Month: August 2019

BEST YET

                Dad started in the wholesale business in the late 40’s or early 50’s, after spending his first year or two out of the navy working as a carpenter on the payroll of Charlton Forbis (Sanford’s brother and Shannon (Shank)’s uncle), who was a subcontractor for TJ Watson, a general contractor who was building houses for the returning veterans in booming Charlotte. There were no precut studs in those days and no power saws, at least none owned by Charlton, and Dad said he spent many an hour cutting studs, window and floor jacks, floor and ceiling joists, and rafters with a hand saw. My partner, Frank Griffin, said he was called to the law following a mule in a cotton field. I guess Dad was called to the mercantile business by an arm tired of cutting lumber.

Given what I wrote yesterday, in reality, I guess I was only quasi rather
than semi recruited by Carolina, but I was definitely semi recruited to play
football by Wake Forest. East Meck head coach, Don Hipps, SS teacher at St
John’s Baptist and prodigious as well as prolific purveyor of extremely
creative profanity and vulgarity, as, when chastising Martin Brackett for
sluggish performance at Monday morning pre-season practice, Coach inquired
as to whether he’d spent the weekend sitting around playing with his
colorfully characterized male member, had played blocking back in the
single-wing at Wake, maybe under Peahead Walker. I don’t know whether Hipps
put in a good word for me at Wake or not (if he did, he didn’t tell me), but
an assistant coach invited me up for their opening game of the ’63 season
against Va Tech.

1967 was an eventful year for me. I don’t remember how it started off but it ended with one of the greatest blessings of my life, the birth of my first child, Tom,Jr on Christmas eve. At spring break, I swapped my 1965 Volvo with Mom for her Mercury Meteor and Bill Carr and I took off for Greensboro where we picked up my girlfriend, Janet Tweed, a sophomore at WC, for Womens College,  as UNCG was called at the time, proceeded to Durham to pick up her brother, Doug, a freshman at Duke who I was meeting for the first time, and his buddy, Steve Cornelison, and proceeded to the Tweed home in Virginia Beach for a little R&R. We were graciously hosted by Janet’s mother, Mary, who I was also meeting for the first time. Her father, Mac, was in Viet Nam. Janet and I drove Bill to Newport News where he was going to spend break with a buddy of his from Mars Hill. Driving thru the long tunnel to get to NN, an event, while not as dramatic as the other events described herein, occurred which I feel sure is indelibly etched in the three of our olfactory memories. But, I digress…