Month: October 2018

Mom, Inc.

Snack Time

It’s worth all the trouble

By Renee Phile

They’re all watching me. I can’t move. I have to sit here until they don’t notice me anymore. I have to look casual, disinterested. The older boy plays his game; the younger one whines. If they would just stop looking at me, stop talking to me, I could get to it. I stand up, yawn for effect, and creep to the door of the bedroom.

“Bailey, no!” Mom says. My nails on the wood floor. Might as well be a car alarm. I lie down beside the door. Patience. It will have to wait. But I can’t wait! What if it’s gone by the time I get there? Libby will get it — that blasted cat. The worst day of my life was when they brought her home. She’s ridiculous and thinks she owns the place.

They stop paying attention. It was only a matter of time. I stand up. No one notices. Mom is cooking dinner (it smells good; I wonder if I will get a bite). Dad is working on his computer.

I tiptoe inside the doorway. Damn nails. “Bailey girl! What are you doing? Bailey!” The younger boy plops himself right down on me. It’s annoying, but being the patient Rottweiler that I am, I endure it.

“Kevin, get off her,” Mom says. Thank you, Mom. Kevin saunters off and I put my head down. I’ll try again in five minutes. Maybe four. Maybe three. The dinner smells so good, and Dad is still working on his computer, and the other boy is still playing his game, talking loudly in his headset to someone as he sits in front of the TV.

I stand up. No sudden moves. No one notices. Good. I inch inside the bedroom. No one sees me. Yeeeeessss! There she sits, like the queen she thinks she is — on the bed. I’m not allowed on the bed. She stares at me, and I think she is going to hiss at me, but she just stares. I stare back and inch forward, stop, inch some more until I get to the bathroom door.

“Where’s Bailey?” I hear Dad say. Oh no. They’re looking for me. I’m through the door. I’m in. There it is: Libby’s food. She never eats much of it anyway. I like to think she leaves it for me. Wait, she hates me. Either way, it’s mine.

Someone is moving in the kitchen.

“Is she outside?” Mom asks.

“I don’t think so,” I hear Dad say.

I gobble up all the food I can, not even taking a breath, like one of those pie eating contests. There it is. The bottom of the bowl. I scamper out, food still in my mouth, and lay down on the bedroom floor as nonchalant as you please. Been there for hours. The cat looks at me in disgust, and Dad comes into the room.

“Bailey? Did you eat the cat food?” How does he always, and I mean always, know? I look up at him with my eyes, but keep my head down. I don’t want him to smell the hairball formula on my breath. He walks past me and looks into the bathroom at the empty cat bowl.

“Come on. You know you’re in trouble,” he says, and I know, because, honestly, this has happened before. But, I don’t care that I have to sit in my crate for an hour. Solitary. I stand up and head to my crate while Dad follows. It’s all worth it, you see, as I lick my lips and glare at Libby, who looks at me with that strange smile. PS

Renee Phile loves being a teacher, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

A Dream Creation

Heritage Flag Company barrels toward success

By Amy Griggs • Photographs by Tim Sayer

Shoppers meander through rooms of the 118-year-old Bennett Street house-turned-retail shop of The Heritage Flag Company.

The faint, sweet scent of bourbon accompanies a visual feast of rough, charred and blond barrel staves crafted to stir the blood in the form of rustic American flags, works of art, no two exactly alike, varying in size from mounts on desktop easels to those three feet high and larger. Visitors express surprise: Website photos do not do the product justice.

“We hear that a lot,” says owner Heath Trigg. One customer review from the company website reads, “We purchased this flag for my father-in-law as a birthday present. I loved the look of it in the pictures on the website, but those pictures in no way do the craftsmanship justice. These flags are works of art.”

The story of The Heritage Flag Company is an American one of can-do spirit, hard work and self-determination, of Old South embraces the digital age. It is a Southern Pines micro-industry bred and born four short years ago, propelled by people’s thirst for the company’s now-signature product, a rustic American flag fashioned from whiskey barrel staves. Trigg set out to satisfy that thirst once he realized the number of potential customers for, by his estimation, “the most recognizable symbol in the world.”

His phone buzzes and his computer screen stands at the ready on his desk in what used to be his living room. Heath and his wife, Ginny, had their home and business offices occupying neighboring floors of their house until Heritage Flag’s need for space exploded. The couple moved, and now the entire house is dedicated to business and retail operations. The woodworking shop is in the back, repurposed from Trigg’s cabinetmaking business.

Though he speaks confidently about his business, his employees and products, Trigg remains somewhat mystified by the meteoric success of the company he founded, foregoing his original home building and cabinetmaking businesses.

“I could never have fathomed that I would own an e-commerce business that sells millions of dollars worth of wooden American flags,” he says.

The company narrative — noticed by statewide media and beyond — begins with his contracted job at Southern Pines Brewing Company, where in 2014 he and his cabinet crafters built its unique taproom bar and tables using whiskey barrel staves, a Trigg innovation. The owners loved it. Trigg so respected the three brewers’ knowledge and background as Special Forces veterans that he wanted to surprise them with a gift at their opening celebration.

A flag was born.

“I had two other businesses,” he says. “We were building houses, we were making cabinets, and we were kicking butt doing it. We dreamed up this flag as a thank you gift at the end of a project and jeez — I mean, it’s just unbelievable where these flags are today.”

