling test. Although they may alight briefly on ships or oil rigs along the way, it is a long haul. Interestingly, some American redstarts breed as far south as in the bottomlands of the Sandhills. But they are more likely to be found in open woodlands north of the clay line. In the United States, they prefer larger wooded tracts, which are increasingly harder to find. So it is no surprise that the bulk of pairs nest well to the north nowadays, across much of Canada. Another noteworthy detail: Some males of this species are polygamous, which means a lot of extra work since they may fly as much as a quarter mile between families during spring and early summer. This species is one of a handful in which males do not attain adult plumage until the end of their second summer. Although they do sing prolifically their first spring, it is unlikely they will succeed at attracting a mate until they acquire the distinctive black and orange feathers of maturity. So should you hear a high, squeaky chip note or catch sight of a tiny flash of color high in the trees this fall, take a closer look. It just might be an American redstart. OH Susan would love to receive your wildlife observations and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.
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Wandering Billy
Remembrance of Things Past A rolling farmers market, Pixy Stix and group fun at the Quakers’ final resting place
By Billy Eye “If time flies when you’re having fun, it hits the afterburners when you don’t think you’re having enough.” — Jef Mallett
We called it the ‘Toot Toot Truck’ be-
cause its arrival was preceded with intermittent honking before parking in front of our home on the 1200 block of Hill Street. Twice daily in the 1960s, kindly Mr. (Wilbert) Sullivan would lumber with a slight limp from the cab of a slightly rusty, robin’s-egg-blue, ’50s-era Chevy truck to ring his brass bell summoning neighborhood kids to come running. In the bed of that pickup were crates of farm fresh vegetables, cold drinks and a wide array of confections.
Some of my earliest memories are of climbing up the side of that rolling farmers market, reaching across the produce for candy bars, grape Pixy Stix, Atomic Fireballs, Nik-L-Nips (fruit flavored water in miniature wax bottles), The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Wacky Packages, and Batman bubblegum cards. This gray-haired, portly gentleman always wore the same outfit — denim overalls and a conductor’s cap with a red handkerchief tucked into his back pocket to wipe his brow between weighing out snap beans and collard greens on the hanging scales that would clank and rock slowly when he removed the goods. He arrived at least twice a week, 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I remember him rolling by six days a week in the summer. I could be wrong though. It’s not like anyone was paying attention. After servicing our block, Mr. Sullivan would pull over in the middle of the 1100 block of Hill, where there would already be folks waiting, then park in the driveway of the last house on the left before Wendover. Where he went next was a mystery to me, but I understand now that he ventured into the College Hill, Sunset Hills and Westerwood neighborhoods, as well as Latham Park. I can’t tell you how many times his visits made the difference between us having homegrown tomatoes, lima beans or corn on the cob rather than some warmed over mush from a can (Mother’s signature dish). At some point around 1970 his absence was felt. Days turned into months before we once again heard the familiar honking and ringing of Mr. Sullivan’s bell. But things weren’t the same. He’d been hospitalized, lost a lot of weight and obviously wasn’t able to stock the truck with much of anything that he probably didn’t grow himself. A few weeks later he stopped coming altogether, and we heard not long after that he had passed away. God bless that relic from another era, a hearty farmer right out of central casting, rapidly becoming an October 2017
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Wandering Billy
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anachronism by the late-’60s, but a comfort nonetheless to Baby Boomers blessed to be experiencing the last gasps of America’s mom-and-pop economy. What I wouldn’t give to have a produce truck loaded down with fresh veggies pulling up to my home every once in a while, although I’d like to think I’d avoid the diabetic-coma-inducing Pixy Stix, the most insidiously delicious processed sugar delivery device known to man.
***
Speaking of how times have changed, did you know that until the late-1960s, if you needed medical assistance in many communities, ambulances were dispatched from the nearest funeral home? Conflict of interest? You bet! Where the borders overlapped, they would actually compete at the scene of an accident for the opportunity to transport the most seriously injured individuals, just in case they’d expire before reaching the hospital. Eye kid you not!
***
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This Halloween night I will reprise my role as holy rolling preacher Vance Abner on Max Carter’s lantern-lit yearly jaunt through New Garden Friends Cemetery at Guilford College, where the long-gone inhabitants have been resting peacefully (and quietly) since long before the founding of Greensborough. As visitors make their way from one landmark to another, actors are at the ready to bring history to life with the telling of the early days of the Underground Railroad; a hallowed tree from 1492 that shaded wounded Revolutionary soldiers brought down by a terrorist bomber in the 1950s; legendary ballplayers the Ferrell brothers; and the deep roots of our city’s proud Quaker heritage. As Max informed me, “While traipsing through the cemetery, you don’t have to be worried if you step on the graves because Quakers are as benign in death as they are in life.” There was a lively crowd last year and everything moves at a fast clip, surely one of the more entertaining ways to spend this most sacred of holidays. A 15-year tradition, the tour begins promptly at 8 p.m. on the 31st. OH Grand Ole Uproar is one of my favorite party bands of all time, a rolling thunderous New Orleans flavored musical Po’Boy with country psychedelic seasoning and just a sprinkling of cheese. Fronted by Josh Watson, you can always be assured of a great night out when he lays down that funky soundtrack. You’ll have an opportunity to catch Grand Ole Uproar live on October 6th at the Craft City Sip-in, 2130 New Garden Road. Eye plans to be there on the 26th when they perform at Wahoo’s Tavern Billy Eye is really a great deal more sophisticated and debonair than his writing suggests.
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October 2017 Foggy Morning on 421 The fog is eating the mountains. A thick white cloud covers pine trees, rock faces, and wooden fences. Then the road disappears, with its helpful lines and warning signs. I follow the lights of the car in front of me. We’re part of an unwitting convoy, inching down a mountain road in zero visibility. A runaway truck could hit us from behind and send us careening off the mountain or spinning like billiard balls. This is what it’s like to grow old, creeping along slowly, losing your vision, memory, and friends, no familiar landmarks to guide you, the suspense building as you wait for a sudden exit. Karen Filipski
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Design Lab For Catherine and John Adcox, creating home interiors is an ongoing scientific experiment By Kristy Woodson Harvey Photographs by Bert VanderVeen
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T
he house that Catherine and John Adcox share in Irving Park looks like something out of a storybook. With a white brick exterior, pale blue-gray shutters, a manicured garden and an idyllic picket fence, it is, in a word, charming. It’s the kind of place that you know people are lined up for, just waiting for it to go on the market. Only, the Adcoxes weren’t among those waiting. They’d already contracted to buy the house next door, planning to undertake a complete renovation once their house down the street sold. And yet, when the home belonging to Bradshaw Orrell and Douglas Freeman, both celebrated members of the interior design and art worlds, came up for sale, they did the most dangerous thing two people who are not intending to buy a house can do: They decided to “just look.” I probably don’t need to tell you what happened next. John says, “We knew it was perfect as soon as we walked inside.”
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While the couple had spent months planning their renovation on the house next door, they knew that, with their son, John Ross, not yet 2-years-old, and daughter, Peyton, a busy and bustling 9, moving into a house that was already finished to their standards would be far, far easier. “From the marble in the kitchen to the grass cloth with pagoda detailing in the powder room, it matched our aesthetic down to the last detail,” Catherine says. The Adcoxes purchased the home immediately. From masterfully opening the floor plan to improve the flow to renovating the kitchen and bathrooms, Orrell and Freeman had already done most of the dirty work. The Adcoxes converted an upstairs storage room to a fun playroom for their children and made the outdoor space more of a dining than living room for entertaining three seasons of the year. “All we had to do,” John recalls, “was furnish and decorate and make the house work for our family.” That was a task lovingly — and easily—undertaken by the Adcoxes, who conveniently own SOURCC, an interior design studio for, in the words of the couple, “people who are passionate about decorating their own spaces.” Now operating in 13 cities across the country, SOURCC says one of its real measures of difference is having a staff member who can help homeowners bring their visions to life by assisting in the curation process, providing scaled floor plans and design boards — all free of charge — and then ordering their items for less than retail or online prices, in most cases. From residential to commercial spaces, model homes to clubhouses and lighting packages, the couple and their cross-country team dove headfirst into the idea that there were people like them who wanted to decorate their own houses but needed a little help. “It has been such fun to watch the company grow so quickly,” Catherine says. It was also incredibly convenient, when the couple went to decorate their new home, that their Irving Park headquarters boasts hundreds of designer fabrics, wallpapers, trims, finish samples, and luxury furniture and lighting catalogs typically reserved for those in the trade — all available to the public. “It’s a veritable playground for design lovers,” John confirms. And it became the playground for the couple as they began their decorating journey. “We chose comfortable upholstery in performance fabrics and tailored slipcovers that could survive daily life with kids and two dogs,” John says. Then the couple
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layered in family antiques and favorite furnishings and accessories from their previous house to create the feeling that its interior had been collected over time. “What we love most about the house,” Catherine adds, “is that it works just as well for a cocktail party with 100 guests as it does for our family of four on any given Tuesday night. It lives well and it entertains well. It’s hard to find a floor plan that does both so perfectly.” As Catherine’s cousin and someone who has had the pleasure of attending a High Point Market or two with John and Catherine, I knew as soon as I stepped through the front door that this house was them. More important, it was their family. With a floor plan that strikes the perfect balance between open and intimately closed, it is filled with plenty of welcoming spaces for everyone to spread out, a one-of-a-kind brass stair rail, enviable architectural details and design elements that the couple loves. But, as you can imagine, the owners of a successful interior design company change their minds about what they love quite a lot. Their friends joke that visiting the Adcoxes is like a scavenger hunt to find what is different. “We are constantly reinventing and changing, using our house as a canvas to experiment with looks that we ultimately incorporate into client projects,” Catherine says. “It’s like our version of a scientist’s laboratory,” John adds, laughing. A beautiful, well-curated scientist’s laboratory. As for the future, well, a design enthusiast’s work is never done. The couple hopes to add a pool and pool house to their backyard one day, once the swing set, ride-on toys and soccer balls have gone by the wayside. “There is something magical about sparkling water reflecting the light at an evening party,” Catherine observes. But the good news is, they have plenty of time. Will this be their forever home? I can’t help but wonder. “We love our house and couldn’t be happier here,” Catherine says. “We feel completely settled and at home.”
