How to Clean a Rug

(And go slightly mad)

By Clyde Edgerton

While I was visiting Hillsborough a while back, my wife, Kristina, called me from our home in Wilmington and asked me to stop by her sister’s house in Pittsboro and pick up a rug cleaning machine. Kristina had moved our couch and rolled up our big rug that needed cleaning.

I’d never seen a rug cleaning machine that I knew of.

I thought things through for about a second and asked, “How much does it cost to just get a rug cleaned?”

I was thinking to myself: I’ll have to drive to get the cleaning machine, take it home, figure out how to use it, maybe get one of the kids to help me, take that big rug out on the back deck, clean it, let it dry, put it back, take the cleaner back to Pittsboro.

Kristina answered my question — told me how much it costs to get a rug cleaned.

Holy Moley. I picked up the cleaning machine — it looks like a very large vacuum cleaner — and brought it home. A YouTube video would explain how to operate it.

My job the next day was to write the first draft of a Salt magazine essay about the Frontier Cultures Museum in Staunton, Virginia. I was hoping to have a first draft done by noon but my new job — before starting the essay — was to clean two rugs (was one, now two) with the help of my 9-year-old daughter, Truma. Rug No. 1 — very large, maybe 8-by-12 — had been peed on several times by dog No. 1. Rug No. 2 — about 4-by-8 — had been thrown up on at least several times by dog No. 2. I picture this conversation happening very early on several mornings within the last month:

Dog No. 1 says: “Are they up yet?”

Dog No. 2 says: “Nope.”

No. 1: “I have to pee.”

No. 2: “Pee in the corner of the living room. In the corner by the table. It’ll be days before they figure it out.”

No. 1: “OK. Would you throw up on that other rug in the play room — kind of keep them distracted?”

No. 2: “Sure.”

Truma and I find the YouTube video telling us how to use the machine. The video is 15 minutes long. The person giving instructions seems to be used to talking in a foreign language and I have problems understanding him, but we finally get through the explanation, including how to clean the machine after cleaning the rug. Some assembly and disassembly are involved. Truma takes notes.

Our first task is to go buy some liquid cleaner. About 6 ounces is to be combined with 2 gallons of warm water in a soft plastic container inside a hard plastic container that will keep dirty water separate from the cleaning solution.

We go to Lowe’s and they don’t have our brand — I’d yet to learn that most any concentrated rug cleaner would work. Duh.

Sitting in the parking lot, I call Home Depot. They don’t have our brand, either. I call a rug cleaning service. They are rude. I call another rug cleaning service, explain that I’m sitting in a hot parking lot in a bit of a jam and this person patiently tells me to go to Food Lion.

At Food Lion, the manager walks with me to the rug cleaning stand and finds a substitute concentrate for me. Truma and I buy it and we start home.

At home, we take the machine apart, load it with warm water and cleaner, then put the machine back together. We spread the smaller of the two rugs on our back deck and Truma starts cleaning. Generally speaking, you go over a portion of the rug while holding a trigger beneath the hand grip. The trigger sprays the rug with cleaning solution and then you go over the same portion of the rug and the machine sucks up dirty liquid.

Truma gets tired. I take over and she goes inside, out of the sun.

I finish the cleaning about time it stops being fun. I hang the rugs over the deck railings, disassemble the machine and, in the driveway beside my automobile, start spraying the plastic parts with water from a hose.

The problem with cleaning the plastic parts is that there is a great amount of dog lint inside one of the see-through plastic parts and — though I don’t remember the video telling me to unscrew anything — I notice that if I unscrew four screws, I can pull that section apart. Seeing that lint is like feeling a little popcorn shell-like thing between your teeth when you can’t free it.

I unscrew the screws and nothing happens — nothing comes apart. Oh. I see four more screws. I unscrew them and the thing falls apart, but the lint is still not exposed in any way.

The screws are lined up on the hood of our car. I start putting the screws back in. A screw rolls off the hood of the car and I hear it plink dully onto the cement driveway. I look. It’s nowhere to be seen. I get down on my hands and knees. One of the dogs comes up and sniffs me. It’s dog No. 1. She will go back inside the house and say, “Clyde is out in the driveway. He thinks he’s a dog. It won’t be long before he’s peeing on the rug.”

I didn’t get started on that essay and I cleaned two more rugs the morning after that.

This could go on a long time.

I now better understand the cost of cleaning a rug.”  PS

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

A Little Bacon Grease, Please

In praise of the olive oil of the south

By Susan Kelly

I miss bacon grease.

My grandmother and my mother — and I, as well, for a while — had a round, silvery metal container on the top of the stove for bacon grease where everyone now has their sea and/or kosher salt bowl. The container held a clever fitted strainer neatly built in, where crispy bits of brown were trapped. These are the bits, my mother says, that make your eggs unlovely if you scramble them up in the same cast iron pan that you cook your bacon in. I have no use for these aesthetics, but it’s easier to answer, “Fine.”

Even less appealing to the eye, beneath the sieve was stuff that resembled pus, but grainier. A semi-solid that wasn’t quite white, but wasn’t quite yellow.