The “dreamed up” part is literal, by now a well-circulated plot point in the story, the moment when Luke the Weimaraner woke Trigg in the night as his master dreamed of a rustic American flag fashioned from those whiskey barrels. His wife’s kitchen notepad played a role. “In the middle of the night I walked out, got the Sharpies out, and drew a picture of it on that pink high heel shoe,” he says of the handy notepad, however unlikely a shape or color for the design of his dream. “The next morning, I literally came into the shop with that pink high heel shoe and showed it to the craftsmen.”

His team created the flag, varying the dark stripes using the charred inside of the barrel, and light stripes from the outside, and adding a bank of 50 carved stars. “We still constantly get questions about it,” says one of the brewery owners, Jason Ginos. “It’s the first or second thing customers ask about when they come in.” From that one gift grew ideas for several others, until the demand for the unique flags took on a life of its own.

Today there are Heritage Flags in the White House, the Pentagon and One World Trade Center. “We’ve presented flags to amputees, Gold Star widows, people who truly know what it is to sacrifice,” he notes, awed still. Donated flags have raised more than $1million for non-profit organizations. Nonmilitary customers abound as well.

At an age where expounding on one’s history might be a short story, Trigg, 35, is keen on crediting his upbringing and the other influences that have shaped him and, by extension, The Heritage Flag Company. Unwavering attention to quality and customer service “play an immense role,” he says, attempting to explain the company’s phenomenal success. But, he refines the point. “When you think about it, it’s values. Family values.”

From early childhood growing up in Charlotte, Trigg looked forward to visiting his grandparents in Moore County. His mother, Laurin Williams Trigg, is one of seven children of Ruby and the late Winford Williams. Winford was one of 11 children who grew up here, many of whom remained, operating lumber mills, farms and related businesses.

“Any time I had a day off of school,” Trigg recalls, “I was kicking and screaming and moaning and groaning to come here and get on that tractor or work with Pop, ride dirt bikes or be in the woods or whatever.” Enamored of the Moore County country life, he knew he would settle here and start building after completing his business degree at Appalachian State.

On his father’s side, his dad and granddad served in the Navy. His dad was also one of seven, entrepreneurs in businesses from construction to fast-food operations. And Trigg took notes.

He counts his wife’s family, owners of a textile business, and the Brewery guys, as important influences. Ginos speaks of their symbiotic relationship. “His uncommon vision, his work ethic and the process. He does everything within the company,” Ginos says. “He’s an inspiration for me, my family and company.”

“We’ve got tons of incredible plans for moving ahead,” Trigg says. “I think that the biggest one, the most impactful plan we have, is to help Americans understand the values it takes to be successful. To understand the values it has taken to make this country what it is.”

Inundated with requests from nonprofits, Trigg became somewhat disillusioned. “Hey, this is a problem,” he says. “The more we give, the more people will show up with their hand out. It’s insane. And really and truly we’re not helping them in doing that. We’re not.”

His solution was to ensure that at least some of those recipients invest “sweat equity.” A flag donation for children of the military’s Special Operations men and women might require the kids and families to show up on a Saturday, roll up their sleeves, sweat, sweep and otherwise pitch in.

Trigg finds the process rewarding. He gets positive feedback from parents who might have been leery at first, and the kids appreciate it. “You teach these kids these things,” he says. “You put them to work and you make them sweat, and they see it. They get it.”

He tosses out other tenets: Life isn’t fair; you should listen more than you speak; it’s not OK for somebody to feel sorry for you.

In a country he sees as divided, reclaiming American pride has become a sort of company motto. “That is what I think is the coolest thing that this company can do. A lot of people say, and I myself say, this country’s huge. Do you think your little butt here in Southern Pines with this teenie tiny business can . . . well, I don’t know. I have no earthly idea whether we can do something like that. I know if we don’t try, we’ve failed.”

Earlier this year, an 18-year-old who had been involved in a serious motorcycle accident was struggling with his recovery, relearning how to eat, talk and walk. “He is a miracle. Three weeks ago he, his mother and father came into our shop on a Saturday and helped us make, physically helped us, make flags,” says Trigg.

“He and his family came in to make four flags to give to the four doctors that saved his life. And . . . I got to go.”

Emotion wells up, the silence unexpected but welcome.

Trigg loves sharing these stories, but is guarded — like a true entrepreneur — not divulging company profits, sales figures, or detailed 5-year or 10-year plans. Looking far ahead, plans do include handing over The Heritage Flag Company one day to Charlie, the couple’s 1-year-old son.

So, whatever happened to that sketch, the very first one scribbled in the wee hours on the pink high heel notepad?

“It’s in my safe downstairs,” Trigg says. “It’s crazy. It’s cool. We have it insured. It all started with a dream.” And a passion. PS

Amy Griggs has worked as a community journalist and middle school teacher. She lives in Wake County and counts the Sandhills as her second home.

2018 Feature

Almanac

Hollowed pumpkins filled with dahlias. Acorns, gourds and pheasant feathers. Cinnamon and clementine. November is a holy shrine.

Can you feel that? The vibrancy among the decay?

The veil between worlds is thin.

In the garden, the holly gleams with scarlet berries, beckons bluebird, warbler, thrasher, and — do you hear those lisping calls? — gregarious flocks of cedar waxwing.

