Green with Envy

Doing St. Paddy’s Day the Southern way

By Tom Allen

You are what your ancestors ate. And drank. Sometimes.

Credit English forebears for my fish and chips hankering. Hot tea, too. But a recent Ancestry.com search shows a wee bit o’ green pulsing through my veins. Therefore the Irish branch on my family tree should support corned beef and cabbage. But no. A split decision. I love cabbage. Ditto potatoes and soda bread slathered with Kerrygold butter.  But, even on St. Patrick’s Day, I can’t stomach corned beef. Maybe that’s because nobody in Ireland eats the Americanized permutation, which replaced bacon — too expensive for poor Irish immigrants.

Funny thing is, I’m a deeply rooted Southerner who doesn’t appreciate a thick Better Boy tomato slice on white bread, made mushier with mayo. Duke’s, of course.  “Unheard of,” some folks say.  “Treason,” others sneer.  My reply?  “Sorry, it’s a texture thing.”

Leprechauns aside, March 17 marks the feast day of Ireland’s beloved patron saint.  In Ireland, until later in the 20th century, the day was more religious than raucous.  While family and faith are important to the celebration, pubs and parades now mark the occasion as well.  An estimated 33 million pints of Guinness are downed in that 24-hour period.

In America, St. Patrick’s Day is a one-day deal, but the Emerald Isle spends several days tipping its hat to the good fellow credited with Christianizing the island nation and driving out those legendary snakes.  According to a friend with Irish roots, lots of folks wear green, even live shamrocks, but pinching is purely American.  Pinch an Irishman who’s not wearing green and you’re liable to catch a left hook.

As for Irish food, colcannon, not corned beef, is a St. Patrick’s Day staple.  The mixture of creamy mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale is served with bacon, a combination that makes me smile.  But who whips up colcannon around here?

I’m a foodie traditionalist.  Therein lies the pickle.  Give me Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day, burgers and dogs on July 4, turkey from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  But what’s a Southern boy, with a bit of Irish ancestry, supposed to eat on St. Paddy’s Day?  If not corned beef, perhaps a pork option honoring those frugal Irish immigrants who gave up their pricey bacon?  Try cured and fried.  Make mine country ham, sliced paper thin and seared in an iron skillet.  Perfect, I say, with a plate of steamed cabbage.  Pair with some buttermilk biscuits, spread with Kerrygold butter, of course, and dig into a fine pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Speaking of pickles, St. Patrick’s Day always falls during Lent, a season when some abstain from meat on Fridays.  Last year, the feast fell on a Friday.  Fortunately, some bishops in communities with large Irish-American populations relaxed the rule, granting one-day dispensations, so the faithful didn’t have to choose between sinning and nibbling on their beloved corned beef.

No such pickle this year, since St. Patrick’s Day falls on Saturday.  So simmer a pot of cabbage. Load up that slow cooker with a slab of corned beef brisket, or, if you’re like me, fry up some slices of North Carolina’s WayCo country ham.  Don a bit of green, offer a word of thanks for good souls like Patrick, then sit down to a salty feast that’s sure to keep those Irish eyes smiling.  Erin go bragh!

Tom Allen is minister of education at First Baptist Church, Southern Pines. 

Who’s on First?

In the early years of the 20th century, when hillmen were twirling the white spheroid at swat artists, baseball’s spring training was not the domain of Florida and Arizona as it is today. To sweat out the boilermakers and beef stew consumed over the winter, major leaguers moved all around the United States’ warmer climes. They came to places they could reach by train that had adequate and affordable lodging, a ball field a cut above a pasture, and town elders eager for publicity via all-caps datelines in big-city papers. 

Teams ventured to a score of locations during this time, including Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana; Dallas, Galveston and Marlin Springs, Texas; Charlottesville, Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia; Augusta, Macon, Savannah and Thomasville, Georgia; Charleston, Columbia and Spartanburg, South Carolina; Memphis, Tennessee; French Lick, Indiana; Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama; Hot Springs and Little Rock, Arkansas; Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. (Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run on March 7, 1914, at Fayetteville’s Cape Fear Fairgrounds during an intrasquad game as a member of the then-minor league Baltimore Orioles.) 

For three seasons, the Philadelphia Phillies got down to playing weight, knocked off the rust and otherwise readied for their National League schedule in Southern Pines.

The Phillies held spring training in Southern Pines in 1909, 1910 and 1913. In 1914, when Philadelphia, seduced by a fancy field in Wilmington, moved on, the Baltimore Terrapins came to town in 1914 to prepare for their first season in the short-lived Federal League. Familiarity hadn’t bred contempt for Terrapins player-manager Otto Knabe, who was a second baseman for the Phillies in their three Sandhills springs.

The Phillies had set up camp in Savannah from 1906 to 1908, but in early January 1909 Southern Pines officials wrote to club president Bill Shettsline asking him to visit and consider the town for spring training. “At a meeting of the councilmen and the golf club of Southern Pines last week the plans for taking care of the ball players, should they go there, caused considerable enthusiasm,” the Harrisburg Daily Independent wrote of the bid. “It was decided to improve the baseball grounds and to put in shower baths and a plunge.” Another paper reported that “every accommodation and facility for training were guaranteed.”

When Phillies manager Billy Murray left January 10, 1909, on a scouting trip of Southern camp possibilities, Southern Pines was his first stop. Murray liked what he saw — from the enthusiasm of the populace to the accommodations at the Piney Woods Inn to the quality of the baseball field next to Southern Pines Country Club, which had been established in 1906. 

