Life Before Cyberspace

{Prompt: Write about the campus of NCSSM}

Watts Hospital - The Backdrop

When we moved into the School of Science and Mathematics, on September 7th, 1980, our group photo (in shorts and short-sleeved shirts) was taken in front of the edifice of the renovated 1908 Building of the historic Watts Hospital.

And on the day we graduated, on May 30th, 1982, our group photo (in cap and gown) was taken on the lawn, with the 1908 Building and Wyche House in the background.  Our high school experience was book-ended by portraits in front of the venerable buildings that for seventy years had been emblematic of Watts Hospital and the Watts School of Nursing.  

The facade of the 1908 building — with its red tiled overhanging roofs, its stuccoed walls, its ornamented loggia, and its ornate Moorish cupola — subsequently became symbolic of the new institution — the NC School of Science and Math — and symbolic of high expectations. 

The iconic cupola even served as the school’s logo for many years (after the “Flaming Diaper”… before the “Catalyst”).

The cupola of the 1908 building.

As a backdrop, it was awe-inspiring and exciting.  To prospective applicants and to students, it was inviting.  In fact it was designed to be inviting when the hospital opened 70 years before—to encourage patients to feel at ease as they entered the institution.

But even though the dramatic and historic architecture of the buildings served as a testament to great philanthropy and innovative planning… even though the buildings were home to decades of medical care, including life and death… all that meant little to the young students, including myself, all embarked upon an entirely new adventure.

For us, the grandeur of the buildings served only as a backdrop to a grand experiment – a newly funded residential high school for gifted students, in the state of North Carolina.

The entering class (and staff) in September 1980.

The High School Campus

In 1980, there was no student center or student commons… no gymnasium… no auditorium… not even a cafeteria.  Classrooms were confined to the basements, generally functional, but nothing more.  The teachers had barely enough time to move in — to make the classrooms their own.

Other parts of campus — places awaiting renovation — were off limits completely.  I didn’t even see the elegant lobby of the 1908 building until years later.  And the school administration, though housed on campus, was (happily) assigned to office space that was quite far from our student living quarters.

Our dormitories were the places most filled with the bustle of activity during that first year.  There were a little fewer than 150 students, assigned to roughly five halls on campus: two halls at Wyche House (male), two halls at Hill House (female), and one hall on the third floor of the Main Building (also male). 

In our rooms we might study… or more likely, unwind with our radio or cassette player or hi-fi stereo (depending on our audiophile nerdiness), or read a book, or discuss our day with friends.  Over time, those conversations would grow to include everything from the mundane to the existential, including our hopes and fears.

I had no roommate during most of the first year, so I spent most of my time not in my room, but in the recreation room in the basement of Wyche House.  I played ping pong down there… a lot of ping pong.  I met the other guys in the dorm down there.  We talked about random topics.  We ate Domino’s Pizza.  We started a “secret” society — a fraternity of sorts — “The Callipygian Correspondents’ Collaboration Club.”

Sidebar: “4C” as it was known, was inspired by the chance discovery of a slightly naughty word in the “C” section of the dictionary (no internet, remember), and ginned up into existence by some aspect of group mob mentality — adolescent social dynamics.  In retrospect, it’s not surprising that this blatantly misogynistic “gentleman’s club” would become an embarrassment — a testament to my immaturity.

Those social spaces… those recreation rooms, porches, and lounges… were unforgettable.  All kinds of events and activities, both sanctioned and unsanctioned, took place in those spaces.  They were the “melting pots” of our differing perspectives — our different origins.  They were the places where friend groups and close relationships were kindled.  Those experiences became the kernel of growing hall pride.

A gaggle of eleventh graders gathered for Halloween.

The Places In Between

But our daily lives, our personal time and our meanderings, were often found in the liminal spaces — the halls and breezeways between buildings, the elevator and elevator lobbies of Beall (Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion), the steps of Wyche or Hill House, the grassy quad between the dorms, and the road that crossed the middle of campus.

For me the most memorable space in which I lingered, between scheduled classes and activities, would be the mail room. It was on the ground floor of Hill House.  It may sound like a dull utilitarian space, but it was nothing of the kind.  The mailbox doors were all made of brass, designed in the 1920s, creating an antique, but regal, grid of lock boxes on the wall.  Each mailbox door was about the size of a deck of cards… maybe a little bit bigger… about 3 by 4 inches in size.  Each student had their own box, and their own combination.

A typical mailbox. 

Upon opening the brass door, on any given day, a myriad of contents could be discovered.  The mail room was the dispensary for postage-stamped letters, with news and loving encouragement from the family at home… and for some students, home was quite far away.  With virtually no internet in existence, the mail room was the source of contact with the outside world.

But the mailroom also became the essential hub of internal communications, from administration, staff, and faculty. Even student newsletters and announcements found their way into the rectangular mail cubicles. It was nearly every day that some memorandum, amusement, assignment, or directive was found curled up inside the slot at the back of the mailbox door. 

It was a little like having a mystery gift delivered in a beautiful brass box.  It could be unlocked and retrieved with a secret combination. 

But the contents must have also been quite important.  I still have a dream, to this day that I’m running late… and I can’t find my class, somewhere on campus… I can’t find the administrative office, to find out where the class is located… and I can’t find my mailbox with the crucial directions… or I’ve forgotten my combination.  My efforts to find my way are thwarted at every turn.  I wake up, realizing that it’s only a dream, and thank heavens that I made it to all my requisite courses, way back then.

Keith Promislow at his mailbox in 1980-81.

What Makes a (renovated) Hospital a Home?

The NC School of Science and Math began as a dream — an aspirational repurposing of a historically, culturally, and architecturally significant campus — the Watts Hospital Campus. The expectations were high that our class, and future classes, would honor the legacy of the hospital that had served Durham for decades. The 1908 Building was like the representation of, and the portal for, all those expectations.

But, when we walked across the threshold and through that symbolic portal, a school and a community quickly developed. It had interior functional spaces — classrooms and lounges – to facilitate the mixture of attitudes and opinions from students and faculty, from the farthest reaches of the state. 

It was a physical space where learning flowed in both directions, between the young and the old – between the book-smart, impetuous, and ambitious student body and the cautious, judicious, and moderating faculty and staff.  

Eventually it also became a home.  There were places for purposeful solo activity — for quiet contemplation, if you looked for it.  Sometimes, after class and before starting my homework (or avoiding it), I would go to the lawn beside the breezeway adjoining the 1908 Building, and practice dribbling and kicking the soccer ball, hoping not to knock any stucco from the walls, or worse, break a window.  

Or I would go to the darkroom… remove the film from the camera in complete darkness and wind it on a spool for development, later choosing a frame from the negatives to enlarge onto photographic paper – exposing the paper, developing the paper, and stopping the development — then hanging up the various photos to dry.

Or I would go to work service, cleaning dishes on the conveyor belt — rinsing off the residue, loading them into plastic trays, and pushing them through the industrial washing machine, like a miniature carwash.

Or I might check the mail, hoping for a moment of whimsy… a letter from home… some news of the world… an instruction to follow… or a plan for tomorrow. 

I dreamed of the future, inspired by iconic buildings of the past.

The Music I Bathed In

{Prompt: What band did you love in high school?}

Imagine leaving home, in 1980, at age 16; and moving into a dorm room, at a residential high school 30 miles away. What would you take with you? Clothes, obviously. Maybe a book or two. Perhaps a blanket. But most importantly, you’d bring your music — a digital clock radio at a minimum. If you were cool, or wanted to be cool, and you had a cassette collection, you would bring your tapes, and a boombox for your friends, or a Walkman for your private enjoyment. If you were old-school or an audiophile, you would bring your records and a stereo. That was living the good life.

My roommate, in my senior year at the School of Science and Math, had a beautiful black boxy stereo system with speakers the size of side tables, and he loved to play The Cars. The Cars, if you don’t know, were a five-member band with the lanky and geeky-looking Ric Ocasek on most of the rock vocals, but they also had a photogenic bass player named Benjamin Orr who had a beautiful voice, a talented keyboard player who gave them their signature synthesizer sounds, an electric guitarist who could play a killer bridge, and a drummer to keep the songs driving and real (no such thing as a drum machine then—thank God). They had tunes like Just What I Needed, Let’s Go, Moving in Stereo, and Bye Bye Love, which I love.

