Tag: Carolina Panthers

Proof That We Had Escaped

Bank of America Stadium
Bank of America Stadium

After the NFL awarded a pro football franchise to Charlotte in 1993 Brother Dave bought two Permanent Seat Licenses and season tickets to Carolina Panther games.

He took me to several games at Ericsson Stadium after it opened in 1996 — it’s now called Bank of America Stadium.

Dave  had good seats.  They were on the 40–yard line, under the edge of the upper deck, so when it rained, and most other folks got wet, he and his guest stayed dry.

Permanent Seat License holders had exclusive access to a nice restaurant — think white tablecloths and roast beef — on an upper level of the stadium and he took me there, too.

The restaurant
The restaurant

The outer wall of the restaurant was glass and while we ate I could look down on Graham Street, on the very spot where Dave and I had worked summers when we were in junior high and high school making syrup and, later, clothes hangers in my Dad’s sweat shop.  I had worked like a dog  there for 50 cents an hour.

When we finished with dessert we would walk a short distance to Dave’s seats and watch the Panthers play football.

I can’t tell you how good that felt.  We had escaped.

Coming Monday:  Whose Fault Was It?

They Say Guns Don’t Kill People

George Mobley’s common-law wife stabbed him in the heart with a butcher knife.  Almost killed him.

[I don’t know how she spelled her name, but George pronounced it, “Louise-ee.”]

The Mobleys had four or five children.  They lived in a slum in Charlotte, in a shotgun house that was torn down years ago to make room for the parking lot next to the stadium where the Carolina Panthers play football.  My Dad’s syrup plant was nearby, on Graham Street, and that’s how I knew George. He worked for Dad for years and I worked for Dad in the summers, starting when I was in junior high.

George was a good worker and a good guy when he wasn’t drinking.

After he got well and came back to work he and I were sitting around at lunchtime one day, eating our sandwiches, and I ask him:

“George, why did Louise-ee stab you?”

And he said, “Well, I had her down on the floor choking her and she said, ‘George, if you don’t let me up right now, when I get up I’m gonna “stub” you.’  I didn’t let her up right then. And when she got up, she stubbed me.”

George’s throat had been cut years ago — he had a nasty looking scar around his neck– and I asked him about that too.

“Louise-ee cut my throat,” he said.

“Had you been whipping up on her?”

George said, yes, he had, that he had been drunk at the time. He said she was quick with a knife.

I thought I might as well ask him about the crease in the back of his skull while I was at it.

“Did Louise-ee do that too?” I asked, pointing to the crease.

“She chopped me with a hatchet,” he said.

Finally, Louise-ee killed George.   She shot him.

That’s why I never bought the NRA line, that guns don’t kill people.  George had been stabbed, slashed, and chopped — and lived — but a gun killed George Mobley.

NOTE: I was in George and Louise-ee’s house one time, when Dad sent me over there to get him.  First thing I noticed was a big, expensive looking TV, way better than our TV. I asked George how much he had paid for it.

“Five dollars and two moves,” George replied.

Coming Friday: You Know, Don’t You