July PineStraw 2011 by PineStraw Magazine

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Features

July 2011 Volume 6, No. 7

56 Mrs.Darcy Meets the Blue-eyed Stranger

64 Avid Readers

70 Waiting

76 Aisles to Another World

82 Story of a House: Life’s OK at the Corral

Short fiction from North Carolina’s finest storyteller.

7 10 15 17 21 25 29 31 33 37 38 41 43 45 51 94 102 109

Sweet Tea Chronicles Jim Dodson PinePitch Cos and Effect Cos Barnes The Omnivorous Reader Stephen E. Smith Bookshelf PineBuzz Jack Dodson Southern Classics Deborah Salomon Hitting Home Dale Nixon The Kitchen Garden Jan Leitschuh Vine Wisdom Robyn James The Pleasures of Life Marjorie Hopkins Spirits Frank Daniels III Birdwatch Susan Campbell The Sporting Life Tom Bryant Golftown Journal Lee Pace Calendar SandhillSeen The Accidental Astrologer

Sara King

Sometimes all you can do is wait for the heat to break — and hearts to mend. Here’s where to escape the heat — and travel far and wide.

Cassie Butler

So, what’s on your summer reading table?

Departments

Lee Smith

Deborah Salomon

This venerable five-room cottage soothes the soul.

90 The Garden Path: Labor of Love Step by step, Craig and Scarlett Allison created the perfect backyard garden retreat.

Noah Salt

Astrid Stellanova

111 PineNeedler Mart Dickerson

112 SouthWords Chris Dunn

Cover Photograph of Author Lee Smith By Tim Sayer Photograph this page shot at The Corral By John Gessner

July 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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PineStraw M A G A Z I N E Jim Dodson, Editor

910.693.2506 • jim@pinestrawmag.com

Andie Stuart Rose, Creative Director 910.693.2467 • andie@pinestrawmag.com

Kathryn Galloway, Graphic Designer Ashley Wahl, Editorial Assistant Cassie Butler, Photographer/Writer Editorial

Deborah Salomon, Staff Writer Noah Salt, Staff Writer Stephen E. Smith, Staff Writer Sara King, Proofreader Mary Novitsky, Proofreader Photographers

Glenn Dickerson Tim Sayer Hannah Sharpe

Contributors

Cos Barnes, Laurie Birdsong, Tom Bryant, Susan Campbell, Frank Daniels III, Mart Dickerson, Jack Dodson, Chris Dunn, Robert Gable, Marjorie Hopkins, Robyn James, Pamela Powers January, Sara King, Jan Leitschuh, Dale Nixon, Lee Pace, Jeanne Paine, Lee Smith, Astrid Stellanova, Angie Tally

David Woronoff, Publisher Advertising Sales

Ginny Kelly, 910.693.2481 • ginnykelly@thepilot.com Terry Hartsell, 910.693.2513 Marty Hefner, 910.693.2508 Peggy Marsh, 910.693.2516 Darlene McNeil-Smith, 910.693.2519 Johnsie Tipton, 910.693.2515 Karen Triplett, 910.693.2510 Perry Loflin, 910.693.2514 Pat Taylor, Advertising Director 910.693.2505 • pat@thepilot.com Advertising Graphic Design advertise@thepilot.com

Kathryn Galloway, B.J. Hill Mechelle Wood, Scott Yancey, Kristen Clark Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488 • dstark@thepilot.com PineStraw Magazine 910.693.2467 173 W. Pennsylvania Avenue Southern Pines, NC 28387 pinestraw@thepilot.com • www.pinestrawmag.com ©Copyright 2011. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. PineStraw magazine is published by The Pilot LLC

PINEHURST

3 Sherwood Court – 3 BR / 3.5 BA / Water Front

WEST END

460 Broken Ridge Trail – 4 BR / 4 BA / Horse Property

MID SOUTH CLUB

28 Plantation Drive – 4 BR / 4.5 BA / Golf Front

This beautiful home is tucked away at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac overlooking Lake Pinehurst. The living room features shinning hardwood floors, a stone fireplace, built-in wet bar and a wall of windows. The beautifully renovated kitchen includes custom cabinets, granite counter tops, tile backsplash, oversized island and eating area. The master suite features a private deck, a large walk-in closet and private bath with tile flooring, double sinks, garden tub and step-in shower! $589,000 Code 752

This beautiful and spacious custom home is located in the horse friendly community of McLendon Hills. The kitchen is well designed and the formal dining room is perfect for entertaining. The secluded master bedroom is on the main level with a spa like bath. The upper level includes three generous sized bedrooms, two full baths, an ofﬁce and a bonus room. Additional features include a formal living room, family room, storage shed and workshop! $519,000 Code 757

www.3SherwoodCourt.com

www.460BrokenRidgeTrail.com

www.28PlantationDrive.com

WHISPERING PINES

PINEHURST

SEVEN LAKES WEST

50 Shadow Drive – 3 BR / 2 BA / Brick Ranch

80 Ridgewood Road – 4 BR / 3.5 BA / Golf Front

Absolutely pristine and ready to move in featuring beautiful custom details throughout. The living room takes full advantage of the golf view while the gourmet kitchen is a cooks dream. The master bedroom is generous in size and features a private bath. The upper level features an ofﬁce, two additional guest bedrooms each with private baths and a hobby or craft room. This is a must see home! $549,900 Code 788

105 Featherston Point – 4 BR / 3.5 BA / Water Front

Lovely brick ranch tucked away on a beautifully landscaped lot in Whispering Pines. The split floor plan is sure to please. The well planned kitchen is perfect for gathering with family and friends. The living room has a beautiful stone fireplace and a wall of windows for lots of natural light. Also featured is a large master suite, 2 guest bedrooms and an oversized office! $285,000 Code 767

Truly one of the best views in Pinehurst! This beautifully renovated golf front home overlooks the 9th hole of Pinehurst course #3. The house and grounds have been meticulously redone and the result is beautiful. A few features this home has are hardwood ﬂoors, crown molding, generous sized rooms and chandelier lighting. Must see to appreciate! $395,000 Code 771

This is an elegant lake front home with beautiful water views. Desirable features of this home include soaring ceiling heights, clerestory windows, a covered patio, deck area, split bedroom ﬂoor plan, hardwood ﬂoors, crown molding, awesome water views and much more. You’ll enjoy the gourmet kitchen, the dramatic living room, the secluded master suite, the upper level and the walk-out lower level! $699,000 Code 762

www.50ShadowDrive.com

www.80RidgewoodRoad.com

www.105FeatherstonPoint.com

SEVEN LAKES NORTH

PINEWILD

WHISPERING PINES

212 Firetree Lane – 3 BR / 2.5 BA / Water View

Wow! This lovely custom built home offers wide water views of Lake Sequoia. Great details through out include a skylight, chair railing, chandelier lighting, a gas ﬁreplace, built-in bookshelves and a super ﬂoor plan. Don’t forget the covered front porch, nicely landscaped yard, attic storage and the 2 car garage! $237,000 Code 768

www.212FiretreeLane.com

WHISPERING PINES

23 Shadow Drive – 3 BR / 3 BA / Water Front

This beautiful lake front home has been beautifully renovated and offers a terriﬁc ﬂoor plan. You’ll love everything from the large deck to the 2 master bedrooms. The upper level features room for entertaining while the lower level features room for spreading out. There is beautiful landscaping to catch your eye along with the gorgeous lake views! $396,000 Code 765

www.23ShadowDrive.com

14 Abbottsford Drive – 3 BR / 3.5 BA / Golf Front

53 Winding Trail – 4 BR / 2.5 BA / Split Plan

Tucked away in it’s private setting, this elegant golf front home offers expansive views of the 6th and 7th fairway and green of the Magnolia course. It has a generously spaced ﬂoor plan that has plenty of room for everyone. You’ll ﬁnd special touches, lots of storage and an airy feel through out. Don’t miss this one! $525,000 Code 772

This home is warm and inviting from the moment you step inside. The master suite with private bath offers lots of privacy on the main level while the upper level is home to 3 guest bedrooms and a bonus room. The main level also features a formal dining room, living room and inviting kitchen. Additional features of this home include a covered front porch, large back patio, fenced yard, irrigation system and more! $309,900 Code 763

www.14AbbottsfordDrive.com

www.53WindingTrail.com

PINEHURST

8 Tull Lane – 3 BR / 2 BA / Split Plan

500 SW Longleaf Drive – 4 BR / 3 BA / Village Acres

This beautiful all brick home is located on a quiet cul-de-sac. The well thought out ﬂoor plan provides privacy for everyone. The living room has a cozy ﬁreplace and the kitchen is inviting with lots of cabinet space. The master suite has a spa like bath perfect for relaxing. Enjoy a screened porch, 2 guest bedrooms, formal dining room and a partial basement with lots of storage. $239,900 Code 758

This is a wonderful family home located in a quiet neighborhood. The open ﬂoor plan is sure to please. The spacious master bedroom has it’s own bath and entrance to the deck. The living room is bright and next to the charming kitchen. There is room in the fenced yard to play or relax. Mature landscaping rounds out this wonderful home! $155,000 Code 759

www.8TullLane.com

www.500LongleafDrive.com

View Floor Plans and Virtual Tours of Our Listings and See ALL Moore County Listings and Community Information at

www.MarthaGentry.com

sweet tea chronicles

Faithful Travelers

By Jim Dodson

Summer travel with kids can be a real adventure — often as painful as it is comic.

During the summer of 1997 my daughter Maggie, then eight, and our elderly golden retriever, Amos, and I set off in my old Chevy Blazer for a 7,000 mile camping and fly-fishing odyssey across America. We chased trout from the Adirondacks to the Snake River in Wyoming, learned about Hemingway’s TwoHearted River, rode horses at a dude ranch in Colorado, blew up the truck in the panhandle of Oklahoma, met a host of unforgettable characters, and briefly lost the dog in Yellowstone. Exactly four years later her younger brother Jack and his old man set off an equally ambitious summer adventure — to see the wonders of the ancient world in just seven or eight weeks. Basically, everything that could go wrong did so. But we still had the time of our lives. Both were journeys of the heart that commenced in July, summers their father will never forget, not least of all because my two best books came from those trips. This is from a chapter called “Touching a Trout” in Faithful Travelers. Following a long day of fishing Lake Walloon, the boyhood haunt of young Ernest Hemingway, and showing my daughter how to catch and properly release a trout — and failing to touch one in the currents as as related in Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories — we were camped near a Mormon couple in a beautiful state park on the shores of Lake Michigan. After supper, I washed up the dinner plates and put on water to scald them, then fed Amos his aspirins in cheese. A screen door slapped up at the shower building and the Mormon couple came back from having their evening showers. I introduced them to Maggie, who was headed to the showers with her towel, soap, and toothbrush. When she was gone, Toni Bowman brought over fresh-made coffee and an extra cup. Jerry followed his wife, buttoning up a flannel shirt. The

night was surprisingly cool off Lake Michigan. “We made too much and hate to pour it out,” she explained. We chatted for a while about their trip and ours. I admitted to them that Maggie’s mother wasn’t with us because she and I were getting divorced. I suppose part of me thought of this confession as a little test. I wanted to see how they would react, how a Mormon who didn’t accept the idea of divorce would take this news, how any stranger would. Perhaps I’d not yet stated the words aloud because part of me clung to the belief that they simply weren’t true. Just the prospect of going through a divorce makes you feel unclean, so anxious to try to explain that you’re really not an awful person. I half expected them to whip out their Bible and lecture me in that cheerful pious manner some Mormons have about God and family matters. But the Bowmans were either too considerate, or maybe didn’t know what to say. They only offered hot coffee and a bit of sympathy, for which I was grateful on both counts. Jerry said they were fetching their horse and rolling out in the morning, too, hoping to make Holland by the weekend. “The town,” he said with a pleasant wink at Toni, “not the country.” We said goodnight and a little while later my daughter came back from her shower and asked me to comb out her hair, which I was delighted to do. She hadn’t asked me to comb out her hair in ages. First I tossed on another log, sending up a burst of sparks, and then put on the radio softly, though no news this time. Central Michigan University’s station was playing Aaron Copland’s “Appalachain Spring,” a bittersweet anthem based on Shaker melodies that had its world debut on the same day fifty years ago that the war ended in Europe. My father had been in that war, seen things as awful as Hemingway had, and it had changed him, too. Strangely, it made him more determined to be kind and optimistic. The Copland piece was one of my favorites. It reminded me of my boyhood home in North Carolina. I suppose I loved it for that, though not as much as I loved combing out my daughter’s wet, sweet-smelling hair and not as much as I loved being lost with her in the Michigan woods with a storm rumbling like a timpani drum or maybe the gods bowling far out over Lake Michigan, heading, like us, for the Upper Peninsula. “Dad?” “Yeah, babe?” “Do you think that fish remembers that we caught him today?” I smiled to myself and complimented her for asking such an interesting question. Soon she would have her own chair in philosophy at Yale — or at least a great country band. Did fish have memories? Only she would ask such a thing. All philosophy begins in wonder. That trout we’d caught was two pounds of muscle, fin, membrane, and

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

Cottage Living

sweet tea chronicles

sinew, a few thousand strands of taut nerve endings and survival instincts as old as stone, one of the most efficient eating machines on earth — amazing, I said, when you thought about it, for a creature whose brain was just slightly larger than a green pea. She reminded me that we’d had fresh green peas for supper and hamburgers shaped to look like trout and said there must be room in there for a bit of memory. I smiled again, kept combing, and explained to her that the Psalms say memory is immortality and I would remember that fish for a long time even if I failed to touch him and he forgot me the moment I let him go. God gives the solitary a home, the Psalms also say. And a little girl gives you hope, I would add. “I think that trout will be a little bit smarter next time. That’s how small fish get to be big fish.” “Did he feel pain when we caught him?” “Yes. It hurt him to get caught. Every living thing feels pain. But you know what?” “What?” “It made him feel better to be set free. I bet he won’t remember the pain.” Finally, a snippet from “An Older Hill” in The Road To Somewhere. Father and son had climbed the famous Glastonbury Tor — believed to be the oldest hill in Britain — where I decided to break the disappointing news to Jack that our trip around the world had to be cut in half owing to unforeseen world events. We were carrying our baseball gloves along, aiming to play catch at every sacred site of the ancient world... . The summit at Glastonbury Tor at sunset seemed as good a place as any to officially break the bad news about our trip around the world. It wasn’t going to happen the way either of us hoped and expected it to. “Jack,” I said without preamble, after we’d climbed the twohundred-foot hill with our ball gloves still in hand and sat down to catch our breath on a tilted stone outside the crumbling fourteenth-century tower. “I think Africa is out of the picture — and probably Egypt and China, too.” For once, I wasn’t fooling around. He knew that and looked shocked and disappointed, maybe even a bit betrayed, his young face warmly lit by the midsummer sun’s retreat somewhere out over Wales. “Dad ... why?” I explained about my secret consultations with Chet from the embassy, the trouble and violence in all those places, the travel advisory placed on Kenya, the suicide bombings in Gaza, the continuing dustup over the downed American spy plane. His mother, I said, would

sweet tea chronicles

be worried sick if I hauled him into harm’s way. He got up and walked around the Tor to where a scraggily band of rough travelers had occupied the entrance doors’ interior space of the ancient watchtower. A young man with long braided hair was playing an unintelligible song on a wooden flute while a woman sat in the lotus position on the trampled earthen floor of the tower, head tilted back, eyes shut, lips moving in silent meditation. A few feet away, a toddler and three-legged dog played in the dirt. I got up and walked around the tower, only to find Jack sitting on another stone, staring due east. He’d taken another ball out of his knapsack and was silently fingering it, obviously thinking the situation over. “I can fly,” he said as I sat down beside him. “I’m glad to hear it. But Africa’s still not possible.” I held out my upturned glove, asking for the ball. He deposited it in my glove and stared glumly down the hill at the elderly couple that was trudging up to take in the sunset. They were carrying a blanket and a bottle of wine, probably going to make out like a couple young Druids. Then I noticed something funny about the ball, which was one of the two balls we’d brought along with us. Jack had printed names of the places we’d already visited on the leather skin, the way travelers used to plaster destination stickers on their luggage. I suppose it was one boy’s way of charting progress through the world. “Here ... catch,” I said and tossed the ball gently into the air. He stuck out his glove and caught it without too much problem, or enthusiasm. “Now you can write Glastonbury on the ball,” I said. He shrugged. “Are we going home?” “Do you want to?” “No sir.” “I don’t either.” For what it was worth, I said, we could still go kick up our heels in Paris for France’s

birthday, maybe catch the beaches of Normandy on the way, scope out the South of France and dip into Italy for a few meals, and maybe hop over to Greece to see whatever was worth seeing — a bunch of crumbling temples and stuff where half-dressed heroes and gods used to hang out while making mortal man’s life a real hell. For what it was worth, the island of Crete was supposed to be very cool, the edge of Western Civilization itself, where Minos placed the half-bull monster in the palace labyrinth. “Really?” This news seemed to revive a bit of interest in the mysteries of an older world, pushing on with our pilgrimage to who knows where. “Yep. Might be a myth-take we’d both regret to take our ball and just go home at this point.” Nibs thumped his glove, turned and gave me another of his laughably threatening eaglet looks, trying hard not to laugh, the allowed the faintest smile to indicate he got the pun. “What’s that way?” he asked simply, nodding toward the eastern horizon, which by now had turned several lovely shades of evening purple. Swallows or field sparrows or blood-sucking bats whirled madly overhead, and the ancient Druid lovers were nearing the top of the famous grassy signal hill. I could hear them pleasantly murmuring about breaking open the wine and which one would get to be on top in the pagan starlight. “Holland, I think.” “What’s in Holland?” “Windmills. Wood shoes. Heineken beer. Tulips. The canals of Amsterdam. Anne Frank’s house. Gouda cheese. Jan Vermeer. Really cool stuff. I went there once.” He nodded and gave his glove another thump. “Can we go there?” “Sure. You might really like Holland.” I really didn’t. But that was another story. This was more Jack’s trip than mine, anyway. I was just pleased to keep on keeping on, wherever the good road took us. “Okay,” he agreed. And with that, we went to Holland. PS

Blues Muses

The 10th Annual Sunrise Blues and Concert Crawl begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines with a headliner concert featuring Zac Harmon. Afterward, music will continue at eight bars and clubs within walking distance of the theater. Tickets and information: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

The Sounds of Music

Carolina Performing Arts Center announces Music Together — a series of classes for infants-to-5-year-olds, where children sing, play instruments, learn rhythmical chants and participate in playful movement in a relaxed, nonperformance setting. Teacher KC Holliday is a professional singer who has appeared in “The Sound of Music” at Temple Theater in Sanford. A free demonstration class will be held at 10:30 a.m. on July 7 at Carolina Performing Arts Center in Southern Pines. Information and registration: (910) 691-2594 or email kc.holliday@live.com.

The Fourth is Bustin’ Out All Over…

Carthage July 4th Parade, 11 a.m., Monroe Street, downtown Carthage. Floats, cars, color guard, music, food. Information: (910) 947-2331. Annual Aberdeen July 4th Celebration at Aberdeen Lake Park. This is the biggie, with games starting at 5:30 p.m. and live music by The Entertainers at 6 p.m. Fireworks commence at 9:15 p.m. Wristbands for participation in kids’ games, activities and face painting: $3. Information: (910) 944-PARK. Moore County Concert Band presents a free performance at 3 p.m. July 4th in the Cardinal Ballroom, Pinehurst Resort. Information: (910) 295-9023. Pinehurst 4th of July celebration with fireworks, beginning at 5 p.m. at the 1 Mile Track, Fair Barn, Pinehurst Harness Track: Activities include pony rides, Sparky and Friends, The Vision Band (6 p.m.). Fireworks at 9:15 p.m. Food and beverages available, or bring your own, along with chairs and blankets. Information: (910) 295-2817.

July 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Sweet Songs of Summer

Pinehurst resident Brenton O’Hara has invited three of his fellow students from the East Carolina University School of Music to join him in presenting a voice recital, Sing, Be, Live, See at 5:30 p.m. on July 16 at Community Presbyterian Church in Pinehurst. One hundred percent of proceeds benefit the Boys and Girls Club of the Sandhills. The recital will feature operatic arias, art songs, musical theater selections and hymns. Previous concerts have raised hundreds of dollars for Sandhills/Moore Coalition for Human Care. Admission is free, donations appreciated. Information: (910) 315-2825.

Think Christmas

Cool Christmas gifts are ready at Seagrove Christmas in July, when participating Moore County and Seagrove area potters preview the holiday season July 15-17. Shops will be decorated and gifts ready to go. Information: (336) 873-7887 or www.seagrovepotteryheritage.com.

Pop Goes the Concerts

The Pinehurst Summer Pops Series opens at 7 p.m. July 18, Owens Auditorium, Sandhills Community College, with “Chopin in Paris” presented by Pinehurst Performing Arts Center in partnership with the Carolina Philharmonic. David Michael Wolff directs Chopin’s works that won over Paris when he popped up there in 1831. Tickets: $20. Information: www.carolinaphil.org. The series continues at 7 p.m. July 29 with Pops Extravaganza: Sunset Boulevard, Broadway and LaScala, at Pinecrest High School in Southern Pines. Wolff leads the orchestra and chorus, with guest divos and divas. Program includes music from “Out of Africa,” “Schindler’s List,” “Phantom of the Opera” and others. Tickets: $20. Information (910) 687-4746 or www.carolinaphil.org.

First and Foremost

First Fridays continue with Anders Osborne from 5 to 8:30 p.m. on July 1 on the grassy knoll adjacent to the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines. Live music/entertainment; family-friendly. Information: www.firstfridaysouthernpines.com.

Forever Flowers

Preserve the image of plants and flowers at a one-day workshop offered by the Sandhills Horticultural Society. Pen and Watercolor on Ginwashi Paper, taught by Donna Whitman, takes place from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on July 16 at Sandhills Community College. This is a relaxed, recreational class for nonpainters and those with experience. Most materials supplied. Fee: $45 for horticultural society members, $50 for non-members. Information and registration: (910) 695-3882.

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

Still Crowing

Rooster’s Wife at Poplar Knight Spot in Aberdeen offers: July 10, 6:45 p.m. Joe Craven and the Harris Brothers. Many know Joe Craven from previous gigs at the Roosters Wife. He is a musical madman with anything that has strings attached; violin, mandolin, tin can, bedpan, cookie tin, tenor guitar, mouth bow, banjo, berimbau, balalaika, boot ‘n lace, animal bones, squeeze toys, cake pans, waste cans, umbrella stands, martini shakers and; himself. And also performing will be the talented Harris Brothers, whose sound is heavily influenced by traditional blues and Appalachian mountain music, jazz, country, and rock n’ roll. No matter what the Harris Brothers play, be it originals or old favorites, they have a special way of making the music their own; it’s stripped down, intense, and real, with no gimmicks. July 17, 6:45 p.m. Angela Easterling and the Carter Brothers. One critic wrote “If Steve Earle was reborn a girl, he’d very likely be Angela Easterling,” one critic wrote of the dynamic honky-tonk singer who infuses traditional sound into passionate ballads. The Carter Brothers — an electrifying and hard-driving original rock/folk/blues and new-grass duo — will also perform. July 24, 6:45 p.m. Ed Snodderly and the Hot Seats. The name Ed Snodderly is synonymous with Southern music and culture, by just doing what comes naturally. Ed has unofficially established himself as one of the South’s most valued treasures — his most famous role occurred in the movie phenomenon “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” where Ed’s fiddling took center stage in the character of the “Village Idiot.” Oh brother, what an evening! July 31, 6:45 p.m. Solas. Since its birth in 1996, Solas has been loudly proclaimed as the most popular, influential, and exciting Celtic band to ever emerge from the United States. The New York Times praised their “unbridled vitality“, the Washington Post dubbed them one of the “world’s finest Celticfolk ensembles” and the Austin American-Statesman called them “the standard by which contemporary Celtic groups are judged.”

The Joke’s on Us

Is there a Jerry Seinfeld in the house? Milton Berle? Ricky Gervais? The Arts Council of Moore County, Dr. Christine Gatti and Dogwood Dental Associates present the Moore Puns Comedy Series. The second installment — Funniest Comic in the Sandhills — happens at 8 p.m. July 23 at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines. Humor will be reasonably genteel but may not be suitable for children under 14. Audience will vote on comedians. Winners receive a trophy and will open for professional comedian Jeffrey Jenna on Aug 13. Tickets: $10 at the door. For information on auditioning, visit www. mooreart.org or email moorepuns@gmail.com.

Cream of the Crop

The much-anticipated North Carolina Peach Festival comes to Fitzgerald Park in Candor from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on July 16. The event opens with a parade followed by live entertainment, vendors, games, kiddie rides, food and peaches, peaches, peaches. This has been a good year for the Sandhills’ signature fruit. Taste them at the source. Information: (910) 974-4221.

Information and tickets: (910)9447502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

CoS AND effeCT

keeping Time Winding an heirloom clock keeps you young — or at least on schedule

By cos BaRnEs

i have been given another perk for the older of age — a new

Photograph by Cassie Butler

key for my grandmother’s eight-day clock, which dates back to the 1800s.

granny wound the clock once a week religiously with a key that measured 1 3/4” x 1 1/2.” My new key, which was given to me by clock repairman harold cameron, is 2 1/2” x 2. it is shiny and bright, made for someone whose eyes no longer can distinguish the numerals but whose hands can still feel the motion, the rhythm created in the winding of this ancient and cherished mechanism. harold called me from the West coast after hearing my repeated pleas on his answering machine about the clock not striking. he told me to wind it both to the right and to the left, and as he listened it chimed twelve times. i wondered what granny would’ve thought of that. i inherited the clock in 1985 and when i brought it to my home in southern Pines, i took it to the late Mr. Whitaker of carthage to have it checked out and to get it running properly. i still treasure those times with Mr. Whitaker. he taught me more about time than making my clock run. “the hour hand can be moved in either direction,” he said, peering at me over his magnifying glasses, “but the minute hand only clockwise. “Wind it on the same day every week. if it runs down and is not chiming correctly, set it to the right time and give it a chance to strike.” “give it a chance,” i said, as i placed granny’s clock on my mantel, remembering Mr. Whitaker’s admonition. “Push the pendulum gently. listen to the rhythm of its tick. your ear will tell you if it is not right.” hands trembling, i pushed the pendulum, then stood back to watch its motion. i marveled that he had only had to replace the pendulum rod and suspension spring. the clock was as good as new although it had been stored in a pantry for years and wore layers of soot and grime, which i painstakingly removed. now almost obliterated by that which they measured, the roman numerals on its face were barely readable, but i’d been afraid to repaint them. Besides, they reminded me of a bygone era when the clock reigned as the centerpiece in granny’s home. it was somewhat of an anachronism in my den, recently redone in shades of pink and hunter green. Despite the designer’s suggestion that i paint it pink, i had spent hours sanding the clock back to its original color, which i preferred it to retain. the clock is still a vital connection to my grandmother. i remember her saying, “i relied on that clock. if it stopped in the night, i woke up. One time it ceased to run. Days passed, then without warning, it chimed. i knew it was a sign. something had happened to Jess. later i received word that on that day, Jess has been killed in battle in France. the year was 1917.” PS

Lunch service is something that we take pretty seriously at The Sly Fox. With the onset of another steamy Sandhills summer, lunch should be light and refreshing yet fulfilling. That’s why we’ve designed the “Spa Fare” section on The Sly Fox Lunch Menu. Curry Cashew Chicken, a beautiful North Carolina Strawberry and Goat’s Cheese Salad, and the Thai Shrimp Salad are but a few of the items you’ll find at The Sly Fox that were specially designed with the season in mind. So, allow us to help you lunch properly at The Sly Fox!

