North Carolina People; Dennis Rogers, Columnist, The News & Observer

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Pardon this letter cold but we're so delighted to have you join us in North Carolina people tonight if you're in the readership area of the News Observer of Raleigh. You know Dennis Rogers his columns and his writings. But if you're not going to meet a very interesting personality just a few second North Carolina people is brought to you by walkover banking investments and financial services for individuals businesses and corporations. Kovio we're here let's get started. Three times a week we pick up our paper in the mornings up in this part of North Carolina and there you are. When you get up what do you know you write about today or tomorrow. How do you get these. There are wonderful columns. It's to me that the column that works best

is that columns that when you're sitting at the at the table having breakfast in the morning you say to your spouse Hey listen if there is something it's so good you got to read it. You've got to be the one that tells you about it. That's the story I'm looking for whether it's from my experiences whether it's it's a reaction to what's going on in the news or whether it's just something completely off the wall. I'm looking for that story that just makes people want to take a moment away from what's going on in the world and just take five minutes and go somewhere they never thought they'd go. I never wanted to be predictable and it drives people crazy they say what kind of column do you write well gosh I don't know and figure that out yet after 22 years I think that's it's genius that everybody has to read every every third day it goes if you don't you don't know what business is writing. That's the fun of it. If it was ever predictable I think I would have lost

something in it. You would. You came over here after Vietnam and Korean Chapel Hill to journalism school and graduated Beta Kappa here but we have you know we don't talk too loud about it. But have you always had it in your bones to write. Well I'm afraid I misspent childhood I guess. I wrote probably some of the worst poetry ever written throughout the 50s. I expressed my unrequited love for various young ladies from Wilson with bad poetry. And then I started writing some short stories or even worse. So but afterwards after service I went to to you and see and those remarkable people that were in the J-school then. Can barley taught me more about how to write for a community while Spearman and the ethics I learn from from Dean Adams. These were just invaluable to

me they are the ones who are responsible for good or bad it's their fault. How hard is it to write a story or write an editorial dealing with the facts when you know maybe the fellow is a scoundrel to start with and you can't get into a person that's sometimes difficult and it's it's very difficult. The editorial side. I sometimes find it more difficult because you have to read you have to have a certain aloofness a certain decorum is expected in editorials in a column on the other hand you can get just a little more relaxed to you can you can name names and you can get in and tell them what you think. And so I joined both of the exercise is they they take different sorts of discipline. Each one of them. But the combination is just makes for a fun week at work. You should have been in my office the day that you wrote that. There's one place of liberal in the

Nike swoosh and that's on Bill Bradley switcher it was read to me what I wanted to buy. Still less room in there I guess. Well I think all of us read you because we we have a feeling about your work that you are in touch with what the humanity of the world trying to do to common people as little people. Does that mean that in a demeaning way. But the ones who just live the daily work do its job and move on. That's me I grew up on a dirt street and Wilson out in the Five Points neighborhood. And I was an enlisted man in service. I worked my way through Carolina with some help from V.A. and journalism foundation scholarships. And now I live down a dirt road in a farming community Harnett County. I have never aspired to be part of the literati or the power structure. I approach everything I

write from the point of view of my neighbors. How it affects the people that that work in the grocery stores in anger how how whatever's going on affects the people that pay the bills and bear the burdens. I know it's easy for instance to talk about what we ought to do in Iraq. What is the budget for Fort Bragg's going to have to do whatever it is that we in our wisdom decide they should do. They've got to bear the burden and everything that that we do in this country I think needs to be filtered through through itself through this filter of its effect on real people. You know the people that pay their taxes. You know the public pays far more taxes and General Motors ever thinks about General Motors gets the breaks and the poor guy on the street. Who's trying to keep the family together and figure out who's going to send his kids to college.

