Category: August 2017

By Bill Fields

For decades, any time I came home, I went out to the street on a scouting mission. At 10 o’clock opposite the end of our driveway, “RICKY 67” was written on the curb in white paint. That bit of Sherwin-Williams graffiti was a stubborn remnant of childhood, and when the sun and the rain eventually erased it like chalk off a blackboard, its absence saddened me.

The boy who scrawled his name 50 years ago was one of Chuck’s older brothers. To see his mark was to be reminded of Chuck, my first best friend, who from kindergarten — if we had gone to kindergarten in that less structured period — through middle school was a frequent companion and valued confidante.

I don’t remember when Chuck and I met, only that he was always there, the boy my age in a family across the street whose ranch house had a basement and a gloriously large backyard where we played until we were tuckered out.

Chuck’s mom, a kind person who never tired of my presence, fueled us with two food groups, Kool-Aid and grilled cheese sandwiches, the sugar in the pitcher and butter in the pan in amounts still probably best not to know. We would gulp and wolf down our sustenance so we could get back to whatever we were doing. When Chuck was called in to sit down for a proper supper, he returned with the speed of an Olympic sprinter, as eager as I was for more play.

I hated sunset because that meant having to retreat to our respective homes for a night of sleep until we could reconvene. This was a year-round angst but particularly acute in summer, when the days were long and we spent so much time together it was as if I had a brother to go with my two older sisters.

Chuck was taller and more athletic than me, although when I was late in learning to ride a bicycle, he patiently let me apprentice behind his house, where I could fail in private and fall on sand instead of the shin-scraping asphalt of our avenue. He was tougher, too, owing in part to having three older brothers, and bounced back quickly from a baseball to the head after a little witch hazel. Chuck’s composure contrasted with my dramatics when his family’s dachshund bit me on the hand.

Before sports filled our time together, we spent hours in Chuck’s backyard playing in the dirt with Tonka trucks and toy soldiers under the shade of a large sycamore tree — later from which a subsequent occupant of the house fell and broke a leg — and I don’t think coal miners were more ready for a bath than we were after an afternoon of scale-model construction and maneuvers.

We shared Archie comics, Super Balls and an urge to swing an old Jimmie Fox signature bat — too heavy, but made you feel like a big-leaguer — among the sports gear stashed on Chuck’s back porch. As with any boys born in the 1950s, baseball occupied much of our time. We loved clipping out box scores (if pressed, I can probably still recite the Giants vs. Cardinals, circa 1968) and pitching a tennis ball at a garden cart propped up by the steps, the length and quality of the carom dictating hit or out.

There was plenty of batting practice as well. Only because I faced him so often in the neighborhood and he had excellent control, Chuck was the only Little League pitcher I came close to figuring out. My command wasn’t as good, and during one Braves-Dodgers game in which I was hapless on the mound, I plunked him in the back.

Chuck forgave me for that wild pitch, but before long my fast friend was my past friend — at least in terms of the tight relationship that proximity had helped nurture. Before we entered high school, circumstances caused Chuck’s family to move to another part of Moore County. We began to move in different circles and developed new buddies. I know little about Chuck’s life beyond the boyhood we shared so happily in my memory and I hope in his.  PS

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

August Books

Turning up the heat

 

By Romey Petite

The Doll Funeral, by Kate Hamer

The author of The Girl in the Red Coat, an Amazon Best Book of the Year (2016), returns with a new novel continuing themes of mothers and daughters and missing children. On Ruby’s 13th birthday, her dream comes true — she discovers that the loathsome Mick and his placating wife, Barbara, are only her adoptive parents. Packing a suitcase, she sets out in search of her real mother and father, venturing into the Forest of Dean with her intangible friend, the Shadow boy. There, Ruby finds a new family among three siblings — Tom, Elizabeth and Crispin. Told through the perspectives of Ruby, her mother and the Shadow boy, Hamer’s languid, yet delicious prose will be a delight for any adult who grew up reading Roald Dahl’s Matilda or Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. Overall, The Doll Funeral is a triumph of the uncanny and a voyage back into the strange, shifting threshold between childhood and adolescence.   

