The Kitchen Garden

Goo Gone

Okra’s slime problem

By Jan Leitschuh

Okra has an image problem.

During the blast-furnace days of August, tropical okra thrives, throwing off pods with merry abandon, challenging growers to pick faster before the pods grow too long and tough.

This finger-shaped Southern vegetable is rarely available in grocery stores or supermarkets. You’ll either have to search it out at local farm stands or farmers markets, or grow it yourself (no difficult task).

So it isn’t necessarily a familiar vegetable for many transplants and town dwellers. Lots of people around here still have no idea what to do with the pinkie-sized, ridged green veggie, or how to cook it. And unless you grew up with it, you may not know it as culinary real estate on your dinner plate.

Even for those who do know okra, there may lurk an underlying aversion: slime.

Talk about okra, and a good number of people make that face, wrinkling their noses and calling its texture “slimy.” Okra is rich in a gel-like substance called mucilage. Turns out that slime is actually good for you. It’s healing for an irritated gut, helps with digestion, and it can help lower cholesterol by binding to it. It puts the “gum” in gumbo.

But if slime ain’t your bag, nothing I say — such as okra is full of antioxidants and contains lectin, which is a type of protein that can inhibit the growth of human cancer cells — will turn you on. I get it. My husband is in your tribe.

If you’re a Southern cook and grew up eating okra, well, do your thang, sugah. Pickled okra all the way! Stewed garden tomatoes, onions and okra. Chopped okra in soups and gumbos. Steam it till the slime squeaks.

But if this veggie is less familiar to you and you’re determined to hold your nose and have your “when-in-Rome” encounter, perhaps you’d like to start with a slimeless way of getting to know this stellar hot-weather veggie.

The most delicious cop-out, er, method of consumption, of course, is breaded and fried. Almost everyone likes fried okra, all crispy and salty fried crumbs with a vegetable patina. They are the French fries of the produce world. But if you don’t want to get this fussy/fried, let’s look at other methods of de-sliming this worthy Southern vegetable. High heat and longer cooking time will eliminate the slime factor (but also some of the health benefits).

The simplest way to de-slime okra is to roast it.

Rinse a batch, and dry thoroughly to prevent steam. Cut the stem ends off. Slice pods in half, toss in olive oil and layer in a baking dish or sheet pan. Add salt and pepper. Simple, and so good! Typically, we will toss other veggies in the mix as the garden allows: green pepper slices, halved cherry tomatoes, onions sliced into rings, zucchini or yellow squash slices, green beans and more. Roast (bake) at 375 for 30-45 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle on a little garlic powder. Add a slice of melon, a chicken breast or a burger and you have a meal.

Or, turn your oven up higher, to 425. Prep a bag of a few teaspoons of garlic salt and shake pods vigorously. Let sit for 10 minutes to draw out moisture. Then add a cup of cornmeal and perhaps some Creole seasonings, shake again. Rest another 10 minutes. Remove pods onto a foil-lined sheet pan, and spritz with cooking spray. Bake for 15 minutes, turn pods, bake another 15. Oven-baked crunchy goodness, without frying.

Grilling is another simple method of removing the goo. Lay the pods directly on the grill or skewer sideways for easier handling. Another option is to skewer with small onions and cherry tomatoes. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, perhaps some cayenne pepper. Depending on the heat of your grill, this will take 10-20 minutes. Remove and shake some Parmesan shreds on top. Serve with your grilled chicken.

Searing in a cast iron pan is easy and will reduce slime. Just don’t add so many that the crowding causes steaming — steaming increases slime.

The acid of lemons or tomatoes can cut the consistency down a bit. Stewed tomatoes and okra are classic.

Finally, selection can play a role in low slime — choose small, fresh pods. The smaller the pod, the less slime you’ll get. The largest pods can be fibrous and tough. You can store your farmers market finds in the fridge for a day or two, but too long or too much causes black spots to appear.

Fellow garden enthusiast and neighbor Cameron Sadler of Southern Pines recently shared her okra enthusiasm, and I will pass it along:

Cameron Sadler’s Garlic-Roasted Okra

Get a large sheet pan, and lay your okra on top of it. Okra should be sliced in half, long way. It’s good to use about one clove of garlic per cup of okra. Slice the garlic cloves into skinny slivers, or mash with crusher. Put garlic on top of the okra. I like to melt a stick of butter, then spoon it over the garlic and okra.

Top with sprinkles of some really good salt, pick your favorite one. Stir it around halfway through cooking, so everything is coated. I roast mine for one hour at 350 degrees.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of Sandhills Farm to Table.

Simple Life

In the Sweet By and By

Until then, the dance of life continues

By Jim Dodson

The Great Pandemic Summer of 2020 is drawing to a close.

How have you coped?

As you read this, I am coping by being thigh-deep in a tumbling stream at the base of Mount Mitchell, deep in a national forest, amusing a few sleepy rainbow trout with my rusty fly-casting skills.

If ever there was a summer to get away to the wild, this is it. For me, fly fishing has long provided relaxation and unexpected answers to questions that seem to resist easy answers.

Twenty-five summers ago, during an unexpected family crisis, my daughter Maggie and I spent a glorious summer camping and fly-fishing our way across America. Maggie was 7 years old. Our old dog Amos was pushing 13. It was a summer to remember chasing trout  in some of the West’s most iconic rivers.

This summer, Maggie and her fiancé, Nate, and their two rescued pups are retracing portions of our route through the West as they head for new jobs in Los Angeles, camping and hiking. The other night, Maggie phoned from the banks of Shoshone River in Wyoming just to hear her old man rhapsodize about the summer night we spent camped by the swift blue river beneath a quilt of glittering stars. Such nights stay with you.  

Throughout this devastating pandemic and summer of social discontent, many of us have faithfully sheltered in place and adopted wearing face coverings in public. We have placed our trust in science, avoided crowds, dutifully washed hands and learned new phrases like “safe distancing” and “community spread.” We’ve also marveled at the human capacity for finding meaning, change and creativity in the midst of a crisis our children will probably tell their grandchildren about in tones of wonder and solemnity, and maybe even gratitude.

Change and history move in halting steps, stumbling before we who are living through them finally come to terms with the truth. To many in America, a racial awakening in the midst of a worldwide pandemic either seems like a cosmic piling on or a clear message from the universe that it’s time for America to face up to the sins of our collective past and finally take steps to end systemic racism, a reckoning long overdue. 

