Brent's Blog

I will be on the Gulf Coast next week. Please enjoy our other fine Times-News blogs.
Have a Happy Fourth.

Keeping life simple on only $29 million

It’s hard not to wonder, upon reading Jeffrey Wilson’s story this week, what you would do in his shoes.

Wilson, of Kings Mountain, redeemed a lucky lottery ticket this week. After the government took its share, he went back home with $29 million.

I’ve bought one lottery ticket since we began an education lottery in North Carolina, on the first day. I didn’t win.

I’ve thought about playing the lottery under the assumption that, if I can break even and benefit North Carolina schools while keeping myself in the mix for a big payoff, what’s the harm?

My mother has been playing for a while, and I don’t think she’s breaking even, despite winning more than a hundred dollars at least once.

Besides, the stand of lottery tickets on the counter of my local convenience store seems as confusing to me as the New York City subway system. And I don’t like those people who hold up the line buying tickets when I’m in a hurry to buy my Cheerwine, especially the ones who write checks.

So I won’t be playing the lottery anytime soon. Still, it’s fun to think about what I would do with that kind of money.

My wife would quit her job and become a full-time mom. That would be the best part.

I’d adopt more children. Not Angelina Jolie-type numbers, but at least three.

I’d take care of my family.

I’d go to Chicago. And New York City. Maybe Ireland.

I’d buy a nice car, but not obnoxious. To me, it’s embarrassing to drive around in a Rolls Royce you didn’t work to pay for yourself. Maybe a red BMW convertible. Used. And a used pickup truck.

You see, I have trouble with our rampant consumer culture. I’m not sure I could find things to spend millions of dollars on.

A solid gold medallion that says “Brent” does not appeal to me, nor does a jewel-encrusted cell phone. I don’t believe my wife would be interested in a small dog in a $1,000 handbag.

The television in our living room might be my age, but it still works. Why do I need a home theater system? Why do I need a 5,000-square-foot house? I’m sick of cleaning the one I have and I’d be embarrassed to pay someone to clean my house for me.

So I’d upgrade my Netflix account to three DVDs at a time. I might not buy as many of my clothes from the thrift store. I’d pay someone to cut my hair so my wife could have a break from doing it.

And I’d work. Not forever, but until I had some more work, whether it be president of the Brent Charitable Foundation or whatever.

That’s what would scare me the most about being an instant millionaire - a lack of purpose. I think that’s why Wilson said this week that he hopes to find a job.

I spent a week on Times-News-mandated furlough earlier this year and it annoyed me more than I thought it would. I don’t want to be alone with myself anymore than you do.

I need to be doing some kind of work, I think, to be happy. Wasting someone else’s money on the trivial junk that our culture values wouldn’t do it.

But maybe, with a $29 million payout, I could be persuaded to think otherwise.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at brent_lancaster@link.freedom.com or 506-3040. Read his blog at brentsblog.freedomblogging.com.

- How the deficit will be paid off.
- A little good news on the state budget.
- World’s firsts.
- Mark Sanford’s seductive e-mails.
- War-themed propaganda for the new era.
- Amazing crop circles.

- Mark Sanford was in Argentina.
- Why is the military blocking data on incoming meteors? Are our alien overlords inside?
- Photo of a volcano eruption from space.
- Barney Frank now turns his attention to condos.
- How Britain planned to survive nuclear war.
- Greensboro may loan DOT $30 million to keep road project moving.
- How the food makers captured our brains.

- Deal to fix the Beach Plan could cost you.
- Seven man-made substances that laugh in the face of physics.
- Anti-bullying law passes state House by a whisker.
- South Carolina governor has been found.
- The end of Kodachrome.

- Should Jim Black be given a break?
- Pics from Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.”
- Incredible videos from Iran.
- The 50 richest members of Congress.
- The last-minute guide to summer camping.

- Cronkite “gravely ill.”
- The curse of reality television.
- Your tax dollars at work.
- U.S. destroyer to intercept North Korean ship.
- Student denied diploma for blowing a kiss to his mother on stage at graduation.
- The world’s highest-paid athletes.

A man of his time and ours

Sit around the Times-News newsroom long enough and you will learn that I like to run my mouth. Here are some of the things you might hear me say, sometimes loudly.

“When is your story going to be done?”

“You can’t force private money to go where it doesn’t want to go.”

“I am a doctor. You morons just don’t listen to me.”

“Do you have anything to eat?”

“Curt Davis has earned the right to waste our time.”

Davis was a former POW and active local veteran who died June 7. He was one of many people who, being involved in a lot of things, wanted a lot of things from the newspaper. Those of us in this business have a grudging respect for these folks because they do a lot of good and they are able to make things happen with the force of their personality.

The thing is, though, we don’t always have a lot of time to spend with these folks, or at least not as much time as they would like.

But Curt Davis always got my time. He deserved it.

Curt was a native Canadian. Maybe that’s what I like about his story. He enlisted in the Army before he was old enough, not to fight for the land of his birth, but to fight for his adopted home. Maybe he needed a job. Maybe he liked a good scrap. I like to think that he liked the idea of America enough that it was worth going to war over.

He was captured by the Japanese at Corregidor and spent more than three years as a POW in Japan working in copper mines.

After the war and during his time here, he was involved with the VFW and the Forty & Eight. He spoke in the schools and disposed of worn and tattered flags the proper way, by burning them.

There’s a peculiarly male question that I struggle with: What if I went to war? I wonder about it when watching the D-Day scene from “Saving Private Ryan” or reading a book about the Civil War.

Instead of going to college at 18, what if I was marching to Antietam Creek or patrolling in the bush in Vietnam? What if I had been born in a different time and was on Corregidor with Curt Davis?

Would I have fought or hidden? Would I have had the nerve to take action to help my comrades? Maybe more importantly, after going through something like Curt Davis did, would I be able to go on?

Curt was always chipper, despite what he had seen, been through and had done to him. If he had a bit of hatred or anger in him, he hid it well. If the horrors of war changed him to a negative, depressed person, then he was, at the same time, a terrific actor.

Alamance County will miss what Curt Davis did for its people. And I’ll miss having to give him a little bit of my time.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at brent_lancaster@link.freedom.com or 506-3040. Read his blog at brentsblog.freedomblogging.com.

- MySpace employs 400 people?
- Entertainment Weekly gives the new Wilco a B.
- A Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog from 1964.
- Ten quirky economic indicators.
- Is the North Korea situation about to move from bluster to something serious?
- Obama says “robust growth will helps us avoid tax increases.
- The size of the bailout compared to pretty much everything else the United States has ever done.
- Six stretches to help you deal with being hunched over this computer all day.

I’m wearing this borrowed hat this week in honor of the late great Cary Allred. Cary became known in the later years by a similarly tacky hat he wore. It even showed up in a sheriff’s deputy’s report on pulling Cary over and charging him with careless and reckless driving, when the deputy said he recognized Cary because of the hat he put on upon being pulled over.

Say what you want about Cary (and I will, because Cary doesn’t read the Internet) but he is entertaining and he does know a lot about public affairs in the state of North Carolina.
That’s why today I’m calling on WBAG to give Cary Allred his own talk show.
This was discussed in the newsroom this week, and though some advocated letting Cary take over Talk Line in place of Bill Huff, I think Cary needs his own show. Cary would probably not share the show well with Harry Myers.
Conservative talk radio needs a local program that’s a little more coherent than Talk Line.
Put him on after Swap Shop. Put him on in place of Swap Shop. Put him on in place of the church program at lunchtime or in the afternoon.
Just put the man on. He needs something to do.