Popcorn Sutton: A Hell Of A Life is now on YouTube

The legend of Popcorn Sutton lives on.  The man was already larger than life when he was with us.  Sixteen years after he tragically passed away, Sutton seems even bigger than ever.  Not long ago I saw a guy wearing a shirt with Popcorn's image on it.  And memes featuring him continue to populate the Internet.  I am forever going to regret that...

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Welcome home Sergeant Hardy

Came upon this obituary on the website of a funeral home that is back where I'm from originally.  I find this fascinating, on so many levels. Official Obituary ofDavid Eugene HardyNovember 1, 1928 ~ February 28, 1951 (age 22)SGT David Eugene Hardy was born on Nov 1, 1928 and died on Feb 28, 1951 as a POW at Camp 5, Pyoktong, North Korea. ...

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GOOD NEWS: Short Sugar's BBQ Sauce is hitting store shelves soon-ish!

This blog has been SLAMMED with visitors since three days ago coming to read about Short Sugar's Bar-B-Q in Reidsville, North Carolina shutting down after more than 75 years in business.  The counter has been ringing up visits from all fifty states, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Germany, even some people in Brazil. There were few corners of the globe that hadn't...

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Dateline: Reidsville, North Carolina: Short Sugar's is no more

Of all the things that the Biden economy has destroyed, in its final days it has taken down one last victim.  And being a proud son of the town of Reidsville, North Carolina, this is the most bitter loss of all.Short Sugar's Pit Bar-B-Q1949 ~ 2025The sad word came down earlier today.  Reidsville's most famous restaurant has shuttered for good.Short Sugar's had been...

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Excellent article in The Assembly about Popcorn Sutton

It's quite difficult to believe that more than fifteen years have passed since Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton left us.  He was a man who I had come to very much want to meet, after hearing so much about him from both the web and people who knew him firsthand.  When I told my best friend from college that I had heard about "this guy Popcorn Sutton" Ed's eyes lit up...

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In memory of a good man

The sad word came late yesterday evening that Dav Gerrells, who owned and operated Cafe 99 in Reidsville, North Carolina for many years, passed away after a brief illness over the weekend.  I used to eat at Cafe 99 when I still lived in Reidsville and Dav always made me feel welcome.  The man was a thoroughly great guy and he was an amazing cook.Early in 2007 I entered...

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Tammy and me at Kitty Hawk

Today is the 120th anniversary of the first powered air flight, by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk on the  Outer Banks of North Carolina.In May of 2017, not long after coming back east after nearly a year of traveling across America, I took my dog Tammy on a day trip to the Outer Banks.  I wanted her to be able to say (to other dogs anyway) that she has seen the...

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The legend of Popcorn Sutton lives on! Family is (legally) brewing famed 'shiner's likker

Yowza!!  And I've thought that many times over the past several years or so, in regard to the memory of Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton.  Longtime readers will remember when I was posting about Popcorn with machine gun-regularity.  I'd always wanted to meet the man.  Unfortunately that never happened.  In March of 2009, a few days before he was supposed to...

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Lenten Bloging 2022: Day 32

For the past six days we've been watching it like a hurricane, churning ever closer and gaining strength along the way.  It has become the perfect storm: nothing like this has happened before and nothing like it will ever happen again.  We are bracing for a collision of gargantuan proportions and no matter who wins it will be a battle for the ages.Tonight, Duke plays North Carolina in the NCAA Basketball Tournament semifinal.The two teams...

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COVID-19: It's time to reopen America

I'm still  choosing to be coy about where fate landed me after I left North Carolina almost four years ago.  Even so, I still keep an eye on my old home state, and I'll forever be proud to have been a son of the Tarheel State (even if my basketball proclivities lay toward Duke, but I digress...). Right now I'm sitting in some abject disbelief at North Carolina's governor Roy Cooper insisting on keeping the state closed for all intents...

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No, News & Record, most people don't care about the "Greensboro Massacre"

Despite now being a few years and several hundred miles away from my spawning grounds in Reidsville, I still tend to keep an eye on goings-on in north-central North Carolina.  Part and parcel to that is every so often visiting the website of Greensboro's News & Record... even though it's been years since that newspaper bore any semblance of objective reporting.  The...

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"Let me out...": One Night At The Grove Park Inn (a true story)

It was August of 2000.  I had been living in Asheville for just over two weeks.  With abandon I had thrown myself into the ways and customs of that curious city in the North Carolina mountains.  And not just for sake of my new job as investigative reporter. No, it was more personal than that.  Asheville was finally a crack at life on my own, now 26 and...

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The News & Record has banned me from leaving comments

Okay, to be fair, there has not been any formal notification of exile.  But having attempted to make comments with five different browsers and automatically being directed to a Facebook "blue screen of banishment" with each one, it's safe to say at this point that I am now persona non grata from adding to reader commentary on the News & Record website.  It...

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North Carolina schools: Dark sarcasm in the classroom...

Photo: Gerry Broome, AP Apparently following the recent examples of others throughout the country, today thousands of teachers from across North Carolina descended upon the streets of Raleigh to demand more money, resources, and... well, what exactly? Many and perhaps even most school systems in North Carolina cancelled classes entirely.  There were not enough substitutes...

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