Wish I Could Find the Words

The joy of a good read

By Sam Walker

On my first ever plane ride from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, I became the star attraction. “So you’re going there to ask this guy you’ve never met if you can marry his daughter? Are you nuts, just in love or both?” asked my aisle seat companion. Cheers followed. Right then I promised myself never to fly without a book again.

It would take a few years before my romance with reading and the power of words would begin. Books for me were to be studied. They were assignments written by experts in various academic fields. Reading was a responsibility, an often tedious chore to be done in library nooks.

Even on family vacations my beach or lakeside reading was “heavy,” as my wife surmised. One day she offered, “How about reading something just for fun?” Sometimes a person suggests you need to do something even before you know you need to. That afternoon I rode my bike to the summer library in a quaint clapboard cottage and entered a new world. The romance began with a small volume by Anne Morrow Lindberg called Gift from the Sea, and I displayed it proudly after dinner. I was hooked.

I would discover that, if stuck at a social gathering or caught in an awkward silence, you can ask, “What are you reading?” The conversation may surprise you. Book clubs are everywhere. The team from The Country Bookshop has guided me to folks I never would have met — Sue Monk Kidd, Laura Hillenbrand, Barbara Shapiro, Louise Penny, Khaled Hosseini and in a deeper way, Richard Rohr. Books can be wonderful companions. You can close a book, mark your place, and pick it up later. Dogs and people, wonderful as they are, don’t have a pause button.

Written or spoken, words are powerful. They can inspire, encourage and heal. They can also do deep and lasting harm. In these days of parties, promises and pundits, words can overwhelm and numb us. Sometimes mute is the better choice. Words on social media can be dangerous. Words can be walls to hide behind or invitations to breakthroughs. Words are part of relationships, part of simply being human.

Consider renowned photographer Ansel Adams, some of whose works were recently displayed at Reynolda House in Winston-Salem. The interplay of black and white, essential to the portrayal, was inspiring. But it was Adams’ words framed at the exhibit’s entrance that drew me in and spoke to me:  “I hope these pictures will rekindle an appreciation of the marvelous.” True of landscapes and, more so, of people.

Consider the images of some of our planet’s humanity unfolding from the opening ceremonies and throughout the summer’s Olympics. Inspiring and full of hope for the best of our world. But it was the poet Maya Angelou’s words as a lyrical accompaniment to a diversity of faces on the only commercial worth watching that drew me in and spoke to my heart: “We are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike.” True of our own community right here.

Consider a bookmark I grabbed on leaving a bookshop in San Francisco for the return flight to North Carolina following a friend’s wedding. It was strictly utilitarian. After takeoff I saw its odd design of sun, moon and stars set in purple shading with a small line of words around the perimeter. It would be these that really drew me in and spoke to me: “Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point of intelligence at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future cease to be perceived as opposites.” True, and a way to look through artificial stereotypes. The bookmark guides my reading of daily meditations today.

Why have these few simple words of a photographer, a poet and an unknown author spoken to me? Why have I shared them? Because, I suspect, I needed to hear them. Because sometimes words suggest something you need to know before you know you need to. May you take time to seek and listen to those intriguing, peaceful and true words that speak to you.  PS

Sam Walker, a retired minister, maintains a curiosity about life and is an old friend of PineStraw. 

On Beaver Pond

Joy is the only thing that slows the clock

By Tom Bryant

It was my favorite time of year. I don’t know why I say that. Every season is my favorite, except that maybe fall has more in the plus column because of bird-hunting, surf-fishing, and just the beauty of the great outdoors. In the fall, Mother Nature pulls out her most colorful palette and paints the landscape in brilliant hues of red, yellow, russet and pine green, preparing nature for its long winter sleep and another beauty that’s entirely different.

This past summer, during one of my many forays afield, by chance I discovered a beaver pond way back off the beaten path, down close to a small creek where I hoped to do a little cane pole fishing. I was really far back in swamp country and being extra careful not to disturb “Mr. No-Shoulders” (an old Native American term for a snake). I was treading lightly. It had been fairly dry for a couple of weeks, and farm crops and wildlife needed some rain badly, so the ground that would have been very marshy was passable. I hardly got my feet wet. But after stepping around wet, overgrown areas and toting some unwieldy fishing poles, I decided to head back to the truck, drive over to the farm pond, and fish there.

As I angled back on the return path, I noticed to the west a general sloping where the land and vegetation seemed to be more vibrant. Walking slowly that way and being extra quiet not to alert wildlife, I discovered the beaver pond. It was a picture right out of Sporting Classics magazine. Alders were thick on the banks, and hickory trees and oaks and even some cypress completed the picture of a perfect, undisturbed wild habitat created by some of my favorite animals, the industrious beaver.

It was late in the afternoon, so I gave up the idea of fishing and decided to sit and watch a bit to see what game was using the pond. I had just sat down with my back against a big longleaf pine when two wood ducks, a hen and a drake, darted through the alders and skidded across the water right in front of me. They swam for a couple of minutes and then leaped straight up, kicked in the afterburner, and jetted out the far end of the pond. They must have seen me, I thought, as they climbed out of sight. As soon as the ducks were gone, a pair of deer, a doe and a new fawn, materialized on the far side and nosed down to the water to drink. They stood for a minute or two and disappeared back into the forest as if they had never been there. Three beavers swam close to where the deer had been. They were dragging freshly cut alders through the water, probably to reinforce their dam. My new discovery was so unbelievably pristine, it was hard for me to leave, but sunset was on the way and I needed good light for my trek back to the truck. I made mental notes on the location of the beaver pond, resolving to come back as soon as I could; but as in a lot of my endeavors lately, I was delayed. It was October before I could visit the pond again.

