The Set-Up Man

Pinehurst’s Bob Harlow, golf’s promotional genius

By Bill Case   

Photographs from the Tufts Archives

When Bob Harlow learned that golf great Walter Hagen was looking to hire a full-time manager in 1921, the 32-year-old newspaperman quit his job as sports editor of the Associated Press’s Radio Division, and leaped at the opportunity to represent “The Haig.” No other professional golfer had ever hired a personal agent, but then, no other professional golfer had ever been Walter Hagen.

Not yet 30 himself, Hagen had already won the United States Open Championship twice, earning a mere $475 for his second national title. The real money, however, was in exhibitions, and Hagen was both fond of making real money and bad at keeping it once he got it. Enter Bob Harlow, glad-hander of warmth and unflinching good humor, a well-educated world-class multi-tasker who, for roughly a decade — and more, depending on your tolerance for conflicts of interest — would resolutely arrange and manage the myriad details of Hagen’s intense schedule, sometimes as many as five exhibitions a week spread across the map like paint splatters. It was a business relationship requiring nothing more formal than a Champagne toast, a money match made in heaven. Harlow would collect it and Hagen would spend it.

If Hagen knew he needed organizational triage, Harlow seemed particularly well-suited to apply the tourniquet. Herbert Warren Wind, the venerable golf writer, described Harlow as “the only man who could undress, take a shower, dress, call his wife, and write a postcard in something less than nine minutes.” A native of Massachusetts and the son of a Congregational Church minister, Harlow was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and the University of Pennsylvania. Having himself worked for three different East Coast dailies, including the New York Tribune, he knew how to schmooze the local sportswriters whose fawning coverage was required if Hagen’s exhibitions were to produce a handsome gate.

Harlow’s theatrical flair matched Hagen’s own and helped him transform the star golfer into Sir Walter, a Roaring 20s commercial brand. In a 1928 exhibition match between Hagen and Archie Compston, Harlow hired a Scotland Yard detective so massive he looked like the Matterhorn with a brush mustache to stand as Hagen’s bodyguard. Furthermore, and much to the delight of the tabloid cartoonists, Harlow prevailed on the giant of a man to wear a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat. Harlow was widely believed to have been the ghostwriter of some of The Haig’s best lines, burnishing the image — apocryphal in degrees — of Hagen the champion carouser, partying the night away before appearing for matches the following day in a chauffeured limousine still clothed in a rumpled tux when, in truth, he was more likely to have watered the potted plants with most of his drinks.

Hagen describes their touring retinue in The Walter Hagen Story. “We had a regular caravan — three or four Cadillacs or Lincolns, my chauffeur heading the group in one, Harlow in the second, my caddie with my clothes and golf equipment in the third. I must have played, at one time or another, every golf course in this country. Guarantees didn’t mean much to me. I’d play for the gate and pray that I’d acquired the type of personality and game to draw the crowds. After the matches we’d stuff the money in a suitcase and gun the motors to the next date.” It was Harlow who was in charge of the cash, the crowd, the persona and the getaway.

Adding even more showmanship — as if that commodity was ever lacking — to many of the exhibitions was the presence of Australia’s Joe Kirkwood, the first of the great trick shot artists, who met Hagen at the 1921 North and South Open in Pinehurst. A 13-time winner of professional events, Kirkwood typically paired with Hagen in four-ball games against local hotshots. Then Kirkwood would display his fabulous array of trick shots with Sir Walter providing humorous commentary. It was a great gig. They roamed the country picking up as much as $1,000 a match at blue blood country clubs but settling for far lesser sums at nine-hole dog-patch layouts and, in the process, inspiring a generation of players to take up the game.

And it didn’t hurt the Hagen-Harlow fortunes that Hagen could pass for a movie star. Deeply tanned, not a single follicle of his immaculate black hair out of place, the always self-assured Hagen packed in the crowds. It was estimated he netted $45,000 annually from exhibitions. And he continued to play brilliantly in the big moments. During their association Hagen captured four Open Championships in Great Britain and five PGA Championships (four in a row from 1924 through 1927). The undisputed king of match play prevailed in 29 consecutive matches during that remarkable string. His unflappability coupled with recurring dramatic recoveries from seemingly impossible situations tended to dishearten opponents.

The only challenger to Hagen’s standing as the world’s finest golfer was the nonpareil amateur Bobby Jones. Both players spent their winters in Florida playing a lot of golf and selling a little real estate at two Gulf Coast country club developments — Jones at Whitfield Estates Country Club (now Sara Bay CC), Hagen at Pasadena Golf Club (now Pasadena Yacht & CC). “Matches of the Century” were a dime a dozen in the era of exhibitions, but if anything deserved the moniker, it would be Hagen v. Jones. In 1925, Harlow brokered the deal right down to the coin flip — a 72 hole home-and-home match to settle bragging rights and promote their respective clubs. It quickly turned into a rout with Hagen handing Jones the most lopsided defeat of his career, 12 holes up with 11 to play.

As if handling Hagen’s business wasn’t job enough, Harlow served as the guiding hand for the first National Golf Show held at New York City’s 71st Regiment Armory in May 1924. He arranged for promotional appearances by Hagen, Kirkwood, Gene Sarazen, Glenna Collett Vare and Alexa Stirling. Sixty-five exhibitors displayed equipment and clothing under one roof. A “Le Petit” (miniature golf) course was available for play, and the 8,000 patrons were wowed by a life-sized two-story clubhouse specially constructed for the exposition. Harlow also arranged for an exhibit of trophies from all of the major championships and, in a classic piece of Harlow marketing, emphasized their importance by posting an armed guard at the display.

In all matters, Harlow was shamelessly quick to leverage his association with Hagen. In February 1926, he wrote to Pinehurst titan Leonard Tufts that he and Hagen would be visiting again since Hagen planned to enter the North and South Open. After dispensing that welcome news, Harlow immediately segued into his sales pitch, writing, “ I should like very much to devote my publicity affairs and promotion work to Pinehurst from that time until after the North and South (Amateur) Championship.” He pointed out that the women’s field the previous year “was not too strong” and that he knew all the top Florida female amateurs and was sure he could get them to attend the 1927 event. Tufts replied that he hadn’t been all that impressed with the number of people Harlow had been able to produce in the past, yet still he consented to house him at the Carolina for “ten days to two weeks and $100 for expenses.”