The Half-Drowned King, by Linnea Hartsuyker 

Young Ragnvald has come of age and looks forward to assuming his rightful role in Viking-era Norway after returning from Solvi’s raids in Ireland. He’ll reign as chieftain of his late father’s lands — and set about finding a good and kind husband for his beloved sister Svanhild. There is just one problem; the siblings’ stepfather, Olaf, has no intention of surrendering the property. Olaf arranges to have Ragnvald betrayed by his fellow raiders and is left to drown among sea goddesses and mermaids. Rescued by a fisherman, Ragnvald makes an alliance with Harald of Vestfold — a prophesized king. Meanwhile, Svanhild contemplates an expedient marriage to escape her stepfather’s selfish treachery. Blending elements of the plots of Homer’s Odyssey and Shakespeare’s Hamlet while being motivated by her own family’s rich history, debut novelist Linnea Hartsuyker has crafted a thrilling tale perfect for lovers of history, myth or George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

The Readymade Thief, by Augustus Rose 

Lee Cuddy, an elfin girl of 17, is an expert shoplifter and member of a network of homeless kids inhabiting an abandoned structure in Philadelphia known as the Crystal Castle. Operating under the protection of an organization dubbed the Société Anonyme, Lee and Tomi, a boy with an encyclopedic knowledge of hacking and postmodern art, are prompted by the mysterious disappearance of kids from the collective to investigate their shadowy benefactors.  Finding themselves on the run, The Readymade Thief is the opening of a doorway as Lee hurtles into a wonderland of ciphers, puzzles, alchemy, and the subtle genius of Marcel Duchamp. The Readymade Thief is screenwriter Augustus Rose’s first novel — bending genre by straddling the wide worlds between literary fiction and the pulse-pounding thriller. Fans of Marisha Pessl’s Night Film and Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookshop will want to watch out for this one.

See What I Have Done, by Sarah Schmidt

On Aug. 4 of 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts, the Bordens’ family home becomes the scene of the grisly massacre of the patriarch, Andrew, and his second wife, Abby. According to the old rhyme, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.” Through See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt focuses not on what seems rational but on each character’s rationale regarding the interlocking events leading up to the murders and their aftermath. Whatever really happened that day, it’s clear there is much more to the Borden family than the details the sensationalist press and police fixate on. Setting before the reader via four distinct points of view, those of the family maid (Bridget), Lizzie’s sister (Emma), the mysterious jack of trades (Benjamin), and Lizzie herself, Schmidt weaves together a chilling, transfixing tale from start to finish. 

Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat, by Patricia William and Jeannine Amber 

Born to a single mother on the west end of Atlanta, Patricia Williams, a comedian known by the stage name “Ms. Pat,” was 8 years old the first time she learned to steal, encouraged to pinch wallets from drunken houseguests in her granddaddy’s living room, a space that doubled as a bootleg house. Nicknamed “Rabbit” by her mother’s then-boyfriend, by 16 she was selling drugs to support two children of her own. Endowed with a comedian’s gift for creative hindsight, Patricia discovered her penchant for telling funny stories at an open mic night and would go on to make appearances on Nickelodeon’s Mom’s Night Out, the syndicated Bob & Tom radio show, and NBC’s Last Comic Standing. Co-written with Jeannine Amber, an award winning journalist and writer for Essence magazine, Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat is a riveting escape story in which tragedy is transmuted to humor and harnessed as a tool for survival.

Yesterday, by Felicia Yap

Claire and Mark Evans are an unlikely couple. Both have married outside of their class in a society divided not only by familiar hegemonies, but also by what they are able to remember. Mark, a Duo, can remember up to two days at a time, whereas Claire, a Mono, is only capable of recalling the previous 24 hours. For the rest, each has to navigate a crawlspace of memos by relying on careful notes made in their respective iDiaries. After observing Mark reacting strangely to a news report regarding a body found in the River Cam, and subsequently learning the woman was Mark’s mistress, Claire begins to suspect she is being manipulated and sets about attempting to retrieve what she may have conveniently forgotten. Told from the perspectives of Claire, Mark, Detective Hans and the iDiary entries of the victim, Sophia, Yap’s debut novel is part Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and part Jonathan and Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000).

