It Slices. It Dices.

It Slices. It Dices.

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Memoir by Stephen E. Smith   •   Illustration by Harry Blair

“Get up! Get up! Get up, up, up!” my mother blurted.

It was at 6:30 a.m., the first day of Christmas break, and as always she felt compelled to rouse her children at the most ungodly hour. I lifted my head from the pillow and stared bleary-eyed at her figure in the bedroom doorway. Wrapped to her chin in a blue terrycloth robe, her fists were planted firmly on her hips. She meant business. “You’re to march yourself down to the Safeway and ask Mr. Short if he’ll give you a job for the holidays,” she ordered. “You can earn enough money to pay for your books next semester. And next time I see Mr. Short, I’ll find out if you asked him for a job.”

“Can’t you even say, ‘Welcome home’?” I asked.

“Sure. Welcome home, Mr. Big Shot College Guy. Now get out of that bed and get yourself down to the Safeway.”

I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation. I’d caught an all-night ride home from North Carolina and had dragged into the house on Janice Drive at 3:15 a.m. But my mother was not to be denied, so I managed to pull on the wrinkled clothes I’d worn the day before and stumbled downstairs to eat a bowl of my brother’s Froot Loops. At 8:30 a.m. I scuffled up Bayridge Avenue to the Eastport Shopping Center, where I found Mr. Short on the dock, supervising the unloading of pallets of dog food from a tractor-trailer. He shook my hand and asked how college was going.

“It’s fine,” I answered. “I was hoping you might have an opening for a cashier during the holidays. I’m not looking to work eight hours a day, but, you know, something part time.”

“If I had an opening, I’d hire you,” he said. “But right now I have all the cashiers I need. I’d have to cut someone else’s hours, and that wouldn’t be fair, especially at Christmas.” My spirits soared. If he didn’t have an opening, I could pass the holidays stretched out on my bed reading P.G. Wodehouse.

“I’ll tell you what,” he continued, “I’ve got a friend who’s the manager at the Drug Fair in Parole. Go see him and tell him I sent you. He’s looking for holiday help.”

A job at Drug Fair was the last thing I wanted, but I had to make an inquiry. My mother was as good as her word, and I knew she’d buttonhole Mr. Short the next time she visited the Safeway. If she found out I hadn’t applied for the Drug Fair job, she’d make my Christmas break miserable, which she had already begun to do by wakening me before sunup.

Among cashiers, there existed a hierarchy, and working a register at Safeway carried with it a degree of status and a wage that was at least $1.75 an hour. Drug Fair was a discount pharmacy, emporium and grocery store, a low-rent warehouse for plastic crap and wilted vegetables, where the discount prices were clearly marked on each item — work for the dimwitted — and the pay was $1.25 an hour.

I caught the bus to Parole and found the Drug Fair manager, a rumpled, balding, ectomorphic fellow with thick wire spectacles and a long pointy nose, puzzling over paperwork in an elevated office that overlooked a line of disheveled employees who were pounding away at their cash registers. He appeared to be in emotional distress, his mouth screwed into a grotesque snarl.

“Excuse me,” I said. He looked up, snatched the glasses from his face and tossed them on the countertop in a display of frustration. “Mr. Short over at Safeway said I should talk with you about working as a cashier for the holidays. I don’t need a full-time job, just some part-time work if you’ve got it.”

Sweet relief swept over his face, his lips stretching into a half smile. “Mr. Short sent you?” he asked.

“He said you might need an experienced cashier.”

“You used to work at the Safeway?”

“For two years, until I went off to college.”

He grinned fully. I was apparently the man he’d been waiting for. He stepped out of his office, planted both feet flat on the linoleum and looked me up and down. “Can you work a register?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’ve worked stock?”

“Yes, sir.”

My God, he was going to hire me! I was going to pass the next two weeks checking out Christmas junk at the Drug Fair for minimum wage! This was not good.

The manager handed me a pen and an application clamped to a clipboard, and I took a couple of minutes to fill in the information.

“Follow me,” he said, and we walked quickly down aisle four toward the back of the crowded store. “I can use you to relieve my regular cashiers for their lunch and supper breaks, and you can help keep the shelves stocked, especially this display. We’re selling the hell out of these things.” He pointed to a chest-high pyramid of black, orange and beige boxes crowned with an unboxed white plastic kitchen device known to every American who owned a TV. “We’ve had to restock this display three times this morning. You know anything about Veg-O-Matics?” he asked.

