Do we set the patterns of the world with our individual actions and thoughts? After all, nothing happens until someone forms a thought.
He was an eighteen year old kid wearing an orange tee-shirt. He was two car links in front of us at the traffic light. We waited in line; he had a heart attack. I will always have that memory.
I came by this idea in a place where my mind should not have been wandering…I drove to four different destinations today in heavy Los Angeles traffic and survived without harm or causing harm.

The area I covered was probably a total distance of eight to ten miles. I was in the car for a total of three hours.

The trouble with Los Angeles traffic today began early when the traffic reporter announced that there was a tree slide in the middle of a busy street in Brentwood.

I glanced at the television and, sure enough, there were trees lying across two lanes of traffic on Sepulveda Blvd. It looked like half-dozen trees from somebody’s cliff side back yard had fallen to the street below. This happens in LA, particularly after it has rained a couple of days. And much like the forest in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” or the walking trees from the movie, “The Lord of the Rings,” these errant trees wreak havoc.

Commuters would not arrive on time, patients would be late for doctor visits and the worst, today’s drivers were destined to while away large segments of their lives in long lines of traffic. Los Angeles is one of the worst places, but it is happening everywhere. It is happening to Charlotte, and even, the crossroads of Shuffletown.

Driving in LA exposes you to unlikely circumstances. I swear in the year 2004, Lee and I were tooling down Barrington Drive. Lee was driving. We had not reached Nebraska Ave., we were approaching University High School, when a kid passed us driving a jeep. He was rocking, flaps were flying and drums were thumping. He was even jumping up and down in his seat. He was an eighteen year old kid wearing an orange tee-shirt. He was two car links in front of us at the traffic light. We waited in line; he had a heart attack. I will always have that memory.

I spend a lot of my life in traffic between West LA, Brentwood, and Beverly Hills. The problem is that it takes almost thirty minutes to drive two miles in LA traffic.

When I am driving in LA traffic I am more alert than an Indy racer. Because, I, too, feel like I am driving while straddling a gas tank.

I try to stay calm. My eyes dart in four directions, my ears are more alert than those of a startled rabbit. Sometimes, I am so alert that it takes a honking car to get my attention.

I have my traffic mantras. I always remind myself to breathe. I see glorious fall seasons ablaze with the colors of the rainbow, the mountain brook, the lightness of the evening breeze, and the freedom of thunderstorms, fire and ice.

Today, a woman on a cell phone blew her horn at me, while my wheels were still rolling up to the stop sign. I was driving on a street in a sun-dappled neighborhood and suddenly, her horn blasted at me. Did she want me to run the stop sign? She didn’t care about the stop sign; she just wanted me out of the way.

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Koons’ Dog

Here I am, again. It is wintertime. Ground Hog Day has passed and I am living on Bentley Avenue in West Los Angeles. I am writing to you from the “City of the Angels,” Los Angeles, my winter home. This city is the lollipop of success filled with the promise of glamour and glitz.

Here, in this land of hype, the trees, the air, people quiver with expectancy because at any given moment, at any given hour, hundreds are waiting, 24/7, to hear from an agent.

Los Angeles is the mythical land where the highways and interstates are lined with Bentleys, Ferraris, and an assortment of shiny four-wheeled baubles that cost more than most people make in a lifetime. Stretch limousines slide silently through the traffic with darkened windows. I am pretty much convinced that there is an unwritten code that stipulates to be on the success track, the wife must drive a large black SUV or, in special circumstances, drive a BMW in a car pool. This is the “Land of Me” and the birthplace of road rage and illusion.

Also, Los Angeles is the land of valets. If you like to open doors for folks…Los Angeles needs you. There is a valet job waiting for you. A valet lives large in this land of sunshine. My favorite grocery store in Century City has valet services every day. Well-coiffed LA matrons arrives driving Jaguars, late model Cadillac’s and land yacht Lincolns pull into the valet section to hand over their cars to courteous men in red jackets who work for tips.

As to tips, valets need to perfect a style for either good or evil. The choice is to either endear yourselves to the car owner or assume an air of being so aloof that the car owner would fear not giving you a large enough tip.

In Los Angeles, houses are paper-clipped on the sides of hills and in the last couple of years, following a heavy rain, one or two houses splits in half and begins to slide down the cliff taking the house below it with them as they crash to the bottom. Currently, there is a mansion in Encino whose foundation split into two pieces and is ever so slowly sliding off the mountain. This event holds everyone’s attention for at least a week. In the fall, the public’s attention is on the wildfires that occur and devour nature and mansions. Also, I would like to point out that the Los Angeles River is paved. I have actually seen a couple of scenic paintings of fish and rocks on the pavement, an addition painted by Los Angeles artists.