Keep in mind, I’d probably never heard The Cars before my roommate put their record on the turntable, but I heard them early, and often. I can’t say I complained. That was just part of the milieu of our end (the far end) of the hall. When I opened the fire doors at the entrance to that wing, the distant sound of The Cars would often come drifting down the acoustic echo chamber of the hallway.

The Cars band members.

Our dorm (Hill House) shared an uneven quad with a dorm to the East (Wyche House). We often played ultimate frisbee on the quad, and sometimes an enterprising student would turn their speakers, playing music through the windows, and we would be treated to their own personal jam.

We also had music playing when we were doing our homework, or out on Ninth street for a bite to eat. I remember a lot of Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road — one of my friend’s personal favorites. Pat Benatar was taking numbers and breaking hearts, so to speak. She was one of only a few rock bands with a female singer, but she was killing it! Freddy Mercury and Queen were blowing people’s minds with their raw talent and their eccentricity, and at my school we were all “Under Pressure”. Hall & Oates were bringing soul to the white masses, and Journey was perfecting the release of the pop-rock ballad, one right after the next.

My personal favorite was Boston. I could listen to their debut album over and over again. I found out much later that most of the demos for the songs were created by Tom Scholz in his basement. He could play guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums, and he had his own personal studio with mixing equipment to create sounds that no one else was making. And his musical compositions were insanely good! All he really needed was a singer, and somehow he found an amazing singer —Brad Delp. I think a lot of songs are pretty perfect, but More Than a Feeling might be the best of the classic rock era.

Boston’s First Album.

There were many bands that I was too young or too cloistered to embrace. Those are the ones that I like to go back and listen to today: Led Zeppelin, Steely Dan, The Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, and The Who. When those bands were big, I was still listening to John Denver, Olivia Newton-John (before Grease), Billy Joel, Heart, and the Eagles.

I didn’t listen to much country or heavy metal… and I still don’t, although there are an alarming number of country crossover artists in my CD collection: Shania Twain, Martina McBride, and Amy Grant, to name a few. I blame some of this on my wife, who claims that she doesn’t like country, but kind of acts as if she does sometimes. (I think she just doesn’t like banjo or fiddle music.)

My brother went down his own musical journey, and at various times, he introduced me to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jimmy Buffett, and the Indigo Girls, for which I thank him. Each of those groups found their own niche in the musical zeitgeist.

Living and Dying in ¾ Time.

These days I worry that I’m listening to too much music from the past — getting a little too comfortable in my musical niche.

I’ll never forget an embarrassing incident when I was only nineteen. I was working as a lifeguard at the outdoor Pullen Park pool (now filled and replaced with an outdoor stage). I was having a break with some of the other lifeguards, and we were talking about music. They were Black, and they asked me if I listened to any Black artists.

I was a little unprepared to cite my musical preferences, but I thought of one of the latest hits on the radio, that sounded like a Black recording, and I said that I liked Madonna. Bear in mind that I hadn’t ever seen Madonna. (It was a very long time ago; before she was world famous.) But I assumed, from the groove of Borderline, that she must be black.

Of course, everyone got a good laugh out of my reply, much to my chagrin. I never forgot that feeling of utter stupidity.

Sidebar: It turns out that I was half right. ‘Borderline’ was written and produced by Reggie Lucas, a black artist, who had a lot to do with Madonna’s success.

Madonna at her best.

I recently bought some albums by R&B artists like Donny Hathaway, Al Green, Roberta Flack, Bill Withers, Otis Redding, and Ray Charles , artists that I didn’t know by name when they were in their prime. I really love the music of Stevie Wonder, Grover Washington, Jr., Earth, Wind & Fire, and a lot of other African-American artists; but I think I will always be one step behind, and a little bit at a loss, when it comes to my appreciation for Jazz, Soul, R&B, Rap, and the rest of the catalog of music with Afro-Caribbean roots.

I’m trying to sample some tunes from musical genres that I might have overlooked and underappreciated. I’ve gotten an album by the Tex-Mex band, The Mavericks, and another by Filipino artist, Freddie Aguilar.

I started following Lake Street Dive to see if their eclectic sound would become a hit.

First an album. Then a musical.

Once, on a road trip, I put in the Green Day album, American Idiot, because I heard that it was pretty good. (Maybe it was Jasmine who brought it.) Same thing with the Dixie Chicks album, Wide Open Spaces. Both albums were brilliant. They really take me back to a moment in time, in a way that is hard to explain.

I could go on and on with fond recollections of the music that I bathed in, from one stage of my life to the next. From Three Dog Night… to Peter, Paul, and Mary… to Jim Croce… to Cyndi Lauper… to Pink Floyd… to 10,000 Maniacs… to Crowded House… to Echo and the Bunnymen… to Alison Krauss… to Eva Cassidy… to Dakota Blonde… to Evanescence… to Pink… to Chappell Roan…

This is one time when words are doomed to fall utterly and invariably short of the mark. Nothing can describe the beauty of music, or the way it makes you feel… but music.

So go! Listen to some music.

Put on your super noise-cancelling, iridescent headphones, roll down the windows and crank up the car stereo, or tell Alexa to play yacht rock in your kitchen. You can’t get that visceral sensation — those vibes from my written recollections.

The best music you’ve ever heard, might just be the next thing on your Spotify playlist.

Waiting for My New Life to Begin

{Prompt: Why did you decide to attend NCSSM}

Yes.  I was a little nerdy in middle school.  

I tried to hide it a little.  But it came to me so easily.  

I had no qualms about dissecting a frog.

I created a report on the unusual properties of arcs and tangents for my geometry teacher. I don’t think she even asked for it.

In Algebra, I understood quadratic equations right off the bat.  Everyone else seemed so confused.  Except for one other student.  She and I could do the quadratic equations in our heads, most of the time.  It just seemed… simple.

I always got good grades.  I was polite.  I raised my hand.  I usually knew the answers.

Although I was smart, I tried not to be the teacher’s pet.  To be known as the favorite could make you a pariah.

But when you know things, you become useful — an asset.  Sometimes, when other students realized that I knew how to solve math problems, they asked me for help.  I tried to keep that sort of activity on the down-low.  I would help.  Of course, I would help them, but I did so quietly… unobtrusively… like a P.O.W. with a plan for escape — keeping the conversations hush-hush and secretive.

“So you add the numbers here, and you multiply the numbers there.  Shhh.  I’ll explain it later.”

I also took up soccer, and I played for junior varsity.  I tried not to be so nerdy.  

But I also played in the band.  I played the flute. Not good.

When I went to high school (which started with 10th grade, back then), I dropped the flute and joined the percussion section.  Our percussion section created a cadence to play when the band was on the move, between songs.  I still remember that cadence today.  Dum dum dum. Dumbidum dumbidum dum.  Dum dum dum.  Dumbidum dumbidum dum…  

That seemed pretty cool. I felt a little less like a nerd in marching band. 

Side note: I had never played the drums. So when I switched instruments, I was put on cymbals, which meant that half the time I was holding the cymbals for one of the drummers to play. The other half of the time I was counting measures and rests like my life depended on it, because if you clap the cymbals on the wrong beat, pretty much the whole band knows you blew it. But I digress.

In 10th grade, I think I took the following classes: Biology, Trigonometry, AP English, Latin, Typing, Computer Science, and Marching Band.

In AP English we learned about the different writing formats: narrative, descriptive, persuasive, and expository. I learned a lot — more than just big words, although my habit of flipping open Grandpa’s Merriam Webster to random tabs and learning new words was still paying off.

In Latin we learned to conjugate verbs. Amo, amas, amat… amamus, amatis, amant.  And we learned Latin puns — like “Semper ubi sub ubi” — always ‘where’ under ‘where.’   I think I took it because I had heard that it might be useful to learn Latin and Greek roots for various branches of science.

I took typing because it seemed like it could come in handy for computers.  I had gotten a home computer when they first entered the market.  It was a Christmas gift.  I don’t know what brand it was.  Probably an Apple.  I learned BASIC pretty quickly.  You could create pictures on the screen by coding where to put a letter, or letters, line by line.  On the computers at school, I created bigger and better pictures.  I guess I learned a little programming, too.  

