Bill's World

If Jack Robinson hadn’t been a successful and honored airlines pilot, he would have been the best of whatever else he did.
Jack died the other day. He was the captain of his ship. He flew planes all over the world. He sat in the pilot’s seat – out front. In command.  Soft-voiced. Capable. In all walks of life, he led, and people followed.
I had met Jack several times in the past, but it was when he moved into Covenant Village a couple of years ago that we got to know each other. Mostly in the dining room, lingering over coffee in the evening, chatting on an autumn bench while waiting for a friend to show.
He rode his electric wheel chair like he flew his many airplanes – carefully, politely, and always on the lookout. Wheelchairs are safe, but there are no caution lights.
Jack Robinson was one of God’s true gentlemen. Soft of voice. Sure of statement. Firm of conviction. Concerned.
He was a pilot who took nothing for granted. Check it once; check it twice. Then, check it again.  I can imagine that if Jack had been flying the plane that ditched in the Hudson a year ago, the outcome would have been similar. I would wager that there were many times when he walked that thin, red line of heroism, but nobody knew about it.
One of my other heroes is Dr. Bob Blake, retired Gastonia orthopedic surgeon. He and Jack Robinson were long-time friends. The following was written by Blake back in August and was printed  in the periodical “Echoes from the Sky.” It is a rare tribute, one friend to another, and it is my privilege, my pleasure, to offer it here:

To my friend, Jack Robinson, whose career spanned the open cockpit to the jet aircraft.

He has heard the wind in the wires, vibrated with the roar of the radial engine and has been kissed by raw exhaust. He has seen the world upside down and spinning around – then felt the secure tug of the lap belt at the bottom of a loop.

He has gripped the cold yoke of a C-54, traveling with the stars, on black nights over the lonely North Atlantic. He has seen majestic sunrises and sunsets. He has felt the vicious hands of angry July thunderstorms, shaking the very rivets of his airplane. His calm hands have guided DC-9s down the ILS beams in marginal weather to reunite lovers, families and friends while “flying the line” for the airlines. He is truly Mr. Aviation!
Your friend, Bob Blake, August 2009

Former Senator Jim Broyhill was in town for the funeral of Pat Craig and stopped off to see his buddy, Dub Dickson.

There was a time – probably more than once – when ol’ Dub was Broyhill’s Gaston County chairman of Broyhill’s re-election committee.

The two formed a close relationship over the years and used to play tennis back when they were younger and stronger.

They’d play today except they forgot where the tennis court is.

I was the recipient of an email that Broyhill had sent regarding his friend, Dub. Here, mostly, is what the former senator wrote:

Let me share a story involving me and Dub. You need to know that my dad wasn’t very big on talk. He said what he wanted to say and meant for it to be understood without a lot of pretty words.

Dub Dickson and I were playing tennis at the tennis court my brother and I

had built in between our houses there in Lenoir.

Dad drove up to the house, saw us playing tennis and came up to look on for a bit. (Now you have to understand that although Dad played golf he had never played tennis, and really didn’t know a great deal about the game.

( As a matter of fact he had never seen a golf course or tennis court until he was well up in years after he left the farm.)

Well, old Dub gets the tennis ball, and serves it to me, and I knock it in

the net. We do that a few times and Dub wins the game.

When it is my serve, I serve the ball to Dub and he knocks it in the net.

Dad watched us do that a few times, and he snorted: “Umpf!!! Neither one of you is any good!” and turned around and walked off!

It had not taken him five minutes to discover the truth about our tennis game!

I used to play tennis with Dub and a bunch of other old guys.

What’s that they mean when they yell out, “SERVE!?”

The first time I saw Pat Craig was in 1950.  He had returned from World War II unscathed and had received his formal education at Erskine College in Due West S.C.
He had settled in with his dad, “Mister E.D.”, at Craig Motor Company and soon found that he was at the bottom of the corporate ladder, with many rungs to climb.
At that time, I was a reporter with The Gazette, and one of my duties was to do a weekly column called “Things You Auto Know.”  Those “auto-know” things involved visiting the auto dealers in the city, find out what was going on, and writing about them.
It was then that I got a glimpse now and then of Pat Craig.
Later on, we played golf together. Met each other at civic and social gatherings. And, much later, found ourselves in the “Gang of 24.”
It wasn’t all that bad. In fact, it was totally good. The gang consisted of local veterans who were born in 1924, had mostly graduated from Gastonia High School together, had gone off to war and come back. And met once a year at the City Club for breakfast and to talk about times past.