One man’s awakening, I suppose, is another’s End of Days.

For what it’s worth, a different metric on this time of trials comes from leading astrologers who point out that for the first time in thousands of years, half a dozen planets are simultaneously in retrograde and the rare success of three consecutive eclipses, two lunar, one solar, combined with the planet Pluto — the diminutive power broker of darkness and chaos — passing through America’s chart in almost the exact location at the time of our country’s founding, indicates a period of feeling “stuck” in a protracted time of intense disruption and bitter division. As the planets move forward, or so we are told, we may experience a vast spiritual awakening, possibly even a new age of enlightenment springing from lessons of the past.

Whether the problem lies in our stars or ourselves remains an open question.

In the meantime, lacking the gift of celestial prophecy, I stand in tumbling waters thinking how this year of chaos and change reminds me of valuable lessons learned early in life in the racially bifurcated world where I grew up.

My father was a newspaperman with a poet’s heart who lost his dream in 1958 when his partner cleaned out the operating funds of their thriving weekly newspaper in coastal Mississippi, disappearing without a trace.

One day later, his only sister died in a car wreck on an icy road outside Washington, D.C., and my mother suffered her second late-term miscarriage in three years.

We left Mississippi with everything we owned in a Pontiac Star Chief and drove all night to Wilmington, where my dad worked for several months at the Star News before moving on to a better job in South Carolina.

I started first grade in Florence, a pretty Southern town of old houses and shady streets. I was the only kid in my class who could read chapter books and had perfect attendance at school.  At year’s end, Miss Patillo presented me with a small brass pin shaped like an open book with Perfect Attendance inscribed on its pages. I still have the pin.

For my parents, however — something I learned many years later — Florence was like a silent ordeal, a twilight world between the unyielding values of the Old South and a brave new world of tomorrow.

The summer before second grade, a lovely African-American woman named Miss Jesse came to help my mother get back on her feet. She was said to be a natural healer and a woman who knew how to take care of families like ours. My mother held strong views about race and resisted the notion of having a maid like other women in town. But her health was dangerously frail. So Miss Jesse came.

It is no longer the fashion to speak of having someone like Miss Jesse in your privileged white life.  I get that. But for one summer this kind woman took me everywhere with her to keep me out from under my mother’s feet — to the public library, to the Piggly Wiggly, to and from vacation Bible school at the Lutheran Church. I adored riding around town with Miss Jesse. The radio of her blue Dodge Dart was always tuned to a Southern gospel station. I can almost hear her singing “In the Sweet By and By” and “I’ll Fly Away.” I sang along, too.

She and my mom quickly became friends. Among other things, Miss Jesse introduced my mother-a former Maryland beauty queen-to flower gardening and turned her into quite a respectable Southern cook. Her beauty and vitality returned.

One evening while the two of them were cooking supper, a lively gospel tune came on the transistor radio and Miss Jesse invited me to hop on her strong feet, sashaying us both around the kitchen floor. She called this “feet dancing.”

One night that autumn of 1959, my father’s boss came to supper. He was a thin old man with loose change jingling in his pants pockets. Miss Jesse was cooking supper. The adults were all standing in the kitchen talking about “protests” that were suddenly happening across the Deep South. My father’s boss jingled his change and declared, “Fortunately, we don’t have that kind of trouble around here, do we Jesse? That’s because we have good nigras round these parts.”

“Jimmy,” my mother chimed instantly, “could you come with me, please?”

I was barely into the hallway when she took hold of my ear and perp-walked me to the bathroom, leading me in and shutting the door.  Over my protest, she ordered me to sit and hush up.

As I watched, she calmly opened a new bar of Ivory soap and held it inches from my face.

“If I ever hear that word come out of your mouth,” she said, restraining her Germanic fury, “you’ll be sitting on this toilet with this new bar of soap in your mouth for an hour. Is that clear?”

I knew exactly the word she meant. She explained that “nigra” was the way “supposedly educated white people in the South” said the word my brother and I were forbidden to ever use, though I heard it often used in those days.

For what it’s worth, I can’t stomach the smell of Ivory soap to this day.

Weeks later, shockingly, Miss Jesse went into the hospital and we went to visit her in its “colored wing.” She passed a few days later. We went to her funeral service at the little brick church she attended. The place was full of flowers and people, including a few white women who’d benefited from Miss Jesse’s healing presence. The music was pure gospel. My mother cried. I remember meeting Miss Jesse’s daughter, her pride and joy whom she called “Babygirl,” an art teacher from Atlanta.

A few weeks later, my dad took a new job and we finally moved home to Greensboro, where I started mid-way through the second grade.

Just days after my brother and I got our new library cards, our history-mad father mysteriously turned up at school to spring us for the afternoon. He drove us downtown to stand near the “colored” entrance of the Center Theater and watch as four brave students from A&T attempted to integrate the Woolworth’s lunch counter across Elm Street.

“Boys,” he said to us. “This isn’t just going to change life in Greensboro. It’s going to change America.”

That event is considered a watershed moment of the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement of America.

It was my 7th birthday, February 2, 1960.

Sixty years later, as statues of Confederate generals and segregationists topple and sweeping racial reckoning has finally commenced, I’ve been playing a lot of Southern gospel in my car, thinking about Miss Jesse and the first music I ever learned to sing. Embarrassing to admit, I’m having trouble remembering her last name. To me she was always Miss Jesse.

As I cast after slumbering trout in a gorgeous mountain stream, far away from that strained and vanishing South, I find myself humming “In the Sweet By and By” and wishing I could properly thank Miss Jesse for saving my mother’s life and unexpectedly shaping mine.

Maybe someday, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to feet dance with her again. And learn her whole name.  PS

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

Almanac

By Ash Alder

Always, always everything at once, and in August you can see it.

Blackberry and bramble.

Rose and thorn. 

Honey and hive.

The sweetness and the sting.

You cannot have one without the other.

August is carefree. Bare feet. Soft grass and ant bites. Sandspurs and sweet peas. Long days and hot nights. Sweet corn and crickets. Sunburn and bee balm. Picnics and rope swings and cool, flowing water.

Cool, flowing water . . . the one true remedy for the sweltering heat of summer. 

