I was visiting UNC Greensboro, where George had studied writing. George was giving a reading on campus that week. Afterwards Jim Clark [director of the MFA Program at UNCG] and a bunch of students hung out on the front steps of an old house on Carr Street. He and Jim were close friends and told some wild stories from George’s grad school days. He hung out at Jim’s house a lot back then—the house sat right across the street.
In another nearby house’s yard, there used to be a lot of what they called worm snakes, these tiny dark snakes. There must have been a burrow. So one night, George and Jim collected a bunch of them and stood outside the Baptist church on the corner of Carr and Tate, and as people poured out the door following services, George and Jim stood there clutching these tiny snakes in their upheld hands, howling, making faces—heathens trying to freak the believers.
—Aaron Gilbreath, writer and essayist
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