Naturalist

NATURALIST

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The Day a Whale Came to Southern Pines

Momma T, a train, and one big mystery

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

As the end of the year winds to a close, I can’t help but feel nostalgic about the holidays of my youth. Among my most vivid and cherished Christmas Day memories are the family gatherings at my late grandmother’s house in Eagle Springs. Home-cooked meals, touch football in the yard with cousins, seven-layer cakes, lots of laughter, and gifts aplenty. At the center of it all was our matriarch, Irene Thomas.

“Mamma T,” or simply “T,” as I liked to call her, was, by any measure, an extraordinary woman. Born on a farm near the headwaters of Drowning Creek, my grandmother lived a long and productive life, passing just a few weeks before her 93rd birthday. During that time, she raised two sets of twins, played the organ each and every Sunday at church, maintained a long and productive career with the N.C. Department of Social Services, and continued to work helping others at the Penick Village in Southern Pines long after retirement.

Nestled in a corner of the laundry room in her small house was a wooden bookshelf lined with a complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia, the black and white leather-bound 1967 edition. The “W” volume held my attention the longest, for that’s where the account of whales was found. I spent many a Christmas lost within the pages of that massive tome.

Mamma T recognized my fascination with wildlife early on, and went out of her way to foster and nurture that passion. She routinely clipped newspaper articles about whales and saved them for me. She even took me on my first airplane flight to Washington, D.C., where we visited the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. And each year at Christmas, she gifted me a subscription to National Geographic magazine.

Spending her entire life in landlocked Eagle Springs, my grandmother never observed a whale in the wild. However, over the years, she would occasionally recount the time she did see an actual large whale, up close and personal, right in the heart of Southern Pines. It was around the time the country was in the throes of the Great Depression and, though she was a young child and could not recall many details, she knew the whale arrived in town by train. Her family journeyed all the way from Eagle Springs — a bit of a haul in those days — to see the leviathan stretched out on a railway car. She remembered paying a dime to view the traveling exhibit.

As a kid who loved whales and trains, hearing her story sparked my imagination. Later, as an adult who worked as a marine biologist by profession, I began to wonder about that story and that “whale train.” Where did it come from? Who sponsored it? What type of whale was on the train? 

My grandmother retained her mental acuity till the day she passed away in 2015. In fact, we talked about the whale in Southern Pines just a few months before her death. I’d always assumed the whale had washed ashore along a North Carolina beach and was loaded onto a train car that toured the state. Perhaps some local entrepreneur, an ad hoc P.T. Barnum hoping to capitalize on the public’s fascination with sea monsters or the biblical parable of Jonah, had made the arrangements.

Whales have washed up on the beaches of North Carolina for millennia. Records dating back to the mid-1600s describe the first settlers of Colington Island selling over 80 barrels of oil rendered down from dead whales, known as “drift whales,” cast ashore on the northern Outer Banks. Today, one can find numerous skeletons of large, beach-cast whales hanging from the rafters of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, including an immense sperm whale (of Moby Dick fame) that washed ashore in Wilmington in 1928. Did the remains of that whale travel by train from Wilmington to Raleigh via Southern Pines?

I thought perhaps the answer to that question could be found in a small booklet titled A Whale Called Trouble, published by the museum in 2004. It tells how the bones of the sperm whale were buried in a shallow grave on the beach for over 6 months and then dug up and transferred to Raleigh by two trucks. Clearly this was not the whale Mamma T saw in her youth. Back to square one.

It wasn’t until recently that I discovered what I believe to be a clue about the origins of the great whale of Southern Pines. While researching historic fishing accounts of sawfish and sturgeon in our state’s waters, I stumbled across an advertisement in an April 28, 1933, edition of the Roanoke Beacon, published in the small town of Plymouth, in the eastern part of the state. Beneath a black and white photograph of a dead whale lying on its side on a shipping dock, a caption reads:

It took eight hours and 15 minutes to capture this monster whale, which will be on exhibition here in a few days. The Pacific Whaling Company fleet captured the whale and embalmed it. Many difficulties were overcome in placing him on a railway car. An actual close-up of the whale can be obtained by visiting the exhibition near the depot when it arrives in the city. It will be here next Thursday afternoon.

Surely, this must be it. The account has all the elements: a train, a whale, and a date that matches up. In 1933, my grandmother would have been 11 years old.

So, I did a deep dive into the history of the Pacific Whaling Company, which caught and killed whales off the coast of California in the early decades of the 20th century. It was the heyday of commercial whaling, during the pre-plastic era, when whale blubber was rendered down to valuable oil, and whalebone and baleen were used for a variety of purposes, everything from ladies’ corsets to chimney-sweep brushes.