He's the one ditz that looks at his paycheck every month and really knows the cost of what all of these grandiose plans really give a lot of your contemporaries who write the novels and the books we all pick up invariably will say about people like you and me who live in this part of the world to the land and the church in the family where the forces are they occurred to us as we grew up it was what made us what we are. Have we strayed too far away in recent years from what you see what you write about. Most of the people back there on the farm they still think this way and live this way don't absolutely. I don't you see the changes when you when you're intransient communities which rallies become one. Chapel Hill Durham we've all here in the triangle we've become this sort of melting pot of people coming in and going out. But the people who are still out there who are go into the church your grandmother went to.

I go to the little cemetery at continued Primitive Baptist Church in Wilson County and there for five generations my family there. And I'm not an hour away and that's far enough when my time comes I want to be in that same sandy loam right with my great great great grandfather. I think those values are still they are I think they they are they're not being heard anymore the noise disco Katha ne of media of the Internet of. The disharmony that's going on right now in Washington these things are grounding it out I think. But at the root at the basic level it's still a layer you have so that on a Sunday afternoon you could walk through the forest and hear the wind whistling through the pines isn't it you are so rigid. I try to live now when I walk out in the morning. I smell my neighbor's cows. You know I when my and when his cows get out at night I'm out

there helping him get him back in. I I lived in Raleigh for 20 years and I found myself missing this sort of more tranquil life than that I imagined was out there I didn't when it was still there or not. And it is it is. If I wanted to I walk out and I see my neighbors and we howdy and just like it's been going on for for ever. Then you mentioned what's been happening here in the triangle and I notice in your paper this morning that the secretary told to get ready to convene people from all over what to do about this transportation problem that we let development get ahead of really serious planning and conservation of our. We always do I think we I think we're we're always behind the government. Government plays a catch up game all the time in transportation planning you know highway building. We

react to crisis. We don't we don't look down the road we're still just we're just trying to keep up with what we've got now not realizing by the time it's finished it's going to be out of date. I don't know how many more lanes they can put on I-40 but I guarantee you ever no matter how many they put they're going to be full on the day that they open the lanes. We we had this grand idea and no one has been more supportive of the Research Triangle Park for instance than myself. But. The time has come to say wait a minute if we put another 5000 employees in this park we have another 5000 chorus of deal with why don't we start moving them outside now let's just because all these companies want to be next door to all the companies already here. Well that's well and good but you know if they were down in Harnett County or in Franklin County we might not have to be building quite as many of these

roads and tearing up the trees and destroying the environment. I just don't want us to become the Boston of the South. If you've tried to drive us at 128 around Boston it's just a nightmare. And we're on the verge of killing that that proverbial goose these people didn't come down here to live in Detroit or to live in Boston or to live in Washington even they came down here because we had something very special to offer them you know and now we're destroying it in your paper this week has been a story about the city of conserving water. Another full length feature about how many thousands of children are going to school in trailers. Another one about the huge unruled that's pushing community colleges and universities and it's this kind of thing that can take away what you've been writing about. Who would have ever thought in North Carolina we would have been short of water. Monstrous notions amazing but it's true it's absolutely true.

We have we've enjoyed the growth and we have benefited greatly from it all of us I mean our communities a better place to live because of these people that have come in and make jokes all the time about Yankees and southerners but it's all in fun. The reality is the triangle is a better place to live because of the influx of these new ideas and these new people. But there comes a point where it turns and I don't know where that point is I would be there yet or not. I think it's Unless we do some very serious thinking we're suddenly going to find ourselves in this homogenized place that nobody's going to recognize. You know it's there's an old country song that talks about Dixie's had a facelift. Well yeah and I'm not sure it's all for the better. Unless we get some in the light in the leadership the future does not look as bright to me as it did 20 years ago now that could be just a factor of getting

old in quite as well get a good idea of the Interstate 5 6 o'clock or an auto drive I don't do it. That's why I for one with the pick ups in the afternoon. You have bad experiences about it walking up to you and you walking down the street in a row and say why did you say this in the column. Why did you do this. But isn't that great that is the exactly what I'm looking for I want people to be involved. You know they talk about how the Internet made us all interactive. I've been interactive for 25 years. People not hesitate to tell me what they think and I think part of that is because I'm just one of them. You know I'm not going to try to tell Russell Baker what to think he's just sort of up on a mountaintop somewhere or David Brinkley are all North Carolinians but maybe I'm just a god it's lived down the road they'll tell me what they think and I think that's just fabulous because that's what I learned. Somebody tells you hey great job