Reincarnation Blues, by Michael Poore 

Milo has lived approximately 9,994 lives and, as such, fancies himself an easygoing, spiritual wiseguy. In his 9,995th incarnation he has reached 50 years of age and is content to have little more to his name than a dog named Burt and a fishing boat christened the Jenny Ann Loudermilk. While swimming in the moonlight along the Florida shore, a healthy dose of the absurd intervenes in Milo’s paradise as the guru is devoured by a shark, and he is immediately spirited once again into the Afterlife that lies between one existence and the next. It is there he is reunited with the acerbic Suzie, the anthropomorphic embodiment of Death and Milo’s one true love. Realizing that he only has four lives left — everyone gets 10,000 chances to achieve cosmic bliss — Milo becomes determined to use his remaining time to find the secret to immortal life so that he and Suzie can be together at last. Michael Poore’s first novel, Up Jumps the Devil, was praised by The New York Review of Books as “an elegiac masterpiece.” Reincarnation Blues is full of the profound, existential, and sublime world-weary wisdom, meandering in tone between Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light and the darkly comic stories of Kurt Vonnegut.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

By Angie Talley

TheMermaid, by
Jan Brett

The beloved author/illustrator of such classic children’s books The Mitten and Gingerbread Baby will publish The Mermaid on Aug. 22.  A stunningly beautiful undersea version of The Three Bears, Brett’s latest tale is sure to be the  book for the fall.  The author will visit Southern Pines on Thursday, Nov. 29, at 5 p.m.  Call or stop by The Country Bookshop for more information on this not-to-be-missed event. All ages.

Motor Goose, by Rebecca Colby

“There Was an Old Tire that Parked in a Shed,” “Bumpty Dumpty,” “Tow Tow Tow the Car.” Young readers are sure to delight in these and other classic fairy tales in Motor Goose, a delightful collection of nursery rhymes retold with cars, trucks and trains as the main characters.  Pair with your favorite version of Mother Goose for a great afternoon of reading fun with a little one. Ages 3-6.

Dogosaurus Rex, by Anna Staniszewski

When Ben and his mom go to the shelter to adopt a dog, they bring home a most unusual pet.  Instead of saying “ruff,” Sadie says, “roar.” Instead of taking a bath in the tub, Sadie takes up the whole lake. And instead of being a dog . . . Sadie is a dinosaur!  When she’s let loose in the town, she shows everyone just how helpful dinosaurs can be. Ages 3-6.

How to Get Your Teacher Ready, by Jean Reagan

In a world brimming with “the first day of school is scary” titles, How To Get You Teacher Ready is a welcome treat.  New kindergartners will love seeing how the students welcome the teacher, making sure she knows where to put her things, how to get extra spaghetti in the cafeteria and especially where to find the bathroom.  Finally, the perfect first-day-of-school book. Ages 4-7.

The List, by Patricia Forde

“Speak your mind.”  Not words to be taken lightly nor taken for granted for the citizens of Ark. In an attempt to control actions, thought and communication through the regimenting of language, their leader, John Noa, has decreed language will be limited to 500 specific words.  The List is a powerful, absorbing book reminiscent of The Giver and The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Ages 12-15.  PS

Change of Place

How the king of the legal thriller became an adopted son of Carolina

 

By D.G. Martin

When John Grisham’s latest novel, Camino Island, hit bookstore shelves in June, it immediately rose to number one on The New York Times best-seller list and stayed there for weeks.

No surprise there. That is what John Grisham’s books do.

But Camino Island is different from most of Grisham’s previous 30 novels. It is not his usual legal thriller in which crimes and mystery intersect with the lives of lawyers and judges.  Lawyers make only cameo appearances in the new book.

Instead, the action is set in the literary world — the world of writing, publishing and selling books. There is also a literary underworld of criminals who steal and sell valuable manuscripts. Grisham still gives us a crime story. But this time writers, readers and booksellers, as well as thieves, take center stage. 

