When the first little snow came a couple of weeks ago, you didn't see any snowmen.
But after last week's big snow--big for us since we don't get 'em except about every 10 years now--there were plenty of snowmen, snowwomen, snow creatures, snow angels and snow somethings-or-others.
I got several calls on snowmen. The calls included one from James Usher, who lives over on Oliver Street, about a snowman that he and his children made. What's unusual is that I took a photo of James with a snowman back when he was a young man, many moons ago.
He is 43 now with a family of his own, and is a self-employed carpenter, brick mason and home improvement and remodeling man. His wife, Evelyn, is a teacher's assistant in Goldsboro.
After last week's snow, James said his youngest child, Iaeshia, eight, wanted him to build her a snowman.
James has four other children, James Jr., 11, Yolonda Usher, 20, and two grown-and-gone children, Laquita Miles and Mike McCullen.
"My baby child kept saying, 'Daddy, I want you to build me a snowman.' I won't going to do it at first, because I thought we might get wet and get sick," he said.
But he said his daughter kept insisting.
"Then I said, 'Well, if we get sick, we just get sick. It don't snow that much here, so we decided to go ahead and build it--and she loved it!"
It makes me realize I'm getting old when folks like James tell me I used to take their photos when they were kids.

Don't know about you, but even I--a snow lover--was glad to see the mess leave with the rain Sunday.
But, tell you what! This fat boy got himself another bait of snow cream once more. It doesn't snow enough here anymore to get enough snow for snow cream, 'cept about every 10 years.
I also talked with many others who said they had eaten a lot of snow cream. Snow cream is more of a Southern thing, kinda like grits and collards, 'cause them Yankees don't know what's good noway.
Even heard Bill Leslie on WRAL-TV 5 news telling about making snow cream and beating up an egg in the mixture of condensed milk (it's better than other milk) and real vanilla flavoring.
I learned about another person who loves snow cream, too, and ate a lot--Calypso Commissioner Diane Lewis. She even made some with the first little snow we had.
I've always loved snow cream because mama always made it when I was growing up. But it snowed more often then and we had it every winter.
To me, snow cream is about three times better than Bryer's premium ice cream.
I know I'll pay for eating so much snow cream, 'cause I gain weight instantly anyway. But, what the heck, I'll be on Social Security before we'll get another snowfall big enough to scoop up enough for snow cream.
Anybody who doesn't like snow cream has got to be a dull individual, I think. I bet even Republicans like it. Or is that snow jobs they like?

Getting around in the ice was treacherous, and I kept my big butt in slow motion because I didn't want to wind up in the emergency room.
I've had two broken arms, a broken ankle, broken wrist and broken fingers (not all at once, of course) from being clumsy and falling as a child. And broken bones don't feel good.
Another reason I am careful in ice is that when I was about 14 I busted my head on hard-packed ice on the road in front of my house and wound up hospitalized with a brain concussion.
We kids were running and sliding on the packed ice on the road about two days after a big snow. The rest of 'em glided like Olympic skaters, but my feet went out from under me on my first try.
They told me the back of my head hit the ice and pavement. The last thing I remembered, before I woke up in the hospital, was running toward the ice. And I had the headache for a month afterwards.
There were some similar packed places of ice in parking lots around here till Sunday. Some of them were so slick that a bird couldn't stand up on 'em.

Michael Saviak, local barber and hair stylist, was shoveling snow in front of his shop on North Center Street last week.
But he had a funny-looking shovel. The top part was a crutch.
"That's my state workers shovel," Mike said. "Something they can lean on."
There is a photo of it above with today's column.
Now before anybody gets their drawers in a wad, it's all a good-natured joke. No offense intended.
You know how people are so super-sensitive and politically correct now, and get all bent out of shape, even with good clean humor.
Mike is not belittling anyone, it's just a well-known joke about state workers not doing any hard work. A joke that is as old as the one about policemen eating doughnuts.
My daddy had a friend who worked with the state highway department one time, and daddy always teased him, telling him that he wouldn't ever die of hard work.
Mike said a relative fixed the shovel as a novelty item and gave it to him.
So, now if you see Mike with the odd-looking shovel, you'll know what it is.

TILL NEXT WEEK, and thanks for reading this stuff:
This Dobbersville man says a mobile home salesman is a wheel estate dealer.
This Dudley man says the ice was so bad last week that he saw a dog chasing a cat--and they both were skating.
This Suttontown woman says nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action.
And Ruth--you remember Ruth from Seven Springs School--was sitting in the living room with her husband and watching the snow fall last week as it got colder and colder.
"You know, honey," her husband said, "that thermometer just keeps dropping."
"Well, dear," Ruth says, "why don't you use some stronger cord and nails on it?"

