(This is the second of two parts of some reflections from our family’s first trip to the Big Apple)
Last week I stopped as we were about to venture to what was to be the high point of our trip from my standpoint, going to the Statue of Liberty.
It may take 30 minutes to ride the ferry to the statue, but there are great views of the New York and New Jersey skylines, as well as the statue as you approach.
I had hoped to go up into the statue, but safety concerns have caused the government to shut down tours into the statue. You go up the base, and can walk around the base, but you cannot go into the statue as before. There is an extensive history lesson in displays on how the statue was built and the money raised, and about the sculptor and the design. There are several photo opportunities. I found it most inspiring.
We stopped at the souvenir shop that was doing great business. Among many items, they sell DVDs of the PBS show that Ken Burns made on the Statue a number of years ago. I found that most enjoyable when we got back.
There are some great tourist items at Battery Park where the ferries depart and dock. There were two performance artists dressed like the Statue who pose with tourists for tips. The girls got their pictures made. There are also some great photos of the city, some that we purchased.
We got back on the Gray Line tour bus when we left. The park is at the base of Manhattan, the heart of the city. Little China and Little Italy are nearby, and we got off as Kelly pursued some of the bargains she had heard about from the tour guide the night before. It almost seemed as if you cut off a piece of China and stuck it in Manhattan. Signs, newspapers, DVDs, as well as uniquely Chinese merchandise, with hardly an indication that you were in the United States. I’m guessing about nine city blocks of Little China.
We later rode past the United Nations, the Waldorf Astoria, and some of the famous downtown department stores with windows decorated for Christmas. With more energy and time, they would be well worth exploring. We ended up back at Times Square, ready for lunch.
We decided to go to Planet Hollywood. There was a line, so we chose to eat in the bar to avoid the wait. We missed some of the atmosphere, though you can look down into the restaurant from the bar. You get a 10% discount with the New York Pass, and our lunch was about $100, about what you would pay to go to a nice restaurant around here, and very good with good-sized portions.
We next ventured to Madame Toussard’s wax museum. You get free admission with New York Pass, as well as a pass on the lines. The recreations are amazing. When you make photos, the wax images reflect the harsh lights of the flash cameras, but in the softer lights of the museum, you have a hard time telling. An incredible number of reproductions.
There is a staged area with a photographer making photos of the group NSync, and it looks like people standing with the group making a photo. It may take you, as it did me, a time to realize that you are pausing to not walk in front of just dummies. Just shows how real it was.
We went back to the hotel to get ready for our big night out on Broadway. While we got dressed in our fancy digs, many who were at the theatres were dressed casually. Our lunch was so late and big that we decided to pass on dinner.
Marilyn and I saw Phantom of the Opera, while our girls went to Spamalot. Both theatres were four or five blocks from the hotel, and we got there in plenty of time.
I was surprised with how small the theatres were. Radio City Music Hall is huge, but our theatres were rather intimate. You also sit very close to the person next to you, side-to-side and front to back. I was not uncomfortable, but large people could be. We went through one of the ticket brokers on-line before we went. There are also day of tickets available at a discount, but we particularly wanted to see these shows, so we bought them early. We paid about $175 apiece including service charges, though we could have paid about $100 if we had booked earlier. I think the discounted tickets day-of are 50% off. If you are not overly picky, I think it’s worth a try, but we had ours. Expect a line, though.
While our production lacked any big names, I was very impressed with the production. There were many tricks they used to convey the scene and place, some I really couldn’t figure out. As you would hope with the best of the best, it was top drawer.
The girls thoroughly enjoyed Spamalot, though David Hyde-Pierce (TV Frazier’s brother) was on vacation the night we were there. There were other actors you would recognize, though not their names probably.
