Hello. Welcome to class.
My name is James Thomas Shell — Thom to most people. My father was James. My family still calls me Tommy, because sometimes the memories don’t grow old even when we do.
This is Hickory Hound U.
We’re not here to chase headlines or small talk. We’re here to study something that actually matters:
How a community works — and what happens when the world changes, but the community struggles to keep up.
The official term for that is socioeconomics and culture.
I call it real life in Hickory, North Carolina.
If you live here, you’re already enrolled. You might as well pay attention.
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I’ve spent my working career in kitchens. 212°F water. 350°F to 550°F ovens. 40°F coolers. 0°F freezers. Occasional burns, occasional nicks, and sometimes worse. Timing is everything. One mistake can ruin the whole night. It’s an honest way to make a living — harder than people think, and nowhere near as forgiving. You learn a truth early: don’t depend on someone coming through the door to save you. You are that someone. You carry the weight or get out of the way. Things get done because you make them happen.
I’ve seen Hickory when a hard day’s work was enough to stand on. Life wasn’t perfect and nobody walked around full of themselves, but people looked each other in the eye. Families could breathe. You sacrificed today because you believed tomorrow would be worth it. These days, that belief feels thin. We’ve been told to be patient while the ground keeps shifting beneath our feet.
There’s a certain kind of person you can build a town on — the ones who get up early, keep their heads down, and don’t need applause to do the right thing. That’s who built this place. And then there’s the other kind — the ones who spend other people’s money like it’s their own and whine when you ask for the receipts. They call their ambition “leadership,” but they’ve never carried the load they’re so proud of directing.
I didn’t set out to be a public critic. I’m not here for politics. I’m not here to please everyone, but I’m not the enemy either. I just saw something slipping away, and I couldn’t watch it happen without saying a word. This isn’t theory to me. It’s not a hobby. I’ve lived it. I’ve paid for it. And I’m tired of seeing good people carry the cost of bad decisions made by folks who will never feel what so many of us have felt.
So I started The Hickory Hound 17 years ago. Not to stir the pot, but to tell the story — the real story. The kind that doesn’t care who’s in the room when it’s spoken… The kind that still means something around here.
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This website is big, because the problems we’re facing aren’t small. There’s a lot to take in, and the last thing I want is for good people to feel lost before they even get started. So I’m going to make this easy to follow.
There have been three weekly check-ins (Tuesdays – Thursdays – Sundays) that provide my delivery rhythm. Technically, the articles may come out the day before. Presently, this series (Hickory 101) will be my Tuesday series for the foreseeable future. Thursdays will be for a series called Schisms. And Sunday is for News & Views:
- Tuesdays: Hickory 101 — a weekly guide for readers who want to learn how to navigate this site and learn about what is going on around here. You will learn the bigger story behind this town. Each lesson helps you access and make sense of the information here. We will connect the dots — money, social, culture, well-being. This series takes you from feeling lost or overwhelmed to knowing where you are on the map. It’s not a civics class, and it’s not about weekly news. It’s a clear map of Hickory’s ecosystem, built so you can read it and stay ahead of what’s coming next.
- Thursdays: Structural Schisms — an investigation into how Hickory’s systems function. It explains the hidden breakpoints in our systems — housing, government, planning, safety — the design, duplication, and disconnects that shape local results.. Each part shows how decisions from the past and present have created problems we feel every day.
- Sundays — News & Views — a weekly look at the main issues shaping life in Hickory. It explains what’s going on beneath the surface — the systems, decisions, and pressures that affect how we live, work, and plan for tomorrow. It’s not about headlines. It’s about what’s really driving this town.
When you want more, the deeper material is waiting for you. There are Deep Research articles that show what’s really behind the curtain — the trends, the data, the history, and the decisions that have shaped where we are today. The newer articles have executive summaries and a one-page cheat sheet. You can take what you need, or you can dig all the way to the bottom.
Use the sidebar (on the right side of every page) as your map:
· Hickory 101: Start Here — this guided path
· News & Views — weekly briefing
· Deep Research — the full story, no shortcuts
· Search — type the issue you care about, and follow the trail
You don’t need to memorize everything. Nobody can. But when you see how issues connect — housing to wages, schools to crime, healthcare to transportation — you start to understand what’s really going on.
Our future gets decided by the people who pay attention. And for too long, most folks have been too busy working or raising a family to watch the details. That’s how decline hides in plain sight.
This is a place where the details are finally laid out clean.
If you stick with these weekly checkpoints, you won’t get blindsided anymore. And when the next big decision comes down — you’ll see it coming before they try to sell it to you.
That’s how we steady this town again.
One lesson at a time.
Class Dismissed. See you next week for more 101.