“The hotels here will be prepared to take care of the crowds, and they are assured of the best of treatment and of the generous hospitality of the townspeople,” The Tourist of Southern Pines boasted. “Mr. C.L. Hayward of the baseball committee has had a force of men at work on the grandstand, and it has been entirely renovated. Three extra tiers of seats have been added, the flooring renewed, and the whole stand braced inside and out. A canopy of canvas will protect the spectators in the grandstand from the direct rays of the sun.”

The Phillies arrived in early March after a 14-hour train trip. Among the traveling party was sports cartoonist and columnist Edgar Wolfe of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Wolfe, who used the pen name “Jim Nasium” and would become nationally known through his drawings in The Sporting News, chronicled each of the Philly team’s sojourns to Southern Pines.

Nasium endorsed the ball field, calling it the finest spring-training surface the Phillies had encountered in a long time, with black loam over sand rolled hard and smooth. “This means much in training the judgment and speed of infielders in early spring practice,” Nasium wrote, “besides greatly reducing the frequency of those delightful moments when an infielder gets plugged in the eye with a hot one that hasn’t any consistency in its action.”

The correspondent was less enthusiastic with the sleepy atmosphere in Southern Pines, population approximately 500. “When it comes to wide-awake towns,” Nasium said, “this little old village makes the average group of Southern plantation buildings look like a bustling metropolis in comparison.”

And Nasium rued the difficulty in finding a drink in the area. “Nut-brown is the prevailing style of complexions in this neck of the woods,” he wrote. “But you couldn’t get a nut-brown taste in your mouth here if you were President of the United States with a rattlesnake bite as big as an ostrich egg concealed on your person. This is one of those sections of the Sunny South where you can’t ‘look upon the wine when it is red,’ or any other color, unless you happen to personally be acquainted with some native who keeps a fire extinguisher in the house charged with ‘joy water’ for home consumption and the entertainment of guests.”

A lack of diversions wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for teams attempting to get their charges in shape. During the latter part of the 1800s, when pre-season getaways began (Boss Tweed’s New York Mutuals, an amateur nine, traveled to New Orleans in 1869, with the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Stockings warming up in the Crescent City the following season) and into the 20th century, the focus was on perspiration not strategy.

“ . . . For early camps were more fat farms than baseball camps,” Charles Fountain wrote in Under the March Sun: The Story of Spring Training. “The players of the day were given greatly to off-season dissipation . . . ” In Baseball: The Early Years, Harold Seymour noted that players frequently showed up in the spring “looking like aldermen.”

The Phillies were given every advantage to work off any off-season excesses in Southern Pines. There were many paths through the longleafs for walks to augment baseball drills. The 8-mile round trip to Aberdeen was a frequent training route. Being based near the country club, a majority of the players caught the golf bug and played every chance they got. Sherry Magee, the Phillies stalwart left fielder who in 1910 hit .331 to snap Honus Wagner’s four-year run as National League batting champion, often led the hikes and golf outings.

After a full day, the Phillies could sit on the veranda of the Piney Woods and, as Nasium wrote in the Inquirer, “bite off chunks of balsam-laden ozone that will assay 500 pounds to the bite and make you sweat turpentine every time the sun hits you.”

Because the food coming out of the Piney Woods kitchen was so tasty, the players had to mind their portions in order to keep their hard effort from being for naught. Certainly there were no reports of dissatisfied players such as Philadelphia Athletics catcher Ossee Schreck, who according to Fountain in Under the March Sun, “grew increasingly frustrated with the poor quality of the steak he was served at the team’s hotel and with the hotel’s seeming indifference to his complaints. Somewhere along the way, he secured a hammer and nail, and when another steak displeased him, he rose from his table and nailed the steak to the dining room wall.”

There was discontent about the wind and rain that sometimes marred March in Moore County, the latter a particular concern in 1910. New Philadelphia player-manager Red Dooin — a compact but feisty catcher sometimes called the “singing maskman” because of his off-season vaudeville work — was appalled at the condition of the field when he got to Southern Pines.

“Manager Dooin scared the golf club committee into seven different kinds of fits last night,” Nasium wrote on March 2, “when he threatened to pack up his trunks and take his bunch of ball tossers to some other spot on the Southern map where there was an inch of smooth ground to practice on.”

It turned out to be an idle threat. Dooin calmed down as town officials scurried to make improvements to the diamond. But four players wished the team had decamped.

As the Phillies slept in the Piney Woods Inn on Sunday, March 6, a severe storm rolled in with heavy rain starting at 2:30 a.m. Forty-five minutes later a powerful lightning bolt hit the cupola of the wooden structure. “Suddenly the heavens were lit up with a flash of fire which shot down on the hotel,” the Inquirer reported. “It tore away the big flag-pole on the corner of the roof, burned a big hole through the shingles and went through two floors, splintering the woodwork, shattering many window panes and scattering plaster all over the corridor.”

The worst damage occurred in a room housing Johnny Bates, Lou Schettler, Jim Maroney and Harry Welchonce, where the lightning ripped a hole in the ceiling above Maroney’s bed, sending a chandelier and plaster debris crashing down on them.

“That the big pitcher was not killed,” the Associated Press wrote of Maroney, “was due to the fact that a gaspipe, extending across, acted as a conductor and shunted the lightning away.”

The four players were stunned and shaken — Schettler unable to speak for two hours — but miraculously weren’t injured. For Welchonce, the incident brought back bad memories of a close call from lightning a few years prior and was part of an odyssey of misfortune that limited the highly touted minor leaguer to only play a total of 26 games in the majors. In addition to the lightning-strike scares, Welchonce battled shoulder injuries, was hit in the head by a pitch and contracted tuberculosis.

Surprisingly, despite the litany of problems, he had a long life, dying at 93 in 1977.

