Bill's World

I used to have a very bad habit of scaring the devil out of my wife when I would jump straight up in bed, yelling and thrashing about like Judgment Day had come and I was nowhere near ready.
She survived, the little guys in white uniforms didn’t come to take me away, and now I can look back on those days and chuckle – heh…heh…heh…oh, yes I can. I just do it when my wife is not around.

We were sitting around the dinner table the other evening, finishing dessert, lolly-gagging,  when the subject of bad dreams came up. One tale led to another and pretty soon some of us had become a little silly. Actually, I kind of lost my mind.
I tend to get a bit edgy when somebody goes poking around in my dreams.
My record goes way back when I slept with my brother, Marcelle. We slept in the “fire room” which also was the living room. We had a parlor, but we didn’t spend a lot of time there. Our two older sisters brought their dates there, but the only time I got the sights and smells in the parlor was when I sneaked in when nobody else was around.
I think my brother was the reason for my early-on bad dreams. He was four years older and would come in about four hours later at night than anyone else in the family. It would be cold in the fire room by that time – freezing, really.
He’d come in, shove me aside between those cold sheets and then crawl into the warmest spot in the house – where my hot little body had been sleeping. I was half asleep but I know that the experience landed deep inside my psyche and became justifiable material as a base for those future horrific dreams.

Anyhow, to get back to that dinner talk.
I told them about the night when, having been freshly married for a few months, I rose from my downy pad and made like a maniac way beyond the safe margin. I jumped straight up in bed, yelling, trying to fight off something on my head and…my new bride wondering how she could get out of those  matrimonial chains that bind.
Her heart pumping and on the verge of exploding, she finally made it to a bedside table and got a light turned on.
She said that I paused in mid-fit, looked around as if to say “where am I?” and then said: ‘I….uh…had just washed my hair and was outside and it started raining molasses!’”
It might well have been a carnivorous cannibal  slashing at me with a hatchet, as far as my wife was concerned. I apologized, told her that I would enroll in a dream-management course and went back to sleep.
She held up a finger and said: “That’s one.” And went back to sleep.

Number Two came a year or so later.
We had built a house by then and were looking around for furniture. We had heard of a place in Morganton (Nite Furniture Co., I think it was) that had good furniture at a reasonable price. We went, saw, and bought.
Everything went well for a few months when the marital bed once again erupted one night as I, once again, assumed the role of raving maniac.  Except, more so, this time.
I remember in that dream that one of my loved ones – perhaps more than one – was about to get smashed, like something falling on him or her. I used every ounce of energy to prevent this. I was young and in good shape, tough, forceful. I hit the footboard of the bed with all of my energy – legs, arms, head – and it crumpled like a paper cup smashed between hands.
The foot end of the bed went down and came to rest at a crazy angle.
The light went on and I could see fire in my wife’s eyes.
A crowd had gathered outside, and all was so quiet.
Especially in our bedroom.
See what happens when your brother uses up the warmest spot in the house.

I had lost track of Dr. Bill Eckbert and figured that he and his wife, Sarah, had slipped off to some retirement place in Florida and lived out their days in happiness and peace.

His obituary was in the paper Tuesday. He was 95, and there went one of God’s special people.

For over 55 years, he had practiced family medicine in Cramerton. He was a beloved member of the community, committing himself and his talents to the care of people, reaching out – always reaching out – in an effort to iron the wrinkles from somebody else’s life.

“Doctor Bill,” as he was affectionately known, was born in Pennsylvania, got his medical training at Duke while Sarah was becoming a nurse there. They were married at the end of Bill’s senior year in medical school, and Sarah was nursing at Duke Hospital.

The couple moved to Baltimore, Md., where Bill completed his post-graduate training in infectious disease and then moved to Crossnore where Sarah had grown up. Bill practiced medicine there and Sarah ran the small hospital before the onset of World War II.

It was at Crossnore where I probably had first met the two, but never realized that until years later, back in Gaston County. At that time, I was a student in the business college at Crossnore and had occasion to visit the hospital. It got so that when I walked through the door I could see heads turning like windmills, and somebody would say, “Here he comes again.”