Cos Barnes, we’re thrilled to say, lives and writes in Southern Pines. She is a longtime contributor to PineStraw magazine.

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

The oMNiVoRouS ReADeR

Blount Words

A breezy summer read for budding word snobs

By sTEPHEn E. sMITH

A friend told me a story about a high school

english teacher who asked a country boy to define adverb. the boy replied, “it might be the white part of a chicken manure, for all i know.”

that line has always fascinated me. the boy’s use of manure instead of the common s-word, which seems a more appropriate reply, is puzzling, although i’m willing to concede that the yokel may have chosen his words pragmatically. the use of the s-word would have earned him a three-day suspension. Maybe manure is just disrespectful enough to aggravate the teacher while maintaining the student’s status as class clown. if you’re given to pondering the intricacies of language — god knows it’s a curse! — you’ll be in hog heaven when reading roy Blount Jr.’s Alphabetter Juice, the sequel to his very successful Alphabet Juice. Blount is best known as a panelist on Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me, the nPr quiz show that tests contestants’ knowledge of current events. But he’s also the author of 21 previous books and a favorite on the waspish literary chitlin’ circuit. his anecdotes and shaggy dog stories have audiences rolling in the aisles. Blount is such an excellent entertainer that for many years he performed a one-man show at new york’s american Palace theatre. But you’re probably thinking: a book about language; sounds boring. and admittedly, Alphabetter Juice is intended to appeal to the effete impudent snob in all of us. nevertheless, Blount’s deadpan talent for storytelling makes the book the perfect summer read. the text is organized around words that are deconstructed in simple alphabetical order. there’s no sign of a plot and no persistent characters to keep track of, so you can be lying on the beach or kicked back on the porch reading away when you look up and say, to no one in particular, “Do you know that discalced means shoeless or barefoot? it comes from the latin dis and calcere, to fit for shoes?” and then you can justifiably ask, “Would you fetch me an-

other frosty samuel adams from the fridge?” (you gotta love american english.) Blount’s read on G-string is typical: “…a narrow nethergarment, leaves more than you might think to the imagination. We do know that the term goes back farther than the striptease, for ‘the strip and tease’ has not shown up in print before 1930, and a writer referred to the string holding up an american indian breechcloth as a gee-string in 1878. in 1885, gee-string was used for the string and cloth together, and in 1891 we read ‘some of the boys wore only g-strings’ (as, for some reason, the breech-clout is commonly called on the prairie).” a persistent strain of literary smartalecness might get old after a few complex explications, but behind each revelation you can imagine Blount’s sly poker face, as with his take on peeve when used as a noun: “When i sense a peeve about to come boiling up at me from an audience, i pray it isn’t one to which i must frankly respond: ‘no, the truth is, i like snuck’ or ‘Well, as far as gone missing goes, i can’t think of any expression that expresses the meaning meant to be expressed, uh, as well as gone missing does, actually.’” Woe to political types who have stumbled into Blount’s crosshairs. When supreme court nominee sonia sotomayor said that a wise latina woman might know more about certain matters than a white man, newt gingrich twittered: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. latina woman racist should also withdraw.” about which Blount responds: “ugh. sound like white man tweet with thumbs of movie injun. if there is evidence that wise white men are discriminated against, it is that we see so few of them in positions of authority. Meanwhile, foolish white men, in such positions, seem to be taking every opportunity to make statements ever more foolish than might be expected.” and when karl rove bragged about the number of editors and wordsmiths who had helped craft his book, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, Blount nailed him in the book’s first sentence, which reads “On september 11, 2001, i was the first person to tell President george W. Bush that a plane had slammed into an office tower in new york city and was aboard air Force One as it crisscrossed

The oMNiVoRouS ReADeR

the country in the hours that followed.” Blount notes that rove has placed the “office-tower-hitting plane” aboard air Force One — and he goes on to explain that “the president really would have been slow on the uptake if his trusted aide had informed him that such a plane was crisscrossing the country aboard the president’s own plane.” even more endearing than Blount’s quirky etymologies and acerbic annotations are his stories, most of them of the shaggy dog variety, a narrative form much maligned since twain dazzled the common man with his stage “lectures.” My most favorite (excuse the double superlative) story concerns a flight on which Blount

even more endearing than Blount’s quirky etymologies and acerbic annotations are his stories, most of them of the shaggy dog variety . . . was occupying a window seat when a mother and son slipped into the aisle and middle seats respectively. the son had never flown before and began to exclaim, “We’re going to hit a bus!” and “highways! We’re flying over cars!” eventually, Blount changed seats with the mother and son, placing the mother in the center seat and son in the window seat, after which the flight attendant announced that “We have a special passenger on board. this is his sixteenth birthday. and this is his first flight, ever. let’s have a big hand for… roy!” turns out that the son’s name was leron. at the top of his game, Blount is irresistible. so here’s the deal: Alphabetter Juice is an informative and hilarious summer read. you can open the book to any page and laugh yourself silly. and you might even learn a little something that would be useful at a snooty soiree. you can say to the idiot who’s monopolizing your time: “Do you know what an oaf is? it’s a child whose deformity is explained by its having been left by elves, in place of a real child.” that should put an end to your suffering. PS Stephen Smith’s most recent book of poetry, A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths, is available at The Country Bookshop. Contact him at travisses@hotmail.com. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

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Bookshelf

New Releases For July FICTION-PAPERBACK Faithful Place by Tana French. The third novel about the Dublin Murder squad, French takes readers into the mind of Frank Mackey, the hotheaded mastermind of The Likeness as he wrestles with his own past and the family, the lover and the neighborhood he thought he’s left behind for good. Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith. Ivy Rowe, Virginia mountain girl, then wife, mother and finally “Mawmaw,” never strays far from her home, but the letters she writes take her across the country and over the ocean. Writing “to hold onto what’s passing,” she tells stories that are rich with the life of Appalachia in words that are colloquial, often misspelled, but always beautiful. Black Out: An Inspector Troy Thriller by John Lawton. The reissued debut novel is the first of the Inspector Troy novels. It captures the realities of wartime London, weaving them into a riveting drama that encapsulates the uncertainty of Europe at the dawn of the postwar era. Russians, mysterious women and spy forces send Scotland Yard’s Detective Sergeant Frederick Troy on a thrilling search. Pao by Kerry Young. The irresistible story of Pao, Chinese-Jamaican racketeer, not-so-ruthless fixer, star-crossed lover, as he navigates the roiling history of twentieth-century Jamaica. Fiction-Hardcover Night Train by Clyde Edgerton. Set in small town North Carolina during the 1960s, this book focuses on the friendship and shenanigans of two teenage boys, black and white, whose enthusiasm for James Brown and music carries the story and friendship through a small town and segregation. Look out for the boys’ noteworthy prank — throwing a live chicken in a theater during the bird-pecking scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield. A deep story about a small town family and the trials they face. Several generations of the Moses family live in the home in Arkansas. This home houses an out-of-work preacher, a speakeasy called Never Closes and a filling station/general store. Fascinated with her war veteran uncle, wild and dynamic 11-year-old Swan befriends a beaten 8-year-old boy who has seen true evil in his father and brings that evil to the idyllic home.

Iron house by John Hart. A New York Times best-selling author delivers his most devastating novel yet — the remarkable story of two orphaned brothers separated by violence at an early age. When a boy is brutally murdered in their orphanage, one brother runs and takes the blame with him. Twenty years later, he returns to North Carolina a seasoned killer. Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante. In this novel about a retired orthopedic surgeon with dementia, the reader is brought deeply into a brilliant woman’s deteriorating mind, where the impossibility of recognizing reality can be both a blessing and a curse. Non-Fiction-Hardcover Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden. The executive editor of the New Yorker has written an engaging narrative about her grandmother and her best friend, two young women who left their affluent lives in Auburn, New York, to teach school on the Western frontier in 1916. The story is taken from interviews and letters and reads like a travel adventure. The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci’s Arithmetic Revolution by Keith Devlin. From NPR’s Math Guy comes the story of Leonardo of Pisa, the medieval mathematician who introduced Arabic numbers to the West and helped launch the modern era of arithmetic. Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family, and a Way of Life by Alicia Oltuski. A rich and fascinating chronicle that seamlessly blends family narrative with reportage to bring to life the shrouded inner workings of the diamond industry and some of its most beguiling characters. Scales to Scalpels: Doctors who practice the Healing Arts of Music and Medicine, The Story of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra by Dr. Lisa Wong and Robert Viagas. Longwood Symphony Orchestra began in 1982 as talented Boston area physicians, med students and health care professionals joined together to play music. This book chronicles how the musical acumen of these physicians affects the way they administer healing. How does practicing the art of music transform the art of practicing medicine?

Bookshelf

Non-fiction- Paperback High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg by Niall Ferguson. A biography of mid-20th century financier Segmund Warburg. Based on diary entries and letters, Ferguson tells the story of the obsessive perfectionist with an aversion to excessive risk and his firm, D. G. Warburg. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters edited by Bill Morgan and David Stanford. Perhaps one of the last great dual corresponsences of the twentieth century, these letters span 1944 to 1969. They reveal the process of creation for two of the most celebrated members of the Beat Generation and the unfolding of a remarkable friendship of immense pathos and spiritual depth. Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan by Piers Dudgeon. Dudgeon began his research for this book after the 50-year moratorium lapse on Daphne du Maurierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diaries. The tragic story of J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, and the family he obsessed over is shocking. It is a study of greed and psychological abuse. It is sinister and creepy. It is also a page-turner. Yankee Come Home: On the Road from San Juan Hill to Guantanamo by William Craig. Beautifully blending history, memoir and travel, William Craig travels along the SpanishAmerican War battle trail in Cuba to connect Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s troubled present to its forgotten past. children and young adult Teach Your Buffalo To Play Drums by Audrey Vernik. Does your buffalo pound on

Bookshelf

pots and pans? Tap out rhythms at the dinner table? It’s not as unusual as you might think. He’s simply at the start of an exciting new journey. From the author of Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten this hilarious new picture guide-book instructs young buffalo owners on how to encourage their pet’s inner rock star. Age 4-8 Happy Hippo, Angry Duck by Sandra Boynton. Whether grumpy as a moose or excited as a dog, worried as a rabbit or contented as a frog, young readers will giggle as they enjoy this delightful board book about moods. Ages 2-4 Skippyjon Jones, Class Action by Judy Schachner. Skippyjon Jones, a mischievous little Siamese kitten with a big imagination, taps his Chihuahua alter ego and fulfills his dream of attending dog school, where he bays with beagles and learns French with poodles. Read-aloud fun for ages 4-8. School Days According to Humphrey by Betty Birney. Humphrey, adorable third-grade classroom hamster, has taken spelling tests, gone on field trips and visited the homes of the students in Mrs. Brisbane’s class. Now it is again the first day of school, Humphrey’s friends have moved to fourth grade, and he discovers he must get to know a whole new group of students with different personalities and new kid problems. A must-read series for age 8-12. The Summer I Learned to Fly by Dana Reinhardt. It is hard being 13. But having a friend to lean on always makes things easier. When 13-year-old Drew goes into the alley behind her mother’s cheese shop to look for her lost pet rat, she meets Emmett, cheese lover, rat expert and boy on an intensely personal quest. Together they experience the value of friendship, the thrill of adventure and the challenge of personal sacrifice. This gentle coming-of-age story is the perfect choice for an afternoon in a hammock or on the beach. Ages 12-15 PS PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

pinebuzz

Playing Favorites Our reviewer comes clean

By Jack Dodson

Summer needs a

proper soundtrack. Last summer we gave you a list of new songs that would make a good playlist. This year, we’re going for more of a throwback, a personal style.

I know you’ve all been wondering for so incredibly long what my all-time favorite songs are, waiting for the day when that column might come. Well, my friends, it’s here. Really, this is quite a treat for you. In all seriousness, a friend asked me recently what my favorite song was, and this got me thinking about how I never have a real answer to that question, a feeling I seem to share with a lot of people. A lot of people just say whatever their favorite song is at that moment — but with music, there’s so much to be taken into consideration. Songs have varying connections to us. You can have favorites for different purposes. Music is diverse; it’s often too hard to pin down one song as being the all-time favorite. A good response I like to give is, “Something by The Beatles.” But there’s more to it than that. When my friend asked, I decided this was worth looking into my own playlist of favorites. Take this how you will, but by venturing into the depths of your musical taste, you may achieve self-awareness. And, admit it or not, you’ll like what you find. Here’s my latest summer list. Ask me tomorrow and it may be completely different. “What Ever Happened?” — The Strokes I don’t know what it is about this song that makes me love it more than the other early Strokes songs; perhaps just that it’s massively underappreciated because it hails from the less-critically-acclaimed sophomore album. But try this on for size: “Oh dear, is it really all true?/ Did they offend us and they want it to sound new?/ Top ten ideas for countdown shows/ Whose culture is this and does anybody know?/ I wait and tell myself “life ain’t chess.”/ But no one comes in and yes, you’re alone.” “Maps” — Yeah Yeah Yeahs Honestly, this might just be the very best of twenty-first century indie rock: College radio at its best. “Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down” — Noah and the Whale My absolute favorite moment in music is the breakdown in a song. Here, beautiful songwriting meets a fantastic breakdown, where only the words are left as the music rebuilds anew around it. “Til Kingdom Come” — Coldplay A lot of favorite songs are tied to memories. This one tends to bring up quite a few, and it’s just a hauntingly beautiful — albeit stubborn — ballad.

“Born To Run” & “Thunder Road” — Bruce Springsteen I frequently tell people these are my favorite songs. That’s true in some sense — I’ve never felt more passionately about any ideology of songs, and that’s saying something. But really, Mary, if we could just get in that car and head down the highway and leave all this behind, living off the madness in our souls, wouldn’t you do it? “PDA” — Interpol Another breakdown song — one where the early 2000s indie rock grunge suddenly gives way to heartfelt, fantastic guitar riffs. The song collapses on itself out of nowhere, leaving two electric guitar notes to fill the void. And then a fine rebuild. “Sing My Songs to Me” & “For Everyman” — Jackson Browne Good classic rock and effective songwriting doesn’t get much better than these classics by Jackson Browne. Though some of the lyrics are more powerful in his other songs, this two-song-in-one duo holds up from the writing to the relaxed but complex musicality of it. Browne is pretty much at his best here, in my book. “Requiem for O.M.M.” — Of Montreal Simple, true and fun. And who else besides Of Montreal could mix sad truth with energetic, enjoyable pop music? “Echoes (Part 1)” off the soundtrack to “Live at Pompeii” — Pink Floyd Probably one of the most genuinely enjoyable jams ever recorded. (I know, it’s Pink Floyd, and that honor really deserves to go to any number of brilliant jazz musicians or Eric Clapton or someone like that. Let’s just say I’m more inspired, and have a larger appreciation for those, but something about this particular version of Echoes is just fantastic, and really fun to play along to.) “Gimme Shelter” — Rolling Stones Unadorned classic rock at its very best. You’ve got powerful female vocals, reminiscent of those off Dark Side of the Moon; a catchy and unique chord progression; Mick Jagger, yelling like a madman. What else could you ask for? “Passing Afternoon” — Iron & Wine Sam Beam is an incredible musician. World-renowned, his music often gets played in movies as Zach Braff sits lonely in a bathtub (Garden State made them famous, remember?). But really, if it were up to me, I would use this song. “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” — Weezer Basically, if you want to feel awesome, listen to this song. “Come On Up to the House” & “Home I’ll Never Be” & “Old Shoes” & “Take It With Me” — Tom Waits There’s so much that could be said about Tom Waits. He’s weird. All his songs sound slightly different. He’s got a really annoying voice. I think what all those translate to is one simple truth: He’s a genius. Perhaps that’s why I have four favorite Waits songs and not just one. Each one represents

pinebuzz

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a different version of the musician. At once, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s raw, hardened and singing about traveling as a bum; belting out a powerful gospel hymn, with a voice so loud and strong, you want to run to the nearest church; and heartbreakingly beautiful, singing about the sad but gorgeous moments of life and getting old. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complex, brilliant, poetic. One of a kind. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s All Understoodâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Jack Johnson This may be the most obscure Jack Johnson song, as it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sound like something that would be played in coffee shops across the land. But the song is important, well-written and makes a compelling point about our flawed society. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Keep the Car Runningâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Arcade Fire Each Arcade Fire album is a work of art. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve said this before â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they truly are the band that defines the modern era of music. They made the indie movement culturally relevant and defined a generation of music lovers. For me, this was the song that did it. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve imagined so many final scenes of movies that end with this anthem â&#x20AC;&#x201D; hopeful, powerful and impassioned. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunsetâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Modest Mouse Modest Mouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest asset may be their brilliant songwriting. They offer random lines that hit you like youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been punched in the gut with enlightenment. And remember that whole thing about breakdowns from before? This is Modest Mouse doing that. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Elevator Love Letterâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Stars Everyone has to have a super girly song they like. For me, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not RENT or Kelly Clarkson, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Stars (i.e., Canadian indie-pop). These guys are well respected enough to be lumped in there with big names like The New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade and, yes, Arcade Fire. This song just makes me happy, as it should everyone. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Helplessness Bluesâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Fleet Foxes True musical beauty doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come along often. See last monthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s PineBuzz for more on this song. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jesus on the Radioâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Guster Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something particularly exciting about an acoustic song featuring a banjo, some fantastic harmonies, a sing-along song with a strong message. Gusterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s good at all of those things, but this one is tops in my book. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Here, There and Everywhere,â&#x20AC;? by The Beatles. Really, what is there to say? Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the greatest band that ever was. There will never be another like them. So why this song? In my book, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basically the quintessential love song â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and, well, no one does that better than the four from Liverpool. PS Jack Dodson can be reached at jdodson4@elon.edu.

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Fry, Baby … Fry!

Everything fried just tastes better. If you don’t believe it, fry it By Deborah Salomon

Don’tcha wonder why a few

generations back Southern folks had nannies and grandpappies who lived into their 90s?

I’ll tell ya why. Everything they ate was fried. Well, not everything. Greens weren’t fried. They were cooked with fatback. Ditto shiny beans. Biscuits weren’t fried. Nanny mixed ’em up with lard. Fried steak was smothered with cream gravy. Fried apples? Lordy, yes — with pork chops. Fried, of course. That was OK when you tilled the land, weeded the garden, picked the corn, chased the chickens, slopped the hogs, chopped the wood and collapsed at sundown. Nobody counted fat calories. Cholesterol hadn’t been invented. Neither had Diet Dr. Pepper. The real reason Southerners ate fried food was because fried food is GOOD. And when you start out with yard (reinvented as “free range”) chickens, produce so fresh the bugs are still alive and fish just caught in the river, well, that’s heaven. That heaven has a fancy scientific explanation discovered, no doubt, by some bilious Yankee: that fat, albeit tasteless, conveys flavor. How? Who knows? Who cares? Cut a potato in two. Boil one half. Fry the other. See? Nutritionally correct gastronomes fight back with semantics: “The farmed filet of bass is dusted with organic unbleached flour and sautéed in olive oil.”

Sounds like fried catfish to me. Really good, twice-fried French fries are my dream food, along with chicken slow-fried in an iron skillet and hush puppies. But the fryee doesn’t have to be Southern. Tempura, lacy potato pancakes, egg rolls, breaded shrimp, onion rings, sunny-side ups do just fine. Only in my dreams. That’s because, as my Nanny Teachey from Reidsville would say, my gallbladder is a bit “tetched.” Meaning pain comparable to giving birth to a nine-pound baby, which I’ve done also. Or maybe, instead of my Fairy Gallbladder, it’s my conscience — or my sharp Nutrition Facts label-reading eyes. Occasionally I succumb, usually to French fries, since meat’s no longer on my menu. They can’t ever have been frozen. I want ’em cut on the premises, preferably unpeeled old potatoes (as opposed to new potatoes), soaked in salted water, dried on a towel, twice fried in peanut oil, drained on a brown paper bag, and sprinkled with fine sea salt. Gimme a blob of Heinz ketchup and I’m one happy puppy. Of course the house smells for a week, which is why, wherever I relocate, after finding a dentist and a hairdresser I audition Frenchfry joints. Here, Maxie’s in Pinehurst got the nod with a high-five to The Bell Tree in Southern Pines for newfangled sweet potato fries. Once a year I tempt the surgeon’s knife with a plateful. So far, not bad. Life is a balancing act: Water for wine. Beans for bacon. Cottage for Camembert — up to a point. Because I’d rather eat Brussels sprouts for breakfast, tofu for Thanksgiving and grapefruit flambé — I’d even rather be boiled in oil than forever denied the fried. PS Deborah Salomon is a staff writer for PineStraw magazine.

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 2011

h i tt i n g h o m e

Hubby Goes Grocery Shopping (Lucky me)

By Dale Nixon

Last week I insisted that Bob Nixon accompany me to the grocery store.

I insisted that he go because, in thirty-five years of marriage, he (1) had never been, (2) has complained continually about food prices and (3) always wants something to eat that’s not available in our kitchen cabinets. At first he resisted the idea, but I won him over with a little gentle persuasion. I asked him whether he ever wanted to eat a meal in our home again. He agreed to go. I grabbed my pocketbook, stuffed my grocery list into it, and threw him the car keys. He approached the parking lot at the grocery store like Jimmie Johnson approaches the first turn at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Cars were pulling out from every direction, but he didn’t touch the brakes until he came to a screeching halt in a parking space. “Bobby, what is your problem?” “My problem is that I want to get this over with as soon as possible.” I practically had to run to keep up with him as he made long strides toward the entrance. Upon entering the grocery store, Bobby announced that he was going on a diet. I sprinted behind him as he made his way to the frozen foods department and watched as he tossed Lean Cuisines into the shopping cart. “Bobby, have you ever eaten a Lean Cuisine?” “No.” “Don’t you think you should try one to see if you like them?” “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try one of each.” “Bobby, Lean Cuisines are rather expensive. Why don’t we just buy a couple?” He gave me one of his no-nonsense looks and said, “I’M GOING TO BUY WHAT I WANT.” I now had a quantity of Lean Cuisines in my shopping cart, and Bobby was pressing on. He hovered over me as I tried to make a dent in my shopping list. He compared prices, read the ingredients out loud from the labels, recited food commercials he had committed to memory, and even hummed a jingle or two. (I was impressed.) The third time he asked me if I was about through, I suggested that he pick a couple of items on my grocery list and hunt them down for me. He disappeared around the corner. Now I could make some headway on my shopping. But after a few minutes, I heard him calling, “Daaaaale … I need you.” When I saw him, I knew immediately it wasn’t me he needed, but the shopping cart. His arms were laden with a big container of chocolate — covered peanuts, a couple of gallons of ice cream (Häagen Dazs, no less), several boxes of

doughnuts and four different kinds of cookies. As he plopped them in the cart, I said, “Bob, I thought you were going on a diet.” “I am. But you can’t expect me to subsist on 300 calories a day, can you?” I didn’t answer. Why try? “Bobby, there are some things I have to buy; things you can’t eat, like paper towels, laundry detergent and spray starch. Why don’t you wander around the store until I’m through? We’ll get out of here faster.” He liked the sound of the words “get out.” He wandered off and found his way right to the delicatessen. I spied him several times as I made my way around the store. I saw him eating a sandwich and drinking a cola as he flipped through a copy of Sports Illustrated. I saw him nibbling on a candy bar as he visited with a friend he had run into. I saw him munching on a bag of potato chips as he watched a clerk stack up a display of canned goods. When we finally met at the checkout counter, he grinned sheepishly as he pulled an array of empty wrappers from behind his back for tabulation. My grocery list was checked off, but with the Lean Cuisines, junk foods and the tab from the delicatessen, the grocery bill was the highest it had ever been. After we arrived home and he unloaded the car, I asked Bobby what he wanted for dinner. He said, “I’m not hungry.” I never again will insist that Bobby accompany me to the grocery store, because in thirty-five years of marriage, (1) once is enough, (2) he doubles our food bill and (3) if he doesn’t like what’s available in our kitchen cabinets, I’ll threaten him with a Lean Cuisine. PS Columnist Dale Nixon resides in Concord but enjoys a slice of heaven (disguised as a condominium) in the village of Pinehurst. You may contact her by e-mail at dalenixon@carolina.rr.com.

July 2011

The kitchen garden

Sweet Bell Peppers One of the summer garden’s most versatile stars

By Jan Leitschuh

Although many

Photograph by Hannah Sharpe

vegetables could qualify, whenever the health adage “eat your colors” is invoked, sweet bell peppers always come to mind. A rainbow jumble of red, orange, green, yellow and/or purple peppers on a produce display, plate, or simply shining in the garden never fails to thrill a plant geek’s culinary soul in a fundamental way.

People who grow lovely tomatoes tell me they can’t grow peppers. This puzzles me, as the two require similar care — in fact, they share the same “nightshade” family. So here’s how we grow them. But if you don’t want to go to the trouble (and why would you not?), there are pretty ones to be found at local farm stands and farmers markets this month and beyond. At our house, peppers have a nine-month lifespan some years. Come President’s Day in February — the timing works out and it’s easy to remember — I sow several varieties. With luck, we’re often still picking a few for Thanksgiving supper, given a little protection with a blanket on frosty nights. Our long, hot, humid summers are the perfect set-up for plant diseases, so a successful pepper harvest starts with rotation. I never plant peppers, tomatoes, eggplant or Irish potatoes in the same spot two years in a row. This eliminates much disease right up front. In fact, I divide my garden into quarters, and every four years one quarter hosts these “nightshade” family members. Next best tip is selecting a good disease-resistant variety. Unfortunately, the varieties that show up at the local discount stores are not necessarily suited to this area and these growing conditions, so if you’ve been saying “I can’t grow peppers,” that might be your first place to look for answers. I like selections that resist things like bacterial leaf spot and tobacco mosaic virus. A good catalog can help you there. A green bell pepper I’ve

had good luck with is “Camelot,” and while I’ve not tried “Galaxy,” I’ve heard favorable comment from local growers. “Elisa” is an outstanding, longish red bell pepper. I am still searching for a good yellow, though I bought one by accident one year at an out-of-town farmers market and have been wondering ever since what it was. It grew splendidly and bore blocky, thick-walled golden fruit. Some very experienced friends in Pittsboro recommend “Orobelle” for a yellow pepper, and for a very sweet orange they like the aptly-named “Valencia.” These varieties all grow green fruits, and can be eaten green, but if one waits a while longer, the fruits start to change and develop sweeter — and in some cases more nutritious — characteristics. Red bells, for example, are vastly higher in the antioxidant lycopene and Vitamin C than in their green state. These catalog-purchased seeds are sown into margarine tubs of sterile starting mix, moistened and set atop the water heater to begin life in the Sandhills. Despite daily checking, I usually miss the earliest sprouters, and these become leggy stretching for the light, poor darlings. Luckily, the main batch comes along soon after, when I move them to a heating mat in the bathroom, with a grow light adjusted right above the little sproutlings, so the stems stay short and strong. When they develop their second set of leaves (actually, the first true leaves), I transplant them gently into six-packs and potting soil, feeding them with a little kelp and seaweed solution. Transplanting is not hard, just takes some time and a meditative state of mind. It’s actually very good therapy in the “right here, right now” vein. The main caution is to handle transplants by their little leaves, lest one pinch off the “tube” of the stem and kill it. Though we have a tiny greenhouse, the peppers usually stay on the heat mats and under grow lights the longest, though by the end I am setting them outside for the day and bringing them in at night. Peppers are usually the last transplants, along with eggplant and basil, that I set out in the garden. I may have a few tomatoes in the ground (for bragging rights, mainly) in early April or even late March, but I wait till May and warm soil (not merely warm temperatures) before setting peppers and eggplant out.

