Jenkins:  They were, when they met at old Wake Forest College in the late 1930s, of strikingly similar backgrounds. One was the son of a small-town police chief in Monroe, the other the son of a small-town Baptist preacher in Boiling Springs.

The reach of a song for the ages

Jenkins:  September 1982. After years of owning guitars here and there, just messing around really, learning a few basic chords on my own, I got myself a first-rate instrument and vowed to find the same quality in a teacher.

Jenkins:  They walk among us, in far-flung small towns all over North Carolina. The people who made the difference.

Jenkins:  It was the sign heard ... OK, not heard, but seen ... around the world. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama moves to the stage and his wife, Michelle, after introducing him, holds out her fist, and he then gives her a little bump with his fist.

Jenkins:  Y'all go on now and get yourselves something nice, said Uncle George W. Bush, president of the United States, as if Christmas were coming and the goose was getting fat, and all that.

Jenkins:  Like many small-town preachers, my granddaddy welcomed the occasional politician to the old Baptist parsonage in Boiling Springs, N.C., lo those many decades ago.

Jenkins:  Powell Elementary School Principal Jimmy Sposato knew it the first time he talked to Ann Quarles. "I knew after five minutes of interviewing her I wanted to offer her a job. You could look into her eyes and sense the passion. I knew she'd be where she is today."

Jenkins:  All it takes is living. A week, a day of moving through this American life as an average traveler. It could save our presidential candidates all the time and money spent in meetings with overpriced "policy" advisers and pollsters who are telling them what all us "average people" are thinking about.

One day soon, you will be headed down Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh, and you will see a lanky bearded man standing before a giant pile of lumber, and you will stop to talk to him. "What are you doing, sir?" you will say.

Before your correspondent really gets rolling about what they call "grade inflation" on our college campuses -- over 40 percent of all grades last spring at UNC-Chapel Hill were A's -- a few words of patented, up-front candor. Not Bill Clinton candor, either. The straight stuff. Some of my classmates in the early 1970s graduated summa cum laude. Others cum laude. I was, as a friend put it, thank you laude. I blame some of it on lax instruction, of course, and not on study habits that had me averaging 10 minutes a night. It was also a peculiar time of experimentation with courses of study -- you could trade math against philosophy, or foreign languages against that same cursed math. I survived with a diploma, but to this day when others of my generation talk about basic training experiences, I say, "I know what you mean. I was at Chapel Hill then...but I don't like to talk about it."

In search of: one chancellor for North Carolina State University and one cure for Searchitis, an expensive and seemingly chronic illness that afflicts trustees at major university campuses. The malady is brought on by the resignation or retirement or departure of a university head. A feverish sort of panic sweeps down on trustees, who seek the cure by throwing tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes more, at search firms and other expenses to bring in "candidates with national reputations" for the job.

Whenever Hollywood and history walk the aisle, you know it's going to be a marriage akin to that (or rather, those) of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. The ceremony is fine and the reception is plush; the couple is adorned in finery. The friends are breathless with anticipation and glowingly optimistic. But sooner or later, the yelling is going to start and art objects are going to become airborne. Inevitably, everybody winds up in divorce court talking about what a mistake it all was. History has been rewritten a multitude of times by the titans of Tinseltown -- sometimes with utterly no regard for facts, other times with some flirtation toward them, and on still other occasions when producers and directors stand somberly on some red carpet and boast that their latest offering is "historically accurate." This promise often has all the credibility of the kid next door who talked you into trading him your roller skates for his jelly beans, not that we're still bitter, of course.

Wellsir, all the president's men figure George W. Bush will raise about $200 million to finance his re-election campaign, which is one reason he came to North Carolina this week. Among other things, Bush was thanking his "Rangers," the people who raised $200,000 or so, and the "Pioneers," who raised $100,000. What happens is, you raise that kind of money, and you get your picture taken with the president and maybe have a couple of shrimp and a little wine. Actually, that's not fair. The fact is, the Bush campaign has a very well-organized compensation plan for donors to express its appreciation to them. It is not well-known, but your correspondent has of late been working the inside track on the campaigns of President Bush and presumed Democratic nominee John Kerry, that tall guy from Massachusetts. Thus, we have assembled information closely held in both camps as to how donors are rewarded for their support.

It was a typical example of the man's modesty. When Bill Friday had to back out of a dinner with those of us participating in a statewide editorial writers and editors conference last week, he apologized but said he had to attend an awards ceremony for Duke University historian John Hope Franklin. He didn't mention that he was also being honored. But when he came to the conference the next morning, the fellow who led the University of North Carolina system with a quiet dignity for 30 years was breathing fire on a subject, college sports, that has occupied his energies for some years. It might even be said that his concerns go back nearly a half-century, to the early days of his tenure as president.