July O.Henry 2019

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July2019 FEATURES 47 Pulling Up the Wild Blackberry Bushes Poetry by Ashley Memory

48 For Love of Past Lives

By Jim Dodson For Steve Lynch, history is an everyday pleasure and privilege

54 (Wo)man’s Search for Happiness

By Cynthia Adams Oh, the lengths we'll go to find — and keep it — for a little while

58 She’s Got Game

By Maria Johnson Joy resounds in the crack of a bat for Grasshoppers superfan Priscilla Tuttle

60 Anchors Aweigh!

By Billy Ingram Frank Slate Brooks and Brad Newton are always ready to set sail for adventure from the comfort of their nautical-themed home in historic Lindley Park

72 Fantasy Island

By Nancy Oakley Local designer Terry Allred brings a tropical flair to an iconic North Carolina beach destination

77 Almanac

By Ash Alder

Cover Photograph By John Koob Gessner

DEPARTMENTS 15 Simple Life

38 Sporting Life

18 Short Stories

41 True South

By Jim Dodson

23 Doodad

By Annie Vorys

25 Life’s Funny

By Maria Johnson

27 Omnivorous Reader

By Stephen E. Smith

31 Scuppernong Bookshelf

43 Birdwatch

By Susan Campbell

44 Wandering Billy

By Billy Eye

90 Arts Calendar

33 Drinking with Writers 36 In the Spirit

112 O.Henry Ending

By Tony Cross

July 2019

By Susan S. Kelly

1 04 GreenScene 111 The Accidental Astrologer

By Wiley Cash

8 O.Henry

By Tom Bryant

By Astrid Stellanova

By Brian Faulkner

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Fine Eyewear, Artwork and Jewelry 327 South Elm | Greensboro 336.274.1278 | TheViewOnElm.com Becky Causey, Licensed Optician Find us on Facebook

M A G A Z I N E

Volume 9, No. 7 “I have a fancy that every city has a voice.”

What matters to you, matters to us

336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com PUBLISHER

David Woronoff Jim Dodson, Editor • jim@thepilot.com Andie Stuart Rose, Art Director • andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor • nancy@ohenrymag.com Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Cynthia Adams, David Claude Bailey, Harry Blair, Maria Johnson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Mallory Cash, Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, Sam Froelich, John Koob Gessner, Bert VanderVeen, Mark Wagoner CONTRIBUTORS Ash Alder, Jane Borden, Grant Britt, Susan Campbell, Wiley Cash, Tony Cross, Clyde Edgerton, Billy Eye, Ross Howell Jr., Billy Ingram, Susan S. Kelly, Sara King, Brian Lampkin, Meridith Martens, D.G. Martin, Ogi Overman, Romey Petite, Angela Sanchez, Stephen E. Smith, Astrid Stellanova

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July 2019

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Simple Life

The Road to Happiness It’s an upward climb filled with twists and turns, but joy is in the journey

By Jim Dodson

A dear friend phoned the other day

just to say hello, a gifted young poet I hired many years ago as our organization’s first staff writer, who went on to become the senior editor of this magazine. I always knew the time would come when Ashley would fly away to new horizons, which she did after many years of our working together, moving to the mountains where she became a teacher, artist and musician. Lucky for us, her soulful perspective continues to grace the magazine’s pages.

As old friends do, we spent a full half hour catching up on each other’s lives.

I was pleased to learn about her current boyfriend and their travels to art festivals across the Southeast, where they sell handmade crafts created from sea glass, answering the muse and enjoying life on the road.

“You sound pretty happy,” I ventured at one point.

“I am. Maybe never happier. How about you?”

I replied that I was happy at that moment because I was talking to her while sitting in a well-worn Adirondack chair on the lawn where I begin and end most of my day in quiet reflection, watching the dawn arrive and the day depart, usually with Mulligan the dog and Boo the cat by my side. When she called, my companions and I happened to be watching the first fireflies of the season dance in the dusk.

During our years working together, Ashley and I often fell into lengthy conversations about life, love, matters of faith and favorite poets. Among other things, we share an Aquarian sensibility about the future and how we must spiritually evolve in order to get there in one piece as a race of scattered and fractured human beings.

I wasn’t surprised when she asked what things make me happy these days.

I gave her my short and simple list: rainy Sundays, walks with my wife and our dogs, working in my garden, driving back roads, early church, books and movies that stir the heart, phone calls from my grown children and suppers on the porch with friends.

“What about writing?” she asked.

“Cheap therapy.”

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

She laughed.

“Maybe you should write a book about happiness.”

This notion made me laugh.

Somewhere I’d read that there are more than 500 books on the subject of happiness in print, proving happiness is purely in the eye — or soul — of the beholder.

Besides, I confessed, my kind of happiness was increasingly fueled by things I’d given up or simply no longer needed for the journey, a list that included, but was not limited to, late-night fears of failure, desires for wealth or fame, judging other flawed human beings, even my once all-consuming love of sports was practically gone.

True to the spirit of our talks, I turned the question around on her. Ashley didn’t hesitate.

“I think happiness comes when you are following your heart and doing good things for others.”

Her prescription reminded me of something I’d just read in commentator David Brooks’ outstanding new book The Second Mountain — The Quest for a Moral Life.

“Often,” Brooks writes, “we say a good life is a happy life. We live, as it says in our founding document, in pursuit of happiness. In all forms of happiness we feel good, elated, uplifted. But the word ‘happiness’ can mean a lot of different things.”

Brooks makes an important distinction, for instance, between things that make us happy — a good marriage, a successful career, a sense of material achievement — and the rarer experience of joy.

“Happiness involves a victory for the self, an expansion of self. Happiness comes when we move toward our goals, when things go our way. You get a big promotion. You graduate from college. Your team wins the Super Bowl. You have a delicious meal. Happiness often has to do with some success, some new ability, or some heightened sensual pleasure.”

Joy, on the other hand, he posits, has to do with some transcendence of self, comes almost unbidden when “the skin barrier between you and some other person or entity fades away and you feel fused together. Joy is present when mother and baby are gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes, when a hiker is overwhelmed by the beauty in the woods and feels at one with nature, when a gaggle of friends are dancing deliriously in union. Joy often involves self-forgetting. ”We can help create happiness,” Brooks concludes, “but we are seized by joy.

We are pleased by happiness, but we are transformed by joy.”

The day after catching up with Ashley, I was on a winding road deep in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, chasing pieces of Wagon Road history July 2019

O.Henry 15

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July 2019

Simple Life and human stories for my next book — something that always makes me happy — unable to get our conversation about happiness out of my head.

The art of happiness, if there is such a thing, my version of it anyway, seems to be about an inward journey cultivated by intentionally making room in life for small restorative acts and daily rituals that invite you to step out of your hectic, overscheduled life into what Irish mystics called a thin space, a place where duty and obligation are put on hold and deeper mindfulness is possible. Without my early morning communion with the stars and the grateful prayers I send up like sparks from a signal fire to the gods, my day is curiously never fully complete.

For what it’s worth, I also agree with Ashley the poet and Brooks the wise counselor that service of the smallest order to others in a world where there is so much isolation, loneliness and suffering may be the truest pathway to a happier, more meaningful life, a true “Second Mountain” existence.

Since most of my days are spent in quiet working isolation — Hemingway, not a happy camper, called writing the “loneliest art” — I find myself these days almost unconsciously seeking out opportunities to commit some kind of tiny random act of kindness to a fellow stranger in need. The other day, I chased down a harried mother’s runaway grocery cart in the parking lot of Harris-Teeter. She had an infant on her hip and was struggling to unlock her SUV. Her grateful smile and warm thanks were like a liberating breeze to a weary brain that had been armwrestling words and sentences onto the page most of that day.

During our pre-dawn walks around the neighborhood each day, my wife began stopping by the house of an elderly shut-in lady to walk her newspaper from the curb to a chair by her front door. We’ve never seen our neighbor’s face. But the dogs insist on stopping to deliver her paper the final 50 feet. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis on prayer, this minuscule act of neighborliness may do nothing whatsoever for God, but it sure makes us all feel a tiny bit happier.

The 17th-century Buddhist monk Gensei wrote, “With the happiness held in one inchsquare heart, you can fill the whole space between heaven and Earth.”

Sometimes, we need to be reminded of this fact.

A friend who works with the homeless explained to me that perhaps the hardest things homeless people deal with on a daily basis is a feeling that they are not worthy of noticing or speaking to — are, in effect, invisible travelers in our midst.

This prompted a change a shift in my awareness and behavior, from that of feeling uneasy and even slightly resentful whenever I reach into my pocket to offer whatever modest sum may be there, to making a point of looking in the eyes and sharing a few words of ordinary greeting or simple recognition, The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Simple Life maybe even learning a name and sharing mine. We are, after all, all traveling the same road between Earth and heaven.

It’s a lesson I seem destined to repeatedly learn.

Watching Notre Dame cathedral in Paris burn live on CNN back in the spring, I was suddenly transported to a rainy July day 18 years ago when my son, Jack, then 10, and I were coming out of the famous cathedral in a thunderstorm. Surrounded by a swarm of tourist umbrellas dashing for cover, as we hurried past a lone ragged man with blind eyes standing in the downpour, simply holding out an upturned palm, a character straight from Victor Hugo, a dignified beggar for God. No one was stopping. But when I saw my son glance back, something stopped me. I gave my son 100 francs and asked him to go and give it to the man. Without hesitation, he threaded back through the on-rushing umbrellas and placed the folded money into the man’s outstretched hand.

What happened next still gives me goose bumps of unexpected joy — the kind of self-forgetting transcendence David Brooks speaks of.

The blind man placed his free hand gently on Jack’s head, as if bestowing a blessing. Watching, my eyes filled with tears, or maybe simply rain. Or both.

“What did he say to you?” I asked as we hurried off to find a dry lunch in a cozy Left Bank bistro.

“I don’t know,” he said with a happy smile. “But it was in French and it sounded nice.”

Last summer, at the end of a walking pilgrimage across Tuscany with my wife and 30 other pilgrims, I skipped the private tour of the Vatican’s famous Sistine Chapel in favor of climbing a leafy Roman hill to a small Greek Orthodox Church where I sat on a simple wooden pew for God knows how long listening to morning prayers being sung in Greek by three exquisite voices.

Save for an elderly woman manning a small stand at the rear entrance of the church, I was the only worshipper in the building, sitting beneath the tiny dome of a stunning blue ceiling painted with stars, angels and saints.

Time completely vanished, taking my weary feet with it.

Unexpectedly, it was the happiest moment of my long journey that week.

On the way out, the old woman smiled and waved me over to her stand, handing me a small gilt-framed portrait of an Eastern Saint. I’m still not sure which one.

When I reached into my pocket to pay, she gave me a gentle smile and nod, waving me on with gentle words.

I have no idea what she said to me. I believe it was in Greek and it sounded nice. OH

REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL. SO IS KRISTEN.

Greensboro is the “hidden gem” community of North Carolina! I’ve been so lucky to call it home my entire life. There is something for everyone, offering all the amenities of a larger city with a small town vibe. It’s central proximity between coast and mountains is just another bonus that I love!! When it comes to selling your home, no one in the Greensboro area does it better than Kristen and the team at TR&M. Local experts, global reach. Call 336.274.1717 or visit trmhomes.com today.

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019

O.Henry 17

Short Stories

Garden Art

And not the kind that includes concrete birdbaths or gnomes, but elegant pieces from Twin City Artisans, who will exhibit their wares July 19 and 20 at Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden (215 South Main Street, Kernersville). The brainchild of TCA charter member and avid gardener Sue Davis and Ciener’s Executive Director John Whisnant, Artisans in the Garden will include stained glass, photography, jewelry, pieces made from turned wood, calligraphy and hand-bound books . . . and so much more. The idea is not only to promote the works of the various craftsmen but also the importance of botanical gardens. And what a way to spend the afternoon, wandering among Nature’s creations in the perennial and kitchen gardens, before cooling off in the carriage house to admire works wrought by human hands? Info: cienerbotanicalgarden.org or twincityartisansnc.com.

Close Knit

JEFFREY GIBSON, TO FEEL THE WARM SUN ON MY FACE

Hey, all you yarnspinners – and for once, we don’t mean storytellers, but knitters — here’s something that will keep you in stitches: The Carolina Yarn Crawl, which takes place July 18–21 across the Piedmont. All you have to do is pick up a free Passport at one of the seven participating fiber stores, such as Gate City Yarns (231 South Elm Street). As you weave your way to the other boutiques, take advantage of sales, raffles and giveaways and enter your name in a drawing for a grand prize. For more, uh, purls of wisdom about the event please visit centralcarolinayarncrawl. com or facebook.com/centralcarolinayarncrawl.

Blazing Trails

Hiking boots? Check. Mountain bike? Check. Kayak? Check.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep — yours on Saturday, July 27 for Greensboro Trails Day at Country Park (3905 Nathanael Greene Drive). Organized by Parks & Recreation, with help from partners such as Piedmont Hiking and Outing Club and Piedmont Fat Tire Society, you and the whole family can take a guided hike or a spin.

Along the way, stop to take in BMX demos, have a gander at some ganders as Goose Masters (Border Collies) herd their gaggles, listen to a lecture about the Underground Railroad, try your hand at some crafts and snag some swag.

Most important: Celebrate the great outdoors in the full blush of summer. To register: greensboro-nc.gov/TrailsDay.

Shape Up!

We tend to think of geometric shapes as the stuff of 1960s and ’70s pop art. But the medium’s era of hard lines and bright colors seemed to comprise art merely for art’s sake, contrasted to current trends, in which artists sometimes imbue their works with personal meaning or social commentary. See for yourself at Double-Edged: Geometric Abstraction Then and Now on view at Weatherspoon Art Museum, (500 Tate Street) through August 18. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.

18 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Worth the Drive to Winston-Salem

Now in its 16th year, the biennial National Black Theatre Festival (July 29–August 3) is pulling out the stops. Not only has it lured as cochairs stage and screen luminaries Margaret Avery (The Color Purple) and Chester Gregory (The Jackie Wilson Story: My Heart Is Crying, Crying and Dreamgirls), the festival is also offering a crowd-pleasing lineup of plays that include the hit musical Jelly’s Last Jam, Ruined, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize– winning drama set against the unrest of Democratic Republic of Congo and Prideland, a dance adaptation of The Lion King. Added to the mix are workshops, one-person shows, performances of words and verse, revues featuring the songs of Aretha Franklin and Lena Horne, an acapella musical and an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Mon — set in Jamaica. Performances take place in various venues throughout the Twin City. For information and tickets: ncblackrep.org.

Fuzz Busters

Or rather, door busters. Hungry patrons are, heh, pitted against one another to get their fix of Carolina Belles, Contenders, WinBlos, and more, at Piedmont Triad Farmers Market’s Peach Day on July 12 (2914 Sandy Ridge Road, Colfax), which includes a peach pie recipe contest. On July 20 at Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, (501 Yanceyville Street), line up for a helping of flapjacks at Peach Pancake and Celebration Day. Whether cooked in a short stack or cobbler, smothered in a bowl of cream, or simply as is, there’s nothing quite like the sweet, succulent, rosy-colored fruit that tastes like summer. Info: www.facebook.com/ PiedmontTriadFarmersMarket; gsofarmersmarket.org.

By George, He’s Got It!

George Clinton, that is, who’s got groove — One Nation Under Groove. Strutting onto the stage July 27 at the Coliseum’s White Oak Amphitheatre (1921West Gate Boulevard), the master of funk and founder of Parliament /Funkadelic, ramps up the blues- and rock-inflected beats with hits like “Tear the Roof Off,” “Mothership Connection” and “Flashlight,” with performances from Galatic Fishbone, and Miss Velvet & the Blue Wolf. So go, and get down as Clinton says, “for the funk of it.”

Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or livenation.com.

Fore and Score

Koepka, Rose, Fowler, Cantlay, McIlroy . . . come out July 30–August 4 to watch the pros stalk Sedgefield Country Club’s course (3201 Forsyth Drive) for the Sam Snead Cup, awarded at the 2019 Wyndham Championship. In addition to great play, the PGA TOUR stop includes all the elements we’ve come to anticipate: a pro-am, practice rounds, youth clinics, hot dogs, tall cool frosties, demos, merch tents — and we hope, Hawaiian leis. For information and tickets: wyndhamchampionship.com.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Ogi Sez Ogi Overman

July, being the beginning of the second half of the year, is the half-full or half-empty month. If the first six months of your year were not so great, here’s your chance to start anew. And if they were wonderful, it’s a reminder to keep the momentum going.

Either way, stay cool and raise your glass to some terrific summertime music.

• July 6, White Oak Amphitheatre: I

remember so well when Warren Haynes and Allen Woody formed Gov’t Mule as a side project to the Allman Brothers. Has it really been a quarter century ago? Woody has since passed on, but Haynes has kept the group as vibrant and kickass as it ever was. Rock on, my brothers.

• July 20, Blue Note Grill: There was a

time when the Nighthawks and Rev. Billy C. Wirtz played Greensboro regularly. But these days it’s going to take a quick trip to Durham to see this perfect joining of blistering blues and sizzling satire. It’ll be worth the trip.

• July 25, Greensboro Coliseum: One

might think that Lionel Richie has nothing left to give and should quit dancing on the ceiling all night long. But at the ripe young age of 70 (as of June 20), he is hotter than ever, with a new album, tour, and “American Idol” judgeship. It truly is an endless love.

• July 26, Carolina Theatre: If you could read my mind you’d know that when Gordon Lightfoot hits the Carolina stage, I’ll be right down front, swooning and swaying.

Of all the musical heroes I’ve had over the years, he is right at the top of the list. This might be the highlight of my summer.

• July 31, Ramkat: OK, Americana buffs, you heard it here first. If you love the Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons, and the Decemberists, National Park Radio is your new BFF. You have seriously got to head to Winston-Salem to see this band. You can thank me later.

July 2019

O.Henry 19

THE REVIEWS ARE IN AND WE ARE SHAMELESSLY BRAGGING… Love your new email newsletter! We have moved back to Greensboro after living out of state for three years, and this will help us get involved again.

O.Hey is awesome and a hit.

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Enjoy the info and the humor.

Keep sending!

- PEGGY Who is writing this thing?

It is so witty!

- ELIZABETH Not sure why I was cc’d on this but I loved it. The writer is a crack up.

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Instagram Winners Congratulations to our July Instagram winners!

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Next month’s theme:

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July 2019

O.Henry 21

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Doodad

Phone Home Downtown Greensboro’s Passport to Summer goes digital

I

f your summer dreams include sampling Laotian food, tasting fine Italian wines or touring airy museums, maybe you want to skip the airline reservations and TSA lines for a change of pace. Just grab your “Passport” and head to Greensboro. For the third year, Downtown Greensboro (DGSO) is hosting its Passport program, encouraging locals and visitors to explore the heart of the city. Through August 31, participants can earn prizes by visiting local “ports of call” — restaurants, bars, and shops any number of other attractions about town.

This year, DGSO has gone digital, eschewing the printed passport and physical stamps for an app that gets local adventurers in the game within minutes. “We received feedback from participants over the past two years. People would often say ‘I wish this were on my phone. I forget my Passport, but I always have my phone with me,’ so we took that to heart,” says Director of Operations Julia Roach.

To get started, download the DGSO app from the App Store or Google Play and choose from three passports: Food + Drink, Shops, and Things To Do. Visit one of the participating businesses, and complete the required task to check in and receive a stamp. Six stamps in one of the passports earns you Tourist status with a prize of two Downtown Greensboro koozies. Backpackers (12 stamps) will receive a DGSO T-shirt, while Globetrotters with 20 stamps will get a water bottle and be entered for a chance to win a night out in downtown Greensboro including a stay at the new Hyatt Place hotel.

Alexa Wilde, owner of Antlers and Astronauts on South Elm Street gives her, well, stamp of approval for the program. “It’s not just for people who live in Greensboro. It’s a great resource for anyone in surrounding areas, too. The Passport is like a guidebook to summer.” The program is, of course, designed to boost sales for downtown businesses. And it seems to be working. “All of the people that have checked in so far this year have made a purchase,” says Wilde.

Roach is following the initiative with anticipation. “I’m just really excited to see how people react to the change to digital. It’s given new energy to the project, so we’re really excited to see where it goes from here.” The prizes aren’t the only reason to get involved. On August 2, O.Henry’s own O.Hey is hosting a Passport Party at Preyer Brewing Co., a fitting way to top off the program . . . and snag another Passport stamp. — Annie Vorys OH The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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O.Henry 23

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• Pop-Up Dance Club: July 5 & Aug. 2 Learn more at PrintWorksBistro.com • Summer Weekend and July 4 Special: 10% off the Best Rate plus a $20 restaurant voucher. Book your getaway at OHenryHotel.com or ProximityHotel.com • EMF Summer Package: Experience extraordinary EMF performances in style! Book at OHenryHotel.com or ProximityHotel.com • Songs from a Southern Kitchen: See the schedule and learn more at Lucky32.com.

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Visit our websites to see the latest happenings.

COMMUNITY

YARD SALE AUGUST 10 • 7AM-NOON

TABLES ARE AVAILABLE FOR RENT FOR $25 OR BRING YOUR OWN TABLE AND RENT SPACE FOR $15 Reservations need to be made by August 2nd by calling 336-884-7983.

Individuals not desiring a table may donate items to the agency for sale with proceeds benefiting our services such as Meals on Wheel, Senior Wheels and theGrandparents Raising Grandchildren Support Group.

1401 Benjamin Parkway • Greensboro, NC 27408 336-373-4816 Fax: 336-373-4922

and helping older adults throughout our community?

www.senior-resources-guilford.org www.guilfordboomers.org

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED

Serving older adults since 1977

Senior Resources of Guilford is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization eligible to receive tax deductible donations. Your support enables the agency to respond to requests for information and services that will assist seniors to continue to live independently.

