Author: pinestrawmag

Four Seasons of Harmony

Strolling through the Gardens at Sunny Mount

By Claudia Watson • Photographs by Laura L. Gingerich

The experience of walking through the Gardens at Sunny Mount is like taking a tour of a stunning plant-filled archipelago. Set into the native landscape of pines and wiregrass, Kyle and Mary Sonnenberg’s garden is filled with surprises and a spirit of experimentation. The couple moved to the nearly 7-acre property off a rutted road in McDeed’s Creek in 2016 with the lifetime dream of building a garden without limits.

Kyle’s interest in gardening began as a young boy working alongside his father, mainly doing yard work. Still, he says, it was enough to get him interested.

“When Mary and I married, we had a little house in Texas with a little garden that was mostly vegetables because we had so much sun,” he says, recalling how he enjoyed the connection of taking a tiny seed, nurturing it and watching it grow.

Over the years of his career in city management, they frequently moved to homes with conventional-size lots — small canvases for Kyle’s creative style. But the lack of space didn’t stop him from carefully considering a plant’s texture, form and color when creating their outdoor oasis.

“Now our home sits in the middle of the property and has lots of windows, so the garden needs to look good each season. I work very hard to find plants that bloom each season, so there is always color,” he says. “I gravitate toward the unusual and exotic, and I push the climatic zones.”

Freed from the constraints of an established landscape and rule book, Kyle eagerly began to revive their property. First, he took on the entry by creating circular driveways and paths, and transplanting wiregrass.

“It was a laborious project that included two managed controlled burns to remove brush and deadwood,” he explains. “Suddenly there was an abundance of green. The wiregrass popped back. Then, I found dwarf huckleberry (Gaylussacia dumosa), goat’s rue (Galega officinali), and a small native dwarf iris (Iris verna). It was an education. I understand why the burns are necessary for the preservation and restoration of the longleaf forests.”

Fortunately, they also inherited an arc of mature magnolias, hollies (Ilex) and wax myrtles (Morella cerifera) at the side and the rear of the lot, planted by the previous owners. These provide a privacy screen and a dense green backdrop for the unfolding kaleidoscope of color.

As each season unfolds, the garden gradually changes character, shifting from summer’s vibrancy to autumn’s fiery shades of orange and yellow and cooler tones of blue to winter’s delicately faceted silhouettes and spring’s colorful exuberance.

“I love so many plants, especially perennials and shrubs, but as nice as it is to have the repetition of plants and swathes of the same plant and color, I wanted this garden to be different. I use as many different plants as possible — so it’s a bit of everything, wild, exotic and colorful. And the best way to experience it is to stroll through it,” he says, gesturing the way.

The property’s meandering paths encourage exploration of the garden rooms focused on an item or plant theme. Three-dimensional art and tropical-looking plants are the focus of the front garden. There, a metal unicyclist with a glass head announces the garden’s entrance. Giant metal insects prowl the mixed beds of perennials and exotic shrubs. Sabal palms and ornamental Chinese dwarf bananas (Musella lasiocarpa) are considered winter hardy in our 7B planting zone and are grown for their bold-textured foliage. The yellow flowers look like an unworldly lotus. You’ll get a banana only if you’re lucky.

Pretty Copper Canyon daisies (Tagetes lemmonii), discovered on a mountain in Arizona, brighten the garden in late fall with a profusion of golden flowers. A firecracker vine (Manettia cirdifolia) climbs through the branches of a sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana). It bursts with orange and red blossoms that look like miniature firecrackers in the fall.

A garden bench near the home’s entrance is paired with the unlikely — an old, galvanized bathtub. Discovered in a warehouse in Asheville, it serves as an aspiring cocktail table. Unsuitable for setting a tipple, it provides plenty of conversation since it’s a home for native carnivorous pitcher plants and Venus fly traps that eat insects. It also includes terrestrial orchids and rain lilies (Zephyranthes candida) with tiny white star-shaped flowers and upright grass-like foliage that add structure.

It’s a relaxed garden. The areas around the home are framed with broadleaf evergreen and deciduous shrubs, native grasses and flowering perennials, creating a sense of enclosure. And Kyle gives plants space to develop and do their own thing.

His enthusiasm for shrubs is evident, though he does not care for conifers. “They grow those up North, but I’ve been in the South for a long time and am used to these camellias,” he says, adding that deer damage is taking a toll. “I may need to change my ways and try some conifers that taste bad to deer or have unpleasant needles.”

The entrance to the rear gardens features a trough garden — named for the old stone troughs used to feed and water horses — discarded by farmers with the advent of modern plumbing. Now rare, Kyle discovered a cache of look-alike troughs made of soapstone that served as chemistry lab sinks.

Trough gardening is an ideal way to manage collections of plants that have specialized cultural requirements, such as succulents and cacti. His 10 troughs display a cactus garden where stunning dwarf Korean firs (Abies Koreana), with dark green needles and silvery white undersides, mingle with dianthus and yellow cacti.

Ground covers and flowers spill down the berm on the winding path, creating a seamless landscape.

“It’s my homage to Chanticleer Garden,” he remarks, referring to a public garden outside Philadelphia that serves as his garden muse. His eyes survey the large garden anchored by an aging flowering dogwood (Cornus florida). The tree sat alone in the landscape in its younger life, but is now the centerpiece of the garden’s pond.

Clumps of Stokes asters (Stokesia laevis), rudbeckia, phlox, columbine and the crested white roof iris (Iris tectorum ‘Alba’) thrive on the sunny side of the berm and far from the tree’s canopy.

The shady area under the dogwood is home to shallow-rooted plants that thrive in either part or full shade. Here, hostas, hellebores, ferns, Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum), toad lilies (Tricyrtis hirta), lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis), and the tiny crested iris (Iris cristata) grow together. Low-growing ajuga and green and gold (Chrysogonum virginianum) glue the planting together. All were planted in the tree’s native soil and amended with a small amount of compost to accommodate, not bury, the tree’s roots, creating a healthy environment for all.

