The State You're In

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There are hockey mascots with sharp teeth and fierce expressions. Mascots built to intimidate. Mascots meant to look fast or wild or fearsome.

And then there's Stormy.

A brown hog in a hockey jersey.

Which, if we're being honest, may be the most North Carolina thing ever created.

When the Hurricanes came South nearly thirty years ago, they could've chosen just about anything to represent the team. A storm cloud. A tornado. Some sort of weather phenomenon with glaring eyes.

Instead, they picked a pig.

Not because pigs are fierce. Not because they skate particularly well. But because few animals are woven into the story of North Carolina quite like the hog.

This is a state where generations have gathered around pig pickin's. Where barbecue isn't simply food, but a language spoken differently from one county to the next. Where entire communities have been built around agriculture, and where a pig has long been a symbol of hard work, abundance, and gathering together.

Somewhere along the way, Stormy became more than a mascot.

He became ours.

He has danced on the glass, high fived generations of fans, celebrated goals, weathered tough seasons, and witnessed TWO Stanley Cup championships. Through it all, he's been there, a constant reminder that hockey in Carolina never had to become something else to belong here.

Instead, it put a pig in a jersey and made itself right at home.

Happy National Mascot Day to Stormy, proof that when hockey came South, the South came to play hockey.

RALEIGH, NC — LOCAL MAN BUYS TORTORELLA’S EXACT SUIT AT CAUSE FOR PAWS, VOWS TO WEAR IT TO STANLEY CUP PARADE

Raleigh resident Ricky "Skeeter" Barnes says he knew he had found something special the moment he saw a black suit hanging on the rack at Cause for Paws.

Not just any suit.

The suit.

"The exact one," Skeeter said confidently. "You can tell by the cut of the jacket and the smell of playoff disappointment seeped into the fabric."

As Hurricanes fans may remember, after Game 5, John Tortorella told reporters he was leaving his clothes at the Raleigh hotel because he was certain there would be a Game 7.

There was not.

According to Skeeter, sometime between the Hurricanes winning the Cup and checkout time at the hotel, the suit reportedly made its way to Cause for Paws, where he purchased it for $18.50 and a coupon from donating an old kitty carrier.

Skeeter says he'll be wearing the exact suit as he walks in Saturday's Stanley Cup Parade, describing it as "sustainable fashion with a side of elite level pettiness."

Neighbors report he's already rehearsed for the celebration by standing in the back of a broken down Dodge Ram in the suit, chugging Storm Brew with one hand and twisting a 2006 playoff shirt round his head like a helicopter with the other.

At press time, Skeeter was reportedly steaming the suit over a pot of boiling vinegar barbecue sauce while muttering, "still smells like polyester and premature confidence."

This morning it was just coffee on the back porch and Clapton Unplugged drifting out across the yard.

I've probably listened to that album a thousand times since I first carried it out of Schoolkids Records as a teenager, and somehow it keeps finding new things to say.

They say the music you hear when you're young stays with you longer than anything else. I don't know much about studies, but I know this right here, there are songs that become part of your life the same way old roads do. You don't always travel them, but you never forget where they lead.

I was raised strict Pentecostal Holiness. MTV and much of popular music was forbidden fruit. Of course, that's often the quickest way to make a teenager want to taste the apple.

So we did.

And there was Eric Clapton sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar, making songs feel older than time and newer than tomorrow all at once.

Maybe that's why Running on Faith ages so well. When you're seventeen, you don't yet have the experiences to understand it. But after a few decades of living, you realize it's not a sad song at all. It's a profoundly optimistic one, the quiet belief that the road ahead bends toward something good, even when it's out of sight.

The older I get, the more I think Tears in Heaven isn't asking a question so much as holding onto hope. The kind of hope that says love doesn't simply vanish. It changes shape, settles into memory, and walks beside us the rest of our day

Funny how records do that.

The songs stay the same.

But the person listening to them keeps changing.

And every now and then, on a quiet morning with coffee on the porch, an old album reminds you exactly who you were when you first heard it, and just how far you've come since.

If YOU had the Stanley Cup for 1 day, where would you take it in North Carolina & what would you fill it with...

North Carolina is rooted in pottery.

Long before most of us were here, families like the Coles, Teagues, Owens, and Owen(yes, there's a difference) were shaping clay from this soil into something useful and beautiful. Their craft was passed down the old-fashioned way, from one generation to the next, through hands stained with red clay and years of practice.

We treasure those stories.

But there is something special about a person who finds clay later in life.

Travis Schultz spent twenty years in Army Special Operations Command before becoming a high school mathematics teacher. Somewhere along the way, he found a pottery wheel.

Now he takes little balls of dirt and turns them into mugs and vessels meant for everyday life.

It turns out that hands can learn twice.

Once to serve.

And again to create.

Catch Clayculations at Dirtbag Farmers Market in Hope Mills, NC ☕️

You spend your whole life seeing the Stanley Cup on TV.

In parades.

On stages.

Lifted over the heads of legends.

You never imagine your first touch of it will be in a tiny bar in downtown Raleigh.

But maybe that's the beauty of hockey in North Carolina.

The greatest trophy in sports didn't come here hidden behind ropes or guarded by security.

It came to a neighborhood bar.

To the people.

I reached out and touched it.

Cold silver.

The same kind of cold I remember from my granny's good silver. The pieces that only came out on holidays. I could still hear her voice saying that the oils from your hands would tarnish it.

There'll be a parade on Saturday.

And it'll be a sight to see.

But years from now, I think I'll remember this.

A cold piece of silver.

My granny's voice.

And the strange way history sometimes finds its way into your hands.

The Hashbrown Casserole Biscuit does not care about your opinion.

Cheese upon potatoes.

Potatoes upon biscuit.

Butter upon everything.

A monument to breakfast excess.

A carb cathedral.

A dairy pyramid.

An edible act of Southern engineering.

Some call it too much.

Those people are wrong.

Nutrition facts have left the building.

There is only biscuit.

There is only hashbrown casserole.

There is only peace.

God bless whoever said, "Put it in a biscuit."