A northwestern front had moved through the area the evening before, leaving behind the first real cool snap of the season. I was on my way to revisit the pond and was really up for a big day in the woods. The deep blue sky was the perfect backdrop for the russet colored dogwoods accented with yellow hickory leaves. I pulled the truck into the woods a little way and grabbed my gunning bag and shotgun from the back. The shotgun was one of my favorites, a 28-gauge Remington 870 that I had rigged with a sling so I could carry it over my shoulder. Linda, my bride, had given me the little gun for my birthday many years ago, and it became the one I used the most when I was going to be in the field for an extended time.

Birthdays. They were rolling around pretty fast, it seemed. I had just celebrated one that really got my attention. It wasn’t one with zeros, although those tend to amplify the speed of time. This one quartered the century and was a special event in my rush through life. It increased awareness of my own mortality.

I recognized the route to the beaver pond right off the bat and moved off in that direction at a brisk pace. I had plenty of time and had to keep telling myself that there was no train to catch and to slow down and enjoy the day. That was it, enjoy, and I thought of John MacDonald’s quote in his book that I had just read, reread actually. “Joy is the only thing that slows the clock” in our rush to the end, or as a lot of us hope, the beginning.

I caught glimpses of water reflected by the overhead sun and slowed my walk to a crawl, so as not to disturb any animals that were enjoying the pond. I came to the water at the same location I had on my first visit, propped my shotgun against the pine and sat down using the tree for a backrest.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur. It was as if the area wildlife planned to put on a show for me and used the little pond as a stage. I saw beavers, deer, ducks, doves, a pair of otters, and even a bobcat made a special appearance. They didn’t notice me, or if they did, they didn’t care. They went about their business as if I was part of the scenery and belonged, just as they did.

It was an exceptional time in the backcountry, and all too soon my special day was gone. I had a real knowledge of the pond now, having walked the northern perimeter from the dam to the creek. It was about five acres and was situated in the swamp bottom. The beavers used the lay of the land to build one of the best nature habitats I’ve ever seen.

I came out of the woods near the truck just as a full moon was coming up over the eastern pines. I got a drink out of the cooler in the back, grabbed a sack of peanuts out of my gunning bag, leaned up against the front fender and watched as a pair of Canada geese, silhouetted against the moon, flew honking toward the pond, probably to roost, I thought

If MacDonald is right, and joy slows down the clock, I dang near stopped the thing that day.  PS

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

The Great Divide

What stays? What goes? Only Heaven knows

By Susan Kelly

William Faulkner freaks will tell you that a seminal scene in The Sound and the Fury is the basis for all that follows in his famous novel. A little girl named Caddy falls into a puddle. When she climbs a tree, her brothers see her muddy drawers and predict their mother’s fury that Caddy has gotten dirty.

What, you might fairly ask, has this English-majorish observation to do with downsizing?

Downsizing necessitates decisions, divesting and division, tasks that are, by turn, hilarious, tedious and heartbreaking. Never mind the big stuff; this weekend, we — myself and my two sisters — were merely dealing with the contents of our mother’s chests and closets and shelves. And so we find ourselves faced with What Goes, What Stays, What We Want, and What We Can’t Bear to Think About piles.

“Sentiment,” I quote from a past writing teacher who was quoting someone else, “is giving something more tenderness than God intended it to have.” We’re staring sentimentally at three pyramids of toys that defined each of us, certainly then, and kind of now.

My Steiff stuffed animals — brought from NYC by my father in the “rag trade” — and with which I made up endless stories. The writer. Save.

Her Barbies (and Kens and Midges) as well as their clothes, exquisitely made, with labels sewn in the collars, and tiny buttons and buttonholes, and real zippers. The clotheshorse extrovert. Save.

Her Tonka trucks. A big, shin-high pickup truck, a horse trailer, a hook-and-ladder, an earthmover. The tomboy. Suppressed sob … Sell. Because not a daughter or daughter-in-law alive would ever permit the no-doubt lethally leaded paint and sharp, semi-rusted corners of the metal vehicles in the sanitized, only-eats-non-GMO-avocados fingers of their helicopter-parented offspring. Tears blinked back.

We let the Barnabas Network guy have the Schlitz beer can lamp (he had a collection of beer can lamps, I kid you not.) We kept our Stokes County grandfather’s lapboard with the inlaid checkerboard where, if I could get a single king, I won. (I never did.) I sat on the radiator cover and watched him eat a hundred pieces of watermelon — cut not in wedges but in rounds, like a doughnut — on that lapboard as we watched “Jeopardy!” together.

At one point, after we’d unhesitatingly pitched the homemade afghan we remembered being sick — red measles to the vomits — beneath on the den sofa, the three of us laid flat on our backs on the floor to rest. “Get up and look at me,” I told the youngest. “This is what I’d look like with a face-lift.” At another point, my mother said, “I want to watch this part,” as we prepared to divide up table linens, from Italian damask to exquisite lace hems to monogrammed satin-hemmed napkins the size of small tablecloths to, well, tablecloths. We were made to understand that each set had its story: wedding present, purchased in France, etc. We counted, chose, caressed, chose, hovered, chose, thought silently and disloyally about drawer space and lifestyle. “This is boring,” my mother announced, and left.