One of the book’s central characters gives it a strong North Carolina connection. Mercer Mann, a writing instructor at UNC-Chapel Hill, is losing her job. She suffers writer’s block as she tries to complete her second novel to follow up her first mildly successful one. Carrying a burden of tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, she is at loose ends. Her desperate situation and some other personal connections make her a prime target to be recruited for an undercover assignment to help recover a stash of valuable stolen papers.

Earlier, a group of clever thieves has broken into the Princeton University library and walked away with the original manuscripts of The Great Gatsby and four other novels written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The papers were insured for $25 million. The insurance company suspects that Bruce Cable, a rare book dealer and bookstore owner, has possession of the Fitzgerald papers. He is the center of a group of writers, fans and book collectors on Camino Island, a small resort community near Jacksonville, Florida.

Somehow investigators for the insurance company learn that Mercer’s grandparents had lived on Camino Island, that their house is still in the family, and that Mercer has been a frequent visitor. The company sends the case’s lead investigator, Elaine Shelby, to Chapel Hill to recruit Mercer. She wants Mercer to go to Camino Island, where she can infiltrate Bruce’s group, make friends with him, and try to learn whether he has the Fitzgerald papers.

In Chapel Hill, Elaine wines and dines Mercer at Spanky’s and the Lantern restaurants, two of the town’s favorites, and, incidentally, not far from the house where Grisham and his wife, Renee, live when they visit their daughter and her family, who live in Raleigh.

Mercer is a reluctant recruit, but Elaine is persistent and persuasive. Elaine’s promise to pay Mercer’s student debt is a clincher. She tells Elaine, “I have sixty-one thousand dollars in student debt that I can’t get rid of. It’s a burden that consumes every waking hour and it’s making me crazy.”

Elaine promises, “We’ll take care of the student loans.” Plus, she offers another $100,000.

Later, when Mercer has doubts, Elaine continues to persuade, “You’re a writer living at the beach for a few months in the family cottage. You’re hard at work on a novel. It’s the perfect story, Mercer, because it’s true. And you have the perfect personality because you’re genuine. If we needed a con artist we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

Sure enough, Mercer becomes part of the group of writers who gather around Bruce and his bookstore. Some of them, Mercer discovers, “are seasoned raconteurs with an endless supply of stories and quips and one-liners. Others are reclusive and introverted souls who labor in their solitary worlds and struggle to mix and mingle.”

As she mingles and mixes, she learns that the popular authors whose books have sold well “longed for critical acclaim, while the literary ones . . . longed for greater royalties.”

Getting to know the writers leads to Mercer getting to know Bruce, the smart and charming owner of Bay Books. He owns a dozen seersucker suits and wears a different color each day. He has persuaded 100 customers to collect signed first editions and to put in a standing order to buy signed copies of the latest book by every visiting author. Bay Books makes big money on the sales, and those sales attract book tour visits by America’s most popular authors.

Bruce does well as an independent bookseller. He does even better collecting and selling rare books and signed first editions.

Is he also making even more money dealing in the dark world of stolen books and papers?

Mercer’s assignment is to get to know Bruce well enough to learn whether he has possession of Princeton’s Fitzgerald papers. By courting and charming him, she ultimately finds the answer.

Meanwhile, he is courting and charming her, too. While she is finding out about his dark world, he prepares defenses to turn the tables on her and the investigators’ plot to prove that Bruce has his hands on the Fitzgerald papers.

So, as the story moves toward an expected ending, Grisham does his usual. He twists the expected into a set of cascading surprises that will fool, entertain and delight his readers, just as he does in his legal thrillers.

Is there more than an entertaining story here? Does Grisham, for instance, want to highlight our country’s growing problem with the student debt that is affecting so many young Americans? He says not. The student debt burden on Mercer, he says, is just a small plot point in the Camino Island story. But, according to Grisham, his next legal thriller, coming out in October, will have overwhelming student debt as a central feature of the new novel’s plot.

North Carolinians love their authors. They love for North Carolina authors to have the kind of success Grisham enjoys. Some North Carolina Grisham fans argue that his growing connections to our state give us grounds to say that he is one of us.

