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By Gene Owens

November 20, 2009

Gene Owens: Recalling smells of lint and sweat

I wouldn't have known about the Textile Heritage Center in Cooleemee had I not moseyed up to Spencer last spring for the Rail Days observance at the North Carolina Transportation Museum. Read More

November 13, 2009

Gene Owens: Mills were the South's Marshall Plan

I was disappointed when the Charlotte-based National Football League team chose the shopworn nickname, "Panthers." I thought the name "Charlotte Shuttles" would have been more alliterative and more redolent of local history. Call... Read More

November 6, 2009

Gene Owens: The rhythm of life in mill towns

For generations, the sturdy Southerners who left the cotton fields for the cotton mills worked their way through flurries of lint, steaming humidity and suffocating heat toward the promised land in which the rhythm of the shuttle would give way to t... Read More

October 30, 2009

Gene Owens: The culture of the lintheads

When I identify myself these days as an "old linthead," I usually have to explain myself. A linthead is the mill-village cousin of a redneck. John Kincaid of Reidsville identified himself as a linthead in a letter he wrote me a while back. Read More

October 16, 2009

Gene Owens: Hanging freedom out to dry

Our daughter Michelle hangs her laundry on a backyard clothesline. It isn't that she can't afford a dryer. She has one; she just prefers sunshine to Duke Energy. She and husband Derrick also have a few laying hens, along with a Welsh Corgi puppy tha... Read More

October 9, 2009

Gene Owens: Letterman's (yawn) sex life

As everybody knows, late-night comedian David Letterman has confessed to having sex with women on his staff. His confession accompanied the revelation that a man whom police identified as Robert Halderman, producer of CBS' "48 Hours" and o... Read More

October 2, 2009

Gene Owens: Readers recall more old sayings

Several readers had fun with a recent column on sayings we seldom hear any more and contributed some that still live in their memories. "You missed a big one," wrote George L. Eagle, an 80-year-old retired gunnery sergeant from Julian. &qu... Read More

September 25, 2009

Gene Owens: Pros and cons of a temporary bachelorhood

It's been lonely around the manor for the past three weeks. Miss Peggy, as she frequently does, ditched me for a younger man. The younger man is 2-year-old Chase, our latest grandchild, and Miss Peggy has been accompanying his mama, Kim, on a getawa... Read More

September 18, 2009

Gene Owens: We don't say that anymore

A while back, John Taylor of Greensboro suggested that I write something about expressions you used to hear every day but seldom hear anymore. It got me to thinking: Each generation has its own pet expressions that preceding generations think are ju... Read More

September 11, 2009

Gene Owens: Shakes and Girl Scout cookies

I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little weary of all those TV commercials in which Chad, the all-American boy, humiliates those nerds who represent competitors of Alltel, Chad's favorite wireless telephone provider. Maybe one of those comme... Read More

August 28, 2009

Gene Owens: The classmate I thought would be governor

Robert M. Bell, the flagship of my high-school class, passed over the horizon last week, and my world's center of gravity shifted. I hadn't seen Robert in more than 20 years, but he had been a steady presence in my memory, a strong tie to the world... Read More

August 21, 2009

Gene Owens: Helen Keller unhorses Jabez Curry

Alabama is replacing Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry with Helen Keller in the U.S. Capitol's statuary collection, and I haven't heard any loud outcry emanating from the Heart of Dixie. That's probably because the blind, deaf and mute Keller has been an ins... Read More

August 14, 2009

Gene Owens: Caught with no place to hide

Given the occasion for her arrest, it might be inappropriate to invite Lula Mae Battle to the White House for beer, but maybe a little sweet tea and banana pudding in the mayor's office would help ease the hurt. Ms. Battle was arrested in Mobile, Al... Read More

August 7, 2009

Gene Owens: A long line of presidents who weren't Americans

As every right-thinking person knows, Barack Obama is not a real American, having been saddled at birth with an Arabic name and having been born somewhere west of San Francisco, east of Cape Hatteras and south of Alabama. Some say he was born in Ken... Read More

July 31, 2009

Gene Owens: The moon-walker and the moon-talker

I haven't heard or read much about Walter Cronkite during the past week. Uncle Walter seems to have departed this life with the same dignity that characterized his departure from the CBS Evening News in 1981, when he concluded his final newscast with his... Read More

July 24, 2009

Gene Owens: Reconnecting with Patsy Boone

She sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to me over the telephone, in a voice as Southern as red-eye gravy over grits. It was the same voice that had captivated me 13 years ago when she called me in Mobile, Ala., to sing the praises of her hometown... Read More

July 17, 2009

Gene Owens: Restroom rights at the old ball game

The Founding Fathers missed a chance to strike a blow for liberty when they omitted this clause from the Bill of Rights: "The right of a citizen to answer a call of nature during a sports event shall not be abridged, nor shall access be denied to a c... Read More

July 10, 2009

Gene Owens: No grill, but a bargain still

Miss Peggy is a pushover for anything free, which explains why we're driving around in a luminescent Toyota Matrix instead of a sedate gray Honda Civic. It happened last winter when Miss Peggy told me that the local Honda dealership was offering a free Ge... Read More

July 3, 2009

Gene Owens: South Carolina in the limelight

As a native and current resident of South Carolina, I'm sick and tired of people talking about the embarrassment Gov. Mark Sanford has caused the state through his affair of the heart with Maria Chapur. Embarrassment? The governor's philandering down in A... Read More

June 26, 2009

Gene Owens: Be glad Sarah isn't Harry, Dave

I don't usually watch David Letterman unless I fall asleep during the 11 o'clock news and wake up during his introductory monologue. I don't usually pay a lot of attention to Sarah Palin either. Alaska and the 2012 presidential race are a long way off, an... Read More

June 19, 2009

Gene Owens: Wallowing in railroad nostalgia

Railroads provided the steel thread that stitched a continent together during the 19th and 20th centuries, and the Southern Railroad shops at Spencer were among the sewing machines that kept the trains on track. I wallowed in nostalgia last weekend when I... Read More

June 12, 2009

Gene Owens: Don't smile if you want a license

Wipe that smile off your face, America. The electronic devices don't like it. Four states, Virginia, Arkansas, Nevada and Indiana, now require "neutral expressions" on driver's license photos. The reason: The electronic devices that are supposed... Read More

June 5, 2009

Gene Owens: Kate Smith did it; so can Susan Boyle

The YouTube generation seems to be awestricken over the fact that somebody who looks like Susan Boyle can sing like Susan Boyle. The YouTube generation obviously never encountered Kate Smith, a lady with ordinary looks and an extraordinary voice who sang... Read More

May 29, 2009

Gene Owens: Yankees bring sin to the South

A bunch of geographers at Kansas State University have strayed across the boundary into morality and concluded that we who dwell in the Bible Belt are a bunch of sinners -- worse even than those drinking, gambling, cavorting folks out in Las Vegas, which... Read More

May 22, 2009

Gene Owens: Choosing prom or diploma

"It was worth it," Tyler Frost told CBS News after his church-sponsored private school suspended him for taking his girlfriend to her public school's senior prom. Which makes me wonder why Tyler and his stepfather are talking about suing Heritag... Read More