August O.Henry 2021

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Lorena Guillen Tango Ensemble Tango Pan-Latin Fusion

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R&B, Jazz

AUGUST 29 • 6 PM Soultriii

Soul, Pop

Sheila Star Productions R&B, Country, Gospel

Farewell Friend Americana, Folk

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Time to get back to normal.

Steve Troxler (R)

Commissioner of Agriculture

Time to roll up our sleeves and get the COVID-19 vaccine.

As a 7th generation farmer and devout family man, Steve Troxler got vaccinated at the earliest opportunity possible. He did it to safely—and frequently—hug his grandchildren, and once again walk among the crowds at the North Carolina State Fair. Join Commissioner Troxler and roll up your sleeves for the vaccine. It’s free and no appointments are needed. conehealth.com/vaccine

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August 2021 FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

43 Snap The Whip

11 The Nature of Things

44 Tales of a Brave New World

13 Simple Life

Poetry by Millard Dunn

The Stitch Around Her Mouth

The World is Still the World

Into The New

Fiction by Etaf Rum

Fiction by Daniel Wallace

Memoir by Frances Mayes

56 Fred Chappell: The Movie

By Ross Howell Jr. Local writers know there’s a treasure among us. A forthcoming film celebrates the life story of Greensboro’s beloved Fred

60 Leafing the World Behind

By Maria Johnson A rustic treehouse getaway for the young — and young at heart

67 Almanac

By Ashley Wahl

By Ashley Wahl

By Jim Dodson

16 Short Stories 18 Tea Leaf Astrologer

By Zora Stellanova

20 Life’s Funny

By Maria Johnson

22 The Creators of N.C.

By Wiley Cash

26 The Omnivorous Reader

By D. G. Martin

28 Scuppernong Bookshelf 31 Home by Design

By Cynthia Adams

35 Road Trip Playlist

By David Menconi

37 Birdwatch

By Susan Campbell

39 Wandering Billy

By Billy Eye

39 Events Calendar 80 O.Henry Ending

By Ruth Moose

Cover photograph

and photograph this page by 6 O.Henry

M adalyn Yates

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M A G A Z I N E

Volume 11, No. 8 “I have a fancy that every city has a voice.”

336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com PUBLISHER

David Woronoff Ashley Wahl, Editor awahl@ohenrymag.com Jim Dodson, Ambassador-at-Large Andie Rose, Creative Director andie@thepilot.com Lauren M. Coffey, Art Director Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer DIGITAL CONTENT

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O.Henry Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC

8 O.Henry

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The Nature of Things

Imaginary Worlds

By Ashley Wahl

It’s hard for me

to let go of a good book, even when I’m sure I won’t reread it. Yet each time I pack up and move, my shelves receive a thorough sweep.

Last summer, before leaving my former home in Asheville, I wistfully delivered a trunkful of classics to the Little Free Library up the hill. If I wanted to read The Catcher in the Rye again, I could always make a trip to an actual library — assuming they’d reopen some day with the rest of our then-shuttered world.

These days, my bookshelves are mostly stocked with poetry and favorite memoirs. But there’s one book from my childhood that somehow keeps making the cut. Tediously mended with small strips of Scotch tape, the dust jacket suggests that Mike’s Toads must have been a favorite read, although I couldn’t quite tell you why.

Maybe it was the art.

On a recent summer afternoon, I took the book from my shelf, went outside and studied the cover illustration of a fat, smug looking toad the size of my adult hand, half wondering if it might blink.

Written by Wilson Gage (pen name of Mary Q. Steele) and peppered with primitive sketches by illustrator Glen Rounds, Mike’s Toads was a gift from my grandparents on my 7th birthday. Not that I had remembered that. But when I cracked the book open for the first time in nearly 30 years, I found the inscription from Mammaw and Buddy.

Beneath the shade of a black walnut, our panting dog stretched out like a treasure map beside me, I stepped inside a long-forgotten world The Art & Soul of Greensboro

in which a boy named Mike learns a thing or two about toads and life. (Spoiler alert: If your brother can’t watch the neighbor’s toads for the summer, but you tell the neighbor that he can, then guess who’s watching the toads?)

As I turned the pages, tickled by expressions like “Oh, good grief” and “For Pete’s sake,” I couldn’t help but think back

to a simpler time.

Until I was 7 years old, my kid brother and I shared a bedroom and virtually everything in it. But once my parents bought their first house — a modest ranch surrounded by towering pines — our bunk beds went into Kris’ room, and I moved into a space of my own. After lining my shelves with stuffed animals and miniature plastic horses, I promptly cleared out my closet to create a secret reading fort, an imaginary world that might take me anywhere.

While I doubt that I ever shared my closet hideaway with my brother, we still shared plenty of things, including a shoebox filled with tiny rubber lizards, each animated with a name and a story, hatched from the 50-cent machine on grocery runs to Food Lion. Fortunately for my parents, we never felt the need to bring home real ones. Unless my brother had a secret that I still don’t know about.

As dappled sunlight danced across the final pages of my little book, the sleeping dog chased her own imaginary critters, and life felt simple.

And as the sun dipped further still, the faintest kiss of autumn arrived on a summer breeze.

Good grief, I thought to myself. Where does the time go? OH As a child, editor Ashley Wahl was wild about the Teddy Ruxpin books. You can contact her at awahl@ohenrymag.com.

O.Henry 11

Simple Life

Miss Mully’s Garden It may be unfinished, but what in life is not?

By Jim Dodson

When COVID-19

shut down the world as we know it last year, I decided this was a sign from on high to finish building my backyard shade garden.

The cosmic joke, as any gardener worth his composted cow poop knows, is that, while no garden is ever really finished, it may well finish (off) the gardener.

That said, I set myself a goal to have the garden fully laid out and growing by the time the dog days of August rolled around. Beneath ancient white oaks, I began to see elegant stone pathways winding through beds of cool ferns, colorful hostas and other shade-loving trees and plants — the ideal place to sit and read a book when the oppressive heat of late summer lays upon us.

You might say I worked like a dog — and with a dog — from February to July, hoping to get the job done. After clearing out the last of the weeds and some forlorn, overgrown shrubs of the property’s former owner, I drew up plans and constantly revised them, laying out pathways and building beds for young plants.

Alas, August is here, and while I toiled and toiled away, my ambitious shade garden is yet unfinished.

Still, my old dog, Mulligan, never missed a day of work. She’s 16, and either deaf or simply uninterested in whatever her owner has to say. We’ve been together since I found her running wild and free in a park where I’d just given a talk at a festival, a joyous black pup with the happiest eyes I’d ever seen.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Workers in the park told me she was a stray that nobody could catch, had been around for weeks, either a runaway or a pup someone simply dumped. She was living off garbage and small critters she chased down in the woods. The girl was a hunter.

To this day, I’m not sure whether I found her or she found me. She raced past me as I was preparing to leave, heading back for the woods across a busy highway where I’d seen her cross into the park an hour before, somehow just missing the wheels of a truck.

I simply called out, “Hey, you! Black streak! Come here.” Something remarkable happened. The pup stopped, looked back, then ran straight into my arms. I named her Mulligan, a second-chance dog. Mully, for short.

We’ve been together ever since.

Any time I’m working in the garden, she’s there. Every trip to the plant nursery, the grocery store, or any errand around town, she’s along for the ride. It’s been like this for a decade and a half.

She’s my constant travel pal — my best friend and the best dog ever — always ready to hit the road.

Four years ago, Miss Mully was along for the ride when I started down the Great Wagon Road for a book about the Colonial Era “highway” that a couple hundred thousand Scots-Irish, English and German immigrants, including all three wings of my family, took to this part of the world during the 18th century.

As I laid out this long-planned journey in my mind, Mully and I would simply breeze down the mythic road together from Philadelphia to Georgia over the span of three or four weeks, meeting colorful characters, diving into frontier history and gathering O.Henry 13

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14 O.Henry

untold tales from America’s original immigrant highway. The book would almost write itself. I’d finish it in no time flat.

Evidently, God and wives both laugh when foolish men make plans, to paraphrase an old Yiddish proverb. From the beginning, my wife, Wendy, thought it would take me five years to complete my mighty road book.

She was right. Ditto God. Like my backyard shade garden, my mighty road tale is not yet finished. The sweeping scope of its history and people, not to mention the motherlode of remarkable folks Miss Mully and I encountered along the road, argued for a much deeper dive and more thorough approach to my subject. An unplanned bit of plumbing surgery and a worldwide pandemic that shut down the globe for more than a year hardly helped to shrink the time horizon.

But that’s life.

We all have unfinished business. We are all works in progress.

With a little luck and continued work, I hope to complete both my book and my backyard garden around the same time, maybe by Thanksgiving.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I understand that the day is growing late for my old dog and her master.

She still walks a mile with us every morning, and her dark eyes still shine with the happiest light.

Every afternoon, she takes a slow walk around the garden as if inspecting my work or memorizing the plants. I often catch her just sitting alone in the middle of the garden, thinking God knows what.

For the moment, our journey together is unfinished. But someday I hope to sit in the middle of Miss Mully’s Garden, reading a book and thinking God knows what, too.

Something tells me that won’t be the end of the journey. Maybe just the beginning. OH Jim Dodson is the founding editor and ambassador-at-large of O.Henry.

His favorite children’s book? The Wind in the Willows. His all-time favorite book: James Salter’s Light Years.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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Below Expectations

Last month, O.Henry’s Raleigh-based sister pub, Walter, featured North Carolina artist Amber Share.

She’s become a thing on Instagram with her Subpar Parks project — a series of “postcard” illustrations inspired by one-star reviews of National Parks. And now she has a book out: America’s Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors.

Here’s one for you, Greensboro. Share’s take on Hanging Rock State Park, where, as one underwhelmed visitor complained, the “trees obscure the view.” Find her on Instagram @subparparks

16 O.Henry

The most beautiful words in the English language? The great novelist Henry James said, “summer afternoon.” But he’d never been to the Greensboro Taco Festival. On Saturday, August 14, from 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., try convincing yourself that words like “guac” and “cilantro” weren’t created here in the Gate City, especially after that third margarita. At this sizzling fiesta of area restaurants and mobile kitchens, you’re bound to find the taco of your dreams, whether you like yours with lettuce and tomato, cotija and lime, mango, extra veggies or with salsa so blistering it will make your mouth, nose and eyes water. Speaking of water, you can find that here, too — with or without salt and tequila. Admission: $15; $10/advance. VIP tickets: $35 (include one shirt, two tacos and two margaritas). White Oak Amphitheatre, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

Belly Dancing

Downtown Greensboro, but with food trucks. Like, lots of them. On Sunday, August 29, from 3–9 p.m., celebrate the flavors of the city at, yep, Greensboro Food Truck Festival. Fifty food trucks plus craft beer, live music, kids’ activities and craft vendors — no ticket required for entry. Just bring your appetite — and maybe some sunscreen — to Greene, Market and Elm Streets, which will smell a bit like street food heaven.

Info: www.greensborofoodtruckfestivals.com

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Ogi Sez Ogi Overman

Show Us Your Twist

If you love this magazine, then you likely know a thing or two about our namesake, William Sydney Porter, who famously ended his stories with a twist. And if, like us, you can’t get enough of his writing and whimsy, then you’ll want to be at the Greensboro History Museum on Thursday, September 2, for a conversation about the extraordinary genius of this favorite Greensboro son at 7 p.m. The Life & Works of O. Henry, a co-production of the museum, Greensboro Public Library and Scuppernong Books, features Ben Yagoda — bestselling author and editor of the new Library of America anthology O. Henry: 101 Stories — and Jim Dodson, founding editor of O.Henry magazine. It’s free, smart as the dickens and you’ll leave feeling all the richer. Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: greensborohistory.org.

Supper and a Song

In the blazing heat of summer, blooming in full sun, behold purple aster and Limelight salvia. Alice Walker’s Shug Avery said it best: “I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.” And when a musical adaptation of Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is showing at the Barn Dinner Theatre, you’ll only piss yourself off by not snagging tickets.

The Color Purple runs from August 7 through September 25. Boasting an exuberant score — jazz, ragtime, gospel, African music and blues — this story of hope is a testament to the healing power of love. And that’s after you dance through the Southern-style buffet. Seating begins at 6 p.m. Tickets: $51–$56 (adults); $25.50–$30.50 (children under 12). Barn Dinner Theatre, 120 Stage Coach Trail, Greensboro. Reservations/Info: barndinner.com.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

We’re baaaaaaaack! After a cold, dark, lonesome, COVID-induced hiatus, the wonderful and necessary world of live music is making a beautiful comeback. And your faithful scribe is ahead of the curve on finding the finest entertainment offerings from around the Triad.

Tentative, maybe, but this month marks the first full concert schedule in a year and a half, and to say we’re ready is a huge understatement. Let’s indulge!

• August 11, White Oak Amphitheatre: I had the privilege of interviewing Train lead singer Pat Monahan a couple of years ago in advance of a show at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. He was as warm and neighborly as the rock band’s signature sound (“Drops of Jupiter,” “Hey, Soul Sister,” et. al.). They’re into their third decade now, and still chugging along.

• August 19, Ramkat (Winston-Salem): Thank goodness my favorite mid-size venue is back in full swing, with several goodies to choose from each month. This time around, it’s Kendell Marvel, one of Nashville’s most in-demand songwriters for years, who has finally stepped from the shadows into the performing limelight. No formulaic pablum here, folks. He’s the real deal.

• August 22, Blind Tiger: Local music aficionados know how lucky we are to have a genuine blues legend like Bob Margolin residing among us. And he performs among us, as well, bringing several of his top-shelf friends with him. The ever-popular BT did a good thing by nabbing him for what promises to be an SRO event.

• August 28, High Point Theatre: OK, I know I’m prejudiced. He’s my neighbor and two of his band members are my cousins (Timmy and Toby Overman). But, believe me, Billy “Crash” Craddock has still got it. He hasn’t lost a step in his long, illustrious career, and puts on a show as entertaining as his days as a young ’70s heartthrob.