We too offer fruit. Some for the living, some for the dead.

Altars lined with flickering candles, candied pumpkins, marigolds and copal incense are lovingly created in remembrance of deceased loved ones, who are believed to return home for El Día de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday celebrated Oct. 31 through Nov. 2.

Sweet bread, warm meals, soap to cleanse the weary soul . . .

Imagine celebrating Thanksgiving with that kind of spirit.

Or better yet, try it.

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

Seeds of inspiration for the November gardener:

· Enjoy the quiet hour of morning, the sweet gift of Daylight Saving Time (Sunday, Nov. 4).

· Day after Thanksgiving, sow poppy seeds on the full Beaver Moon for a dreamy spring.

· Feed the birds.

· Force paperwhites, hyacinth and amaryllis bulbs for holiday bloom.

· Stop and smell the flowering witch hazel.

The Eleventh Hour

Best known by nom de plume George Eliot, Victorian-era novelist Mary Anne Evans so loved fall that she claimed her very soul was wedded to it. “If I were a bird,” she wrote, “I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” No surprise she was born in November, the 11th hour of this season of swirling leaves, snapdragons, goldenrod and falling apple.

Sesame Street’s googly-eyed Muppet Cookie Monster was born Nov. 2, on the Mexican Day of the Dead.

You want cookie?

In the spirit of life and death, try pan de muertos instead, a sweet bread baked in honor of departed loved ones. The below recipe came from a sweet-toothed friend who isn’t afraid to wake the dead.

Pan de Muertos (Mexican Bread of the Dead)

Bread:

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup warm water

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons aniseed (or 1/2 teaspoon anise extract)

1/4 cup white sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 teaspoons orange zest

Glaze:

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup orange juice

1 tablespoon orange zest

2 tablespoons white sugar

Directions:

Heat butter and milk together in medium saucepan. Once butter melts, remove mixture from heat, then add warm water.

In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of the flour, plus yeast, salt, aniseed, and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Beat in the warm milk mixture, then add eggs and orange zest and beat until well combined. Stir in 1/2 cup of flour and continue adding more flour until the dough is soft.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.

Place the dough into a lightly greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size (allow 1 to 2 hours). Next, punch the dough down and shape it into a large round loaf with a round knob on top. Place dough onto a baking sheet, loosely cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or until roughly doubled in size.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about 35 to 45 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool slightly, then brush with glaze.

To make glaze: In a small saucepan combine the 1/4 cup sugar, orange juice and orange zest. Bring to a boil over medium heat and boil for 2 minutes. Brush over top of bread while still warm. Sprinkle glazed bread with white sugar.

2018 Almanac Feature

Wine Country

Thanksgiving Bounty

Be grateful for the cheese and wine

By Angela Sanchez

When I lived away from Moore County, I came home for the holidays with all kinds of wines and cheeses I wanted to share with my family. At Thanksgiving I’d arrive with a bag full and nothing ever hit the fridge or shelf before we sampled it. At Christmas I came bearing gifts: a nice basket of cheese, crackers, olives with chutneys and jams and a case of mixed wines wrapped with a bow.

Thanksgiving was always a big deal for us. As Southerners we had to have at least two meats. Just a turkey wouldn’t do, so we added a ham or possibly venison if my brother had been lucky on the hunt that year. My mom taught me more is better when it comes to sides and dessert. As I got older, I loved cooking with her, preparing the meal for the family and entertaining. We started with appetizers from the array of items I brought home — six or seven cheeses, always a mix of hard, soft, blue and bold, domestic and imported, with one or two types of charcuterie, olives, pickles, crackers and an exotic jam. We sipped wine as we snacked and cooked. I like to start with bubbles, so a nice bottle (or two, or three) of Cava or Prosecco would get us going. Later with dinner, we’d sit down with two bottles of wine, a white and a red. The white would be light, a dry Riesling from Alsace, France, or Germany, or a white Burgundy like Chablis or Meursault. The red would be a nice Burgundy like something from Domain Vincent Girardin. I am particularly fond of his Santenay, perhaps not as well known as other appellations in Burgundy but packing great quality for the price. And there was always French Champagne for dessert because nothing is better with cake and chocolate than Champagne.

Christmas was more traditional. My dad was Catholic and, until he became too ill to go, we went to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. It was just my parents and I so we would unwrap the cheeses and other foods I brought home and bust into the case of wine, which was a beautiful mix of my favorites from around the world. There was enough to enjoy after Mass when we opened the gifts, sipping a red wine, most likely Italian or Rhône, at that time of night. Brunch with the rest of the family the next day started with sparkling wine again, usually mimosas with baked Brie.