Mike and his shovel

Staff photo/NELSON BLAND
BUILD SNOWMAN--James Usher Sr., right, of Oliver Street, and his children, Iaeshia, eight, and James Jr., 11, pose with the snowman they built in their yard last week.

When they had an old-fashioned hog-killing day Friday at Harold Barwick's farm here, Mrs. Sallie Hardy of Mount Olive and her sister, Mrs. Dora Beavers of Seven Springs--in photo above--were there cooking the noontime meal for the workers.
A lot of you will know Mrs. Sallie, who is a familiar sight in the summertime at Harold's produce stand on NC 55 just east of town.
Mrs. Sallie and Mrs. Dora had the kitchen steamed up and smelling good.
"We're cooking some fresh pork tenderloin and biscuits, some collard greens, rice, steak, gravy, butterbeans, peas, sweet potatoes, rutabagas and corn," Mrs. Sallie said.
The two sisters know how to cook. Mrs. Sallie retired after 24 years as a cook in the Carver School lunchroom, and Mrs. Dora was manager of the lunchroom at Spring Creek School.
They said they started cooking at hog-killings when their parents, the late Jesse and Elma Williams, had hog killings at their homeplace on NC 111 near Seven Springs.
"We were raised in the country and know a lot about hog-killings," Mrs. Sallie said. "Until Dora got big enough to cook, I cooked for the hog-killings at our house. When she got big enough, she took my place and I went to help them work in the stuff outside, and she cooked."
The two said they enjoyed preparing dinner for the crew last Friday and Saturday.
Mrs. Sallie said he likes almost any type pork meat, but she loves liver hash.
"I told Harold I wanted a liver with everything on it to make me a pot of liver hash," she said.

Like Harold, who is just a few years older than me, I was raised around hog-killings.
When daddy had hog-killings, friends and neighbors would come to help. Men would bring their big butcher knives, women would bring pots and pans and such.
When I got old enough to drive I would go to town to get Mrs. Myrtie Southerland on Steele Street, my mama's best friend. Mrs. Myrtie always came out with this big old enameled pan which had been patched on the bottom and a bunch of dishcloths and towels.
Mama, Mrs. Myrtie and a black lady who I grew up with (she was not a hired hand, but a close friend of our family), Hattie "Sister" Battle, would fix dinner on hog-killing day.
They'd cook some of the fresh tenderloins and biscuits, rice and gravy, sweet 'taters, cracklings and such, like Mrs. Sallie and Mrs. Dora were doing.
If you ain't never had a tenderloin biscuit or a juicy sweet 'tater dobbed into some brown and crunchy cracklings, you ain't country.

One of the Mexican men helping at Harold's hog-killing, Angel Sanchez--who spoke good English--was telling me that goat is more popular than pork in Mexico.
He said they also cook pork in Mexico, but not like we do. He said they season it with pepper and such, and cook it in big pots in chunks until its almost fried.
He said they also barbecue goats.
Mexicans love goat meat, he said, and in Mexico they butcher goats much like we do hogs--they even make goat sausage.
Angel said the goats are usually barbecued in a big hole in the ground that is filled with burning wood, then when it gets down hot coals, the goat is wrapped in some kind of catcus leaves, put in the hole and covered for hours.
"It is better than pork, it is juicer," he said, smiling.
Folks around here have cooked goats before, too, I learned from Harold. He said when he was a little boy, his mama, the late Mrs. Hattie Barwick, cooked goat.
"If you didn't know any better," Harold said. "You would think it was stew beef!"
He recalled the time when his older brother, the late Harvey J. Barwick, was cooking a goat stew under the barn shelter.
"We were building something and 'J.' wouldn't let nobody go up there to eat until we got through with what were doing," Harold said. "But when we got there, the old dog was up on the table and had eaten every bit of the goat meat and was licking out the pot!"
Harold said the Mexicans also barbecue cow heads in the ground like they do goats.
"When they take it up, the meat is so tender it is falling off the head," he said, "but I can't eat none of that because the cow is still looking up at you!"

