Here goes, another refrain from The Old Fart’s Lament: It was different back then, 41 years ago when I started in this business.

With a bedroom as the office and his garage the warehouse, Bob Luddy started what became Captive-Aire Systems Inc. 33 years ago in Raleigh.

My dad bought an interest in a bakery in Burlington in 1941, so we moved there from Greensboro. The bakery had a retail store and about a half-dozen wholesale routes. The first Christmas there I worked setting up carryout boxes.

Heat shimmers from the pavement, and shards of a Bud Light bottle glint in the gutter. The few dozen cars school in shoals of shade cast by gingko trees growing in concrete islands amid a sea of asphalt

GMAC Inc. is based in Detroit. It says so on the automobile lender’s Web site. It says so in its regulatory filings. But CEO Al de Molina lives and works in Charlotte.

When commercial fishing and seafood processing foundered in the mid-’90s, industry hunters turned to another traditional maritime trade to help buoy the coastal economy.

At first glance, it might seem far away and of little consequence to North Carolinians: US Airways Group Inc. wants to swap 125 round-trip slots at New York’s LaGuardia Airport for 42 that Delta Air Lines Inc. owns at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.

Three years ago, David Joyner got into his car and went to see some mayors in western Wake County about making a planned bypass around Raleigh’s west side a toll road.

Anglers cast for rainbows and brownies, but the trout in western North Carolina waters are all green: Fishing for them has an economic impact of $174 million a year, including motel rentals, guide fees and tackle sales, a state Wildlife Resources Commission study estimates.

So much for government not negotiating with terrorists. A decade ago, Bruce Marks billed himself a “bank terrorist,” and he hasn’t backed away from the label.

On Sept. 17, 2007, a for-sale sign was jammed into the front yard of my home, which I had bought just 2 1/2 years prior (which is to say, near the peak of the housing market). Thus began my education in real estate.