In spring of 1973, I went home to Winston-Salem with one of my best friends at Denison University: Bert Bennett III, for a long weekend. The funny thing was that THEN I had NO IDEA that Bert, Jr. owned the LARGEST Shell Oil Distributorship in the USA -- nor that he was the KING-MAKER of North Carolina's Democratic Party, by then -- or soon after -- having gotten Terry Sanford elected Governor twice, and Jim Hunt elected FOUR TIMES as Governor!!!
He also got Roman Catholic JFK to WIN in solid Protestant North Carolina. “Bennett was the most important man in modern-day politics in North Carolina,” Jim Hunt told The News & Observer of Raleigh. “He was progressive personally, but a strong, no-nonsense leader in business who was highly successful.”
And what I remember of staying a long weekend with the Bennetts is that both parents and all eight children ate breakfast and dinner together -- served by two black house-servants (a cook and a maid). As a total ("poor"),Yankee, then, I felt uncomfortable being served by Blacks in the Old South, but got to know them both, and realized they were well paid and taken care of.
Bert III and I visited his best friend, a Reynolds, in the R.J. Reynolds Manor House (that today is a Museum). I met Mrs. Reynolds ("The old Dowager "), and her son had a whole suite of rooms on the second floor, and had had two friends over the night before. All three of them were NAKED, smoking pot, and chasing each other around the bedroom like WHIPPETS (the dog, not the drug)!!!
At THAT time, all I knew about my distant Kenan cousins was that they had a LOT of EXXON STOCK -- but NOTHING of their control of so many other Companies or of so many Politicians. But Bert, Jr. was an incredibly fun guy at the dining table, and he must have figured out my position. My father was still working for his lifelong employer, Sun Oil Company (SUNOCO), one of the FEW American oil companies that was NEVER part of Standard Oil (like Shell had been).
MOST of all -- I did tell Bert, Jr. that my father's best friend when my parents brought me from my birthplace (Cincinnati), to visit his family in Wilmington, NC at the age of six weeks, and that Dad's best friend had fed me a "teaspoon" (likely just a finger-dip), of Bourbon -- to keep me from turning YANKEE!!!
And when Cook brought in a fresh platter of steaming buttermilk biscuits, he took one, stuck his finger into it, pulled it out, and then filled the hole with sorghum molassas -- and insisted I try it -- I had already "ughed" when he raved about sorghum molasses.
So, I did my own fresh, steaming biscuit -- and it was DELICIOUS !!! I ate LOTS of biscuits, the last two mornings I was there.
So, here I am again -- having lived in Wilmington since dusk on December 30, 2010, if HOMELESS then and living in my car -- and having had to FLEE back to Puerto Vallarta for my SECOND period of Political Exile late April 2012 - June 2015 -- thanks, especially, to DEMOCRAT District Attorney Benjamin R. David (who was really a Republican and whose wife, Stephanie David, was Mitt Romney's and Lamar Alexander's BIGGEST FUND-RAISER and STRATEGIST!!!).
I had gotten used to having STRANGE VISIONS and STRANGE VISITORS which and who predicted the FUTURE -- that I didn't DARE BELIEVE .
>>> WHAT I PROPOSE -- ACTUALLY INSIST ON -- IS THAT I WORK WITH LT. GOV. RACHEL HUNT AND GOV. JOSH STEIN AND THE OTHER JUST ELECTED STATEWIDE DEMOCRATS TO CLEAR ALL OF THE CORRUPTION IN THE NORTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATS (generally, those who are "Christians"), AND ESPECIALLY ANDERSON CLAYTON, JILL HOPMAN, MAYOR "BILL" SAFFO, STATE REPRESENTATIVE DEB BUTLER . . .
You get the idea -- and if NOT, just read a few of my recent Blog Postings!!!
This has been a VERY LONG LAST FEW DAYS -- and I am EXHAUSTED .
But I HAD to get this much out -- and I'll finish with some NEWS ITEMS:
agree. There is no bigger evil than evangelical Christians. They live by the do as I say not as I do. And if you do they throw the fear of hell in your face."
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