The pond is the work of noted landscape architect Vince Zucchino and a sparkling expression of gardening. Carefully placed boulders edge the 3,000-gallon pond and mature plantings tumble over the margins, blurring the water’s edge, making it a place Mary likes to dangle her feet on a hot summer’s day.

An essential design feature is the waterfall. “I didn’t want a gushing waterfall, but one that was weeping and makes ripples in the water,” explains Kyle.

Dragonflies and little aquatic beetles skim the water’s surface, and an abundance of bird life converges on the area guarded by a stone fawn purchased on a trip to the Toronto Botanical Gardens. Calla lilies (Zantedeschia sp.), turtlehead (Chelone spp.), white spider lilies (Hymenocallis latifolia), sedges and pickerel rush (Pontederia cordata) grow in the boggy area of the pond where fish take cover.

Kyle removes the tropical water lilies (Nymphaeaceae) in late autumn and overwinters them. “I put them in buckets with water and stick them in a cool closet, and they return each year.”

Dry gardens surround the pond where the sunlight is intense, and the soil is dry. It’s planted with drought-resistant plants — including cactus, sedums, agave, yucca and Engelmann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia), a long-stalked perennial with yellow-petaled flowers and fuzzy green leaves.

Kyle’s secret weapon is a 24-foot potting bench he made several years ago and tucked to the side of the dry garden area.

“I buy plants small and grow them up in pots. It takes time, but they are less expensive, and they get acclimated and have well-established root systems before they are planted,” he says. “I bring the orchids out for the summer and all the plants I bought that I haven’t planted yet. I didn’t realize how handy it would be until I built it.”

At the highest and sunniest location on the property, The Mount, a small lawn with a working sundial flanks an extensive fruit and vegetable garden. Eighteen raised beds offer blackberries, raspberries and a variety of annual vegetables. Espaliered apples and pears line one side; nearby, blueberry, mulberry, native persimmon and pawpaw trees appreciate the sun.

On one side of the lawn is a patio and a crevice garden. It’s a rock gardening style that uses flat stones pushed vertically into the soil from the top. The vertical stones are closely spaced, leaving deep, narrow soil channels for planting xeric plants. “It looks like a mountain range if viewed from the far side of the lawn,” says Kyle.

He does all the garden work and says it takes planning, endurance and patience. “At times, it would be helpful to have a gardener to assist, not a landscape maintenance person, but someone who gardens and knows about plant care,” he says. “I’ve learned my ambitions are greater than I have time to devote to them, at least as far as this garden goes.”

A red metal windmill clanks in the soft breeze above multiple perennial beds as we talk. The effect is magical in the late summer, and it’s a breathtaking place to linger with colors that clash, contrast and harmonize — constantly moving the eye around. It’s a pollinators’ haven with penstemon, coreopsis, echinacea, hemerocallis, salvia, crinum and a lovely scented Thérèse Bugnet pink rose.

“We often sit out here later in the day when the sky is clear, and we can smell the flowers and hear the hummingbirds as they whiz by,” he says. “It’s peaceful and makes us feel far away from everything.”

The years of work offer moments of harmony. The unexpected diversity of the Gardens at Sunny Mount is a living version of a painter’s palette and perfect for an autumnal stroll through a horticultural paradise. PS

Claudia Watson is a longtime contributor to PineStraw and The Pilot and finds joy each day, often in the garden.

2023 Feature

Hometown

A Little Misdirection

A lake by any other name isn’t always as clear

By Bill Fields

Photograph © The Tichnor Brothers Collection, Boston Public Library

Our next-door neighbor, Dom Scali, was a good man: World War II veteran (European theater), father of a boy and a girl who were my pals. A native New Yorker and a butcher, for years after moving to Southern Pines — where he ran the Mid Pines Golf Club locker room from fall through spring — Dom went north with his family in the summer and worked in his old trade on Fire Island.

Dom drove an Oldsmobile Delta 88, dark green with a white top, a first-class car that made the parade of bargain, well-used models in our driveway feel like junkers. One late summer day around 1970, though, I discovered Dom’s sense of direction wasn’t as good as his sense of style.

We didn’t have school because of a teacher workday, and the Scali family kindly invited me to join them on a day trip to White Lake in Bladen County. This was a big deal because White Lake was to freshwater bodies of water what a Delta 88 was to sedans.

White Lake is one of many Carolina bays, oval depressions in the Coastal Plain. There were many theories about how the bays were formed, from the impact of meteorites to the spawning of giant fish. Experts eventually agreed that when the ocean receded, waves created pools of standing water shaped in elliptical forms by wind from a constant direction (northwest to southeast).

Many of the Carolina bays were the color of strong tea, but the water in the 1,200-acre White Lake was so clear it was as if it had come from a bathroom faucet. You could walk in up to your shoulders and still see your feet on the smooth, white sand bottom — you didn’t have to worry about stepping on something icky. I never saw anything that compared to the pristine water of White Lake until a few years later on a trip to the Florida panhandle and a visit to Wakulla Springs, which was so crystal clear the manatees could spot one another from a football field away.

I never rode a glass-bottom boat at White Lake, but there was a pier, concession stands and carnival rides. Away from shore, expert waterskiers performed tricks. It was about half as far from home as the Atlantic Ocean, but nearly as much fun as our annual vacation to the beach. In flip-flops, bathing suit, T-shirt and carrying a beach towel, I eagerly piled into the back seat with Donnie and Karen for the 75-mile drive southeast to White Lake. Dom was behind the wheel with wife Rose riding shotgun.

We were counting license plates and otherwise entertaining ourselves. After a while, the chatter in the front seat led to a stop at a gas station. We spent dimes on Cokes from the drink machine. I saw Mr. Scali speaking to the attendant. “It won’t be long now,” he said when getting back behind the wheel.