I remember that there was a primitive lunar module landing game, on the computer in high school.  You tried to slow the rate of descent just right, so that the module landed gently.  I think you had to tap on the arrow keys to do it.  If you didn’t control the module just right, you either cratered badly, or your module flew back off into the void of space.  I didn’t know it, but I was getting ready for a whole wave of arcade computer games that were about to usher in a golden age of coin-operated, joystick controlled, dopamine-fueled activity at the mall.

Biology was my favorite class. My teacher was Mr. Braddy.  (That’s not a typo.  He spelled his name Braddy, even though it was pronounced like Brady.)  He was a good teacher—patient and bright.

We learned how to create a dichotomous table to classify a bunch of mythical beasts, which was fun, but we also learned how to use a dichotomous table to identify a tree from its twigs and other physical characteristics, even in winter.

We learned about taxonomy and binomial nomenclature.  We learned about kingdoms and phyla. We learned about protozoa. The Euglena was always my favorite.Still is. I used to have a small or medium yellow T-shirt (I was awkward and skinny back then) with a picture of the elegant Euglena screen printed on the front. It was very, very nerdy.  I had a talent for learning about weird creatures, and for memorizing odd facts. (It really paid off in college when I took Invertebrate Zoology, the most difficult course of my major — the one that weeded out the A students from the B students.)

We learned about Botany… about xylem and phloem…  about plant reproduction. We even went on field trips.  Once we went to a forested area in early Spring to see the emergence of the spring ephemerals on the forest floor.  I knew I was hooked when we uncovered the funky spotted brown flower of a sprig of wild ginger, lying hidden beneath the pine needles and leaves.

Mr. Braddy wrote my letter of recommendation when I applied for NCSSM around that time— the early spring of 1980.  He must have seen how much I loved botany and zoology, even though I was only one of a hundred of his students.

I loved everything about science.  I learned that the first time, back in middle school.  (And I learned it again… remembered the thrill… 30 years later, when my two girls were in middle school, and I volunteered to be a parent helper for NC Science Olympiad.)  So when I found out that there was a School of Science and Math opening in the Fall of 1980, I jumped at the opportunity.  It really seemed like a no-brainer.

Now, granted, there were other reasons for me to apply.  Free room and board was a substantial incentive for my family and me.  My father had died in 1976, and my mother was living on Social Security payments (for her two children) and a little spending money from a morning newspaper route.  I was getting up at 4:30 AM to help with the paper route, and I was ready for that to be over.  Seriously ready!  Getting free food at a residential high school seemed like a way to reduce our burdens.

Basically, I felt like I was ready to get out of Dodge.  I was ready to start over.  And what could be better than starting over in a place just a little way away from home, in a school full of like-minded nerds.  It was a perfect opportunity.

My mother gave her blessing.  (She’s the one who showed me the newspaper article in the first place!) and I got my letters of recommendation, and started the application process.  I was ready for my new life to begin.

Fame

{Prompt: Describe your application & admission to NCSSM}

Sometime during the week of May 22, 1980, I found out I had been accepted to become a member of the first class of the NC School of Science and Mathematics. It was less than a week after my 16th birthday.  Best birthday ever!

Later that summer, before classes began, I was contacted by a reporter from The Raleigh Times, an afternoon regional daily paper serving primarily the citizens of Wake County.

The reporter, Mary Burch, wanted to interview me about my admission to the School of Science and Math.  Naturally, I agreed.

So Ms. Burch came by my house and brought a photographer.  It was a pleasant, sunny day, so, we talked outside, where the photographer could get a few shots.  I spent a long time answering the interview questions.  At least it seemed like a long time. 

A day or two later, the story came out on the front page of the paper. It was the lead story, right below the banner. There were five head shots of rising 11th grade students—including a picture of me, right smack dab in the middle. The headline read, “Science-Math Hi — Wake has five in cream of crop”.

This was my 15 minutes of fame!

From my wide-ranging interview (which I like to imagine was full of wit and wisdom), the writer took the following quote, and the layout editor put it in a caption right beneath my grainy black and white picture: “‘I think it’s a real honor to be chosen, because if you knew the other people going, they’re such good students’ — Steven Gallup, from Broughton.”  

Ugh!  What a horrible quote.  What a horrible picture.  If this is what fame looks like, I don’t want it anymore.

But we all became a little more famous that summer — the summer of 1980.  We became members of the first class of the widely anticipated public residential high school for gifted students in North Carolina.

A faded copy of The Raleigh Times - Sept. 1, 1980.

I don’t really remember much about that summer, but I do remember watching an unheralded film about another group of high school students, coming from dissimilar backgrounds to apply for and attend a specialized high school — this time in Manhattan.  Although the storyline was fictional, the high school was real. These students were from New York City, and the school was the High School of Performing Arts at 120 West 46th Street.

The movie was “Fame”; and it was released across the country on June 20th, 1980. Here is the Wikipedia description of the characters, as they are introduced during auditions for the school, at the beginning of the film:

Accepted in the Drama department are Montgomery MacNeil, son of a well-known actress; Doris Finsecker, a shy Jewish girl with an overbearing mother; and Ralph Garci, who succeeds after failed auditions for Music and Dance. In the Music department, Bruno Martelli is an aspiring keyboardist whose electronic equipment horrifies Mr. Shorofsky, a conservative music teacher. In the Dance department, Coco Hernandez coolly hints at how she could join any of the three departments while Lisa Monroe is talkative and nervous. Leroy Johnson attends to perform his part of a dance routine for an auditioning friend, but the dance teachers are more impressed by his talents than his friend’s.

As the plot unfolds, the students advance from year to year in their education and in the daily struggles of their lives. Montgomery discusses his homosexuality, and comes out to his classmates.  Doris, overcomes shyness and blossoms, away from the hovering of her helicopter mother. Ralph, experiences the highs and lows of life on stage while also dealing with an attack on his little sister (and the magical thinking of his mother). Coco finds herself unwillingly undressing on camera for an amateur filmmaker’s “screen test”. And Leroy is dealing with illiteracy that could spoil his chances for graduation and future success.

The stories in the movie are actually deep, frightening, complex, and messy. For every jubilant and spontaneous Hot Lunch Jam; there is a moody and sobering Dogs in the Yard — the songs, that accompany the action span a range of emotions.  One of them, Out Here on My Own was sung at the talent show held on the campus of NCSSM, later that fall.  I think all of us, at the time, could identify with the struggles and the stresses of the characters in the movie, even though we were only beginning our own transformative journeys.

Fame movie poster.

In the movie finale, all the characters come together for an end-of-the-year performance of  I sing the body electric, a song based on the poem by Walt Whitman.  In the scene, parents and faculty look on, in a supportive body, as students from all branches of the school rise to sing enthusiastically:

I sing the body electric

I celebrate the me yet come

I toast to my own reunion

When I become one with the sun

That part always makes me cry.

The rest of the article in The Raleigh Times.

Separate Ways

{Prompt: Have you ever lost a meaningful friendship?}

Written in the Stars

Back in tenth grade, in 1979, I learned from a newspaper article that the NC School of Science and Mathematics was accepting applications for interested students who would be living at a residential school during their eleventh and twelfth grade years… for free.

I thought about the possibilities of living on campus in Durham with paid room and board for all of two minutes, thinking of no reason that I shouldn’t apply. And so I did apply.

I gave literally no thought to maintaining ties with my current school and my current friends.

I think, at the time, that the adventure of applying was as enticing as the school itself. I had to get recommendations, fill out application forms, and take the SATs early. It was exciting. My grades weren’t really a problem. They were still very good. Also, I found I would be taking cognitive tests and personal interviews. Even more exciting.

I was ready to leave Raleigh and the little green house on Wayland Drive behind. My father had passed away two years before and my brother had gone off to college. There was no nostalgic ring in the old adage, “There’s no place like home.” At least not for me. I felt more like, “Any place is better than home.” And the prospect of spending both day and night at a shiny new school seemed like heaven.