you go oh OK that's fine. When somebody tells you what you did wrong and enumerates all the reasons you're bait that's when you learn something. That's when you get better. Colum you did today on the death of General Martin. Yeah the sensitivity that you reflect there shows that that's exactly who you are. Well when you go out. Do you get when you walk down the street and know you carry in the cards right. Does something come to you or an impulse once in a while. Oh yeah I have that notes made on napkins in restaurants while I put now Country Style study good barbecue. I've got scribbles everywhere. Yeah I can't I can't remember you know I'm not here that comes to you while you drive it down the road if you don't think about it and write it down. It's gone it's you say I'll remember that. Yeah and you won't either. It's going to you know you may remember it later with you that day up why didn't I think of

that then when I needed it. You've you've been innovating this but when I asked a direct question at bottom in this piece that we all feel is a lack of civility. That we've lost in the conducting of the public's business at least to me it is what's called System happen in our public life. Do you see to it the turning here. It's I don't know why it's happened. I think it is it's distasteful. But I think more than just tasteful it's dangerous. Politics is has long been the art of compromise is often been said. We've reached a point now where it's take no prisoners bloodletting. There is no compromise possible right and wrong don't seem to have to do with anything. It's it's become an exercise in power. Who's got it. What they're willing to do to keep it and how they're going to exercise it.

It is power for power's own sake. It's how they keep score down. It's and that makes it important to me all but impossible to really think about the important things where we need both sides in any argument to come together reach some agreement and move on. We are if we lose that then this may be the second impeachment we've ever had but it's not going to be the last one. We may have started down a very dangerous road. Dennis do you feel is is that what is causing this trend and public voting for example. Or just the attitude people have toward government. I don't like you I get distressed seeing how little regard there is for the Congress for example when we get up. Well it's one of the least respected institutions in this country now. But does that get to your neighbors there in Wilson County. Oh absolutely. He's with he's still got the ability to sift through this and see it for what it really

is and there's going to come a time I think when the power structure is going to need the support of the people at large. The people who have not been heard the people who are who have been overlooked who have been taxed and without being adequately represented we're going to be needed one day. And I'm afraid when we are needed we're not going to be there. Those people are going to be left out hanging. If if they think it's bad now if the people lose faith that their government in some way represents them. There is no limit to how bad it can be. We'll rifted you take up riding a motorcycle. Well they say every man goes a little nuts about his 40th birthday and I was looking around when I turned 40 years old and said I want to do something just crazy and I bought a motorcycle. And yes it

was at a time when you wanted people who rode a Harley Davidsons were outlaws and now it's the only people riding Harley Davidson seem to be bankers and lawyers enough and I'm not sure which is the worse they need to be associated with. But I'm still doing it after it's been almost been 15 15 years now. I'm still at it. You really work at it up keeping. I do a lot more shining than writing something. But yeah I'm still out there for 5000 miles a year just taking little short cruises on Sunday afternoon and it's when you get out there and you're on a motorcycle. Suddenly all the other problems don't seem to matter very much you get that wind blowing in your hair and the bugs in your teeth and know the other stuff seems to matter very much Dan.. Where do you get this interest in the community theater. I didn't know you were back there. Yes Lord I have been doing that about 30 years now I was in the army down at Fort Bragg my last year of service and

was actually had a fight with my wife one Sunday afternoon and I thought well I'm going to get out of the house and just cool off and I went out riding around and happened by the community theater and it playhouse. And they said auditions today. And I thought as hot as their condition and now I'm going to sit down and then to listen. So I've walked in and just like in the play chorus line I'm watching it but you know I believe I could do that. Turns out I couldn't but I sure felt good at that. So I got up and actually got cast in a part and had so much fun. And I've been doing it regularly for 30 years since then. Well that's what I'm an old hand around all of the theater and theater park all those good places that the top movie this past week had to do with a doctor who makes you more than part of his life. The essence of practice. You certainly reflect this in your writings. Have we lost the notion that you are so much a part of our very being.

