Proper English

Tobacco Road

Home is where the nicotiana grows. And where it doesn’t

By Serena Brown

There’s a painting of the McLeod farm hanging above my desk. It was painted around this time of year. The sky is that pale, hazy Carolina blue of summer, thick with humidity; shirt-wringing, not-moving hot. It was a hundred degrees in the shade of the painter’s hat when he made that picture and, after years of washed-out British summers, he was very happy about it.

Back here in England we have tobacco growing in our garden. I use the word “growing” in a spirit of optimism; y’all know the conditions in which tobacco thrives — they’re a bit hard to recreate in a maritime climate. By the time you read this the Sandhills bright leaf will be 4 1/2 feet high and partially, if not totally, plucked from the stalk. Our seedlings have yet to nudge bravely into the Dorset air. We had a heat wave in July  — which in England means it was 80 degrees for the three days until the weekend — so there’s still room for hope.

It wasn’t a deliberate decision, the planting of the tobacco.  Back in the spring we were at our local garden centre stocking up on canes for the sweet peas. The rows of seed packets had caught our toddler son’s attention, and he was gazing happily at the wall of brightly coloured potential.

After a while he quite deliberately walked up to the packets and picked one off. Keen to encourage what I fondly imagined was a burgeoning interest in horticulture, I received it with enthusiasm. I didn’t really look at the packet, just saw a picture of some pretty, trumpet-shaped white flowers and the words VERY FRAGRANT BLOOMS. “That sounds nice,” I thought. I congratulated the toddler on his good taste and put the seeds into our basket.

When we got home and unloaded our shopping, my husband smiled a wry Southern smile and asked, “Why’d you buy tobacco?”

“What?”

“You bought tobacco seeds. Look.”

Nicotiana. Oh yes. And written in little letters on the back: Nicotiana sylvestris. Common name: Tobacco Plant. So I had.

The flowers look rather different in a close-up photograph of an herbaceous border. And, as everyone in tobacco country knows, those very fragrant blooms don’t get to stick around for long in a field before they’re topped, so they’re not the part of the plant I’d recognise. The only further point in my defence — and it’s a weak one — is that sylvestris is a South American variety of the Nicotiana tabacum with which we’re all familiar.

When “home” means more than one place, there are ways of making bridges and doorways between those worlds, no matter how far apart. When we were living in the Sandhills I knew I had only to breathe in the aroma of those high tobacco plants to be transported back to the old-fashioned, cigarette box scent of my childhood home.

Now we’re back in England, and those portals work the other way. Smelling a fresh cigarette now takes me to those fields around Carthage. The taste of bourbon is a journey to a field off Young’s Road. Once I’ve mistaken a passing vehicle for the sound of the evening train.

If I had been trying to find those quiet gateways for our garden, I have to admit that Nicotiana sylvestris wouldn’t have been at the top of my list. I can sniff a cigarette box for that effect. No, I’m waiting until our roots are a little deeper, when I shall realise my quiet ambition to achieve a grove of dogwood trees. Oh, how I miss the dogwoods.

However, by serendipity we have plenty around us to connect us to the Sandhills. There is a jasmine in the garden of the house we’re renting, so there’s a whiff of the jessamine fence at our little house on May Street. The honeysuckle rambling over our garden works as a gateway between the lake we used to walk round near Whispering Pines, a tangle of wildflowers, snakes and otter trails landscaped by a family of beavers, and the English hedgerows with their birdsong and bluebells and Queen Anne’s Lace.

Our local landmark is a hill topped by a stand of pine trees. We live by the sea, that threshold to, well, Brittany in our case, but if we set a more westerly course — and improved our sailing skills — we’d find ourselves on the shores of Hatteras directly.

I’ve just leaned over to the window and checked the thermometer, a Taylor gem from Carthage Farm Supply, and it’s reading 60 degrees. Perhaps we shouldn’t hold our breath for our tobacco crop. Instead we’ll light the grill, kick back on our (glassed-in) porch, put on an old-time country record and smell the honeysuckle. And whiskey. Home from home, wherever we are.

Serena Brown, the former senior editor of PineStraw, would like to remind everyone to feed the hummingbirds. They like tobacco plants too.

Almanac

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad. — Edwin Way Teale

Soft thuds of September apples tap at the windows of ancient memories.

This is how it always goes. Long before the leaves turn golden-orange-scarlet-purple, we feel the subtle yet sudden arrival of fall. We can smell it in the air. Even our skin has memorized this electric instant.

We open the kitchen window.

Inside, chrysanthemums in mason jars and herbs in tidy bundles, hung to dry. Outside, a murmuration of swallows flashes across the whispy-clouded horizon, confirming what we already know: Autumn is here. This moment of recognition is embedded in our bones. 

Among the harvest — winter squash and lettuce greens — Rome Beauties call for homemade pie. Brilliant red spirals of skin fall away with each smooth crank of the apple peeler, spelling out a sacred message on the countertop. We flash back to grade school, remember twisting the stems of our lunchtime apple to see whom we might marry. 