Nowadays, we don’t even cook bacon anymore, or rarely, the big-breakfast must-have that smells so good. We buy it already cooked at Costco and just nuke that baby for your BLT or spinach salad or squash casserole. But at one time bacon grease was king. It reigned over butter, margarine, Crisco, the works. Bacon grease went into cornbread and was an understood ingredient for the pot likker in crowder peas and butterbeans and green beans. You put a dollop in a pan and fried up a hot dog or slice of bologna. Or okra. Heck, you used a cup of the stuff in red beans.

Bacon grease went into the dog food, too. Lab to dachshund, it made their coats shine, or so it was believed. With our dogs drooling over those dry chunks coated with bacon grease, their supper looked so good I nearly wanted to eat it myself.

Bacon grease was the olive oil of yesteryear, though it didn’t come in pretty containers, and you actually had to cook to get it. You couldn’t buy bacon grease at T.J. Maxx, or upscale foodie stores, or the everyday Teeter, for that matter. Still, like olive oil that comes from certain regions or specific orchards, bacon grease had a provenance too: your own kitchen. It wasn’t cold-pressed or extra virgin or truffle-flavored. It was, however, labeled, though not in a foreign language or with pretty, Italianate fonts. The container said GREASE right there in raised, silver, block, all cap letters.

Even purists could throw a little sausage grease in there, too. Neese’s patties are preferred over links, though links are an admittedly more convenient vehicle to dredge, swipe and swish through the syrup left behind by the pancakes and waffles. To this day, I’m still unsure what made me feel more that I’d become a bona fide grownup in the kitchen of my first apartment: potholders, or that store-bought GREASE can.

When it comes to stove-sitting-stuff, salt bowls may be trendier, even healthier, but nothing — including spoon rests and olive oil spritzers — has the personality and presence of a metal grease container. Empty frozen O.J. cans need not apply.  PS

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

School Daze

A learning experience we all share

By Deborah Salomon

I’m not one to skip down memory lane unless it leads somewhere — in September, obviously, to long hallways lined with classrooms and metal lockers.

Back to school: a marketing phrase that exposes layers of emotion. Amazing, at an age when many recollections have begun to blur, school retains IMAX clarity, a permanence drawn with a stick in wet concrete.

Why? Young minds are eager, receptive, soaking up experiences like eggplant soaks up oil. I remember my fourth-grade teacher and classmates better than college professors and sorority sisters. Within these halls I also identify the roots of lifelong fears and pleasures.

The elementary school I attended bore no resemblance to Norman Rockwell’s. We wore uniforms. Teachers didn’t accept apples, and nobody got detention. My mother, a high school math teacher, had high hopes for her only child. So she chose a private girls’ school deemed “progressive” by 1945 standards. I loved it. Classes were small, about 12; French conversation was taught in Grade 1 (great idea); and faculty moved students along as they saw fit. At the end of Grade 2, the headmistress — a formidable dowager with Edwardian bosom, lace collar and a gray nape bun — decided with some tutoring during summer vacation I could take on Grade 4.

The tutoring, implemented by my mother, boiled down to multiplication tables. I resisted, resentful at having to memorize numbers while other kids played outside. She employed tactics I’d rather not mention. During that summer I envisioned, come fall, the entire fourth grade devoted to multiplication when all I wanted to do was read. To this day, flash cards give me hives. To this day, also, I’m wobbly on 12-times. Furthermore (a dark secret), I couldn’t tell time because my parents owned the world’s first digital clock, with wheel-mounted numbers that clicked into place every minute. I was terrified, absolutely terrified. Things worked out, I guess. I only remembered the clock incident when my grandson, spoiled by Velcro, had trouble tying his shoelaces.

By junior high (now called middle school) I lived in a different city on a different planet. Nobody cared about multiplication. Everybody cared about whether you wore bobby sox rolled up or down. The arbiter was the girl with the most sweater sets and the coolest boyfriend.

High school . . . much better. I was a cheerleader when our basketball team won the state championship. Latin made sense. Algebra proved way easier than 12-times; plane geometry, a snap. My English teacher meted out inspiration but took no prisoners. I finally got the sox thing right and had a few cool boyfriends. Then, senior year, my friends’ older siblings, home for Thanksgiving, bombarded us with warnings about college: impossibly difficult, tons of work, heartless instructors, killer exams.

“Just you wait,” was the message.

Again, I was terrified not only by the academics, but because for the first time in my life I would have a roommate. With eight siblings, this was the first time in my roommate’s life that she had only one. She took advantage of the quiet by studying, writing letters and praying. I admired her dedication. We hardly spoke.

Roomie and I split at end of semester. Let’s see . . . what was her name?

The dire warnings about workload guaranteed panic. Worse, I got lost changing classroom buildings on Duke’s two campuses. I misplaced a textbook. Then, after midterms, it hit me: I can do this. Not easy, but possible. I’d come this far, right?

I was an active participant during my children’s school years — mostly as provider of rides, lunches, pocket money, the right jeans. Kids hung around our house for the big, friendly dog and homemade cookies. Pushover mom could be persuaded to drop everything, pile a gang into the station wagon and head for the movies.

September brought relief tempered by envy. Ah, the thrill of flipping through a new textbook, the woody smell of freshly sharpened pencils, the joy at finding the right cartoon-character backpack.