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Catherine and John turn to each other and smile, and I recognize it, that twinkle, that unmistakable feeling that, for the design lover, there will always be another renovation to tackle, another home to breathe life into. At that, John verbalizes what I have just felt pass between them: “But forever is a long time.” OH Kristy Woodson Harvey is the founder of the blog, Design Chic (mydesignchic.com) and the author of three novels, including Slightly South of Simple, published earlier this year by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Frills and Spills: Family-Friendly Decorating Tips from the Adcoxes
• Upholstery textiles are important. Choose durable fabrics that are rated as “performance.” This will help keep spills from becoming stains. • Don’t overlook slipcovers as an option. Even if you don’t like the shabby chic look, there are lots of great upholstery lines that offer well-tailored slipcovers that look like upholstered furniture. You can easily create a sophisticated space that’s entirely washable. • “We recently covered some beautiful antique dining chairs in a faux leather/ vinyl. The result is a chic dining room that wipes clean with soap and water after family meals.” • “It’s OK to have nice things with kids. In fact, we encourage it. Teaching them to appreciate and care for quality items in your interior from an early age definitely takes more work, but pays off in the long run. We hope we are bringing up children who will have an appreciation and respect for great design and beautiful things — and who know that a glass without a coaster does nothing good for great-grandmother’s side table.” — K.W.H.
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The Craftsmen’s Art The warmth and good energy of Michael Walker’s bungalow and greenhouse By Maria Johnson Photographs by Bert VanderVeen
H
e went there three years ago, to the heart of Greensboro’s Irving Park, to give a quote for reupholstering a built-in sofa. That’s when the greenhouse came up. The homeowner said she was tearing down the steel-and-glass structure to make room for a bigger garage. Mike Walker was startled. As the owner of Murphy’s Upholstery, he’d driven past the white-ribbed bubble many times. Joined to the garage, it seemed like a fixture at the home that once belonged to Ralph Price, the son of Julian Price, long-ago chairman of Greensboro’s cornerstone Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company. Though badly rusted in places, the greenhouse sported automatic pop-up ceiling vents and metal blinds that descended over Gothic arched sides. “I just thought it was super cool, and I hated to see it destroyed,” says Walker, who dashed off a $1,000 check for the greenhouse. He and a couple of friends spent nearly two weeks disassembling it. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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“We took it down rusty screw by broken glass pane,” he says. “It fought us at every turn. A screw that should have taken 20 seconds to remove took 20 minutes.” Walker had the perfect place to resurrect the greenhouse: the backyard of a house he’d just bought, and planned to rent, adjacent to his own home on Mayflower Drive near UNCG. Maybe, he thought, he would build a potting shed as the greenhouse’s new fourth wall. There was one hitch: He had no cash. So the glass and steel rested in pieces in the yard for a year until he sold Murphy’s Upholstery, which put the green in greenhouse. Walker called on builder Larry Shaver and architect Carl Myatt to create a new companion for the glass nursery: an office from which Walker could tend the rental properties that he owns with business partner Jim Menius. Less than a cottage but more than a shed, the 16-by-16 foot Craftsman-tinged-with-Victorian office features a coppertopped cupola crowned with a classic rooster-based weathervane; a four-gable roof with yawning copper leader heads and downspouts at each corner; and a flagstone patio to welcome visitors. Inside, the vaulted ceiling snatches your breath with four deep wedges — the undersides of the converging gables — that peak in the middle with an oculus, or round window under the cupola. “We wanted to expose the structure,” says Myatt. “The space was small, so we wanted to expand it visually.” Overhead, tension rods sprout from the four corners. They’re anchored in the center by an iron circle that hovers over a compass rose laid into the vinyl hardwood floor. The repetition of circles from oculus to floor was intentional. A structural engineer made sure the room was solid. Walker made sure the room sang. He populated it with handsome furniture — barrister bookcases, a rolltop desk, a library desk, a red leather Chesterfield sofa, and a wall-mounted map case that houses 1940s Los Angeles schematics — popula-
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tion, road and utility maps — glued to fabric rolls. A pencil sketch of Walker’s grandfather Logan Walker hangs on the wall. Mike Walker has dedicated the office, which he calls Logansprout, to his grandfather, who was a roofer. Mike Walker insisted that the building be roofed with Tamko shingles, the brand his grandfather sold. More history literally drips from the ceiling here. Walker snared the cylindrical hanging lights from First Presbyterian Church during a renovation. A white iron door — Walker bought it from antiques dealer Mary Wells, who said it came from a department store — leads to the greenhouse, which sports a new foundation and brick floor laid by mason Michael McKinnis. Heated with a small gas unit, it’s a wonderful place for plants to sunbathe and for people to escape nippy weather. Last year, Walker hosted a Christmas party on the coldest night of the year. Guests gladly signed up for tours of the greenhouse, which shelters Walker’s plants, some of which he has nurtured for 30 years. Many were gifts from dear friends. “There are so many pieces out here that tie into my history or Greensboro history that I never feel alone,” says Walker. “I call this my happy place. I come out here to work, but it doesn’t seem like work.” The greenhouse office sits in the yard next to Walker’s, but because of a drain line that crosses the yards diagonally, the structure is oriented at a diagonal, facing Walker’s fourssquare Craftsman bungalow. The home has an interesting backstory, too. It was built in 1927. The first owner was Southern Railway engineer Andrew Waynick. “The home was built to a nice scale,” says Walker. “The bones were absolutely wonderful.” A native of Pinehurst, Walker first happened upon the house when he was a student of international finance at UNCG in the 1990s. A friend lived there, and over the years, Walker left the house with oddities such as a wooden leg that he found in the attic and the metal door to a coal-burning
firebox. For years, Walker used the door as a yard ornament at his home in Sunset Hills. Then, one day in 2000, after he’d veered away from the world of international finance and into the upholstery business (by way of a catchall job at Tobacco USA and a cooking gig in the Cayman Islands), he drove by the Mayflower house and noticed it was for sale. “All it needed was a little love,” he says. He summoned his father, Donald, a building inspector who showed up with a flashlight for a look-see. “He said, ‘Son, this house is built to the highest standards,’ then he wrote me a check for $5,000 and said, ‘I’ll help you buy it,’” says Walker. Walker moved in and set about enhancing what was already there. He kept the radiators, which were tied to a functioning gas furnace. He added a forced-air system for extra warmth and chill, but the radiators steal the visual show, especially in the front room, where the grille harmonizes with antiques in a sanguine room that’s painted a color Walker describes as “Botticelli red.” Among the eye-poppers is a huge brass censer with a coal-kettle base and domed, filigreed lid. In the same Middle Eastern vein is a brass lamp with a lacy metal shade with folds like bird wings. Walker loves a curio. In his mind, finds are finds, whether they come from estate auctions, generous friends or curbside heaps. “Certain things catch my eye. Sometimes, I don’t know if they’re worth anything or not, but it doesn’t matter,” he says. He leans toward antiques but embraces modern amenities, which is why he upgraded the kitchen to include granite counters, custom
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cabinets, and coffered ceilings with removable panels for access to plumbing in the floor above. As part of the makeover, Walker unmasked and embellished a nook that had been blocked by a double oven. He discovered the little room when he opened the door to a storage room and saw the backs of ovens. The house contained more puzzles. For example, an exterior door led to a basement shower, sink and a toilet that Walker assumed had been for servants. He later learned the bathroom was for the original owner, the train engineer, who came home from work covered in soot. “He had to clean up before he came upstairs to the family,” says Walker. The age of the house also meant a dearth of closet space in the bedrooms. Walker fixed that by fashioning an upstairs dressing room from a niche that once served as a sewing room. He added a cedar-lined closet, clothing racks, a copper sink and a vanity bathed in warm light. He applied his upholstery know-how to make valances and curtains for nearly every room. You can see some of his handiwork from the street — curtains wrought from outdoor fabric, tied back in swags against the tapered porch columns. The deep porch, punctuated with plants, is an appropriate bookend for the greenhouse in back. Beneath the overhang, foliage mingles with ceiling fans; Adirondack chairs that Walker made after disassembling and tracing a friend’s comfortable chairs (“I’ve
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always been handy”); and outdoor rugs from home-improvement stores. Like many deft designers, he combines budget-friendly pieces with custom work. He and faux painter Jason Gammon, of Danville, Virginia, were scraping scaly white paint from the porch ceiling when they stepped back to admire the emerging pattern: the paint was sticking to parts of the heart pine. They decided to let it be, adding only light blue milk paint between the boards. The result is an artful sky over visitors’ heads. “This is the best entertaining porch in the world,” says Walker. He hired Gammon again to tone the pine paneling in the greenhouse office. Gammon brushed on similar hues: creams, blues and browns. Where the paneling stops, at the 9-foot mark, the walls turn to azure. The paneling picks up again at the ceiling, this time with a deeper blue tint. Contractor Shaver did a command performance with the office, too. He’d already worked for Walker, constructing a 50-foot arbor, now heavy with Lady Banks roses, akebia and grape vines, to serve as a living fence between Walker’s home and a house that he rents via Airbnb. Walker has a keen interest in preserving the homes and property values along his street. A UNCG water tank is visible from his backyard. The university and developers have approached him and others about buying their homes. One day, Walker says, they’ll sell, but in the meantime, homeowners for three blocks have lawyered up and banded together as the Mayflower Area Neighborhood Association. They’ll hold out en masse for the best deal possible, he says. As a result more homeowners are sprucing up their properties because they know they won’t be stuck with a domestic island in a sea of development. “We have this great little slice of neighborhood that we’re trying hard to keep together,” he says. “In this case, there’s strength as well as potential profit in banding together.” At the heart of the union are Walker’s home and, now, greenhouse office. “It just has a good aura,” he says. “I have friends who are much more ethereal than me, and they say this house has good energy.” OH Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry.