But about those underpants.

“Where’s my Joy of Cooking?” she asks.

Exchange of panicked glances. Her Joy of Cooking was no longer a book. It was a chunk composed of a single frayed, faded, fabric-covered cardboard whose visible spine was stitched with what looked like kitchen twine holding clumps and singles of thin yellow pages with 6-point-font printing. And no pictures.

“It’s falling apart,” we object. “Do you think you’re going to be cooking recipes from The Joy of Cooking?” we ask. “We’ll get you a new one,” we offer.

“The new one doesn’t have the same recipes,” she says.

Like what? I think. Chilled beef consomme? No loss.

“I want it,” she says. This, from the same woman who threw out decades of travel pictures, even her wedding album, without a twinge.

“It’s in the car,” I say, cool as Melanie Wilkes lying to the Yankees. “I’ll get it.”

My mother’s Joy of Cooking was not in the car. It was buried somewhere in a black plastic bag in the Dumpster squatting in the asphalt parking lot of an elementary school. Which is how I came to find myself folded at the hips like a hinge over the sharp, rusty, Tonka truck-like Dumpster edge, fishing, digging, clawing, groping and tearing at bags of cafeteria refuse, supply room cast-offs and restroom detritus (Is that a book spine I feel or a box of rotting fish sticks?) in 100-degree heat while my sister stands behind me saying unhelpful things like, “I hope they don’t have closed circuit cameras to catch people illegally throwing stuff away.”

If so, kindergarten show and tell can be the film of my drawers and backside as I’m trying not to fall into the dark, stinking, super-heated, steel-walled abyss of a Dumpster interior. Although at the very least you should be in high school to really appreciate The Sound and the Fury. And you need to be 86 to really appreciate your original Joy of Cooking. Because I recovered it.

My sister recovered, too. The Tonka trucks sold instantly on consignment, for a lot of money. Plus, no one came down with lockjaw.  PS

In a former life, Susan Kelly published five novels, won some awards, did some teaching, and made a lot of speeches. These days, she’s freelancing and making up for all that time she spent indoors writing those five novels.

Wrong Number

How I found my way to the deadbeat Scrooge list

By Deborah Salomon

I am the hunted. Help! Please help!

I stand prey to denizens of faceless (though not nameless or voiceless) robots who wait until mealtime, or the evening news, to offer me hearing aids, funeral insurance or, most recently, an extended warranty on a car I traded in three years ago.

What happened to electronic record-keeping?

These robots, obviously, aren’t MIT computer whizzes. They aren’t even smart enough to hack into the DMV.

I am warned of their spiel by a blip when I pick up the receiver followed by a pause while I am plugged into some voiceboard, whatever that is. 

Then the cheery-sounding gal or gent greets me with a generic name like Kate Jordan or Bill Perkins. The voice never has an accent — heaven forbid, that might turn off prospects in a different region. At least I can chat about the weather in Mumbai when I call Dell or Time Warner.

After introducing him/herself the robocaller proceeds to “Howareya’ doin’ today?” at which most prospects hang up. Instead, I answer, “Horrible. An alligator just bit off my foot,” to which the voice replies, “Well, good. Now if you’ll just give me a minute of your time I’ll show you how . . .”

When robocalling and other nuisance telemarketers first raised their ugly heads it was possible to call a central agency to unsubscribe the number they got from — go figure. The last such agency I tried had been disconnected, a recording announced.

I assume AARP provides information to businesses targeting retirees. But really, who would buy insurance for “final expenses” over the phone?

Cells were safe (especially private numbers) until providers started annoying their customers with in-house sales pitches. Caller ID isn’t much help. Sometimes just a city name will pop up, or that same phony moniker.

Similar solicitations now arrive by email where a Jane Doe — more likely a Mike Stevens — appears on the “from” line and something like “a voice from the past” as the subject. Many have attachments, begging you to “see how the gang looks now,” the gang being Sammy Scam, Vera Virus … and Charlie CRASH!

Even worse, a bogus message from your bank or credit card company suggesting a dire circumstance.

The most difficult requests to ignore come from veterans’ and police/ firefighters’ benevolent associations. At least you’re speaking to a real person, which makes saying no harder. Once scammed (by a lightbulbs scheme) always suspicious. So I reply, “Please mail me information about your organization, including its tax-exempt status. You accessed my phone number, so finding my address shouldn’t be difficult. Then I’ll consider a modest donation.”

Never got one single follow-up.

However, I regularly receive hand-addressed envelopes of greeting card or invitation dimensions that do, in fact, contain an invitation to a sales-pitch event.

Then, watch out what you browse online because the products will show up forever on your home page, an annoying reminder that you haven’t purchased them yet. This reveals your choices to whoever uses your computer. Uh-oh.

Door-to-door solicitations have all but disappeared. I’m almost glad to find students with overpriced chocolate bars ringing the bell. At least they’re not selling quinoa or kale.

Suppose I do donate. Practically overnight my mailbox overflows with requests from organizations that have purchased a list with my name on it. Imagine the wasted paper and postage. Must I be hounded by nature groups just because I subscribed to National Geographic, for my grandsons?