In fact, it wasn’t too long until we found ourselves on a commercial strip and saw signs for . . . Spring Lake. We had spent most of the morning heading toward the pawn shops and military surplus stores of the town near Fort Bragg. Mr. Scali had maneuvered us to the wrong “lake.”

I sat quietly. Dom’s wife and children were capably critiquing what had happened.

“We’ll get there,” Mr. Scali said after everyone had calmed down.

And we did, a long time after we should have. As we rolled into the parking lot in late afternoon, we saw families packing up their stuff to head home.

We had a swim; the White Lake water as clean and the bottom as smooth as I remembered from my previous trip. We weren’t there long enough to worry about getting sunburned. Before we knew it, we were knocking the sand off our flip-flops and getting into the Olds for the ride home — a journey that fortunately didn’t include any wrong turns or detours to Spring Lake.

Our stories of the day lasted longer than that roundabout ride to White Lake and were always told with a smile. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

A Touch of Glass

The embrace of new minimalism

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Gessner

There it stands, beyond contemporary, a stark union of planes and angles. A symphony by Stravinsky. A guitar by Picasso. A figure by Giacometti. Might this be a Tibetan temple? A modern art gallery? The home of a Japanese diplomat?

No, no and definitely not, says Neal Jarest — although he admits people stop, stare and ask questions about his stunning residence in Forest Creek, itself an enclave of diverse architectural styles.

Linear, geometric, composed in black and gray, concrete, metal and glass, this is exactly what Neal and Tanda Jarest wanted — a complete turnaround after years in a 5,200-square-foot, two-kitchen family home bordering Lake Pinehurst, which Tanda describes as “red, green and golfy.”

Their motive, however, was familiar. “We wanted to downsize,” Tanda explains. The move offered the opportunity for a unique architectural statement: 3,200 indoor square feet, another 2,000 square feet with a roof overhang. “We wanted outdoor living space, where we could cook and eat around the pool,” she says.

Most furnishings are understated. No kitsch in the kitchen. Cabinets there, in the master bedroom and elsewhere are topped with white countertops, all bare, conveying serenity.

The Jarests call their residence 109 Porte, meaning “gate” in Portuguese, French or Italian. They cite Frank Lloyd Wright as inspiration. But only their architect, Doug Byce, summons the correct words: “An interpretation of Prairie Style . . . married to the ground with long, low, horizontal lines . . . asymmetrically anchored to the Great Room core . . . a massive hip roof floating on a clerestory ribbon window . . . an 18-foot stacked stone chimney surrounded by glass walls. Monochromatic exterior colors anchor the home to the ground . . . and allow it to become a shadow among native longleaf pines,” he writes.

Add pivoting doors, polished concrete and walnut floors, and floating ceiling fixtures of the Saturn genre to complete the effect. Visible beyond those half-inch, double-paned glass walls in the great room are a 30-feet by 16-feet pool, hot tub and bocce ball court surrounded by man-made turf, where grandchildren frolic.

“I love to come home from work, have a glass of wine and jump in the pool,” Tanda says. Work is “opulence” itself, the name of the business the Jarests own in downtown Southern Pines offering the world’s finest Egyptian cotton linens, Duxiana beds and residential accoutrements fit for a pharaoh, with sister boutiques in Raleigh and Florida.

Neal, from Rhode Island, and Tanda, from Georgia, arrived at Fort Bragg in 1996. She opened Opulence in 1997 in a remodeled gas station. Neal retired from the Army in 2005 and joined her in the business. They played golf at Forest Creek, made friends there — a logical choice for their project. Byce was the architect for Duxiana stores worldwide, with a passion for residential design. He stayed with them for a time, absorbed their tastes and requirements, both structural and decorative: clean lines, no moldings or trim, door sills, or thresholds. They agreed on a floor plan embracing a master suite wing with door opening out to the pool, and a guest wing with two bedrooms, a bathroom and sitting room, with glass door closing off the area but not the light. They broke ground in 2020 on a level, 1-acre site on a quiet cul-de-sac. Move-in date: February 2022.

Innovations begin just inside the massive front door, where a control room monitors all systems. Down a hallway, the sunken kitchen/dining/great room, with its soaring chimney and 30-foot ceiling, informs visitors that this house pushes boundaries. Once accustomed to the vastness, eyes are drawn to the custom-made dining table, where a vertical slice of native pine, ragged edges intact, is embedded in a black base, creating a 3-D effect that begs touching. Two utility pantries and a laundry room (with a shark-sized goldfish painting) service the kitchen, although Neal cooks most evening meals, burgers to paella, on the Big Green Egg charcoal grill on the veranda.

Two architectural details of the master suite set it apart: a long, narrow window over the built-in drawers overlooks the great room, while the wall separating bed from bathroom ends a foot shy of the ceiling. Automatic blinds provide privacy.

Black, gray, sandy beige and white, integral to contemporary interior design, require relief. The Jarests enjoy traveling to sunny environs — Portugal, the Caribbean. In Mexico Tanda discovered Otomi, a native art form that provides splashes of color. These handcrafted embroidery panels depict stylized plants and animals against a neutral cotton background. Tall vertical panels framed in walnut to match the floor overlook the hallway, great room and kitchen. Tanda created other bright spots with paintings by local artist Jessie Mackay. In the master bedroom a trompe l’oeil rendition of a gently draped sheet once hung in Opulence. Portraits of landmark buildings in Germany and elsewhere echo their trips abroad. Not above a touch of whimsy, Tanda lines an open shelf with straw hats and includes skulls — the trademark of Hispanic Day of the Dead celebrations — on throw pillows. Area rugs, few but custom-made in traditional patterns, are carryovers from the Pinehurst house.

Throughout the building/furnishing process, husband and wife concurred on most decisions, though Neal concedes, “Tanda has her lanes and I have mine.” When the workout room off a three-bay garage proved a tight squeeze, instead of making do, Neal enlarged it. His décor contributions include a leather sofa in orange, his favorite color, also from their previous home, and a chaise covered in shearling. “That’s from my father’s house,” he says. “I can remember sitting on it with him when I was a little boy.”