Ankle, shin, then knee-deep in the swollen creek, where the dog fetches driftwood and the snake rests coiled on the sunny bank, time slows down. If it’s true that water retains memory, then you are standing in a pool of ancient musings — an endless, ever-flowing cycle of beginnings and endings, life and death, sweetness and sorrow.

The dog interrupts your own introspection with a playful shake — water spraying in all directions — and you admire the fullness and purity of his presence. Amid the sweetness and the sting, he’s just here, joyfully and without a care. And in this moment, so are you.

You watch as a dragonfly kisses the water’s surface, wings glittering as it circles about this summer dreamscape. Even the dragonfly bites. We forget. And yet the sting is part of it, inseparable from the beauty of the bigger picture.

Lose yourself in the bramble and remember: The sting makes the berries all the sweeter.

Thank you, beloved August. Thank you for your thorns and fruits and wild honey. Thank you for all of it.

In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs. — Henry David Thoreau

Pickle Me This

Want to savor the summer bounty while keeping things simple? Quick-pickle it. Refrigerator pickles will keep in the fridge for several weeks. And all you’ll need is your harvest, white distilled or apple cider vinegar, canning or pickling salt (read: not table salt!), water, and any glass or plastic container with a lid.

A “Simple Pickling Recipe” from The Old Farmer’s Almanac recommends 1 1/2 pounds of homegrown cucumbers, 1 cup of vinegar, 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt, 1 cup of water, and — if you’re feeling spicy — dill or mustard seeds, peppercorns, garlic cloves (peeled and smashed), or fresh dill, mint, or basil.

Got everything? OK, here we go:

If you’re flavoring your fridge pickles with herbs or spices, add that to your glass or plastic containers first.

Next, wash produce, slice into spears or coins, then add them to the containers, leaving at least 1/2 inch of headspace up top.

Time for the brine. Combine vinegar, water, and salt in a saucepan over high heat. Bring to a rolling boil, then pour hot brine over the veggies (cover vegetables completely with liquid but leave about 1/2 inch of headspace) and cover. Allow the jars to cool on the countertop for about an hour, then add your lids and pop those future pickles into the fridge. In three days to one week (the longer you wait the better they’ll taste), give them a try.

Natural Remedies

One of the highlights of porch-sitting in the summer is hearing the sweet, unmistakable buzz of hummingbird wings moments before it swoops in for a long drink from the feeder. One of the low points: mosquitoes. They also arrive with a buzz — arguably unsweet — and the only long drink they’re coming for is you.

If you’re into natural mosquito repellents, you’ve likely tried citronella candles or added its oil to homemade sprays. But did you know that planting certain herbs and flowers in your garden might also help keep them at bay? Try lemon balm, marigolds, peppermint, catnip, lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus, neem, basil and thyme. Either way, you really can’t go wrong.  PS

What dreadful hot weather we have!
It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
— Jane Austen

In the Spirit

The World of Del Maguey

Mezcal so good, I forgot how to count

By Tony Cross

Back in June, I was invited to dinner and a mezcal tasting by my good friends Bo and Suze. I first met the couple six years ago when I was tending bar. Bo and I bonded over our love of spirits and cocktails. He was one of the few people I knew at the time that shared the same knowledge and appreciation of everything from cocktail books, to bars across the U.S. and the great drinks they are known for. Needless to say, we’ve been pals ever since.

In the time we’ve known each other, we’ve shared lots of great drinks, many of which were imbibed in his bar, The Bo Zone. That’s right. He’s got quite the selection, and almost everything on hand for most cocktails across the board. Along with his invitation, he informed me he’d just received a huge delivery of spirits online. Yes, you can order spirits online and have them delivered to your home in North Carolina. I’m not going to name names, but do your research and thank me later.

The majority of bottles from Bo’s latest shipment was mezcal from Del Maguey. Pronounced ma-gay, the single village Mezcal was founded in 1995 by Ron Cooper. Each bottle is made by individual family producers and, as the website states: “We are the first producer to credit each product after the village where our liquid is made. When you see our beautiful green bottles, you know it’s Del Maguey.”

After the three of us enjoyed a fabulous dinner, we retired downstairs to The Bo Zone, where many beautiful green bottles awaited us. Here are a few of my favorites from that evening. I’m including the tasting notes that Bo provided, along with my recollections. I took pictures so I would remember just in case I time-traveled — I didn’t, but I’m glad I have the pictures to remind me. They were all excellent. The mezcals, I mean.

Del Maguey Tepextate ($115)

This was the first bottle we got into. What a great start.

Bo’s notes: This glorious mezcal made from wild agave is the work of the same master mezcalero that produces the legendary Tobala (see below) bottled by Del Maguey. Tepextate expressions are rare, to say the least, and the extreme conditions that the plant grows in result in mezcals with concentrated, sweet tones of pure nectar.”

My recollections: Honeysuckle. It was a touch sweet. The problem with all of these great mezcals is you want to have another taste — there’s so much going on that you need one more little sip to figure out what your palate is picking up.

Del Maguey San Pablo Ameyaltepec ($130)

Number three on the list was this beauty from Puebla. For “mezcal” to be printed on a label, the agave has to originate from one of eight Mexican states. Puebla is now on that list.

Bo’s notes: With this extraordinary bottling from master mezcalero Aurelio Gonzalez Tobnon, Del Maguey takes a big step forward with their first official bottling from the state of Puebla. The wild Papalote agaves for this spirit were harvested after 12 to 18 years maturing to full ripeness in the remote hillsides outside the city limits. Showing off an incredible range of complexity, the spirit resolves to an umami-like level of intensity and harmony with notes that hit on the tropical, floral, spicy, savory, salty, mineral and more.

My recollections: We all agreed that the Ameyaltepec left a savory, umami flavor on the finish. What’s fun about tasting mezcal (or spirits or wine) is how there is no right or wrong. You taste what you taste. Over the years I’ve looked at tech sheets on spirits/wine provided for staff by a distillery/winery and thinking, “Nope. That’s not what I taste at all.” This was one of the times where we all thought the notes hit the nail on the head. What a finish.

Del Maguey Madrecuixe ($110)

Bo’s notes: Not far off the banks of the Red Ant River in the dense, green village of San Luis del Rio in Oaxaca, Paciano Cruz Nolasco produces some of the most traditional mezcals on Earth. This rare bottling was made from the wild grown agave species of Madrecruixe. The opening notes are herbaceous and green in nature, then slowly, layers of tropical fruit are revealed spiked with earthy, edgy flavors that all seem to fit together thanks to the gorgeous texture and elegant medium body.”