Today things are much different. The day before Thanksgiving is a workday, one of the busiest days of the year, and so is the day after. That shortens our holiday a bit but we celebrate with cheese and wine just the same. The lineup is less complicated, more to the point. This year we’ll be enjoying a delicate and delightful Cava, Mistinguett. It has bright acidity with lemon and pear notes and finishes dry, a must if you want to make it through the rest of the day. Garrotxa, a goat’s milk cave-aged cheese from the same region of Spain, is a good companion. The delicate white paste and grassy, mellow flavor are a great way to start off. Perrin Reserve Rosé, with strawberry and light watermelon notes from the southern Rhône Valley, goes well with everything. It will be around all day and make another appearance as a dinner choice. Now we include a few craft beers like Southern Pines Brewing Oktoberfest, golden hued with notes of clove and marzipan. It pairs well with Goat Lady Dairy’s Snow Camp and honey. Snow Camp is a combination goat and cow’s milk camembert-style made in North Carolina. The honey will be in the comb from R2 Apiary right here in Moore County. Some salty Marcona almonds roasted in sunflower oil make a nice compliment. The meal is a bit different, too, with fewer sides but still two meats. Rolling up with the turkey and ham this year will be K.Martini & Sohn Riesling from Alto Adige in the north of Italy. Aromatic and vibrant floral, with lime and peach stone fruit and nicely balanced acidity, it’s one of the best I’ve had in quite some time. This year I’m really feeling Italy and a great grape like Montepulciano is just the right weight, not too light, not too big to pair with ham, turkey, venison and potatoes in all forms. Marramiero Dama Montepulciano DOC 2016 has a nice balance of plum, briar berries and licorice with medium tannins and just enough oak aging to keep it bright and add structure.

Enjoy the wine and cheese with the people who really matter and, above all, be grateful. PS

Angela Sanchez owns Southern Whey, a cheese-centric specialty food store in Southern Pines, with her husband, Chris Abbey. She was in the wine industry for 20 years and was lucky enough to travel the world drinking wine and eating cheese.

2018 Department Wine Country

Golftown Journal

Double Trouble

The colorful legacies of Billy Joe Patton and Harvie Ward

By Lee Pace

One came from a small town in the western part of North Carolina, one from a small town in the east. One was a Wake Forest man when the Baptist institution was located in northern Wake County, the other a Tar Heel from the University of North Carolina. Both played golf with flair and color. They talked to the galleries and regaled the news media, their pictures appearing in national magazines (one of them smiling on the cover of Newsweek) throughout the 1950s. Both had outstanding short games and were deadly putters. They won five Carolinas Amateur Championships between them.

Each flirted with winning major professional championships in golf. Billy Joe Patton led the Masters on the final day in 1954 before twice hitting into Augusta National’s creeks and ponds and finishing third. Harvie Ward was tied for the lead in the 1957 Masters on the final day before hitting into the pond on 11, making double-bogey and fading as Doug Ford raced to the victory.

Patton led the U.S. Open after one round in 1954.

Ward won the U.S. Amateur in 1955 and ’56.

They played on eight Walker Cup teams (Patton five and Ward three).

They both won the North and South Amateur, Ward while a student at Carolina in 1948 and Patton in the height of his working-man/crack-golfer career in 1954, ’62 and ’63. Both were right-brained golfers where feel, touch and imagination were tantamount, and each thrived on Pinehurst No. 2, a venue requiring those skills in copious amounts.

“I loved playing No. 2. You had to play a lot of bounce-up shots,” Ward reflected years later. “You couldn’t play into the green. It was more like Scottish golf — you had to bounce it in there. You used to have to hit the chip-and-run or putt from off the green on those sand greens in Tarboro. There and playing at Pinehurst helped when I won the British Amateur. They were amazed over there how good I was hitting the pitch-and-run versus the flop wedge, where you hit it in the air and stop it by the hole. I adapted to golf over there very easily.”

“When I think of Pinehurst, I think of No. 2,” Patton said. “If I listed the five best golf courses I ever played, it would never leave my hand. I don’t know if I ever thought any course was any better. I think Donald Ross just took what he had. It was a desert of sand and scrub oak and pine, and the fellow just built a golf course on it. He didn’t build it around a lake because there wasn’t a lake there.”

And both at the height of their amateur careers rejected the idea of turning professional. There simply wasn’t the money to make it the same draw it is today. Ward sold cars and later became a club pro and expert golf instructor. Patton was in the lumber business.

“As it is now, I get a terrific kick out of playing golf,” Ward said in 1955. “It’s a pleasure, rather than work. I like it that way.”

“I’ve had a good life,” Patton said in 1994. “I’ve been happy. I’ve enjoyed my golf. I’ve enjoyed my friends. I’ve enjoyed my family. I’ve enjoyed my work. I’ve spent a lot of time doing the things I wanted to do. A man can’t ask for much more than that.”

Ward died in August 2004, succumbing to a long bout with cancer. Patton followed in 2011 at the age of 88 after several years living in a retirement home.

As huge as their respective shadows were across golf in the Carolinas, surprisingly they had very little face-to-face experience with one another.

“I was in college at Wake Forest,” Patton remembered in 2007. “It was 1940, I think. Harvie was a high school kid from Tarboro. They had this little tournament in Raleigh called the Eastern Carolina Amateur. He beat me 1-up. He couldn’t have been more than 15 years old and showed up in short pants. He’d never graduated to long pants. He was very straight off the tee and was a wonderful putter. That was aggravating, getting beat by a kid like that. There was a story in the paper after that match and my fraternity brothers gave me a lot of grief.

“I evened it up a few years later. We were playing in the Biltmore Forest Invitational. I was pumped up because he’d beaten me before. We played 16 holes and I had eight 3s on my card. In fact, from the eighth hole I made five 3s in a row. I closed him out on the 16th hole. Those are the only two times I remember us playing one another. I was older than he was and then later he moved off to California.”

Ward played a game that golf writer and historian Herbert Warren Wind once described as “archaically relaxed” and possessed a “rare gracefulness to his shotmaking that made him a treat to watch.”