“Our tastes have developed over time,” Neal says. “This is where they are now.”

Viewed from any angle this house and its grounds represent a leap from the past into the Jarests’ present — and a stunning personal “gate” into the future. PS

2023 Feature

Omnivorous Reader

Portrait of a Rock Icon

The good, the bad and the ugly

By Stephen E. Smith

When organizing the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, the promoter phoned Chuck Berry to invite him to perform, explaining that the acts were donating their fees to charity. Berry replied, “Chuck Berry has only one charity and that’s Chuck Berry.” End of discussion.

That was Chuck Berry at his most generous, and readers of RJ Smith’s Chuck Berry: An American Life will likely be taken aback by the unsavory details of the life of the man who gave us “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Back in the U.S.A.,” “Reelin’ and Rockin’,” “School Days,” “You Never Can Tell” and “Johnny B. Goode,” rock ’n’ roll classics that pop culture will not willingly let die.

Smith’s biography has been widely lauded in print, online and over the airways, and his study of Berry’s life is as close to a complete examination available to the public. Court records offer even more objectionable details. This much is certain: The more you read about Chuck Berry’s lifestyle, the less likely you are to ever listen to “Maybellene” with a sense of nostalgia.

Berry grew up in a solid middle-class St. Louis family. He wasn’t a blues guy who spent his youth picking cotton and banging on a catalog guitar. He did, however, suffer discrimination early in his life, and Smith devotes the opening chapters of the biography detailing the effects of Jim Crow on Berry’s formative years.

Berry’s trouble began when he was convicted of armed robbery as a teenager and spent almost three years in juvenile detention. When he was released, he drifted into music, became an early master of the new electric guitar, and created an original sound by combining country music with boogie-woogie.

We can argue about who invented the concept of “rock star,” but certainly Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis could lay claim to the term. Berry’s shtick was to sing with impeccable diction while blasting glib rapid-fire lyrics that teenagers could instantly comprehend and dance to. This straightforward blueprint for early rock ’n’ roll attracted Black audiences in the early ’50s. By the mid-’50s Berry’s fanbase was integrated. In the 1960s, he was playing to almost entirely white crowds, at which point his performance was simply called “rock.”

The bulk of Smith’s biography is taken up with the upsetting stories that accompany Berry’s hundreds of performances. His business plan was straightforward. Berry would sign a contract with a promoter who was responsible for supplying the backup band and amplification equipment. He’d arrive in a Cadillac, also supplied by the promoter, minutes before he was to take the stage. There’d be no rehearsal, no interaction with the band, and he’d demand payment in cash before performing. Berry would count the moola, play for the designated amount of time, duckwalk for the audience’s edification, and bang out the hits for which he was best known. Then he’d exit the stage. If there was an encore, he’d demand additional cash. When the concert was over, he’d pack up his guitar and make a clean getaway.

Generally, the audience loved it, dancing, cheering and having a fine time. Berry made money, the promoter usually made money, and the audience left satisfied. The late Rick Nelson summed it up best in his hit “Garden Party”: “Someone opened the closet door and out stepped Johnny B. Good,/playing guitar like ringing a bell, and looking like he should.” Ray Kroc would have been proud — Berry cooked up musical cheeseburgers, each one a tasty clone of its predecessor. Consistency was the key.

All of which was fine and dandy with American audiences. But there was one overawing problem: Chuck Berry. He was irascible, mercurial, essentially unknowable, and had an affinity for trouble. After serving his time in juvie and achieving fame as a rock ’n’ roller, he began traveling the county with a 14-year-old Native American girl he claimed was his assistant. The cops weren’t buying it and nailed Berry for violating the Mann Act — transporting an underage female across state lines for immoral purposes. He spent two more years in prison. Then the IRS began tracking the cash Berry received for his performances and nailed him for income tax evasion, and late in his career he was busted for installing covert cameras in the restrooms of a restaurant he owned, an act of voyeurism that gave rise to an investigation that uncovered a trove of pornographic material in which Chuck Berry was the star.

As Berry’s antisocial behavior was becoming common knowledge, he was being roundly honored by the American public. On Whittier Street in St. Louis, the National Register of Historic Places listed his home as a monument, and after his release from prison for violating the Mann Act, NASA blasted gold-plated recordings of Berry’s “Johnny B. Good” into interstellar space aboard Voyagers 1 and 2. (Voyager 1 is now 14.1 billion miles from Earth, a far distance from the prison cells Berry occupied in the ’60s and ’70s.) His IRS indictment was greeted with a universal shrug, and his voyeurism conviction was likewise ignored by the press. Chuck Berry went right on performing and raking in the big bucks, playing out the string until the bitter end.

Smith has included all the facts: the good, of which there’s little enough; the bad; and the ugly, of which there’s plenty. Two questions remain. First, who was Chuck Berry? Did anyone truly know the man? Berry explained his sense of self in an interview: “This is a materialistic, physical world. And you can’t really KNOW anybody else, man, because you can’t even really know yourself. And if you can’t know yourself then sure as hell no one else can. Nobody’s been with you as long as you and you still don’t know yourself real well.”

The second question is more complex, encompassing the American penchant for revering individuals, whether rich, talented or charismatic, who are given to violating legal and social norms. Are we willing to accept outrageous behavior from unrepentant religious leaders, corrupt politicians and wayward rock ’n’ roll stars because they’ve somehow made themselves infamous? Apparently so. After all, nothing is quite as American as hypocrisy. PS

Stephen E. Smith’s latest book, Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us, is available from Kelsay Books, Amazon and Local bookstores.

