More love letters from our dear readers
Dear Editor,
That was a terrific piece on forever Tar Heel Walter Davis. I was at Carolina for part of his career there, and he always seemed so nice and approachable. The only way you would have known he was a star basketball player was because he was taller than the average student on campus.
Bless you, Sweet D, and bless you, too, Saunders. (Never thought I’d say that.)
P.G.
Dear Editor,
Thank you for the wonderful tribute to Walter Davis, my favorite Tar Heel ever. Maybe that’s because I’m from Pineville, too, but mainly because he hit that 40-foot shot 50 years ago that beat Duke, and I hate Duke.
Walter was like many of the players who played under Coach Smith, a gentleman.
I’m glad he convinced you to return home when you ran away, because there is no telling what kind of mischief you would have got into if you had gone to Colorado in that VW Microbus with those hippies. Maybe the Triangle would have been deprived of your wonderful writing the past however many decades you have been here.
My late husband loved your columns, and when I heard him laughing at the breakfast table in the morning, I knew he was reading something you wrote.
D.W.
Dear Editor,
I loved watching Walter Davis play basketball for the Tar Heels. He was almost flawless on the court. But he made one error, stopping you from running away even further with those hippies.
If you had gone ahead to Colorado or Timbuktu or wherever they were going, we might could have been spared all of that WOKE nonsense you always write. Is there ever a problem you can’t blame on RACISM or CONSERVATIVES?
One day the world will find out why you are always writing nasty lies about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
Is it something personal between you two that you are not letting us in on? Hmmm?
T.E.
Dear Editor,
You stink. Reading back in The Saunders Report, you have not picked on anybody as much as you have picked on Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Robinson is a distinguished Tar Heel, a Christian, and God willing he will be the next Governor of North Carolina. What have you done, besides badmouth him and wear stupid hats?
W.S.
Dear Editor,
I really want to like your stories and The Saunders Report, but why do you feel it is necessary to write all the time about how much trouble you got into as a child? It seems that you are proud of what a lawless little s#!t you were.
It is obvious you paid attention in school, because you are an excellent writer. If you set your mind to it, you could probably be an inspiration for some young men. Instead, all you want to do is brag about how much trouble you got into. It is getting tiresome.
R.D.
Dear Editor,
Ha Ha. You are busted, Barry. I know people who went to school with you in Richmond (County) and they say that you were nothing like the person you present yourself to be when you write about your teenage years. One friend of yours, a retired teacher who said her son was your best friend, said you were quiet and polite and nothing like the troublemaker you are always writing about yourself as being.
Are you so ashamed to admit that you were smart or a goody two-shoes in school that you had to create a whole new alter ego?
R.E.
Dear R.E.,
Several years ago, my cousin, fellow writer Thomasi McDonald, and I, attended the funeral of a very dear childhood friend. As his family and the preacher talked about how “quiet” and “shy” he had been in life, I turned to my cousin and said “Hey man, you want to go look in that casket and make sure we’re at the right funeral?”
Anyone who says I was polite and shy may not have been at the wrong funeral, but they were definitely in the wrong classroom.
Of couse, I never thought I was incorrigible in school, but there is a history of suspensions and letters written to my aunt that state otherwise.
The editor
Dear Editor,
I hope Mark Robinson kicks you where the sun don’t shine when he sees you. He is too much of a gentleman and a Christian to ever do that or to ever respond to you, but he would be within his rights to punch you out for the way you are always writing lies about him.
Envy is a(n) ugly sin, sir.
By the way, I am a bail bondsman and I would post his bail free of charge if he ever decides to punch you right in your big mouth.
C.T.
Dear Editor,
It has been three years since you wrote a tremendous column about my college classmate and teammate at N.C. State, Ronald Krall. You wrote he was your P.E. teacher, and I was so glad to read that he had such a positive influence on you. Although his lessons didn't seem to take hold, by your own admission, until you were out of high school for decades.
I went back and re-read that column, and it is something that you should reprint every November.
Thanks again,
L.B.
Dear L.B.,
One decade - that's how long it took for Coach Krall's life lessons to sink in and for me to call and thank him and apologize for being so unreceptive at 17. Just one.
The editor
