Hometown

Two Thousand Miles I Roam

Just to make this dock my home

By Bill Fields

I have a modest stash of record albums, LPs that spark memories of people, places and parties. The number of scratches pretty much tells where each ranked on my personal charts, but no visual cues are required to identify the vinyl that meant the most to me.

Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman was the first album I owned, and I thought it was 29 minutes of gold. It was released in November 1968, when I was 9 years old. Given that pop culture took the slow train to Southern Pines in those days, I obtained it a bit later.

The love of my first album coincided with my loathing of fourth-grade music and having to learn how to play the recorder. I didn’t like the teacher and couldn’t get the hang of the instrument. The combination caused me to loathe that class to a degree unmatched until calculus came along.

Amid the unpleasantness created by a one-dollar piece of plastic with holes in it, putting Wichita Lineman on the record player was bliss even though there was a lot of melancholy within the lyrics of those 11 songs. Campbell had a beautiful, pure voice and was, as I would learn, a world-class guitarist.

As I listened over and over to the album, Campbell became an obsession, my first outside of sports. If, in the summer of ’69, you’d told me I could meet either Brooks Robinson or Glen Campbell, I might well have chosen the famous Arkansan who didn’t play third base.

My mother and sisters could sing, and the Campbell record convinced me to see if I could, too, although there wasn’t a boys’ choir in America that would have signed me. I made up for the talent deficit with enthusiasm. Santa Claus brought me a TrueTone reel-to-reel tape recorder, affording me a make-believe opportunity to be a sports announcer or, after Campbell’s music became part of my life, recording artist.

I sang the title track plenty of times, but the second song on side one, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” became my favorite. It was written by soul singer Otis Redding with Steve Cropper and recorded not long before Redding died in a plane crash in December 1967, when he was only 26 years old.

I must have heard Redding’s song played on the radio after it was released in early ’68, but Campbell’s cover was what I tried to mimic. I recorded it on the TrueTone and forced my parents to listen to me perform it live in the living room. I was far from being a lonely child, but Redding’s song of loneliness, sung by Campbell, fascinated me.

When Campbell came to town to play golf in the pro-am preceding the U.S. Professional Match Play Championship at the Country Club of North Carolina in 1971, he was the celebrity I was most eager to see, even though Mickey Mantle and astronaut Gene Cernan also were in the field. Campbell was dressed in yellow and offered a wide smile when I called out from behind a gallery rope before snapping a picture with my Instamatic camera. After the round, he signed my program. I collected many golfers’ autographs that day — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Julius Boros and Ray Floyd among them — but at home that evening I lingered over the signature of the man whose music had meant so much.

About 20 years or so later, when karaoke had become a thing, I was in an airport hotel in Orlando, having arrived to photograph a story with well-known golf instructor David Leadbetter the next morning. I hadn’t sung outside the shower or alone in my car in years. But it was karaoke night at the Marriott, I knew no one in the crowded bar, and I wanted to sing. There was no doubt about the song.

I was waiting for my turn when I heard a familiar voice. It was my colleague John Huggan, a Scot with standards and opinions. Suddenly, I did know someone in the crowded bar. My plan for off-key anonymity was gone. Huggan and I chatted over a beer as a handful of karaoke performers grabbed the microphone. My name was called. The lyrics scrolled on a monitor but having sung “The Dock of the Bay” over and over as a kid, I could have done it without assistance.

I sang the song. A few people clapped. I warily returned to my barstool.

“You weren’t the worst,” Huggan said.

I considered it high praise  PS

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

Golftown Journal

By Lee Pace

It’s the banana ball that balloons into the wind and is funneled into the hinterlands to the right. It’s the duck hook that runs like a scalded dog into the woods left. It’s that bladed wedge that flies into the weeds and dark catacombs beyond the green.

A bad shot at Tobacco Road Golf Club provides opportunity. For Martha Hudson with her trusty iPhone camera, the possibilities are endless.

“Most of the really interesting angles that I find usually happen when I’m playing and I’ve hit a really horrendous shot, or I’m helping someone look for a ball,” says Hudson, a golf staff member at Tobacco Road who manages the course’s social media platforms.

Over the last six years, Hudson has learned to work with dexterity, documenting the skies, shadows and seasons of a course designed by Mike Strantz in 1998 and carved from a sand pit 30 miles north of the village of Pinehurst. Showcased at various times on the club’s Instagram account, which numbers more than 26,000 followers, are the mottled grasses and dramatic hillocks around the blind-shot 13th green; the mammoth mounds bordering the pathway of the tee shot on the first hole; the weathered railroad ties up to the ninth tee, or others providing access to bunkers around the course. There are misty mornings, full moons at dusk, and the ecrus of dormant grass in the winter.

“For me, it’s capturing all of what makes this golf course so unique,” she says. “The features, the green shapes, the undulations, the light at different times of day and different seasons. I wasn’t here when the course was built, but the guys who were here talk about how Mike saw everything as art. That artwork has matured over 20 years. That’s what I try to capture.”