• August 29, Tanger Center: Hallelujah! We’ve been waiting a year for this, and our downtown crown jewel is finally open for business. And there’s no better way to get our feet wet than with the Queens of Soul. These three elite vocalists, backed by the complete orchestral treatment, perform everything from royalty like Aretha, Tina Turner, Gladys Knight all the way to current stars such as Adele, Alicia Keys and even Amy Winehouse. This will be an evening that’s good for the soul.

O.Henry 17

w r i g h tsvi l l e

bea c h

Tea Leaf Astrologer

sailing into

AUGUST

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Have you ever met a Leo with a show dog? I doubt it. Because if there’s one thing this fire sign hates more than sharing the spotlight, it’s feeling inferior to another being in any way. Who has the silkiest locks, the smoothest gait, the most charming disposition? Of course you do, Leo. But this month — and yes, everyone knows it’s your birth month — don’t be surprised if you’re not getting the undying affection you so desperately crave. Do yourself a favor: relax. Your fans still adore you.

Especially your rescue mutt.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you: Virgo (August 23 – September 22) Brush up on your social skills this month. Interrogation and flirtation are inherently different.

Libra (September 23 – October 22) Love is in the air. But you won’t catch it with a butterfly net. Read that again.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21) Spin and you’ll win. It’s really that simple.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21) Don’t throw the crazy out with the bath water. You know you’d be lost without it.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19) Two words: Muscle through.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) Let’s not beat around the bush. You know what to do. Swallow your pride and ask for help.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20) Too much of a good thing isn’t the case this month. Just don’t forget to say thanks.

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18 O.Henry

Aries (March 21 – April 19) You’ve just moved mountains. Don’t think people haven’t noticed. And don’t let that go to your head.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20) Plant the seed. Then leave it be.

Seriously. Walk away.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20) Pack your bags, sweetheart. Go someplace you’ve never been. It’s time for a little perspective.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22) Don’t spend it all in one place. But if you do, remember that abundance is a mindset. OH Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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We would like to thank all of our clients for allowing us the opportunity to help you pursue your financial goals.

Seated (left to right): Allen Hammonds, Vice President/Investments; Chip Pegram, First Vice President/Investments. Standing (left to right): Christopher T. Barbee, CFP®, Vice President/Investments; Robert B. Mitchell, Jr., Senior Vice President/Investments; John G. Scott, Jr. CFP®, Senior Vice President/Investments; Jacqueline T. Wieland, AIF®, First Vice President/Investments; Paul A. Vidovich, CFP®, First Vice President/Investments, Branch Manager; Gregory E. Gonzales, Senior Vice President/Investments; Phillip H. Joyce, Vice President/Investments

(336) 478-3700 | 629 Green Valley Road, Suite 211 | Greensboro, North Carolina 27408 Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated | Member SIPC & NYSE | www.stifel.com

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

O.Henry 19

Life's Funny

Lost and Found

Sometimes life’s greatest mystery is, well, locating your mom

By Maria Johnson

Where was my mom?

I had no idea.

I’d arranged for a friend of mine — a ride-share driver — to take my mom from her house to a water aerobics class, a step toward postvaccination normalcy.

And now, at the appointed hour, my friend was texting me to say that he’d arrived at my mom’s house early, but there was no sign of her. He rang the doorbell, waited, then left.

Hmm. I called her cell phone. No answer.

I tried the landline. No answer.

I felt my heartbeat pick up.

“I’m going over,” I told my husband.

“Yeah, you should,” he said. “Lemme know if you need help.”

If I needed help. I knew what that meant. He did, too.

But it was probably the same situation as last time she didn’t answer. She was on her patio, puttering in her flowers, and her cell phone was inside.

I rang the doorbell once . . . twice . . . three times.

Nothing.

I heard her dog barking inside the house. If my mom were on the patio, her faithful guardian would be with her, not in the house. I fumbled with my keys and opened the door.

“Hellll-oooo-oooo,” I called.

Nothing.

There was her dog, wagging away.

“Where is she, Ella?”

Ella ran to the back of the house. I followed.

“Hellll-ooooo?”

The bed was made in her room. Everything seemed to be in order.

I closed my eyes for a second and made myself look in the bathroom.

Nothing.

I walked to the kitchen. There was her coffee cup, and her favorite flannel jacket, with a soft blue plaid, hanging over the back of the kitchen chair where she sits. A blue gel pack, thawed, lay on the

20 O.Henry

kitchen counter. Was she having a pain she hadn’t told me about?

I swept through the dining room and living room, out onto the patio. The rainbow lantana was vibrant, and the swamp hibiscus was blooming in wide pink saucers.

But nada mama.

I walked back through the house, stopping briefly at a shelf full of family pictures.

There was my dad.

My mom’s sister. Their mother and father. Their maternal grandmother and grandfather.

All gone.

“Do Y’ALL know where she is?” I asked the gallery.

No response.

So much for the view from heaven.

I scanned the house again, looking for clues, and decided she’d left on a mission.

Did she find another ride to the class?

I headed for the Y. “I’ve, um, lost my mom,” I said to a woman behind the counter.

“Has she checked in?”

“Oh yeah, she was in here earlier. She said her ride didn’t show up.”

Now I was really stumped.

I looked toward the glass wall that separated the lobby from the pool. Was she still here?

Across the pool, a group of women splashed with foam dumbbells. One woman, with her back to me, looked sort of like my mom.

If that bobbing noggin belonged to her, I didn’t want to scare her by showing up on the pool deck. The class would be over in 30 minutes. I set my phone alarm and headed to the gym to calm myself with a few dozen sets.

When my alarm stuttered, I walked to the women’s locker room, which was dripping with grannies. Literally.

I checked the locker aisles and the dressing stalls. No ma. I hit the showers. All of the curtains were pulled shut. I thought about calling her name, but there was no way she would hear me under a stream of water, without her hearing aids.

I had an idea: We’d just gotten a pedicure together. I knew her colThe Art & Soul of Greensboro

or. Plus, we have the same crooked toe on our left foot. I bent double and inched down the row inspecting soapy feet as nonchalantly as possible — which is not very.

“Have you lost something?” a woman behind me asked gently.

“Yeah, my mom,” I said popping upright.

In that moment, I knew I sounded like that kid who, long ago, in the toy section of a store called Value Village, realized her mom was nowhere in sight. The kid who went running to find her. The kid who finally found her a couple of aisles away. Had I wandered away from her? Or had she wandered away from me?

I couldn’t remember.

I just remember how relieved I was to see her, and the look of surprise on her face when she saw I was distressed.

Fifty-some-odd years later, I had help in my search. A squad of soaked grannies was on the case, calling my mom’s name around the locker room while I checked the pool and sauna.

I was standing on the pool deck, utterly flummoxed, when one member of the search party came out of the locker room, waving at me.

“I found her!” she said triumphantly.

She led me to the locker area — which I’d passed on the way in — and there sat my mom on a bench, wrapped in a towel.

“Hi, honey,” she said, smiling. She seemed surprised to see me.

“When did you . . . why did you . . . how did you get here?” I began.

She’d gotten mixed up, she said, and thought her ride was coming an hour earlier than we’d planned. When he didn’t appear, she’d

Life's Funny

called me, but I didn’t pick up. So she’d asked a friend, who happened to be helping her in the garden that morning, to take her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have left you a message.”

“But just now,” I said. “A few minutes ago, where were you?”

“Oh, in the toilet,” she said, dropping her voice. “I couldn’t get my bathing suit back up. You know how hard that is when you’re wet.

But, look, I’ve met the nicest people.”

I stood there, eyes wide.

It all made sense.

Sort of.

And she looked so happy.

A new friend walked by her.

“I can tell that’s your daughter,” she said. “She looks just like you.”

“Thank you,” my mom and I said in unison, involuntarily.

I turned to leave her with her new pals.

“I’ll be in the gym whenever you’re ready,” I said. “Don’t take another ride home.”

“I won’t,” she said, laughing and turning to her soggy classmate.

“Well, lemme tell you what happened.” OH Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Contact her at ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

Favorite children’s book? Not exactly. More like nonfiction, encyclopediatype books about dogs and horses. “They didn’t do much for my narrative skills,” she says, “but I did know everything about Saint Bernards and draft horses at a very young age.”

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O.Henry 21

The Creators of N.C.

Totally Blawesome A flower farm where miracles bloom year-round

By Wiley Cash Photographs By Mallory Cash

On a lush four acres of land nestled be-

tween Chapel Hill and the Haw River, 24-year-old Raimee Sorensen spends his days growing, harvesting, assembling and delivering stunning bouquets and custom flower arrangements. According to his mother, Rebecca, “He emanates joy.” The oldest of three siblings, Raimee works alongside Rebecca and a small, devoted team of farmers. It’s clear that everyone at Blawesome flower farm is dedicated to two things: delivering high-quality, organically grown flowers to the waiting hands of their customers and ensuring that everyone on the farm has the opportunity to live and work to their full potential, including Raimee, who has a diagnosis of autism and epilepsy.

“When given the opportunity to be amazing and successful,” says Rebecca, “folks with disabilities will rise to meet that challenge.

22 O.Henry

If we are able to provide more opportunities for folks with disabilities to be successful, then I think we would see a moral shift in our communities.”

And farming is certainly challenging. “There are always opportunities to problem solve,” Rebecca says. “It’s very cerebral work.”

In the morning, Raimee looks at his check list and gets to work, deciding how much preservative solution to add to which type of flower and what kind of tool is necessary to harvest each variety.

“And when he takes his bouquets out into the world, he gets the confirmation of ‘You’re a wonderful farmer, and you grow amazing things,’” Rebecca adds. From season to season, Raimee’s knowledge and confidence have grown, and Rebecca has seen the skills he’s learned on the farm transfer to other areas of his life. For example, when they host tours and workshops on the farm, Raimee is able to share his knowledge about what’s going on in each production zone, and if someone asks a question, it’s Raimee, despite challenges with expressive and receptive language, who often chooses to answer it.

Before starting the farm, the Sorensens homeschooled Raimee for eight years, and during that time, they set up community internships where he could explore a number of opportunities while building varying sets of skills. He particularly excelled at a community farm where he volunteered for four years. He enjoyed being outdoors and working alongside others. Eventually, the Sorensens enrolled Raimee in a charter school specifically geared toward students with The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The Creators of N.C.

disabilities, but when the school abruptly shut down, they realized they needed to find an opportunity for him to achieve his greatest sense of independence. Better yet, they would create one.

Initially, the Sorensens’ decisions were practical. They had a 1/4-acre strip of land alongside their driveway, and based on how Raimee performed in his work at the community farm, they decided to cultivate the small area into a flower garden. After all, he was good at growing things, and he enjoyed connecting with the community. What better way to connect with others than by putting fresh flowers in their hands?

Raimee was not the only Sorensen with a background in farming and a love for flowers. Rebecca grew up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania with a father who was an avid gardener. In high school, she worked at and eventually managed a greenhouse, and later, on the other side of the country, she worked at an organic farm, growing peppers and houseplants in greenhouses in Oregon. She felt confident that she and Raimee could turn this small plot of land beside their house into a successful venture that would allow them to explore their interests and talents.

And then the four-acre lot next door went up for sale. Rebecca and Raimee’s vision for what they could do grew, and the family The Art & Soul of Greensboro

shifted again.

After purchasing the land, Rebecca applied for a micro-enterprise grant. The initial grant was for $5,000 but after completing the application, she learned that more money was available. She went back to the drawing board, carefully envisioning a project and wrote a proposal that eventually won a $50,000 state grant from the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. The shift had happened. The Sorensens were now owners of land that would become a flower farm, and all they had to do was build it.

Working with a team of land specialists and local farmers, the Sorensens grew intimately familiar with their new land, working to create a plan that was realistic in terms of what they could grow and harvest with their small crew. At the same time, Rebecca, whose background is in social work, was traveling the state, leading workshops on affordable housing for adults with mental illnesses. She met an architect from Elon University whose son had a diagnosis, and he suggested that they work on a project together. He went on to design the barn on the Sorensens’ new property, and he brought out teams of university students to help construct it. He would later design the home where Raimee and a supported-living provider live.

O.Henry 23

The Creators of N.C.

Blawesome was born, and the flower farm that began on a small strip of land beside the family’s driveway grew into a working farm that provides fresh flowers for everything from weddings to businesses, plus events at UNC-Chapel Hill.

But no matter how much the Sorensens had been willing and able to shift over the years, COVID presented an incredible challenge. They lost national contracts with huge corporations.

Weddings were cancelled, and the university moved nearly all of its business online. But people still wanted flowers, and Blawesome met that need.

Individual orders soared, as did memberships in their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which provides seasonal flowers year-round to subscribers. “The community just came out and lifted us up in a way we could’ve never anticipated,” Rebecca says. “It was extraordinary.”

That says a lot coming from someone who has seen extraordinary things happen, both in her family and in her community. Raimee took medication for obsessive compulsive disorder for eight years, and then he was able to stop taking it one year after starting the farm. He has epilepsy, but according to Rebecca, he’s had only one seizure in the same

START BACK TO SCHOOL

Smiling

24 O.Henry

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

time span. “You can pull Raimee’s Medicaid file for the past four years and see that he has not accessed any of the services he used to access since we started the farm, because he’s happier and healthier than he’s ever been,” she says. Both Raimee and the farm are thriving. “A lot of people in his situation don’t get told how special they are,” she adds.

But it is hard work, and the work never stops. “I don’t know if people understand how completely consuming farming is. It’s a lifestyle,” Rebecca says.

“I like that for Raimee because it’s every part of his day. There’s not any time when he’s not thinking about it or planning for it or anticipating something, but it’s pretty miraculous to be part of something that is a living, breathing organism. I feel like I’m surrounded by miracles all the time.” OH

The Creators of N.C.

Wiley Cash is the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, will be released this year.