But, unlike some old-timers, I don’t yearn to return. School has changed. Fonzie’s a senior citizen hawking reverse mortgages on TV. Police patrol the grounds. Cursive is hieroglyphics, soda fountains are extinct. Hoodies and “jeggings” replace sweater sets and bobby sox, and every phone multiplies by 12.

This September, however, my interest is rekindled. Back-to-school means law school. After graduating with honors from an accelerated pre-law college program, my grandson will commence studying for his chosen career.

The very idea terrifies me. Not him. He has times-12 down pat and reads an analog clock. He can tie his shoelaces, drive a car, keep a steady girlfriend and make a grilled cheese sandwich. Laptop loaded, apps in place, roommate selected, apartment rented — he’s good to go.

Far, I hope.  PS

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

Don’t Get “Bored”

What’s a squash lover to do?

By Jan Leitschuh

You know the old joke about zucchini in small towns? How you dare not leave your car windows down on the street or some neighbor will kindly donate a bagful of the oversized green vegetables, thanks to their prolific abundance. Maybe that friendly donor was even you.

Well, that never happened here. Not after our first year of gardening.

Sure, that initial garden season, we were flush. The bugs hardly knew we were here. If a person finally licks his or her deer problem (more on that in a later column), what’s left to decimate the summer squash? Vine-killing squash borers, in spades.

Word of our organic venture zapped out swiftly on the bug internet. Now we have well-established borer populations that allow us one — count ’em, one — delicious early flush of zukes, and then they take out the vines at the base like commandos.

Working organically, I had a little luck spraying a kaolin clay barrier product developed for orchards, called “Surround,” but I generally forget to apply it in time. I also plant summer squash in flushes, trying to space out several plantings to have enough to freeze. But you have to remember to do this in a timely fashion.

Squash vine borers (Melittia cucurbitae) are a major problem for organic gardeners. The adult squash vine borer is a colorful moth, 5/8 inch long with orange and black legs. The adult may be mistaken for a wasp in the garden. Young larvae hatch from dark reddish brown eggs and grow to about one inch with a whitish body and brown head.

Borer larvae tunnel into the base of the plant and interrupt the flow of water and nutrients. The larvae feed on plant tissue, hollowing it out, so the plants begin to wither. The homeowner waters, thinking the plants are dry. But the vines don’t perk up, instead continuing to yellow and die. If you cut open the stem of a decimated plant, you may see several. I feed them to the chickens when I can.

What’s a squash lover to do? Squash can help lower blood sugar, being a good complex carb. It’s known for its ability to boost the immune system, help prevent certain types of cancer, improve vision, protect the skin, strengthen the bones, reduce blood pressure, maintain fluid balance, regulate blood sugar and cholesterol, improve digestion, and maintain proper circulation. It’s good stuff, and it’s tasty too. Squash is the ultimate easy side dish, amenable to any number of spices and flavorings.

This is the year I decided to learn about winter squashes. Yes, I could have gone with physical barriers like row covers or wrapping individual stems of my summer squash but, until retirement looms, those efforts will remain spotty.

When I learned the best defense against borers is to plant squash varieties that are squash vine borer-resistant, I started researching. And first on the list was a favorite, a winter squash — butternut.

Waltham Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata) is said to be reasonably tolerant of the vine borer, as are most other butternut types. Showing up as summer drifts into the cooler relief of fall, we love butternut squashes for their wonderful taste, and use them in soups, casseroles and baking. What is easier than halving a butternut, scooping out the little pocket of seeds at the ball end, dropping in some butter or olive oil and microwaving — or better, yet, roasting, to bring out the sweetness?

The flesh of butternut squash is close-grained and sweet-nutty. The beauty of butternut, and its cousin acorn, is that it rises to nearly any flavor occasion.

Want sweet? Sprinkle some cinnamon, brown sugar, rum-soaked raisins, maple syrup, pecans, apples, honey, walnuts, pear-fig sauce, orange zest, peach-habanero jam or any combo of the above that suits your taste buds, and roast for a healthy dessert. Any of these stand in for dessert, or go great with pork as a fall side dish.

Want savory? Any number of spices can change the character of this versatile veggie nightly: curries, cayenne, sage, bouillon stock granules, garlic and olive oil, oregano and hot pepper flakes, thyme, simple salt and pepper. Bake fries from them, smother them in cheese, cram them into chicken stock to make soups. Baked, roasted, caramelized, mashed, cubed, casseroled, shredded and hashed, frittered and fried, there are myriad iterations. Since they will store for many months in a cool pantry, basement or under-cabinet, they’re fine for winter use. Butternuts are also easy to grow so they make good choices for novice, as well as experienced, gardeners. Next year, they will have a place in our garden.

There are other choices beyond butternut. The University of Illinois Extension reports that Blue Hubbard (Cucurbita maxima “Blue Hubbard”) performs best against squash vine borers, followed by the slightly less resistant Cucurbita maxima “Boston Marrow” and Cucurbita maxima “Golden Delicious” varieties of hubbard squash. The extension also reports that two pumpkin varieties, Cucurbita pepo “Connecticut Field” and Cucurbita pepo “Small Sugar” — both heirloom varieties — also perform well. All of these are good keepers and cheerily decorative in autumn displays.