Los Angeles receives so much sunshine that the air is stoked with energy. It seems to vibrate with expectancy and it must be water droplets from the ocean that makes the city seem to sparkle. Somewhere in this town, someone is always signing a contract, writing a television show, waiting to hear from an agent.

The metropolis of Los Angeles is alive with dreams and littered with dashed hopes. There is always an air of expectancy in Los Angeles. This feeling of expectancy is as real as the sea breezes that blow into West Los Angeles from Santa Monica. There is always an air of expectancy hanging about Los Angeles. Here, in this land of hype, the trees, the air, people quiver with expectancy because at any given moment, at any given hour, hundreds are waiting, 24/7, to hear from an agent.

Los Angeles has too much sunshine; it stokes the citizens with energy overload and this overload drives them to believe their dreams. The air is cluttered with dreams. It is almost as if you should be able to pluck a dream from the air.

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Silence is loud in the city. It is the noise of life. City streets, all hours of the day, are lined with cars and trucks in every shape and color; each jockeying for the quickest route home. It is a constant parade of vehicles and people, dogs, bicycles, taxis, ambulances, police, fire trucks, and buses. Standard Utility Vans roll by above the flow. Many are talking on cell phones totally unconscious of the world outside their windows, even; sometimes to the signals of green and red…stop and go. Horns blare and wheels squeal.
I am also fond of this time of day. Contentment is contagious and as I watch my dogs relaxed and content, I settle into the moment and let my mind wander.
We live in a second floor condominium in a small complex that was built around a rectangle swimming pool. Each unit opens on a walkway above the first floor pool area. The pool is usually still and deserted, except for two weeks when Nancy’s grandchildren visit. You could say that we are near water.

Yet, only streets away from this hyper-activity of traffic, in the shaded neighborhood, squirrels eat nuts in the middle of the street. Crows squawk at each other from pole to pole keeping watch for hawks.

We are waiting for Lee, Jipper, Sassy and me. He had called to say he was ten minutes away. When he calls, we follow routine and move into waiting formation.

When Lee calls to announce his impending arrival, I release the hounds, two small overfed Pomeranians. The dogs take their places on the walkway above the swimming pool where they watch the first floor for signs of life. They are not in a hurry. Until Lee arrives, they will bark a greeting to anyone who steps up to the elevator below. They are patient with life, for eventually Lee will step through the garage door and walk to the elevator. Until then, they listen and watch. Silence is a perspective. It is in the pauses that we find ourselves and hear the mourning dove cooing for its mate.

This is the dogs’ favorite time of day, well, except for walks, riding in the car, “getting up time,” which is often four in the morning, and treats.

While they enjoy all escort duty, bringing guests from the elevator to our front door. Their two favorite escorts are food deliveries and Lee. It is the best of the bests, a great honor, in another day of wonder, marching Lee home bringing another work day to a close.

Sassy trots down the concrete walkway towards the elevator. When she reaches the appropriate spot, she lays her belly and body down as smoothly as maple syrup on hot pancakes. When she is in place, she is so round and furry that it looks like someone dropped their fur muff on the floor. She likes to keep her belly cool. Sassy settles just as easily onto the green grass when we are in North Carolina. I always thought she only did this in Carolina because, well, it was home. Only today, I noticed that she seems just as content on concrete as grass.

Jipper won’t go that far from the front door until he sees the top of Lee’s head pop through the door below. Jipper never forgets that he is a lap dog, and he considers a walk every 12 hours quite enough exercise. But this time of day was an exception to the rule, his ears are up and alert. Today, he will see Lee first. He will be the first to bark the alarm.

I am also fond of this time of day. Contentment is contagious and as I watch my dogs relaxed and content, I settle into the moment and let my mind wander.

If we pause, if we settle into the rhythm, we find all. We adjust into the repetition of life. To the city dweller, this loud silence is no different than slumbering off to sleep to the song of the cicada with bull frogs singing bass.

We’ve got trouble with a capital, “T,” Right here in River City. Yes, we have trouble in this great community of old and new neighborhoods. This great community founded on the banks of the Catawba River is being hustled by the real estate grifters that frequent the hallways and backrooms of our formerly beloved, City of Charlotte.