2023 Department Omnivorous Reader

In the Spirit

Cognac, Pisco and Applejack

Here’s the story ’bout a spirit named Brandy

By Tony Cross

The other day I was watching Anders Erickson on YouTube, and he was demonstrating how to make the brandy crusta — a classic cocktail that I haven’t whipped up in almost a decade. It got me thinking about the different types of brandy that have been sitting, untouched, in my cabinet. Let’s discuss.

First, what is brandy? Simply put, it’s a spirit distilled from fruit. Cognac, for example, is produced in the Cognac region of France. There are six sub-regions, or appellations, where the grapes are grown. The grapes are fermented after being picked and then double-distilled in copper pots. The “eau de vie” is then aged in oak barrels. Cognac is classified in three different categories: VS (Very Special/Superior), aged for at least two years in oak casks; VSOP (Very Special/Superior Old Pale), aged for at least four years in oak casks; and XO (Extra Old), aged for at least six years in oak casks.

Pisco, another type of brandy, is native to parts of South America, Peru in particular, and is made by the distillation of grape juices and musts (the pulp and skins of crushed grapes). There was a time, long ago, when pisco was the only spirit you could get in the western United States. In Meehan’s Bartender Manual, bartender and author Jim Meehan explains: “Pisco Punch became legendary thanks to Scottish barman Duncan Nicol, who purchased San Francisco’s historic Bank Exchange Saloon — with its house punch recipe — in 1893 and kept it a secret, despite fanfare and public prying, until his dying day in 1926.” Some speculate that Nicol’s secret ingredient wasn’t just the gum arabic, it was cocaine. Meehan says, that might “explain why he permitted only two portions per patron.”

Another type of brandy, this one native to the United States, is apple brandy. An argument can be made that apple brandy has just as much claim to be America’s spirit as bourbon whiskey. Laird & Company, originally based in New Jersey, has been making brandy since the 1700s. Laird’s bonded apple brandy adheres to the same set of standards required for bonded whiskey, yielding a rich, deeply aged, spicy spirit. In addition to apple brandy, there is applejack. This spirit is traditionally produced by freezing distillation, known as “jacking.” Modern applejack is usually a combination of apple brandy and a neutral grain spirit (a 30 percent to 70 percent ratio). France has its own version of apple brandy, called Calvados. Produced in the Calvados region of France, it’s defined by production and aging regulations similar to those for cognac and Armagnac. It tends to have a crisp apple flavor with loads of barnyard funk.

In his YouTube video, Erikson says he never thought much about the brandy crusta because he felt it was more about the presentation than the ingredients in the cocktail itself. That resonated with me. I remembered making the cocktail and thinking that the whole thing was kind of silly. It’s one of the only cocktails that you garnish before you prepare the drink. The copious amounts of sugar crusted on the rim (hence the name) was kind of a turn-off for me. Erikson confessed that if it wasn’t for this cocktail, he would have never tasted the drink that turned him on to bartending — the Sidecar. (Another classic cocktail with links to the brandy crusta.) The lesson I learned is to respect all of the classics — even if it’s not your thing. So, without further ado, here’s Anders Erickson’s recipe:

Brandy Crusta

Take a large lemon and (with a Y-peeler or other peeler) peel around the entire fruit. Cut the lemon in half. Rim a coupe glass with the open half of sliced lemon; dip the rimmed coupe in sugar (don’t skimp). Carefully curl the long lemon peel all along the inside of the glass.

2 ounces Pierre Ferrand 1840 cognac

1/4 ounce Pierre Ferrand dry curaçao

1/4 ounce Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur

1/4 ounce semi-rich simple syrup (1 1/2:1 sugar/water)

1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

2-4 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker, add ice, and shake hard for 15 seconds. Double strain into coupe glass. PS

Tony Cross owns and operates Reverie Cocktails, a cocktail delivery service that delivers kegged cocktails for businesses to pour on tap — but once a bartender, always a bartender.

2023 Department In the Spirit

Sporting Life

A Sentimental Mood

Riding the wave of memories

By Tom Bryant

“Things,” the Old Man said, “certainly ain’t like they used to be. It’s the penalty we pay for getting wise. About the time a man decides what he likes or don’t like, either he can’t find it, can’t afford it , or can’t handle it.”

—Robert Ruark from The Old Man and The Boy

I was feeling a bit nostalgic the other day, sitting around the house, not doing much of anything. Linda, my bride, was visiting a couple of her longtime friends in Burlington, so I was sort of at loose ends. To have something to do and to get my mind off yard work, which I really needed to do, I decided to ride down to the little farm I lease for hunting to see if the doves were flying.

The weather was unsettled, threatening thunderstorms later in the day, so I was in no hurry to get to the farm. As I drove by the location of our old high school, I made an impromptu turn into the drive that led to the little rise where the ancient halls of learning once stood.

The night before, realizing that our high school class reunion was coming up, I pulled out my aged annual from 1959, The Timekeeper, and flipped through the well-worn pages. So I was in just the right sentimental mood to look around the location that had shaped so many young lives, mine included.

Of course the high school was long gone, having been demolished in the ’60s when consolidation of schools became the touchstone of the new education system; but the elementary school, gymnasium and auditorium were still there, although vacant and desolate.

There were a couple of Aberdeen police officers standing around a K-9 pickup truck, and I remembered reading in The Pilot that they were using the school for training purposes. The other buildings were locked and battened down tight. I eased by the officers, waved and continued out the far drive. On the way, I noticed that the shop building, where Mr. Farrior tried to teach us how to use an electric saw without losing several important digits, was still hanging on the side of the hill. It seemed to be in remarkably good shape.

Where have all the years gone, I wondered, as I drove down the little road that led to the old football and baseball fields. We had a good year in football in 1958, our first year playing 11-man football. Up till then we had competed in six-man ball, almost another sport entirely. In ’58, out of 10 games, we won five. Our losses were close with the exception of our game with archrival Southern Pines, 26 points for them, zip for us.