From 1930 to 1937 the Pacific Whaling Company sent out specially designed railway cars, each loaded with an embalmed dead whale, to towns all across the U.S. and Canada. Along with the whales, actors in sailing attire, often portraying ship captains, would regale audiences with tales of high seas adventures. Occasionally other marine curiosities, such as stuffed penguins, were exhibited alongside the whales. A small admission fee was charged for these “educational exhibits.” By some accounts, the “whale on rails” was quite profitable for the company. In some years, Pacific Whaling grossed more than a quarter of a million dollars, an extraordinary sum for that day and age, especially during the Depression. Even by today’s standards it’s a big chunk of change.

Having now seen many historic accounts of these whales on trains throughout the country, I feel confident that the Pacific Whaling Company was the source of the whale that came to Southern Pines during Mamma T’s childhood. Still, there are unanswered questions. What type of whale did she see all those years ago? A blue whale? A humpback? And what were the dates when the whale train came into Southern Pines? I have more work to do.

But this Christmas, like so many, I’ll be thinking about whales and my late grandmother. It’s funny how her seemingly insignificant story of a whale on a train, told with such love and enthusiasm, has left so large an impression on me. Mamma T gave me one of life’s greatest gifts: the gift of wonder. For that, I am forever grateful.

Hometown

HOMETOWN

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Hail, Cedar!

Friends, aroma, countrymen, lend me your gifts

By Bill Fields

There was a remarkable consistency to the trappings of Christmas in our house when I was a child. This was the case for what was under the tree (treats such as walnuts and tangerines that didn’t grace our kitchen the rest of the calendar), on the tree (some vintage ball ornaments made of glass as fragile as a first frost), and the tree itself.

I come in praise of Juniperus virginiana, the botanical name for Eastern red cedar, the humble type of conifer that decorated our Decembers for years.

My fond memories are possible for two reasons. I never was charged with cleaning up the detritus of scalelike foliage that had fallen to the floor during a cedar’s fortnight as our living room centerpiece. And none of our cedars, even with their tendency to get as dry as a Baptist social, ever caught fire despite our using strands of big colored bulbs that seemed to get as warm as a stovetop.

A cedar tree was as much a part of Christmas as carols, festive cards taped around the dining room doorway, poinsettias, baked ham, and getting to speak to Santa Claus at the Collins Department Store in downtown Aberdeen.

Gardening blogger Allen Bush has called the Eastern red cedar the “Chevy Corvair of Christmas trees.” True, a cedar didn’t strike much of a figure, especially when compared to evergreens that came later, produced for holiday consumption — particularly the more pyramidically perfect spruces and firs. But when decorated and illuminated, with presents and stockings nearby, a lowly cedar was as sharp as a fancy-finned Cadillac.

Mom told stories of traipsing through the Jackson Springs countryside with her father when he chopped down a cedar for their house across the street from the Presbyterian church. He would nail it to a simple wooden stand, and she and her mother would then adorn it with strands of popcorn. Given that the Eastern red cedar could be found in nearly 40 states, there were lots of kids who went on the same mission as my grandfather and his youngest child.

My father didn’t own an axe and, after roughing it plenty during his World War II service, didn’t relish a walk in the woods to obtain a Christmas tree. Eschewing the old-fashioned way, Dad bought our cedars from one of the pop-up lots that appeared in town at the beginning of the holidays. If his wallet wasn’t as thin as usual, there might be additional purchases from the seasonal vendor: a wreath for the front door and a Claxton Fruit Cake, made in southeast Georgia and distinguished by its horse-and-buggy label.

It took fortitude to decorate our cedar tree. Mom could be picky about which ornament went where, and the nature of the evergreen — a lack of long, definitive branches on which to hang things — compounded the process. Finding a spot that would support the heaviest objects, the ceramic angels, wasn’t easy. Sometimes the ornament hooks bought for the task weren’t long enough, which necessitated improvisation in the form of paper clips partially straightened.

After the ornaments and lights had been situated, it was time to put on the silver tinsel garland and artificial icicles. I usually tried to get out of dealing with the latter decorative touch since I lacked the patience to satisfy my supervising Mom, who had high icicle placement standards and wouldn’t tolerate slipshod dangling of the slippery strands. Every Christmas I would hear, “You can’t just throw it on there,” after she noticed my icicle imprecision.

