Back to doodling on napkins

In November 1974, the Piedmont prop plane bringing me to Raleigh landed five times between Cincinnati and here before coming to a stop on the tarmac at Terminal A, which was RDU at the time. N&O Editor Claude Sitton's secretary drove us into town for my interview, and I will always remember that Raleigh looked just as I had pictured it - rolling hills and huge oak trees still showing the fall colors.

Downtown was another story, especially after I had lived and worked over the course of the previous four years at papers in San Antonio and Cincinnati, where huge buildings loomed over the bustling city life below. Raleigh had a much smaller, laid-back feel, but it did have something that appealed to me career wise: a kick-butt newspaper with a great reputation, a nationally renowned civil rights reporter as editor, and a state capitol right up the street.

Over the years, I saw Jesse Helms get re-elected and re-elected despite my best efforts to show him the way to retirement. Fayetteville Street had an unobstructed view from the Capitol to Memorial Auditorium before it was ripped up soon after I settled in, and before long a huge white elephant was plopped down in the middle of it in the form of a new convention center.

Eventually downtown Raleigh become nearly deserted, but in recent years it has undergone a Phoenix-like resurgence. The white elephant is gone, replaced by a first-class convention center, with a world-class art display by highly respected local artist Thomas Sayer emblazoning one side. Fayetteville Street's north-south view has been restored and people are standing in line downtown to get into clubs and restaurants.

A coincidence of note: As I make for the exits, one of my favorite subjects whom I also like on a personal level is leaving his high post in the state legislature. Sen. Tony Rand and I both had a good ride, and for the record, I promise I will retire the checked coat that I always draw him in. Oh heck, I'm supposed to be retired. Well, there are always bar napkins.

Hopefully, the newspaper industry will right itself enough before long so that The N&O will summon the budget for another cartoonist from the pool of immensely talented unemployed cartoonists - all friends of mine.

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