What happened next was probably brought on by fatigue — or maybe I needed an excuse to get fired before I got hired. Whatever the cause, a synaptic misfire propelled me into the past. I picked up the display device, held it out in front of me and began to deliver the requisite spiel:

“Imagine slicing a whole potato into uniform slices with one motion. Bulk cheese costs less. Look how easy Veg-O-Matic makes many slices at once. Imagine slicing all these radishes in seconds. This is the only appliance in the world that slices whole firm tomatoes in one stroke with every seed in place. Hamburger lovers, feed whole onions into Veg-O-Matic and make these tempting thin slices. Simply turn the dial and change from thin to thick slices. You can slice a whole can of prepared meat at one time. Isn’t that amazing? Like magic, change from slicing to dicing. That’s right, it slices, it dices, it juliennes, perfect every time!”

By the time I’d finished yammering, the manager’s eyes were wide and his jaw slack.

“How’d you learn that?” he asked.

“I used to watch the commercial on TV, and it just sort of stuck in my head.”

My fascination with the Veg-O-Matic stretched back to my junior year in high school. Strung out on testosterone and teenage angst, I suffered insomnia for about six months. On those long, restless nights, I’d roll out of bed after everyone else in the house was asleep, slink down to the “rec” room and turn on the black and white TV. WJZ, the local CBS affiliate, was the only station out of Baltimore that aired anything other than an Indian Chief test pattern in the early a.m., so I’d tune in channel 13 in time to catch Father Callahan of St. Francis Xavier House of Prayer bestowing his benediction. Then I’d settle in for a three-hour run of continuous raise-your-own-chinchillas commercials.

My clandestine obsession with Father Callahan and chinchillas continued for two or three months — until the fateful night when the good Father delivered his usual homily and the chinchilla commercials failed to materialize. Instead, a plastic guillotine-like device appeared on the TV screen, contrasted against a background map of the world, below which were printed the words “World Famous Veg-O-Matic.” Then a disembodied voice said: “Imagine slicing a whole potato into uniform slices with one motion. Bulk cheese costs less. Look how easy Veg-O-Matic makes many slices at once. . . . ”

I’d spent my Father Callahan/chinchilla nights dozing fitfully on the couch and sneaking back to my room before the rest of the family awakened, but on that memorable evening — I’ve come to think of it as Night of the Veg-O-Matic — I sat there stupefied, watching the commercial over and over. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen, and by morning I had the narration memorized — every nuance, modulation and inflection — to which I could add hand gestures, including the graceful, upturned palm that beckoned, “Buy me, buy me, buy me. . . .”

Later that day, I was eating lunch in the high school cafeteria with my regular buds when freckle-faced Ronnie Wheeler produced a sliced tomato his mother had wrapped in wax paper to keep it from saturating the white bread he needed to construct his BLT. I jumped up, grabbed the tomato slices and ran through the entire Veg-O-Matic routine, spreading the segments across the Formica tabletop and finishing with the obligatory “. . . perfect every time!” 

My friends were speechless, especially Ronnie, whose sandwich was ruined. They stared blankly before bursting into hysterics. The vice-principal, Mr. Wetherhold, a stern disciplinarian who abhorred any form of frivolity, hurried over to our table to discern the source of the disturbance. “What’s going on here?” he asked sternly.

“Do it!” my friends begged. “Do the Veg-O-Matic thing!” They didn’t have to ask twice. When I finished my second run-through, it was Mr. Wetherhold who was howling with laughter. Suffice it to say I spent a good deal of my time in high school doing “the Veg-O-Matic thing” for my friends. They never tired of it.

Now the Drug Fair manager’s face glowed with approval, and I could see that he’d suffered an epiphany. He rushed into the stockroom and reappeared with a folding table. He extended the legs, positioned the table in front of the pyramid of boxes and covered the top with a square of red cheesecloth. He grabbed an onion from the produce aisle, peeled away the skin, and ordered me to deliver my recitation again, this time with the unboxed Veg-O-Matic at my fingertips.

Despite my long and intimate history with the kitchen device, this was the first time I’d worked with one. But I muddled through the presentation by recalling the images I’d watched hundreds of times on TV, each motion transmitted from memory to physical articulation. I made quick work of the onion, repeating the entire monologue. My demonstration, although clumsy, went well enough to instantly earn me the title: 1965 Parole Drug Fair Veg-O-Matic Man.