24 O.Henry

July 2019

Interested in Volunteering

600 North Hamilton Street • High Point, NC 27260 336-883-3586 Fax: 336-883-3179

to deliver meals to homebound older adults, provide rides to routine medical appointments, and provide office support.

To learn more about these opportunities and how you can get started, contact Ashlyn Martin at (336) 373-4816 Ext. 243.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Life’s Funny

Hairs to Ya

An essay on living, (not) dyeing, in the gray areas of life

By Maria Johnson

It’s been a year since I stopped coloring my hair.

Almost all of the chestnut dye has grown out.

The last time I sat in my stylist’s chair, she combed up a long swath to trim — wet hair clamped between her fingers, scissors snipping at an angle — and I could see the line of demarcation, the zone where faded brown gave way to translucent strands.

“Only a couple of inches to go,” I said.

“You’re almost there!” she said enthusiastically.

Last year, when I first pitched the idea of growing out my gray, she smiled and crinkled her nose: hairdresser-ese for “oh-hell-no.”

I made my case, using a variation of what I tell myself whenever one of my sons wears his hair in way I don’t like: It’s only hair. Eventually it’ll grow out — or be cut. Maybe. At the very worst, if I didn’t like the gray, I could start coloring it again.

I was ready to walk on the wild side. Woo-hoo.

What tipped the scale?

First, my boss’s wife — who’s also in her late 50s. I hadn’t seen her in a while.

She’s a radiant woman, and she looked even more so when I saw her around the holidays.

“You look different,” I said.

“I’m letting my hair go gray,” she said.

Honest to God, she looked younger because of it. Her pretty brown eyes took center stage.

Then there was my brother, who for a while experimented with “touching up,” as they say when men color their hair.

I launched into a treatise: The only men who color their hair are car salesmen and news anchors, and you’re neither, so stop it.

Why is it OK for women and not men? he pressed.

Because, I said, most women color their hair as they age, so it looks normal. Most men, on the other hand, don’t color their hair, so it jumps out when they do.

It’s stone-cold sexism, I continued, but take advantage of the fact that no one expects you to color your hair.

He listened and reverted to his handsome salt-and-pepper self.

I listened, too. To myself.

If I really believed hair-coloring was a sexist expectation for women, why had I been meeting it for 20 years?

Was it to look younger?

Or did I — Ms. Independent-Won’t-Be-Herded-Like-a-Sheep — do it because I feared standing out?

I looked in the mirror.

Ba-ah-ah-ah-ah.

It was time to find out how old I really looked. And I won’t lie. It was tough,

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

especially for the first few months, a.k.a. The Skunk Period, the time when you have a white stripe running down the center of an otherwise dark head.

During conversations, other women didn’t look me in the eye. They looked me in the hair. I knew what they were thinking: “Doesn’t she realize how bad her roots look? Should I tell her?”

Of course, they never did.

One white-headed woman had the courage to bring it up the first time we met.

“Letting your color go, huh?”

“Yep.” “You’ll never get whistled at again,” she said flatly.

Wow. Well. OK. I thought about it for a minute. Really, for years, the only time anyone had whistled in my direction was when I was standing between them and their dog at the dog park.

As the Skunk Period ended, another period began. Just when I thought I was done with periods.

This was the Hurry-Up-And-Dye-Already phase, when it’s clear that you’re doing this on purpose.

This is when your female friends finally will speak up, usually aided by chardonnay.

“Why are you doing this?” they’ll ask gravely.

“Because I want to see what it looks like. Plus, I’m tired of paying to get it colored every three weeks.”

“You’ll look older.”

“Maybe I am older.”

Sometimes, at this point, a look of horror will cross their faces because . . . they’re the same age as you are.

The grayer my hair grew, the more it grew on me. And others. My stylist reported that my silver strands looked good with my coloring — better than she thought they would. Anyway, she offered, going gray is a thing now.

To wit: models of a certain age, and younger women whose idea of “going gray” involves violet tinges to their processed tresses.

Both of my sons claimed to like the lighter version of me. So did my husband, who has a very “distinguished” head himself. My graying male friends joked that they must’ve inspired me.

They did. By being themselves.

Mind you, I’m not without vanity. I hit the gym and the eye make-up a little harder now, and I use snazzy earrings and colorful reading glasses to show I’m down — or as down as woman in 2.5 readers can be.

Occasionally, a woman my age will sidle up and say she wants to stop coloring her hair, too. Inevitably, she’ll say, “But my gray isn’t a pretty gray.”

I feel ya on the fear, sister.

But who defines pretty?

And what is your true color?

You’ll never know until you let it grow. OH Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Her email is ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

July 2019

O.Henry 25

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The Omnivorous Reader

Ferlinghetti’s Torrent of Words Little Boy offers little wisdom

By Stephen E. Smith

Here’s the theory: If a writer

drags his audience into unknown intellectual territory — even if the journey’s destination is an unpleasant one — he’s lifted his readers out of the familiar and allowed them to perceive the world from a new and revelatory perspective. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind did that for a generation of poets, and the book remains one of the best-selling collections with over a million copies in print.

Ferlinghetti also achieved literary fame by publishing and defending in federal court Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. The lengthy First Amendment trial became a literary cause célèbre, and in the years since the Howl controversy, Ferlinghetti has continued to support leftist social and political causes while producing his own volumes of poetry and prose.

His latest book, Little Boy, was published on the author’s 100th birthday and immediately climbed the best-sellers list. Billed by its publisher as “a novel” and “last will and testament,” the book isn’t a novel, not in the traditional sense, and it isn’t the last word on anything. Call it bait and switch or simple misrepresentation, but Little Boy is, for better or worse, an adventurous, effusive, stream-of-consciousness rant that begins promisingly as a memoir complete with punctuation, plot and character development, and lapses almost immediately into an unpunctuated acerbic toxic word dump that occasionally sweeps up the reader in its rebellious energy.

If the designation “novel” is misleading, Ferlinghetti manages to hide a cursory explanation deep in his tangled text: “Ah yes indeed I must revert instead to the recounting and accounting of my own fantasies my ideas and agitations and dumb contemplations of the workings of the mind and heart . . . And so do I return to the monologue of my life seen as an endless novel simply because I don’t know how to end any life.”

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The opening 15 pages of Little Boy recount how Ferlinghetti was separated from his mother shortly after birth, grew up in both privilege and poverty, and eventually graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completing his doctoral study in comparative literature in France — all of which is conveyed in straightforward third-person prose.

Then the structure of the narrative abruptly transforms, launching into a torrent of words sans grammatical niceties, e.g.: “ . . . the Greeks really all gone now down the drain And shall we tally it up now and see what’s left after capitalism hits the fan But in any case now it’s time it’s high tide time to try to make some sense or cents of our little life on earth and is it not all a dumb show of mummery a blindman’s bluff a buffoon’s antic asininities with clowns in masks jumping over the moon as in a Chagall painting or as if we each were dropped out of a womb into this earth so naked and alone we come to this world and blind in our courses, where do we wander and know not where we go nor what we do, with no assigned destinies . . . .”

There’s nothing new about this narrative technique (Joyce gave us Molly Bloom’s monologue more than a century ago), and Ferlinghetti’s deluge of words wears thin with surprising alacrity.

With the exception of an occasional brief interlude of traditional storytelling, he continues in this vein for the remainder of the novel. Since the monologue is essentially plotless, he rails again about global warming, capitalism, fascism, socialism, people with cellphones — “can you imagine millions of them a whole new generation on earth computing their lives in pixels” — and the world in general: “. . . it’s all like the old film The King of Hearts in which the inmates of an asylum consider themselves the only sane people in the world, while the people outside go forth every day to murder their dreams and July 2019

O.Henry 27

GREENSBORO BUILDERS ASSOCIATION

See for Yourself!

Take another look at The Village at Brookwood, where you can enjoy a robust lifestyle in a down-to-earth retirement community. We invite you to…

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July 2019

GreensboroBuilders.org The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Omnivorous Reader ecstasies in the general conflagration of everyday life in the twenty-first century . . . .”

Allusions abound, most of them employed as similes or used as foils or objects of derision as in “‘Tea Ass’ Elliot” or twisted into puns as in “Let’s not fall deep into romanticism again for the warming world is too much with us late and soon . . . .” And there are literary references galore, if you can identify them: “Let us go then you and me-me-me . . .” “Drive she said,” or “a tale of sound and furry animals.”

And the name-dropping goes on ad nauseam: Thorstein Veblen, Nelson Algren, Louise Brooks, Mikhail Lermontov, J. M.W. Turner, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sri Aurobindo, Giacometti, Edward Bellcamp, etc., personages with whom most readers are probably unfamiliar. Unfortunately, Ferlinghetti makes no use of these allusions. He’s in a position to supply important scholarly insights into Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Beckett, Kerouac, Sartre, etc., but the mention of literary celebrities has all the intellectual import of the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s or an academic adaptation of Where’s Waldo? Readers can research the luminaries Ferlinghetti mentions — how likely is that? — or they can let the allusions ride and go plunging through the text, which is, of course, the more likely scenario.

Readers might presume, given Ferlinghetti’s appetite for social and political causes, that he’d have something to say about the political state of the country in which he’s lived for a century. It’s not unreasonable, after all, to expect a little wisdom from our elders, but Ferlinghetti disappoints on this count. Perhaps he’s correct when he writes: “. . . so I am just an onion peeling myself down to the core to find there is nothing there at all. . . .”

The opening lines of his Coney Island poem “I Am Waiting”— “. . . and I am waiting/for the American Eagle/to really spread its wings/and straighten up and fly right . . .” — has more political oomph than all the words in Little Boy, and the sum of all the complaints and observations spewed forth in the novel tell us little more than we learned in A Coney Island of the Mind.

Ferlinghetti’s longevity and literary reputation have earned him the right to offer a parting public thought. For better or worse, this might be it: “. . . so bye-bye civilization as we know it and should I just let everybody else die as long as I got my piece of prime cheese oh man it’s all beyond me-me-me . . . .” OH D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch Sunday at 11 a.m. and Tuesday at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV. The program also airs on the North Carolina Channel Tuesday at 8 p.m. To view prior programs go to: http:// video.unctv.org/show/nc-bookwatch/episodes/.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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July 2019

O.Henry 29

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July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Scuppernong Bookshelf

Liberty for All

July’s releases include reflections on the state of the republic

Compiled by Brian Lampkin

We’re still hanging on.

Two hundred-forty-three years later and the republic continues to function. These July books help us imagine a way forward while acknowledging a past both admirable and devastating.

July 2: It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art (Atria Books, $19.99). When Donald Trump claimed victory in the November 2016 election, the U.S. literary and art world erupted in indignation. Many of America’s pre-eminent writers and artists are stridently opposed to the administration’s agenda and executive orders — and they’re not about to go gentle into that good night. In this “masterful literary achievement,” more than 30 of the most acclaimed writers at work today consider the fundamental ideals of a free, just and compassionate democracy through fiction in an anthology that “promises to be both a powerful tool in the fight to uphold our values and a tribute to the remarkable voices behind it” (Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU).

July 2: A Dream Called Home: A Memoir, by Reyna Grande (Washington Square Press, $17). As an immigrant in an unfamiliar country, with an indifferent mother and abusive father, Reyna had few resources at her disposal. Taking refuge in words, Reyna’s love of reading and writing propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Through it all, Reyna is determined to make the impossible possible, going from undocumented immigrant of little means to “a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild.

July 2: Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II, by Svetlana Alexievich (Random House, $30). For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the 20th century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

of emotions . . . a history of the soul.”

Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded — a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation.

July 9: When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom, by Asma Uddin (Pegasus, $27.99). Religious liberty lawyer Asma Uddin has long considered her work defending people of all faiths to be a calling more than a job. Yet even as she seeks equal protection for Evangelicals, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews and Catholics alike, she has seen an ominous increase in attempts to criminalize Islam and exclude American Muslims from their inalienable rights.

July 16: The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, $24.95).

As the civil rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Florida, Elwood Curtis is abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother. Although he enrolls in the local black college, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future for a black boy in the Jim Crow South. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy.

Based on the real story of that reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

July 30: Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism, by Terry McAuliffe (Thomas Dunne, $24.95). In Beyond Charlottesville, McAuliffe looks at the forces and events that led to the tragedy in Charlottesville, including the murder of Heather Heyer and the death of two state troopers in a helicopter accident. He doesn’t whitewash Virginia history and his discussion of the KKK protest over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee is a hard, real-time, behind-the-scenes look at the actions of everyone on that fateful August 12, including himself, to see what could have been done. OH Brian Lampkin is one of the proprietors of Scuppernong Books.

July 2019

O.Henry 31

Be the wellspring of

new possibilities We keep adding new amenities and new opportunities to our dynamic, active community. Come and see them for yourself!

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NEW theatre

32 O.Henry

July 2019

Get in touch with nature in our new raised-bed garden.

NEW bistro & renovated dining room

NEW woodworking shop & art studios

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Drinking with Writers

A Born Storyteller Wills Maxwell makes comedy real

By Wiley Cash • Photographs by Mallory Cash

Wilmington-based comedian

Wills Maxwell routinely opens his sets with a joke about what he claims is his desire to fit in. “I’m a conformist,” he says. “I’m such a conformist that the only reason I’m black is because everyone else in my family is.”

The son of an attorney and an insurance claims adjuster, and the brother of three sisters — all of whom have advanced degrees — the career path Wills has taken proves he is not one bit concerned with conformity. Even when he was a kid growing up in Raleigh, Wills knew he wanted to be a storyteller.

“My ambition was to write comic books about superheroes,” he says. “I wanted to tell stories however I could, so I came to UNC Wilmington and studied filmmaking and screenwriting and learned how to tell stories that way.”

The skill Wills developed behind the camera landed him a job directing the morning news at WWAY TV-3, the NBC/CBS/CW affiliate in Wilmington, but it was his talent in front of the camera that landed him a weekly segment he calls “What Did We Miss?” in which he “tells you the stories that WWAY did not.” The three-minute segments cover outlandish news, and they are marked by Wills’ hilarious one-liners and asides. In one episode he covers a crew of car burglars in Los Angeles who are using The Art & Soul of Greensboro

scooters to flee the scenes of their crimes. In another episode, he covers the story of a man in an Easter bunny suit who breaks up a street fight without removing his mask.

It is no surprise that Wills is able to turn inane news items into comic gold. He has been perfecting his comedic timing and writing for several years, first on stage at Dead Crow Comedy Club in Wilmington, and later on stages across the Southeast. His big break came last year in Charlotte when he made it to the finals round of StandUp NBC, a nationwide search for stand-up comedians from diverse backgrounds. That success got him an invite to return to this year’s Nashville competition and an automatic leapfrog to the second round, where he will have two minutes to earn another spot in the finals.

For Wills, it all comes down to storytelling: “Comedy lets me tell stories in a way that puts people into my perspective, so maybe they can leave the show just a little more aware of how other people live.”

Recently, Wills and I sat down for lunch at the Dixie Grill in downtown Wilmington, and as we ate — a club sandwich for me and a chicken finger basket for him — we discussed his desire for audiences to see things from his perspective. I ask him what that means to him.

“In the summer of 2015, I went to Charleston, South Carolina, to work on an independent film,” he says. “I arrived in town a week after Walter Scott was shot in the back by a police officer while he was running from a traffic stop because he had a broken brake light. Filming wrapped and I left July 2019

O.Henry 33

Drinking with Writers

Charleston one week after Dylan Roof murdered nine people just because they were black.”

He pauses and looks out the window at the tourists on the sidewalk, some of them heading north on Market Street toward the city’s Confederate monuments.

“Those were dark bookends to my summer in Charleston,” he says. “Even before those tragedies I was on edge and paranoid, and I was thrown by Charleston’s adoration for the Confederacy. But I found some kind of relief in seeing the Confederate flag being flown because it showed me that I was not welcome everywhere.

34 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Drinking with Writers I did not have to rely on suspicion. It was proof.”

I ask him if it is hard to take these serious issues and make them funny in front of an audience.

“It can be hard,” he says. “The goal is to make people laugh and to make them feel good, but I want things to stick with people in a way that makes them say, ‘Oh, I’ve never thought of it like that.’ After Walter Scott was shot, I made jokes about being afraid of the police. Now, maybe someone in the audience doesn’t have my paranoia about the police, but if they hear my jokes it may make them understand a little about why I feel afraid.”

The goal is to make people laugh and to make them feel good, but I want things to stick with people in a way that makes them say, “Oh, I’ve never thought of it like that.”

I comment that all comedy is based on tragedy, either your own or someone else’s.

“And laughing helps us understand it,” Wills adds. “It helps us look at someone else’s tragedy and really see it, but every audience is different.”

Later, this summer, Wills will be returning to Raleigh Supercon, a three-day festival for people who love comic books, science fiction, fantasy and video games. “It’s nice to be in front of a crowd that gets my jokes about the Power Rangers,” he says.

I imagine that it is also nice for him to get away on a weekend instead of pulling late nights in clubs after waking up at 3 a.m. to get to the news station to prepare for that morning’s show.

I ask him how he does it, how he works the stage late into the night and works behind the camera early in the morning.

“I feed myself,” he says. “I stay alive. I pursue what I want to do.”

Spoken like a true nonconformist. OH Wiley Cash lives in Wilmington with his wife and their two daughters. His latest novel, The Last Ballad, is available wherever books are sold.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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O.Henry 35

In the Spirit

The Bare Necessities Keeping it simple keeps it delicious

Last month I confessed to being behind

on a number of books that I had barely started or hadn’t opened at all. One of those books is Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Yes, that’s right. It’s blasphemous to say that I adore the man, yet have not read his epic first book. Embarrassing, I know. Anyway, the book is amazing. One of the chapters, “How to Cook Like the Pros,” has Bourdain giving tips to those at home who want to cook well enough to amaze their next dinner party guests.

Good stuff. He starts with tools: chef’s knife, other knives, plastic squeeze bottles, pots and pans, etc. He then moves on to ingredients: butter, stock, shallots and more. So, in this episode, I’m going to blatantly rip off Anthony. It’s OK, we share the same first name.

When it comes to making drinks, people always ask me questions like: “What’s your favorite drink to make? Do you really like egg whites in cocktails?

What’s a good recipe?” (I get that one a lot.) Or: “How do you make your oldfashioneds?” and “Do you really like mezcal?” I usually respond to the last one with “no” and a grin on my face. One time, a married woman (claiming to be newly separated) actually messaged me on social media late on a Saturday night to find out what my favorite rye is. It’s Rittenhouse, but that’s not all she asked.

The point is, you only need a few tools, and a few ingredients to make a ton of delicious cocktails. And in no particular order, so let’s go.

36 O.Henry

July 2019

Angostura Bitters There are a ton of bitters on the market. They’re everywhere. And by all means, experiment and check them out. But I’ve never lost it in my kitchen when I’ve run out of cardamom bitters. It’ll never happen. Angostura is the essential bitters that should always be stocked in your place. Plain and simple.

Plus, it’s available everywhere, and it cures hiccups (doused on a lemon wedge).

Just saying.

A Good Juicer A durable, inexpensive, hand-held juicer is all you need when making drinks at home. I’ve talked to people who just “squeeze a little lime juice” into their shaker (I hope) when creating their own gimlets. Amazon has the Chef’n FreshForce model that is only $20, and durable as hell. Even if you’re hosting a 12-person cocktail party, this hand-held juicer is really convenient. Once you get the hang of it, you can juice 10 ounces in no time. Oh, and measure the stuff while you’re at it.

Jigger Use a jigger that has a few measurements on it. You know, 1/4 , 1/2, 3/4 of an ounce. I prefer the Japanese style, but whatever is easiest for you. Cocktail Kingdom has a lot of fancy plated ones; to each their own. I have the original stainless steel, and they’ve lasted me for years. If you’re not measuring, stop reading here.

Sugar If you’ve always got a half to a full cup of simple syrup in your fridge that hasn’t gone bad, good for you. You’re an alcoholic. Kidding. The rest of us probably have that “Oh, hell” moment when realizing that we’ve got everything for the drink ready except for said syrup. No worries, it only takes a minute to make, and that’s if you feel like making it. But syrup or no syrup, you should always have a small amount of demerara or cane sugar in the The Art & Soul of Greensboro

PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY CROSS

By Tony Cross

In the Spirit cabinet. It makes all the difference in the classics.

Don’t believe me? Make a rich demerara syrup for your next daiquiri and tell me that the sugar doesn’t bring out the flavors in the top of the line rum you used. The color may not be Instagramworthy, but who cares when you’ve made one of the best drinks in the world.

Vermouth I can’t believe that almost every bar and restaurant in this town still has vermouth on the shelf.

It’s rancid. Don’t be like most bars and restaurants in this town. Refrigerate, dammit. You’re only wasting your own hard-earned dollar and taste buds. Get a white and a red. You don’t need four of each, unless you’re using them before they spoil.

Here, here! Dolin Dry for martinis and Carpano Antica for Manhattans. They’re also delicious over ice with a twist, too, ya know.

Spirit I see a lot of articles online that read something like this: “The 8 Gins You Should Have at Home!” Really? Eight? No thanks. How about two or three? Plymouth for martinis and Beefeater’s for gin and tonics. “Hey, Tony! I can’t imagine how many whiskies you have at home!” I can. Three or four? Maybe? I love rye, so I usually have Old Overholt, Rittenhouse and/or Wild Turkey Rye. Whatever bourbon I can get my hands on that’s halfway decent from the ABC. Oh, and a good bottle of Scotch. Yeah, that’s about it. Aaaaand for the rest: Agave: If you are really just into margaritas, get a blanco; I particularly enjoy Herradura. If sipping is your thing, grab a nice anejo. A bottle of Del Maguey anything wouldn’t hurt either.