Soon, the trees will be naked as the apples on the cutting block. We cut them into perfect slices, toss them in brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Autumn’s first breeze filters through the open window — a dear, bright-eyed friend returning home with stories and souvenirs.

Harvest Season

September apples call to mind Pomona, Roman goddess and virgin wood nymph depicted as keeper of the orchards and fruit trees. The harvest she effortlessly carries in her arms reminds us of the sweet abundance of this most prolific season.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, one of the best days for harvesting this month is with the new moon on Sept. 1. The full moon rises on Saturday, Sept. 16, which also happens to be International “Eat an Apple Day.”  Lakota tribes associated this moon as the time when the “plums are scarlet.” For the Omaha, it rose “when the deer paw the Earth.” 

On Friday, Sept. 22, the sun enters 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. Day and night will exist for approximately the same length of time. Literally and figuratively, now is time to reap what we have sown.

The Feast of the Archangels is a minor Christian festival observed on Friday, Sept. 29. Also called Michaelmas, this celebration honors the angelic warrior who protects against darkness.

As autumn days grow shorter, we acknowledge the dance between lightness and dark.

Crock-Pot Apple Butter

Ingredients

6 pounds apples (variety)

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Preparation

1. Peel, core and slice apples.

2. Combine apples, sugar and spices in a Crock-Pot; cover and cook on high for one hour.

3. Remove lid, and cook on low, stirring occasionally, until apple butter reaches a spreadable consistency and is dark brown in color. Cook time will vary, depending on the types of apples you use.

4. Transfer apple butter to hot, sterilized jars.

The milkweed pods are breaking,

And the bits of silken down

Float off upon the autumn breeze

Across the meadows brown.

— Cecil Cavendish, The Milkweed

Good Natured

Legacy of Smart Choices

By Karen Frye

I have three beautiful daughters who are now grown and have children of their own. One of the most important things I felt that I could do for their well-being while they were little was to make sure they had a healthy diet. No sodas, no artificial colors, preservatives, and nothing processed. They did not go to fast food places. Now I see that they are caring for their babies this way as well.

About 20 years ago the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that doctors work with schools to reduce students’ consumption of soft drinks and unhealthy snacks. The Feingold Association was founded in 1976 by parent volunteers to help families of children with learning and behavioral problems, and chemically sensitive adults. The late Dr. Benjamin Feingold, a pediatric allergist and the chief of allergy at the San Francisco Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, developed the allergy program, which eliminates synthetic food additives that have been shown to trigger hyperactivity, attention deficit and other behavioral problems. The association’s advisory board includes doctors and nurses from a variety of institutions, including Johns Hopkins. You can learn much more about the studies and special diets on their website, www.feingold.org.

There are stories about schools across the country that have implemented additive-free food options; the resulting difference has been higher test scores, and improved behavioral patterns. Also, the program has reduced the alarming rate of childhood obesity. Restricting junk foods, which are loaded with synthetic additives and sugar, can change a child’s life in a most positive way. Even the kids will notice a difference in how they feel, with less aggressiveness and better concentration in school.

In 1997, the students at Central Alternative High School in Appleton, Wisconsin, were out of control. Violence and discipline problems were everywhere. What the school did was revolutionary. They did not call in the SWAT team; they did not pass out medication. They simply installed a healthy lunch program. Fast-food burgers and fries were no longer an option. Instead, their choices were fresh salads, and meats prepared without preservatives. Whole grains and fresh fruits were added to the menu. Vending machines were removed, and purified water was readily available. As time passed, grades went up, attendance was better, vandalism decreased, and the kids were getting along with each other better.

It may be a farfetched thought that this could become the way we feed our children both at home and at school. If we could do our part to make the healthy choices for our kids, and educate them on the reasons why, there could be a shift in schools — and perhaps less ADD and ADHD — as we see the clear relationship between food and behavior. Make healthy eating a priority for your family, and the reward could be calmer, more attentive children.

Karen Frye is the owner and founder of Nature’s Own and teaches yoga at the Bikram Yoga Studio.

Banish the Beige

Banish the Beige

Madcap guys write the must-have design book of the season

By Jason Oliver Nixon & John Loecke   •   Photographs by John Bessler & Jay Wilde

It takes exactly one year to craft a design book such as Prints Charming: Create Absolutely Beautiful Interiors with Prints & Patterns. We began this amazing project in the spring of 2016 and wrapped up the writing, endless photo shoots, and editing in the spring of 2017. And that was after months of writing a proposal, reworking the proposal with our book agent, and shopping the book around to prospective publishing houses in New York.