We made it back to the hotel, and slept a little late the next morning, as we had been pushing the girls pretty hard to this point. We took a taxi to the Metropolitan Museum of Art ($12 each way for the four of us as I remember). It took us maybe 20 minutes to get in. It was gently raining, and there was a fellow selling umbrellas in the line, I remember. The day we were there, there was a display on drawings of Van Gogh. I would guess there were maybe 150 drawings. I spent maybe an hour, though the girls were long past looking.
We spent probably four and a half hours in the museum, including lunch in one of their cafes (I think there are three or four, good but $15 a head unless you are really frugal). I did not get to the American art, but looked at European and some Egyptian. It was amazing how much Christian art there is in the European collection. Great staff there.
I could have spent another four hours there easily.
There are a half dozen other quality museums in the area including the Guggenheim, the Frick, and Museum of Natural History. If museums are your thing, you could go crazy.
We left the city about 3 p.m., expecting to beat some of the rush hour traffic out, but we were wrong. It was tough in northern New Jersey. We discussed possibly stopping somewhere for the night, but decided to drive through and had initial hopes of getting home about 11 p.m. We pulled in about 2 a.m. I took the last leg as we put one of the girls behind the wheel for a couple of hours while I got some sleep, and that worked out.
As we were assured before we left, the parts of the city we were in and at the times we were there, we felt as safe as we would feel at home. It’s a little unusual to see merchants put their trash out in big plastic bags in front of their stores, but I felt the city was very clean, and the bags were all picked up during the night. It was cold, so we didn’t see many performance artists on the street (no naked cowboy this time), and I didn’t see one street hustler, well, there was that guy with a briefcase saying watches, watches, to Marilyn.
Hotels are high, but in many other ways, you can go and not spend an arm and a leg if you watch what you are doing, and maybe plan ahead. You are going to spend more than if you spend the weekend at home, of course, but I found that I could live within a budget.
We had a very good New York experience, and I suspect most others come back home with similar responses. If you haven’t been, it’s well worth the trip.

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Where I stand by Barry Merrill
I love New York I

We have lived in eastern North Carolina for over twenty years, but until the Christmas holidays, we had never been to New York. My daughters have not been there, but Marilyn and I had never visited the city either.
I had a wonderful time and would enjoy going back. I did not find some of the negatives that I have heard about for years. I think the city works at making tourists feel welcome, and have cleaned up some of the negatives. And as billed, it is a city like no other.
I should mention that our Princeton office manager, Betty Wellons, has been several times and was an encouragement, as were our friends over at the Kenly News, Rick and Karen Stewart. We benefited from their experiences.
Those of you who have been several times may find some of our notes interesting, and those of you who have not, or haven’t been very often, you may find some of our experiences beneficial if you plan to go back.
The primary reason we went was my wife has become a “Phantom of the Opera” fanatic. She had seen the play locally, seen the movie which we have on DVD countless times, and wanted to see it on Broadway. While we were there, we wanted to at least do some of the tourist things.
As we often take time off between Christmas and New Year’s, and of course our two daughters would be off from college then, we decided to go up on Monday, the day after Christmas. We came back home on Thursday night, after spending most of the day in the city.
One of the tour guides suggested that time is one of the busiest. Some of the lines we faced were probably longer because we chose that week to go.
We made a number of decisions based on trying to save a few dollars on the trip, and for the most part, I think they were good decisions. You may have some that you have used that we could pass along to those interested.
Lodging is always a significant decision. We chose to stay outside New York on Monday night, finding a place in New Jersey for about $85 just off the New Jersey Turnpike. That saved us a significant amount. Speaking of turnpikes, we chose to go straight up I-95, and I would guess that we spend a little under $40 in tolls on the trip.
Marilyn did extensive research on the internet and found a hotel in mid-town Manhattan called TravelInn. That cost us $175 per night for the four of us, tax included, all staying in the same room. You may be able to find other hotels at around that rate, but most won’t allow four in a room. They also offer free parking to guests. I don’t know how much that saved us, but I know it was significant, as many hotels charge for parking.