I recall considerable debate within the family about whether to apply a final touch to the cedar tree: snow in a can. Photo album evidence indicates the practice being phased out not long before we became a white pine family in the 1970s.

Years after that, when she was widowed and alone, for as long as she was able, Mom took care to put up a tree each Christmas. They were beauties, too — Fraser firs of perfect dimensions, fit for the Hallmark movies she loved to watch. And dotting those ideal branches were some of the ornaments that festooned those budget, boxy cedars, witnesses to so many smiles.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

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Sticky Fingers

Confessions of a cookie dough thief

By Emilee Phillips

Around the holidays, my mother is known for baking her days away. Even with all of her kids grown and (mostly) gone she still churns out the sugary treats as if Bobby Flay were going to walk in at any moment to pass judgment on the selection.

Like most master chefs, she had specific dishware for specific things. Regular plates versus fancy plates, plastic cups versus glassware, and a collection of mixing bowls as stackable as Russian nesting dolls. There was one item, however, that came with spoonfuls of family chronicles — the granddaddy of them all — the cookie dough bowl.

When that heavy beige and blue ceramic bowl came out, we knew a spread of precisely shaped and elegantly frosted sugar cookies was on its way. But that wasn’t the best part. Oh, no. The best part was the dough.

All of us — and by us I mean her feral children — stuck our grubby fingers in that dough at least once a day, for as long as it sat in the fridge, before any of it ever landed on a cookie sheet. We weren’t afraid of salmonella, we were afraid of not seeing the bowl in time. It’s a good thing we didn’t have many guests during the holidays — it’s doubtful their constitutions would have been as hardy as ours.

My mother always wondered why her recipes never produced quite the cookie count she thought they should yield. We did our best to be discreet but eventually, my mom put two and two together and came up with three — children, that is. In the end we were betrayed by the aluminum foil that never seemed to go back as snugly as it went on and, of course, the fistful of finger divots.

Not that my brother and I were entirely innocent, but my sister, Megan, was the main culprit. And yes, that matters. The year Megan came home from college on Thanksgiving break is the year “the incident” happened. Whether or not it was on purpose has yet to be discovered.

It was late in the evening and Megan was loitering in the light of the fridge in search of a midnight snack. I can only imagine her delight when she saw the bowl. Not that I was on a cookie dough prowl myself — I have always been something of a night owl — but when I walked into the kitchen, my timing couldn’t have been better. I witnessed Megan popping a dough-laden finger into her mouth. Or so we both thought.

“Blech!” she exclaimed. Her head shook and her body shivered as she stuck out her tongue in disgust. I could see her mentally wrestling the urge to summon our mother at the top of her lungs to get to bottom of this vile pile. But of course, that would have given her up as the main cookie dough thief. Hoisted on her own petard, she couldn’t say a word.

Megan looked at me, confused. I calmly, and innocently, surveyed the scene. The cookie cutters weren’t out on the counter. Conspicuous by their absence, I knew what had happened. I reached past my sister and peeled back the foil. The bowl — not just any bowl but THE bowl — was full of potato salad.

It was as though our mother had defied the laws of nature that night. “It was even on the right shelf,” Megan whispered as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and trudged up to her room. I was just glad it wasn’t me.

The next morning at the breakfast table, Mom asked no one in particular, “So, how was the cookie dough?”

My sister lifted her gaze from her plate of pancakes with the look and sting of betrayal. To this day she swears I gave her up, but I think Mom saw the once smooth foil rumpled and decided to run with it, regardless of who the actual victim was. They exchanged a quick look full of mental gymnastics.

“That was cold,” said Megan, eyes narrowing. I was holding my breath waiting for Mom’s comeback — a lecture, or perhaps a revenge story.

Instead, the corners of her mouth turned upward as she stood to clear the breakfast plates. “Well, yeah,” she said on her way out of the room, “it was in the fridge.”

Almanac November 2024

ALMANAC NOVEMBER 2024

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Almanac November 2024

By Jim Dodson

Generations of Americans who were schoolchildren during the Ozzie and Harriet years from the 1950s through 1960s have keen memories of singing an ancient hymn long associated with Thanksgiving titled “We Gather Together.” In fact, the hymn had nothing to do with the mythologized first Thanksgiving held by the Pilgrims in November 1621. Based on a Dutch folk tune, the hymn was written in 1597 to celebrate the Dutch victory over the Spanish forces at the Battle of Turnhout. Prior to that, Dutch protestants were forbidden to gather for religious observances. It first appeared in American hymnals around 1903 and rapidly gained popularity as the Thanksgiving hymn sung at church services and in public schools during the week of the November holiday. In 1992, comedian Adam Sandler performed his own mocking version of the holiday standard on Saturday Night Live that more or less coincided with “We Gather Together” being removed forever from public schools and gatherings. The hymn is still a staple in churches across America at Thanksgiving.