I was also, at that time, working with my mother to help her complete her morning newspaper route. I was getting up early every day of the week. That was probably the last straw. Although I remember some aspects of the morning route with fondness — the glimmer of sunrise between the pines, the early 1980s “Yacht Rock” on the FM dial, and the warm buttery waffles after completing the route — I remember the drudgery and exhaustion too. The weather could be bitterly cold in the mornings in winter, with the car windows open. I was sometimes hungry… and nauseated from the frequent car turns and the smell of newspaper ink filling the air. I was probably sleep deprived, to judge from the frequency with which I punched the snooze button on my clock radio.

At age fifteen, I would have done just about anything to change what was written in the stars.

Dialogue from A Knight’s Tale

Like Family

Let me go back for just a moment to talk about some of my childhood friends — the ones I left behind.

The first friends that I really remember were my friends from elementary and middle school, from West Raleigh. We were a gang of very well-behaved and studious kids who sat together at the cafeteria tables and shared the contents of our lunch boxes, until that became uncool. When we were older, we sat down with our cafeteria meals atop their brown, prefabricated, plastic cafeteria trays, and we considered the quality of our respective food choices.

Bill Walter (who I had known since kindergarten) was probably the catalyst for this group of friends. He was full of impromptu humor and quick with a smile. He could recite Monty Python sketches at length, and wasn’t the least bit bothered that I had never seen a single sketch. He lived in an old stone house on Cowper Drive, near the Five Points intersection.

His parents once arranged a blindfolded, barefooted experience for our group of friends for a Halloween in the ‘70s, climaxing with us walking onto a tarp covered with the mushy, stringy, pumpkin-seed-riddled innards of their pumpkin, turned Jack-O-Lantern. It was ingeniously and hilariously disgusting. We were fast friends at ten.

A few years later, in junior high, surprisingly, Bill began dating, and even more surprisingly, he introduced his girlfriend to the group. She began to join us at recess and in other gatherings. She would quietly watch, while the boys threw a frisbee, or she would stand on the edges of a conversation, simply listening. Melanie Morrison had bright red hair, and was pretty beautiful by any measure, but was perhaps the most “spiritual”, or “introspective”, of an already pensive group. Bill was probably the least pensive, and most impulsive, in contrast. They made a pretty good couple.

Bill and Melanie at a dance - circa 1979.

I knew Jenny West, about as long as I had known Bill. We gradually advanced through the ranks of our children’s choir at church, up into youth choir, and then into young adult choir (The real names of the ensembles are lost to time.) It seemed like she was the one person in the choir who could truly sing the songs in tune, and because she had talent, the choirmaster eventually roped her into singing solos from the rear balcony during the church offering. I think she would have happily stayed out of the limelight, singing in the chorus, and singing for her own pleasure. Between church and school, I probably knew Jenny better than anyone.

John Matula and Jenny West at a luau/dance - circa 1979.

I met John Dunning and John Matula, probably because they knew Jenny, and they lived in the same neighborhood. “Dunning” had a clever sense of humor that required a bit of thought and reflection. He had wit.

“Matula” was also funny, but in an over-the-top, spontaneous kind of way. “Matula” was from Schenectady, which I knew was a town near Albany, where my father had once lived. He had a bit of that upstate New York sensibility, meaning he just said whatever he was thinking. He was always happy to see me, and he was usually out on the streets of his neighborhood. He was probably happy to see anyone and everyone. I found out later that he was always outside because his house was inhumanly hot. It had been built decades before, and had no air conditioning at all, and little ventilation, making it practically unlivable in the summer.

Stephanie and John Dunning - circa 1980

Sarah Booth was the most bookish of the lot. She was always reading… and frequently writing — come to think of it. She frequently wore a mid-length khaki skirt or pants, and pastel button-down shirts. There was no doubt at the time that she would have a literary career one day.

Stephanie Valachovic was a bit of a wild card. She had long straight hair, a foreign name, and was always flat-out honest. She almost always wore blue jeans and a plaid, flannel shirt.

Charles Alvarez was also an enigma, but he could be every bit as entertaining as the rest. He was sometimes dressed for the ROTC, as he was in the picture below.

Rob Pascale was another friend who sort of flew under the radar. He was part of the pack, but I only remember him as being a persistently friendly and positive person. In fact, everyone in the group was friendly, funny, optimistic, and smart.

We were not a part of the “popular crowd” — rich kids with wealthy parents. But we weren’t particularly poor either. We weren’t from troubled homes or welfare circumstances. In truth, I might have been among the poorest of the group. I certainly was, after my father passed away.

We were tight-knit friends, as I remember us in 10th grade when we were attending Broughton High School together in Raleigh.I took the picture below, in the base of the Broughton clock tower, by putting my SLR camera on the opposite windowsill, and setting the 10 second timer. It was a conspicuous decision — the decision to capture, on film, the faces of my confidantes forever. It glows. It captures their personalities perfectly. I must have known I was heading to NCSSM when I took the picture. Or perhaps it was just pure luck that I got a picture of most of us before I left Raleigh and my childhood friends behind.

These weren’t my only friends in Raleigh, but they were certainly my closest. Ironically, I feel like I really knew very little about their lives — their hopes and dreams. I guess we just accepted each other like family, with no strings attached — a group providing refuge and acceptance amid the chaos and drama of a school with hundreds of others.

L to R: Charles, Bill, Melanie, me, Stephanie, Sara, Jenny, John D.

A Faustian Bargain

And yet, I pretty much cut ties with these—my best friends— when I moved to Durham. I don’t know what I was thinking… perhaps I wasn’t thinking… of the consequences of leaving. I made a Faustian bargain, to leave my past behind, to start anew, to move to the School of Science and Math in 1980. I didn’t know, then, how completely some of these friendships would be lost in the bargain.

As I moved into Wyche House dorm, at the School of Science and Math in September of 1980, I was excitedly inundated by the camaraderie of the students I met. They were from all over the state. We were all in the same boat — all leaving friends behind. They were every bit as quirky and comical as the friends I had before. And I soon had a new group of friends — not sharing a common history but all sharing a common experience.

I found, over time, as I moved from place to place — from school to school — that, each time I moved, I had to let some friends go. We had to go our separate ways. But I would make new friends in a new place, and the balance would be restored.

Still… I made strong friendships at the School of Science and Math — lifelong friends. A few, I kept in touch with in college at NC State (Kim McLauchlin and Karl Garrison, for example) and a few were also at Duke when I started medical school (John Armitage and Shauna Tilley). But essentially our class forged a lifelong bond of friendship in two short years, by living together under intense scrutiny, in a pressure-packed situation. We were, essentially, the first class of a state-sponsored pilot program, whose success or failure depended to a large degree upon our own success or failure.

As close as we were at the time that we matriculated, it was still all too easy to lose touch, as I discovered. As we scattered to the four corners of the universe — to various universities in various states — we frequently lost contact. And some of us moved on to other endeavors, never looking back.

Surprisingly few (in my mind) returned for the reunion 5 years later, and efforts to track down the missing yielded little improvement at subsequent reunions. It seemed as if the absent alumni were happy to remain apart and among the missing. It was just the same as when I had moved on from my childhood friends, a few years before.

Despite the inevitable loss of classmates over time, to attrition or to death, these classmates — my new companions from NCSSM — are still my closest friends. As I grow older and enter retirement, I do my best to foster those friendships that began forty-five years ago.

Sidebar

I did try to keep in touch with some of my old friends, when I moved from Raleigh to Durham, but it was much harder to keep in touch back then. You had to call by phone… or drop by. I would see a few people when I went back to Raleigh, almost by chance. In the end, I saw John Matula the most, as he was always out — out in his neighborhood and up for adventure. I had a moped in the 80s and I would sometimes go up to Five Points, and see the kids in that neck of the woods — so much more interesting than my dull street.

And I saw a girl named Van Dinh Nguyen, who left Vietnam with her family (probably in 1975 after the fall of Saigon), moving to North Carolina. I called her, and tried to arrange some casual get-togethers. I tried to be nonchalant, although in reality, I had a crush on her, and I would have happily abandoned any and all of my plans, commitments, and aspirations for a kiss, or a touch of her hand. Alas… Van Dinh never shared my infatuation, but… still… she did answer her phone when I called. She occasionally went out with me for a meal or a movie, and we stayed friends for many years, and still keep in touch.

