Snow:Bill Warren was running late for an appointment in Kinston when, breezing along the bypass between Wilson and Goldsboro, he spotted an elderly man with a cane on the roadside by his car.

Snow:Baseball is not my game. Never was. As a kid, I was the last chosen as we teamed up for cow pasture baseball.

A.C. Snow:A week from today, the "depression" begins. No, I'm not speaking of the economic doldrums -- which are already upon us -- but of the end of daylight saving time.

Snow:We were leaving a rest stop on Interstate 40, west of Statesville, when a neatly dressed woman in the next car honked her horn, rolled down her window and said, "Look, I'm out of gas and need to get to Greensboro. Could you spare a little money... ?"

Snow:It's that time again. Campaign yard signs are blooming all over America's lawns like dandelions in spring.

Snow:My friend Dave Jones once owned a dog named Baci. He was a good dog, basically -- obedient and staying within the confines of the lawn, which was surrounded by one of those invisible fences.

Snow:In the 1960s when we borrowed $15,000 to build our dream house -- modest dreams were in vogue then -- I lay awake nights for weeks worrying about a $103.20-a-month mortgage. Eventually, sleep returned.

Snow:It is said that sex sells -- whether it's in a book, a movie, magazine or just plain gossip. But never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that sex might help sell a biography of the late N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Susie Sharp.

A. C. Snow:I sometimes wonder if our house isn't marked with some secret sign, visible only to door-to-door salespeople, that reads: "Stop here. Soft touch!"

A. C. Snow:You've heard the anecdote in which the wife suggests to her husband that they renew their marriage vows and he responds with uncommon delight, "You mean they've expired?!"

Not long ago, I mentioned that my newspaper reporter son-in-law, while stopping off in Smithfield on a political assignment, met a native who admitted to reading this column.

How many of you as parents have stuffed spinach and other disagreeables down your children's throats while pleading, "Try it, you'll like it!" The slogan rarely worked with my two, whether it was spinach, going to bed on time in summer or picking up debris on the lawn after a hurricane.

no matter if it's changing a baby's diaper, the volume on a restaurant sound system spouting noise posing as "music" at unbearable decibels or even traipsing along the multilane highway of cyberspace. But Raleigh will rue the day it plows up the Fayetteville Street Mall. This oasis of beauty in all seasons but winter is the only bright spot in the otherwise dreary landscape that is downtown Raleigh.

After three days of confinement, you don't need to take your temperature to diagnose the ailment: Cabin fever! The symptoms mount. Pacing. Has the newspaper come? Tired of reading. Sick of TV, including the New Hampshire slugfest and the hoarse, hollering "Hardball."

'I hate to tell you, but I think I'll be voting for George Bush this Fall," she said, almost apologetically. I suppose you could call my older sister a "closet Independent," the only one in a large family that is 99 percent Republican, down the line. "That's OK by me," I said. "But what has caused you to make up your mind so early?"

Because of the national obsession with this year's Democratic primaries and caucuses, I've been been re-reading Timothy Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus," a compelling account of what life was like for the pack of political reporters who in 1972 trailed across America with the men who would be president. There is good writing here; on Page 1: "While reporters still snored like Hessians in a hundred beds throughout the hotel, the McGovern munchkins were at work, plying the halls, slipping legal-sized handouts through the cracks under the door ... According to one of these handouts, the Baptist Ministers' Union of Oakland had decided after 'prayerful and careful deliberation' to endorse Sen. McGovern."

Finally, February folded. But cold memories of not only the "longest month" but the entire wicked winter linger on. Remember Robert Frost's dilemma?: Some say the world will end in fire,