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COLUMN: Sex in Secret Service reminds me of Superman
I’ve been trying not to think about the big party some Secret Service boys allegedly threw with the local prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, and instead think about the future of American Chinchilla farming or the environment.
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COLUMN: Censored columnist caught in Saladgate
I’m eating a burrito at a local Mexican restaurant and discussing the blight of North Carolina politics when a waiter I’m not familiar with comes up to me and in broken English says I owe him $18.76 for a taco salad.
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COLUMN: I got the Sears closed-up-and-shut-down blues
It’s spring and life is cheerful, though one must accept certain grim realities like mortality, paper cuts and the demise of our local Sears store.
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COLUMN: Poetry solves man's greatest dilemma -- women
If you’re planning to throw your golf clubs in the car and head out for a round of 18 holes, it may not mean much to you that April is Poetry Month.
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COLUMN: The soldier obeys so we can have our say
Our story opens with President Obama sitting in the Oval Office with his feet propped on his desk, hands clasped behind his head, looking at his advisers and asking the question Disney’s Bambi asked his mother: “So, what’re we gonna do today?”
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COLUMN: A frog, the soup and a child
This morning I became a hero. I heard my wife scream; the blood-curdling sound you hear when the tall vampire raises his black cape to embrace the bare-shouldered woman while lowering his fangs to her milky white neck.
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COLUMN: Her boots hit the ground for education
My wife is a teacher, an elementary grade educator; her boots are the first to hit the ground in America’s offensive to educate its young.
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COLUMN: The class of '71 has my heart, and my stomach
You go to high school reunions not to see old friends as much as to see what our teenage selves became as reflected back in the eyes of those who knew us when.
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Procrastinate your way to good health
Recently, I had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with our newest city councilman, Mr. Roy West, who is known for his quick humor, business savvy -- and having a passion for cycling, which is why his stomach is flat. My stomach is round, like a planet … with its own gravity field … and I think last night I attracted a moon. You can understand my concern.
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Hard work teaches you to live and give
I grew up on a tobacco farm in eastern North Carolina and before we became middles class (those people that used a piece of aluminum foil only one time) I realized we were poor. It was my mother’s Sunbeam mixer that gave me my first clue.
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Righteous indignation the secret to longevity
January is a month for reflection. We are forced indoors to live closer to each other, so we put away sharp objects and re-evaluate our relationships.
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COLUMN: Your guide to the best Christmas ever
Some years ago we managed to get a big crowd together for Christmas. The Visigoths came and so did the Huns along with a small tribe of half-crazed savages who hunkered at the table drinking from goblets, eating meat with their bare hands, belching, whooping and then they started using catapults. We were scraping food off the ceiling fans for weeks.
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COLUMN: One man's pornography is another man's home
I was sitting in the Milwaukee airport when I found a piece of paper in my pocket --- a Bible verse from Sunday school. It was Ecclesiastes 5:12: “The sleep of a laboring man [is] sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep,” which explains why more than 80 million Americans get fewer than six hours of the suggested eight hours of sleep. Americans are wealthy by the world’s standards, and according to some statistics we each have at least 1.3 houses, two cars and cholesterol levels high enough to start a grease fire.
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Column: Blue skies, each individual leaf a wonder
I am headed north on Interstate 77 crossing a bridge after having eaten grilled shrimp at a lakeside café on Lake Norman. I’m enjoying a gorgeous Indian summer day, which makes an old Baptist like me nervous. We fear temptation and spontaneity. I’ve a sudden urge to abandon all obligations and live in a commune by the lake whose members worship blue skies and forbid the use of clocks.
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COLUMN: Columnist slashes costs, maintains quality of writing
Economic uncertainties have compelled me to take a hard look at the revenue I make from this column, which revealed I am actually earning a mere pittance of the $3.7 million that was projected for 2011. Horrors! Therefore, to slash costs, there will be a 90 percent reduction in the truth, we’ll outsource editing (China) and get rid of the spell check. I appreciate your patience during this tranzition/transition (sp?) and apologize in advance for any confusion.