Tobacco Road is one of the Sandhills area’s most distinctive golf courses. It’s appropriate then that the club has one of the most cutting-edge social media presences, particularly on Instagram, the medium of choice for millennial and Generation Z golfers looking for eye candy and interaction with their fellows. It can hardly rival the reach of Pinehurst Resort and Country Club with its 68,000-plus Instagram followers and a worldwide presence via more than a century of existence and its position as a U.S. Open “anchor site,” but Tobacco Road dwarfs every other golf venue in the area.

Hudson, a former collegiate golfer at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and an English major, melds her love of golf — “the Game,” as she refers to it online — a one-of-a-kind golf course, her vocabulary and her camera, into an eclectic mix of images and pithy descriptions.

“I have a concentration in creative writing, so the storytelling aspect of doing the marketing at such a unique place is fulfilling on a creative level for me,” she says. “Tobacco Road is truly a special place, and people are reliving experiences digitally, whether it’s going through their own photos or Instagram or whatever social media platforms they’re on. You get their attention, and then they’ll dig into whatever story you want to tell. A lot of golf courses never take advantage of the opportunity. It’s free. All it takes is effort, a little time and some creativity.”

A mid-1990s golf trip to Myrtle Beach by two Sanford friends and businessmen sparked the idea for Tobacco Road. Mark Stewart was president of Lee Concrete Co., and Tony Woodell was vice president of construction, and their company owned more than 200 acres of old rock and sand quarries on a tobacco and soybean farm just off U.S. 15-501 south of Sanford. The proliferation of courses in the 1990s golf boom prompted them to wonder if a daily fee course located between the population-dense Triangle area and the international golf mecca of the Sandhills might work. They investigated the concept and were led to Strantz, a former Tom Fazio protégé who had recently completed excellent work at Caledonia and True Blue near Pawley’s Island, South Carolina.

Before his death from cancer in 2005, Strantz bequeathed to the mid-Atlantic region a half-dozen dynamic new golf courses. His firm was named Maverick Golf Design for excellent reasons. The architect worked on one course at a time and set up living quarters at the venue. He stood 6-foot-5 and sported shoulder-length hair and a mustache. He rode a horse around the property and made intricate sketches of every hole, then turned the drawings over to his shapers. He would be covered in dirt after working the equipment all day or in paint after marking the lines of the various layers of the course — fairways, fescue rough, love grass, areas to be left in their natural sandy state. Part of the club’s logo is a deer skull that Strantz found while building the course.

“I remember his passion most of all,” says Joe Gay, the club’s original director of golf, who retired in 2015. “He was so enthusiastic about everything. He was excited all the time. We feel blessed Mike provided us with this golf course before he passed away.”

Today the course is ranked No. 49 on Golf Digest’s list of America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses and No. 35 on Golf magazine’s Top 100 Courses You Can Play. The course closed for two months in the summer of 2014 to convert its greens to MiniVerde Bermudagrass.

“It is so visually stunning, and the images just get seared in your mind at certain places, and it just makes you want more,” Hudson says. “You want to understand more of the golf course and why Mike did that or maybe how you could have played it differently.”

Hudson grew up in Black Mountain, just east of Asheville, and played golf in high school in the early 2000s before moving on to UAB. She was working at a daily fee course in Birmingham in January 2015 when she was hired at Tobacco Road. Gay retired later that year, Chris Brown moved up from head professional to director of golf, and Hudson was given more responsibilities, including managing the social media platforms. The course’s Instagram account had under 500 followers at the time.

“Martha has done a great job,” Brown says. “Some people are good with the photos, some with the words. She’s skilled at both. Add to that the fact that everybody has a mobile TV studio in their back pocket. The younger audiences are coming through the door, the guys attracted by Bar Stool and places like that. People get information today through so many different sources. I’m 53. I don’t have to understand it or always agree with it, but I know it works.”  PS

Chapel Hill-based writer Lee Pace has written about golf in the Sandhills since the late 1980s and has authored a dozen books about clubs, courses and the people who made it special. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @LeePaceTweet.

The Kitchen Garden

Christmas Greens

Cold and collards go together

By Jan Leitschuh

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for many kitchen gardeners. Holidays are an opportune time to harvest, prepare and share the fruits of the late fall veggie patch — especially fresh collards.

About the time frost kisses the November vegetable garden, knocking back the remnant pepper plants and gone-to-seed basil, the collard patch comes into its happy place. That happy place extends into December, indeed, usually all winter. Jack Frost may be nipping at your nose, but he only does very good things for the unique flavor of collards.

When temperatures drop down to about 26 degrees Fahrenheit, frost can burn the foliage of the collard’s cousins such as broccoli and cauliflower. But the tough leaves of collards can take the cold down to 5 degrees F. A deeply cold morning may flatten your collard patch, a sad drooping sight, but after a few hours of sun they look sturdy and brand-new again. More than merely survive cold weather, nutrient-packed collards come through the cold even more flavorful — sweeter.

“Because of their high levels of glucosinolate compounds, collards offer more nutrition than all but just a few other vegetables,” says SFGate. “Freshly harvested collards top the charts in nutritional benefits, but by the time they are shipped long distances, up to 80 percent of their nutrients are lost. In addition, time and distance cause sweetness to fade and bitterness to intensify, so the tastiest option is to grow them yourself.”

