Steer wrestling, a practice credited to legendary cowboy and rodeo star Bill Pickett, usually involves leaping onto a steer from the back of a specially trained horse. At the Madison
Put ramekins on a baking sheet. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until puffed and golden. Remove from oven, and let stand for 5 minutes. With a flexible spatula, remove strata to
Santa's Helpers series: His numbers are legion, this Christmas figure and personality so familiar to young and old — merry, red-suited, white-bearded, bearing gifts, and ho-ho-hoing — but his intention
Santa's Helpers series: His numbers are legion, this Christmas figure and personality so familiar to young and old — merry, red-suited, white-bearded, bearing gifts, and ho-ho-hoing — but his intention
Santa's Helpers series: His numbers are legion, this Christmas figure and personality so familiar to young and old — merry, red-suited, white-bearded, bearing gifts, and ho-ho-hoing — but his intention
Santa’s Helpers series: His numbers are legion, this Christmas figure and personality so familiar to young and old — merry, red-suited, white-bearded, bearing gifts, and ho-ho-hoing — but his intention is single-minded and, for these North Carolina Santa Clauses, single-hearted. They know their actual identities don’t matter, as long as they embody the true spirit of Christmas. Join us as we share the stories of eight North Carolina Santa’s Helpers.
Warren Keyes, Raleigh
“I really am Santa,” Warren Keyes, 62, says matter-of-factly. “I’m typically a jovial fellow, and Santa-esque all year long.” His goal — as Santa or in his day job as a customer relationships account manager — is to make sure people are happy. “There’s a mind-set that comes with this role,” he says, then muses — and chuckles, in a distinctly Santa-esque manner — “mind-set or madness?”
Keyes was first noticed as a Santa dead-ringer by a photographer at a wedding. Six months later, the photographer saw him again, at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh around Christmastime, and ran Keyes down. Turns out the photographer was also a Santa “handler,” who became Keyes’s coach, teaching him skills, like how to slow down your speech and speak to a child as Santa.
While Keyes has been a Santa helper for only four years, something more important than longevity distinguishes him from other Santas. “I’m a darker-hued Santa,” he says gently. Which means that when he visits the Hayti Heritage Center, in a predominantly black neighborhood of Durham, not only are the children amazed, but their parents are, too. “Here they are, late in life, thinking back to their childhoods, when Santa was only white.” Now, people make the trip from Raleigh, Fayetteville, and elsewhere to pay a visit to Keyes’s Santa — if not exactly to sit on his lap, then to appreciate that Santa isn’t always blue-eyed and fair-skinned.
This tiny city block in downtown Greensboro once had a gigantic reputation. Not so much for its charbroiled beef patties — though they, too, were plentiful — but for its colorful characters and their wild shenanigans.
In the 1950s, as Americans hit freshly paved roads in shiny new cars during the postwar boom, a new kind of restaurant took shape: the drive-in. From those first thin patties to the elaborate gourmet hamburgers of today, North Carolina has spent the past 80 years making burger history.