July 2011

The kitchen garden

Soil prep should have been accomplished earlier, perhaps the fall before, with a soil test to adjust the pH of the soil and check minerals. Adequate phosphorus, calcium and potash spur development and thick walls. Because I have the room, I like to plant two feet apart to give the peppers plenty of room for air flow, which cuts down disease. As the soil warms up and the sun begins to bake the soil, I mulch with straw to cut down on weeds and hold in moisture. Two months after transplanting, some early fruits can be harvested. Though peppers like it hot, extreme heat will cause the blossoms to abort. No blossoms, no sweet bell peppers. But with less-hot temps and adequate moisture, they will bloom again. We often get our prettiest fruits in the fall. This is when the colors and sweetness will really develop. Although perhaps not as fundamental to home cooking as onions and garlic, sweet bells must surely come in third in terms of kitchen usefulness. What would chili be without some chopped bell pepper (along with another Capsicum family member, a little chopped jalapeño). Pizza without green peppers? Never! Denver omelet sans bell pepper? Unforgivable! Four-lobed, squarish and hollow with a “belllike” shape, sweet bells are eminently stuffable. Strips of red bell pepper brighten up salads or skillet of sauteed squash and onions. Chunks grill nicely for kebabs, or charred and roasted for an exquisite treat. When the pepper abundance begins to flow in fall, we chop and freeze little casserole-sized “packets” for winter chilis, casseroles, stir-fries and omelets.

Stuffed Bell Peppers

A good destination for any leftover rice. Cut the tops off several largish peppers, and clean out the seeds. Some folks give them a quick boil first, to soften, but I never do. Put a teaspoon of olive oil in each. Set aside in a baking dish. In a pan, sauté some onion. When translucent, toss in some garlic and chopped garden tomatoes. Push around a little to get the process started, then remove from heat. Add cooked ground beef or crumbled cooked sausage, some oregano, salt and pepper, and cooked rice. Everyone has his favorite flavorings — try Worcestershire sauce, paprika, Tabasco sauce, ketchup, hot sauce. Mix it all up, might as well use your hands because you’re going to stuff the peppers using them anyway. Drizzle olive oil, perhaps grate a little cheese over the top. Bake at 350 for 35-50 minutes. PS Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

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V i n e W i sd o m

Beyoncé For A Day With the WineStation, tasting reaches a new level

By Robyn James

Entrepreneur

Photograph by Hannah Sharpe

Magazine has named Napa Technology one of the 100 Top Brilliant Companies of 2011 and it’s easy to see why.

Napa Technology, LLC was formed in early 2005 after its founders reunited to develop a unique cutting edge product which fed their individual passions for wine. Their invention, the WineStation, has definitely taken wine tasting to a whole new level. Each state of the art machine holds four different wine bottles, perfectly preserved with argon gas at the optimum temperature. Insert your smart card, punch one of three buttons and purchase a taste, half-glass or full glass of the chosen wine. The bottles of wine in each machine are pristinely preserved for at least sixty days. The beauty of the WineStation is that depending on the price points of the bottles loaded in the machine, you could spend, say, about $800 buying a bottle of each wine in the machine, but purchasing a card to taste each bottle may only cost you around $50-$60. The really cool thing is that you aren’t really purchasing wine, but the experience of tasting. Just as you would love to drive that Ferrari, eat that truffle, catch a ride on that private jet, the WineStation lets you be Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Brad and Angelina for the day. Restaurants and wine retailers equipped with WineStations can now offer tastes, half glasses or whole glasses of treasures that otherwise would obviously deteriorate upon opening. This is the perfect option for older vintages. An older bottle can

begin to fade the moment it is opened and exposed to air, and you may not get through half the bottle fast enough to stay ahead of the oxidation. Inside the WineStation, the oxygen is immediately displaced by argon gas. These awesome machines allow those who would never spend $100-$300 on a bottle of wine to taste that wine or have a half glass of that wine, relishing the experience without incurring the cost of an entire bottle. Initial reactions of consumers have been thrilling. If you are even remotely wine savvy, the possibilities are lip-licking. Imagine a rare white Chateauneuf Du Pape, composed of the Marsanne/Rousanne grapes, rich and thick with viscosity. A searing single vineyard, ninety-five point searing German Auslese, brisk and sharp. A sixteen-year-old Sangiovese, from a Brunello Reserva, herbal and awesome. A Shiraz from a one-hundred-year-old-vineyard in Australia, meaty and mouth-filling. Just to mention a few. So, it’s not only a great gift to give, since you are giving an experience, but also a great corporate gift or event for out-of-town guests and entertaining. You can find the WineStations at Disney World, airports, arenas, convention centers and cruise lines. So, don’t miss a chance to try them out. It’s not only entertaining, but educational as well! PS Robyn James is proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at winecellar@pinehurst.net.

July 2011

T HE P LE A S URE S O F LI F E

The Comfort of Tea

Laced with milk and cubes of sugar, served in real china, a cup of tea is pure magic

By Marjorie Hopkins

I’ve been a coffee

drinker ever since Grampa Johnson gave me coffee milk when I was a toddler. Among Swedes in our western Nebraska town, coffee was the thread which wove social life together. When friend or stranger walked in the door, the coffee pot moved from the back of the stove to the front burner. While attending Nebraska Wesleyan University and too strapped for money to buy my own cream and sugar, I learned to like my coffee black. Doc Miller, head of the Drama Department, always had a pot brewing backstage in the theater. “If you’re sissy enough to want cream and sugar, bring your own,” she said. Even today the aroma of freshly brewed coffee awakens tugs of longing for Mom’s inviting kitchen and Doc’s artistic stagings. Although less frequent, my tea drinking experiences have the power to evoke poignant and defining memories. My first cup of tea, laced with milk and cubes of sugar, came as a reward from my piano teacher, Lulu B. Slocumb. Every Saturday morning while in grade school, I walked three blocks up the hill to where the door of her greystone house became my open sesame to another world. If I arrived early, Mrs. Slocumb’s quick smile from her chair beside the baby grand piano in the music room indicated my welcome, along with a silent admonition to take a seat and wait my turn. I chose the blue plush sofa in her beautiful parlor as my place to wait. The feel of it was soft between my fingers. Scatter rugs, she called them Persian, were like intricate islands of color floating on a polished hardwood sea. Facing me on the wall was a

picture of a boy, dressed in blue velvet with a white lace collar. When she invited me to the piano for my turn, first came the ritual of the payment, fifty cents, which my mother tied into the corner of a handkerchief and tucked in my pocket. I would untie the knot and place the coins, usually two quarters, in her small hand, acknowledging the contract made between us. She accepted the coins with solemnity, and the lesson would begin. As the metronome clicked back and forth, I could feel sweat gathering on the back of my knees. As the last pupil of the day, a special treat sometimes lay in store, an invitation to stay for tea. It was served in delicate china cups, English bone, she called them, painted with tiny flowers and the lips edged in gold. Crisp wafers, golden and delicious, were offered from a plate. From the gramophone came music to stir the soul. While the music played she’d tell me stories. The beautiful Cho Cho San waiting for her lieutenant; the stirring march into the bull ring; the fiery Carmen dying at the gate; the tragic clown Pagliacci. Many times I cried. I don’t know if my tears were for the sad stories or ones of joy for the beauty around me. Bess Streeter Aldrich, successful author and highest paid woman of the ’40s, poured my next cup of tea. I was attending college in Lincoln, where she had recently moved from Elwood, Nebraska, to be near her daughter. As a teenager I devoured her books and short stories. Oh, how I admired the courage and humor of the pioneering women brought to life by her words. A Lantern in her Hand was one of my favorites, along with Miss Bishop, which had been made into the movie Cheers for Miss Bishop. Somehow or other I finagled an interview with Mrs. Aldrich and wrote an article for the college newspaper. Warm, cozy, bright, and gracious best describe both the woman and her home. She served tea in a sunny parlor overlooking a flower garden. I’ve forgotten what I covered in the interview but remember her advice. “If you plan to write, keep a journal,” she said, “and

T HE P LE A S URE S O F LI F E

don’t hold back. Let thoughts and feelings flow from your mind and heart onto the page. It cleans your own soul and gives life to your writing.” Serving and drinking tea took on a different level of interest a number of years later in the early ’50s when I worked for former Ambassador Joseph C. Grew in Washington, D.C. Mr. Grew had been U.S. Ambassador to Japan for ten years up until Pearl Harbor. On his return, he continued in the State Department as Assistant Secretary and then Acting Secretary. Now he had retired and was writing a memoir, Turbulent Era, about his forty-one years in diplomatic service. I started with him on a trial basis, and then he offered to make the job permanent. Never in cloud-nine dreams did I ever think I’d meet the political, diplomatic and social leaders who were part of his everyday world. With the war over, many Japanese dignitaries who traveled to America invariably made a courtesy call on Mr. Grew. On those occasions tea was served to the guests, and when Mrs. Grew was not available, it became my duty to pour. One such guest was Yukio Ozaki, a noted Japanese statesman who was featured in LIFE magazine. He was pictured amid cherry blossoms fringing the Tidal Basin, trees which he had presented as a gift of friendship to the city many years ago. When I met him, it was like a caricature of a movie scene. He bowed, I bowed, he bowed again. I bowed again. I can’t remember how the scene ended. All I remember is this tiny white-haired, beaming man, ninety years old, and flying all that distance from Japan to Washington. When tea was offered, I questioned in my mind why Mr. Grew explained to the distinguished gentleman that they were having English, not the traditional Japanese tea. To my way of thinking, tea was tea, and the delicate sandwiches, wafers and almond crescents prepared in the Grew kitchen were the perfect added touches. It was only on a fairly recent trip to the Orient when I participated in a formal tea ceremony that I understood the reason for Mr. Grew’s explanation. Over the years, I’ve had many cups of tea beyond these that have triggered marvelous memories. A recent three generational tea with my daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter is my latest special tea experience. At Lady Bedford’s Tea Parlour in Pinehurst, we sipped our individual choices of tea and talked about family, life and upcoming wedding plans for my granddaughter. I have not forsaken my love of coffee, but must admit the comfort of tea makes me feel as cozy as the cozy itself that keeps the pot warm. PS Marjorie Hopkins, writer and book lover, lives at the new Southern Pines Retirement Village. You can contact her at marjhop@nc.rr.com .

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S p i r i ts

Papa got it right

Nothing beats the heat like the cool, perfect Daiquiri

By Frank Daniels III

Photograph by Hannah Sharpe. Prepared by Kimberly at The Jefferson Inn in Southern Pines.

I love the new —

new golf clubs, new shotguns, new iPhones, new Macs, new tools, new cars, new restaurants, new books. It’s not that I dislike the old, or do not appreciate the timeless, but I suffer little angst about change and certainly do not pine for the past. But I also have come to enjoy the way new things, new ideas, new experiences enable me to see old things in new ways, so that old can becomes new again as my perception and experience open new patterns.

Summer is a great time for revisiting some of the old, and seeing it with new eyes and hands and taste buds. Like most folks, I was desultory about the required reading of classics, but in recent summers, I have put some classics on my reading stand (or more recently in my e-reader.) My recent jag has been picking up Hemingway again. Very humbling. It is a reasonable goal to have a drink in every bar Papa Hemingway frequented (I hope I live a long time), as he drank in some great places. He had a hand in popularizing some of the classic cocktails, and invented a few as well, including my favorite, Death in the Gulfstream, as a hangover cure for marlin fishing after a rough night. And from his time in Cuba, we can resurrect one of the great, mistreated cocktails, the Daiquiri. Simple, excellent, perfect for the heat. David Embury, author of the definitive book on cocktails, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (a splendid bar fly’s read published first in 1948), says, “The original and correct recipe for the Daiquiri is stated in terms of a single cocktail as ½ teaspoonful of sugar, juice of half a lime, and one jigger of white rum. This is a cocktail that is difficult to improve upon. It is dry, yet smooth. The reaction time is short. The lime and rum blend perfectly. The Daiquiri, like the Old Fashioned, deserves an even greater popularity than it now enjoys... .” You don’t see many Daiquiris made that way today; frozen, fruity sugar bombs have replaced the simple formula perfected by arguably the finest bartender of the 20th century, Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, master barman at El Floridita in Havana. As always in these classic cocktails, the ingredients are essential. Fresh squeezed lime juice, squeezed by hand or with a simple-squeeze juicer, fine sugar

old, timeless cocktail is. Enjoy. PS

and, of course, excellent white rum. Finding good white rum may be the hardest part. I find Bacardi’s aftertaste unpleasant, but I have found an excellent white rum from a Tennessee distiller, Prichard’s, that gets close to the flavor of a Cuban rum (which you can get in Canada), very good! Unfortunately, you’ll have to sample several to find your favorite. Darn. Hemingway spent a lot of time at El Floridita in Constantino’s bar and the barman made up a variation of his classic Daiquiri for him, the Papa Doble, or “Papa’s Double.” Lore goes that Hemingway did not like sugar in his drinks and Constantino obliged with a tailored version, substituting maraschino liqueur for sugar and adding fresh grapefruit juice (the bar notes I’ve read are that the Cuban grapefruit he used is fairly sweet, so adding a touch of sugar shouldn’t violate Papa’s memory). It is interesting how new and refreshing this

Original Daiquiri

Constantino Ribalaigua Vert’s recipe from El Floridita in Havana. 1 1/2 oz White rum 1 oz Simple syrup 3/4 oz Fresh lime juice Mix the three ingredients in a chilled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Papa Doble (Hemingway Daiquiri) 1 1/2 oz White rum 1/4 oz Maraschino liqueur 1/2 oz Fresh grapefruit juice 3/4 oz Fresh lime juice 3/4 oz Simple syrup or ½1/2 teaspoon fine sugar Mix all the ingredients in a chilled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Frank Daniels is an editor and writer living in Nashville, Tenn. His cocktail book,

Frank’s Little Black Bar Book, Wakestone Press, is available at The Country Bookshop. fdanielsiii@mac.com.

July 2011

B IR irD dwat WA T CH ch

Common Nighthawk Soaring low over ball fields and meadows, this prodigious bug-eater is neither common nor a hawk

By Susan Campbell

Indeed, Common Nighthawks can be

found around Moore County. But in actuality they are neither “common” nor are they “hawks.” These large birds feed exclusively on insects, and they actually do so at night. They use their large mouths to catch prey. Beetles and other insects are instantaneously intercepted and ingested by way of the birds’ oversized mouths. Nighthawks are unique in that they literally fly into large insects. They do not grab at them as true hawks do, given their weak feet are designed purely for perching.

Nighthawks are active mainly at dawn and dusk, when beetles and other large insects are most active. But due to their terrific night vision, they can hunt effectively in darkness as well. However, these birds may feed during the day, especially when they have young to provide for. In early summer, cicadas, grasshoppers, larger wasps and bugs are abundant. Given their aerodynamic prowess, nighthawks are very successful predators at any hour. Not surprisingly, Common Nighthawks spend the day perched horizontally on a pine branch. Invisibility is the goal during daylight hours. Although their vision is not compromised, they have a better advantage when light intensity is low. The mottled black, gray and white feathering is very hard to see regardless of the time of day. But their characteristic

low “peent” call and erratic moth-like flight is distinctive regardless. Common Nighthawks’ nests also are well camouflaged. Females construct (if you can call it that) them at ground level. Their speckled eggs blend in well with the mineral soil and miscellaneous debris typical of native arid Sandhills terrain. Their presence is often given away by males “booming” in the morning over high quality open habitats such as the Moore County Airport or drop zones on Fort Bragg. The unique noise they produce comes from air passing over the wing feathers (not vocalizations) of breeding males as they move through the air. However, nighthawks are one of a handful of bird species that will also nest on flat rooftops. As large fields become scarce, Common Nighthawks have become more prone to using large artificial spaces. Given that open foraging habitats such as agricultural fields or other athletic venues are becoming more common, these birds can easily support a family on the associated abundant flying insects found there. It is not unusual to see or hear nighthawks at summer baseball games or early fall football games in our area. They are capitalizing on the abundant prey associated with the evening floodlights at stadiums across the area. Found in so many open areas in the eastern United States in summer, Common Nighthawks begin to move south in early fall, often in large flocks. They migrate long distances to winter destinations in Central America and northern South America. Large numbers can typically be seen feeding just before dark in the evening here in August and early September. So there is lots of time left to spot a nighthawk this season — keep an eye out! PS Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by e-mail at susan@ncaves.com, by phone at (910) 949-3207 or by mail at 144 Pine Ridge Drive, Whispering Pines, NC 28327.

July 2011

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T h e sp o r t i n g l i f e

The Perfect Stranger

A chance encounter with an injured fisherman leaves a tantalizing mystery — and a lovely hand-tied fly

By Tom Bryant

The plan was to

climb over the ridge from the little trout stream where I had been fishing all morning, pick up the Bronco, then drive up the mountain to Tommy’s place for a quick lunch. After a short nap, I’d get back to the stream to fish the south fork until dark. Yep, that was the plan. Then I saw the boulder hanging out over the creek like a hammock. It was the perfect place to lie back and enjoy the scenery, which is just what I did. Listening to the sounds of the water rippling over the rocks soon put me to sleep, though, and when I awoke with a start, I thought, man, this is going to put a crimp in my afternoon plans. I’d better get a move on. When I came out of the brush to the little gravel road where I had parked the Bronco, I was surprised to see an older man leaning up against the vehicle. I walked up slowly to the truck wondering all the while who he was and, more than that, what he wanted. The mountain community where our son lives is relatively unpopulated and has a private road serving the area. It’s rare to see anyone on foot, especially someone of this individual’s age. “Whaddaya say, partner?” I said as I came up to the back of the Bronco, raised the window and put the tailgate down. “Something I can do for you?”

The old gentleman came around the corner of the truck and said, “You sure can, sir, if you have the time. I’m hoping you can give me a ride back to my cabin, which is just on the other side of the mountain. I started off fishing early this morning, and it seems as if I’ve sprained an ankle.” The old guy was dressed in the traditional mountain fly-fisherman’s outfit: vest, khaki shirt, old moleskin trousers and hip boots of a style I hadn’t seen in years. He limped rather severely, holding on to the Bronco all the while. “Sit up on the tailgate,” I said, “and I’ll help you off with those hip boots.” He climbed up slowly, grimacing a little. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette?” he asked, “No, sir. I quit smoking more than thirty years ago.” “Me too,” he replied. “I quit a long time ago, but I made up my mind today that the next person I meet who has some cigarettes, I’m gonna bum one and try it again.” He was looking at me with an amused glint in his eyes as I gently grabbed the heel of his hurt ankle. “I don’t know, Bubba,” I said. “This could hurt. Maybe I should run you down to the hospital and let them take a look at you.” “No, sir,” he replied. “That’s too much trouble. I’ve sprained this same ankle before. You know how once you hurt an ankle, it’s always weak. I’ll just wait till I get back to the cabin, and we’ll try to get it off there. It’s an old boot and if need be, I’ll just cut it off. No smokes, huh?” “That’s right,” I replied. “No smokes.” There was something strange about the old guy that I couldn’t quite put a finger on. He seemed out of place here on the side of the mountain, and yet he looked familiar. “Have I met you somewhere before?” “I don’t think so,” he replied. “I haven’t been down in this hollow in several years. You know, about those cigarettes, isn’t it funny how the things we enjoy the most are either not good for you or illegal. I smoked a bunch and enjoyed it a bunch, but quit because I was smart enough to know that they could kill me. And drinking, now I enjoy a slight touch of fine Scotch as much as the next guy. And even if the doctor says it’s not good for me, I’m still gonna have a toddy in the evening.”

July 2011

T h e sp o r t i n g l i f e

The old timer was on a roll, and he was also cutting into my plan for the afternoon. “Well, I tell you what, old sport. Let me help you in the Bronco. We’ll get on back to your place, and I’ll help you get settled. Is anyone there to give you a hand? I wish you would let me take you to the emergency room.” “I’ll be fine,” he said. “When we get to the house, I’ll get us some lunch if you have the time. I’ve got a few trout I’ll fry up, and I’ll make us a great salad with fixings from the garden. How did you do this morning?” I had broken down the gentleman’s fly rod, an old bamboo one, and put it along with his creel in the back. While doing it, I noticed that his equipment was well worn but expensive.

The old guy deposited a fishing fly in my hand. “I tie them myself and I use feathers from wood ducks. That style is one of my favorites. It’ll catch you a trout.

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“Oh, I caught several six- and seven-inchers. Nothing I would want to keep.” I cranked the Bronco and eased up the mountain trail. “You’re gonna have to show me the way.” “It’s not too far. Just keep on this road till it forks at the top of the mountain, then down to the little wooden bridge, ford Call Creek, and it’s just a short piece from there.” He noticed the expression on my face when he said ford. “Don’t worry, the creek there is only six or eight inches deep. By the way, my name is Sam Call. I own most of this mountain. Been in the family for years.” On the ride to his cabin, we talked about trout fishing, hunting, the weather, and anything two perfect strangers would converse about. “There’s the fork, about a mile to the little bridge and then across the creek and home. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.” “Glad to help out,” I said. “You live in a pretty area.” “Yeah, it’s about time for the laurel to bloom. It really will be beautiful then. Kinda quiet up here. I like that.” We got to the little wooden bridge over the creek. “I had to build the bridge. The creek’s too deep to cross here. The ford is right up ahead.”

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The small gravel road, more like a path, was overhung with low limbs from the brush on both sides. It was like entering a tunnel. When we came up over the rise, there sat his cabin, nestled on a low ridge. The scene was as picturesque as any postcard. His house was a two-story structure with a porch that wrapped around the entire building. The ground floor was made of logs, and the second level was covered with bark siding. The entire setting was unbelievably striking, and I expressed that to the old fellow. “I’ve enjoyed it here. As a matter of fact, I haven’t been off the mountain much, just for supplies and materials when I was building the cabin. Come on in. I want to give you something for helping me out today.” “You don’t have to do that,” I said as I unloaded his fishing gear out of the Bronco and helped him up the stairs to the front porch. “Let’s try and get those boots off.” He sat down on a rocker right by the front door, and I gently pulled the boot, expecting a yelp at any minute. It slipped right off. “Well, how about that,” he said. “Seems as if the ankle has gone down some.” I helped him off with the other boot. “Well, old sport, I’m gonna try to get in a little more fishing this afternoon. So I’m back over the mountain.” “Wait just a second,” he said, “Come on in. I’ve got something for you that’ll help in your trout fishing.” I went in the cabin with the old gentleman, and he hobbled up the stairs. I was awestruck by the stone fireplace that stretched across one wall of the main room. “It took me a year to build that fireplace,” he said as he came back down the stairs leaning heavily on the banister. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.” “I hauled the rocks in a horse-drawn wagon from the creek we crossed. It was a labor of love. Here, I know you’re in a hurry. I want you to have this.” The old guy deposited a fishing fly in my hand. “I tie them myself and I use feathers from wood ducks. That style is one of my favorites. It’ll catch you a trout. Now you come back when you have more time, and I’ll show you some photos of nice catches I’ve made in Call Creek. Tonight, to celebrate finding a new friend, I’m breaking out my Cuban cigars, and I’ll have one with a touch of single malt before bed.” I thanked him and said good-bye, climbed into the Bronco, stuck the fishing fly up over the sun visor on the passenger side, and hustled on back to Tom’s place to grab a bite. After my late lunch, I found the afternoon was too far gone to do any serious fishing, so I decided to wait until Tom got home from work, then we would ride over to Blowing Rock for supper. That evening during a great dinner at Canyons Restaurant, I told him about my morning experi-

T h e sp o r t i n g l i f e

ence and the old guy I had met. Tommy looked funny at me and then laughed and said, “You’re pulling my leg, Dad. You must have been dreaming longer than you thought down at the creek. When we get home, I’ll show you an old magazine from 1965 featuring Sam Call and how he died in a cabin fire. They seem to think he fell asleep smoking. The only thing left from the blaze was the giant stone chimney. I think it’s still there.” Needless to say, the rest of the evening was spent in pondering what I thought had happened. The only answer was that I’d dreamed the whole episode while napping by the creek. Maybe, we finally decided, I had read the story in a magazine on an earlier visit to Tom’s house and forgot about it, thus creating fodder for the dream. The next morning, still thinking about the previous day’s events, I headed home to catch up on some overdue chores. The sun was blazing out of the east, and I reached over to the passenger side sun visor and lowered it. A hand-tied fishing fly, unmistakably made from wood duck feathers, fell on the seat. PS Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

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G o l ft o w n J o u r n a l

When Dornoch Calls A trip to the gem of the Scotland North Country, and birthplace of Donald Ross, is one you’ll never forget

The beauty of the fifth, sixth and 11th holes at Royal Dornoch is captured in this painting titled “Whinny Brae” by Richard Chorley; courtesy Old Sport & Gallery, Pinehurst. By Lee Pace

Tom Watson had won three British

Opens and become a national hero in Scotland by July 1981when he visited the Scottish Highland burg of Dornoch with Sandy Tatum, a long-time family friend and the just-retired president of the USGA. They played on a blustery Saturday afternoon in front of a gallery of several hundred spectators, then repaired to the bar on the second floor of the clubhouse. As he visited with the locals, Watson told head professional Willie Skinner to keep their clubs at hand, and he whispered to one of the caddies, a young man named Dennis Bethune, “Don’t go anywhere.”