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Your New Cadillac
Has Arrived As another repurposed architectural gem is rescued by providence and sweat equity, a nearly century-old monument to American ingenuity promises to reignite a once vibrant neighborhood
I
By Billy Ingram • Photographs by Amy Freeman
n its heyday the south side of downtown, under the shadow of the King Cotton Hotel and bordered by the train tracks, was populated by venerable businesses such as the Gate City Hotel, New Baltimore Cafe, Greensboro Tavern, Harold Sykes’ Amoco, Weinstein Music, Cox Furniture, Bishop’s Record Shop and Groome Tire. Also flourishing were lodge halls, boarding houses, billiard parlors, union headquarters, barber shops, florists, alongside wholesalers in ice, dairy, poultry, produce, candy, feed and seed. Some of the finest homes the city has ever seen completed this tableau. This epicenter of luxury and style during the first half of the 20th century, astonishingly intact, is the most concentrated pocket of historically significant properties outside South Elm. As the 1920s began to roar, situated on the southeastern corner of East Market and Forbis (now Church), was Carolina Cadillac, later called Adamson before becoming Black Cadillac-Oldsmobile
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in the mid-’50s. This was automotive row for many decades. Next door to the Cadillac dealership, now under the Graphica logo, was Lowman Studebaker. Trader’s Chevrolet was just up the block on East Market, now a parking lot, while Gate City Motors was a few blocks north on Church, now enjoying life as the Children’s Museum. Another survivor, on Hughes and Church, is the Art Deco inspired Ingram Motor Company’s Ford Truck headquarters, built around 1950 for my grandfather Bill Ingram Sr. Automotive dealerships erected from the 1920s into the 1940s were often opulent castles, richly appointed with marble or terracotta columns and impressive ornamentations meant to assure customers that this business was a permanent member of the community. This Caddy Showroom is a primo example, with two-story–high ceilings, large picture windows and wide open spaces necessary for displaying those motorized behemoths Detroit was mass producing, like the 1957 Coupe de Ville land yacht, 5,000 pounds of hulking The Art & Soul of Greensboro
polished chrome and steel that seated six comfortably. When Jay and Andrea Jung (pronounced “young”) embarked on a wallto-wall reimagining of this showplace that once housed chariots of the industrial-age gods, the end result wasn’t what they originally had in mind. Jay explains what drove them, so to speak, to where they are now. “We bought the Studebaker building in 1997, then bought this one in 2007, but everything kinda crashed. Then Design Archives let us know a few months after we bought it that they were moving to Tate Street,” he says, adding that the place sat mostly empty until 2013. “People would come by and they would get excited about it, but they just didn’t have enough money to develop it.” Then the Jungs were steered in an unexpected direction as Jay tells it, “Along came Zack Matheny, who had just joined DGI [Downtown Greensboro Inc.]. He put us together with Kathi Dubel in economic development and they are the reason we went ahead [with the event space]. We wanted to invest right here in Greensboro and Zack saw that.” For the next four years the duo, along with Jay’s brother and business partner Tom, made this their DIY project, “My brother and I, along with one artist here in Greensboro, built pretty much everything in here.” That meant acquiring a concrete mixer, welding equipment, a woodworking shop, then setting about to create a true work of art on a deteriorating canvas. “We went through a lot of iterations as to what this might be before finally settling on it being an event space,” Andrea tells me. The Jungs considered a market at one point, then a restaurant. Regardless of the showroom’s ulti-
CAROL W. MARTIN/GREENSBORO HISTORY MUSEUM COLLECTION
mate intended use, the Herculean effort to revive it would have to begin with the unglamorous task of repairing flooded boiler rooms, modernizing bathrooms, restoring skylights and demolishing the antiquated offices. That alone took two years. In the meantime Jay says, “My brother and I were head of design for Panera Bread. The way the CEO put it was, ‘Figure out where we should throw the football. Don’t figure out where we should be right now, figure out where we should be in the future.’” Traveling all around the country, they had the good fortune to encounter creative artisans and explore some
Adamson Cadillac, 1953 Photograph by Carol W. Martin
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exotic materials Panera was using for a radical redesign of its 1,800 locations. Back in Greensboro, concrete 9 inches thick was poured over the garage floor, then coated and polished; all the glasswork was replaced and reglazed, including the skylights. Modular lighting, both wall-mounted and hanging, was installed along with baffling to reduce echoing. A rounded concrete loading dock with a bent steel accent doubles as a stage that leads to an outdoor garden patio paved in recycled granite. Taking advantage of the exposed brick walls surrounding the spacious interior, the Jungs were determined to use only steel, concrete, stone, wood, chrome and glass for fixtures and furnishings to give birth to what they’re calling Cadillac Service Garage, as a hat-tip to the past. An entire wedding celebration can be held under one roof, with the ceremony taking place in the garage, Andrea Jung explains. “Then we send everybody up front to the showroom for cocktails and appetizers, and we flip the back for the seated reception. So you can be divided up in the three spaces without feeling separated.” There’s a magnificent archway off the main foyer that flows out of the comfy bride and groom’s lounges so the couple can lace up before the face-up, then make their dramatic entrance in style. A nearby Mid-Century brick house, originally a paint and body shop, serves as the operation’s offices and staging area for seamless transitions. The cozy mezzanine, which used to be nondescript sales offices, overlooks both the front showroom with the original black-and-white checkered tile and the former repair shop in the rear. One example of the meticulous attention to detail prevalent throughout this enterprise are the twin staircases leading to the upper landing. “On purpose, we built these at a 7-degree angle,” Jay tells me. “There are no 90-degree angles, which gives it a lot of visual interest.” The side railings came to them by chance, as Jay recounts: “We have a really good friend who called and said, ‘I’m standing in a dumpster and there are huge sheets of curved meshed metal. Can you use it?’ I said, ‘Send me a picture.’ He sent it to me, I said, ‘We’re coming right over.’” When the Jungs arrived at
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the dumpster, they pulled the metal out “and ran it through a rolling machine backwards,” Jay recalls. Once the sheets were straightened out, he says, “Then we blasted them and coated them.”
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lever touches are found wherever you look. In front of an upstairs wall, adorned with 5-by-10-foot slabs of Italian porcelain resembling copper, are heavy metal swivel stools with polished mahogany tops. Jay explains how they came about: “We drew them out, then had the pieces cut and we welded them together. The whole thing is designed to be a part of the railing, they swivel on the railing posts.” Andrea points out the front entrance. “This was just a solid storefront,” she says. “When we started renovating the city said, ‘You can’t open up on the sidewalk, that’s a tripping hazard.’ But you can’t open the door to the inside because that’s a fire hazard!” A vestibule of steel with concrete overlays was crafted to support custom-made doors carved from reclaimed wood, sandblasted to deepen the grain. “When we fashioned this vestibule we wanted to make sure it wasn’t all hard and cold,” Jay says. “So this warm, beautiful wood kind of meshes with it. But we also take a lot of time in how we finish our steel. This steel, even though it’s hard and cold, it has a softness to it. So we would pick our metal very carefully. We rub it, distress it, finish it in a certain way.” Indeed, it never occurred to me that this wasn’t the original entrance, and I’d been here several times in the 1990s when this one-time derelict was the scene for rave parties. “Everything we’ve done in the place is of the character of the building,” Andrea notes. “Everything feels like it should feel, but it’s all cleaned up and new.” The entire 13,000-square foot ceiling was paneled in stained heart pine The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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slats rescued from a warehouse in Eden, giving this Industrial chic arena with Steampunk undertones a distinctly warm feeling. Even the dinner tables are manufactured from thick wooden beams. Jay explains, “We planed them to make sure they were functionally stable, then we painted them, rubbed them, painted them again, rubbed them again” to give the surface a distressed but silky smooth, ice creamy lusciousness.
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ow does this nearly century-old beauty fit within the surrounding neighborhood? Directly across the street from Cadillac Service Garage on East Market is Mitchell’s Clothing. Ninety-year old John Mitchell tells me he’s been haberdashering in this very spot since 1937. “I was 11 years old. The owner was my uncle, I used to come work here after school,” he recalls. A few years later his father bought the business. Mitchell’s is a living testament to how the area has changed. “You had the Hudson dealership next to Johnson Motors. Then you had the Clegg-King barber shop in the basement of the hotel. And Greensboro Barbecue, that man’s name was Al Kypris, they had good food,” John Mitchell remembers, before ticking off a list of area diners operating out of remodeled railroad cars. “There used to be a chicken place on Sycamore Street where they sold live chickens. Then you had Patterson’s Seafood on Davie; they had trays all the way around the store with different kinds of fresh fish on ice. You’d pick out what you want and they’d go in the back and clean it for you. These people would bring the fish in [from the coast] every Friday,” he says. Referring to the charming, ’20s-era, three-story brick apartment house next door to his shop at 313 East Market, Mitchell says, “Upstairs, back in the old days, a lot of Greeks, when they came from the Old Country, would live up there for a while. A Greek woman there used to scrub the steps every day and kept it clean and nice.” Dual ground-floor storefronts below the rental units once housed Dabbs Furniture. Dating back to the ’20s, on the corner of Market and Lyndon, is another restored relic, the enormous Dick’s Laundry building with a decorative brickwork facade and large swatches of windows, unique for the period. Lost to “progress” was the two-story, blocklong Arctic Coal and Ice facility that would have offered a world of possibilities today. On the 400 block of East Market is an old-school brick shopping strip completed in two stages, the first around 1951 for Eat Well Cafe and Guilford Dry Cleaners that now, fit-
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tingly, houses an authentic barbershop, itself frozen in time. The railroad overpass that caps this district was the historical demarcation of what was euphemistically referred to in olden times as “the other side of the tracks,” with dual pedestrian tunnels underneath, one side designated for whites, the other for blacks. According to Mitchell, “From Church Street to the bridge was more or less a buffer zone between the black town and the white town.” Around the corner on Lyndon Street are two of the neighborhood’s remaining single family homes, one of which has been Frankensteined into eight units, along with four San Francisco–style row houses from 1905. They are a very unusual design for our state, but another block of row houses used to exist nearby, at the rear of the News and Record property. These are followed on Lyndon by the Crane and Tomlinson Plumbing warehouses, the latter now an artists’ collective, and a distribution depot for Brinkley & Holland, all built in the 1920s and ’30s. Mitchell recalls that during Prohibition, “I’d see the lawyers and businessmen walk across the street and I always wondered where they went. I found out they had a bootlegger house over there on Lyndon where they’d sell whiskey. They’d have a couple of drinks and go back to work.” Also in sight, the palatial but underused Anderson Produce Market at Church and Friendly with a stark but sturdy Art Deco façade dating back to the mid-1920s. Black Cadillac-Olds moved to their current showroom on Bessemer around 1966, leaving behind a cavernous cadaver. The southern edge of downtown went to seed as businesses fled the city center in general; that decline was hastened after our premiere hotel became a fleabag, as Mitchell witnessed firsthand. “The King Cotton got rundown, people got in there and they were rowdy. They used to throw bottles out of the windows on people walking by and stuff like that,” he says. That 13-story high-rise, once the city’s The Art & Soul of Greensboro
