When my friend J. T. said he’d found a slave narrative involving his family, I had to know more. A former slave named Parker Pool recalled Yankee soldiers coming through Johnston County in 1865. Pool, J.T. explained, worked his ancestor’s farm in the Smithfield area. The slave account was part of the Federal Writers’ Project, a collection of narratives compiled …
I wish I had an unlisted number, with all the robocalls about my vehicle warranty. If you have a pulse, you know the drill. The phone rings. Caller ID displays Hendersonville or Spruce Pine or Forest City so you’ll think it’s someone from this region. For a while I thought the calls had something to do with my vehicle being …
By now we’re all familiar with the images of Jan. 6 when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol—the broken windows, the angry rioters on a rampage threatening Vice President Pence and other officials. Five people died in the melee, including a policeman. The nation was outraged, and rightly so. Such calamities light up social media, and this one has been …
After surviving 2020, I dread to speculate what this year may bring. If you listen to some forecasters, 2021 may turn out to be 2020’s ugly sister. I hope not. This COVID year brought one misfortune after another: shutdowns, layoffs, record downpours, Hurricane Zeta—even a rare Carolina earthquake. Bad juju run amok. Last spring, when face masks were becoming a …
I’m a purist when it comes to Christmas trees. They should be real (or at least green) and feature large colored bulbs, shiny glass ornaments and tinsel. It’s true, many of us try to recreate Christmases from our preschool years. My memories predate the aluminum tree craze of the 1960s. In case you missed 1962, every other house at had …
Zoom meetings, Zoom church, Zoom Christmas. Some authorities suggest that we pare the home holiday crowd to two or three and invite the extras virtually. It’s not a new idea. Several years ago, a gathering of friends on Thanksgiving included a Facetime session with a relative living in California. She watched us longingly a dozen of us gathered around the …
March 12, 1974: Sue (at right) and I sharing our picnic lunch with London pigeons. Minutes later we were invited inside Buckingham Palace. Season 4 of The Crown is a great diversion for chilly November evenings. Netflix debuted the newest episodes last Sunday focusing on the 1980s and 1990s. Those cover history most viewers know: Prince Charles, Princess Diana and …
I’ve followed election cycles to one degree or another for more than 50 years. I learned much of what I know at the family dinner table, growing up in a small Midwestern town. My father was an unwavering Republican who wore his preferences on his car bumper. As a kid I assumed it had always been this way until Dad …
Phantom odors: Ghosts or coincidence? Have you ever awakened to the smell of breakfast cooking when nobody is in the kitchen? Or the mysterious scent of a cologne or tobacco smoke when no one else is around? Phantom odors are a familiar component of the paranormal world. Skeptics, on the other hand, reason that such experiences are explainable coincidences, but …
Between moving house plants inside and turning on the gas logs is the time-worn rite of autumn: the closet switcheroo. Saturday’s rain gave me the perfect excuse to swap my summer things for cold-weather gear. Rifling through sweaters and boots, it seemed a lot longer than seven months ago that I wore this stuff. That’s how it is in this …