When I pulled up beside the embankment of the vacant sports fields, I paused, got out of the Cruiser, leaned against it and looked out over the green acres that meant so much to so many budding young athletes. The football field and the baseball diamond were adjacent, efficiently utilizing the space as only our head coach, Hugh Bowman, could do. Now the fields were smaller. The tree line had crept in over the expanse where we used to play, and I couldn’t recognize where the two fields used to be. I understand that the small grassland expanse remaining is used for soccer.

Later, Robbie Farrell, the longtime mayor of Aberdeen, told me by phone that Aberdeen has big plans for the gym and the auditorium that the city purchased from the school system, but the old elementary school and the fields behind it would be sold to developers who would probably use the space for housing, closely supervised by the zoning and planning folks of the city.

Robbie also graduated from Aberdeen High School and has been a prodigious supporter of anything Aberdeen, probably the reason he has been the unopposed mayor for so long. It was a pleasure talking to him and reminiscing about the old days.

There have been several reunions of the class of ’59 since that momentous day when we walked confidently out of those small halls of learning into the real world. At one of those get-togethers, a good friend and I wondered why high school remembrances mean so much when other events, probably much more influential in our lives, didn’t seem to be as important.

“Tommy, I think it’s because in those days, especially at our small Aberdeen school, we were almost like family,” he said. “We knew each other, we knew all of the faults and qualities of each and every one, real or perceived, and it was a pivotal time in our lives. Those days, like them or not, meant something.”

So here we go. Another, perhaps the last, reunion for the class of ’59 because so many of our group have already crossed the river, a trip we will all make. But I keep remembering the closing to a column I wrote about one of our reunions over 20 years ago:

“In the late ’50s, the country seemed to pause and take a break from the horrors of the ’30s, ’40s and early ’50s. The Depression was over, World War II and the Korean War had just ended. It was as if we were riding the crest of a huge wave, not knowing when or where it would break. Around the bend were the ’60s and flower children, drugs you couldn’t buy in a drugstore, the Cold War, and a heated one by the name of Vietnam. But in the summer of 1959, I was cruising in a 1957 Chevy with all the windows rolled down and the radio turned up to The Tams and beach music. I had just graduated from Aberdeen High and was ready to take on the world.”

It has been a while since that day in 1959, cruising in the Chevy, nothing any more important on my mind than college and playing baseball. A lot of water has flowed under that proverbial bridge, and there have been some bumps in life’s road along the way; but all in all, as we get closer to the end of the trip, it has been a good ride. PS

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

2023 Department Sporting Life

Focus on Food

Pancakes à la Einkorn

Welcome to the world of ancient grains

Story and Photograph by Rose Shewey

Crêpes, the slender, graceful cousin of the pudgy, all-American pancake, used to be the unrivaled god in my Olympus of all things batter-fried. With a culinary frame of reference of an expat and, well, a tad bit of ignorance, I had a lingering prejudice against pancakes for a long time. Put yourself in my shoes. Aside from the fact that a pancake seems to be just ordinary cake posing as a breakfast food, to the untrained eye, they appear a bit clumsy (if not to say uninspired). If you haven’t had the satisfaction of tasting properly prepared, made-from-scratch pancakes (I had the misfortune to be introduced to pancakes from a box mix), it’s not totally unreasonable to be skeptical of the legitimacy of this cake-like meal. Unjustly so, as lovingly home-crafted pancakes, artfully stacked and creatively topped, are a revelation in all their pillowy, puffed-up goodness. Though I have only recently begun to incorporate pancakes into our brunch routine — I still find them a bit heavy for breakfast — what absolutely sold me is making them with einkorn flour.

Einkorn wheat is an ancient grain believed to be the oldest and purest food around. Unlike modern grains, einkorn was never hybridized and contains fewer anti-nutrients, such as gluten. Folks who have a mild gluten sensitivity are often able to consume einkorn because of its gluten profile, which differs in quality from modern gluten.

While you can substitute einkorn for all-purpose flour, I found it best to start out following dedicated recipes to get a feel for this unique flour. Einkorn pancakes are an easy, fail-proof introduction to the world of ancient grains. It adds a nutty flavor and aids in keeping pancakes as fluffy as they need to be. Watch out crêpes, pancakes are on the rise! Pun intended.

Chocolate Einkorn Pancakes with Cherry Sauce

(Makes 4-6 pancakes)

Cherry Sauce

1 tablespoon arrowroot powder

1/4 cup water

1 pound fresh or frozen pitted cherries

4 – 6 tablespoons sweetener, such as honey, maple syrup or granulated sugar, to taste

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

In a small bowl, whisk together the arrowroot powder and the water to create a slurry. Set aside. Add cherries, sugar (start with less sweetener and add more later, if desired) and lemon juice to a large pot and bring to a boil. Add the slurry while stirring continuously and simmer until the sauce thickens; for a bright red sauce, take off the heat now or keep simmering for 5-7 minutes for a more homogenous, cooked-through cherry sauce.

Einkorn Pancakes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose einkorn flour

3 tablespoons cacao powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk or full-fat milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 tablespoon melted butter

2 tablespoons honey

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Add the remaining ingredients to a separate bowl and mix with a hand mixer until frothy. Add the dry mixture to the liquid mixture and stir until the batter is smooth. Allow batter to rest for a few minutes, as einkorn is slow to absorb liquid. Heat a skillet over medium heat, add desired amount of batter (about 1/4 cup) and cook on one side until the edges look done and the center bubbles up, then flip for a brief moment to finish cooking. Serve right away with toppings of your choice. PS

German native Rose Shewey is a food stylist and food photographer. To see more of her work visit her website, suessholz.com.

2023 Department Focus on Food

Golftown Journal

Three of a Kind

Keeping Pinehurst in good hands

By Lee Pace

Photographs by John Gessner

Think of it: Trump Pinehurst. JW Marriott Pinehurst Resort. Omni Pinehurst. Imagine checking your brokerage account for HLT and wondering if the Hilton chain stock got a nice bump during the weeks Pinehurst was hosting the U.S. Open. Oh, what could have been — and thankfully has not.