It is located on 42nd St. near 10th Ave. We were less than a half dozen blocks to Times Square and could walk several places. We took few taxis, which helped save some expense (more on that later).
We left New Jersey early, anticipating heavy commuter traffic, but we drove into Manhattan with surprisingly few problems. We had called the hotel and they said we may be able to park before we checked in, and sure enough, they had space for us as we pulled up.
We had decided to see the Rockettes Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall. We bought them on line before we left, which I recommend. We did not have the best seats in the house, but they were plenty good to enjoy the show. I think we spent over $300 to get the four of us in, with a souvenir program, of course, but we could have paid more. We chose to go to the 11 a.m. show on Tuesday, our first day in the city. The show was packed, so I think it pays to book it early.
While the high kicking Rockettes are the star of the show, the live acting, singing and dancing by a number of other performers were first-rate, and the special effects were eye-popping. I did not realize that the show was capped by a Nativity, which is awesome. The NY Pass can get you a free backstage tour, which we did not take the time for. I would have liked the NBC Studio tour at Rockefeller Center, which is part of the complex there, but again, we did not have or take time for that.
We stopped for lunch after the almost two hour show at a nearby Heartland Brewery, a brew pub that was recommended in one of the tour guide books we had searched. There are a number of them. There was maybe a 30 minute wait for seats. We ordered two dinners with four plates and kept our late lunch a bit reasonable. The food was good.
As friends had recommended, we bought tickets on Gray Line, and we opted to also get a New York Pass. They have a combination price for a two-day pass on the Gray Line and two-day New York Pass. The New York Pass gets you free admission on a number of attractions, and discounts other places. For the four of us, that cost us for the tickets and passes, about $350. Again, we bought that before we went, and I recommend that.
If you haven’t been, Gray Line is hop-on, hop-off, on all but the night tour. The operate a downtown loop, an uptown loop, and a Brooklyn Loop, plus the night tour. If you buy a two-day ticket, you get on the one you want, stay on it as long as you want, and you can kinda use it as a taxi to get you around the town. The hub for the tours is about five blocks from the hotel.
We got back to the hotel, checked in, and got bundled up for the night tour. It is billed during the holidays as the Holiday Lights Tour, and New York does dress up for the holidays.
The busses are double deckers with the top open air, but with a windshield. We put on our heavy coats, gloves and hats, and surprisingly were very comfortable in the open air. I recommend that if you can stand it. The tour was certainly worth the time.
The human tour guides I found most helpful, and generally very entertaining. They work for tips, and I did tip some. One we found annoying, but on the hop-on, hop off, you can get off and get on the next bus if you don’t like your tour guide.
Our night tour guide offered several good tips. If you go to Macy’s, and go to their guest relations on the mezzanine, they will give you an 11% discount coupon good on anything in the store. He also said to hit the most popular attractions early or late, such as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.
We opted to walk to the Empire State Building and Macy’s after the tour. That was an ambitious undertaking. My younger daughter, Kelly, particularly wanted to shop in Macy’s, and she found an attractive dress on sale. With her 11% discount, I think it was less than $30.
One of our few disappointments of the trip was, though the Empire State Building was open until midnight, when we got there around 10 p.m., they had shut down admissions, as the crowds were so large.
As Marilyn has recently had knee surgery and was hurting, the lateness of the hour, and her disappointment, I hailed a cab for the trip back to the hotel. I was pleasantly surprised when the cabbie asked for $5.60 for the four of us.
We found the hotel very comfortable while not luxurious, with radiator heat that worked fine. No coffee or breakfast, as you might expect. There was a bagel shop next door, but there was a 7-11 a couple of blocks away that offered free coffee with pastry, and I bought doughnuts and sweet rolls and orange juice for the girls and coffee for Marilyn and I in the morning.
As per the tour guide’s suggestion, we went to the Statue of Liberty early Wednesday morning, and they had a special tour bus that we could get on that would take us straight there.