Harlow and Tufts did the same tango the following February. With the 1927 Southern Open in Atlanta the week prior to the North and South Open, Harlow tried to sell the proposition that if Tufts retained him to represent the resort in Atlanta, “Pinehurst should obtain practically the entire Atlanta field . . . (as) it will be easy for me to persuade them to stop in Pinehurst on their way north.” Harlow naturally followed with his trump card. “I will have Walter Hagen in Pinehurst for the North and South Open as usual.”

Donald Ross opined that, while he was not opposed to retaining Harlow, the pros playing in Atlanta would likely appear in Pinehurst regardless. Club management conjured up a more difficult task for the promoter. “Why not ask him why he cannot bring Bobby Jones here for the North and South?” Harlow agreed to make the ask, but cautioned Jones would likely decline because of law school commitments at Emory University while unabashedly noting that if Jones was ever going to appear for anyone, “he would for Walter Hagen and myself as our association with him has been very friendly.” Tufts provided Harlow the same lodging and expenses afforded him in 1926.

In 1930, the PGA of America hired Harlow as its first official tournament bureau manager. The post involved the day-to-day organization of tournaments and public relations. In the throes of the Great Depression, Harlow faced the tall order of simply keeping what passed for the “tour” alive. Country clubs were closing. Sponsors reduced purses. Other events simply vanished from the calendar. Moreover, the PGA never had been able to schedule a full year’s slate of tournaments. Players still needed club pro affiliations to make ends meet. Harlow’s goal was to build a tour that would alter that paradigm. “It is entirely possible,” he claimed, “that in the future there will be sufficient tournaments and prize money — and with a schedule so changed that it will keep the better players profitably engaged for practically 12 months a year.”

There were plenty of blank spaces in the schedule and Harlow set about filling them. In 1931, the owner of the Miami Biltmore Hotel faced tax problems, and Harlow convinced him his predicament could be eased by holding a tournament on the hotel’s Donald Ross-designed course and donating the proceeds to charity. The Warm Springs Spa, where Franklin Roosevelt had undergone treatment for polio, would be the ideal beneficiary. The resulting Miami-Biltmore Open was a rousing triumph while also offering the tour’s richest purse, $10,000. The fundraising effort led to establishment of the March of Dimes.

Harlow stepped up the fledgling tour’s promotional efforts. He authored the first Tournament Players Record Book, which provided local newspapermen “a ready source of material to promote a tournament and write preview stories.” He continued writing his golf column and began publishing his own periodical, Golf News. Harlow sought to make “permanent news about golf as prominent as major league baseball.” He cajoled Hagen into speaking at fundraising dinners and exhorted local media to go the extra mile to promote tournaments because, like actors in a theater, the pros would not perform their best “playing to empty fairways.”

Prior to Harlow, players arranged their own starting times, teeing up when they wanted with whom they wanted. Hagen was a habitual offender, often appearing hours after he was expected. Harlow instituted mandatory tee times, prevailing on the local papers to publish them 24 hours in advance so fans would know when their favorites would be playing. Aware that there were players who failed to act with proper decorum, he issued a code of conduct, continually reminding pros that tournament golf was a form of show business, and they needed to act accordingly.

Compensation for the head of the PGA’s tournament bureau didn’t look much like the million dollar contracts and private jets enjoyed by today’s PGA Tour pooh-bahs. Moonlighting was more necessity than option. Harlow remained cozy with Hagen and managed the affairs and schedules of other players like Horton Smith, Ed Dudley and Paul Runyan. In the spring of 1932, after convincing American Fork & Hoe Company to underwrite a tour stop in New Orleans, Harlow extended his stay an extra day or two. By the time he left the Big Easy, he’d been sacked as tour manager almost certainly because of perceived conflicts of interest representing star players.

The players, led by Hagen, were outraged. They threatened to break away and form their own tour. In October of 1933, the PGA returned Harlow to his job, but by December of 1936 he was fired again. Despite his undeniable success keeping the tour alive in uncertain times, the higher-ups still seethed that he did not devote full time to the affairs of the tournament bureau.

A preternaturally optimistic person, Harlow, now 48, looked for an environment where he and wife, Lillian, a former New York opera singer, could flourish. Given his previous association with Leonard and Richard Tufts, Pinehurst seemed a logical choice. Maybe the Tuftses could be of assistance. They were. Harlow was hired as head of publicity for the resort in 1937 and held that position until World War II.

Not long after settling in Pinehurst, Harlow purchased The Pinehurst Outlook, a newspaper hitherto published weekly during the resort’s high season. Begun in 1897, the Outlook had focused on the social comings and goings of guests and members of the town’s swish cottage colony. Its offices were located in The Harvard Building (now the Old Sport & Gallery). Harlow became editor and publisher, and Lillian served as business manager.

In the November 12, 1939 edition of the Outlook, Harlow announced a new publishing schedule — every weekday during the season except Mondays, plus all Sundays. He intended to ramp up golf coverage. “The Editor . . . has long had a desire to assemble the . . . golf news of the world under one journalistic roof, and on this page, each Sunday, will endeavor to present at least a portion of the more interesting golf news which is not widely circulated by the daily press,” Harlow wrote. “It seems that a Pinehurst newspaper is a proper place for such material.”

While some national news would be reported in the Outlook, its general policy would be to avoid the “terrific controversies of the day.” As Harlow put it, “Pinehurst is a resort where visitors wish to forget for a time the problems of this disturbed world.” Still, as the winds of war blew in ’39, Harlow used golf to illustrate frightening changes taking hold in Germany. In one writing, he worriedly speculated what might be occurring at Berlin’s Wannsee Golf Club, ruefully noting that fully half the membership, including its president, Hans Zanuck, was Jewish.

