An important point, friends — whether by letter or e-mail, please include your full name, address, and phone number.
I prefer to talk to you before I edit, make changes, or omit a limerick of merit.
Now feast your eyes on these limericks!
Larry Meyer advocates:
Pinehurst’s the best!
May she ever be blessed —
We've got No. 2
Now Delta’s here too —
Come live among us. Be our guest!
Ken Layton advertises:
Welcome, Stranger, to the best.
Make Sweet Carthage a place to rest.
Stay a week, a month, a life,
Just settle in, take a wife,
There’s no place better. Be our guest!
J.B. Smith sings two verses in praise of:
Southern Pines is the best town of all!
We’ve festivals both Spring and Fall.
Our downtown is hopping
With great stores for shopping
While traffic moves by at a crawl.
A feature most other towns lack
Is our median railroad track;
It makes us unique -
So if quaintness you seek,
Come visit, y’all and come back!
Harriette Corbin is not about to get sidetracked — she “senses” three essentials of Southern Pines living:
Southern Pines is best town in our state.
Its Southern charm none can debate;
There’s not a magnolia
In far-off Mongolia
Or the question: “Want grits on your plate?”
West End drew more votes than any other! Several of you mused over the lack of an east end for West End and captured differing views of the town.
Think about each line of Joe Piper’s limerick faintly praising West End:
West End is the best town in town,
I pass it while driving around;
I think that at least
A portion runs east
Or cartographers surely would frown!
Or this peachy-keen view of West End from D. Cox:
West End is best: full of peach-es,
Y’all come from all over to reach us;
We’ve lots of fresh air
And home-folks to spare
There’s nothin’ you Yankees can teach us!
Years ago, encouraging them to use the resources available to them, I concluded a presentation to the Fairfax County, Va., Board of Supervisors with a grin: “You have vast resources generated by the high tech community, and have responded with half-vast programs and ideas.”
The few seconds of shocked silence ended in vigorous laughter, as you might imagine. Joe Piper is a “fellow traveler”:
Some folks say the best town is Vass;
For farming, they say it’s first class.
When pronouncing it, see
That you don’t drop the V,
Or its residents will be aghast!
Piper actually lives a risky life farther west — and his wife permits him to write:
Seven Lakes is the best in N.C.
Some live elsewhere, but why, I can‘t see.
It’s verdant and pretty,
More country than city,
One drawback — my wife lives with me!
And the winner is, in the “Best in Class” category, from 8-year-old Maddie King, a rising third-grader at Carthage Elementary School, for her gumption and love of reading. She says her grandfather helped a little bit, but that’s okay — Shakespeare had help, too!
Carthage is the best place I know!
I was born here just eight years ago…
Here children can play
Each fine, sunny day,
Unless to school we have to go!
About your quarterly voting for the best original limerick published in this column — all of the published limericks are eligible, not just the one I pick.
So clip and keep the columns. Each quarter, in a mid-month column, you’ll vote for the best of them all. Then, at year’s end, the Final Four!
Your task for July is to tell us about your favorite beach. For example, “Myrtle Beach is my favorite beach” or “My favorite beach is Myrtle Beach.” Let us know which one you like better.
A suggestion to help you write a really good limerick: first, make a list of everything you like about the beach (in this case) and sort the items around until a limerick of one or two stanzas pops out. Or list all of your favorite beaches and assemble them.
My five-line limerick praises eight beaches, including two in North Carolina, two particularly romantic spots that used-to-be in South Carolina and New Jersey, the east end cove on Majorca, Sukret’s east beach — where the tsunami hit and did so much damage, and Sanibel. I just thought of another, in Dinosaur National Park.
Keep those limericks flowing to Limericks, The Pilot, Box 58, Southern Pines, or ArtLimericks@aol.com. The deadline is July 28.
Art Dersch lives in Whispering Pines. He may be reached at ArtLimericks@aol.com.