Consider this: Pinehurst (the resort and club) is 128 years old. It has had three owners. Three. In a golf industry expected to crest $41 billion by 2025 and with mergers and acquisitions flying like golf balls on Maniac Hill, Pinehurst has remained safely ensconced in private hands, never having to make its quarterly nut.

Certainly, it’s not all been peaches and cream, particularly those two years in the early 1980s when a consortium of banks was in charge after Diamondhead defaulted on its loans. Depressions and recessions generated some heartburn.

Trivia question: What do soda fountains, shipping containers and country club management have in common? Those were the arenas in which entrepreneurs that would eventually own Pinehurst generated their fortunes. James Tufts, Malcom McLean and Robert Dedman Sr. each grew from modest means to fabulous business success.

Tufts was born in 1835, grew up in the Boston suburb of Charlestown, and at age 15 was apprenticed in an apothecary shop. He established his own shop by age 21 and soon expanded to five stores. He recognized the soda fountain was a key part of what would become the modern drugstore, with customers not only buying medicine but also the drinks and ice cream concoctions from the Italian marble and silver-plated foundation apparatus.

When he was 27, Tufts developed and began manufacturing and selling the successful Arctic Soda machines through his new venture, the Arctic Soda Fountain Company. And since parts of his popular fountains were silver-plated, that led him to manufacture an extensive line of silver-plated pitchers, dishes and table accessories. Many of these items, including an Arctic Soda machine, are on display at the Tufts Archives in Pinehurst.

He became the first president of the American Soda Fountain Company through a merger in 1891, and with his wealth and business success secure, he turned his focus to other pursuits and philanthropy. The concept that became Pinehurst was the result of him wanting to create a resort in the southern United States for those like him of frail health to escape the bitter New England winters.

Golf was not part of the original vision that opened in late 1895, but it came to his attention in 1897 that guests were hitting small rubber balls with wooden sticks around the dairy fields and, in the process, aggravating the cows. Tufts built nine holes as a lark in 1898, enlisting the help of Dr. D. LeRoy Culver, a Southern Pines physician who was an avid golfer, had played in England and Scotland, and understood the gist of what a course should look like. “A nine-hole golf course has been laid out after the famous St. Andrews, near Edinburgh, Scotland,” The Pinehurst Outlook reported in February 1898.

And the dominoes started falling.

Tufts died in 1902 of heart disease, and the evolution of Pinehurst remained in the hands of his son Leonard and three grandsons. In the late 1960s, the aging of that third generation, the specter of inheritance taxes and the need to spend millions of dollars to upfit what was an aging resort in a time of rapid growth of the golf industry led the Tuftses to sell the resort and club. They found a buyer in a man who grew up 30 miles away and had just collected $160 million for selling a company that had revolutionized the shipping industry.

Malcom McLean grew up on a farm near Maxton, graduated from high school and went directly into business for himself, purchasing a used pickup truck for $120 with savings from his gas-pumping job. He and two of his six siblings — sister Clara and brother Jim — then opened McLean Trucking Company, expanding their fleet and hauling crops from farm to market, and empty tobacco barrels from market back to farm.

Another early job during these mid-1930s formative days of what would become the second largest trucking firm in the country was in Pinehurst. McLean had the account of Pinehurst Inc. to haul guests’ luggage from the train station in Southern Pines to the hotels in Pinehurst.

Frustrated in 1937 by having to wait days at a New Jersey dock to unload his cargo of cotton onto a ship bound for Istanbul, McLean groused “there must be a better way” than loading a ship with cargo piece by piece. The idea fomented for two decades until he acted on his instincts in 1956 — that of designing cargo containers that could be easily separated from the truck bed and then neatly stacked on a ship designed to haul hundreds of containers at a time. He bought a fleet of old tankers, converted them to cargo ships and was off on his next venture, one that would revolutionize the shipping industry.

The eventual sale of Sea-Land Service Inc. to R.J. Reynolds in 1969 made the McLeans multi-millionaires. One of McLean’s sidelines was the resort and residential development concern that he named the Diamondhead Corporation, and that had projects underway in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. He remembered Pinehurst fondly from his luggage hauling days and eventually bought the resort from the Tuftses on Dec. 31, 1970, for the price of $9.2 million.

Diamondhead expanded the golf offering, building course No. 6 in the mid-1970s, creating the new World Golf Hall of Fame, and getting Pinehurst No. 2 back on the PGA Tour from 1973-82. It also embarked on an aggressive home-building expansion, with one ill-conceived and hideous idea to build condominiums within the No. 2 course that was thankfully thwarted by a lawsuit. In time, the company lost the resort to bankruptcy proceedings, opening the door for Dedman to step in in 1984.

Dedman was a self-made billionaire who worked his way from the farmland of Arkansas to law school and on to creating a business that owned and operated country, athletic and city clubs around the world. He was working as in-house counsel for Dallas oilman H.L. Hunt in the mid-1950s when he perceived an opportunity to spread the country club concept beyond the 1 percent of elite citizens. He saw hundreds of thousands of potential homebuyers and members amid the masses of people now working, earning a good living and raising families in the post-war ’50s.

Dedman soon learned of the inefficiencies inherent in the operation of clubs, most of which are governed by committees of members. They are experts in their chosen fields — doctoring or lawyering, for example — but limited in their expertise of club business. One of his favorite sayings was, “For God so loved the world that he didn’t send a committee to save it.” He brought systems and procedures to running his clubs. By bundling its buying power across dozens of clubs, his company found significant savings in purchases from fertilizer for golf courses to food for dining rooms.

Club Corporation of America eventually would own and operate more than 200 clubs total and have assets of more than $1.6 billion. Dedman died in 2002, and his son, Robert Jr., took over. The Dedman family sold its interests in what had become ClubCorp in 2006 but kept Pinehurst.