What to do? An anonymous donation means no tax receipt, which is better than the alternative. But I experience horrible angst during TV spots about abused animals and sick/starving children with insects crawling across their innocent little faces. I can’t stand it. I want to run to the bank, empty my checking account, cash in my IRA and CDs. Except past donations have triggered impassioned pleas to become a regular contributor, perhaps monthly.

The most disappointing attack occurs after canceling a magazine subscription. This happened with The New Yorker, after more than 50 years. Just too expensive. I even wrote them a letter, explaining why. Big mistake. The deluge of offers and reminders made me feel like I had abandoned a sick parent. But I stood my ground, which seems to have had some effect, since I’m still receiving articles online.

Let this serve as a public statement: I am that ghastly senior citizen living on a pension, Social Security and a good part-time job. My “final expenses” have been pre-paid. I don’t need a hearing aid. I am sympathetic, but wish the government (to whom I still pay considerable tax) would take better care of police and firefighters. I regularly donate to children’s causes and animal relief — I even buy chocolate bars, if the kids have bittersweet.

But that’s it. Hounding won’t help. So please, transfer my name, address, email and phone number to the miserable old deadbeat Scrooge list.

After that, “Have a nice day!”  PS

Deborah Salomon is a staff writer for PineStraw and The Pilot.
She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

Old Sam Peabody

The song of the white-throated sparrow heralds winter

By Susan Campbell

Here in central North Carolina, the winged harbinger of winter is the white-throated sparrow. After summering in the forests of the far north, this bold little bird breeds across Canada and in northern New England at higher elevations. Then it heads south for the winter, probably stopping off in your backyard. A medium-sized sparrow, it is anything but drab, with brown notes on its upper body and white below. Look for bold markings on the head. Pale stripes on the crown and a white throat patch are set off by gray feathers on the face. And to top it all off, white-throateds sport a yellow spot at the base of their stout bill.

Interestingly there are two color forms of this species: those with heads that are white-striped and those that are tan-striped. Both forms persist. While white-striped individuals are more aggressive during the breeding season, either type will breed with the other. Following courtship, females handle the nest-making, usually in a depression on the ground under a low-growing tree or shrub. However, should it, not surprisingly, fall victim to predators, the second nest may be placed on low branches.

If you have not spotted one of these birds, you almost certainly have heard their distinctive loud “seet” call emanating from thick vegetation. Their song, which can be heard even during cold weather, is a recognizable, liquid “oh sweet Canada.” (Others hear “old Sam Peabody.”) Since they tend to flock together, you are likely to encounter small groups along forest edges, farm fields, parks and suburban areas

These squatty sparrows actually have a broad diet. Although they primarily feed on a range of seeds during the winter months, their preference shifts during the year. In spring, they are more likely to seek out buds and flowers of fresh vegetation. Luckily, white-throateds love feeding stations, often in association with dark-eyed juncos, another bird of the high country.

White-throated sparrows do not walk or run but hop when on the ground. As they forage, they will forcefully scratch backward in leaf litter using both feet and pouncing on tasty bits that they uncover. And if you happen to look out of your window and see leaves taking flight, it is probably white-throated sparrows forcefully flicking aside dead leaves using their bills. In the winter months, pecking orders form within flocks with the more aggressive males dominating.

If you want to attract white-throated sparrows this winter, it is easy and inexpensive. Since they tend to stay low, scattering a seed mix in a cleared spot near shrubs or other thick vegetation is all it may take. White-throats will hop up onto a stump or low platform feeder as well. Easier yet, simply leave a portion of your yard unmowed until Spring and these predictable visitors may well turn up to take advantage of the resulting seeds that remain as the growing season winds down.  PS

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

Laid-back Libra

Don’t let October become “Rocktober” under the sign of the scales

By Astrid Stellanova

There just ain’t no pigeon-holing a Libran. Bridgette Bardot is a Libran. So is Simon Cowell, Julie Andrews. Sting. And Jesse Jackson. The Libran likes the better things in life, likes taking to a public stage, likes being given lots of room to develop their fine talents, but doesn’t much care for grunt work. The Librans I know also don’t like for people around them to kick up a lot of dust and make a fuss.  Ad Astra — Astrid

Libra (September 23–October 22)

You got a hand stuck out, being friendly, wanting to make nice with someone who has tested your last nerve — and they think you stuck your hand out for a gimme. They don’t have the class you do, my well-balanced friend, so the first order of business is to keep your hand to yourself and enjoy the jingling of all that silver that is filling your pocket. You have got a lot of prosperity in the stars waiting for you this year.  And you also have more friends than a body could ever need, so square your shoulders and go enjoy a big ole slice of birthday cake.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

There was a time when keeping secrets worked for you. This, however, is not that time. You need a strong shoulder to cry on, and given your natural magnetism, plenty will offer one. The pleasure of a kind word can go further than the deep pleasure you take from maintaining personal mystery—so purge, Honey, and let somebody be a good pal to you.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

A big idea you incubated some time ago is ripe and ready. Don’t hesitate to share it and find the support and dollars you need.  Also, this is a good time to look at all your investments (I call this rooting and hunting under the sofa cushions) and see how much you have on hand to back yourself. Your idea is a good one; you weren’t crazy when you claimed you are this close to Making Good, as Grandpa Hornblower says.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

Summer was discombobulating for you, wasn’t it Sugar?  And the fall is looking a little dicey.  But cheer up; you are just going to love the year end. But first, there are two matters that need to be addressed before you have the personal freedom to move on from something that keeps tripping you up. Darling, they are not going away without you putting down the Fritos bag (and getting up off the sofa) in order to show these two matters the door.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

Whaa-whaa-whaa . . . That, whaa-whaa sound, Honey Child, is your disillusionment when the happy went right out of your red balloon. You have been killing yourself trying to make someone you care for care for you in the same way. There is nothing more you can do. This person is not as giving, generous, nor nearly as much fun as you are.  And they are never going to be as demonstrative. You got invested, for sure, but do you love them?