That’s what we do — grow ‘em ourselves! No bugs in our winter garden.

A member of the cabbage family, the substantive, leathery leaves of collards grow in a loose head, rather than tight balls like cabbages. Thus, the home gardener can harvest just a few leaves for supper or soup, or you can chop the whole shebang for a holiday cookfest.

There are several ways to prepare collard leaves for cooking. A quick and simple way is to tear the leafy part from the midrib, then discard the ribs. The softer leaves can be rolled and cut into thin strips for even steaming. By julienning, smaller amounts of the tough leaves can be swiftly and easily steamed, dressed with a little Texas Pete or olive oil.

Discarding the sturdy midribs is wasteful, however. A more traditional treatment is to go big, with pounds of collards prepped at one time. Tear the leaf from the midrib, as above. Then, snap the crisp ribs into 3-inch pieces and place on the bottom of a pan with about 4 cups of liquid.

In the South, those 4 cups of flavorful liquid are often the result of boiling two or three smoked ham hocks in several cups of water for 2 hours (you could use — sorry, traditionalists — chicken, or even vegetable stock if ham is off your dietary radar). Other common additions are a teaspoon or so each of salt and red pepper flakes. One-half cup of apple cider vinegar helps the boiled meat break down and adds depth to the flavor but, be certain to use a non-reactive pot.

After a 2-hour simmer, the smoked meat should fall off the bone. Cool the broth, chop the meat, and remove bones. Add about 5 pounds of washed and torn collards, the snapped midribs at the bottom of the liquid. Then pile on the torn leaves, with the thickest leaves near the bottom. The newer, more tender, leaves can go in near the top since they won’t be fully submerged.

Cover the pot and simmer gently for another hour. Repeat, gently. Low heat keeps the healthy sulfur compounds in the collards from stinking up the joint. The bright green leaves will darken to an olive green.

Eat hearty, share with friends, and freeze the rest. Merry Christmas! PS

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

Hometown

Strikes, Spares and a Baby Split

Filling an open frame with something to cherish

By Bill Fields

A couple of months before my mother died, she had to be hospitalized because of an infection. At 95, with dementia, Mom was tiny. On the last day of my visit, she had rallied but still was very frail. I stood by her bed. Putting the large fingers of my right hand on her right palm, for reasons I don’t know, I said, “Squeeze.”

Her eyes took me in and she did, holding the grip for several seconds. I was stunned by its force. My fingers hurt. When she let go, I saw the hint of a smile on her face. I shook my head — and my hand — as I left the room.

Driving my rental car to RDU, I thought about bowling.

My mother wasn’t an athlete. She enjoyed watching college basketball and professional golf — Mom spent quite a few minutes with me on her land line lamenting what Phil Mickelson or Carolina had done — but that was about it.

She would shoot a basket in the backyard if I made her and play miniature golf with the rest of the family at the beach. Once, when she was in her early 60s, Mom joined a Wiffle ball game with kids and grandkids at the home of her younger daughter. Twenty years or so after that, I coerced her into a few golf swings on the Knollwood range. By that point in life she was content to watch Phil on TV, and her assisted-living room was decorated with an autographed picture of Lefty.

Once upon a time, though, Mom had a been a bowler. It was the winter of 1964-65. I was 5 years old and would have been in kindergarten, but East Southern Pines School started with first grade. I watched Captain Kangaroo, played in the dirt with toy soldiers or Tonka trucks, and pored over the World Books. Dad had taken a job at a tool-and-die plant in High Point, coming home on weekends.

Mom worked as a teller at The Citizens Bank and Trust Company. The bank had a team in a women’s bowling league that competed in the bowling alley that stood on North West Broad just before the intersection with Morganton Road. That winter, on Tuesday nights after Mom made supper for the two of us, she put on her white team shirt with the bank’s name in green script on the back and drove downtown with her boy riding shotgun. I was given a dime to use in the candy machine and told to behave, which wasn’t a given for me at that age.

The bowling center was an exotic place to a kid who hadn’t seen much beyond his block. Shiny wooden lanes brightly lit. Bowlers in their matching team shirts.  The rumble of flying pins. More than once, another spectating child and I had to be shooed away from the air vent where bowlers dried their hands, so fascinating was that feature. The women who smoked put their lipstick-stained cigarettes in a big glass ashtray when it was their turn. I didn’t know what either body English or camaraderie meant at the time, but recognize now that both were present.

There were winners and losers on those Tuesday evenings, results that would be reported in The Pilot, but I couldn’t tell you how the Citizens’ ladies fared against the competition or whether Mom ever rolled a strike. That bowling season came and went. Mom never bought her own ball, one of the colorful ones that looked like a giant marble. Her snazzy shirt became a painting smock when it was home improvement time. The bowling alley would burn down.

