I was driving in Goldsboro, North Carolina yesterday and I saw a simple sign on a pole: Sheetz / Diesel. There was nothing else on the sign, and I laughed and said to myself, “Sheetz Diesel, well that’s good, but when they Sheetz Propane, let me know because I need some for my grill. It’s almost the 4th of July.
After lunch, I drove over to the SJAB air field to see if any planes were taking off or landing and they were. There were a few other people stopped along this “dead end” farm road. Depending upon the time of year, and the crops that are being grown, you can either see all the activity, or the tall corn will block your view.
I’ve done the lunch at Longhorn, and then SJAB view routine quite a few times, but as I was leaving this time, I decided to turn down a country road heading further east, with the idea of looping back around to Hwy. 70 to come back by Wilber’s and then back in Goldsboro, and finally to the Wayne County Library.
I had probably driven a couple of miles on this road when I looked ahead and saw what appeared to be an automobile accident. It was a white car, and I could see what appeared to be bits of a car strewn on the highway. I just stopped as another car drove up to the accident. I finally decided to turn around rather than drive through the mess. I flashed my lights and turned on my flashers periodically as I saw vehicles coming toward me. I ended up taking the next road up and “hopefully” back toward the accident, but not blocked. Sure enough, I saw a fire engine with it’s emergency lights flashing and as I neared it, there was a fireman standing by the back corner of the engine, directing traffic. I waited and he motioned me on after several other cars came from the other direction.
I passed near a new white automobile that had major damage to it’s passenger side front grill. But as I passed by, I looked over across a ditch into the woods and there was a severely damaged smaller blue automobile. I would imagine that whomever was in the blue car probably suffered the greater injuries.
This is where the accident occurred, and there were many more vehicles and people when I came through the accident scene. The firetruck had an “El-Roy” on it.
After I got on Hwy. 70 heading back to Goldsboro, I noted the El-Roy Fire Department, probably where the firetruck had come from.
On the way to lunch, a car passed in front of me and I noticed the carrier on the top. But, it was just the shape of the storage container that intrigued me. I thought that would be a great shape for an e-foil. You could sit on it and straddle it with your feet resting on some kind of stirrups on each side. I know this would add too much weight for the e-foil to easily lift off of the water. I saw the carrier from the side, and then was never able to get up beside the car to take an image of it length-wise. It had an organic shape. When I zoomed in on the carrier I saw the company name as YAKIMA.
There is a nice, private community in town, which has a LLL. I didn’t note the “private” sign the first few times I stopped by the Little Lending Library, so I ignore it. If they want to “press charges” and stop me from visiting, okay. But I left a copy of “A Cook’s Tour of the Azalea Coast” cook book that I had gotten some time ago. I figured this was the type of neighborhood that might appreciate this.
I drove back to the Wayne County Library. I looked through a couple of magazines and one had an extensive article of using AI for various functions.
On my way back to Fayetteville, I stopped in the Wilson Store near Spivey’s Corner. I had never been in this store and wanted to see what it was like. I was surprised. It was much more than a mom-n-pops country store. At the front were several coolers and glass display fridges stocked with various soft drinks. But I walked around the corner and there began a well stocked hardware and agriculture supply store.
There were brand new hammers, shovels, hoes, post hole diggers and then I turned another corner and headed back into the depths of the store. There was an assortment of different sized cables, and ropes. They had marked the concrete floor with distances. I didn’t note how long, but probably more than 100 feet in length. There were nails, screws, bolts & nuts, PVC piping and connectors in bins. I even saw and picked up a PVC check valve, which reminded me of the RAM pump I built about 1984 while in Alabama. There was a plumbing section, and an automotive or small engine section, which took on the aroma of a car engine, or maybe a lawn mower, but I didn’t see any lawn equipment.
They did have several easy chairs up front near the cash register and several gentlemen were sitting in them, one on the phone, one seemingly catatonic, and a black gentleman that smiled as I walked past him. There was a younger woman at the register talking to someone.
This was what I would consider a well stocked hardware store. No need to drive all the way to Goldsboro, Clinton, Fayetteville or Dunn to get most of the things you might need.
I just realized that the above entry about Wilson’s Store was the perfect “lead in” for me to mention that I just “bummed” a bolt cutter and a saw from Jeff. I’m glad he asked if I wanted the saw also, because it has helped me cut up an old chair so that I can easily get rid of it. I have an old La-Z-Boy easy chair that began to disintegrate, after years of use. The wooden braces beneath the chair splintered, but all the rest of the chair is still “rock solid.” The bolt cutters helped me remove the wire bracing on the bottom of the chair, and the saw is making it easy work of cutting through, I’m guessing the “oak” frame.
Bill Gibson, II 