PINEPITCH

• Southern Pines native and PineStraw columnist Bill Fields discusses his memoir, A Quick Nine Before Dark: A Life in
Golf, at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 2. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

• Virginia McGee Richards talks about her book The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway, at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines, at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

• Taylor Brown discusses his new novel, Wolvers, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 15, at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: ticketmesandhills.com.

• Emily Matchar talks about her new book, The Lost Girl of Craven County, at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 16, at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

• Julia Hans will be at the Southern Pines Public Library, 170 N.W. Connecticut Ave., at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 18 to share her book, a Penny Postcard History of Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

• Bob Crawford, bass player with The Avett Brothers, will speak about his book America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 22, at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

• Michelle Collins Anderson will talk about her new novel, The Moonshine Women, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 26, at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

First held in October of 1914, the Sandhills Fair was sponsored by the Sandhills Board of Trade and the Sandhills Farmers Association. There was sewing, knitting, canning, gardening, woodworking and animal husbandry, all highlighting the work of nearby farms. After the first several years, it was held at the Fair Barn and Harness Track, where a large grandstand was built to accommodate crowds of as many as 3,000 spectators. The Pinehurst Outlook said the fair required “nothing more than a smile for admission” and “was a fair without a midway and doesn’t need one.”

One of the more popular activities was “auto polo,” invented around 1910 by Ralph “Pappy” Hankinson, a Ford dealer from Topeka, Kansas, hoping to increase his sales. Patterned after equestrian polo, matches featured four cars with two players per car: a driver and a “mallet man.” The cars were generally stripped-down Model Ts with no tops, doors or windshields. A regulation-sized basketball was used, although some venues manufactured even larger polo balls. The driver and mallet man had to guide the ball into a 5-foot-tall goal. The mallet men — and, periodically, the driver — were frequently ejected from the vehicle resulting in cuts, broken bones or being run over. Later, the cars were equipped with primitive roll bars above the driver.

The sport caught on in the U.S. but internationally it was viewed with caution and skepticism, being christened “a lunatic game.” Auto polo drew large crowds, but enthusiasm waned during the late 1920s due to the cost of the vehicles and the ensuing necessary repairs.