Fairy Lands of North Carolina

Those with “the Sight” claim there are wee folk among us. Do you believe?

By John Hood   •   Illustration by Harry Blair

That rock in the river was a big one. Big enough to sit on. That’s what the woman did, in fact, while her husband spent the afternoon fishing upstream. She waded out to the rock, found a comfortable seat, and took out a book to read. What happened next was like something out of a book — but not the one she was reading.

Hearing footsteps and voices, the woman glanced up and saw two boys cavorting along a trail, their distracted father trudging along behind. As the boys approached the water’s edge, something else entered her field of vision. “It started coming up the river,” she later recalled.

What was “it”? A “pale-skinned, water-logged-looking” creature, she said, “with black hair and sharp, serrated teeth showing in a smile.” Paying no attention to the woman perched on the rock, it “focused on the boys” and moved rapidly through the water toward them.

She wasn’t the only one who saw it. The boys did, too. They picked up sticks and pointed them at the mysterious swimmer. The woman never found out if their makeshift weapons would have done any good. Although apparently unable to see the creature that was now just a few feet away from his boys, the father nevertheless decided they were playing too close to the water and ushered them back to the trail.

That the boys were briefly in peril, though, the woman never doubted. “It watched them move up the trail away with a creepy look on its face,” she said, “and then moved on upriver out of sight.”

Maybe you think you know what was really in that river. A bullfrog. A bottom-feeder. A bumpy log converted into something sinister by an overactive imagination. But the woman in question is convinced she saw a fairy. Just a few years ago. Right here in North Carolina.

It’s not our state’s first fairy sighting. It won’t be the last. Oh, it’s easy to scoff at those who claim to see wee folk wading in rivers or slinking through forests or dancing on hilltops. How childish. How backward. How unscientific. Well, sure. But I bet you know someone who still carries a lucky charm or wears a lucky sweatshirt whenever the Wolfpack play the Tar Heels. I bet you know someone who watches Ancient Aliens or Ghost Hunters, hits up psychics for advice or thinks Bigfoot just might really be out there somewhere, camera-shy but furtively flattered.

By the way, what’s your sign?

Generations ago, all the smart people thought universal schooling would disabuse the masses of such fanciful superstitions. They thought the relentless march of science would muscle old faiths and folk traditions aside — confining them, converting them into historical curiosities. “Rationalization and intellectualization,” the sociologist Max Weber famously predicted a century ago, would bring “the disenchantment of the world.”

Then a great many of these same smart people went out and got their palms read. Or sat in seances. Just for the experience, you know.

The magical, the paranormal, the supernatural are not so easily banished. According to a recent Harris Poll, 42 percent of us believe in ghosts, 36 percent in UFOs, 29 percent in astrology and 26 percent in witches. Fairies — by which I mean the broad swath of legendary little people, not just tiny Tinker Bells with translucent wings — rarely get included in American polls. But surveys in other countries find significant minorities still believe in fairies. In some places, such as Iceland, believers form a majority.

Among the believers is the woman I mentioned earlier. I wish I could tell you more about her and the fairy encounter she claimed to witness from that big rock. Unfortunately, I can’t even tell you her name. Anonymity was the promise made by folklorist Simon Young in 2014 when he began soliciting first-person accounts of fairy sightings. Published four years later as The Fairy Census, Young’s research spans hundreds of stories from around the world — including several from our state.

I can tell you the woman says it wasn’t her first sighting. “I have seen them since childhood, different ones,” she told Young. “My granny from Ireland says I have ‘the Sight’ like her.” The woman describes fairies as “beings from another world” that can have good or bad intentions. “I was always taught to never talk to them or let them know I see them.”

I can also say that, if you believe her story and hope to see your own fairy one day, there are plenty of places in our state worth exploring. While researching my new historical-fantasy novel Mountain Folk, largely set in North Carolina during the American Revolution, I learned a great deal about the fairy lore of our ancestors. Some of it developed locally, tied to specific Carolina landmarks. Other beliefs were brought here from afar — from the British Isles, from Northern Europe and the Mediterranean world, from West Africa. It turns out that almost all cultures have stories of wee folk. Accounts vary, of course, but a surprising number of them converge in key details: creatures two to three feet tall, invisible to most if they wish to be, infused with magic, attuned with nature, prone to pranks but also willing to trade favors for something they covet.

Based on the woman’s description, for example, you might find her rocky seat in some Piedmont river or mountain stream. The original inhabitants of those parts of North Carolina often told tales of such creatures. Among the Cherokee, for example, they were called the yunwi amayine hi, or “water dwellers,” and had the power to boost fish catches and promote healing.

In one story, a water dweller disguises herself as human to attend a dance. Smitten by her charms, a Cherokee man follows her to a riverbank and professes his love. He must be persuasive, for she agrees to become his wife. Eyes sparkling, she dives in the river and beckons him to follow. “It is really only a road,” she says. He takes a deep breath and leaps. Finding a wondrous world hidden beneath the river, he lives there happily as her husband. Later, when he leaves to visit his parents, they turn out to be long since dead. Generations of Cherokee live and die during the few years he lives among the water-dwellers.

Alternatively, maybe what our eyewitness saw was not a diminutive humanoid from native folklore but something scalier. The place where the Haw and Deep rivers converge in Chatham County to form the Cape Fear is nicknamed Mermaid Point. Just before the Revolutionary War, a man named Ambrose Ramsey ran a tavern nearby. When the locals left Ramsey’s tavern late at night to stumble home, they’d pass a sandbar. On numerous occasions, they spotted small figures luxuriating there in the moonlight. Figures with the heads, arms and torsos of beautiful women and the lateral lines and shiny tails of a fish. If the patrons were quiet and kept to the shadows, they could watch the mermaids laugh, play, sing and comb their long hair. But if the men tried to speak to them, the fairies would disappear into the water.