Harlow attracted remarkable talent to his hometown newspaper. Charles Price, a premier golf writer of his generation, cut his teeth covering local events for the Outlook. Nationally known golf writer Herb Graffis contributed a regular column. And Harlow, a gifted essayist himself, composed numerous noteworthy pieces. He was proudest of crafting a series of articles commemorating the Pinehurst resort’s 50th anniversary in 1945. Laboring until 3 a.m. for three successive nights and authoring 24 pages of copy four days in a row, his work still ranks as an indispensable account of Pinehurst’s first half-century.

Believing the scope of the paper’s golf coverage would befit a national publication, Harlow hatched a weekly magazine ambitiously titled Golf World on June 18, 1947. While other golf periodicals existed, Harlow’s new publication raised the bar for scholarly writing about the game. Working in tandem with associate editor Tom O’Neil and with Lillian in charge of circulation and advertising, the magazine garnered 5,000 subscribers the first year of operation. Harlow re-emerged as a player on the national golf stage.

The offices of the Outlook and Golf World moved to the Pinehurst warehouse building, the white structure still located across the road from the 18th tee of PCC course No. 3. The burden of managing two publications proved too great, even for the energetic Harlow. On August 3, 1950, he announced the sale of The Pinehurst Outlook to the Wilson family. (It would cease regular publication in 1961.) With the Harlows able to concentrate their efforts on Golf World, circulation continued to grow, rising to 9,000 in its first five years. The same year he sold the Outlook, Harlow hired 14-year-old Tony McKenzie to do odd jobs, eventually including lithography and typesetting. McKenzie remembers many of golf’s great names breezing in to pay their respects to the publisher in his second floor office. Harlow’s ready supply of Wild Turkey and Seagram’s Seven Crown provided refreshment for the likes of Jimmy Demaret, Lloyd Mangrum, and Hagen himself. Tony remembers Sam Snead coming by too, although the Slammer was known to be abstemious.

On November 15, 1954, Harlow died suddenly at age 65, a victim of coronary thrombosis. By then his little magazine had subscribers in “every state of our country, every province in Canada and sixty foreign countries,” wrote Herb Wind. “Golf World was successful because it had the chatty, everybody-here-knows-everybody-else flavor of a home town newspaper. It had that flavor because Bob Harlow was a hopelessly friendly and companionable man.” The Outlook reported that his untimely death, “cast a pall of gloom over the entire village.” His friend and benefactor Richard Tufts remarked, “The world of golf has lost its best friend . . . I always came away from any contact with him stimulated mentally by his opinions and refreshed by the honesty of his purpose.” Harlow’s successor at the PGA Tournament Bureau, Fred Corcoran, wrote: “He opened the door to riches for American professional golfers. Yet he never forgot that golf is a game.”

A mourning Lillian Harlow announced that Golf World would continue and “. . . will be better than ever. It must be so as a monument to Bob.” And the magazine did continue under the editorship of Dick Taylor without missing a beat. Lillian moved the offices from the warehouse building to Southern Pines, and continued her ownership until 1972. After two interim owners, the New York Times Company bought Golf World in 1989 and relocated the magazine to Connecticut, joining another NYT property, Golf Digest. In 2001, it sold both magazines to Condé Nast. Golf World’s paper publication was terminated following the 2014 Open Championship. At the time, it was the game’s longest running publication. The title survives on Golf Digest’s website.

The list of the magazine’s contributors is long and venerable. It served as a platform for the likes of Ben Wright, Bob Drum, Al Barkow, Lorne Rubenstein, Bob Verdi, Dave Anderson, John Feinstein, Curt Sampson, Geoff Shackelford, Steve Eubanks, Nick Seitz, Moore County resident Jaime Diaz and PineStraw’s Jim Moriarty and Bill Fields, to name just a few.

In 1988, Harlow was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. The only others enshrined for writing about and/or publicizing the game are Corcoran, Wind, Graffis and, most recently, Dan Jenkins. He joined Donald Ross and Richard Tufts as the only Pinehurst residents in the Hall.

Of the notable golf people who have called Pinehurst home, Bob Harlow’s name is rarely mentioned. Among visitors to the modern golf Hall of Fame near St. Augustine, he would rank right at the top of the “Who’s that?” list. But, a trailblazer’s footprints can have a light touch.  PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.

Almanac

February, a form

Pale-vestured, wildly fair,—

One of the North Wind’s daughters,

With icicles in her hair.

– Edgar Fawcett, “The Masque of Months” (1878)

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 The Snow Moon

Perhaps no poem paints a more fitting portrait of this time of year than Thomas Hardy’s classic verse about a “blast-beruffled” bird whose joyful song pierces the silence of a dark and desolate eve like an arrow through autumn’s last apple.

Read: February is here. Behold the first glorious explosion of golden daffodils.

Although “Darkling Thrush” is set at the cusp of a new year (and century), its haunting image of “tangled bine-stems” slicing the sky “like strings of broken lyres” invokes, at least for this nature lover, the bleakest yet most beautiful days of winter. Since the heaviest snows tend to fall this month, the full moon on Friday, Feb. 10, has long been called the full snow moon. The Cherokee called it the bone moon because, well, food was so scarce that supper was often marrow soup.

Speaking of soup, now’s time for root vegetable stews and chowders thick with heavy cream and gold potatoes. Make enough and you can eat from it all week — a quick and hearty fix after a cold evening spent pruning the rose bush and deadheading pansies. Through the kitchen window, a brown thrasher gently swings on the suet feeder before disappearing with twilight. It’s cold, but daylight is stretching out a little further every day. The soup simmers on the stovetop. Spring will be here soon.

Say it with Flowers

Violet and primrose are the birth flowers of February. The old folk poem calls the flower blue, but violets bloom mauve, yellow and white, too. Gift a lover a violet on Valentine’s Day and they’ll read: I’ll always be true. As for the primrose, a pale yellow perennial that thrives in cool woodland glades, the message crackles like an ardent fire:
I can’t live without you.