Each of the chapters in this book is a space — a home or apartment — that we, the Madcap Cottage gents, designed, so the book’s photo shoots had us hopping between interiors that we had crafted in New York City, Iowa, Florida, upstate New York, and our hometown of High Point, North Carolina. And then it was back to NYC. We live in North Carolina, but we are lucky enough to work all over the world, from New Orleans to London, the Hamptons, and our own backyard, High Point’s historic Emerywood neighborhood.

We were inspired to pen this colorful tome not because we harbored illusions of crafting a New York Times bestseller, but rather because folks like you, our clients, have always found pattern a tad perplexing. 

At Madcap Cottage, we believe decorating should be fun, and never grim and glum. It should be an adventure — one whose end result is rooms that burst with personality and that put a smile upon your face the moment you step through the front door. And the key to crafting this décor-driven bliss is patterns, friends, patterns. Forget white walls and neutral furnishings. It’s time to dream big and transform your home with the wonders of pattern! So let’s go; this E-ticket ride is ready to roll.

For ease of use, Prints Charming is divided by pattern-themed chapters instead of, say, by rooms, so if you think you have an affinity for “Pattern is Romantic,” you can start there and hop between “Pattern is Sophisticated,” “Modern,” “Timeless,” “Masculine,” and so many more. Pattern is not granny, and it’s definitely not going anywhere but up.

What follows is a sneak peek to entice you to embrace the myriad pleasures of prints and pattern in your own home. And once you are hooked on living a more colorful life, as are we, you can purchase the book (Abrams, $35), at The Country Bookshop in the heart of Southern Pines. We will be there on November 14 at 5 p.m. for a book signing, and hope to see you.

Life is short. Why dream in beige?

Here we are in our upholstery workroom in High Point, the furniture capital of the world. That’s John Loecke on the left and Jason Oliver Nixon on the right. Almost all of the fabrics featured in the book — including those upon the cover — are from our Madcap Cottage for Robert Allen @Home collection, available at fine retailers from coast to coast (please visit madcapcottage.com to find a retailer near you). Retail? Yes! We believe that good design should be available to all and not just to the interior design trade. By the by, John’s pants and Jason’s shorts are crafted from Madcap Cottage collection fabrics, too.

 

The living room of our 1930s-era, Regency-style House of Bedlam home, the centerpiece of the chapter entitled “Pattern is Sophisticated.” An antique Chinese rug pairs with a custom scenic wallpaper from Gracie Studio and brings a timeless storyline to life. Black furnishings add just the right amount of neutral to allow the room’s patterns to really sing. Green and coral are the hues that predominate in the space and connect the dots between the various patterns. The armchairs are covered in the Madcap Cottage for Robert Allen @Home pattern Mill Reef, inspired by the fabled club in Antigua that was once home to American heiress Bunny Mellon. Note that all of the furnishings in the room are vintage or antique: Look to the past to move the needle forward.

 

In the chapter “Pattern is Timeless,” a classic blue-and-white living room that we designed in Des Moines, Iowa takes center stage. The Duncan Phyfe-style sofa — an inherited heirloom — is the perfect, punchy focal point for the room. The sofa’s tree-of-life-patterned chintz is a design classic with origins tracing to the China trade in the early 1700s. Tonal blue-and-white motifs round out the look and play off the flora and fauna elements in the chintz. The vine-and-floral-bouquet pattern in the rug echoes the blue-and-white pottery collection that fills the room’s shelves.

 

We gave a suburban home in New York’s Westchester County a contemporary spin thanks to a spirited dash of prints and pattern, as profiled in the chapter “Pattern is Modern.” Here, the home’s entry — once a white box with zero personality — looks smashing thanks to striped wallpaper that helps mask the foyer’s many odd angles while adding heaps of drama. The zebra rug lends an organic element to the room. In a room, you do not want to make everything too perfect or too linear, as that will have less impact. Talk about a grand entrance, all thanks to a little stripe tease.

 

In the same “Pattern is Romantic” cottage, the kitchen shines with a mix of textured finishes in a limited color palette of blacks, grays, and pale blue. Natural materials such as slate, marble, and wood, tell a textured and well-worn pattern story. The room’s tongue-and-groove ceiling and chunky chiseled wood beams add visual interest on high. Although new, the finish on the custom cabinets was intentionally distressed to give the room a sense of history. The Roman shades in our Windy Corner fabric pattern are from the Madcap Cottage collection for Smith + Noble, the window treatments catalogue and e-tailer.

 

An Art Deco-styled living room springs to life in the chapter “Pattern is Masculine.” Think clubby, chic, and sophisticated abstract patterns, moody colors, and deco-styled chinoiserie in a small apartment on Manhattan’s East Side. Takeaway: Stumped on how to embrace pattern? Create a storyline for your home, and turn to pattern to make that dream a reality. Throwback 1930s Shanghai and a nod to the Bund in the East Thirties of NYC, why not!