While Tuesday had been a great day in the city, Wednesday and Thursday would be spectacular.

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David Williams
What I'd like not to see in 2006
Welcome to the new year, everyone.
We have all arrived at 2006, well into our 21st century and over the halfway mark of another decade. For something as constant as the passing of time, why is it that time seems to pass more quickly as you get older?
I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. Young people believe they have years upon years to go before the passage of time becomes relative to them, while older folks like me are starting to realize that one way or another, the lease may expire a lot faster than we might have expected.
For all the family feeling and respectful solemnity of the Christmas holiday, New Years is a whole different vibe. The basic strategy in celebrating New Years is to start New Years Eve and generate a party sufficient to explode in glee at midnight, then groove on through the entire year.
It never does happen that way, but I know of several folks who have given it a darn good run for the money. I used to be able to party on New Years Eve and keep right on boogeying through at least January 3rd.
Those days are gone, now. I started January 1, 2006 when my daughter called me at 12:05 a.m. and woke me up to wish me Happy New Year. I had fallen asleep watching a movie so insignificant that I can’t remember its title.
Yes, friends —the dog and I snored in the new year.
I have long since given up on resolutions, deciding that true change comes from a desire to really change, and is not based on the turn of a calendar page. I have several personal goals, and I see no need to put them off until late December just to call them resolutions.
But I can mark the passage of one year and the start of another year by sharing with you all a few things I hope will head on out to pasture with the old 2005 guy who just exited, stage right.
Here are the things I hope will die before 2006 is over:
• Reality shows. We are inundated with these hour and half-hour television programs that challenge ordinary people who are placed in not-so ordinary situations. We have all been fooled for long enough by television producers and networks who crave any kind of programming. Who says any of these people are average Americans? They are folks that the TV people think we will keep watching week after week. Heaven knows we have seen Richard Hatch on 14 different programs since he won the original Survivor. Enough already.
• Laid-back drivers. Not the people with a friendly, easy-going personality — I mean the drivers who think the only way they can look cool is to slide the seat’s back into a half-reclined position and peek over the steering wheel like a 88-year old grandparent sitting on two telephone books. What’s the point to this? They surely cannot see much of what’s around them in that position — but I am sure they are getting a perfect perspective of the car’s sunroof. Come on — I have to drive on the same road you do. And I am not that great a driver. Sit up, already.
• Road Rabbits. Let me explain this one. Suppose you are driving down a four-lane highway, like U.S. Highway 70. An orange sign informs you that the road is about to lose a lane to construction needs — like has happened frequently on U.S. Highway 70 in recent weeks. The sign is usually posted between a quarter-mile and half-mile away from the bottleneck.
Most motorists that see this sign — usually a big, illuminated sign that flashes — will get into the correct lane and slow down, preparing for the stopped line of cars and trucks that lies ahead.
Not the Road Rabbit. This individual — with all the preparedness of a 12-year old about to perform brain surgery — will race down the rapidly closing lane, laughing in his rear view as he passes 15 to 20 cars preparing to endure the delay. Of course, the Road Rabbit gets to the narrowed lane and must stop. When there, the Rabbit then goes sympathetic and turns on his blinker, nudges his car fender toward the slow-moving line of vehicles and waits for someone to take pity on him and let him in.
All this guy wants is the feeling that he got over on the poor simpletons he just passed with glee. He deserves what he gets — which should be a 45-minute wait, while taking a lecture from a DOT guy about obeying the warning signs. He deserves to spend four hours with a sign pole in his hand, flipping it from “Stop” to “Slow” as the Regular Joe drivers laugh at him.
I admit that is not much of a list of items to be banished. But I guess a truly better world will take more than one year.

David Williams
Raising children different these days

It is apparent to most anyone who has children that we don’t raise our offspring these days the way our parents and grandparents did.