I was playing golf with Pat one day when he told me that he was attending the ’24 meeting next day. I told him I was a year younger, but would I qualify. He said he’d slip me in.
Pat Craig died the other day and his funereal was held at First Presbyterian Church on Garrison Boulevard.
The Gang of ’24 – more lately “The Group of ‘24”, was there to tell Pat goodbye. Together with some of his golfing buddies, we sat as honorary pallbearers during the funeral and then formed a double line to honor family members as they exited the sanctuary.
I had the feeling that Pat would smile with satisfaction at what was said about him, both during the service and a reception that followed. He was never one to hide his thoughts or feelings. He knew the difference between right and wrong, and he was not bashful about letting his leanings be known.
His long-time friend, Bill Keith, got to know Pat through business dealings. Keith was the chief executive of First Union Bank and Craig was running Craig Motor Company back there in the ‘60s and ‘70s. There were times when Craig needed to borrow a large amount of money during hard times.
Keith said: “When his note was due, he would come up on the escalator and loud enough for everyone to hear say: “’I’M NOT PAYING MORE THAN  HALF A PERCENT OVER PRIME, OR I’LL MOVE MY ACCOUNT!’”
Keith said that he’d try to hush his customer so that no one else could hear, but Pat knew what he would do, and no more. “We let him have it at that rate.”
More lately, both would recall Craig’s antics at the ’24 Group’s meeting, and have a hearty laugh about it all.
Members of the group are 85 now.
With one fewer in number than they were several days ago.

Remember what the poet said about beauty — that a thing of beauty is a joy forever?
Well, I kind of look at spider webs in the same fashion, with perhaps a slight variation. I think a spider web is a joy for a little while. But not forever. Just… a little while.
I have discovered that even though I do not seek, I find.
I go out in the morning to pick up the paper, and there it is – stretched horizontally across the walkway so that it hits me just under my nose and gets tangled in my yet unshaven beard.
If I could see it, I would avoid it.
If I could remember from one day to the next, I would try to see it.
As it is, this one spider figures it is essential to jump start my day with his own little juices that come from an orifice on his body that I don’t know whether it’s up or down.
And there it is, right under my nose.
OK, I’ll admit that some spider webs are pretty. And the little twerps know what they are doing. You can knock down their perfectly formulated web and go back an hour later and find another web – a facsimile of the first.
I did that. Went back the second time, and the third a day later. Each time, I’d see Ol’ Spider sitting up there high and dry and watching me destroy his art work. The last time — you might not believe this — but it sure looked like he was giving me the finger.

There is this organization called Spiders Anonymous, and they are out to do me in.
Not only do they get under my nose early in the morning, but I can be walking a trail either in Gastonia or Lake Lure, and they have gone on ahead and are waiting for me. There is nothing in God’s Great Plan that says a spider can stretch his resources 30 feet from nowhere to nowhere and get me again just under the nose and around my ear – all of which causes, again, that itchy-bitchy feeling.
It is my feeling that wars are started over less than this.

There must be a hidden truth somewhere in this mess.
And that’s why I complained to my wife.
First, I told her about all those spider webs in the nooks and crannies of our house. We went out, and we looked. It was my idea that, yes, some of those webs were very pretty, and that it took a skilled craftsman to make one. But I did not think that spiders and their webs were much to our advantage.
I wanted to kill ‘em. Destroy their houses. Step on their cute little boys and girls and then go laughing like a hyena back into the house.
What SHE  wanted to do was go back at night with a flashlight and shine it from different angles to see the beauty constructed there.
I closed my ears and my mouth stopped talking.
She got down the encyclopedia and looked up spiders, their habits, their webs. She went to the library and brought back books on spiders. She learned the names of certain spiders and said them to me.
I don’t hear well, and my memory stands by to help me forget what I do hear.
For awhile, she quoted me what she had learned. Took me by the elbow once again into the dark (she wouldn’t go by herself) to verify what she had learned.
It is difficult to be brilliantly certain when you certainly don’t know what you are talking about. And your wife stands there with a research book in each hand and obviously in command of the carefully hidden truth.
Which is…
Oh, to heck with it. All I know is that I will be out there tomorrow morning, and so will that spider web.
Right under my nose.

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