Walk, don't run.

• Position: Brief Article

When I was about 15, I got in a fight on a bus that was loading up to leave a skating rink in Mebane. Some guy from Haw River wanted a piece of me because I was from Burlington, which, if you were a kid from Haw River, was reason enough. Burlington was a mill town that grew into a small city and put on airs. Haw River, a mill village just across its namesake, hadn't and couldn't: Back then, its only airs were those wafting off industrial waste washing by in the dye-stained river -- much of it courtesy of Bigger, Better Burlington, as the local license tags read. We looked down on them. They compensated by beating up on us.

Grappling each other before the first fist could be flung, we wound up wallowing in the aisle. Since violence never solves anything, I tried to reason with him by grabbing both his ears and pounding his head, like a jack hammer, on the bolts fastening one of the seats to the floor. To break it up, the bus driver started stomping on us. Unfortunately for me, I was on top. Even more unfortunate for my foe, the fandango that the driver was dancing on my back KO'd my bladder.

Kicked off the bus, we stood there, damp and growing cold in the crisp night air, glaring at each other in the dark, empty parking lot. Haw River was nearer, but a long, very uncomfortable hike home lay ahead for each of us.

Jim Martin's letter (page 6) chastising me for the column I wrote on the Global TransPark reminded me of this incident 37 years ago. He's right about one thing: Nobody wins a faction fight, whether it's between regions of a state or just across city limits. The blows one section suffers eventually rain down, one way or another, on the other. But the former governor and...