Close Quarters

Grandparents are backyard buddies at the King-Mowery compound

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Living with or near the in-laws spawned “All in the Family” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” award-winning sitcoms exploring the ups and downs, the inevitables and hystericals of family life. By these standards one extended family occupying a cluster of three homes built during the 1920s in the Southern Pines Historic District would flop in prime time. Because harmony, not discord, thrives here.

Really, what’s the likelihood of the father of two toddlers inviting his wife’s parents, Renate and Jim Mowery, to move from Virginia to a classic Weymouth “cottage” renovated, by him, for them? Then, when it came on the market, he purchased and renovated the house next door as lodgings for visiting relatives.

Who is this visionary?

Steve King.

Day job: Oncology radiologist.

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Eyebrows were raised, comments made. “This wouldn’t work for all families,” Steve concedes. “But we had a great relationship with my wife’s parents. We had traveled together.” He certainly did not underestimate the advantage of having grandparents 50 yards away.

Steve had lived in his house for many years. He knew the elderly couple beyond the back fence. After they died, he considered acquiring their house for a historic renovation which, he learned, entailed applications, documentation, building restrictions and copious paperwork.

But the ambitious amateur already had a stable of subcontractors and experience gained remodeling his own home. And now, he had a reason. “You’re retired — come live here so you can be around the grandchildren,” Steve proposed.

“I was thrilled,” says Roberta King, the Mowerys’ daughter. “Mom and I are extremely close. I could have my baby and my parents too; we helped each other.”

“It was an interesting process, an outlet for me,” Steve says. “I don’t get to do much creative stuff.”

The idea to invite Renate and Jim jelled when another of the four Mowery daughters was accepted at Duke University Medical School. The chemistry and geography were in place; Renate and Jim, youthful and active, accepted.

Jim, a former Army officer and Reynolds Aluminum executive, met Renate, a language teacher, while stationed in Germany. As a child she lived for 10 years in two rooms with no running water on a farm outside Munich. Jim grew up in a typical Southern post-war family house on a dirt road near Richmond, Virginia. The couple returned to Virginia to raise a family in an impressive Southern Colonial, which Renate had just spent six months refurbishing. Fortunately, yet another daughter was happy to take on that house, facilitating the Mowerys’ relocation.

The best part, Renate beams, was, “Steve did everything.”

“Everything” meant gutting the sunroom (dark walls, smelly indoor-outdoor carpet over concrete), refitting kitchen and bathrooms, building bookcases in almost every room (“I’m a reader,” Jim says), refinishing hardwood floors all without moving walls or altering the footprint, per historic property restrictions.  An addition was, however, possible. In an obvious yet bold move, Steve converted the garage into a “fun” room with bar, entertainment equipment and posters. For a wall he used a massive pair of sliding wooden barn doors. The garage ceiling hid the original patterned tin, which, uncovered, adds texture and antiquity. Across from the garage (which could become a main-floor bedroom if needed) new construction allowed a laundry and bathroom.

As for the rest, “We just wanted something comfortable,” easy-to-please Renate says.

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Comfort, in these circumstances, meant restraint. “I had to find a balance between their comfort and budget restrictions,” Steve says. The new kitchen — moderately sized, as are all the rooms — contains no grand appliances or service island. Instead, a sturdy cupboard with drop-leaf table top provides storage, preparation surface and breakfast bar. The kitchen carpet is Renate’s prize: “We were on a Mediterranean cruise. In Istanbul we stopped at a rug place, where I saw this.” She fell in love with the pattern and superb quality. The size was perfect. But she hadn’t brought credit cards or cash ashore. No problem. The merchant followed them back to the ship, where the transaction was completed, and shipped the rug to the United States.

Renate also loves white wicker, using it generously in the sunroom and bedrooms. “To me it’s light, not depressing,” she says. Other furnishings in dark, polished woods suggest European origin; the dining room credenza — weighty, with angular lines — comes from Germany. “Before I said, ‘I don’t want this old thing, it’s not modern,’” but she never regrets keeping it or other handsome heirlooms placed sparingly throughout the house. “I’m not a collector,” Renate adds, with the exception of Hummel figurines displayed in a curio cabinet made by Jim’s dad.

From the coffered dining room ceiling hang four small chandeliers instead of one large. The living room, with fireplace set into a “floating” wall setting off what was once a Carolina room, continues the European aura with graceful velvet upholstered chairs, a Chinese screen, more bookcases, window seats and family portraits. Renate has chosen pastels throughout, except for deep gold walls in the dining room.

The garden is Renate’s design and showplace, with grass so thick, so perfect it appears artificial, bordered by clumps of black-eyed Susans. Flower-filled urns flank the front gate, increasing curb appeal. Renate relates a horticultural omen: “I transplanted a Japanese maple from Richmond. A seed fell into a planter in the front yard, where it grew 6 or 7 feet tall.” Even a weed vine that sprang up over the backyard fence resembles an illustration for “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

Next door to the Mowerys’ white stucco cottage stands the pink stucco three-bedroom guesthouse where well-known Southern Pines residents Peg and Hollis Thompson raised five children. Steve knew the Thompsons; he arranged the purchase before they passed away on the same day in 2015. “I’ll hold onto it awhile as a guest house. I wanted to renovate it, to keep the neighborhood looking nice,” Steve says.

And to keep the family together — a place where 11 cousins, now ages 9 to 22, can gather close to parents and grandparents, just not too close. A place where nobody is crowded at Christmas. A place with a swimming pool, a trampoline, pet accommodations and a long dining table.

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The Mowerys have lived in Southern Pines for 13 years now, watching their granddaughters grow from infants to teens. Boundaries have never been a problem, Roberta confirms. “If (my parents) know I’m by myself they might walk in, but if Steve’s home they are respectful.” The Kings’ children beat a path from their house to the gate opening into Jim and Renate’s yard. “My daughters are always running over to Oma’s house to show her something.”

Looking to the future, Roberta also realizes that having her mother and father a minute away may have health care advantages, since Steve is a physician. Several of her friends report waiting too long to make a similar arrangement.

A century ago, multi-generations still lived under one roof or close by. Grandparents were part of a child’s life. Aunts, uncles and cousins visited on weekends. Since then family structure has evolved — or devolved — with unsettling results.

But the old ways work well at the Mowery-King compound except, Roberta notes, for this small glitch:

“All my sisters are jealous.”  PS

Skyline View

This old house returns to its roots

By Jim Moriarty

Sometimes you buy more than a house, you buy a heritage. Early in July, Jennifer Armbrister, her husband, Nicholas Williams, and their 2-year-old son, Mason, moved into Skyline. Armbrister is from everywhere, a self-described Army brat who was in the service herself for nine years. Williams, a Californian, is still active duty, stationed at Fort Bragg, and experienced in places dusty, hot and dangerous.

“We found this place online,” says Armbrister, standing in the kitchen with Mason, who points at a picture of a dinosaur and roars. “There was something about it that drew us to it, both my husband and me. We fell in love with it. There’s this sense of stability and home that I’ve never had before. There’s just something about it.”

Skyline is a house built very near what is now Hyland Golf Club on a bit of landscape elevated enough and once desolate enough that legend has it you could see Carthage 13 miles away. The nearby highway was Route 50 then, U.S. 1 now. Designed and built by a civil engineer, James Swett, construction of the tapestry brick home began around 1917 and was completed in 1920 for $40,000. A large part of the surrounding 108 acres became a peach orchard, but the unhappy convergence of a peach borer infestation and the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the property into foreclosure.

