For those worried about the traffic impact of the new Davie High School on Farmington Road, rest easy. Help is on the way … eventually. The N.C. Department of Transportation plans to build roundabouts at the east ramp to I-40 on Farmington Road and at US 158 and Farmington Road … in the year 2024. The projects, estimated at $1,788,000, are among 144 projects included in the new July 2017 draft transportation plan.

Also on the future list, DOT plans to widen US 158 to three lanes from Lewisville-Clemmons Road to Baltimore Road in Davie for an estimated $31,961,000. The widened road will also have curbing and guttering and wide shoulders and sidewalks.

Don’t worry about that one just yet, either. It’s slated 10 years from now in 2027.

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In a rare display of political unity not seen in recent years, Davie Republican leaders voted near unanimously last week for Dan Barrett to fill the vacant state senate seat created when Andrew Brock stepped down.

Combined with help from his Iredell friends and a split among the Rowan GOP delegation, Barrett won the party’s nod to replace Brock. His nomination means a Davie resident will continue to hold the Senate seat. Rowan had a 55 percent voting share of the district leadership and could have easily claimed the seat.

Instead, Davie party leaders recognized the value of having a hometown resident in political office and unified behind county commissioner Barrett. Davie will continue to have resident members of the North Carolina House, Julia Howard, and the Senate, Dan Barrett, and a member of Congress, Ted Budd.

Barrett’s tenure was quickly threatened by a redistricting plan released this week. If the plan is approved, he will be thrown into a reconfigured district with a Forsyth County incumbent.

Barrett, a lawyer with an office in Clemmons, has always exhibited good sense, political calmness and a willingness to listen to and work for all of Davie County. He is an outstanding addition to the Senate. To keep him in Raleigh, however, Davie voters will have to employ the same unity the GOP leaders demonstrated last week.

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We took the youngest son to Chapel Hill on Saturday, but there was no time for emotional farewells and long sermons by his father.

We had 45 minutes.

We were given a pass to park by the dormitory just long enough to unload, unpack a few things and make his bed. Then our time was up. So we just left him there to fend for himself on that big campus with 20,000 others.

Don’t mess with Silent Sam, I told him. Don’t join the hooligans who want to whitewash America’s history and defame the South.

Silent Sam is the Confederate statue that pays tribute to the hundreds of Carolina students who dropped their books and fought in the Civil War — an estimated 40 percent of the student body in those days.

Like other Confederate statues, Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and America’s founding fathers, Silent Sam is under assault by the history revisionists. Their valor is now being defamed and vandalized, most recently at Duke University.

Carolina campus lore has it that Silent Sam will fire his rifle whenever a virgin walks past. Who would disturb a fellow like that?

Sam stands very close to the Old Well. Another tradition has it that drinking from the well on the first day of the semester will yield A’s. Michael was in a long line of freshmen at midnight.

— Dwight Sparks