We got more humor than ever and worst humor than ever. You know we got a lot of it is not very good. Yeah we've lost the art I think of gentle humor. We've become your measured these days by how sharp your rapier wit is how you can put someone down how you can just devastate someone with a quip as opposed to helping someone sort of guide him into seeing the humor in their own life or to see the humor going on around them. You know my grandkids are funnier than any comedian that paid the big bucks on television and I was what kids you know listen to my my daughter spar with each other which they've been doing for 35 years. That's that's real humor. That's the kind of thing humor that comes out of affection as opposed to out of this viciousness that it seems to be all the rage. That's what we're losing we're losing Will Rogers and we're

we're picking up the kind of things you see only HBO and they are. Yeah it kind of funny but you know it's sorta like eat junk food you don't remember it much the next day. That's the point. Yeah I was wondering the way not so long ago and I turned in Bentonville and I stopped at one in the headquarters place and I really got acquainted with what for the next hour with what happened there in the civil war that made it in reading about your career. I know you do this frequently. I see represented Leo Daughtry that told him I wanted to get some money to fix that place up at such a point to an important turning point and I was like no one knows. No we don't know what happened in Bienville But if you moved around following these battles we've got a lot of work to do to perpetuate this history have with it is one of the greatest things that things happen in the last 10 years was when Disney announced they were going to go up the masses and build a

theme park based on American history right in the cradle of where American history was already there. And we've got the same problem down here in the ballot Bentonville is a perfect example. Most people have never been near the place. They don't realize that right at the end of the war when it was a hopeless calls for the southern forces. Thirty thousand of people who were our neighbors. Charged into this nightmare of a battle for the fort. Why and why did they do that. What was it about those people that made them willing to sacrifice everything for something they believed in. When the calls was lost they still did it. That story needs to be told and they do a great job of it vil with with the resources they have. But organizations like the Civil War trust that I was member of and support. They are trying to

save some of these places if we lose that heritage that history then were addressed. We are LOL solos without any knowledge of where we. Man how in the world can we say where we're going. Has there ever come a time when you were doing these columns and the daily pressure that you get under that you just couldn't come up with it and you have to reach out via remoting really and I don't mean that facetiously I start every day with not really a clear idea of what the day's going to bring. There may be some ideas jotted down on scraps of paper on my wreck of a desk. But that's part of the fun. That's part of the excitement that's what you see adrenaline pumping. If my day was laid out for me and I know today I'm doing isn't tomorrow this new bar that I'm afraid out approach is somewhat lax of Basically there is a lot of adrenaline and everything because it's it's that uncertainty that gives you that adrenaline.

It is deserving of it. You know I've talked to a lot of riders and I was the same con early on you know they I'm a rider I'm waiting for inspiration. I don't have time for that I got a mortgage payment. I've got to start writing and I tell him just start writing. Start something. Get it going. Don't sit around and wait for the muse to light on your shoulder the muse may miss you today. I have I work for a daily newspaper. It's got to be done every day. And that's the great fun of it. I mean have you not found that in every live there's a great story somewhere somebody absolutely has something that absolutely. And the older they are the more stories there are. AD I have yet to meet anyone that is devoid of humanity that if you work at it there's not a story might not be a great story might not be one you want to tell. There's a story there we've all of us just in

in living. I have experiences that if you can distill him down make great tales. Absolutely go to collect them and put them in a book at a time. Oh yes say that forever I've put out four books now that are collections of columns that are lawn and I keep saying yeah one day I'm going to sit down and write from scratch. The great one. I get to that real soon just as soon as I get to Morris column. Never say a bad individual by individual and yeah I'm livin I'm livin my literary career. Fifteen inches at a time I must say. It's just so good to see you again we've wandered through our allotted time but thank you thank you because I'm over this great so you keep putting those columns up along as well at next. Thank you. North

Carolina people is brought to you by walk Obeah banking investments and financial services for individuals businesses and corporations. Walk over we're here let's get started.