symbol of elegance and permanence, was imploded in 1971. Before that decade ended, even the train depot up and left. It wasn’t until another 40 years, with the restoration of the Studebaker dealership in 2007 to serve as offices for Jay Jung’s marketing firms Graphica and Think/Create, followed by the repurposing of Dick’s Laundry, that there was a glimmer of hope for this side pocket of downtown to experience a comeback. Lit up at night, under its original metal sidewalk canopy, Cadillac Service Garage sparkles with the elegance and panache of a 1940s cruise ship. Accommodating a maximum of 680 people, this capacious event space can be scaled easily for big or small receptions. When First Bancorp acquired Carolina Bank they had their first big corporate meet-up here. And, if you happen to be in the area, by all means stop by Mitchell’s Clothing and check out his prodigious selection of hats and shoes, then you can say you shopped where your grandfather did. I couldn’t resist asking John Mitchell how he managed to stay in business all these decades. His reply came quickly: “I open the door.” It seems every parcel of Greensboro has its own made-up moniker, most recently an area north of downtown was christened Midtown despite its being anything but. Jay Jung believes the neighborhood Cadillac Service Garage now anchors deserves its own nickname, “Zack and I were brainstorming about it and we thought it would be great to call it DUMBO, Down Under the Market Bridge Overpass, kinda like it is in Brooklyn.” OH Billy Ingram was born and raised in Greensboro but, for a period in the 1980s and ’90s, was part of the Hollywood team the ad world has enshrined as, “The New York Yankees of motion picture advertising.” He is the author of five books, as if anyone reads anymore. October 2017
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Reverie Place Richard Petty’s homage to the love of a lifetime By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Lynn Donovan
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magine a love story. Let’s say it begins in 1958, when a 21-year-old man marries his 17-year-old sweetheart and sets out to make his mark in the world. He wins fame and fortune in a dangerous game, his wife and children by his side. In time, our hero and his bride suffer setbacks and even tragedy. But these challenges make their ties to family even stronger. Then, in 2014, the man loses his sweetheart to cancer. With children and grandchildren gathered, she passes away peacefully at the home the couple had built together. So we close our romance and reach for the tissues, right? Not Richard Petty. Instead, one fine morning, after talking with his children, he walks out in the fields of the farm where he’s lived with his wife for 40 years and picks a spot to create a garden in her memory. A place he’ll fill with living things, where people can gather to celebrate and pray. And that’s why I happen to be driving through Level Cross toward Randleman. I turn on to Providence Church Road, looking for the gate guards for the drive into “Reverie Place,” Petty’s 528-acre estate. I pull in,
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passing the brick guards with their black metal gates, a handsome gold “P” glistening on each one. There’s a fenced pasture to my right and woodlands to my left. Ahead there’s another set of gate guards. Beyond them is a flagpole, an American flag stirring in the breeze. Lion sculptures stand post at the guards below a vigilant eagle and a pineapple, symbol of hospitality. The drive forks, curving to the right toward a big, low-slung brick house shaded by oaks, or straight ahead toward fenced pastures and a horse barn. That’s where I spot O.Henry photographer Lynn Donovan and her husband Dan speaking with someone. I park the car and Lynn introduces me to Rebecca Petty Moffitt, the youngest of the four Petty children. She serves as executive director of the Petty Family Foundation and has agreed to show us around the property today. My attention is captured right away by a fountain opposite the drive. In its play of water are sculpted hummingbirds, some flying, some at rest. The fountain stands in the center of a circular basin of stone. “The artist did four different hummingbirds to represent us children,” Moffitt tells me. “The fountain is the only place where you’ll find all four The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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of them together.” A sign on a low stone wall lets me know this is the spot Petty and his children picked to honor their wife and mother. The sign reads, “The Lynda Petty Memorial Garden.” A circular walk around the fountain leads to an arched wooden bower set on stone foundations. Nearby are big stones with plantings of holly, hydrangeas and day lilies. “Momma was a real gardener,” Moffitt says. “Vegetables, fruits, flowers, you name it. Daylilies were her favorites.” As I look up at the bower, Moffitt explains that the structure was built to suggest the narthex of a church. Southern Pines landscape designer Mark Wesley Parson, a family friend, helped with the design of the garden. I step through the narthex into an open circle of manicured lawn, perhaps a hundred feet in diameter. Bordering the circle are more plantings — crepe myrtle, Mexican sage, butterfly bush, white hydrangea, holly and more. Straight ahead is another wooden structure built on stone footings. It rises to a peak, and above is the shape of a bell tower. I turn to Moffitt. “The altar?” She nods. There are wings, with plenty of room for wedding attendants. I take a moment to enjoy the quiet here — a sanctuary carpeted with grass, walled in by living things, vaulted by the sky above. A good place for a soul to linger. The wind sighs in the pine woods beyond the altar. “Mark wanted the design to direct you forward,” Moffitt says, “and up.” “I see that,” I say. “It’s a beautiful spot.” “Two of my nieces were married here,” she says. “You wouldn’t expect it, but inside the circle we can seat 150 people.” And that’s where our love story takes a turn toward the practical. Five hundred acres is a lot to keep up, and Richard Petty wants his estate to be self-sustaining financially. While he’s given 100 acres to Victory Junction, the camp for children with chronic or serious illnesses founded in honor of his grandson, Adam, there are still four people who work full time to maintain the place. “Daddy’s proud of the success he’s had,” Moffitt says. “And he likes sharing it with people, having people on the property.” So the family came up with the idea of making Lynda’s memorial garden and other places on the Petty farm available for weddings and other celebrations. They developed a website, www.reverie-place.com, where a variety of The Art & Soul of Greensboro
options for uses of the property, April through October, can be found. “One weekend we had two formal weddings with big receptions,” Moffitt says. “Honestly, it was just too hectic.” They’ve learned in spite of demand, they need to limit the number of activities they book. Down the hill from The Lynda Petty Memorial Garden is a pasture fence and just beyond, a trim horse barn. “Oh, we have brides who’ll prefer something more casual,” Moffitt says. “Something country.” So staff at the farm will decorate the barn and put straw bales out for people to sit. “We’ve had several weddings there,” Moffitt says. We turn and head toward the Pavilion. As I drove in, I missed seeing a large stone fire pit with metal benches. “This is a great spot for making s’mores,” Moffitt says. The Pavilion is large, with a metal roof, and wooden, cantilevered supports set on stone footings. “It’s a great place for receptions, parties, showers, company events,” Moffitt says. Canvas sides can be lowered if the weather is rainy or cold. White tables and chairs are still in place from an earlier event. Moffitt tells me the Pavilion was built on what used to be the family tennis courts. “This was such a great place to grow up as a kid,” she says, smiling. “We were always doing something, riding four-wheelers in the woods, whatever.” Tall crepe myrtles line one side of the Pavilion. On the other side is a water garden shaded by big hardwoods. Water spurts from the trunk of a happy elephant sculpture into a two-stage spillway before splashing into a pool. There are cattails, horsetails, water lilies, hostas and rhododendrons. There are frog and heron figures. The sound of the water is soothing, tranquil. We’re close to the Petty residence, and I notice here and there are painted hot-air balloon sculptures, metal bicycle sculptures, frogs and huge planters. “Oh, that’s Daddy,” Moffitt says. “Sometimes he gets a little carried away.” She smiles broadly. She tells me her father likes to look through direct mail catalogs, and when he orders something, he orders plenty. “To tell you the truth,” she continues, “we try to get to his mail before he does, so we can pull out all the catalogs!” As we’re looking at the Pavilion and water garden, we’re joined by Moffitt’s sister, Sharon Petty Farlow, executive director of the Petty Museum October 2017
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in Randleman and the event coordinator for Reverie Place. A kindergarten and elementary school teacher for 32 years, Farlow serves on the Randolph County School Board, just as her mother did. Farlow is driving a golf cart, and asks us to hop on so we can ride down to see another attraction on the estate. We travel along a drive lined with cherry trees. “They’re so pretty in the spring,” Farlow says. Like her sister, she has a wide, bright smile, and laughs easily. “They alternate,” she continues, “one with white blossoms, the next with pink.” We start down a slow grade, the road bending to the left. On that side beyond a pasture fence is a grove of oaks in a pasture. I see a couple of bison and a donkey. “Daddy has longhorn cattle somewhere in the pasture,” Farlow says. “And peacocks at the barn. He always has something.” She tells me how she’ll sometimes see her father out in the fields in the early morning, looking things over. Above the drive I glimpse a small grape arbor with apple trees beyond. “Momma had those trees put in,” Moffitt says. “She loved making her pies.” We start down the grade. Straight ahead lies a wide expanse of mown grass with a big pond stretching to an earth dam. A gentle point of land juts into the pond. There’s open pasture to the left, and river birches and woodlands to the right. We pull into a circular drive next to a log cabin. Farlow parks the cart and we pile out. The pond has a big aerator. We listen to the water. Spray refracts into little jewels in the sunlight. It’s a peaceful spot. “Daddy had this cabin moved here,” Farlow says. “It dates from the 1800s. There was a barn attached, and he moved it, too. That’s where the kitchen and bath were put in.” I comment on the johnny house behind the cabin, and Farlow chuckles. “It’s actually a Porta-john for outdoor events,” she says. “We boarded it over for effect.” We walk around to the front of the cabin, where a porch overlooks the pond. Big bears, carved by an artist in Wyoming, stand watch. We climb the steps and go inside the cabin, blinking at the change from bright sunlight. Around us are antiques, racing memorabilia and quilts. A massive stone fireplace reaches from floor to ceiling. There’s an antique pie safe, a wooden ice box, and a “Country Charm” reproduction woodstove in the kitchen. “At one time, Momma owned an antiques shop,” Farlow says. “Daddy
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always said the problem with the shop was Momma was its best customer.” Her bright smile flashes. I step up a narrow stairway to a loft, where there’s a metal frame bed, quilts and antique dolls. I look down onto the main floor. The two sisters haven’t seen each other in days, so they’re sitting together, chatting about children and schedules and relatives. The sound of their voices is musical, comforting. I step back to the main floor. The two sisters stand. “Sometimes brides like to put on their gowns here,” Moffitt says. “Where it’s nice and quiet.” She tells me there’s a bower they can set up on the point of land by the pond. Several brides have had their weddings there. Sometimes people will rent the cabin for a weekend getaway. “I’ll lock up behind you,” Farlow says. Moffitt and I start for the porch. By the window is a big round table. Moffitt stops for a moment. “We brought that table from the house,” she says quietly. She tells me how the Petty family’s life in racing meant a life of weekends on the road. “But on Tuesday nights,” Moffitt says, “Daddy would be home, with all of us, and Momma would always fix beans and cornbread.” She tells me about sitting around the table with her brother and sisters, with her mother and father. I can hear in her voice how special those meals were. We walk out onto the porch and down the steps. I hear the door lock behind us. We step around to the golf cart as Farlow closes and locks the side door to the cabin. She gets behind the wheel of the cart. “There’ve been so many events for Daddy’s birthday,” Farlow says. “You know, sponsors, friends, fans. And family. He turned 80 in July.” Moffitt smiles at her sister as the cart starts up the grade. Then she looks at me. “I said to him, ‘Daddy, you keep going to all these events, you’re gonna wind up being 200 years old!’” We all laugh together. As we pass the curve where Lynda Petty’s arbor and trees overlook the drive, across from the pastures where Richard Petty likes to walk alone in the mornings, I get the feeling the love story we imagined at the beginning of this piece isn’t over quite yet. OH When Ross Howell Jr. was a student at Floyd County High School in Virginia, stock car driver Curtis Turner was a hometown hero, the Wood Brothers were building race cars with their father Glen in nearby Stuart, and Richard Petty was on his way to becoming a legend.