By December 1930, Skyline was back on its feet, literally. Bearing in mind that Prohibition wasn’t lifted (wink, wink) for another three years, it was turned into a nightclub by John Bloxham and Frank Harrington. A hundred people showed up for the opening, entertained by a seven-piece “orchestra” from Pittsburgh that had been booked for the entire season. Graced by a marquee running the entire length of the roofline and blaring CLUB SKYLINE, by the late ’30s the party was over and Skyline swirled down the drain, back into bankruptcy.

In stepped Arch (at the tender age of 61) and Annieclare Coleman with the financial backing of a cousin, Maj. Gen. Frederick W. Coleman Jr., who purchased the property in ’39 from Citizens Bank & Trust Co. The assessed value of the house, the tenant cottage and the 108 acres was $10,000, though the previous owner was on the hook for 35 large. The Colemans set about turning Skyline into Skyline Manor, one of the many boutique hotels and inns of Moore County.

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Once the postmaster of Minneapolis — and with a boost from a Minnesota congressman — Arch Coleman had been appointed to the position of assistant postmaster general of the U.S. in the Herbert Hoover administration. A member of Hoover’s Little Cabinet, Coleman is acknowledged in Hoover’s memoirs as a person possessing “future Cabinet timber,” with the former president tossing in Douglas MacArthur and J. Edger Hoover as a couple of other promising up-and-comers. When FDR beat Hoover in ’32, Coleman found himself out of work and in the depths of the Depression. His granddaughter, Deirdre Newton (a Southern Pines resident), says her mother — Arch and Annieclare’s daughter Ruth — described him as “the only politician who ever left Washington without a penny in his pocket.”  Post-Hoover, he landed, first, with a brother-in-law in Sanford and then at Skyline.

Coleman was Mr. Outside; Annieclare Mrs. Inside. He cultivated eggplant and was in charge of turning the ‘NO’ on or off in front of ‘VACANCY’ on the neon sign by the highway. She did all the cooking. The house was filled with photographs: Coleman with President Hoover; Coleman with the other under secretaries; Coleman with the congressman from Minnesota. The houseguests had names like Delano and Ives and Rathbun.

“Grandma was a big talker and had a very ambitious nature. Grandpa always listened,” says Deirdre Newton of the man she remembers as tall, thin and reserved. “Then, when he got bored with the whole thing, he’d just stand up, go back into his bedroom, lie on his bed and read detective stories.”

Arch and Annieclare’s daughter, Ruth, lived in England. Her husband, Jack Dundas, was an officer in the Royal Navy. He helped with the evacuation of Dunkirk; captained the HMS Nigeria, escorting cargo ships from America to Mirmansk; was the chief of staff to the commander of the Mediterranean fleet when Montgomery was fighting Rommel in North Africa and, by the end of World War II, the assistant chief of naval staff. The war, however, destroyed his health. In 1946, bound for Skyline, Rear Admiral Dundas, Ruth and their five children came to America on the Queen Elizabeth in its first voyage after being refitted from troop transport to luxury liner.

Also arriving after the war was Arch and Annieclare’s son, Archie. He built a stucco cottage located near the manor house for his wife, Madeline, and their daughter, Claudia, still a Southern Pines resident. Archie had a less visible war record. A member of the Office of Strategic Services — the World War II forerunner of the CIA — he was the second-ranking officer of the Istanbul station of the OSS and in direct communication with William “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS. Archie was a flamboyant Ian Fleming-style, larger-than-life figure who delighted the Dundas girls, Deirdre and her older sister Rosie in particular, with his guitar playing and singing. “He was a fabulous character,” says Deirdre. “We were in love with Uncle Archie.”

Annieclare passed away in 1960. Skyline Manor quickly ceased to be a business when the real and true manager was gone. By the mid-60s, Uncle Archie had moved to Virginia Beach and Arch Coleman stayed close to his children to the end of his life. The property passed on, too, gradually falling into utter disrepair when the next generation of owners discovered what Coleman had, that Skyline was too big for one elderly man to manage. By the ’80s, upstairs rooms were being rented to Sandhills Community College students, and a hairdressing salon popped up like a mushroom in the basement. The house had become more albatross than heirloom.

“It had fallen into disrepair,” says Frank Staples, who grew up next door. “You could stand in the basement and look clean out to the sky.”

In 1990 it was purchased by Jane and Gary Thomas, who spent the next 26 years bringing it back. “When we bought it, it had been empty for a few years,” says Jane. “We really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, but it is a special place.” If Jennifer Armbrister and Nicholas Williams share a military kinship with Skyline, their intention is to revisit its business plan, too, eventually transforming it into a home stay guesthouse. Imagine something a few biscuits shy of a proper bed and breakfast.

Claudia Coleman, the intelligence officer’s daughter, is a well-known local artist who lived in the stucco cottage. “It was a wonderful place to grow up,” she says of Skyline.

It looks like Mason will get the chance to find out for himself.  PS

Jim Moriarty is a senior editor at PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

Rising from the Past

The historic town of Badin resolves to survive and thrive again

By Jim Moriarty   •   Photographs by John Gessner

At the center of Badin village is a confounding five-pointed starfish intersection with a right of way that seems to be ruled by nothing more than neighborliness. Where the post office now sits there was once a grand opera house. Built in 1918, it was dropped to its knees by a wrecking ball 41 years later in the days before historic preservation allowed the soul of a town to outrun its bottom line. The theater was the prime stopping point between Richmond and Atlanta for gypsy vaudevillians whose Pullman cars parked on the railroad tracks by the depot that once stood across Route 740 from a convenience store where now even the baitfish seem to have gone belly up. It was a workingman’s town then, a one-trick aluminum pony that fused the men who spent their days in Alcoa’s hot, hazardous pot rooms with imported fun. Staying sometimes as long as a week, W.C. Fields and Mae West were among the entertainers who performed there. On the same stage chorus girls left little to the imagination and Tom Mix shot up silent movie saloons, fire and brimstone preachers lit up the 650 sinners in the main auditorium, another 150 in the balconies.

Across the highway from the convenience store the hulking, desolate and empty factory buildings are covered with sorrowful rust stains as if their mascara was running. Just behind the store the little, historic village tries to climb back up the prosperity cliff it was thrown over when the company ups and leaves the company town. Badin may be more than a hundred years old, but it still has the will to live, and there is much to admire in the ambition.

A long block but a short walk up Falls Road from the starfish crossroads, pushed away from the street into the shade, an imposing red brick church gives the architectural impression of Baptists swallowing up a wandering band of orthodox Greeks sometime in the 1920s. On one side of the church is the old cemetery. Close by on the other side is the Badin Treehouse Co. It may not have a monopoly on food in Badin but it has, at the very least, cornered what passes for the gourmet market. The menu is country eclectic and the décor something of a cross between Savannah art college kitsch and your dotty old aunt’s attic. There are furs, beads, animal heads, jukeboxes, musical instruments, wild turkey feathers, and Frank Sinatra and Etta James in surround sound.