Tracking Down Lost Friends

Although I was the first to leave my group of friends in Raleigh, ultimately, all of our paths diverged. Now, Bill is somewhere in California, specializing in the care of honeybees. Jenny is living in Kansas City, Missouri, but her name is Melissa Ramsey now. (She uses her middle name.) Sara is somewhere up north, as is John Dunning, but beyond that, I know nothing. We’ve lost touch. Stephanie is living down east in North Carolina, and volunteering with pet rescue agencies, while Rob is teaching middle school in Chesapeake, Virginia, something I never imagined.

Melanie, tragically, died unexpectedly in 2017, shortly after one of her two beautiful children graduated from NC State University. I learned this through Facebook. From the posts, it seems that most of her friends were shocked by her loss. She was married and working as a food technologist for the Department of Agriculture in Rockville, Maryland, at the time. It all happened before I began to rekindle my connections to my childhood friends.

I got up the gumption to go to a Broughton High School reunion in 2017, 37 years after leaving town, and 35 years after graduating from high school at NCSSM instead. I wanted to see some of the people that knew me a little when I was just a kid from Raleigh, like them. I had a little picnic with Rob Pascale, Charles Alvarez, Melissa “Jenny West” Ramsey, and Van Dinh Carriker, introducing them to my wife, and reintroducing them to myself.

I went to the Broughton reunion, seeing some of those well-off “beautiful” people that I rubbed elbows with in the corridors of education. And I also saw a few members of the percussion section that I played with for one year in the Broughton High School Cavaliers marching band. I saw “Matula” who had become quite a charmer, judging from his flow from one group to another at the party.

I sometimes run into him, in the real world, rummaging through the vinyl record albums at The Readers Corner on Hillsborough Street. We laugh about how things have changed from our childhood. We make chit chat for a while. Then we go our separate ways. We have new friends and families.

The glow of friendship in the clocktower at Broughton is just a memory now. A beautiful memory.

*************************

Appendix I

A chronological listing of some of the interesting people I’ve known. (Underlined names are incommunicado.)

- Friends from Wayland Heights neighborhood: Catherine Gordon (now a pediatrician in Boston), John Preston (now working for Motorola, in Florida, and an avid cyclist), David Siler (now doing something somewhere in eastern NC).

- Friends from Daniels (Jr. High), and Broughton (Sr. High): Bill Walters , Melanie Morrison (passed away, circa 2017), Jenny West, Sarah Booth, John Matula, John Dunning, Stephanie Valachovic, Charles Alvarez, Robert Pascal.

- Friends at NCSSM: Kim McLauchlin (pen pal when I was attending Vanderbilt), Barbara Birdwell (avid photographer, but we lost touch), Teri Buffmeyer (close friend, now living in Calabash, NC), Jeff Parker (close friend, now in Hickory where he runs a factory), John Armitage (soccer teammate who also attended Duke Medical School. Now CEO of “Our Blood Institute” in OKC.) Robert Lee (Super close friend and former roommate, who I see at reunions, now living in Davidson, NC) Many other classmates, who I aspire to see at a dinner party in the future, including Sherri Vasalga, Elizabeth Grainger Paige, et al.

An archival slide of NCSSM students at Halloween - circa 1980

15 intrepid alumni at the 40th - at historic Woolworth’s counter.

- Friend at Vanderbilt: Edmund Rucker (from Paducah, Ky. Now working for the University of Louisville).

- Friends at NCSU: Jane Matthews, (from Mocksville, NC. Worked in textiles in Clarksville, Va., before I lost touch). Nooshin Ansari (my girlfriend in 1984, when she was on exchange from Plymouth Polytechnic University in England - a very serious relationship that I torpedoed. Now living in Queensland, Australia. Srini Iyengar (my closest friend for many years). We gradually drifted apart, but still keep in touch), Robin Davis (was working as a nurse at NC Memorial Hospital when she was dating a mutual friend. She had his baby, but he moved back to Pakistan.) Suzanne Malloy (Another female acquaintance whom I came to know intimately when I returned to NCSU in 1986. Lost touch.)

My girlfriend - Nooshin, Me, Srini, and Jane - circa 1984. Picture by my Mom.

Jane, Me, Nooshin, and Mom circa 1985 in the airport as I departed for South Australia. Picture by Srini.

- Friends at Flinders University: Juliana Teoh Suan, Graeme, Anne McMillan, Amosa, Vincent, et al. (No longer in touch with any of these wonderful people. I’ve pledged to visit Malaysia and Western Samoa some day, because they were so cool.)

Juliana laughing with me on the steps at Flinders University

Juliana (trying to study), Anne (not amused) - circa 1985

- Friends at Lightwater Valley amusement park (all lost)

Two coworkers (in the park overalls) - circa 1986

Another goofy coworker at Lightwater Valley - circa 1985

- Friends at Duke University: Chang Lim (good friend at the time, now no longer in touch), Lisa Gangarosa (now head of the GI department at NC Memorial Hospital), Mary Teresa Amato (recently working in the ED at Duke), Catherine Hren (living close by, but no longer getting together as often)

Chang and me at a fundraiser (he painted the sign)- circa 1988

Some fellow students and I at an intramural event.

- Friends at UNC-CH: Dianne Shihadi (We married.) Steve McNulty (Counting the days to his own resignation from DCRI). Gail Tudor (living in New Hampshire. She had five children.) Most of the others from my department have scattered. Dianne still keeps in touch with some of the Biostatisticians.

- Friends at Residency - Jon Parham, Alana Williams, and others (We follow each other on Facebook.)

- Business friends - Jodi Winkel (We worked together for 12 years at Garner Family Practice and became good friends. We occasionally get together). Coworkers at UNC Family Practice at Fuquay Varina— We almost completely lost touch when I retired, and, worse, the pandemic led to a great deal of self-imposed isolation in 2020-2021.

Volleyball friends in Sanford - Bill & Susan Carter (They divorced and we lost touch.) Jeremy & Candace Pedley (still happily living in Sanford. We are FB friends.)

The winning volleyball team.

Basketball friends in Cary - Mike, Skip, Jim, Dave (most still living in our neighborhood, and keeping in touch, although none of us are still playing basketball, to the best of my knowledge.)

A bunch of family guys that played ball on the cul-de-sac.

Cycling friends - Bob, Dave, Mike K., Karen, Doug, Nancy - taught me everything I needed to know about cycling; Kristy, Scott, Bud, Kerri, Tom - “The usual suspects”; David, Matt, Marc, Rob - We did winter rides together back in 2016; Keith, Will, George - quartet with mutual interests; Leslie & Tim, Sheila & Doug - Wallyworld rides; Gayle, Eric, Darryl, Tom, Rex, Stewart - Havoc rides. The list goes on…

A ride to Devil’s Tramping Ground from Pittsboro - 2024

A ride to Mount Mitchell from Little Switzerland - circa 2015

A winter ride from Holly Springs - circa 2016

Appendix 2

-Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) - song by Journey, 1983

Here we stand
Worlds apart, hearts broken in two, two, two

Sleepless nights, losing ground
I’m reachin’ for you, you, you

Feelin’ that it’s gone
Can change your mind

If we can’t go on
To survive the tide, love divides

Someday love will find you
Break those chains that bind you
One night will remind you
How we touched and went our separate ways

If he ever hurts you
True love won’t desert you
You know I still love you
Though we touched and went our separate ways

Troubled times
Caught between confusion and pain, pain, pain

Distant eyes
Promises we made were in vain, in vain, in vain

If you must go, I wish you love
You’ll never walk alone

Take care, my love
Miss you, love

Someday love will find you
Break those chains that bind you
One night will remind you
How we touched and went our separate ways….

Appendix 3

-Go Your Own Way - song by Fleetwood Mac, 1977

Loving you
Isn’t the right thing to do
How can I ever change things that I feel?

If I could
Baby I’d give you my world

How can I
When you won’t take it from me?

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

Tell me why
Everything turned around

Packing up
Shacking up’s all you wanna do

If I could
Baby I’d give you my world

Open up
Everything’s waiting for you

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

Pennies From Heaven

{Prompt: Has anyone ever been a hero to you?}

I’m not sure when I met T.C. Pate exactly. At first, he was just a guy.