--nb--

Mrs. Helen Bell

My fourth-grade teacher at Mount Olive Elementary School, Mrs. Helen Bell, celebrated her 84th birthday recently.
Mrs. Bell is in good health, still drives, tends to her yard at her North Center Street home here and is up on current events, her grandson, Chuck Bell told me.
The picture here of Mrs. Bell, which is about the way she looked when she was my teacher, is one that Chuck provided.
Mrs. Bell, who taught at several schools, including Calypso and Seven Springs, retired from teaching in 1976 at Mount Olive Junior High, the same building that was the elementary school when I was in her fourth-grade room.
It was there that I broke my arm on the sliding board. (I've always been clumsy.) Back then (1954) there was no rescue squad, but Mrs. Bell put me in her new 1954 Chevrolet and drove me to the Henderson-Crumpler Clinic on North Center Street, exactly five blocks from the school.
I was in excruciating pain and felt every crack and bug in the road that the car ran over.
Chuck said his grandmama was an outstanding basketball player at Mount Olive High where she graduated in 1932, and also played basketball in college.
"She still loves sports," he said, "and she is a proud Democrat, too."
(I knew she has always been a super-nice person for some reason.)
Mrs. Bell has been a widow since 1955. She and her husband, Raymond Bell, had one son, Charles Bell of Mount Olive, who we all know as "Tinker."
Happy Birthday, Mrs. Bell! And I still thank you for taking me to Dr. W.H. Crumpler that day to ease my pain and have my broken arm set.

TILL NEXT WEEK, and thanks for reading this stuff:
This Dobbersville man said the snow we had last week was the first snow job in weeks that hadn't come from Washington.
This Faison man says his new prescription glasses are so thick he can look at a road map and see people waving.
This Pricetown man says the weather service was wrong in its Monday forecast. But he said probably the last completely accurate forecast was when God told Noah there was 100 percent chance of precipitation.
And Ruth--you remember Ruth from Seven Springs School--was working as a waitress at a Goldsboro restaurant when she was about 18.
One day a man ordered a steak, and after tasting it he yelled, "Waitress, this steak isn't very tender!"
And Ruth says, "If it's affection you want, sir, you'd better speak to the cashier."

Staff photo/NELSON BLAND
COOK FOR CREW--Sallie Hardy, left, of Mount Olive, stirring a pot of vegetables, and her sister, Dora Beavers of Seven Springs, holding a pan of biscuits fresh from the oven, cook for the crew on "hog-killing day" Friday at the Harold Barwick farm here.

Coming through Faison the other day I noticed how things have changed downtown. Like Pug Precythe's old service station that was once the heartbeat of the business district. It's now empty and deteriorating.
Pug's used to be the place to hang out where you found out the latest gossip and news. Pug was always busy with his ever-present cigar in mouth, pumping gas and patching tires or whatever.
That was back in the late 60s when I worked as a clerk at the Faison ABC Store, which is closed now.
The other day while going through a box of old Tribune photos I took about 25 years ago, I noticed one at a fire training in Faison. Back when I was young and creative. It was taken by the existing light on the fire truck's panel.
The photo, reprinted above, shows Faison Fire Chief Glenn Jernigan (who is still chief and has been a hundred years) and another person I can't identify. Glenn had more and darker hair back then.
'Course you know Glenn is now the high sheriff of Duplin County. In the almost 30 years I've dealt with Glenn, he's always been honest and fair with me. He's a good person and a good Democrat, too.

In some of the old photos I also saw one of Faison Chief of Police Randy Brock investigating vandalism at Hee Haw's Package Store that was run by the late Melvin Rogers.
Randy's hair ain't dark no more like it is in the photo. It's gray--and he's like some of the rest of us, he ain't no spring chicken no more.
I chatted with ol' Randy the other night at a fire at Faison. He's been at Faison for more than a quarter of century now, and is a good down-home, small-town cop like you would find in Normal Rockwell's America.
Randy's never been big-headed, arrogant or a smart-tail. He's just Randy and everybody likes him. He fell right in the footsteps of the late Faison police chief Wade Wheless.
When I worked at the ABC store, Wade used to escort me to the bank to make the night deposits. And he would often stop in and chat with me.
I never had to call Wade for an emergency but one time, when this local alcoholic came in the store in tizzy. He had the DTs, even his eyeballs were trembling. He was intoxicated and I told him I couldn't sell him anything, which was a law.
Next thing I knew, the man had sailed across the counter, grabbed a pint of Smirnoff 100-proof vodka and done and drunk half of it before Wade got there. Enough to kill a normal person.
Wade came and carted the man off.
Poor fella was in bad shape, but he got enough 100-proof vodka to calm him down.