After Pearl Harbor, Doctor Bill left his medical practice and joined the U.S. Army. He saw action in a glider regiment and later was placed in an infantry division that fought its way through France and through southern Germany.

After the end of the war, the Eckbert family settled in Cramerton and took over the practice of a retiring family physician.

The obit says: “In the early days, Sarah worked side by side with Bill in the office. Many times, they were not paid with money but with food: chickens, fish, fresh vegetables and fruits. As the only physician, Bill was always on call except for the one week in summer when he took the Eckbert family for a vacation to Daytona Beach.”

Later, the doctor recruited a partner, Dr. Rufus Davis. The two practiced together for many years, trading night calls so that each got some rest from the practice.

When Davis retired, Bill continued to practice until he retired at the age of 85.

The doctor and the nurse then moved to Winter Park, Fla., to be near their son’s family and their great-grandchildren.

Doctor Bill was a do-er of good. He practiced that, just like medicine.

(Kathryn Kosak)

What if you were sitting in church and you had just heard a good sermon and the minister asked you to take off your shoes and walk out of the church?
Would you do it?
You are thinking: Well, maybe. But probably not. Tell me more.
Well, it happened in a large church in Kernersville, near Winston Salem, a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what occurred:

Kathryn Kosak, formerly of Gastonia, is a member of Summit Church in Kernersville and has been attending there for some time. She is the daughter of Bob and Marilyn Kosak of Gastonia. She came here with her parents when she was two. Her dad landed here in the ’50s with that group that came down from Minnesota to open and run the new Lithium Corporation plant that opened near Bessemer City. It wasn’t long until he sent word back to Marilyn to come on down and bring the family. That included little two-year-old Kathryn.
The Kosaks became members of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Kathryn grew up there, graduated from Ashbrook High School and went off to UNC-Chapel Hill. She lives and works in Winston Salem at Mullen Advertising  as a media buyer.
She became a member of Summit Church, a non-denominational body with average attendance of around 1700.
So, with 1700 in attendance (three services) that Sunday two weeks ago, the Rev. Jonathan Robins was reminding his parishioners that there still is a lot of suffering and need in the world and that everybody needs to search themselves and do what they can to help.
Katheryn Kosak sat in the church that day and heard her minister ask the entire congregation to take off their shoes, leave them, and then walk out in their sox, or bare feet if they  had walked in soxless.
The request was an extension of a church drive to collect coats for a mission church being started in Baltimore. They need shoes, too, he said. And, underlying it all was his word about overcoming evil with good. He said that no one was obligated to do this. “Just do what’s in your heart.”

Said Kathryn:
“People started taking off their shoes immediately . I kept saying no, I’m not going to do this. I had a pair at home that I wouldn’t mind giving, or I could go buy a pair – but not this pair that was so really comfortable and was unique and a good mix of comfort and style.
“Eventually, I ended up deciding that I could make myself uncomfortable for someone else. I ended up like everyone else in church that day. I walked out into the cold, barefooted, cold – but warm all over, actually.”

It seems that, on that day, a lot of people took a big step in “overcoming evil with good.”

(Photo by Barry Caldwell)

I’m not sure about going on the road with our act but Darrell Bumgardner is great to work with.
He makes the music and I make shoes shine. And the harder he plays, the more I shine.
He had just moved into a hot number when I threw caution to the wind, unfurled my longest rag, stood up and started flickering around the floor like a lizard looking for love. I should have been looking for the shoe.
Darrell had waited patiently for the cue. The cue was the next shoeshine customer, which turned out to be two. One, a witch; and the other the pretty princess wrapped tight in love.
I was working on the princess’s shoes and was trying to brace myself to resist her charms when Darrell  put down  one tune and moved into another.  Playing his beautiful Alvarez mandolin, he knows my theme song, and there it was: Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy.
It started off:
Have you ever passed the corner of Fourth and Grand
Where a little ball of rhythm has a shoeshine stand
The people gather round and clap their hands
He’s a great big bundle of joy
He pops a boogie-woogie rag,
The Chattanooga shoeshine boy.

I moved right along with the beat, keeping time, trying to evoke an enticing little “pop” from that rag, but middle age has set in for me and the body is more like a grandfather clock. It keeps on ticking but things aren’t clicking.