Rivers are hardly North Carolina’s only sites for fairy lore. Another folk from Cherokee legend, the Nunnehi, are associated with such locations as Pilot Mountain (both the famous monadnock in Surry County and a lesser-known peak near Hendersonville) and the modern town of Franklin, where the Nunnehi were said to have helped defeat a Creek invasion and, much later, a raid by Union soldiers. On the other side of the state, in and around the Great Dismal Swamp, the mythology of Iroquois and Algonquin speakers mingled with European and African-American legends to produce a rich folklore of eerie lights, dark shapes and magical creatures.

Moreover, as the Fairy Census reminds us, our sightings aren’t limited to old tales preserved in old books. They still happen. A 30-something woman reported “staring at the foot of the bed at the light coming in through a large window when I saw a fairy suddenly appear on one side of the room and fly across the bed toward the window.” She described the creature as brown-haired and gaunt, about three-feet tall with sharp features “not very pleasant to look at.”

The woman wasn’t alone. But her husband, lying next to her, never saw the fairy. “I think it is strange that I had this experience in my house in suburban North Carolina, of all places,” she said.

Another North Carolinian described an encounter she had in her youth with a fairy “about two to three feet tall, dressed entirely in red, with a solid red face, tiny white horns on the top of his head, and with a red, pointed tail.” He was standing next to the stump of a tree that had been his home until it was felled during the construction of the girl’s house. She ran to get her parents. But they couldn’t see it.

The more you study both folklore and modern-day sightings, the more you come to appreciate the commonalities. I decided to include several in Mountain Folk, such as the extreme time difference between fairy realms and the human world, the link between fairies and nature and the idea that only those rare humans possessing “the Sight” can pierce fairy disguises.

Do such commonalities suggest fairy traditions aren’t pristine, that they develop over time through cross-cultural exchange? Or that people claiming to see fairies are just mashing up distant memories of bedtime stories with drowsy daydreams and optical illusions? Could be.

There are many explanations for fairy belief. For some, it’s reassuring to believe that good and bad events aren’t just random. That powerful forces are at work, magical forces to be tapped or propitiated. For others, fairy belief is about rediscovering a sense of wonder — about reenchanting the world, as Weber might say, instead of settling for a cold, clockwork version.

That’s how some of your fellow North Carolinians feel, anyway. Whether out exploring their state’s natural beauty or just puttering around the neighborhood, they keep their minds open along with their eyes. They suspend their disbelief. They dare to hope that something utterly fantastic will happen. That something utterly fantastic can happen.

After all, it’s happened before. Or so they’ve heard.  PS

John Hood is a Raleigh-based writer and the author of the historical-fantasy novel Mountain Folk (Defiance Press, 2021).

Golftown Journal

A Loop of My Own

When lightning strikes twice

By Lee Pace

I’ve hit many thousands of golf shots over more than four decades, and through early July 2021 two of my favorites had come at Forest Creek Golf Club, the 36-hole facility just northeast of the Village of Pinehurst.

One was a hole-in-one in July 1996. I made an annual trip to Pinehurst in the 1990s with three buddies from Chapel Hill, and we were able to arrange a game at Forest Creek during its first summer of operation. I hit a sweet 6-iron on the sixth hole, and the ball hit the green, bounced and rolled into the cup.

Then, in May 2014, I was invited by Ed Kinney, a longtime friend through our shared affiliations with the University of North Carolina football and basketball programs, to play in the club member-guest. What a memorable weekend — five nine-hole matches on the club’s North and South Courses, a bed in Ed and wife Betty’s comfortable home on Granville Drive, succulent meals, and a lavish gift package (I still have my Scotty Cameron Newport 2 putter).

Ed and I played well together that weekend, and we needed to win our match on Saturday afternoon to collect first place in our flight. We were playing the back nine of the South Course and came to the par-3 17th. The hole was playing fairly long that afternoon, and I hit a 5-wood tight to win the hole and close out our opponents.

That hole is certainly one of the most gorgeous and challenging among the 36 at Forest Creek — a clutch of pine trees and azaleas standing sentinel to the rear, the tree limbs reflected in a pond in front of the green as you gaze from the tee, the rolling higher ground of the eighth fairway in the distance, a very shallow green demanding you get your number dead perfect.

If you’re going to nail the sweet spot and watch that gorgeous right-to-left curve against a deep blue sky, I can’t think of a better venue for it.

Thus I was certainly interested when I received a phone call in early 2018 from one of the partners of Colony 9 LLC, the group that at the end of 2017 had purchased Forest Creek from a consortium of members. They were looking ahead to the club’s 25th  anniversary in 2021 and wanted to talk about publishing a book to commemorate the club’s first quarter-century.

One of the interesting (and sobering) elements to tacking on the years is that you find yourself writing anniversary tributes to events you witnessed in real time. I can remember in the early 1990s having a meeting at the Holly Inn in Pinehurst with a fellow named Larry Torrance, who was on the staff of a new club just outside Pinehurst called Bent Creek. It turns out that “Bent Creek” as well as “The Farm” were two early names the developers wanted to use for their new golf venture, but because other clubs in Texas and Georgia, respectively, already had those names, they decided to go with Forest Creek.