Another Mediterranean heirloom called cucuzzi (Lagenaria siceraria), also known as either the snake gourd or Italian edible gourd — though technically not a squash — is said to be indistinguishable in taste from a sweet squash or pumpkin and is highly resistant to vine borers. The long slender fruit is pale green and twists and spirals like a snake, hence its most common name.

Finally, the hefty, green-striped cushaw (Cucurbita mixta) is an old heirloom and one tough vegetable, grown by native Americans since prehistoric times. Drought tolerant and insect resistant — including the squash vine borer — it’s also reported to be an excellent keeper and great-tasting variety for use in pies or for snacking on seeds. You get your money’s worth with a cushaw squash — they can grow to be massive, though homeowners may wish to pick them smaller. It’s the ultimate winter storage food, so if you get a big one be ready to prepare it all and freeze the rest or serve it up to a crowd.

Here are two simple recipes to render your winter squash meals delicious, however you acquire them.

Winter Squash Caramel

2 medium butternut squash

6 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt

1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Peel and cube squash, removing seeds. In a bowl, toss cubes with the remaining ingredients. Spread in a baking dish and roast for 45 minutes to an hour, turning occasionally, until glaze begins to caramelize. Remove when tender and serve hot.

Easy Spicy-Savory Squash

Using the same prep as above, instead toss cubes with olive oil, thyme, black pepper, salt and a little cayenne pepper. Roast in a baking dish, single layer, covered, for 30-45 minutes, until soft, then stir in 1/4 cup grated Romano cheese. Sprinkle additional cheese on top and serve hot.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

Subtle Notes

And the myriad of flavors from Winston-Salem’s Sutler’s Gin

By Tony Cross

“When are you coming up to Winston-Salem? How does your schedule look for the next two weeks? Any chance you are coming to the Triad area? Either way I need to get Sutler’s Gin into your market very soon.” All are questions from Scot Sanborn, owner and distiller of Sutler’s Gin. Sanborn and I were introduced via email from a mutual friend back in March. We’d been playing tag up until July, when the two of us finally sat down at his distillery and had a chance to talk. When we went our separate ways, I left Sanborn a bottle of my Tonyc and took with me his sleek and sexy bottle of Sutler’s that I purchased. I definitely got the better deal in the exchange.

Although he was born in Boston, Sanborn considers himself a “Southern soul with Yankee blood.” As he relocated to the South as an infant, Charleston, South Carolina, served as his stomping ground as a youth. After graduating high school, Sanborn went on to attend The Citadel, where he received his undergraduate degree, and later, his MBA.

When scanning over his unique bottle of gin, you can definitely see the patriotic influence. Twenty-some years of the commercial photography business followed, but it wasn’t until eight years ago, when Sanborn began experimenting with home distilling, that his passion developed. After making what he calls “horrible tasting spirits,” Sanborn began taking distilling courses, traveling the country, and acting as an apprentice to deepen his knowledge and perfect his craft. Soon after, he left his domestic cocoon of garage distilling and took it to the next level.

Gin is the spirit that has intrigued him the most over the years for a few different reasons. “It’s versatile and classy, and it doesn’t require aging, which means that I knew that I could get it on the market much quicker than other spirits starting out.” He’s also been perplexed as to why gin sales in the South aren’t much higher than they are: “I feel that gin is a spirit that people have forgotten about, but are slowly returning to.” And he’s right: Most folks that I’ve talked to that pass on gin do so because they’re used to London Dry gins, whose characteristics are juniper-forward, or “piney,” as most would put it (think Beefeater’s or Tanqueray). It wasn’t until Hendrick’s went global that people began to rethink their position on the ever-changing botanical spirit.

Delving into a glass of Sutler’s, on the nose I immediately notice the presence of juniper. However, on the palate, the juniper is present, but nothing like a London Dry or as Sanborn calls it “a lack of a ‘punch in the mouth’ Christmas tree flavor.” In fact, I find that the juniper is balanced quite nicely with citrus, and coriander. On the finish, a trace of lavender and Earl Grey tea. I’ve never prided myself on having the best palate so I’m afraid that I’ve had to keep sipping just to make sure that I get this right.

Actually, this is something that Sanborn and I have in common: good, but not great palates. To help him with distinguishing the subtler notes of his labors, Sanborn recruited distiller Tim Nolan. The two met in Winston-Salem a few years ago when Sanborn was building his distillery. Sanborn would cool off next door at a bar/brewery and would chat with Nolan, who managed and was behind the bar. Nolan’s background spans over 10 years in the food and beverage industry, which includes working in New York and studying abroad in Italy. They would always chat, and “during one of these conversations, I realized he was very knowledgeable about gin and I asked if he would like to help me.” After a short apprenticeship, Nolan became a “mad scientist, (and) after almost 11 months of hard work, and making all types of gin, Nolan and I were finally confidant that we had something that was special. I am very lucky to have found someone who is so passionate about gin and other unique spirits. Nolan is a great asset to Sutler’s Spirit Co.”

Even though Sanborn and Nolan can drink the fruits of their labor, they still have other obstacles to overcome. One of them? Moore County. I guarantee that as I am writing this, 99 percent of locals have not purchased a bottle of Sutler’s Gin, and that’s because it hasn’t been available in our local ABC stores.

“Moore County has been quite the conundrum,” Sanborn says. “I would have expected with the demographics of this area that gin would be consumed much more than it currently is. I would like to think that for some reason they have forgotten gin, but will soon remember it.”