“Where would this place be if not for Robert Dedman?” Jim Hyler mused during his 2010-11 tenure as president of the USGA. “He might have been the one man in golf at the time who could pull it off. He literally saved the place.”

“The Dedmans are the ‘anti-Wall Street,’” added Mike Davis, the USGA’s executive director from 2011-21. “They don’t think about the next quarter. They think long term. You cannot put a value on that. We simply don’t have another relationship like the one we have with Pinehurst. They genuinely care about the game of golf, preserving and protecting the game.”

Tufts to McLean to Dedman. Interesting to ponder over the next year as the new Golf House Pinehurst opens and Pinehurst No. 2 plays host to its fourth men’s national championship. PS

Chapel Hill based writer Lee Pace has written extensively about Pinehurst since the late 1980s and has authored a half dozen books on Sandhills area golf. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @leepacetweet.

2023 Department Golftown Journal

Southwords

Letter to Charlotte

By LuEllen Huntley

She’s cute the last time we shop for groceries, wearing pressed jeans with a sparkle button jean jacket, exactly hemmed. Hair washed, set and combed the way she likes it. After putting almost everything on her “list” into our cart, she needs a restroom break. When she comes out, she’s forgotten it all. I show her our cart, nearly full. She wants to start over with all the things on the list. This is how it goes, sooner or later. Our grocery shopping together ends this day. I take over writing down the grocery items on her notepad at home, but a time comes when even the list doesn’t matter anymore.

Three years before our last shopping trip, during a daily visit, she says, “I’ve written a birthday letter for Charlotte’s second birthday.” Charlotte is her first great-grandchild. She has four grown children, four adult grandchildren, and by the time she writes her letter to Charlotte, three great-grandchildren. She has seen pictures of her two great-grandsons, but Charlotte is the only one she’s held in her arms. She occupies her mind that day. “I want you to keep this and give it to Charlotte’s parents when she’s 11,” she says.

Her mind has not yet betrayed her, but it will. Sooner than we dare to think. She looks me in the eye when giving directives, as she always does. Her commanding codes, spoken and unspoken, reflect her resolve, an attribute refined from teaching elementary school. Her handwriting on the envelope — meticulous as ever — betrays what I know. She’s written this over and over again for perfection.

I’m charmed by my mother’s unquestioning trust in me as her courier. Although it’s been a gradual shift, our roles as mother and daughter have reversed. And here she is, having completed an assignment she has given herself, sharing wisdom with her great-granddaughter, and honoring me to be the messenger. It’s a sacred trust. My father, her high school sweetheart, passed away seven months before and she’s carrying on. In private, I know she suffers. We all do.

In August 2022, eight years after my mother writes her letter and more than two years after she, herself, has passed away, I send it to Charlotte’s parents. It’s her 10th birthday. It’s written on two notebook pages, front and back. Her voice is in every line. She tells Charlotte she knows what it’s like to be young and to want to be admired but to understand that she already is. Walk proudly, she says, and that when hard times come faith will see her through, just as it did her.

On August 21, 2023, Charlotte will be 11. When she reads the letter from her great-grandmother, her brown eyes will grow wide. Written in the past, it’s delivered in the present to the future, from an old soul to a young one. Ink on paper. A list for life. PS

LuEllen Huntley, associate professor emerita in the UNCW Department of English, lives in Pinehurst. She is originally from Wadesboro, in Anson County.

2023 Department Southwords

PinePitch

An Inconvenient Truth

Join David Joy as he discusses Those We Thought We Knew, his compelling new novel of a community whose dark underbelly is suddenly revealed, on Friday, Aug. 4, at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Joy’s honors include winning the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award for When These Mountains Burn and the 2018 Southern Book Prize for The Weight of This World. In addition, he was an Edgar Award finalist for best first novel for Where All Light Tends to Go. He’s also the author of Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey. The event is free, but space is limited. Go to ticketmesandhills.com to reserve yours.

If You Can Dodge a Wrench

Create your own underdog story at a fun day of dodgeball and fundraising for the CARE Group programs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 26, at the old Aberdeen Elementary School Gym, 305 Elm St., Aberdeen. The cost is $150 for a team of six plus one substitute player and $5 for a Fan in the Stands pass. Unfortunately Patches O’Hoolihan can’t make it. There will be food trucks, drinks, raffles, contests and prizes. For more information visit www.thecaregroupinc.org/events/dodgeball-tournament.

Pinky Finger Up

Spend the day cruising the Seagrove countryside, sampling teas and pastries, as you discover handmade pottery on Saturday, Aug. 12, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Drink iced tea from Carriage House Tea, sample the pastries from the Table Farmhouse Bakery and Holly Hill Farm, then try homemade treats while stopping at Blue Hen Pottery, Dean & Martin Pottery, Eck McCanless Pottery, From the Ground Up, Red Hare Pottery and Thomas Pottery. It all takes place on N.C. Pottery Highway 705, Seagrove.

First Friday

And when you’re finished listening to David Joy, walk down the block — or up the block, depending on if you’re right side up or upside down — to hear Caitlin Krisko and The Broadcast perform from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Aug. 4, on the First Bank Stage at Sunrise Square, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. All the usual rules apply. Leave Cujo at home. There will be beer on tap and food trucks to feed your inner Homer Simpson. For information call (910) 420-2549 or go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Live After Five

The hits keep on happening when Heads Up Penny performs from 5:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. at The Village Arboretum, 375 Magnolia Road, Pinehurst, on Friday, Aug. 11. Bring lawn chairs, blankets and the unbridled will to dance barefoot in the park. There will be children’s activities and food trucks. Beer, wine and additional beverages will be available for purchase. Picnic baskets are A-OK, but outside alcoholic beverages are not permitted. Julia Golden is the opening act. For more information call (910) 295-3642 or go to www.vopnc.org.

2023 Department PinePitch