I’ve been fortunate to have a front-row seat to the evolution of the Sandhills area since the late 1980s: from the restoration of Pinehurst No. 2 as a venue for major championships to the emergence of Pine Needles as a regular venue for the U.S. Women’s Open; from the explosion of golf courses in the 1990s to the retrenchment in various corners during economic downturns.

Forest Creek has been a major cog in that story. That it is still standing and standing strong is a testament to the original vision, the resolve of the members and the passion and resources that the Colony 9 partnership provides.

A highlight of my two-plus years working on the book to be introduced in late October at a gala 25-year-anniverary celebration has been the occasional late-afternoon walking round with course superintendent David Lee, who I’ve known dating to his previous job at Hope Valley Country Club in Durham. I know David as “Bushwood” and he knows me as “Shooter,” the nicknames bestowed upon us when we joined the early morning men’s workout group known as F3 in the Durham/Chapel Hill area around 2013. That both of our monikers came from the golf movie realm (his from Caddyshack and mine from Happy Gilmore) are testaments to the place golf holds in our lives.

I sought David out for a twilight nine on July 15, 2021, just as the finishing pieces were coming together to form the book. I wanted to enjoy the nirvana of late afternoon golf, bags slung over our shoulders, no hurry in the world, before finishing this essay. I had reflected earlier in the week on my history at Forest Creek and even plowed through some memorabilia to see if I might have saved that scorecard from 1996, but to no avail.

A fierce thunderstorm to the east threatened our outing at 4 p.m., but David checked the radar and thought the weather was moving away from us. So off we set, the only two golfers, it seemed, on the premises.

We embraced the experience — catching up on work, family, our respective workout regimens, the upcoming football season, plugging various leaks in our respective golf games, the stuff guys talk about when they’re going for a walk in a nice park — with a few golf shots thrown in.

We climbed the steep hill leading to the sixth tee. I tried to catch my breath while measuring the distance with my GPS. I pulled my 5-iron for the 168-yard shot. I put a good move on the ball, and it tracked toward the hole. I knew it would be close but couldn’t see just how close, my aging eyes able to see the landing and bounce of a ball but not always the final resting spot. 

“Nice shot,” David said, then, looking closer, added, “I think that’s in the hole.”

“Seriously?” I responded.

“That or it’s right behind the stick.”

“Maybe it rolled off the back,” I said.

“No, it definitely did not do that.”

I quickened and lengthened my strides toward the green. No sign of the ball. I got to the hole, leaned over, and sure enough, there it was.

Twenty-five years later — same hole, same month of the year, same one.

I phoned one of my playing companions from a quarter-century ago and marveled over the odds.

“Water has a better chance of freezing at 43 degrees than what you just did,” Mick Mixon said. “That is just eerie.”

David phoned one of his assistants as we were playing the seventh hole and asked him to grab the flag from the sixth hole. “If you make a hole-in-one here, you get to keep the pin flag,” he said. The flag was delivered as we hit our tee shots on eight. It will look splendid with Tom Fazio’s autograph and a nice frame.

All I wanted from that twilight nine was to close the loop on my 25 years at Forest Creek. Consider that box properly checked.  PS

Lee Pace has written club histories in the Sandhills area for Pinehurst Resort and Country Club, Pine Needles, Mid Pines and now Forest Creek Golf Club. Contact him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @LeePaceTweet.

Poem

Advice on Nighttime Caregiving

Know the bulk of night

will be sleepless and embrace it

with the weariest part of yourself.

 

Nothing but bitter tea will do,

steeped too long as you pour

another glass of water

 

another mouth will drink,

as you console another crying

child who values sleep

 

on different terms,

as you — deep in the black

hour when familiar constellations

 

wend into a strange topography —

walk the dog who will thank you

without language: she who eats

 

white clover by night,

sniffling through dark

grass sweetened with dew.

 

Now sleep or wake — let go

of what you hold. The untouched

tea is as cool as morning.

— Benjamin Cutler

Benjamin Cutler is the recipient of the Susan Laughter Meyers Poets Fellowship and the author of The Geese Who Might be Gods.

Simple Life

The Last Ride

A legendary car, two old dogs and the end of the road in sight

By Jim Dodson

I knew this day would eventually come.

In recent years, I’ve pushed the thought to the back of my mind that it might be time to say goodbye and hand her off to someone who can restore her to her glory.

But every time I take her for a spin, by Jove, The Pearl works her automotive magic on me, riding like a dream, cruising the world on eight cylinders and a Corvette engine. With her roomy leather seats and patented “Dynaride” suspension system, she’s still like driving in your living room. We’ve been together a dozen years, almost half The Pearl’s life and almost one-sixth of mine. We survived the Great Recession, the end of cassette players and four teenagers. My dog Mulligan has spent most of her long life riding shotgun in The Pearl. Oh, the places we’ve been together up and down the highway!

The Pearl is a 1996 Buick Roadmaster estate station wagon, reportedly the last true production wagon that General Motors made before switching to prissy little SUVs.

The mighty Roadmaster is an American automotive icon, introduced in 1936 as the nation began to crawl out from under the Great Depression. Its creators had this nutty idea that Americans getting back on their feet might want to take the family on a road trip to see the land of the free and the home of the brave. With its oversized windows, sleek lines, wide chassis, faux wooden siding, “vista roof” and proverbial third seat facing backwards, the versatile Roadmaster wagon was just the ticket for seeing America from ground level.

The end of the Roadmaster line came in 1996 when 22,989 models rolled off the assembly line for the last time.

Mine entered the life of a nice gentleman from New Jersey who loved the car so much he kept the dashboard covered with protective felt and put only 60,000 miles on its odometer over 12 years.