The holiday itself has something of a checkered and violent history. The highly mythologized account of the first Thanksgiving “harvest feast” shared by English Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people in 1621 generally ignores the fact that disease brought by the colonists to North America wiped out 90 percent of New England’s native populations. Following a major Patriot victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide Thanksgiving celebration in America, marking Nov. 26, 1789, “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” He was then upstaged by Abraham Lincoln 74 years later, who formally established the national holiday when he issued a proclamation for a National Day of Thanksgiving in October 1863, following the Battle of Gettysburg, in which 50,000 soldiers died. In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt moved the Thanksgiving holiday one week earlier than normal to the second-to-last Thursday in November, believing that doing so would help bolster retail sales during the final years of the Great Depression. 

Regardless of these inconvenient truths — and Adam Sandler’s buffoonery — the overwhelming majority of us in a wonderfully diverse America embrace Thanksgiving as a welcome opportunity to gather with family and friends and celebrate however we see fit with food, football and a nice afternoon nap.

“Let us give thanks for this beautiful day.
Let us give thanks for this life. Let us give thanks for the water without which
life would not be possible.
Let us give thanks for Grandmother Earth,
who protects and nourishes us.”

— Traditional daily prayer of the American Lakota people

When the Year Grows Old

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old —
October — November —
How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
That I wish I could forget —
The look of a scared thing
Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old —
October — November —
How she disliked the cold!

Here’s to 30 Years

HERE'S TO 30 YEARS

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Here's to 30 Years

Celebrating the Artists League of the Sandhills

By Jenna Biter   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Dozens of guests swirl about a long, rectangular room. A vase of sherbet roses and powder blue hydrangeas anchors the space on a table in the center. It’s a cool dusk outside, but inside the walls, the atmosphere is warm. It’s heated by the chatter of old and new friends, or at least friendly strangers. They flit in and out of conversations, gabbing and howling like they’re enjoying one last party at the end of the world.

They aren’t, of course. The Artists League of the Sandhills begins most months like this, with a gallery opening held the first Friday evening in that slender room in the not-for-profit organization’s headquarters. The building is situated not at the end of the world but at the end of Exchange Street, with its rear wall kissing the main train tracks that slice through historic Aberdeen.

A woman leans toward a friend while pointing at a small portrait of a lady peering through a monocle on the opposite wall. “We’re getting . . . ” she begins, but her voice trails off as she gets lost in the art. She walks across the room, magnetized. A red sticker on the artwork’s label marks it sold not long into the event.

The time of the gallery openings is always the same — 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. — but the theme varies from one show to the next. In August it was small art. In September viewers with reading glasses were grateful to see the works return to regular size. In October, the gallery showcased figures and faces, and November boasts the biggest event of the year, the annual fall exhibit and sale, which opens with a public reception Friday, Nov. 8, and hangs through Dec. 20.

The sprawling gallery show features somewhere around 150 new pieces of art, with works for sale by many of the league’s dozens of members. If you wander across the one-story building, through two large classrooms, past a framing station and a library of catalogued art books and into a maze of cubicle-like studios, you’ll find an additional 300 or so pieces for sale. With a pocketful of dollars and a can-do spirit, you could easily redecorate your entire house with an evening’s offerings.

The November opening is an art lover’s delight, but this year it’s something more — the exhibit marks a milestone anniversary, too. Originally the Workshop of the Sandhills, 2024 marks 30 years since the Artists League opened shop in the same old Aberdeen Rockfish railroad warehouse that it occupies today.

As if on command, a train roars past, releasing a protracted honk into the graying night sky. The blast is a visceral reminder of the league’s modest beginnings, when a pair of retired executives scrubbed through oil and grime to transform a century-old train depot into a gathering place for artists of all calibers and kinds.

The Sandhills knew Chuck Lunney as the audacious and distinguished World War II pilot who swooped his B-29 bomber under the Golden Gate Bridge on a dare, but he’s also remembered as an advertising professional and lifelong artist with an interest in art education and community, driven to create an organization for likeminded folks. Lunney found one such mind in retired sales manager and watercolorist Mike D’Andrea at a Campbell House Galleries reception sometime in the 1980s. After a half-decade’s search for the perfect location for their artists’ haven, the men opened the Artists League of the Sandhills on Oct. 26, 1994, in one-half of a dirty train terminal. When the town of Aberdeen offered to rent them the building for a dollar per year, the word “perfect” suddenly seemed to describe the broken building tucked all the way back on a forgotten side street.

