Hometown

Quiet Time

A tranquil week at Weymouth

By Bill Fields

It’s always great to come to Southern Pines, but a return last fall was special. I’d passed the hounds on Ridge Street marking the entrance to the Boyd House many times — walking, on my bike or in a car — going back to when I started elementary school in the mid-1960s. In November, though, I drove up Vermont Avenue, crossed Ridge and went through the stone canines.

For the first time, I wasn’t just passing by; I was arriving to settle in for a week at Weymouth as a writer-in-residence. My writing chops pale in comparison to some of the authors who have graced the estate going back more than a century, but I was certain no visitor had closer roots given that I’d grown up only three blocks away. Not only was I excited to see what I could get done over seven days in an inspiring environment, I was proud to be there.

I was booked to bunk in a room named for Max Perkins, the legendary book editor who helped shape 20th-century American literature with his vital ties to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and North Carolinian Thomas Wolfe, among others. The room assignment pleased me. As I unpacked, I recalled reading A. Scott Berg’s 1978 biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius while in college. Given that typing a high school hoops gamer on deadline in the sports department of the Durham Morning Herald was the big time at that point in my life, discovering Perkins’ New York world was a revelation.

By week’s end — when two fellow resident writers and I celebrated with a lovely dinner at Ashten’s and afterward shared aloud samples of what we’d produced while at Weymouth — I’d written thousands of words for what I hope will someday be a memoir. My output, in longhand (I was reminded of the pleasure of a fountain pen) and on my laptop, didn’t quite reach the five-figure goal I’d set for myself. Yet as I waved goodbye to the dogs as I left the property and began the long drive home to Connecticut, I realized that my time at Weymouth shouldn’t be measured by word count alone.

If I’m not careful, I watch too much television and spend too much time on social media. While staying in the Boyd House, I watched no TV and paid scant attention to what was being said online. In that small bedroom and in those large common rooms alike, I had time to think.

I’m not nearly as plugged in as some people, and my texting thumbs will never reach warp speed. Stepping out of a normal routine for a week, however, and holing up in a place where the point is to get away from everything, made it easier to realize just how much sway technology holds over us.

It was quiet at Weymouth. The lack of noise took me back to late night studying in an unlocked classroom building not far from Old West dormitory, or the hours in a lonesome carrel in the Wilson Library stacks. I’ve written plenty of stories over the years in crowded press rooms, and there is satisfaction in tuning out the surroundings and turning out smooth copy in time to make an editor happy.

But I think my best work has come in quiet hotel rooms after golf tournaments, when Sunday night has turned into Monday morning and, somehow, a couple of thousand words were on the page by dawn and by deadline, in an order that mostly made sense.

Months after my peaceful week at Weymouth, I don’t get the message on my smartphone that my screen usage has been up as often as it used to. Not only did I write something there, I learned something too.  PS

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