Fate and quiet desperation brought us together when my children began stealing the Volvos and Subarus to go off to college. I wrote a newspaper column joking that I was shopping for a car like the one my old man drove when I was a kid — a gas-guzzling monster of the American highway that no enlightened, environmentally-minded Millennial would be caught dead riding in around town. It turns out, that car was a Buick Roadmaster wagon.

Not two days after the column appeared, a woman phoned to say, “Mr. Dodson, I am here to make you a happy man.”

Her father and mother were residents of a local senior living community. They owned a 1996 Buick Roadmaster station wagon that the daughter had fooled her father into giving up, lest he injure himself or someone else due to his declining driving habits.

“My father bought the car new and absolutely adores it,” she explained. “We all loved it. It took me off to college and helped me move several times. She has a few dings but still runs like a dream. But it has to go.”

She explained that a vintage car buff out West was interested in buying it — Roadmasters were apparently big with car collectors — but if I wanted to check it out at a local garage, she would consider selling it to me.

“If you don’t buy this car,” said the mechanic, handing me the keys for a test drive, “I probably will. They don’t make cars like this anymore.”

I purchased it an hour later. My wife laughed when she saw it pull into the driveway. “Oh my,” she said. “That really is your father’s Buick.”

No. 1 son — the Subaru thief — asked if he could take the car off to college. Not a chance, I told him.

No. 2 son pointed out that my Roadmaster model was ranked No. 7 on the “official list of Best Cars to Own in the Event of a Zombie Apocalypse.” He wondered if he could take it for a spin.

“Maybe after the zombie apocalypse,” I said.

I had, after all, my own big plans for this oversized jewel of the 20th Century American highway.

For many years — decades, actually — I’d dreamed of finding and traveling the Great Wagon Road of Colonial America, the famous backcountry highway that brought thousands of Scots-Irish, German and other European immigrants to the American South during the 18th century, including my own English and Scottish forebears.

Historians and old road experts had recently determined the Great Road’s original path from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia — an 850-mile land route that passed through some of the most historic battlefields, towns and sacred landscapes of early America.

Dan’l Boone and his family traveled it from Pennsylvania to the banks of the Yadkin River. The most pivotal battles of the Revolutionary War were fought along the highway, including engagements at Cowpens, Kings Mountain and Guilford Courthouse, leading to the British surrender at Yorktown. 

America’s first immigrant highway also bisected the killing fields of the American Civil War at Antietam and Gettysburg, where Abraham Lincoln — whose grandfather lived on the Great Road in Virginia — gave the Gettysburg Address on a hill just above the highway. By my count, in fact, no less than seven U.S. presidents were either born directly on or traveled the Great Wagon Road most of their lives. The Scots-Irish brought their balladry, fiddle music and God-given talent for fighting (and making corn whiskey) down the road, giving birth to Bluegrass in the hollers of Appalachia.

Four summers ago, after years of research and planning, my dog Mulligan and I set off along the road in our own Great Wagon, which a colleague at work nicknamed The Pearl, hoping to travel the entire route in two or three weeks.

Silly me. It took a month just to get out of Pennsylvania. The abundance of great stories and memorable people we met along the road turned an 800-mile road trip into a three-year, 3,000-mile odyssey of discovery that recently drew to a close, including a year of travel lost due to COVID.

Though she is showing her age and is more dinged up than ever, The Pearl managed to make the entire journey and then some. She brought us home with an engine that still runs like a dream.

Along the way, she provided absolute strangers with fond memories of their own childhood. “My father had a car just like that,” they would say with a note of pure wonder. “It was my favorite family car.” A man in the parking lot at Gettysburg actually offered to buy The Pearl. “How much do you want for her?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “But I might someday give her to the right person.”

He handed me a card, which I promptly lost.

Since finishing the road last autumn, The Pearl has mostly been my gardening car, hauling shrubs and mulch, though Miss Mulligan and I go out for a spin every now and then.

Mully is now 16, The Pearl is pushing 25. The last ride can’t be far away.

But what a time we’ve had, what a sweet journey it’s been. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

In the Spirit

Apples to Autumn

Leaf-fallin’ brandy cocktails

By Tony Cross

Over the summer, I read about a 50/50 cocktail that intrigued me. The drink is simply an “equal parts” cocktail, and this one had applejack in it. Admittedly, it has been at least a full minute since I’ve had anything with applejack or Calvados in it, so I thought it was the perfect time to dust that bottle off and give it a go. The drink was so good, I ordered more of the brandy online.

Brandy is Dutch for “burned wine.” It’s a spirit distilled from wine or fermented juice from apples, pears, plums and so on. In the case of apple brandy, cider apples usually supply the juice. Jim Meehan’s Bartender Manual says: “Today, brandy is produced all over the world, but the world’s most prized bottlings — barrel-aged Cognacs and Armagnacs from wine, Calvados from cider, and clear eau de vie and schnapps from ripe berries and tree fruit — are all produced in the European Union.”

Before we get into the cocktails, let’s do a quick breakdown of the categories of apple brandy. My trusty Death & Co. cocktail book has this to say:

Calvados: This French apple brandy, produced in the Calvados region, is defined by production and aging regulations similar to those for Cognac and Armagnac. It tends to have crisp apple flavor with loads of barnyard funk.

Straight apple brandy: This term refers to American apple brandy. Laird’s bonded apple brandy adheres to the same set of standards required for bonded whiskey, yielding a rich, deeply aged, spicy spirit.

Applejack: Though traditionally produced by freezing distillation (a process known as jacking), modern applejack is typically a combination of apple brandy and a neutral grain spirit (30 and 70 percent, respectively).