“Their goal, I think initially, was to have 20 artists just so they could pay the bills,” says Pam Griner, the league’s office manager of 14 years. Sure, rent was dirt cheap, but they still had to keep the lights on.

The initial goal was immediately surpassed. According to a Nov. 10, 1994 article in the Moore County Citizen News-Record, 28 local artists signed up the very first day.

Thirty years later, both founders have since passed — Lunney, 93, in 2012, and D’Andrea, 89, in 2018 — but their legacy lives on in the organization they scrubbed into existence. The Artists League now occupies the entire warehouse, and membership bumps its head against 200, with tens of artists able to key into studios 24/7.

There’s always a waitlist for those 34 cheap-as-bananas workspaces.

In a typical week, members teach art classes Monday through Friday on media that run the full artistic gamut from oil to watercolor. Nationally known professional artists visit to host multiday intensives several times per year. With the fees from those classes and workshops, memberships and generous donations, as well as a small percentage of sales from the monthly art shows, the league stays up and running.

As more guests shuffle in, more red stickers claim ownership. The show led off with a large work of art, a reinterpretation of Gustav Klimt’s Lady with a Fan — a dove has been added in an upper corner. A blurb on the wall explains why. Beyond the Klimt-alike more paintings, a scratchboard engraving of a goat, and mixed media of all types ranging in size from postcard to poster, snake around the room like a boa constrictor squeezing onlookers into a tight-knit group.

Most of the league’s artists are amateurs — stay-at-home moms or refugees and retirees from their day jobs — while others have taught or made art their entire lives. It doesn’t really matter who they are, the members bond over art. Learning it, loving it, making it. They exchange Christmas cards during the holidays, often crafted in a special December class, offer bedside company when ER visits become a sad reality, and grab lunch together even when it isn’t in the Artists League’s break room.

The spirit of community bubbles over, into the corners of the gallery space and out the front doors like an uncorked bottle of champagne. Even in the dim light of evening when the last guests are walking to their cars, the atmosphere is as bright as the roses and hydrangeas still on the center table.

“The new community facility offers artists, from the beginner to the accomplished, the opportunity to share their knowledge, gather inspiration and improve their skills,” the News-Record said in 1994.

Besides the word “new,” the same sentence could be printed today.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

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Scorpio

(October 23 – November 21)

Nothing like an old sweater, huh? So comfy and familiar. But so not doing you any favors. This month, self-worth is the name of the game. And here’s the thing: You’re destined to win. It’s simply a matter of ditching the security blanket — be that a threadbare sweater or an outdated (read, self-effacing) MO. Oh, and when Juno enters your sign on Nov. 3, get ready for a next-level soul connection. We’re talking oceanic depths. How do you feel about whale songs?

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Throw out the candy.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Get ready for a boon.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Turn the dial just a hair.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

More root vegetables.

Aries (March 21 – April 19) 

Try softening your gaze.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Just ask for directions.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Lay off the caffeine for a bit.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Someone’s got your back.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Get cozy with the silence.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Worrying won’t help.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Don’t be a doormat.

NC Surround Sound

NC SURROUND SOUND

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A Giant Legacy in a Small Town

Nina Simone, Crys Armbrust and Tryon

By Tom Maxwell

At first glance, Tryon isn’t too different from most small North Carolina towns: Its people are genuinely friendly instead of merely polite; a snug line of mostly brick buildings make up its diminutive downtown; residential housing is a typical mix of stately homes on one side of town and forgotten shacks vanishing into the encroaching kudzu on the other. It’s the kind of place real estate agents describe as “nestled,” situated as it is at the southernmost edge of Polk County, where the great Blue Ridge begins to rise like a crumbling wall. But culturally, the town has distinguished itself in ways that have put a brighter shine on North Carolina’s starry crown.

In 1939, you probably wouldn’t have taken a second look at 6-year-old Eunice Waymon as she walked across the railroad tracks along Trade Street, unless you thought it unusual to see a poor Black kid heading to that part of town. Most everybody in Tryon knew Eunice as a child prodigy, on her way up the hill to Glengarnock Road to take piano lessons from Muriel Mazzanovich, better known as Miss Mazzy. In every sense, Eunice was headed for big things.