He was just another guy — a newspaper carrier — at the distribution point, picking up papers to deliver, at 4 or 5 in the morning. He got there and threw his bundles in his car. We got there and threw our bundles in our car (Mom and me). And we went off to do our respective routes.

Occasionally the distribution truck was late. Then we were all there waiting — waiting for the newspaper bundles, together. That’s probably when we met and talked, speculating on the causes for the delay. Or talking about the weather. Or talking about the newspaper delivery business. We all got to know one another, a little bit more.

Once, Mom’s car broke down at the Phillips 66 — the gas station where the papers were distributed. We didn’t have a backup plan — no one to call at 5 in the morning. No way to deliver the papers. No way to get home. Mr. Pate came to our rescue. He helped us finish the route. He took us home. He helped us get our car fixed.

After that, he became a friend of the family.

Mr. Pate — dressed for delivering papers — circa 1979.

His Backstory

Here is a little bit of his backstory. Mr. Pate was born about 50 miles from Raleigh, in Falcon, NC. Falcon is just south of Dunn, which is a “major center for producing cotton, tobacco, and turpentine,” and just west of Spivey’s Corner, where the National Hollerin’ contest is held each year. That tells you everything you need to know about Falcon. You could say it’s in the middle of nowhere.

He was christened Theron Carl Pate by his mother, but he always preferred to go by “T.C.,” for short. He must have gotten some guff for his first name—Theron— but it’s actually a pretty interesting name. It means “hunter” in Greek.

I don’t know what T.C. did during his childhood, but he was born in 1913 just before World War I, and he lived through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression as a young adult. He attended Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, Virginia, in the early 1930s.

His mother died in a car accident in 1936, when he was only 23 years old. She was driving back to Falcon — back home from Raleigh, with her nephew, when their car swerved into an oncoming truck. The collision was so severe that both of them were thrown from the car and died from the trauma.

Mr. Pate never talked about this. I only know about it now from the news articles.

1936 Article about T. C. Pate’s mother and cousin

I found out from T. C. himself that he served in World War II, and he was stationed in the Aleutian Islands, way up in Alaska, trying to avoid sniper fire from the Japanese. I interviewed him for an assignment when I was still in middle school and found out about his military service. Ultimately he was discharged from the military with a 100% disability (PTSD perhaps), meaning that he was eligible for VA medical benefits for the rest of his life.

An early portrait of T. C. Pate.

He was married in 1939, before WWII, and he had five sons: Thomas R., Andrew C., David R., Robert F., and Charles A. Pate. (Now, they live in Tampa, Florida; Kennesaw, Georgia; Raleigh, NC; Atlanta, Georgia; and Lorton, Virginia.) I never met his sons, because they were all grown up and moved away when I knew him. But I knew that he was especially proud of his youngest son, Charlie, who was enrolled at West Point at the time.

Mr. Pate and his wife were in the midst of a separation when he and I and my mom became acquainted back in 1978. It was complicated.

All I knew was that he worked delivering papers to make ends meet; but his real passion was being a salesman — selling massage chairs and other gadgets. He once told me that the secret to salesmanship is to really believe in the product that you’re selling. Once or twice he pointed out a gumball machine full of Chiclets, and he mentioned that it was one of his side hustles. The Ford gumball machines used to sell gumballs for a penny apiece. Civic clubs, like the Lions Club, used the machines to raise money for charity. Apparently, T. C. was a salesman or a distributor for these machines, because he shared in the profits.

He said, half-jokingly, that his favorite song was Pennies from Heaven.

A Ford gumball machine - gum for a penny.

Newspaper Delivery

At some point he took up morning newspaper-delivery to supplement his income. His morning route was about twice as big as ours, but he had been doing it for a while. He had all the houses memorized. He knew who liked their paper on the driveway, and who liked their paper on the grass. And he knew who wanted their paper in the box beneath the mailbox.

His route went down most of Blue Ridge Road, and the side streets nearby. Incidentally, Blue Ridge Road was one of the first roads in Raleigh to have a bicycle lane, but a lot of people used the lane for jogging too. Jogging was a brand new trend at the time. Not many people in Raleigh had even heard of jogging before 1972. (Frank Shorter is credited with inspiring a running boom when he won the marathon in the 1972 Summer Olympics.)

Mr. Pate’s route had a lot of cul-de-sacs. And I should know, because for a while I helped Mr. Pate with his route, folding and banding papers in the back seat. Every time he made a sharp turn, I had to brace the paper stacks to keep them from falling over (on me!)

T.C. would often throw the paper over the car roof, using his left hand, as he went around the cul-de-sac in a counter-clockwise direction. Sometimes, on the back roads, we just drove on the left-hand side of the road so he could throw the paper directly out of the window on his left. No one else was driving at that time of the morning. Still, we never did that on Blue Ridge Road.

After the route, we used to go to the Your House breakfast restaurant, on Capital Boulevard. It was close to where the Triangle Town Shopping Center is now. I’m not sure why he preferred to go to Your House. The Waffle House at the corner of Hillsborough and Method Street was certainly closer. But he seemed to know a lot of the patrons and the staff at Your House. And they knew him. I guess it was a tradition.

I think I told him once that I didn’t have any money, to buy breakfast with. He bought it for me, and said, “Never turn down free food,” with a smile and a sparkle in his eye. And since that day, I never have.

Quintessential diner counter like the one at Your House

A Generous Person.

Over the years he got to know my mother, me, and my brother. He let us drive his blue and white Skylark, and let us use his boat-sized, big, black Oldsmobile. We ended up driving those two cars into the ground, as he bought new cars for himself.

I’m pretty sure I was driving one of them when another driver on Hillsborough started waving me down, and pointing at one of my wheels. I pulled into the Arby’s parking lot to see what was wrong, and it looked like the tire was about to fall off! I have no idea why it was in such a state, but youthful neglect was probably a factor. I called for a tow truck, and when the tow-truck driver started to hoist the car onto the flatbed, the tire actually did fall off, much to his alarm. I’m pretty sure I sold it for junk to pay for the tow to the junkyard.

A 1971 Buick Skylark in fine condition.

Mr. Pate liked to buy a new (American-made) car every five or six years. I wonder if he gave the old ones to each of his five boys. It sure would take a lot of gum and newspapers to pay for a new car so often.

He must have been pretty frugal in other respects. He lived in a small one-story house, with a basement, at 729 Kimbrough Street, just off of Whitaker Mill Road. My mother stayed in his house for a little while after she sold our family home in 1986 or 1987. I would swear it was in the summer of 1986, because I was out of the country when I found out that she had accepted an offer on our family home. (When I returned from England I stayed with my friend Srini for a while.)

A lot of our childhood toys and school records went into Mr. Pate’s basement, or the shed in his backyard, before we could make room for them in a place of our own, eventually.

Mr. Pate also informally adopted our pet dog, Lindy — a beagle mix. Lindy stayed with him at his house, spent some time in a fenced-in area in his backyard, and probably had the run of the first floor.

Mr. Pate at his home in 1988

Sometime, in 1979 or 1980, Mr. Pate wrote a recommendation for me for the School of Science and Math. And he might have written another recommendation for me for medical school. Some of those recommendations had to be written by someone who was “not a family member”. In the time between high school and medical school, he had become as good as a family member to me; but still, technically, he was just a friend.

Moving On

My mother left Raleigh in 1988, when my grandmother, up in Virginia, suffered a broken hip. She moved out of the house on Kimbrough Street and into an even smaller house, up in Stanley, Virginia. She took care of my grandfather, Willard, until he died in August of 1991. And she took care of my grandmother, Mary, until she died in November of 1993. And then she stayed in Stanley.

Mr. Pate was a guest at my wedding in 1991 and was an honorary best man for my brother’s wedding in 1995. But he and my mother saw less and less of one another, given their distance apart; and she married Ivan Purdham, from Stanley, in 1997.

Margaret Gallup and T.C. Pate at my wedding in 1991

I saw less of Mr. Pate, myself, when I went to medical school in 1987, and even less when I went through residency (in Pittsburgh, PA, and Columbia, SC) starting in 1992. And then Dianne and I had twins in 1994, and I didn’t really see him at all.