With Calvados, you have categories defined by minimum years in oak casks:

• Fine, Trois Etoiles (three stars), VS: 2 years

• Reserve/Vieux: 3 years

• Vieille Reserve, VO, VOSP: 4 years

• XO, Tres Vieux, Extra, Hors d’Age: 6 years

The first time I had apple brandy was from Laird’s, which uses pressed Golden Delicious and Red, Fuji, Gala, Jonathan, Stayman and Winesap apples. I’ve only eaten (to my knowledge) four of those seven varieties. What I love about their bottled-in-bond straight apple brandy is the higher proof. It gives cocktails a little more oomph from the spiciness courtesy of the ABV. The classic Jack Rose cocktail was my first love affair with apple brandy, and it goes a little something like this:

Jack Rose

2 ounces Laird’s Bottled-in-Bond Straight Apple Brandy

3/4 ounce lemon juice

3/4 ounce grenadine

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. No garnish.

(Grenadine: Combine equal parts raw or demerara sugar with POM Wonderful pomegranate juice. Stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. You may add a touch of pomegranate molasses for depth.)

The following drink is courtesy of Meehan, who added it to his menu when Brooklyn cocktails (rye whiskey, dry vermouth, Luxardo and Amer Picon — a bitter orange liqueur from France) were all the rage. “We looked across the river for inspiration, and came up with this New Jersey apple brandy-based twist, which substituted Fernet-Branca for Amer Picon. Boozy and bitter, it was, we felt, worthy enough to be Newark’s namesake.”

Newark

2 ounces Laird’s apple brandy

1 ounce Vya sweet vermouth (or Cocchi Vermouth di Torino)

1/4 ounce Fernet-Branca

1/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur

Stir all ingredients with ice, then strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. No garnish.

Coming full circle, let’s talk about that 50/50 cocktail I embraced over the summer. I read about it in Punch magazine. While Seattle bar consultant Lindsay Matteson says the 50/50, “should always be a shot, room temperature and two ounces,” I pour mine over a rock at the casa. The CIA (Cynar in applejack) is a delicious pairing. A dash of Angostura bitters brings the drink all together for this simple sipper. It’s the creation of New York City bar owner Sother Teague, who keeps a batched bottle (at room temperature) on hand, making it simpler yet. Cynar is a low ABV, artichoke-based Italian liqueur; slightly sweet, slightly bitter. Every now and then I’ll add a quarter- to a half-ounce of rye whiskey to give this a little more fuel. Keep in mind, with any of these cocktails you can swap out Laird’s for Calvados to give your cocktail a slightly different profile.

CIA

1 ounce Cynar

1 ounce Laird’s apple brandy

1 dash Angostura bitters

Two ways to mix: Pour into a shot glass at room temperature and imbibe or build the drink in a rocks glass with one large cube and stir briefly. No garnish is needed, but every now and then, I’ll add an orange or lemon peel.  PS

Tony Cross is a bartender (well, ex-bartender) who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern Pines.

PinePitch

Book Bonanza

October 6: Sharon Granito talks about her new children’s book, The True Story of Elmo, at The Pilot, 145 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines.

October 7: Louise Marburg, author of No Diving Allowed, has a conversation with Katrina Denza at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines.

October 12: Lee Pace discusses his new book, Good Walks: Rediscovering the Soul of Golf at Eighteen of the Carolinas’ Best Courses, with Jim Moriarty at The Country Bookshop.

October 13: Pinehurst author Tony Rothwell appears at the Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., to talk about his new book, Love, Intrigue and Chicanery, inspired by the work of English satirist James Gillray.

October 20: Walter Bennett discusses his new book, The Last First Kiss, at The Country Bookshop.

October 24: Elizabeth Emerson talks about her new historical biography, Letters from Red Farm: The Untold Story of the Friendship between Helen Keller and Journalist Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, at The Country Bookshop.

October 28: Michael Almond shares his debut novel The Tannery at the Country Club of North Carolina.

November 4: Kristy Woodson Harvey returns with her book Christmas in Peachtree Bluff at The Country Bookshop.

For information and tickets about all of the above, go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Everything That’s Old Is New Again

The 2021 Fall Street Fair in Cameron, featuring the town’s rich antique marketplace, begins at 9 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 1, and ends on Saturday, Oct. 2. There will be food, fun, and lots and lots of old stuff for sale. Wander the streets of downtown Cameron, N.C. 24-27. For information visit www.townofcameron.com.

Satire on Parade

The Country Bookshop is hosting an event at the Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, on Oct. 13, where Pinehurst author Tony Rothwell will discuss his new book, Love, Intrigue and Chicanery, and share a selection of the prints by the English satirist James Gillray that inspired it. You can pre-register at www.ticketmesandhills.com.

On Sunrise Square

October’s First Friday, which for the impatient among us happens to be Oct. 1, features the Sam Fribush Organ Trio with Charlie Hunter. All the usual accoutrements apply: food trucks, sponsors, stuff to eat and drink, and beer from the Southern Pines Brewery. No rolling, strolling, jogging or jumping coolers allowed. And please leave Cujo at home. The square is adjacent to the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. For information call (910) 692-3611 or go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Heritage Fair and Fundraiser

The 13th Annual Shaw House Heritage Fair and Moore Treasures Sale takes place Saturday, Oct. 9, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Shaw House, 110 Morganton Road, Southern Pines. The all-day event benefits the nonprofit Moore County Historical Association and offers baked goods, live music, and demonstrations of old-time crafts. There are farm animals for petting and American Revolution War re-enactors for learning. For more information call (910) 692-2051 or visit www.moorehistory.com.