“You’re hired!” the manager said. “I want you to do a demonstration at the top of every hour. Use all the tomatoes and onions you want, but stay away from the cheese and Spam. That stuff costs money.”

“Yes, sir,” I said dutifully. 

“The rest of the time you can restock these Veg-O-Matics and relieve the cashiers who are going on break. Can you start tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I guess.”

“Be here at 8 o’clock, and wear a white shirt.”

Crestfallen, I dragged myself into the parking lot and caught the bus back to Eastport. When I stumbled into our living room, it was 11:30 a.m., and I was whipped.

“Did Mr. Short hire you?” my mother yelled from the kitchen.

“He didn’t have any openings, but I got a job at Drug Fair in Parole.”

“Excellent,” she said.

When I turned up at Drug Fair on Saturday morning ready to begin my new career, the manager had anticipated my every need. The folding table was set up in aisle four, which was stocked with kitchen junk — Melmac dishes, spatulas, plastic forks, spoons and knives, etc. — and beside the table waited a freshly replenished pyramid of multicolored boxes containing the Veg-O-Matics. The tabletop was covered with the red cheesecloth from the day before, and a white apron of the style that loops around the neck and ties in the back was folded neatly on the table. An unopened can of Spam and a brick of Kraft Velveeta cheese were stacked beside the gleaming white Veg-O-Matic display model I’d used in my earlier demonstration, and a bag of assorted vegetables — tomatoes, onions, carrots and potatoes — awaited their fate. As a touch of class, the manager had placed a roll of paper towels on the table, and a beige commercial dome-topped trash can sat directly behind my workspace.

“Here, wear this,” he said, handing me a handsome black clip-on bowtie. I donned my apron and attached the bowtie to the wrinkled collar of my white shirt. “Now show me your stuff. Just use vegetables. The Spam and cheese are for show.”

I launched into my Veg-O-Matic dance at a measured pace, slicing up a small potato and allowing my hands to gracefully execute a lilting swirl at the conclusion of the shtick.

“That was even better than yesterday,” the manager beamed, “although I’d take it a little slower if I were you.” He looked up and down aisle four. “I’ll make an announcement at the top of every hour. You get yourself set up. Sell the hell out of these Veg-O-Matics. If you don’t, you’ll be in a checkout stand all day.” And he left me on my own.

I peeled an onion, and trimmed it to the proper size and shape. I was ready. Or as ready as I was ever going to be.

“We are pleased to direct your attention to aisle four,” I heard the manager announce over the PA system, “where you can view a demonstration of the miracle Veg-O-Matic, the 20th century’s greatest kitchen appliance. It makes an economical and useful Christmas gift! Do all your Christmas shopping in five minutes and have your Veg-O-Matics gift wrapped right here in the store. Christmas cards are available on aisle six.”

After my first two demonstrations, I discovered that operating the Veg-O-Matic wasn’t quite the effortless exercise I’d observed on TV. I directed my attention to the tomato, which I positioned perfectly between the upper and lower blades. “This is the only appliance in the world that slices whole firm tomatoes in one stroke with every seed in place,” I said, as I slammed down the top of the Veg-O-Matic. The tomato exploded like a water balloon, splattering juice and seeds all over my apron and the tabletop. The two customers who had gathered for my demonstration jumped back and bolted for the exit.

I’d created a huge mess. I mopped the tomato slop off my hands with a paper towel and brushed the seeds from my apron, but pulp continued to dribble from the bottom of the Veg-O-Matic, and I had to retreat to the stockroom to wash the blades. So tomatoes were out. Ripe ones, at least. After mopping the splatter from the tabletop, I attempted to slice an onion I’d peeled earlier. I gave a forceful downward thrust and the device worked perfectly, sending a cascade of onion slivers onto the cheesecloth. Still, it was a messy business; pieces of onion got stuck in the blades and had to be pried out. I had the same experience with carrots, stubborn chunks of which had to be worked free with my fingertips.

I settled, finally, on a peeled Idaho Russet potato. I cut the spud into four pieces, which I fed individually into the chopper. And the device worked as intended — neat and clean. The Veg-O-Matic was, after all, meant to transform a time-consuming, chaotic operation into a simple, wholesome procedure. And that’s what it did.