My recollections: I remember loving this. I also remember humming some Jimi Hendrix tune that was on in the background. Let’s go with: What tastes like bananas, silk, and something green for $300, Alex?

Del Maguey Tobala ($120)

When we finished tasting the recent acquisitions, Bo pulled two more off the shelf. I’ve had this one before, but it had been so long I was forced to say, “Hey, man, lemme taste that one again” out loud.

Notes from Del Maguey’s website: The Tobala maguey is found growing naturally only in the highest altitude canyons in the shade of oak trees, like truffles. It takes about eight piñas (agave hearts) to equal one piña from either of the more commonly propagated and cultivated magueys. Our Tobala has a sweet, fruity nose, with a mango and cinnamon taste and long, extra smooth finish.

My recollections: “Ahh, man, that’s awesome!” At this point I was texting certain friends (who could care less) with pictures of the different, beautiful green bottles I was sipping from. My laugh was getting audibly louder and somewhat obnoxious, even in text form.

Del Maguey Pechuga ($200)

This is the showstopper. Bo had a little more than half a bottle of the Pechuga that had been on the shelf for five years — or did he say three? — and I was honored he would share this beautiful spirit with me. The first thing I learned about Pechuga involved the use of a chicken. Don’t be afraid. A whole skinless chicken breast (pechuga) is washed thoroughly to remove any grease, then hung by a string within the still for 24 hours while a second or third distillation happens. It’s not voodoo, it balances the native apples, plums, plantains, pineapples, almonds, and white rice that were already added to the 100 liters of mezcal.

My recollections: I remember taking a few sips, smiling, saying something brainy, and then tuning out. I was transported immediately to Santa Catarina Minas. I’m a donkey. Kind of like Eeyore, but not melancholy; my mood was the equivalent of being in a commercial for unwanted facial hair where everyone is really, really, happy. Oh, and I was a cartoon. I’m in the middle of grinding piñas during mezcal production. And then I came to. Maybe I did time-travel a little. This mezcal is classy.  PS

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

Mom Inc.

Parenting Points

The situation is fluid

By Renee Whitmore

I used to give out parenting advice. It was very popular, and free.

No video games.

No fast food.

No sugar.

Early to bed, early to rise.

Of course, this was before I had children.

Our family of six — my husband, my 16- and 11-year-old boys, my two fur-bearing children and me — have been inside since March. MARCH. Confined by COVID. School is starting back this month. Hopefully. But before that reprieve, let me give you a peak into what our life was like.

To put it nicely, it was a transition.

At 3:17 a.m. on Wednesday morning, I hear yelling coming from the living room. “Duuuuuuddde NO!” This is the universal call of the video game addict. Then I hear the buzzer in the kitchen. The oven door opens. The oven door slams.

It’s David, the 16-year-old. He’s playing Fortnite online with his friends. At 3 o’clock in the morning. He’s cooking frozen french fries, destined to be smothered with ranch dressing. At 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s OK. He’s going to sleep until noon. When he finally gets up he’ll start his online schoolwork, finish around 4 p.m., and pop more frozen french fries in the oven. I don’t even care. At least he’s safe. And he still likes me, most days.

I pull a pillow over my head and go back to sleep.

At 7 a.m. I sit in the kitchen drinking my coffee with my Rottweiler, Baily, sprawled out by my feet. If I wanted to go anywhere my first move would have to be a standing broad jump. My cat, Libby, is sitting on the table watching me sip my dark roast with that judgmental feline stare. You know the one. Kevin, the 11-year-old, shuffles in, still drowsy.

He walks to the cabinet, grabs two packages of Jolly Rancher Green Apple Pop Tarts and asks me if I can make him hot chocolate with marshmallows. I break the news. We’re out of marshmallows. So, he doesn’t want hot chocolate anymore. According to him, hot chocolate is undrinkable without marshmallows. Might as well be a cup of hemlock. Instead he grabs a Sunkist from the fridge and consumes each Pop Tart in two bites. Chomp. Chomp. Sip. Gone.

When Kevin was 3, I got a call from his preschool teacher. He’d repurposed Jasmine’s and Miguel’s cupcakes from the snack table, sneaking off to the bathroom and stuffing them in his mouth. The teacher’s report went something like this: “I was banging on the bathroom door and when he answered his cheeks were full of cupcake and I could smell frosting on his breath.” Perry Mason couldn’t get him off.

“I don’t think I’m going to do any schoolwork today,” Kevin informs me, Baily and Libby as he goes to the back-up package of Pop Tarts. “I’m just not feeling it.”

Huh. Me neither.

“Can I take a break?”

“You’ve had a break. You’ve been home for two months,” I say. “What will you do on your break?”

“I don’t know. Will you make me a grilled cheese?”

“I’ll make grilled cheese for lunch.”

He looks at me as though lunch is in December. I don’t even care. At least he’s safe. And he still likes me, most days.

Since the real kids — not the virtual ones — came along, I don’t give advice much. If anyone asks I say, “Whatever works.” And welcome back to school. I hope.  PS

When Renee isn’t teaching English or being a professional taxi driver for her two boys, she’s working on her first book.

Running Man

The unquenchable passion of Jef Moody

By Bill Fields   •   Photograph by Tim Sayer

Most mornings between 6 and 7 o’clock, Jef Moody laces up his running shoes and goes to the starting line, a sandy trailhead next to his driveway in Taylortown. He will travel a couple of miles on paths through the pines and scrub oaks in about 45 minutes. It is, at age 63, as far and as fast as his body will allow unless he wants to move around like a much older man the following day.

He has logged 129,000 miles since he began keeping track as a child, more than half the distance to the moon or five times the circumference of Earth. “I remember once when I had gotten over 100,000, I finished my run and was sitting in the driveway and my wife (Nadine) asked me what was wrong,” Moody says. “I said, ‘I’ve run more than 100,000 miles and I feel like I did every one of them today.’”

A while back, someone called Nadine, and told her “a man was hopping down the road.” It was Jef, who says these days he goes “jopping,” a hybrid of jogging and hopping, because of the decades of wear and tear.

“I’ve got a good bad knee and a bad good knee,” he says of the arthritic joints, punctuating the description with a smile. “I wake up still thinking I can do a 4-minute mile, then my two feet hit the floor. But 90 percent of the time, the knees don’t hurt when I run unless I step wrong or go too fast. I’ve got to run slow. I hate running slow.”