She didn’t want to leave her home when it was time. It was her house and her things, lots of them after more than 60 years. My sisters and I toiled for a week to sort through it all. Mom’s bedroom closet was chock full of stuff. I hadn’t seen the bank bowling shirt in many years but hoped to find it. To my disappointment, the shirt wasn’t there. As I cleared things out, something shiny in the closet corner caught my eye.

It was a trophy, chrome with a wooden base, about a foot tall with a woman on top. “TARHEEL BOWLERETTES. 64-65. Most Improved.”  PS

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

Sporting Life

An Authentic Master

Born to be in the outdoors

“Tom, I know there are people who have more money and more stuff than I do, but I don’t know anyone who’s had more fun.” — Edwin Clapp, dove hunting season, 2021

By Tom Bryant

Over my years as an outdoorsman, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many folks who claim they were born for the outdoors. Very few fit the high goal they supposedly set for themselves. They are either overly enthused and too vocal about their expertise, or in the case of one dude we took on a duck hunt, had to be watched like a hawk to keep from shooting himself, or worse, us. That fellow should never have left the pavement.

Edwin Clapp is definitely not one of those.

I first met Edwin in the early ’80s. We both were having fun training yellow Labs as gun dogs and retrievers. It’s often said in the vernacular of dog owners, especially hunting dog owners, “If you’re lucky in your lifetime and you’re persistent, you will have one good dog. And if the stars align just right, you might have a great dog.”

The stars lined up just right for Edwin and me. His dog was a big, long-legged yellow Lab named Dick, and mine was a medium-sized yellow named Paddle. Edwin and I spent many happy hours afield training those wonderful animals.

Edwin grew up on a farm relatively close to Siler City. He has two brothers: Al, who owns and manages Clapp Brothers Tractor; and Tim, who’s a retired N.C. State University professor. They are both equally proficient in the woods; but in my opinion, Edwin tops the bill.

He went to Jordan-Matthews High School, where he starred in baseball, basketball and track. He received a full baseball scholarship to Louisburg College, where he was instrumental in helping his team go to the Junior College World Series, a first for the school. He was voted captain and the most valuable player.

Edwin is a self-effacing kind of fellow, and it took me several years to land an interview with him. On this particular day, we were on his farm at his lake house, “Fair Weather,” where we had hunted doves several weeks earlier. It was raining, and we were kicked back under the tin-roofed porch of his barn near the cabin. It was the perfect setting for reminiscing about old times. As we looked toward the tree line on the far side of the dove field, three wild turkeys crossed the expanse in front of us.

“Tom, I was kinda tired of school after that first year, so a buddy and I decided we would go to Florida. We got jobs at Disney World, and I worked in the candy factory making lollipops.”

It was incredible to me that a star baseball player would toss all that fame and fortune away, just like that. Edwin’s adventure leaving school hit close to home. I remembered that as a young guy looking for adventure, I joined the Marines after my first year of college.

“So, what was next?” I asked.

“I got tired of making candy and came back home, called my coach at Louisburg and he told me to come on back, the scholarship was still available.”

Edwin returned to school and that year was offered a full baseball scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and also a full scholarship to East Carolina University. He chose ECU and was a star pitcher, their number one righthander.

Again, fate stepped in and for whatever reason, Edwin left college and became a jack of all trades. There are people like that. I’ve met a few. Folks who can do anything, fix anything, and build anything. In Edwin’s case, he ended up starting his own company, C&B Small Engines, and later, after selling his business, he became the service manager at MacDonald’s Building Supply.

Rain was rattling the tin roof of the old barn in a restful way, and we watched as the turkeys continued to feed across the field.

“You know, Tom, there was a time during my journeys that I took a six-month sabbatical, lived here at the cabin and hunted and fished every day. It was wonderful.”

The land that Edwin hunts has been in his family for generations. It’s where he grew up, and he knows every nook and cranny like the back of his hand.

Our conversation drifted here and yonder about all the places he had hunted and fished, which brought me to my next question. “Which do you like to do best, hunt or fish?”

“I believe I like to fish the best. One season I had the opportunity to be the mate on a 38-foot Bertram sport fisher boat for a gentleman who was fishing in a king mackerel tournament. It was loads of fun and I learned a lot about fishing tournaments. But don’t forget, hunting runs a close second. I love dove hunting.”

I have hunted with Edwin many times, and I’ve never seen anyone better with a shotgun. Every dove season, he has an opening day hunt on his farm. It’s by invitation only. He barbecues chicken and Boston butts with all the fixin’s. Yet another talent. He’s a superb cook. The event is a day-long affair and is much looked forward to by everybody.

The rain was slacking a little and Edwin stood and said, “Come on, I want to show you a part of the farm you’ve never seen.”

We climbed in his truck, and he put it in 4-wheel drive. We drove down a narrow track, almost a path, with overhanging branches damp with rain. The path opened to a small field, maybe 5 or 6 acres, and just as we eased out of the tree line, a pair of whitetail deer bounded tight around the planted cornfield. We exclaimed and laughed about jumping the deer. Then, as we turned the corner, we saw a group of young turkeys, maybe this year’s crop, and they flew across the front of the truck into the trees.