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www.polliwogs.com 336.275.1555 1724 Battleground Ave. Suite 104 Greensboro, NC 27408
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
A L M A N A C
October By Ash Alder
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It happens in October. The morning is charged with autumnal magic, and ancient memories of the circus awaken in our bones.
A yellow spider descends from the porch rafter like an aerial silk dancer, and a crow pivots round on the wrought iron rail between the fence pickets. In the garden, feathery muhly grass whispers a simple incantation, and winter squash and warty goblins embody the weird and the wonderful. The world is a carnival of texture and color, and spirited creatures remind us of stilt walkers and acrobats and mystical sideshows. The spider ascends. Inside, red and golden spirals fall away with each smooth crank of the apple peeler, and the dog-eared pages of the family cookbook mark applesauce; apple dumplings, crisp and tart; great aunt Linda’s brown butter apple loaf. The crow caws madly in the garden, calls us back to the front porch, where sunlight dances in the spider’s web. She’s spun a message: You, too, are the magician.
The Stinking Rose
In ancient Greece, brides carried bouquets of garlic in lieu of flowers. In ancient Egypt, it was fed those who built the Great Pyramids. In addition to warding off vampires and evil spirits, garlic does wonders for sautéed turnip, beet and mustard greens. Break bulbs into cloves and plant them before the first hard freeze. Although it won’t be ready for harvest until next June, growing your own garlic means you’ll be well equipped for cold (and collard) season next fall. And wedding season, of course.
The sweet calm sunshine of October, now Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough Drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October. –Nathaniel Hawthorne
Brain Candy & Ivy People In the spirit of Halloween, tricks and treats:
• Weighing in at over 2,600 pounds, the largest pumpkin ever measured was grown by a farmer named Mathias Wellemijns, who wheeled the monster from his home in Belgium to the Giant Pumpkin European Championship in Germany last year to take top prize. • Master illusionist Harry Houdini, one of the greatest magicians who ever lived, mysteriously died on Halloween night in 1926. Among his first tricks: picking the lock on his mother’s cupboard to retrieve her fresh-baked apple pies. • Egyptian farmers swaddled wooden figures with nets to create the first “scarecrows” in recorded history. Only they weren’t scarecrows, per se. They were used to keep quail from the wheat fields along the Nile River. • During the pre-Halloween celebration of Samhain, a Gaelic festival that marks the end of harvest season, bonfires were lit to ensure the return of the sun. Druid priests offered bones of cattle to the flames. “Bone fire” became “bonfire.” • The Full Hunters Moon rises just after sunset on Thursday, October 5 — a prelude to Mad Hatter’s Day on Friday, October 6. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Ponder this and other riddles over tea in the garden — top hat optional. • The ancient Celts looked to the trees for knowledge and wisdom. According to Celtic tree astrology, those born from September 30 – October 27 associate with ivy, an evergreen vine is known for its ability to cling and bind. Ivy people are charming and charismatic, but their compassion, fierce loyalty to others and ability to flourish against all odds is what sets them apart from other signs of the zodiac. Ivy people are most attracted to ash (February 19–March 17) and oak (June 10–July 7) signs. OH
–William Cullen Bryant
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October 2017 Chica to Chica
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October 1 CULTIVATING WITH CRITTERS. 2 p.m. Learn how to grow things without disrupting or inviting critters at “Gardening with (and in Spite of) Wildlife,” courtesy of Triad Daylily Fans Garden Club. 4301 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 456-4509 or thegreensborocouncilofgardenclubs.com. ARTICUTLURE. Noon. Catch a juried show featuring artwork and crafts of 50-some artists
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The Rain in Spain
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and artisans in a lush setting at Art in the Arboretum. 401 Ashland Drive, Greensboro. Info: greensborobeautiful.org. CHICA TO CHICA. 7 p.m. Latin pop divas Gloria Trevi and Alejandra Guzmán team up for their Versus tour. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
October 1–8
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FAIR DEAL. As if rides, funnel cakes and prize cows weren’t enough, the Dixie Classic Fair also offers a heap o’ entertainment, including tractor pulls, wrestling, equestrian arts and musical acts, such as The Afters and Jason Gray. WinstonSalem Fairgrounds, 421 27th St., NW, WinstonSalem. Tickets and Info: dcfair.com.
October 1–13 DECORATIVE DENIM/17DAYS. Before it, er, fades away, catch 50 Shades of Blue Greensboro,
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Arts Calendar
EAGLES
Foo Fighters
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an exhibit featuring artwork made from denim scraps. Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc.gov.
October 1–15 LAST CHANCE! To see Red-Hot and Newly Acquired: Recent Additions to the Collection. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
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October 1–November 5 OUTSIDE THE BOX/17DAYS. Renzo Ortega puts the art in carton in his exhibit of collages made from boxes at Two Artists/One Space. GreenHill, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org. SEE WHAT?/17DAYS. The familiar becomes distorted in Observational Abstraction, in which artists paint the physical world through the genre of abstraction. GreenHill (InFocus Gallery) 200
Hey, Hey Paula
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North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
October 1–December 3 PROFS’ PIECES. See 2017 UNCG Faculty Biennial. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
October 1–December 8
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Arts Calendar GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Check out the ofrenda with sugar skulls, food, beverages and mementos, as well as a photo collage of the observance of Day of the Dead in San Miguel Allende. Museum of Anthropology, Wake Forest University, 1834 Wake Forest Road, WinstonSalem. Info: (336) 758-5282 or moa.wfu.edu.
October 1–Dec. 22 EDGY/17DAYS. Catch the only Southern leg of an exhibit of explosive abstract expressionist works at Louise Fishman: A Retrospective. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
October 1–February 11 TIMELESS. It’s all relative: While away the hours 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.
October 4 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 4 p.m. Meet Young Adult novelist Joanne O’Sullivan, author of Between Two Skies. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet novelist Daren Wang, author of The Hidden Light of Northern Fires. The reading is co-sponsored by the UNCG M.F.A. Program. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 7631919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 5 VEGGIN’ OUT. Noon. Learn how to stock up for winter at “Growing Cool-Season Vegetables,” a lunch and learn courtesy of curator Adrienne Roethling. Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, 215 South Main St., Kernersville. To register: (336) 996-7888 or cienerbotanicalgarden.org. AUTHORS, AUTHORS. 7 p.m. Meet poets Catherine Strisik and Mark SmithSoto. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm
St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 5–7 BEST BUY. Histories, mysteries, novels, biographies and more can be yours for a song at the Friends of the Library annual Fall Book Sale. Members’ preview night (10/5 ). Times vary. Greensboro Public Library Central Branch, 219 North Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 3732471 or greensboro-nc.gov.
October 5–8 LOVERLY. Get ye to the show on time! High Point Community Theatre presents My Fair Lady. Performance times vary. High Point Theatre, 220 East Commerce Ave., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointheatre.com.
October 6 CAPITOL CAMPAIGN. 7 p.m. Help preserve a National Historic Landmark, N.C.’s State Capitol, by shag dancing, eating seafood and bidding in a silent auction at the State Capitol Foundation
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Arts Calendar Oyster Roast. State Capitol grounds, 1 East Edenton St., Raleigh. Tickets and Info: (919) 7334994 or ncstatecapitol.org. ART AND DANCE. 7 p.m. Dance Project presents three short pieces performed by Van Dyke Dance Group and choreographed especially for gallery space. GreenHill, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2727 or greenhillnc.org. THROWDOWN! 10 p.m. Jessica Mashburn cranks up the grooves at Pop-Up Dance Club. Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or printworksbistro.com.
October 6–15 TEENAGE DETECTIVE. See Drama Center’s teen production based on Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, featuring the mystery novelist’s beloved detective, Miss Marple. Performance times vary. Stephen D. Hyers Theatre, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Tickets: greensboro-nc.gov.
October 7 BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE. 10 a.m. Or soon will be. Learn how early settlers prepared for winter. High Point Museum, 1859 East Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.
October 6–8 AGGIE-NY AND ECSTASY. Musical acts, food, drink and arts vendors, and a visit from the A&T marching band . . . must be Aggie FanFest! War Memorial Stadium, 510 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc.gov.
AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Christine Arvidson, co-editor of The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. HEALING ARTS. 6:30 p.m. Bid for works of art to keep the Hirsch Wellness Center for Creativity and Wellness going, going, to avoid it being gone at “Art Lives Here” Silent Auction. Revolution
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October 7 & 8 LEAFY GREENS. 8 a.m. For greenbacks! Get yer trees, shrubs, perennials and more at the Fall Plant Sale. Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, 215 South Main St., Kernersville. Info: (336) 996-7888 or cienerbotanicalgarden.org. AGGIE NOTES. 7:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Migos and Gucci Mane headline the A&T Homecoming concert (10/7), while the Mann family puts the home in “homecoming” with gospel tunes. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. BACH-UP SINGERS. 7 p.m. and 4 p.m. Kick off the celebration of Bel Canto Company’s 35th anniversary with concerts featuring the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Ebenezer Lutheran Church, 1905 Walker Ave., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2220 or belcantocompany.com.
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Arts Calendar October 9 SWING TIME. 11 a.m. Tee up for the 2017 Hannah’s Haven Teen Challenge Golf Tournament, featuring tips from PGA TOUR veterans, Fred Funk, Bob Gilder, Mike Goodes and Gene Sauers. Greensboro Country Club, Farm Course, 5121 Hedrick Drive, Greensboro. To register: (336) 613-2646 or mgoodes7@icloud. com. Info: hannahshaven.net.