After downing a pint and hobnobbing with the locals, Watson and Tatum sneaked back onto the golf course early in the evening (the summer sunlight in Dornoch lingers until ten o’clock), this time with no swarm of onlookers. “They had a gallery of two — a man walking his dog,” says Skinner. They ventured out amid the wind and rain and played the difficult parthree second hole, with the green perched on the kind of plateau that the course’s co-designer, the devout Old Tom Morris, was fond of because they kept the golfer looking toward heaven. They walked down the path thirty yards toward the third tee, through the thick bushes of yellow whins, then

turned the corner where the vegetation gives way and a panorama of the North Sea opens up. They continued along, carefully aiming their tee shots to steer clear of the oval pot bunkers and tacked left and right, depending on the direction and force of the gales. “We were walking down the third fairway, and Watson stopped,” Tatum remembers. “He said, ‘Tatum, I want to say something. This is the most fun I’ve had playing golf in my whole life.’” They continued to the fifth tee, tucked alongside a ridge that runs the length of the course. Below them in one direction was the fifth fairway, below them to the right were the eleventh and twelfth holes and the beach. “We were standing right at the very back of the tee,” says Bethune, today the captain of Royal Dornoch. “The wind and rain and squalls were blowing and Watson said, ‘This is what golf’s all about.’” Watson and Tatum stayed the night and on Sunday morning went back out to play again. Watson surveyed the townsfolk gathered around the first tee, like the day before an ample gallery of several hundred. “I thought all of you people would be in church this morning,” he said. “We can’t,” one of them replied, then nodded to a man standing a few yards away. “The minister’s right there.” The sport of golf is quite the religious experience in Dornoch, the Scottish hamlet with profound physical and spiritual alliances with Pinehurst and the Sandhills. Both are small and remote (though Dornoch more so than Pinehurst). Golf is the mother’s milk of daily life at both addresses. Both have world renowned courses — Royal Dornoch and Pinehurst No. 2. There is no noise pollution or visual obscenity in either. And, of course, there is the considerable thread of one Donald James Ross. Ross was born, raised and introduced to the sport of golf and the business of golf in Dornoch. It’s believed he was present in 1886 when Old Tom jour-

July 2011

G o l ft o w n J o u r n a l

neyed up from St. Andrews to expand the club’s nine-hole course into eighteen. Ross most certainly learned from Morris during a St. Andrews apprenticeship several years later, returning to a full-time job at Dornoch tending the course, building clubs, giving lessons and managing the caddies. Ross moved to the United States in 1899, intrigued that he could double his salary and interested in twelve months of constructive golf activity in contrast to four fertile months and eight fallow ones in the northern extremities of Scotland. He soon found his way to Pinehurst, where the sandy soil reminded him of Dornoch and the wire grass reminded him of the whins. The design values he first absorbed at Dornoch followed him throughout nearly 400 North American course creations. “You have to go to Dornoch and to the old country to understand the appeal this ground had for Mr. Ross,” Ben Crenshaw said in 2010 upon a visit to inspect the restoration project he and design partner Bill Coore were executing on No. 2. “You set your feet on links turf for the first time and you say, ‘My gosh, this is bone dry, this is different.’ The only water on those golf courses is what falls from the sky. The ball takes off and you just say, Wow. The turf conditions there are very different. There are only a few spots where you can emulate Dornoch, and Pinehurst is one of them.” Americans limiting their Scottish excursions to the trophy courses of the British Open rota — St. Andrews, Turnberry, Troon, Muirfield and the like — are missing the experience of their lives if they let Dornoch’s remote location, some 200 miles north of the capital city of Edinburgh, spook them from the effort. The A9 highway snakes its way northward, through villages like Killiecrankie and Kingussie, beneath the barren mountain peaks, and alongside the salmon and mussel rich River Tay. Sheep chew their cud in a pasture to the left, acres of blazing yellow rapeseed scream from the right. Castles and cathedrals and whisky distilleries dot the landscape. Pinehurst’s Richard Tufts made the drive in the 1950s — and this was before the construction of two bridges trimmed the journey considerably — and talked architect Pete Dye and journalist Herbert Warren Wind into it. Wind wrote about the experience in The New Yorker in 1964, prompting thousands more Americans to make the pilgrimage. Crenshaw has been to Dornoch and said he “very nearly didn’t come back.” David Fay, the USGA executive director for two decades, made the journey and played fifty-four holes in one day. Craig Stadler came north and told the locals, “Don’t change a thing.” Two more Americans who have made the drive up A9 — and, in fact, did stay — are Don Greenberg and Chris Surmonte. Greenberg came to Dornoch from California in 1985 on vacation, joined the club and now splits his time between

g o l F T oW n J o u r nA l

Dornoch and Tampa. Surmonte grew up in New Jersey, loved golf and while traveling to various links courses in 1997, was told he could probably get a job caddying at Dornoch. He was smitten and has been there ever since. Greenberg cites the par-four fifteenth hole, a short one of just over 300 yards with a green sitting cliffside above the beach, as a hole that reflects the aesthetics and challenges of links golf and the kind of holes Ross built in the United States. “This was Donald Ross’s introduction to golf,” he says. “When I was caddying here, I would walk people to the mound on fifteen, drop a ball a hundred yards from the green, look around and tell them, ‘This is what Donald Ross and Dornoch are all about.’ “You can make anything from a two to a seven without hardly doing anything wrong. You can run it up, lob it up — it all depends on the wind and the pin position. You can knock it fifteen feet from the hole and still walk away with double bogey, not even hitting a poor putt. When the breeze picks up, it definitely affects balls on the greens, and fifteen is one of the more exposed greens.” “Dornoch has that perfect blend of charm and challenge,” adds Surmonte, who now runs Luigi’s, Dornoch’s best restaurant. “All golfers love it — from the pros down to twenty-five handicaps. You can go to Carnoustie, where you have your hat handed to you, or you can play holiday golf, where it’s charming. But if you want charm and challenge and eighteen perfect holes, Dornoch is it. You come all the way up here and you’re rewarded — the views, the village, the golf. Dornoch has it all.” The best vantage point for the Dornoch experience is the Royal Golf Hotel, where the front door is about fifty paces from the first tee. The lounge has nearly a thousand bag tags from golf courses around the world pinned to eaves above the bartender’s area — and one from Pinehurst is front and center. If you’re lucky enough to get a room on the southeast corner of the hotel, you’ll wake to a view of the rumpled ground, the golden whins, the odd rabbit scooting across the fairway, the symphony of puffy clouds and sunlight over the Dornoch Firth in the distance. One such morning in May of 2011, I rose to this visual array, tucked into some coffee, cereal and a few slices of meaty British bacon and was off to the first tee, where I found Roddy Roderick resplendent in his kilt as he sent golfers about their merry way. “Aye, it’s pretty much as God left it,” he said. What more reason, then, for an adventure into the Scottish Highlands? PS Lee Pace will write about hickory golf and other vintage topics in his forthcoming book, “The Golden Age of Pinehurst,” due out in the spring of 2012.

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July 2011

At The Lake, Summer Evening A full moon luminous, large rises over the eastern trees. In the west, thunder-heads. The sky darkens. I turn the boat toward home, lightning behind me. On the lift the boat sits steady. I snap the cover into place. She is dry now, snug against the weather. The rain begins to fall. Another crash of thunder. I raise my head to the angry sky. The moon is gone. In my house the lights flicker

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Tony Abbott

Mrs. Darcy Meets the BlueEyed Stranger

FICtIon by lee smIth

It was cocktail time. The sun, which had been in and out all day, now found a crack in the piles of gray cloud and shone brilliantly, falsely,

down the length of the beach, even though thunder rolled on in the distance. The ocean was full of whitecaps. Its color went from a mean gray, far out near the horizon under those clouds, to steely blue patches closer in where the sun hit it. The tide was coming in, running about a foot higher than usual, eating up the beach, bunching the people on the beach closer and closer to together. It was unreliable, irritating weather, unusual for August. A strong wind had come up after the most recent shower, blowing straight in from the ocean over the waves. This wind was perfect for kites and kites had sprung up everywhere, flown mostly by grandchildren who tangled their strings or let them get caught on TV antennas and then had to have another one, immediately, from El’s Hardware Store on the mainland. It was this day, August 25, nearing sunset, cocktail time in kite weather, when Mrs. Darcy received her first vision. Below the house, Mrs. Darcy’s daughters had arranged themselves together on the beach. Tall, graceful women like flowers, they leaned delicately toward one another and sipped their gin and tonics and shouted into the wind. Their family resemblance was noticeable, if not particularly striking: the narrow forehead, the high cheekbones, the dark eyes set a fraction of an inch too close together: the long straight nose, rather imperious, aristocratic, and prone to sinus. They were good-looking women. Yet try as she might — and she had tried, all their years of growing up — Mrs. Darcy was unable to find anything of herself in them. Mrs. Darcy was short, blond, and overweight, with folds of flesh that dangled like dewlaps from her upper arms. She had been a pretty girl once, but she had never been a thin girl, or a fashionable girl, or a fashionable young woman. These girls took after their father; they had his long, thin hands. Inside the house, Mrs. Darcy leafed through the pile of craft books that Trixie had brought her, and looked down at her daughters on the beach. Craft books! Mrs. Darcy thought. Craft books. What does she know? Wrapping her robe about her, Mrs. Darcy moved to stand at the door.

“W

hat was she doing when you came out?” Trixie asked. Trixie was the oldest, with three teenagers of her own. Her close-cut hair was streaked with gray, and her hornrimmed glasses sat squarely on her nose. “What was she doing?” Trixie asked again, over the wind. Maria, the middle sister, shifted her position on the quilt. “Not much, I think. Puttering around the kitchen.” “Well, there’s nothing to do for supper,” Trixie pointed out. “It’s already done.” “I don’t know,” said Maria, who always deliberated, or gave the impression of deliberating, before she spoke. “I think some of the children

Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger had come in and gotten a drink or something.” “I tried to get her to help cook,” Trixie said. “Remember how she used to cook?” “You know what really drove me mad?” Ginny said suddenly. “I was telling my shrink this the other day. I mean, whenever I think of Mama, you know what I think of her doing? I think of her putting leftovers in a smaller container. Like, say, we’ve had a roast, right? And if it were me, I’d leave the roast in the pan it was in. But oh no. After dinner, she had to find a smaller pan, right? For the refrigerator. Tupperware or something. The Tupperware post-roast container. Then somebody makes a sandwich maybe, and one inch of the roast is gone, so she had to find another container. Then another, then another, then another. She must have gone through about fifteen containers for every major thing she fixed. That’s all I can remember of childhood.” Ginny had been leaning forward intensely, sucking on a Winston in the wind. Now she stabbed the cigarette out in the sand and flung herself back flat and her long black hair fanned out on the quilt. “You’re feeling very angry about this,” Maria said in her precise, wellmodulated voice. Maria was a psychologist, married to another psychologist, Mark, who sat some thirty yards behind the sisters on the deck at the back of the house, observing things through his binoculars. “Your anger seems oddly out of proportion to the event,” Maria remarked. “No kidding,” Ginny said. One of Maria’s children, Andrew, came up to get his shoe tied. “Why can’t we buy any firecrackers?” he wailed, and then ran off, a blur of blue jean legs, without waiting for the answer. “Now, then,” Trixie said. The wind had died down, it was possible to talk, and Trixie liked to get right to the heart of the matter. “It does seem to me, as I wrote to both of you, that a certain amount of, er, aimlessness is understandable under the circumstances. But as I said before, when I went to Raleigh last month, I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe the way she was living. Dust on everything, and you know how she always was about dust. She was drinking Coca-Colas. Hawaiian Punch. Frozen pizza in the refrigerator — pizza, can you imagine?” Maria smiled at the idea of pizza, the mere mention of it so incongruous with their childhood dinners in Raleigh. She remembered the long shining expanse of mahogany, the silver, the peacocks on the wallpaper, the crimsonflowered Oriental rug. “Pizza!” Maria said softly. “Pop would have died.” “He did,” Ginny pointed out. “Really!” Trixie said. “I think there has to be a natural period of mourning,” Maria said, not meaning to lecture. “It’s absolutely essential in the cycle of regeneration.” “But it’s not mourning, exactly,” Trixie said. “It’s just being not interested. Not interested in anything, that’s the only way I can describe it. Lack of interest in life.” “I can understand that,” Ginny said. “That could be a form of mourning,” Maria said. “No two people mourn alike, of course.” “Different strokes for different folks,” Ginny said. They ignored her. “But you know how she used to keep herself so busy all the time,” Trixie said. “She always had some craft project going, always. She was always doing volunteer work, playing bridge, you know how she was.” “She wore spectator heels and stockings every day,” Ginny said in a passingjudgment tone. “Yes, well, that’s what I mean,” Trixie went on. “And now what is she wearing? Rubber flip-flops from K-Mart. She’s let Lorene go, too. Lorene only

comes in once a week now and does the bathrooms and the floors.” “I can’t imagine that house without Lorene,” Maria said. Lorene had been a central figure in their girlhood, skinny as Olive Oyl in her starched white uniform. “Well, Lorene is just as worried about Mama as she can be,” Trixie said. “As you might well imagine. I went over to see her in the projects and gave her some money and I wrote down my number for her, at home, and told her to call me up any time. Any time she goes over there to clean and anything worries her.” “That’s a good idea, Trixie,” Maria said. “Well,” Trixie said. Trixie saw her two daughters, tan leggy Richmond girls, far down the beach, walking toward them in the foaming line of surf. “I’ll tell you what I told Mother,” Trixie continued. “I said, ‘Why don’t you start going to church again? Why don’t you join one of these retirement clubs in town? They have all sorts of them now, you wouldn’t believe it. They go to the mountains and they go to New York to see plays and everything is all arranged for them ahead of time. Why, we saw a group of them at Disney World in Florida, having a perfectly wonderful time!’ ” “I can’t see that,” Ginny said. “Of course you can’t, you’re twenty--seven years old,” Trixie snapped. Sometimes she felt as though Ginny were her daughter instead of her sister. “Still, she did show some interest in coming down here,” Maria pointed out. “Surely that’s something.” “Interest but no initiative,” Trixie said. “I suggested it, I picked her up.” “Aren’t you something?” Ginny said. “Ginny, I realize that you’re going through a difficult period of adjustment yourself, but that is no excuse, no excuse at all for childish behavior. I think we have to start thinking in terms of a nursing home, is what I think. Caswell agrees, incidentally. Of course that would involve selling the Raleigh house: it would all be quite complicated. But I do see that as a distinct possibility.” “There’s Margaret, why don’t you ask her what she thinks?” Maria said. “She came over to see Mama this morning.” “When?” Trixie asked sharply. “Oh, about ten o’clock. You were at the Hammock Shop, I think.” “Gotcha!” Ginny said.

argaret Dale Whitted, who had divorced one husband and buried two, made her slow majestic way across the sand. A white caftan billowed about her and she carried a martini balanced carefully in one hand. “Cheers!” Margaret said when she reached them, steadying herself with a hand on Trixie’s shoulder. “My God, dears, it’s not worth it, is it? Nature, I mean.” Margaret’s voice was raspy and decisive, the voice of someone who has always had money. She had known their mother for forty summers more or less, since the time when Lolly and Pop had built their house, the Lollipop, next to Margaret’s Sand Castle. There had been nothing, almost nothing, on the south end of the island

Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger then. They had been pioneers. “Margaret, how are you?” Ginny asked. Ginny had always liked Margaret. “Oh, there’s some life in the old girl yet.” Margaret gave her famous wink. “I’m having some trouble, though, just between us girls, with this shoulder. I fell, you know, in March.” They didn’t know. Margaret sipped her martini and stared out to sea, breathing heavily. Ginny stood up and dusted the sand off her jeans. Margaret’s gold medallion winked in the fitful sun. “We wanted to ask you about Mama. What you think, I mean,” Trixie said. Trixie noticed how her own daughters had seated themselves just far enough away so that no one could connect them with her at all. “Mama, Mama, it’s all tangled up,” wailed Christy, Maria’s six-year-old daughter. “Take it to Daddy,” Maria said. “He’ll have to cut some string.” Trixie and Maria stood up. “Well,” Margaret rasped. “I’ll tell you what, girls. It’s hell to get old.” Margaret laughed and steadied herself on Trixie’s elbow. The wind blew Margaret’s huge white skirt about their legs, entwining them. Suddenly Ginny dashed off after a Frisbee, got it, and threw it back to Bill, Trixie’s son. Maria picked up the quilt, shook it, and walked back up toward the Lollipop, the deck, her husband. Through the binoculars, he stared toward the ocean, his red beard curled around his pipe. The screen door of the Lollipop opened and Mrs. Darcy came slowly out, blinking in the sun. Down on the beach, Margaret raised her silver cup aloft, “Cheers, honey,” she said to Trixie. “Look, Mama, look!” Christy and Andrew started up a howl. “Look, Mama, a rainbow, a rainbow!” Maria nodded to them, with exaggerated gestures, from the deck. “How’s it going, honey?” Mark asked without lowering the binoculars. “Getting everything worked out?” “Oh, it’s just so difficult.” Maria put the quilt over the rail and sat down in a chair. “Ginny is so difficult, for one thing. I hate these whole-family things, I always have. There are so many things to work through. So many layers of meaning to sort out.” “Actually there’s a great deal to be said for the nuclear family structure,” said Mark, focusing his binoculars on the sight he had been viewing for some time now, Ginny’s breasts moving beneath her pink T-shirt as she played Frisbee with his nephew. But Ginny stopped playing Frisbee then and turned to stare out at the ocean and Bill did too, as all movement stopped along the beach. “Mama, Mama, Mama!” Christy screamed. “I’ll be damned,” Mark said, putting the binoculars down. “A double rainbow.” Mark put an arm around his wife and they stood together on the deck, nuclear and whole, like a piece of architecture against the wind. “All the summers we’ve been here, I’ve never seen one of those,” Trixie remarked to Margaret. A giant rainbow shimmered above the horizon, pink and blue and yellow and blue again, above the mass of clouds, and as they all watched, the clouds parted and a second rainbow — almost iridescent at first, the merest hint of color — arced across the sky beneath the first, spreading color until the rainbows seemed to fill the sky. The children on the beach, caught in motion as definitely as if they had been playing Statues, broke up with a whoop and began to cavort madly, whirling around and around in all directions. Sand and Frisbees flew. Up on the porch, behind Maria and her son-in-law, Mrs.

Darcy moved hesitantly at first, in an oddly sidewise, crablike fashion, further out into the afternoon. Mrs. Darcy wore her flip-flops and a flowered housecoat. She raised her arms suddenly, stretching them up and out toward the rainbows. “Ai-yi-yi!” she wailed loudly. “Yi-yi-yi!” Mrs. Darcy stood transfixed then fell forward into the sandy deck in a dead faint.

he next morning dawned clear and beautiful. The joggers were at it early, pounding the road from one end of the island to the other. Fishermen lined the bridge over the sound to the mainland, dropping their lines straight down into the outgoing tide. Marsh grass waved in the wind and strange South Carolina birds flew overhead. Somebody caught a blowfish. Along the road beside the biggest houses, white-uniformed maids came out to dump the bottles and trash from the night before, getting their houses ready for the next day, lingering to gossip in the sun. Children ran out onto the piers that protruded far into the marsh, checking crab traps, squealing at the catch. At the far south end of the island, Ginny prowled the beach for sand dollars, watching the shifting tide pools as the tide rushed out to sea. She remembered getting on her raft in the sound at about the middle of the island, drifting lazily through the marsh grass past all the piers, gaining speed as the tide picked up, rocketing around the south end of the island finally, right here, jetting out to sea to be knocked back at last by the waves. Ginny remembered the final, absolute panic each time in the rush to the sea, how strong the current was. In this memory she seemed to be always alone. Maria never wanted to do it, Trixie had been too old, off at school or something. But there had been friends every summer. Ginny remembered the Mitchells from Columbia, whose house had been sold five years ago. Johnny Bridgely, her first beau. The Padgetts who always had birthday parties with piñatas. Ginny sat in a tide pool and played with the hermit crabs. The water was so clear you couldn’t tell it was there sometimes. She could feel the sun, already hot on her shoulders, and nothing seemed worth the effort it took. At the Lollipop, Mrs. Darcy lay back on a daybed in the big rustic living room, surrounded by children and friends who urged her back each time she attempted to rise. “I still think, Mama, that it would be very silly — I repeat, very silly — for you not to let us take you right up to the doctor in Myrtle Beach. Or down to Georgetown if you prefer. But you cannot just ignore an attack like this,” Trixie said. “I wonder if this might not be some sort of ploy,” Maria whispered to Mark in the kitchen. “An attention-getting thing. Unconscious, of course.” “It’s possible,” Mark said. “Or she might have had a slight stroke.” “A stroke!” Maria said. “Do you think so?” “No, but it’s possible,” Mark said. Mark got a cup of coffee and went out onto the beach. His nieces, already oiled, lay on their stomachs reading books from their summer book list. His own children were making a castle in the wet sand farther out. “I think I’ll scramble some eggs,” Mrs. Darcy said, but the lady from across the street, Susie Reynolds, jumped up and began doing it for her. There was something new about Mrs. Darcy, something ethereal, this morning. Had she had a brush with death? a simple fall? or what? Why did she refuse to see the doctor? Mrs. Darcy looked absurdly small lying there on the rather large daybed, surrounded by pillows. She still wore the flowered housecoat. Her small fat ankles stuck out at the bottom, the bare feet plump and blue-veined, with a splotch or two of old red nail polish on the yellowed toenails. Her arms were folded over her stomach, the hands

Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger clasped. Her hair curled white and blond in all directions; but beneath the wild hair, her wrinkled face had taken on a new, luminous quality, so that it appeared to shine. Trixie, looking at her mother, grew more and more annoyed. Trixie remembered her mother’s careful makeup, her conservative dress. Why couldn’t she be reasonable, dress up a little, like the other old ladies out on the beach? Even Margaret, with her martinis and her bossiness, was better than this. Life does go on, Trixie thought. Mrs. Darcy smiled suddenly, a beatific smile that traveled the room like a searchlight, directed at no one in particular. “She seems a little better, don’t you think?” Mrs. Reynolds said to Trixie from the kitchen door. Mrs. Reynolds brought in the plate of scrambled eggs and toast. “Oh, I don’t know,” Trixie said. “I’ve been so worried, I just can’t tell.” “Well, I think she looks just fine,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “I’ll go on back now. Call me if you need me, honey.” Mrs. Darcy sat up and began to eat. Maria, book in hand, watched her silently from the wicker armchair. Morning sun came in the glass doors, and a crossbreeze ruffled the pages of the magazines on the table. Bill came back for his flippers and mask. The volume of the children rose from the beach. “How do you feel now?” Maria asked carefully. Mrs. Darcy’s watery blue eyes seemed to darken in color as she looked at her middle daughter. “When I saw the rainbow,” she said in her soft Southern voice, “why, it was the strangest thing! All of a sudden I felt this, this presence, I can’t tell you what it was like, it just filled me up until I was floating. Then I saw him.” “Saw who?” Maria put down the book and leaned forward in her chair. In the kitchen, Trixie dropped a coffee cup with a clatter and came to sit at the end of the daybed. “Why, I don’t know!” Mrs. Darcy said in a wondering sort of way. “I just don’t know!” She began to eat heartily. “Mother, I don’t believe I quite understand,” Maria said calmly. “Do you mean that you saw a stranger, some strange man, on the deck? Or did he come into the house from the front?” “Oh, no,” Mrs. Darcy said airily, waving her fork. “Oh, no, nothing like that. I went out on the porch, I was looking at the rainbow, I felt this overwhelming presence everywhere, oh, I just can’t tell you what it was like! Then I saw him.” She beamed at them. “Trixie, honey, could you bring me some salt?” she asked. Trixie rose automatically, was stopped by the sight of her son Bill standing in the kitchen door, flippers and mask in hand, staring at his grandmother. “Go on down to the beach,” Trixie said to him. “Go!” He went. Trixie got the salt, came back and gave it to her mother who sat placidly munching toast and dropping crumbs all down the front of her housecoat. “Could you be a little clearer, Mother?” Maria asked. “I’m still not sure who this man was.” “But I don’t know!” Mrs. Darcy said. “Thank you, dear,” she said to Trixie, and sprinkled salt liberally on her eggs. “He had long hair, he wore a long white thing, sort of like Margaret’s dress as a matter of fact, you know the one I mean, and he had the most beautiful blue eyes. He looked at me and stretched out his arms and said, ‘Lolly.’ Just like that, just my name.” “Then what?” Maria said. “Then I went to him, of course.” Mrs. Darcy finished her breakfast and stood up. “I may have a swim,” she said. “Oh, I wouldn’t,” Trixie said quickly. Mrs. Darcy seemed not to hear. Training her new smile upon each of them

in turn, she went into her bedroom and softly closed the door. The sisters stared at each other. “That beats everything I’ve ever heard!” Trixie said. “You see why I brought up the nursing home?” Under the brown thatch of hair, Trixie’s face looked nearly triumphant, causing Maria to reflect fleetingly upon the strange accident of birth, the fact that if the woman facing her had not happened to be her sister, they would have had nothing in common at all. Nothing ! Maria thought. “I think we have to proceed very carefully here,” she told Trixie. “Let me go and discuss this with Mark.” Trixie went upstairs to lie down, thinking, as she climbed the stairs, that Caswell had been right after all. They should have gone to Sea Island by themselves. Ginny had joined the others on the beach, standing with Mark at the water’s edge to watch the children swim. “Let me put some of this on your back,” Mark said, holding up a bottle of suntan oil. “No, thanks,” Ginny said. “Please. Not any more.” Mark put the top back on the bottle. “Well, what happened with Don, then?” he asked. “You want to talk about it?” “No,” Ginny said. “I don’t.” “Mark, Mark!” Maria came running toward them. She arrived; she told them everything. Ginny began to laugh. Bill came dripping up out of the water, followed by the girls. “There’s a real strong undertow,” he yelled to everybody. When they didn’t answer he came closer, pushing the face mask up. “Grandma’s going batty, isn’t she?” he said to his uncle and aunts. “Is that true?” the girls demanded. “Is she going to go in a nut house?” “Of course not,” Ginny said. “What’s a nut house?” Christy asked. Ginny was laughing and laughing. “This will take some thought,” Mark said, pulling at his beard. Slowly and daintily, Mrs. Darcy made her way past the whole group of them and stood at the edge of the ocean to adjust her red rubber bathing cap. Her skin was so white that she looked startling among the sun-browned children in the surf. She turned once, waved, before she walked straight out into the waves until they were hip-high. Then she raised her hands and dove. “You know I don’t believe I’ve ever seen your mother swim before,” Mark said to Maria. Maria stood open-mouthed. “She doesn’t,” she finally said. In years past, her mother’s beach routine had never varied: up around nine, a walk perhaps, some shopping, drinks with friends, but never — never — had she actually gone for a swim. Maria burst into tears. “She needs help,” Maria said. “Oh, come on,” Ginny said. “We all do. Look, I’ll drive all the kids up to the trampoline for a while, OK?” Before them, just beyond the breakers, Mrs. Darcy’s red bathing cap bobbed like a cork in the rise and fall of the waves.

hree days passed, all of them sunny and blue, calm and idyllic. Caswell arrived. The Lollipop settled into the old routine of summers past. Plans were made and carried out, menus planned, groceries were bought and cooked. Caswell and Mark chartered a boat out of Murrell’s Inlet and took Bill fishing. Maria was always amazed at how well Caswell and Mark got along; she couldn’t imagine what they had to say to each other. Trixie’s girls found some nice boys from Charleston to date. Old friends came and

Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger went. Margaret took Mrs. Darcy to lunch at Litchfield Plantation. Pop was mentioned often, casually and affectionately, and Mrs. Darcy seemed not to mind. She did not mention the “presence” or the blue-eyed stranger again. She continued to pad about the house in her flip-flops and housecoat, but she showed some interest in the cooking and she played checkers with Christy and Andrew. By Thursday morning, Trixie had begun to relax. She thought it was time to interest her mother in Shrink-Art. Trixie had brought all the materials with her, and now she unpacked them and brought them into the kitchen and spread them out. The others had gone crabbing up at Huntington Beach State Park. “Now Mother,” Trixie said, “let’s do a little bit of this. It’s really fun, really easy, and you’ll just be amazed at what you can make.” “Maybe a little later, dear,” Mrs. Darcy said. Mrs. Darcy sat in a wicker armchair, looking out at the beach. “No,” said Trixie said firmly. “Now is the time. They’ll be back before long, then we’ll have to make sandwiches. Now look, Mother, all you do is trace designs onto this clear plastic, using these permanent markers. Or you can make your own designs, of course. Then you cut them out and bake them for three minutes and — ” “Bake them?” Mrs. Darcy echoed faintly. “Sure!” Trixie said. “Then they turn into something exactly like stained glass. They’re really lovely. You can make jewelry, Christmas ornaments, whatever. They make lovely Christmas ornaments.” “But how would you hang them up?” Mrs. Darcy came to stand beside her daughter at the table. “Oh, you punch a little hole before you put them in the oven,” she said.