Even though many Tryon townsfolk — white and Black — recognized and contributed to Eunice’s artistic development, racism was baked into the Jim Crow South. Before a recital at Lanier Library, a teenaged Eunice saw her parents quietly ushered to the back of the room so white people could take their place in the front row. The young pianist refused to perform until her mother and father were returned to their rightful place.

If systemic racism wasn’t enough to drive ambitious young musicians of color out of the South, professional necessity was. Opportunity was located where the music industry was largely based, either New York or Los Angeles. As her journey into adulthood began, Eunice first attended Asheville’s exclusive Allen Home School, where she befriended Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Then it was on to New York’s Juilliard School of Music, and after that, a failed audition for a scholarship to Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. This was an experience that Eunice remembered for the rest of her life with some bitterness.

Denied a career in classical music, Eunice took a nightclub gig in Atlantic City, where she was informed that she would have to be the featured vocalist as well as the piano accompanist. Soon afterward, she adopted the stage name Nina Simone to protect her family’s reputation. The artist’s new identity and career path would go on to change the world of popular music in ways that defy description: Nina Simone’s music contains elements of jazz, gospel, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues — and still the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

“Nina Simone was one of the key artists who grew up here and fled at the earliest opportunity,” David Menconi says. “But North Carolina left a mark, as it does.” Menconi has spent a lifetime writing about music — first as a critic who spent a couple of decades at Raleigh’s News & Observer; now as an editor and author, most recently of Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music.

The list of North Carolina-based musicians who joined that Jim Crow-era Black diaspora is extraordinary: jazz legends John Coltrane, Max Roach, Thelonious Monk; soul singer Roberta Flack; and funk pioneers George Clinton, Maceo Parker and Betty Davis comprise only a partial list.

“Branford Marsalis told me that people like Nina Simone and Thelonious Monk, who left here at a young age, are still identifiable as Southern because of just how deep a mark church puts on everybody,” Menconi says. “That’s what all these artists have in common: They’re not playing gospel, but church is what’s in there if you dig deep enough.”

In 1996, when Crys Armbrust’s dad told him that Nina Simone was born in Tryon, he was met with disbelief. “I actually stood him down for a liar,” Armbrust said when I met him in 2019. “Because any other town in the world that could claim Nina Simone as a local daughter would have it plastered on every building — on every street — in order to build the reputation of that community.” But this was the mid-1990s, and North Carolina had yet to publicly embrace most, if not all, of its distinguished African American sons and daughters. Armbrust, a fan of Nina Simone since his teenage years, spent much of the rest of his life correcting that mistake.

Dr. Joseph Crystal Armbrust was born and raised in South Carolina but summered in Tryon for 45 consecutive years before making it his home. Precious few people can legitimately be called a polymath, but Crys Armbrust is near the top of the list. After earning two Ph.D.s in literature at the University of South Carolina, he taught English literature and in the school of business, later serving as assistant principal at USC’s prestigious Preston Residential College. Once ensconced in Tryon, Armbrust served as the town’s economic development director, commissioner and mayor pro tempore emeritus. As a musician, he performed recitals at Kings Oxford and Westminster Abbey, while serving back home as master of choristers and music director for Tryon’s Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross. An accomplished composer, Armbrust was commissioned to write several works for eminent clients like Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Vatican.

“My parents wanted a Renaissance man,” Armbrust said, “and they made one.”

None of this would have been immediately obvious to somebody like Menconi if he happened to see Armbrust puttering in the yard of Nina Simone’s birthplace — which he often did. Menconi visited Tryon in 2017, a year before Simone was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Everyone in town told him he had to talk to Crys Armbrust. “I discovered that he was the guy who knew everything about everyone, but especially her and the cabin where she grew up,” Menconi says. “He was the on-site caretaker of the place.”

The Nina Simone House, saved from obscurity or destruction by a group of artists in 2017, was declared a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation a few years later. One of the groups the trust worked closely with when crowdsourcing funds for the house’s rehabilitation was Crys Armbrust’s Nina Simone Project.

“I knew I had the skill set to make a pretty strong impact with respect to creating the Nina Simone Project, so I began in earnest after my father’s death in 2008,” Armbrust said. He conceived a three-phase nonprofit, incorporating a statue, a scholarship and a music festival. When I met Armbrust in 2019, the Nina Simone Project had already bestowed over a dozen general scholarships to local kids.