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Jodi Wahab is the reluctant restaurateur, having run headlong into code issues in her original location. The plan was to have a coffee house/art gallery a few doors away in the century-old brick building with the RC Cola advertisement painted on its side where she lives with her husband, James, and her two Chihuahuas, Roxie and Allie. Or Ally. Or Alley. The actual spelling being a matter of casual indifference. Wahab got the building in an old-fashioned swap with the artist Roger Thomas, who lived in it for 13 years. “Everybody sees the potential Badin has, especially with the lake area right there,” says Thomas, who got his Route 740 farm in the deal. “I think Badin is a charming town. It’s a very neat historical town.”

The floor inside the front door of Wahab’s Falls Road building is partially covered with a large mural made mostly out of pennies. Her copper art pieces hang on one wall. The other has an elk head and a leopard — as alive as the parrot in “Monty Python’s Flying Circus’” skit — in a cage. There’s an elegant, idle coffee bar anticipating the return of the espresso machine from down the street; an out of operation waterfall waiting for unfinished oil paintings to decorate either side; and a beach cottage room with a mural of Cape Lookout and a floor covered with river sand. “What I wanted was for you to have your cappuccino and to step into my art, just come and sit,” she says. “I’m fighting to get back here.” Wahab has the U.S. franchise for Massimo Zecchi’s art supplies from Florence, Italy, but selling out of a closed coffee shop in Badin has, well, challenges. “Right now there’s no industry, so the town is just having to survive with what we are,” she says.

The town was the invention of a French company headed by Adrien Badin that came to the Yadkin River Basin early in the 20th century to make aluminum and electricity, not necessarily in that order. World War I brought the French invasion to an abrupt end and the project was taken over by the Aluminum Company of America — Alcoa — which finished construction of the Narrows Dam in 1917, helping to create the body of water that now comprises Badin Lake and Lake Tillery. Until the building of the Hoover Dam, the Narrows was the largest overflow dam in the world and it, along with the buildings of old Badin, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It also happens to be downriver from one of the most significant Paleo-Indian archeological sites in the southeastern United States.

Like the opera house, Badin’s dwellings were built for the aluminum workers, started by the French and finished by Alcoa. Some were small bungalows but mostly it was condo-style apartments in four conjoined units. These quadraplexes had indoor plumbing, three bedrooms upstairs and hot water that circulated through wood-burning stoves. Because people need roofs more than they need vaudeville, the lodging has outlived the tap dancers of the opera house and a handful of other buildings that became too forlorn to justify their existence to an accountant. “They tore down more buildings and destroyed more property that had historical value to it — it just makes you sick,” says Thomas.

Artifacts from the Hardaway archeological site, a Badin timeline, a refurbished quadraplex apartment and even the 1937 Ford American LaFrance fire truck (aluminum colored, of course) are on display in the visitors center and a pair of nearby museums at the starfish intersection. They open twice a week, on Tuesdays and again on Sunday afternoons. Not that there isn’t a lot of foot traffic in Badin, but if Martha Garber sees a strange face walking by during operating hours, she’s as likely as not to snatch the person right off the sidewalk.

Anne Harwood, who taught education at Pfeiffer University, is the mayor of a town with a zombie tax base. “We are a historic town with unique architecture,” says Harwood. “We’re working to keep Badin as preserved as we can.” When the moment of the great unwinding of the inevitable lawsuits arising from the end of business as usual finally arrives, Harwood sees better times. “Alcoa’s going to be generous — not just to us — they’re going to give some land to Morrow Mountain. We will get the property around the lake. That’s huge,” she says. “Then, we have to decide, with our budget, what we can do with it. Our biggest property tax group is no longer here.”

The Badin Inn, built by the French in 1914 as dormitory-style living for staff of the subsidiary of L’Aluminium Française, and its associated golf club are integral to Badin’s hand-over-hand climb back to, if not affluence, at least survivability. Stewardship of the historic structure has fallen into the hands of general manager Mark Eberle from St. Augustine, Florida. He’s partnered this museum piece, a place that’s a little tender loving care and a few investment dollars shy of being adorable, with a nonprofit organization that tries to help kids through golf. The nonprofit is called Music, Art, Literature and Thought and it’s the parent of the faith-based Growing Kids Through Golf. Back in the ’70s Eberle traveled the mini-tours, sleeping in the back of his Dodge utility van, trying to make enough money one week to play again the next. He’s chasing a different goal now. “I started that kids’ program in 1989,” says Eberle. “We’ve always targeted that group of kids that don’t naturally have an opportunity to play golf. Our purpose was never really about creating golfers of the future. We’re just trying to help kids. It was never to create the next Tiger Woods.”

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The Inn has some modern suites over the pro shop, but it’s the six rooms on the second floor of the old building with the ghostly footprints of visitors like Sam Snead that are its legacy. The hallway still has a sign that says, “Pull Switch For Air Raid Alarm.” (The aluminum factory would, after all, have been a high value target during WWII.) And, there’s an intercom in the lobby that looks like it could still dial up the ’50s. The third floor remains uninhabitable, almost a metaphor. “This is pretty much Badin,” says Eberle of the Inn and golf course. “It’s a fascinating property, it really is. This is a 100-year-old inn with classic rooms, hardwood floors, furniture to match. Same way with the golf. We spent nine months improving the course, investing in it strongly. The lake is two blocks away. The river is a quarter-mile. Morrow Mountain is right behind us. They didn’t know what they had. This isn’t a resort; it’s a small town, a homey, comfortable, relaxed atmosphere. If you’re looking for a championship golf course, you don’t want to come up here. But, if you want to play golf like it was played in 1924, you’re going to love this place.”

The most famous person from Badin now is the TV personality Star Jones, but that distinction used to be held by Johnny Palmer, the Badin Blaster, who grew up caddying on the old course. A WWII veteran who flew 32 missions over Japan as the side gunner on a B-29, Palmer quit a job as a crane operator at Alcoa to join the tour and won seven times from 1946-54. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, Snead nicknamed him ‘Stone’ because his expression never changed on the golf course. In the finals of the 1949 PGA Championship at Hermitage CC in Richmond, Virginia, Snead took a 2-up lead over Palmer into the last nine holes, bounced his tee shot on the 10th off a transfer truck that kicked it back into play, made a birdie and went on to win, 3 and 2.

After moving to Oklahoma, Palmer spent the last years of his life back in Badin, living in the family apartment in a quadraplex on Spruce Avenue. His son, Jock, lives there still and can be found most days after work at the golf course’s grill. With some prodding Jock recalls a conversation with Gene Littler and Don January on a ferry ride across the Savannah River at a senior tournament. “Your dad was one of the best chippers and putters,” Jock says they told him. “He missed the TV money. He missed the senior tour. They said, hey, never let anybody tell you your dad wasn’t great.”

A lot like Badin.  PS

Jim Moriarty is a senior editor at PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com

The Amazing Summers of Miss Edie Womble

By Jim Dodson   •   Photographs by John Gessner

“I’ve always loved this table,” says Miss Edie Chatham, smoothing her hand over the weathered surface of the large round table that dominates her expansive kitchen in Pinehurst.

“It’s been in our family for a very long time. My daughter brought it all the way from Louisville when Dick and I built this house 30 years ago. She took it apart and drove all that way here, if you can believe it, attached to the roof of her car. Clever girl. The table was fine, a sign of how well it was made. It just gets better with time.”

Now in her 90s — but don’t tell her we told you so — Miss Edie Chatham knows a thing or two about well-made objects and getting better with time.