Rum: One white rum and one funky.

For me, it’s Cana Brava and Smith & Cross. Actually, I’m lying. I have more.

But I’m a rum-whore. Can’t help it. But the former is a good start.

Vodka: This is easily the most debated.

Probably because most people who boast about what vodka they love are full of it. Tito’s, you say? Yeah, sure. I don’t care. For me, it’s always a vehicle to a destination. Just don’t let that ride be a Ford Pinto.

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019

O.Henry 37

Sporting Life

Keepin’ It Cool Fans, porches and a visit to the ice plant

By Tom Bryant

Good night nurse, it was hot!

Fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk kind of hot, and I was in the woods at a little farm pond trying to fish. The morning had started off pleasant enough. I was up and at ’em early, anticipating the scorcher promised by the Weather Channel, another of their disaster predictions, and I hoped to catch a mess of bream before the sun could cook my brain.

Fishing was slow, as I knew it would be, and I was going at it the lazy way. I cast a couple of lines baited with night crawlers, anchored the rods securely on the bank, and looked for some shade. The tree line was too far from the pond, so I pulled the old Bronco close to my set and kicked back on a camp chair in her shade. That made it right tolerable.

Growing up when air-conditioning meant an opened window and, if we were lucky, a strong window fan, I think people knew how to handle the scorching summer heat. As kids, we would head to Pinebluff Lake. It was fed by springs and a little creek, and I can still remember swimming into a cool spot created by one of the natural springs. We spent hours in the little lake, devising all kinds of games to play in the naturally cool water.

Probably one of the reasons I don’t like swimming pools today is that I feel like I’m cooped up in an oversized bathtub.

I was also fortunate that my dad ran the massive ice plant located next to the railroad tracks in Aberdeen, and if the summer temperatures got complete-

38 O.Henry

July 2019

ly out of hand, I could always cool down in one of the storage rooms that were wall-to-wall with ice. Typically, I didn’t stay long. The average temperature in those rooms was about 28 degrees. It’s a pretty good shock to your system when it’s summer outside and, all of a sudden, you’re freezing.

We kids had a routine: Pinebluff Lake in the morning, home for lunch and a nap, and back to the lake in the late afternoon. It was not just a normal nap. Dad had installed a window fan in my sisters’ bedroom, the kind of fan that had four speeds and was reversible, and I knew exactly how to make that thing work. My little brother and I had the bedroom right across the hall from our sisters. We were upstairs so I could close the door at the bottom of the stairs, open our bedroom doors, put the fan blowing out, switch it to “high,” and stand back. That fan would have the curtains in my bedroom standing straight out from the window, and the cool breeze was constant. The sound of the fan and the cool air wafting through the room were almost hypnotic, and in no time I was in the midst of a great nap. I think that’s the reason I nap today and have a sound machine nearby.

I was jolted out of my reverie by the zinging of one of my rods as the line was being pulled in the lake. I raced to catch it and yanked to set the hook.

Nothing. Whatever was on it was gone. I reeled in, rebaited the hook and went back to the Bronco. The sun had angled around the corner of the truck, so I rearranged the chair and kicked back again.

The lake, naps and ice plant weren’t the only ways we had to cool down.

Most of the Aberdeen downtown businesses were just beginning to install air-conditioning, and the movie theater was one of the first. The mothers in Pinebluff alternated carpooling us kids to the theater on Saturday afternoons. It was 15 cents to get in, 5 cents for a drink and 10 cents for popcorn; and we really got our money’s worth when there was a double feature. The cowboys — Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lash LaRue and Rex Allen — reigned The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Sporting Life

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman whose work is familiar to sportsmen throughout the Triad.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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supreme in those early movies. Air-conditioning, a novelty at first but soon to become a necessity, made for a kid’s great afternoon of fun.

My ancestors in the 1800s weren’t so lucky. A South Carolina low country summer could be unbearable. Our old family home place was built to provide a little relief from the heat.

First, there’s a rain porch that stretches across the entire front of the house with columns to the ground. The roof’s overhang is far out from the edge of the porch so that during a storm, a person won’t get wet while relaxing in the swing.

Next, a long entrance hall runs the length of the house to the back door that opens onto a screened sleeping porch. The house also faces east to catch the prevailing breezes, and the foundation pillars are about 4 feet tall and connected with latticed skirting, allowing air to flow beneath the house. Big rooms with 14-foot tall ceilings and 8-foot windows also helped.

All of these features were great in the summer, but winter was another story. Every room has a fireplace, and in those days, using them kept at least one person busy hauling wood. I guess those early relatives thought that frostbite was preferable to heat stroke.

I checked the lines on the fishing rods to make sure they still had bait, went to the back of the truck for a cool libation, moved my chair to the diminishing shade, and sat back down. The ride home was going to be a hot one because the Bronco doesn’t have air-conditioning.

That thought got me thinking about our first air-conditioned car, a 1969 Buick LeSabre. Prior to that, I thought air-conditioning a car was an expensive add-on that we could do without.

Needless to say, after a couple of summer trips to Florida in our un-air-conditioned 1962 MGB, my bride, Linda, helped me to think otherwise. So, along came car air-conditioning.

The sun was now almost directly overhead, so I decided to give up the fishing expedition and try again in a few days when it got a little cooler. I felt a little like a wimp, though, as I loaded the gear in the back of the Bronco. Back in the day, I would have stuck it out till dark, and did that many times. It made me wonder if the reason we suffer so much from the heat is that, as a general population, we’ve become softer and more acclimated to modern conveniences.

That observation needs more study, I thought, something to think about when I take my afternoon nap. I hope Linda turned down the air-conditioning.

I fired up the Bronco and headed home. OH

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O.Henry 39

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True South

Reminders A kind of grief

By Susan S. Kelly

This is the month that I turn 65. I

suspect I’ll have a breakdown.

I don’t put much store by birthdays typically. As a child, a July birthday meant that my friends were away on family vacations, so no one was around for a party. A summer birthday meant no cupcakes in elementary school, or care packages from Hickory Farms — the standard-but-thrilling gift — at boarding school. As an adult, I seem often to be at the beach, where my mother annually suggests that we have a “nice piece of fish” to celebrate my birthday — a roll-eye refrain the entire family now uses whenever we’re referring to celebrations of any kind.

My sister has a breakdown every time we leave the beach, crying and honking the car horn until she’s out of sight. She’s worried that by the next time we’re all together again, someone will have died, divorced or been irreparably altered in some way. Cheerful, no? I made her a Breakdown CD full of mournful songs from James Taylor, Pachelbel’s Canon, the themes from To Kill A Mockingbird and The Thorn Birds, so she’ll have background music to wail with during the four-hour drive home.

The last time I had a breakdown birthday was 3 1/2 decades ago, when I turned 30. I was waiting at a stoplight and was suddenly just . . . overcome. I bowed my heard and laid my forehead against the hard, ridged, steering wheel and wept. I did not want to be 30 with children and a mortgage and a yard. I wanted to be a sorority girl wearing Topsiders and drinking beer at The Shack with my hair pulled back in a grosgrain ribbon on a Thursday afternoon. There was nothing for my despair but for my husband to take me to Chapel Hill for the weekend. But The Shack was a parking lot. Beers at the gleaming wood bar in Spanky’s didn’t cut it.

The good part about A Big Birthday year means that my friends are turning 65 too. Bridge buddies, hiking homies, college pals, boarding school classmates — all of us. Meaning that every day brings a veritable blizzard of emails filled with dates, pleas, opinions, rebuttals, suggestions, complaints, reminders, asides, and the occasional joke, all in the service of organizing what I term Girl Gigs. Girl Gigs deserve a column of their own, but I’ll give you a teaser: One friend, for a Girl Gig in the mountains every January, flies in from Greenwich, Connecticut, and brings nothing but a mink coat and 3 pairs of pajamas. Stay tuned.

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I don’t care a whit about getting old, or dying (proved by my Funeral File, a topic addressed earlier in these pages). I’ll admit to a fear of my house smelling like old people, and wondering whether it’s time to go ahead and lock into what one friend calls a “terminal hairdo,” the one you wear to the grave. And I drive a Mini Cooper, which seems to be the universally acknowledged car for females of a certain age. But otherwise, nope. No fear, no dread, no anxiety.

I also have zero regrets about those things in the past that I’ve done or left undone, or shoulda, woulda, coulda. Furthering my career? More me time?

Taken that trip, accepted that offer? No, no, and no. Do-overs don’t interest me.

Wherefore the melancholy, then? Just this: 1,277 photographs — give or take a couple dozen travel pictures — on a digital frame. A New Year’s resolution labor of love with a scanner that rotates continuously all day, every day, showing me 1,277 times what I cannot have back. That summer twilight evening of my oldest in his tacky polyester pajamas blowing dime-store bubbles in the driveway before bedtime. That child wearing a mask while he watches television, oblivious that he’s even wearing a mask. That child blowing out candles on what is surely the most hideous homemade birthday cake ever, shaped and iced like a sharpened pencil. The grin the day the braces came off. A husband mowing the lawn with a toddler draped around his neck like a pashmina.

What was I doing during these ordinary, everyday moments? What was I saying, thinking, hoping, cooking, even? I don’t want to time travel, to swallow a magic youth pill, to go back and re-live. What stops and saddens me is the simple yet incontrovertible fact that, no matter what, I cannot get that Tuesday morning in that picture, where the child with the trike, or the new backpack for the first day of school, or that Sunday afternoon when a young husband tosses free throws at the driveway basketball goal — long since vanished — back.

Not a single, commonplace, inconsequential second of them. Nothing I can do will return them to me. No begging. No money. No who-you-know. No good deeds. No nothing.

Thornton Wilder knew the kind of grief I’m talking about, and in his play, Our Town, has Emily Webb, who’s dead, ask the Stage Manager, “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it . . . every, every minute?”

“No,” the Stage Manager replies. “Saints and poets maybe . . . they do some.”

And I’m neither.

So, this July, if you see someone pulled over with her head against the steering wheel, it’s just me, in my Mini, in the breakdown lane. OH Susan S. Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and a proud grandmother.

July 2019

O.Henry 41

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July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Birdwatch

Beak House This time of year sees a hot real estate market for house wrens

By Susan Campbell

Throughout the Piedmont and Sandhills,

Carolina wrens are year-round residents easily recognized by their handsome rufous coloring, prominent white eyebrows, cocked up tails and loud voices. The emphatic “chirpity, chirpity, chirp” calls are made primarily by males, although, from time to time, females may join the chorus. These inquisitive birds, foraging almost nonstop in all sorts of nooks and crannies looking for bugs, are known to find their way into garages and even homes if there is a crack large enough for them to squeeze through.

In addition, they seek out protected places to nest, often using front door wreaths, mailboxes, hanging baskets and manmade objects of all kinds.

House wrens, on the other hand, are a bit smaller and drabber in coloration. Both the male and female are gray-brown with faint streaking on wings and tail. These diminutive birds are just as feisty as their more familiar cousins. Their song, however, is a lovely mix of bubbling notes that carries quite a way. House wrens, too, are voracious insectivores, found in close association with people.

Once upon a time, they were considered seasonal migratory visitors to both the Piedmont and Sandhills, skulking in thick vegetation during spring and fall migration. In 1922, house wrens were seen nesting in the Piedmont and are now found commonly around Raleigh, and from Greensboro to Charlotte. The first documented, known successful breeding attempt in Moore County was sighted in Pinehurst during the summer of 2007. Since then a few pairs have been reported from Whispering Pines,

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

as well as pockets around the Village of Pinehurst. However, these birds are easily overlooked by folks unfamiliar with the species. At this point, they are almost certainly breeding in more locations in at least the northern half of the Sandhills.

House wrens have a breeding strategy that allows them to colonize new habitat quickly. Females typically produce two sets of four to seven young each summer. The males are frequently polygamous. Interestingly, a female may move to the territory of a different male for the second nesting. And female house wrens are known to raise broods in quick succession. The male may finish raising the first brood as the female begins nest-building for round two.

Unlike Carolina wrens, house wrens are cavity nesters, so they will use bird boxes readily. Small holes are hard to come by on the human-altered landscape — but birdhouses are not. With increased urbanization and the widespread interest in providing for birds, more boxes are appearing on the landscape every spring. Although house wrens will use a box that is pole-mounted, they actually prefer hanging houses. It is possible that this is because dangling accommodations are less likely to be invaded by predators.

The challenge that house wrens no doubt have been facing here in the Sandhills as they attempt to become established, is available “real estate.”

When they return to nest in mid-April, the bluebirds, as well as our nonmigratory chickadees, nuthatches and titmice have not only claimed a large percentage of the available bird houses but are also well into incubation.

House wrens then must search for an empty box. If you are interested in providing for these uncommon little birds, it is best to wait to hang a suitable box until about April 15. Also you might want to consider a box with a smaller (1-inch or 1 1/2-inch) entrance that will exclude larger cavity nesters.

If you happen to attract house wrens, please let me know. We are still very interested in the progress of these birds as they continue their southward dispersal here in central North Carolina. OH Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.

July 2019

O.Henry 43

Wandering Billy

The Boys Of Summer Meet the chairmen of the boards of Greensboro’s skate parks and beyond

By Billy Eye

Every time I run into Chris Roberts — and

it’s quite frequently — besides an engaging grin, he almost always sports a different hairstyle. Not too long ago, his head was shaved. Today he’s coiffed in a green bowl cut pointing skyward. That’s not all that unusual when you consider he’s studying to be a barber.

Chris is a 25-year old Greensboro native, working full-time while attending school in Winston-Salem. He’s an impressive young man possessing unmistakable leadership skills with a passion for sidewalk surfing. Good thing, a skateboard is his main means of conveyance. Many times I’ve witnessed him whizzing by, neatly dressed, passing cars while perched on his board, left foot forward, riding to work. He’s one of perhaps hundreds of similarly inclined city dwellers gravitating from place to place primarily via wheels of urethane.

I wondered when Chris received his first skateboard. “It was a hand-medown from my dad,” he replies. “I was probably about 3 or 4. At that point I would just scoot around on it on my knee. I couldn’t really stand up on it.”

He received his first “sick board” at 10 or 11. (The slang word “sick,” in the same way that “bad” really means “good,” indicates the board is anything but feeble.) “A World Industries [model], I got it at Board Paradise,” he recalls.

“My dad took me there, it was one of the only times I’d ever been to a skate shop.” What impressed him was the art on the World Industries’ boards: “As I’m older, I realize that there are different shapes and sizes and different reasons for riding different boards. But for me, World Industries had the coolest art on the bottom, with this cartoon-style water droplet and fire droplet battling each other.”

Chris felt an affinity for the lifestyle right away. “About that same time I went to my first skatepark, 915. It was run by Cricket Hooks at the time. I met life-long friends there.” Established in 1999 on West Lee Street, 915 Skate Park and Skate Shop’s retail store were located in a former Guilford Dairy Bar. (They even preserved Guilford Dairy’s signage along the top of the building.)

“It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from,” Chris says. “If you see someone with a skateboard, you just automatically

44 O.Henry

July 2019

have this connection.” For the longest time, he says, skateboarding was looked on as something juvenile or criminal even. Not at 915. “So kids have a sense of community because we know we have each other to look out for. A lot of people walking down the street, they don’t see it, it’s kind of secret and kind of cool.”

Skateboard culture has evolved dramatically since the board’s invention in the late 1940s, originally marketed to bored California surfers when flat conditions forced them to seek thrills elsewhere, onto sidewalks lining the beaches, even if it meant wiping out on considerably harder surfaces.

Eye received a primitive skateboard as a youngster in the 1960s, a lacquered wood plank on clay wheels that would catch in a crack in the sidewalk, lock up, then send the rider flying. It served the neighborhood well; however, getting nailed to the bottom of orange crates and refrigerator boxes, or whatever we wanted to transform into some makeshift, Little Rascals–type vehicle.

That was when we were living two blocks north of what would become Greensboro’s new skate park on Hill Street.

“That skate park has brought a lot of outside revenue to Greensboro,” Chris says. “So many people are traveling here because it’s such a great layout.”

Centrally located, “That gives an opportunity for young kids who only have a skateboard, not even a nice one necessarily, they can come to this place and focus on something that’s positive with positive people around them.”

Chris’ thoughts are echoed by his friend John Pearce. Originally from Fuquay-Varina, John is a 21-year-old vocal performance major at UNCG who grew up skating around downtown Raleigh and the skate park in Apex.

“I was about 8 years old,” John tells me about his first rig. “It was brandnew, my dad got it for me for Christmas. He was big into skating when he was younger. He got me a whole complete deck, it was awesome. Spitfire [wheels] with Royal [trucks] and a Birdhouse board.” John turns his board around to show us the underside. “It’s kinda funny, I still have the same trucks from when I was 8 years old.” (Trucks are the front and rear axle assemblies.)

With the rigors of full-time studies and part-time employment, skating is more than mere recreation. “Music used to be my outlet in high school,” John says. “Music and skating. Now that I’m in school, music kinda stresses me out so I skate to get rid of the stress. I never get sick of skating, you can always go The Art & Soul of Greensboro

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRY SEYEZ

“A smile is the shortest distance between people.”

— Victor Borge

Wandering Billy

to the skate park and learn new stuff.”

For 21-year-old Josh Acosta, who hails from Palm Springs, California, but relocated five years ago to Greensboro after his parents retired here, “Skateboarding is so much bigger in Southern California so I’ve been skating since I don’t even remember, on one of my older brothers’ boards probably.”

Skaters often talk about entering a state of bliss, not unlike an actor immersing himself in a role.

That’s true for Josh, “It’s the sense of freedom of being on your board,” he explains. “It’s such an overwhelmingly calming thing. It’s weird to say ‘overwhelmingly calm,’ being overwhelmed is one thing but being overwhelmed by calmness is bliss, very relaxing.”

Not that this sport is without hazards, automotive collisions for one are being somewhat inevitable. “It hurts,” Josh replies nonchalantly. “You just get up and walk away, not much you can do.”

Chris Roberts has experienced more than a few scrapes and bruises over the years. “From top to bottom,” is how he characterizes his past injuries.

“Both collar bones, both wrists, my left elbow four or five times, my right patella, my right ankle, and few toes here and there. I think that’s it.”

Regardless, or perhaps due to those occasional mishaps, skateboarding provides an excellent vehicle for teaching youngsters critical life skills.

“It’s hard,” Chris notes. “You keep trying over and over again. It teaches you perseverance and also courage because it’s scary. It’s healthy, you’re outside, you’re not staring at a screen.” That’s why he’ll continue skating: “Until I can’t stand up on it anymore.” *** As I was preparing to submit this article, I received devastating news that Taylor Bays had passed away. He was 34. Taylor was a towering presence in our underground music scene, a gifted collaborator, solo performer and lead singer for a number of bands including his own, Taylor Bays and The Laser Rays. He was consistently present in the audience whenever and wherever other local bands were gigging or when cult faves like Green Jellÿ came to town.

Could anyone ever get over losing a friend like Taylor Bays? Not grief whoring, just a simple statement of fact. One of the smartest, wittiest, most talented individuals I’ve ever met, whose death blows a gaping hole in our arts community and in our hearts; a mercurial singer/songwriter whose coat of many colors was woven from the thousands of people he inspired, supported, influenced, and loved. Whenever I spent time with Taylor, we were like kids catching minnows in a creek. Now I’m gasping for air. OH Billy Eye will be summering this year in a large icebox.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019

O.Henry 45

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46 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019 Pulling Up the Wild Blackberry Bushes seems ungrateful but they’re too plentiful crowding the precious patch of sun meant for the Heritage Red Raspberry that cost $16.

So it’s a matter of hubris that we jerk up those lesser cousins before they bloom drag them over nubile grass and toss their torn briars into fire.

Yet when I get to the last bush, I stop remember how in August I needed more fruit to nestle around the scant peaches in my cobbler.

The berries were small but their juice tasted of mulled wine, piquant but not too tart, the grace note of a last-minute potluck, others cooed for the recipe.

So I lay aside the shovel, knowing that this last bush, cane too tender for thorns, might one day be our savior if the raspberry turns to dust.

— Ashley Memory

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48 O.Henry

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

For Love of

Past Lives

For Steve Lynch, history is an everyday pleasure and privilege

By Jim Dodson • Photographs by John Koob Gessner

N

ot long ago, on a tip from a local historian, I called on a man named Steve Lynch who lives in a pretty, middle-class neighborhood off Alamance Road, a few miles north of the pre-Revolutionary-era (1771) battlefield of the same name.

I’d been led to believe that Lynch might be able to tell me something about a celebrated relative of mine named George Washington Tate, a surveyor, grist mill owner, furniture maker and prominent citizen of the county in the 19th century.

My great grandmother, Emma Tate Dodson, had been his daughter, and according to family lore, she was supposedly a Native American, an infant when Tate brought her home from one of his “gospel rides” out west to help establish Methodist churches in the wilderness of the Blue Ridge hill country.

All I really knew about her papa, old George Tate, was that he was famous for his furniture-making and owned one of the most important grist mills on the historic Haw River. It was a fording spot of the ancient east-west Trading Path used by Indian tribes and settlers in the 18th century — including my own immigrant Scottish and English forebears who came down the Great Wagon Road to the region in the 1750s.

Greensboro’s Tate Street is reportedly named for this rural Carolina polymath.

My hope was that Steve Lynch could fill in a few blanks and maybe answer a question or two about my respected ancestor.

What I found instead was another polymath in the tradition of Tate himself, a patriotic native son of Mebane, a Vietnam combat vet, 33rd degree Mason, former police detective and history nut extraordinaire for whom the past is not only alive and kicking, but also a source of daily happiness. He enthusiastically shares it with visiting groups and individuals who find their way to perhaps the most charming personal museum in the state.

