Oct 29, 2024
Man Of Few Words - Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders
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Man Of Few Words - Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders
Do you think I like covering up this luscious beard that makes me look like Frederick Douglass—if you look at me while squinting real hard through your bad eye after three Gin Rickeys?
It was a fall Saturday night in 1997, during the first Mack Brown era at UNC.
The Tar Heels were hosting Florida State’s very good football team, and the once-raucous crowd calmed down considerably when it became obvious that the home team — despite a valiant effort — wasn’t going to win.
I whipped out a cigar and lit it, and the crowd seated around me at Kenan Stadium rose as one once again. Only this time, they weren’t united in cheering the boys on the field. They were united in telling me — literally — where to stick that cigar.
Shouts of “YOU CAN’T SMOKE THAT IN HERE!” were accompanied by unprintable suggestions.
“In here?”
I looked around to make sure we were outside — we were — then dutifully mashed out the stogie. Chastened, my ears began to burn.
So did my thigh: turns out I hadn’t completely extinguished the cigar before stuffing it into my pocket.
As we filed out of the stadium, fans aghast that someone would so brazenly breach stadium etiquette were still giving me the fisheye and the business.
The same umbrage and dirty looks I inspired that night 23 years ago should be inspired by everyone who now runs around in the Age of Coronavirus without a face mask.
What is wrong with these people?
I was, in my defense, an ignorant country boy from Rockingham who, as the folks back home liked to say, “didn’t know no better.” What’s the excuse for people who refuse to mask up today, when public health officials tell us unequivocally that wearing masks can slow the spread of COVID-19?
It can’t be ignorance: We’ve all heard the exhortations to put on a mask when near others, and even the president — after five months of poo-pooing PPEs — was recently seen wearing one.
There are, sadly, people who care nothing about convention, even when it comes to the coronavirus.
Some, like the maskless musclebound mofo I saw shopping in Harris Teeter recently, think they are too cool to cover their mugs with a piece of potentially life-saving cloth. Do you think I like covering up this luscious beard that makes me look like Frederick Douglass — if you look at me while squinting real hard through your bad eye after three Gin Rickeys?
No, but I do it for the common good.
But others don’t care about themselves, so you know they don’t care about you and me.
That was not the case with the unmasked muscle head in the Teeter. He was so conscientious about his own health that he was, I swear, minutely inspecting greens and squeezing avocados to make sure they were perfect for whatever healthy concoction he was fixing to go home and toss into the blender.
Yet, his lack of concern for the minimum-wage earning employees who’ve been declared essential workers was such that he refused to mask up for the few minutes he was shopping. This chump personifies the reason my cousin, instead of celebrating the fact that his teenage daughter recently got her first job, is instead lamenting the fact that it is in a grocery store.
Sir Elton John, in his underrated song “I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford),” sings “If looks could kill, then I’d be a dead man.”
So would that dude in Harris Teeter. He’d have keeled over right there in front of the kumquats.
While drinking coffee last week at Brier Creek shopping center with my friend Jeff — he sat at one end of the bench, I, at the other, both masked and staring straight ahead as we talked — told me of a recent encounter with a neighbor who claims to have been a Navy SEAL.
Jeff: Where’s your mask?
Alleged SEAL: Oh, I don’t need one.
The man, Jeff said, has had several heart attacks and is of an age that makes him vulnerable.
Oy.
As someone — I think it was Shakespeare — once wrote:
Alas, don’t be a schnook
Cover your face no matter how good you look.
Your ignorance society cannot brook
If you can’t wear a mask
stay home and read a book.
BARRY SAUNDERS is a former columnist for The News & Observer. He now publishes thesaundersreport.com. Comment on this column at [email protected].
Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club.
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Remember how, in Easy Rider, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper went riding cross-country to find “the real America”? I found it, and I only had to drive eight miles from my house.
Man, oh man. How I wish President Trump had been riding with me last Friday … said no one ever.
Until now. Because, without an ounce of facetiousness, I surely wish the president had been hanging with me when my truck broke down in Durham. I’ll explain why directly.
As I was heading out to 15-501 — must’ve been about 4:30 p.m. on a Friday — a huge tanker that had just dropped off gas at Costco pulled up to the intersection and blocked my path.
Before I could start cussing and ask the driver what the [insert expletive here] he was doing, he leaped from the big rig, ran around the front of his truck, and came up to my driver’s side door. “Hey, man,” he informed me, “you’ve got a flat.”
Sure enough, I’d been blissfully tooling along down the road, obliviously grooving to Otis Redding singing “These Arms of Mine,” with my left rear tire as flat as three-day-old beer. I mean, that sucker was on the rim, Jack.
I thanked him, limped up to the gas station half a mile away, and asked the attendant for a bag of pork skins and change for the air pump. He gave it to me, but warned, “I don’t think it’s working.” People, he said, had been coming in to complain about it for the past week. “Here’s a number to call if it takes your money.”
Forewarned and disgusted, my tire busted, I eschewed the air pump and spied — like the mirage of a water fountain in the middle of the Sahara desert — the full-service service station across the street. I dashed — if a truck on a flat can be said to dash — across Guess Road and pulled into the RDU Car Care center.
The mechanic there was just sitting down to eat, so I apologized for interrupting and told him to finish his meal. He could finish his meal any time, he said. “What’s your problem?”
When he inflated the tire, the air seeped out only slightly less quickly than he’d put it in.
The tire was shot, he told me, noting a gash in the sidewall. “Wait a minute,” he added. “I think we’ve got one of those in the back.”
He then went into the back, climbed a ladder, and proceeded to toss down or push aside twenty or so tires before finding one that fit Otis (that’s my truck). The used tire was in terrific shape, so he went in and talked with the shop’s owner. He emerged a minute later and offered to put it on for less than half of what the tire and job were worth.
Right on, I said.
I was, like Willie Nelson, on the road again within minutes. Happens every day, right, people getting flats and Good Sams rushing to help?
Sure it does, but this is why I wish the president had been riding with me.
You know how President Trump seems to prefer a monochromatic vision of America? Well, the people who helped me get back on the road represented a rainbow coalition of auto angels: The tanker driver who leaped out of his truck to tell me I had a flat was a black guy. The cashier who saved me the trouble of filling up the tire temporarily was Latino. (Had I pumped in two minutes’ worth of air, I’d have gotten onto the highway and possibly had a blowout at 55 mph, endangering many other motorists. I also would have had just enough air to drive past RDU Car Care.) The mechanic who went hunting for a tire was a white dude. And the owner of the service station who sold me the tire at such a bargain was a Hindu from India.
None of this occurred to me until later.
Oh, it immediately struck me that each of these men had gone beyond what was required, but the fact that they represented four distinct parts of America didn’t hit me until later.
Remember how, in Easy Rider, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper went riding cross-country to find “the real America”? I found it, and I only had to drive eight miles from my house.
That’s the America I want the president to see.
Barry Saunders is a former News & Observer columnist who, over his two decades at the paper, wrote extensively about Durham. He now publishes thesaundersreport.com.
Next Week: T. Greg Douchette, a local criminal defense attorney, justice reform advocate, and host of the podcast #Fsck ’Em All.
INDY Voices — a rotating weekly column featuring some of the Triangle’s most compelling writers and thinkers — is made possible by contributions to the INDYPress Club. Visit KeepItINDY.com for more information. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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