Edwin is the ultimate conservationist. He has a wildlife habitat on his farm that’s rarely seen anymore.

We rode slowly back to his house, and as I prepared to load up and head home, he presented me with a big sack of freshly picked tomatoes and peppers from his garden. Did I mention that he’s also a champion gardener?

Edwin and his lovely wife, Danette, live happily on their farm in Chatham County, and I agree with him wholeheartedly when he says that he has had plenty of fun. But without a doubt, his talent and hard work has made all those good times possible.  PS

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

Out of the Blue

Thankful for Thanksgiving

The holiday with staying power

By Deborah Salomon

Far as I can tell, of all the holidays Americans over-celebrate, Thanksgiving best retains its symbols and sanctities. Sure, the food magazines do turkey upside down and backward, including an abomination called turducken, a deboned chicken shoved inside a deboned duck shoved inside a deboned turkey costing an arm and a leg. Cranberry chutney may be all the rage, but the backbone of the celebration hasn’t changed much since the holiday, celebrated informally since the 1860s, was institutionalized in 1941.

At least for a few minutes, before digging in we still go round the table giving thanks. For what?

Columnists and entertainers offer lists of things to be thankful for, usually predictable, mostly generic. Families and their guests are called upon to do the same, with often poignant and amusing results. Pregnancies and new jobs are cited, as well as medical updates. “I’m thankful my cancer is in remission” is always welcome. This year, however, has been so fraught with tragedies that thanks may require a slant.

I’m thankful not to have contracted COVID-19.

I’m thankful there’s a vaccine to prevent it.

I’m thankful Hurricane Ida petered out before reaching Moore County.

I’m thankful my job wasn’t eliminated.

I’m thankful my home wasn’t destroyed by earthquakes or wildfires.

I’m thankful I didn’t run out of paper products during the pandemic.

Other observations, beyond the stuffing: The vocabulary of a traditional Thanksgiving usually includes “Grandma” — a relic from when she lived over the river and through the woods, not in a Florida retirement village. Where’s Grandpa? Stretched out in his BarcaLounger, watching the game. But Grandma, the institution, is fast morphing into a format more Sharon Stone and Judge Judy than the sweet homemakers-choir singers-pie bakers-rose growers I find on the obit page. Let’s be thankful for those while they last because, like the woolly mammoth, when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Back to food because, truth be told, without it Thanksgiving might wither on the vine. Try as they may, Martha Stewart, Ina Garten and Rachael Ray cannot budge green bean casserole, marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, jellied cranberry sauce, spongy dinner rolls, pumpkin pie and a Butterball built like Dolly Parton — an image I’ve used for more than three decades.

They are sacred. They are icons. I know, because I grew up deprived. I’m the only child of late-onset parents. My mother loved to eat, hated to cook. She never once stuck a turkey in the oven even when I came home from college, starved — a waste for three people, was her excuse. If we weren’t invited somewhere, we ate in a hotel dining room with a turkey dinner special. Forget seconds. No leftovers. Imagine her surprise seeing me roast several birds a year, just for sandwiches. Besides, nothing compares to warmed-over cornbread stuffing for breakfast.

After all, June, not November, is National Turkey Lovers’ Month. Another surprise: Israel, devoid of Thanksgiving, consumes the most turkey per capita.

Last Thanksgiving, sales of small turkeys soared, attributed to fewer big gatherings. With the unexpected summer virus surge, no telling what will happen this month. But I have faith that even if the turkey and trimmings are pared down, Thanksgiving will survive intact.

Because where there’s life, there’s hope. And hopeful people always find something to be thankful for.  PS

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

The Omnivorous Reader

Comrades in the Wilderness

A solitary woman and a red fox

By Stephen E. Smith

Literary agents and acquisition editors who read early drafts of what would become Catherine Raven’s bestselling Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship must have wondered what niche the book might fill. Memoir/autobiography? Not exactly. Humanities/social sciences? Not really. Spirituality/self-help? Probably not.

This much is certain: Whatever nook the book occupies, a careworn copy of Walden is already there. Like Thoreau, Catherine Raven wandered into the wilderness “to live deliberately, to confront the essential facts of life, and see if she could not learn what it had to teach.”

At the age of 15, Raven escaped her abusive parents who, she claims, wanted her “to disappear.” She eventually landed a job as a ranger in the National Park system. She was homeless, living in her car on a piece of remote land in Montana while putting herself through college and graduate school, where, as she frequently reminds the reader, she earned a Ph.D. in biology. She built a house in Montana and taught the occasional college class, all the while avoiding her fellow human beings. Then she met the fox.

Every day at 4:15 p.m. a red fox visits Raven’s property. His arrival quickly becomes the central focus of her otherwise uneventful life, and she begins to structure her activities around his visits. She reads to him from Dr. Seuss and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (a fox plays a central role in the story). She observes his every movement and speculates as to his motivations. She keeps track of his nutritional needs (he has an appetite for voles), his mating habits, the kits he helps raise, and his interaction with the surrounding fauna, especially two magpies who she names Tennis Ball and Round Belly, and bluebirds, deer, bats, eagles, elk, feral cats, etc. And she details the local flora — fescue, mustard, cheat, mullein, sunflower, Russian thistle, rabbitbrush, knapweed, sagebrush, wild rye, bluestem, wheatgrass, sow thistle — with equal purpose, producing a litany of zoological annotations liberally sprinkled with a biologist’s vocabulary. (Readers utilizing a Kindle will appreciate the handy “Dictionary” function.)