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Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste;

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.

And therefore is love said to be a child

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

– William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

 

A Grimm Fellow

Wilhelm Grimm, younger of the Brothers Grimm, was born Feb. 24, 1786, in Hessen, Germany. Perhaps that’s why National Tell a Fairy Tale Day falls just two days later, on Sunday, Feb. 26. In addition to publishing a hefty collection of folk tales — “Hänsel and Gretel,” “Der Froschkönig” (“The Frog Prince”), “Dornröschen” (Sleeping Beauty), “Schneewittchen” (“Snow White”), and on and on — the brothers started writing a definitive German dictionary in 1838, but never did get around to finishing it. Add a little extra magic to this month of love by spinning a tale about fairies or mermaids, or, in the spirit of this bleak wintry season, perhaps something a bit darker. Like the one where the evil stepsisters cut off their toes to make the glass slipper fit.

Oscar Comes to Town

Why should we let Los Angeles have all the fun when there’s plenty of glitz and glamour to spread around in the Sandhills?

Photographs by Tim Sayer and John Gessner

Dreamgirls

Jennifer Hudson won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2007 in her acting debut in Dreamgirls, adapted from the 1981 Broadway musical of the same name. Her character, Effie White, is left behind when Curtis, the man she loves and the group’s manager, replaces her as the lead singer of The Dreams, the Motown group based on The Supremes, that rises to stardom without her. Barely getting by in inner city Detroit with her daughter, Magic, Effie revives her career when she reconciles with her brother, C.C., who writes and produces her comeback hit, “One Night Only.” Our Effie, Courtney Pearson, is an Appalachian State University alum in a graduate program in the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, who teaches sixth grade English at West Pine Middle School. And what better stage for Effie to belt out her comeback single than at Casino Guitars in Southern Pines, the place where musical dreams really can begin?

Photograph by Tim Sayer

Gown from Brides Etc.

Makeup by Gabriela Villaseñor/Retro Salon

Mary Poppins

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise to see Mary Poppins seated at a window table in Lady Bedford’s Tea Parlour and Gift Shoppe in Pinehurst. After all, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. With her portrayal of the title character in the 1964 Disney movie, Julie Andrews won an Academy Award for Best Actress in her feature film debut. Our Mary Poppins, Christy Tucker, didn’t float down from the sky with the use of her umbrella, nor does she carry an enchanted carpetbag. Christy does, however, have three children of her own to nanny, 4-year-old Wyatt and his 2-year-old twin brothers, Wesley and Whitt. As perfect a setting as Lady Bedford’s may be for a spot of tea, don’t expect any penguin waiters or a tea party on the ceiling with Uncle Albert because, well, that would just be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Photograph by John Gessner

Costuming by Marcie Haberstroh/Showboats Neverland

Makeup by Megan Weitzel/Retro Salon

Hair by Meredith Jacob/Retro Salon

The Blind Side

In 2010 the Oscar for Best Actress went to Sandra Bullock for her appearance in the film The Blind Side, playing the role of Leigh Anne Tuohy, who opens her home to a teenage football prodigy, Michael Oher. Running away from one foster home after another, Oher, who now plays left tackle — the blind side — for the Carolina Panthers, is left homeless by the death of his father and the drug addiction of his mother. Slowly but surely he becomes a member of the Tuohy family and is eventually adopted by them. Our Leigh Anne is Kelly Kilgore, the mother of two daughters, Ava and Audry, and the owner of RIOT (Run in Our Tribe), a running and specialty athletic store on Pennsylvania Avenue, who pulls off the performance with the help of the Pinecrest Patriots. Jehari Whitfield (78) turns in a solid portrayal of Oher, aided by his teammates Will Robson (76), Langdon McFay (44), J.D. Robinson (81) and Davis Byrd (80).

Photograph by John Gessner

Hair and makeup by Ariana Cooper/Beautopia

Ray

Brother Ray. The Genius. Jamie Foxx won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his gritty portrayal of Ray Charles in the 2004 movie Ray. Blind from the age of 7, raised on a sharecropping farm in Florida, Ray Charles passed away shortly before the film’s release. Charles learned to read music using Braille at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, but it was his creative combination of blues, rhythm and blues and gospel that produced an entire new genre. His fame came at personal cost, including a struggle with drug addiction. Charles’ long list of hits included “I Got a Woman,” “What’d I Say” and “Georgia on my Mind.” Who better to sit in at the piano for Charles than Paul Murphy? The pastor of the Trinity AME Zion church in Southern Pines started playing at The Carolina Hotel, where this picture was taken, in the early 1980s.

Photograph by John Gessner

Costuming by Marcie Haberstroh/Showboats Neverland

Annie Hall

Giving neuroses a good name, comedian Alvy Singer, played by the movie’s writer/director Woody Allen, falls in love with Annie Hall, portrayed by Diane Keaton, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in the 1977 eponymous movie. Together they stand in line for the movie The Sorrow and the Pity, where Marshall McLuhan makes an imaginary appearance to explain to another theatergoer why he’s gotten it all wrong. Alvy and Annie fall in love over a meal of boiled lobster, but the relationship falls apart when they move in together. They reconcile, if only temporarily, when he rushes to Annie’s rescue after she calls him in a needy panic — though only to kill a spider. We found our Annie, Annie Arroyo, a graduate of James Madison University who works for First Flight Digital, the media arm of The Pilot, hanging out not in Manhattan but outside The Given Outpost in Pinehurst.