October 9 & 10 GREEN SCENES. 7 p.m. See a screening of The Fault in Our Stars at the Carolina Theatre, (310 South Greene St.) followed by a John Green party at 9 p.m. and midnight release of his new novel, Turtles All the Way Down. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 7631919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 10 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Sue Shankle, author of A Stash of One’s Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting Go of Yarn. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. FLAT TOP. 7 p.m. Give a nod to the 1930s by watching Boris Karloff’s terrifying performance in Frankenstein, part of the decade-by-decade film series celebrating the Carolina Theatre’s 90th anniversary. Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
October 11 AUTHORS, AUTHORS. 7 p.m. Meet Lisa Napoli, author of Ray and Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away. Stick around for a story and a
stout with Steve Cushman. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 7631919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 12 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Howard Covington author of Lending Power: How SelfHelp Credit Union Turned Small-Time Lending into Big-Time Change. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 12 & 13 NUTHIN’ ADO-IN’/17DAYS 5:30 p.m. See a plein-air, Southernized production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing — set in rural Guilford County — and follow the actors from one outdoor location to another. Shared Radiance Studio, 609 N.C. Highway 62, Greensboro. Tickets: sharedradiance.org
October 13 BLOCKOUT/17DAYS. 6 p.m. Join the monthly block party downtown for food, music, craft brews and more. North Church Street between Lindsay Street and Friendly Avenue, Greensboro. Info: downtowngreensboro.org. POP SOUNDS/17DAYS. 6:30 p.m. The sounds of the 1960s come alive at “Blue-Eyed Soul: The Hidden Musicians,” part of the One City, One Book initiative. Greensboro Public Library, Central Branch, 219 North Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2471 or greensboronc.gov. PIPED AND PUMPED/17DAYS. 7:30 p.m. Hear a recital by organist Faythe Freese at “Women in Music,” a series of Music for a Great Space. Christ United Methodist Church, 410 North Holden
At Greenwood Bed and Breakfast,
Road, Greensboro. Tickets: christgreensboro.org. EARTH TONES. 8 p.m. Get ready to tap your toes at the Piedmont Conservancy Land Jam, featuring Bela Fleck, Abigail Washburn and Laurelyn Dossett. Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
October 13–15 YOUR OWN SPECIAL ISLAND/17DAYS. Catch the final run of South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s World War II–era musical. Triad Stage, 232 South Elm St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
October 13–20 BRIT WIT/17DAYS. 7:30 p.m. The humor and insight of one of London’s literary lights of the early 20 th century comes alive in A Wild Romp Through the Mind of G.K. Chesterton. Performance times vary. City 616, 614 South Elm St., Greensboro. Tickets: joyfulcommunity.com.
October 13–22 DRIPPY/17DAYS. You’ll — heh — melt with laughter at the comedy, A Night at the Wax Museum. Performance dates and times vary. Community Theatre of Greensboro, 520 South Elm St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-7469 or ctgso.org
October 14 STEPPING UP/17DAYS. 10 a.m. Learn Indian classical dance, aka Bharatanatyam, thanks to Dance Project and NC Dance Festival. Bonus points if you can pronounce its name. Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2712 or danceproject.org.
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October 2017
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar SEEING STARS/17DAYS. 3 p.m. Help build a geodesic dome and learn how to make your own planetarium with household items, courtesy of the program, “Would You Like to Swing on a Star?” Glenn McNairy Library, 4860 Lake Jeanette Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2015 or greensboro-nc.gov.
October 14 & 28
BOO WHO? 6 p.m. Cynthia Moore Brown, that’s who. Listen to her ghost stories in Historical Park. High Point Museum, 1859 East Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.
October 14
FLESH MOB/17DAYS. 2:30 p.m. For admission price that won’t cost you an arm or a leg, see how the human body becomes an artistic canvas at the Living Art America Bodypainting Championship. Greensboro Coliseum, Special Events Center, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: livingartamerica.com. PARK PARTY/17DAYS. 6 p.m. The last of the LeBauer Live concerts, courtesy of Krispy Kreme, features West African dance duo Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba. LeBauer Park, 208 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensborodowntownparks.org.
DRAMATIC IRON-Y. 10 a.m. The forge is smokin’ and you know what that means . . . the Blacksmith is at it again. High Point Museum, 1859 East Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.
SOUL-O ACT. 7:30 p.m. Meaning soulmates, husband and wife and Country duo, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, who bring their Soul2Soul tour to town. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. APPLAUSE FOR A CAUSE. 7 p.m. Enjoy music by Wolf Temper, a benefit for Greensboro Bound Literary Festival. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 15 WORDS FOR SALE. 2 p.m. Sisters in Crime invites writers and readers to learn about the possibilites of publishing options in the
marketplace. High Point Library, 901 North Main St., High Point. Info: murderwewrite.org. FOO-EY! 7:30 p.m. Yup, post-grunge rockers Foo Fighters take the stage.’Nuf said. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. AGILE AILEY/17DAYS. 8 p.m. See the graceful movements of the dance troupe Ailey II. Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
October 15 BON TEMPS/17DAYS. 7 p.m. For some footstompin’ fun, catch ’em if you can: Buckwheat Zydeco’s legendary Ils Sont Partis band. Van Dyke Performance Space, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Tickets: thevandyke.org.
October 16 SUCKULENTS. 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. Open your veins at the Paul Ciener Blood Drive. Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, 215 South Main St., Kernersville. To register: (336) 996-7888 or
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VERSE-A-TILE. 7 p.m. Poems inspired by Hidden Figures take center stage at “Live Your Poem,” an open-mic event. LeBauer Park, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreensboroparks.org.
October 18–20
October 17 SOARING SOUNDS. 8 p.m. The quintessential ’70s superband flies again. Come to “An Evening with the Eagles,” featuring Deacon Frey, son of late front man Glenn Frey. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Mindy Fried, author of Caring for Red: A Daughter’s Memoir. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 18 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Karen L. Cox, author of Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South. Scuppernong Books,
COLOR WHEELS/17DAYS. 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. (on 10/20 only). The UNCG Art Truck rolls into to downtown. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
October 19 STRING ALONG. 5:30 p.m. Grab a piece of clothing and bead it — just bead it — into fabric beads for necklaces, bracelets or earrings. GreenHill, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. To register: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org. AUTHOR, AUTHOR/17DAYS. 7 p.m. Meet novelist and regular contributor to O.Henry, Wiley Cash, author of The Last Ballad, and Bryant Simon, author of The Hamlet Fire. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 19, 20 , 21 & 22 ROTSA RUV/17DAYS. Fifty runaway brides with 50 angry, grooms in hot pursuit. See UNCG Theatre’s Big Love, a thought-provoking take on The Supplicants, by Aeschylus. Pam and David Sprinkle Theatre, 401 Tate Street, Greensboro. Tickets: theatre.uncg.edu.
October 20 SISTER ACT/17DAYS. 8 p.m. After bringing down the house at last year’s National Folk Festival with their harmonies and mean fiddling, Americana trio The Quebe Sisters are back in the Gate City by popular demand. Van Dyke Performance Space, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 838-3006 or thevandyke.org. MEXED MEDIA. 8 p.m. Hear the fusion sounds of Mexican folk, rock, soul and blues from Grammy Award winners Los Lobos. High Point Theatre, 220 East Commerce Ave., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointheatre.com.
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116 O.Henry
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar PUNK’D /17DAYS. 8 a.m. And who wouldn’t be? It’s Pumpkin Pancake & Harvest Celebration Day. ($5 a plate). Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: 373-2402 gsofarmersmarket.org.
SEXTRA TERRESTRIALS/17DAYS. 3:30 p.m. Sci-fi from the 1950s doesn’t get any campier. Catch Outer Space Vixens: Queen of Outer Space, starring Zsa Zsa Gabor as the leader of the “shebeasts” of Venus. Benjamin Branch Library, 1530 Benjamin Parkway, Greensboro. Info: (336) 3737540 or greensboro-nc.gov. THE BIG TO-DOO/17DAYS. 8 p.m. Five Broadway stars of Jersey Boys fame tune up with Greensboro Symphony Orchestra for the Doo Wop Project, a program of Frankie Valli–era songs, dancing and more. Westover Church, 505 Muirs Chapel Road, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 335-4546, ext. 224 or greensborosymphony.org. HEY, HEY PAULA! 8 p.m. Comedian Paula Poundstone goes for the laughs. Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
October 21–29 MOTION PICTURES/17DAYS. Watch the art of dance on film from professionals, students and 13 different countries at Greensboro Dance Film Festival. Times vary. Greensboro Project Space, 219 West Lewis St., Greensboro. Info: greensboroprojectspace.com.
October 22 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 2 p.m. Meet novelist Paoul Paul Boorstin, author of David and the Philistine Woman. The reading is co-sponsored by the Jewish Book Council. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 7631919 or scuppernongbooks.com. BIKE BASH/17DAYS. 3 p.m. Wild Ones unite! Vintage motorcycles are the highlight of Rumble at the Stacks. Revolution Mill, 1200 Revolution Mill Drive, Greensboro. Info: revolutionmillgreensboro.com. OUTDOOR CLASSROOM/17DAYS. 3 p.m. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
October 24 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet novelist Greg Fields, author of Arc of the Comet. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
Life & Home
BOOK BANTER. 2 p.m. Join WFDD Book Club for a discussion of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
Explore nature and stimulate scientific curiosity at “Edu-trekking,” with Kathy Mathews, Ph.D., and Aerin Benavides, Ph.D. Kathleen Clay Bryan Library, 1420 Price Park Drive, Greensboro. To register by email: melanie.buckingham@ greensboro-nc.gov.
October 25 TEN . . . NINE . . . EIGHT/17DAYS. 3 p.m. Ground Control to Maj. Tom: Learn about the science behind rocketry at “Blasting Off,” courtesy of the Triad Rocketry Club. Glenn McNairy Library, 4860 Lake Jeanette Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2015 or greensboro-nc.gov. THE CONVERSATION OF ART/17DAYS. 6 p.m. Hear the voices behind the artistic works of Two Artists/One Space, a talk by Renzo Ortega and Antoine Williams. GreenHill, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Mike Walden, author of North Carolina Beyond the Connected Age: The Tar Heel State in 2050. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. HEY MON! 9:30 p.m. Catch some New York– style reggae courtesy of New Kingston. The Blind Tiger, 1819 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 272-9888 or theblindtiger.com MIND MATTERS/17DAYS. 7:30 p.m. Bryan Series presents “The Humanity Behind Mental Health Statistics,” a lecture by Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Lee St., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
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October 21
October 27 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 5 p.m. Meet Lee Artz, co-author of Cultural Hegemony in the United States. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. TIME WARPED. 9 p.m. Just a jump to the left . . . and you know the rest. Let’s do the Time Warp again at The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Carolina
online @
www.ohenrymag.com October 2017
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Arts Calendar Theatre, 310 South Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
October 27–31 WAR AND PEACE. English and German soldiers in World War I take a break from combat to celebrate Christmas in Silent Night, a production of Piedmont Opera, adapted from the film Joyeux Noël. Performance times vary. Stevens Center, 405 West Fourth St., Winston-Salem. Tickets: piedmontopera.org.
October 27–Nov. 12 INVASIVE SPECIES/17DAYS. A plant with a thirst for human blood? Yup. Little Shop of Horrors delivers the laughs. Performance dates and times vary. Community Theatre of Greensboro, 520 South Elm St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 3337469 or ctgso.org.
October 28 CHEF TELLS ALL. 8 a.m. Learn how to make
rustic apple tarts from Chef Steve Terrill of Red Chair Dinners. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2402 or gsofarmersmarket.org.