His favorite children’s book is The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth. His all-time favorite book? Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

Thank you Wyndham Championship FOR SHOWCASING SEDGEFIELD AS A WONDERFUL PLACE TO LIVE!

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O.Henry 25

Omnivorous Reader

The Soong Saga

North Carolina’s link to the fall of “The Last Emperor”

By D.G. Martin

One of North Carolina’s most

interesting stories takes us back to the 1880s when a young Chinese boy winds up in Wilmington, where he converts to Christianity and then returns to China as a missionary. He becomes wealthy, and his family becomes extremely powerful. How it all happened is a saga that is almost unbelievable.

In Wilmington there is a small granite monument on the grounds of the modest, lovely Fifth Avenue Methodist Church building. It reads: “Charlie Jones Soong, father of the famous Soong family of modern China, was converted to Christianity in the old Fifth Street Methodist Church, which stood on this site. He was baptized on Nov. 7, 1880, by the Rev. T. Page Ricaud, then pastor. One of his six children, Madam Chiang Kai-shek, whose Christian influence is world-wide, is the wife of China’s devout generalissimo and president.

Erected in 1944.”

Here is the report from the November 7, 1880, Wilmington Star announcing an event that would ultimately have a profound impact on modern Chinese history: “Fifth Street Methodist Church: This morning the ordinance of Baptism will be administered at this church. A Chinese convert will be one of the subjects of the solemn right (sic), being probably the first ‘Celestial’ that has ever submitted to the ordinance of Baptism in North Carolina. The pastor, Rev. T. Page Ricaud, will officiate.”

That Celestial, as some Americans then referred to a Chinese person, was Charlie Soong, a teenager, whose North Carolina Methodist sponsors arranged for his education and subsequent return to China as a missionary.

A minister in Wilmington persuaded Durham tobacco and textile manufacturer Julian Carr to take an interest in Soong. Carr brought Soong to Durham and then arranged for him to enroll as the first foreign student at Trinity College in Randolph County.

Carr and Soong developed a “father-son” lifelong friendship, despite Charlie Soong’s serious flirtation with Carr’s niece, which

26 O.Henry

resulted in Charlie’s exile to Vanderbilt University for more religious training. After being ordained as a Methodist minister, Soong went back to China as a missionary. Once there he drifted into business, developing the Bible printing operation that became a springboard to greater financial success, often with Carr’s backing.

When much of China’s limited manufacturing capacity was under the control of foreigners, Soong showed that the Chinese could do it for themselves. He helped construct a platform on which China’s modern manufacturing base is built. He printed Chinese Bibles so inexpensively that they drove the competition — mostly Europeans — out of business and, in the process, became one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful business and political insiders.

It was the last days of the Qing Dynasty and “The Last Emperor,” and China was in revolutionary turmoil. Soong helped fund the activities of the major revolutionary leader, Sun Yat-sen, sometimes called the “founder of the Chinese Republic.”

Soong sent most of his children to the United States for education.

When his three daughters came back to China, they married prominent Chinese. One daughter, Ching-ling, married Sun Yat-sen and, as Madame Sun Yat-sen, remained an important figure in Chinese government long after her husband’s death. She even served under Mao Zedong as a vice-chairman of the People’s Republic from 1949 to 1975.

The oldest daughter, Ai-ling, married banker H.H. Kung, who became finance minister in the Nationalist government.

Another daughter, May-ling, married Chiang Kai-shek, who led the Nationalist government until he was driven to Taiwan by Mao’s forces in 1949. Madame Chiang Kai-shek was well known to Americans and a favorite of many until her death in 2003 at the age of 105.

One son, T.V. Soong, represented China at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. After the Communist takeover of China, he moved to the U.S. and became a highly successful banker.

The Soong family was so important in China that it is sometimes referred to as The Soong Dynasty, the title of the most popular and detailed version of this story, written by Sterling Seagrave and published in 1985. It presented an unfriendly version of the family history, but a The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Omnivorous Reader review in The New York Times saw it differently. “Indeed the charm of the man often outshines Mr. Seagrave’s attempts both to debunk him and make him sinister,” said the Times.

A more recent book by former Greensboro resident Ed Haag, Charlie Soong: North Carolina’s Link to the Fall of the Last Emperor of China, gives us a more balanced account. Although the Charlie Soong story is not new, Haag dug up previously unpublished material, much of it from the Soong papers housed at the Duke University library.

Haag explains better than earlier authors how Charlie Soong became so wealthy. While others have written about Soong’s missionary work leading to a business printing Bibles, his association with a flour mill in Shanghai also contributed to his success. According to Haag, Soong’s greatest wealth came from his role as a “comprador,” a fixer and go-between who helped bridge the different customs and expectations of Western suppliers and traders and their Chinese counterparts. Those North Carolinians who already know about Charlie Soong will appreciate Haag’s refinements and additions. For those who never heard of Soong, Haag’s book is a great starting point.

But the Soong family’s connection to North Carolina doesn’t end there.

On Aug. 30, 2015, his great-grandson Michael Feng came to Wilmington to be baptized in the same church where his great-grandfather received the sacrament. Feng and his wife, Winnie, are longtime active participants at The Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, a historic church in New York City, at Fifth Avenue and 90th Street.

“It was the church of my grandfather, T.V. Soong, where Winnie and I were married and raised our two children,” said Feng. “I had just never gotten around to being baptized. I guess my parents were too busy when I was young. Winnie had been after me for a long time to be baptized. And when we were planning a trip to North Carolina for a wedding, we decided this would be a wonderful time and place for my baptism.”

Feng explained to the congregation at Fifth Avenue Church that his family remained grateful to the North Carolinians who provided his great-grandfather the educational, spiritual and financial resources that made the difference for Charlie Soong. “He gave these resources to his children and our family,” said Feng of a Chinese dynasty announced in a note in the Wilmington Star 135 years before.

Almost seven years after his baptism in Wilmington, Michael and Winnie Feng remain active at the Church of Heavenly Rest, where there is another North Carolina connection. The leader of that church is its rector, the Rev. Matthew Heyd, who grew up in Charlotte and was a Morehead Scholar and student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Surely, Charlie Soong would be pleased. OH D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch Sunday at 3:30 p.m. and Tuesday at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV. His favorite book growing up was Lou Gehrig, Boy of The Sand Lots by Guernsey Van Riper Jr.

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O.Henry 27

Scuppernong Bookshelf

Brain Candy Summertime and the reading is easy

By Shannon Purdy Jones

For me, summer reading calls for what we

at Scuppernong Books think of as “brain candy” — a palette-cleanser of sorts to give us a break from the weight of meatier books we’ve consumed.

After all that we’ve been through during the pandemic, our first post-vaccination summer is the perfect time to relax or romp in the sunshine, shucking off the stresses we’ve been carrying around. So grab another beer from the beachside cooler and dive into a salacious romance or a thriller that can’t be put down. This year more than ever we’ve all earned a break to indulge in some guilty pleasures and unwind.

So here’s what we’ve got for you this month: Brain candy for every kind of reader, including those who still want something with a little bite for their poolside grazing.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine Books, $28) Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-ofsummer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over — especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva. The only person not looking forward to the party is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud — because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth. By midnight,

28 O.Henry

the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play and all this family’s love and secrets will come bubbling to the surface.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (Berkley Books, $17) When Poppy met Alex, there was no spark, no chemistry and no reason to think they’d ever talk again. Alex is quiet, studious and destined for a future in academia. Poppy is a wild child who only came to U of Chicago to escape small-town life. But after sharing a ride home for the summer, the two form a surprising friendship. After all, who better to confide in than someone you could never, ever date? Over the years, Alex and Poppy’s lives take them in different directions, but every summer the two find their way back to each other for a magical weeklong vacation. That is, until one trip goes awry, and in the fallout, they lose touch. Two years later, Poppy’s in a rut. Her dream job, her relationships, her life — none of it is making her happy. In fact, the last time she remembers feeling truly happy was on that final, ill-fated Summer Trip. The answer to all her problems is obvious: She needs one last vacation to win back her best friend. As a hilariously disastrous week unfolds and tensions rise, Poppy and Alex are forced to confront what drove them apart — and decide what they’re willing to risk for the chance to be together.

A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead, $28) When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, questions arise about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand last seen in the victim’s home. Carla is his grief-stricken aunt, already mourning the recent death of yet another family member. And Miriam is the nosy neighbor clearly keeping secrets from the police. Three women with separate connections to the victim. Three women who are — for different reasons — simmering with resentment. Each, whether they know it or not, is burning to right the wrongs done to them. When it comes to revenge, even good people are capable of terrible deeds. How far might any one of them go to find peace? How long can secrets smolder before they explode into flame?

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Scuppernong Bookshelf Blush by Jamie Brenner (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $26) For decades, the Hollander Estates winery has been the premier destination for lavish parties and romantic day trips on Long Island. But behind the lush vineyards and majestic estate house, the Hollander family fortunes have suffered and the threat of a sale brings old wounds to the surface.

Matriarch Vivian fears that this summer season could be their last — and that selling their winery to strangers could expose a dark secret she’s harbored for decades. Meanwhile, her daughter, Leah, who was turned away from the business years ago, finds her marriage at a crossroads and returns home for a sorely needed escape. And granddaughter Sadie, grappling with a crisis of her own, runs to the vineyard looking for inspiration. But when Sadie uncovers journals from Vivian’s old book club dedicated to scandalous novels of decades past, she realizes that this might be the distraction they all need. Reviving the trashy book club, the Hollander women find that the stories hold the key to their fight, not only for the vineyard, but for the life and love they’ve wanted all along.

Heatwave by Victor Jestin (Scribner, $22) Oscar is dead because I watched him die and did nothing. Seventeen-year-old Leo is sitting in an empty playground at night, listening to the sound of partying and pop music filtering in from the beach when he sees another, more popular boy strangle himself with the ropes of the swings. In a panic, Leo drags him to the beach and buries him. Over the next 24 hours, Leo wanders around like a sleepwalker, haunted by guilt and fear, and distracted by his desire for a girl named Luce. A prizewinning sensation in France and now stunningly translated by Sam Taylor, Heatwave is

Victor Jestin’s unforgettable debut — a searing portrait of adolescent desire and recklessness, and secrets too big to keep. (Originally published in France under the title La Chaleur.)

The Coward by Stephen Aryan (Angry Robot, $14.99) Kell Kressia is a legend, a celebrity, a hero. Aged just 17, he sets out on an epic quest with a band of wizened fighters to slay the Ice Lich and save the world.

Only he returns victorious. The Lich is dead, the ice recedes and the Five Kingdoms are safe. Ten years pass with Kell living a quiet farmer’s life, while stories about his heroism are told in every tavern across the length and breadth of the land. But now, a new terror has arisen in the North. Beyond the frozen circle, north of the Frostrunner clans, something has taken up residence in the Lich’s abandoned castle. And the ice is beginning to creep south once more. For the second time, Kell is called upon to take up his famous sword, Slayer, and battle the forces of darkness. But he has a terrible secret that nobody knows. He’s not a hero — he was just lucky.

Other notable summer reads: Sex/Life: 44 Chapters About 4 Men by B. B. Easton (Forever, $17.99), The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang (Berkley Books, $16), Falling by T. J. Newman (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, $28) and The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books, $28.99) OH Shannon Purdy Jones is store manager and children’s buyer at Scuppernong Books. Her current favorite children’s book? Pearl by Molly Idle.

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O.Henry 29

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30 O.Henry

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Home by Design

Howard and Other Fixtures

It was dark in there — the house, the heart pine and Howard’s heart — yet we always saw the light

By Cynthia Adams

Our den’s heart-pine paneling was

stained so darkly you could barely make out the swirls, which imperceptibly darkened with every year. A faux-shuttered, oak TV cabinet presided over our family room, which featured Early American decor at its very apex. I even recall a fake spinning wheel. Early American was embraced by children of the Depression, much like doughnuts and savings bonds.

The furniture and accessories were one-part TV Western-inspired (Remember the dark interiors of Bonanza’s Ponderosa?) and the other part owing to the limited range of our local furniture store.

On the wall was a large, dark-stained curio cabinet from MaLeck woodcraft factory in Wingate, which was owned by a relative. It was filled with knickknacks, including a tiny coffee grinder. A matching magazine rack hid Mom’s National Enquirers and Grits.

My father’s untouchable recliner occupied an oval brown-andcinnamon braided rug, likely from Capel Rugs in Troy, which profited from Early American better than early Americans had.

And perched like a fixture in our den in his dusty work clothes — a navy blue jumpsuit and Caterpillar cap, which covered his black hair — sat Howard, our father’s pathologically shy bulldozer operator. The work clothes indicated that he had not yet been home to Ruby, his devout and long-suffering wife. Although Howard had not found religion, Ruby sure had. For hours, Howard would just sit there, often in companionable silence, though sometimes he could be surprisingly chatty.

Behind the noticeably inebriated Howard were shelves filled with Reader’s Digest condensed volumes, the World Book Encyclopedia (a must in pre-Internet days) and the World Book’s supplemental annuals, which helpfully summed up what we had just experienced in the prior year, in case we had memory lapses. Life, National Geographic and Progressive Farmer magazines — all well-thumbed — were on the shelf.

But Howard had not come to read. He sought company.

A nubby brown-and-mustard plaid sofa formed a right angle to The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Howard’s often-claimed Early American chair. These were, and I do not exaggerate, impervious to stain.

Matching coffee table and end tables with spindles flanked the seating. These were sturdy tables. I know this, because on sleep-walking forays, I sometimes awoke standing on top of that coffee table.

Silk flower arrangements, earth-toned and sporting dried money plant and reedy shoots, filled squatty brass bowls meant to approximate spittoons, something I observed watching Westerns.

The sole window was covered by mustard yellow, light-obviating curtains complete with “sheers” meant to check any excess rays of light.

Even midday, the room was tavern-like. This may have reminded Howard of his prior appointment at the bootlegger.