“I’ve got the hole-puncher right here.” Trixie spread out the plastic sheets, the designs, the permanent pens. She turned the oven on to three hundred degrees. “OK,” she said. “All set. Which one do you want to try?” “Maybe this,” Mrs. Darcy said. She placed a sheet of the clear plastic over a design involving a bunch of tulips stuck into a wooden shoe. Trixie was mildly surprised by the choice, more surprised by her mother’s easy acquiescence. Everything seemed so much better since the weather had cleared. Perhaps things were not so complicated, so serious as they had thought. Still, it was reassuring that Mark and Maria had arranged treatment for Mother, back in Raleigh. A most competent doctor by all accounts, highly recommended. Trixie felt sure that Mother would agree to see him. The teakettle began to whistle. Trixie got up to make the iced tea. This pitcher, old heavy brown pottery, had been at the beach house ever since she could remember. Out of the corner of her eye, Trixie watched Mother biting her tongue a bit and gripping her marker tightly, like a small, pudgy, dutiful child. Trixie added lemon and sugar to the tea. “There now,” Mrs. Darcy said, sitting back in the chair, her round wrinkled face rather flushed. She looked at Trixie hopefully. “Now what?” “Now you cut it out,” Trixie said, “and punch a hole, and we put it in the oven for three minutes.” Mrs. Darcy cut the design out carefully, using some old round-tipped scissors that Trixie had found way back in a kitchen drawer. Trixie took the design from her, somewhat distressed to find that Mother had colored the tulips blue. Still, it would not do to appear disparaging. “This is so pretty, Mother,” Trixie said. “Now you can watch it shrink if you want to.” Mrs. Darcy turned

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Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger her chair, so that she could peer through the oven’s glass door. The kitchen door burst open at that moment and there they were suddenly, all of the rest of them, with two coolers full of scrambling crabs and the children all talking at once. “Just leave those on the porch,” Trixie directed. “Go on, take them right back out this instant. Right now. Go on. Bill, what do you mean tracking in here this way? Go take off those shoes on the porch.” “Bill fell in, Bill fell in!” Andrew danced up and down, still holding his piece of twine with the rock and the chicken neck tied to the end. “You’re so excited, darling,” Maria said. “Well, I’m starving.” Still wearing her black bikini, Ginny came barefooted into the kitchen, so that she was the closest one to her mother, the only one who actually saw Mrs. Darcy’s face as she watched her tulips shrink, and shrink, and shrink before her eyes. Ginny stopped, caught in the oddest sensation: it might have been her own face before her, it might have been her own voice that began to scream.

fine drizzle fell all day Sunday, jewelling the surface of things. They left for hours, it seemed, and their leavetaking took up most of the day. Lolly knew that they had been up far into the night, deciding what to do about her. She realized that she had created a problem by her refusal to leave. But she did not want to leave yet, and she had never created a problem before — not ever, for anyone. So. She remained stubborn and went to bed early, leaving them to deal with her as best they could. As they told themselves over and over, the others had to go. There was no question. Caswell had to fly straight up to Washington for a conference. The children’s schools were beginning again, and Trixie had to buy school clothes

for the girls. Maria and Mark had faculty meetings, workshops, classes. It was hard to believe that Christy would be in the first grade. “Look,” Ginny had surprised them all by saying. “Look, I’ll stick around for a week or so. OK? You all go on. I’ll bring her back to Raleigh before long.” It was so unlike Ginny to be responsible that Maria had stared at her with considerable interest. “I’d like to know why you’re doing this,” Maria said. “Why not?” Ginny had answered. And they had left, Trixie and Caswell and their large children in the long sleek car, Maria and Mark in their van. Christy and Andrew waved madly from the rear window as long as they stayed in sight. Lolly stood on the rainswept back porch, looking across the road to see the rising mist over the marsh. She traced designs on the drops of water that clung to the sides of the water heater. Each little drop seemed singular and profound, seemed to hold some iridescence of its own, or perhaps it was just the reflection from passing cars. “Mama,” Ginny said for the third time. Ginny stood in the kitchen door wearing white slacks, a windbreaker. She looked Lolly in the eye. “Listen, Mama, I’m driving up to Long Beach to have dinner with a friend, OK? The number is by the telephone. I might be back tonight, or I might be back tomorrow. There’s a pizza in the freezer. OK?” “OK.” Lolly smiled at Ginny and watched her leave too, running lightly down the steps, slamming into her little car. Lolly went back in the house. The silence wrapped her up like soft cotton. She got a Coke from the refrigerator, poured it, and sucked off the foam. She smiled to herself, turned on some lights. After a while she went to the telephone and called Margaret and in a little while Margaret came, bringing the friend she’d told Lolly about. This friend was a wealthy widow of their own age, from Norfolk. “The doc-

The most

Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger

Originally published as “Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger at the Beach” from the collection Cakewalk, originally published by G. P. Putnams, copyright 1970 by Lee Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.

brilliant colors

of Summer

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tor can’t seem to find any explanation for it,” she said. “Some sort of damaged nerve. It’s just this intense pain, right here.” She lifted her forearm so that the heavy bracelets jangled like wind chimes. “Sometimes the pain is so intense I just can’t seem to go out at all. I can’t even get out of bed.” “I know,” said Lolly. Her pale eyes darkened and focused; she smiled. “Lie down,” Lolly said, indicating the daybed, and she took the stringy manicured hand of Margaret’s friend in her own soft white ringless fingers. “That’s right, dear,” Margaret rasped from the wicker armchair. “Don’t be nervous, dear. This is exactly the way she fixed my shoulder. I was lying just like that on my own chaise longue. The green one. Remarkable. Now just do exactly what Lolly says. Close your eyes, dear. Relax. That’s right. Relax.” Later, healed and radiant, Margaret’s friend wanted to pay Lolly, to make some contribution at least to the charity of her choice. Lolly declined, and they all had a glass of sherry. “Really, how do you do it?” Margaret’s friend asked. “Really, if you only knew how much money I’ve spent on doctors. Why, I even tried a chiropractor at Virginia Beach.” “It’s nothing,” Lolly said. “Listen to that!” Margaret hooted. “Ha!” Margaret blew out a great puff of smoke that hung blue in the comfortable glow of the lamps. “It’s not me at all,” Lolly told them. “I’m just an agent, you might say. An intermediary.” “Do you do much work with arthritis?” Margaret’s friend asked. “I have a friend who’s in the most terrible pain.” “I could give it a try,” Lolly said. When they had gone, she heated up the pizza and drank a glass of milk, leaving all her dishes in the sink. She took a bath. She put on a faded terry housecoat. Opening the doors to the ocean, Lolly went out on the deck. Out here everything was cold and clean-smelling and a sharpness bit through the air, signaling summer’s end. There were few lights along the beach; most of the summer people and renters had gone. Beyond Lolly, out in the darkness, waves crashed onto the sand. She could taste their salt on her lips. Lolly was not even cold. She seated herself in a damp deck chair, and leaned back. “Now,” she said into the night.

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Avid Readers Photographs and Interviews by Cassie Butler

It’s summertime and the reading is abundant. Friends and neighbors tell us there is nothing better than a good book.

Marianne Lewis • Age : 46 u Profession: Restaurant owner (Chef Warren’s) Book that changed your life: Lonely Planet’s Guide to Indonesia, because when I was there, I got sick with dengue fever and the only thing I could do during that time was read. I practiced phrases and numbers from this book, which enabled me to bargain in Indonesia and inevitably changed the whole way we traveled. Book you would recommend everyone to read: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Currently reading: The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card. Favorite place to read: In bed, or on airplanes because it makes time go faster. Strangest place you ever read a book: Riding an elephant on the Thai-Burma border. Favorite book of all time: The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien. Guilty pleasure read: The Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris.

Ben Lewis

• Age: 10

Currently reading: Alchemyst by Michael Scott.

Book that changed your life: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which started the Pac-Man effect once he realized he could lose himself in reading.

Favorite book of all time: The Billionaire’s Curse by Richard Newsome.

Book you would recommend everyone to read: The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.

Guilty pleasure read: Calvin and Hobbes.

Favorite children’s book: Richard Scarry’s Busy People.

t Sarah Elizabeth Younger • Age: 23 Profession: eBook Editor at Press 53 of Winston-Salem and graduate student at the University of Denver Book that changed your life: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine showed me how enjoyable reading could be and turned me into a lifelong reading fanatic. Currently reading: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you could be any character in any book, you would be: Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice) for a day to wear riding habits, bonnets and walking dresses while sipping tea in the afternoon and waltzing an evening away with Mr. Darcy (the Colin Firth version Mr. Darcy). I’d also like to be Hermione Granger (Harry Potter) because of her superior magical abilities. Most unexpected place you ever read a book: While riding my horse Cee Bar Tuff, or hiding in his stall to avoid farm chores. Favorite place to read: In bed. What is your favorite children’s book? Harry Potter is technically a children’s book so it is officially my favorite, but the Thelwell’s Pony illustrated children’s books are quite adorable. Favorite guilty pleasure read? Twilight by Stephenie Meyer or anything by romance novelist Lisa Kleypas. Most memorable first line of a book: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. — Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Joy Johnson • Age: 51 u Profession: Teacher at Sandhills Classical Christian School; retired United States Air Force Reserves pilot. Book that changed your life: Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Douglas Wilson. Currently reading: The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. If you could be any character in any book, you would be: Christy from the book of the same name. She went off on a great adventure, touching lives and being deeply changed herself. Most unusual place you ever read a book: In the lines at Disney World. Reading was the only thing that made that bearable. Favorite place to read: A chair, under an umbrella, toes dug into the sand at the beach. Favorite book of all time: Christy by Catherine Marshall Favorite children’s book: The Great and Terrible Quest by Margaret Lovett. I read it aloud to my fourth-graders every year, and I can never read the end without crying. Favorite guilty pleasure read: People magazine. Most memorable first line of a book: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is another favorite book of mine: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”. This book may have the best last line too. (“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I got to, than I have ever known.”) PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

q Elizabeth Williams

• Age: 49

Profession: Aspiring writer, sales associate at Lowe’s Home Improvement. Book you would recommend everyone to read: Hannah’s List by Debbie Macomber. Currently reading: A Turn in the Road by Debbie Macomber, rereading Tough Customer by Sandra Brown, Intimate Exposure (Kimani Romance) by Simona Taylor. If you could be any character in any book, who would you be? I’d want to be Lexi Titan in Susan Mallery’s Lone Star Sisters series because she flies by the seat of her pants. She doesn’t think about the consequences, she just does something because it’s fun. Favorite place to read: In the library because it’s nice and quiet and at least you can think. Your favorite book of all time: Maggie’s Dad by Diana Palmer.

p Katrina Denza • Age: 46 Profession: Writer with a published short story collection. Books everyone should read: Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Favorite guilty read: Kimani Romance novels. The hardest book you ever read: A Brenda Novak series, which I ended up giving away. Most memorable first line: Lip Service by Susan Mallery — “I’d like you to marry my daughter.”

Currently reading: Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones; Gryphon, New and Selected Stories by Charles Baxter. Most memorable character? Olive Kitteridge in Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Hardest book you ever read: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. Favorite first line of a book: “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.” – The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Thomas Denza • Age: 56 Profession: Hardwood floor business. Book that changed your life: Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner. Book you would recommend: The Stranger by Albert Camus. Currently reading: The writings of Authur Rimbaud. If you could be any character in any book, who would you pick? Nick Charles in The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. Strangest place you ever read a book: Crime and Punishment in an 8’ by 8’ tin shack on top of a building in Madrid. Favorite book of all time: Ulysses by James Joyce.

Xander Denza • Age: 9 Currently reading: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and I.Q. Book Two: The White House by Roland Smith. If you could be any character in any book, who would you be? Sherlock Holmes because I’d like to be a detective. Favorite place to read: Our comfy gold chair. What would you be embarrassed to tell your mom you read? The Day My Butt Went Psycho by Andy Griffiths.

q Shelby Basinger

• Age: 32

Profession: Teaching Faculty, Health and Fitness Science — Sandhills Community College. Book you would recommend everyone to read: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Currently reading: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. Favorite place to read: The hammock on our front porch with an old quilt and a glass of iced tea! Favorite book of all time: I have several favorites: The Poisonwood Bible, The Shadow of the Wind, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Book Thief, The Kite Runner, The Secret Life of Bees, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Cutting for Stone. Favorite children’s book: Richard Scarry’s Best Mother Goose Ever and The Sneeches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss. My mother used to read these books to us over and over again when we were little — to the point where my brother and I had them memorized from beginning to end … they never got old.

p Janice Reagan • Age: 63 Profession: School psychologist in Virginia, Presbyterian missionary in Japan, bookstore employee 8 1/2 of the past 15 years.

Favorite passage: “You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” — Kahil Gibran, The Prophet. One of my favorite high school teachers and mentors, Mrs. Griffin, gave this book to me when I graduated. It has many memorable passages, but this is one that made an impression on me.

Book that changed your life: A Diary of Private Prayer, by John Baillie. Book you would recommend everyone to read: Don Quixote. Currently reading: The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall. Favorite place to read: In bed or in the bathtub. What is your favorite book of all time? Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. What was/is your favorite children’s book? WAS — anything with Eloise Wilkins illustrations. IS — Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes What was the hardest book you ever read? The Idiot by Dostoevsky.

John Reagan • Age: 85 Profession: Retired human rights missionary to Japan. Book that changed your life: Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa because I learned to look at words in the context in which they were used. Book you would recommend: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Currently reading: Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany by Frederick Taylor. Favorite place to read: In my study or in my library at home. Favorite book of all time: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. “This was a very healing book for me on the plane back from Japan after I lost my first wife.” Book I would be embarrassed to tell my mom I read: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Most memorable first line of a book: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God …” PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

t Evan Sherwood • Age: 18 Book that changed my life: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Book everyone should read: The Harry Potter series. They are a classic series. They have everything you want in a book. Currently reading: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. If you could be any character in any book, who would you be? Huckleberry Finn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I love how he gets to experience all these crazy situations and gets to meet some fascinating people. It would be neat to go on a type of journey like his. I love adventure and he gets into plenty of them, and as an added bonus, he’s a little mischievous, like me. Favorite place to read a book: Under a big tree. Favorite book: A few favorite series which include the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, A Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket, the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye, and The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. Favorite children’s book: The Wizard Of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Most memorable first line of a book: “All children, except one, grow” in Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie.

Landon Sherwood • Age: 18 Book that changed your life: The Bible.

Book you would recommend: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. If you could be any character in any book, who would you be? Joe Gargery from Great Expectations because he displays to me how every person should act: with compassion and an open mind. Currently reading: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Favorite place to read: In my bedroom or at the beach. Favorite book: Animal Farm by George Orwell. Favorite children’s book: The Harry Potter series. Most memorable first line of a book: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Bobbie Benade • Age: 89 u Profession: Homemaker with two sons, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Book that changed your life: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and several books by Catherine Marshall. Book everyone should read: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Currently reading: Mark Steyn’s The Face of the Tiger and Other Tales from the New War. If you could be any character in any book, who would you be? I would be the heroine Dagny in Atlas Shrugged because I admire what she was able to do and what she was able to stand against. Favorite place to read? Propped up in bed. Favorite book of all time: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Favorite children’s book: Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne. Hardest book you ever read? War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

q Bruce B. Rutherford

• Age: 79

Profession: Retired Marine aviator; adjunct faculty for English at Sandhills Community College. Book everyone should read at least once: Two authors: Mary Oliver and Stephen Dunn. Both are poets. For Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems. For Stephen Dunn I recommend his Pulitzer prize-winning book Different Hours. Currently reading: Two books. David Ignatius’ newest book Bloodmoney and Lily King’s earlier book The Pleasing Hour.

p Louise Buchan • Age: 88 Profession: Bookkeeper, realtor. Book you would recommend everyone to read: The Bible. Currently reading: Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard; The Help by Kathryn Stockett; Jim Hunt: A Biography by Gary Pearce. Most unusual place you read a book: In the car last winter while my husband Lee had physical therapy. Favorite passage: “Judge not lest ye be judged.” — Matthew 7:1, The Bible

Kam Hurst • Age: 56

Strangest place you ever read a book: South China Beach during the Vietnam War. I was reading the first stanza of an Auden poem: “That night when joy began/ Our narrowest veins to flush,/We waited for the flash/ Of morning’s leveled gun,” when three VC rockets flew overhead hitting the beach missing us but exploding nearby. All of the class sprung up, gathered their books and started heading for some bunkers. My best friend, who earlier in our tour had nicknamed me Captain Comma, was in the class. He came running by shouting, “Captain Comma, methinks we’ve just heard morning’s leveled gun.” That line became a squadron phrase during our combat tour every time rockets came whistling in or when we dropped ordinance on a VC target. Most memorable first line of a book: The first two lines are from In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent where he opens his book saying, “The boy woke in the dark house and knew he was alone. It was knowing this that woke him.” Being alone and in the dark becomes a sustaining metaphor throughout the novel.

Profession: Sales Currently Reading: Too Proud to Ride a Cow by Bernie Harberts. If you could be any character in a book, who would you be? Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She learned early how blessed she was and how great home was. Most unusual place you ever read a book: While riding a camel in Pakistan. Favorite book: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Favorite children’s book: Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney. Favorite Guilty Pleasure Read: AARP Magazine.

Mary Kathryn Hurst • Age: 16 Book that changed your life: Roxy Robin Learns a Lot by Linda Elrod. Book you would recommend everyone to read: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Currently reading: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. If you could be any character in any book, who would you be? Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee so I could make a hermaphrodite snowman! Favorite children’s book: Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss because I first learned to read with this book. Favorite guilty pleasure read: Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne; I’ve been hooked since second grade! Hardest book you ever read: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; it was over my head at the time. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

Waiting Fiction By Sara King

or years afterward, people in Leesville talked about the fifty-day drought — those blistering days that began in June and lasted into July. Every morning the sun would rise in a clear blue sky and glare down until dusk, scorching the fresh layers of green below. The grass became brown and brittle, and tobacco plants shriveled in the fields. Will’s daddy said if they got some good rain by the middle of summer, maybe most farmers could save their crops and do all right. But Mr. Kelly, who lived down the road, shook his head. He thought all the bombs in Europe had upset the balance of things. “Plain made the sky too hot,” he declared. Old Mr. Silas told Will’s granddaddy about a man in town who’d shot his wife in the arm two times. “But the sheriff didn’t do nothing,” he said. “He knows heat can make a man crazy.” And Will’s granddaddy had nodded, like he knew what he meant. Will didn’t mind the heat too much, but sometimes he thought Mr. Silas was right. Most everybody in his family was acting different. His daddy didn’t laugh much anymore, and the lines around his mouth looked deep and hard. His mother’s face was fixed in a scowl, and she was always wiping her neck with the handkerchief she kept down the front of her dress. His sister Marie had stopped fussing with her long, wavy hair and twisted it on top of her head, held tight with three barrettes. She wore her old cotton shift and sat by the window writing

Photograph By Cassie Butler letters to her boyfriend, Ben Whitley. Ben used to bring Will Baby Ruth bars, but now he was fighting in Europe somewhere. Will gradually decided that only his granddaddy was acting the same. In the morning, he sat in the green rocker on the porch, chewing tobacco and looking out at the fields. After dinner, he’d lie down in his room for a while, but in late afternoon, he’d go back to the porch and stay there until late at night, except for when he went in to supper. Sometimes his friends would stop by, people like Mr. Silas or Mr. Kelly. They’d talk about the heat and the war and how things were different from the first one. Then Will’s daddy might stop listening to the radio and join them on the porch. He’d been a young soldier in the first war, so he knew a lot about it. But he always said he hadn’t known there’d be another one, least not so soon. The men would sigh and shake their heads, and Will would watch them from his place on the steps. Once in a while, his mother came to the door and told him that the mosquitoes were going to eat up his scrawny legs, but his granddaddy always said, “Let the boy be.” Will turned his head so his mother couldn’t see the smile on his face, and he really could smile since mosquitoes weren’t as bad without any rain. Will looked forward to the nights on the porch, even on the days when he and James Martin went down to the swimming hole. The water was drying up, but there was still enough to get them good and wet, and they would take off their clothes and let it cover their nakedness.

Then they’d climb onto the bank and talk while the sun toasted their bodies to a deep brown. He would tell James Martin about the nights on the porch and the conversations the grown-ups had, but he never mentioned the bad things he heard about the war. James Martin had a brother on a ship, and Will knew that James Martin was scared, even though he never said he was. Ever since Lucas Thorp was killed, everybody was scared. In May, a military man had come to see Lucas’s parents, and for a week afterward, Marie had cried and hung around the mailbox. She said she knew something had happened to Ben, but finally she got a letter from him and found out he was exhausted, but well enough. She was still a little edgy for the next few days, but then the heat set in, and by the middle of June, Marie had stopped going to the mailbox. She said she couldn’t bear the heat, so Will picked up her letters for her. Sometimes she got two at a time, but other times she didn’t get a letter for two weeks or more.

ne night he talked to his granddaddy about the letters. They were sitting on the porch, and since it was only the two of them, Will sat in a chair by the rocker. He liked to sit close to his granddaddy. In the shadows, the lines on his face looked dark, but the moonlight made his hair look shiny, almost silver. His granddaddy looked off in the distance, except when he bent his head to spit brown juice into an old tin can. But Will knew that he was listening. When a person talked, his granddaddy listened, and when nobody talked, he rocked and listened to the sounds of night. Will propped his elbows on his bare knees. “Granddaddy, when Daddy was in the first war, did you get many letters from him? Sometimes Marie gets about two a week, but other times she don’t get any.” His grandfather nodded. “That’s how letters are in war times. Some weeks a soldier is fighting and don’t have time to write. It’s hard to tell, son. It’s hard to tell when to expect a letter.” Will nodded. “Guess you’re right, Granddaddy, but it seems like we’re doing a lot of waiting this summer. Everybody’s waiting for rain, and Marie and other folks are waiting for letters.” He sighed and looked up at his grandfather. “I reckon it makes things hard sometimes.” The old man lifted the can to his mouth, and a brown stream hit the metal. “I reckon it does,” he agreed, “but we have to deal with it all our lives.” Will narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, Granddaddy? You mean like waiting for rain and letters?” His grandfather stared toward the fields, gently tapping the side of the can. “We’re always waiting,” he said. “We wait for a baby to be born. Then that baby spends the rest of his life waiting.” “Waiting for what?” Will pleaded. “What’s he waiting for, Granddaddy?” He leaned forward, trying to see his grandfather’s eyes, but the old man never looked away from the fields. “Oh, just waiting for something — or many things,” he finally said. Will squirmed in his chair. “But what things?” His grandfather shook his head. “He don’t likely know, and if he thinks he knows, he’s often fooled.” Will slid his chair closer to the rocker. “How’s he fooled? How’s a person fooled when he’s waiting?” The old man turned toward his grandson. He smiled and placed a gnarled hand on the boy’s smooth arm. “If you spend too much time asking questions, you don’t hear the answers. It’d be good to remember that.” Will began to speak, but stopped and reluctantly nodded. His grandfather patted his arm and looked back at the field. Will followed his gaze and watched the lightning bugs blinking in the yard. He didn’t hear any answers, but he heard the crickets and an owl in a tree. The next night, Marie came out on the porch. She had her dark hair rolled neatly off her neck, and she was wearing her blue dress with the puffy sleeves. As she sat down, Will thought he smelled his mother’s lilac toilet water. He peered at his sister. “Why are you dressed up? You going somewhere?” Marie glanced at him. “I just might be, not that it’s any of your business, mind you.”

“Come on, Marie, where you goin’?” Will looked at his grandfather. “What’s she up to, Granddaddy?” The old man shook his head. “Can’t say I know, but she’s looking mighty pretty.” He smiled, then put a plug of tobacco in his mouth. Marie giggled and glanced toward the road. In a few minutes, Will saw a car turn in by the field. He looked suspiciously at his sister. “Ain’t that Bobby Wheeler’s car? You ain’t cheating on Ben, are you?” Marie glared at him. “Bobby and me are friends, that’s all. He came by this afternoon — all dressed up and real polite — and asked if I’d like to go for a ride, which is exactly what I intend to do. I need to get some fresh air.” She smoothed the back of her hair. “Of course, you’re too young to understand that a man and a woman might be just friends.” Will straightened his shoulders. “I’m thirteen,” he said, “and I already know more than you do.” He scowled at his sister, but she was waving to the boy in the car. As Bobby Wheeler pulled up beside the porch, Marie smiled and ran down the steps. In a few minutes, they were gone, clouds of dust drifting behind them. Will saw his mother at the door. She walked onto the porch, looking grimly toward the road. “I don’t think a thing of that Wheeler boy, no matter how fine his clothes or manners are,” she muttered. “Made up some excuse so he wouldn’t have to fight and could ride around in that car all the time. And his sister up and run off with that salesman and left her poor husband and baby.” She took a deep breath. “Never heard of a meaner, crazier girl.” She sighed and sat down beside Will. “Them Wheelers have always been passionate, hot-headed folks, but Marie’s daddy told her to go on. Said she needed a little fun to get her mind off things.” The old man spit into his can. “Maybe he’s right,” he said. “Don’t worry so, Meggie.” Will looked at his grandfather. He hadn’t heard him call his mother that in a long time, and when he looked back at his mother, she seemed pleased. Her eyes had softened, and she reached over and squeezed Will’s hand. “Well,” she admitted, “Marie’s a grown girl, and I guess she’s old enough to make her own decisions, but … but I’ll be real glad when this war’s over and Ben’s back home.” For a moment, her voice was soft. Then she abruptly shook her head. “I don’t know how you two can stand it on this porch. The bugs are awful.” She stood and went to the door. “Don’t be long now, Will. It’s about bedtime.” “Yes ma’am.” He watched her rub her neck and walk into the house. He leaned toward his grandfather. “What’s Mama mean by calling the Wheelers passionate? Is that something bad?” The old man shook his head. “It’s not bad if it don’t hurt somebody. It just means that a person is real full of love, or sometimes hate.” “Granddaddy, are soldiers passionate? From what you said, it seems they’d have to be.” He glanced at the sky, wondering whether soldiers in Europe saw the same stars. The old man looked at his grandson. Then he mussed Will’s sun-streaked hair. “I reckon some of them are. Now you best be getting to bed.” Will smiled up at his grandfather’s weathered face. “All right. Good night, Granddaddy.” He leaned toward him as though he were going to hug him, but stood and held out his hand. His grandfather put down his tin can and firmly clasped Will’s palm. “Good night, son. Pray for rain.” Will nodded and ran into the house. In his small bed, he prayed for days of cool, pouring rain, but in the morning, the sky was blue, and the sun continued to blaze overhead. As the hot days passed, his father grew more solemn every day. Will would see him walking through the fields, and when he came back in the house, he was silent for a long time. His mother tried to be cheerful, but the corners of her mouth drooped, and her eyes looked puffy and tired. Her dresses were always damp across the back. Marie didn’t even try to act cheerful. She snapped at everybody, and moved sluggishly through the house for most of the day. Then in late afternoon, she would disappear into her room and emerge at supper, freshly dressed and made-

Waiting up, ready for another ride with Bobby Wheeler. Will didn’t remember when she’d written a letter to Ben. Sometimes he thought of writing Ben himself, but he never got around to it. Since the swimming hole was practically dry, he and James Martin hung around in the woods, digging small tunnels until they reached cool ground. And at night he sat on the porch. Lately, though, his father had started sitting with his grandfather, and they talked about the crops and the war. Will liked it better when he and his granddaddy talked by themselves, but there was nothing he could do about it. One night his grandfather called him over and patted his arm. “Why don’t you catch some lightning bugs in that jar you fixed up last summer?” he suggested. “The yard’s sure full of them.” Will nodded glumly. He supposed that his daddy and granddaddy had something private to say, so he wandered into the house and found the jar under the sink. His mother asked him if he wanted to listen to the radio, but he shook his head and went out the back door. He caught about six or seven bugs and took the jar to his room. When he turned off the light to go to sleep, the jar blinked a lot. He watched it for a long time and hoped the bugs would last until morning. Then he’d let them go. He finally closed his eyes and slept, but in the heat, he slept fitfully, and when he unexpectedly woke, it was still night. He rubbed his eyes and looked at his jar. The lights in the jar were growing dimmer. He had to get those bugs outside. They were dying in there. Will slipped out of bed and took the jar to the window. He began to unlatch the screen, but as he pulled at the hook, he saw something white dart from the side of the house. He stood very still and stared into the darkness. Marie was running toward the barn. Her nightgown flared about her knees, and in the moonlight, she seemed to be floating. For a moment, Will hesitated. Then, carefully holding the jar, he lifted the screen and climbed out. He opened the lid and dumped the lightning bugs onto the ground. While most flickered away, he ran across the yard, leaving the jar nestled in the grass. When he got to the barn, he heard whispers that slowly faded into silence. Cautiously, he peered around the door. Marie was kissing Bobby Wheeler. Her gown had slipped off her shoulders, and she was pressed against Bobby’s bare chest, his thick fingers caressing her back. Will shuddered. He felt goose bumps on his neck, but he kept staring into the barn, unable to move. Finally he turned away, but as he started to run, two hands grabbed him and twirled him around. He looked up at the black hair on Bobby Wheeler’s chest. “You spying on us?” Bobby hissed as he grabbed Will’s shoulders. “You little snoop, you goddamned sneak.”

