On the following pages you'll find Art's Art. He loves to read as well as write, and he has a most entertaining as well as clever way with words. After reading some of his essays, I decided to devote the following pages to his art so that others might also benefit from his wit. Who is Art? I'll let him introduce himself:

  Born without choice on a South Carolina farm in 1925, early years passed without complaint until the hard labor of agricultural life intruded on my preferences. I undertook to learn the printing trade as a more attractive alternative. Escape wasn’t easy; my father ran the farm, along with supervising buildings, landscapes and boys for an orphanage operated by Episcopal churches. The printing office was my refuge, and I applied myself to setting type, operating presses, folder machines, etc. and escaped much the harder labors in the fields.

    Other adventures seemed to stick on me, not because I asked, but was chosen somehow. An odd assortment: counselor at a church camp; bath house manager for a state park recreation area; house parent for senior boys at the orphanage, bus driver and print shop manager. All before I’d lived 18 years on earth. A big war was looming. The house parent left for better pay in making bullets; the printing teacher joined the navy; those left had to keep the home fires burning.

    On my 18th birthday I joined the Army Air Corp as a more comfortable way to wage war than slogging through mud or dust as an infantryman. Much better except for the morning our big bomber flew its nose into the runway instead of into the wild blue yonder. Human damage was minimal but the flying boxcar was scrap.

    Thereafter, I took an opportunity to study journalism but later returned to my first love of actually printing the words and made a career of it. Along the way I still found myself “volunteered” for a variety of non-paying jobs: Church choir and its assorted projects, civic clubs, city alderman, and various ad hoc endeavors.

    How I found time to marry and produce children is still a mystery. But it was a fulfilling experience of another stripe. A widower now for 16 years, not a day passes without thinking of my wife of 34 years—lover, partner, mother of our children, toughest critic and staunchest defender, keeper of values in trying times. How blessed I have been. 

  22 June 2012 

Here is a collection of unusual photos NC Art sent Photos Worth Your Time.