Calvin Phelps sees a bit of himself in Jeff Penn. Like that fellow, whose family started Penn Tobacco in Reidsville in the 1870s, Phelps is a tobacco executive. His Mocksville-based Renegade Holdings Inc. and its subsidiaries make cigarettes and filters as well as refurbish and sell cigarette-manufacturing and -packing machinery.

Around High Point, Harvey Dondero is the modern equivalent of a cowpuncher who sold out to the rustlers.

Metal buildings line Gribble Road in Matthews, east of Charlotte, housing a private garbage-collection service, car repair shops and other businesses. In one, Kevin Schoolcraft pushes through a door from offices into a shop that covers a quarter of an acre. It is filled with the smell of wood — Brazilian cherry, walnut, white oak — and the whine of saws.

Our panel of professional stock pickers predict which Tar Heel shares will be the top performers for 2007.

Real estate is Chris Smith’s area of expertise. He’s president of Charlotte-based Allegiance Realty Corp., which owns about 2.1 million square feet of office space and 1,700 hotel rooms around the U.S.

This is a story about Carl Garrett’s gallbladder — a tale that might have meandered in obscurity from the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the plains of India and back if not for the griping of a Pittsburgh-based labor union. It is a tale of sickness and health, of globalization and collective bargaining. And like many Southern yarns, it is a tale of a lost cause.