Gordon Poindexter stopped by the newspaper office last week with an unusual request: Put a little something in the paper about his parents, Oscar and Ruth Poindexter, late, of Advance.

“The Bible tells us to honor thy mother and father, and that’s what I want to do,” he said.

His tribute is somewhere in this week’s edition with his parents’ names and their four surviving sons. I’ve known the Poindexter boys since they were boys. They were easily the most skillful with yo-yos after services at Macedonia Moravian Church during the yo-yo craze of the early 1960s.

Oscar and Ruth have been gone more than a decade, but I’ve hardly forgotten them.

Ruth was a walking encyclopedia of genealogical information. She knew my family tree better than I did. A Bowden, she grew up on a farm that is now Oak Valley. A wealth of historical knowledge died with her.

Oscar Poindexter was the mailman of Advance. The one and only. There are 10 postal routes now to handle all the population growth. Oscar’s delivery map started north on NC 801 at Joe Langston Road and went south to US 64.

It has taken 10 carriers to replace him.

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This year’s presidential primaries just can’t end for either political party. Hillary Clinton was expected to be crowned by the Democrats without a serious contest, but she’s now struggling against an oddball socialist senator from Vermont who promises free college to the younger set. They are gaga for Bernie Sanders, who exhibits the old-fashioned way of getting votes: Bribe them with free stuff. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is proving hard to love. Her voice is raspy and shrill. She has lost a long string of states outside the South. Tuesday’s primary in New York was expected to get her back on track.

Even her rascal husband, former President Bill Clinton, can’t put a little excitement in the air for his wife.

Hillary continues to be hounded by the Libya debacle, her email scandal and an investigation by the FBI. She has baggage. “Hillary for Prison,” a bumper sticker reads.

On the Republican side, the race has narrowed to a shoot-out between New York tycoon Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Cruz has a likability problem. He’s perhaps the smartest presidential candidate since Thomas Jefferson, but voters have been slow to embrace him except as the last standing alternative to Donald Trump, who drives some people absolutely crazy.

Trump could have sewn up the GOP nomination by now if he had avoided stepping on his self-planted land mines. He nastily contrasted his beautiful trophy wife to Cruz’s wife, which made him seem like a royal cad. He insulted Vietnam prisoner-of-war Sen. John McCain. He mocked a handicapped reporter. He made and then retracted comments about punishing women who get abortions. He has been a circus act. Diplomatic, he is not. But he says he can be if he wants.

Some of my friends love Trump’s outspoken, politically incorrect methods. Others can’t stand him for his foppish, mean-spirited, mud-slinging behavior. China and Russia worry about him. My polite European friends are horrified that this outlandish, trigger-happy guy could command nuclear weapons.

We Americans have always troubled the Europeans. They expressed the same uncertainties about Ronald Reagan as a gun-slinging cowboy.

Trump has a commanding lead in the delegate count, but he may not have enough in the end for an out-right win at the GOP convention. Cruz, meanwhile, is grabbing up delegate commitments to collar the nomination on a second vote.

Politics may be nasty, but it isn’t boring.

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After a long wait through three seasons, let the blooming begin The first of my irises unfurled Monday, and more are promising to follow.

— Dwight Sparks