After a meeting with the local board in July, it will now. Even though they’re only selling in North Carolina at the moment, Sanborn stresses the importance of getting his gin in every ABC store. “If your local ABC board does not carry it, please request it, and most likely they will be happy to order it for you,” he says.

It’s only a matter of time before Sutler’s Gin makes its way across the Southeast and other parts of our nation. The gin has plenty of depth, with unique packaging to boot. In time, Sanborn and Nolan plan to release a rum that they’ve had barrel-aging for a few years. They’re hoping for a winter release, but nothing’s set in stone yet. In addition to the gin and rum, they’re experimenting with other spirits at the moment. Their gin is delicious, so I’m eagerly anticipating their rum, my favorite spirit. With the work ethic that these two employ, I’m sure it’s going to be nothing short of fantastic. PS

Tony Cross is a bartender who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern pines. He can also recommend a vitamin supplement for the morning after at Nature’s Own.

Pinot Noir Goes Gaucho

Chileans find surprising success with a difficult grape

By Robyn James

Pinot noir: the Holy Grail of wine grapes. It’s finicky, it’s elusive, and it may be the best wine you ever had, or the worst. As the primary red grape of Burgundy, France, be prepared to spend $50 for a low-level basic Burgundy and sell your car to try the best.

It’s a joke in the wine industry that there is no such thing as a “good value” pinot noir. It’s painstaking and expensive to grow this grape that needs vines with age and lower yields at harvest. 

Many love Oregon; California gets a lot of play, and New Zealand has made great strides with the grape.

Ever considered pinot noir from Chile? Probably a resounding no. Fifteen years ago I sampled some Chilean pinot noirs and thought, hey folks, stick to chardonnay, cabernet and carménère.

Pinot noir takes time for vines to age, and winemakers need to find very site-specific areas for the grapes that need a cooler climate, preferably with a maritime influence. Fast forward 15 years, and winemakers have zeroed in on the Casablanca, Maule and Aconcagua Valleys on the coast, brought pinot noir clones from Burgundy and hired Burgundian consultants. The vines are older now, and Chile is off and running with pinot noir. Although pinot noir is only 3 percent of Chile’s total plantings, it has increased 170 percent since 2006. Chilean winemakers have embraced the challenge.

Eric Monnin, a French enologist with experience working in Champagne and Burgundy, splits his winemaking duties between Chile and France. He is the head winemaker for the Boutinot Company and supervises making the El Viejo del Valle pinot noir. He and his team discovered a very old block of pinot noir beneath a volcano in the Maule Valley and picked it to produce this little gem that sells for a ridiculous $9. The interesting label is a reproduction of Chilean street art, and if you look closely you can find the profile of the “Old Man of the Valley” hidden in the art. They describe their El Viejo pinot as “deliciously long, bright, textural pinot from cold, stony vineyards deep in the Maule Valley. Some oak barrel fermentation adds complexity, depth and warm vanilla notes to the finish.”

Don Maximiano Errazuriz founded his winery in 1870 in the Aconcagua Valley. His fifth generation descendants now run this natural quality winery and have named their reserve lines “Max” in his honor. Already located in a great pinot location, a visit to Chile should include Errazuriz. The estate is stunning, and their techniques are first class. This wine was aged in French oak barrels, 15 percent new, for 12 months before release. One of the first Chilean wineries to gain success with pinot noir, the current vintage scored a whopping 90 points from The Wine Spectator. They describe it as “a suave red, with a silky mouthfeel and medium-grained tannins behind the flavors of cherry, plum and hazelnut. The spicy finish is long and rich, revealing accents of sandalwood.” That’s a description and score worthy of a $65 Oregon pinot noir. This winner from Chile is about $17.

August Huneeus, born in Santiago, Chile, has one of the most impressive résumés in the wine industry. He became CEO for Concha Y Toro at a very young age, then came to the United States for a long, successful career. He owns several prestigious wineries in California such as Quintessa (where he resides), The Prisoner, Illumination and several others.

In 1989 Huneeus and his wife, Valeria, decided to venture back into Chile and founded the Veramonte Winery in Casablanca Valley. Their Ritual pinot noir is hand-harvested from the coolest vineyards of their estate, put through a malolactic fermentation and aged in French oak barrels for 12 months. The Wine Advocate gave this $18 wine 89 points, and noted that, “This aims at showing what Casablanca can do as a valley in pinot noir. There are more fruit than herbal aromas here, and this shows nice ripeness, combining aromas of sour cherries with lactic hints and bare traces of spicy oak. The palate is medium bodied with fine tannins, good freshness and the final granite bite in the finish with the oak much better integrated.”

Incidentally, Chile has the same ability as California to allow up to 25 percent of another grape into the wine without noting it on the label. However, all three of our pinots recommended are happily 100 percent pinot noir. “A” for effort, Chile!  PS

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

All Dressed Up

A boy, a dinner jacket and a new chapter in life

By Bill Fields

Late in the afternoon on Saturday, Sept. 3, 1966, I had a small part in a wonderful event. A very small part.

I was, like the mums, gladioli and snapdragons in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church, a decorative touch.