Will tried to pull free, but the strong hands held him tight. Bobby’s fingertips pushed hard into his skin, but suddenly the grip loosened, and he felt the softness of Marie’s nightgown and the tears on her cheeks as she bent to hug him. “Go home, Bobby,” she said. “I have to talk to my brother.” The tall boy swore again and stalked away from the barn, leaving Marie clinging to Will. “Please,” she begged. “Please try to understand. I know I shouldn’t have come here.” Her shoulders began to shake, but Will stood rigidly in her arms. “What about Ben?” he asked. “I thought you were going to marry him.” Marie wiped her eyes. “I don’t know anymore. I might when he gets back, but I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him.” Her voice began to waver. “I’m so lonely, and … and Bobby loves me.” Will pulled away and stared across the yard. His mother had been right. Bobby Wheeler was passionate. He was full of love for Marie. But Marie wasn’t passionate. She wasn’t full of anything except loneliness. He glanced at his sister. Shiny with tears, her face looked like wet glass. “Please don’t tell anybody,” she begged. “Please, Will. Someday you’ll be able to understand.” He nodded slowly. “Please promise me,” she insisted. “Promise.” “I promise,” he said dully. “I promise.” He didn’t want to tell anybody, not even his granddaddy, who understood about passionate people. Marie took his hand, and they walked back to the house. While she crept toward her bedroom, he picked up the jar, crawled in his window, and hooked the screen. Before he slept, he thought about what Mr. Silas had said: Heat did make people crazy. After tonight, he would never doubt it. When Will got up the next morning, Marie’s door was still closed, and his mother said his sister was sick. “Been riding around in that car too much,” she muttered, as she put his breakfast on the table. But Will didn’t say anything. He ate as fast as he could and headed toward the swimming hole. He couldn’t swim there anymore, but it was private and gave a person a chance to think. He walked by James Martin’s house, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t want to talk to anybody.

t the swimming hole, he took off his shirt and kneeled to sprinkle some of what water remained over his chest and back. Then he stretched out on the bank and balled his shirt up under his head. As the sun dried his skin, he closed his eyes and slept. The heat blocked out all his thoughts of the night before. When he woke, James Martin was shaking his arm. “Hey Will, wake up,” he said. “Your mama wants you home.” Will slowly lifted his head. The sun was bright above him, and he knew he’d slept longer than he’d planned. He sat up and moaned. “I told Mama I wouldn’t be long. I must be late for dinner.” He

Waiting looked at his friend. “Was she mad?” James Martin pushed his blond hair from his eyes and shrugged. “She didn’t look mad, but she was bothered about something. Mr. Jackson was standing on the porch with your mama and daddy, and when I walked up, your mama told me where you were and said to get you home quick.” He sat down on the bank. “That’s all I know.” Will grabbed his shirt and stood. “I better see what’s the matter.” He looked at his friend. “If she ain’t mad, I’ll be back after dinner. You gonna be here?” James Martin nodded, and Will ran toward the road. He wondered why Mr. Jackson was there. He didn’t remember that he’d ever come before.

hen he got to the house, he stopped a minute to catch his breath. The porch was empty, but he found his mother in the kitchen rolling out a piecrust. When she saw him, she put down the rolling pin and brushed the flour from her hands. Will saw that she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy. She left the counter and walked to the kitchen table. Wearily rubbing her forehead, she pulled out two chairs and looked over at him. “Will, honey, come here. I need to talk to you.” She sat down and clenched her hands in her lap. Will eased into the chair beside her. He stared at the streak of flour on her brow. James Martin was right. His mama didn’t seem mad, but she was surely troubled. When she spoke, her voice was strained. “It’s about Marie. She’s mighty upset. We’re … we’re all upset.” Will gripped the seat of the chair. He was almost afraid to breathe. His parents must know about Bobby Wheeler and Marie. Mr. Jackson must have told them. Somehow he must have known. Suddenly he remembered Bobby Wheeler’s bare chest and the sweaty hair that had pressed against Marie. He felt a strange sickness in the pit of his stomach. His mother was talking, but she sounded far away. “Mr. Jackson lives near the Whitleys, Ben’s folks, and…” She smeared the flour with the back of her arm. “Will, Ben’s dead. He was shot bad.” Will’s eyes burned. He tried to remember Ben’s face, but he could only see Bobby Wheeler’s. Ben was dead, and Marie had kissed Bobby. He felt too numb to cry, but when his mother pulled him close to her, he could taste the salt on his lips. “We’re gonna have to be brave, honey,” his mother whispered. “It’s hard for everybody, but we’ll have to be brave for Marie.” Will swallowed hard. He sat back and wiped his knuckles over his cheeks. The anger stinging his throat was the only thing he could feel. His mother pointed to some pots on the stove and told him to eat when he felt like it. She said she’d

be too busy making pies for the Whitley family to fuss with anything else. Then she kissed his cheek and walked back to the counter. Will slowly stood and started toward his bedroom. When he passed Marie’s room, he peeked through the cracked door. He could see his sister curled on the bed, her face buried in her pillow. He couldn’t hear her crying, but her whole body was shaking. As he stood there, Marie pushed her pillow aside and glanced toward the door. Her eyes were almost swollen shut, and her white face matched the pillowcase. “Please go away,” she murmured. “Just go away.” She turned her head into the covers. Will lingered in the hallway, staring at Marie. He wanted to tell her he was sorry about Ben, but he figured she knew that. He softly closed the door and went to his room. Part of him wanted to run back to the swimming hole and sit on the bank with James Martin, but the other part wanted to lie on his bed and watch the sun set over the fields. For a minute, he closed his eyes. He began to pray, but when he moved his lips, nothing came out. He sighed. Praying didn’t matter. Nothing he said could change things. He lay quietly on his bed. The afternoon sun made streaks on the wall, but after a while, the streaks were gone, and there was only a soft reflection on the old mirror above his dresser. Beyond the fields, the sky was dark pink. He heard the screen door slam and saw his parents walking to the car. His daddy was wearing a tie, and his mother had on her Sunday dress. She was holding two pies in her hands. As they drove away, Will wandered out to the kitchen. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and his stomach was feeling hollow. He picked up a plate from the table and filled it with chicken and dumplings, but when he started to eat, he didn’t feel hungry anymore. He pushed his plate aside and walked to the window. As he stared out at the dusky sky, he heard the rocker on the porch. It was time to sit with his granddaddy. When he stepped outside, his grandfather motioned to the chair beside him. “Come and sit a spell,” he said. “It’s a little cooler tonight.” Will nodded. The dry breeze felt good on his face. He sat down and looked at his grandfather. “Guess you heard about Ben.” “Sure was sorry to hear it,” he said. “Mighty sorry.” Will pulled his legs up onto the chair. “Marie’s pretty bad off, even though she’s been seeing Bobby Wheeler.” He rested his chin on his knee. “You know, Granddaddy, for a while I didn’t think she liked Ben much anymore.” His grandfather looked toward the fields. “Sometimes loneliness confuses people,” he said. “That’s something to think on.” Will sat very still. “I’ve been thinking about lots of things, Granddaddy. I’ve been thinking Marie’s

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Waiting been waiting for Ben to come home, and now that he’s dead, she’s still waiting.” He shivered slightly and folded his arms around his legs. “Will they send him home in a box like they did Lucas Thorp?” His grandfather picked up the can at his feet. “I reckon so.” Will rubbed his forehead. “It’s like you said, Granddaddy. You said sometimes people don’t know what they’re waiting for, and it’s true. We’ve been waiting for a person, and now we’re waiting for a box.” He looked at his grandfather. “It’s gonna be mighty hard, ain’t it?” His grandfather nodded. “Yes, it’ll be hard, but we’ll do the best we can.” He touched Will’s arm. “Why don’t you go ask Marie if she’ll sit on the porch with me. She needs some fresh air.” Will took a deep breath and went into the house. Marie was still in her room, but after he delivered his grandfather’s message, she left her bed and went outside. When he heard his granddaddy’s low voice, Will turned and walked back to his room. From the window, he saw lightning bugs and the long shadows of the barn. He wondered when the box would come.

ut the box never came. Ben was buried in a soldier cemetery in France, so the Whitley family had a memorial service and put up a stone marker for Ben at the church, even though he wasn’t there. Will’s mother said she thought it was probably best that way, but Will heard his father say he never would’ve done it. No son of his would be buried in foreign dirt. Marie heard him, too, and she cried a lot for the next couple of days. Then the rain came, and when it was over, there wasn’t time for arguing or crying. They had a lot of work to do to get their tobacco flue-cured as soon as they could in August, and as his anxious mother reminded them, August was only a few breaths away. So everyone got up early and worked until dusk, trying to save as much tobacco as possible. The swimming hole had filled up with fresh water, but Will was too busy to go. And most nights, he was too tired to even sit on the porch. He usually ate his supper and went on to bed. A couple of times when he looked out his window, he thought he saw Bobby Wheeler’s car down past the barn, but Marie never went out to see him, least not that he saw. She went on to bed with the rest of them, all except his granddaddy. He still sat on the porch and rocked in the green rocker. Will’s mother kept saying a man his age shouldn’t be sitting outside in the dark; he should be inside. But his granddaddy spit in his tin can, then shook his head. He said on this porch was exactly where he should be. Until fall arrived, he’d be sitting right there waiting for summer to pass. Sara King is a proofreader for PineStraw. She has had two novels published and short stories in Pembroke Magazine

Aisles to Another World A born-again book lover’s re-discovery of our local libraries Photographs and Library Summaries by Cassie Butler

n the ten-plus years since I was last a student, library-cruising fell out of fashion for a while. The practice disappeared from my weekly routine at the point when I was long done with college and graduate assignments. As a student, the search-engine information salvation of these institutions had gotten me through angst-producing papers and group projects. Yet as I grew into a semester-free life, I lost touch with the push for an onsite knowledge fix that only libraries offer every time one passes through their hushed halls. It took joining a women’s book club a year or so ago for me to give libraries fresh relevance in my busy world. As the book club fed my reading habit with secondhand paperbacks bought on the cheap, the very notion of borrowing books, rather than accumulating them, began to appeal. To halt the glut of assigned good and completed reads overtaking my bookshelves, checking out a library book seemed just the cure. Now that I check out my monthly reads at the desk of an echo-y big university library, its floors beg that I stick around for a full meal of microfiche, abstracts, full-text journals, special collections and infinitely more from its digital-meets-analog menu. Over a lunch break while working in Chapel Hill, a book-borrowing trip to UNC’s Davis Library hardly gives one much time to linger with call numbers. Nonetheless, passing students who pore over texts in the same study carrels where I once burrowed reminds me of the moments when college stuck to knowledge. Passing through this very building brings to mind a chilly December afternoon my freshman year when a beau insisted we take the elevator to Davis’ eighth floor a few minutes after 5 p.m., just in time for a pinnacle view of a late afternoon sunset through the library’s windows.

Meanwhile, closer to home, Moore County libraries cry out to taxpayers that small town clearinghouses of information are ubiquitous and convenient. My husband’s routine trips to a handful of the area’s five county-run libraries, one municipal library and a well-resourced community-college private library, let me live the Moore County library experience through his nighttime recaps of what he encountered tracking information amid their stacks. When he vanishes on weekends to Boyd Library at Sandhills Community College, my husband often comes home with a look of accomplishment, derived from an afternoon lost somewhere in SCC’s 88,000 text collection where a sequence of sensory experiences must abound. The austerity of the parlor-styled Wood Reading Room might have settled over him while thumbing its periodicals. Maybe he collected his best thoughts looking out a palladian window, slumped in a plush chair along the library’s far-walled arc. Did the latest on display from SCC’s visual arts students in Hastings Gallery make him take a detour on the way out? Detached from seeking a means to a college paper end, born-again book borrowing and my husband’s local knowledge hunts have made me rediscover the beauty of a library’s stacks and aisles. Maybe I’ll become better acquainted with these homegrown chapels of knowledge, these aisles to another world, if one ever becomes a second home for researching my first historical novel. For now, the simplicity of book-borrowing trips has reintroduced me to that wonderful experience of sensing what these hallowed institutions offer to anyone who walks in looking to refresh the mind, rest the feet and journey through the pages of a good book. PS — Laurie Birdsong

Moore County Public Library The Moore County Public Library in Carthage is the main branch library and the largest of four counterparts. It opened in January 1969. Its full-service public library system has a collection of 80,000 books, audios, videos, periodicals, newspapers and other items. Just a few of the perks include Internet, interlibrary loans, programs for children and adults, and fax and copy equipment. Membership is free to all county residents, with branches in Aberdeen, Pinebluff, Robbins and Vass, and a mobile library. Catie Roche, the newly hired director of the Moore County Public Library System, sits at her desk, where she gets “fired up for reading,” just as her office poster suggests. Roche is enthusiastic about her new position and has all kinds of ideas up her sleeves from Wii gaming programs to stitch-ins. The Moore County Libraries are undergoing a variety of summer reading programs following the theme One World, Many Stories. More information can be found at www.srls.info/summerreading.html.

Given Memorial Library

Vass Area Library

The Vass Area Library nearly blends in with the downtown’s storefronts; only white columns distinguish it from the rest. Computers are open for Internet usage; kids populate the library for a fun, interactive storytime every third Thursday of the month at 10:30 a.m. Once a theater, the Vass Area Library building was donated as a library and veterans memorial by the Keith family of Keith Hardware in Vass and Carthage. The library was — and still is — a community effort. It survives by donations from the community and is maintained by the Friends of Vass Area Library group.

The Given Memorial Library is a classy haven in the Village of Pinehurst. The sun pours into the front reading room welcoming regulars like Dave Sinnott who come to make their dent in the employee-selected jigsaw puzzle, which stays out until completed by passers-by and dedicated puzzle fanatics. Many patrons take advantage of free Wi-Fi, utilizing Given as their home office, while others trade old books with the ongoing paperback book exchange. Most regulars also look forward to the Gathering at Given, which is typically held the first Thursday of each month at 3:30 p.m. and features a wide variety of subjects, culminating with a Q & A session. The library has a collection of more than 14,000 items and is home of the Tufts Archives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and displaying the history of Pinehurst. Tucked in the back of the library, a maze of photographs and artifacts is open free of charge, highlighting the history of Pinehurst’s founder, James Walker Tuft, and his lucrative invention — the Arctic Soda Fountain machine.

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Southern Pines Public Library

In addition to current fiction and nonfiction books, the Southern Pines Public Library has magazines, newspapers, large print materials, audio books, educational videos and CDs. Adult programs of interest are offered to the community periodically, as well as youth programs, such as the pictured Glee party for the student advisory board. All programs are free and open to the public. Residency is required to receive a free library card; a fee is charged to nonresidents.

Robbins Library

The need for a library in the Robbins area was so great that the community members spearheaded its creation and it was finally built in 1994 with the help of Mayor Theron Bell. Its manicured grass out front is a playground for children of all ages, and its sunlit nooks inside give the library an inviting atmosphere. Its high ceilings, arches and windows give the library a crisp, clean look. Storytime is well-attended every Thursday at 10 a.m.

Aberdeen

The Page Memorial Library is the second oldest library in North Carolina and is the smallest of the Moore County branch libraries. The historic landmark, still with its original windows, is around 900 square feet, and has everything a full-service public library offers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; four computers with Internet, copy machine, color printer, fax services, books on CD and tape, DVDs and fiction and nonfiction books for readers of all ages.

Pinebluff Library

The Pinebluff Area Library didn’t start off as a library. The building was built in 1901 as a one-room schoolhouse until 1933, when it was used as the Town Hall. In 1956, a new wing was built for a library, until 1994, when the Town Hall moved to another location. Melissa Schrum recalls some of her fondest and earliest memories were of going to the Pinebluff library with her mother when she was five. “I loved checking out fairytales. Alice and Wonderland was my favorite.” Now Pinebluff Area Library’s branch manager and librarian, Schrum helps today’s youth pick out their favorite books nearly 40 years later. “I just love this place. It’s so quaint and homey.” Once the Town Hall moved out of the building, the library’s space increased from 880 to 1,860 square feet. The library survived a fire in 1970, was rebuilt with a few changes and its collection restored through donations. Today the library has three computers and a collection of more than 11,000 items.

Bookmobile

This library has wheels and it’s coming your way! The Bookmobile follows an established schedule Monday through Thursday, going anywhere between Aberdeen to Robbins and Eagle Springs to Cameron. Scheduled stops are visited every two weeks at daycares and schools, nursing homes and retirement communities, shopping centers and neighborhoods. Children and adults of all ages look forward to the Bookmobile, like Iris Strother, who says, “This is our social life!” The Bookmobile has a wide selection of books including best sellers, large print, juvenile to adult books, books on tape and CD, and patrons can reserve and request books from the main library. Find out when and where the nearest stop is to you at www.srls.info/moore/moorebookmobile.html

Katharine L . Boyd Library

Though Boyd Libraryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primary mission is to be an academic library for Sandhills Community College, it is also a public library, and residents of Moore and Hoke counties can obtain a patron card free of charge. Boyd Library is unlike the other libraries in Moore County. It is expansive, with 23,000 square feet to hold its collection of more than 88,000 volumes and periodical holdings as well as over 1,000 videotapes and DVDs. Students, faculty and staff can request books unavailable at Boyd Library through its InterLibrary Loan, an online catalog that gives access to the holdings of 46 other North Carolina community college libraries amounting to more than a million learning resources. Located at the front of the library, the Teresa C. Wood Reading Room is a welcoming environment with its wooden bookshelves, Oriental rugs and comfy couches. To the front right, Hastings Gallery is located with a variety of student art on display. The young college atmosphere is refreshing, but remember, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just students who have the ability to enjoy the library and take advantage of what it has to offer! PS

S tor y of a h o u se

Life’s OK at the Corral

Creative parts make a comfortable whole for Southern Pines designer

By Deborah Salomon Photographs By John Gessner

ak trees outnumber longleaf pines. Grass, not pinestraw, covers the lawn. The house, long-ago named The Corral, has a somewhat un-southern feel — comfy, filled with conversation pieces, but lacking the studied perfection achieved by an interior designer. Yet one lives here. In fact, Mary Gozzi has been part of The Corral since the 1970s, when the home belonged to her business partner Kitty Ostrom. “My office was here,” Mary says, pointing to what is now the laundry room. “I knew it was a happy house even then.” Happy, beautiful, but far from conventional. Over the years, additions created a haphazard floor plan with a formal living room, less-formal family sitting room and study/office along one side of an off-center hall lit by unlikely skylights. The master suite lies immediately to the left of the front door. The kitchen occupies two rooms (sink and range in one, refrigerator and wall ovens in the other). Three upstairs bedrooms are seldom used — not so an enormous screened porch facing a pool built in 1939, when the headmistress of a girls’ school lived here, and allowed the students to swim. The setting, too, is atypical. A dirt road, longhorns grazing in a neighboring pasture, the foliage and cottage design evoke New England. The Corral, tucked between Weymouth Heights and horse country, adjoins land chosen by tobacco tycoon R.J. (Josh) Reynolds III for his country home. The modest residence was built in 1905 by the Maples family, noted for banking and golf course design. Subsequently, the five-room cottage with stables, garage and 20 acres became a Boston newspaperman’s hunting retreat. When Kitty Ostrom came home to Southern Pines in 1948, she asked her driver if he knew any nice houses for sale. He brought her to the white clapboard Corral, which she bought on the spot. Soon, she extended the living room, added a porch and reassigned space for living and conducting her design business. “Kitty was a mother-like figure,” Mary says. “I have an emotional attachment to this place.”

Above: A New England cottage with enlarged lily pond, grassy lawn and deciduous trees fit well into horse country landscape. Below: Outisde comes into the screened garden room, furnished in refreshing stark white antique wicker and cool blue fabric.

ary Gozzi grew up in Delaware in a white New England clapboard, attended college in Massachusetts, where she majored in retailing, worked at Lord & Taylor, and lived in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. She has always shared her fresh ideas and good taste with friends. “I just morphed into interior design,” she says. Bill Gozzi, a retired turkey producer, is also from Connecticut. The young family came to Southern Pines in the 1960s when, Mary recalls, the town had one grocery store and no real restaurant. They built a traditional ranch at Southern Pines Country Club, where they lived until 1988, when Kitty offered to sell them her home/office. Bill loved the land. Mary felt the tug. “When Kitty died the light went out. Once we starting tearing things apart the house became ours,” Mary recalls. For ten months Mary, with an architect’s assistance, worked at reshaping the space, replacing all the windows (many elongated to add light limited by shade trees), installing air conditioning, a new and larger kitchen, those surprising skylights, and built-in cabinets to display her collections. They raised the porch ceiling to accommodate fans and exterminated the termites. The stable became Bill’s office; an apartment above the garage served as guest quarters. The charm remained intact. “I wanted to keep the farm-like look,” Mary says. Nothing prissy, everything touchable. “My house has to be comfortable. We have dogs. Our children have dogs.” Bruno, a laid-back chow mix, enters and leaves by a torn screen panel on the back porch. Farm-like describes wide pine paneling covering hallway walls, which Mary whitewashed; similar boards traverse the unusually high family-room ceiling. These she painted moss green,

Upper left: Peek-through tiles from the wall around a Chinese house decorate painted paneling. Right: Mary Gozzi’s not-so-formal living room features a bureau (her signature piece), mini chairs and stools at the fireplace and deliciously upholstered pieces, all brightened by skylights.

Above: Painted pine panels on the ceiling, a cut-down antique library table, low chair and bureau suit the informal family parlor. Lower left: Antique plates â&#x20AC;&#x201D; mostly blue and white â&#x20AC;&#x201D; greet guests in the entranceway.

Drinks, anyone? The Gozzis added a wet bar in to the den.

a color repeated in life-sized lily pads on a bold upholstery fabric. Comfortable means an 18th century European fruitwood sideboard facing a marble-topped pastry table, something Mary had always wanted, something she asked for in every antique shop. Finally, in Wilson, North Carolina, the answer was yes. This bakery fixture (marble keeps pastry dough cold) shares the dining room with chairs from Mary’s grandmother and still-life paintings of onions and pears, one by Sandhills artist David Hewson. “I collect antiques but don’t want museum-quality — nothing stiff or stilted,” Mary says. Her favorite (and most useful) may be the wide breakfast-room table of worn pine. This, she explains with pride, was a school desk found in western North Carolina, with a drawer for each child. Burn marks on the corner suggest the table was damaged in a fire. This table, placed under a window, is so inviting that the Gozzis often serve guests here rather than in the dining room.

ontrast sparks Mary’s choices. The living room, with cathedral ceiling and more skylights, shouts 1960s, when it was added as a sunroom — not a likely backdrop for traditional furnishings and a delicate white-on-white trellis pattern rug. Mary replaced sliding glass doors with paned French windows overlooking the lily pond stocked with tiny goldfish after herons feasted on larger specimens. A Parsons coffee table fashioned from reclaimed wood and a “Madison Ave. milking stool” beside the fireplace tone down the formality. Child-sized chairs and stools of many designs, for grandchildren and decoration, occupy corners throughout the house. Mary was not above cutting down her great-grandmother’s library table — a practice frowned on by antiquarians — for a coffee table. A jumble of art, framed gold leaf to sleek minimalist, draws attention up, then down. Paintings hang near the ceiling, at eye level, even over doorways. Many have a personal connecPineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

tion: Mary’s son posed for a series of heads by Southern Pines classicist Jeffrey Mims. A snowscape evokes New England winters, while sketches of Ben Owens’ pottery by Stephen Knight convey her appreciation for the craft. A framed autograph from Sen. Sam Ervin recalls a fascination with Watergate. A mysterious unsigned painting which Mary calls The Red Shoes belonged to Katherine Boyd. And what’s the story behind thick turquoise tiles mounted in the hallway over a tansu chest? “Chinese people are curious,” Mary explains. These open work tiles were cemented into the walls fronting a house so occupants could view the street. Mary purchased them in a rough state; she removed ancient, foul-smelling cement surrounding them herself. Almost every room contains a chest, bureau or armoire. Mary adores drawers. Case pieces, she notes, are practical in a house built before walk-in closets. Likewise, her two-part kitchen, done in cream and browns, is a feast of cabinets and pantries. For all the interwoven styles and objects within this house, Mary seems most comfortable on the screened porch — her creation and by far the largest room, often used for entertaining or nodding off on a Sunday afternoon: Wedgwood blue cushions on her grandmother’s chalk white wicker. Blue and white pottery “smalls.” A magnificent live oak climbing tree filled with chirping birds just beyond. Peaceful. Elegant. Bucolic. “I love coming home from shopping or from our house in Blowing Rock,” Mary says. “When I drive into our driveway I just melt down. I’m an esthetic person; this house pleases me. No anxiety, my husband is here — there’s no place I’d rather be.” PS

Above: Mary Gozzi used her grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dining room chairs and a long-sought pastry table (against the window) along with 18th century antiques in the formal dining room. Lower right: Guests gravitate to a school table, with eight drawers, in the kitchen.

L abor ofLove Step by step, a backyard paradise takes shape By Noah Salt Photographs By Glenn Dickerson

“O

ne would have to say this garden is a true labor of love,” says Scarlett Allison. “And like most things you love, it didn’t just happen overnight.” From where Scarlett stands on a wooden deck overlooking an almost Babylonian series of spectacular tiered gardens and wooden decks and walkways that meander naturally down the sloping terrain behind the home dentist Craig Allison and wife Scarlett built in 1978 to the edge of Lake Watson, the force of that love seems very apparent. The summer blooming season lies in full force. Strategic beds of day lilies and earthen pots of knockout roses and Japanese maples direct a visitor down the network of wood walkways to arching butterfly bushes and a reflecting pool where koy fish laze through the water, then along a rock-girded tumbling stream bordered by mature plantings of rhododendron, wax myrtles, Indica azaleas, hydrangeas, various native grasses and indigenous ferns. Along the way, mature Loropetalum — commonly known as Chinese Witch Hazel — produce gorgeous white blooms and burgundytinged foliage. The effect on this warm summer morning, minutes before the garden is opened to visitors for the annual Southern Pines Garden Tour, is one of an invitingly cool space and a carefully crafted Eden meant to showcase beautiful plant specimens with every step, ultimately arriving at an inviting saltwater pool and majestic cabana structure that almost seems to mirror the lake shore beyond. What an inviting paradise it seems.