Despite the economic crash of 2008, Armbrust and the NSP were able to raise enough money to create a statue honoring Simone. It’s situated in a little park on Trade Street, near the railroad tracks Eunice used to cross on her way to take piano lessons. The statue, of Simone seated at a floating, undulating keyboard, contains some of the musician’s ashes in its bronze heart. It was conceived and created by Zenos Frudakis, the same sculptor who did the Payne Stewart likeness behind Pinehurst No. 2’s 18th green.

According to Armbrust, Simone often returned to Tryon. “She left at about 15 and came back quite often,” he told Menconi. “Early on, any and all hours of the day — usually later at night with no fanfare so she wouldn’t have to deal with people. My friend James Payne — who lives a block up the road — would pick her up at the airport, whisk her back here, the door would open, and in she’d walk.” Simone’s last visit to Tryon was to attend her mother’s funeral in 2001.

Crys Armbrust died in August. The Nina Simone Project appears to have gone dormant with his passing, but both he and Simone are very much woven into the fabric of modern-day Tryon. Through his relentless advocacy, Armbrust contributed to a new wave of cultural recognition and reconciliation across the state. In 2006, High Point erected their own bronze statue to “distinguished citizen” John Coltrane. Now there’s a highway marker in the tiny Yancey County seat of Burnsville celebrating Lesley Riddle, an African American native son who, along with the Carter family, helped invent country music. Legendary Piedmont blues artist Elizabeth Cotten is featured in a large mural in her hometown of Carrboro. That list, happily, expands with each passing year.

Hurricane Helene wreaked unimaginable destruction across all of Western North Carolina. Tryon wasn’t spared. The day after, her people did what all tight-knit communities do: They came together. While dazed residents checked in on neighbors and loved ones, the Trade Street Diner set up a generator and offered free coffee and Wi-Fi to all — including evacuees sheltering in Polk County High School. Nearby, at 54 N. Trade St., there’s a bench in Nina Simone Plaza where those who need a break can sit across from the statue of Tryon’s most famous daughter and rest before continuing the work of saving their town. Like a simple act of recognition, a moment’s respite is a small thing that can make a huge difference.

Not the Last Waltz

NOT THE LAST WALTZ

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Not the Last Waltz

After a brief and soul-crushing hiatus, the Sunrise Theater in downtown Southern Pines will once again show the ultimate tryptophan antidote, The Last Waltz, on Thanksgiving night. The award-winning rock documentary of what was billed as The Band’s farewell performance was filmed on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 1976, by director Martin Scorsese. Released in 1978, the film is so highly regarded it was selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry in 2019.

The members of The Band were Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson. At 87, Hudson is the only member still living. The venue was Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, where The Band debuted as a group in 1969. Starting at 5 p.m. the audience of some 5,000 was served turkey dinners. There was an orchestra for ballroom dancing, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti was among a group of poets who gave readings. The Band began performing around 9 p.m.

And what a concert it was.

When the idea of a farewell performance was hatched, mostly by Robertson, who wanted to quit the touring life, the idea was to invite Bob Dylan and Ronnie Hawkins — their original employers — to join them. The guest list exploded from there, eventually including both Dylan and Hawkins, Bobby Charles, Ronnie Wood, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Dr. John, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton and more. They were backed by a large horn section. Later, sound stage work that included Emmylou Harris and the Staple Singers was added to the film.

The documentary begins with The Band performing what was, in fact, their last song of the night, “Don’t Do It.” From there the film progresses more or less in chronological order of play — songs like “Stage Fright,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — mixed in with the studio sessions and interviews with the members of The Band, conducted by Scorsese.

In one anecdote, Robertson explains that the classically trained Hudson would join the group only if every member would pay him $10 a week for music lessons so that he could tell his parents back in Canada that he was a music teacher and not just a rock and roll musician.

The Last Waltz begins on Thursday, Nov. 28, at 7 p.m., and admission is free. The leftovers will keep until morning.

Poem November 2024

POEM NOVEMBER 2024

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Great Blue Heron

He looked like an old man hunkered down
in a faded blue overcoat, his collar turned up,
shoulders hunched. He didn’t seem bothered

by the shallow water his feet were covered

by, nor the chill winter air blowing around
his bare pate. But then his narrow head rose

like a periscope, higher and higher — swiveled
in the direction of a hardly perceptible splash.

Slowly, he moved toward the sound on legs
as skinny as walking sticks, to the place where
dinner was served and eaten so fast, any cook

would wonder if he tasted it. It was enough,
however, to restore his quiet contemplations.