I say your young men’ll be frittering! Frittering away their noontime, suppertime, chore time, too.”

We’ve got trouble with a capital, “T,” because we are not being treated equally by said beloved city. They aren’t listening to us as we complain about snarled traffic, discarded homes, and crime. There was a time when what is happening to us was called “taxation without representation”. Trouble. Trouble. Trouble.

We’ve got taxes with a capital “T,” property values are now so high that those who own a few acres of land are being faced with hard choices about their lives and their land. Not to mention, we are still paying for a new arena that was voted down on our side of town… I learned this was taxation without representation in an elementary school history class.

Each day we fight traffic to get where we are going…as cars creep along our main traffic arteries: Mt. Holly-Huntersville Rd, Belhaven Blvd., Brookshire Blvd., and Rozzelles Ferry Road are like a gigantic centipede with crossed legs. We’ve got traffic with a capital “T.” And, the city has assured us that there is no solution to this problem in sight; especially with the opening of I-485 and the Mountain Island Promenade to be built on the east corner of the crossroads of Mt. Holly-Huntersville Rd. Trouble. Trouble.

We’ve got crime. Crime with a capital, “C.” A member of Cook’s Memorial Church told me last week that if you put flowers on a grave in the graveyard behind the church they will be quickly destroyed or sitting on someone’s dinner table by sunset.

We suddenly have a community of idle young men with too much time on their hands. Harold, the con-artist in the play/movie called, “The Music Man,” said it best:

I say your young men’ll be frittering! Frittering away their noontime, suppertime, chore time, too.”

These young men that fritter their lives away have taken up transgressions of vandalism and burglary upon their neighbors. There is a whole lot of frittering going on in this area.

Crime is so blatant here that the other day, one of our merchants watched from his office window as a young man parked a low-slung dark car beside his truck. The young man opened his back car door and then opened the door to the trunk. Just as the young man began to pilfer from the truck, the owner stepped outside and asked, “What you doing, son?”

“Son” reached in his pocket as if he was about to pull out a gun, but the owner already had a 12-gauge aimed towards the black car. “You ought to just get back in your car and leave peaceably,” the owner suggested. “Son” took his suggestion and backed out of his yard at a high speed.

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The New Year is upon us. Like many I have given consideration to my New Year’s resolutions. I have one failed resolution that I have made over and over for many years. It goes something like this: this year, I will not be so outspoken.

Age, old age, is an excuse for many things: you can talk to people on elevators without being arrested, flirt with young men for the fun of it, and give advice no one listens to or cares to hear.

Last year, I resolved to share my opinions only with my dogs, Sassy and Jipper. I think that resolution was broken by 9:45 am January 2. This year I am dispensing with any resolutions. Even, my favorite January resolution which is to resolve to exercise on a regular basis. I can’t keep this one either, though, I did set out on a brisk walk once this past October. If you count rolling out the garbage can on Thursday, well, I semi-completed this resolution.

Resolutions work like this with me. They irritate my dogs and just thinking about them makes me irascible. At my extended age changing a stubborn personality like mine is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It is not that I don’t believe in resolutions. I do. I am just too old, too impatient, and too head strong. Also, I have reached an age of freedom, an age of crankiness.

And speaking of cranky, I am so tired of developers who have chopped down acres and acres of trees and emaciated our community. One new developer has recently destroyed approximately 30 acres of pine trees. Tore them out of the earth, one by one. These pine trees were planted in the 1940s by Will Sherrill, one of Shuffletown’s dearest characters. This act of clearing acres of trees is what I consider a “crime against nature and our community.” This makes me cranky.

Age, old age, is an excuse for many things: you can talk to people on elevators without being arrested, flirt with young men for the fun of it, and give advice no one listens to or cares to hear. If I feel like it…I will wear unmatched shoes and odd clothing, but I promise to never show my belly button.

I have pretty much acted like this most of my life, but now I am older and I have an excuse. I can wear funny hats and sleep on the couch until 3 am, if I feel like it. Aging is good. Recently, I kept showing a police officer photos of my grandchildren while I searched through my purse for my driver’s license. This action garnered me a warning, not a speeding ticket.

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Christmas is not my favorite holiday. I prefer Ground Hog Day; a day when a man in a top hat holds up a stunned groundhog to remind us that any way you slice it … Spring is six weeks away. It’s a practical holiday, an instructive holiday, and kind of a spring advent calendar. There are other reasons I prefer Ground Hog Day: Ground Hog Day requires no preparation; no shopping; no guilt; and no expectations. Also, Ground Hog Day has not been discovered by advertising agencies and marketing executives.