It’s housed inside “Lynch Lodge,” a pair of Amish-built sheds their owner artfully fused together in his backyard some years back. He added a pretty front porch where Lynch and bride, Betsy, can sit and admire the handsomely landscaped approach through a leafy garden that features a full-scale flag pole and live boxwood shrubs rooted from Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, George Washington’s Mount Vernon and the governor’s palace at Williamsburg.

That was the first of many of nice surprises, each one more interesting than the last, when I called on him on a quiet summer afternoon.

Stepping into the Lodge, my eye went straight to an opposing wall where there was a beautiful portrait of George Washington hanging in a large gilt frame.

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O.Henry 49

“Let me show you something,” Lynch said with a chuckle. The framed portrait had a nifty trick. It was set on hinges inside a larger matching frame, rather like a hidden safe.

“Here’s why.”

Attached to a linen binding on the back of the original framed painting, which dated from 1789, was the actual obituary of George Washington from a Philadelphia newspaper.

“I bought it at an auction in Mebane and got tired of having to pick it up off an easel to show people what’s on back,” he genially explained. “So I took it to a cabinet maker who came up with a clever solution.”

“You seem to have a thing for the name George Washington,” I commented, noting that the entire wall surrounding the portrait was covered with various paintings and antique pen and ink sketches of the nation’s first president.

Lots of other Washington memorabilia was on displayed, too — antique tins of George Washington pipe tobacco, whiskey bottles and liquor decanters bearing the great man’s likeness, china plates with portraits of Mount Vernon and

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July 2019

Martha Washington, an 1819 twin-volume History of the America Revolution featuring the writing of our founding president, at least a dozen statue heads, including a brass bank. Standing on the floor was a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s famous unfinished portrait of Washington.

“A fella I visited who owned a plantation house down in Little Washington gave that to me — just took it off the wall and sent it home with me,” Lynch offered, shaking his silver-topped head wonderingly.

Further along the wall, Lynch showed me an ancient pen-and-ink drawing of General Washington that was given to him by another friend that infected him with the collecting bug, setting him on the road to building his museum to house his growing and expanding collections.

“I do love George Washington,” Lynch said, stating the obvious.” Sure, he as our first president, but he’s also “someone everyone admires and should emulate in the way he lived. It’s also because I’m rather partial to the name,” my host explained.

With that, he showed me the first photograph I’d seen of my illustrious ancestor, G.W. Tate, whom I learned was his great-great-grandfather, as well.

“Emma Tate’s sister was my great-grandmother, which makes us cousins,” he announced with a wide country grin.

He showed me two other Tate artifacts that left me momentarily speechless — and answered a lot of questions in an instant. One was a framed U.S. Patent certificate for a grain threshing machine that improved the famous one invented by Cyrus McCormick in the early 1800s.

The other items were Tate’s pocket watch, mess kit and solid brass telescope from his service in the Confederate States Army, given to Lynch by his grandfather. On the spot, I learned that Tate had served as a full colonel in the North Carolina 11th regiment.

Finally, he showed me a 19th-century map of Guilford and Alamance counties that revealed that Tate’s mill wasn’t where I’d always thought it was — and had visited near the I-85/40 bridge over the Haw, first as a boy and more recently, a few years ago when I began research on the Great Wagon Road.

“Tate’s Mill was nearby, though — actually on Haw Creek,” Lynch informed me. “I know a man who can take you to see where it was located.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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O.Henry 51

I believe some parts of it may even be visible.”

The tour continued to the opposite end of the room to the “Franklin Corner” where lots of similar artifacts and memorabilia of Benjamin Franklin were on view.

That area led to a section filled with items gathered from Lynch’s distinguished 40-year career in law enforcement, including his 30 years as a detective for the Burlington Police Department and 11 more working as chief investigator for the Alamance District Attorney’s office. Displayed in this area were handcuffs (“They were on some pretty colorful people”) and a small pistol that a subject fired at Lynch during his first day on the job.

On the opposite side of the far end of the room was his “military corner” that displayed various uniforms, gear and items from the Vietnam era, including his year in combat for the 501 Infantry division of the 101st Airborne in 1969, one of the toughest years of the unpopular war.

“Just had four college boys from N.C. State and a veteran of Special Forces come by the other day to have a look at these things,” Lynch reflects, staring at the wall with visible emotion. “They all thanked me.”

At this point of the museum tour, I asked him to pause and sit for a spell so I could learn more about where his love of country and passion for history came from. This was the day after the Memorial Day weekend. The flag outside Lynch Lodge was still at half-mast.

Steve Lynch, I learned, was born on Clay Street in Mebane in 1949.

Upon graduating from Eastern Alamance High School in the spring of 1967, he wrote a letter to J. Edgar Hoover and found a job working for a year

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July 2019

in the fingerprint lab at FBI headquarters, before a romance lured him back home to Burlington.

“About that time, I got an official letter from President Johnson and soon found myself on the way to Vietnam. I was happy to serve.”

He was 19 years old. Within days of arrival, he was choppered to a unit fighting along the Ho Chi Minh Trail deep in the jungles of the A Shau Valley, west of the coastal city of Huế near the border with Laos, a key infiltration spot for the Vietcong and scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting.

That year, American personnel fighting in Vietnam reached its peak of 543,000. Back home in America, antiwar protests also reached an early peak, filling the streets of America.

Steve Lynch grew quiet, speaking solemnly, rapidly blinking his eyes.

“The nice guy that flew over there with me in the helicopter died the first day in action. We were new recruits. These were hardened soldiers. It was an unwritten rule among the guys who’d been in combat that nobody spoke to you in case you didn’t survive the next firefight.”

Steve Lynch survived the next firefight and many other major ones, including one in which his unit was overrun by the enemy. When his right hand got a serious infection that came close to becoming gangrene, he was airlifted out and treated before being sent back into the fray.

By that point he was an accepted brother in arms. From his first to last day in country, Lynch carried a small family Bible he kept wrapped in plastic. “Whenever we had a quiet moment, the others would ask me to read from the testament.”

The guys in his unit gave him a nickname. He was called “Preacher.”

After serving his year, earning the respected Combat Infantryman Badge, Steve Lynch was sent home, only to be diagnosed with severe Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. A brigadier general he met at the Pentagon changed his orders to allow him to spend the rest of his military service under his first sergeant from Vietnam, assigned to Fort Stewart in Georgia.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

“He was one of my best friends. We’d been through a lot together. That meant a great deal to me.”

Lynch blinked for a few more seconds, his mind back somewhere in a war America tried hard to forget but he never has. Then he looked at me and smiled.

“You know, just a few weeks back I flew out to Missouri to see the chaplain I served with over there. He retired as a full bird colonel with a Silver Star. We had a wonderful visit,” he recalled. “As I told him, looking back, serving my country over there was the thing I’m proudest of in my life. You see the same thing in all the fellas and women who were there. It’s a bond, a love for each other that’s unbreakable.”

When his chaplain was driving him back to the airport for his flight home, Lynch added, they stopped by a patch of woods and sat for a while talking and actually holding hands and praying.

“When you see veterans at the wall in Washington,” he explained, “that’s what you’re seeing — real gratitude for loving friendship and memories of those who didn’t make it back.”

He nodded to a pair of well-worn Army boots on the floor beside me.

There were dog tags attached to the boots’ laces.

“That was done so the army could identify your body if part of it was blown away,” he explained.

Lynch showed me a photograph of himself taken five years ago when the Pentagon called up out of the blue inviting him to lay a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

“I have no idea why they chose me,” he said. “Except for the fact that I was over there and survived. It was a big honor.”

On a happier note, we moved along to a big wooden desk, above which were a series of framed photographs from his years of service in the police.

Among his duties, he often was asked to escort dignitaries when they passed through the county. The dignitaries included Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President George Herbert Walker Bush, President Bill Clinton and local luminaries including former Senator Elizabeth Dole and former North Carolina Congressman Howard Coble.

“I even liked president Clinton,” he allowed wryly. “People back then said we looked like each other. I suppose we did. That always struck me as kind of funny.”

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The next section contained some beautiful spiritual artifacts — a framed page from the Isaac Collins Bible of 1791, the first family Bible printed in America, and an original page from the Geneva Bible of 1560.

Lynch made local news some years ago when he gave his family’s O’Kelly Bible to Elon University. James O’Kelly was a fiery preacher and one of America’s earliest proponents of religious liberty — also, I was not surprised to learn, an ancestor of Steve Lynch.

Therefore, I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn, moments later, that he was also a direct descendent of Thomas Lynch Jr., signer of the Declaration of Independence from South Carolina. Lynch and his father, were the only father and son to serve in the Continental Congress.

The tour of Lynch Lodge ended where it began, at a nook by the front door that was designated for great Masons in history — a wall of portraits, artifacts and figurines in the likenesses of Beethoven and Robert Burns; Generals Jimmy Doolittle, Douglas MacArthur and John J. Pershing; Roy Rogers and Mozart and Harry S. Truman.

Just days before I showed up on his porch, Steve Lynch filled the place with dozens of 33rd degree mason and grand masters from all over North Carolina. He even had a special glass engraved to give to each of the participants. Steve Lynch belongs to the same Eagle Lodge in Hillsborough where George Washington Tate — the man where my inquiry began — was initiated in 1857.

As I left, I asked Steve Lynch what is it about showcasing American history that gives him such satisfaction.

“You know,” he replied, “that’s a little hard to explain. History is personal to people. I have groups and people come look at this little museum and always seem to find something that connects them to their history. It’s the story of where we all came from, after all. It makes me very happy to be part of that.”

As we shook hands, he placed something into mine.

It was a well-worn belt buckle from the Confederate Army.

“I thought you might like to have that, considering what you learned about our relative George Washington Tate today.”

He was right about that. OH

July 2019

O.Henry 53

Search s ’ n a m ) for o (W appines

H

s

Oh, the lengths we'll go to find — and keep it — for a little while

ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR

By Cynthia Adams

54 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

I

’ve been on a quest about happiness for a long time. Not a project, not a preamble, just a working definition that would illuminate the good life. When it comes to capturing what Psychology Today deemed “that elusive state,” and Thomas Jefferson declared the inalienable right (!) I’ve discovered some detours on the road to happiness.

I even met a guru named Gaura.

Thank Jefferson for my obsession. And ad man Charles Saatchi for declaring he was more interested in the happiness of pursuit.

Here’s a roadmap.

1. Avoid the Unpleasant

Live long enough, and you’ll learn a few things. Here is what I am certain does not make you happy: • Drinking pickle juice. (I did this to promote my gut biome.)

• Investing in a new nose unless it is a red clown nose. (Surgery for a deviated septum left me admittedly improved, but the Bob Hope-like ski slope nose did not leave me sniffing the sweet smell of success like Hope.)

• Impulsive experimentation with hair styles and color. (I did this during a winter funk. It deepened my funk.)

• Shopping sprees — unless it is to buy various brands of ice cream. (More on that later.)

• Mediums in the road. A Montgomery County farmer gave me directions admonishing me to strictly avoid “that thar medium in the road.” He probably meant median, but I skirt them thereafter nonetheless.

2. Party in an Envelope

Happiness comes in tiny pieces. I had only to stroll through my neighborhood of Latham Park (chalking up two scientifically proven methods toward claiming happiness — walks in the park and sunshine) that led me to a eureka moment, inspired by a neighbor, Kimberly Lewis and her birthday cards.

A candy-making, dog-loving, genuinely happy person, Lewis makes a signature candy and leaves it at the doorstep during the holidays, works with animal rescue and is always the first onto a dance floor. When her friends’ birthdays roll around, she sends them cards stuffed with sparkling confetti.

I think of the confetti as a ‘party in an envelope!’” says Lewis. Think of the bright bits of colored paper, the exuberant stuff of New Year’s Eve and the very hallmark of celebrations, as the B-12 of happiness. (The English word “confetti” — borrowed, by the way, from Italian — is the plural of “confetto.”

It is derived from the Latin confectum and was a sweet confection thrown out to crowds during carnival. That’s a tiny shot of happiness expressly for wordsmiths.)

According to a designer named Ingrid Fetell Lee, Lewis is onto something. In a recent Ted Talk, Lee explains that confetti makes us happy.

Incorporating its bright primary colors and shapes into institutional places — hospitals and schools, for example — jollies things up. No more gunmetal gray or sickly sea green.

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3. Embracing a Medium in the Road

On another saunter in Latham Park, I encountered Gaura, a Hare Krishna devotee, as he was seeking a mulberry tree. Gaura had been feasting on mulberries along the park path. “A superfood,” he declared. As we directed him to Smith Street and cracked jokes, he grew serious. “You must be wise to be witty,” he said, and thanked us profusely for being “gurus on my path.”

4. Ben Franklin

The self-help section of any bookstore reveals to see how obsessed — and conflicted — we are with happiness.

When my sister’s house was being cleared following her sudden death last winter, I was surprised to discover one of the books on her bedside table was Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. Opening it, I found my sister’s favorite pewter Celtic bookmark inside along with some scribbled notes.

The find puzzled me. We both enjoyed humorists like Rick Bragg — and I also found some of his works she’d recently read. But the mystery was, what to make of my sister’s seeming happiness? She had the kind of robust laugh that fills a room. I was eager to know what the book contained.

It was a dreary read. Rubin road-mapped a self-flagellating flog to become happier. Among Rubin’s recommendations were to nag less, which her husband acknowledged helped his own happiness, work out more and keep the house shipshape and organized. It was obvious she had a number of compulsions to be perfect. By the end of the book, I wanted to send Rubin’s muchnagged husband a sympathy card.

If self-improvement is, in fact, the road to happiness, then I’ll put my money on Ben Franklin’s 13 virtues. To recap, they were: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility.

In a dogged pursuit, Franklin charted and recorded his efforts to happiness.

(An editor comments “Knowing Poor Richard, no doubt temperance and chastity had their share of marks.”)

But the view was worth the climb. In later years, Franklin admitted he’d fallen short of his ambition “yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”

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5. Warts and All

In a recent editorial meeting, O.Henry editor Jim Dodson mentioned a title on his reading list, The Second Mountain by David Brooks.

“He explains the difference between joy and happiness,” says Dodson.

“Joy is better.” He advises not to confuse the two.

If the consensus is that joy is longer lasting, perhaps Franklin was onto something, reconciling the good and bad, the inevitable failing in the attempt to be perfect. He had outRubined dour Rubin, charting his successes and failures on the way to finding virtue. And he found time for nude “air baths!”

6. Happy Hour

7. Laughter

I became a Certified Laughter Leader after a chance airport encounter with Dr. Patch Adams. (Remember the 1998 biopic starring Robin Williams as Dr. Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams?) Though he was on his way to minister to the sick in some of the world’s most cheerless, impoverished hospitals, the good doctor truly believed that laughter was the best medicine and invited me to take his laughter training course.

He and fellow volunteers (and you can add volunteering to yet another scientifically proven step to happiness) dress as clowns “to bring humor to orphans, patients and other people.” He calls his program, “clown care.”

Dr. Adams is also the inspiration for our dog’s name, Patch Adams, a pup who is eternally happy, my husband says.

I took the laughter training. The thing is, deep laughter promotes deep breathing, which may not transport you to happiness but it does promote less . . . unhappiness.

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July 2019

ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR

Most days, I’m happy. Admittedly, I’m not a zippity-do-dah morning person, but a let’s-talk-after coffee sort. If my happiness was a car, it would be a trusty diesel — once jollied up, fully fueled and caffeinated, I’m pretty damn happy till Happy Hour.

Oh, Happy Hour! It’s wrapped in the clichés of blinking neon martini glasses, bottomless pitchers and mounds of tortilla chips.

But literary types know it is as old as writing itself. It seems that the idea of a happy hour is Shakespearean — straight out of Henry V! “Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour . . .”

Here again are two more scientifically proven methods to happiness: a glass of wine, or better yet, sharing a glass of wine and enjoying pals. Ben Franklin offered that wine is a “constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” Tippling a little among those whose company you enjoy can lead to a few laughs. Which brings me to. . .

8. A Warm Puppy

And though it was Peanuts gang creator Charles Schulz who coined this one, I had only to look to Jane Gibson, a much-loved Hospice and Palliative Care Center staffer, to put it in context. She copes with seriously sad issues on a relentless basis. But she is invariably able to find a silver lining in the darkest cloud. For Gibson, the key to her happiness is humor.

“I always find talking to someone with a good sense of humor gets me back up,” she offers. Her husband, Paul Gibson, is known as a master of the witty comeback and wry observation. Just ask Jane: He suggested naming their new puppy Kayak upon registering Jane’s shock one Christmas morning. “It was the same bewildered look I gave him when he gave me a kayak another Christmas,” she laughs.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

10. If All Else Fails — Ice Cream 9. Catch a Sense of Humor

This goes beyond Paul Gibson’s quip or Patch Adams’ panacea, laughter, but the spark that engenders both.

This is what Gaura was talking about.

But where does it come from?

Get your catcher’s mitt out and be ready. For it is “caught, not taught,” I learned from found Helen Canaday, a beloved UNCG professor who directed the successful on-campus Nursery Program while teaching about child development.

Psychologists would often observe the toddlers in her charge, determining and analyzing aspects of personality. Canaday believed humor was vital to a healthy adulthood and meaningful life. One needed to be in possession of one’s wits, she reminded me. She was of a generation who still described someone dull as a “half-wit.”

She personally was a full wit, possessed of a wonderful, ready laugh. If anyone would know what was funny, Canaday would, having made a lifelong study of children.

And she always made me laugh with her observations about the foibles of adults.

Then she commenced to answer my question, but with difficulty, which was unusual. She started with the dictionary.

“I do have what Mr. Webster has,” she said finally, “which is, ‘the mental quality or faculty of experiencing or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous;’ something designed to be comical, amusing or witty.”

I pressed that I wanted to know what she — not Webster — thought.

“Well, I was trying to, and I haven’t finished working up a definition,” she faltered. “I do think that humor is caught not taught . . I think it is learned vicariously.”

She offered something fascinating. “You can teach children to be respectful, to be friendly, to love. You can teach children all the other aspects of the personality, but I don’t think you can teach them humor.”

Then, the good professor observed that certain humor is innate, saying “even babies will laugh.”

Canaday added something I underscored in my notes. “I know people who never, ever enjoy humor,” she said ruefully. “I think they participate, but they don’t have a feel for it.”

A feel for it.

Having a feel for humor — is that it? Do we feel our way towards happiness? Uh oh. Scratch that. It sounds lascivious, just writing it, but you know what I mean, and (bonus!) it did make me giggle.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

If you do a Google-search of good humor, the first 10 entries all concern ice cream brands. (Remember Good Humor?) I once attempted to eat my way to good humor-fueled happiness in the third grade by saving all my lunch money up for ice cream. And my husband took the factory tour of T. Wall and Sons Ice Cream (once the largest manufacturer of ice cream in the world) so many times when he was a boy (probably eight times) that they finally waved him through for the complimentary ice cream at the end. Day after day.

A child of any age can be forgiven for believing ice cream is a path to happiness. Whether your choice is chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, Rocky Road or Cherry Garcia, it sort of is. Even the writers at Psychology Today concede this much: “small indulgences” are potential happiness boosters. Not to mention the sugar high.

11. Natural Highs — and Lows

All those scientific researchers must be pretty damn happy with their lists of other proven recipes for happiness that include making your bed, rumpuses (think: fun) and travel — unless you’re waylaid by TSA agents or your flight is cancelled.

And for millennia, circles. (It's a 40,000-year fixation; Manuel Lima explains the reasons we are attracted “to curvilinear shapes” over angular ones. Which brings me full circle to Psychology Today that beat Second Mountaineer Brooks to the punch. They had already summited. Happiness “is not the result of bouncing from one joy to the next; researchers find that achieving happiness typically involves times of considerable discomfort.”

Was I just one pickle juice swig away from a good gut and all-encompassing happiness? Did I, as Canaday said, have a feel for it?

I felt something, I truly did! A smile tickled up from the corners of my mouth as pickle juice trickled out and I contemplated me, white water and a new kayak. OH Cynthia Adams is fascinated that Happy Hour is illegal in Kansas.

It is also illegal for Kansans to serve wine in teacups, which automatically makes her happier.

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She’s Got Game

Joy resounds in the crack of a bat for Grasshoppers superfan Priscilla Tuttle

By Maria Johnson • Photographs by Sam Froelich

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riscilla Tuttle raises her fists, but not in anger.

She puts up her dukes to bolster her beloved Grasshoppers when they need it — as they do now, in the opening act of a daylight double header against the Lakewood BlueClaws, who’ve scuttled down from New Jersey.

It’s the bottom of the first, and the Hoppers, Greensboro’s minor league baseball team, are at-bat, down 1-nothing.

The BlueClaws pitcher unfurls a fastball that reverses sharply with a flash of ash. CRACK! A shooting star of hide arcs over the infield and lands in the grass. The Hoppers batter in bright white churns to first.

“Go-go-go-go-go-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-wooooooooo,” Tuttle croons from her usual seat in the first row behind the Hoppers dugout. She shakes her fists like baby rattles, though she’s far from the cradle.

At 78, she’s one of those women who subtracts years by answering the age question quickly.

She’s not afraid of stepping up to the plate.

Or guarding it, like she did when she was coming up in the textile town of Eden.

Her daddy worked at Fieldcrest Mills’ Draper blanket plant; he played catcher and shortstop for the mill team. Young Priscilla and her family watched the games at close range.

“Mama said my first black eye I got by a baseball when I was 3,” she says.

As a teenager in the 1950s, Priscilla followed the Dodgers — the Brooklyn Dodgers — on TV. She played catcher for her high school softball team. She

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used her daddy’s mitt, a hard brown doughnut made buttery in the middle by balls that numbed her left hand.

