While I was interviewing a graduate student for my story in this issue, I asked when he first ate at Biscuit King. A committed King enthusiast, he could provide me with no answer. "I think it must have been some time in 1996," he said searchingly.
I stopped taking notes for a second and started thinking how I would answer the question if I were interviewing myself. To my surprise, I realized that I couldn't answer it either. There was a time before Biscuit King became part of my life. Then I was going every Friday. I don't know when the transition came.
My first visit probably came in the spring of 2001. Probably on a Friday afternoon. I was probably hungover. It was rush or pledging and one of my future brothers in Sigma Chi probably picked me up and drove me there.
My initial reaction was probably similar to most of Biscuit King's first-time Yankee visitors' reactions. What is this dump? What's that odor? What's in the barbecue sauce that makes it so good?
But I soon warmed up to the King and it soon became a part of me. I was required to eat there once a week that semester for pledging and I quickly grew addicted to the sweet tea in styrofoam cups with crushed ice and the sweetshot sandwich and the smiles from Jerry, Bonny, Lisa and Kimmy and the crisp, blue North Carolina Fridays with their feelings of freedom and excitement for the coming weekend. The multi-sensory snapshot will certainly remain in the album that I will always keep with me after I graduate next month.
Sadly, in the next year, my trips to the King came less and less frequently. Biscuit King's hard-to-describe grease odor attaches itself to clothing and hair and even clothing that comes into contact with clothing that visited the King, so a lunch would have to be followed by a shower before returning to civilized society. Chronicle sports meetings interfered with my King Fridays, thus journalism pulled me away from the place.
So it was ironic when writing my very first magazine-style piece that sophomore spring brought me right back to Jerry. The story was about the prospective closing of Biscuit King, which at the time seemed imminent, for Robert Bliwise's magazine journalism class. The class was the beginning of a mentoring relationship for which I am deeply grateful and from which I, and by extension TowerView, have benefited immensely.
Returning to the subject of my first story, of some of my favorite memories of freshman year, seemed the perfect way to conclude my time at Duke and particularly my editorship of this magazine.
TowerView has been a tremendous experience for me this year. It was a privilege to work with wonderful people and journalists: my managing editor Ruth Carlitz; photo editors Anthony Cross, Betsy McDonald and Bobby Russell; and repeat writers Mike Corey, Alex Garinger, Andrew Gerst, Kelly Rohrs, Matt Sullivan and Liana Wyler.
I've enjoyed the challenge of helping writers grapple with tricky and weighty topics: farm labor standards; effortless perfection; LGBT students; racial segregation on campus; the firing of a football coach; and ADA non-compliance among others. I've been delighted to present some clever and beautifully told stories: meditations on myrtle; freshman orientation; sports medicine; a day at Ricks; Duke as Big Brother; and Teaching for America to name a few.
All the while, it has been a lot of fun to create layouts within the summer redesign, for which Whitney Robinson deserves thanks.
To round out my Oscar acceptance speech, I need to thank my family for its support and comments and my fraternity brothers for leaving issues on their coffee tables, allowing me to fool myself into thinking they actually read the magazine.
So now that I conclude the last page of the last issue of TowerView, I turn your attention to the next volume. The very capable journalist and gifted leader Mike Corey will follow the path I blazed out of the sports department to inherit the editorship of the magazine. I eagerly await the first issue that he and managing editor Molly Nicholson produce this summer.
Farewell reader and thanks for reading. I've enjoyed this past year, and I hope you have too. I'm off to grab a sweetshot at Charlie's.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.