He entered a Veteran’s Administration rest home sometime in the late 1990s and he passed away on August 9, 2002, with hardly any fanfare at all. He was buried at the Antioch Baptist Church cemetery in Falcon, North Carolina, with a military grave marker. (His wife was buried separately in a cemetery in Raleigh.)

T.C. Pate’s grave marker in Falcon.

What He Meant

Although he was just another guy at the newspaper stop when I met him, he became an incredibly important part of my life — a role model and a mentor — for a decade, starting in 1978, when I was only fourteen years old.

He taught me to “Really believe in whatever you’re selling”, “Never turn down free food”, and “Give your mama a break — she’s doing the best that she can”. He had five grownup children of his own, but he had the audacity to take on two more who needed support.

His life started out tough, but he made it through tragedy and hard times, just like me.

He had a life full of adventures, big and small.

I hope I do too.

He was never camera shy.

These Dreams

{Prompt: What was it like before you went to NCSSM in 1980?}

It’s dark outside, except for the moon sinking on the horizon, and the streetlights casting their incandescent glow.  As I drive, with my window down, the cold morning air swirls past my left ear and my neck. It swirls into the back seats, and then back around again.  The naturally cool, fresh air from outside mixes with the heated air from the car vents, which is variably hot or cold.

The unfolded newspapers ruffle in turbulence in the passenger seat beside me, demanding my attention. I put a folded paper on top of the pile, to keep the pages from fluttering up… and open… and falling apart.  At some point I will stop to fold and band the rest of the unfolded pile, but for now, I will weigh down the loose papers and deliver the ones I have already banded.

So I’m tossing out the papers, one at a time, onto the driveways of the houses in the neighborhood. I’m driving around in the predawn hours making my paper deliveries.  One to this house.  One to that house. One to the next house.  Everything is going smoothly, under control.

But I begin to realize that I haven’t been paying attention to the house addresses.  I’ve been doing my route on autopilot.  I haven’t been checking that the right house got the paper. After a while all the driveways start to look the same.

Was I supposed to deliver a paper to that last address?  Are they on vacation? Did they put a stop on the delivery?

I’ll have to check my list of subscription customers. Where is it?  My list seems to be missing!

Oh!  Hold on.  Wait a minute.  This isn’t my route, at all!  I’m only subbing this route for another carrier.

I need his list of subscribers. Where is it?  Did he give it to me?  It must be somewhere. 

Oh, shit.  I can’t find it.  Well… so, I can’t find it… so what?  I should know it by memory.  I’ve done the route with him enough times.  I should know it by now.

But I can’t remember the route. And I can’t find the list. Nothing is going according to plan. None of these customers is getting their paper today.  Or maybe, all of the houses are getting a paper instead, whether they have a subscription or not! 

I only have a finite supply of newspapers.  And I can’t deliver them properly.  What can I do?

And then, I wake up.  It’s all a dream. I’m not delivering newspapers today, or any other day.

In fact, I’m a retired family doctor.  I retired 5 years ago.  I stopped delivering papers a long time ago.  So long, in fact, that I have to do a little math.  It was about 45 years since I did a morning newspaper route.

But I still dream about it. Or should I call it a nightmare? I am literally haunted by my time as a “paperboy”, when I was a teenager in Raleigh.  Let me explain.

The Raleigh Times

Lots of kids had an afternoon paper route when I was young.  It was fun, because you were out on your bike, and out in the neighborhood.  And it was the way that you made extra money, before you were old enough to apply for a regular job.* 

 

I was probably 12 years old when I began delivering The Raleigh Times** with my brother.  We rode our bikes up to Johnson’s Pharmacy, three blocks away. We got our stacks of newspapers, and we got to work.

We sat on the sidewalk banding the papers with the #16-sized rubber bands. They had the right combination of give and take.  Strong enough to keep from snapping, and strong enough to keep the paper from unfolding, but stretchy enough to twist up and over the edge of the paper, once… or twice… or even thrice, if necessary. 

If we wanted a relatively flat, aerodynamic paper that could be thrown sideways, floating like a frisbee, then we folded it into thirds, and wrapped the rubber band around it twice. 

If we wanted a solid, conical paper that could be thrown end over end, like an axe, then we folded it in thirds, and then in half again, and we wrapped the band around it three or even four times to keep it tight and stiff.

The tightly bound, weaponized papers weren’t really practical.  They took longer to fold and to band. But they sure were fun to throw at one another, when we had extras.  A game of dodgeball with papers.

When we weren’t trying to bind the papers into tight little knots, we were folding as fast as we could, stuffing the papers into canvas paper bags or into steel bicycle baskets, and heading out to deliver the papers to five or six streets in our neighborhood.  If we split up, we could finish the route twice as fast.  Those were the days!

The 1970s

These were the late 1970s.  I did an afternoon route with my brother, or on my own, between 1976—the year of the national bicentennial—and 1979—the year of the Iran hostage crisis.  In the 1970s, there was no internet… no “social media”… no cell phones.  Personal computing and GPS were only in their infancy.  

It’s hard to imagine, but if we wanted to meet someone… somewhere… sometime, we had to call them on our telephone, arrange a meeting place… and time, and then find them at the designated rendezvous.

To do this you needed their phone number, you needed a telephone connected to a landline, you needed a watch (or clock), and you needed a map (or working knowledge of the streets).  You had to have telephone skills (no texting), memory skills (no cell phone reminders), and navigation skills (no GPS navigators). 

In the ‘70s shopping malls were popular, in part, because there was no online shopping.  Movie theaters were popular because there was no online streaming.  Libraries and books were popular because there were no digital books or online references.  Newspapers and network TV were the major sources of information and the major dispensers of “social media”.

In the ’70s people listened to music on the radio, or on records, or on cassette tapes.  The Sony Walkman, a personal cassette player, was released in 1979, and boom boxes were reaching their zenith.

Typewriters were used for “word processing” and photographic slide machines, with mechanical slide carousels, were used for slideshows.  Film cameras and video cassette recorders were used to record photographs and videos. Xerox machines, fax machines, and the U.S. Postal Service were used to copy, transmit, or deliver letters and documents.

In schools, when we talked about environmental conservation, we imagined a day, only a year or two away, when trees and the paper they supplied would no longer be consumed in such seemingly limitless quantities.  It took about 50 years before that future became a reality.

The News & Observer

In 1977, my mother and my brother began a morning route, delivering The News & Observer..  This was not a “fun” newspaper route.  They did this for a little extra spending money, to help make ends meet, because money was short.

They did this for at least a year and a half, with only my occasional assistance, but in 1979 everything changed.  My brother left for college.  He was almost 18.  I was recruited to help my mother — to continue the route. It meant getting up with her in the morning, every… single… day!  I was 15 at the time.

Mom, on the paper route - circa 1979

A morning route with your mom is not the same as an afternoon route with your brother.  A morning route is bigger… much bigger than an afternoon route. 

And it’s done in the morning — I mean early morning — in the dark, before the sun comes up.

It is sometimes cold.  It is sometimes lonely.  You would be hungry.  And tired.  It is not fun.  It is a job.  

A typical route has 100 to 300 customers, or more.  You need a car to complete the route in a timely manner, and you need to….  no… you have to complete the route in a timely manner.

You complete your route on time, so that the customers can pick up their paper before breakfast, or before heading off to work.  For the convenience of the customers, you wake up at 4:30 in the morning.  You force yourself to leave the comfort of your cozy bed.  You grab a bite to eat, if you didn’t oversleep. And you’re out the door.  That is… you are out the door if you didn’t sit up and say, “I’m awake”, when your mom poked you on your foot before you fell back and fell asleep again.

You need a car to carry the sheer volume of newspapers on a morning route.  The newspapers come to the carrier in bundles, at the distribution point.  A big brown van pulls up to a closed-for-the-night Phillips 66, where the carriers are waiting in their cars or quietly smoking cigarettes.  Two guys start pulling out the bundles from the back of the truck.  They stack them in groups, for 7 or 8 different routes.  On top of the bundles they put a distribution slip, which has the number for the route, the number of papers required, and any particular subscriber requests.