“I never saw Bobby Jones play, but I saw everybody else, and Harvie was the best amateur I ever saw,” Ken Venturi said. “That’s the best amateur. Harvie didn’t have a pro bone in his body. He was too much a free spirit.”

Ward spent the last 15 years of his life living in Pinehurst, taught at Pine Needles and Forest Creek Golf Club, and mentored a network of young club and teaching professionals he had developed over the years. Ward told friends he “felt like a kid all over again” in the twilight of his life.

“Harvie never lived an unpleasant day in his life,” said Furman Bisher, the venerable columnist from the Atlanta Journal. “Or if he did, he didn’t show it. He was among the most untethered, unabashed people I’ve ever known.”

Patton’s style was established as a youngster in Morganton. He began swinging hard and never looked back. “I wanted to attack everything,” he said. “It was a war within myself, to hit that little ball as far as I could.” His knees were bent at address in exaggerated fashion. He had a strong grip, a whiplash waggle and a fast backswing. He cleared his left hip quickly through impact and cut his follow-through off at chest level, a move that later prompted Byron Nelson to call him a “slasher.”

Just as Ward was a maestro with the putter, so too was Patton.

“He never missed from 6 to 8 feet,” said Joe Cheves, the longtime pro at Patton’s home course, Mimosa Hills. “In all the rounds I played with him over the years, I never remember him missing from that range. He knew he was going to make it, and you knew he was going to make it. He was a very confident putter.”

Over the 1950s and through the ’60s, Patton enjoyed a remarkable run in national circles — not to mention in and around the Carolinas. His legend grew from one end of the Carolinas to the other.

“Billy Joe was a guy with professional ability playing in amateur tournaments,” says Hale Van Hoy, the Carolinas Golf Association executive director from 1965-1991. “Most tournament players of his caliber want to play their rounds all serious, without speaking to anyone, but he was always just as friendly, just as affable in the middle of a critical North and South round or U.S. Amateur round as he would be in a weekend game with the guys.”

The consummate Patton story came from the North and South Amateur one year in the late 1950s. Patton was on the second hole of a playoff with Dr. Bud Taylor and had hooked his tee shot onto the lip of a bunker bordering the long par-4. A hundred or so people watched as he addressed the ball awkwardly with a 4-wood, his right foot in the bunker, his left foot maybe 18 inches above it and the ball in the high grass. Meanwhile, a motorist who’d probably been trying to figure out Pinehurst’s curious maze of streets stopped her car on the road next to the gallery and asked, to no one in particular, “Does anyone know where I can get a room for the night?”

Patton continued waggling. “If you can wait a few minutes you can probably get mine,” he said.

The gallery erupted. Then Patton punched out, en route to a bogey. Taylor, safely in the fairway, parred the hole and won the match.

“It was more fun following Billy Joe in the woods than it was from the fairway,” longtime caddie Jerry Boggan said. “He was something else.”

Billy Joe and Harvie — both long gone, but both still generating chuckles and warm memories across the Carolinas golf landscape. PS

Golf writer Lee Pace has written frequently about Patton and Ward in a dozen books he’s written about golf in Pinehurst and across the Carolinas.30

2018 Department Golftown Journal

November 2018

Lost Cause

Doing battle with the autumn winds,

the fragile leaves present their colors.

They shake their pointed fingers

in a wild dance, then regroup.

In the end, there is no reprieve;

strength overcomes determination.

The forlorn maple tree shivers,

gives up all pretense of modesty.

I’ve watched this drama unfold

for days now as though I were

at a sporting event — rooting for

the underdog, though I realize

it’s truly a lopsided contest.

In the autumn of my years,

I too am buffeted willy-nilly

by the winds of inexorable change.

— Martha Golensky

2018 Feature Poem

The Evolving Species

Mothers of Invention

Who really thought of that?

By Michael Smith

You’ve probably read somewhere that back in 1948, Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral invented Velcro, portmanteau of the French velours and crochet — velvet and hook. He did that after a walk in the Alps with his pup when he noticed how burs had attached to his socks and to his dog’s fur. Velcro is strong. It can be stronger, much stronger, depending on the length of the hooks and the fuzziness of whatever the hooks hook into. In fact, a person wearing a suit with hooks on the back, after aligned with a fuzzy wall, was actually lifted and stuck on the wall.

You may or may not have read that Abe Lincoln was issued U.S. Patent 6,469 for his invention designed to buoy boats over river shoals; or that Einstein (yes, that one) co-invented a refrigerator that had no working parts and needed no freon — ding! U.S. Patent 1,781,541; or that Thomas Paine, ever full of common sense, received U.S. Patent 1667 for his plans for a bridge with a single arch and lattice support structure mimicking a spider web; or that Harry Houdini invented a two-part deep-sea diving suit that gave a diver a safe way to get out of it if he needed to escape the thing — U.S. Patent 1,370,316.

Unexpected inventors? Yes, well, except for their gender. Guys always get recognition. Take ol’ Ben Franklin. You remember how electrifying that boy was. Or that Wizard of Menlo Park fellow. Women inventors? They don’t get no respect. Yet, there are more female inventors than Carter’s got liver pills. But first let’s give a nod to Mr. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Hard to imagine life without that. So, let’s check out three women inventors, randomly selected from many.