From the beginning, her remarkable life has been one of steady exploration and refinement, beginning with a fearless mother who wished her six children to experience a rapidly changing world to a beautiful house Miss Edie herself sketched out on paper, inspired by 19th century houses from the Carolina low country. The New Jersey architect she and her husband, Dick Chatham, engaged in the early 1980s to draw up the plans for their retirement home, after relocating from Elkins to the Sandhills, had never seen anything quite like the simple two-bedroom “country house” Edie Chatham had in mind. It was modest in scale, in tune with the pragmatism of an earlier age, featuring a simple porte cochère and copper roof that turned elegantly green with the passing seasons, wide and welcoming Dutch front doors equipped with sturdy wooden screens, 12-foot ceilings, and a dramatically wide central hallway running front to back of the house, designed to catch the gentlest breeze and provide a place for Edie’s grandchildren to learn to roller skate and ride bicycles.

“He said it was such a waste of space, but I wanted a house that would stay cool on the hottest summer day,” she explains. “I’d lived in almost every kind of house you can imagine up till then, so I knew exactly what I wanted. We only needed a guest bedroom.”

“Don’t try to talk her out of it,” Dick Chatham advised the architect. “When she gets her mind made up, she never changes it.” The architect obliged though later congratulated her on designing the “perfect dog house” because the windows were large enough for the smallest dog to look out.

A local builder named Clealand Fowler did the work, handcrafting a house that feels as settled and welcoming as any low country home place passed down through generations. “Clealand was terrific,” she remembers. “He built the place a little bit by the seat of his pants, creating as we went along, a real craftsman, making the oversized windows and every door by hand. He did the floors, too. While he worked, I researched.”

ps-edie2-9-16.jpgIt was she who found, for instance, a man in Chapel Hill that had heart pine flooring from Richmond, Virginia’s original railway station when it was demolished to make way for a new station. “The boards were gray and weathered, but Clealand sanded them down and fitted them beautifully together, countersinking the nails and staining them with tung oil. They’ve aged so nicely, don’t you think?”

Everything about the house Miss Edie Chatham built seems to have aged nicely, as a matter of fact, from the bathrooms outfitted with old-fashioned fixtures she found at area thrift shops to a sunroom overlooking a backyard woodland where she keeps an eye out for local wildlife, a peaceful sitting room filled with the works of folk artists and American crafts.

Befitting a family home place, mementos and heirlooms and personal treasures emblematic of the long and notable life Edie Chatham has lived grace every room — favorite books and paintings, family photographs, a refrigerator covered by cards and photographs of her large, loving, scattered clan that includes 11 grandchildren and 13 greats. In 2015, son Richard and his wife, Allison, threw a surprise birthday party for his mother that included a low country boil and four days of paying tribute to their extraordinary matriarch.

“I would have been happy with just a lemon pie,” she allows with a laugh, settling down at the aforementioned pine table to chat — albeit a tad reluctantly — about a life rich in experience and surrounded by family and friends, as mentally vibrant as ever. As she sits, her miniature poodle Susie, 17, appears, curling up at her feet. “But it was so wonderful to have the entire family come from everywhere, some from other countries and very far away.”

She pauses and smiles. “We do seem to be a family that likes to travel a great deal. My brothers and sisters and I all shared that trait — a gift given to us by our parents, who believed the more we saw of the world, the better we would understand others and ourselves.”

She smiles, thinking of something.

“I was just speaking to my older brother Bill last evening on the phone. Bill is 99. His mind’s still so sharp. We were sharing memories of those great summers we had growing up, our travels across America with the Georgia Caravans. Bill was a counselor for the boys on our first trip. That was a very different world back then. I don’t suppose children’s summers are anything like that today. Everyone goes their own way. But, oh, what a grand adventure that was!”

She was Edie Womble then, a precocious 13, the fourth oldest of six children of Bunyon Snipes Womble and his highly independent wife, Edith Willingham Womble, from Macon, Georgia.

Bun Womble, as friends called her father, son of a Methodist minister, was one of Winston-Salem’s most successful lawyers. At age 37, he sat on the board of his alma mater, Duke University, and pushed to integrate the school. He later served in the state legislature and was one of the city’s famous 12 elders who gathered monthly at a private home dressed in formal attire to plan the future of Winston-Salem, planning for the growth of neighborhoods, city government, even the merger of the two neighboring towns. “It was Dad who suggested putting the hyphen between Winston and Salem,” says Miss Edie.

Her mother was also a force to be reckoned with.

“Thanks to our parents, we understood how fortunate we were when so many were suffering due to the Depression. We lived in the same neighborhood as the Hanes and Reynolds families but  with  six of us all under the age of 8, we all learned to be each other’s best friends very quickly. We made our own beds and straightened our rooms and our father always walked us to school. Our grandmother lived with us, too. It was bliss.”

Edie’s mother had been around the world three times and held strong views about exposing her six children to the realities of life — even, and maybe especially, with the devastation of the Great Depression sweeping over America.

When an enterprising fellow named Clarence Rose came through town promoting a summer-long caravan of buses designed to show children of the affluent South the key sights and landmarks of America, Edith Willingham Womble signed up four of her oldest children for the year 1933, the lowest point of the Depression — Lila, Bill, Olivia and Edie.

“Dad took us to Atlanta on the train to meet the caravan. There were nine buses that had been customized to carry 16 or 17 children. They were called ‘Spirit of Progress’ buses. The boys and girls were segregated by sex and rode on separate buses based on their ages. Each bus had its own counselor, cook and a full kitchen. Tents and cots came out of the roof to camp, and each camper had his or her own canvas bag with clothing and toiletries and spending money. Dad gave us each  spending money to last the entire summer, all the way to the West Coast and back,” Miss Edie remembers.

Three fine automobiles — brand new Lincolns, she recalls —  took off before  the buses bearing the caravan’s campers. “Rose did things first-class, which is why when he ran short of funds we ate a lot of potato salad later,” Miss Edie explains with a prim smile.

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Traveling over rough highways and dirt roads, the caravan’s first major stop was the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933. Celebrating the city’s centennial, the theme of the international exposition was America’s emerging technical innovation. Among the highlights, the German Graf Zeppelin landed and Sally Rand performed for one of the last times. Two other things deeply impressed young Edie Womble. “One was that I got to meet the real Aunt Jemima, the pancake lady. She was very nice to us. Clarence Rose allowed us to wander around the fair in groups of three. I was also struck by models of what highways of the future were going to look like. They looked exactly what interstates do today — four lanes, all paved, overpasses and everything.”

The campers stayed on the grounds of a university in Evanston. If a college or university wasn’t available, the caravan buses camped at local fairgrounds, churches and state parks. “In some towns, people turned out to welcome us. The colleges were the best because most of the roads we were traveling were gravel or dirt roads and we could get showers or baths.”

Onward west they pushed — to the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Yellowstone Park, Los Angeles and Santa Monica, where the children spent a full day riding a roller coaster that went out over the ocean and drank themselves silly on milkshakes. In Los Angeles Edie found a stray kitten she decided to bring home with her to North Carolina. During the return trip, at Yosemite National Park, she witnessed the park’s celebrated 300-foot “Firefall” and met the park’s famous Jaybird Man, who could summon at least 50 different kinds of birds with various whistles. She took photographs with her Brownie camera. She also wrote letters home to her grandmother and the family’s cook, whom she was worried about because her bank back in Winston had folded.