She threw right-handed, batted left, was a fair-to-good hitter and a scrappy defender who planted her featherweight frame over home plate whenever a girl rounded third.

“I tried to keep ’em from getting across that base. I got rocked a lot. That was in the old days,” she says.

Later in life, after she and her husband, Gray, had four sons, she and the boys played on occasional Sunday afternoons with a co-ed bunch from her Methodist church. Priscilla played catcher, again. She didn’t get bowled over nearly as much — thank you, Jesus, for Christians and small children at home plate— but she got charley horses from not warming up.

Dirt-and-fescue diamonds are rarely a girl’s best friend into middle age.

She quit the plate and exercised by chasing her boys and minding the family store — The Barn Bait & Tackle — in an old tobacco barn on N.C. Highway 135 between Eden and Stoneville. That’s where she was working when a friend of the family — who was also a booster of the Greensboro Hornets, a predecessor of the Hoppers — walked in with some players in T-shirts and jeans.

It was 1991.

The booster-friend had worked it out with Gray’s uncle to let the players fish in the uncle’s pond. They stopped at the store for rods and reels and worms.

Priscilla fixed them up. That’s how it started, her long walk home to baseball.

She’d set up the players with bait and tackle, they’d talk, and naturally, they The Art & Soul of Greensboro

got to be friends. She invited them over to the house for supper.

She made regular food. Salisbury steak. Meat loaf. Green beans. Crowder peas. Creamed potatoes. Cornbread.

“They ate it all,” she says. “Lord have mercy.”

One day, one of the players asked Priscilla if she’d ever been to one of their games?

No, she said.

Why not? he asked.

She shrugged.

If I got you some tickets, would you go?

Sure, she said.

In 1993, she became a regular at War Memorial Stadium. Gray would go, too, when he could get away from farming tobacco and getting up hay.

Priscilla studied the game. She learned the fine points that had never dawned on her in high school: how hitters hit to certain locations in certain situations; how defenders shift on the field depending on who is at-bat; how every throw from the field is calculated to minimize damage.

Like most games, baseball was simple on the surface, complex underneath.

“It’s a finesse game,” she says. “I enjoy seeing ’em work it.”

It was more fun because she knew the players. She took their pictures, had double prints made at Winn-Dixie, laid out photo albums for herself and gave extra prints to the players to share with their families.

Somewhere, she knew, those players — most of whom were single and in their late teens or early 20s — had parents who worried about them. Priscilla wore out her Instamatic camera letting the unseen families know she was watching out for their sons.

She got new cameras, new lenses.

She made the transition from film to digital.

She grew and changed with the team, with the seasons.

She joined the booster club and pitched in to provide the players with picnics, household goods, and goody bags for road trips.

She adapted to the name changes — from Hornets to Bats in 1994, and from Bats to Grasshoppers in 2005, when the team moved to what’s now First National Bank Field.

She rolled with changing affiliations to major-league clubs.

She and Gray traveled to spring training in Tampa, Florida, when the team was aligned with the New York Yankees. They visited Jupiter during the reign of the Miami Marlins.

Just this season, the Hoppers divorced the Marlins and took up with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who eat grapefruit in Bradenton, Florida.

Priscilla was sorry to see the split. Marlin’s CEO Derek Jeter had played for the Greensboro Hornets in 1992 and ’93 before going onto stardom with the Yankees, and Priscilla was impressed by him and his parents. Good people.

But Jeter’s visit to Greensboro last season did not bode well, she says. He stayed in a skybox and did not acknowledge the fans.

“It looks like he would have come out of the box to meet the people,” she says. “There are a lot of people here who remember the old days.”

Maybe, she says, it was time for a change after all. The Marlins’ brass didn’t like the dog crates in the clubhouse. The bat-fetching pooches of Hoppers owner Donald Moore are longtime darlings of local fans, including Tuttle.

Soooo . . . fair thee well, Marlins.

“We like the Pirates,” says Priscilla, who has served as the president of the Hoppers booster club for, as she says, forever. “We like the Pirates just fine.”

It’s time for “Y.M.C.A.” The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Youngsters in shorts mount the dugout roof in front of Tuttle. She moves her canvas tote bag to give them more room as they commence to making Village People of the crowd.

Tuttle, whose short blond hair yields easily to gray, stays seated, sings along and makes the letters with her arms. In her elastic-waist jeans and slip-on sneakers, she looks every bit the elementary-school substitute teacher that she once was — and the reading tutor that she still is.

Her red T-shirt advertises the Fighting Quakers of Guilford College. Her grandson, Dylan Tuttle, pitches and plays right field for the Quakers. He gets it — why his grandmother keeps baseball cards, baseball programs, baseball books and signed baseballs in clear plastic boxes.

He gets her poster of Yankees slugger Don “Hit Man” Mattingly, who, incidentally, also played in Greensboro, in 1980, on his way to the Show.

If anything happens to me, Priscilla has told Dylan, don’t let them throw this stuff away. You know what it means. Not that she plans on going anywhere anytime soon, she points out, other than to a Hoppers game.

“A lot of things make me happy, but with this, I enjoy sitting and watching the plays. You sit here, and the cares of the day . . . it’s a way of focusing on something else,” she says.

“You can stay at home, in your little cluster, and never branch out, or you can go out someplace like this and meet people, and have a community. It's just a joy. Except when we’re losing.”

We’re losing.

Have been since the error-filled fourth inning.

Now, it’s bottom on the seventh, the final inning of the foreshortened doubleheader.

Priscilla locks her blue-green eyes on the game. Her bifocal lenses are clear — not rosecolored — but her wire frames are rosy-gold.

Hopeful around the edges.

We’re down 4-7 when the rally starts.

Siri doubles. Sanchez walks.

Men on first and second.

Macias singles, driving home Siri and advancing Sanchez.

Men on first and third.

“Oh! Go-go-go-go-go! Woooooooo.”

Priscilla’s fists are up.

The score is 5-7 when the first baseman Martin comes to bat. His mother might call him Mason, but to Priscilla, he’s Martin. She calls them by their last names. This is baseball.

Martin’s a lefty. Out of Washington state, Priscilla thinks. She’s still getting to know this Pirates team, making them her own.

“Let’s go, Hoppers! Let’s goooo,” she urges.

Four-hundred-and-eleven feet. That’s how far Martin pulls the ball. It sails over the ad-plastered fence and clonks off a building under construction on the other side of Eugene Street.

Martin knows it’s gone when he hits it. His slow trot around the bases gives time for everything to rise: The noise. The fans. The delirium of seeing the long shot made real.

Game over.

Hoppers win 8-7.

Priscilla Tuttle is on her feet, bouncing in her Skechers, yelling to be heard over the swell.

“Now, that’s what you call a baseball game.” OH Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Her email is ohenrymaria@ gmail.com.

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Anchors Aweigh!

Frank Slate Brooks and Brad Newton are always ready to set sail for adventure from the comfort of their nautical-themed home in historic Lindley Park

By Billy Ingram • Photographs by John Koob Gessner

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rank Slate Brooks and Brad Newton have chosen to cruise through life, moored but not anchored to their spectacular Lindley Park home, a retro-pop sanctuary where elegance and eccentricity collide.

Frank was raised in High Point, Brad in Burlington. They’ll have been a couple for 23 years this August. “We found out a couple of years into our relationship that our grandparents had been best friends,” Frank tells me. “We don’t know if we met each other as kids or not, but it was meant to be somehow.”

If their names sound familiar, it may be due to a blizzard of publicity that erupted in 2014 after they became the first gay couple to marry in Guilford County. “I didn’t realize that the media might be there,” Frank recalls. With that in mind, their first thought was — would their parents be OK with this being public? “My father is very conservative,” Frank says. “My mother had already passed and my dad was out at River Landing. Someone had left him a copy of the newspaper next to his bed and wrote ‘Congratulations’ on it. I walked in and Dad said, ‘So what have you been up to?’ He was all good.”

And so was the community at large. “We really thought there would be some kind of backlash or something nasty but it was the opposite,” Brad says.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

“At the baseball stadium the Saturday after, there was a chili cookout thing going on and people of all ages were coming up to us giving us hugs, it was just great.” Frank Slate Brooks, now with Tyler Redhead & McAlister Real Estate, has sold well over 100 homes in and around Lindley Park since 2006. “In 2001, I started out flipping homes with my then partner [interior designer] Laurie Lanier,” Frank tells me. “She staged a house for me and it sold in less than half a day. We did about 12 houses here in Lindley Park before we priced ourselves out of the market because when we started, Lindley Park was not what it is today.

Everything that we sold raised the prices for all the properties around them.”

After his experience flipping houses, Frank realized he needed to get his real estate license, “I really think we [Stephanie and I] were responsible for the renaissance of Lindley Park.”

Graced with tree-lined streets, eclectic architecture and neighborhood schools, Lindley Park was ripe for a revival once people began moving in from the suburbs. It was originally the site of an amusement park designed by the Greensboro Electric Company in 1902 to generate interest in the city’s new trolley line. That 3-mile trolley ride down Spring Garden from the center of town took around an hour and a half. (You could walk in half the time, but the muddy terrain wasn’t exactly pedestrian-friendly.)

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Named for J. Van Lindley, whose 1,130-acre nursery and Pomona Terra Cotta Company were situated nearby, the 26-acre park opened on the Fourth of July. The pavilion featured refreshment booths, a Fairyland Casino for dancing and bowling alleys. Nearby was a manmade lake for swimming and boating in the summer, ice skating in the winter, along with a miniature railroad and a 1,000-seat theater for touring vaudeville acts, as well as some sort of local monkey act. The park’s 20 x 25–foot bathhouse still stands behind the residence at 2812 Masonic Drive.

Frank and Brad’s two-story, Colonial Revival–style home on Northridge Street was built during the first wave of swank homes developed for the Lindley Park neighborhood in 1922 after the amusement park had closed.

Its construction is somewhat unusual, consisting of a brick exterior with 16 inches of insulation between the walls, the majority being more brick that keep rooms naturally warm in winter and cool in the summer. “They knew

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how to build houses back then,” Brad says.

At the start of the 1920s, the heart of Lindley Park was the corner of Walker and Elam and it remains so today. The first collection of unrelated businesses outside downtown was most likely Sunset Hills Shopping Center, established around 1925 on the northeast and northwest corners of the intersection, with two shops and a service station where Sticks and Stones is today. The retail area expanded in the 1930s to include a Piggly Wiggly in the space Suds & Duds currently occupies.

The Pickwick Soda Shop (now Walker’s) opened around 1943, at some point in the 1960s becoming The Pickwick bar and grill where, in the evening, newspaper folks downed Blatz on tap with college students that included Jim Clark, future Director of UNCG’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Sealing its street cred as a hippie hangout in the ’60s and ’70s, The Allman Brothers played there. As the district became more bohemian The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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with the expansion of UNCG in the 1980s, large portions of Lindley Park began to go to seed.

In 1999, Frank had been living on Mayflower Drive for around seven years when, as he recalls, “My parents said, ‘You need to get a bigger house because we’re giving you a lot of furniture’ and I thought, ‘OK . . .’” Visiting a friend who lived on Northridge Street, “We were out on her deck,” Frank remembers. “And she said, ‘These people next door are getting ready to transfer and they’re selling their home,’ and I said, ‘What house?’ We had been over there many times and never noticed this house.”

That may be because the manse is somewhat hidden behind a canopy of shade trees even older than the home itself. Frank ventured over, knocked on the door, “A woman named Mary lived here,” he says. “She showed me the house and the backyard and I said, ‘Sold!’”

A few minutes later, “Frank called me at work,” Brad recalls. “He said ‘I found a house, we’re signing the papers tonight’ and I said, ‘Whoa, slow down.’ I’ve not even seen this house! I came over after work and kinda did the same thing: ‘Sold!’”

Frank describes the surroundings in 1999, “The Filling Station [restaurant] was still a filling station with stacks of rusty cars in front of it.” Fishbones on the corner, he says “was part of The Blind Tiger next door; they closed that off and it just sat there. Now it’s the reverse.”

“Bestway was owned by two old men,” Brad remarks. “After they sold it, it became very much like a glorified Stop & Rob, not at all what it is now.

There was very little activity at the corner of Walker and Elam, I think Wild Magnolia closed right as we were moving in.”

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Since then, they’ve been furnishing their home in 20th-century whimsy, a Technicolor dreamscape. For instance, in an otherwise sedate living room, a Chain Drive Irish Mail push/pull pedal cart from the 1960s adorns one corner.

In the breakfast room, a papier-mâché monkey mask by Mexican artist Sergio Bustamante hangs above a pristine 1952 Seeburg Select-O-Matic 100 jukebox.

“We had it restored,” Frank says. Surprisingly, filling it full of hit records was easy, he adds. “I had a listing where the owner had left hundreds of 45s behind so we switch it out all the time.” They even found a place online that prints those distinctive crimson-striped labels for the jukebox’s song selections.

Brad is a big Don Knotts fan, so a poster from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken holds a prominent spot in the kitchen, as does a collection of pins acquired by Frank’s father from the many countries he’d traveled to. It continues to grow with the couple’s own additions. “This kitchen has seen so many transformations,” Frank says. “We recently did the countertops, the upper cabinets are from Preservation Greensboro.” Just off the kitchen is another equally impressive collection: of model ships he assembled as a teenager.

But what really makes their home one-of-a-kind is an unmistakable nautical theme. Both Frank and Brad (or “Frankenbrad” as their friends fondly refer to them) share a fascination with ocean liners and enjoy luxuriating on transatlantic cruises aboard vessels like the SS Norway and RMS Queen Mary 2. Part of the allure? “I love the ability to unpack once and have everything taken care of,” Frank says. “In a lot of ways, we’re very old-fashioned,” Brad explains. “On cruise ships you still have to dress for dinner, I do enjoy that. On the Queen Mary 2, they will stop people from entering the dining room in a T-shirt and shorts.”

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Cunard ships and Celebrity Cruises,” Frank insists. “They always have lectures and more interesting things to do than your Caribbean cruises. The spa . . . high tea is very nice, the British ships are big on trivia contests. And the disco is fun for maybe one night.”

“Frank made friends with the actress Celia Imrie (of the Bridget Jones movies) on our first Queen Mary crossing,” Brad says. “We were invited to a gay wedding on board, officiated by the Captain, and she was involved in that.”

Even choppy waters won’t spoil the good times for these two. “We got chased

by Hurricane Mitch last year on the [Celebrity Cruise ship] Mercury,” Frank tells me. “We dodged it the first time but then it reformed in the Atlantic and they were calling it ‘Son of a Mitch.’ The waves got so bad, everyone was tossed and thrown everywhere so all drinks were free for a day or two. We have our sea legs so it didn’t bother us; we thought it was fun.”

At an early age, Frank became infatuated with America’s Flagship, the SS United States. Now he’s North Carolina co-chairman of the SS United States Conservancy, an attempt to repurpose what was once the most elegant ship on the high seas, attracting U.S. Presidents and Hollywood stars alike from the moment of her maiden voyage in 1952. A full 100 feet longer than the RMS Titanic, the SS United States still holds the record as the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic. The ship was retired in 1969.

All around the home are mementos and sumptuous details salvaged from the SS United States: ashtrays, aluminum cabin keys, towels, travel posters, its

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“Swimming Pool” sign in the mudroom above the back door, even blankets on the beds bear the ship’s insignia.

In the dining room are several chairs, a table lamp, and fine china place settings that also originated from the ocean liner; a scale model of the ship serves as the formal table’s centerpiece. Nearby, a grandfather clock from the 1800s chimes the hour while, mounted on another wall, is a metal sculpture of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns by Felix de Weldon who famously sculpted the Iwo Jima Memorial. “It’s bolted to the wall,” Brad says. “It’s very heavy. If it ever falls off, it’ll end up in our basement.”

Recently, FrankenBrad hosted a kick-off party here for Preservation Greensboro’s tour of Lindley Park homes. “We had a great turnout,” Brad says. “Our house was going to be on the tour, but we were out of town.”

Brad, who’s worked in marketing for Replacements, Ltd. for the past 23 years, has a love for Hollywood movies, as evidenced by the dramatic framed three-sheet posters for such cult classics as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Stanley Kramer’s The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., both of them three times larger than your typical one-sheet movie poster. “They didn’t make a whole lot of three-sheets,” Brad notes. “In fact, they are always numbered.” Pointing to an etching in the bottom left hand corner of the 5,000 Fingers poster, he says, “There were only a total of 53 of these made and this is No. 8.” A poster for Roman Polanski’s 1965 thriller Repulsion is mounted above their bed because, as Brad says, “Everyone wants to see a psychotic Catherine Deneuve whenever The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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they walk into the bedroom, right?”

If this home reminds one of Stately Wayne Manor it shouldn’t be surprising that, just like the ’66 Batman TV show, in the den next to a red rotary telephone is a bust of William Shakespeare. Pulling back The Bard’s head reveals a switch that triggers a bookcase to slide to one side, exposing the Batpole leading down to the Batcave (sliding bookcase, Batpole and Batcave not included).

Another fitting nostalgic touch? Their screened porch, which hasn’t been glassed-in as so many are nowadays. There’s something quaint about a screened porch, especially this one with four 1950s era barbershop waiting room chairs to lounge on. Very Mayberry.

Entering their backyard, dominated by a 60-foot long pool, is a bit like walking onto the deck of a cruise ship, but considerably greener. “These silver planters are from the First Class Dining Room in the SS United States,” Frank says. A wall of nautical flags, nearly an exact replica of the one situated at the end of that fabled ocean liner’s indoor pool, spells out, ‘Come on in the water’s fine!’ The outdoor shower and deck chairs also originate from the United States.

As we relaxed on the terrace, accompanied by a symphony of chirping birds, I half expected Admiral Halsey to come floating down from the sky.

“There was a time when we were talking about buying a beach house,” The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Brad explains. “We thought about the upkeep, the insurance, worrying every time a storm came through, so we decided we’d turn our house into a vacation property. We love to get up on Saturday mornings, put on our bathing suits [“Or not,” Frank interjects] and it’s like we’re on vacation in our own neighborhood.”

It’s safe to say the couple’s three dogs — Rex, a 6-year-old black Lab; Dios, a 9-year old golden retriever; and Ripley, a 2-year old English Cream — enjoy the pool almost as much their owners do. Frank laughs, “When we go on vacation we have a dog sitter who is always like, ‘Oh yeah!’”

Chip Callaway did the landscaping, lining the fence line with magnolias and upright skip laurel. “Chip told us, ’The first year they sleep,’” Frank explains. “‘The second year they creep and the third year they leap.’ And that’s where we are now, the leaping stage.” A pull-down motion picture screen along an exterior wall of the garage allows for cozy movie nights. No wonder they have no intention of moving or even one day downsizing. “We’re here to stay,” Frank insists. “We love it here.”

Sold! OH Billy Ingram is a former Hollywood movie poster artist who now enjoys exploring Greensboro’s rich history.

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Fantasy Island Local designer Terry Allred brings a tropical flair to an iconic North Carolina beach destination

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By Nancy Oakley • Photographs by Andrew Sherman

acation, all I ever wanted/Vacation, had to get away . . .” The Go-Gos’ high-pitched chorus of their jaunty 1982 pop hit, “Vacation” rolls around in your mind, if not on the car stereo, as you accelerate with abandon down I-40 toward the beach. Good-bye alarm clock! Good-bye over-air conditioned office with blinding fluorescent lights! Good-bye deadlines! Good-bye broiling Battleground Avenue, clogged honking traffic and the acrid smell of tar! You’re going on vacation! Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! You can’t wait to get your “toes in the water, ass in the sand,” as another travelin’ troubadour, Zac Brown puts it. Your happy place of choice? The Blockade Runner Beach Resort in Wrightsville Beach.

Impossible not to notice before you even set foot inside the door is a colorful sculpture that takes up the entire front window — a wire frame filled with foam flowers, as it turns out — resembling a sea anemone, the handiwork of interior designer Terry Allred. She understands all too well that for the generations of North Carolinians who have regularly vacationed there, the Blockade Runner is an institution, their “own special place,” to borrow from yet another song, “Bali Hai.” So why not create a similar paradise?

“Wrightsville Beach is an island. Let’s make them think they’ve come to an island, a really funky island. A fun island,” she recalls suggesting to the hotel’s owners, Bill Baggett and his sister Mary Baggett Martin, when the décor was due for an upgrade.

The tropical fantasy envelops you as you enter the lobby, where, covering the floor, a bright blue mural by Winston-Salem artist Angelina Taddeucci recalls the blue holes in the Bahamas, though Allred says her inspiration were the overwater bungalows so popular in Polynesian resorts. Overhead, a ripple of aqua-colored, stretchy fabric spans the ceiling — waves, as it were; the far wall, original to the hotel, is also painted bright blue and mounted with various kinds of fish (a vestige of a prior renovation, Allred notes); wooden slats replicating a boardwalk punctuate other walls, another foam flower sculpture in the shape of a seahorse is suspended from the ceiling. “I wanted people to feel like they were walking on water,” Allred explains. “When you walk in, you’re supposed to be absorbing water. There’s water everywhere.” Even in the elevator where a single drop seems to splash off the walls. “Why do you come to the beach?

You come for the water, right?”

She and her husband, John, came to the beach 26 years ago. Gate City born and bred, Allred had built a successful design business in her hometown in the 1980s with a high-end consignment store named — what else?

— Terry Allred. “It was on North Elm Street where Fishers Grille is,” the designer remembers (she would later relocate it to West Market). “I loved to do vignettes. I’m a designer! C’mon!” she says. The tableaux were her creative outlet, since 98 percent of her clientele were other designers. “Why would I be a stupid idiot and compete with people who were coming in and buying from me all the time?” she posits, adding that occasionally she would hire her compatriots to help with the store, if for nothing else than the camaraderie. “My customers were my life!” she says wistfully.

