The Gospel According to Jerry

I’ve been taken to the woodshed by some animal-rights folks after describing my experience buying a lot of old horses and mules at the Asheville stockyard to be processed in my father’s rendering plant (see “The Gospel According to Jerry,” Nov. 26, 2008 Xpress). There was no truck available to haul these animals. My father […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

When I grew up in small-town Asheville, Christmas was magical. True, it was a secular holiday for my family and me. But who could ignore the excitement of the Christmas parade, the lights and decorations, the music and the spirit of giving and caring that pervaded the community during that time of year? “White Christmas” […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

Let me tell you about one of the longest days of my life. As I’ve mentioned in earlier columns, my father operated a rendering plant on Riverside Drive just south of Broadway. We bought product from many different sources, one of which was the Asheville Livestock Yard, located near where the Day’s warehouses are now. […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

As I watched the final night of the Democratic convention, I reflected on how I was brought up segregated in Asheville. It was made clear that I shouldn’t drink from the black water fountain at Sears, or use the black men’s room on Pack Square, or sit in the back of the bus or in […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

We have a free front seat at one of the great melodramas, replete with Roman tragedy, Greek pathos, bathos and raw comedy. The opening scene takes place in City/County Plaza in the ancient village of Asheville. Many worshippers and mystical witches are dancing around a beautiful magnolia tree that they have imbued with a special […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

MooI was 14 years old when V-J Day was declared in August of 1945. It happened that my crazy Aunt Johanna, whom I just loved, was visiting us from Philadelphia. She asked my dad if I could go back to Philadelphia with her. My dad said it would cost too much for a train ticket, […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

An expert is a person from more than 50 miles away with a briefcase. Recently the city of Asheville hired a group of experts called Goody Clancy all the way from Boston, Mass., to tell us what we should do with our downtown in order to appease our no-growth activists. It seems like we go […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

I hope this column passes the smell test. Actually it seems appropriate that as a preamble to this narrative we discuss people’s selective acceptance of unpleasant odors. When I was very small, my father was a dealer in cowhides. He would come home in the evening, pick me up and give me a big hug, […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

First of all, I want to announce that I am not a hysterical revisionist. In my Feb. 6 column, I mentioned that the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on Dec. 7, 1942; the correct year is 1941. Both my editor and I missed it: my bad, he badder. This mistake did have one positive effect, […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

The 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, got me reflecting on how much the 1942 attack changed my life—and changed Asheville. I have a particularly vivid memory of what happened that fateful day. My father had taken me and several of my little friends to the Isis Theater in West Asheville, where we […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

My most exciting memories of life along the French Broad River in my very early teens were of my surreptitious forays to the Asheville stockyard, which was then on Riverside Drive near Day’s Tobacco Warehouse. I would wait till my dad left for his regular Friday buying trip and then jump off the back rail […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

Council member Carl Mumpower and I must have had similar upbringings, learning at home and later in the military that laws were made to be enforced, and violating them would bring swift justice. Our country is now overrun with millions of illegal immigrants who are thumbing their noses at Uncle Sam. They are sucking the […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

This is not a fairy tale. Once upon a time, coal was king and the French Broad River was queen. Smoking, fire-breathing dragons hauled long lines of huge wagons loaded with coal and other supplies destined for the kingdom. The railroad also delivered finished products, bringing much treasure to the realm. An abundance of willing […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

The shocking irony of the Asheville City Council’s recent actions wasn’t lost on me—or, I am sure, on many other residents of our fair city. First they passed an ordinance prohibiting gated communities. This was ostensibly an effort to bring our community together by fostering a climate of inclusiveness. Then, in the next breath, they […]

The gospel according to Jerry

The pathetic news story of Mary Winkler of Lebanon, Tenn., who was recently convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of her preacher husband, makes me wonder what kind of hell it must be living daily with the fear that your spouse or significant other is going to verbally, physically or sexually harass or abuse […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

Asheville City Council members have finally found a real visceral issue that they can add to their long and impressive list of accomplishments. So far, the list consists of installing more roundabouts, putting up fancy (and expensive) new streetlights, getting a trellis put up at Staples, changing the loading dock at Green Life, and their […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

The cause of people opposed to building a new power plant in Woodfin was hardly dignified by two punk kids who illegally climbed a billboard and vandalized private property. I certainly understand that many of us are very frustrated with our national energy policy, which does not promote conservation or reduce the use of fossil […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

The passing of Wilma Dykeman, the grande dame of local river history, reminded me of the need to fulfill my promise to the many who read my Depot Street articles and asked me for similar recollections of the river. Thinking back some 70 years, my first memories of the river were hardly Dykemanesque. Of course, […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

The Asheville Tribune‘s recent commentary by Bill Fishburne, “Council Liberals Show True Colors in Tuesday Night Anti-military Vote,” implied that the Asheville City Council had deliberately screwed our servicemen and women. This hit a new low in editorial bottom fishing. The almost childlike implication was that because city staff had negotiated an arm’s-length agreement with […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

What’s the difference between an Asheville City Council meeting and a kabuki dance? The answer: Not much. Both are excruciatingly tedious and seem to go on forever. The Asheville City Council is like the board of directors of a major corporation. The directors are elected by the citizen stakeholders who are residents of Asheville. Council […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

As neighborhoods organize to discourage traffic on their streets, the general population is subjected to more and more abuse. In my ongoing quest to become neighborhood man of the year, I want to talk about traffic calming. When I think of traffic calming, I am reminded of a childhood song: “Here we go loop de […]