In general, we all approve of how the folks brought us up. After all, we all turned out all right, didn’t we? And in general, the way today’s children are being reared is yielding good results as well. The two methods are not better or worse than each other, just different.
A lot of that has to do with the technology of the times. Folks in my era were told to keep our hands off the stereo and the TV because we didn’t know how to work it, and we might break it. These days, children not only know how to work today’ gadgets and gizmos, but they also know how to troubleshoot them, find the errors, change components and order the new parts online.
A friend told me the other day that her son, barely over a year old, has watched his parents start the kiddie CDs on the DVD player so often that he got up and pressed the button himself the other day.
Modern-day children are so in tune with technology that adults are tapping into their brains to help them get along. If I have a problem with the computer or the television you can bet I am calling my son or daughter – and in some cases — my granddaughter — to help me out.
So the kids of today have a leg up on us in the technology department. But they are ahead of us in other ways, as well.
Today’s children are bombarded with so much information that they gain their perspectives a lot faster on more complex issues. An elementary school student can quickly tell you it’s not O.K. to smoke A middle-school student is as hip on social issues as they are on the newest pop star, the latest movie or video game or who their friend secretly likes. High School students have a maturity that reveals itself in their quests for careers and college degrees.
These days, kids go to school in special schools designed to concentrate studies in specific areas. In my day, going to special school meant you were such a bad little kid to had to go to reform school.
Children today get presents for any occasion, including good report cards or keeping good behavior up. When I was little, presents came out for Christmas and birthdays — and being good and making good grades was expected behavior that did not get rewarded with gifts.
Punishment has drastically changed, too. Imagine a child of the new century who did badly and needed punishment. Their parents go out to the woods and cut a switch, then come back and begin to use it for its intended purpose. Someone from the police, the social services department and a camera crew from the local TV station would burst through the door and arrest the parent for being a child abuser.
Child abuser? If that is right, my parents were among the worst abusers in the world, and of course, they were not. I used to be relatively content about the kids doing bad and facing a group whipping from Dad. He did it in age order, and being the sixth of seven, he was pretty worn out by the time he got to me. Usually, baby sister Pam and I just got off with a winded Dad telling us to behave ourselves next time.
Mom — even today — is among the fastest slipper-whippers of all time. She could wear you out with a house slipper, or throw it at you and tell you to pick it up and bring it to her. That took real guts — taking the slipper back to Mom and getting close enough to make the exchange without her grabbing you and waling away again.
Of course, this was not nearly as bad as it sounds today. My parents believed, as their parents did, that a regular dusting of the britches was a solid foundation for not having to identify your child in a police lineup or arranging bail at 3 a.m.
I can certainly understand that a regular spate of corporal punishment could lead to abusive situations, but as far as my parents went, it was the last course of action and the law of the land, with nothing going above it. If you got a spanking, you hurt over it until your seat cooled down, then had your feelings bruised for a while, then got over it and hopefully learned your lesson.
Of course, this action does take its limit when a child gets older. It seems a bit ridiculous to threaten corporal punishment on a 17-year old who could probably take you in a fair fight. But I can distinctly remember Dad saying to one of his boys, “You will never get so big where I can’t stand on a chair and box your ears.”
Standing about five-foot nine, that was probably a smart course of action for dad, all of his boys being at or above six feet tall.
The thing most people of this generation did not understand about getting spanked is that it was done out of love. Of course, I never quite grasped that concept as I dangled from mom’s grip as she took on a spontaneous paddling when I got into trouble. But looking back on it, I can see that they weren’t abusing us or taking out their frustrations after a hard day. They were loving us, and caring enough to spank us.
Perhaps corporal punishment has outlasted its usefulness. But lets hope historians do not look back on the day as something dark and ignorant, We weren’t all scholars of behavior back then, and they did what they knew to do, acting out of love.
If today’s parents act out of love as our parents did, then they will never go far wrong.

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David Williams
Enjoying the ride

I used to suffer from road rage. At least, I think I did.