The fox never exhibits what might be interpreted as affection and doesn’t approach within petting distance. But Raven’s isolation leads her to imagine a relationship has developed between her and the animal. Her friends, few though they may be, remind her that her academic training forbids anthropomorphizing the fox, but the regularity of his visits and his attention to her human affectations lead her to project a personality onto the fox. “I tried to imagine when Fox and I first became more than just two itinerant animals crossing each other’s paths. . . . Maybe the relationship had developed so smoothly that I never doubted that all was as it should be, or maybe it had developed rapidly enough to keep me perpetually confused. . . . I had barely enough social intelligence to understand that adults, least of all trained scientists, don’t go around treating wild foxes as if they had personalities.”

Raven’s narrative doesn’t collapse into a mawkish “Lassie” story, but it approaches, especially in its conclusion, a sentimentality that is tempered only by her scientific training. Because she accepts that communicating with a wild animal is not the same as conversing with her friends and that her relationship with the fox is in no way tantamount to a human friendship, she remains uncertain as to why the attachment has developed or what lessons she might draw from her limited interaction with the fox. In fact, Fox and I might be read as a rationalization for Raven’s bond, real or imagined, with the fox. As beautifully written as her memoir is — and certainly Raven’s prose occasionally rises to the level of poetry — she never truly resolves the ambiguities that are central to her life with the fox.

Predictably, the moment arrives when Raven senses that the fox’s trust in her is almost complete. On a moonlit night, she is waiting outside for his arrival and notices the fox’s “wispy, translucent fur in the light” as he trots directly to her front steps. “I stepped away from the door, and four round and fluid kits rolled past me. Fox moved off to the side, leaving me surrounded by little leaping foxes. Close enough to touch, they were tumbling around me like acrobats while my hands sprung up in surprise. I focused on two tussling kits, and everything around them homogenized into a blur.”

All such animal tales have an obvious and inevitable conclusion, and it’s not spoiling the ending to reveal the fox’s fate. Wildfire rips through Raven’s corner of Montana, and she flees for her life. She returns to find that her house has survived but that the fox and his kits are nowhere to be found, gone up, one would suppose, in smoke, possible victims of global warming. “Nature is cruel,” she writes, “that’s a trope masquerading as a paradigm, in the sense that a carpetbagger might masquerade as a charlatan.”

Raven blames herself, enjoying the self-pity that accompanies the probable death of the fox, noting that he might have fled to safety with his vixen and the four kits, but that he waited for her to appear: “I imagined him upright on his hind legs and pressing his nose into my front window like he used to do. I could see him standing with his ears drawn back until his ankles shook and then skipping backward to regain his balance. His last memory of me was an empty house.”

Although Fox and I is nonfiction, Raven uses fictional techniques to tell her story and includes chapters written from the fox’s point of view. Though occasionally afflicted with the dictionary disease, her style is fluid and lyrical and is a joy to read, propelling the reader through her intermittent pedantic ramblings. More to her credit, she doesn’t burden the reader with timely political insights or lessons learned. Readers are left to their own conclusions. She simply tells the story of a lonely woman’s encounter with a red fox in the wilds of Montana.  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.

The Kitchen Garden

Thanksgiving in a Bowl

The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink soup

By Jan Leitschuh

Who wouldn’t love to curl up around a steamy, creamy bowl of soup on a raw November day?

I have a clever friend and avid kitchen gardener, Deb Tucker, who gathers the fall harvest from garden and market, and throws it together in marvelous combinations. She takes this abundance and turns it into a rich bowl of comfort food to ward off late fall’s chill.

The goodies in her cook pot are different every time. The nice thing about this soup is that the ingredients are fluid, and you don’t have to be a gifted chef to make a hearty and delicious potful — just a cook who likes to eat.

The markets reflect the abundance of fresh fall harvest available to us, from apples and squashes, to broccoli, to pecans, to sweet potatoes, to early collards, to fall green beans, to northern cranberries and more. And, of course, roasted turkey.

And my creative friend grabs onto it with both hands, crafting her free-form soup magic.

So, no precise recipes here. Soup is more of a narrative, anyway, a tale of your household’s leftover bits and bobs, with a tasty dash of this and that. To craft your Thanksgiving-in-a-bowl, follow the basic structure, unleash your inner Deb, and fashion a soup that fits your dietary needs and preferences.

Deb described her latest as “cream and cheeses and sherry and cranberries and onions and pecans and nutmeg and coriander and broccoli and cayenne and leftover seasoned turkey tenderloins. Basically . . . comfort food.”

Too rich for you? Back off the cream and cheeses. Avoiding alcohol? Eliminate the sherry. Vegetarian? Use vegetable stock and lose the turkey. Vegan? Vegetarian plus no dairy.