When you’re getting married and have a 7-year-old brother — as was the case with my sister Dianne — you make him a junior usher, a role as vital as being a lifeguard in a parking lot. The groom, Bob, had a much younger sibling (named Bill, too), who also was enlisted for this non-essential duty. So the two of us, in dinner jackets like the rest of the males in the wedding party, gave no one a program and helped no one to his seat.

It was the best standing-around I’ve ever done.

The occasion had been a couple of years in the making, since Dianne and Bob met while students at Wake Forest College. She was a Spanish major, and he was studying biochemistry, which would underpin his esteemed career as a scientist-professor. They are both smart as a whip, with kind hearts, his patience balancing her energy.

It is difficult for me to remember Dianne without Bob because I was so young when they began dating. During their courtship, when Bob came to visit in Southern Pines, I’m sure I occasionally was 4 feet and 60 pounds of pain-in-the-neck when I sneaked up with a water pistol or begged them to come outside and shoot baskets. Any ambivalence about Bob becoming part of the family ended when he gave me my first Matchbox car, a red Ferrari, that made the cheap, tiny metal cars I bought at Pope’s dime store look like true clunkers.

The details from the Summer of the Wedding are hazy, but I remember lots of activity and conversation. The cake was made by Mrs. Bristow, whose house was out on the May Street extension north of town. I knew about “taffy” but wondered what was this “taffeta” that the dresses for the maid of honor (my other sister, Sadie) and the bridesmaids were made of. They were basically Carolina Blue, so whatever the material, that made me happy.

When the big weekend arrived, our house was full of cousins and anticipation. Months earlier the Fields clan had met the Broyles clan in Winston-Salem, a summit of familiarization and approval. The groom’s parents, who lived in West Virginia, put on the rehearsal dinner the eve of the wedding in a private room at Howard Johnson’s in Aberdeen, where the opportunity to have a hamburger and fries chased with an orange Fanta was about all for which a second-grader could hope.

My sister has recalled a sweet moment when she and my father were about to walk down the aisle, toward the altar and a new chapter in her life, and given the flood of emotions wondered if they both could make it. Arm in arm, they did, of course. It was a beautiful ceremony in that small, simple structure on the corner of New York and Ashe that sadly was torn down years ago when the church moved into a larger facility. The vows were followed by cake and punch in the basement fellowship hall that was the junior ushers’ favorite part of the day, followed closely by the throwing of the rice.

Dianne and Bob honeymooned at Fontana Village in western North Carolina. I have a remnant of their trip within arm’s reach on my desk as I type this — the painted stone head of a souvenir tomahawk they brought back for me. They also gifted me a Fontana Dam T-shirt with a cartoon of a bear on the front. I’m wearing it in one of our family’s favorite pictures, all of us posing on a couch suppressing a mighty group giggle.

No marriage is all laughs, but Dianne and Bob have had lots of them in five decades together, a union that has produced two children and two grandchildren, a union that is an example of living well.

It was an honor to be there at the starting line.  PS

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

September Books

By Kimberly Daniels Taws

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles.

This is an exceptional book, likely to be read over centuries, not just decades. The author of Rules of Civility returns with his sophomore novel about Count Alexander Rostov, sentenced in 1922 by a Bolshevik tribunal to spend the rest of his life in the posh Metropol Hotel, once a grand destination for dignitaries. While the circumstances of Russia change around the hotel, the count maintains his elegance through emotional trials, friendships and adventures that are a pure pleasure to read.

Darktown, by Thomas Mullen.

Follow two of Atlanta’s first black police officers as they investigate the death of a young black woman last seen in the company of a white man. Feel and experience the prejudice and hostility they face from their peers, and ride with the one officer who dared to reach across racial barriers for answers and justice.

The Orphan Mother, by Robert Hicks.

The New York Times best-selling author of The Widow of the South returns with another Southern epic story about Mariah Reddick, the former slave to Carrie McGavock who becomes a midwife in Franklin, Tennessee, following the Civil War. After her politically minded and ambitious grown son is murdered, Mariah seeks the truth and is forced to confront her own past. 

A House by the Sea, by Bunny Williams.

Designer Bunny Williams provides a peek into her Caribbean retreat in this wonderful coffee table book. The stunning photographs are punctuated with thoughtful essays by friends on the art of entertaining, gardens and much more. 

Bacon, by Fred Thompson.

The author of Fred Thompson’s Southern Sides joins the “Savor the South” cookbook series with a book on bacon that tracks the humble history and our region’s culinary history. The book includes 56 recipes and wonderful information about this popular treat.

Best. State. Ever. A Florida Man Defends His Homeland, by Dave Barry.

The talented Dave Berry applies his trademark humor to a celebration — and high-spirited defense — of the state he calls home, Florida. From Ponce de Leon to modern weirdness, Barry unmasks, as only he can, what makes Florida great. 

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America, by Patrick Phillips.

Bill Maher writes that Blood at the Root is able to avoid the self-flagellation usually found in similar accounts and, while ugly things in our past history are certainly unpleasant to read about, stirring the dry bones reminds the living how far they have come and how far they have to go.

Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? by Mark Thompson.

After serving as a CEO of a major TV corporation, director-general of the BBC and now CEO of The New York Times, Thompson continues his career in writing with a deeply thought out examination of the distortion of the public language and new trends in public engagement. 

In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox, by Carol Burnett.