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COLUMN: Government conspiracy goes the pork barrel route
One morning you finish your danish and consider reaching for another, but instead you Google around for government conspiracies that seek to block your pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
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COLUMN: A day alone doesn't go as planned
Friday evening, my wife leaves town and suddenly I had the house to myself for the weekend. I ordered pizza and made big plans but plans do not always go the way we hope.
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COLUMN: The world needs more Southern gentlemen
Some people have an uncontrollable need to be first, and manners usually get trampled in the process as demonstrated by a stocky black-haired lady in the Milwaukee airport recently who cut in front of me at the boarding gate. She was a practiced Line Cutter, real smooth as she planted left foot in front of my right foot, lunged forward and without any apology whatsoever cut me off. I had to stop suddenly which caused the gentleman behind me to accidently nuzzle the back of my neck. Awkward.
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COLUMN: For success, read a newspaper
I was sitting in Starbucks on Broad Street and observed that young people lack the style and finesse for success -- -they look as if they were all stamped out of sheet metal. They sit slump-shouldered and zombie-like staring at laptop screens --- held captive for hours by websites like YouTube, Twitter and other Places of the Bored. A young man sits glassy-eyed staring at a video of a chipmunk doing the electric slide.
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COLUMN: Vices fade away, simple pleasures don't
Getting old has few perks, but one of them is that you can afford to dine at better restaurants because nature slows your metabolism to the speed of a garden snail. That is why you’ll see geezers like me in a five-star restaurant pay $40 for five shrimp, a teaspoon of risotto and a dollop of pureed broccoli all on a white plate the size of a hubcap. It’s all the food we need --- for a week. We’re not sumo wrestlers. But the holidays roll around and the old habit of eating emerges again and we belly up to the chow line, pile enough food on our plate to make a scale model of Mt. Kilimanjaro, wolf it all down and by midnight we whine in our kennels wishing someone would take us out for a walk.
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COLUMN: Paradise lost by mid-week
Jim was from Arizona. As we stood ankle deep in the ocean surf with water whirling around our ankles I realized that it is possible this day and age to fly six hours due east (Jim did it), land on a strip of land surrounded by water and still enjoy the protection of the U.S. Stars and Stripes, which is a most amazing thing when you think about it. It’s paradise in fact, but right then Jim was more interested in telling me about his taxidermy business.
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COLUMN: Columnist speaks to morality, biker gangs
Here’s a tip — stay out of the obituaries as long as you can. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a well-written obit as well as the next guy and what with people my age showing up in there (say what!!??), that whole section of the newspaper is beginning to resemble my high school yearbook. But you never know what they are going to write about you.
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COLUMN: High drama at the Auto Bell Car Wash
(There will be a test at the end of this story.) The Winston-Salem publishing company Press 53 recently informed me that out of submissions from 33 states and five countries, I had made the finalists list in its 2011 Open Awards event. Being a finalist means you get listed on the company website right under the winner of each of six categories, in this case Creative Nonfiction. You start getting emails from people who turned you down years ago and some, for a small fee, offer to get you into the world of book publishing --- sort of like a third cousin that needs money.
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COLUMN: I'll take two hamburgers --- without the palm trees
Somewhere at a posh resort a man in dark sunglasses and a white bathrobe sat under green palm trees considering his wealth while young nubile women brought him caviar and drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. But that man wasn’t me.
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COLUMN: I call freedom by cell phone
Hot summer nights in July, darkness descends and the fragrance of grilled hamburgers and fresh-cut grass wafts in the air, night creatures chatter and chirp and children come and go while we stand on our front porch occasionally rattling the ice cubes in a near-empty glass of ice tea. In Washington D.C., our elected lawmakers debate the national budget while millions of people await the outcome, their lives on hold. But we all know what’s really crucial --- our cell phones.
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