 

Another view of the clubby living room in the chapter “Pattern is Masculine.” To give the light-filled apartment moody atmosphere, we covered one wall with a glamorous Asian-inspired wallpaper. The wall was just the starting point. Note how we carried the chinoiserie vibe throughout the room, from the Chinese-style brass pulls on the serving cabinet to the vintage gilded and lacquered faux bamboo dining table. Be sure to bring a storyline to fruition: You can dip a toe in the water, but if you want the complete pattern effect, go full force by bringing fabric and accessories into the mix.  PS

High Point’s John Loecke and Jason Oliver Nixon invite you to dive into the accessible, affordable magic that is prints and patterns.

 

Hometown

First Fall

The semester where it all begins

By Bill Fields

When I arrived at the University of North Carolina for freshman year in 1977, the idea that fall semester was sweater season turned out to be the Moby Dick of lies. It stayed hot deep into the football schedule. We would have been much better off drinking water instead of the contraband we brought into Kenan Stadium — Southern Comfort hasn’t touched my lips since — but I had a lot to learn.

My dormitory, close to classes (good) and Franklin Street (good, as long as you remembered with enough regularity the point of being in Chapel Hill), was three-storied and three-towered Old West, where my hometown doctor and multiple generations of students before him had lodged. After all, the residence hall was built in 1823. 

I settled into room 27 — first floor, north tower, a straight shot down the sidewalk to the main drag — with Keith, a senior studio art major from Greensboro in his mid-20s. He turned out to be a great roommate, good company when he was there, the kind of fellow whose teasing never crossed the line, and considerate when he returned after a late night creating one of his abstract works. Skinny as a paintbrush, he ate a lot of toast, usually while sitting cross-legged on his bed.

It didn’t take long to understand what a long straw I had grabbed when it came to who was sharing my room. A fellow who became one of my best first-year friends not only was placed in an Old West triple in quarters meant for two, but one of his roommates once took the keys to his car and drove it to Rocky Mount and back without asking first. Handing over the keys, he called my buddy’s Chevette “the worst car made.” He was, I’m afraid, as right as he was rude.

Those first few months in my new world, I encountered moonshine offered by a suitemate from eastern Tennessee, a guitar-playing redhead from Pennsylvania who believed with all his heart he was Neil Young and, in the TV room one evening, a pet tarantula owned by a guy whose roots I never cared to know.

Unlike some of the newcomers to Old West, I arrived with no visions of med school, did not have to cram for an introductory chemistry mid-term, and, therefore did not have to return to my room after flunking that test and realizing, quickly, I was not cut out to be a doctor. That was not the fate of a number of my dorm mates from elite prep schools in the Northeast, some of whom arrived on campus with a semester or more of college credits, an eye-popping revelation for a public high school graduate who was starting from zero and naïvely believed that everyone did.

I tended to my studies well enough that I made the Dean’s List for my only time, doing well in an intensive Spanish course that did wonders for my G.P.A. that would dip in subsequent semesters as I put in more hours at The Daily Tar Heel. When we put in an all-nighter, three of us usually spent it in a classroom at nearby unlocked Smith Building, our studying fueled by what came to be known by us as a “One Thirty Four,” the cheapest offering at Subway, a foot-long bologna sandwich that cost $1.29 plus five cents tax.

My Smith Building preparation worked well enough until I stayed up until 5 a.m. cramming for an Astronomy 31 final and slept through my alarm. I woke up mid-morning to guys talking outside my room having finished their various finals, a sound that shocked me into a pair of sweatpants and a windbreaker, and out the door to Phillips Hall, a short distance down Cameron Avenue. My professor took pity and let me take the exam, and I returned by noon to friends who never let me forget that day.

It’s tempting to say that was my biggest embarrassment of fall semester, but the nadir likely occurred at the Daniel Boone Ice Rink in Hillsborough, site of a mixer with one of the north campus’ women’s dorms. Since I had never ice skated, the prudent move would have been to skip it. But I loaded on the bus and went forth to the ice where I fell over and over to the point that I was soaked from failure, while the experienced skaters from up north went round and round, wowing the southern girls.

I picked up no phone numbers that night, only a cold.

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

The Accidental Astrologer

Sweet September

Friends in need are friends indeed

By Astrid Stellanova

Virgo, close your eyes and think of Mars! You’re not a Martian, but this is where your energy lies. Known as good communicators, you are attracted to professions that demand a stage. Fellow Virgos include Kobe Bryant, Charlie Sheen, Mother Teresa, Sean Connery, Richard Gere, Pippa Middleton, and Lance Armstrong. Shew-we, Baby Doll, you know how to make entrances and exits, and sure look just as good going as coming!  — Ad Astra, Astrid

Virgo (August 23–September 22)

Thoughtful and sincere you are, and that is your calling card, Sugar. You care about your fellow man and we know it. Friendships are golden, and this year makes that clear to all closest to you. You and your inner circle are about as tight as bark on a tree or a tick on a hound dog. This makes your life a whole lot sweeter, and the world an itty bit better knowing you are in it. Now, be alert to a communication. It will need your attention and will pay off to boot.