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

There, there, there. Feel better?  Did you take to your bed after Sugar Booger left your heart busted into two big pieces?  Well, nobody would have blamed you one bit if you had. They seem to have a contractual obligation to darken your world while you are playing Mary Poppins and trying for sweetness and light. Sweet Thing, shake it off and look for a different type.

Aries (March 21–April 19)

You are about two Alka-Seltzers away from driving your friends and families crazy as a bat in the basement. It is true that you can be entertaining and the life of the party, but right now everybody who knows you wishes you could spend at least one day a week boring the crap out of them. Quiet is not a four-letter word. It’s five, Darling.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

Someone close to you is convinced you are having a breakthrough just at the very time you feel you are having a breakdown. The other person is right. You have developed a creative genius for seeing a new way to approach a very old problem. It could bring you closer to a dream if you don’t back away. See it through.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

A mysterious person — somebody you’ve known for some time but never well — has a connection to you that will soon become clear.  This will require you to be open, gentle, pliant and honest in order to enjoy the full benefit of a special revelation. Honey, I know that’s a tall order, but for your own sake, try.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

Thankfully, you took old Astrid’s advice about last month and stopped borrowing money and began making your own. Now, Sugar, I want you to stop thinking you can borrow time. This ain’t a dress rehearsal — it’s your life you have been blowing like you were on the easy credit life extension plan. Do. Not. Waste. One. More. Second. You aren’t about to die but you also won’t get endless chances to take care of business.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

You’ve had a funny feeling about a loved one that actually is your deepest intuition talking to you.  Trust it. Rely upon it. You have considerable intuitive abilities that have been building since early adulthood. This is not lottery winning-type information, and doesn’t require a Ouija board, but it sure is about expanding your world, happiness and friendships with others. That, Dearie, is the real jackpot.

Virgo (August 23–September 22)

Something started for you last month that you might not secretly trust but that you should.  It was an unusual gift — and you were deeply puzzled at first. This gift is going to change you, change your life and even change your mind about who you are. Honey, it is going to be a crazy ride for you but there is no question it is your destiny to follow the Yellow Brick Road. Get hopping.  PS

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.

Party Line

Telephones have come a long way — even if our politics and sense of civility haven’t

By Clyde Edgerton

A red rotary phone recently ended up in our house. It had been used in an elementary school talent show. Some of you remember the pre-push button, dial telephone once in many homes. The phone itself, about the size of a brick, but a little taller, usually sat on a table or shelf and was plugged into the wall via a cord. My 13 -year-old son wondered if people used to walk around holding them when they talked — receiver in one hand, phone in the other. I said that early on the cord wasn’t long enough and then later very long cords became fashionable and people could walk around with them if they liked. A phone was about the weight of a laptop, but with significantly fewer functions.

For younger folks: On the front of the phone is a round disc — about the size of a CD (remember those?) with 10 holes in a circle — counting counter-clockwise. Inside each hole is a number, 1 – 9, and then the final number, 0.

A phone number is dialed, one number at a time, by sticking your finger into the correct hole on the dial and pulling around one number at a time until it reaches a little metal stop. The 1 is nearest the stop. Our number in Durham County, North Carolina, when I was a child, was 6-4558.

As I write, I realize that perhaps the 0 should have preceded the 1 rather than follow the 9. That’s off-topic, though.

But to continue off-topic: Back then when you called the operator to say the number of (and ask her to place) a long distance call, you had to dial 0 to get the operator — meaning the dial had to be cranked from the 0 spot all the way around to the stop and then released. The 0 took longer to finish dialing than any other number. An enormous amount of time was wasted over several decades while people waited for the 0 to finish dialing.

Sorry, I just did the math: Every billion long distance calls collectively wasted about 30 years.

The phone had a receiver which rested atop the phone. The receiver, about the size of a banana (actually a sender/receiver because you talked into one end and listened from the other), while resting on the phone, pressed down two buttons which did not work independently. When you pressed one button, they both went down. When you lifted the receiver from its cradle, the buttons came up together and the line was open for you to make a call. There was a dial tone that I’m sure I can’t describe to one who’s not heard it. To one who has: You are probably hearing it in your head now.

While explaining things to my son, I remembered this:

In the early 1950s, our phone was on a party line, shared with seven or eight households, not a private line; and there was a skillful way to secretly listen in on neighbors’ phone conversations. I probably learned the technique from watching my mother, though I can’t be sure.

Usually, if you were talking along and somebody on your party line lifted their receiver off their phone, you would hear a click and then you could hear breathing or whatever was going on in their house, and then they’d hang up since the line was in use. If they continued listening, you could say, “Sorry, I’m using the line.”

