When my father died four years ago, some papers and keepsakes passed to me that have no significance, except to our family. Dad happened to keep a couple of autograph albums that had belonged to my mother while she was in high school. I came across t ...Read More

It's easy to picture Dr. J. Ernest Stokes' patients strolling up the sidewalk, opening the gate and moving through the garden to the small cottage in back that served as his office. On the way, they must have paused to look up toward the handsome ma ...Read More

Ever since arriving at the Post many years ago, I've heard people talk about the three consecutive Wednesdays in March when it snowed. Jan Trexler at the Rowan County Chamber of Commerce sent me an e-mail Tuesday asking what year this weather madness ...Read More

They call themselves the Romeo Boys."Romeo" serves as acronym for Retired Old Marines Eat Out, something these guys do every Friday morning at the Farmhouse restaurant in Salisbury. Last Friday, the Boys allowed me to share in their weekly breakfast ...Read More

At the front of his desk, Ralph Ketner keeps a cuss jar. Every time he utters an expletive — they are mild as swear words go — he fishes into his pants pocket for a quarter to deposit in the jar. Various folks around the Ketner School of Business a ...Read More

In its heyday, Food Lion's stock outperformed Microsoft. So why aren't Ralph Ketner and the company's investment success story mentioned in the same conversations with the likes of Bill Gates and Microsoft or Sam Walton and Walmart? It's something th ...Read More

The amazing thing about water is how fast it appears and how quickly it goes away. With trepidation — never give a camera to a reporter — I ventured out Monday morning to record in pictures some of the overnight flooding that was enough to call off ...Read More

The deer come to Carroll Owen's backyard three times a day, if he puts out the deer corn. "We'll be in here piddling, and all of a sudden, there they are," Owen says. Owen and his wife, Bonnie, delight in the daily deer visits, and Carroll spends a ...Read More

Stafford Pemberton, who grew up in Salisbury's East End, thought efforts to establish a monument in the Dixonville Cemetery needed a jump-start. So the 89-year-old Pemberton made a sizeable donation to get things going. He has at least six relatives ...Read More

I bought my first lottery tickets Friday. Late in the morning, I left the newsroom, hopped in the truck and drove down to the Sunoco Express Market on South Main Street. I had written down the games I wanted to play on a piece of paper. The lady ...Read More

In coming days, if it hasn't already happened this weekend, there will be some major robberies along the streets of Salisbury. Artists from North and South Carolina will be coming here and taking away the sculptures that had become part of the downt ...Read More

Jerry and Elaine are devil cats, pawns of Satan. Over the recent holiday break, while our son Benn was home from college, the cats with "Seinfeld"-inspired names came with him and took over the house. Every morning I seemed to wake up with Jerry's bu ...Read More

In Kabul, Afghanistan, Will James lives in a sprawling house with other civilian contractors. Their compound is surrounded by a 15-foot-high wall with barbed wire on top. Armed guards and machine guns protect the perimeter. To get to work each day, ...Read More

Folks in Salisbury and Rowan County partied into a new decade this morning with one burning question: How do you say it? What will be the preferred way, if any, of saying the year 2010? Is it Twenty-Ten? Or should it be Two Thousand-Ten, or even ...Read More

Every summer, Rowan Countians fall in love all over again with American Legion baseball. But the summer of 2009 was special. There was something about this group of kids that was different. In sports they like to call it "chemistry." The good team ...Read More

Over the past dozen years or so, Salisburian Will James has lived and worked in outposts such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, the Republic of Georgia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ghana, Liberia and Kosovo. Now he's working on a two-year contract in Afghanista ...Read More

A year ago, Devereaux Swaim was heading down a familiar path of many high school seniors. She had applied to four colleges, been accepted at three and was on a waiting list for her top choice, Emory University in Atlanta. But something kept telling ...Read More

Perry Barbee has fought the good fight with the N.C. Department of Transportation and lost. So it wasn't surprising to see him walk into the newsroom recently and make his case to me — no doubt, a last resort — hoping a story might put enough public ...Read More

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. — Albert Pike When the stock market tanked and the economy went sour, Johnny Safrit sought out messages of hope, joy and serenit ...Read More

Other 'Thoughts for the Day' Here are other examples of Johnny Safrit's "Thought for the Day:" - Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least. — Goethe - Humility is not thinking less of yourself — it is thinking of ...Read More

By Mark Wineka mwineka@salisburypost.com When I leave the newsroom for home, I sometimes yell to whomever is left, "Let me know if anything stirs." The message is clear: If anything newsworthy happens, call me. At my age, of course, I hope nothing ...Read More

Newsrooms used to be filled with smokers, drinkers, screamers and general roustabouts. Today they've become computerized, antiseptic and downright boring. Columnist Mark Wineka longs for the good old days in Tuesday's edition of the Salisbury Post. ...Read More

By Mark Wineka Salisbury Post This story is 10 or 20 years too late. Mike Cline placed a huge Dumpster in his driveway this summer and spent several weeks filling it with the remnants of his 22-year career as a dealer/collector in entertainment. ...Read More

By Mark Wineka mwineka@salisburypost.com A couple of years ago Tripp Clement and his wife, Katherine, were rummaging through an upstairs room when a cardboard box fell on the floor. Clement turned the box right-side up and spied a faded document o ...Read More

A couple of years ago Tripp Clement and his wife, Katherine, were rummaging through an upstairs room when a cardboard box fell on the floor. Clement turned the box right-side up and spied a faded document on top. The flowing penmanship of another age ...Read More