“When Craig left the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and came here to open a practice in the late 1970s,” Scarlett explains, “the thing we loved most about this property was the way the land sloped gently toward the lake. Our driveway (off Lake Dornoch Road) was the remains of an old logging road and the trees here were and are some of the largest and oldest in the CCNC property. That was a real attraction to us. Unfortunately, with toddlers and a new practice to get up and going, we really didn’t do much with this backyard area for nearly twenty years. But then we made up for lost time.” In the late 1990s, about the time Scarlett began work on her own doctorate in speech and language therapy, prelude to her job of many years directing the program for exceptional children for Montgomery County Schools, hubby Craig began sketching decks and walkways at night, laying out the beginning framework of a fairly modest hillside garden that ultimately began to emerge in stages when Southern Pines landscape designer Joel Kennedy, who did the initial design work on the front and sides of the residence, returned to begin phased work on the terraced rock garden out back. Craig and Scarlett did much of the detailed planting work themselves in the areas along the walkways and around the pool, adding “Miss Huff” lantana and other perennials of interest. “Essentially it all developed piece by piece, one phase at a time. We envisioned it as we went along. In retrospect that was a good thing,” Scarlett explains, “because it enabled us to really think through both the function and the look of the garden we wanted. With children and family and our enjoyment of entertaining, it really was important to

make this space as functional as it was inviting. That’s why I say it really was a labor of love that really took years to create.” A key element of the garden’s cloistered charm involves the artful use of bordering Leyland cypresses, magnolias and white crape myrtles to give the garden a welcoming sheltered effect, particularly useful on a hot summer afternoon. Several dogwoods that were original to the property remain, giving the outer fringes of the garden a natural look that feels perfectly compatible with the surrounding Sandhills woodland. Ironically, with both children grown, Craig and Scarlett are planning to downsize sometime in the not-too-distant future. “We simply don’t need all the space we currently have and have picked out another site in CCNC for a smaller house,” she says, standing near the base of the garden and inviting her morning’s first visitor to turn and take in the garden from its lowest perspective. The view back up the slope confirms the initial impression of a tiered Babylonian garden leading one’s eye from lakeside to sky. “Note the pine trees from down here,” she adds. “They tower so far above everything — they are, in fact, some of the oldest pines to be found inside CCNC. That’s going to be the hard part for me in saying goodbye to this garden. We worked so hard to get it just the way we wanted it, and now it’s on to something smaller.” She gives a small laugh as a hummingbird whizzes past, headed toward the lusciously blooming butterfly shrubs and the first of the day’s garden tourists begin to arrive up the hill, pausing to admire the view. “I’m sure,” she adds, “that one will be a labor of love, too.” PS

HomeStyles

July Sunday

Monday

WINGED GEMS: Butterfly Hike. 3 p.m. A half-mile hike focused on identifying butterflies using binoculars. Bring binoculars, field guides and bug spray. Visitor Center Auditorium, Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve. Information: (910) 692-2167.

10.

11.

THE ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT SERIES. 6:45 p.m. Joe Craven and the Harris Brothers at Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight Street, Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

17.

ROOSTERS WIFE CONCERT SERIES. 6:45 p.m. Poplar Knight Spot, Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-7502. NOVEL DESTINATIONS: 3 p.m. Southern Pines Public Library. Information: (910) 692-8235 .

24.

SUMMER READING PROGRAM. Southern Pines Public Library. Information: (910) 692-8235. THE ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT SERIES. 6:45 p.m. Ed Snodderly and the Hot Seats at Poplar Knight Spot.Information: (910) 944-7502.

31.

NOVEL DESTINATIONS: 2:30 p.m. Southern Pines Public Library. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. THE ROOSTER’S WIFE. 6:45 p.m. Solas at Poplar Knight Spot. Information: (910) 944-7502.

CARTHAGE JULY 4th PARADE. 11 a.m. Downtown Carthage. Information: (910) 947-2331.

Friday

FIRST FRIDAY. 5 - 8:30 p.m. Information: www.firstfridaysouthernpines.com.

PineStraw MAGAZINE

Tuesday

ANNUAL ABERDEEN JULY 4th CELEBRATION. 5:30 p.m. Aberdeen Lake Park. Information: (910) 944-PARK.

12.

Wednesday

Thursday

ART CLASS. 1 - 4 p.m. Painting Realistic Animals with Yvonne Sovereign. Study animal attitude, expression and anatomy in order to paint SENIOR EVENT: realistic animals, wildlife or Beatrix Potter’s Birthday. domestic. Artists League of Douglas Community Center. the Sandhills.Information: Information: (910) 692-7376. (910) 944-3979. SUMMER READING PROGRAM. “In Our Backyard.” Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

UNCORKED: Wine Tasting. 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Elliott’s on Linden. Information: (910) 215-0775. SCHOOL HOUSE ROCK LIVE JR. 6 p.m. R.E. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines. Tickets and Information: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org.

HISTORIC WALKING TOUR & TEA. Cost: $25. Spaces limited. Information and reservations: (910) 235-8415. UNTAPPED: Beer Tasting. 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Elliott’s on Linden. Information: (910) 215-0775. JAZZY FRIDAYS. 7 - 10 p.m. Live jazz music and hors d’oeuvres, rain or shine. Admission: $10. Cypress Bend Vineyards & Winery, Riverton Road, Wagram. Information: (910) 369-0411.

ART CLASS. 1 - 4 p.m. Watercolor on Rice Paper with Ann Campbell. Class designed to introduce a creative and enjoyable approach to the watercolor medium. PHOTOCLUB MEETING. 7 - 9 p.m. Artists League of the Information: www.sandhill- Sandhills. Information: sphotoclub.org. (910) 944-3979.

13.

14.

15.

SUMMER READING PROGRAM. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

TENNIS TOURNAMENT: Pinehurst Junior Classic. Information: Harper Phillip at (910) 295-2817.

SEAGROVE CHRISTMAS IN JULY. Information: Museum of NC Traditional Pottery at (336) 873-7887 or www.seagrovepotteryheritage.com.

18.

20.

21.

CHILDREN’S STORY TIME. 1:30 p.m. Given Memorial Library. Information: (910) 295-6022.

SUMMER READING PROGRAM. 10:30 a.m. Vass Area Library. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

27.

28.

AUTHOR EVENT. John Milliken Thompson, “The Reservoir.” Information: (910) 692-3211 or www. thecountrybookshop.biz.

PINEHURST SUMMER POPS SERIES: “Chopin in Paris.” 7 p.m. Tickets: $20. Owens Auditorium, Sandhills Community College. Tickets and Information: (910) 687-4746 or www. carolinaphil.org.

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19.

GOLF TOURNAMENT: 109th North & South Women’s Amateur Championship. For information on format or sign up, call the Pinehurst Tournament Office at (800)795-4653, ext. 3, or (910) 235-8140.

26.

PENICK VILLAGE LECTURE SERIES: DOWNSIZING. 2 - 4 p.m. Ellen Perkinson of The Village Design Group will share tips and resources to make your next move as easy and smooth as possible. Information: (910) 692-0386 or www.penickvillage.org.

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 - 4 p.m. Southern Pines Public Library. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

SUMMER READING CLUB: Band of Bookies. 11 a.m. Southern Pines Public Library. Information: (910) 692-8235

ART CLASS. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Artists League of the Sandhills. Information: (910) 944-3979. CHILDREN’S STORY TIME. 1:30 p.m. Given Memorial Library. Information: (910) 295-6022.

OLDIES & GOODIES FILM SERIES. 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. Southern Pines Public Library. Information: (910) 692-8235.

SUMMER READING CLUB: Reader Rabbits. 11 a.m. Southern Pines Public Library. Information: (910) 692-8235.

SUMMER READING PROGRAM. 10:30 a.m. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

CLASSIC CAR & TRUCK CRUISEIN. 5 - 8 p.m. Featuring door prizes, 50/50 drawing and music. In the case of inclement weather, event will be cancelled. Ledo Pizza. Information: (910) 639-1494.

22.

JAZZY FRIDAYS. 7 - 10 p.m. Live jazz music and hors d’oeuvres, rain or shine. Admission: $10. Cypress Bend Vineyards & Winery, Riverton Road, Wagram. Information: (910) 369-0411.

29.

GOLF TOURNAMENT: 14th Carolinas Parent-Child Championship. Longleaf Country Club. Information: (910) 673-1000 or www.carolinasgolf.org. GOLF TOURNAMENT: 45th Carolinas Father-Son Championship. Pinehurst area courses. Information: (910) 673-1000 or www.carolinasgolf.org.

U.S. KIDS GOLF. Teen PINEHURST SUMMER POPS SERIES. 7 p.m. World Championship Robert E. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, & Teen World Cup. Information: (800) 487-4653. Pinehurst. Tickets and information: (910) 687-4746.

July

Saturday

MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Mary Frey at Hollyhocks Art Gallery. Information: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com. FOOD DEMONSTRATION. 12 & 2 p.m. BBQ Sauce, Marinades & Rubs. Elliott’s on Linden. Information: (910) 215-0775. WESTERN DRAMA: Meek’s Cutoff. 2:30 p.m. (Sat & Sun); 7:30 p.m. (Sat- Mon). Dano. The Sunrise Theater.Information: (910) 692-8501.

Arts & Entertainment Calendar

July 1 FIRST FRIDAY. 5 - 8:30 p.m. A family friendly community event featuring food, beverages, entertainment and live music from Anders Osborne. Free admission. The grassy knoll adjacent to the Sunrise Theater, Broad Street, Southern Pines. Information: www. firstfridaysouthernpines.com.

UNCORKED: Wine Tasting. 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Featuring Zinfandel; paired with tapas-style bites from Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775.

FREE WINE TASTING. Foothills Hoppyum. Elliott’s on Linden. Information: (910) 215-0775.

SCHOOL HOUSE ROCK LIVE JR. 6 p.m. Presented by the Arts Council of Moore County and ConnectNC.com; Directed by Judy Osborne and Adam Faw; Performed by campers in the 2011 Summer Theater Camp at the R.E. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines. Tickets and Information: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org.

SOMETHING MOORE: A Treasure Chest Sale. 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. Campbell House Galleries. Donation and general information: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org.

MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Diane Kraudelt at Hollyhocks Art Gallery. Information: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

16.

NC PEACH FESTIVAL. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Fitzgerald Park on Railroad Street, Candor. Information: Town of Candor at (910) 974-4221 or email townofcandor@earthlink.net.

July 1-4 RALLY AT THE ROCK. Motorbikes, muscle cars and fireworks on the track for the first annual East Coast Biker Rally. Rockingham Dragway, 2153 US Hwy 1 North, Rockingham, NC. Information: www.eastcoastbikerrally.com.

AUTHOR EVENT. 2 p.m. Sheri Castle, “The New Southern Garden Cookbook: Enjoying the Best from Homegrown Gardens, Farmers’ Markets, Roadside Stands, and CSA Farm Boxes.” The Country Bookshop. Information: (910) 692-3211.

July 1 - 5

23.

July 2

FREE WINE TASTING. Lodi Zinfandel. Elliott’s on Linden. Information: (910) 215-0775.

MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Mary Frey at Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 2550665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

ART CLASS. 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Fiber Collage: Adding Depth and Texture with Textiles and Fibers with Nanette Zeller. Artists League of the Sandhills. Information: (910) 944-3979.

FOOD DEMONSTRATION. 12 & 2 p.m. Summer BBQ Side Dishes. Elliott’s on Linden. Information: (910) 215-0775.

30.

ONE-DAY TOURNAMENT. Southern Pines Golf Club. Information: (910) 673-1000 or www.carolinasgolf.org. FREE WINE TASTING. Pinot Gris. Elliott’s on Linden. Information: (910) 215-0775. MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Jean Frost at Hollyhocks Art Gallery. Information: (910) 2550665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

ART EXHIBIT & SALE. 12 - 3 p.m. Artists League of the Sandhills presents Absolutely Art Judged Exhibit & Sale at 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-3979 or www.artistleague.org. FREE WINE TASTING. The Perfect Picnic Wine. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775.

FOOD DEMONSTRATION. 12 & 2 p.m. BBQ Sauce, Marinades & Rubs. Easy, healthy ways to ensure flavorful juicy results without adding excess fat or calories. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775.

July 2 - 4 WESTERN DRAMA: Meek’s Cutoff. 2:30 p.m. (Saturday & Sunday); 7:30 p.m. (Saturday through Monday). A film starring Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood and Paul Dano. The Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad Street, Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-8501.

July 3 WINGED GEMS: Butterfly Hike. 3 p.m. A half-mile hike focused on identifying butterflies using binoculars. Nearly 98 species of butterflies may be found in the Sandhills. Bring binoculars, field guides and bug spray. Visitor Center Auditorium, Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve. Information: (910) 692-2167.

July 4 CARTHAGE JULY 4th PARADE. 11 a.m. Traditional parade with floats, cars, color guard, music and food. Free for spectators. Monroe Street, Downtown Carthage. Information: (910) 947-2331. ANNUAL ABERDEEN JULY 4th CELEBRATION. 5:30 p.m. This 46th annual celebration will offer entertainment for people of all ages. Activities and games begin at 5:30 p.m.; live music by The Entertainers starts at 6 p.m. Fireworks begin at 9:15 p.m. Free admission. Wrist bands: $3 (allow to participate in games and activities, win prizes, and have their face painted). Aberdeen Lake Park. Information (910) 944-PARK. MOORE COUNTY CONCERT BAND. 3 p.m. Free. The Cardinal Ballroom, Carolina Hotel at Pinehurst Resort. Information: (910) 295-9023 or www.moorecountyband.com. Key: Art

Music/Concerts

Dance/Theater

Film

PINEHURST 4th OF JULY CELEBRATION. 5 p.m. Fun and games for all ages, featuring pony rides and Sparky and friends. Bring lawn chairs or a blanket and enjoy The Vision Band at 6 p.m. Fireworks begin at 9:15 p.m. Food and beverages available by local caterers, or bring a picnic. The Fair Barn, Pinehurst Harness Track, Route 5, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 295-2817. FIREWORKS EXTRAVAGANZA AT TWEETSIE RAILROAD. North Carolina’s first theme park and American icon will light up the Blue Ridge Mountains. Located on U.S. Highway 321 between Boone and Blowing Rock, NC. Information: Tweetsie.com or call (877) 893-3874.

July 6 CHIDREN’S STORY TIME. 1:30 p.m. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 295-6022. SUMMER READING PROGRAM. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, “One World, Many Stories,” held in Carthage and Robbins Area Libraries. Today’s theme, “In Our Backyard,” features Kim with the Sandhills Nature Preserve. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335. SENIOR EVENT: Beatrix Potter’s Birthday. Read The Tales of Peter Rabbit and make “Bunny Pizza” in celebration of the creator of Peter Rabbit. Cost: $4(residents); $8(non-residents). Douglas Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-7376.

July 6 - 7 ART CLASS. 1 - 4 p.m. Painting Realistic Animals with Yvonne Sovereign. Study animal attitude, expression and anatomy in order to paint realistic animals, wildlife or domestic. Class is open to all levels. Cost: $40 members/$50 nonmembers. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Information: (910) 9443979 or www.artistleague.org.

July 7 SUMMER READING PROGRAM. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, “One World, Many Stories,” held in the Vass Area Library. Today’s theme, “In Our Backyard,” features Kim with the Sandhills Nature Preserve. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

July 8 HISTORIC WALKING TOUR & TEA. Discover the stories of Pinehurst’s history and enjoy the traditions of classic high tea at the Pinehurst Resort, one of America’s Historic Landmarks. Cost: $25. Spaces limited. Information and reservations: (910) 235-8415. UNTAPPED: Beer Tasting. 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Featuring East Coast IPA’s versus West Coast IPA’s; paired with tapas from Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775. JAZZY FRIDAYS. 7 - 10 p.m. Live jazz music and hors d’oeuvres, rain or shine. Admission: $10. Cypress Bend Vineyards & Winery, Riverton Road, Wagram. Information: (910) 369-0411.

July 9 SOMETHING MOORE: A Treasure Chest Sale. 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. Antiques, art, pottery, china, silver and more. Sale benefits the Arts Council of Moore County. Campbell House Galleries, Southern Pines. Donation and general information: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org. FREE WINE TASTING. Foothills Hoppyum, brewed in Winston Salem. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775. MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Diane Kraudelt at Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 255 0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com. FOOD DEMONSTRATION. 12 & 2 p.m. Butchering for the BBQ. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775.

Literature/Speakers

Fun

History

Sports

ca l e n da r

July 10 THE ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT SERIES. 6:45 p.m. Joe Craven and the Harris Brothers at Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight Street, Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org. TURTLE TALK. 3 p.m. Learn to recognize different species of turtles and celebrate our shelled critters of the Sandhills. Program is fit for all ages. Weymouth Woods Auditorium, 1024 Ft. Bragg Rd., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-2167.

July 11 SCC JAZZ BAND OUTDOOR CONCERT. 6:30pm. Bring lawn chairs and picnics. BBQ by Jordon’s for $7/plate starting at 5 p.m. In the event of rain concert moves to Owens Auditorium. Free. Sandhills Community College, Airport Rd., Pinehurst. Information: (910) 695-3829. AUTHOR EVENT. John Milliken Thompson presents his mystery, “The Reservoir,” set in 1885 Virginia and based on a true story, of the investigation into the suspicious death of a young pregnant woman and the eccentric group of men who collaborate to solve the crime. The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-3211 or www.thecountrybookshop.biz. PHOTOCLUB MEETING. 7 - 9 p.m. The Sandhills Photography Club welcomes Linda Piechota, a founding member of the club, to speak on “Seeing Artistically.” New members welcome. Christ Fellowship Church, Midland & Pee Dee Roads, Southern Pines. Information: www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

July 11 - 12 ART CLASS. 1 - 4 p.m. Watercolor on Rice Paper with Ann Campbell. Class designed to introduce a creative and enjoyable approach to the watercolor medium. Different techniques in the use of the paper and materials will be demonstrated. Cost: $40 members/$50 nonmembers. Artists League of the

Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Information: (910) 9443979 or www.artistleague.org.

July 11 - 14 GOLF TOURNAMENT: 33rd North & South Junior Championship. Played on Pinehurst No. 2, 5 and 8. Information on format and sign up: Pinehurst Tournament Office at (910) 235-8140.

July 12 PENICK VILLAGE LECTURE SERIES: What’s The Buzz About Yoga? 2 - 4 p.m. Dawn Harris, who holds a masters degree in occupational therapy, answers questions about the emerging Yoga trend. Information and RSVP: (910) 692-0386, (910) 692-0382 or www.penickvillage.org.

July 13 SENIOR ACTIVITY: Tanger Outlets Fieldtrip. Travel to Mebane, NC to visit the newly opened Tanger Outlets, featuring over 65 stores. Enjoy lunch on-site at one of the local restaurants. Cost (includes transportation): $13 (residents); $26 (non-residents). Information: Douglas Community Center at (910) 692-7376. CHILDREN’S STORY TIME. 1:30 p.m. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 295-6022. PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 - 4 p.m. For infants and toddlers (ages birth through 5 years). Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. SUMMER READING PROGRAM. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, “One World, Many Stories,” held in Carthage and Robbins Area Libraries. Today’s theme is “The Stories We Tell.” Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

SUMMER READING PROGRAM. “One World, Many Stories,” for preschoolers. Information: Southern Pines Public Library at (910) 692-8235.

July 14 OLDIES & GOODIES FILM SERIES. 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. Presenting a musical fantasy from 1954 starring Gene Kelly, Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse. Free refreshments provided. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. SUMMER READING PROGRAM EVENT: Action Animals USA. Meet amazing and talented animals from around the world, including a monkey, serval cat, cockatoo, macaw, chicken, chincilla and bintarong. Free event part of the “One World, Many Stories” summer reading program. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. SUMMER READING PROGRAM. 10:30 a.m. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, “One World, Many Stories,” held in the Vass Area Library. Today’s theme is “Africa to America: the Roots of Music We Have Today.” Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

July 14 - 17 TENNIS TOURNAMENT: Pinehurst Junior Classic. Free for spectators. Sandhills Tennis Association. Information: Harper Phillip at (910) 295-2817.

July 15 CLASSIC CAR & TRUCK CRUISE-IN. 5 - 8 p.m. Featuring door prizes, 50/50 drawing and music. In the case of inclement weather, event will be cancelled. Ledo Pizza, 1480 US Hwy 1 South, Southern Pines. Information: (910) 639-1494.

July 15-17 SEAGROVE CHRISTMAS IN JULY. Participating Moore County and Seagrove area potters kick off the holiday season early by debuting their 2011 Christmas items and decorating their shops for Christmas. Information: Museum of NC Traditional Pottery at (336) 873-7887 or www.seagrovepotteryheritage.com.

July 16 FLORAL PAINTING CLASS. 9 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Create a beautiful pen and watercolor picture on Ginwashi paper to take home. Class presented by the Sandhills Horticulture Gardens; conducted by Donna Whitman. No painting experience necessary. Admission: $45 horticultural society members/$50 nonmembers. Steed Hall, Sandhills Community College. Information and registration: Tricia Mabe at (910) 695-3882 or www.sandhillshorticulturalgardens.com. NC PEACH FESTIVAL. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. A celebration of the peach-growing heritage prevalent in the town of Candor. Parade begins at 10 a.m. Bring lawn chairs and enjoy live entertainment, vendors, games and rides for the kids, food galore and all the yummy peaches you can carry home. Fitzgerald Park on Railroad Street, Candor. Information: Town of Candor at (910) 974-4221 or email townofcandor@earthlink.net. ART CLASS. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Mud, Cauliflowers and Edging with Emma Skurnick. Learn how to control your watercolors using both wet-in-wet and dry brush techniques. Suitable for all levels. Cost: $35 members/$45 nonmembers. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-3979 or www.artistleague.org. FREE WINE TASTING. Every Day Italian. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775. MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Carolyn Rotter at Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com. FOOD DEMONSTRATION. 12 & 2 p.m. BBQ Across the Country. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775. Key: Art Music/Concerts Dance/Theater Literature/Speakers Fun History Sports

96 July 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Film

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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New Expanded Menu!

Table on the Green Now pairing American Cuisine with the exotic tastes of Thailand

910-295-3240, 295-4118 Midland Country Club, Midland Road PUBLIC WELCOME www.tableonthegreen.com

Live Music & Entertainment Please call for info

Sunday Brunch Menu 10-2pm Lunch 11:30 - 2:30 Tues. - Sat. Dinner 5 - 9 Tues. - Sat. Closed Monday Reservations Suggested | Banquet Room Available Elegant Dining with Family Friendly Atmosphere

Locally Grown and Operated 910.246.3510 140 E. New Hampshire Avenue Downtown Southern Pines Serving Dinner Tuesday-Sunday

www.ashtens.com

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ca l e n da r AUTHOR EVENT. 2 p.m. Food writer and cooking teacher Sheri Castle will celebrate the pleasures of fresh, local, seasonal food when she discusses her book, “The New Southern Garden Cookbook: Enjoying the Best from Homegrown Gardens, Farmers’ Markets, Roadside Stands, and CSA Farm Boxes. The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-3211. SUNRISE BLUES CONCERT & CRAWL. 7:30 p.m. (concert); 9 p.m. (crawl) 10th Annual event showcases Southern Pines venues that have the Blues. Eight venues, eight bands, beginning with Headliner Zac Harmon at the Sunrise Theatre, and continuing on to intimate bars and clubs downtown. Fat Bastard Blues Band (O’Donnell’s Pub), E-Train & the Rusted Rails (Corfu), Gene Gene & the Blues Machine (Rhett’s), Danny Cowan Band (The Wine Cellar - 7 to 11p.m.), Rush Street (The Bell Tree), Joe Frye (Swank - 12 to 6 p.m.), Lockdown (Eye Candy Gallery), Crossover Blues (The Jefferson Inn). Tickets: Zac Harmon Concert - $25/Pub Crawl Wristband - $20/Combo ticket for Zac Harmon & Pub Crawl - $40. Sunrise Theatre, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

July 17 ROOSTERS WIFE CONCERT SERIES. 6:45 p.m. Angela Easterling and the Carter Brothers at Poplar Knight Spot, Aberdeen. Tickets and Information: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

NOVEL DESTINATIONS: Book discussion. 3 p.m. Chocolate-tasting and discussion of the novel Chocolat. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. GEOLOGY OF THE SANDHILLS. 3 p.m. Where did all the sand come from? What is paint rock and soap stone? Join the Park Ranger to learn the answers and discover more about the geology of the Sandhills. Visitor Center, Weymouth Woods, 1024 Ft. Bragg Rd., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-2167.

July 18 ART CLASS. 9 a.m. - 4 p.m Landscape: Water-based Oils/ Acrylics with Andrea Schmidt. Learn to control composition, considering placement and value scale of subjects to create the illusion of depth, walking through the painting with an artist’s eye observation for color and value, and simplifying complex subjects. Class will complete two paintings (one in morning and one in afternoon). Cost: $40 members/$50 nonmembers. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-3979 or www.artistleague.org. PINEHURST SUMMER POPS SERIES: “Chopin in Paris.” 7 p.m. Pinehurst Performing Arts Center in partnership with Carolina Philharmonic. David Michael Wolff presents an exposition of the works that won over Paris, including the First Piano Concerto in Chopin’s own arrangement for piano soloist and string quintet, and the Sonata for Cello and Piano, with cellist Nate Leyland. Tickets: $20. Owens Auditorium, Sandhills Community College. Tickets and Information: (910) 687-4746 or www.carolinaphil.org. MICHAEL BOLTON & KENNY G. 8 p.m. Live in concert at the Crown Coliseum, Fayetteville, NC. Information: www.crowncoliseum.com.

July 18 - 23 SUMMER THEATRE CAMP. 10 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Arts Council of Moore County and ConnectNC.com present Summer Theatre Camp 2011 featuring Jungle Book at First Baptist Church, Southern Pines. Open to ages 5 to 18; camp directed by the Missoula Children’s Theatre. Camp performances: July 22 & 23. Cost: $150. Registration and Information: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org.

July 19 SUMMER READING CLUB: Book Bunch. 11 a.m. Kids grades 3-5 invited. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. Key: Art Music/Concerts Dance/Theater Literature/Speakers Fun History Sports

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Film

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

cA l e n dA r SENIOR ACTIVITY: National Jelly Bean Day. 11:30 a.m. The flavors are limited only by the imagination of candy makers. Enjoy a sampling. Cost: $2(residents); $4(non-residents). Douglas Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-7376.

July 22

July 19-23

July 23

GOLF TOURNAMENT: 109th North & South Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Amateur Championship. Played on Pinehurst No. 2. For information on format or sign up, call the Pinehurst Tournament Office at (800) 795-4653, ext. 3, or (910) 235-8140.