This is a sacred time. December marks a holy time for many religions, yet today, the spirituality of the season has been lost in the debris of advertising.

Christmas on the other hand is the darling of advertising. Thanks to those wonderful folks who turned a football game into Oscar time for commercials, Christmas has been turned into a shopping event of Olympic proportions.

Christmas now follows Halloween. All Saint’s Day has been pushed aside to make way for the annual Holiday Shopping Season. For example: while the children are sorting through their pile of candy pilfered from friends and neighbors … employees like elves creep into a certain national chain of coffee shops and before dawn they have transformed the stores into a Holiday market filled an array of gifts to purchase while waiting for your Holiday cup containing more than 2,500 calories. A good fifty-five days before Christmas Day, you can begin consuming holiday lattes in a green or red cup and by Christmas morning, you have consumed 137,500 calories.

This is a sacred time. December marks a holy time for many religions, yet today, the spirituality of the season has been lost in the debris of advertising.

As a historian, setting aside famine, drought, and plagues … in my opinion, holiday shopping accounts for more than 99% of family strife, 99% of our national debt, and the genesis of the winter flu season brought on by holiday letdown.

Was it always like this? Is it just me, but has this season that was meant to fortify us is now beginning to make me feel melancholy and wistful? I have regrets in this season. I regret that all of us will not celebrate a wonderful holiday. Those advertisements I speak of … can make those who should save their money feel that they should spend extravagantly on presents that will take them years to finish paying back the debt. I regret that so many trees die, undecorated and forgotten in tree lots. Is it the stress of holiday shopping that drives some shopping center Santa’s to drink? Look at the mess we have made of this blessed season.

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What happened is this. The television was blaring, the dogs were sleeping, and I was sitting in front of my computer staring out the window. The computer screen glowered.

I require these distractions because, as a divorced mother, I spent many years and evenings writing articles while in the background my children watched television or took down the house in their music. I learned to write surrounded with noise and distractions. Yet, hours can go by without noticing what is on the television or the noise.

Each month, as deadlines approach, I am forced to think, to give thought almost every hour of each disappearing day for a column topic. In the in-between times, when the column is finished, I have been known not to think at all.

Focusing on one subject from the depths of this dense mind is like running a monthly marathon. And as my friends know, I would never run — unless I am being chased. One this late evening, I couldn’t write two agreeable paragraphs. I was stuck like a bug on a strip of flypaper.

Out of my eye, I caught the flash of golden robes as the members of the choir filed into place. They began to sing from the television screen.

“I’m gonna put on my long white robe, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside. Gonna study war no more.”

I stopped typing. Leaned on my elbows. They were calling to me. I turned my attention to the screen thinking. “I have to stop thinking and pay attention now. This is where God enters.”

Gospel music speaks to my soul, like pinto beans, potato salad, and fried chicken. It is deep in my roots like spring wisteria, gathering at harvest time; and Carolina red dirt.

Gospel Music is the sound of the world when I was a child and the faith I was taught while sitting between my parents, Richard Franklin and Josephine Link Rozzelle. I learned the Golden Rule in my youth to the sounds of music.

There are so many things Southern that were so wrong. Yet, there are things Southern that are so right that they should not be forgotten or overlooked. Even though, our region is stained with a bloody history. It is not just a place of bad and ungodly history. Maybe this history is what drives southerners to study humanity very closely.

In the south, we were once born to the dirt for our existence. We are told stories lying in the crib, standing in line, and at funerals. We love to sing to tell stories, and to laugh, most times, at ourselves.

As I listened to the televised choir, I recalled the time I first spoke in public. I was to give the eulogy at the funeral of a dear beloved friend, Janie McGee Clemons. I was scared to death. No, I was terrified. It has been many years past since I have answered a question out loud — in a classroom.

As I took a seat, I noticed to my horror that the only microphone was on the podium where the minister was speaking. He stood in front of the choir. All, the way down that long aisle; I was praying to do well. However, I never expected such a heavenly response.

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I was walking after midnight to avoid the day-time August heat. August heat captures our daylight hours and holds the fortunate hostages inside their igloos.

It is the sultry heat that roasts corn stalks and scalds cement. Even at midnight, you can feel it getting ready to sizzle soon. I had waited way too late for my quiet walk, but I harnessed my dogs, locked the door,

For me at least, it is spooky walking in darkness, even in the friendliest of neighborhoods.