Driving from place to place had become a difficult experience for me, and in my business, I drive a lot. Very little news worth reporting on comes in through the front door of my office.
And for some reason, I hated the experience. This was unusual for me since I have always loved driving cars and traveling. I am not one of those gear-head guys who tinker with their cars and get more RPMs by rebuilding his carburetor every weekend, or who changes their motor oil every three days just because they can.
I enjoy the traveling part. The winding road, the scenery, the wind through your window and the radio up loud. Getting from Point A to Point B is a challenge and a thrill, and I savor the chance to control the environment within the car and decide if I am going to get 60 miles in the next hour or stop and savor a sack lunch from a roadway rest stop.
I probably got that way from our family trips of my childhood, from our California home to south Alabama to visit our relatives. We got a lot of family time as the nine of us packed into a Volkswagen bus and drove three days through the summer sun.
One of the kids would always get sick coming through the hills between San Diego and Yuma. We played game after game of the traveling alphabet game, where you would have to find words on road signs and other things in alphabetical sequence.
And seeing the sun come up while sitting with Mom and Dad between the front seats across a horizon of road and desert was breathtaking, even as a child.
So I like to drive. I hated driving with all the other drivers on the road, however. This has gotten worse as I have had to spend more time on U.S. Highway 70 and dealing with speeding cars, trucks and motorcycles.
My mood would progressively darken as I watched cars weaving in and out of traffic, swerve over into my lane, slam on brakes mere feet in front of me and honk at me as they zoomed past me because I would not do 85 miles an hour, nor get out of their way.
But I don’t suffer from the pangs of anger very much anymore.
The cure? New car.
I admit I really could have kept my old car for a few more months. The engine was running fine, the result of a trip to a good mechanic who essentially rebuilt the top half of the engine. The tires were fairly new and the mechanical essentials of the car were solid.
But the “comfort parts” of the car — the radio, the air conditioning — had seen their better days. I used “2-55” air conditioning for the last three years — ladies, ask your husbands what that is if you don’t know — and the radio’s FM band had stopped working in the 1990s. I was an expert on any talk-radio subject you wanted to bring up, because it was all I had to listen to.
I was prompted to seek new vehicular accommodations when the gauges began to falter. The speedometer became an infrequent operator shortly after I bought the car, I got used to it, though — most drivers of manual transmission cars get a feel for the speed they are traveling by getting a feel for the engine’s amount of labor and the gear they are in.
But when the gas gauge started to act up, I knew I had a problem that I could not adapt to, unless I wanted to fill up every twenty miles, just to make sure.
I paid a really sweet (meaning cheap) price for that car, drove it six years, and got the same amount back when I traded it in. Gotta say, the old girl was good to me until the last.
The new car has really made driving a lot more fun. I got some bells and whistles — I had never had a car with a sunroof before, and I never really understood the attraction until I bought the new car, Now I am riding with the sunroof open and loving the experience of enjoying the warm winter weather while I drive.
It looks a lot nicer, too. The old girl was easy to spot in parking lots – that peeling purple paint was unmistakable. Most auto owners would try to leave a space of two between my car and theirs, in case it was giving off paint-depriving emanations.
My new car is sleek black, and very stylish-looking, at least to me. I am still wandering around parking lots at big events because I am not accustomed to finding my new car in a crowd yet.
Fortunately, I have another new gadget I have never had before — a car key that comes with one of those key fobs that allows you to lock and unlock your car doors by remote control. It is another manly event to try and get your remote control to work first from further away than the guy next to you.
These make car location a simple process — hit the panic button and follow the sound of incessant honking.
The car is not new, but it looks very current. I do not possess the resources to buy a new car, but I am very happy with this one. The one thing the car brought me that I did not have to deal with before is a car payment, and that is taking some getting used to.
And I enjoy driving again. Even short trips to the store are more pleasant and less cumbersome.