See? This is easy. So, commence:

1. Begin at the bottom of your soup pot. Add a bit of oil and “start as we do with nearly everything, sautéing/caramelizing onion,” Deb said. You might want to add a handful of chopped celery, if available. Thanksgiving spices such as sage are also good additions — a bit of chopped, fried sage is the “pumpkin spice” of our favorite savory Thanksgiving dishes.

2. You’ll need the stock for the soup’s broth. Chicken broth is the standard; vegetable stock could also suffice. A carton of squash soup might be an intriguing side trip into fall flavors. Add liquid to the soup pot and heat. Once your stock is established, start tossing things in.

3. Depending on your diet, you may or may not want to skip the dairy — my friend cooks like a Frenchwoman. On this chilly fall day, Deb’s tastes went right to rich by adding “a little heavy cream. You could also use both cream cheese and/or mascarpone,” she said, “though I wanted the tart bite of cream cheese.” Gilding the lily, as it were, Deb also used a second cheese, an extra-sharp shredded cheddar. “It was a cool, rainy day, and I just wanted some cheesiness,” she said. “I was out of any melty-type cheese, but that would be good, too.” Despite all the dairy, Deb used a light touch and called her concoction more of a “bisque, as it wasn’t as thick as a creamed soup, but not as broth-y as a clear soup.”

4. Add the protein. Deb tossed in leftover turkey, torn in pieces from a simple Butterball-type turkey tenderloin. (On another occasion, she sprinkled the tenderloins with chili powder and cumin, roasting them at 325 degrees for about 45 minutes. She also added mashed sweet potatoes.) Vegetarians could add chunks of grilled portobello mushrooms, or perhaps stir some nut butter into the veggie broth.

5. Season the Thanksgiving bowl with spices and flavors. Deb loves sherry in soups, “many good splashes.” She tried a spot of nutmeg (“just a little . . . freshly grated is best”) and coriander. For a little more heat, she dashed in a little cayenne along with salt and pepper. Though she loves garlic in so many things, Deb steered clear of it this time. “I didn’t think it fit with this milder concoction,” she explained.

6. Add more stuff. Deb kept tossing in seasonal ingredients. A handful of chopped pecans are a soup surprise but very effective, adding “a little bit of the crunch of pecans, which can also be mild and creamy.” Another surprise is a scattering of dried fruits. For this latest creation, she used low-sugar dried cranberries. She adores adding Montmorency sour cherries at other times.

7. After simmering a bit to blend flavors, Deb added frozen broccoli florets near the end. She wants them cooked but still firm and green, “not too soggy. Sometimes I’ll throw some frozen florets into a skillet and brown it quickly, so it resembles roasted.” The result is “easy and quick, if you already have the leftover turkey.”

As a self-described experimental kitchen cook, I could see adding a few sautéed green beans, a cut potato or two, or perhaps some chunks of roasted sweet potato in some iteration. Your larder, tastebuds and imagination shape the outcome.

The result was so good, “I wish I had made enough to have the next day,” Deb said. “Oh, wait, I think I do have one bowl left. Don’t tell my husband. It might disappear when I settle down to watch a movie tonight.”

November leftovers don’t get much better than that. PS

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

In the Spirit

Reinventing a Classic

He seeks to satisfy a stronger hunger, Grasshopper

By Tony Cross

When I first started bartending, I was 21 years old, and hadn’t a clue what I was doing. There was a huge part of me that thought all there was to the job was being fast and making the drinks strong. I thought this for a couple of reasons: I was young and dumb; and the clientele of a majority of the bars where I worked appreciated their drinks being made fast and strong. Since then, the cocktail renaissance, if you will, has happened, and it seems everyone has cool-looking bar aprons, and lots of men have stolen their mustaches from Mario’s brother, Luigi.

In those early days, I had one regular who would approach the bar toward the end of the night (it was a restaurant, so we’re not talking 3 a.m. here) and order a cocktail I had to look up in the lone bar book we had on hand — I believe it was a Mr. Boston Bartender’s and Party Guide. The gentleman would order stingers, toasted almonds or grasshoppers. They were all three-ingredient drinks that had to have been vehicles to a destination because, to me, they tasted pretty awful.

Well, it’s been many years since then, and drinks have evolved, including the grasshopper. Here are three ways to make the cocktail, from novice to master. And by master, I mean taking the time to buy quality ingredients and getting your hands a little dirty.

Easiest and Almost Drinkable

It’s straight from Mr. Boston. Three ingredients: crème de menthe, crème de cacao and light cream. I used heavy cream (if memory serves); light cream is basically coffee cream or “table cream.” It’s just a little bit higher in fat than half-and-half.

3/4 ounce crème de menthe (we had the clear Arrowhead brand)

3/4 ounce crème de cacao (again with the Arrowhead)

3/4 ounce light cream

Shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass. There’s a small drawing of a martini glass next to the recipe in the book.