Led by Magee’s hitting and the pitching of Earl Moore, who led the league in strikeouts, the Phillies improved slightly on their 74-79 record of 1909, going 80-73 and finishing fourth in the National League in 1910. By that fall, though, they had decided to go elsewhere for spring training. Philadelphia traveled to Birmingham in 1911 and Hot Springs in 1912.

The Arkansas locale, where the Dodgers and Pirates also prepared for the 1912 season, made a push to get the Phillies to return in 1913. But Southern Pines recruited them as well, and with promises of a good practice field and comfortable rooms at the Pine Cone Inn — the Piney Woods Inn had burned down since their last visit — Philadelphia headed to Moore County again.

“Instead of the snow which greeted their vision in 1910,” the Inquirer wrote upon the Phillies’ arrival in North Carolina, “old Mother Earth was just donning her gown of green, the sun was shining bright and getting warmer every minute. It was a glorious sight for a bunch of tired old ball players and it made every one sniff and show new life.”

Dooin, who had suffered a broken ankle in 1910 and a broken leg in 1911, the latter on a vicious collision as he tried to block home plate in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, would be more manager than player in 1913, taking the field in only 55 games. The skipper had players to fill the void, though.

Gavvy Cravath, who joined the Phillies in 1912, had a great year in 1913. Cravath led the National League in hits (179), home runs (19, no tiny number in the Dead-Ball Era) and RBIs (128, setting a National League mark that stood until Rogers Hornsby broke it in 1921). One of baseball’s greatest pitchers, Grover Cleveland “Pete” Alexander, also limbered up for the 1913 season in Southern Pines after opening a pool hall in his native Nebraska over the winter. Alexander went 22-8 in 1913 and won 373 games in his long career, tied for third all-time with Christy Mathewson and trailing Cy Young (511 wins) and Walter Johnson (417).

In their third trip to Southern Pines, the Phillies enjoyed better weather and field conditions than they experienced in 1910. As during their previous visits, they liked being able to play golf on the country club course as well as utilize it for conditioning runs. Yet by the time they departed town at the end of March 1913, it was clear that all was not perfect on the golf-baseball front.

Southern Pines Country Club had expanded to 18 holes and golf had grown in popularity with more visiting golfers. “The country club will not permit a high fence to be built around the outfield so as to protect the players from the strong winds,” a reporter noted, “and some of the golfers object to a ball field being so close to the links.” The club also indicated plans for tennis courts where the diamond was situated, likely meaning that a new field would have to be constructed somewhere else in town.

In writing about the Phillies’ spring training plans in December 1913, Nasium addressed the underlying tension. “The Phillies like to play golf — and the golfers didn’t want their sacred links invaded by a lot of professionals,” he wrote. “As the golf course started back of the ball club’s grandstand, it was very annoying to the golfers to have to dodge foul balls, or to have part of the links walked over every day by a lot of ball fans on their way to see the Phillies play.”

During 1913 spring training, the Phillies went to Wilmington on March 20 for a game against the Orioles. The Phillies won the game, 5-1, and Wilmington won over the Phillies, local officials turning out in force and hosting a barbecue after the game. In 1914 the Philly club headed to Wilmington to prepare for the season. But it was snowing upon their arrival, and it turned out to be one-and-done for Phillies’ spring training in the Port City. The teams would visit 13 different cities before settling in Clearwater, Florida, in 1947.

The Terrapins were a hit when they trained in Southern Pines in 1914 for the first Federal League season, staying in the Southern Pines Hotel and working out at the Phillies’ old spot by the country club. When the Terrapins left on the train in early April, The Baltimore Sun noted: “Pretty nearly the whole town turned out to say goodbye to the boys, and, as usual, every Terrapin felt just a little sorry he could not take the whole bunch along.”

Despite the support, in 1915 the Baltimore club conducted spring training in Fayetteville. No major league team returned to the Sandhills to tune up for a season.

The only spring training encore came more than three decades later when some of the Detroit Tigers’ minor league squads set up camp in Southern Pines in 1950-51. The Class C Butler (Pennsylvania) Tigers and Class D Jamestown (New York) Falcons trained in ’50, and in ’51 Jamestown was joined by two other Class D squads, the Richmond (Indiana) Tigers and Wausau (Wisconsin) Timberjacks.

“A good many fans have been out to watch the boys at work and report them a good-looking, clean-cut bunch,” The Pilot reported in 1950.

The farm clubs played at Memorial Field, their foul balls no threat to any golfers who by then were taking their shag bags to the grounds that long ago had been home to the Phillies, working on pitches of their own and most likely unaware of Southern Pines’ brief brush with the big leagues.

Walter’s Saw

Cutting through time

By Jim Dodson

Save for a handsaw, an old pocket wallet and quiet memories, they are all that I have left of him.

The wallet is a fine piece of work, a gentleman’s pebble grain leather breast wallet, beautifully stitched and bearing my grandfather’s initials in gilt lettering: W.W.D.

William Walter Dodson was a skilled carpenter and electrician who helped raise this region’s first electrical transmission towers and worked on the crew that wired Greensboro’s Jefferson Standard Building. During the Second World War, he also made cabinets for PT boats and built bookshelves for local public libraries.

The wallet is in mint condition, lined with fine silk, its state of preservation suggesting it was scarcely used. I think my dad brought it to my grandfather upon returning from military service in England and Normandy, in 1945. My guess is, Walter rarely used it because he was a workingman who rarely, if ever, dressed up. As I remember him, he was a preternaturally quiet but gentle man in rumpled cotton pants who was either fishing or in his woodshop or massive vegetable garden — the three places I spent most of my time with him. There was always the stump of a King Edward cigar in his mouth.

Walter’s handsaw, on the other hand, shows years of steady use, well worn and rusted in places near its simple wooden handle. I suppose it must be 80 years old if a day.