October 28–January 8 HUMAN VESSELS. Ceramic figures inspired by vessels of the Huastec peoples of present-day Mexico are the focus of Kukuli Velarde: Falk Visiting Artist. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
October 28 POWER OF THE PRESS. 7 p.m. Press 53, that is. Celebrate the local boutique publisher’s anniversary. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 29
BIRTHDAY BASH. 8 p.m. Give a round of applause for the Gate City’s lovely old movie palace-turned-concert venue at Spirit of the Carolina: Celebrating 90 Years. Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com. DRAG RACE/17DAYS 4 p.m. Don your running shoes, dress up Junior and Fido in Halloween costumes and get moving for Run 4 the Greenway, a 4-mile, plus a 1.25-mile run in honor of UNCG’s 125th anniversary. Morehead Park, 500 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway.org.
AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 3 p.m. Meet poet Jane Kirkman-Smith, author of Water from the Wells of Home. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
October 31 SPIRITED AWAY. 8 p.m. Learn about the forme lives of those, er, down under at Max Carter’s annual Halloween graveside tour. New Garden Friends Cemetery, 801 New Garden Road, Greensboro. Info: ngfm.org.
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar 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 North Church St., Greensboro. Preregistration: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
a free evening of artistic expression at ArtQuest. GreenHill, 200 North Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 greenhillnc.org.
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 North Church St., Greensboro. To register: (336) 5742898 or gcmuseum.com.
CHAT-EAU. Noon. French leave? Au contraire! Join French Table, a conversation group. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
PICKIN’ AND GRINNIN’ 6 until 9 p.m. Y’all come for Songs from a Southern Kitchen, featuring Sam Frazier & Eddie Walker (10/3), Abigail Dowd & Jason Duff (10/10), Anne-Claire Niver & Friends (10/17), Vaughan Penn & Friends (10/24), Evan Olson & Jessica Mashburn (a special Halloween show on 10/31). 1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 3700707 or lucky32.com/greensboro_music.htm.
Tuesdays
Wednesdays
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 North Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.
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 North Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.
Thursdays
TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. The produce will be fresh and the cut fleurs belles at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 3732402 or gsofarmersmarket.org. CREATIVE KIN. 5 to 7 p.m. Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins: Enjoy
TWICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Preschool Storytime convenes for children ages 3–5. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 North 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: Sarah Strable (10/5),
ASHMORE RARE COinS & MEtAlS Since 1987
• 30 years as a major dealer of Gold, Silver, and Coins • Most respected local dealer for appraising and buying Coin Collections, Gold, Silver, Diamond Jewelry and Sterling Flatware • Investment Gold, Silver, & Platinum Bullion
Visit us: www.ashmore.com or call 336-617-7537 5725 W. Friendly Ave. Ste 112 • Greensboro, NC 27410
Business & Services
Across the street from the entrance to Guilford College
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
October 2017
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Arts Calendar
Jessica Mashburn (10/12), Joey Barnes (10/19), Clinton Horton (10/28). All performances are at the O.Henry Hotel Social Lobby Bar. No cover. 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or 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 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 THE HALF OF IT. 5 p.m. Enjoy the handson exhibits and activities for half the cost of admission at $5 Fun Fridays ($2 on First Fridays). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET. 8 p.m. A 90-minute, historical, candlelit ghost walking tour of Downtown Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 9054060 or carolinahistoryandhaunts.com/ information.
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.
Saturdays
Sundays
Fridays & Saturdays
TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 7 a.m. until noon. The produce is fresh and the cut fleurs belles, and Market Music Makers series bring plenty of humming and strumming. 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 South Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 7631919 or scuppernongbooks.com. JAZZ ENCORE. 6:30 p.m. Hear contemporary jazz cats, Dr. John Henry (10/7), The Penn Family (10/14), Matt Reid Quartet (10/28) and enjoy 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.
HALF FOR HALF-PINTS. 1 p.m. And grownups, too. A $5 admission, as opposed to the usual $10, will allow you entry to exhibits and more. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North 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.
Floral Design • Delivery Service Home Décor & Gifts Weddings & Special Events Come Visit Our Retail Shop! 1616 Battleground Avenue, Suite D-1 Greensboro, NC 27408
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October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
shops • service • food • farms
support locally owned businesses
Happy
& HEaLTHy IS OUR BUSINESS
1052 Grecade St. • GreenSboro, nc 27408 Conveniently located in Midtown
336.897.1505
dr. Janine oliver dr. Katelyn cobb
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Furnishing stylish homes in the Triad
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FURNITURE, ACCESSORIES AND GIFTS. Tuesday- Saturday 10-5pm 3500 Old Battleground Rd. Suite A (336) 617-4275 • www.aubreyhomedesign.com
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
October 2017
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
O.Henry 123
shops • service • food • farms
support locally owned businesses
Greensboro's Locally Owned Kitchen Store since 1985
Friendly Shopping Center, Greensboro, NC 1-800-528-3618
336-299-9767
www.extraingredient.com
our cuStom e rS a re youn G and th e younG at h e art. th e y are th e cl aSSic a m e rica n b e auty or th oS e lookinG for th re ad S th at a re unique ly on tre nd.
HanD cRaftED, cuStOm WOOD itEmS
boutique boutique
RED DOG WOODWORKS - Bill HiER
124
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 O.Henry October 2017
809 Green Valley r oad Suit e 101
| 336-944-5335
T u e s - F r i • 1 0 - 6 | saT • 1 0 -3
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
shops • service • food • farms
support locally owned businesses
We’re Moving! January 2018 1616-H Battleground ave Greensboro Dover Square down from Main & taylor
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
home at last!
Solo Art Exhibit by
sCott harrIs
oPenIng reCePton FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13 • 5:30-8:30 PM Show will run through Friday, November 3. Best known for his light catching oil on aluminum paintings and sculptures. Scott Harris uses the flexible and reflectiveqiality of his surface to add depth and movement to his art.
IrvIng Park art & Frame
2105-A West Cornwallis Drive • Greensboro, NC | 336.274.6717
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
October 2017
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
O.Henry 125
BOGO Halfsies* Buy One Pair of Glasses, and Get One Pair Half Price. OCTOBER SALE ENDS 10/31/17
NO OTHER SPECIALS ACCEPTED WITH THIS OFFER. 2ND PAIR: SINGLE-VISION WITH STANDARD ANTI-GLARE OR SINGLE VISION SUNGLASSES ONLY. INSURANCE PLANS DO NOT APPLY. SEE STORE FOR DETAILS.
126 O.Henry
October 2017
226 S. ELM STREET, GREENSBORO, NC 336 333 2993 OscarOglethorpe.com
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
city life,
reimagined. L i f e
Get downtown this fall and experience all we have to offer! Full list of events and happenings at
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215 S. Elm Street • Greensboro, NC
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modern furniture made locally
VIVID i n t e r i o r s
Interior Design • Furnishings • Art • Gifts • Accessories 513 S. Elm Street, Greensboro, NC 27406 336-265-8628 www.vivid-interiors.com The Art & Soul of Greensboro
511 S Elm St. | Greensboro NC 27406 | 336.370.1050 areamod.com
D O W N TO W N G R E E N S B O R O.O R G
October 2017
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New Hours • New YarNs • New Classes 231 S Elm StrEEt, GrEEnSboro nC 27401 • 336-370-1233 Tuesday thru Saturday • 10am-7Pm
gaTeciTyyarn@gmail.com
Come. Sit. Heal. We strive to provide complete care for our patients. Preventive & Wellness Care • Hospitalization Medicine / Surgery • Dentistry • And more ...
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 128 O.Henry
October 2017
D O W N TO W N G R E E N S B O R O.O R G
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Recipes fRom the old city of
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
➛
online @ www.ohenrymag.com
D O W N TO W N G R E E N S B O R O.O R G
October 2017
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Arts & Culture
Please join us for fine art, wine and hors d’oeuvres while raising funds for local breast cancer patients
mOLLY COURCELLE
THURSDAY | OCTOBER 5, 2017 5:30 TO 8:30 IN THE EVENING $30 ADmISSION TYLER WHITE O’BRIEN GALLERY 307 STATE STREET Lunch and Learn with Cheyenne and Molly will be 11:30am-1pm. Visit us online at AlightFoundation.org or call 336.832.0027 for more information.
CHEYENNE TRUNNELL
“Yellow and Pink”
130 O.Henry
October 2017
Acrylic On Paper
40”x60”
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Agnes Preston-Brame n e w
p a i n t i n g s
Arts & Culture
October 3 - 30, 2017 • Reception: October 6, 5 - 9PM 528 S. Elm St. Greensboro, 27406 • 336-275-9844
www.amblesidearts.com
vative, Exceptional, Inno horal and Engaging C Performances
35th Anniversary Season
Artistic Director Welborn Young
Spirit of Chan ge Saturday OCTOBER
7 8:00 pm Sunday OCTOBER 8 4:00 pm Monday OCTOBER 9 7:30 pm
Ebenezer Lutheran Church
1905 Walker Ave, Greensboro
J. S. Bach Johannes Brahms Dan Forrest
Tickets and Information: (336) 333-2220 or belcantocompany.com The Art & Soul of Greensboro
October 2017
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Arts & Culture 132 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
History Cabaret - Hearing ameriCa CHange: tHe songs of World War i Friday, October 27 at 7:30
Greensboro History Museum Archives
Broadcaster Michael Lasser, along with singers Cindy Miller and Alan Jones, turn the Greensboro History Museum into a WWI-era cabaret.
Arts & Culture
Tickets are free, reservations strongly suggested: www.GreensboroHistory.org or 336-373-2043
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
9/9/2017 9:29:30 AM
October 2017
O.Henry 133
GreenScene
Wayne Abraham, Kevin Williams
Schaum & Hendrix Flowers, Chase Leak
DAAS
Public Art Block Party Thursday August 17, 2017
Photographs by Lynn Donovan Constance, Amir, Asia & Darren Leak
Stephen Young, Julie Grimley
Monica Scovell, Matthew Felts, Kiara Heidenreich
Judah Harris, Anne Klar, Ayeza Nxumalo, Naimat Harris
Hannah Hilz, Jordan Morris
Brian Lewis, Mitch Cook
Bettina Acosta, Rasandra McNeill, Chante McNeill
Marshall & Cheryl Stewart Reid Chilton, Taylor Whitley
Barb & Rick Newbauer
Jay Squid, Tre Wilkes
134 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
F i n d Y o u r Wa Y H o m e
5805 Mashoes Ct
1101 sunset Dr
Stunning Executive waterfront home in Henson Farms! Luxurious 5 BR 4 level home w/over 7,000 SF of living space w/elevator. Formal DR, epicurean kitchen & 1st flr Mst ste & BA. Beautiful 3 season rm overlooks stunning views of lake.
Irving Park brick home that was built with serenity and family comfort in mind. Situated overlooking the golf course, 5 BR, 5 full BAs, 2 half BAs, Master BR on main level, open floor plan and custom built details.