Although any running is better than no running, if Moody felt differently about the pace of his current workouts, it would be a news flash. He spent the first third of his life becoming an elite cross country and middle distance runner, one of Moore County’s best all-time athletes, after moving to Southern Pines to live with his maternal grandmother, Geneva Mincer, as a fifth-grader in 1968. He was a star at Pinecrest High School and Pembroke State University (now UNC Pembroke). A member of Pembroke’s 1978 NAIA national-championship cross-country team and the 1979 NAIA 1500-meter national champion, Moody still holds eight UNC Pembroke school records, including the 800 meters (1:50.30) and 1500 meters (3:44.10) established in 1977.

“I never saw him finish a race,” says Gary Barbee, a Pinecrest cross-country teammate of Moody’s in 1972. “Jef would already have his warm-ups back on by the time I was done. He already was ‘the man.’”

During his stellar prep career, during which he was a national Junior Olympic champion in cross-country and 800 meters, Moody was recruited by 175 colleges. Kansas was among the many prominent schools to pursue him, and the Jayhawks enlisted a famous alum to make their pitch the second semester of Jef’s senior year at Pinecrest.

“My Grandma said there was a guy on the phone named Jim Ryun,” Moody recalls. “She didn’t know much about track, but she wanted to know who he was. I just told her he was a big-time runner.”

Ryun, the first high school runner to break the 4-minute mark in the mile and a three-time Olympian (1964, ’68, ’72), called Moody once a week for a month in the spring of 1975 to no avail. Pembroke coach Dr. Edwin Crain’s visits to the Moody home paid off.

By 1980, the year following his graduation from Pembroke and an NAIA national championship in the 1500 meters, Moody was a good bet to qualify at that distance for the Summer Olympics in Moscow. That dream dissolved when the United States and some of its Allies boycotted the games in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

When the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it took Moody back 40 years. He was at the wheel of his red Fiat driving through South Carolina returning home from a race when he heard about the Olympic boycott on the car radio. 

“I had run a 5-miler in Columbia in 23:48, I think it was,” says Moody. “I was pretty much ready to go. The (Olympic qualifying) trials were coming up. I’d gotten my stuff for that. I was upset and decided I wasn’t going to go to the trials. When Nadine and I got married the previous November, I said to give me a year to get through the Olympics. I was crushed, but as they say, time heals.”

Moody is sitting in his “Track Shack,” a small, detached man cave/office in the shadow of the home where he and Nadine raised their children (Yarona, Jessica and Jeff II). The walls are covered with photos, ribbons, medals and uniforms — markers of Moody’s running life that began 475 miles and a world away from Moore County in a tough part of Philadelphia.

“I was 5 or 6 years old,” Moody says. “The doctor told my mom I had a heart murmur and it’d be good for me to exercise a little. She let me go out and run a little bit — run around the corner. That’s when I started to love to run.”

Moody found a kindred spirit in classmate Louis Pagano. From first through fourth grades the pair ran the half-mile to school in the morning, made a round trip at lunch and back home in the afternoon. The exercise and other hijinx — the boys rubbed the wax from Nik-L-Nip bottles on the soles of their dress shoes to slide across the playground — were a buffer against a difficult family situation. Mildred and Robert Moody Jr. separated. “My parents were apart and my mother was sick. We were homeless and it was North Philly, a rough part of the city.”

On March 3, 1968, Isaac Mincer, the uncle of Jeff (it was two f’s then) and his younger brother, Robert III, intervened. He put the children — Jef was a month or so from turning 11 years old — on a train to Southern Pines. “I was like, ‘Man, we’re leaving everything we’ve known,’” Moody says. “I remember telling my grandmother the first week that as soon as I finished high school I was out of here.”

But Moody made friends and charted a course for himself in the Sandhills, never returning North to live. Grandma Mincer’s yard with a large garden of fruits and vegetables was a stark contrast to Jef’s urban roots. “It was just a big garden,” he says, “but I felt like a farm boy.”

He soon began to immerse himself in running, motivated at first to win a live turkey in a 2-mile race for middle-schoolers held on a Midland Road horse track located where the Longleaf golf course exists now. Moody didn’t bag the bird in two tries — he laughs about ending his career with a frozen fowl-earning victory at a mid-1980s Pinehurst Turkey Trot — but developed an indefatigable work ethic to complement his athletic talent and competitiveness.

Moody’s Pinecrest coach, Charlie Bishop, an important mentor, told him to always win as convincingly as he could.   And Moody trained to make that possible.

“Since 1969, I don’t think I’ve missed a hundred days of running,” Moody says. “I had two streaks of six years and ones of five and four years where I didn’t miss a day.”

And on almost all of those days, Jef — who began preferring to spell his first name that way in 1994, after someone misspelled “Jeff” in a letter — pushed himself hard.

“He always ran one more lap after practice,” recalls Pembroke teammate Jim Miles, a pole vaulter who sometimes ran relay events. “I asked him why once, and he said, ‘Jim, somebody else out there is doing it too.’”

Crain worked his distance men hard, rain or shine, a thunderstorm the only thing that paused the training. “When freshmen got to campus, they sometimes wouldn’t come to practice if it was raining,” Crain says. “Jeff would go to the dorm and tell them that wasn’t how it works. He was a great influence on his teammates.”

Nothing could keep Moody away from his passion. During his final track season at Pinecrest, he suffered a stress fracture in his right foot running an indoor race in Greensboro. For a few weeks, he had the cast removed for a meet, then replaced. During the 1977 NAIA cross-country national championship in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the 5-mile course went through some woods. After glancing back at a teammate, Moody collided full speed into a tree.

“They said I finished the race but I don’t remember,” Moody says. “I don’t remember flying home. They were still pulling bark out of my eyes when I got to the infirmary. But the next morning I snuck out the window to go on a training run. I did the run and got caught climbing back through the window.”

He ran a 5:30 mile in the seventh grade. In the eighth grade, he lowered his time to 4:51 after being motivated to break the school record of 5:14. As Moody got more serious about his training, he logged every workout on a calendar, a practice carried out with more detail in desk diaries and, later in adulthood, a computer. It was a habit, he discovered after his father died years later, that ran in his family.

“Going through his things, we found notes he kept on his daily life,” Moody says. “He wrote down everything he did during the day.”