Grisham himself says his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, is his home and that he is very happy there.

However, his North Carolina contacts are substantial. In addition to his house in Chapel Hill, his daughter’s family in Raleigh, and the Chapel Hill scenes in the latest book, he is a Carolina basketball fan. Grisham and popular television host Charlie Rose have an ongoing $100 bet on every Carolina-Duke basketball game.  Rose supports his alma mater, Duke. Grisham bets on Carolina.

On his recent book tour to promote Camino Island, he made only 11 stops. Four were in North Carolina, twice as many as in any other state. Along the way he invited other North Carolina literary giants — Randall Kenan, Jill McCorkle, John Hart, Ron Rash, Wiley Cash and Clyde Edgerton — to discuss their work.

Even if Grisham and his wife are still proud Virginians, we can declare them honorary North Carolinians.

Grisham dedicated Camino Island to Renee. He gives her credit for helping develop the new book’s plot as they were driving to Florida for vacation. They collect rare books and signed first editions. When they heard a radio report about a stolen rare book, they were off and running and had the outline of the book developed before they got out of the car.

I bet they were driving through North Carolina when the idea hit.

John Grisham’s Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction*

1. DO — WRITE A PAGE EVERY DAY

That’s about 200 words, or 1,000 words a week. Do that for two years and you’ll have a novel that’s long enough. Nothing will happen until you are producing at least one page per day.

2. DON’T — WRITE THE FIRST SCENE UNTIL YOU KNOW THE LAST

This necessitates the use of a dreaded device commonly called an outline. Virtually all writers hate that word. I have yet to meet one who admits to using an outline. Plotting takes careful planning. Writers waste years pursuing stories that eventually don’t work.

3. DO — WRITE YOUR ONE PAGE EACH DAY AT THE SAME PLACE AND TIME

Early morning, lunch break, on the train, late at night — it doesn’t matter. Find the extra hour, go to the same place, shut the door. No exceptions, no excuses.

4. DON’T — WRITE A PROLOGUE

Prologues are usually gimmicks to hook the reader. Avoid them. Plan your story (see No. 2) and start with Chapter 1.

5. DO — USE QUOTATION MARKS WITH DIALOGUE

Please do this. It’s rather basic.

6. DON’T — KEEP A THESAURUS WITHIN REACHING DISTANCE

I know, I know, there’s one at your fingertips.

There are three types of words: (1) words we know; (2) words we should know; (3) words nobody knows. Forget those in the third category and use restraint with those in the second.

A common mistake by fledgling authors is using jaw-breaking vocabulary. It’s frustrating and phony.

7. DO — READ EACH SENTENCE AT LEAST THREE TIMES IN SEARCH OF WORDS TO CUT

Most writers use too many words, and why not? We have unlimited space and few constraints.

8. DON’T — INTRODUCE 20 CHARACTERS IN THE FIRST CHAPTER

Another rookie mistake. Your readers are eager to get started. Don’t bombard them with a barrage of names from four generations of the same family. Five names are enough to get started.

*Shared first in The New York Times, May 31, 2017. PS

D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

Quenching a Thirst

Hibiscus tea’s multiple benefits

 

By Karen Frye

In the midst of the summer heat we seek ways to cool off a bit. Often nothing hits the spot like a glass of iced tea. We have been consuming tea for centuries. Much to one’s surprise there exists a lovely tea made from flowers of the specific species of the hibiscus plant hibiscus sabdariffa. The plant originates in Africa. Hibiscus has a deep red color (reminds me of Kool-Aid) and the scent is berry-like. On the palate, tart cranberry dominates your taste buds. Hibiscus is caffeine-free and delicious on its own, hot or cold. It combines well with a little honey for sweetness, or add a splash of your favorite juice or sparkling water.

The medicinal benefit of hibiscus tea is amazing. Some nutritionists believe drinking hibiscus tea on a regular basis may help reduce blood pressure. Participants in a 2008 study of 65 subjects presented to the American Medical Association averaged a reduction of 7 points in systolic pressure. Hibiscus also contains enzymes that can aid in the digestion of food. Drinking a cup of hibiscus tea before a meal may help reduce the absorption of carbs and sugars and assist in losing weight. In addition to blocking sugar absorption, the tea has cleansing and anti-bloating properties and is high in vitamin C.