But if you wanted to listen in on another conversation, you lifted only one end of the receiver and pressed the exposed button (so that both buttons stayed down), and then kept holding them down as you lifted the receiver to your ear. Next, you slowly lifted the button that was depressed, stopping just before the click. Then you heard the talkers, but they couldn’t tell you were listening in. If you lifted that button too high, a click would sound and your presence would be known. Of course, you couldn’t do something like this in our day and age as you might get banned from the county park system or the courthouse or county school grounds by vigilant officials.

Thinking back on all this led me to what may be a naive realization:

Let’s assume we are in the 1950s and that today’s political climate exists: many people despising fellow citizens because of “political beliefs.”

Let’s assume further that because of your new neighbor’s bumper sticker, you’ve never spoken to her/him. But, you happen to overhear a phone conversation that neighbor is having with a friend on a neighborhood party line.

You hear no political talk, but you learn that your neighbor likes dark roast coffee like you do. I mean, really likes it. His mother has dementia, like your mother. He likes Dr. John’s music, like you do.

When you next see that neighbor in person, the chance for friendship is greater than before. The possibility of being civil, of seeing beyond the spirit of bumper-sticker-like cable news, of showing some Southern hospitality — is not so far-flung.  PS

Clyde Edgerton is the author of 10 novels, a memoir and a new work, Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers. He is the Thomas S. Kenan III Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UNCW.

Memories on Wheels

Sometimes there’s nothing basic about transportation

By Bill Fields

I never paid too much attention to four-leaf clovers or cracks in the sidewalk, but once, playing Kreskin’s ESP at a neighbor’s house in 1969, the “mystery pendulum” made a prediction the famous mentalist would have been proud of.

Many years later I’m not sure what I really think about “extra sensitive perception,” as Barney Fife called it. That particular Sunday afternoon, though, gave me a reason to believe.

With a notable exception of stranding us in Tabor City when it broke down returning from the beach one time, our well-traveled Plymouth station wagon — which took my parents to their jobs and my sisters to college — remained reliable transportation. There had been no talk around our kitchen table about getting a new car, no inkling of the possibility. When the board game said otherwise, it seemed as outlandish as forecasting I would be one of the tallest, fastest boys in fifth grade.

In less than two weeks, I was getting into a ’69 Ford Fairlane 500 with my dad as he drove it off the lot at Jackson Motors in Pinedene. At that point, if Kreskin had said Brooks Robinson was going to come to town and spend a week teaching me how to play third base, I would have believed him.

It was a beautiful automatic transmission (Cruise-O-Matic) automobile, a four-door sedan the lightest of blue, the color of the Tar Heels before television demanded a bit darker hue so the uniform numbers would stand out. It had comfortable and roomy bench seats. It had a large trunk. It had seat belts!

The Fairlane carried us to Florida for the first time, and on the way back stopped at Six Flags Over Georgia. It idled in heavy traffic in Atlanta and pulled over for a scenic vista on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

At different times, the Fairlane smelled like Salems, chili dogs, Brut 33, a stringer full of farm-pond bream, Juicy Fruit and the sweat of 36 holes on a July day.

I got my driver’s license in that car in 1975. I picked my mother up at her bank job, in the winter, when the sun set early, tuning in WABC New York while I waited for her in a parking space on Broad Street. I drove it to junior golf tournaments in Henderson and Myrtle Beach, to my senior prom via the JFR Barn, when gas was 69 cents a gallon.

Mom and Dad loaded me and my belongings in August of 1977 and took me to college in Chapel Hill, to my room in Old West. Less than three years later, I was behind the wheel driving south toward home with my tears and my sport coat for Dad’s end game with cancer.

The Fairlane went to Stoneybrook, Carolina Cougars’ games, a Supertramp concert, the GGO, North Carolina Motor Speedway and to Atlantic Beach in the wee hours, when that seemed like the perfect call one spring night senior year in college.

I never got a ticket in the Fairlane, but once, exiting Pinecrest High School in a long line of cars, I had to be at my most persuasive to convince a highway patrolman I was not the idiot tossing firecrackers out the window.

In the summer of 1981, after graduating from Carolina and setting out into the real world, it seemed like the time was right to move on from the Fairlane that had served so well. It was a dozen years old and had about 115,000 miles on it. There were nicks on the back bumper from changing into golf spikes in parking lots. The paint was corroded at the driver-side window, so often did my father rest his arm there.

From the same lot that had been home to the Fairlane before our very unexpected purchase, in what had become Bill Smith Ford, I bought a white Escort that would be mine for a decade. After spritzing the Fairlane and vacuuming the interior at the self-serve car wash, I drove it to the house of man near West End who had answered my classified.

I got $300 from the sale but still felt kind of empty getting rid of a car that had grown old as I grew up.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north 30 years ago but hasn’t lost his accent.

Focus on Furmint

From Hungary comes a white wine to savor

By Robyn James

Sometimes in the world of wine geeks, the hot new thing on the scene turns out to be the oldest. Such is the case with the dry white wine, furmint, from the ancient Hungarian region of Tokaj. Presented with a sample bottle of Evolúció a few weeks ago, I was fascinated to taste and learn about the furmint grape finished dry. Never an expert in Hungarian wine throughout my career, I always had a vague perception of their incredibly sweet, beautiful dessert wines that came from the region of Tokaj. Louis XIV of France declared the wines “Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum” (Wine of Kings, King of Wines). They were labeled with a number of “puttonyos” measuring the degree of sweetness and quality.