Occasionally, the numbers Moody denoted in his log were staggering. As a Pinecrest sophomore, Barbee was on an activity bus making the 27-mile drive to Richmond County for a jayvee basketball game. As they passed through Pinebluff, Barbee saw Moody running beside U.S. 1. Later that evening, Barbee saw him in the stands spectating during the varsity game, having run all the way there.

Pembroke was loaded with talent during Moody’s time on the Robeson County campus. “I had 15 guys who could run five miles in 25:30,” Crain says. “If you sneezed, two guys would pass you — all the guys were good.”

Wayne Broadhead, who ran for the Braves with Moody, says, “We had to do 10 miles in under an hour just to get a uniform.”

Ten miles was a normal afternoon team practice schedule, with runners having done five miles on their own in the morning before class. Crain rode a bicycle alongside his charges as they ran, but Moody never needed much prodding. For hill work, Crain drove the Braves to a steep stretch of Hwy. 74 east of Rockingham, where they ran up and jogged back a handful of times.

“Jef didn’t miss a day of practice in four years,” Crain says. “He was a great leader, by voice and by example.”

Moody has run distances from 200 meters through a marathon. As a 128-pound high school freshman who couldn’t do a single pull-up, he tended to get jostled on a crowded track or cross-country field. He realized he needed to get stronger. “A lot of people don’t realize you can only run as fast as you can pump your arms. If you can’t pump your arms fast, you’re not going to run fast.” By his sophomore year at Pinecrest he was up to about 150 pounds. When he graduated, he could do 40 or more pull-ups.

“Remember those Michelin commercials with the tire digging into the road?” Miles says. “Most people ran on top of the track; Jef had a forceful stride that ate into the track. He could go sub-11 seconds in the 100 meters. That’s some great leg speed for a miler.”

Moody was running a time trial during a 1978 practice on the Pembroke track when he bettered four minutes in the mile for the first time. His teammate Garry Henry, a star long-distance runner, was a formidable foe and had speed too. Moody set out to just stay in front of Henry and did. “We showered and got dressed and coach told us what we ran,” Moody says. “I was 3:59.2.”

Moody’s confidence spiked when he defeated Dick Buerkle, world record-holder in the indoor mile, during a 1979 race in Georgia. Later that year he and Nadine, a fellow Moore County native, got married on the afternoon of Nov. 24 — after the groom tended to some other business in Raleigh.

“The race was 6.2 miles but I think I ran 7 because I was hustling to the car to get home for the ceremony,” Moody says.

He had begun what would be a long, successful career as an elementary school physical education instructor, guiding youngsters as Moore County educator-coaches such as John Williams, Joe Wynn and Nat Carter had influenced him, with direction and encouragement.

“Jef is definitely a people person,” says Larry Rodgers, retired UNC Pembroke track and field coach for whom Moody worked as a part-time assistant in the 2000s. “He communicates well and always has a positive attitude. The athletes really listened to him, and he always made them feel like they could reach their potential.”

As a teacher and coach, Moody always tries to connect with young people, often encouraging them to develop talents they weren’t aware they possessed.

“He’s always been great with kids because he’s still a kid at heart himself,” says Nadine.

Out of college and ineligible for the race he wanted to run more than any other, Moody was gearing up for a new school year teaching when the final of the 1500 meters at the Moscow Summer Olympics was held Aug. 1, 1980, at Lenin Central Stadium. Great Britain’s Sebastian Coe won the gold medal with a time of 3:38.4. It had required 3:43.6 to get through one semifinal and 3:40.4 in the other. The former time was just slightly better than Moody’s fastest time in the event.

In advance of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Moody considered taking a stab at the steeplechase. He learned the requisite hurdling technique but was hampered by not having an available training partner. Moody shelved his Olympic hopes for good. “I ran in some little races here and there, but basically after 1980 my racing career was over.” He competed for the last time 21 years ago, in a 3000-meter masters run in the same city he raced the day he got married 20 years earlier.

Now a grandfather of five — “a relay team of boys and a girl,” he says — Moody continued to coach, including a stint at Sandhills Community College, where his expertise and dedication helped the Flyers succeed. It’s hard not to if you follow his mantra.

“I want to always get 100 percent out of myself,” Moody says. “That might not be my best, but it’s my best on that day.” He remains a volunteer with Sandhills Track Club, eager to help youth with the will to find a way.

“No, I didn’t get a shot at the Olympics, but I believe I’ve had a bonus of 52 years after moving down here,” Moody says. “I sit here and think about it and kind of tear up. Who knows what could have happened up in Philadelphia? It was a tough situation.”

As long as Moody can run, he will run. It is 2020 and he is on a rural path, but it could be 1965 on a city sidewalk, his lungs and legs taking him to a new place.  PS

Sandhills Photography Club: Wings

The Sandhills Photography Club meets the second Monday of each month at 7 p.m. in the theater of the Hannah Marie Bradshaw Activities Center of The O’Neal School at 3300 Airport Road
in Pinehurst. Visit www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

Hometown

The Bellhop

Summer days that weren’t so lazy

By Bill Fields

Mid Pines Club — known now as Mid Pines Inn and Golf Club — wasn’t open during the summer for its first half-century of operation. But when I consider this time of year, Mid Pines is always in my mind.

That’s because, by the mid-1970s, Mid Pines had a new owner and was open year-round. For a golf-loving local teenager (me) who needed a summer job, this was a wonderful development. Some of the club’s longtime staff still migrated north that time of year, to Nantucket, Fire Island or other spots, which created some positions between spring and fall.

I worked a handful of summers at Mid Pines, as a cart attendant during high school and two stints as a bellman while in college. I earned money for gas, golf balls, green fees (when I wasn’t playing at Mid Pines) and expenses going to UNC-Chapel Hill. To be able to get an employee discount on All-Star gloves, Pickering shirts and other pro shop items seemed almost better than a paycheck.

Making me the part-time cart guy was Mid Pines head professional Jim Boros’ generous way of helping along my golf game, for which I had more enthusiasm than skill, or certainly consistency. (I made six birdies at Mid Pines and shot 78.) The cart gig was just a couple of hours each evening, waiting for the later groups after the shop had closed. The fact that I could spend a lot of my time on the practice green when I wasn’t parking a cart or picking the range made it hardly seem like work.