Hibiscus is enjoyed as a food around the world in various ways. Sometimes it’s candied and used in desserts. In Mexico, it is used in savory and sweet dishes, salsas, enchiladas, and quesadillas.

Basic Hibiscus Tea

Add 1/4 cup of dried hibiscus flowers to 4 cups of pure water (cold or room temperature is fine) in a large jar. Cover and set in the refrigerator overnight. Strain and add honey to taste. Use mint leaves or a squeeze of lime for additional flavor.

Hibiscus Tea Blend

4 cups boiling water

4 teaspoons dried hibiscus flowers

1 teaspoon dried mint

1 vanilla bean

3 cloves

1 cinnamon stick

Pour water over all the ingredients. Steep for 10 minutes, strain. Add local honey for sweetness.

You can find hibiscus flowers in bulk or tea bags at Nature’s Own along with tea ready-to-drink at the juice bar, in addition to hibiscus soda on draft. PS

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

Notes From a Firefly Summer

A message from tiny lights shining in the darkness

 

By Jim Dodson

Early one morning back in late June — the eve of the summer solstice, as it happened — while I was making coffee in the kitchen before sunrise, I heard a small sound of an animal in distress. I stepped out to our carport and found a baby rabbit lying on his back, his feet lightly kicking, as he looked up at me.

I gently scooped up the little fella, wondering how he’d gotten into such a fix. But then it came to me.

He’d been brought home by one Boo Radley, our young tiger cat who was at present missing his collar and bell. This explained everything. Wearing his bell, Boo Radley is a fairly harmless dude on the prowl. Without it, a feline serial killer and menace to small creatures everywhere. He’d been roaming free for a full week without his collar and bell, which also explained the dead yellow finch I’d found on the stone path beneath the feeder out back and buried in the primroses.

Fortunately the tiny rabbit’s injuries appeared slight. As I carried him across the street to a wild area in my neighbor’s yard where lots of rabbits congregate in the evening, I thought about a couple of books about rabbits that helped to shape my view of life.

The first was Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which I still own a copy of, given to me by my mother at a very early age, along with Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. These were the first two chapter books I’d read during the solitary summer days in the small Southern town where my father worked for the newspaper.   

Before I set him down in the tall grass, I gently massaged the baby rabbit between the ears and gave him the only line from Peter Rabbit that I could recall: “Maybe your mother will put you to bed with some chamomile tea.”

Our neighborhood, which is old and heavily forested, teems with rabbits. We see them in groups on our early morning and evening walks with the dogs. I joke that we actually live in Bunnyland, a vast empire of tunnels and warrens where these small brown herbivores who are either considered a nuisance by gardeners or a sign of ecological harmony by tree huggers — and I am both things, by the way — reside in a world of their own, coming out at the corners of the day to munch on clover and grass and any fool’s unfenced veggie patch. Most are so tame you can walk within a few feet of them. 

I freely admit having a soft spot for rabbits, probably because of Peter Rabbit but also because the first living creature I intentionally killed was a rabbit, which I shot one cold afternoon while hunting with my father on Henry Tucker’s farm in the hills west of town. I was 12 or 13. It was late on New Year’s Day. The rabbit stood up as we approached across the stubble of a harvested cornfield, erect as a Presbyterian elder. It was my first hunt. Several young rabbits scampered away in terror but the old rabbit stood his ground on his haunches watching us approach. I leveled my 20-gauge and pulled the trigger without a second thought.

My dad made me take the rabbit home to skin and cook, pointing out his belief that it would be a crime not to honor the rabbit’s life by wasting his flesh. I ate as much of it as I could bear, thinking how, just hours before, this handsome elder of the rabbit race had been out for his last New Year’s walk. Off and on, I dreamed about that rabbit for years.

And I never hunted again.