Tokaj is geographically located between two rivers, the Danube and the Tisza. In the fall, the fog influence from the rivers creates the perfect dampness for the “noble rot” to occur on the furmint grapes, resulting in their super sweet famous dessert wines.

However, if you harvest the furmint early, before noble rot occurs, you come up with a delicious mineral-driven white wine that is a fabulous alternative to sauvignon blanc, pinot gris and chardonnay.

Hungarian winemakers in the Furmint Society visited Napa Valley recently, wowing California winemakers who likened the wines to Chablis, stating, “I would put them against the great whites of Friuli, Bordeaux and Burgundy.”

Located on the same latitude as Alsace, France, the Hungarian native grape derives its name from the French word “froment” for the wheat gold color of the wine.

The Evolúció that I tasted is fermented in all stainless steel, and is described by the winery as, “Intense aromas, ripe peach and floral. Elegant, rich and mineral, great balance between (the) intense acidity and discreet residual sugar, it is pleasing and refreshing. Some summer fruits with white pear, citrus and hints of almond.”

Retailing for around $12, Evolúció’s high acidity would pair well with fish and chicken dishes or even beef short ribs.

Furmint also makes a delicious sparkling wine. Affinitas makes a methóde traditionnelle (same painstaking method as French Champagne with the secondary fermentation in the bottle) that sells for around $18, a bargain. Another Hungarian grape, harslevelu, is blended into this sparkler that the winery describes as “clear with a fine mousse. Citrus blossoms, grapefruit and crisp apple. Fresh acidity, it is precise without being austere. Rich backbone, exotic fruits and brioche, great acid and mineral.”

Furmint is grown in other European countries and blends well with other grapes. The Dveri-Pax Winery in Slovenia makes a $15 “Yanez” that is 40 percent furmint, 40 percent pinot gris and 20 percent riesling. Scoring 87 Points from The Wine Advocate, it is described as “fresh, clean and perky, refreshing demeanor and very enticing.” The Boutique Wine Collection out of Philadelphia is one of the main importers of furmint and I love their logo, a little heart on top of a dollar sign with the statement, “Love Over Money.” I guess you won’t get rich importing furmint, but it sure is fun to try.  PS

Robyn James is a certified sommelier and proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at robynajames@gmail.com.

Dark Clowns

By Jim Dodson

I was deep in the country at twilight, heading home with the radio on when I heard about the dark clowns. The BBC presenter sounded skeptical, even amused by reports out of Greenville, South Carolina, where people dressed as clowns were reportedly trying to lure children into the woods with candy and money.

“So . . . is this just a hoax or something people there are really concerned about?” the host asked a local reporter covering the story, his tongue half in cheek.

“I can’t say it’s a hoax,” she replied, “because the police are taking this very seriously. They have warned parents and doubled patrols. This really has a lot of people freaked out.”

So-called “after-dark clowns” have been spooking America quite a bit lately, it turns out, most recently in Winston-Salem and Green Bay, Wisconsin, where a photograph of a dark clown roaming early morning streets carrying black balloons set the Internet on fire. Two Octobers ago residents of Bakersfield, California, were spooked by photographs of “evil after-dark clowns” roaming their streets after hours, showing up under lampposts and frequenting kiddie rides. Since then, reports of dark clowns have cropped up in a dozen other places around the country.

“The police don’t know whether the stories are coming from the imaginations of children or something sinister is afoot, but panicked residents seem to be taking the law into their own hands,” The New York Times noted about this latest outbreak of clowns in South Carolina, adding that shots had been fired into wooded areas where the sightings occurred.

Whatever else may be true, clowns occupy a peculiar space in American popular culture, somewhere between what’s perfectly innocent and downright terrifying. My September issue of Smithsonian notes that clowns have been with us since man’s earliest days in the guise of everything from mythologized tricksters to painted medicine men. Pygmy clowns entertained bored Egyptian pharaohs, and medieval court jesters were entitled to thumb their oversized noses at the king without fear of losing their heads. Ancient Rome had professional clowns whose job it was to pacify unruly crowds at festivals, peacekeepers who kept an eye out for troublemakers. “Well into the 18th and 19th century,” writes Smithsonian’s Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, “the prevailing clown figure of Western Europe and Britain was the pantomime clown, who was sort of a bumbling buffoon.”

Once, standing in a crowd of camera-wielding tourists next to my young daughter on the main drag in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, awaiting a parade of local rodeo riders, I spotted a mime working the crowd and approaching us. My daughter was delighted. But I wasn’t.

Mimes have always made me uncomfortable, a modest phobia I trace to a powerful moment in my early childhood in Mississippi, where my father briefly owned a small newspaper. One evening in the late fall he took my brother and me to a political rally in a cornfield just outside town where a group of strange people showed up wearing white robes and hoods and stood around a bonfire. We didn’t stay long, just long enough for our father to get a quote or two from the mayor and the hooded figures and to frighten the bug juice out of his sons. We asked our dad why those men wore hoods. “Because people who wear masks are weak people often up to no good,” he replied. Our mother gave him holy hell when she found out where he’d taken us just to harvest a quote.