Libra (September 23–October 22)

What happened wasn’t fair, and you knew it, but life has offered some very sweet compensations for your troubles. The stars look a whole lot better this month, and an even better opportunity pops up on the horizon. That person that causes you grief? About the only thing you share is you both breathe air, Baby.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

Aw, c’mon. You didn’t orchestrate world peace, but then, you didn’t fire a missile at North Korea. Here’s what you can do in your own little corner of the world. Turn off the telly and take a walk. Leave the office. Bay at the moon if you wanna. But don’t treat the checkout line at Harris Teeter like it’s the suicide prevention line.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

You’ve been looking like you lost your platoon, but Sugar, you might need to know this little tidbit: You at least have a clue where you are going. Those around you don’t. Stop following the lost and take back control; you have some valuable intel and plenty of people who would give you a helping hand.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

Your give-a-damn meter is broken, Darling. Everybody is cracking up, watching you square your shoulders and standing up for yourself. About time, they are saying to themselves. Before you tangle with the boss/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/manager of 7-Eleven step back and get a grip. You’ve made your point.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

As things are slowly being revealed, you keep your peace and watch it play out. You think you are completely subtle, but Sugar Pie, you’ve been giving them catfish eyes and everybody noticed. Until the game is over, wear shades. Meantime, an investment in something you know a good bit about is worth a closer look.

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

A bestie has risen up in life, and they act like they think they’re the manager at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Indulge them a little. They need your kind words because what you say and think matters more to them than anything. Meanwhile, be mindful of your health and check your craving for Blue Bell ice cream.

Aries (March 21–April 19)

Summer has taken the air out of your sail, and you’re feeling it. By the time you settle yourself down in a chair and take a rare break and a deep breath, it’s a lot like Zeus sucking the oxygen out of the room. Honey, you have no clue that your idle is a lot of folks’s high gear. Read a book; take a nap. Give us a break, why dontcha?

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

You’ve ignored mending fences because you just cannot admit to your stubborn self that you had a role in the breakdown. Now you gotta choose: Would you rather be happy, or would you rather be right? This ain’t Dr. Phil talking; we all know you don’t need this person like they need you. So go for the high road.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

Just when you thought your achy breaky heart was done for, good fortune smiled. It’s like that for you; you take to your bed, moping and moaning, and then the sun shines again. Honey, you are going to like the astral forecast because you get lucky on so many levels it ain’t even real. The odds break in your favor.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

You’ve got a concealed weapon that has a whole lot of power: your never-fail charm. It’s often concealed because you know that you could rely upon it too much and be less authentic, but you are better than that. There’s a sneaking suspicion building up that you are more intuitive than you knew.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

Here’s a snapshot: you get up from a nap, roar a little, then fall back onto the sofa. Snap outta this cycle, you lazy feline. Time to move out and do your own hunting. The object of your considerable desire is prone to change, so focus, Sugar, focus. By feeding time, you will have the meal you deserve.

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.

Poem

DON’T WALK FAST

Rock … fallen leaves … soil.

At first just listen … after a mile

or so sound will distill in your body.

Find rhythm … keep that pace …

then slowly refocus mind & ear

so as to attend the measured silence

between boot swing & boot fall.

There’s the music … call it that.

It was not here before you came

won’t be here when you’re gone.

The spaces pulse … connecting links

making sound complete & movement whole.

Do not avoid the steeper slopes.

Against grade the intervals will

widen & deepen so that you

will hear the lovely up-

curving arc of trail.

  —George Ellison

 

Painting by Elizabeth Ellison

The Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities presents The Wilderness Poet, George Ellison, and his wife, Elizabeth Ellison, renowned visual artist and illustrator of her husband’s works. A reading and art exhibit are in the Great Room at Weymouth on Sunday, Sept. 10, at 4 p.m., $10 for members and $15 for non-members. A reception will follow.

Out of the Blue

Life Behind The Front Door

The lowdown on “Story of a House”

By Deborah Salomon

Talk about a dream assignment. “Would you like to take over ‘Story of a House?’” editor Jim Dodson asked, when I came to The Pilot/PineStraw in November 2008. I had written about houses before, knew something of architecture, construction, furnishings, even plumbing — also that homes reflect their occupants in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

“Great!” I answered.

That was approximately 110 homes ago, including five in Greensboro for O.Henry. I don’t remember them all but, since this is PineStraw’s annual Home & Garden issue, I thought you might enjoy sharing the process and some standouts.

Houses are selected by PineStraw founder and creative director Andie Rose. I call for an appointment lasting at least an hour, always in daylight, preferably on a weekend, when people are relaxed. I try to learn something of the family and house beforehand. The Tufts Archives at Given Memorial Library help with historic properties.

I work with photographer John “The Genius” Gessner who, honestly, could make Camilla look like Lady Di.