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She was not, therefore “a happy trooper” on that day in 1991 when John Allred announced that his job as an engineer for Wilmington Machinery was taking the two to the Port City. With a heavy heart, Terry Allred the designer sold Terry Allred the store, before she and John embarked for the coast.

But as she notes, Greensboro and Wilmington have long been inextricably linked, and it was a Greensboro connection who made the Allreds’ transition to Wilmington a little easier. “Jane Moffitt [now Jane Moffitt Beeker, owner of JM Designs] was a really, really great customer of mine. Incredible customer,” Allred says. She goes on to explain that she’d helped Moffitt with some installations at the Wilmington community of Landfall, which in the early ’90s was smaller than it is today, “maybe 300 people,” Allred estimates. Being new in town, it was a good place for the couple to start out and meet people, and where Allred could establish her professional reputation. She maintained ties with the Triad, buying antiques for Henredon Furniture’s 11,000 square-foot showroom at High Point Market, and ultimately for Ralph Lauren, which was using Henredon furniture in its galleries nationwide. She and John

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would eventually move to a house “on the prettiest, cleanest creek on the Intracoastal,” with a “gorgeous” yard they loved to work in, but Allred kept her connections to Landfall, doing interiors for some of its residents. One of them introduced her to the woman who would play a huge part in the designer’s life and career, Blockade Runner’s Mary Baggett Martin.

The hotel had been sold to a developer who had plans to convert the lodging into a condominium development. But before it was inked, the deal fell through, leaving the Baggetts with a hotel that suddenly had no advance bookings. Mary desperately needed to refresh the rooms. Which is how, in October of 2006, Allred became Blockade Runner’s in-house interior designer.

“Mary and I hit it off,” Allred says, recalling how the two went to the High Point Market that October, and later, a show in Atlanta. Her new gig was unique in many respects. “This is a family-owned hotel. This is not Marriott — Marriott tells you what to buy,” Allred offers. She was responsible for selecting everything, down to the tiniest detail. “I was picking toilet paper, salt and pepper shakers . . . nothing came into that hotel that I didn’t put my hands The Art & Soul of Greensboro

on,” Allred says. Initially, each of the hotel’s 150 rooms had its own unique design. “We would buy throws for the beds, pillows for the beds.

We can’t have the same tissue holder for every bathroom, if every room’s different,” Allred says. Housekeeping would often get confused as to which throws belonged in which rooms.

And, as she would discover over the course of 12 years, a hotel designer’s work is constantly in progress. For one, it takes months for the furnishings ordered in bulk at Market to arrive in containers. Since the Blockade Runner is almost always fully rented, new furnishings and accents have to be implemented in piecemeal fashion. Guests often rearrange pieces designated for specific spaces. “That doesn’t happen in residential [projects],” Allred notes. Then there’s the wear and tear, requiring most lodgings to refresh their interiors every five years or so. But a beach hotel? “It’s unmerciful,” says Allred, citing the sand and unrelenting humidity.

And yet, for all of the challenges, she was having fun. Allred’s eyes light up at the latest redesign as she scrolls through her iPhone flashing photographs of pillows purchased at Market, some with a Mexican folkloric vibe consisting of a rough weave of deep blue thread on a cream background (“Is this not fun?”); others in bright florals seen in Rifle Paper Company’s stationery, all the rage among the younger set (“Is that not the funnest thing?”). She pauses at another image of flooring in a floral design similar to Moroccan tile (“It’s vinyl; isn’t it cool?”) and another image of a bar that appears to be studded with beachcombers’ finds. (“It’s for the lobby, from Phillips Collection. I thought it looked like quartz and pebbles, see?”).

She had Taddeucci paint big splashy murals of palm fronds and blue coral on the walls of the dining areas, used teak furniture and bright colors for the upholstery. Outside, the landscaped lawn shows more evidence of Allred’s ingenuity: an Easter Island head here (you’re on an island, remember?), a fountain there (Allred laughs about the time she accidentally fell into it), elegant hammocks where one can laze and gaze at the roiling Atlantic; across from the pool area, a set of bright blue wicker pod chairs resembling dolphin fins. Nearby stands an accent wall, its bricks painted in glossy red hues — meant to reflect and amplify the sun’s setting rays beaming from the opposite direction.

Allred credits Mary’s generosity for letting her creative spirit run loose.

“Mary spoiled me,” she says of their many showroom jaunts over the years.

“She’s taught me a lot. She leaves no stone unturned.” When Allred’s muse strikes and she immediately wants to purchase items that catch her eye, it is Mary who pulls in the reins with a gentle, “Are you sure about that?” or “Let’s go look some more.” Allred has persuaded her friend and employer to rethink things, too, coaxing her away from 150 unique rooms and offering seven distinct floors, instead, the idea being that each visit to the Blockade Runner can be different from the last. On a nautical-themed floor lined with porthole mirrors, sailing enthusiasts will appreciate the sailcloth shower curtains, not to mention the view of watercraft cruising the sound. There is a Rifle floor, using the aforementioned accents of the Rifle Paper Company, and Allred’s The Art & Soul of Greensboro

favorite, a Bohemian floor whose design was inspired by an elegant dresser she calls “Emma.”

It was love at first sight when she spotted the piece at Market. “I sat down on the floor in front of Emma. And I said, ‘I’m doing a floor with this dresser.’” She likes to think her creative impulsivity has rubbed off. When, at another showroom Mary and younger Brother Ben Baggett gasped in unison at the sight of an enormous Lucite Guildmaster table supported by an enormous driftwood base, Allred immediately ordered the piece, despite Ben’s questioning where in the hotel it would go. Her response? “What difference does it make? “We’ll find a home for something that takes your breath away.”

That, after all, part of creating an escape for vacationers. The table, as it happens, now has a place of pride in the stunning, water-themed lobby.

Another pearl of wisdom Allred hopes she has imparted to Mary is the importance of establishing consistent relationships with vendors. She has particular praise for High Point–based Phillips Collection, “because they’re so easy, they’ll do anything for you,” Allred says. For the same reason, she speaks admiringly of BELFOR, the property restoration company that stepped in after the Blockade Runner was saturated with water during Hurricane Florence last fall. “They were fabulous,” Allred says, mentioning that BELFOR had to rebuild the entire balcony section of the hotel, whose roof was ripped off during the storm. Allred was “back in the saddle” in the storm’s wake, going to the High Point and Atlanta shows to purchase furniture, art and accessories and overseeing all the myriad moving parts integral to the hotel’s refurbishment. She says BELFOR was particularly helpful with to replacing carpets, flooring or wallpaper. “They do it. They get it for me, which cuts out some of my hassle.” Having lived through 17 hurricanes, she is all too familiar with the hassle of recovery — the demand for contractors and inspections alone — that many inland dwellers simply do not understand.

But Terry and John Allred will always understand what it means to be waterlogged, even though they themselves are once again inland dwellers. The pull of home was just too strong. They sold their house on the Intracoastal Waterway exactly one week before Florence struck. “I told my husband we should have bought lottery tickets that week,” Allred quips, as she stands before another Taddeucci mural consisting of green leaves on a black background. It is a bold statement in their high-rise, as is the expansive view of downtown Greensboro.

“We love our new life,” Allred sighs contentedly, mentioning the nearby restaurants, Carolina Theater, Triad Stage and the live music from the N.C. Folk Festival readily available from their perch. “I can sit right here, have a glass of wine and watch it all!” the designer enthuses. She likes to walk in Fisher Park, and come winter, make snow angels in City Center Park. “We’re not the beach people we used to be,” she reflects. In fact, she and John have turned their gaze to the west. For when they’re not enjoying the Gate City’s downtown scene, the Allreds take delight in the cool mountain breezes of Meadows of Dan, Virginia, where they frequently socialize with an enclave of fellow Greensborians, visit wineries such as Chateau Morrisette and Villa Appalaccia, dine at the posh mountaintop resort, Primland, and work in a new garden — this one rich in the red clay they’ve missed all these years.

The couple chanced upon a small condominium community while visiting another Baggett family property, Meadows of Dan Campground that includes some log cabins, which, yes, Allred refurbished for her dear friend Mary. The Baggetts, she says, “are family.” And though she officially retired from her post at the Blockade Runner, Allred was still overseeing the post-Forence design work and putting some finishing touches on the lobby — oversized wicker fan chairs, metal palm trees — for its grand unveiling last month before the start of high season. She’ll likely return in October when the property celebrates its 55th anniversary, lending her special magic to the decorations and festivities as she has for every holiday — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth of July — making the hotel a happy place for all who enter its dreamlike watery world. Then she’ll head west again to where she is happiest: “digging in the dirt . . . and visiting wineries.” OH By the time you read this, Nancy Oakley will be kickin’ back, Zac Brown–style.

July 2019

O.Henry 75

Calling all born storytellers, shaggy dog fans and fearless yarn-spinners!

Thursday, August 15 7 to 9 pm at Red Oak Brewery in Whitsett

Join us for the first O.Henry Magazine Story Slam, an evening of great competitive improv storytelling, homegrown humor and fabulous Red Oak beer in an authentic Bavarian Lager Haus!

Offer up a memorable 6-minute story about this month’s theme -- “The Summer Everything Changed” -- and you could win a cash prize and cool bling!”

Tickets are $10 in advance (and includes your first beer) Competition is limited to first 10 storytellers who sign up at the door.

Brought to you by

For information and tickets visit www.ticketmetriad.com

A L M A N A C

July

nBA y

sh Alder

Snapshots from July are salt-laced and dreamy.

Children skipping through sprinklers on the front lawn.

Baskets of ripe peaches, still warm from the sun.

Tree houses and tackle boxes.

Tangles of wild blackberry.

Brown paper bags filled with just-picked sweet corn.

Last summer, gathered in celebration of July 4, we made a game of shucking sweet corn on my grandmother’s front porch. Two points for each clean ear, a bonus per earworm, yet as husks and corn silk began to carpet the ground beneath us, joy and laughter were all that counted.

And now, memories.

Like Papa’s pickles, made with the cukes from his own garden.

Speaking of Papa . . . something tells me he would have loved watching us turn a chore into a simple pleasure, perhaps the secret of any seasoned gardener.

The Art of Shade-Dwelling

In the sticky July heat our state is known for, not just the flowers are wilting.

Advice from a fern: seek shade and thrive.

Yes, you.

Bring a hammock, summer reading, refreshments, pen and journal.

Daydream beneath the lush canopy.

Bathe in the filtered light. Indulge in the summery soundscape. Cloud gaze.

And if you’re looking for a spot by the water, follow the spiraling dragonfly. She will always lead you there.

The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.

— James Russell Lowell The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Fresh from the Garden

Eggplant, snap beans, green beans, summer squash.

Plump tomatoes are spilling from the vine, but there are two words on my mind: melon season.

In one word: cantaloupe.

And while it’s fresh and abundant, consider some new ways to enjoy it.

Blend it with club soda and honey.

Salt and spice it with crushed peppercorn and sumac.

Toss it with arugula, fennel and oregano.

Make cool melon soup, or sweet-and-salty jam.

Nothing spells refreshing like chilled cubes of it after a hot day in the sun, but if you’re looking for savory, check out the below recipe from Epicurious.

Cantaloupe and Cucumber Salad

(Makes 4 servings) Ingredients 1/2 cup olive oil 1/4 cup Champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon ground coriander 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom 1/2 large cantaloupe, rind and seeds removed, flesh cut into 1-inch pieces 1 large English hothouse cucumber, sliced on a diagonal -½ inch thick 2 Fresno chiles, thinly sliced 1/2 cup unsalted, roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas) 1/4 cup chopped cilantro 1/4 cup chopped mint Sumac (for serving) Ingredient Info Sumac is a tart, citrusy spice generally sold in ground form. It can be found at Middle Eastern markets, specialty foods stores and online.

Preparation Whisk oil, vinegar, coriander, salt, pepper and cardamom in a large bowl. Add cantaloupe, cucumber and chiles, and toss to coat in dressing.

Let sit, uncovered, 15 minutes.

To serve, add pumpkin seeds, cilantro and mint to salad and toss gently to combine. Top with sumac.

Lazy Days of Summer

The full buck moon rises on Tuesday, July 16, which, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, is a good day for pruning, mowing and weeding. But if R&R is more your speed, below are a few obscure holidays you might add to the calendar.

July 10: Pick Blueberries Day July 17: Peach Ice Cream Day July 20: Ice Cream Soda Day July 22: Hammock Day Happy Independence Day, friends. Happy, happy hot July. OH July 2019

O.Henry 77

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OH PROfiles The People & Businesses That Make The Triad A More Vibrant Place To Live and Work!

SPONSORED SECTION JULY 2019

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TRACIE CATLETT Head of School

With a bachelor’s degree in finance from Florida State University, Tracie Catlett was happily employed as an analyst for NationsBank in Miami — until the day she volunteered with Junior Achievement as an economics instructor at a K–12 school in South Florida. All at once, Catlett realized she belonged in a classroom: “I hung up my banking career and followed my heart,” she says, which led her to a master’s degree in education followed by a ten-year stint teaching high school mathematics in the public school system in Louisville, Kentucky. Soon after, she spent another decade teaching and leading Louisville Collegiate School, a K–12 independent school, where she most recently was the associate head of the school.

In July of this year, once again she followed her heart to Greensboro, where she became the first female head of Greensboro Day School: “After visiting the Greensboro Day School campus, it was clear that this is a school that I wanted my own children to attend,” she recalls. “It’s the people in the community that made Greensboro feel like home well before we arrived.” What really got Catlett’s attention after getting to know Greensboro Day’s community during the interview process was how the school “stands out as a relationship-based community. Teachers know students individually and challenge them to be their best selves every day in an inclusive and supportive community where students enjoy a one-to-eight faculty-to student ratio.” Personal attention pays off: “Our students are taught how to think,” Catlett says, “not what to think.”

Greensboro Day School enrolls approximately 750 students from two-years-old to 12th grade and will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this upcoming school year. In addition to celebrating fifty years of history, Catlett says she is intent on “continuing to build an inclusive and supportive community that prepares students to become contributing, global citizens ready to take on college and the interconnected world in which they will live.” “My passion for making a difference in children’s lives is just as strong today as it was 25 years ago,” she says.

Recent Reads: The Wright Brothers (David McCullough), Becoming (Michelle Obama) and The Invisible Classroom (Kirke Olson) Favorite podcast: How I Built This Greatest accomplishment in life: Being a mother Family: Husband Mark is newly retired from coaching and teaching history in public school. They have four boys: John, Jack, Will, Hank — and a 7-year-old dog named Charlie.

Dream vacation: Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

336.288.8590 5401 Lawndale Drive Greensboro, NC www.greensboroday.org

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MARK AND KIM LITTRELL Mark and Kim Littrell always tell their clients, “with Team Littrell, you get two for the price of one.” But their real measure of difference comes from the pair’s extensive business experience outside of real estate, which gives them the ability to negotiate deals and then track each one of them until they go through.

Though they lived for years within miles of each other in Greensboro, “Team Littrell” first met on a Delta Airlines flight in December 2000 en route from Greensboro to Atlanta. They hit it off, exchanged phone numbers and met sporadically for coffee or lunch, but some turbulence ensued in the continuing relationship.

Then, serendipitously, a few months later they met again— on another Delta flight to Atlanta, and this time it stuck. On 9/11 (2001), when planes stopped flying, Mark was in Dallas and Kim in Alabama. Mark drove twelve straight hours to pick up Kim. It was then they realized “how short life is and how important it is to have someone to share your life with,” Kim told Delta’s Sky magazine. Engaged weeks later on Thanksgiving

Eve, 2001, they got married the following January.

Raised in Sanford, Kim worked in pharmaceutical sales and management with a degree from N.C. State.

In 2002, she started her own real estate company.

Mark — born in Eastern Kentucky and a member on Vanderbilt University’s 1982 Hall of Fame Bowl football team — was ready for a career change and got his real estate license after 30 years of handily crossing back and forth from sales, marketing and operations in consumer finance and receivables. And then in 2015, the two of them, armed with their one-of-a-kind sales and business background, joined Allen Tate and launched Team Littrell so “Kim wouldn’t have to be boss of Mark at home and at work,” they joke.

Representing clients primarily in Guilford County with a focus on Greensboro, it’s been a winning team from the start. They have achieved Master Circle status and been named Quarterly VIPs and monthly top performers, but having a winning team is not good enough for them: “In the next three years, we would like to double

our size and triple our sales volume,” Kim says. To help them, Claude Ruth and Chase Pender have joined Team Littrell. “Though we have faced a number of challenges together and have achieved many goals, we really feel our greatest accomplishments in life are yet to come,” Mark says.

Recent Reads: Mark: Hillbilly Elegy (J.D. Vance); Kim: Vaporized (Robert Tercek) After Hours: Both are tennis players, with Kim part of N.C. State’s Mixed Doubles Champions in the 9.0 division a few years ago. Both love to travel, especially to St. Barths.

Family: Three grown daughters between them, Allye of Greensboro, Abby in Charlotte and Lindsey in Raleigh.

Volunteerism: Kim is a long-time member and past president of the Greensboro Symphony Guild and has served on the board of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra. Mark is a member of Gate City Rotary, and has been past president of Starmount Forest Country Club.

He also organizes Bourbon tastings to raise money for local charities.

336-210-9294 717 Green Valley Rd. Greensboro, NC kimlittrell.allentate.com

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GRAHAM E. FARLESS, DDS Owner and Dentist

As a child, Dr. Graham Farless spent hours tinkering with the smallest toys like micro-machines and LEGOs, possibly a prerequisite to the work he would find so fulfilling in his dental career, a profession focused on all the fine details.

Add to this Graham’s warm personality, and enthusiasm for technology, and it’s the perfect combination to create the thriving dental practice he has today. Delivering the latest in digital dentistry such as same-day crown technology, along with implant and cosmetic dentistry services, Farless Dental Group’s real measure of difference comes from what prompted Graham to go into dentistry, “the ability to have a positive impact on other people’s lives through compassion, reliability, a willingness to listen and a desire to be the best.” Born and raised in Northeastern North Carolina on a family farm in Merry Hill, Farless earned his doctorate in dental surgery at UNC-Chapel Hill. His first job out of dental school was in Greensboro, which he and his wife, Katherine, decided was a good place to raise a future family: “It provides the perfect balance of size and amenities without feeling crowded or too busy,” he says. Taking over the practice of Dr. Jim Osborne in 2010, Farless has built a culture in which patients are treated as family members with integrity, honesty, fairness and respect. When you add state-of-the-art technology, says Farless, “we now are able to help provide and guide patients with the best options out there so that they can achieve their goal of great oral health.” With a newly renovated office and the addition of Dr. Darryl Locklear, Farless Dental Group provides “the highest quality and most advanced dental care in a comfortable and professional environment where each patient is treated with compassion and respect.”

Greatest Accomplishment: “Being a dad; I get to learn every day how to be the best kind of dad to each of my sons. ” Married 14 years to his wife, Katherine, they have three boys, Graham Jr., Burk and John — as well as a Labrador Retriever, Sprig.

After Hours: “Going to the mountains, hiking and playing outside.” Also, golf, hunting, fishing, F3 and volunteering in his church.

Dream Trip: Exploring Yellowstone National Park

336.282.2868 2511 Oakcrest Avenue Greensboro, NC gsodentist.com

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TIM, SONYA, JAY AND SCOTT KOEHLER Owners

“What people hate most about remodeling their kitchen is the amount of time it takes and the cost,” says Tim Koehler of Kitchen Express. Koehler should know.

He has 39 years of experience designing, building and remodeling kitchens and baths.

Born in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, Koehler got into the remodeling business after Clarion State College, first working for someone else and then, he says, “I decided to become an entrepreneur.” He moved to Greensboro

in 1985, and ultimately founded My Dream Kitchen.

In 1996, he bought the Re-Bath franchise for Guilford County. His son Scott started with Re-Bath as an installation technician and worked his way up to Production Manager. He now manages ten crews remodeling both baths and kitchens. Kitchen Express is a sister company of Re-Bath of the Triad and they both operate under the same premise: “Treat others as you would want to be treated.”

Tim Koehler sold My Dream Kitchen in 2011 so he could focus on Re-Bath, “but many of our Re-bath customers asked us to do their kitchens. We began to offer kitchen remodeling — completed, from start to finish, in less than two weeks, ” he says, “which is quite different from the typical 4 to 6 weeks.” Because of their highly efficient, streamlined process, “We can offer kitchen remodeling at a very affordable price,” Koehler says.

It helps that when Kitchen Express opened three years ago, his son, Jay, became interested in kitchen design and was mentored by his father. And wife, Sonya has been with the family enterprise since the beginning.

Tim Koehler is certified by the National Kitchen + Bath Association and the American Society of Interior Designers.

His greatest accomplishment? Not surprisingly he says, “My family.”

(336) 895-1110 2701 Branchwood Dr, Greensboro www.kitchenexpressnc.com

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PATRICK RUSH Owner and investment adviser

“Complacency scares me,” Patrick Rush admits. That fear must be a real motivator. This year, Forbes named him Greensboro’s top financial advisor. Barron’s has similarly honored him by putting him on its list of America’s Top Advisors for four years running. And the Financial Times has listed Triad Financial Advisors (TFA) as one of the top investment firms in the country for the past four years as well.

“There’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to manage clients’ financial futures, and I’m passionate about implementing better solutions and outcomes,” Rush says.

That begins by insisting that clients meet with only Certified Financial Planners™, considered the gold standard throughout the industry. Services are on a fee-only basis, meaning advisors don’t rely on commissions. Face-to-face customer service is a hallmark: “A live voice always answers the phone so our clients are heard, not routed around by pre-recorded prompts.”