Forty years later, picking up on my post-Klan jitters, the mime paused right in front of us and attempted to make me smile. He made a huge happy face followed by a tragic sad one, rubbing away imaginary tears when I wouldn’t yield. The crowd ate it up.

“Thanks,” I said through gritted teeth. “Feel free to move along now.”

Clowns were everywhere in the America where I grew up. Most were fun-loving and perfectly innocent in those faraway days — Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody and Bozo the Clown with his internationally syndicated show — which according to Smithsonian had a 10-year waiting list for tickets.

There was even a clown I liked on my favorite weeknight TV show, Red Skelton’s alter ego Clem Kadiddlehopper, a bumbling painted-up fool who was tolerable only because he often broke up halfway through his skits. In my bedroom I even had a harlequin desk lamp. I attended Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus about that time, exactly once, on the other hand, feeling bad for the animals and truly bothered by the clowns. Only the acrobats appealed to me.

“So the question is,” Smithsonian’s McRobbie wonders, “when did the clown, supposedly a jolly figure of innocuous, kid-friendly entertainment, become so weighed down by fear and sadness? When did clowns become so dark?”

The truest answer is, long ago and far away.

Classical operas and Shakespearean dramas, after all, have long used clown figures as sinister messengers of mystery and intrigue. But in the modern American context it may well have been an evil clown named Pogo who established the motif of the dark clown around town.

His real name was John Wayne Gacy Jr., a friendly chap who entertained children in the Chicago suburbs for years during the middle 1970s before he was arrested, tried and convicted of killing 33 young men. “You know,” he reportedly told investigators, “a clown can get away with murder.” Before Gacy faced execution in 1994, America’s Crown Prince of Killer Clowns spent his time in his cell painting pictures of clowns and self-portraits of himself as Pogo the clown.

After seven years of writing about dark things for my magazine in Atlanta, I officially swore off watching horror films after writing a piece for Boston magazine about a reclusive teen in western Massachusetts whose mother allowed her son to gorge himself on the Friday the 13th films only to have her troubled son don a hockey mask one Halloween night and slash several kids before hanging himself in the woods. The psychologist who’d been treating him for years told me “his identification with Jason seemed pretty harmless.”

A toxic flood of even more ghastly films continues to flow into your local Cineplex, feeding our insatiable desire to terrify ourselves. Heath Ledger’s brilliant if disquieting Joker in the 2008 Batman remake The Dark Knight seemed almost too real and sadly prefigured the gifted actor’s own demons rising to the surface when he shortly died of an accidental drug and alcohol overdose.

I sometimes wonder if we aren’t simply hardwired to value a good harmless scare in a world that appears damaged beyond repair and full of very real dangers, providing new purpose to whatever bogeyman has always lurked beneath the bed. In another age, after all, fairy tales and fables of trolls loitering beneath bridges and witches in the woods were meant to instruct children on the dangers of straying too far beyond the light or down a road of ruin, real or imagined. “Always keep a-hold of Nurse,” goes a famous ditty by a French writer, Hilaire Belloc, “for fear of finding something worse.”

Once upon a time, Madge the beautician and Speedy Alka-Seltzer were icons of commercial television spots. They’ve given way to pharmaceutical companies peddling expensive drugs for maladies whose side effects may kill you, security firms eager to surveil your home against intruders who are just waiting to pounce, identity theft, and internet investment firms that torched your 401-K plan a few years back while reminding you that you haven’t put aside nearly enough for a “happy” retirement.

Perhaps this explains why Americans can’t seem to get enough of Halloween’s faux gore and fright wigs, projected to shell out a record $7 billion or $75 per ghoul among those celebrating the holiday this year — rivaling Christmas retail.

It’s all part of the funhouse ride that thankfully isn’t real, and every town larger than the hips on a snake seems eager to cash in on the phenomenon with its own haunted corn maze or woods of terror peopled by chain saw–wielding psychos and evil clowns, bless their dark little hearts.

In a broader context, all our lives are challenged by Dark Clowns of one kind or another and things that go bump in the night — a sick child, a worrying diagnosis, a lost job. The worry list is endless.

Maybe the way to fight back is to simply make light of such darkness the way John Candy did in the 1989 John Hughes’ classic Uncle Buck. In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, a drunken clown shows up to entertain at a children’s birthday party where Uncle Buck Russell, good-natured loser — played to perfection by the late great Candy — is babysitting his nephew and two nieces. Upon discovering that the clown is drunk from an all-night bachelorette party, Uncle Buck suggests the clown’s behavior is inappropriate for children. Offended, the clown snarls, “In the field of local live home entertainment, I’m a god.” At which Uncle Buck points to the clown’s rodent-eared VW and firmly says, “Get in your mouse and get out of here,” and proceeds to flattens the clown’s big fat rubber nose to drive home the point.

According to Smithsonian, only 2 percent of grown-ups suffer from excessive fear of clowns, technically a phobia called coulrophobia.

But don’t try telling that to the anxious parents of Green Bay, Bakersfield and Greenville anytime soon.

Truthfully, I’m more worried about some of the dark clowns we’ll have to decide between in the voting booth a few days after Halloween. Bottom line, if a dark clown is foolish enough to show up at my door on Halloween night, don’t be surprised if I give him a shot of John Candy to remember me by.  PS

Contact editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.