Photograph by Tim Sayer

Costuming by Marcie Haberstroh/Showboats Neverland

The King’s Speech

When King Edward VIII abdicates his throne in order to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson, his brother, Albert, aka “Bertie”, succeeds him as King George VI. Colin Firth won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the royal who conquered his awkward stammer in the 2010 film The King’s Speech. Cautioned by his father, George V, about the importance of communication in the age of radio, Albert seeks the aid of an Australian, Lionel Logue, whose sole training came from working with shell-shocked soldiers after World War I. With Logue’s help, Bertie takes the mic following Britain’s declaration of war with Nazi Germany and delivers his radio address almost flawlessly. While Logue points out some less-than-perfect w’s, Albert replies, “Well, I had to throw in a few so they’d know it was me.” Southern Pines Assistant Town Manager Chris Kennedy, a 10th generation North Carolinian, rises to the occasion as our king at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Photograph by Tim Sayer

Costuming by Marcie Haberstroh/Showboats Neverland

Roman Holiday

A crown princess sets off from the embassy of her undisclosed country to explore Rome da sola. She finds love, and Audrey Hepburn found an Oscar for Best Actress in the part of Ann in the classic 1953 romantic comedy. An expatriate American newspaper reporter, Joe, finds, but does not recognize, the princess (who calls herself Anya Smith) and invites her — in an abundance of caution — to spend the night in his apartment. Her regal comportment amuses Joe, played by Gregory Peck. In the morning, having slept through a scheduled interview with Princess Ann, Joe pretends to his editor that he was actually there until his boss tells him the interview was canceled. Joe sees her picture, realizes who is in his apartment and senses a scoop. Hijinks ensue. Our Ann is Ella Burkes, a stylist at Bamboo, a Boutique Salon in Southern Pines. She doesn’t have a crown but she does have a wiener dog, Norman.

Photograph by Tim Sayer

Hair and makeup by Ella Burkes/Bamboo Salon

Costuming by Marcie Haberstroh/Showboats Neverland

Shadow Market

A fanciful dealer in dark wares

By D.G. Martin

When Fred Chappell writes, multitudes of fans stop and read. Now retired, he was for more than 40 years a beloved teacher of writers at UNCG, where he helped establish its much-admired Master of Fine Arts in Writing program. He served as North Carolina poet laureate from 1997 until 2002. He is revered by many for his fiction, especially his early works based on his years growing up in the mountains. But his 30 some-odd books show his determination not to be limited to any genre, geography or time.

His latest book, A Shadow All of Light, demonstrates the wide scope of his imagination and talent. It is a magical, speculative story set in an Italianate country hundreds of years ago. Chappell asks his readers to believe that shadows are something more than the images people cast by interrupting a light source. These shadows are an important, integral part of a person’s being. They can be stolen or given up. When lost, the person is never the same.

In Chappell’s tale, an ambitious young rural man, Falco, comes to a big port city (think Venice), where he attaches himself to a successful shadow merchant, Maestro Astolfo. Over time Falco learns the trade of acquiring and selling shadows detached from their original owners. The business is a “shady” one because the acquisition of human shadows often involves underhanded, even illegal methods, something like today’s markets in exotic animal parts or pilfered art.

But Maestro Astolfo and Falco, notwithstanding public attitudes, strive to conduct their business in a highly moral manner. Although losing one’s shadow could be devastating, the situation is mollified if a similar replacement can be secured from shadow dealers like Astolfo or Falco.

Chappell, in the voice of Falco, explains, “No one likes to lose his shadow. It is not a mortal blow, but it is a wearying trouble. If it is stolen or damaged, a man will seek out a dealer in umbrae supply and the difficulty is got around in the hobbledehoy fashion. The fellow is the same as before, so he fancies, with a new shadow that so closely resembles his true one, no one would take note.

“That is not the case. His new shadow never quite fits him so trimly, so comfortably, so sweetly as did his original. There is a certain discrepancy of contour, a minor raggedness not easy to mark but plainly evident to one versed in the materials. The wearer never completely grows to his new shadow and goes about with it rather as if wearing an older brother’s hand-me-down cloak.

“Another change occurs also, not in the fitting or wearing, but in the character of the person. To lose a shadow is to lose something of oneself. The loss is slight and generally unnoticeable, yet an alert observer might see some diminishing in the confidence of bearing, in the certitude of handclasp, in the authority of tread upon a stone stairway.”

After introducing his readers to the complexities of shadow theft, storage and trade, Chappell takes Falco, Astolfo and their colleague Mutano through a series of encounters with bandits, pirates and a host of other shady characters. Mutano loses his voice to a cat. Bandits challenge Falco’s efforts to collect rare plants that eat human shadows. Pirates led by a beautiful and evil woman battle the port city’s residents for control.

Similar to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Chappell’s A Shadow All of Light is fast-paced, mythic, and unbelievably entertaining.  PS

D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

Walking with Dinosaurs

A winter beach is just the thing for soothing the shock of the new

By Serena Kenyon Brown

Here we are in February. It has been one shipping container, seven months, 3,843 miles and 88,632 still-unpacked boxes since the Sandhills of North Carolina.

It is 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The dogs, who normally eat at about 4 o’clock, have climbed into my lap as I sit down to write in order to remind me of their dinner time every minute for the next two hours. They are not lapdog sized and they are inconvenient to work around. Please forgive any resulting errors.

They’ve been somewhat unhinged, the dogs, since we left the pine-scented breezes of Moore County for the salty air of England’s south coast last summer. They’ve never much liked suitcases, and the rearrangement of our entire household on May Street into plastic boxes was a bridge too far. Or so they thought until they were driven to Atlanta, bundled into crates and wheeled onto an aeroplane bound for Heathrow.

As we took our seats on the same plane we asked the air hostess if she would tell the captain that there were dogs on board, so that the hold could be kept at a reasonable temperature.

“Yes,” replied the stewardess, with all the tact of one blissfully unaware of how it feels to have put a pet on a trans-Atlantic flight, “We know. We can hear them. One’s barking, the other’s howling.”

Oh.

It was rather a long journey.

Have you ever had a dream where everything’s completely normal but for one thing that’s starkly out of place? That’s how it felt when the dogs joined us at our friends’ house in London. And there they were again, popping up unexpectedly at my parents’ house, in the back of our old car, which had been mothballed in a barn for nearly five years, as we set out for our new home. (Shortly before the car broke down and we had to be towed the remaining 140 miles. Not quite the first impression we had hoped to make as we rolled in at 10 o’clock at night on the back of a tow truck like the Beverly Hillbillies.)