Founded in 1982 by Mrs. Carter Leinster, a pioneer for women in financial advising, TFA is the local leader in working with female investors. “Helping women with their finances is not a niche,” Rush says. “We’ve been doing it for almost 40 years.”

Born in Chicago with a financial-markets-and-trading degree from Illinois Institute of Technology along with an M.B.A. in finance from Stuart School of Business, Rush was lured to Greensboro in 2002 by First Horizon to lead a new wealth-management initiative. “I liked statistics, money and the chaos of the trading floor,” he says. “But my motivation has evolved over time, and today I’m driven by a much bigger, idealistic dream to raise the standards in our industry.”

After 20 years, financial advising comes easily, he says. However, “leading a business and managing people is a tremendous challenge.”

But not one he’s afraid of.

After Hours: “I love sports and played baseball in college. I challenge myself physically at Title Boxing, as well as my Peloton.”

Recent Read: Dare to Lead (Brene Brown).

Family: His wife, Dr. Christina Rush, is a clinical psychologist, and all three children, Havana, 7, and twins, Walker and Quincy, 4, will be attending Canterbury School in the fall.

Secret Pleasure: “I’m a huge UNCG basketball fan and have court-side seats. It’s the best and most affordable entertainment in town.”

Dream Trip: “I’d love to travel to the Galapagos Islands with my family. Kids can be so intellectually curious and the Galapagos seems like it would blow their minds!”

336.230.0071 3623 North Elm Street, Suite 102 Greensboro, NC www.triadfa.com

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MELISSA GREER

REAL ESTATE BROKER, RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE Shy by nature, which surprises most people, Melissa Greer struggled when she first began selling real estate after graduating from Page High School and Chapel Hill. Her mother and mentor — who, in 1978, started Johnnye Greer Hunter & Associates after a decade in real estate — couldn’t help but notice. “What’s going on with you,” she wondered aloud, issuing a challenge to her daughter: “Every day for the next thirty days, I want you to put a mirror on your desk and smile into it as you talk to clients on the phone,” she told her. “This really was the turning point in my career,” Greer says. “In that fateful thirty days, I sold almost $1 million in real estate.”

She also got her other secret weapon from her mother, who urged her to lead with her heart: “My mother taught me that real estate is more than a business. It’s an opportunity to help people discover what home really means.” Whether as a buyer’s agent or a seller’s agent, she works intimately with clients, determined to give them joy and protect their investment. To Greer, “success is knowing I have changed someone’s life for the better. Real estate is not a transactional experience for me. It is carried out from a place of empathy.” It’s definitely been a winning formula. Berkshire Hathaway has three circles of excellence: Diamond Circle, for only the most stellar sales performers who rank in the top one-half-of-one-percent category nationally, a circle Greer has stepped into three times, twice in the last two years. And during the last 10 years, she has also been in the Gold or Platinum circle six times.

A passionate advocate for Preservation Greensboro, Greer works behind the scenes to honor and preserve the legacy of Greensboro’s historic homes. But what really distinguishes her, again, leading from her heart, is what she gives back to Greensboro. From Go Red for Women to the American Heart Association Legacy Circle of Red Society, and from the Guilford Green Foundation to the Big Hair Ball of the Family Services of the Piedmont, the Greensboro community has again and again been the beneficiary of Greer’s irrepressible gung-ho spirit and continuing generosity. But her abiding passion is for Greensboro’s Carolina Theatre, where she’s heavily involved with a capital-campaign fund to set the stage for what she calls a rejuvenation of the theater — “to honor my mother’s memory.”

Recent Reads: The Energy Bus (Jon Gordon), anything by Brené Brown, and Southern and historical fiction in general.

Pet Project: “I am a resident and supporter of Sunset Hills Running of the Balls, serving as an advocate and as a sponsor supporting the event’s efforts to supply canned goods and donations to Second Harvest Food Bank.”

Dream Trip: “Greece and Portugal are at the top of my list. I love experiencing different cultures.”

336.337.5233 1103 North Elm Street #100 Greensboro, NC melissagreer.bhhscarolinas.com

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KEVIN OTEY Owner

“The frame is the heart of the house,” says Kevin Otey. “When a house is properly framed, the sheetrock hangs right and the trim and molding are square and tight.” Having built his reputation in the Piedmont based on the quality of his framing and trim work from the age of 18, Otey built his company, Otey Construction Inc., on another firm foundation: “Promises, made, promises kept.” It’s all about relationships, he says. “I want to make others happy. Period. I truly want to make sure my homeowners are happy and that my vendors like to work with me.”

Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, Otey has been building, remodeling and painting “since the time I was old enough to swing a hammer. It’s always been a passion of mine.” At 17, he went to work for what he calls a house factory, a manufacturer of prefabricated, modular houses. The experience he got was priceless; the money not so good. “I started exploring where we shipped the houses, the High Point area, and liked it. I moved and started Otey Construction six months later at age 18.” From that humble beginning, it’s always been, “Get the work done to the best of your ability and don’t worry about the profits.”

The recipient of numerous Gold and Silver awards from the Greensboro Builders Association’s Parade of Homes and twelfth among the Triad Business Journal’s Fast 50, Otey Construction’s four full-time employees work with more than 250 subcontractors, which doesn’t keep Otey from spending lots of time advising customers one-on-one and out checking on work sites. “I love what I do and wouldn’t choose to do anything else. I’m not about ready to retire yet,” he says.

After Hours: “I enjoy fly fishing and make regular trips to Montana to do just that. As long as I’m outside, I’m happy, even sitting by the fire on my back porch at night.”

Family: “My wife, Karen, and I have been together for five years and got married in January of 2019.”

Volunteerism: Otey Construction partnered with WXII-12 and TL Concepts to build the 2009 Concept Home. Tour proceeds benefited the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Otey is also a regular sponsor of KidsPath, Family Services of the Piedmont, Red Dog Farm and SheRocks.

336.643.1020 340 Air Harbor Rd. Greensboro, NC 27455 www.oteyconstruction.com

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PEPPER MOON CATERING You’ve doubtlessly seen their iconic red-chili-pepper logo on trucks parked outside countless venues, emblazoned with “Pepper Moon,” and might have sampled, for instance, their ineffable petite pork shanks paired with mango salsa, but where on earth did this evocatively named caterer, the largest and premier in the Triad, come from?

Turn your radio dial back to 1996, says Meredith Williams, one of its founders and still part of the team 23 years later. Imagine the late Charlie Erwin of Ham’s and Barn Dinner Theatre fame, calling up Meredith, 27 at the time, and Bill Schneider, who was 31, and offering them seed money to become caterers — provided they’d rent the old Tavern on the Glen building on West Market from him. Setting up offices on the second floor, they renovated the restaurant below so they could host events.

The venture was so successful that ten 10 years later Pepper Moon custom-designed and built a 7,700-squarefoot, state-of-the-art commissary that can prepare food for events hosting as few as 20 guests or as many as 3,500.

With a staff of 25 full-time workers, some of whom have been there over 20 years, Pepper Moon employs as many as 150 workers during the furniture market in High Point. And it has expertly managed concessions and masterfully catered the PGA Wyndham Championship for two decades. Using only the freshest and tastiest of produce and the very finest of ingredients, their innovative team of dedicated professionals provide amazing and memorable experiences.

Pepper Moon is a member of the prestigious Leading Caterers of America and one of the only full service caterers in the area with a full liquor license. With ownership passing to Lee Staehly and her husband over two years ago, Pepper Moon is a full-service operation, ready to cater to the unique needs of any client, whether for a memorable wedding, a charity event or a corporate gathering. The catchy name? “I wish we had a good story,” Williams reflects, “but out of the 15 names Bouvier Kelly gave us, it was the last, and best, one. It was the quickest and easiest decision we ever made.”

Modus operandi: Personalized catering and event services, from beginning to end. We love to celebrate life’s most important occasions with people of all types throughout the Triad (and beyond.)

We can be as hands-on as a client wants, or just keep it simple.

Measure of difference: Experience and transparency. We’ve made it over 23 years in this highly competitive industry by listening closely to our clients, giving them options, being honest about visions, and then following through on that.

Secret ingredient: From our exceptionally talented event planners, culinary and service teams, and delivery drivers, we understand events!

Bragging rights: Pepper Moon Catering delivers the Triad’s most prestigious and memorable events, like the Wyndham Championship, the Family Service of the Piedmont’s Oyster Roasts, See to Believe Galas, Eastern Music Festival events, and partnerships with other incredibly awesome groups throughout the Triad!

336.218.8858 1068 Boulder Road Greensboro, NC www.peppermooncatering.com

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LANE, VANCE, AND ARNOLD SCHIFFMAN

Owners

When you sit down and chat with the fourth generation of Schiffman brothers, each of them confirms one another’s sentiments about the family jewelry business.

All three Schiffman brothers were born in Greensboro, sons of Madeleine and Arnold A. (Tony) Schiffman, Jr. Each graduated from Appalachian State with a degree in business and became certified as gemologists in Santa Monica, California, at the Gemological Institute of America. All three were lucky enough to have worked with their grandfather, known affectionately as Mr. A (Arnold Sr.), for at least 10 years.

And each of them grew up, “from the time we were kneehigh to a grasshopper, in the business,” says Arnold Schiffman III, who oversees accounting, merchandising, IT, and estate jewelry (they don’t believe in titles). “Since we wanted to see more of our dad, we ended up playing and working at the store, so we were here quite a bit as kids,” says Vance Schiffman, who does all the diamond buying and bridal jewelry merchandising.

“Being raised in the family business,” says Lane Schiffman, who spearheads the marketing and timepiece departments, “this was too good of an opportunity to not take advantage of. It just seemed natural for all of us to follow in our father’s footsteps.”

Schiffman’s Jewelers was founded in 1893 by Simon Lazareth Schiffman, their great grandfather, who, at age 19, stumbled upon a bankrupt jewelry store on Elm Street during a train stop while traveling to Asheville. The rest is history.

Following the tradition of Simon and his son — and his son’s sons — Schiffman’s has built the business on relationships and not transactions. Many of these relationships have flourished over generations. It’s not unusual for one of the brothers, who all still work the sales floor, to sell an engagement ring to a third-generation client, while telling him stories about his mother, father, grandmother or grandfather.

With 150 employees, in 10 locations found in four states, Schiffman’s is constantly looking to the future by renovating the stores, looking for the newest trends in fine jewelry, and exploring new ideas in marketing in a digital age to meet the needs of all their clients. “To be successful in this business,” their father told them, “you’ve got to be flexible and adapt to the times. Sitting still will take you backwards.”

Recent Reads: Marketing and other business books Greatest accomplishment in life: Maintaining and even growing the business that our father, grandfather, and great grandfather built. And to feel confident about passing it on to “Gen Five,” the brothers’ nickname for their eight children, some of whom are already following in the footsteps of the generations before them. “We feel sure that the business will be in good hands when that time comes,” they echo.

336.272.5146 225 SOUTH ELM STREET GREENSBORO www.schiffmans.com

Dream vacation: While in college, each brother was taken on a special trip with their grandfather where they visited mines and jewelers around the world. There are still a few places they’d like to visit, though. Someday, they would enjoy visiting Tanzania, Kenya, New Zealand, South America, the Great Barrier Reef and Russia.

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July2019

Meet Poet Susan Schmidt

2 July 2

JUST DESSERTS. 5:30 p.m. Last chance to indulge in the food-themed exhibit Sweet. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 6 p.m. Meet poet Susan Schmidt, author of Let Go or Hold Fast: Beaufort Poems.

Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.

July 1–September 15 MASTERS’ PIECES. The works of local art professors is the focus of 2019 UNCG Faculty Biennial.

Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro.

Info: (336) 334-5770 weatherspoon.uncg.edu.

July 1–September 29 TAKE THE CLOTH. Meaning, the exhibit, Interwoven: Natural and Illusory Textiles. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 weatherspoon.uncg.edu.

July 1–October 20 THE HUMAN LEAGUE. Get a leg up at Here We Are: Painting and Sculpting the Human Form. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 3345770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.

90 O.Henry

July 2019

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July 1– 14

PLAYING THE ANGLES. Get into shape(s) with Double-Edged: Geometric Abstraction Then and Now. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro.

Info: (336) 334-5770 weatherspoon.uncg.edu.

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July 1–August 18

Songs of the South

Garden Guzzle

July 1–27 EMF. Strings, brass, percussion, young artists, master classes, a pub crawl, chamber music, orchestral music . . .

Is there anything Eastern Music Festival doesn’t offer?

Find out! Performance times and venues vary. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or easternmusicfestival.org.

July 3 & 4 LIBERTY FOR ALL. Rock the block and run free at American Block Party and Freedom Run — and don’t forget to stay for fireworks — at Fun Fourth Festival.

Downtown Greensboro. Info: funfourthfestival.org.

July 4–7 HOPPERS HERE. The Greensboro Grasshoppers are home again. First National Bank Field, 408 Bellemeade St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 268-2255 or milb.com.

July 4 FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. 10 a.m. Celebrate your unalienable right to read whatever you damn well please at the Independence Day Used Book Sale. Scuppernong

Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.

July 5 DYE-A-RAMA. 10 a.m. Bring a cotton T-shirt and learn how to tie-dye it, while listening to the tattoos of steel drummer Tracy Thornton. Historical Park, High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexingon Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.

RAISING CANE. 8 p.m. As in, Cane Mill Road, the next wave of bluegrass virtuosos. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

SHIMMY AND SHAKE. 10 p.m. While DJ Jessica Mashburn spins, at Pop-Up Dance Party. Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or printworksbistro.com.

July 6 KICK LIKE A MULE. 7 p.m. Gov’t Mule, that is. The Allman Brothers spinoff brings some twang to town.

White Oak Amphitheatre, Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro.

Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.

July 6 & 7 THY QUILL BE DONE. 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. Don’t get The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Arts Calendar thrown for a, well, loop learning to write with a quill and walnut ink. Historical Park, High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 8851859 or highpointmuseum.org.

CELLULOID CELEBRATION. 7:30 p.m. Catch some truly local cinema at Best of Greensboro 48-Hour Film Project. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro.

Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

July 7

July 13 & 27; 14 &28

MUSEP. 6 p.m. & 7:15 p.m. Sing the blues along with Smitty & the Jumpstarters and get your fix of some old rock ’n’ roll, courtesy of Rob Massengale Band. Hester Park, 3906 Betula Road, Greensboro. Info: musep.info.

IRON INTAKE. 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. Hot coals, summer in the city, the back of his neck getting dirty and gritty . . . The Blacksmith strikes again! Historical Park, High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point.

Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.

July 8 CIAO HOUNDS. 9 a.m. Chef Reto inspires tykes to become the next Chef Boyardee at Summer Junior Chefs Camp: Ciao! Reto’s Kitchen, 600 S. Elam Ave., Greensboro. Tickets: ticketmetriad.com.

July 8 – August 16 SCREEN GEMS. Sidesplitting comedy, nail-biting suspense, singing and dancing and cartoons . . . yep, the Summer Film Festival and Carolina Kids Club have returned. Times vary. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

July 10 GARDEN GUZZLE. 6 p.m. Bottoms up! Learn how to mix cocktails using fruits and veggies from the garden at Adult Cooking: Cocktails with Mark Weddle.

Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. To register: gcmuseum.com.

July 11

July 14 MEXIN’ IT UP. 6 p.m. Skip the nachos and sample authentic Mexican fare at Sunday @ Chef Reto’s. Reto’s Kitchen, 600 S. Elam Ave., Greensboro. Tickets: ticketmetriad.com.

MUSEP. 6:30 p.m. Stay classy, Greensboro . . . with some classical and pops from Eastern Music Festival Young Artists Wind Ensemble. Le Bauer Park, 208 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: musp.info.

July 15 GLOBAL GRUB. 9 a.m. Turn your kiddos into sophisticates at Summer Junior Chef’s Camp: World Cuisine I. Reto’s Kitchen, 600 S. Elam Ave., Greensboro. Tickets: ticketmetriad.com.

July 18 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Martin Clark, author of The Substitution Order. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.

A HELPING HAND FOR HELPING HANDS. Noon. Encouragement and practical tips are yours at “The Caregiver Experience: Navigating Rough Waters.” The Lusk Center, 2501 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Tickets: ticketmetriad.com.

July 18–21

July 11–14

CURRY UP AND SATE! 5:30 p.m. It’s the gift that keeps on giving: At Adult Cooking, the underground supper club Moon and Tide Sundries will teach you to make several meals from curried chicken. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. To register: gemuseum.com.

MOP HEAD. Ya gotta hang on till tuh-morrowwww, but don’t put off seeing Drama Center’s production of the Broadway hit Annie. Performance times vary. Weaver Academy Theatre, 300 S. Spring St., Greensboro.

Tickets: (336) 373-2947 or thedramacenter.com.

July 12–17 HOPPERS HERE. The Greensboro Grasshoppers are home again. First National Bank Field, 408 Bellemeade St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 268-2255 or milb.com.

July 13 HOT FOOTIN’ IT. 8 a.m. Glenn Chavis leads a walk through the historic Washington Street district, a thriving black business and entertainment hub during segregation. Changing Tides Cultural Center, 613 Washington St., High Point. To reserve: (336) 885-1859.

SONGS OF THE SOUTH. 7 p.m. Relive the 1970s with Wristband and special guest Hudson Red, who’ll be performing Allman Brothers hits at Crown Mountain Jam. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

KNIT WITS. Thread your way to six fiber shops across the Piedmont in four days for the Central Carolina Yarn Crawl. Info: centralcarolinayarncrawl.com.

July 19 & 20 LOCALLY MADE. 10 a.m. See and purchase handcrafted wares at Artisans in the Garden, presented by Twin City Artisans. Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, 215 S. Main St., Kernersville. Info: twincityartisansnc.com.

TRIPLE A. 8 p.m. Meaning Anuel AA, who brings his Latin-infused rap grooves to town. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro.

Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.

July 19–21 HAVIN’ A BALL WITH PAUL. Noon. Specifically, basketball with Chris Paul. The Houston Rocket’s point guard and WFU alum hosts the regional competition of The Basketball Tournament (TBT) with his Team CP3.

The Fieldhouse, Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd. Tickets: thetournament.com.

July 20 SLURP! 8 a.m. Dare to eat a peach — or several, smothered in batter and syrup at Peach Pancake and Celebration Day. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Tickets: ticketmetriad.com.

VILLAGE PEOPLE. 10 a.m. Woodworkers, spinners, musicians, among others recreate 18th-century commercial life at the Village Fair. Mendenhall Homeplace, 603 W. Main St., Jamestown. Info: (336) 454-3819 or mendenhallhomeplace.com.

HOP HEADS. Noon. Cruise to the brews — the Summertime Brews Festival, now in its 15th year.

Special Events Center, Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro.

Tickets: summertimebrews.com.

OLD SCHOOL. 8 p.m. Travel back in time with ’90s Kickback Concert, featuring R&B faves Dru Hill, Next and Ginuwine, among others. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.

July 21 MUSEP. 6 p.m. Swing out with the sounds of Piedmont Triad Jazz Orchestra. Guilford College Founders Lawn, 5800 Friendly Ave., Greensboro. Info: musep.info.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY. 1 p.m. Outdoor games, such as rolling hoop, stilts, and cup and ball. Learn to play ’em all in Historical Park. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.

ROSÉ CAN YOU SEE? 7 p.m. Or more important, can you sip? Raise a glass of the season’s favorite and enjoy a Lowcountry Viet/Cajun boil at Rose After Dark. 1618 Seafood Grille, 1618 W. Friendly Ave., Greensboro. Tickets: ticketmetriad.com.

July 22 ’MURRICAN MENU. 9 a.m. Let the young ’uns get in touch with native noshes, such as chicken pot pie, at Summer Junior Chefs Camp: American.

Reto’s Kitchen, 600 S. Elam Ave., Greensboro. Tickets: ticketmetriad.

July 22 & 23 WHO’S THE DOSS? Addren Doss, of course. Thanks to O’Brien Gallery, the oil and pastel artist will lead a two-day painting workshop on Figure 8 Island near Wilmington. Open to Figure 8 members and their guests. To register, call Kathy O’Brien at (336) 707-7476.

July 23–29 HOPPERS HERE. The Greensboro Grasshoppers are home again. First National Bank Field, 408 Bellemeade St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 268-2255 or milb.com.

July 25 A-PEALING. 7:30 p.m. That would Violet Bell, the Americana duo appearing after warmup band Wylder. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro.

July 2019

O.Henry 91

home HAPPINESS IS

JULY

EVENTS 7/8-12

Summer Junior Chefs Camp: Ciao! Italian Cooking Camp Reto’s Kitchen 2:00 pm

7/11

The Caregiver Experience: Navigating Rough Waters

MITZIE WEATHERLY

THE REALTOR™ FOR YOU

Lunch & Learn The Lusk Center 12:00 pm

7/13

REALTOR™ & BROKER HELPING BUYERS AND SELLERS FOR OVER 20 YEARS

Cooking for One Cooking Class Greensboro Farmers Curb Market 10:00 am

Mitzie.Weatherly@allentate.com | 336.314.5500

7/14 Sunday @ Chef Reto’s: Mexican!

Pop-up dinner Reto’s Kitchen 6:00 pm

7/15-19

Summer Junior Chefs Camp: World Cuisine Cooking Camp Reto’s Kitchen 2:00 pm

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7/ 20 Peach Pancake & Celebration Day Fundraiser Greensboro Farmers Curb Market 8:00 am

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Rose’ After Dark Party Wine dinner 1618 Seafood Grille 7:00 pm

7/22-26

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July 2019

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

shops • service • food • farms

support locally owned businesses

Arts Calendar

Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

July 27

July 30–August 4

STRIKE IT RICHIE. 8 p.m. R&B legend Lionel Richie sings old faves on his “Hello” Tour. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro.

Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.