Home Again

The Carolina Philharmonic will open its 13th season on Thursday, Oct. 7, at 7:30 p.m. at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. For its return to live performances Maestro David Michael Wolff has planned a high-energy celebration featuring Broadway’s Catherine Brunell and James Moye. Then, on Friday, Oct. 29, at 6:30 p.m., the Philharmonic will hold its annual gala fundraiser at the Fair Barn, 200 Beulah Hill Road S., Pinehurst, in support of its music education programs. Hors d’oeuvres and wine pairings will be accompanied by the delightful jazz songstress Hilary Gardner. For additional info call (910) 687-0287 or visit www.carolinaphil.org.

Live After Five

Get your shag on with beach music by The Sand Band from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 8, at Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road, Pinehurst. Eryn Fuson is the opening act for this family-friendly evening of music, dancing, food and beverages — adult and otherwise. No outside alcohol allowed, but bring your lawn chairs and your dancing shoes. For more information go to www.pinehurstrec.org.

Boo Ya’ll!

Children 12 and under can trick-or-treat at the downtown businesses in Southern Pines, then gather for Halloween-themed games, crafts, activities and a best-dressed dog costume raffle at the Downtown Park, 145 S.E. Broad St., Southern Pines, on Friday, Oct. 22. Don’t forget to bring a carved pumpkin to enter in the pumpkin carving contest. Stay for SCOOB! starting at 7 p.m. For information call (910) 692-7376.

Tickling the Ivories

Renowned concert pianist Solomon Eichner, who made his debut at Carnegie Hall in 2016, will be performing selections of romantic music and jazz-influenced compositions in the Great Room of the Boyd House at the Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, on Sunday, Oct. 24. Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for non-members. For information and tickets go to www.weymouthcenter.org or www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Up in the Air

The Festival D’Avion, a celebration of freedom and flight, returns for 2021 on Friday, Oct. 29, at 5 p.m. at the Moore County Airport, 7425 Aviation Blvd., Carthage. The band On the Border — The Ultimate Eagles Tribute will perform. The festival continues Oct. 30 at 10 a.m. with the aircraft flyout from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. For information and tickets go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Boiled Over

Enjoy a low country boil catered by Giff Fisher’s White Rabbit Catering from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 27, with the proceeds benefiting the Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. For more information call (910) 295-3642 or visit www.giventufts.org.

Jazz on the Grass

Enjoy live jazz with Al Strong and the “99” Brass Band and a boxed brunch by Baton Rouge Cuisine for a Mardi Gras-inspired Halloween celebration at the Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. For information and tickets go to either www.weymouthcenter.org or wwwtickemesandhills.com.

Barney, Floyd, Otis, et al.

Few things have the ability to tug at North Carolina heartstrings like The Andy Griffith Show, an imaginary land where everything, it seems, is a morality play. Independent filmmaker Chris Hudson, born in Moore County and raised in Charlotte, recently released a 90-minute documentary, The Mayberry Effect, a project five years in the making that sees the fictional Mayberry through the eyes of those who never left it — the re-enactors who inhabit the characters, quote their lines and stroll down to the ol’ fishing hole in the land of nostalgia. The film is distributed digitally in the U.S. and Canada by Gravitas Ventures. The link on iTunes is https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-mayberry-effect/id1584316675. You can learn more by visiting Hudson’s website, www.TheMayberryEffect.com.

The Naturalist

Ghosts Among the Pines

The white squirrels of Rockingham

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

Hop on U.S.  in Aberdeen and take it south, out of town. Cross over the floodplain of Drowning Creek at the Richmond County line and continue through the small hamlet of Hoffman, past the majestic stands of longleaf pine and wire grass of the Sandhills Game Land, and the old NASCAR motor speedway. Approaching the city limit signs of Rockingham, take a right turn into any of the suburban neighborhoods bordering the road and keep your eyes peeled. Among the patchwork of ranch-styled houses, manicured lawns and forest edges, you might just see a ghost.

It was my late uncle, Lamar, who first told me about them. The ghosts in question are part of a unique population of the grey squirrels that call this Sandhills town home. The squirrels here are not your average run-of-the-mill bushy-tailed rodents that are the bane to backyard gardeners and bird feeders everywhere. Many, instead, sport unusual, brilliant, snowy white fur coats and feature dark blue eyes.

I first set out to see the white squirrels of Rockingham one cold December day over 12 years ago. About a mile off U.S. 1, along a small section of road bordered by large oak trees and old homes, I counted a dozen white squirrels scattered here and there among the grassy yards. One yard in particular, with a large birdfeeder mounted atop a wooden pole next to a window of a single-story brick home, held four individual white squirrels.

After I stopped and rang the doorbell of the house, a kind, soft-spoken elderly man met me at the door. When I requested permission to photograph the white squirrels in his yard, his eyes lit up. He remarked that the white squirrels held a special place in his heart, reminding him of his late wife, who had filled the birdfeeder next to their living room window with sunflower seeds every day just so she could watch their antics. It was a tradition he had continued long after her passing, and it thrilled him that someone else had taken an interest in “her” squirrels.

“You go ahead and photograph the squirrels to your heart’s content,” he said.

With that, I lugged my camera gear out of the car, sat down quietly at the edge of the yard, and waited. Cardinals and chickadees, typical yard birds for the area, flew back and forth from the birdfeeder to a hedgerow, their incessant calls breaking the silence of an otherwise quiet winter’s day.