Our current residence, a red brick villa of elegant Georgian proportions, is resolutely bearing the indignity of having been reduced to a confluence. Here it’s not just the spaniels’ presence that is jolting. It’s everything. Southern family life meets big city youth meets classical art school. Paintings are jostling for space with bicycles and laundry baskets, resting three deep against desks overflowing with anatomical studies and much-put-off paperwork.

A grill that looks like Stephenson’s Rocket dominates the English garden. The red toddler car is cheek by jowl with a Victorian kitchen table piled high with wine bottles, silk peonies, board games, teapots and Ordnance Survey maps, all crowned by a set of red deer antlers and overseen by an effigy of Dewi Sri, the Balinese goddess of rice and home, who is looking very stern in the face of such domestic disharmony.

We have learnt that we are in possession of a vast library of much splashed and scribbled-in cookery books and another of tomes on art history. The downstairs loo is stuffed to the gunwales with fishing tackle. There’s a 1950s Power Trac in what was once the dining room. A bat is hanging off the chandelier.

But for clearing the mind, if not the sitting room, there’s nothing like a bracing winter march along a beach. Known as the Jurassic Coast, 185 million years of history lie in the black and golden cliffs that lour over the beaches here. Ammonite imprints stand out clearly in the rocks. Ten minutes of searching will yield a handful of fossils. We’ve found veins of wood and sea creatures galore, even a very happy clam.

The dogs and I walked along the bay this morning. As often happens, the wind dropped once we reached the shelter of the cliffs. The waves tipped gently onto the shore and retreated with a gravelly ssshhhhhhh. The sun seared through the bitter cold and sent long shadows dancing behind us. Herring gulls soared and socialised. Or perhaps they were pterodactyls.

Back in the States the spaniels would scent deer and flush wild turkeys. Now they’re startling seagulls and turning up Plesiosaurs. Quite an adjustment, and it feels like it’s taking a long time. But on a bright winter’s morning, when the stick the dogs are tussling over is 140 million years old, the turnover of a season or two fits perfectly into perspective.  PS

Serena Kenyon Brown is missing the PineStraw magazine deadline milkshakes. Even in the winter.  

Relishing Sparkling Reds

Put a little color in your Valentine’s Day

By Robyn James

During the month of Valentine’s our thoughts always turn to Champagne and other sparkling wines. Some choose white, some like pink, but how many take the road less traveled and sample a sparkling red?

My generation carries a heavy grudge toward sparkling reds because we remember the cheap, stomach-turning Cold Duck beverage and the fake bulk processed lambruscos like Cella and Riunite.

However, there are some gorgeous, quality sparkling reds in the market and the visual of the red bubbling froth in a flute is impressive and romantic.

Italy is definitely the mothership for sparkling reds. It’s a little ironic that one of the most famous sparklers comes from the Piedmont region of Italy, usually famous for the hard, tannic reds from Barolo and Barbaresco.

Brachetto is a dark-skinned grape grown almost exclusively in the Piedmont region but planted primarily in the provinces of Asti and Alessandria. It is often considered to be the red counterpart to Moscato D’Asti, although the grapes are not related.

Fizz 56 is one of my favorite brachettos and costs about $18. Although it is higher on the residual sugar scale, the acidity in the wine keeps it from tasting cloyingly sweet. This wine is truly a basket of berry flavors: strawberries, raspberries and touches of blackberries. There is even a nuance of candied rose petals, which is interesting because often Barolo can have a drier rose petal note. There is no wine that complements chocolate better than brachetto.

Not many American consumers are familiar with quality lambrusco; however, you will find them on the wine lists of authentic Italian restaurants in New York City.

Lambrusco is an Italian grape grown primarily in Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy. It is finished frizzante (sparkling in Italian). Mederfil Lambrusco Reggiano is labeled rosso dolce, meaning “sweet red.” This wine is about $10 and also has bountiful berry and violet flavors. Strawberries, cherries and blackberries are deliciously wrapped with an herbal earthiness that almost gives an impression of fruit in balsamic. Although sweet, it has a nice beam of acidity that would pair well with pizza or pasta.

There’s no way to talk about sparkling reds without a tip of the hat to Australia and its fabulous sparkling shiraz. When I visited Australia over 15 years ago, I was delighted to find that literally every winery I visited produced a sparkling shiraz. I predicted it would become all the rage in the U.S., and sadly I was mistaken. It’s still difficult to find sparkling shiraz in the U.S. when it is all over Australia. I guess importers lack faith in the marketability of the wine.

One of my favorites that is available stateside is The Black Chook Sparkling Shiraz, about $21 a bottle. The winemaker explains that his shiraz follows the centuries-old tradition of northern Rhone French syrahs by adding a very small amount of viognier, a white grape that actually deepens the dark color of the wine. He spotted a black chook (chicken) in the vineyard and compared the small white egg it came from to their small white addition of viognier to the wine. Hence the name Black Chook. This is a serious sparkling red.

Sourced from great vineyards in McLaren Vale, a premiere shiraz location, this wine is aged in small French oak barrels. The barrels contribute a smoky, slightly tannic edge to the black currant, blackberry and chocolate-cherry flavors. Try it as a party aperitif wine or with duck, grilled tuna or any chargrilled meat.

February is the month to branch out and experiment with a great sparkling red!  PS

Robyn James is a certified sommelier and proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at robynajames@gmail.com.

The Gull Next Door

Winter brings ring-billed gulls inland

By Susan Campbell

Gulls? Here in the middle of the state? It may be puzzling but, indeed, you may see a few soaring over the nearby mall or standing around on the local playing fields. Come late November — then through December and reaching their peak sometime in January — the most common species of inland gulls, ring-billed, predictably swells each winter. Highly adaptable, they happily hang out at landfills, parking lots and farm fields. Ring-billed gulls are medium-sized, easy to overlook — unless you are a birdwatcher. Flocks can easily number in the hundreds and, nowadays, are largely unaffected by human activity. Of course, it is the actions of people that have facilitated the species’ winter range expansion over the past century.