A man who I took pictures of when he was just a tiny tot in mini rescue suits, Davis Brinson, is running for register of deeds in Duplin County.
Davis is the son of well-liked, retired Duplin County EMS director Hiram Brinson of Kenansville.
Like his daddy, Davis is a good strong Democrat. Davis has always been a fine person, a gentle and honest guy. I've seen him grow up and he's 27 now, but it seems like just last year that he was a little kid hanging around with Hiram.
Hiram has a nickname for me, and when he called me the other day to ask if I would interview Davis, I knew it was Hiram.
Back in the old days when I first started with the Tribune, news photographers actually had flashbulbs they put in reflectors. Won't no electronic flashes then.
Hiram gave me a nickname that he has always called me. "Flashbulb." So when I picked up the phone and someone said, "Flashbulb," I knew it was Hiram.
That reminds me of something that Hiram, who has a good sense of humor and is full of fun, once said at a national EMS convention where there was a speaker from the National Weather Service, I think. Anyway, the topic was storms, tornadoes and such.
When the speaker got through, he asked the audience if anyone had any questions.
"Yes, I do," Hiram said, raising his hand. "Could you tell me what tornadoes sounded like before they had freight trains?"

Our town manager, I. Ray McDonald Sr. (the "I" stands for In The Groove) got a bouquet the other day, I am told.
You remember over a year ago, before he was hired, the town had a "search committee" to look for a town manager.
Well, when Ray walked in his office one day last week there was this old vase with a bunch of ugly weather-beaten, dried flowers, stems, weeds and such in it, I hear.
But it had a nice little note that read something like, "Congratulations on your first anniversary. The search committee."
Also, there is a plot in Maplewood Cemetery here someone has laid out for Ray. It has a marker--the little metal kind the funeral homes stick in the ground, about a 4x6-inch deal. It's between the plots of Ray's buddies A.N. Martin and his brother, George.
The plaque with Ray's name reads something to the effect that here will lay the truth forever.
Wonder if A.N., George, retired Tribune general manager Leonard Teachey and the rest of the McDonald's coffee bunch that hangs around with Ray know anything about all this?

Here's a list that someone gave me that contains actual items in church bulletins:
Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. is done.
Low Self-Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 p.m. Please use the back door.
A songfest was hell at the Methodist Church Wednesday.
Tuesday at 4 p.m. there will be an ice cream social. All ladies giving milk will please come early.
A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
Weight Watchers will meet at 7 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door on the side.
Mrs. Johnson will be entering their hospital this week for testes.
The Lutheran Men's group will meet at 6 p.m. Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans and bread will be served for a nominal feel.
For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
The senior choir invites any member of the congregation who enjoys sinning to join the choir.

TILL NEXT WEEK, and thanks for reading this stuff:
This Grantham man says life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.
This Suttontown woman says women are the only problem that men like to wrestle with.
This Pricetown man says his girlfriend has a Sunday school face and Saturday night ideas.
And Ruth--you remember Ruth from Seven Springs School--was 14 when she told he mother she was going steady, and got permission for the boy to come to her house.
One day her boyfriend asked Ruth, "Can I have just one more kiss before I go?"
"No, we ain't got time," Ruth says. "My parents will be home in an hour."

IT WON'T YESTERDAY--This old Tribune photo was taken about 25 years ago and shows Faison Fire Chief Glenn Jernigan, right, (he is still fire chief) and another person beside a fire truck at a nighttime training session.

Hey Phil Baddour, John Kerr, Carolyn Russell up there in the legislature, Governor Hunt or somebody. Help!
Please get us some assistance down here in little ol' Mount Olive with the state-maintained (and long worn-out) Breazeale Avenue.
The street, named after one of our mayors, the late Pete Breazeale, is eat up with potholes, bumps, lumps, humps, broken pavement, splits, patched and repatched craters, etc. Has been for years and is getting worse.
Our town manager, Ray McDonald Sr., tried to get something done. But I just read in the paper where some state DOT bigwig says the street, which is the major artery in town, is not in an urban area or something like that, so therefore it is not on a priority list.
Now we all know how politics, politicians and priority lists work up in that great political heaven called Raleigh. And don't tell me that Phil, John or somebody can't get some kind of ball rolling to get something done.
In the "Big Apple of Wayne County"--Goldsboro--George Street is, like Breazeale, the old US 117. But a few years ago it got nicely resurfaced somehow.
Mount Olive--Wayne County's little red-headed stepchild to most politicians and state officials--is south of the Neuse River and on a different planet than Raleigh, but folks here pay state taxes, too.
I hear complaints about Breazeale all the time. It will wear your car's front end out.
But no bigwig political contributor, honcho politician or super-university president or such have to drive it. If they did, it would have been paved smooth as silk years ago.
The state can pave roads (so I have read) for big-shot developers in the Triangle, for rich folks to get to UNC games in Blue Heaven and such.
Heck, little ol' Breazeale Avenue ain't a drop in the state's political-favors bucket with that.
So, please Phil, John, somebody--shucks, maybe even Carolyn Russell--can't you all look into this for us shock-worn, tax-paying motorists?
I know Big John has some "pull" in Raleigh and has got some good road projects done in other places. And I'll give him credit, he does visit Mount Olive a lot--not just at re-election time.
So, y'all, help! Please!
I see where you all are seeking re-election, and whoever gets something done about Breazeale Avenue (and I will let folks around here know if you do) will, no doubt, get the vote of everybody who has to ride on that street.
I'd even recommend voting for a Republican if he or she could get Breazeale Avenue resurfaced.