Unless the course was busy with conventioneers, I usually would have played before my shift. Most evenings, after I’d cleaned and plugged in all the carts, I would rush out to join assistant pros Barry and Lloyd Matey — brothers from Connecticut — and Gary Dixon to play as many holes as possible before dark. When I recall that era of persimmon, polyester and possibility, the golden-hour spins around that fine course with those friends simply having fun are hard to beat.

There weren’t many teenage guests, but one girl whose name I can’t remember — and who probably tried to forget mine quickly, as you shall see — was up from Georgia for a short golf trip with her parents. We chatted and ended up going on a date, which took an embarrassing turn when I got sick before I could pull the car over. She was very kind, but I doubt anyone was ever happier when a date was over.

I had one more Mid Pines-related date, much more pleasant, in my bellhop days. Sue was a fellow UNC student, and I think she was impressed when I procured cheesecake from an unlocked kitchen refrigerator — the pastry chef was kind that way — to close the evening.

I was judicious about enjoying those complimentary sweets but probably didn’t need to be given the workouts from carrying suitcases up two or three flights every day. Combined with some running that I had started to do, along with some softball action with the Mid Pines team, I was probably in the best shape of my life. I also mastered driving a stick shift by using the club’s small Toyota pickup to go to the Golfotel near the fourth hole, the rental houses along Midland Road, or when taking the deposit to First Union downtown.

The bell shifts were either 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. or 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. You’d often work late then early, and one honeymooning couple was surprised when I helped them into their room late one night, then brought them room service eight hours later.

I misplaced some keys recently, and it got me thinking about the time that caused the most anxiety during my bellman days. I had gone with my parents to Cherry Grove for a weekend. Back home in Southern Pines, I couldn’t find the ring containing all the Mid Pines master keys. I searched all over the house without success and was just about ready to call the Mid Pines manager, Dick Davenport, to break the news. Then I looked in one more location, a drawer I never used but apparently thought a burglar wouldn’t ransack in our absence. Not long after, I found my first gray hair and believe it was related to this folly.

When Mom died last year, we had lunch after her service on the Mid Pines terrace. Everyone enjoyed the food and drink, but to me, the location meant everything.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Golftown Journal

The Ross Trifecta

A new direction for an old gem

By Lee Pace

Despite the oft-told and entertaining story of Pinehurst founder James Walker Tufts commissioning a golf course in 1898 after learning that guests had brought their own clubs and balls and were hitting little rubber spheres in the dairy fields to the aggravation of the cows, evidence exists that golf was already being played elsewhere in the Sandhills.

Southern Pines was incorporated in 1887, and in 1895 the Piney Woods Inn opened on high ground northwest of the little town. The grand hotel built in the late Victorian style stood four stories high with ornate turrets atop the four corners of the structure and could accommodate 250 visitors. It offered golf, tennis and fox hunting for recreation, and a newspaper account in 1896 noted: “The golf links at Piney Woods start off immediately at the hotel. They consist of a nine-hole course — some fine natural hazards. The turf is firm and hard and kept in good condition.”

By 1906 another course was in operation on land to the south of the train depot and downtown. The evolution of Southern Pines Golf Club is a bit spotty, but the high points of a skeleton chronology include: nine holes open 1906; nine more by 1912; modifications in 1914; a third nine opened by 1924 with plans later in the decade for nine more (never executed amid the Great Depression); and sand greens converted to grass by the late 1930s.

The design and construction were supervised by Donald Ross, the Scottish golf majordomo ensconced in Pinehurst. By the end of the 1920s, Ross had seven courses operating in the Sandhills — four at Pinehurst Country Club, one at Mid Pines Inn and Golf Club (opened 1921), one at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club (1928) and Southern Pines.

A thread linking the three courses in Southern Pines is the flow of the land. Anyone who is a regular walker at any of the Southern Pines courses can attest to the strain of the fourth and 10th fairways at Pine Needles, up to the second and 14th greens at Mid Pines, and a half dozen holes at Southern Pines.

“The hills are rugged little mountains, giving all the charm desired to a climb or a walk in the pursuit of the game or in a ramble among the pine woods, where walks and roads and springs and forest foliage suggest the primeval,” read a passage in a 1920s print advertisement produced by Southern Pines Golf Club.

“Downtown Southern Pines is flat because it was located where the railroad ran, and it needed to stop on a flat part of the ground,” says Southern Pines resident and avid golfer Ran Morrissett. “But you get outside that little area and you start seeing quite a bit of land movement. Honestly, I think Southern Pines is the best block of land in Moore County. Think of these three courses — Mid Pines, Pine Needles, Southern Pines. Think of the land movement. To me, it’s the best topography in the area.”

Southern Pines Golf Club has existed for more than a century, first under the auspices of the town, then after World War II a Connecticut businessman named Mike Sherman (who employed a young accountant named Julius Boros), and finally over more than half a century The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, one of the world’s largest fraternal organizations.

Walter Hagen and Sam Snead played an exhibition there in 1924. The women’s Mid South Open was held there in the 1930s and ‘40s with Patty Berg, Estelle Lawson Page, Babe Zaharias and Helen Hicks among the competitors. But the course over much of its recent life has existed in relative anonymity as the Elks have had neither the financial nor management capital to elevate it to its potential.

“Quite honestly, the Elks have no business running a golf course,” says Chris Deanes, Exalted Ruler of the Elks. “We’re a volunteer organization that focuses on charity and giving money away. Running golf courses is not what we do.”

Which is why the news that the Elks have turned management and ownership over to the umbrella company that owns Pine Needles and Mid Pines is cause for celebration in the golf community. Kelly Miller, president and CEO of Pine Needles and Mid Pines, proposed to buy or lease the course as far back as 2005 to no avail with various other stabs ever since.

“It’s been a long chase,” says Miller, who first came to Southern Pines in 1984, when he married Peggy Ann Bell, daughter of Pine Needles owners Peggy Kirk and Warren Bell. “I have fond memories of playing Southern Pines years ago. We had a group of guys who played various courses around the area. Southern Pines was one of them.

“I’ve always thought it a wonderful golf course,” he continues. “It’s one of the best routings in the area. It has great topography and a set of par-3s that are unmatched anywhere. The club has a lot of fascinating history, and I think it’s a perfect fit for us.”

Pine Needles has been in the Bell family since 1953, and the Bells have been partners in owning Mid Pines since 1994. Miller and partners took over the keys to Southern Pines Golf Club effective July 1, 2020.