(Time out here now for a commercial.)
What it was was Friday GTown Market, when vendors return to that new little park near uptown Gastonia, bringing their enticing foods and wares. I was there two weeks ago, shining shoes. Bumgardner (The Sonshyne Boyz) wanted to do what he could to help raise money for Crisis Assistance Ministry, so he volunteered to bring the music.
(Now, back to the program.)

He charges you a nickel just to shine one shoe
He makes the oldest kind of leather look like new
You feel as though you wanna dance when he gets through
He’s a great big bundle of joy.
He pops a boogie woogie rage, the Chattanooga shoeshine boy.

Traffic got off to a slow start. There for a while, I figured I’d have to get a bull horn and remind them that they didn’t need to swarm around like flies after garbage. I’d just like to  warm up my elbows, pop  a few rags.
Then, Darrell sent out some airbrushed notes, and the party began.

I put a shine on the shoes of Roy Lindsay Woods. He had sat while I shined and then said that his dad used to shine shoes near uptown Gastonia about 50 years ago. Roy, himself, is a visual artist. (704-678-7224)
Jack Spady is a long-time resident of Gastonia. We both know and love the Rev. Dr. M. O. Owens, and Jack gets to listen to M.O. preach every Sunday, and then plays golf with him when the weather permits. He said that “M.O.” (as he is known far and wide) “will sometimes play weather NOT permitting.
Martha Wilson of Gastonia had heard the music as she walked down South Street. She turned the corner and was caught. Darrell said he was going to play something special for her, something he had written himself. So, right on cue, he had that mandolin juicing up the place as Darrell sang his own “Christmas  in Carolina.” It was good enough to feel blanket-like warding off a chill.

He opens up for business when the clock strikes nine
He likes to get ‘em early when they’re feeling fine
Everybody gets a little rise and shine with a great big bundle of joy
He pops a boogie woogie rag, the Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy.

I toted up the take for a couple of hours of shines.
Forty dollars and three cents.
Heading for Crisis Assistance Ministry.
Heavy tippers, all.  Sympathetic hearts. Like springs of pure water.

I sit at my computer and look through the window into the woods above and beyond.

The path runs along the ridge nestled just this side of the woods. Pines and poplars and maples crowd along the path’s edge like children wanting to be first.

And, I don’t blame them. If I were as pretty as they are, I would want to be first, too.

It’s a funny thing. I look at this brilliant tapestry of color, and I see beauty as it filters through the window and nestles up close and personal. It does. Real beauty is like that. Warming.

I see trees and leaves with their spottings of bark . I see autumn through a wide lens. I dare not look too close for fear of missing something seen only as a whole. What I see is a piece of cloth put together by the Master. It is an orchestration; take away the drums and you have lost the beat. Smother the flute and feeling falls to the floor.

I realize that I am just sitting here entranced, and that I need something to rouse me from my reverie. Something did. It was the leaves falling, one or two at a time, that had hypnotized me. And it was the leaves, still falling, that puffed me with drafts of oxygen and brought me around.

I will never understand nature. I know that she is as much a revolving door as any modern contraption that allows humans to enter but keeps out those elements that make humans shiver. She was out there last spring, sewing her seeds, fertilizing her fields, making ready.

She sent sun and rain, and those bare branches that seemed like bones did their part. Out popped buds and leaves and flowers and the wonderful glow of life.

Now, here it is, fall. Once again. The revolving door has gone around in one form and has come back in another.

Let the music begin.

(How’d we get so lucky?)

The years keep crawling by and, yet, there’s Roy Hullett still clipping away, shaving somebody now and then, greeting his customers, wishing them well as they stroll out the door.
This time, it was Gastonia retired banker, Bob Crockett. He got up with a fresh aftershave and said he was a new man. Barber Hullett had pulled off another one.

For 59 years, Roy Hullett has plied his trade as a barber in Gastonia – all of that time on South Street. He owns Spindle Center Barber Shop at 192 South Street. Two other barbers – Pete Wells and Charles Faulkner – are long-time associates.