A great place to start is with Maria E. Beasley (1847 – 1904). Maria scored her first but not even close to her last patent in 1878 for, of all things, a barrel-making machine. Suddenly that little lady was knocking down 20 grand a year for that gadget, at a time when the average earnings for a working woman were a whopping three bucks a day. (Here’s the math on that — $3 x 365 = $1,095.) It topped her former dressmaking income, plus, it gave her the freedom to become a serial inventor, chalking up things like foot warmers, cooking pans, anti-derailment devices for trains and two improved life raft designs. Maria also invented a fireproof, compact and foldable, easily stored life raft. Her 1880 raft saved a lot of lives. In fact, they were on the Titanic when it sank and are credited with helping save 706 lives. In 1880, the U.S. Census listed her as an “unemployed housewife.”

Margaret E. Knight also got dissed because of her gender. Knight’s first invention was a safety device for a mechanical loom in a cotton mill where she worked. She invented the device after watching a co-worker stabbed by a part that flew off the loom. Margaret was 12 years old. Though she did not patent the device, it was used extensively by various cotton mills.

Of her 27 patents, she is best known for inventing a machine that folds and glues paper bags so they have a flat bottom. At that time, she worked at the Columbia Paper Bag company in Springfield, Massachusetts. To patent her idea, Margaret needed a metal model of her machine. So, in the machine shop where it was being built, one Charles Annan stole her design and patented it himself. She promptly did the, then, un-ladylike thing of suing for patent infringement. Annan explained to the court that “a woman could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities” of that invention. Margaret won her suit and, in 1870, founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company. Of course, her flat-bottomed paper bags are still in use today.

Over her life, she became the prolific inventor of over a hundred different machines — shoe-cutting machines, machines that counted, a rotary engine and on and on. She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Queen Victoria awarded Margaret the Decoration of the Royal Legion of Honor. When she died, her obituary described her as a “woman Edison.”

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was one lady nobody dissed, well, nobody but U.S. Navy brass. Ubiquitously dubbed the world’s most beautiful woman, she starred in such films as Samson and Delilah, Algiers and Comrade X. You’ve already guessed. And you’re right, of course. It’s Hedy Lamarr.

Who knew that beautiful lady also had a first-rate brain? One person that knew was her “friend,” Howard Hughes. Hughes supported her “tinkering” hobbies by instructing his science engineers to do or make anything Hedy asked for. In return, she designed a new wing shape for Hughes’ planes, to make them more aerodynamic. Other things Lamarr tinkered with included an improved traffic stoplight and a dissolvable tablet like Alka-Seltzer. But she was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for a far more serious invention.

During World War II, Hedy learned that radio-controlled torpedoes could easily be jammed and sent off course. She set about solving that problem with her neighbor, pianist George Antheil. Together, they devised and patented the “Secret Communications System.” Their solution was a system for disguising radio transmissions from the torpedo guidance mechanism to the torpedo by making the signal jump between channels in a prearranged pattern.

Together, they developed a “frequency hopping” signal that would synchronize between transmitter and receiver but could not be traced or jammed. At the heart of their system were slotted paper rolls, like those used in pianolas, self-playing, mechanically operated pianos that used perforated paper to activate the keys. Their system hopped between 88 frequencies, the number of keys on a piano.

When Lamarr and Antheil patented their system in 1941, Hedy used her married name, then Hedy Kiesler Markey. Markey was the second of Hedy’s six husbands. They turned over their patented idea to the U.S. Navy, but the Navy dismissed their system as being too bulky to successfully install in torpedoes.

In 1957, Sylvania scientists resurrected the Lamarr/Antheil idea but substituted electronic circuitry for paper rolls to provide the synchronized signals. The Navy then used the revised system in the Cuba blockade of 1962.

Today, the Lamarr/Antheil patented idea is the core of many systems, including communications satellites and cellphones used by subscribers worldwide. In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, reserved for those whose inventions have significantly contributed to society.

It is easy to remember inventors that came up with things like how to make a hydrogen bomb, not so easy to remember inventions of ordinary things that changed our lives for the better. It’s even less easy to remember female inventors, like, for example, Stephanie Kwolek, who invented Kevlar, Mary Anderson, the lady who invented windshield wipers, or Josephine Cochrane, who came up with the mechanical dishwasher that she later sold to KitchenAid. PS

Michael Smith lives in Talamore, Southern Pines, with his wife, Judee. They moved here in 2017 and wish they had moved here years earlier.

2018 Department Evolving Species

November Books

FICTION

Nine Perfect Strangers, by Liane Moriarty

In the new novel by the author of The New York Times best-sellers Big Little Lies, The Husband’s Secret, and Truly Madly Guilty nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are there to lose weight, some are there to get a reboot on life, some are there for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amid all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these 10 days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging it was going to be.

Tony’s Wife, by Adriana Trigiani

Set in the lush Big Band era of the 1940s and World War II, this spellbinding saga from The New York Times best-selling author tells the story of two talented working class kids who meet shortly before World War II on the Jersey Shore and fall in love. Both are talented and ambitious, and both share the dream of becoming singers for the legendary orchestras of the time: Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman. The couple marry and travel from New Jersey to Las Vegas to Hollywood, and all the dance halls in between. They become a successful singing act, until time, temptation and the responsibilities of home and family derail their dreams.