Before long, a luminescent white squirrel emerged from a hollow cavity 20 feet off the ground in a robust oak tree along the edge of the driveway in the front yard. Walking out onto a long vertical limb, it made a flying leap onto a nearby powerline that stretched across the width of the front yard. Like a miniature tightrope walker, the squirrel nimbly ran the length of the powerline and jumped off onto a pine tree. Scampering down the trunk, it hopped to the ground and raced over to the birdfeeder next to the window.

Watching it reminded me of another, more celebrated North Carolina population of white squirrels. Each spring, Brevard, a quaint town nestled within the mountains of Transylvania County, holds a weekend-long “White Squirrel Festival,” attracting thousands of tourists from across the state. The town is so enamored with their white squirrels that it created a sanctuary for the pale mammals, making it illegal for anyone to hunt, trap or kill one within city limits.

Stark white animals have captured the imagination of mankind for millennia, and figure prominently in myth and legend. Many Native cultures across the globe view albino animals as deities or omens of good luck. Albino animals feature prominently in popular culture as well, perhaps none more so than the great white whale pursued by the obsessed Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s literary classic Moby Dick.

The white squirrels in both Rockingham and Brevard are not actually albinos, but are what biologists refer to as leucistic animals. Like albinos, leucistic animals lack pigment in their skins but retain small amounts in certain parts of their bodies, especially the eyes. Both albino and leucistic animals are rare in nature. Their stark white coloration makes them especially vulnerable to predators, and logic dictates that populations of white squirrels should remain low in areas where foxes, red-tailed hawks and feral cats are common. However, the populations of white squirrels in both Carolina towns appear to be thriving.

Back in Rockingham, a normal-colored grey squirrel came bounding across the yard and hopped up onto the bird feeder across from the white one. Together, they enjoyed mouthfuls of sunflower seed as the afternoon sun drifted across the Carolina blue sky. The yin and yang contrast between the two provided a wonderful photo opportunity, and I raised my camera. Framing the two squirrels in my viewfinder, I noticed the elderly man sitting quietly inside the nearby window admiring them. He was smiling.

Pressing the shutter, I smiled back. PS

Naturalist and photographer Todd Pusser works to document the extraordinary diversity of life both near and far. His images can be found at www.ToddPusser.com.

The Creators of N.C.

Time Capsule in Jazz

Whether you know him as Dr. Martinez or Marty Most, you know The Big Easy is alive in his heart and his photos

By Wiley Cash  •  Photographs by Mallory Cash

Nestled in a patch of pine woods just south of Wilmington, Dr. Maurice Martinez, New Orleans’ first beat poet, is sitting in a favorite chair in his sunlight-flooded living room. At his feet are several crates of black-and-white photographs, carefully encased in plastic sleeves. He bends down to pick up an image, staring at it for a moment before gesturing toward the subject — a Black man in a suit playing a soprano saxophone. The man’s eyes are closed in concentration.

“John Coltrane was the most serious musician I’ve ever met,” says Martinez. He looks back down at the photograph with such intensity it’s as if he’s traveling back in time, peeling back the years and the stories that led him from a childhood in New Orleans to the halls of American academia by way of a barnstorming concert tour across Brazil. Photograph in hand, Martinez’s mind and memory are focused on the string of shows Coltrane played when he came to New Orleans in 1963. Martinez and his camera were there to capture it. He presented a composite of several of the photos he took to the jazz musician. “When he saw it, he got warm and opened up,” Martinez says. “He could see that I was serious about music, too.”

Maurice Martinez has been serious about many things over the course of his life — music, education, social justice, documentary filmmaking, plus Creole heritage and history — but jazz and photography have been lifelong staples. His two passions have recently come together in A Time Capsule in Jazz, an exhibit on display at the Genesis Block Gallery in downtown Wilmington until October 20.

Martinez was a college student at Xavier University in Louisiana when he first began to take photography seriously. His early steps were tentative, but experimental.

“It was a little black box, and it only had one speed on the shutter,” he says. “But it also had a way that you could do a time exposure by disengaging the automatic shutter.”

And so he did just that, then put the camera on the desk.

“It came out like a Rembrandt.”

He soon moved on to Instamatics and 35mm cameras, experimenting with various lenses before graduating to better and more advanced equipment. After starting a wedding photography business with a buddy, he soon learned that the best photographs came at what he calls “the peak moment of joy,” such as when the newlyweds are seated in the limousine and the wedding and all its fuss is behind them. Only then do you see the couple relax, he says.

Martinez saw that those moments of joy were also evident in the jazz musicians who brought their soulful music to New Orleans in the 1960s. Music had always been a passion for Martinez, and his parents recognized his talent when he was young. A local university offered a junior school of music, so Martinez began piano classes there when he was 9 years old with his buddy Ellis Marsalis. Martinez would eventually step away from the piano and pick up the bass, purchasing what was reportedly the first electric bass played in New Orleans. Along with his photography business, he founded a jazz quartet that played gigs for fraternities at Tulane.

When he finished college at Xavier, one of his professors encouraged him to apply to graduate school at the University of Michigan. While segregation ensured that state universities in Louisiana were closed to people of color, $750 grants were available to Black students who sought degrees outside the state. But by the time Martinez had been granted admission to Michigan, the December deadline to apply for the Louisiana grant had passed. His father, who had made a career as a master bricklayer and stonemason, reached out to one of his wealthy patrons, and the $750 needed to enroll at Michigan was secured. Martinez packed up his camera and headed north, bringing his love for jazz with him.

At Michigan, he found himself as the music curator for a creative arts festival, and while many of the students wanted to invite The Who and other rock’n’roll bands, Martinez invited Miles Davis.