When Hullett came back from barber school in Durham in 1950, he settled in with Lloyd Spargo who had a shop on South Street where Dino’s restaurant is now. Hullett remained with Spargo until Hullett opened his first shop across the street in the building owned by then Congressman Basil Whitener.
In 1971, Hullett moved his Spindle Center Barber Shop back across the street to its present location sandwiched between the old Webb Theater and Duren’s Jewel Shop.  (Note: Hullett and Duren are on a collision course to see who survives on South the longest.)
Roy Hullett was born in Clover, S.C., in 1929 but moved with his family to Gastonia five years later. His first job was with a grocery store when he was 13.
“Back then,” he said, “this other boy and I were delivery boys. We rode our bikes and if the people weren’t home, we’d put groceries in their fridge for them, making sure that things were left like we found them.”
Later, while he still was in Gastonia High School, he worked for a few years with Pollock’s Shoe Store, making enough money to take a girl to a movie and have a milk shake and a burger later on.
In 1950, haircuts were 75 cents, shaves were 35 cents and a shoeshine was 20 cents. Customers got their shoes shined while their hair was being cut.
Roy said he knew he was on the right track when his instructor in barber school took one look at Roy’s first cutting and asked where he had been cutting hair.
“Haven’t,” Roy answered.
The instructor said the haircut not only was good but fast.
When he finished school six months later, Hullett said he could complete a shave in 30 seconds. His instructor advised him “to slow down with that razor before you slit somebody’s throat wide open.”
Do people still get flattops?
“Yes, but not as many as back in the fifties. I claim to have invented that. One day, I cut 19 flattops in a row.  I figure that’s some kind of record.”
“Back during ‘50s and ‘60s, did you shave any heads?”
“None. And I don’t shave many now. I don’t like to see ‘em, and I don’t like to do ‘em.”
“Do people unload their problems to barbers?”
“Yes, they do, but since alcohol came to the county and people stop off in bars, I guess bartenders hear more of that than we do as barbers. Still, they tell us a lot more than we need to know.”
Historically, women have shied away from barber shops. Does he cut the hair of women now?
“Yeah, I still cut a few. I also pierce their ears.”
“Do customers want to talk politics as they relax in the barber chair?
“Probably not as much as in the past. It takes two people  for that, and I’ve never taken a lot of interest in politics. I am not a politician.”
Now, horse trading is something else for Hullett. He got into horse trading years ago when he bought a pony for a son. In a short while, he had bought another pony and a horse. A daughter came along and she needed a horse.
He soon found that he was doing a bit of swapping, “mostly to satisfy my daughter.”  One day, he made a trip to Kentucky and brought back several horses. Sold them. Made a little money. Had a lot of fun.
He also was hooked.
Before he slacked off, he had bought and sold more than 200 horses. “I learned a lot about horses, and a little more about people,” he said.
He believes that horses can teach kids a lot of things that adults have trouble teaching.
In sum, that’s a little about Roy Hullett, hair cutter and horse trader.
Also piercer of  ears.

ROY HULLETT…he has cut hair on South Street for more than half a century

The second thing I do when I get ready to do a bit of writing is turn on my computer.

The first thing I do is turn on my radio. To 95.7, “The Ride.” That’s the Charlotte station that plays my kind of music. Is it Classic Rock? I’m not sure. It could be.

Right now, the tune is “Send Me Out An SOS.” They have been singing that line for at least a minute, one time after another. Send me out an SOS…send me out an SOS…send me out a SOS.

Once in a while, they’ll sing another line: “Message in a bot-tle…message in a bot-tle…message in a bot-tle.”

I have no clue what they are talking about. I really don’t want to know. All I know is that it is a good tune, has a good beat, and my “inner self” tells me that I like it.

Right now, they have moved on to something else. Has something to do with “walking in my sleep”…walking in my sleep…walking in my sleep.

There must be an unwritten law that requires an artist to sing a line three times, throw in a little jazzy music, and then sing it three more times. Then repeat a few times again. I’m not sure about all this, but it makes sense. If you get hold of something good to eat, you want to keep on eating.

Same way with music.

My alarm clock is music.

My car radio is music.

When I drive alone in my wife’s car, her radio is music. When I turn off the switch and forget to return the dial to her favorite station, my name is mud. (Not really. She is my Sweet Little Baboo, and sweet little baboos know the value of marital tranquility.)