The subscriber might request a vacation hold. Or they might request that you put the paper on their doorstep… or in a mailbox… or on the grass… or on the driveway.  They might just complain… that their front page was wet from the dew on the grass… or chewed up from skidding on the driveway… or just plain missing. 

 A typical bundle is 20 to 25 pounds.  It’s about a foot tall, a foot and a half wide, and a foot deep.  One bundle can hold up to 50 papers, when the papers are thin, on the slow news days, like Mondays.  A bundle can hold 25 papers on days when the papers are thick, filled with grocery store coupons,, like Wednesdays.  Or a bundle might hold only 10 to 15 papers on Sundays, when the papers are bulging, with both advertising inserts, and extra sections.

You want the papers to be thin, so you can get them all in the car at one time.  So you can do your route in one fell swoop.  You can get 8 to 12 bundles in the back seat of your car if you’re doing the route alone. Or you can put 4 to 6 bundles in the back if you want to make room for a “helper.”  The unfolded papers go in the back. And the folded papers — the ones that are ready to be thrown from the window — go in the passenger seat.

So, looking down at the car from a bird’s-eye viewpoint, going clockwise, you would see a “driver” in the front, driving the route and throwing the papers from the window; folded papers in the passenger seat, ready to be thrown; unfolded papers in the rear seat on the passenger side (away from the open window); and a “helper” in the rear seat behind the driver, folding the papers as you go along.

From 1979 to 1980, before I had my driver’s license, I was in the back seat of my mother’s Honda Accord***, and I was the “helper”.

Sitting in the back seat of a Honda, folding papers on a morning paper route, is not an enviable place to be.  There is cold air (or rain) coming in the open window in front of you.  There is the odor of ink and newsprint making you queasy, and the movement of the car making you carsick.

The car is never moving in a straight line. It is constantly weaving back and forth, toward a mailbox, or toward a driveway — around a parked car, or around a cul-de-sac.  We are driving on the left-hand side of the road in the neighborhoods, where traffic is non-existent at five in the morning.  We are driving on the left so we can throw the papers onto the driveway or onto the lawn from the driver’s side window. 

On the secondary roads, where traffic is light, but still a threat, we drive on the right. But then we have to throw the paper over the roof of the car, or stretch out as far as we can to cram the paper through the passenger side window, into the newspaper box next to (or under) the mailbox. 

You can try to throw the paper through the passenger side window, but that never works.  One end or the other will always hit the window frame, stutter, and then plop down in the gutter of the road.  And then you have to stop, walk around the car, and throw it up the driveway properly. It’s the newspaper deliverer’s walk of shame.  It’s not worth the time or the embarrassment.

It’s not bad if you’re the driver.  You don’t get so car sick, because you’ve got eyes on the road.  You get more heat from the air vents in the winter, and less exposure to the cold air from the open window.  The empty roads can give you a feeling of omnipotence, as if you were the only human on the planet, and the empty neighborhoods make you imagine a world without people — a world where frogs and crickets are the most vocal citizens of the night, and birds announce the arrival of dawn with a chorus of twittering.

Or, the driver may choose to listen to the radio instead.  When my mother drove the route, she would listen to Chuck Swindoll, a radio preacher whose radio show, Insight for Living, was broadcast on radio stations nationwide. 

Or she would listen to The Larry King Show, an interview show with a call-in audience from across the nation.   (I truly admire Larry King, most of all, for the flair with which he would abuse and then hang up on any caller that rambled for too long or too far off the topic.  Those callers got treated to Larry’s no-nonsense reprimand, and a “Click.” Then Larry would tell the audience what a nut the caller was.  That was the best part.  Nut cases were not tolerated on The Larry King Show.)

Occasionally she would listen to an FM station, for music instead of talk radio.  At least once a week, stations would broadcast American Top 40, with Casey Kasem, and I suspect it was played on repeat in the wee hours of the morning. 

There was a lot of music that we call yacht rock today, including Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, and the Doobie Brothers; and a lot of what we call soft rock as well: The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Air Supply, for example. 

But there were also stations that played “Oldies”, which at the time could be anything from swing (The Artie Shaw orchestra, The Benny Goodman orchestra, or the Andrews Sisters), to classic country artists (Tammy Wynette, George Jones, or Charley Pride), or pioneer rock and roll (The Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, or Bobby Vinton).

In 1979, “Oldies” could be anything from the 1930s, ‘40s, or ‘50s. This is the music that I might hear in the car, when my mother was driving, if I was lucky! Around this time (the late 1970s) Disco, Punk, Rap, Classic Rock, and Heavy Metal were all making their way into, or out of, the national consciousness. But generally they were not on the radio when my mom was driving.

Sometimes we had trouble — car trouble, or trouble with the weather.  I remember once, when it snowed, on a Sunday, we had trouble doing the route at anything approaching a normal speed.  We were driving slowly that day, and the papers were big. We were so slow and so late, that by the time we finished, there were children and parents out, bundled up in coats, mittens, and gloves playing in the snow.

Another time, there was sleet and freezing rain, and we made the ill-advised decision to attempt to climb a narrow alley off of Medlin Drive — to deliver papers to two or three houses at the top of the hill.  We failed on the first attempt to get up the hill, and on the second attempt we ended up with our car slipping off the side of the road. I still have a picture (starting to brown with age) of a sky blue Honda Acura hatchback, parked at a rakish angle, with one side only a few feet above the dark creek at the bottom of the road, and the other side perched on the icy incline of silvery-black chip and seal road.

Paper delivery in the worst imaginable weather.

I’m not sure how we got home that day; or how we finished the route.  I think we had to walk to a coin-operated phone kiosk at a strip mall nearby, and call for a ride.

When the morning deliveries were done, on the weekdays, I must have gone to school.  But I don’t remember those days.  I only remember the days we headed for the Your House breakfast restaurant, for scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, and grits (or a waffle). Or the days we went back home and I crawled back into the sweet warm covers of my bed.

I remember the morning paper route at night, and I remember my tenth grade high school classes during the day — as if they were two separate worlds.  By day, I was a normal teen, taking classes and going to marching band. By night, I was a newspaper “helper” — an independent contractor.  I was a master of paper folding, banding, and bagging; survivor of back seat confinement and sleep deprivation; an innocent victim of inclement weather, and a learned critic of AM/FM radio content.

Postscript

I only did the morning paper route with my mother for one year, from the fall of 1979 to the summer of 1980.  But it seemed like it was longer.  Much longer.  

After all, I did it every day of the year, seven days a week.  And if the papers were late… or misplaced, there was a vocal group of well informed, news-consuming customers ready to call the N&O to request redelivery.  We had to get it right… on the first run as much as possible.

It was my introduction to work and responsibility. It was my first experience with drudgery and toil.  It was work that left a fine powder of newsprint dust on the car dash and the stain of newspaper ink on my hands and face. 

Perhaps there were perks, in the end.  Seeing the world at night, in a way that few people do. Enjoying the full spectrum of the radio dial. Helping your family in a time of need. Learning to adapt and to persevere.

It produced, in me, a measure of maturity.  And an enduring appreciation for the craft and skill of newspaper men and women.  But it left in me a nascent fear of failure, that still occurs in my dreams.  

I went on to assist other carriers in the future, and I sometimes worked as a substitute carrier when those carriers needed or wanted to take a day off. 

I learned to fold papers, and drive at the same time—driving from one driveway to the next with my knee under the steering wheel.

I got to listen to my own radio station preferences; primarily on the FM radio dial. 

I came to love the Waffle House, which was the usual reward at the end of a completed route. 

I even earned academic scholarships from the News & Observer, paying for a portion of my college expenses — a kind of cosmic retribution. 

If only I could get those pesky dreams to go away.

A Waffle House, like I remember it — early in the morning.

Footnotes:

* Newspaper delivery, baby sitting, acting, and agricultural work are exceptions to the minimum age requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act in North Carolina.

** The Raleigh Times was a local afternoon newspaper dating back to at least 1901, that published its last edition on November 30, 1989.

*** The Honda Accord, by the way, was among the first cars from Japan to be sold in the US around the time of the nationwide gas shortage.  Better fuel efficiency made them more desirable.