Night of Miracles, by Elizabeth Berg

Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the inspiration of her dear, departed friend, Arthur Truluv, she has begun to teach baking classes, sharing the secrets of her delicious classic Southern yellow cake, perfect pinwheel cookies and other sweet essentials. Her classes have become so popular that she’s hired Iris, a new resident of Mason, Missouri, as an assistant. Iris doesn’t know how to bake, but she needs to keep her mind off a big decision she sorely regrets. When a new family moves in next door and tragedy strikes, Lucille begins to look after Lincoln, their son. Lincoln’s parents aren’t the only ones in town facing hard choices and an uncertain future. In these difficult times, the residents of Mason come together and find the true power of community — just when they need it the most.

The Adults, by Caroline Hulse

Claire and Matt are no longer a couple but decide that what’s best for their daughter, Scarlett, is to have a “normal” family Christmas. They can’t agree on whose idea it was to go to the Happy Forest Holiday Park, or who said they should bring their new partners, but they all go. Claire brings her new boyfriend, Patrick (never Pat), a seemingly sensible, eligible from a distance, Iron-Man-in-Waiting. Matt brings the new love of his life, Alex, funny, smart and extremely patient. Scarlett, who is 7, brings her imaginary friend Posey. He’s a rabbit. Together the five (or six?) of them grit their teeth over forced fun activities, drinking a little too much after bedtime, divulging secrets about their pasts and, before you know it, their holiday is a powder keg that ends where this debut novel begins — with a tearful, frightened call to the police.

All the Lives We Never Lived, by Anuradha Roy

From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, comes a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during both World War II and the present-day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother. Though freedom may be stirring in India, across the world the Nazis have risen to power in Germany. A German artist seeks out Myshkin’s mother, Gayatri, and his arrival ignites passions she has long suppressed. Myshkin pieces together her life, a journey that takes him through India and Dutch-held Bali. Discovering the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, he comes to understand his long-lost mother, and the connections between strife at home and a war-torn universe.

NONFICTION

Becoming, by Michelle Obama

In a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her — from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. Michelle Robinson Obama served as first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Mrs. Obama started her career as an attorney at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin LLP, where she met her future husband, Barack Obama. She later worked in the Chicago mayor’s office, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Mrs. Obama also founded the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an organization that prepares young people for careers in public service.

The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II,
by Winston Groom

By the end of World War II, 59 nations were arrayed against the Axis powers, but three Allied leaders — Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin — emerged to control the war in Europe and the Pacific. Vastly different in upbringing and political beliefs, they were not always in agreement, or even on good terms. Often led by Churchill’s enduring spirit, in the end these three men changed the course of history. Using the remarkable letters among the three world leaders, enriching narrative details of their personal lives, and riveting tales of battles won and lost, best-selling historian Groom returns to share one of the biggest stories of the 20th century.

Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star: The War Years, 1940-1946, by Gary Giddins

Bing Crosby dominated American popular culture in a way that few artists have. From the dizzy era of Prohibition through the dark days of World War II, he was the nation’s most beloved entertainer. Crosby redefined the very foundations of modern music, from the way it was recorded to the way it was orchestrated and performed. In this follow-up to the acclaimed first volume, National Book Critics Circle-winner Giddins focuses on Crosby’s most memorable period and the origin story of White Christmas. This groundbreaking work traces Crosby’s skyrocketing career as he fully inhabits a new era of American entertainment and culture. While he would go on to reshape both popular music and cinema, Crosby’s legacy would be forever intertwined with his impact on the home front, a unifying voice for a nation at war. Over a decade in the making and drawing on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to numerous archives, Giddins brings Bing Crosby, his work and his world to vivid life — firmly reclaiming Crosby’s central role in American cultural history.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The Broken Ornament, by Tony DiTerlizzi

Every family has a favorite holiday decorating story — the time the cat climbed the tree or Dad fell in the bushes hanging lights. The Broken Ornament stemmed from a DiTerlizzi family Christmas when his daughter broke a holiday ornament and learned the truth: When a beloved ornament is broken, a Christmas fairy is born. The Broken Ornament should be the first request on every Christmas list this year. Children and their families are invited to join New York Times best-selling and Caldecott Honor-winning author/illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi on Thursday, Dec. 6, at 4 p.m. for an ornament making workshop and Ugly Sweater Contest at The Country Bookshop. (Ages 3-10.)

Bear Can’t Sleep, by Karma Wilson

“Oh, Bear!” mouse squeaks. “You are up too late. It is winter in the woods, and bears hibernate.” Everyone’s favorite hibernating bear is back, but this time, Bear can’t fall asleep. Certain to find an audience with the “do I have to take a nap” crowd, Bear Can’t Sleep will be the sleeper hit of the season. (Ages 3-5.)

Lovely Beasts: The Surprising Truth, by Kate Gardner

They’re the bad guys — wolves, sharks, hyenas, bees. But are they really? This simple and stunning picture book is a lesson to all that first impressions and common notions are often far from the truth. The perfect book for the holiday season and one to read far into the New Year, Lovely Beasts shares lessons that can have far reaching universal truths. (Ages 4-7.)