The secret, as with many physical actions, was in the wrist. It was all finesse. I’d place a piece of potato on the bottom blades and apply a sharp downward whack with the top. And voila! the potato was julienned, perfect for hash browns. If I spoke slowly, worked methodically and was meticulous with my cleanup, I could kill the better part of a half hour on each demonstration, thus allowing for only 30 minutes of working at a cash register before my next demonstration.

At first, I was worried that I wouldn’t sell enough Veg-O-Matics to keep my new job, but the pile of boxes diminished at an ever-increasing rate as Christmas approached and the manager was a happy man. I’d sold six to eight Veg-O-Matics with each demonstration, and I noticed that many customers who didn’t make an immediate purchase returned later to snatch up two or three Veg-O-Matics, having chosen convenience over thoughtful reflection. Usually these return customers felt compelled to offer an explanation for their delayed purchase. “You know,” they’d say, “I was thinking about your demonstration, and you’re right, this will make an excellent gift for my mother.”

Every day I’d work straight through until 10 p.m., taking an hour each for lunch and dinner, and then I’d catch the bus home in the dark. I’d shower and collapse into my bed to read for a few seconds in Pigs Have Wings, my latest Wodehouse novel, before falling asleep.

And that’s how it went for seven straight days. I’d turn up at Drug Fair at 8 a.m., an hour before the store opened, to prepare the potatoes for my demonstration. I’d restock the Veg-O-Matic display, piling the boxes high in an ergonomically conical construct of my own contrivance, and check out a register tray so that I could relieve cashiers who went on break.

If my schedule was exhausting, it also had its advantages. I slept like a stone, and the days flew by. At home, I didn’t have a conversation with my mother, father or sister that lasted more than 10 seconds. “Hi, how ya doing?” was as intimate as it got, which suited me. My father was asleep when I left in the morning and when I came in at night, I didn’t have to listen to my mother and sister bicker. Only my brother Mike, with whom I shared a room, was around when I staggered in whacked out from 12 hours of working with the public. He’d fill me in on the day’s drama with my sister, which made me glad I’d be headed back to college soon.

When the store closed at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve, I used my humongous 5 percent employee discount to purchase gifts for the family — a cheap cotton bathrobe for my mother, which turned out to fit her like a circus tent, a simulated leather wallet for my father, a 45 of Donovan’s “Catch the Wind” for my brother, and the Beatles’ Help! for my sister. I was headed out the door with my packages when the manager stopped me.

“You’ve done a good job,” he said, a genuine smile on his pasty face. “And I’m hoping you’ll consider coming back to work through New Year’s Eve. You won’t be selling Veg-O-Matics, but I need experienced help to run the registers and handle returns. I could use you for at least 12 hours a day.”

Normally I would have responded with an emphatic “No,” but fresh in my memory were the money problems I’d experienced during my first four months at college and the hours I spent in McEwen Dining Hall scraping greasy dishes and scrubbing pots. With my paltry allowance, there was no hope of establishing a relationship with any of the girls I found myself drooling over as they roamed the campus. It was essential I screw up my courage and get myself an on-campus date. I’d have to double with an upperclassman who had a car, and to make that happen, I needed enough money to cover my share of the gas.

“All right,” I answered. “Can I get some overtime?”

“I’ll give you all the overtime you want. You can work 14 hours a day if you skip lunch and dinner.”

“All right,” I answered, “I’ll be glad to help out.”

So on December 27, I was standing behind a cash register refunding money for the Veg-O-Matics I’d sold the week before. “I’d like to get the money back for this thing,” the customer would say, handing me the orange and black box. They occasionally offered excuses such as “I already have one of these” or “I have no use for this piece of junk,” but what they wanted was cash. In almost every case the customer returning the Veg-O-Matic was not the person who’d bought it, so I didn’t consider the returns a criticism of my performance. I handed them the money and stuck the boxes and signed receipts under the register. At the end of the day, I toted the returned Veg-O-Matics to the storeroom and piled them up in the same space they’d occupied when they were new.