Both wallet and saw came my way decades ago and traveled with me to Georgia and Maine and back to Carolina in order to complete the sacred circle old elephants and most Southerners observe before they translate to a gentler, kinder place.

I inherited the items from my father, who never used the wallet either — too nice, he claimed — but did use that old handsaw for years until power saws showed up in his own woodworking workshop. He made bookshelves and tables for friends and family.

Not surprisingly, I picked up the woodworking bug too, clearly something in the bloodline.  We hail, after all, from a long line of Carolina woodworkers, at least one of whom was a celebrated cabinetmaker.

Walter’s grandfather — my great-great-granddad — was one George Washington Tate, a prominent citizen of Alamance County who helped survey the boundaries of the state’s central counties following the Civil War, but was best known for his grist mill on the Haw River and his skill at crafting fine furniture.

Last summer, while attending a seminar at the Museum of Early Decorative Art (commonly known as MESDA) on the Scots-Irish furniture makers who filtered into the Carolina back country during the 18th century, I heard G.W. Tate’s name mentioned in a tone of near reverence by an expert on Piedmont furniture making, who noted that one of his most notable surviving pieces is a handmade wardrobe displayed in a Williamburg museum of early American furniture. Tate Street in Greensboro is named for this man.

She was delighted when I informed her afterwards that I knew of a second splendid handwork of Tate’s. My second cousin Roger Dodson and his wife, Polly, had recently had us to supper and showed us a handsome old walnut corner cupboard that bore his distinctive mark “G.W. Tate.”

It was his grandson Walter, however, for whom I’m partially named, who first placed a saw in my hand. One Christmas when I was about 6 or 7 years of age, visiting my grandparents in Florida, he gave me a miniature tool box with a small hammer, screw drivers and handsaw.

In his modest workshop, he also showed me how to saw a straight line and hammer a nail — small tasks that seemed almost magical at the time.

Somehow that kid’s toolbox disappeared over the years, probably because I used its tools constantly to build forts in the woods around our house. I recall using them to build my entry for the annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. My car got eliminated early, which was perfectly fine with me. I much preferred building forts and crude furniture.

It wasn’t until I was over 30 and living on the coast of Maine that two abiding passions hit me with a vengeance, both of which I trace to a quiet carpenter and gardener in rumpled pants.

The first struck when my wife and I built a post and beam house on a forested hill in Maine. I helped the housewrights place the structural beams, but did most of the interior finish work myself, learning as I went.

Not only did I lay and peg the 16-inch ancient pine flooring boards salvaged from a 19th-century barn in New Hampshire, I also designed and built the kitchen’s counter and cabinetry from scratch. Ditto the adjoining walls of pine bookshelves in the living room. My distinctly Southern mama, when she first walked into our home, smiled and remarked, “Honey, all this wood is very pretty. But when are you going to finish this house?”

The Canadian hemlock beams and pine floors and cabinets cast a golden glow over everything, especially as the sun shone through our tall south-facing windows. Over nearly two decades that followed, I loved the subtle creaks and moans the beams and floors made as the house settled and the wood aged, especially in the dead of winter when the sun struck the beams and the house emitted out a lovely scent of the forest. I thought of this as the house exhaling in a contented way that my late grandfather would likely have approved.

Walter probably would have liked the rustic farm table and occasional table I made for the living room, too. The table we gave away when my second wife and I moved home to North Carolina. The occasional table went to my first wife’s house, where it’s still in use and quite loved today.

Walter Dodson passed on when he was 64. I was 11, my first funeral, and it was really sad to see him go. He looked remarkably peaceful in his big wooden coffin, dressed in the only suit I ever saw him wear. My grandmother was a serious Southern Baptist, though Walter rarely darkened the doorway of any church. Time on the water or in his workshop or garden were his idea of worship, his way celebrating the gift of life.  Anyone who works intimately with wood or tends a garden through the seasons would completely understand.

As I write, this Walter is also 64 years old and preparing to build a set of ambitious bookshelves for the cozy room my wife and I have decided would make a splendid library in the old house we’ve been slowly redoing over the past 20 or so months.

I have my eye on a fancy new power saw that will do just about anything from the finest trim work to cutting a rough plank flooring. It costs more than my gifted, gentle grandfather probably made in a year.

Proof that you can take the boy out of the woodshop but not the other way around, however, resides in the fact that Walter’s handsaw will be hung somewhere in my new woodshop where those bookshelves will be born, a sweet reminder that the hand that shapes the cut was created long before the saw ever touched wood.

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

Still Dormie

New life for the Coore-Crenshaw course

By Lee Pace

It was exactly 10 years ago this spring that Bob Hansen sat down to breakfast at the Pine Crest Inn to talk about his lifelong love affair with golf, his memorabilia collection, his involvement in a Brunswick County golf course called The Thistle, and a new club he was developing located 5 miles to the northwest of the village of Pinehurst.

The new enterprise was called Dormie Club. It was to be a private enclave with local and national membership components, a place for purists to congregate and walk a rough-hewn and old-style course designed by North Carolina native Bill Coore and his design partner, Ben Crenshaw. Hansen waxed eloquent about the old-soul template for the club and what he hoped would be a lack of pretense — just golfers sticking a peg in the ground and having a game.

“Golf is life-shaping,” Hansen said. “You get an opportunity to be completely away from the business world, from cellphones and traffic and all the noise out there. You get out on the golf course with people, and you find out real quick what’s on their minds. For the most part, you’ll see that fog from their everyday life evaporate and see that their commitment is to the game. Guys are wrought up with stress, but put your bag on your shoulder and go hit some shots and it changes your whole day.”