Hunger sated, he curled his long neck into its
warm collar, and stood as still as a painting

while the sun sank and the snow moon kept

rising like a white balloon over the darkening
lake, the stark tree branches, and a lone heron
blending, bit by bit, into the blue light of dusk.

                           — Terri Kirby Erickson

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

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After the Amber

A novel of disappearance and guilt

By Stephen E. Smith

A startling buzzing blasts from your phone or TV, followed by a high-pitched whine, and a detailed description of a missing child inching across the screen. It’s an active Amber Alert — a child abduction emergency. We experience these alerts too often, but we rarely learn what becomes of the missing child or how such a disappearance affects the child’s family, friends and the community in which the child lives.

Marybeth Mayhew Whalen’s 10th novel, Every Moment Since, is a fictional exploration of the emotional forces that wear on those who knew and loved 11-year-old Davy Malcor, who went missing for over two decades. The narrative opens with an early morning phone call informing Sheriff Lancaster that Davy’s favorite jacket was found in an abandoned building near the small North Carolina town of Wynotte. The burden of Davy’s disappearance is still very much in the public consciousness, fixed there by a bestselling memoir written by Davy’s older brother, Thaddeus, who had been responsible for watching over Davy on the night he vanished. On that tragic evening, Davy’s parents were attending a cocktail party, and Thaddeus ditched Davy so he could drink beer with his buddies. Davy wandered in the darkness with a mysterious new friend until headlights flickered through the neighborhood and Davy was gone. What happened that night transformed the characters’ lives and, years later, one question haunts them all: What might I have done differently?

Whalen has provided an intriguing cast of characters. Tabitha, Davy’s mother, is divorced (a byproduct of her son’s disappearance) and lives alone in the house where Davy was raised. She devotes her time to advocating for the families of missing children. Thaddeus is profiting from his family’s misfortune with a bestselling memoir. Aniss Weaver, the last person to see Davy alive, works as a public information officer for the local police. Gordon Swift, a local sculptor, is the prime suspect in Davy’s disappearance, although there has never been adequate evidence to bring charges against him. We have all the ingredients for a suspenseful mystery.

But Every Moment Since isn’t your typical whodunnit. The plot is a trifle too straightforward: a boy goes missing, his family suffers, the community agonizes, a body is eventually found, and the mystery, albeit a slight one, is solved. There are too few plot twists or complications in the early stages of the narrative, and much of the expository information in the first 180 pages of the 363-page novel focuses on the minutia of the characters’ day-to-day lives. Throughout the story, there is a nagging need to “bring on the bear.”

Whalen’s focus, the moving force in the novel, is guilt, which the characters suffer to various degrees. Tabitha rebukes herself for having left Davy in Thaddeus’ care so she could spend an evening socializing. Aniss Weaver is troubled by her specific knowledge that Thaddeus is blameless. And Thaddeus, more than any of the characters, is troubled by the financial success of his memoir about his brother’s disappearance. Gordon Swift, although innocent, suffers from doubts about his sexuality and the community’s suspicion that focuses on him as the likely culprit.

Whalen employs various third-person points of view that are not arranged chronologically (think Pulp Fiction). And the chapters range from excerpts taken from Thaddeus’ memoir to Tabitha’s daily bouts of regret to pure narrative segments that nudge the story forward. Even Davy, who has long since disappeared from the immediate action, has a third-person limited view in parts of the novel.

If this sounds like a lot to keep straight, it is, and the reader is required to focus his or her attention on what is happening to whom and when. The only question that needs answering is why the narrative is presented in this disjointed fashion, which becomes apparent in the novel’s final chapters.

The reader might reasonably conclude that the novel was written with the audiobook in mind (available as a digital download through Kindle). Chapters featuring the various personas written in the limited third person achieve degrees of separation and distinction when read by voice actors representing the various characters. For example, book chapters about Tabitha contain too few distinctive hooks that the reader can employ to establish an ongoing connection with the character, and one’s attention must remain fixed on who is doing what and when. Read aloud, the connection is immediate and continuous.

Every Moment Since is not recommended for anyone suffering from ADHD or for casual readers who will likely put the novel aside for days and expect to pick up the narrative line without rereading. The shifting points of view will not detract from the novel’s impact if the reader remains focused.

Whalen creates believable characters and has a true talent for dialogue — and she is to be congratulated for taking on a challenging and complex subject. The disappearance of a child is a horrifying possibility for any parent, and the crippling emotions suffered by a family that has experienced such a loss are almost inconceivable. Every Moment Since is a reminder that we should take careful notice of the Amber Alerts that come blaring across our TVs and phones. They aren’t works of fiction.