“We’re happy the course is going to a family that understands the golf course management business,” says Deanes. “Kelly and his partners truly appreciate the essence of the course and are committed to preserving it.”

Miller says an 18-month course improvement plan is being developed that might include any of the following: design tweaks from architect Kyle Franz, who has supervised restorations at Mid Pines (2013) and Pine Needles (2018); resurfacing the greens; and rebuilding the bunkers and cart paths.

News of the transaction struck a chord across the golf universe on social media.

“A massive addition!” enthused Ryan Hub. “I can’t wait to see what management has in store for Southern Pines. Extremely fun course with some awesome greens that will only get better with the new management.”

“This is fantastic news!” said Jake Weaver, a South Dakota golfer. “Southern Pines deserves ownership that ‘gets it.’ I can’t wait to get back and see it like it was meant to be.”

“The opportunity to do something magical here is immense,” said Tate Adkins, a Winter Park, Florida, golfer. “The restoration work at Pine Needles and Mid Pines was exceptionally well-executed. Massive fan.”

Morrissett and Chris Buie are regulars at Southern Pines and have sung the course’s praises online (Morrissett is co-founder of Golfclubatlas.com, a site devoted to course architecture and history) and in print (Buie is author of histories on both the Southern Pines Golf Club and Donald Ross).

“When in the Pinehurst area, head straight for this beauty — you will leave more invigorated than when you arrived,” says Morrissett.

“The fact that Ross was able to forge not only fascinating individual holes but a masterful collection was an impressive feat,” says Buie. “As the course measures under 6,400 yards, it is playable to virtually all. Yet even at this length the sharp players find it curiously resistant to scoring. And it is amusing to see the college teams which regularly pass through puzzling over this while wandering back to their vans.”

There is not a flat hole on the course, and level lies are found mostly on the tee boxes. The par-5 fifth requires a draw, the par-4 eighth and 10th demand a cut. The pins can be tucked in nefarious spots on the canted greens. The course can play 300 yards longer than posted because of numerous uphill carries. And the fact that the ninth hole doesn’t return to the clubhouse vouches for the routing being as good as the land offers; there was no artificial demand to route two separate nines.

And there is little real estate and no pretension.

“You have those brush-ups with the homes on four and five, but otherwise you are secluded in nature,” says Morrissett, who has taken numerous guests to Southern Pines over the years who have been nonplussed by the modest infrastructure but then wowed by the layout. “Even people surrounded by great golf in New Jersey and New York ‘get’ the relaxed atmosphere and low-key vibe the course evokes. It’s just a different experience.

“I swear to God in its own charmingly befuddled way, it reminds me of playing in the United Kingdom, where it’s nothing to do with the club experience or the bar or the men’s locker room. It’s all about changing shoes in the parking lot, a quick hello to the pro and then off to the first tee.”

Morrissett and Buie are devotees of the “golden hour” at Southern Pines, pegging it at 5 p.m. and finishing by dusk. Morrissett applauds the vision and golf chops of the new owners — with one caveat.

“My worry is this little relatively undiscovered gem gains in popularity to the point you need a traffic cop at 5 p.m.,” he says.  PS

Author Lee Pace has written about Pine Needles and Mid Pines clubs in his book Sandhills Classics, first published in 1996 and updated in 2009.

Southwords

False Starts

And now for something completely different

By Jim Moriarty

Not all beginnings are that great. And I can prove it. Consider this a kind of public service announcement, providing a stark contrast to the lyrical work of some of North Carolina’s best writers who appear on pages 70 to 79.

Exhibit A: The first line of Same Circus, Different Clowns, a man-made disaster of an unfinished book I wrote (or tried to) about a female blogger following the professional golf tour. The opening went something — no, it went exactly — like this: “Her name was Vampadelle Summer and she wasn’t to be trusted.”

Exhibit B: Another crippled project on my desktop is called The Objectors, and the first paragraph goes like this: “The screech made him turn away from the empty patio behind the house on Cuba Street. Lyle Sullivan’s eyes adjusted to the dark and he watched the steam gushing from the teakettle. The whistle was loud, annoying. He’d lived in this one bedroom adobe for close to a year but this was the day he’d been waiting for. If it all went to plan, in a week, a month at the most, he could go home to Tulsa knowing he’d done everything he’d set out to do. At 61, he was too old to kill the bastards himself but he could help someone else do it.”

Exhibit C: And then there’s this from The Mogul, another laptop orphan that barely managed to escape the delete button: “David Lord came into the world with his pockets full of house money. And, like anyone who got everything he has from someone else, he desperately wanted the world to think he could have done it himself.”

Exhibit D: From the doomed Paparazzi Beach: “Polk Street runs north and south between the Tri-State and the Skyway, though it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s broken up like match sticks every few blocks and doesn’t pass all the way through. One end of Tommy Flowers’ block ran smack into 2nd Avenue where all the houses faced the empty steel mills.”

Every author (and, if I’m any indication, some more than others) has stories that, for one reason or another, just didn’t work. Frequently the kindest, most merciful thing to do is put the little ragamuffins out of their misery.

While Lee Smith, whose lovely short novel Blue Marlin came out earlier this year, wasn’t able to send a contribution for the aforementioned summer reading section, as one of North Carolina’s most elegant voices, she was able to offer the following:

“I have scoured my office but just cannot find the best (WORST) beginnings of stories I ever tried to write. I probably just put them in the trash where they richly deserved to be, but I sure do remember . . .

“This was my attempt at writing a mystery, in order to make some money . . . or so I thought. A novel named ‘Children of Cronus’ — or Kronos, the Greek god who ate his own children. The story was set at an experimental boarding school (well, it was more like a camp) out in the woods someplace during the late ’60s, and involved a gang of wild, wonderful, brilliant kids who had to turn against their erstwhile headmaster who started dressing in animal skins and got weirder and weirder until he got REALLY weird and then somebody had to kill him . . . but I never could decide who actually did it. I mean EVERYBODY had a motive! So I just left it a mystery, which I thought was brilliant but, unfortunately, nobody else did. One rejection slip just said, ‘Are you kidding???’”

So be of good cheer all you scribblers, typists and word processors out there, as Sinclair Lewis once observed, “Writers have a rare power not given to anyone else; we can bore people long after we are dead.”  PS

Jim Moriarty is the senior editor of PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.