Hansen spoke of the genesis of the name “Dormie,” taken from the golf term meaning that a golfer in match play has a lead equal to the number of holes left to play. He cannot lose.

“’Dormie’ has been in the Scottish language for hundreds of years,” Hansen says. “In the context of this club, its primary meaning is that you have come to a point in life where nothing much bad can happen, where you can do me no harm. ‘I am dormie’ — the worst I can do is tie. I am at a point where I am comfortable and can relax.”

It turns out the “dormie” metaphor was far more ticklish than Hansen and his partners would ever dream. Over the following 12 months, the S&P 500 would be cut in half, and two venerable financial institutions would implode and go belly up. The timing for a new club was horrendous at best, dreadful at worst. The course opened in 2010, but the lofty visions of the Dormie brain trust never materialized. The golf operation never actually closed, but the original plans and infrastructure were stuck in the muck. In recent times, there was not even a head golf professional, just a clerk to take golf fees from the public and the package players that the club needed for its trickle of cash flow.

“Bob had excellent vision for the club,” says Mike Phillips, the club’s original membership and sales director who first worked at Dormie from 2009-13. “He was very smart in bringing Coore and Crenshaw in and basically giving them carte blanche to do what they wanted to do on the golf course. He showed them the boundaries of the property and said, ‘Use what you want and call me when you’re through.’

“The fact that the course never closed during some tough times says volumes about how good it is. The site is hard to match in terms of peace and tranquility.”

Coore and Crenshaw’s first smash hit in the golf design business was Sand Hills, a 1995 build-it-and-they-will-come club in central Nebraska. A member there is Tom Peed, who built a publishing empire centered in the heavy machinery and agricultural worlds of the Midwest and has three sons working for the business. One of them, Zach, is a crack golfer who played at Nebraska Wesleyan College and now is running a division of the company that has purchased four golf courses from Nebraska to Texas to Virginia and, now, to the Sandhills of North Carolina.

Dormie Club was bought in January by Dormie One Properties, which will operate it as one of a network of clubs that includes Briggs Ranch Golf Club in San Antonio, Texas, Ballyhack Golf Club in Roanoke, Virginia, and Arbor Links in Nebraska City, Nebraska. New management will honor tee times and outings already on the books, but in time the club will be strictly private — per the original vision. Local, national and corporate memberships will be available, and membership at one club includes access to each club in the Dormie One network, which the Peed family intends to expand. Plans for a clubhouse and 15 four-bedroom villas are in the works. Phillips, who has returned to the Dormie team as membership director and land sales broker, says the owners hope to break ground by summer, and plans call for no more than 60 to 70 golfers a day.

Coore visited the club in early January 2018 and planned a second trip soon after to complete a punch list of to-do items for the club maintenance staff, things mostly a result of tree and underbrush growth over the eight years since the course opened.

“Ben and I are very pleased with the new developments,” Coore says. “In talking to the Peed family and walking the golf course with them, they really do want it to reach its potential. It’s not been that far off. It’s a very positive thing — not just for Dormie, but for golf in the Pinehurst area. Basically the course just needs a little polishing, nothing major. It’s actually in very good condition.”

The club is located near the intersection of Hwy. 73 and Beulah Hill Church Road and has two lakes (one of them 55 acres large) and 100 feet of elevation change. There are the pine forests typical of the area, but a rich abundance of hardwoods as well.

The designers’ idea for the course when they began in 2006 was to incorporate the look and feel of the No. 2 course, which Coore played often as a junior in the 1950s and ’60s — hard running, plenty of width for strategy, interesting green complexes, no Bermuda rough anywhere. Tees, fairways and greens would be maintained, everything else left as nature had created it. Since there is no real estate within the course, it’s relatively compact and walkable (caddies are available).

“By no means did we envision a copy of No. 2,” Coore says. “But we wanted to take some of the principles we felt applied to No. 2 and other courses Mr. Ross had done in the Sandhills and say, ‘This is our interpretation of what golf in the Sandhills might look and feel like.’”

The finished design requires a deft touch in places — there are two par-4s drivable for long-hitters (the third and 14th, both under 300 yards), but often a player will deduce the smart attack is to lay back and have a full spinning wedge from a hundred yards. Delicacy is also required on the par-3 12th, which stretches only 98 yards with tees stair-stepping upward from back to front. Brute force is demanded on the closing holes — 17 is a par-5 with a vast expanse of sand and nature to carry, and 18 is a long par-4 uphill.

Coore remembers routing the course from walking the land and surveying the topo maps — before wetlands had been designated. He knew from experience and instinct which areas of the property would likely be deemed wetlands and thus untouchable for the playing areas. He was amused and pleased to learn that his routing and the government-issued wetlands map meshed nicely.

“If they had handed me a map at first with the wetlands delineated, I’d have handed them back and said, ‘You can’t do a golf course here,’” Coore says. “But it worked out fine. It just proved to me that if you lay the golf course out the way the land wants to go, in most cases the wetlands are going to be OK. The topos will tell you a lot of things, but they won’t tell you the feel of the place. You have to go walk a site and experience it, get a feel for the way the golf course will circulate. Because we laid the holes out the way you would naturally play from one high, across a low to the next high, the wetlands had little impact.”

And so Dormie Club enters its second iteration, hopefully one that will see it emerge as a winner in extra holes.

Chapel Hill-based writer Lee Pace wrote about Coore and Crenshaw and their restoration of Pinehurst No. 2 in his 2012 book, The Golden Age of Pinehurst.

Go Fish!