“We honestly didn’t see too many signs of the Depression on the road,” she explains. “The crisis was all still unfolding and we kept moving. We knew it was a difficult time for people less fortunate than we were.”

The cat made it home to Winston-Salem, newly named — what else — “L.A.,” and lived out a nice long life at 200 North Stratford.

The second year she joined Clarence Rose’s caravan, Edie saw Glacier National Park, Banff, Lake Louise and the Calgary Stampede. She brought back a petrified rock from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. “There was no air conditioning in the desert, so we wet towels and placed them on our heads. That was our air conditioning,” she remembers.

By then, she notes, Clarence Rose was running out of money and magic. One night he awakened campers in the wee hours and hustled them to the buses in order to outrun local authorities that were demanding he buy special license plates for traveling through their states. A year or so after the Womble children made their final cross-country trip with Georgia Caravan, Rose’s buses were confiscated and sold at auction. The caravan riders had to find their own way home.

“It was a sad end for Rose. We never learned what happened to him. But I think we learned a great deal about being self-sufficient, being unafraid of the world.”

During the summer of 1939, as the shadow of Adolf Hitler crept over western Europe, Edith Womble sent her three middle children on a traditional continental tour of Europe’s cultural capitals. “She knew it might be the last chance to do that before everything dramatically changed — that life would never again be like she remembered it.” Brother Bill had done his European tour in 1935, and older sister Lila actually lived in France for a time.

Edie, a junior at Duke, traveled with her older sister Olivia, a senior, and a group of girls from Duke chaperoned by a campus house mother named Mrs. Pemberton. They landed in Italy, toured ruins and museums before heading for Germany. During a stop in Prague they saw Nazi banners and flags flying everywhere. “And I remembered Bill telling me how when he was there he saw groups of young men in brown uniforms beating up people on the streets. We didn’t see anything like that, though the guide Mrs. Pemberton arranged to give us a tour took us to the Jewish quarter of the city, where we saw many abandoned apartments and empty streets. It was his way of trying to tell us what was really going on in Europe.”

One evening in Munich, a trio of local German boys invited Edie and a couple of friends to a private home to dine. “Mrs, Pemberton let us go because they were very polite and knew English and seemed harmless. The place where they took us was very grand, probably confiscated from wealthy Jewish people we realized later, with a stone courtyard and gate.  We had been warned not to ask any questions. After an elegant dinner upstairs, we went down to the basement to play ping-pong and something quite startling happened. Soldiers wearing black uniforms of the SS suddenly appeared, and we were whisked out and held at the front gatehouse while they tried to figure out what to do with us. It turned out that Adolf Hitler and his henchmen had arrived to dine in the club and nobody knew we were downstairs. The Fuhrer was just upstairs! Fortunately, after they debated what to do with us, they decided it was smarter to let us go — telling us to get out of there fast and not look back.”

In Budapest, the servant of a polished young man appeared at their table and invited Edie to dance with his employer on the hotel’s revolving dance floor. He turned out to be the nephew of Hungary’s highest ranked government official, the country’s embattled regent. His name was Denes Marie Siegfried Joseph, Count of Wenckheim, aka. “Count Sigi.” He took her horseback riding in the royal forest and to see his family’s hunting lodge, where his staff fed them a lavish dinner. He also took Edie to see the airplanes of his country’s modest air force. “It was just a few planes but he was very proud of them. I was eager to see them because I’d taken flying lessons at Duke.

“Sigi was charming. He sent me flowers and lovely notes. For several days before we headed for France, we went to dinner and danced. One night, to Mrs.Pemberton’s dismay, we stayed out till dawn. Sigi wanted to show me Budapest by moonlight. Given all that was happening around us, I suppose it was terribly romantic,” she allows. “But it wouldn’t last.”

Over the next year, Sigi wrote Edie Womble several passionate letters and sent photographs until his country fell under Communist control. Eventually, he was captured and shot by a firing squad. In Paris, shortly before heading to England and on to Scotland for the boat home, Edie and Olivia  went on a mission for their mother to track down a well-known seamstress their mother first met in Vienna in 1900. The woman  was famous for her needlepoint. “She was living in the Jewish section of Paris, and the taxi driver insisted on waiting for us. We knocked on her door, but there was no answer. Some might have given up, but we were taught by our parents never to give up. Eventually a slit in the door opened, and we told the woman who we were. She let us in and it was incredible, the most beautiful fabrics and needlepoint you can imagine. Her name was Mrs. Joli. She’d fled the Nazis from Vienna. The French foolishly thought the war was over. They were taking paintings and other artwork out of hiding. Olivia and I picked out some patterns for our mother’s two tall Italian chairs and paid Mrs. Joli, who promised to send along the coverings as soon as possible.”

ps-edie4-9-16.jpg

Britain declared war on Germany days later, as the Womble girls steamed for America.

“Because of the outbreak of war, mother thought those coverings would never arrive. But amazingly they did — the very next April. Unfortunately, we never heard from Mrs. Joli again. After the war, I went back to Europe and looked for any trace of her, but she and her family were gone. You don’t have to guess what happened to them, poor things.”

Miss Edie Chatham smoothes her hand over her beloved pine table, sighs and smiles.

“Goodness me. Listen to me, how I’m going on.” She touches a small stack of Sigi’s well preserved letters, each baring a Nazi emblem.

“Nothing of the kind,” assures her captivated her visitor.

There is, after all, something deeply rewarding about sitting in such a peaceful house where the afternoon breeze comes through the open kitchen screen door and a woman of the world recalls the most remarkable summers of her life. Softened by her witness to time and surrounded by her sensible old-fashioned house and large loving family, Miss Edie Womble Chatham seems almost ageless. Some women at 70, observed George Bernard Shaw of Queen Cleopatra, seem younger than most women of 17.

Miss Edie graciously offers her guest another glass of iced tea. Eager to sit and hear more, her visitor happily accepts. PS

Almanac

The full Harvest Moon — also called the Singing Moon — will rise at approximately 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 16. Owing to its close proximity to the horizon, the moon will appear vast and orange-colored. Don’t be surprised if you get the sudden urge to dance beneath it.

Also, because this month’s harvest includes the first plump grapes, the harvest moon is alternatively known as the Wine Moon. Red wine pairs well with Neil Young’s Harvest (1972) and Harvest Moon (1992). Should you feel inspired to drink from a sterling goblet while dancing on this brilliant night, consider offering a small libation to Dionysus, the Greek god of winemaking and ritual madness.   

three violet asters

Asters (also called Italian starwort or Michaelmas Daisy) are the birth flower of September, their daisy-like blooms a talisman of love and symbol of patience. The ancient Greeks burned aster leaves to ward off evil spirits, and the plant was sacred to both Roman and Greek deities. Those familiar with the hidden language of flowers will tell you that a gift of asters reads:

Take care of yourself for me, Love.

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year — the days when summer is changing into autumn — the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” ― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

Plant your garlic now until the first hard freeze — the earlier the better, as large root systems are key. Although it won’t be ready for harvest until next June, growing your own garlic means you’ll be well equipped for cold (and collard) season next fall. Aside from boosting your immune system and enhancing your sautéed greens, garlic, researchers believe, can reduce the risk of various cancers. Roast a head until tender and add it to your rosemary mashed potatoes and squash casseroles.