Pretty Damn Yum

This recipe comes from the Cocktail Codex, which came out a few years back. I love this quote: “This cocktail and many others of its ilk have been relegated to dive bars for decades, but as high-quality liqueurs have come to the market — made with actual mint and cacao rather than artificial flavorings — we’ve revisited these classics and added them to our repertoire.” More than likely, you’ll have to get these liqueurs online, so please don’t hesitate. It makes all the difference.

1 ounce Tempus Fugit white crème de menthe

1 ounce Giffard white crème de cacao

1 ounce heavy cream

8 mint leaves

Garnish: 1 mint leaf

Shake all the ingredients with ice. Double strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with the mint leaf, placing it on top of the drink.

Baller Status

This recipe comes from The Aviary: Holiday Cocktails. The drinks are not as simple as 1-2-3, as you’ll see. However, if you enjoy time in the kitchen, this is a cinch.

1 1/4 ounces mint vodka (recipe below)

1 ounce Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao

1 ounce white chocolate syrup (recipe below)

1/4 ounce Ancho Reyes Verde Chile Poblano Liqueur

Combine all cocktail ingredients with ice in cocktail shaker. Shake until chilled and diluted, then double strain into a medium serving glass.

White chocolate syrup:

200 grams water

100 grams white chocolate, coarsely chopped

“Fill a large bowl with ice, and set a smaller bowl inside it. In a medium saucepan, combine the water and chocolate. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, then pour the mixture into the bowl set in ice and allow it to cool completely. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and transfer it to the refrigerator overnight. During that time, the fat in the chocolate will solidify and rise to the top of the mixture. The following day, strain the mixture through a mesh strainer, discarding the solidified chocolate fat. Transfer the mixture to a small bottle or an airtight container and reserve in the refrigerator.” Because the solidified fat gets thrown out, the final product isn’t gritty.

Mint vodka:

100 grams fresh mint

350 grams vodka, chilled thoroughly in the freezer before using

Blanch the mint. To do this, have a bowl of ice water ready and boil a pot of water. When the water comes to a boil, add the leaves (no stems, or bruised leaves) and boil for 30 seconds — no longer than 1 minute. Strain the water and add the mint leaves to the ice bath immediately. This is done so the leaves stop cooking. Drain the leaves, place them on a rag or paper towel making sure almost all moisture is gone.

“Transfer the blanched mint to a blender, and add the chilled vodka. Blend this mixture at high speed for 1 minute. (Blending at high speed has a tendency to heat liquids; we use pre-chilled vodka here to combat this, which helps keep the mint flavor bright and fresh.) Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer, discarding all solids. Transfer to a glass bottle or an airtight container, and reserve it in the freezer to chill thoroughly.”  PS

Tony Cross is a bartender (well, ex-bartender) who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern Pines.

Birdwatch

Turkey Time

A surprisingly wily wild bird

By Susan Campbell

Shorter days and cooler nights have many of us thinking about the holiday season. Thanksgiving is not that far off — and that means turkey. Most of us look forward to feasting on the tender meat of this domesticated, large member of the fowl family. But its wild ancestors are a far cry from the bird we prepare on the fourth Thursday of November each year.

Anyone who has had the opportunity to taste a “real” turkey will tell you that there is no comparison. But hunters who pursue the wild birds are far more often skunked than successful. Turkeys seem to have a sixth sense when being called or decoyed in. Fooling one of these birds to get it within range is one of the biggest challenges bird hunters (or photographers, for that matter) face.

The wild turkey was very nearly our national bird. It is, in fact, the only bird species native to the United States. Benjamin Franklin nominated the turkey for this honor but it lost in Congress, by only one vote, to the bald eagle back in the late 18th century.

Although the cultivated variety is completely white, skittish and not very bright, forest-dwelling turkeys are glossy black, wary and rather agile for a bird with a wingspan of over 5 feet. They are typically found in mature forests with clearings but take advantage of open fields as well. Turkeys forage on a variety of food, including insects, small berries, seeds and buds. Interestingly, one of their favorite fall foods, acorns, are often abundant in our part of the state.

Individuals are well known to associate in large flocks of 50 or more birds. In the early spring, older males will attract and attend to and defend a flock of several females. At this time, they can be heard gobbling and strutting in their characteristic puffed-up posture. Only during the early part of the breeding season, in April and May, are the birds solitary. Once the chicks hatch and reach about 4 weeks of age, hens will gather together with their young and form new aggregations.

In the early 1970s, there weren’t many more than a million turkeys on the landscape. Persecution and habitat alteration had resulted in dramatic reduction in the population. Now, throughout not only the United States but parts of southern Canada and northern Mexico, there are seven times that many.

Here in the Old North State, turkeys can be found in almost every county. In recent years, both the Triad and Triangle have experienced an influx from the Uwharrie Mountains in the west as well as from the inner Coastal Plain to the east. It is not surprising that these big birds show up to take advantage of seed around bird feeders and forage in grassy vegetation along our roadways, as well as looking for tender vegetation and insects in agricultural fields across the area. So, keep your eyes peeled — you, too, may spot one, or more, of these majestic birds here in central North Carolina.  PS

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos.  She can be contacted at susan@ncaves.com.