July 20 SUMMER READING CLUB: Band of Bookies. 11 a.m. Students grades 6-8 are invited. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. CHILDRENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STORY TIME. 1:30 p.m. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 295-6022. SUMMER READING PROGRAM. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, â&#x20AC;&#x153;One World, Many Stories,â&#x20AC;? held in Carthage and Robbins Area Libraries. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s theme is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Away We Goâ&#x20AC;? with music and crafts. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

July 21 SUMMER READING CLUB: Reader Rabbits. 11 a.m. Kids grades K-2 are invited. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. SUMMER READING PROGRAM. 10:30 a.m. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, â&#x20AC;&#x153;One World, Many Stories,â&#x20AC;? held in the Vass Area Library. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s topic is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tropical Connections.â&#x20AC;? Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335. Key: Art

Music/Concerts

Dance/Theater

Film

JAZZY FRIDAYS. 7 - 10 p.m. Live jazz music and hors dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeuvres, rain or shine. Admission: $10. Cypress Bend Vineyards & Winery, Riverton Road, Wagram. Information: (910) 369-0411. ART CLASS. 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Fiber Collage: Adding Depth and Texture with Textiles and Fibers with Nanette Zeller. Explore the use of fiber and textiles as layered collage elements; use a variety of techniques to alter the color and structure of various fibers; and learn techniques to incorporate (collage) fiber elements into 2-dimensial art work. Cost: $40 members/$50 nonmembers. Artists League of the Sandhills 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen, Information: (910) 944-3979 or www.artistleague.org. FREE WINE TASTING. Lodi Zinfandel. Elliottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775. MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Jane Casnellie at Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com. FOOD DEMONSTRATION. 12 & 2 p.m. Summer BBQ Side Dishes. Elliottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775. STAND UP COMEDY. 8 p.m. Moore Puns Comedy Series presents Funniest Comic in the Sandhills. Audition to participate; audience picks winner. Winner will receive the coveted Pine Cone Microphone Trophy and will open for professional comedian Jeffrey Jena on August 13. Material appropriate for ages 14 and up. Tickets: $10 (available at door). Sunrise Theater, Southern Pines. Information: www.mooreart.org or moorepuns@gmail.com.

July 24 SUMMER READING PROGRAM: â&#x20AC;&#x153;One World, Many Stories.â&#x20AC;? 2:30 p.m. Featuring a PG-rated film about a young Literature/Speakers

Fun

History

boy, recently moved to Beijing with his mother, who learns to stand up for himself with the help of his martial arts mentor. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net. THE ROOSTERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WIFE CONCERT SERIES. 6:45 p.m. Ed Snodderly and the Hot Seats at Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight Street, Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org. KIDS PROGRAM: For the Birds. 3 p.m. Ranger-led program that explores the basics of birding ... for kids! Bring tennis shoes and sunscreen. Visitor Center, Weymouth Woods, 1024 Ft. Bragg Rd., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-2167.

July 26 PENICK VILLAGE LECTURE SERIES: DOWNSIZING. 2 - 4 p.m. Ellen Perkinson of The Village Design Group works daily to assist people in making the decision to downsize to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;right-size.â&#x20AC;? Information and RSVP: (910) 692-0386, (910) 6920382 or www.penickvillage.org.

July 27 ART CLASS. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Journaling: Sketching with Permanent Pen & Watercolors or Watercolor Pencils with Betty Hendrix. These small fresh pieces serve as wonderful records of your travels, small meditations, or as a plan for a future, larger artwork. Cost: $35 members/$45 nonmembers. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Information: (910) 944-3979 or www.artistleague.org. CHILDRENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STORY TIME. 1:30 p.m. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 295-6022. SUMMER READING PROGRAM. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, â&#x20AC;&#x153;One World, Many Stories,â&#x20AC;? held in Carthage and Robbins Area Libraries. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

Sports

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ca l e n da r Hastings Gallery is located in the Katharine L. Boyd Library at Sandhills Community College, Pinehurst. Gallery hours are 7:45 a.m. - 9 p.m., Monday-Thursday; 7:45 a.m. - 5 p.m. Friday; and 8:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. Saturday.

July 28

July 30

SUMMER READING PROGRAM. 10:30 a.m. Kids ages 4 - 12 are invited to weekly reading program, “One World, Many Stories,” held in the Vass Area Library. Today’s topic is “Going Down Under” with Aussie music, stories and treats. Information: Moore County Public Libraries at (910) 947-5335.

ONE-DAY TOURNAMENT. Southern Pines Golf Club. Sponsored through the Carolinas Golf Association. Information: (910) 673-1000 or www.carolinasgolf.org.

July 28-31

MEET THE ARTIST. 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Jean Frost at Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

U.S. KIDS GOLF. Teen World Championship & Teen World Cup to be played on Pinehurst courses No. 2, No. 6 and No. 8, and Pine Needles. Information: (800) 487-4653 or www.uskidsgolf.com.

July 29 GOLF TOURNAMENT: 14th Carolinas Parent-Child Championship. Longleaf Country Club, Southern Pines. Sponsored through the Carolinas Golf Association. Information: (910) 673-1000 or www.carolinasgolf.org. GOLF TOURNAMENT: 45th Carolinas Father-Son Championship. Pinehurst area courses. Sponsored through the Carolinas Golf Association. Information: (910) 673-1000 or www.carolinasgolf.org. SENIOR ACTIVITY. 11:30 a.m. July is National Hot Dog Month. Meet at the Downtown Park to enjoy grilled dogs with yummy sides and condiments. Cost: $3(residents); $6(nonresidents). Douglas Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-7376. PINEHURST SUMMER POPS SERIES. 7 p.m. “Pops Extravaganza: Sunset Boulevard, Broadway and La Scala”. From Out of Africa to Schindler’s List, Les Misérables to Phantom of the Opera, La Bohème to Madame Butterfly, there’s something for everyone. Pinehurst Performing Arts Center in partnership with Carolina Philharmonic. David Michael Wolff leads the Carolina Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, with guest divas and divos. Tickets: $20. Robert E. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, Pinehurst. Tickets and information: (910) 687-4746 or www.carolinaphil.org.

FREE WINE TASTING. Pinot Gris. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775.

FOOD DEMONSTRATION. 12 & 2 p.m. Grilled Desserts. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Information: (910) 215-0775.

July 31

$35/ yr • In State $45/ yr • Out of State NAME

SKY Art Gallery, 602 Magnolia Dr., Aberdeen, is open 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. (910) 944-9440, www.skyartgallery.com.

THE ROOSTER’S WIFE. 6:45 p.m. Solas at Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight Street, Aberdeen. Information: (910) 9447502 or wwww.theroosterswife.org. PENICK VILLAGE LECTURE SERIES: REAL FOOD IN FAST TIMES. 2 - 4 p.m. Join Natural food chef Kathy O’Donnell as she teaches how to transition to a nutrient-dense, whole food diet. Information and RSVP: (910) 692-0386, (910) 692-0382 or www.penickvillage.org.

Studio 590, located in a historic log cabin, is the working studio and gallery of artists Betty DiBartolomeo and Harry Neely. Studio 590 offers fine oil paintings, commissions and instruction. Studio 590 is located by the pond in the Dowd Cabin, 590 Dowd Circle in Pinehurst South. (910) 639-9404.

HOPPERS, CLIMBERS & SWIMMERS. 3 p.m. Nights are filled with sounds of frogs. Learn about the different species, from the tiny grass from to the great bull frog. Weymouth Woods Auditorium, 1024 Ft. Bragg Rd., Southern Pines. Information: (910) 692-2167.

White Hill Gallery, 407 U.S. 15-501, Carthage, offers a variety of pottery. (910) 947-6100. The Downtown Gallery (inside Flynne’s Coffee Bar) is located at 115 NE Broad St. in downtown Southern Pines. Ever-changing array of local and regional art, pottery and other handmade items. (910) 693-1999.

August 6

Lady Bedford’s Tea Parlour, located at 25 Chinquapin Road in Pinehurst, is featuring local artist Nancy Campbell. Original oil and watercolor paintings are on display inside the tea shop. Open Tuesday - Saturday 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. (910) 255-0100, www.ladybedfords.com.

RIDE FOR LIFE. 8 a.m. Backcountry bike rides for beginners and experienced cyclists alike. Featuring 20k, 40k and 100k rides. Proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society Relay for Life. Emmanuel Baptist Church, 632 McCrimmon Road, Carthage. Cost: $35 (day of); $30 (pre-registration). Registration: www.active.com. Information: peddlpusher@ yahoo.com or (910) 783-5690 or www.rideforlifemc.com

Nature Centers

Broadhurst Gallery, 2212 Midland Rd., Pinehurst, showcases works by nationally recognized artists such as Louis St. Lewis, Lula Smith, Shawn Morin, Rachel Clearfield, Judy Cox and Jason Craighead. Meet-the-artist opportunities are available. Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., and Saturday, 1-4 p.m. (910) 295-4817, www.broadhurstgallery.com. Art Gallery at the Market Place, 2160 Midland Road, Pinehurst, features original art by local artists Joan Williams, Deane Billings, Jeanette Sheehan, Mike D’Andrea, Janet Burdick, Nancy Yanchus, and Cele Bryant. Meet one of the artists Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. (910) 215-5963. Artist Alley features juried art and fine crafts from local and regional artists, 167 E. New Hampshire Ave., Southern Pines. 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday-Saturday. (910) 692-6077.

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M A G A Z I N E

P.O. BOX 58 Southern Pines, NC 28388

Sandhills Horticultural Gardens (32 acres of gardens). The Sandhills Horticultural Gardens are handicapped-accessible. Daylight hours year-round. (910) 695-3882. Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve (898 acres). 1024 Ft. Bragg Road, Southern Pines. (910) 692-2167. VILLAGE ABORETUM. 35 acres of land adjoining the Village Hall on Magnolia Road, Pinehurst. (910) 295-1900.

Historical Sites Bethesda Church and Cemetery. Guided tours for groups by appointment. 1020 Bethesda Road, Aberdeen. (910) 944-1319. Bryant House and McLendon Cabin. Tours by appointment. (910) 692-2051 or (910) 673-0908.

Artists League of the Sandhills, located at 129 Exchange St. in historic Aberdeen. Exhibit hours are noon - 3 p.m., Monday-Saturday. (910) 944-3979.

Carthage Historical Museum. Sundays, 2-5 p.m. or by appointment. Located at Rockingham and Saunders streets, Carthage. (910) 947-2331.

The Campbell House Galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, is open 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, and every third weekend of the month from 2-4 p.m. (910) 692-4356, www.mooreart.org.

House in the Horseshoe. Open year-round. Hours vary. 288 Alston House Road (10 miles north of Carthage), Sanford. (910) 947-2051.

The Gallery at Seven Lakes, a gallery dedicated to local artists. The Gallery is open on Wednesday and Thursday each week from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. 1145 Seven Lakes Drive, The St. Mary Magdalen building. Just 9 miles from the Pinehurst Traffic Circle up 211. Key: Art

100 July 2011

The Old Silk Route, 113 West Main St., Aberdeen specializes in Asian original art, including silk paintings, tapestries, Buddhist Thangkas and Indian paper miniatures. Open Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. (910) 295-2055. Seagrove Candle Company, 116 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines, showcases the arts and crafts of the Sandhills and Seagrove area. Open 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday, Wednesday-Saturday. (910) 695-0029.

NOVEL DESTINATIONS: Free Screening of Chocolat. 2:30 p.m. Movie starring Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp and Judi Dench. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Information: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

Art Galleries

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Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst, features original artwork by local artists Diane Kraudelt, Carol Rotter, Mary Frey, Jean Frost, Sandy Scott and artist/owner Jane Casnellie. Open Monday-Saturday 10:30 a.m. - 9:30 p.m. (910) 255-0665, www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

Music/Concerts

Dance/Theater

Film

Malcolm Blue Farm and Museum. 1-4 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday. Group tours can be arranged by appointment. (910) 944-7558 or (910) 603-2739. North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m., Monday-Friday, at the Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. (910) 692-6261.

Literature/Speakers

Fun

History

Sports

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ca l e n da r Shaw House Property. Open 1-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. (910) 692-2051. Tufts Archives. 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, and 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Saturday. (910) 295-3642.

Resale Retail

Union Station. Open 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Located in downtown Aberdeen. (910) 944-5902. Sandhills Womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Exchange Log Cabin Open 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. (910) 295-4677 To add an event, send us an e-mail at pinestraw@thepilot.com by the first of the month prior to the event.

PineNeedler Answers Solution:

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Correction

In the June issue of PineStraw, a photographer was miscredited in the Sandhills Photo Club Portrait Competition on page 71. The correct photographer of The Golden Earring is Lois Pollard.

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Ed Blackwell, Jerry Warder and Ray Heddings

SandhillSeen

Thomas Brown, Denise Baker and Rebecca Lapping

Alison Brown and Laurelyn Dossett The Rooster’s Wife - May 28, 2011 Photographs by Jeanne Paine

Dr. Beth Lyerly, Peggy Baldwin and Sandy McElroy

Richard Shearer and Ron Adams

Louise Manring and Scott Manring

Gerry West, Hannah West, Alison Brown and John R. Burr

Tracy Mashburn, Cindy Hughes, Rebecca Lapping and Lee Anne Russell

Elizabeth Allen, Ian Aguilar and Amy Jenison

Sanford 

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July 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

SandhillSeen

Lee Smith Author Event at The Country Bookshop June 9, 2011 Photographs by Cassie Butler

Lee Smith Lee Smith and Denise Baker

Genevra Kelly, Madelieine Till and Peggy Andersen

Woody Wilder and Madora Mullins

Sarah Ross

Beverley Pellom and Pam Armfield

Mary Sisk and Arthur Marsh

103

SandhillSeen “Dining in the Field” Benefit for the Sandhills Children Center - May 19, 2011 Photographs by Cassie Butler

Barbara Jandera and Pennie Clack

Jeanie & Bill Eastman and Chuck & Gail Kendall

Kelly Elliott, Dan Jordan, Dave L’Itailian, Hillary & Bill Shilkitus and Sarah Ellman

Kappa Muldoon, Julia Kober and Dawn Hasty

Ellen & Bun Perkinson, Kathy Wilford, Walt Hess and Elizabeth H. Koeckert

Fiona McKenzie

Susie Boals, Karen Goudy, Karla Ceraso, Trish Brown and Cornelia Morris

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500 US Highway #1 South Aberdeen, NC 28315 910.944.7469 104

SandhillSeen 2011 Tarheel Classic Polocross Tournament Pinehurst Harness Track - May 14, 2011 Photographs by Jeanne Paine Orange County/CH V. Texas Teams

Tyler Thompson and Lara Allen

Carolina V. East Zone Mix Teams

Angela and Anna Hale Sam Pohl, Quentin Jameson and Caroline Gardiner

Zach Anderson, Triston Mecimore and Anthony Allen

Amy Keith and Dori Johnson

Andrew Diemer

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One Man’s Favorite Golf Books By Robert Gable GENERAL INTEREST THE MATCH: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever, by Mark Frost. This is a riveting recreation of the match between Hogan/Nelson and Ward/Venturi at Cypress Point in 1956. Frost uses his skills as a screenwriter to make the dialogue and events come alive. It’s also interesting to learn about the life and times of long-time Pinehurst resident Harvey Ward. FINAL ROUNDS, by James Dodson. A poignant and heartfelt story about the last trip author Dodson took with his father. Golfing buddies and then best of friends, the father and son finally work out a plan to visit Scotland together. The trip takes on an air of finality as they learn, right before leaving, that his father has advanced terminal cancer. Dodson learns more about himself, his father, and life in general as they complete the journey of a lifetime. GOOD BOUNCES AND BAD LIES, by Ben Wright. The former CBS announcer looks back at his many adventures writing and commentating about golf, proving that he certainly knows how to tell a story. GOLF IN THE KINGDOM, by Michael Murphy. The classic book that taps into the fun, mysterious and vexing nature of golf, loosely based on a trip that Murphy took to Scotland. When he returned, he founded the Esaalen Institute in California and went to work on this book. It took him years to digest the ideas given to him by the delightful and mysterious Shivas Irons.

As founding editor of Golf Magazine, he got to know just about every famous player from the early days of professional golf. He retired in Pinehurst, spending his last days reminiscing in the pines and writing lucid prose about this most challenging and vexing of games. Any book by Price is worth your while, and here he does his best to honor Jones’s legacy. MISSING LINKS, by Rick Reilly. Known for his award-winning commentary on the last page of Sports Illustrated (and now part of ESPN’s website), Reilly turned to fiction in this his first novel, a rollicking and bawdy tale (it definitely warrants an “R” rating). He comes up with such wacky characters and puts them into such crazy situations that you can’t help but chuckle at their antics. INSTRUCTION THE FIVE FUNDAMENTALS OF GOLF, by Ben Hogan. Still an interesting read, even though it’s 50some years old, Hogan outlines his approach to playing golf, with the text graced by classic illustrations from Tony Ravielli. Some of his theories are outdated, but it’s interesting to hear his thinking nonetheless. BOBBY JONES ON GOLF, by Roberty Tyre Jones, Jr. Though many aspects of the golf swing have

changed since he played with hickory shafted clubs, Jones has an interesting way of describing the golf swing. This is worth reading just to see the way he masters the English language. (Golf Is My Game is another of his books that deserves a look.) EXTRAORDINARY GOLF: The Art of the Possible, by Fred Shoemaker. Shoemaker wants you to get rid of your expectations and start having fun while playing golf, because how you approach anything is how you approach everything. The exercises he presents to explain his ideas are interesting and worthwhile. THE INNER GAME OF GOLF (Revised Edition), by Timothy Gallwey. One of the pioneers of the sports psychology movement updates his first edition, teaching you to “know thyself” and “know thy golf swing.” His book Inner Tennis led him to take the same theories and successfully apply them to golf. GOLF IS NOT A GAME OF PERFECT, by Bob Rotella. The first of Rotella’s instruction books that helps golfers, whether pros or amateurs, to bolster their mental approach to playing golf. He’s written some more books since — Golf is a Game of Confidence, The Golfer’s Mind, The Golf of Your Dreams — and you can’t go wrong with any of them. PS

GOLF AND THE SPIRIT, by M. Scott Peck. The author of The Road Less Traveled looks at the unique learning opportunities given to golfers as they compare golf to life. His insight into the human condition helps put golf and life into perspective. THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf, by Mark Frost. Frost recounts the amazing story of the 1913 U.S. Open. In a match against the two golfing greats Ted Ray and Harry Vardon, an unlikely hero, a local caddie named Francis Ouimet, emerged victorious and brought golf to the attention of the American public. FAIRWAYS AND GREENS, by Dan Jenkins. This is a collection of some of the best articles by Jenkins, a master of his craft, as he takes on topics such as the state of the game, past champions, and current players on Tour. Agree with him or not, he knows how to turn a phrase and cut right to the heart of an issue. A GOLF STORY: Bobby Jones, Augusta National, and the Masters Tournament, by Charles Price. One of the most eloquent of golf writers — much like Bernard Darwin — Price knew Bob Jones personally. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 2011

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Cancer

(June 22 - July 23) If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all . (But darned if I won’t make an exception .) on the 4th, Venus will have you feeling saucier than Grandma’s Bloody Marys . Just try not to get too used to it, Toots . I’ll tell you, that worm will turn faster than you can say Jack robinson . oh, and by the middle of the month, you’re liable to ﬁnd yourself in a situation that’s stickier than honey-baked urinal cake . For that, I have no wiser words than these: Look for a good spoon, Sweetie . The proof of the pudding is in the eating .

Leo (July 23 - Aug. 23)

Well, brine my biscuit brown. It looks like you’re in for a month that’s busier than a cutworm in a bucket full of mulch. Although an eclipse in your ethereal 12th house on the 1st may leave you feeling rougher than an oak toilet seat with a fiberless diet, try not to sweat the small stuff, Sweet Pea. By the 23rd, you’ll be able to see things through new lenses, even if (well, more like when) the hits keep on coming. Until then, you may as well grab a tater and wait. And when life gives you lemons, add schnapps. Every cloud has a silver lining, Hon. Virgo (Aug. 24 - Sept. 23)

I hope you like vinegar, Dumpling … ’cause you’re fixing to find yourself in a pretty pickle. When Saturn squares up with the sun on the 2nd, keep your thoughts to yourself, even if it darn near kills you. (It’s a shame you can’t plug your pie hole for the rest of the month too. I’d sooner eat curried lentils than have to take back what it is you’ll say on the 5th. Bless your heart.) Like they say, a drowning man will clutch a straw. God speed to you, Toots. And don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. Libra (Sept. 24 - Oct. 23)

For the love of flank steak, Pancake: Pee or get off the pot. Ready or not, the new moon on the 1st is liable to conjure up more change than a two-dollar call girl on Wall Street. I’d say it’s high time to focus on what’s best for you this month, especially on the 8th. As they say: All work and no play will leave you blander than a bowl of boiled oats. Oh, and when Saturn graces your sign on the 16th, line up your doggone ducks. Darned if you’re not destined for a grand new adventure. Just be sure to pack light. Scorpio (Oct. 24 - Nov. 22)

Fine words won’t butter no parsnips, Sweetie. Still, I’ll tell it like it is. When a solar eclipse shakes your faith on the 1st, consider it water over the dam and keep swimming. That said, start paying a lick or two of attention to the things happening around you. (Like when you’re sweating like a dog passing peach pits on the 13th. There may be darn good reason.) Oh, and go after what you want in the middle of the month. That’s when the stars are on your good side. If you don’t, I’m afraid you’ll be sorrier than an old clam at low tide. Sagittarius (Nov. 23 - Dec. 21)

Well I’ll be John Brown. You’re sitting on the edge of something bigger than a pastry chef’s posterior! Trust me, Honey. I can just right taste it. With Mercury streaming into your sign on the 5th, not only are your aspirations for the future as impressive as a prize-winning pig, they’re easier to reach than the itch in your sneezer. Of course, sometimes you’ve got to slow down and put that growth on your neck to good use. Remember, Honey, walnuts and pears you plant for your heirs. A hard head will only make for a soft behind. Capricorn (Dec. 22 - Jan. 20)

I’ll tell you like Momma told me: One year’s seeding makes seven years weeding. That said, be careful what you ask for this month. When Mercury graces your sign on the 2nd, ain’t no thing but a chicken wing can stop you. On the 8th, your

insides may feel like they’re twisting around like a Cirque du Soleil act. Pay them no mind. Acting brashly will prove as useful as buttons on a dishrag. You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. As for the love department: If you can’t be good, be careful — for Pete’s sake, if not your own. Aquarius (Jan. 21 - Feb. 19)

Put your tray table up, Dollface. Things are about to plumb take off for you this month! (I suggest a hairspray that can hold through a hurricane, too.) Although your thoughts may be as distracting as spotting an ex in the middle of Sunday service, try to stay levelheaded until the 9th, when Venus and Neptune harmonize like a bullfrog symphony. After that, the berries are ripe for the picking — and you’d be wise not to let them go to waste. As Momma always said: Many a mickle will make a muckle. Whatever the Sam Hill that means. Pisces (Feb. 20 - March 20)

For the love of lump crab, Child. Get ready for a wake-up call that would scare the starch out of a biscuit-eater. Although you’re typically as bashful as a wallflower at a middle school dance, don’t be afraid to belly-flop into an opportunity once in a while, Cupcake. After all, you can’t tell much about chicken pie before getting through the crust. Clarity will come at the end of the month. Until then, try to stop making up excuses. If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas, as Aunty Pearl would say. Aries (March 21 - April 20)

Hate to break it to you, Dumpling (but not really), you’re liable to find yourself in a situation that’s sticker than Grandpa’s pomade on the 5th. Sleep on it, Poops. One thing that won’t get worse overnight is your judgment … unless of course you spend it in a bar. After the 9th, it won’t all be creamed corn and gravy. Nonetheless, when Neptune enters your sign on the 17th, you’ll be able to use your charm to get what you want. You’re cuter than a speckled pup, just about. Like Momma would say: If you got it, flaunt it. Taurus (April 21 - May 21)

Wake up and smell the bacon, Toots. Your love life is looking hotter than fresh milk this month. Take it easy, Sweetie. All that romance is liable to blur your vision like a whack in the head — that, or make me wish I could scratch my own eyes out. Get ready for a week that’s tougher than a two-dollar steak when Uranus enters your sign on the 8th. Treat yourself to an ice cream on the 15th to mull things over, and fret not. You’ll figure out what cures your ham soon enough. C’est tout, ma bichette. (Pardon my French.) Gemini (May 22 - June 21)

Stitch my britches and send me to school — you’re looking hotter than a nun at high noon this month, Honey. With Mercury entering your sign on the 7th, you’d be a penny wise and a pound foolish not to express your feelings to a reliable source. And on the 25th, get ready to renovate that humdrum routine of yours when the sun brightens a path you’ve yet to travel. As Daddy Foote used to tell me, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. (You’ll know what that means when the time’s right, Sweetheart.) PS

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A Taste of Heaven

At Grandaddy’s store, saying goodbye was always a sweet ending

By Chris Dunn

My favorite childhood memory has al-

ways been my family’s visits to see my grandparents. However, the best part of every visit was actually when we left. Before that statement gets me into a lot of trouble with my Grandmamma, let me explain.

From 1953 until he retired in 1982, my late Granddaddy Dunn had the best job in the world. He owned a country store called Dunn’s Grocery. This simple, cinder-block building (now called McKaskey’s Country Store & Grill) sits on Highway 461 in northeastern North Carolina, just a stone’s throw from the intersection of Union Road and Boone Farm Road in a small village called Union. Even as a child, I knew this was a special place. If you were hungry, this was the place to get the best-tasting hoop cheese in the world, picked out personally by my Granddaddy. Heaven to me was a slice of hoop cheese on a Jack’s shortbread cookie, or a grilled bologna sandwich made to order by my Grandmamma. During tobacco season, she remembers making over 100 sandwiches a day, which she estimated from how many empty bread bags were left after the lunch rush. And I’ll never forget the unique drinks I was introduced to, such as Pepsi Cola with salted peanuts, or my favorite, Chocolate Crush, which I remember being much bigger and better tasting than a Yoo-hoo. If you needed entertainment, there were always several men sitting on drink crates telling lies about the big fish that got away, playing a rowdy game of checkers or Rook, or expounding on what was wrong with our current politicians. It’s amazing my Granddaddy stayed in business for so long because I never saw them buy anything. I guess they were drawn to the store too. If you didn’t have any money … no problem. For farmers, Granddaddy would give credit during crop season, and they would pay after the crops

were harvested in the fall. These lines of credit or “tabs” would be written in a ledger book. There was no legal contract, just a gentleman’s agreement that they would be paid. According to my Grandmamma, most were. Then there was the candy counter ... a shrine to sweetness that would make Willy Wonka proud. It was a huge, antique wooden case located, appropriately, in the center of the store. It had a glass top and glass windows on every side, which caused kids of all ages to stop and dream of the sweet possibilities. In an effort to purchase the case, an antique dealer once offered my Granddaddy a “deal he couldn’t refuse.” According to my Grandmamma, Granddaddy simply told the dealer, “I can refuse it, because I own it.” My Granddaddy was no dummy. Now, I must get back in my Grandmamma’s good graces and explain my initial statement. Once our family visit was over and after a round of goodbye hugs and kisses, the fun was about to begin. The last stop before heading home was always Granddaddy’s store, especially when my family was facing financially challenging times. While my dad gassed up the car and my mom collected a week’s worth of groceries, my sister and I were about to live every child’s dream … free reign over the candy counter. With my family, there was a unique, but strict, candy rule: We could have all the candy we wanted, as long as it fit into one empty cigar box with the lid completely closed. I owe my ability to efficiently pack a car to my well-developed art of cramming Snickers and Zero bars into the cigar box without bending the Blow Pops or Tootsie Roll Pops or damaging the box of candy cigarettes. And though I never developed a desire to smoke, I still have a serious sweet tooth and the dental fillings to prove it. Stores like my Granddaddy’s dot every rural highway in the country. But, in the age of Walmarts and other mega — and variety — stores, they get passed by every day. In my mind, these stores are the most magical places in the world. They provide a sense of community in places that don’t even appear on maps. They lend a helping hand to a family during lean times. They allow a couple to earn a living. And they provide wonderful memories for a child. PS Chris Dunn is director of the Arts Council of Moore County. Illustration by Pamela Powers January

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