In the swim of things with brilliant, imaginative and elusive Pisces

By Astrid Stellanova

Cast a net into the sea of life, and marvel at the roundup of famous Pisceans. As if Albert Einstein weren’t enough, what about Kurt Cobain, George Washington and Dr. Seuss? Throw in Andrew Jackson and Jack Kerouac for a little special sauce, and see who would be best friends and roommates in the great hereafter. If anything is fishy about Pisces in the here and now, it is how they can hide their amazing selves in plain sight. Brilliant in ways you cannot stereotype, they will slip right out of your hands before you ever hook them, these delightfully slippery fish.  –Ad Astra, Astrid.

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

Time was when you were so forgiving (and distracted) that you would let anybody have their way if they were nice and remembered to say “thank you.” In the nicest way possible, you have learned to push back and find your footing concerning a subject that vexed you for most of 2017. Now you have to learn to say: Play me or trade me. Somebody who wants your talents may not realize how valuable they truly are. But, Sugar, you know.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

A natural wit allows you to come back swinging smartly no matter how deep the wound. But your inner wisdom may be telling you not to head into a knife fight with a stick of butter and a yeast roll. Little Ram, have you been duped? Let that sink in a minute, Sugar. Now, deep breaths. Head up, spine straight, and don’t
look back.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

A tornado ripped through your life late last year, and you ain’t quite over it. What happened caused you to go right off the rails and then wallow in the ditch. That is not your style, Star Child. If anything motivates you to start over, it is knowing somebody one-upped you. Don’t tear their heart out and eat it with a nice Chianti. Find a way forward.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

Could this month get any better? Possibly. You finally pulled your fingers out of your ears and started listening to your own heart and living your own life — not your sister’s, not your daughter’s, not your Mama’s. A special little secret is about to unfold.  You’ll be tap dancing all the way to the bank, metaphorically speaking. 

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

It is not that complicated. If you didn’t get what you wanted the last time around, suck it up and take a do-over. You can’t keep your children young and in your grasp forever. But you sure can make the home front happy. That, and take their car keys away. Don’t whine. Be the driver.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

Your two favorite words this month: refund due. Yes, Sweet Thing, the IRS is going to be your ally. Not for nothing did you lose so much money on Sea Monkeys and Sonic Egg Beaters. Turns out, some kinds of pain are deductible! Restrain your entrepreneurial impulse until you are back in the black. 

Virgo (August 23–September 22

You’ve never looked better, prompting a lot of folks to think you’ve found new love. Only you know the actual facts (as opposed to the alternative ones): You have found it a lot easier to be inside your own skin. Honey, that new ’tude ushers in one of the best springtimes in memory. Don’t blink and miss the fact that this ain’t a cosmetic fix, but an inside job — and an important development.

Libra (September 23–October 22) 

It is true that money can’t buy happiness, but it dang sure can buy puppies. At last, practical and generous you have funded your own happiness. This recent splurge may be one of the wisest moves you’ve made in ages. Next up: Discover the bliss of not giving a damn what anybody else thinks!

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

The bottle before you purred, “Yes, amazing Scorpio, you ARE the wisest and best of all!” You drank that in, didn’t you, Sugar? Well, surprise, surprise.  You stayed at the party too long. A little sober reflection might bring you actual wisdom. It stings, realizing your need for affirmation took over.  But now you have opportunity to see clearly . . . truly.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

Recently you have felt sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. That was the exact moment you began to change your life in a very productive way. No need to be all things to all those you love. If you spell resentment, it would look a whole lot like your name, Sugar. Ready to stop?  It’s that simple.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

In the anything-worth-doing-is-worth-overdoing category of life, you may have just taken first place honors and won a new badge. Try for second place, Honey. It is admirable that you care enough to over-deliver. But you cannot sustain this kind of effort. Just. Try. Less.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

It was the perfect birthday for you. Now, an important task. More than one person in your orbit relies upon your gentle counsel. It will surprise you to learn who, as you respect them greatly and view them as a spiritual guide. You are an old soul; you know validation comes from within.

For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path.

The Mighty Onion

A superfood for your garden

By Karen Frye

Superfoods became sought after several years ago, and are still going strong. They are highly nutrient dense in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.  Usually they are plant based, and sometimes exotic.  Acai, goji berries and moringa are a few of the superfoods that are not typically grown in the U.S. and can be rather expensive to add to your diet. We are more familiar with easy-to-find blueberries and raspberries. 

A vegetable that tops the list of healing foods, and one you should include if you’re planting a garden this spring, is the onion. It has been used throughout the ages to treat and heal health maladies from head to toe. They grow easily here, and can be added to your diet in many ways.

Grown all over the world, onions were one of the most highly revered vegetables in cultures dating back to the Egyptians. They have even been used as currency. Onions were placed in the tombs of kings, including King Tut. 

What makes the onion so rich in healing benefits, even more so than its relative, garlic? They are rich in a potent, well-studied bioflavonoid and powerful antioxidant, quercetin, used to treat seasonal allergies. Quercetin kills cancer cells and prevents plaque buildup in the arteries.

Onions also contain sulfur compounds. These compounds have antimicrobial and anti-fungal properties that have been studied in connection with the prevention and treatment of heart disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, asthma and many more health problems.

Eating onions regularly can help lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure and reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke. We think of garlic as a potent remedy for these conditions, and a lot of people take garlic capsules daily for prevention. Actually, onion oil is 10 times more potent than garlic oil. 

Adding onions to your plate can help balance your blood sugar and assist in normal functioning of the liver and kidneys. Women who eat onions daily had a bone density about 5 percent higher than those who only ate onions occasionally. And eating onions regularly may help prevent periodontal disease, by reducing the harmful bacteria that leads to this problem. Even though it’s best to eat them raw, the nutritional benefits are still available if you sauté, steam or bake them. Fried onions, however, lose a lot of value.