Most often, he showed signs of having hit the Four Roses hard.

(The tip off was that Howard would actually talk. Otherwise, he could not.)

“I like the way you walk,” he observed noncommittally, as I strode briskly past him to the kitchen one afternoon.

At that, I stopped.

“You walk like you know where you’re going,” he added goodnaturedly, slurring the word “where.”

He spelled it out: “G-O-I-N-G.” It wasn’t lewd. This was just Howard, a hapless truth-teller when under the influence.

I shrugged and continued.

If my younger brothers and sister popped in, they would try cajoling Howard into cheeseburgers from Jenkins. It is an abiding mystery why we were allowed to ride with an obvious drunk — perhaps because Howard had a clean driving record: never a wreck nor a DUI. Once behind the wheel of the Pearl, his yacht-sized white Ford Fairlane, he seldom drifted across the dividing line. He kept the radio on a country station.

At the wheel, Howard was prone to talk.

“Miz Ruby don’t deserve me,” he would lament as the music whined. “She’s a good Christian woman.”

We knew better than to comment.

“She’s got dinner on the stove waiting for me,” he would add while heading straight to the burger joint in the opposite direction from his home.

O.Henry 31

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Even as Howard slurred a curb-side order, we knew as well as he did that it would be uneaten.

Once we were home, Howard would shoo us inside with white bags of burgers and fries, disappearing inside Pearl’s trunk to root for his bourbon, though Dad kept a bottle hidden in our broken dishwasher for him. Dad even called the dishwasher “the bar.” (“Why do we need a dishwasher when we have five children?” he would ask incredulously.)

When Howard reappeared inside, our mother made a fruitless effort to feed him.

She once offered pound cake and coffee.

“No’mmm,” he slurred one memorable evening, swallowing “Ma’am.”

“I don’t like dry cake. Chokey cake. C-H-O-K-Y.” Apparently, Miss Ruby was not only a paragon of virtue, but a fine baker as well.

This insult was never forgiven; our mother’s grudge held fast.

Yet we regarded Howard as one of us and loved him.

We sold him countless boxes of World’s Finest Chocolates and God knows how many magazine subscriptions.

One night, we learned that Howard was found dead of a heart attack, sitting in the Pearl at home. I imagined Ruby waiting; Howard’s supper long grown cold. Only later did my father tell me the colder truth; Howard had died elsewhere, in flagrante delicto. (A fate my father, too, would share.)

Our father sold the dozer and earth-moving equipment. Only the den remained fixed.

We, each of us, drifted. I left for college and pretended adulthood, walking as Howard had said, as if I knew where I was going. OH We dare you to utter the words “Early American” to O.Henry’s contributing editor Cynthia Adams. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t.

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32 O.Henry

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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O.Henry 33

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Road Trip playlist

Roll down the windows and turn up the volume: these Carolina tunes will keep you cruising

By David Menconi

Road trip season is upon us, which calls for some music to keep the momentum going.

Whether you’re twisting along the Blue Ridge Parkway or cruising the Outer Banks Scenic Byway, when you hit the road for points beyond, bring along tunes made by artists with ties to the Old North State.

Chuck Berry

Etta Baker

This classic from the great classicrock elder Chuck Berry tells the story of a coast-to-coast journey with a roll call of cities along the way, including both Raleigh and Charlotte.

Baker was one of the great legends of Piedmont blues guitar. That especially goes for her signature instrumental “One-Dime Blues,” which rolls on down the highway. If you can play it yourself and keep up, you’re “onediming it.”

“Promised Land” (1964)

6 String Drag

“Gasoline Maybelline” (1997)

One of the best bands from Raleigh’s mid-1990s alternative-country boom, 6 String Drag was a powerhouse with old-school country harmonies and a soulful horn section. Nothing piledrives like “Gasoline Maybelline.”

Blues Magoos

“Tobacco Road” (1966)

Durham native John D. Loudermilk wrote a lot of great songs, none greater than this oft-covered garage-rock classic. New York’s Blues Magoos cut the definitive version of “Tobacco Road,” which you’ll find on the 1972 proto-punk compilation Nuggets.

Squirrel Nut Zippers

“Put a Lid on It” (1996)

The big hit for the latter-day Chapel Hill hot-jazz band could go here as a good song for picking up the pace (or even speeding). But “Put a Lid on It,” featuring singer Katharine Whalen at her sassiest, is better for cruising.

Black Sheep

“The Choice Is Yours” (1991)

From Sanford, North Carolina, the hip-hop duo of William “Mista Lawnge” McLean and Andres “Dres” Titus would like you to know: You can get with this / Or you can get with that.

Don Dixon

“Praying Mantis” (1987)

After you’ve been driving awhile and the caffeine starts to wear off, here’s a great singalong pick-me-up.

“Praying Mantis” dates back to the early 1980s and Dixon’s long-running band Arrogance. After Arrogance broke up, Dixon, a South Carolina native who went to UNC Chapel Hill, had a solo hit with it.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

“One-Dime Blues” (1991)

The “5” Royales

“Think” (1957)

Covered by James Brown and Mick Jagger, “Think” was one of the most enduring songs that the legendary Winston-Salem R&B band The “5” Royales left behind. It’s also a perfect cruising song — but keep your hands on the wheel, no air-guitar allowed.

Sylvan Esso

“Song” (2017)

Durham’s Sylvan Esso, made up of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, makes folksy electronic music with a warm, beating heart. This one is a great song for the wide-open highway.

The Connells

“Stone Cold Yesterday” (1990)

Although they’re best known for the moody 1993 ballad “’74–’75,” Raleigh’s Connells can pick up the tempo, too.

This song’s call-to-arms guitar riff really should have been all over the radio.

Fantasia

“Summertime” (2004)

The High Point native, Charlotte resident and season-three American Idol winner has never been better than on her sultry performance of the George Gershwin classic. Perfect for long cruises.

Southern Culture on the Skids

“Voodoo Cadillac” (1995)

Once you’re close enough to your destination to exit the highway, here’s one to ease off the throttle by Chapel Hill’s long-running garage-rock band. I got eight slappin’ pistons right here under my hood / Let’s ride. OH O.Henry 35

Get the latest word from

Named for William Sydney Porter’s preferred cocktail, we present a miscellany of curated stories, whimsies, curiosities and blithe entertainments from the writers, editors and artists who bring you award-winning O.Henry magazine. We hope you have as much fun reading The Sazerac as we do creating it.

Each Friday afternoon, The Sazerac will hit your inbox just in time for cocktails.

Relax with these fun bits intended to help you shake off the day.

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36 O.Henry

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Birdwatch

A Majestic Wader Wood storks become a more common sight

By Susan Campbell

Believe it or not, although fall is

still a way off, the summer solstice has passed, and for some of our birds, the breeding season is over.

Many have begun wandering ahead of their southward migration. At this time of year, we have a few species that actually move in a northerly direction during mid-summer. The wood stork, one of North Carolina’s newer breeders, is one of these.

Wood storks are large, white wading birds, a bit smaller than great blue herons. They have heavy bills that curve at the tip. In flight, they are very distinctive. Not only do they fly with their head and neck outstretched, but their tails and flight feathers flash black. They are frequently spotted soaring high in the sky on thermals, not unlike hawks and vultures.

These birds forage not only for small fish, crustaceans and a variety of invertebrates, but also reptiles and amphibians, as well as occasional nestlings of other species. Wood storks are visual hunters that search for movement in the shallows. They also may sweep and probe with their bills in murky areas until they feel prey, and then they will snap their mandibles shut and swallow the food item whole. It is not unusual for them to shuffle with their feet and flick their wings to disturb potential meals in muddy water.

Unlike their European kin, storks here nest in trees — not on chimneys. Also, as opposed to legend, these birds do not mate for life but pair up on the breeding grounds each season. They can live a long time, however: The oldest known (banded) bird from Georgia was over 20 years old when it was re-sighted in South Carolina.

Stork nests are bulky stick-built affairs located over water, often

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

in cypress trees. However, any sturdy wetland tree species may be utilized. Both parents are involved in construction. Grassy material will line the nest that is, quite uniquely, adhered together with guano.

It will take almost two months for the one to five young to reach fledging. Not only will wood storks nest alongside others of their kind but they tend to be found in colonies with heron, ibis and egret neighbors.

The wood stork is becoming a more common site in the Carolinas, breeding locally in freshwater or brackish, forested habitat.

They prefer locations with an open canopy, since they require a good bit of space in order to negotiate a landing. There are now two large nesting colonies of storks on private property: one at Lays Lake (Columbus County) and Warwick Mill Bay (Robeson County).

These lakes have been home to nesting storks for less than a decade.

I would not be surprised if pairs are using a few other remote sites in the southeastern corner of the state. Stork numbers have been growing rapidly as the bay lake habitat seems excellent for raising chicks.

Following fledging, however, family groups may move away from the nesting area to wet habitat where food is plentiful. In dry summers, that movement may be significant — and in any direction.

In our state, the largest concentrations of individuals show up annually at Twin Lakes in Sunset Beach (Brunswick County) by mid-summer. They can reliably be found in and around the eastern pond. The birds seem to like probing the flats on the back side of the pond, away from the golfers on Oyster Bay Golf Links. Also look for them loitering in the stout trees along the shoreline into early fall. But do not be surprised if you happen on one, or perhaps a small group, in any wet area from marshes to farm ponds or golf course water hazards in the Piedmont or Sandhills. Wood storks are unique and majestic waders that deserve a special look! OH Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos.

She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.

Favorite children’s book: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

by Roald Dahl.

O.Henry 37

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38 O.Henry

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Wandering Billy

Tippling and Tenpin And a trip down memory lanes

By Billy Eye One of the advantages bowling has over golf is that you seldom lose a bowling ball. — Don Carter

Downtown’s newest entertainment

destination combines two of my favorite pastimes — bourbon and bowling. One of which Eye indulge in daily, the other . . . not so much. But that’s likely to change.

For decades, the corner of South Elm and Lewis Street was the site of a very Sanford-like junk shop, a veritable island of misfit washers and dryers, where doorless refrigerators went to die. You won’t believe that was ever true when you check out downtown’s latest sensation: Bourbon Bowl where, on opening weekend, so many alky lovin’ alley cats jammed the place that it was forced to close for restocking.

Nationwide, bowling began catching on in the 1800s but didn’t migrate as far as our fair city until the mid-1930s, when Greensboro Bowling Center debuted in the 300 block of North Elm. This was back in the days when “pinboys,” one to a lane, stood at the ready to manually reset the 10 plastic coated Maplewood pins after every frame, then roll balls back up the gutter. Hardly a coincidence that bowling came to Greensboro a year after the state allowed for the sale of beer in public after an almost 30-year prohibition. Within a few years, Downtown Bowling Alley at 111 East Washington Street opened for “duck pin” competition (a slight variation on the game preferred by many). It was located behind where Thousands of Prints presently stands.

Charging just a quarter per game, these two venues catered to a decidedly blue-collar clientele where, every week, competition between local bowling leagues reigned. Employees at Sears, Roebuck and Co., The Art & Soul of Greensboro

for instance, would square off against competitors from Guilford National Bank, or Rustin Furniture builders would go head-to-head with Bocock-Stroud’s clothiers.

In the mid-1950s, pinboys became one of the many professions to be rendered obsolete by automation with the introduction of AMF’s automatic pinspotters. By that time, bowling had earned a somewhat seedy reputation. After 25 years, our alleys had declined into smokefilled caverns; burgers sizzling on flat-top grills while hot dogs rolled for hours on end before some cigar-chomping dipsomaniac stuffed them into soggy buns before plopped them onto white, waxed paper reeking of nicotine.

In the ’60s and ’70s, thanks in part to televised matches broadcast on weekend afternoons, bowling attained nationwide fad status, further ignited by Boomer families looking for wholesome entertainment. To fill that void, modern, streamlined facilities were introduced in Greensboro, beginning in 1959. You may recall Fair Lanes Friendly Bowlarama (later Brunswick Triad Lanes) located at the northeastern edge of a newly opened Friendly Shopping Center.

Or O Henry Lanes on East Bessemer, next to the slot car races and Monroe’s Drive-In. And don’t forget Coliseum Fair Lanes on High Point Road. In the ’70s, with some 52 million Americans participating, bowling became the number one participatory sport in the nation. That’s when the sprawling Piedmont Bowling Lanes moved to their current location on Holden Road, with 40 wide lanes, a nursery and a pristine snack shop.

In the mid-70s, I frequented Brunswick Triad Lanes at Friendly primarily to finger their wall of pinball machines. I was struck by the Atomic Age design of the bowling alley itself, complete with stainless steel accents and multi-colored, molded plastic chairs from its 1959 Bowlarama days still in use. After three decades, Brunswick Triad Lanes moved to Oak Branch Drive off Wendover. There, management subsequently installed disco bumper cars, a Lebowski-like lounge O.Henry 39

Wandering Billy and an ungodly retro-candy shop stocked with tooth-rotters you haven’t run across since high school.

Bourbon Bowl’s six lanes may seem a bit claustrophobic compared to AMF All Star Lanes or Triad Lanes (both still going strong) but, then again, I’m not convinced the competitive-sporting aspect of this establishment was meant to be the star attraction.

A joint whose name contains the word “bourbon” should stock a wide array of distilled mash, right?

“We have pretty much everything,” confirms Bourbon Bowl’s bar manager, Travis Tindall. “Irish whiskey, special Japanese whiskies, name brands like Rabbit Hole, Glenlivet, Macallan-aged-18-year scotch, Van Winkle, Hendricks, Blanton’s and Lonerider, a North Carolina blend.” Serious about their whiskies, BB offers 125 brands and will have added another 110 bottles by the time you read this.

“Some of the rarer whiskeys that we can find, that we can get ahold of, we plan to get,” Tindall says.