A good friend sent me a computer program called “Juke Box.” It is a jewel, a rare jewel.

Select any year from the ‘40s to the ‘80s, click on that year, and the Juke Box pops up with 20 hits of that year. I just did that for 1970, and now I’m listening to “Ride Captain, Ride, on Your Mystery Ship.” A great song. It has been lying way back there in my memory, waiting like a virgin in a brothel.

The Captain rides his ship to the end, to be replaced by Lola – Lo-la, Lo-la. La-la-Lola.

I find little pleasure in listening to someone else’s boom box while we wait for the traffic light to change. With my windows up, however, I ease up the volume until I can feel the beat just this side of concussion.

I like a good combination of tone and rhythm. And there is plenty of it around. You don’t have to settle for drivel or mumbo jumbo. Chuck the muck and move on to something pleasing.

There it is now.

“Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy.”

I’ll be right back.

Gotta get my shoe-shine kit.

Gotta make that rag pop.

It is not necessary that my car’s windshield be as clean as a china plate, but it does help to tell night from day out there.

I concluded that the other day when a lot of stuff I was seeing seemed to be covered with melted Milky Ways – or something else kind of chocolate-covered looking.

“Wipers,” I said to myself. “I need a new set of wipers.”

That was some time ago. I do not rush to the nearest auto shop when a light flashes on my dashboard or a brake parachute flops out of the exhaust and waves at me through that little mirror up there. “Check engine soon” has about the same meaning as “Car left out in rain.”

They are Red Flags, all, however. It would help if I were not color blind.

Anyhow, I got up my nerve and went to the auto-supply place.

I get scared every time I go there. They give you carbon copies of a Waffle House greeting, and by then I know I’ve been had.

I used to be able to go in the auto place and know exactly where to find what I wanted. Back then, I kept a few quarts of oil at hand when the light came on. Put in a quart or two and take a right turn onto Mindless Pursuit Blvd. A good quart of oil will do that. It might be six months before that little light comes on again.

This time, it probably was a bit more serious. With all that streaky stuff on the windshield during a sludge rain, the windshield looked like I had thrown up on it and wiped it with an oily rag.

I needed wipers. That’s plural. I found that it’s hard to buy a singular wiper these days. They come in twos. One, I guess, if you have an affidavit.

That wasn’t the real problem. It was two I needed, anyhow, for my wife, who rides with me at times, also likes to see where she is going. It is hard for her to say “turn here” when the sign might say “Stop!”

The problem was in finding a wiper that will do the job and not cost an arm and a leg. I know that’s a cliché, but I’m still limping from the last car inspection that the state declared that my car needed.

The clerk said: “Do you want a wiper that is good, one that is medium good or one that wipes a lot of things but refuses to work on windshields?”

She brought out The Book. I might be wrong on this but it looked to me that nothing else was in The Book except wipers. Big wipers. Small wipers. All in between wipers. Wipers made in heaven.

Wipers that really wipe. Wipers that play a little tune to the wiper beat. Wipers that fall off if you make a too-sharp turn. Wipers that, once attached, require an atomic explosion to make them let go.

Finally, I told the nice lady that I’d take a wiper somewhere in the mid range of whatever ranges were available. Actually two wipers, because my wife also likes to see.

The nice lady typed into her computer for a few minutes, looked happy over what she saw and gave me a figure of $34 and some cents. I could be off a dollar or two on that because dollars go in and out of my brain (pocketbook) in a hurry.

The best car I ever had was my old ’34 Dodge sedan.

It carried me through four years of college and gave up the ghost two days before we got married. Betty and I — not Leapin’ Lena (car’s name) and I.

It sat there smiling as my honey and I headed off on our honeymoon.

A one-wiper car.

Every marriage should have such a beginning.

Back during the early thirties of the last century, it was about as dependable as daylight when some of the members of our large family would be congregated on the front porch on a Sunday afternoon, and Gran’ma would be holding sway.

And when Gran’ma held sway, things usually went her way. She was big. Had trouble getting around. Had a room all to herself, and took no prisoners.

She figured herself religious, though she never went to church. Too much trouble, she said; and she was right. She had her own thoughts on all things, and that settled the case.