Ring-billed gulls are characterized by a white head and chest, gray back and black vertical band around the bill. When perched, their black wingtips, with white spots, extend beyond the squared-off tail. The legs, like the bill, are a bright yellow. Wintering adults will exhibit gray-brown flecking on the head. Immature birds will have varying amounts of brownish streaking as well as pinkish legs and bill. It will take three full years for individuals to acquire adult plumage.

Ring-billed gulls nest far to the north, on small islands across the northern tier of the United States and throughout much of Canada. They use sparsely vegetated habitat and are often found sharing islands with other species of gulls and terns. Ring-billeds are known to return to their natal area to breed, often nesting mere feet from where they nested the year before. They are also likely to return to familiar wintering grounds as well. They have a highly tuned sense of direction, using a built-in compass as well as landmarks (such as rivers and mountain ranges) to successfully navigate in spring and fall.

In the early 1900s, the millinery trade, egg collectors and human encroachment in habitats significantly affected the species’ population numbers. But with the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1917, ring-billed gull numbers began to stabilize. No longer was it legal to shoot adults for their feathers or collect their eggs for food. Additionally, introduction of fishes such as the alewife and inundation of new habitat in the western Great Lakes increased breeding productivity in the decades that followed.

Not only has the increase in garbage dumps and farmlands created more foraging habitat for these birds but also new reservoirs. Although ring-billeds prefer insects, worms, fish, small rodents, as well as grains and berries, they are not picky eaters — and therefore highly adaptable. Reproductive success, thanks to an abundance of food, has been even higher in the last thirty years — especially around the Great Lakes and the Eastern United States. As a result, this species has become a nuisance in some areas. Control measures (scarecrows, noisemakers, materials that move in the wind) have been employed but with very little success.

Large flocks of ring-billed gulls are likely to get the attention of birdwatchers come late winter. It is then that other species may get mixed in. It is possible to tease out a herring gull or perhaps a great black-backed gull from the dozens sitting on the pavement or floating on a local lake, if one has good optical equipment — and a lot of patience.  PS

Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com, or by calling (910) 949-3207.

Grievance

The winter wind is searching for a love

To love her like one loves the fall,

spring, summer, seasons better thought of

Than her silent biting chill, her pall.

Forgotten, crystal blooms on bare-branched trees,

Crisping air that skates on glassy lakes

Wakes the spirit, opens sleepy lungs to breathe

While snowflakes choose their own design to make.

Now she hisses sleet through blizzard teeth,

Love me for who I am and what I bring.

There is no resurrection without death,

Without a sleep, no dreams, no notes to sing.

Hear my lonely recitative,

Say you love me. Say it to me, please.

— Sarah Edwards

The Quickening Time

Scratching the winter gardening itch

By Jan Leitschuh

This time of year, produce hunger often creeps in. After the heavy sugar, meat and cream-rich holiday indulgences, we often crave the clean, simple flavors. A squirt of fresh lemon juice. A crushed garlic clove. Fresh, tender young greens.

If salad is wanted, the usual option is to head to the grocery store. A few gardeners may be lucky enough to have a raggedy collard patch or a frost-pounded row of kale or chard nearby, but those are the more hearty greens; best for stewing and steaming, harder to incorporate mature leaves into a fresh salad.

But for the Kitchen Gardener with itchy fingers, the first thought is . . . what can I grow? Well, even in February, there are ways.

Winter gardening guru Elliot Coleman of Maine, famous for his northward winter market garden, calls these long night/cold times “the Persephone days.” One need not be a Greek mythologist to decipher the meaning: tough times for outdoor plants, even in the sunny South.

Clearly, it’s cold enough to inhibit growth, but icy temps are not the only factor. Many growing things require 10 hours of sunlight to flourish. Active plant growth slows down dramatically during the low-light months, even sturdy, cold-hearty items with lesser light demands — greens such as fall-planted spinach or arugula.

Luckily, we gain almost an hour of daylight in February. The Earth, though not fully throwing off slumber, will quicken throughout its second-month days. Eager gardeners may then plant February sugar snap peas mid-month — if brave and willing to replant. It’s normally an excellent late-winter strategy. Peas can come through some nasty hard freezes surprisingly well, especially in our well-drained soils that prevent rot.

Some brave gardeners might even venture to sow some — not all their seeds, but some — Asian greens, fava beans, lettuce, turnip greens, mache, arugula, carrots, chard, green onions, beets or spinach at month’s end. That’s for the eager. The more cautious/time-pressed can wait until later in March.

One fine strategy takes forethought in September. Grow a sturdy fall greens crop to healthy adulthood, then simply protect it from frost with low tunnels of spun fabric, making a handy, backyard fresh market or “living refrigerator” you can dip into at will. Fresh spinach in January? It can happen, but not without care. But, we didn’t do that, did we? The 2016 barn door has already closed. And we’re hungry now.

The solution is easy enough. Grow a bowl of greens now. Indoors. In a bowl, a small window box or pretty container. Use ordinary plastic flowerpots if you want, and tuck them in an old basket with a dish to catch drips. Greens require a bit less light than other veggies, are packed with vitamins K, A and C, have that sweet fresh crunch and offer a satisfying, off-season chlorophyll hit — besides scratching that kitchen gardening itch.

Besides fresh greens, best thing about it? No deer ravages! Sorry, Bambi — go graze the neighbor’s pansies instead.

Start by ensuring your container has a drainage hole and a dish to catch excess water. Folks have grown greens in fancy urns, tin cans, moss-lined mesh circles, old yogurt cups, black nursery pots and more. As long as it holds a small volume of soil — three or four inches, as lettuces are shallow rooted — and has a good drain hole, it will work.

Fill with a simple potting soil, preferably one with a little fertilizer. If you are going to harvest right from the bowl, the plants will need nourishment over their two-month lifespan. Moisten the soil, let it expand and drink for a while. You can also use organic fertilizers, but this is trickier.