Here and there, lights glowed in windows; from their hiding places, the ever-constant crickets sang hallelujahs to the universal mysteries. The smell of ripeness shrouded the stillness. The thirst of longing for water still can be felt. Yet, I shivered in the 80-plus degree heat.

Darkness played games with my much too vivid imagination. So, this should not come as a surprise, for me to tell you that I had stepped into my memories as I followed my dogs’ steps.

Maybe it was the familiar smells and walking with my dogs. As I have always had dogs at my side throughout my life.

At a bend in the sidewalk beneath the cover of a tree, I slipped into my past and met who I once was. A young kid dressed in a gingham shirt and shorts, running home in the dark from Pearlie’s house with my dog, Skipper.

We were on a well-worn footpath between the corn fields that ran beside the barn, a dark barn where the cows slept. Only the Katydids and the Cicadas broke the silence. I was late and Mom would be mad. As I approached the barn, I picked up speed. The door to the hayloft was open and the darkness gawked at me. Ghost tales that had scared me sleepless when I was young came to mind as I called to Skipper to keep up.

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Some of my most cherished memories are of visits with Cousin Phyllis; the nights I slipped away to her house for unscheduled visits.

About once a month, when I felt the need to aside good sense, I would visit Cousin Phyllis with the intent of leading her astray knowing she would be an eager participant. I would jump in my car and drive the short distance to her house. I rarely dressed for the occasion; I threw my red robe over my purple pajamas and slipped my feet into my pink fuzzy bedroom shoes. Sometimes, I would call, sometimes, I wouldn’t bother.

Since I was the visitor not the visited, it was my responsibility to bring a pack of Merit cigarettes and a jug of wine which I purchased at the 24/7 convenience store in the east corner of Shuffletown crossroads. The clerk was usually Fred.

Fred was an affable man who collected stamps. His choice of clothes was always the same: a leather vest over a well-worn cowboy shirt, a string tie and his pipe always hung from a corner of his mouth. Any purchase required a short conversation with Fred, who was never uptight or rushed. He was there to talk and make change. He never seemed to notice that I stood before him dressed like a Clarabelle.

Once back in the car, I drove 500 feet down Mt. Holly Huntersville Road turned left onto Uncle Johnny’s long gravel driveway and turned right onto Phyllis’s driveway. Sometimes, in my enthusiasm, I brought my car to a stop too close by the apple tree Phyllis had planted the day she moved into her home.

When this happened, I would climb over the “PRNDL” (the thing that says, P for park, R for Reverse, D for drive, etc. etc.) and crawl out the right car door.

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I am a Southern Redneck. I am a River Rat who learned to swim in the Catawba River and I am descended from Revolutionary soldiers who turned the tide of the American Revolution. I am descended from Rednecks, River Rats, and Revolutionaries. It is my birthright, my heritage and my upbringing. I am North Carolina bred; a child born in what was once known as the Great Back Country. How lucky can you be?

I arrived at this prideful stand while performing my duties as the unofficial Shuffletown ambassador to the People’s Republic of California. In the past four years, I have come face-to-face with prejudice. This prejudice has become a sport enjoyed by those born outside the South; those who have accepted as truth that all Southern rednecks are dumb as cabbage, rowdy, beer guzzling, white bigots who speak with a speech impediment and marry their cousins. I take particular offense to the last assumption. It is a sport practiced with smugness and arrogance. And I am tired of it.

At dinner parties I have been treated like a quaint human specimen who has a hoop skirt hanging in my closet. A native of Brooklyn once looked at me and said, “I just don’t understand “youse” guys who say, “y’all.”

Because Southerners are good-natured and appreciate a good joke or tale, we have been too long in denial. These are bad tidings, but it is time we spoke of it openly. It is time for us to stand together. It is time for us to set aside our tolerance — time, to educate the less fortunate.

We, the fortunate, have assumed that the days of prejudice are behind us. We have been lulled into this condition by the mass Northern migrations overtaking the South. Due to our natural hospitality, we have tolerated the jokes and assumptions because they are now our neighbors and friends. And, it is very likely, they will never return to their former lives.

As they settle among us, great amounts of understanding will be required. Especially with those seeking refuge from the crazed, over-stressed, smog laden cities of Boston, Los Angeles, and the Mecca of induced insanity, New York City.

The South is America’s pacifier. In American family rooms throughout our nation, media propaganda about the South is fed to us like candy. Many come to think that no matter how bad things are, “well, at least, we were not born in the South.”

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