This month, with the sun entering Libra (the Scales) on the autumnal equinox, we look to Nature and our gardens to remind us of our own need for balance and harmony. On Thursday, September 22, day and night will exist for approximately the same length of time. Mid-morning, when the astrological start of autumn occurs, take a quiet moment for introspection. In the fall, just as kaleidoscopes of monarchs descend for nectar before their mystical pilgrimage to Mexico, we must prepare to journey inward. Breathe in the beauty of this dreamy twilight — this sacred space between abundance and decay. The duality of darkness and light is essential to all of life.

Tolkien fans have double the reason to celebrate the equinox. In 1978, the American Tolkien Society proclaimed the calendar week containing September 22 as Tolkien Week. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic fantasy novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were both said to be born on September 22; Bilbo in the year of 2890, Frodo in 2968 (refer to the Shire calendar of Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth).

This year, since Hobbit Day officially falls on the first day of autumn, consider hosting a grand birthday feast — call it Second Breakfast if you’d like — with a menu showcasing the bounty of the season. Decorate with ornamental corn, squash and gourds. Since no hobbit meal is complete without ale, mead or wine, you’ll want to have plenty. Punctuate the evening with fresh-baked apple pie. 

Alternatively, you might celebrate Hobbit Day by walking barefoot on the earth, a simple meditation practice with remarkable health benefits. If you’ve never heard of barefoot healing, check out Clinton Ober’s Earthing (2010) or Warren Grossman’s To Be Healed by the Earth (1999). Think about it: If the average hobbit lives about 100 years, they must be doing something right.  PS

Hole In the Sky

Nothing, or nearly so,

These thin molecules of air,

Water vapor collected

So high it’s crystallized,

The ice of a cirrus cloud

Lit by reflected light

And the slant of evening sun

Rendering this whole blue nothing

Something.

Then the hand, old, instinctively wise,

Darting across toned paper,

The scratch, scratch of a pastel . . .

There! Do you see it?

A hole in the sky!

Sometimes,

If we push hard

Against the skin of the world,

It will give enough

To allow us a moment, nearly nothing,

Maybe, but something,

Even if it’s just a hole in the sky

That calls us to remember,

Then shows us

Why we do what we do.

—Bob Wickless

A Letter from My 93-year-old Self

By Sara Phile

Dear Renee,

Here I am, and there you are. You have always had a problem with just being, and you still do. Could you just be for a minute, though? Try.

Your best friends at 33 are still your best friends at 93. What a gift. Cherish every talk, every coffee date, even every argument. They aren’t going anywhere. Your are lucky.

You will never make much money, but you are OK with that. You are pretty smart with money, and will continue to be. In a few years he will want to go to Alaska. You will say no, that you can’t afford it, and while it may seem like you can’t, just go. Go.

Speaking of him, he is one of the best friends I just mentioned. You and he will finally agree on that 10-year-long discussion that keeps coming back. It will be resolved. However, that other one?  The one that you can’t even think about right now or you will go into a hysterical fit, it won’t be resolved, but you will learn to just let it go, and you will be OK.

Your kids will be OK. Stop worrying about where they will end up, what they will do or not do. Let them be, please. Also, don’t be too quick to give your opinions on well . . . you’ll see. But for now, be stingy with your opinions. It’s hard for you, I know, but if you hold back, you will have more peace, and peace is always your goal.

You think you love your boys, and you do. You truly love them the best you can. Just wait until you meet your grandkids, though . . .

Right now, you think you have known grief and pain, and you have. You really have. Later, you will know it even deeper. You will have tools though, that you didn’t have at 33. You will be stronger.

I know it’s cliché, and you aren’t big on clichés, but the things you worry about now — past failures, future potential failures, what others think or don’t think, simply aren’t worth your time and energy. I know it’s easier said than done (again, sorry about the cliché), but you need to let go.

Your body will hurt like hell some days, especially your back. Keep practicing yoga and remember that you don’t have to run faster or lift more weight than the person next to you. Why must you always think that you are in a competition?

You love the Shakespeare quote “To thine own self be true,” but at this point in your life, you haven’t fully grasped the meaning and application. You think you know yourself, but you still have some weeding out and ironing to do. You will know soon, though.

As soon as you are able to realize and accept that your self-worth isn’t wrapped up in others’ acceptance or rejection of you, you will start to be at peace. And peace, my friend, is your goal. Once you find peace, you won’t want to let it go, and you will wish you had grasped onto it much sooner.

Today, this very day, is a Saturday in August and you are living in humid North Carolina. Your boys are 12 and 7. They are still in bed right now, but go wake them up with a water gun. They hate it when you do this, but deep down they think it’s funny too. Ask them what they want to do today, and do it. Even if, especially if, it costs money. Don’t analyze. Just go with it. You won’t get these years back.

Love and peace,

Your 93-year-old self

P.S. Extra pieces of red velvet cake aren’t going to kill you. Worrying about it just might.  PS

Sara Phile teaches English composition at Sandhills Community College.

Take a Chill Pill

In September, nothing succeeds like . . . moderation

By Astrid Stellanova

Summer’s end is here, Star Children. Mercy be, Astrid is relieved, as so many star charts are running hot and boiling over, like my Cadillac’s overheated radiator. Cool off, cool down, top off your tank with some nice cool water, and find whatever tickles your pickle. — Ad Astra, Astrid

Virgo (August 23–September 22)

When you celebrate the date of your birth, you don’t have to bake your own cake. You don’t have to apologize for wanting a party. You don’t even have to second-guess what is everybody else’s favorite cake. Sometimes you know what you want, but you find yourself worrying about what others want. Take yourself on a different kind of birthday trip this year, and I don’t mean you have to actually put on your shoes and go anywhere — just get outside of your comfort zone.

Libra (September 23–October 22)

Excess is not your friend this month. The definition of forklift isn’t about putting more on your fork than you can lift. Temperance and a little patience will help you overcome some of the challenges in your personal life and also make you find other outlets for all those frustrations taking residence in your psyche.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

Your silence is often mistaken for your possessing great depths. Dare I just flat-out say it, Sugar? It’s often you trying to be mysterious but even more, it is you refusing to commit what you truly think. There’s nothing much wrong in your life right now that a good flat-iron and a cocktail couldn’t fix right up.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

Imagine you are Lank Lloyd Wright, younger brother of Frank. Or Willy the Kid, the distant cousin of Billy. You feel like you have grown up in the shade. Born into the unfortunate ranks of shadow siblings, not has-beens but never-weres, you don’t like that you never have gotten your due. Honey, all of those feelings are going to dissipate this very summer when fame comes knocking.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

You and a certain troubled someone go together like drunk and disorderly. They are the flip to your flop. They are also reliably a lot of fun and a lot of trouble. Their draw has been irresistible for so long you cannot imagine a month without their talking you into something you would never do without their goading. This would be a good month to try.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

Say what, Honey? Your belt won’t buckle but your knees do? This is a good time to hit the gym, hit the road, hit a ball . . . just don’t hit the pantry. You love to entertain and you know how to set up a moveable feast. But it is exactly the right time to hit the salad bar and the garden patch and say “no” to anything that doesn’t look like cream, butter or a heaping spoon of sugar, Sugar.