Topically, onion juice can be a very effective treatment to reduce scars. It’s so effective that there are some skin care products that use onion extract in their concoctions. A friend shared with me that his mother always reached for a raw onion to rub on insect bites to alleviate the itch. Onion poultice is easy to make, and works wonders for respiratory conditions. Simply slice a few onions and steam them for about 10 minutes. Pat them dry and wrap in a clean medium-sized dish towel. Place the warm (not too hot) poultice on the chest to break up congestion and coughing.

An onion a day may keep the doctor away. After all, food is our best medicine.

Karen Frye is the owner and founder of Nature’s Own and teaches yoga at the Bikram Yoga Studio.

Spring Forward

But only when the cows do

By Ray Linville

If it wasn’t for the railroads, we might not be losing an hour of sleep on the second Sunday in March when we spring forward and advance to daylight saving time.

The railroads, after all, are responsible for pushing us to adopt time zones in this country to improve communications and travel coordination. Until then, time zones were determined locally. Can you image the chaos if Raleigh and central North Carolina were on a different time than Asheville?

Actually, something similar did happen. From 1883 (when our country’s four time zones were established) to 1946, Asheville and points west in this state were in the central time zone while we kept time with others in the eastern zone. After time zones became standard, it was an easy step to create daylight saving time — and necessary during wartime as a fuel-saving measure.

Benjamin Franklin, famous for the maxim “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” knew better. He didn’t rise at daybreak, and he certainly didn’t want to see the sun an hour early. When he encouraged people to get up early — for the benefit of saving on candle use in the evening — he meant it as a joke.

Tar Heels might have more in common with Pennsylvanian Franklin than we realize. In 1945 when World War II ended, the federal requirement for “war time,” as DST was known, also ended. For decades, observance of DST throughout the country was inconsistent. However, North Carolina never observed DST again until 1966, when the state began following the national schedule.

The argument that DST benefits farmers was long ago debunked. Cows follow a schedule based on the sun, not the hour on our clocks. Even energy conservation today is questionable because any savings in reduced lighting are more than offset by additional demands for air conditioning in the summer evenings.

It was hard enough before the age of the internet to spring forward. Now it’s almost impossible. High schoolers are up late and get so little sleep that their parents are asking for later and later start times.

My granddaughter, Katie, now in seventh grade, has it bad. Because high school students can’t get up early, the middle schoolers win the first bus routes. She sets her alarm clock for 6:15 each school morning to get up for the earliest bus in her county. Imagine her joy for springing forward this month.

In contrast, when I was a teenager in the era of no social media or video games, I got up before sunrise to complete a morning newspaper route well before school began. That alone required that I went to bed early, regardless of Franklin’s advice.

Then in college I struggled to attend 8 o’clock classes. Yes, colleges used to have classes that early.

South Carolina may be leading the region in determining what choice is better — daylight or standard. One legislator has proposed a bill that lets voters decide in a referendum this November if that state should continue to observe daylight time. How would you vote?

For me, the decision would be easy. My days of springing forward are over. I’m with the cows. Sunlight determines my schedule, unless the railroads again have a better idea.

Ray Linville writes about Southern food, history and culture.

Poem

When I Love Spring

when I love spring

geese take off on frothy runways for the north

tuxedoed mallards tow mates through v-shaped water

dotted clouds of dragonflies flurry over lily pads

turtles untuck sleeping noses, rise to feast

icy grey-ghost branches show soft nubs

quiver like an infant’s hands wake in morning sun

— Sarah Edwards

Sporting Life

Gearing Down

February is a month to take stock

 

By Tom Bryant

February, according to many of my outdoor friends, is the dregs of winter. If you enjoy the great outdoors, there’s not much you can do that month. Most hunting seasons are closed, and it’s too cold to fish. If you play golf, a sunny day will let you on the course, if it’s not frosted over in the morning. But I’m afraid golfing never became one of my outdoor pursuits. I’d much rather be pursuing birds than following a little round ball. That’s not to say golf’s not a great sport, I’ve just never tried it. Too many other things appealed to me at a young, formative age.

So what to do in February? I use this down time to sort through and try to organize winter gear that I’ve accumulated over the years. I believe it was Gene Hill, the famous author and columnist for Field and Stream, who once stressed the importance of acquiring sufficient items for days afield. In essence, he said if you find an important piece of gear that fits your requirements to a T, you’d better buy two, because the gremlins, those who often throw curves to befuddle us folks who appreciate the finer points of outdoor gear, will quit making it.

While going through hunting shirts that are hanging in a closet I dedicated to hunting and fishing apparel, I realized that Mr. Hill’s premise was exactly right. I have two heavy chamois shirts that I bought from a clothing outlet in Burlington about 30 years ago. Over time they have become buttery soft and a pleasure to wear. One is khaki, the other dark green. I wear them mostly when duck hunting, and sometimes I’ll slip one on when I’m just hanging around the house. They are especially comfortable when I’m lounging by a blazing fire. I have other shirts designed for outdoor wear and they suffice on most occasions; but when I really want to be comfortable, I’ll pull out my old favorites.

There are also a couple of wool mackinaw trousers; well, one is a pair of trousers and the other overalls. When all the red you can see on the outdoor thermometer is a little bit at the bottom, these are the most important pieces in my closet. I’ve spent many a day in a frozen duck blind, warmed by these amazing garments that have only gotten better over the years.

My problem is I keep trying the new clothing dedicated to hunting and fishing, but nothing seems to come up to the high standards set by my old stuff. Maybe it’s because I’m used to the old and haven’t given the new a real chance; and maybe it’s because the old is broken in and well worn, but I’ve tried, and here’s a recent example. I have several other chamois shirts, some that I’ve purchased and some that were gifts. Initially, they were stiff as cardboard and after several washings they’ve shrunk to a size that would fit a 14-year-old. They are now in a pile, destined to hang on racks at Good Will. Hopefully, a 14-year-old will be able to use them.