The bar, said to be the longest in the city, allows patrons to imbibe indoors or outside while lounging on its enormous patio while enjoying waterfalls framed in rusted metal, distressed brickwork and random industrial accoutrements. The menu, to be expanded later, includes finger food stalwarts like tacos, shrimp skewers, burgers, salads, wraps, dips and an array of, yes, fried cheeses, some with interesting culinary twists.

Lanes rent for $40 an hour, plus a few bucks for shoe rental. On every occasion I’ve wandered by, Bourbon Bowl has been packed, ap-

pealing to families around the dinner hour when even small children can join in the games with the help of bowling ramps and bumpers to ensure at least a few of your tot’s pins will be knocked over. Starting around 10 p.m., young professionals begin congregating around the bar.

“The crowd is ravenous,” Tindall tells me. “Whenever a business nearby lets out for the night, service workers and customers roll in here in waves.”

And with such potent potables as the Moscow Mule, the Manhattan or, perhaps, a Smoked Old Fashioned, it’s little wonder.

“The orange zest soaks up the mahogany and cherry wood flavor and adds a different level of intensity,” says Tindall of their Smoked Old Fashioned. “You can smell it all throughout the restaurant.”

The staff is populated with pros who’ve served for years at other local hotspots. “This is probably the most talented group of bartenders I’ve ever known,” Tindall says. “I’ve been from here to Philadelphia, and these guys have forgotten more about bartending than most people learn in their entire lifetime.”

Not your Old Grand-Dad’s experience, but they do have a bottle of that behind the bar. OH Billy Eye comes from a long line of discerning bourbon drinkers.

His favorite children’s book, In The Night Kitchen, Maurice Sendak’s tribute to Winsor McCay, does not contain a single mention of alcohol.

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O.Henry 41

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

August 2021

Snap the Whip Winslow Homer (1872)

You know the game: everybody runs hard as they can, holding hands, and then the boy on the near end suddenly stops, sets his feet hard against the ground, and the others swing, like a gate made of children, swinging faster the farther out, fighting centrifugal force now to keep from being flung away, flung out of the sudden circle this line of children has become a radius of, and those farthest out have to hang on for dear life.

What saves them is how tight they and their friends can hold on, and for how long. The farthest from the center need the strongest friends.

— Millard Dunn

Millard Dunn is the author of Places We Could Never Find Alone.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

O.Henry 43

A brave new world Earlier this year, in the midst of global lockdowns, pandemic fatigue and an unprecedented sense of loss, we asked three North Carolina authors — Frances Mayes, Etaf Rum and Daniel Wallace — to share their tales of our brave new, old world.

Offering glimpses of resilience, hope, fear, transformation and what-ifs, each piece is an exploration of freedom and the mystery of the human spirit.

Read on for one memoir and two works of fiction that open our eyes, minds and hearts through incomparable storytelling.

44 O.Henry

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The Stitch Around Her Mouth Fiction by Etaf Rum

illustration by Marie-Louise Bennett

T

he stitch was starting to come undone, shedding fine, thin threads at the corners of her mouth. For as long as she could remember, she had never seemed to notice it — a ribbon the color of dust woven tightly around her lips. It had been there ever since she was a child, ever since her mother taught her how to roll her first grape leaf, ever since her grandmother read the thick, musty grounds of Turkish coffee at the bottom of her first kahwa cup. By the time she did notice it, she was a mother herself, devoting her energy to her husband and children, her feet firm in the fabric her family had sewn. When she awakened one morning to find the stitch unraveling, a wild terror overcame her. She dared not tug at the loose ends of her stitch in fear her world would unspool.

She paused to think now as she hurried to complete her chores before her children returned from school. What was it that had snagged her stitch loose now, after all these years? She wondered if she had done something wrong. The worst thing a woman could do was question her condition. Her mother had told her that once. Only she’d barely been thinking lately. She knew such freedoms were the province of boys and men, not for women, whose delicate fibers were spun like webs on the kitchen curtains like a daily reminder. Not for a woman whose life was a tight pattern overlapping her mother’s. There was nothing to think about. Things have always been this way.

She closed her eyes to the image of her 7-year-old face as she waited in

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

O.Henry 45

line at the fabric store.

Mama had prepared her for the stitching tradition the way Mama’s own mother had done before, wrapping her unruly hair and staining her hands with rust-colored henna. While all the other young girls had locked their eyes on the brightest ribbons, her gaze fell quietly on a strand as pale as wheat. She snatched it, gripped it close to her chest. She thought if she must endure the numbing and needling, the pain that comes with saying words too full, the swallowing of thoughts, the stitch should at least blend in with her olive skin. Others should never know.

She stood over the stove now, her afternoon chores completed.

The steam from an ibrik of mint chai prickled her stitch. She felt her mouth stiffening, a burning sensation around the edge of her lips. In the distance, she could hear the sound of a school bus, then her two children approaching — a boy of 8, a girl of 6. She tucked her thoughts away. She didn’t want them to notice her loose stitch, confusing them, or worse, igniting their curiosity. She had no answers to the questions they might ask.

The oven clock read 7 p.m. by the time she finished helping the children with homework and cooking dinner. More than once she considered calling her husband to ask when he would be home. But each time she stopped herself. It would be unseemly to question him, to ask where he was or what he was doing as if he wasn’t working the way she was working. Only what if he wasn’t?

She teased her loose stitch with the tip of her henna-stained finger before pulling it away. No, she shouldn’t question such things.

Growing up, Mama had said the stitch would make her more desirable, not only in the eyes of men, but also women, who were taught to see beauty in lips that were tightly sealed. Yet it was Mama who originally suggested that she choose a ribbon that would blend in. A plain ribbon will help you endure the pain, Mama had said, holding her hand at the fabric store, steering her down the fig-colored aisles. She could see other mothers in the aisles too, smiling as they helped their daughters select their ribbons. Some ribbons had the luster of pride and joy; others had a glow of satisfaction. But not hers. She had wondered why her mother steered her to a ribbon that was barely visible, and why she even needed to get a ribbon at all. What would happen if she decided not to get a ribbon, like some of the unstitched women she knew? She wondered what her world would be like without a stitch around her mouth.

The next thing she knew, the thought escaped her lips. “What if I don’t want to get a stitch?”

“Nonsense,” Mama said, shaking her head.

“But not every woman gets stitched,” she said, frozen in the center of the aisle. “The woman who reports the news doesn’t have

46 O.Henry

one. Or the widow who opened up the pharmacy in town. Or even the girl who lives a few blocks away from us.”

Mama fixed her with a glare. “This is the way things are, daughter. It’s always been this way.”

Soon after the stitching she began to feel a burning sensation in the corners of her mouth, the quiet ripping of flesh. She did what she could to dull the pain, swapping out words, shortening thoughts, sometimes even getting rid of ideas altogether. Some words, she realized, would never be hers to say. Maybe her mother was right. After all, women were woven with a fabric meant to endure the knots and coils of their lives, like carrying the bulbous world in their center. The stitch was just another natural difference, another law of womanhood.

Now there was a sound at the front door, then the twist of a lock, and quickly she turned off the faucet, dried her hands, tucked a strand of dry hair behind her ear. She felt the tip of the dusty wheat ribbon tickle her hands, like the touch of her grandmother’s finger when she read her palms as a child. What would her grandmother say if she knew her stitch was coming undone?

What would Mama say? Surely they would tighten it. Her stitch was supposed to last a lifetime, a legacy passed along generations.

A loosened stitch was the ultimate disgrace, a shame that would swallow her family whole. Wasn’t it her grandmother who said that no good can come from a wide-mouthed woman? And hadn’t Mama agreed, unquestioning, stitching her lips before she learned how to question? Well she was a mother now, to a daughter whose mouth would soon need stitching. She swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn’t like to think of it.

Her husband awaited her at the kitchen table, glancing at her with knitted brows. There was a silence between them, one which she had learned not to mind, and she hurried to pour the lentil soup into four bowls. A blanket of steam covered her face and she withstood the temptation to open her mouth, if only for a moment, and stretch the stitch loose. She could feel her children watching her and she didn’t want them to see her this way, opening her mouth in such an unnatural position, the contortions of her face the opposite of womanly. No — there are some moments a child will never forget, like the sound of a mother’s tears, roaring like rain against the roof. Her children shouldn’t have to feel what she felt now, a mountain of memories clung to her chest. She decided she would only stretch her stitch when no one was watching.

Somehow at the dinner table, she could hear her grandmother in her ear, the same way she had heard her as a child. Sayings and lessons, like fortune cookies hanging from her ears. “A woman belongs at home,” her grandmother would say. “No good will ever come from a woman thinking.”

Her husband cleared his throat, bringing her back to the room.

“I have to travel for work tomorrow,” he said.

“Where to?” She let the words leak through her stitch as if by accident so as not to make her mouth hurt. It was a trick her mother taught her.

“A conference in D.C.,” he said, shoving soup into his mouth as if to purposely end the conversation.

She said nothing, having learned from a young age to find safety in silence. She placed a crumb of bread between her slightly parted lips and clenched hard.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Dinners were the same every night, with her husband sitting at the end of the table and all three of them curled around him like children. More often than not, one of them would signal her, and, as if wired to be true to her nature, she would drop her food and leap with eagerness, refilling cups and bowls, smiling to the rhythm of clinking spoons. Look how much they need me, her tender heart would whisper as she scurried around the table. Delighted, her husband would look at her and smile as if to say: Look at the family we’ve created, you and I. Look at what we’ve done.

Only tonight, huddled around the dinner table with her family, she could hear another whisper: What has she done?

The question grazed her stitch, bitterness on her tongue. She looked up at her daughter and felt a tide of guilt rolling in her chest. For a long time, she studied her daughter’s face, resting her eyes on the dull brown mole on her left cheek. All she could think of was the fine needle, slithering up and down her lips like a snake.

Soon her daughter would be 7 years old, and what could she do then? She couldn’t stop it. Lately she had begun to think the stitch was the reason she only had two children. Her mother-in-law never missed an opportunity to remind her to get pregnant, as if she had somehow forgotten her duty. In fact, she closed her legs purposefully at night, feigning exhaustion or sleep, or when she was particularly distressed, a desperate sadness. On those nights she felt an ache swelter not only from her stitch but from a place buried inside her. But now, looking at her daughter’s mouth, thinking of what was soon to come, never had she felt a pain deeper than the shame of mothering another girl. She wondered if her son knew how lucky he was.

Her husband, noting the strain on her face, scrunched his eyebrows in a knot. “Is there something wrong?”

She met his eyes and instantly turned red. Had her face betrayed her? Had her thoughts escaped her stitch? “No, no,” she whispered. “Nothing’s wrong.”

He lowered his gaze to the bowl, stirred the soup fiercely before scooping a spoonful into his mouth. Swallowing at once, he said, “There’s something on the corners of your mouth.” He handed her a rag. “Here, wipe.”

Calmly she took the rag from his fingers and pressed it against her stitch. She looked at the stain: it was blood.

Her husband stared at her in silence before clearing his throat.

“Careful now,” he said, reaching over to tighten her stitch. “The children and I need you around.”

At that, her children looked at her in their usual way, their eyes glistening with the past and future as if always to remind her. It was as though they’d made a permanent mark upon her heart from which she could never escape. No, she would never escape.

In awe of herself, she swept the thought away. Wasn’t she a believer of God, a believer in His will? If He wanted her this way, with this stitch around her mouth, then surely it was for the best. Besides, did she want to be like some of the unstitched girls she knew, still in their mother’s house, unmarried — or worse, divorced — an ocean of shame in their ribs? Of course she didn’t want that. Yet within herself, she didn’t understand why she couldn’t be happy.

Inside she could hear all the women, and all the women she could hear were tired. She bit the inside of her lip, swallowing her thoughts. She could hear a whisper in her ear. Be thankful, or God The Art & Soul of Greensboro

will take it all away.

The days passed and her stitch kept bleeding: at the dinner table, during the day, whenever she stopped to think about it.

Only when she wasn’t thinking did she seem to forget the uncomfortable grip around her mouth. But soon enough she would remember, feeling the heaviness in her mind sink into her lips whenever she spoke. Then the sound of a stitch unraveling, then the taste of blood. Sometimes it felt as if her mouth was only one stitch away from slitting all together, as if at any moment a thought would come and undo everything. Her life as she knew it. She became afraid. Then she began to wonder: Perhaps it’s all my fault. Perhaps I am being unreasonable. And even though there were no noticeable changes in her, all she could think of was what would become of her life if she let the stitch unravel. This fear had become an everlasting whisper in her chest which no amount of thinking could get rid of.

Four months passed. The day had finally come. Outside, the sky hung oppressively low, suffocating her. Quietly she reached for her daughter’s hand as they walked into the fabric store. The room was made of glass, with gold circles glistening across the walls. Between the brightly colored aisles, she thought she could hear, very faintly, the silent sounds of sorrow. She let go of her daughter’s hand. From a distance she watched her reach for a dusty pink ribbon, almost identical to her own. Her heart swelled in her chest. She could feel her stitch ripping open, blood leaking from her lips, desperate to spare her daughter. But she said nothing.

How she sewed the ribbon, how she stitched her daughter’s mouth — none of that could she remember later. Only one thought came to her now: the mild expression of submission painted on her daughter’s face as if it had been given to her since birth. Alone, she studied her own stitch in the mirror with shame. She ran her fingers along the edges of her lips, dug them into the corners as if to rip the ribbon out.

Trembling, she tried to keep from screaming. She could taste her mother on her stitch and it made her weep. OH The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has a Master’s of Arts in American and British Literature as well as undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English and has taught undergraduate courses in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children. Etaf is also the founder of @booksandbeans. A Woman Is No Man is her first novel.

Favorite children’s book: Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss.

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The World is Still the World Fiction by Daniel Wallace illustrations by Lyudmila Tomova

O

n our last day at the beach the sun came out, and the fog, which for that whole week had draped the shore in a veil of cotton, burned away: we discovered there was an ocean here, after all. It wasn’t blue, really, closer to black, but when the waves flattened out across the beach, the water was perfectly clear and full of minnows and tiny crabs.