Learn about “The Carol Burnett Show” firsthand as Burnett reveals the show’s truths, from its inception to the many hilarious antics of her co-stars and guests, including Lucille Ball, Bing Crosby, Rita Hayworth and Steve Martin. A great read and a reminder that the great comedic talent still has her touch. 

Ingredient: Unveiling the Essential Elements of Food, by Ali Bouzari.

This well-done book is full of pictures and graphs that impart cooking information not widely known. The core of the book is about food in its elemental form. Divided into sections like “Lipids,” “Water” and “Proteins,” this book uses graphs and pictures to explain a seemingly complicated subject in very digestible terms.

Learn to Cook 25 Southern Classics 3 Ways: Traditional, Contemporary, International, by Jennifer Brule.

Brule brings her well-honed recipe testing skills and open, friendly writing to a Southern cookbook that adds modern twists to traditional recipes. 

Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland, by Mariam Horn.

This story looks at five very different professionals tied to the environmental movement. The stories from a Montana rancher, Kansas farmer, Mississippi riverman, Louisiana shrimper and Gulf fisherman all reveal the challenges and powerful myths about American environmental values. 

Ten Restaurants That Changed America, by Paul Freedman.

Photographs, images and original menus are not the only parts of this book that bring 10 restaurants and three centuries in America together. The stories of these restaurants provide a social and cultural history revealing ethnicity, class, immigration and assimilation through the shared experiences of food and dining. 

The Tide: The Science and Stories Behind the Greatest Force on Earth, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams.

Bringing together folklore, scientific thinking and literature, science writer Aldersey-Williams examines the tides and how we have sought to understand and manage them for centuries. 

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

By Angie Tally

Dory Fantasmagory: Dory Dory Black Sheep, by Abby Hanlon.

With best buddies, imaginary friends, a loving mother, a pet sheep from outer space and an imaginary evil nemesis, Dory Dory Black Sheep, the third installment in the Dory Fantasmagory series, really has it all. This is my favorite new chapter book series to recommend to young readers and is perfect for kids who love hearing the Ramona Quimby stories and want something similar to read on their own. Author Abby Hanlon will be at The Country Bookshop at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept 21. Young readers are invited to bring their invisible friends or favorite stuffed farm animals for an afternoon of fun. (Ages 6-10)

Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure, by Ann M. Martin and Annie Parnell. Missy Piggle-Wiggle arrived in Little Spring Valley on a warm spring morning, moved into the upside-down house owned by her great aunt Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, was greeted by Wag the dog, Lightfoot the cat, Penelope the talking parrot and Lester the pig, and quickly took up her family responsibility by helping the neighbors, the Free-for-alls, with their (sometimes) lovely children. Written by the delightful Ann M. Martin and Annie Parnell, the great-granddaughter of Betty MacDonald, the author of the original Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Books, Missy Piggle-Wiggle will delight a new generation of young readers. (Ages 8-12)

Framed, by James Ponti. After most 12-year-olds finish their homework, they play Minecraft or go to soccer practice, but 12-year-old Florian Bates spends his time in a very unusual way: He goes to work for the FBI. Using TOAST, a system of his own devising that stands for Theory Of All Small Things, Florian and his neighbor Margaret help the FBI uncover a foreign government spy ring, assist in the recovery of millions of dollars of stolen paintings, and still makes it home in time for curfew. Readers who love Stuart Gibbs’ Belly Up, E.L. Konigsburg’s Mixed Up Files or Elise Broach’s Masterpiece will love this first in what promises to be a delightful fun mystery series. (Ages 9-12)  PS

Updike Redux

A collection of 186 stories and a new biography are a chance to reexamine a remarkable literary life

By Stephen E. Smith

In his biography Updike, Adam Begley quotes from a letter John Updike wrote to his mother while he was a student at Harvard: “We need a writer who desires both to be great and to be popular, an author who can see America as clearly as Sinclair Lewis, but, unlike Lewis, is willing to take it to his bosom.”

Updike was describing the writer he’d become. For more than 50 years his novels, essays, poems and short stories filled America’s bookshelves, and the upper middle class, the culturati from which he drew his characters and themes, received each new volume with enthusiasm.

When Updike died of lung cancer in 2009 (addiction trumped intellect), we were left with 30 novels, 15 short story collections and umpteen books of poetry and assorted prose to appreciate anew. With the publication of Library of America’s quality two-volume edition (a boxed set) and Begley’s biography, Updike, readers have an opportunity to read or reread 186 stories (the Bech and Maples stories are published in separate volumes) arranged in order of publication. Astute readers can correlate the stories with Begley’s exposition of Updike’s richly complex life as an observer and participant in the subculture about which he wrote with extravagance and often shocking excess. Best remembered for his “Rabbit” novels, it’s Updike’s short stories, most of which were published in The New Yorker, that most closely parallel the life he lived.

Begley is quick to point out that few American fiction writers were more autobiographical than Updike — so obsessively so as to raise questions about Updike’s capacity for rational detachment. Readers unfamiliar with his short fiction are forewarned that his dominant theme is betrayal and its resultant complexities. His characters are white, usually Protestant members of the American upper middle class living in southeastern Pennsylvania or New England. His subject is adultery. The operative emotion is guilt, as explained in his 1977 story “Guilt-Gems”: “A guilt-gem is a piece of the world that has volunteered for compression. Those souls around us, living our lives with us, are gaseous clouds of being awaiting a condensation and preservation — faces, lights that glimmer out, somehow not seized, saved in the gesture and remorse.”