I always carry dog biscuits, for a friendly first impression. This works except the time I left my purse on the floor while the homeowner showed me around. Her sweet Lab puppy emptied it looking for seconds.

First, we sit down (preferably in the kitchen, less formal) while I explain the purpose: how the house relates to its occupants, illustrates lifestyle, travels, tastes and collections. Photos replace lengthy descriptions.

I can usually tell if the house is the product of an interior designer.

Then a walking tour and — now that we’re acquainted — another sit-down for the whole story.

Houses and their contents write the history of Southern Pines and Pinehurst, especially seasonal “cottages” built during the early 20th century. Most, thank goodness, have been respectfully updated/enlarged. I recall only one blip — a huge Victorian left intact outside, converted to a slick, wide-open Manhattan condo inside. I’ve written about rough cabins in the woods and one modest homestead completely engulfed by a mansion.

The smallest house was hardly bigger than a potting shed — a designer’s pied-a-terre with scaled-down furniture and appliances, a morsel of eye candy. The largest was a compound consisting of main house, guest quarters and jumbo over-the-garage apartment, each with a full kitchen and multiple bathrooms. The second largest had a kitchen long enough for the kids to set up bowling pins on the wood floors.

Speaking of garages, how about the detached triple-wide reimagined as a 1950s soda shop, complete with black and white tiled floor, juke box, tables, chairs and a bar.

Emphasis on kitchens and bathrooms came as no surprise. I’ve peeked into bathrooms with wall-mounted TV and DVD players, two-person 100-jet showers, spa tubs set into bay windows, but none as memorable as the tiny, windowless powder room fashioned as a grotto, with mosaic tiles, low lights and a niche surrounding a saintly statue. Glamour kitchens are a given, but their fittings still amaze me, particularly a built-into-the-wall espresso machine and an old-timey red Coca-Cola cooler salvaged from a gas station, now filled with bottled soda. Pastry and “man-cook” areas are a dime a dozen, as are low-mounted microwaves for kids, but just one kitchen sported a cabinet and drawers reserved for breakfast foods, dishes and cutlery. And just one master suite had a mini-kitchen with sink, fridge and coffeemaker. I adored the kitchen with a red racing bike suspended from a vaulted ceiling but, in another, thought a skylight dome surrounded by Italianate murals (I call it Bacchus does the Sistine Chapel) a bit imposing.

The collections on display — impressive — especially Churchill memorabilia, museum-quality Mayan pottery, autographed photos and posters featuring movie stars the owner knew through business. I’ve seen framed documents bearing signatures I dare not mention for security reasons.

The most impressive TV encountered was custom-engineered, 10 feet wide and nearly 6 feet high, filling an entire wall in a second-story golf-themed man cave overlooking Pinehurst No. 2. During the U.S. Open that lucky guy could, theoretically, watch play from his veranda and on his TV simultaneously. Sports/equestrian motifs are common; one Clemson fan had a giant orange paw painted on her garage wall.

The gadget prize goes to a double-decker closet with motorized hanging rack, dry-cleaners style. But I also wrote about a little charmer with no closets, just pegs.

As if a pool isn’t lovely enough, several properties had free-form “pond” pools, with flagstone borders and Earth-toned liners. The pool house adjoining another was a slave cabin, disassembled and brought from South Carolina.

I admit to being spooked by a dining room painted dried-blood red but found the colorful, angular furnishings in another more fun than the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Equally surprising, but lovely: a Christmas tree made from copper tubing, with tiny lights, which stands year-round in an artist’s living room.

In Moore County new construction leans toward cottage styles, with some Arts and Crafts bungalows and a few Taras. Kudos to young families who adapt and beautify those boring brick ranches popular in the 1950s. Other beauties include new but weathered-looking downtown lofts, also a stunning condo with roof garden over the owner’s Broad Street business.

My favorite? I’ll only reveal that it is of modest size, walking distance to downtown Southern Pines and expresses, exquisitely, the occupant’s talents and personality.

Definitely the most unusual dwelling belongs to owners of champion purebred dogs. Not only do they have an exercise/grooming room with treadmill and refrigerator for special diets, but a covered indoor-outdoor run-potty area and a system of gates within the house to prevent fraternization.

Not that pet rooms are unusual, most with bathing facilities, some with TV and music. One had low windows with twin-sized mattresses positioned underneath so the bull mastiffs could stretch out and watch the world go by.

Mustn’t forget the grandkids. I gasped at an upstairs wing with library area, built-in shipboard bunk beds and a curtained stage for performances.

I’ve discovered topiary gardens and arcade game machines, elevators and secret staircases, basement beer gardens and complete outdoor kitchens, workout facilities and putting greens but, as yet, no bidets or indoor lap pools.

Maybe soon, because you never know what’s behind the next front door.