Ray Starling, a/k/a Santa Claus--you know the man who drives the old ugly pickup truck like the Beverly Hillbillies, and appears in them Bobby Denning TV ads, is running for the State House.
He will oppose Phil Baddour, but I told Ray he will, as my grandmama used to say, have to get up before day if he ever beats Phil, a Democrat.
(But, hey, if Ray could find a way to get Breazeale Avenue repaved, he might could.)
Ray's a nice fellow. About the only thing wrong with him is he is a Republican. But sometimes you can overlook that.
I will always like Phil Baddour for introducing the intruder's bill, where residents may use deadly force to protect themselves if they fear their life is in danger by someone breaking in on them.
Saw where my all-time favorite Republican, Rep. Carolyn Russell of Goldsboro, is running for re-election.
Mark my word, that woman--who is a great everyday, friendly, Democrat-like lady--has what it takes to be lieutenant governor or even governor one day.
She's got my vote if she runs for either one.

Betcha can get a good deal on the Y2K survival books and kits today.
Now that the end didn't come and the Y2K bug didn't bite, what is the big news media going to talk about now? Why it didn't happen?
I never paid it much mind noway. I just figured that some computers may just put wrong dates on stuff. (Of course, I despise computers anyway.)
Now, to justify the non-Y2K event, they're saying all these companies and so forth spent millions correcting the problem.
But you didn't hear that till after January 1. All you heard was your car wouldn't crank, you would have no lights, no phones, no gas, planes would fall from the sky and all this other crap.
At one of these superstores last Saturday, I saw people actually buying up flashlights, oil lamps and so on. (They'd been watching too much TV.)
I noticed a few weeks ago in the big new bookstore at Goldsboro there were all kinds of books on how to survive Y2K.
The easiest way I found to survive was to stay home, flop my big butt on the couch and watch TV with Dick Clark and the big ball falling in Times Square.
So, all the Y2K gloom-and-doomers can go somewhere and sit down. (They've probably made enough to retire, anyway.)

Some lunatics--as there always have been--thought the world would come to an end on the first day of Y2K.
But I like what I read in a paper about the Rev. Billy Graham (my all-time favorite TV preacher), who was commenting on that.
He said the Bible says not even the angels in Heaven know when the end will come.
He also predicted that January 1, 2000 would be just another day. And he was right.
He said God can chose any day to end the world and wouldn't have to wait for New Year's Day.
He also said we should not try to figure out what God's plans are, but to put our faith in God--that God has brought us this far, so we should not doubt Him.
Rev. Graham said we should be more concerned with living like Christ would want us to every day and not worry about a calendar date. He said people should go out of their way to love everybody, including those who are different.
He said what most people don't realize is that we all are sinners, and we cannot pick and choose which sin is not acceptable according to our own lives.

TILL NEXT WEEK, and thanks for reading this stuff:
This Faison man says he knows a politician whose idea of safe sex is no press.
This Dobbersville woman says you can't take it with you, so you might as well wear it out while you are here.
This local attorney says 80 percent of married men cheat in Mount Olive; the rest go out of town.
And Ruth--you remember Ruth form Seven Springs School--had to write a fifth-grade essay using different words in sentences. The first word the teacher gave her was "Republicans."
"My cat just had a litter," Ruth wrote, "and all the kittens are Republicans."
The teacher praised her and said that was creative.
The next week the teacher gave Ruth the word "Democrats."
Ruth wrote, "My cat just had a litter," she said, "and all the kittens are Democrats."
But the teacher said, "Now, Ruth, don't you think you ought to use a different sentence?"
"It is different, teacher," Ruth says. "They've opened their eyes now."