You can plant a variety of greens — lettuce, arugula, mache, chard, kale — in your container, but they will have different germination rates. For the most gratification, try a lettuce mix first. Lots of color and variety and similar growth patterns, lettuce should satisfy that salad lust.

Once soil is evenly moist, sprinkle your lettuce seed on the surface. Press the seed into the soil gently with a thumb. Seed-soil contact is critical. Then scatter the slightest dusting of soil atop. Too deep will smother the fine seeds, and too shallow will allow them to dry out. Like Goldilocks, you want it “just right.” Like sprinkling salt on popcorn, use about that much soil.

You’ll need care when watering, or these tiny fine seeds will wash into a clump and compete for space. A daily gentle mist from a household sprayer should suffice. Keep damp but not soaking, and don’t let them dry out. Once plant growth takes off, check soil regularly, as the growing roots will be pulling moisture hard to make new leaves.

A cool room in the house is perfect for germination. It doesn’t need a lot of light until the seeds sprout. Lettuces won’t germinate well above 80 degrees, so skip the water heater or heat pad where you start your tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings. A sunny windowsill makes a perfect growing spot.

The good news is you can be a slacker on many of these suggestions and still grow a crop.

On pretty, sunny days, you can set your lettuce container outside and let it dress up your porch. On bitter, bone-cracking cold nights, you pull it inside. With the right container, it’s a visual asset as well as a culinary one. I’ve been to spring parties where, in a pretty container, a bowl of greens served as a terrific and heartening buffet or centerpiece.

Baby leaves are the most tender. Thin out the leaves for salads as the container begins to fill out. Just snip a few leaves down low on the stem and add them to your existing salads while waiting. I admit, I often just graze my pots, eschewing bowls and salad dressing. Sweet young greens are delicious in their own right.

Thin the heavy spots, to ensure continued production. When the weather warms, you have options. You can harvest right from the bowl, or break up the party and plant clumps in the garden in later March, when the weather softens. There, you’ve got a head start on spring!

If you plant outdoors, you’ll need to “harden” the young plants off so that they may survive. If you’ve been putting the container outside in the sun on the nice days, you’re practically there anyway. Lettuces are even fairly freeze-hardy, if protected.

Unlike tomatoes, squash, eggplant and other heat lovers that would live in a container during challenging and extended conditions, you won’t be keeping your plants indoors or confined long. Lettuce grows to baby-harvest size in as early as 30 days for some varieties, 45 days for others. Better to harvest early, rather than late, for sweetest taste.

Remember, you can sow directly in the garden about six weeks before the last frost date, which is around mid-April here. In March one can attempt to begin sowing, or replanting, outside. Sow a little every two weeks, rather than all at once.

Cold soil will cause slow germination and growth, so I propose that the avid gardeners, eager for spring, do both. Why choose? Doing both will get you maximum production. You can have your indoor garden and eat it too.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

The Time of Her Life

A beautiful ring, an elegant watch, and memories of a girl in a world at war

By Joyce Reehling

Time ticks away, and now my mom is 91 and living on her own for over 17 years, not far from my youngest sister in Pennsylvania. In the last several years she has taken to divesting herself of things now rather than waiting for the “Will” to do it for her. “Why should I miss the look on your face when I give it to you?” she rightly asks. Each of us “girls,” of which there are four, has received items from her ranging from very old cookie cutters to beloved jewelry.

And so it is that I was given two items, both of which held memories and surprises.

Mom asked me to close my eyes and hold out my hand. I felt a small box. I opened my eyes and saw my Nana’s engagement ring. I burst into tears because I had not thought of the ring ever being mine. I was stunned to have it, a lovely old-cut diamond sitting in a setting that screams early 1900s.

My Nana wore it all the time. She could sit for what seemed like hours and stroke my hair while we listened to radio soap operas and lulled me into a state of bliss. She had the most beautiful hands, which I can see to this day. And she was always wearing this ring.

Mom wore it for many years until arthritis made it too difficult. Linked by this ring, I feel both women with me more keenly. I love it and it will go to one of my nieces in what I hope is about 30 years. Like Mom, I will do it in time to see the look on her face.

I always try to get Mom to talk about old Baltimore, the life of the city, her family and her life before me. For some reason on my last visit she wanted to talk more about her youth. Then she went into her bedroom and emerged with a little bundle of tissue. Inside was a watch. Her parents had given this to her when she graduated high school. It was without a strap and no longer working.

“Please have it. If you can get it to work, fine, but it is such a lovely old thing.”

And so it is that it traveled home to Pinehurst. I took it to Cotes Watches in Southern Pines and presented it. The gentleman said, “Oh, an Eska, that is lovely. So, your mom was a nurse.”

“No,” I said, “but during the war she worked for a photographer in Baltimore developing prints.” Another vocation that required seeing and timing in the dark.

Well, he held it like a newborn babe and said it needed either new hands or, for a little more money, he could send it to a place that would restore the original glowing hands.

“Let’s keep it as original as possible,” I said, and off the watch went to find its glow and be cleaned and ready to keep time for me.

I just got it back and bought a bright red strap to match the sweeping second hand and now wear it daily. A war watch that timed chemicals as they revealed recon photos, photos of friends, photos of young men off to war, photos of life. My mom timed life with this watch, her life as a young girl during a war. The lives of others. One photo at a time.

I asked her just yesterday to tell me more about that time, but her only ready memory was that sometimes going out to lunch or on her way to the streetcar to ride home, she would put one foot in the gutter and one on the sidewalk to bounce up and down like a kid as she walked.

“I wasn’t always serious, ya know; it was just fun. I must have looked crazy, but no one said anything.”

And who would? She was just 18 and it was a world at war. A good time for a good time.

Now when I look at the watch I see a young girl, as yet unmarried, then comes a tall Marine for a husband, whom she would outlive, and the young girl has reached the age of 91. And she keeps on ticking.  PS

Joyce Reehling is a frequent contributor and good friend of PineStraw.