Deborah Salomon is a staff writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

Writer’s Life

The Next Frontier

Listening for voices of characters I have not yet created

By Wiley Cash

Jill McCorkle, my friend and fellow writer, has said on more than one occasion that she knows it is time to let go of one novel when the next one reveals itself. I imagine this is like swinging through the jungle on vines: It’s not wise to let go of one vine until you’re certain that another is in reach. I feel the same way; even if my eyes are closed as I reach for the vine, I’m certain it’s there, waiting for me if I’m brave enough to grasp it and keep swinging along.

But I cannot help but pause and hover in mid-air. I need to give my hands a rest before they grasp another project, before my body can agree to be carried through the jungle of novel-writing with only the most tenuous connections to the trees above me to keep me from tumbling to the forest floor.

For me, writing a novel is hard, and it takes a long time, and over the course of writing three novels I have adjusted my approach to letting one go before taking up another.

I began writing my first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, which is about the fallout in the community after a young boy is smothered during a healing service in the mountains of North Carolina, in the spring of 2004, and I thought I had finished it in the fall of 2008 when a New York agent agreed to represent it, but I was wrong. Although she and I worked on revisions of the novel over the next year and a half, she was never able to sell it to a publisher, and we ended up parting ways in early 2010. I had a failed novel on my hands, and I had lost an agent. The chance to publish had slipped through my fingers.

Although I felt defeated, I had already begun thinking about writing a second novel, although I had no idea how to begin. I had lived with the story of my first novel for five years, and I knew the characters intimately  — their history, landscape and emotional terrain  — and I could not imagine forgoing these people for a new cast of individuals that would be born in my mind and live on my screen for some indeterminate time.

Slowly, characters for a new novel and the circumstances that would animate them began to come to me: two young sisters in foster care; a wayward father who is also a washed-up baseball player; stolen money; a bounty hunter with a years’ old vendetta. Although the characters and plot were revealing themselves, I was hesitant to put pen to paper until I knew for certain that my first novel had failed. I’m glad I waited.

In the spring of 2010 I began working with a new agent. Over the course of the next few months, he and I worked on revisions of A Land More Kind Than Home. In late October, he called me and told me that the book was ready to go out to editors in the hope one of them would want to publish it. He asked if I had another novel in mind. He wanted us to go for a two-book deal. I told him the story of a washed-up minor league baseball player who kidnaps his two daughters from a foster home and goes on the run with a bag of stolen money. I had not written a word of the novel yet, but I had lived with it for the better part of a year.

My agent sold the manuscript of A Land More Kind Than Home, as well as a synopsis of what would become This Dark Road to Mercy, to the first editor who read it. I suddenly found myself with a two-book deal.

Over the next few months, my new editor and I went back to A Land More Kind Than Home, and I wrote a new draft of the novel, and I also spent a lot of time on pre-publication tasks: writing essays that would appear online and in magazines; giving interviews; attending trade shows; and traveling to New York to meet the publishing team. Although the synopsis of This Dark Road to Mercy sold in late 2010, I did not write a word of the novel until the summer of 2011.

I was very fortunate to be accepted to artists’ retreats at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, and, later that summer, at MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The first time I sat down to write at Yaddo in June 2011, I wrote the entire first chapter of This Dark Road to Mercy. It literally poured itself onto the page because I had been living with it in my mind for so long. By the end of the summer I almost had a complete draft.

My first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, was published in April 2012, and I submitted the final manuscript of This Dark Road to Mercy to my editor a year later. One day, he and I were on the phone talking about the novel and the ways in which it would be promoted and sold.

He said, “I know you just turned in the manuscript, but I’m wondering if you’ve got any ideas about a new novel.”

I did. For a few years I’d been considering writing about the Loray Mill and the violent textile strike that engulfed my hometown of Gastonia, North Carolina, in the summer of 1929. I told my editor that, in secret, I had begun working on a novel based on the life and tragic murder of Ella May Wiggins, a young single mother who joined the union only to be killed after becoming the face of the strike. He said the story sounded interesting. We got off the phone, and I did not think anything more about our conversation until later that afternoon, when my agent called. My editor had just offered us another two-book deal.

For the past five years I have been clinging to the vine that is now titled The Last Ballad, living in a 1929 world of cotton mill shacks, country clubs, segregated railroad cars, and labor organizers with communist sympathies. Everything I know about the craft of writing and the history, culture and politics of America, especially the American South, has gone into this novel. I literally feel as if I have been wrung dry, and I cannot imagine writing another book, even though I know I will sooner than later.

But even in this state of exhaustion, there is a story percolating in my brain where the voices of characters I have not yet created are speaking in whispers. I feel the hot breath of a novel on my neck even as I sit here. There is a vine somewhere out there in the jungle, if only I’ll reach out, open my hand, and grasp it.

It’s not going anywhere. I’m not either.

Wiley Cash lives in Wilmington with his wife and their two daughters. His forthcoming novel The Last Ballad is available for pre-order wherever books are sold.