Pisces (February 19-–March 20)

Summer started off with you acting like some kind of genuine crazy person. Thelma and pleaaaaaaaaaaaase! Now that you’ve been there and done that, come on back to reality, Child. Take charge of your inner GPS and find a detour around Crazy Town, USA.

Aries (March 21–April 19)

It has been a redneck picnic this summer for you, and you enjoyed every last bite. Now on to your next phase. You are known for episodes of sanity, and one is coming up. Grown-up time for you, Sugar Pie. It may read as mind-numbing and boring to you, but just give it a test drive.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

You have a will, and that will has been more or less focused upon figuring out how to get your way. Always. Hmmm, hit a roadblock recently, didn’t you? Now you have some explaining to do if you want your beloved to forgive and forget. That’s all I’m saying.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

Contrary to what you believe, you have a tendency to show your emotions all over your face. And what you have been showing lately is the meanest-looking doll face since Chuckie’s. Tempers have been flaring, you got into the middle of a ruckus, but you can do better.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

This month is going to be a breeze compared to the hot mess you endured last month. There is every indication you can borrow anything — a cuppa flour, a little time — but don’t borrow any more trouble. There are more important things to attend to right now.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

Go ahead, Leo, roar. You’ve got a splinter in your paw and it hurts like the dickens. Actually, it’s more like you have a splinter wedged in your heart. The wedgie from Hell. It is going to require some time to find the relief you are seeking. Meantime, do what you can to find an outlet — and I don’t mean Tanger’s.  PS

For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path.

The First Domino

Big time tournaments return to Pinehurst No. 2

By Lee Pace

The phone rang in the office of Pinehurst Director of Golf Don Padgett Sr. one day in the summer of 1990. On the line was Deane Beman, the commissioner of the PGA Tour and a longtime brother with Padgett in the fraternity of golf administrative insiders.

“Padge, we’d like to bring our Tour Championship to Pinehurst next year,” Beman said of the season-ending “Super Bowl” of golf that in its first three years of existence had been played at Oak Hill, Pebble Beach and Harbour Town. “It will only cost you half a million dollars.”

“Thanks,” Padgett said. “As much as we’d love to have you, we’re not in a position to spend that kind of money.”

Padgett was three years into his tenure running the golf operations at Pinehurst, and owner Robert Dedman Sr. was six years into his initiative to rebuild what he called “a fallen angel,” a bastion of American golf history that had stumbled on hard times in the early 1980s and even been run by the bank for two years. Padgett’s charge from resort President and CEO Pat Corso was to “bring championship golf back to Pinehurst,” and the club in the previous three years had hosted a successful PGA Club Pro Championship and a U.S. Women’s Amateur.

But a half-million dollars to get the PGA Tour to town? That was beyond the pale.

A week later, Beman called back.

“OK, we’ll forgo the fee,” Beman said. “But we want to come the first week in October.”

Padgett and Corso conferred. Padgett told Corso he didn’t think the resort could afford to give up a prime fall weekend. Corso agreed, and Padgett told Beman he was sorry, but the dates were bad.

Beman called a third time.

“OK, when the hell can we come?” Beman asked.

“How about the last weekend in October?” Padgett answered. “Our peak season will be over, and the golf course and the greens will still be in good shape.”

“Deal,” Beman said.

And thus fell the first domino in what is now de rigueur around Pinehurst and the state of North Carolina — major championships on the No. 2 course. Since that Tour Championship (won by Craig Stadler on Nov. 3, 1991), Pinehurst No. 2 has been the venue for the U.S. Senior Open, three U.S. Opens, one U.S. Amateur and one U.S. Women’s Open. On the schedule are three more USGA events, including the 2024 Open.

“We could hardly have written a better script,” Corso says. “The weather was great. The golfers loved No. 2. The crowds were huge. It was everything we could have hoped for.”

“That Tour Championship was very important,” former USGA Executive Director David Fay says. “David Eger, as a former North & South Junior champion, and an unabashed fan of No. 2, did a masterful job in setting up the golf course. As it had been a few years since the ‘regular tour’ players had competed at No. 2, the Tour Championship confirmed — resoundingly — that No. 2 remained a great championship test.”

And it’s been 25 years.

“Wow — 25 years,” Corso muses today. “Where does the time go?”

I remember a snippet from the twilight hour on Monday, three days before the tournament commenced. The shadows of the towering pine trees were creeping across the fairway and green of the eighth hole as reigning British Open champion Ian Baker-Finch made his way around the course with Corey Pavin. They putted out on the eighth green and walked to the ninth tee. Baker-Finch nodded toward a couple of acquaintances standing nearby.

“This golf course is great,” he said. “I’m only halfway around and it’s one of the five best I’ve seen in this country. Maybe the world.”

Baker-Finch played that evening until it was pitch dark. “I haven’t been this excited since the British Open,” he said.

Stadler shot a 5-under-par score of 279, and only four players broke par for four rounds that week. Eger, a Charlotte native and former PGA Tour player then on the tour’s administrative staff, looked at the leader board on Sunday afternoon and noted that only Stadler and Russ Cochran were in red figures. “Two players under par,” Eger mused. “That looks like a U.S. Open.”

“I admit I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect,” Padgett said years later. “I had some concern that modern equipment and length would render some of the shorter holes defenseless. My son, Don II, told me, ‘Dad, don’t worry. That golf course will hold up fine.’ Don had played several years on the tour in the early 1970s and kept his finger on the pulse of the tour. He also played here frequently on his visits with the family. So I trusted his view and, sure enough, he was right.”

Everything worked well that week in late October and early November of 1991. The galleries were substantial. There was plenty of parking outside the village and a good shuttle system to get people to the golf course. The golf course stood up to the game’s top players, who relished the old-style challenge of Donald Ross’ design. That week led to Pinehurst getting the Tour Championship for the following year, won by Paul Azinger (only six players besting par for the championship). The USGA was watching closely as well, and since the week was an overwhelming success, it soon awarded Pinehurst the U.S. Senior Open for 1994.

“I have talked to every player, and there is nobody disappointed in having Pinehurst No. 2 back in the world of golf in the way it has been through its history,” Beman said. “This is a very special place. It is not going to disappoint anyone. It is an absolute delight to be here.”

The golf media waxed poetically on regional and national levels about the singular atmosphere of Pinehurst, the direction the club seemed to be headed under Dedman’s leadership, and the appeal of championship golf on a classic Ross-designed course. Corso still gets chills 25 years later remembering Jack Whitaker waxing poetically on ABC-TV and saying the golf tour was richer for having been to Pinehurst.

Ron Green Sr. in The Charlotte Observer hooked onto the Friday evening unveiling ceremony of a statue of Donald Ross as a watershed kernel.

“For an old hanger-around who happens to think this village is a little patch of heaven, there was a sense that it was more than an unveiling of the great architect’s likeness, that it was also an unveiling of Pinehurst today,” Green wrote.

Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz, a New York Times correspondent then but a Moore County resident now, put Pinehurst in perspective in tying up a year in golf that saw the four majors contested on Augusta National, Hazeltine, Royal Birkdale and Crooked Stick, and the Ryder Cup on the Ocean Course at Kiawah.

“If the Tour Championship proved anything definitive, it is that Pinehurst No. 2 was the most evocative tournament arena of the year and should continue to have a major presence in American golf,” Diaz offered.