The shells were just so-so, mostly shards of something that used to be beautiful, like ancient pottery washed up from the ocean floor, there to remind you the world was old.

I’d like to say that these discoveries inspired in us a recognition of our own mortality, but the truth was it just felt good to have the sun on our shoulders as my wife and I — so young, newlyweds in fact — walked across the warming sand, hand in hand. She was wearing a black two-piece, simple and very small, and so striking that even the women we passed couldn’t help but stare. Her hair (thick and chocolate brown) was in pigtails, and somehow this girlish maneuver heightened her brazen but effortless display of pure, glorious womanhood. I was invisible in the best possible way.

“I’m glad our honeymoon wasn’t ruined,” she said.

I stopped walking and looked at her. “I didn’t know it was even close to being ruined,” I said. “We’ve made love like a hundred

times, read three novels and watched an entire season of The Walking Dead. That’s almost perfect.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t mean ruined. But you can’t go back and tell people that it was foggy and it rained the whole time and you read and watched TV. It sounds gloomy.”

“You skipped the part about making love.”

“Because you can’t tell people that, either.”

“No,” I said. “Let’s tell them it was sunny every day and we swam with the dolphins.”

“But that would be wrong,” she said, and we laughed.

Somehow this had become a joke: saying but that would be wrong after every wrong thing we talked about doing. I have no idea why or how, but it was hilarious to us, just to us, the way that something that clearly isn’t funny becomes funny for reasons impossible to explain. “That being said, I’ll totally never forget that ride we took on the humpback whale.”

“Because it’s unforgettable. We’ll tell our kids about that.”

“Little Johnny and Marie.”

“I thought we’d settled on Zeus and Hera?”

“I just think that might put too much pressure on them, honey.”

I slapped my forehead, and a few grains of sand fell into my eyes. “Of course, you’re right. Why did I never think about that?

Sometimes I feel like I knew nothing until we met.” Pause. “At

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least I know you’re a goddess.”

She squeezed my hand. “Keep ’em coming,” she said.

“Don’t worry. We’re good for the next ten years at least.”

“Whoa. You stockpile flatteries?”

“Flatteries are my specialty.”

“Oh no,” she said, in a husky whisper, knocking against me with her shoulder. “No, they’re not.”

How long had we been walking? I had no idea. I stopped and looked behind us: I couldn’t see our hotel or any landmark at all. Civilization had disappeared behind the curve of the shore.

I could imagine that we were on a deserted island, looking toward the horizon for a rescue we knew would never come. I don’t know what she was thinking, but she had that faraway look in her eyes as well, and as I looked into them (her eyes were the color of ivy), the tail end of a wave chilled my toes. I almost gasped it was so cold.

She turned to me.

“I’m going in,” she said.

“No way.”

“I could never live with myself if I went to the beach and didn’t get in. I would be ashamed for the rest of my life. You’re coming in, too.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re my husband now,” she said. “You have to. It was in

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

our vows.”

“Those vows were ambiguous.”

“On purpose, just for occasions such as this.”

She let go of my hand and took a deep breath, girding herself.

I took a step toward the water myself, but with her hand on my stomach, she held me back.

“I’m first in,” she said. “I’m always first in. Ever since I was little. That’s what I want on my tombstone: First In, Last Out. Remember that.”

“I will.”

“I’m serious,” she said, and she studied my face. “You’ll remember?”

“I’ll remember. But I didn’t know that about you.”

“Well,” she said. “I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

But she was already gone. She ran into the water, whooping, and kept running as fast as she could, but slowed as the water got deeper. She pushed into it until she couldn’t walk at all, and then she dove under, disappearing completely for what seemed like a long time. Then she reappeared about five yards out, the bigger waves rolling against her back, lifting and releasing her, up and down, up and down. I think she was smiling.

We’d planned a big wedding, with friends and family coming

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

in from all over. There was going to be a band and your choice of chicken or fish or veg, and a first dance and a sound system that could turn even my mousey 80-year-old Aunt Muriel’s voice into that of a roaring lion. But all that was postponed, of course. We’d talked about waiting, to do what we’d hoped to do just a little bit later. When things got back to normal. But we couldn’t wait a minute longer. We were married at the courthouse, with our two best friends, witnesses to our contract, safe behind a Plexiglas wall.

Now here we were at the beach, in the days just before summer, the rest of our lives ahead of us. Six days of fog and rain, one day of sun, and then the rest of our lives.

She waved, I waved.

“Come and get me if you dare!” she yelled into the wind, my freckled goddess in the wine-dark sea, the woman who had already told me the words she wanted on her tombstone when death does us part. I wanted to tell her what I wanted on mine, too, but the water was cold, and she was already so far away. OH Daniel Wallace is the author of six novels, including Big Fish and, most recently, Extraordinary Adventures. He lives in Chapel Hill, where he directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina.

Favorite children’s book: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Into the New

by Frances Mayes

illustration by Gerry O’Neill

D

uring the pandemic, I became enthralled with The New York Times word game, the Spelling Bee. I’d never been attracted to crossword puzzles, Mensa quizzes or those already-penciled-in Sudoku squares in airline magazines. I’d rather read a book. But there I was at midnight, spending good hours I should have used on my nascent novel, staring at seven letters that must be arranged into words. At least I could excel at finding the pangram — the word that uses all the letters.

What I couldn’t do at all was imagine what my fictional characters Charlotte, Lee and Annsley possibly could be up to in their imagined world, given that a plague was loose in the real world. Their concerns seemed of no concern.

But I was learning dozens of new words such as lambi, boba, libelee, doggo and ricin — words that proved useless outside of boosting me from “amazing” status to “genius.”

Ah, genius. What an accomplishment, that is, until the next morning when the new puzzle appeared.

Many friends also had developed obsessive activities.

My husband, Ed, seemed always to be mowing the grass, even measuring the height so it remained at 2 inches. My friend Susan tore through several Indian cookbooks, leaving containers of spicy food at our back door constantly, and an Amazon truck pulled up daily at our across-the-street neighbor’s driveway. She was shopping maniacally.

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Those of us who were lucky survived that suspended and puzzling and frustrating siege.

Remember wiping off grocery bags on the porch? Remember when fashion masks in silk prints appeared?

Remember those annoying suggestions to keep a gratitude journal? For decades, we’ll be puzzling through this aftermath of grief, its effects on students, what refusal to believe the virus existed means, the incalculable, staggering losses, the global politics, on and on. Per ora, for now, as the Italians always caution, we are reassessing, realizing that we are lucky to do the things we so took for granted.

Are we in a Brave New World?

By metabolic nature, I’m a traveler. After having covered a lot of the globe and written many books about place, of course I knew that those journeys play a major part in my life. During confinement, I chafed. I started spending hours researching the history of Cyprus, the accommodations at Machu Picchu, a hike from Bratislava to Prague.

Working on the Spelling Bee one week about eight months into house arrest, I came to an impasse. Instead of forming the usual words, I saw that I was picking the letters for “London,” “Rome,” “Miami,” “Hawaii.” Not allowed, any place names, but my travel gene was taking over. I couldn’t get “bountiful,” “exciting,” “texting” but adamantly typed in “Paris,” “Kenya,” “Greece.”

Travel, it turns out, isn’t just what I like to do, it’s who I am.

Did others find such truths?

I pushed my novel to the back of my desk — bye-bye Annsley, Lee, Charlotte — and began writing about home. Where’s home?

Why leave home? What happens when you do leave home?

Why do memories of various homes come back over and over in dreams? How do you make a home? The pull of this subject, so unlike my novel, took over my days.

I quit pouring that second, third glass of wine with dinner; I exercised; I lost twenty pounds. Despite all the activity, the desire to go, just go, became overwhelming.

Ed and I donned N95 masks and traveled to our home in

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Italy. I felt like we held our breaths the entire way. We were allowed in because we have residency cards.

Everyone greeted us like returning Olympic stars.

We quarantined at our home, then lined up for entering the negozio di frutta e verdura for groceries, enjoyed our friends within the limits of our houses, harvested our olive crop, and, before returning to North Carolina, spent two days in Rome prior to departure.

Rome alone. I walk. All day. At night. Walking the soles off my shoes. In this slowed, surreal scape, here’s Rome washed clean, the city showing its beauty unalloyed. I revisit favorites of mine, even though many are closed — Bramante’s Tempietto on the Janiculum Hill, the Baroque extravaganza Palazzo Colonna, the chalk pastel palazzi on Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, kiosks of botanical prints and severe engravings of ruins at the Mercato delle Stampe, Gelateria del Teatro for sublime gelato of lavender and white peach, or cherry, or orange and mascarpone. Who can choose?

At Trevi fountain, Ed and I stand there alone. For the first time in decades, I toss a coin. In Piazza Navona, too, I can hear the musical splash of water from the Four Rivers fountain and walk around the lovely ellipse of the ancient stadium. The great Marcus Aurelius, copy of the second-century bronze rider, atop his prancing horse at Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio, gains in majesty as he surveys a vacant piazza. Totally real, Rome feels imagined, conjured as one of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities.

Eerie. There’s a lone woman with red fright-wig hair wobbling along the sidewalk with a basket of oranges; the familiar aroma of dark coffee wafting out of a bar, where the barista stands polishing glasses for no customers. The sky is a color a watercolorist might mix, find it too milky pale, and decide to stir in another dollop of cerulean. Trajan’s Column seems to tilt against rushing clouds. The forum appears doubly ancient, columns white as bleached femurs. Church bells send out circles of silver The Art & Soul of Greensboro

sound. The sculptural pines, the vulgar magenta bougainvillea, the surprise of palms.

Because Rome was still “yellow,” low-risk but cautious, some restaurants are open for lunch outside. We order both the fried artichokes and the artichokes with tender homemade pasta. We’re talking about whether anything of this Rome can be carried forth into normal times. We remember the day we showed our grandson 18 fountains in one day. We remember that Keats rode a pony around the Piazza di Spagna in his last weeks. We remember an apartment we rented with a roof garden that looked down on a clothesline with flapping giant underpants. The waiter forgets our glasses of wine, apologizes, and brings over a whole bottle. (That’s Rome.) I’m thrilled to see Rome like this: an unforgettable, once in a lifetime experience for this traveler.

I hope never to see Rome like that again.

After a day, I missed the scramble to see what’s on at the Quirinale, new restaurants, friends toasting at wine bars, shopping for shoes, tracking down 10 things on my to-see list. All this amid a chaos of sirens, horns, weaving motorcycles, tsunamis of tourists, overflowing garbage bins, buses spilling out groups from all over the world, silly goofs trying to get in the fountains. Life.

People, annoying, glorious people.

B

ack at home, the bleak holiday season arrived, then in January, hallelujah: the vaccine. A quasi-normal life recommenced.

Am I grateful for this period of solitude, introspection, focus?

Not a bit. I’m grateful that no one I love died, that’s it. Let’s not whitewash: the period was relentlessly awful and a flash of panic washes over me when I wonder if it will happen again.

What remains? Is there no silver lining? Yes, the major takeaway: a heightened awareness of carpe diem, seize the day. I love so many people; have I said so enough? All the posts and emails The Art & Soul of Greensboro

showed friends making their level best of the situation. I saw anew their humor, resourcefulness, brilliance, thoughtfulness and determination. They signed off not with “ciao,” or “xoxo,” but now with “Love you,” “Miss you,” “Always and Forever.”

Don’t forget this, I told myself, when we’re back at Vin Rouge and JuJu, toasting and chatting and exchanging plans, feeling invincible. We are not invincible. The drastic happened. Don’t forget the lively crowds in Istanbul, the subway crush in New York, the swarms reveling in the extreme beauty of Cinque Terre. Living their lives. Keep the table set, keep the antenna alert for friends in need, keep working to know what’s really going on, keep the rosé chilled, write the check to someone running on ideals, say you are dear to me, order the flowers, the Georgia peaches, the book I just read that X might enjoy. Oh, I do this, but now, my effort doubles and cubes.

Brave New World — we know Aldous Huxley’s depressing novel and his title has been used and used, ironically and seriously. Maybe used up. He took the words from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the whole quote is now somewhat lost. The last half of the sentence is best. Miranda speaks, “O brave new world, that has such people in it.” What mind-bending losses.

Memento vivere, remember to live. We go on now, together.

You are dear to me.

I didn’t give up on the daily Spelling Bee but if I can’t be a quick genius, I click over to visit Annsley, Lee and Charlotte.

They’ve been waiting a long time to resume their lives. When last seen they were arising from the table after a dinner party, about to make enormous changes. I think they are ready. OH Frances Mayes is a novelist, poet and essayist known for work including the New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun. She and her husband split their time between North Carolina and Italy.

Favorite children’s book: The Secret Garden intrigues me still.

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

FredTheChappell Movie Local writers know there’s a treasure among us.

A forthcoming film celebrates the life story of Greensboro’s beloved Fred

By Ross Howell Jr.

R

RIGHT PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB CAVIN

eaders and literary types sometimes don’t know what to make of Greensboro author Fred Chappell.

One day Chappell might translate an ode by Horace from the classical Latin into English just for fun. In the past, he collaborated with the late George Garrett to create a cult sci-fi movie classic. He wrote a fantasy novel where the protagonist makes a living stealing people’s shadows. Yes, their shadows. He’s written a story based on Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, which his former student, writer Marianne Gingher, adapted for a puppet show. He’s received a poetry award shared by some of the most significant American poets of the 20th century. And he’s written poems and stories set in the Appalachian Mountains that break your heart with their beauty and wisdom.

Being a literary type, I call Chappell, telling him I want to write an article.

He’s polite and self-deprecating.

“Oh,” he says, “There’s been so much about me. I don’t think people want to hear me drone on and on.”

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Fred in High School

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Frierson — who has written a book about film director Tim Burton — teaches film production, animation and editing, and has produced short films for Nickelodeon, Children’s Television Workshop and MSN Video.