The Omnivorous Reader

Revolutionary Scars

A revealing look at the cost of civil strife

By Stephen E. Smith

They’re called “uncle books,” popular histories you gift to your Uncle Leo so he can kick back in his easy chair and read about political and military luminaries such as Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton. These lengthy narrative histories, which are generally revisionist in intent and convey idealized portraits of their subjects, have done much to shape our beliefs about the founding of the Republic. What they haven’t done is examine the plight of ordinary Patriots, Loyalists, British and Continental soldiers, African-Americans, Native Americans and German auxiliaries, the brave, long-suffering souls who did most of the fighting and dying during the Revolutionary War.

In Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth, Holger Hoock attempts to set the record straight by revealing the brutality of our first civil war, and describing in graphic detail the torments endured by ordinary soldiers and innocent noncombatants on both sides of the Revolution. Hoock writes: “For two centuries this topic has been subject to whitewashing and selective remembering and forgetting. While contemporaries experienced the Revolution as frightening, messy, and divisive, its pervasive violence and terror have since yielded to romanticized notions of the nation’s birth.”

Hoock supports this thesis with statistics that suggest there was suffering aplenty. Per capita, 10 times as many Americans died in the Revolutionary War as in World War I and five times as many as died in World War II. Among prisoners of war, the death rate was the highest in American history. Between 16,000 to 19,000 Continentals died while confined by the British. And Hoock argues convincingly that Loyalist noncombatants routinely suffered imprisonment and torture at the hands of Patriots.

Hoock offers as an example the experience of Edward Huntington, who was convicted of being a traitor to the Patriot cause and was sentenced to spend “the rest of his life sixty to eighty feet underground in a dark, damp, claustrophobic tomb.” Huntington was transported to an infamous copper mine in Simsbury, Connecticut, and was lowered deep into a dismal cavern where he could not stand upright. He shared his incarceration with “violent criminals serving sentences from one year to life for horse thievery, aggravated burglary, highway robbery, sexual assault, and accessory to murder.” The subterranean chambers had no natural light, limited air circulation, constant dampness and employed a communal tub as a toilet, a breeding ground for “fevers, influenza, respiratory problems, dysentery and typhoid.”

Patriots employed arson, rape, confiscation and public shaming against their Loyalist neighbors, but tarring and feathering was the preferred punishment. The case of John Malcom, a Boston customs official, is cited as typical. After having hot tar and feathers applied to his naked body, Malcom spent two months in bedridden agony before fleeing to England, where he petitioned Parliament for monetary redress by sending pieces of his skin as proof of his loyalty. When such punishments failed to satisfy Patriot vengeance, many Loyalists were “killed by mobs or at the hands of marauding bands, hanged by order of councils of safety or assemblies of various states, or executed following court-martial.”

Hoock gives British atrocities, including Banastre Tarleton’s dishonorable conduct at Waxhaw, passing mention, but his primary focus is on lesser known campaigns, such as Washington’s genocidal response to Iroquois raids in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. Washington’s objective in punishing the Six Nations was “the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.” To that end, the Continental Army destroyed 45 towns and all of the Native Americans’ crops and food stores, plunging the tribes into starvation. Iroquois retaliated by torturing and mutilating Continental soldiers. Patriot  Lt. Thomas Hubley recorded the barbarity in his diary that “their heads Cut off, and the flesh of Lt. Boyds head was intirely taken of and his eyes punched out. . . his fingers and Toe nails was bruised of, and the Dog had eat part of the Shoulders away likewise a knife Sticking in Lt. Boyds body.”

The fate of African-American combatants is, as one might expect, particularly disturbing. In most cases, slaves were promised their freedom by the government for which they fought, but their treatment was at best exploitive and their well-being of little concern to those who tendered assurances. Many slaves who served the Revolutionary cause found that promises weren’t kept, and the British treated African-American soldiers as disposable laborers, abandoning thousands to die of disease, before transporting the survivors to Nova Scotia, or Jamaica and other West Indian islands.

The bitterness occasioned by the Revolution lingered long after Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, and acts of vengeance and retaliation took the form of physical violence and executions. Hoock recounts the 1782 hanging of Joshua Huddy, commander of a New Jersey Patriot militia, and the Patriots’ retaliation — known as the “The Asgill Affair” — in which Gen. Washington ordered that a British officer, Capt.Charles Asgill, be executed. Eventually, Asgill was released, but a generation of brutal warfare had habituated Americans to a thirst for revenge that no treaty could assuage.

Although Scars of Independence isn’t a pleasant read, it makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the Revolution, and it’s another reminder that brutality is the norm in war, especially in civil wars. The question for readers is this: Are we obligated to acknowledge the abominations committed by our forefathers? As Maxim Gorky, a man who knew something of the horrors occasioned by civil strife, wrote: “I have no desire to make anyone miserable, but one must not be sentimental, nor hide the grim truth with the motley words of beautiful lies. Let us face life as it is. All that is good and human in our hearts needs renewing.”

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press awards.