Throughout the two weeks of the 1991 and ’92 Tour Championships, the themes of introduction and renewal emerged.

Old fans of Pinehurst returned:

“I don’t know how they played this course in the early 1900s with hickory shafts,” said Chip Beck, a Fayetteville native and winner of the Donald Ross Memorial as a teenager. “Donald Ross must have been the toughest, hard-nosed architect in the world, because this course has stood the test of time.

“A course like this puts golf in perspective. It has maintained its history and tradition for so long. It’s like Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. It’s a standard to judge by.”

And new fans were born:

“This is the type golf course I could play every day of my life,” Greg Norman said.

“There is so much emphasis today on hitting balls 250 yards over water,” Baker-Finch said. “But this was how golf was meant to be played, the old style.”

“The whole experience is awesome — the village, the hotel, the golf course,” said Lee Janzen. “This is a golf town, all the way. It’s a great place to come, and I wish we’d play here every year.”

One of the most attentive spectators in 1991 was the USGA’s Fay. In the two years since the USGA had brought its Women’s Amateur to Pinehurst, USGA and Pinehurst officials had begun serious conversations about Pinehurst hosting a U.S. Open at some point in the late 1990s. Pinehurst, in fact, would make an official presentation in June 1992 to the USGA’s Championship Committee. The group voted in that meeting at Pebble Beach that an Open would, in fact, be set for Pinehurst, provided the club would rebuild what were considered substandard greens for elite competition in the summer, and the 1999 Open was announced the following June.

“I was very interested to see how the course would play for the Tour Championship,” Fay said. “I was interested to see if people would get romantic about a course. I was curious to see if time had passed it by. It hadn’t.”

The dominoes have been falling for quarter of a century.  PS

Lee Pace’s first book on Pinehurst, Pinehurst Stories, was released just weeks before the 1991 Tour Championship.

Safe at Any Speed

A road trip in an old Bronco travels a well-worn path

By Tom Bryant

Summer had been as promised — hot, hot and hotter. Now, September is here with shorter days and cooler nights, a blessing to those of us who think a half-day bottled up in the house to escape the blistering afternoon heat is some kind of imprisonment.

Linda, my bride, was off to the beach with some of her old college friends and I was hanging around the homestead, trying to put my hunting gear in some semblance of order. Dove season came in on Saturday, and as expected, it was hot and dry with just a few birds flying. Die-hard hunters sat in the middle of the field and sweated, hoping an unsuspecting wayward dove would come within range. A few of us old-timers knew better and found shade in the tree line. No self-respecting dove would be flying in this heat in the middle of the day. Late that afternoon, I was lucky, though, and able to get four big doves.

When the hunt was over I went home, cleaned the birds and grilled them for supper. There was a quarter moon that evening and a fleeting breeze ruffled the dogwood leaves, giving a false sense of coolness. After supper, I kicked back on the porch, enjoyed a nightcap and listened to the evening sounds. Cicadas were calling in earnest, trying to make up for, in a few days, what they had missed by living underground for seven years. A hound dog bayed in the distance, complaining about being cooped up while coons and coyotes roamed about. I was hot and tired and needed a bath but decided to have another little libation before retiring for the evening. Sunday I planned to ride up to Slim’s Country Store, one of my very favorite places, and visit with my longtime friend and hunting buddy Bubba.

For some reason, it was a restless night, so rather than tossing and turning anymore, I got up early, put on a pot of coffee and made a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. I had loaded my ancient Bronco with some provisions the evening before: a cooler, my gunning bag, an old shotgun and a pistol just in case I ran into some hostiles on the way. The old truck is not air-conditioned, so I thought an early start would be advisable before the sun really went to work. There was a gray tint in the dawning sky as I pointed my trusty steed north, and we drove a quiet, lonesome road heading out of town.

The Bronco and I go way back. If I could remember all the adventures I’ve had with her, I could write a book. She’s slow, geared for the backcountry, not the breakneck speed of major highways; consequently, I just drive her on country roads, top speed 55. She’s a meanderer, but off the road she can’t be beat. She has never stranded me in the backwoods.

Very few people were up and about on this lazy Sunday morning, and we had a restful ride. Country farming in early fall is sort of halfway. Harvesting is just getting started, with acres of corn still to be combined, and I noticed that a lot of soybean fields were still green, just beginning to turn brown around the edges.

Moving out of the longleaf pine belt into hardwoods of oak, maple and hickory is like visiting another country. Rolling hills with cut hayfields and pastures with Black Angus cattle resting nose-to-nose next to a shaded creek is something that most folks don’t see that often. My affinity for country air started when I was a youngster, and if I don’t get a whiff of it every now and then, I can become as surly as a saddle bronc that hasn’t been ridden in a while.

I had all the windows down in the Bronco and the back gate fully up, so the ride north to Slim’s was pleasant and a little windy. The sun was steadily climbing and bearing down, promising another stifling day. The country store that was my destination was only about an hour away, and I looked forward to seeing all the good old boys and again listening to some tall tales that the old place seemed to generate. I hadn’t been in this part of the state in a while and was excited about prospects for the day. Bubba was supposed to meet me about 9, and we were going to ride out to check on one of our duck hunting spots from long ago.

Bubba and I are longtime friends. I first met him when he was a fledging executive with his family’s textile manufacturing company. I was just out of the Marine Corps, newly married and just starting my newspaper career after finally finishing college. We were like most young adults that age, ready to make our mark on the world, with a couple of exceptions. I had been given a real dose of reality with the Marines, and Bubba also had to grow up fast. Textiles were just beginning to leave the country. Mexico and China were making inroads into what had once been the South’s major manufacturing asset. Bubba and his other executives had all they could do to keep the plant productive and profitable. The years plowed on, though, and we remained close friends, as they say, through thick and thin.

Slim’s place, an old family country store, is a rarity in this age of big box giant retailing businesses, where big is supposedly automatically better. At Slim’s, a customer gets more than just goods. There is a camaraderie that you will not find at Wally World. Everybody knows everybody and is actually concerned with the well-being of neighbors. I’m afraid that when these old places are finally history, part of the backbone of country living will also be gone.

Bubba was standing on the steps of the store when I pulled into the gravel parking lot. He hasn’t changed much over the years, a rangy white-headed fellow now with a mustache to match. He would have been comfortable riding with Stuart during the Big War, or pushing cattle across the Red River in Texas. He’s the kind of guy everybody wants in their foxhole.

“Hey, Coot,” he exclaimed as I climbed out of the Bronco. “That old truck is still getting you around. Good to see you.” Bubba gave me the nickname Cooter years ago and refuses to let it drop. As far as he’s concerned, I’ll be Cooter as long as we’re on this Earth. Maybe even St. Peter knows me by that name now.

“Yeah, Bubba, she’s like us, old and slow, but the motivation is still there.” I went up the steps and Bubba grabbed me around the shoulders.

“Come on in, Coot. I just made a new pot of coffee and I got some of Ritter’s famous apple brandy sweetener just for you. We need to talk about the coming duck season. I have some good spots lined up.”

We went on in through the double screen doors and I greeted some of the regulars. I got a mug from the coffee bar, poured it about half full and said, “All right, Bubba, where is that famous sweetener?” He grinned, reached in his ever-present gunning bag, and pulled out a flask.

Yes, sir, it’s going to be a good day. PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.