And he’s no stranger to documentary films.

Frierson completed an historical documentary on Charleston, South Carolina, and an hour-long film documentary on New Orleans photographer Clarence John Laughlin, best known for his Surrealist photographs of the American South. Frierson’s most recent film, FBI KKK, is a documentary about his father, Dargan Frierson, an FBI agent in Greensboro, and his relationship with George Dorsett, a chaplain for the United Klans of America, who was an FBI informant during the apex of KKK’s power in North Carolina.

It was Terry Kennedy — director of the M.F.A. writing program at UNCG and editor of The Greensboro Review — who suggested Frierson make a documentary film about Chappell. It may have helped that Kennedy had a little grant money to start up the project.

Regardless, Frierson was sold on the idea, and chipped in grant money from his own department.

“You can make the case that Fred Chappell is likely the most important living writer in the state,” Frierson says.

Additional grant money came from short story writer, novelist and journalist Michael Parker, a native of Siler City who taught at UNCG for 30 years and was about to retire.

With initial funding in place, Frierson began the project the same way he’d begun work on all his documentaries. He set out to learn everything he could about his subject.

“I had to educate myself about the person,” Frierson says. “I’m from Greensboro, so Fred knew my Dad, and he knew me — but not really.” He explains that he needed to learn the historical context, what happened when, so he “could figure out thematically what’s the most important stuff.”

Frierson brought in public relations professional Ron Miller, who’d written the script for an earlier project. A writer and journalist, Miller was the book page editor at the News & Record for many years. He and Frierson are long-time friends, since their daughters are the same age.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

PHOTOGRAPH TOP LEFT COURTESY OF CHRIS ENGLISH PHOTOGRAPH BOTTOM LEFT COURTESY OF FRED CHAPPELL

Then he pauses.

“You know,” Chappell says, “this fellow, Frierson, is making a film. I think some writers put him up to it.

“They’re just trying to torment me in my old age,” he chuckles, “but it might be interesting.”

UNCG professor of media studies Michael Frierson laughs when I tell him how I was put on his trail.

“Fred’s not into tooting his own horn,” he says.

Frierson’s a local boy who attended Grimsley High School with this magazine’s founding editor, Jim Dodson. While an undergrad philosophy major at UNCG, he took one of the university’s first graduate courses in filmmaking with the late John Jellicorse, who was head of the drama and speech department, and author Anthony Fragola, now a media studies colleague of Frierson’s at UNCG. After a six-week stint in law school — “I hated it,” Frierson says — he eventually received a Ph.D. in film at the University of Michigan. He taught at Loyola University in New Orleans for five years before an opportunity at UNCG enabled him to return to Greensboro with his young family to be near his parents.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAN G. HENSLEY ILLUSTRATION BY DWANE POWELL

Fred with Michael Parker “When Michael said, we ought to do Fred Chappell, I said, yeah, we have a national treasure living here in Greensboro, and hardly anybody knows it,” says Miller.

“Ron really crafted the story part,” Frierson adds. “Initially I’d thought the documentary would just be ‘a day in the life of Fred,’ but he’s a very private person, so you can’t just burst in on him with a camera.”

As research continued and more and more individuals agreed to be interviewed, patterns emerged.

“Most of the people who talk about Fred are in awe of his erudition,” Frierson says.

Chappell’s knowledge of world literature — classic to modern — is encyclopedic. His command of poetic and narrative forms is stunning.

And his ability to easily summon that knowledge is uncanny.

Frierson recalls a classroom anecdote where a student had used a literary allusion, but didn’t seem to grasp its significance. When Chappell asked the student why he’d used the quote, he couldn’t answer, so Chappell went to the blackboard and wrote out the entire passage from memory, word for word, explaining its importance.

In an interview with Frierson, author Lee Smith commented on how well-read Fred is, “but you’d never know it if you met him in a bar somewhere.”

“She’s funny,” Frierson grins.

Some place Chappell “at the leading edge of the whole Appalachian writers’ movement,” Frierson adds. He explains that Chappell’s novel, I Am One of You Forever, changed the way some writers viewed the use of fantasy in realistic fiction about the region.

Dan Pierce, a professor of history at UNC Asheville, has written books and articles about Appalachia. In his interview with Frierson, he comments on Chappell’s importance.

“When Fred comes along, there is this very self-conscious movement that wants to explain what Appalachia is, what Appalachian people are, and what they aren’t,” Pierce says. “Fred’s very much a The Art & Soul of Greensboro

part of that — to show that Appalachian people aren’t just a bunch of ignorant, inbred, banjo-pickin’ hillbillies.”

And there’s Chappell’s decades of teaching.

“Fred taught at UNCG at the M.F.A. program for 40 years, so he had hundreds and hundreds of students who became writers and teachers,” says poet Susan O’Dell Underwood, professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Carson-Newman University. “He’s had a huge influence on so many grateful readers, writers and students,” she adds.

Over the last year and a half, Frierson has videotaped and transcribed more than 50 hours of interviews with 34 individuals — comprising writers, literary critics and historians who have been influenced by Chappell and his work, not to mention Chappell himself, along with his sister, Becky Anderson, founding director of HandMade in America, a community development organization located in Western North Carolina.

And that’s not all. Frierson tells me he’s shot some 16 hours of location video — including drone footage of the mountain farm where Chappell was born and his hometown of Canton, along with a scene at the church where Chappell and Susan, his wife of 62 years, were married. In addition, he’s gathered more than 2,000 historical and family photographs and archival recordings to help illustrate Chappell’s life story.

Once you’ve seen Frierson’s documentary, you’ll know what to make of Fred Chappell.

You’ll know we’re lucky to have him. OH To watch the trailer for Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever, and to receive updates on the documentary’s release date and screenings, visit www.fredchappellmovie.com Ross Howell Jr. is a freelance writer in Greensboro. His favorite children’s book? Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry.

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Leafing the World Behind A rustic treehouse getaway for the young — and young at heart

By Maria Johnson • Photographs by John Gessner

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

O.Henry 61

C

HINA GROVE — No offense to Katy O’Neill’s friend, the one with a treehouse back in Durham, where both of the girls live.

Her pal’s loft is pretty swell. It has a slide, and a zip line, and a hammock.

But the treehouse where 8-year-old Katy slept last night was a different story with its comfy beds, plumbed bathroom, kitchenette and flat screen TV. “This one is a lot fancier,” Katy said before checking out of her family’s overnight accommodations at the Cherry Treesort, a cluster of cabins in the canopy outside of China Grove, a community near Interstate 85 between Greensboro and Charlotte.

Treesort owner Trent Cherry — whose other full-time job is being the head pit crew coach for NASCAR’s Team Penske — built the first treehouse on his hobby farm in 2015 and started renting it out later that year.

Since then, his sylvan community has branched out to include eight cabins: six supported by trees and stilts, plus two “Hobbit Houses” burrowed into a hillside.

Measuring no more than 400 square feet each, the wee lodgings

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are a hot property on Airbnb, where renters book the properties — at rates ranging from $125 to $195 per night — months in advance.

Guests come from all over. Striding briskly along a trail that connects the cabins, Cherry stops at a posted map of the United States dotted with multicolored push pins denoting the home states of visitors; all 50 states are nubby with pin heads. That’s not counting the visitors from 12 other countries.

“I wish I could tell you our demographics, but when you track it, it’s everybody. We’ve had people come here for birthday parties, anniversaries, honeymoons. Our oldest guest ever was 91 years old,” he says, anticipating the next question. The elderly guest stayed in a hillside cabin connected to the parking area by boardwalk bridge; no climbing needed.

Cherry says the novelty of napping with the squirrels is the property’s main draw — initially at least.

“The treehouses are what get them here,” says Cherry of his customers. “But what they really enjoy is the atmosphere.”

He means simplicity.

“There’s no Wi-Fi here. That’s on purpose,” he says. “We wanted it to be a family place where you can go outside, sit with your kids and The Art & Soul of Greensboro

turn the electronics off. A lot of parents say, ‘Thank you. We talked, and played board games and card games, and the kids got out and played around the creek and the farm.’”

Would-be renters can tour the treehouses during Winterfest, an open house hosted by Cherry on the first Saturday in December.

Bonus attraction: A screening of How the Grinch Stole Christmas on an inflatable screen in a tree-shrouded amphitheater. Nearby, kids spring around in a bouncy house, Santa takes most-wanted updates, a men’s ministry sells barbecue sandwiches and young entrepreneurs hawk wares ranging from mistletoe balls to marshmallow guns.

“Last year, we had 12 kids, and they all sold out. They’d never seen that much money in their lives,” says Cherry, who dresses farmer-chic in roper boots, Carhartt trousers, a dusty Southern States cap and a T-shirt advertising the treehouse community.

“Never Grow Up” the back of the shirt urges.

The kid in Cherry bought these 27 acres, just down the road from his home in China Grove, because he wanted a place for himself and his son, Nick, now 12, to get away.

Cherry’s father, Jim, who owns a T-shirt manufacturing company in Indian Trail, N.C., was not impressed.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

“He said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ I said, ‘I dunno, but I’ll figure it out.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s pretty stupid.’”

A smile floods Cherry’s face: “Now, he loves it.”

Maybe that’s because the adult in Cherry didn’t take long to figure out that he could build a treehouse for himself and his son and rent it out when they weren’t using it.

Soon, he added more leafy lodging.

It also didn’t hurt that Cherry named two of the cabins — Nona’s Nest and Chico’s Hideaway — for his parents, who live in Charlotte.

Nona means grandmother in Italian. Chico was his father’s nickname in the Navy.

The other cabins bear the names of dear ones, too.

The Miss Molly is named for Cherry’s daughter, now 10.

The Big Nick — a treehouse and adjunct “guest house” joined by a deck — honors his son.

The Sweet Ashley is named for Cherry’s wife, a kindergarten teacher in Concord. The cabin resembles a one-room schoolhouse.

One of the earthen huts is named Mimi and Papa’s, for Ashley’s parents in Winston-Salem.

The other, Lucy Lu’s Hobbit House, is a nod to the family’s O.Henry 63

7-pound Yorkshire Terrier.

“She runs this place,” says Cherry. “She’s the mayor.”

The Lucy Lu might be the most distinctive cabin with its round door and porthole windows peering out from a slope near the main road.

“I came up with that all on my own,” says Cherry. “I saw a picture online of a house built into a hill, and I said, ‘Hell, I’m gonna put a hobbit house in there.’”

The newest treehouse is The Tolson, named for Cherry’s buddy, Doug Tolson, a carpenter who comes from California to help Cherry and a crew of local workers build the cabins at breakneck speed.

“We bust it hard,” says Cherry.

The Tolson went up — literally 10 feet up, into poplars and maples and oaks — in just six weeks.

Cherry insists that the treehouses be supported in part by trees, which usually poke through holes in the decks. Underneath, the trees attach to the houses with sliding brackets that allow the trunks to sway with the wind without twisting the structures.

Cherry bristles at other hosts who bill their rentals as treehouses when the shelters stand on stilts alone.

“Some people build a house in the woods and call it a treehouse,” he declares. “That’s not a treehouse.”

Cherry and Tolson design all of the cabins, scratching out floor plans on napkins, graph paper, scraps of cardboard — whatever’s

64 O.Henry

handy. Cherry sends the drawings to an architect in Charlotte, who polishes the plans, imports them to an app called SketchUp, and ships them back.

A few tweaks later, Cherry and his crew start swinging hammers.

The hideaways are approved by Rowan County inspectors, who also sign off on the well and septic systems. Along with locking doors and windows, most cabins feature a tin roof, wood siding, a deck with furniture, and an outdoor fire pit. Hammocks and swings dangle under the decks.

Inside, the decors are what you might call grain-positive, with wood paneling, wood floors, wood furniture and wood flourishes such as gnarly branches deployed as wall art.

Cherry and his son build all of the furniture, bridges and railings from trees that fall on the property.

“We slab ’em up and make tables and benches,” he says.

Some guests compare the Treesort experience to glamping, or glamorous camping.

“It’s the best parts of camping with all the first-world comforts,” says Lynn O’Neill, the mom of 8-year-old Katy.

O’Neill and her partner, Kathryn Hodskinson, booked one night in a treehouse as a treat for Katy, a fan of the Magic Tree House books.

“We haven’t been anywhere for a year and a half,” said Hodskinson, recounting a stretch of online living because of COVID. “We needed 24 hours of no Wi-Fi,” added O’Neill.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

O.Henry 65

On the way to China Grove, they stopped at the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer. They spent a low-tech evening around the treehouse, reading and cooking hotdogs and SpaghettiOs over a camp stove outside. They used oversize Jenga blocks, which were left on a deck table, to build a house for Katy’s plush toy, Peanut, a mouse from the Magic Tree House.

Hodskinson gave Peanut to Katy as a memento of the trip.

“We’re talking about coming back in the fall, when the colors change,” says Hodskinson.

Just down the dirt road, sisters Jennifer Todd and Amber Kozlowski, both of whom live in the area, were preparing to check out of The Big Nick duplex after a birthday sleepover with seven girls, including Todd’s daughter, Addison, the honoree who was turning 11 in a few days.

The guests included Addison’s cousin, Savannah, along with Addison’s friends Remi, Makenna, Sophie, Kierra and McKinley.

For dinner the night before, the preteen tribe roasted hotdogs and s’mores over the fire pit.

66 O.Henry

Guided by fireflies and bistro lights strung up around the cabins, the girls played hide-and-go-seek in the woods, twirled in swings and watched Barbie videos on their phones until their batteries died; alas, the flat-screen TV in their cabin was hitched only to an antennae and DVD player, not to cable or dish service.

They fueled their all-nighter with Goldfish crackers, Cheetos, cupcakes, Cheerwine and an occasional foray outside to throw each other’s Crocs clogs off the deck. There also was a brief interlude with a yellow jacket wasp that crashed the party.