Updike is the master of The New Yorker short story, carefully wrought prose narratives with lengthy passages of description and meticulously rendered characters who find themselves unhappy in a world of affluence that encourages the guilty pleasures of adultery. So pervasive is this mindset that in “The Women Who Got Away” the narrator is touched with exquisite regret for potential affairs he failed to consummate: “There were women you failed ever to sleep with; these, in retrospect, have a perverse vividness, perhaps because the contacts, in the slithering ball of snakes, were so few that they have stayed distinct.”    

For all of his literary sophistication, Updike is the most parochial of writers. With a few possible exceptions — most especially his story “Varieties of Religious Experience” (a real clunker) — he wisely sticks to what he knows. Southern readers won’t discover tobacco worms, hogs and banjo-picking rednecks in his fiction (although there’s an occasional working-class hero), and his characters are, after the similitude of their re-embodiment in story after story, possessed of a mildly annoying self-indulgence and an irritating dissatisfaction with bourgeois abundance.

Moreover, the focus on the purely carnal is likely to wear thin when the stories are read without interruption. Even the most voyeuristic of readers are likely to experience a vague unease. Certainly sex has much to do with our lives, but at what point is the committed imagination overwhelmed by irrational obsession? Guilt experienced vicariously may have a temporary exhilarating effect on the reader, but it’s accompanied by a sense of sorrow at having benefited emotionally at the expense of others. This becomes especially apparent when Begley reveals Updike’s serial adultery, a philandering so obsessive that Updike was immensely proud of having made love to three women in one day, all the while living a life in which he remained a civic luminary and held responsible stations in various Protestant churches.

In the final analysis, however, Updike is more than a horndog with a thesaurus. In conveying memorable life moments, true and full of empathy, and producing examples of sense experience used to good effect, he is unsurpassed. The poignant, knifing nuances of life permeate his fiction, as with this typical passage from a pedantically sexual visit to a dental hygienist in “Tristan and Iseult”: “Sometimes his roving eyes flicked into her own, then leaped away, overwhelmed by their glory, their — as the deconstructionists say — presence. His glance didn’t dare linger even long enough to register the color of these eyes; he gathered only the spiritual, starlike afterimage of their living gel, simultaneously crystalline and watery, behind the double barrier of her glasses and safety goggles, above the shield-shaped paper mask hiding her mouth, her chin, her nostrils. So much of her was enwrapped, protected. Only her essentials were allowed to emerge, like a barnacle’s feathery appendages, her touch and her steadfast, humorless gaze.” Updike is tirelessly observant, and any careful reader of his fiction is bound to wonder if there’s an emotion, gesture or technical detail that’s gone unexplored.

Updike’s early stories are a study in the evolution of the great writer he would become, and the later stories are often burdened with excess detail and Jamesian syntactical constructs that leave the reader yearning for a misplaced comma or a dangling modifier. The less ambitious middle stories — most notably those included in the collections “Museums and Women” and “Trust Me” — are varied in subject matter  and more experimental in structure and execution. “The Orphaned Swimming Pool,” “Invention of the Horse Collar,” “Poker Night,” “Under the Microscope,” “Museums and Women,” “During the Jurassic,” “The Baluchitherium,” “The Slump” and “Still of Some Use” are departures from Updike’s formulaic adultery fiction. They’re overlooked gems that avoid the quirky, distracting The New Yorker ending and are more immediately appreciated.

Updike became the writer he described in that long ago letter to his mother. A large segment of the American public took him to their bosom, convinced that his vision of America was correct — or at least sufficiently believable. Whether his literary reputation will eclipse that of Sinclair Lewis’, well, that remains to be seen.  PS

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry, and four North Carolina Press awards.

Docs Making House Calls

By Cos Barnes

My grandmother was always visited at home by her physician. I suppose doctors called on the elderly in their homes for the patient’s convenience.

One frosty cold morning when no traffic was stirring because of snow, we called a neighboring physician because my mother was wretchedly ill with a headache. It did not matter that he was an orthopedic surgeon, or a bone doctor, as many called them in those days. He gave her a shot and she never had another headache. This is a true story.

Now there are more than 75 clinicians who provide on-site, state-of-the-art medical care to residents in senior living communities, as well as patients in private homes. Their staff includes specialists in geriatrics, internal and family medicine, neurology, infectious disease, pulmonary medicine, palliative care, podiatry and ophthalmology.

DMHC, as they label themselves, Doctors Making House Calls, serve as the primary care provider as well as urgent care clinician for all DMHC patients. Their clinicians are available 24/7 for urgent care telephone consultation. They see patients seven days a week.

They accept and directly bill Medicare and Medicaid as well as all supplemental insurance care plans.

Gone are the days of appointments that are delayed, canceled or terribly detained, the days when schoolchildren had to miss class days because of appointments.

These doctors like seeing patients in their home setting with familiar surroundings.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  PS

Cos Barnes is a longtime contributor to PineStraw magazine. She can be contacted at cosbarnes@nc.rr.com.