Fire Truck Dreams, by Sharon Chriscoe

For fans of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site will adore this exciting tale of a brave little firetruck. After a big day of putting out fires and saving kittens, it’s finally time to sleep. Fire Truck makes sure all is quiet and safe, rolls back into the station for a shower, swishes and swigs a bedtime refreshment, and settles in with a bedtime story. Autographed copies are available at The Country Bookshop. (Ages 2-5.)

Grenade, by Alan Gratz

The hugely anticipated follow-up to Gratz’s New York Times best-selling, critically acclaimed phenomenon Refugee. In another searing, high-octane story, Grenade shows how fear and war tear us apart, but how hope and redemption tie us together. (Ages 12 and up.) PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally.

2018 Bookshelf Department

True South

Family Dinners

The more they change over time, the more we need them

By Susan S. Kelly

Sure, sure, it’s turkey time, but how about the other 364 dinners someone needs to dream up, whip up, order up, serve up, and clean up for the hungry hordes? It’s been said that every family has a 10-meal rotation that they unconsciously stick to. Chicken, pork chops, spaghetti. Tacos, brats, pasta. Then it’s leftover night, or pizza night, and the rotation begins again.

In direct opposition to this menu stasis theory is the fact that, like everything else on the planet, family dinners change and evolve. At first, they’re wild, untamed things, with high chairs and thrown food. In time, bibs are replaced with napkins, and manners. The toddler turns 6, and learns to set the table. Actual conversation takes place during a family dinner, unless you make the mistake of asking a 7-year-old about the movie he saw, because a 7-year-old’s synopsis tends to last through dessert.

Then comes school. School, school, school. Tired of hearing about school, my mother decided to select a topic for discussion during our family dinners. “Tonight we’re going to talk about art,” she said one memorable table time. Muteness ensued. Cornbread was consumed. The experiment was an abject failure. Family dinners cannot bear that burden. Like nature itself, they have to wander all over the place and sprout in different directions. Also like nature, there’s an exception to every absolute: My children had friends whose parents, over Sunday dinner, would pay their kids a dollar if they could summarize the sermon at church. Their dinner table topic stayed on point. My sister handled the nightly kitchen table convos by asking everyone what the worst and best parts of their day had been. Her husband’s answer never varied: worst — getting out of bed; best — getting into bed.

Every family dinner has its accoutrements other than food. On television shows, families had sodas at dinner; only milk was served at our table. I longed for a spinning lazy Susan in the center of the table, bearing ketchup and Texas Pete bottles on its swiftly appointed rounds. I’d have settled for an upright napkin holder, so you could fish another out when yours fell out of your lap, or got sticky or shredded — a yearning that probably explains why I tend toward cloth napkins now for family dinners. Still, I hid those cloth ones away one Christmas so we could use holiday-themed ones, and didn’t find them until the following September. And still, family dinners had proceeded right on, with the one-ply paper ones.

Happy is the day when evolution gets ’round to when children can cook, rather than complain, about the unfamiliar vegetable, or the texture of the meatloaf. Then, each family member can “take a night” on a vacation, or a Wednesday. They delightedly pick the menu, proceed to shop, prepare, serve and wash up, while you contentedly enjoy the sunset, or the news. As long as you’re also content to foot the bill for tenderloin filets, or dine cheerfully on boiled hot dogs. A new era of family dinners is ushered in when girlfriends and boyfriends arrive on the scene. No more dishing out from pots and pans on the stovetop; time to up the game and make an impression with actual serving dishes. Flowers in a vase. Not candlelight, though: too much of a statement. Where there once was a clamor over who gets to say the blessing grows the nervousness of who gets picked to say the blessing.

Every family experiences years when organizing a dinner together centers around sports, meetings, babysitting and jobs, a task on a par with planning the invasion of Normandy. I wrote a novel whose plot included a family member who’d died unexpectedly. Of the grief-stricken moments of daily minutiae that followed, the most sorrowful was the evening the mother opened a kitchen drawer and gazed at the placemats. She realized that the rotating stack of four — checkered, straw, quilted — would now resume as three. The pattern of family dinners had been forever altered, hammered home by a detail as devastatingly simple as a pattern of placemats. Still, families consist of only two, too. My husband and I light candles every night. After 60, low lights are beneficial. Even the food looks better.

Fifty in a field for a reunion, four for chicken tetrazzini, a pair on stools at the counter with a bowl of soup. Breakfast for dinner. The Sunday steak. Take-out. A USPS delivery from a specialty service with every ingredient, plus recipes, included. Or just the specialty of the house — one of those 10 meals. In the end, only three ingredients truly define a family dinner: Food. Conversation. People. PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud grandmother.

2018 Department True South

Caroline & Chad Day

CAROLINE & CHAD DAY

Photographer: Sayer Photography Wedding Planner: Vision Events Wedding & Event Planning

It takes a force of nature to derail a perfectly planned wedding — quite literally, a tropical storm. Luckily for this bride and groom, the power stayed on throughout the rehearsal dinner at the Country Club of North Carolina, where Chad’s parents and grandparents were members; and on the morning of the wedding, the clouds parted to reveal a gorgeous sky and venues untouched by the previous day’s wind and rain. Chad and his groomsmen even got in a round of golf before meeting the bridal party at The Village Chapel, the church one block away from Caroline’s childhood home. Despite the week’s weather, Caroline’s stellar team was able to pull off her vision of a wedding that honored her Southern roots while staying on-trend with simple and elegant modern touches.

2019