TRAILIN’ ALONG. 8 a.m. Run, hike, bike, paddle on a guided tour at Greensboro Trails Day. Country Park, Jaycee Park Drive entrance, Greensboro. To register: greensboro-nc.gov/TrailsDay.

July 25–28

FUNK FEST. 6:30 p.m. Celebrate your sovereignty with One Nation Under Groove, brought to you by George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic. White Oak Amphitheatre, Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 7453000 or ticketmaster.com.

LINK'D IN. Forget about following your nose but do follow the pros — the ones from the the PGA TOUR — at this year's Wyndham Championship. Sedgefield Country Club, 3201 Forsyth Drive, Greensboro.

Tickets: wyndhamchampionship.com.

GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE. It’s the ultimate revenge tragedy. See the story of Denmark’s most conflicted prince, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, a collaboration of Drama Center and Guilford County Schools. Location to be determined. Info: thedramacenter.com.

FRESH SOUNDS. 7:30 p.m. Unspoken Tradition brings its brand of newgrass to the stage. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro.

Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

’BUG IN A RUG. 8 p.m. Meaning, cutting a mean rug with a jitterbug at Piedmont Swing Dance Society’s do, featuring the tunes of Greg Ruby. Admission is $12 at the door for nonmembers. Greensboro Shrine Club, 5010 High Point Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 5089998 or piedmontswingdance.org.

GORD’S CHORDS. 8 p.m. That would be ’70s folk rocker Gordon Lightfoot. Catch the octogenarian come sundown while he strums along on his 80-Years-Strong Tour. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro.

Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

VA. BEACH MUSIC. 8 p.m. Hailing from Virginia Beach, Virginia, Adwela & the Uprising bring some roots reggae music to town. The Crown, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.

July 26–September 8

July 28

CH-CH-CHANGES. See the crème de la crème of emerging artists in North Carolina at Constant /Change.

Greenhill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org.

MUSEP. 6 p.m. & 7:15 p.m. Chill to classic rock and pop from Low Key before toe-tapping to Sam Frazier & Side Effects’ Americana tunes. Country Park, 3905 Nathanael Greene Dr., Greensboro. Info: musep.info.

July 26

WEEKLY HAPPENINGS Mondays BUZZING. 10 a.m. Your busy little bees engage in a Busy Bees preschool program focusing on music, movement, garden exploration and fun in the kitchen.

(Members only). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. PreTo register: (336) 5742898 or gcmuseum.com.

CHAT-EAU. Noon. French leave? Au contraire! Join French Table, a conversation group. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.

Tuesdays READ ALL ABOUT IT. Treat your little ones to story times: BookWorms (ages 12–24 months) meets at 10 a.m.; Time for Twos meets at 11 a.m. Storyroom; Family Storytime for all ages meets at 6:30 p.m. High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.

READY, SET, GROW! awesome annuals, stunning perennials, tasty herbs, flowering shrubs & trees, gardening supplies and gifts

701 Milner Dr. Greensboro 336-299-1535 guilfordgardencenter.com The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019

Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.

O.Henry 93

shops • service • food • farms

Arts Calendar

ONCE UPON A TIME. 2 p.m. Afterschool Storytime convenes for children of all ages. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.

PICKIN’ AND GRINNIN’ 6 until 9 p.m. Y’all come for Songs from a Southern Kitchen, curated by O.Henry’s own Ogi Overman and featuring performances Rob Massengale Trio (7/2); Abigail Dowd and Jason Duff (7/9); Sam Frazier and Eddie Walker (7/16); South Carolina Broadcasters (7/23); and Vaughan Penn & Family (7/30). Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, 1421 W. Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-0707 or lucky32.com/fried_chicken.htm.

Wednesdays TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 8 a.m. until noon. The produce is fresh and the cut fleurs belles. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro.

Info: gsofarmersmarket.org.

MUSSELS, WINE & MUSIC. 7 until 10 p.m. Mussels with house-cut fries for $15, wines from $10–15 a bottle and live music by AM rOdeO — at Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 3790699 or printworksbistro.com/live_music.htm.

Thursdays TWICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Preschool Storytime convenes for children ages 3–5. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336)

support locally owned businesses

883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.

STU-STU-STUDIO. 5 p.m. Join in on Friday Night Studios: Focus on Food, workshops centered around nutrition and health, in conjunction with the exhibition Sweet. Through 7/12. Pay what you wish. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.

ALL THAT JAZZ. 5:30 until 8 p.m. Hear live, local jazz with Vaughan Penn (7/4), Tanya Ross (7/11), and Diana Tuffin (7/18). and Georgianna and Liz Penn (7/25). All performances are at the O.Henry Hotel Social Lobby Bar. No cover. 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or www.ohenryhotel.com/jazz.htm.

Fridays & Saturdays

JAZZ NIGHT. 7 p.m. Fresh-ground, fresh-brewed coffee is served with a side of jazz at Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 275-2754 or www. tatestreetcoffeehouse.com.

NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET. 8 p.m. A 90-minute, historical, candlelit ghost walking tour of Downtown Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 905-4060 or carolinahistoryandhaunts.com/information.

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 hands-on exhibits and activities for half the cost of admission at $5 Fun Fridays ($3 on First Fridays). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.

SEEING STARS. 5 p.m. Under the stars! Spartan Cinema, a free, summer film festival, kicks off this month with screenings of Mary Poppins Returns, (7/12), Small Foot (7/19), The Meg (7/26). LeBauer Park, 208 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensborodowntownparks.org.

Saturdays TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 7 a.m. until noon.

The produce is still fresh and the cut fleurs still belles.

Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: gsofarmersmarket.org.

MORE MARKET MANIA. 8:30 a.m. See what’s on tap at the High Point Farmers Market, with programs, “Watermelon Mania” (7/6); “Garden Day” (7/13); “Discover Your Library” (7/20) and Featured Farmer (7/27). High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3011 or highpointnc.gov.

THRICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Hear a good yarn at Children’s Storytime. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.

“I couldn’t be happier with my renters, or my rental income” Brantley White

Burkely Rental Homes client

There are times when it’s smarter to lease than to sell your home. Call me when you think you’re there! I’ll be pleased to discuss how Burkely Rental Homes can help you.

94 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.

shops • service • food • farms GENIUS AND JAVA. 11:15 a.m. With a cup of Joe as inspiration, create that masterpiece at Coffee and Canvas, which pairs painting and sipping. Cost is $5 and includes art supplies and bean. Griffin Recreation Center, 5301 Hilltop Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2928 or email Latrisha.Carmon@greensboro-nc.gov.

WRITE IS MIGHT. 3 p.m. Avoid writer’s block by joining a block of writers at Come Write In, a confab of scribes who discuss their literary projects. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.

JAZZ ENCORE. 6:30 p.m. Hear contemporary jazz cats, Kevin Timmons (7/6), Sarah Partridge and The O.Henry Trio (7/13), Aaron Watson (7/20), and Drorester Alexander (7/27), while noshing on seasonal tapas at O.Henry Jazz series for Select Saturdays. O.Henry Hotel, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or ohenryhotel.com.

IMPROV COMEDY. 10 p.m. on Saturday, plus an 8 p.m. show appropriate for the whole family. The Idiot Boxers create scenes on the spot and build upon the ideas of others, creating shows that are one-of-a-kind — at the Idiot Box, 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 274-2699 or idiotboxers.com.

support locally owned businesses

Arts Calendar

Davis Jazz Program serenade you with smooth jazz. The Historic Magnolia House, 442 Gorrell St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 617-3382 or thehistoricmagnoliahouse.com.

HALF FOR HALF-PINTS. 1 p.m. And grown-ups, too. A $5 admission, as opposed to the usual $10, will allow you entry to exhibits and more. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.

MISSING YOUR GRANDMA? 3 p.m. until it’s gone: Tuck into Chef Felicia’s skilletfried chicken, and mop that cornbread in, your choice, giblet gravy or potlikker. Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, 1421 W. 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.

Saturdays & Sundays KIDS’ CRAFTS. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop — unless you enroll Junior in one of three structured activities at Greensboro Children’s Museum: Art Studio encourages making art in all kinds of media; at Music Makers kids can shake, rattle and roll with percussion instruments; while Get Moving! inspires physical activities. Times and dates vary.

Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or send an email mailto: marketing@gcmuseum.com.

Practicing Commercial Real Estate by the Golden Rule

Sundays

336.369.5974 | bstrickland@bipinc.com

GROOVE AND GRUB. 11 a.m. Chow down on mouth-watering Southern brunch fare (biscuits, anyone?), courtesy of Chef Irvin J. Williams, while students from the Miles

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O.Henry 95

Don’t let the 4th of July be the only day you celebrate Independence.

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96 O.Henry

July 2019

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019

O.Henry 97

THE LARGEST SELECTION OF GOURMET CHOCOLATES AND FUDGE IN THE TRIAD!

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98 O.Henry

July 2019

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511 S Elm St. | Greensboro NC 27406 | 336.370.1050 areamod.com

Downtown Greensboro

modern furniture made locally

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WE OFFER: DOG DAYCARE • SLEEPOVERS • GROOMING • WEBCAMS

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019

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C.P. LOGAN “GINGER GIRL” PORTRAIT • 16”X 20” ORIGINAL OIL CONNIE P. LOGAN - ARTIST/TEACHER

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& CULTURE 100 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

MERIDITH MARTENS, artist Fine Art Animal Portraits

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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TO SEE MORE OF KEVIN’S WORK CALL 336.312.0099 FOR STUDIO HOURS AND THANKS FOR PUTTING THE GRILLED CHEESE BACK ON THE MENU

July 2019

O.Henry 101

STYLE SHOWN: CASTLES

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

allentate.com

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717 Green Valley Road, Suite 300 • Greensboro NC • 27408

July 2019

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GreenScene

Skip & Sunshine MacMillian

Tiffany Dumas, Mimi Zeigler

Interactive Resource Center 10th Year Celebration Friday, May 10, 2019

Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Natalya Morena, Camille Miller Sandee Pearce, Sue Spidell Allyson Clark, David Pearce

Donna Newton, Goldie Wells, Tara Sandercock Antonia & Elrick Richburg

Tamesha Goddard, Bridgette Springs

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Steve & Mary Beth Cox, Duane Dassow

104 O.Henry

July 2019

Lisa & Nakia Brown, Antwan Mitchell, Mahlon Jenkins Jr

Ann Morris, Mark Sulter

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

GreenScene

Brittany Mashburn, Brenda Vigil

John & Anne Carty

MayDay

On McGee Saturday, May 4, 2019

Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Mittie & Charlie Hall Leah King, Becky & Lexie Roberts Chelsea Johnson, Candi Fowler, Corey McAdams Leslie Eades, Bryan Gossett, Zach Shepard

Steven Stephenson, Amber Brandon

Sasha Kewish, Alexis & Dustin Goodwin

Aaron Aadland, Remick Schneider, Evan Sharpe

Chuck Brine, Liz Winter

Bruce McWilliams, Mitch & Araya Baker, Tessa Walker

Lou Lou, Ben Czyz, Erin Kirker

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

July 2019

O.Henry 105

Be your own kind of beautiful ...

Irving Park

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1804 Pembroke Rd. • Greensboro, NC 27408 (Behind Irving Park Plaza) • 336.763.7908 Mon. - Fri. 11:00am - 5:30pm • Sat. 11:00am - 4:00pm www.serendipitybyceleste.com

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106 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

GreenScene

David Craft, Stephen Klepper

Austin Bartley, Micelle Vernon

33rd Annual Carolina Blues Festival

Hosted by Piedmont Blues Preservation Society Saturday, May 18, 2019 Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Gail Lilley, Beth Huxford, Erin McCarthy

Amanda Loflin, Olivia Carteaux Wiley & Sammie Lowe

Shari Kumiega, Nancy Cunningham Angela & Doug Berry

Aliba Berkly, Jasme Kelly

Cynthis & Juan Wooten

Jim Sassman, Buster Wilcox, Eddie Huffman, Jerry O'Donnel

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Zachary, Yuri, Eli, Gregory, Mason, & Lisa McFarland

Kelly & Brady Woodward, Mike Lewter, Gavin Lewter, Judy Woodward, Alexis Lewter

July 2019

O.Henry 107

GreenScene

Dennis Barry, Terry Akin, Tim Rice (Past and present CEO's of Cone Health)

Anu & Ajay Kumar

LeBauer & Cone Health 20 Year Celebration Friday May 31, 2019

Photographs by Lynn Donovan Sam & Joe LeBauer (Founders of LeBauer Healthcare)

Susan & David Gutterman Amanda & Reade Fulton, Dawn Herrington

Matt & Laura Murray, Julie Johnston Tammy & Todd Parrett

Pilar Powell, Marali Ramaswamy, Rakesh Alva

Cacey & Jordan Johnson

Kyle & Jessica Zehr, Jennifer & Jonathan Lemmon

Pat Wright, Dora & Bruce Brodie, Jeff Katz, Michael Norris

Sam & Joan LeBauer

108 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

In Pursuit of Your Dream Home D! L SO

!

LD O S

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As some of the Triad’s top Real Estate Brokers, with hundreds of millions in sales, Kay Chesnutt and her team bring enthusiasm, knowledge, passion and directed energy to each and every sale. Working hard for their clients, whether buyers or sellers, their mission is to deliver excellence in service in every transaction, even long after the sale.

Chesnutt - Tisdale Team

Xan Tisdale 336-601-2337

Kay Chesnutt 336-202-9687

Xan.Tisdale@bhhsyostandlittle.com Kay.Chesnutt@bhhsyostandlittle.com Lea.Beuchler@bhhsyostandlittle.com

Lea Beuchler 336-207-4859

©2019 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.

Willkommen to Red Oak

the Largest Lager Only Craft Brewery in America Looking for something different? Red Oak has paired two truly unique entities, America’s Craft Lager Brewery, the home of Unfiltered, Unpasteurized, Preservative Free, Fresh Beers and their charming Lager Haus with its old-world ambience. Relax among the plants and trees in the Biergarten, enjoy the stream, admire the sculpture… Great place to unwind after a long day.

JULY HAPPENINGS Thursday, July 4 July 4th Celebration Sunday, July 14 Yoga at 2:00pm Wednesday Nights Music Bingo at 7:00pm Thursday Nights Wine Specials Fridays Brewery Tour at 4:30pm Wednesday - Sunday Food Trucks On Site Rent the 1516 Tap Room for your next event.

Conveniently located on I 40/85 Exit 138 a few miles east of Greensboro.

6905 Konica Dr., Whitsett, NC • RedOakBrewery.com

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Lager Haus Hours Wed. - Fri. 4 - 10pm Saturday 1 - 10pm Sunday 1 - 7pm

July 2019

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110 O.Henry

July 2019

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The Accidental Astrologer

Grins and Giggles Cancerians bring light and light-heartedness to the darkness

By Astrid Stellanova

A whole lot of July Star Children are born with a funny

streak, and live for shenanigans. One is that high-larious actor Ken Jeong, the doctor and comedian who just so happens to be a Page High School alum. Recently he revisited his local roots to deliver the commencement at UNCG — and delivered the grads from taking themselves too seriously.

The fun and fabulous Sofia Vergara, Will Farrell and comic genius Robin Williams were born under the sign of Cancer. How ironic that the sign of the crab should produce so many big wits and comedians. Like the stars, they light the darkness.

Cancer (June 21–July 22) That double-dang double-crosser who broke your trust will get theirs, and you won’t have to lift a pinky. Not to worry one second. Let’s put it this way: If you were a comic book hero, you’d be known for your super power of . . . judgeyness. You have super powers you have never even explored. Like an incredible talent for sussing up a situation and knowing when to hightail it outta Dodge.

Leo (July 23–August 22) While you were busy monkey-branching like you were Tarzan, you forgot to look down. If you had, you would have noticed some circling hyenas waiting for you to slip and fall. Those are some of the pack you used to run with, and now, Sugar, you need to outrun them. Put your past waay behind you.

Virgo (August 23–September 22) This is classic you: not exactly inclined to give a rat’s you-know-what or a gnat’s little patootie for status or approval. And Honey, you get a lotta lovin’ for that!

Next up: letting down the old guard and making yourself vulnerable. Trust ain’t just a banking term.

Libra (September 23–October 22) You didn’t just lose touch with reality. Sugar, you broke the whole handle off things trying to get a grip. A new work opportunity is golden, but your domestic situation is suffering. Take care of those who tend to the hearth and home.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21) The tee-nine-sy part of you that likes approval took over your whole world. If you want to win friends, Darling, let’s put your “I Know It All” merit badge away in a drawer. Sure you earned it. But it has not helped your sex life or friendships one bit.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21) The juice just ain’t worth the squeeze, Sugar. You have worked hard to make good on a promise to yourself and another. Now you have a significant situation that has escaped you and is calling your name. Time to squeeze and release.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Capricorn (December 22–January 19) By the time you can say tickety-boo you let the cat out of the bag. Not your fault; a trickster you know so well made you spill. No worries. There is time to clean up the mess on Aisle Five before anybody’s the wiser.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18) Rinse and repeat. Words to live by. Works real good for stains and also works good for self-love and redemption. Forgive yourself, Darling, for letting a situation get a little gray and a whole lot dingy. It will all come out in the wash.

Pisces (February 19–March 20) Fireworks don’t have a place in your life except for Independence Day. Dial back emotions, and just recognize somebody set a tripwire for you because they are more volatile than a pig in a hailstorm. They only wish they had your self-control.

Aries (March 21–April 19) Looks like you stuck the baster in the wrong end of the chicken, Honey. You have been in such a dizzy place that you forgot your purpose and dang near lost your marbles. Recalibrate. Breathe. Meditate. Honey Bun, just do anything but knit your brows.

Taurus (April 20–May 20) Pigs were flying when you (praise Jesus) decided to zip it and keep the peace just when your nemesis made a total jerk out of himself. Take a bow. You have just zoomed to the front of the astral line for having passed a major spiritual challenge.

Gemini (May 21-June 20) Sometimes you open your mouth and your Mamma falls out. Life has been a little too boring for your tastes, so you decided to pull the plug on a very good idea and watch it all go right down the dang drain. It will not be boring to reconnoiter. 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.

July 2019

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O.Henry Ending

Wag More, Bark Less

By Brian Faulkner

My next door

neighbor has a dog down the street.

It’s not his dog, but the pup hasn’t figured that out. So, every time my friend approaches the house where the little guy lives, the thing starts to bark and shimmy and shake until Gordon gets there and scratches the dog’s neck.

It’s quite the sight, all that love, which makes me think that maybe Charles Schulz was right about happiness being a warm puppy.

“Why not get yourself a dog like that?” I quiz my neighbor. “No need,” he says. “Fritz and I are happy with things the way they are.”

This isn’t an essay about dogs, although it does seem to be drifting that way — I could tell you about one dog I met who had been taught to smile on command or another who could back up on request, both to great merriment. So it may be that dogs and happiness come from the same place. The light in my youngest brother’s eyes when I brought a puppy home in a box one summer’s day in 1965 could almost make me think so.

We can do things that might lead to happiness, but there’s no guarantee that happiness will appear. But then, just when we finally think we’ve got a grip on it, happiness, slides away and hides out in life’s tall grass until it’s ready to show up again.

“Happiness ain’t a thing in itself,” declares a Mark Twain character who’s trying to figure what heaven might be like. “It’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant.”

“It just seems that if you hang on for a while longer, there is always something bright right around the corner,” observed Schulz, who strung both happiness and heartache through his comic strips like multicolored ribbons. You may remember Charlie Brown each autumn, ready to kick the football Lucy is holding upright for him, eager to let fly with it but knowing that she probably will snatch the ball away just as he gets there.

We know what’s going to happen, but in our story — the one in our hearts, Lucy holds fast and Charlie Brown sends the ball sailing. We’re all Charlie Browns, and disappointments thread their way through our lives like

112 O.Henry

July 2019

insistent melodies. The trick lies in learning to let whatever happiness may come our way just happen.

I enjoy poking around in vintage stores like The Red Collection, where from time to time I’m delighted to find old pictures with a bit of happiness still clinging to them, memories long separated from their people.

One of the happiest pictures I’ve ever seen — anywhere — was shot

by Matthew Lewis Jr., a Pulitzerwinning news photographer known mostly for his civil rights era work: two little girls swinging together — one black child, one white, soaring through the sky and having the time of their young lives. Anybody who claims that “happiness ain’t what it’s cracked up to be” should see that picture.

Sometimes happiness simply surprises, like the time I covered a news story for a radio station. A rather robust lady had fallen through her outhouse seat into the mire below. It took a winch to crank her out, and as her considerable bulk emerged from the darkness, she showered her audience with laughter. What a joy! It’s refreshing to see people happy despite their circumstance, people who know they are blessed and who bless us in return. It could be someone working in their garden and holding up a handful of fresh-pulled weeds in a wave as you pass by. Or Fritz, waiting up the road for my neighbor to come scratch his neck.

Despite scientific research that says happiness ain’t so hot because happy people are more likely to be “influenced by stereotypes” and have other discouraging traits, I for one am all for it — happiness, that is. My suggestion is to take the risk that things won’t turn out perfectly, jump on the happiness train and let it take you down the tracks. Let your spirits rise. Float off in the air, like a balloon that’s escaped from a child’s birthday party, exulting in the moment with no worry about where the wind may take you . . . if anywhere. Breathe in the fresh, breathe out the foul. Divest yourself of the things that gnaw at you, that bring you down, if just for a moment.

Then, as Mark Twain puts it, in no time at all you’ll be “happy as a dog with two tails.” OH Brian Faulkner says he’s happiest when writing, which he’s done more or less successfully all his life, including a series of Emmy award–winning public television programs, the occasional essay and a children’s story now and then. He lives in Lewisville, which he claims is close enough for Greensboro to claim as kin.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR

Happiness is a dog named Fritz

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