After finishing his M.A. in education at Michigan, Martinez returned to New Orleans and followed in the footsteps of his mother by teaching math in the local public schools for six years. His mother taught in the local schools before opening a private school that first catered to Creole children and educated some of the city’s most exceptional Black citizens, including Wynton Marsalis, a former mayor and a former chief of police.

But Martinez felt himself floundering after returning home. People encouraged him to leave the city and make a name for himself, so he returned to the University of Michigan for a doctorate in education. It was there, while studying Portuguese, that he discovered a Ford Foundation grant that was sending students on internships in Latin America. After landing a grant, he lived in Brazil for two years, studying the ways in which tradition and modernity affect life in urban and rural cities. He was also taking photographs and playing jazz. Along with another American and three Brazilians, he formed a quintet called Grupo Calmalma de Jazz Livre, and they went on to play a 14-city tour sponsored by the U.S. Embassy.

It was after returning to Michigan to complete his Ph.D. that Martinez met Marjorie, the woman who would become his wife of 48 years. After graduating, the couple moved to New York City, where Martinez spent 24 years teaching in the education department at Hunter College, taking students and professors into some of the city’s most challenging schools in order to gain a clear perspective on the profession that he was preparing students to pursue.

The experience was fraught with issues of race, class and caste, but coming-of-age in New Orleans assured that he was familiar navigating that terrain.

By the early ’90s, Martinez had grown weary of life in New York, and when he was invited to join the faculty in the UNC-Wilmington’s Watson College of Education as a visiting professor, he jumped at the chance. He joined the full-time faculty the following year, spending 20 years as a professor in the Department of Instructional Technology, Foundations and Secondary Education.

But no matter where he has lived, New Orleans has always been alive in his heart. After all, he is known as Marty Most, Jazz Poet and credited as the first person to put the words “The Big Easy” in print:

Have you ever been to an old time jazz man’s funeral in my hometown?

Put on your imagination, baby, and come on down

To an old time jazz man’s funeral in my hometown.

It’s called the Big Easy, way, way down.

What’s the biggest difference he sees between Wilmington and the Big Easy?

“Wilmington was settled by the British,” he says. “So we have the Azalea Festival. But things would be different if it had been settled by the French.” He leans forward, a smile playing across his face, a light twinkling in his eye. “Because then we’d have Mardi Gras.”  PS

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, was released last month.  

BATwatch

Going Batty

Flying friends of the night

By Susan Campbell

Fall is not only migration time for a large percentage of the bird species found across our state, it’s also when another group of fancy fliers are winging their way southward: bats!

Although we are rarely aware of it, each evening individuals or small groups of these little creatures leave their daytime roosts and, after a short period foraging, move out, headed to warmer — and hence buggier — surroundings for the cooler months. For individuals of certain hardier species, such as red, big brown, hoary and evening bats, central North Carolina may be their winter home.

Bats represent one-quarter of all mammal species worldwide. Like us, they give birth to live young. Bats are relatively long-lived mammals and can survive 20 to 30 years in the wild. Of the 17 bat species that occur in North Carolina, three are listed as federally endangered, and one is listed as federally threatened. Bats are primarily nocturnal, though they also forage in the early evening and early morning hours. Although most bats have relatively good eyesight, they primarily use echolocation to navigate and locate prey. Their maneuverability is phenomenal — bats can avoid objects as small as a string in total darkness.

Bats mate in the spring or fall and usually produce one pup per year. Many species form maternity colonies in the summer to raise their young, while others are solitary roosters. Some bat species migrate south for the winter, and others find local hibernation areas, called hibernacula. Bats prefer caves or mines for hibernacula, though they have also been known to use buildings and bridges, and they usually return to the same site every year. By educating the public, monitoring populations and protecting bat habitat, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) is working to sustain bat populations in our state.

Bats are integral to ecosystems worldwide. Tropical bats disperse large amounts of seed and pollen, enabling plant reproduction and forest regrowth, and are especially important in the pollination of cocoa, mango and the agave plant, which is used to produce tequila. North American bats have a major impact on controlling insect populations that are considered agricultural pests. They save the corn industry over $1 billion annually in pest control. A nursing female bat may consume almost her entire body weight in insects in one night. Recently a protein found in vampire bat saliva has been used to develop clot-busting medication to aid stroke victims.

Many bat populations in the United States have declined in recent years. Pesticides, persecution, and human disturbance of hibernacula and maternity colonies may have contributed to this decline. Furthermore, an emergent fungal disease called white-nose syndrome (WNS) has killed more than 5.7 million bats since its discovery in New York in 2006. This disease spread to North Carolina in 2011 and continues to spread to new states each winter. It is now found in 30 states.

To determine bat distribution and hibernation sites in North Carolina, track the spread of WNS and estimate population trends for certain species, our state biologists conduct intensive monitoring across the state. Through a variety of methods (including mist netting, trapping, banding, acoustic recording, roost monitoring and radio telemetry), NCWRC biologists, in cooperation with several partners, have surveyed and banded thousands of bats in North Carolina. All of this work helps to inform management and, in turn, conservation priorities.

There are several things you can do for bats on your property. An ever more popular endeavor is installing a bat box or two. Also plant native plants that attract insects that bats (as well as the birds) eat. It is very important to limit the use of insecticides and herbicides whenever possible.

Also avoid disturbing bat hibernation areas and maternity colonies. And you might want to consider joining a conservation organization to remain updated on bat conservation efforts such as Bat Conservation International (www.batcon.org).

Last, but not least, educate others regarding the importance of bats and why they are so beneficial.  PS

Susan Campbell would love to hear from you. Feel free to send questions or wildlife observations to susan@ncaves.com.