But I soon learned much more about guns and the brevity of life. When I was 21, my girlfriend was murdered by a 15-year-old kid with a handgun during a botched robbery of a country club in the mountains. Within a few years I was a staffer for the biggest news magazine in the South, covering Atlanta’s record crime wave, interviewing grieving families and coaching a mixed-race baseball team in a city where someone was killing young black kids and tossing their bodies into the Chattahoochee River. The kids on my team and their parents were terrified that they might be next, which is why I drove them home to the federal housing project after practices and games.

During this dark passage of life, I also covered victims of a shooting war on the Texas border with Mexico for a national church magazine, went undercover at a notorious Tennessee game preserve, interviewed convicted murderers, rode with homicide cops, traveled with armed Klansmen and watched a dozen autopsies. One hot August night while walking my dog down our leafy and quiet street in Midtown, I even saw my neighbor shot dead on his porch during a late-night robbery. He was an Emory med student whose promising life went out like a porch light. He died as his hysterical girlfriend and I waited for the emergency medical technicians to arrive. 

Somewhere about that time, I read Richard Adams’s leporine masterpiece Watership Down and decided I’d had enough killing. Days after I turned 30, I pulled up stakes and moved to the banks of a green river in southern Vermont where I rented a small cabin heated by firewood that I split by hand. There, I taught myself to fly fish, procured a pup from the local Humane Society, resumed playing golf and read every book I’d ever meant to read including Watership Down for a second — maybe even a third — time. It became my favorite book.

On summer evenings in the wildflower meadow just outside my cabin door, I’d sit until well after dark watching fireflies dance and rabbits feed. Sometimes the rabbits came right up to my doorstep. Amos the dog was fascinated by them but trained not to give chase. Some grew so unafraid of us they hopped right up to him. I think they thought he might be one very big rabbit.

Years later, when I kept a large flower garden on a hilltop in Maine, I made a silent deal with the rabbits and white-tailed deer that inhabited our forest keep. I planted them a summer garden near a vernal spring at the back of our property, where they fed contentedly through the summer and into the fall. In winter, I trudged out under an Arctic moon to dump 50-pound bags of sorghum on the summer feeding spot. I even made up a fanciful tale about a couple of bumbling black bears called Pete and Charlie who dined in our “Animal Garden,” a tale both my now-grown children vividly recall. Pete and Charlie were part of all our lives, and probably will be for a long time.

Magically — or by random luck — the deer and rabbits never ate my Volkswagen-sized hostas or other tender bedding plants. Ours really was a Peaceable Kingdom.

So what do you suppose is a firefly’s true purpose in this world?

My grandmother, Beatrice Taylor, used to say “lightning bugs” were simply God’s way of reminding us of how brief one’s light shines in this world. She refused to let my brother and me collect them in a jar, citing their fragile dance with mortality.

My own belief is that fireflies are in this world simply to delight and make us pause in a darkening landscape, and remember what childhood felt like, inspiring a true sense of awe over a bug that serenely lights up as it goes its way through the uncertain night. What a living metaphor for how to live your own life.

Whatever else can be said of this firefly summer, regardless of a world beyond the neighborhood and childhood imagination that forever appears to be in danger of coming apart at the seams, it’s been a bountiful season of bunnies and fireflies in our neck of the woods — and kids playing in the dark, too.

The other evening we passed a group of a dozen youngsters of various sizes — toddlers to young teens —  joyfully playing a game my wife and I both loved to play in the long summer dusks of our childhoods. My Southern neighborhood gang called it “Red light, Green Light,” my wife’s Yankee crowd, “Statue.” The name changes but not the basic idea. These kids called their updated version “Night at the Museum.”   

As a central figure shuts eyes and counts out loud, the players attempt to advance “home” without being seen moving when the count is up and the leader’s eyes  suddenly open. Players must freeze like rabbits or statues on the lawn.  As we watched, a tiny barefoot girl was the first to reach “home”, gleefully slapping hands with the older kids.

Just then we heard a mother’s voice calling to her children, another welcome echo of American childhood. Somewhere in the darkness, young Boo Radley was on the prowl again, a world made safer by his new collar and bell. PS

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.