A good time was had by all, except the dearly departed yellow jacket. The cabins — though hot and stuffy at times despite electric fans and split-unit heating and cooling — passed muster with their “rustic vibes,” according to the girls.

“My favorite part was just being in nature,” says 8-year-old Savannah. OH Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry magazine. She can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

A L M A N A C

August n

By Ashley Wahl

A

ugust leaves you wanting.

In the afternoon, when the air is all milk-and-honey and the primal thrum of late summer has reached a crescendo, she will boldly take your hand.

“Close your eyes,” she will whisper, and as her golden light flickers across your face and shoulders, you all but dissolve into her dreamy essence.

“This way,” she will tease, giggling as she guides you someplace a little darker, a little cooler — a shadowy hideaway beneath the trees.

You’ll stop at the tangle of wild blackberries, where deer tracks resemble spirals of ancient text and a sparrow whistles sweetly in the distance.

“All for you,” she will promise, slowly feeding you the last of the dark, warm berries, and then she will guide you along.

You can tell by the sun on your skin that you’ve entered some clearing, and when you crack open your eyes, bees and butterflies light and stir in all directions.

“Keep them closed,” she warns, leading you through wildflowers and down to the dock of a swollen pond, where yellow-bellied sliders bask on the bank, largest to smallest, like a set of wooden stacking dolls.

Bare feet dangling in the water, she leans in close, perfume thick as honeysuckle, plants a soft kiss on your cheek. Because her voice is like nectar — slow and sweet and dripping with intrigue — it makes no difference what she says next: “I’ll never leave you” or “Wait right here.”

Besides, you’re too enraptured to notice that the days are growing shorter, that the gray squirrel has been busy storing nuts.

As the summer light begins to fade, the fireflies blink Morse code.

The cicadas, too, scream out. All the signs are here, but you can’t see them.

When you open your eyes, she is already gone.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Green Corn Moon

Behold the earliest apples, the earliest figs, bushels of sweet corn and tomatoes ripening faster than you can say bruschetta.

When the Green Corn Moon rises on Sunday, August 22, take a lesson from the squirrels: Now’s the time to preserve your summer harvest.

Can the fresh tomatoes. Sun-dry the herbs and figs. Pickle okra, cukes and peppers. As for the rest? Cook now and freeze it for later.

Squash soup, anyone?

Late Bloomers

The bees and all who hum and buzz are, in a word, nectar-drunk.

Among the late summer bloomers — crape myrtle, lantana, lobelia, ageratum and phlox — a favorite is butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, caterpillar food for Monarchs.

Drought tolerant, deer resistant and kin to milkweed, what’s not to love? And their orange-andyellow clusters mirror the joy and warmth of summer.

When in still air and still in summertime A leaf has had enough of this, it seems To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage Its drifting in detachment down the road.

— Howard Nemerov

O.Henry 67

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August 2021 Wyndham Championship

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11 – 15

Although conscientious effort is made to provide accurate and up-to-date information, all events are subject to change and errors can occur! Please call to verify times, costs, status and location before planning or attending an event.

August 1 MUSEP THE MUSICAL. 6–7 p.m. The final streamed concert of the 2021 MUSEP (Music for a Sunday Evening in the Park) series is a musical theater-themed production that will have you doing jazz hands. And it’s free. Info: creativegreensboro.com.

August 4 WALK THE TALK. 6:30–8 p.m. Visit touchstones and turning points in Greensboro’s historically marginalized communities on this “Social Equity in History Walking Tour.” Comfortable walking shoes recommended for this hour-plus trek. Tickets: $5; registration required.

International Civil Rights Center and Museum, 134 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: preservationgreensboro.org/ event.

August 6 FIRST FRIDAY ART PARK. 6–9 p.m. Painters and potters and more? Oh, yes. Free live demos and hands-on projects led by artist/instructors from Art Alliance.

Center City Park, 200 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreensboro.org/events.

GLOBETROTTERS. 7 p.m. The world-famous Harlem Globetrotters bring their newly reimagined Spread Game tour to the Gate City. Tickets: $20+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or greensborocoliseum. com/events.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

Lorena Guillen Tango Ensemble

8/

Lewis & Stamey

8/

15

THE AGE GAP TOUR. 7:30 p.m. Comedienne, author and singer Heather Land tells it like it is with sarcasm and Southern Charm. Tickets: $35/advance; $40.

Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or greensborocoliseum.com/events.

August 7 ELSEWHERE. 2–3 p.m. Take a guided tour with an Elsewhereian and discover the meaning of a store-turnedliving-museum. Tickets: $5. Elsewhere Museum, 606 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: elsewheremuseum.org.

IS THIS THING ON? 6–8 p.m. An open mic event featuring local and traveling talent. Free. Elsewhere Museum, 606 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: elsewheremuseum.org.

August 7–September 25 DINNER & A SHOW. America’s longest-running dinner theater presents The Color Purple, a musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Tickets: $51+. Barn Dinner Theatre, 120 Stage Coach Trail, Greensboro. Info: (336) 292-2211 or barndinner.com.

August 8 LIVE MUSEP. 6 p.m. The first live concert of the 2021 MUSEP season features Cory Luetjen & The Traveling Blues Band and Sweet Dreams (smooth jazz, R&B). Free. White Oak Amphitheatre, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or creativegreensboro.com.

31

August 11–15 WYNDHAM. The PGA tour’s annual Wyndham Championship returns to Greensboro. Tickets: $35+/ day, $220/week. Sedgefield Country Club, 3211 Forsyth Dr., Greensboro. Info: wyndhamchampionship.com.

August 11 HEY SOUL SISTER. 8 p.m. Ready to pop-rock? Train takes the stage with special guests Vertical Horizon.

Tickets: $28.50/lawn, $55+ reserved. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or greensborocoliseum. com/events.

MONUMENTAL. 6:30–8 p.m. This two-mile walking tour explores the collection of national monuments found on the historic Guilford Battleground.

Comfortable walking shoes recommended. Tickets: $5.

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, 2332 New Garden Rd., Greensboro. Registration required: (336) 272-5003. Info: preservationgreensboro.org/event.

August 13 SIP & LAUGH. 6 p.m. Comedians pair well with wine.

Didn’t you know? Tickets: $18. Grove Winery, 7360 Brooks Bridge Rd., Gibsonville. Info: (336) 584-4060 or grovewinery.com.

August 14 LET’S TACO ‘BOUT IT. 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Ten of Greensboro’s best restaurants, food trucks and carts will serve up tacos, beer and margaritas as live bands and DJs keep things lively at this year’s Greensboro

O.Henry 69

shops • service • food • farms

FROM FARMERS MARKETS TO YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER SHOP, LOCAL IS ALWAYS FRESH!

support locally owned businesses

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Call us when you think you’re there!

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Please support your local shops WWW.TRIADLOCALFIRST.ORG

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Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.

shops • service • food • farms

support locally owned businesses

Taco Festival. Tickets: $10/advance; $15; $35/VIP. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or greensborocoliseum.com/events.

producer puts the f-u-n in The Fun Tour. Tickets: $40-70.

Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or greensborocoliseum.com/events.

POETRY IN THE PARK. 8–10 p.m. Word play presented by The Poetry Cafe. BYO blanket or lawn chair.

LeBauer Park, 208 N. Davie St. For more information, email info@thepoetrycafe.org.

August 18

August 15 MORE LIVE MUSEP. 6 p.m. Lorena Guillen Tango Ensemble (tango Pan-Latin fusion) and ALLL (R&B, jazz). Free. White Oak Amphitheatre, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or creativegreensboro.com.

August 15—16 CREATING LAYERS. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. & 1–5 p.m. This two-day workshop led by guest artist Lisa Orr focuses on the complex layering of textures and slips to create low-fire glazes. Registration: $245; $200 for Art Alliance students. Info: artalliancegso.org/classes/workshops.

August 16 ALL FUN AND GAMES. Jim Gaffigan, six-time Grammy nominated comedian, actor, writer and

DUNLEATH WALKING TOUR. 6:30–8 p.m. Explore the history of the Summit Avenue neighborhood. Walking shoes recommended. Tickets: $5; registration required.

Meet at Swann Middle School, 811 Cypress Street, Greensboro. Info: preservationgreensboro.org/event.

August 22

SELF-MOTIVATED. 7 p.m. Alex Dey, author and pioneer of motivation and personal development in Mexico, shares tips and tricks for success. Tickets: $99+.

Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or greensborocoliseum.com/events.

FRIDAY NIGHT PADDLE. 8–10 p.m. Enjoy a peaceful moonlit paddle on Lake Townsend. BYO kayak or rent one on site. Reservations required; ages 13 and up.

Solo kayak: $20; tandem: $30. Info: (336) 373-3694 or greensboro-nc.gov (click on “events”).

August 28

FUNKY LIVE MUSEP. 6 p.m. Featuring doby (funk) and Sheila Star Productions (R&B, country, gospel).

Free. White Oak Amphitheatre, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-7400 or creativegreensboro.com.

PIANO MAN. 8 p.m. GSO presents Michael Cavanaugh: The Music of Billy Joel. Tickets: $3580. Steven Tanger Center, One Abe Brenner Place, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

August 25

August 29

DOWN ON THE MILL. 6:30–8 p.m. This walking tour examines some of the most recent restoration and adaptive reuse phases of Revolution Mill. Walking shoes recommended. Tickets: $5; registration required.

Revolution Mill Docks, 447 W. Washington St., Greensboro. Info: preservationgreensboro.org/event.

shops • service • food • farms

August 27

Calendar

SWEET LIVE MUSEP. 6 p.m. Soultrii (soul, pop) and Farewell Friend (Americana, folk). Free. White Oak Amphitheatre, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro.

Info: (336) 373-7400 or creativegreensboro.com.

FOOD TRUCK FESTIVAL. 3–9 p.m. Explore culinary delights from more than 50 food trucks from the Gate

support locally owned businesses

O.Henry 71

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72 O.Henry

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City and surrounding areas. Live music, children’s activities. Downtown Greensboro. Free admission. Info: greensborofoodtruckfestivals.com.

August 31

Life & Home

LEWIS & STAMEY. 4–5 p.m. Artist Nate Lewis and Weatherspoon curator of exhibitions Emily Stamey host a virtual discussion on Lewis’ newest work in the Monuments series. Free; registration required. Info: weatherspoonart.org.

WEEKLY HAPPENINGS FRIDAYS SPARTAN CINEMA. 5–11 p.m. Family friendly movie nights at the park continue. This month: The Trolls World Tour (8/6), Raya & The Last Dragon (8/13), Jumanji: Next Level (8/20) and Wonder Woman 1984 (8/27). Food and drinks available for purchase. BYO blanket or lawn chair. Free. LeBauer Park, 208 N. Davie St., Greensboro.

Info: greensborodowntownparks.org or news.uncg.edu/ uncgevents.

To add an event, email us at ohenrymagcalendar@gmail.com by the first of the month ONE MONTH PRIOR TO THE EVENT.

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O.Henry 73

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74 O.Henry

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O.Henry 75

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O.Henry 77

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78 O.Henry

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O.Henry 79

O.Henry Ending

Book Clubs I Have Known

By Ruth Moose

Tell me about

your book club and I’ll tell you about mine. And others I have known.

First, let me say that I really love most book clubs. What could be more fun than to get together with other readers and book lovers — preferably with food? Though you have read the same book, everyone reads differently and brings to the discussion ideas to make your own reading wider and deeper. Or not.

My longest membership in one book club was 22 years, and even after moving, if it wasn’t so far away, I’d still be attending. During this pandemic year, we have not Zoomed. Don’t know that we ever had a name, but the club was mostly comprised of Chapel Hill English Department faculty and/or wives of faculty. We met monthly, and when a lot of us found night driving difficult, we switched from evenings to afternoons, rescheduling around teaching days for those not yet retired.

Not a fan of most nonfiction, I read some books I would never have bothered to pick up. Loved The Professor and the Madman, about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, and The Immortal Cells of Henrietta Lacks. Both books not of my choosing, but I’m the richer for having read them.

A book club I briefly belonged to in Fearrington Village read only New York Times bestsellers. A lot of them were bombs, including one fantasy novel that was a single, long sentence. We finally issued the ultimatum that before one “picked” a book, one should actually have read it.

After my first novel came out, I was invited to speak to some book clubs. Boy, did I learn a lot.

One Raleigh club that had been meeting almost 50 years was invitation-only, boasting daughters and granddaughters of its original members. For speaking, I was presented a box of stale cheese straws.

Another club presented me with an organdy tea apron. That

80 O.Henry

needed ironing. Once, I received a box of fancy soaps.

At yet another book club, while waiting to speak, I asked the person next to me what books the group had read this year.

“Oh,” she said over her china teacup, “We don’t read books. We just invite speakers to TELL us about the book.” Ouch.

Another book club in another town confessed the same.

One club told me that each member contributed one book at the beginning of the year. “That way,” she said, “We only have to buy one book.”

Ouch, again.

A friend belongs to a Destination Book Club. Where they meet depends on the season; what they read hinges on the setting — mountains or beach.

Moving back to Albemarle, I immediately rejoined the book club I organized; one that began with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I had listened to it on tape while I painted a utility room. The minute I finished listening, I ran to the library for a print copy. I had to SEE this book, hold it. And I had to discuss it. So, I invited seven friends to my house, and we all dressed as a handmaid of our standing.

No one came in red. I’m proud that the group is still meeting and will let me in by Zoom. I’m ready. I’ve finished the selection, Miss Benson’s Beetle, and I’ve picked my actresses to star in the movie: Bette Midler and Melissa McCarthy.

Can’t wait to hear what stars others have chosen.

I really do love book clubs . . . even the ones who don’t read books. OH Ruth Moose taught Introduction to Writing Short Fiction at UNC-Chapel Hill for 15 years. Her students have since published New York Times Bestsellers and are getting Netflixed. She recently returned to her roots in the Uwharrie Mountains.

Her favorite children’s book? A tie between The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.

The Art & Soul of Greensboro

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