New memoir by Norm Riggs

New memoir by Norm Riggs

In our July 11 and 28, 2018 issues, The Charlotte News experimented with publishing two long-form installments of what eventually became a book-length memoir by Norm Riggs about how, in the summer of 1964, he and a friend, Dave Dyer, two college guys in Des Moines—unable to face another three months of typical, tedious, low-paying summer jobs—decided to take a big chance. They would hop from suburb to suburb across the country, painting house numbers on curbs and asking homeowners to donate for the service.

Pondering reading and three good books on a rainy day

Pondering reading and three good books on a rainy day

It’s a cold, rainy Monday, and I am thinking about reading. I have always been a reader. I remember so many of the books and authors I read when I was young. Pat the Bunny, Dr. Seuss, Uncle Wiggly, Pippi Longstocking, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Kinman Rawlings, Black Beauty, Black Hearts in Battersea—I could go on. And on. And on.

It’s a robber…it’s a murderer…oh, wait. It’s just ghosting season.

It’s a robber…it’s a murderer…oh, wait. It’s just ghosting season.

There’s no moon. I sit in my car on the side of a back-country road, lights off, hazards clicking in the blackness, hoping someone doesn’t call the police. I care about the environment, so I don’t leave my car running, but it’s 40 degrees out. The heat slips out the windows and night sounds settle in as I sit there, shivering, waiting for my accomplices to come back.