Coats seem to be cut smaller, T-shirts and underwear almost disappear after a few washings, and trousers have become restrictive and uncomfortable. I really don’t mean to sound like an old curmudgeon, disappointed in new gear. There are some items that more than fit my strict standards.

L.L. Bean still makes good stuff. I have a pair of their boots that I’ve worn forever, and the good thing is when they are on their last legs I can send them back to the company and they will rebuild them. Same with Barbour coats. I’ve had one of their classic jackets for at least 20 years. I ripped the coat while grouse hunting in Michigan and thought it was a goner; but at the suggestion of a good friend, I sent it back to the factory and they repaired it almost as good as new.

While on a recent duck hunt to Mattamuskeet, my hunting buddies and I commiserated about the lack of well-built hunting gear and how our choices in apparel are decreasing. But more importantly, so are available localities for hunting and fishing. I’ll be the first to admit that we have seen a lot of sunrises in our sporting endeavors, as our ages will attest; but in the last few years, the decline of hunting space has diminished alarmingly. Black Creek Swamp, where I cut my hunting teeth on squirrels, is now bordered by a country club with huge houses and an 18-hole golf course. Now the creek is just a directed stream with rock borders, not a decent locale for any self-respecting squirrel.

Four hundred acres of some of the best habitat for deer, turkeys, ducks and otters plus a creek full of bream and even a bass or two is a place I hunted and fished for over 20 years. Unfortunately, the land has been cut up into 10-acre mini-farms and sold to city folks who like to think they’re living in the country. Also suffering the same fate is Plimhimmon Plantation on the banks of the Tred Avon River in Maryland. For 15 years, we goose hunted that magnificent farm and have wonderful memories I wouldn’t trade for anything.

My companions in the field and I could easily say, what the heck? We’ve seen it and done it and it’s unfortunate it’s gone, but what can we do? I have what I think is a good answer to that question: As geezers, we can continue to talk about it. As long as we do, those times and habitats will not be forgotten, and maybe some of them can even be reclaimed.

There is a bright light on the horizon, though, and that’s the place where I go every winter to replenish my soul: Hyde County and Lake Mattamuskeet. The little town of Engelhard steps right out of the past. Located on the Pamlico Sound, the quaint fishing and farm village remains as it was many years ago. Karen and Dale Meekins are owners and hosts of the Hyde County Lodges, where we hang our duck-hunting hats and are as hospitable as you would expect them to be. Their families go way back in the area and are well known and respected as folks who honor the land and wild country and waters where they have made their home. I enjoy their company.

Also, I have made a tradition of stopping by Gibbs Country Store in the morning as I’m leaving the area. It steps right out of the past, potbelly stove and all. I always get a cup of coffee from the never empty coffee pot, fill it half full and check out at the old register. Mr. Gibbs is usually there and will say, “That’ll be 50 cents.” He’ll then look in the cup. “Nope, you only got half a cup, give me a quarter.”

As long as I’m able, I’m going to continue my annual trek to Hyde County. The visit never fails to improve my outlook for the future of the great outdoors.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Birdwatch

Love Bird

For the American woodcock, February is mating season

 

By Susan Campbell

February is the month for love — and for the American woodcock, this is certainly the case! By midmonth this pudgy, short-legged, long-billed denizen of forest and field is in full courtship mode. Almost everyone, however, will miss its unique singing and dancing since it occurs completely under the cover of darkness.

American woodcocks, also called “timberdoodles,” are cousins of the long-legged shorebirds commonly seen at the beach. Like plovers, turnstones, dowitchers and other sandpipers, these birds have highly adapted bills and cryptic plumage. Woodcocks, having no need to wade, actually sport short legs, which they use to slowly scuffle along as they forage in moist woods and shrubby fields. This behavior is thought to startle worms and other soft-bodied invertebrates in the leaf litter and/or just below the soil surface. Their long, sensitive bills are perfect for probing and/or grabbing food items. And camouflaged plumage hides woodcock from all but the most discerning eye.

And, speaking of eyes, American woodcocks have eyes that are large and strategically arranged on their heads. They are very high up and far back such that they can see both potential predators from above as well as food items in front and below them.

Beginning in late winter, male American woodcocks find open areas adjacent to wet, wooded feeding habitat and begin their romantic display at dusk. Their elaborate come-hither routine begins on the ground and continues in the air. Typically, the male struts around in the open area uttering repeated, loud “peeent” calls. He will then take wing and fly in circles high into the sky, twittering as he goes. Finally, the male will turn and drop sharply back to the ground in zigzag fashion, chirping as he goes. And like a crazed teenager, this is followed by repeated rounds of vocalizations.

Where I live along James Creek in horse country in Southern Pines, displaying begins on calm nights in December. Some of these individuals are most likely northern birds that have made the journey to the Southeast retreating from colder weather. They may just be practicing ahead of some serious hanky-panky in early spring back up North. Regardless, females are known to visit multiple spots where males are known to do their thing before they choose a mate. So it behooves the males to display as often as possible to impress as many females as they can during the weeks that they are on the hunt for a mate.

Although long hunted for sport, it was Aldo Leopold, the renowned conservationist, who implored sportsmen to better appreciate these little birds. They are well adapted for a forest floor existence, hidden from all but their mates come this time of the year. And, on rare occasions, from birdwatchers keen on getting a glimpse of the American woodcock’s antics come late winter.  PS

Susan would love to receive your wildlife observations and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.