One Sunday afternoon, a few of our 11-member family were settled on the porch and were watching the usual four or five boys playing peggy on the school ground just across the road.

The Fink family lived a couple of hundred yards to the west, and to get to “up street,” the more daring of their also-big family took a shortcut through a field.

It was through that shortcut that one of the middle Fink boys was walking and whistling.

All eight of the Williams kids knew Virgil as well as all eight of the Fink kids knew us.

This time, however, Virgil was alone, and he was walking fast and whistling to beat the band.

Loud and shrill and commanding. He was a happy little feller, about 13 or 14, and the more people who heard, the better.

Gran’ma must have been in her 70s by then, and you’d think that by being that old back then was about like climbing the Alps. But, her hearing was good. She could hear a mousetrap closing when she was in the fire room and the trap was in a closet in the kitchen.

This time, Gran’ma heard Virgil Fink whistling. Loud and shrill and commanding. He was whistling a radio song, and that made it all the worse.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and all the signs were wrong. Or right. If it had been a Las Vegas slot machine, there would have been quarters all over the floor as she intoned:

“Look at that! There goes Virgil Fink, WHISTLING ON SUNDAY!”

To Gran’ma, that was as bad as stealing from the Poorbox.

She went on to live a few more years and died when I was in the Air Corps at Dover Air Force Base, Dover, Del.

The Red Cross man came to me and informed me that my grandmother had died.

On the way home on the train for her funeral, I had to remember her as she and I walked arm-in-arm during those years of my youth, and her years as life’s curtain was on the way down.

I came to conclude that Gran’ma had little of life’s material things, but what she had, she appreciated. She wore life like an old pair of shoes, and hoped for the best.

It was one of those pre-autumn afternoons when you feel like you are an advertisement for jelly, but you don’t know why.

Kind of listless, but yet yearning.

We traveled the last few miles on 74-64 going into Lake Lure, always an elegant, satisfying  journey.  We moved on by the Pumpkin Center of the South, where future Jack-O-Lanterns are stacked by the thousands, and memories abound.

The late Zack Whitesides had an idea about half a century ago. He would plant a field of pumpkins and see if anyone would buy them.

Buy them, they did. Snatched them up, couldn’t get seeds in the ground fast enough.

The farmer-turned-pumpkin-man has been dead now for half a dozen years, but the pumpkins live on. And when a full moon sprouts in the east and shines down on that mountain of ghost heads, ride slowly by there with your car window down and know the feeling that your backbone suddenly has become a chocolate éclair.

A mile or so down the highway and turn right on Bill’s Creek Road. Come to those huge patches of now-gone tomatoes and left on Buffalo Creek Road.

Finally, go down that snake-curved stretch and right to cross the creek.

Left, and the fellow at the gate gives you a big grin and the place now called Rumbling Bald Mountain at Lake Lure offers a breeze that fluttered against my face like an old kiss. Nice.

The place was busy. Cars coming and going. Lot of people playing golf.

And more than all others were those walking, talking, standing – just looking.

There was a lot to see.

Anywhere along the 18-mile perimeter of Lake Lure, one can pause and look and see beauty hardly matched in this hemisphere. You might have seen it from a pontoon boat and watched as the sun set behind Old Shumont — red  and round and brilliant as a blooded egg yolk.

Or, you might have seen it from the area where the famous “Dirty Dancing” movie shots were made and wished that you could have been there when Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey dancing and falling in love.

Running just below the surface of looking and walking and humming there was a lot of less action than more. People were just standing and looking…

As if they were waiting for something BIG to happen…

Such as The President dropping down in a helicopter.

Or Patrick Swayze paddling up in a boat.

Down there by the edge of the lake, a couple paused in their amble to look eastward into the forest and see what they could see. And what were they searching for? – the first blush of autumn. They thought they had found it in the blood-red leaves of a sumac tree, shining now like a new-minted copper penny.

This was not a weekend for autumn’s annual blaze. That fire had begun up there in the higher elevations around Beech Mountain and Boone and was working its steady progression downward.

One of these days, within the next week or two, the fire would come to Lake Lure. Home owners and visitors would open their doors one bright morning and fall would have arrived, shining like a brand-new tapestry hanging on the north wall.

Then, the real pointing would have begun.