I am looking forward to taking my first long trip in the car later this year, My son and I have decided to drive to Ohio and see a few things we have not seen together.
I forsee a possible automotive conflict, however. He will have just graduated from college and will probably take advantage of one of those first-time buyer programs to get himself a new car once he has a job. If he has a new car before we take our trip, I am sure he will want to drive and have me ride along.
I would much rather have him come with me. I’d even let him drive my car, but he is a relative novice with manual transmissions and probably won’t want to try it.
Even if it does not work out for that trip, me and the car will be on the highway in the near future, visiting my sister in Atlanta or my family in south Alabama.
Road rage cannot be cured for everyone by doing what I did, But I can assure you, it does ease the symptoms a lot.

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Reggie Ponder
Ghost Walk
I don’t know exactly what to call her. Yes, it was clear that she was a she, but beyond that . . . who knows?
My wife, Jane, and I went on the ghost walk in New Bern during October 2001. She always has had an interest in ghosts and the like, especially if they relate somehow to North Carolina. I have never had much interest in ghosts, apparitions, poltergeists, or whatever, but I went because she wanted to go and because I love New Bern. I hadn’t been to the city much since I attended two years of high school there about 25 years ago, so I was eager to see the sights.
The walk went pretty much without incident until we got to the cemetery at the end of the journey. Yes, the ghost walk ended in the city cemetery. That seems just a little too obvious, I guess, but that’s how the event was designed. The program at the cemetery featured vignettes by local actors who portrayed famous and quasi-famous people buried in the cemetery. The vignettes took place next to the graves of the people who were being portrayed. It was a very nice history lesson, really.
But what to make of the teen-agers skipping playfully through the cemetery while all this was going on was another matter entirely. There were a half-dozen of them, two guys and four girls, the guys wearing long underwear and the girls in white flannel night gowns.
They were wearing mime makeup and skipped in and out among the graves. None of the police officers on hand for the event said anything to them about their disruptive behavior in the cemetery, so I thought they might be part of the program – portraying “ghosts” there in the cemetery.
All of these teens seemed to avoid the crowd except for one bold girl who ventured into the midst of the tourists. She was cute, allowing for her “ghostly” appearance that I chalked up to her costume, and she moved freely in and out among the crowd – even a little too freely.
None of these youth seemed menacing, but this one girl seemed inappropriately flirtatious, though innocent enough apparently. She came over to where I was and brushed against my arm and side a couple of times, making eye contact with an intensely flirtatious look. This struck me as very inappropriate and I moved even closer to my wife, holding her tightly as if to say, “I’ve got someone already, thanks.”
But I had this sinking feeling that I was somehow going to be expected to answer for this flirtation as if somehow I had encouraged it.
The girl moved on to another man about my age or a little older, also on the arm of his wife, and she went through the same basic process with him. Then she went back to skipping in and out among the graves.
As the ghost walk ended and we headed back toward our car, Jane acted like nothing had happened. But I knew better than to assume everything was OK, so I spoke up in my own defense. “I was not flirting with that girl. I moved away when she came toward me. I didn’t do anything to encourage her.”
“What girl?” Jane asked.
“The girl in the white gown and mime makeup,” I replied, a little puzzled.
“What girl?” she repeated.
I decided this was part of my punishment – dragging the whole thing out, pretending at first not to know what I was talking about. But the thing is, four years later Jane still swears that she didn’t see any of the teen-agers skipping around in the cemetery. In fact, no one who was there seemed to see – or feel – them in our midst except for me, and the other man I mentioned.
What was she? I have always said that I don’t really believe in ghosts. Or more precisely, I have had a strong conviction that if they did exist, I should have nothing to do with them, because of biblical prohibitions against mediums and the like.
I continue to believe that we should not seek out the spirits of the dead. But if something like that is what I encountered that night in New Bern, then I don’t feel like I have to run full speed ahead in the opposite direction.
They weren’t really scary. They just seemed a little bit sad.

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