Chesnutt - Tisdale Team Xan Tisdale 336-601-2337
6 oa k G l e n C t
20 soMMerton Dr
Stunning 2-story Transitional home with 5 BR, 5.5 BA. Master BR on main level with bath updated in 2013. 2-story Great Room with skylights. Gorgeous back yard with stream, pond & gardens. 3-car garage. Lots of storage. Priced to sell.
Wonderful comfort and classic beauty of Barrington Place - end unit in prime location. High ceilings, custom moldings, hardwood floors, master bedroom on main level. Large deck. Upper level with 2 bedrooms, bath and storage. 2-car attached garage.
the finest
©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
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w w w. p o s i ta n o. c c October 2017
O.Henry 135
Showing
M A R ION
Fall & winter october 11 - 19 Please contact me for your personal appointment.
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136 O.Henry
October 2017
MICHELLE PORTER MP
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene
Ryan Palma
Crystal Kulhanek
One City, One Book — Hidden Figures Kickoff Block Party Saturday, August 26, 2017
Photographs by Lynn Donovan Kristopher, Jackson & Damian Izaiah
Jeeven, Raj & Mona Malhotra
Joe, Lauren, Liz & Hannah Huscroft
Amy Crawford, Persha Lane, Monica Ramirezt
Chloe Brim, Decarlos Kinds
Geneva Headen, Joan Williams
Jennifer Graf, Stefanie Kiszely, Ciara Kelley Brigitte Blanton, Beth Sheffield
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Joseph Wallace, Brittney Bolden
Justin & Jasper Vettiel
Katherine & Richard Springs
October 2017
O.Henry 137
SArAH’S
2-A FountAin View CirCle
Long run By DaviD BuRl MoRRis
Life & Home
The story of the longest solo run in history according to Guinness Book of World Records.
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138 O.Henry
October 2017
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Call 910-693-2488 or or mail payment to P.O. Box 58, Southern Pines, NC 28388 The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene
Jason & Cyndi Tew
Evan & Jordan Lacenski
Kick-Off Pop-Up Dinner to benefit ALS of NC
Downtown Greensboro Restaurant Week Sunday, August 27, 2017 Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Lee Comer, Jerry Dawson
Warren & Debbie Pence
Julia Roach, Nolan Locklear
Leigh Andrews, Mike Slack
Wes Wheeler, Nick Wilson
Martha Kelly, Cathy & Audrey Wheeler, Kevin & Laura Forrest Sam & Margo Lindsey
Robbie Bald, Nancy Vaughan, Lauran & Zack Matheny, Jodee Ruppel Mary & Debbie Arthur
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Jake Skinner, Josh Birchmore, Andrew Norman
Anne & Parker Huitt
October 2017
O.Henry 139
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140 O.Henry
October 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene
Vanessa Ferguson
Indya Walker, Carl Jones
United Way 95th Anniversary Kick-Off Thursday, August 31, 2017
Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Leah Sprague, Mike Gillis, Michelle Gethers-Clark
Ashley Faulcon, Curtis Roggers
Karen Andrianos, Cindy Levine
Brian Maness, Matt Blake
Chad Stafford, Thelma Pointer Eione Reddick, Tevesee, Dwayne, Mae, Blake Asher & Jayden Diaz
Tahe Zalal, Elizabeth Green Mr. Rozzi, Z J Glam, Charelle Childs, Traci Tyndal
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Waltrene Canada, Ella Pass
Melanie Roof, Candace Smith
October 2017
O.Henry 141
AUTUMN LUNCHES
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O N T HE B LUE R IDGE P ARKWAY
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142 O.Henry
October 2017
$45 in-state • $55 out-of-state
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Accidental Astrologer
Steady-as-She-Goes! With the stars in level-headed Libra, balance is everything
By Astrid Stellanova
Librans are no airheads, even though y’all know
it is an air sign. Libra is the sign of balance. A true Libran likes nothing more than a balanced bank account and a balance beam. But they also have a very off-kilter sense of humor. Funnyman Zach Galifianakis is a Libran (born in Wilkesboro). Susan Sarandon, Vladimir Putin, Lil Wayne, Serena Williams and Will Smith are Librans too. Imagine having that list of guests for a big ole Libra birthday party, Sweet Things. — Ad Astra, Astrid
Libra (September 23–October 22) Sugar, last month you spent too many hours of your life rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Now, you’ve found a whole new (read: not lost) cause and that makes you happy. But do take a tee-ninesy bit of time to stretch out on a lounge chair and just look back over the past year. You’ve weathered some mighty storms, but paddled your way back to shore and survived those stormy seas. This is the month to allow yourself some time for friends and family although you feel pressured to keep your eye on work issues. You have got a good year ahead, with many of your biggest life obstacles faced and overcome. Scorpio (October 23–November 21) You’ve never seen a mirror you didn’t like — c’mon, you know there is a secret little part of you that does like your own reflection. You invest in yourself and it shows. But consider the hard fact that you cannot eat makeup and become a more beautiful person on the inside . . . that is going to require you to put somebody else ahead of little old you. Sagittarius (November 22–December 21) Is Bigfoot real? As real as your windfall fantasies are. Honey, you can keep on buying those lottery tickets and spending your hard-earned cash like you already won, but it ain’t going to get you where you need to be. The truth is this: People admire you for your imagination. But use it to create, not to build castles in the air. Capricorn (December 22–January 19) You got a shock and a bad break. Things should have gone differently. Life can be a lazy Susan of crap cakes, and we all get a serving sooner or later. But here’s the nice part: The month ahead will not be more of the same. In fact, something you missed out on is gonna present itself again — a second chance, Sweet Thang. Aquarius (January 20–February 18) It has been a lonely chapter for you, and you went into full-on hermit crab phase and buried yourself at the home front. Look, Honey, your best friend is not your salad spinner. You have a lot of friends who miss their pal. If you only knew how many consider you a role model, you’d put the lettuce in the Frigidaire and get out more. Pisces (February 19–March 20) Your never-ending urgency is like a 24/7 emergency. Are your pants on fire or is that just smoke you’re blowing? Have you noticed how often you ring the bell, crack the whip and sound all alarms, only to have bewildered looks or eye rolls follow? Maybe try being a little more sensitive; try meditating. Just keep your hands off the alarm.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Aries (March 21–April 19) This is when the stars move into your complementary opposite, but you sometimes lack the gumption to appreciate it. October is when Aries will grow nostalgic for the green promises of spring, and miss out on the beauty of the fall. Balance in all things, if you want to be a sure-footed Ram. Look up to the night sky! Taurus (April 20–May 20) As much as you like to think of yourself as a trendsetter, a few people see it differently. Like, rumor has it that the last original thought you had was probably back when vinyl still ruled. That galls you, right? Ain’t fair, right? So prove the rumormongers wrong. How? Stop dragging out the same old same old. Gemini (May 21–June 20) The crazy train had not even left the station before you decided to kick all the passengers off. Sugar, you are the conductor. The destination is sometimes to the town of Wonderful Madness and sometimes somewhere else. Don’t leave friends guessing — where exactly is this train going, and why are we all here? Cancer (June 21–July 22) The year has been so topsy-turvy you have had a tough time calibrating. This is a good month to chill and watch the leaves change, Baby. Take a road trip to some place you like and try and find solid ground. It isn’t possible to balance by standing on one foot and playing it all Zen, when you really feel Elvis-like and all shook up. Leo (July 23–August 22) The Leo nature can be melancholic. You call it philosophical. But, face it, Honey; some think you’ve just been in a bad mood for several years. If you decide to be less philosophical and more grateful, you would find that you have talents you haven’t used and friends who don’t even know you miss them. Virgo (August 23–September 22) If this year taught you anything, it’s pithy things like have an attitude of gratitude. Stitch that onto a pillow where you can see it. When you take stock this fall, notice that it is life changing to let those who made your good fortune possible know you are aware. Unseen hands have helped you; now move your lips and say “thank you.” 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. October 2017
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O.Henry Ending
Yellow Fever
By Cynthia Adams
I deviate from the Interstate, in search of relief from endless roads with nothing to offer but exits.
The town of Benson, with a namesake fruitcake that I, alone, apart from my mother, eat with gluttony, is a small town easily digested. A hint of quaintness; but mostly used car lots and fast food joints, and soon in my rearview mirror. Tobacco fields, leaves curling yellow, stretch beside the road that leads to Wilmington. Then, a sign: Spivey’s Corner. My Honda slows. Where is the store? The store near a sign promoting the annual hollering contest? But it isn’t hollering that I remember; I remember a summer day in 1980. And an incident that scared me to the soles of a new pair of platforms. We were jammed into an Oldsmobile wagon, a white Yank tank always thirsting for gas, returning from Wilmington. Our boss, the wheelman, swung into the country store. Two of us tumbled from the car. Our boss pumped as Jim and I took requests, then entered the store swatting at the heat. The store was instantly familiar. Farmers gathered in places like this, escaping the endless demands of lands that gobbled all their time. They cupped salted peanuts into the throats of a cold Pepsi and debated the merits of seed and feed, and all the million ways that a farmer’s profits were nibbled to nothing. My father owned farmland. These were my people. And yet . . . the place fell unnaturally quiet. Jim, his dark skin in high contrast to his starched white shirt, moved soundlessly. As a throat cleared, he disappeared behind a rack of Wise potato chips. My heart began thrumming. I wore a decent pantsuit, the one chosen earlier
144 O.Henry
October 2017
for a breakfast meeting. My shoes, however, were an indulgence. New, impractical, jonquil yellow platforms. The clerk at the counter stared, eyes never leaving me. I snatched up Nabs and fished bottles from the drink chest, placing them onto the counter with a ten. Our eyes met. Hers glared. I slid mine away, around the store; Jim was still somewhere behind the chips. Apparently, black men were an uncommon sight in Spivey’s Corner. A sight that was attracting uncomfortable attention. “I just got one question,” she muttered, breaking a pin-drop silence. She of an undeterminable age; maybe 30, maybe 50, with graying worn teeth. I mustered one syllable, dropping my eyes to Alexander Hamilton, and smelling trouble more potent than her sour smell. “Yes?” The store door slammed shut. “Hurry, Jim,” I whispered to myself, and stared down again as if I had borrowed my feet for a test walk. “Whar’d you get them shoes?” I did not breathe. A frisson ran through me to the waffle soles. “Prago-Guyes,” I answered. The wonderful Greensboro shop was where all my spare money flowed. “Aw,” she answered, pushing my change across the counter. Change I pocketed without counting as I hurried out on the waffle soles to the Olds, gassed and ready, with Jim waiting, his breathing shallow. We pulled away with Spivey’s Corner, home of the hollering contest, still much closer than it appeared in the rear view mirror. OH Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry based in Greensboro. Her dear colleagues Jim Isler and David Atwood are long gone, as is Prago-Guyes. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR
Or, walking a mile in someone else’s shoes
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