To compound this irony, the manager handed me a hammer at closing time on my first post-Christmas day as a cashier and sent me to the stockroom to smash the Veg-O-Matics the store had taken back. “Just bash those veggie things into little bits and put them back in the boxes,” he directed. “And while you’re at it, smash up these toys that didn’t get sold.” The manager didn’t explain why I needed to destroy so much perfectly good merchandise, and I didn’t ask. But I laid into my new task with gusto, obliterating hundreds of Veg-O-Matics along with Chatty Cathy dolls, Etch-A-Sketches, tin airliners, space guns, trains, battery-powered James Bond Aston Martin cars, Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots, Easy-Bake Ovens, electric football games, G.I. Joes, and the occasional Barbie doll, perfectly good toys that might have gone to poor children who’d suffered a sad Christmas. But it was exhilarating work — and strangely gratifying — an anti-capitalistic binge that assuaged the guilt I’d suffered from selling plastic crap to poor people.

But the days were long, and there was no time to hang out with my friends. When I got off work at 9 p.m., I was too worn out to go to parties or ride around with high school buds. I’d catch the bus back to Eastport and fall into bed. The following morning, I’d get up and do it again.

On my last day of work, a Friday, the manager shook my hand. “You’re a lifesaver,” he said, pumping my weary arm. “If you need a job next Christmas, just let me know.”

I smiled, gave him my college post office box number and asked him to send my check there rather than to my home address.

“You should get it before the 10th,” he said.

During the two-and-a-half weeks I’d toiled at Drug Fair, my parents hardly noticed my absence. I was a shadow who flitted in and out at odd hours. And I wanted it that way. I didn’t have to listen to them argue, which was their habitual method of communication during any holiday season when they were forced to remain in each other’s company for more than five continuous minutes. And if my parents didn’t realize the hours I was working, they’d have no idea how much money I was making. Had they an inkling of the cash I was likely to pocket, they would have given me that much less for tuition, room and board, and the endless hours I’d spent slaving at Drug Fair would have been for naught.

On the evening before my return to Elon, in honor of my having been invisible during the holiday season, my mother prepared lasagna, my favorite dish. 

“You headed back tomorrow?” my father asked.

“First thing in the morning,” I answered, “I’m going to catch the bus.”

My mother looked puzzled. “It seems like you just got here,” she said.

“I’ve been working the whole time.”

“Good,” she said. “How much money did you make?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten paid yet — and the wage at Drug Fair isn’t as much as it is at the Safeway. I’ll let you know when the check arrives.” I was lying, of course. I had no intention of telling anyone how much money I’d earned. It was nobody’s business but mine.  PS

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of eight 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. This is an excerpt from his forthcoming book The Year We Danced: A Memoir.

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A Bookshop Mystery

A Bookshop Mystery

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The collected letters of an American hero

By Bill Case

 

   

Right Photo: Lt. Alexandre Stillman, bottom row middle

Last July an unidentified patron entered Pinehurst’s Given Tufts Bookshop, went to the rear of the building and placed a bound volume at the shop’s drop-off table for donated books. Tightly bound with a black, white and red-trimmed cover, the volume’s outward appearance didn’t raise any eyebrows. Curiously, though, its title, Thumbs Up, was not accompanied by any identification of the author.

Before donated materials can reach the shelves for resale, shop manager Jessica Flynn inspects them. When she looked at Thumbs Up, she was both intrigued and puzzled. Far from a traditional book, the volume comprised typed letters in chronological order on 167 pages of onionskin paper, dated from 1940 to 1945. The letters had been written by a World War II Navy pilot detailing the entire sweep of his wartime service, culminating in piloting a B-24 Liberator bomber in the Aleutian Islands and then in unidentified locations in the Pacific theater as he flew missions off the coast of Japan.

Who this pilot was, however, was not altogether clear. None of the letters in Thumbs Up are signed, suggesting the onionskins are carbon copies of originals. One letter, roughly halfway through the book, left a space for a signature and underneath it the words “Lt. A. Stillman — officer in charge, Air Operations.” In another letter sent to the author’s mother, he expresses satisfaction that a newborn relative had been named after him: “Jean Joseph Alexandre.” Could the “A” in “A. Stillman” stand for Alexander?

The volume also contained several pasted-in pen and ink drawings and photographs, including one of the pilot and his crew. It was clear that Thumbs Up was a one-of-a-kind historical document worthy of preservation. Perhaps a family member — if one could be found — would treasure this collection from the front lines of the air battle in the Pacific. But first a positive ID had to be nailed down.

Initial inquiries on U.S. Navy websites turned up nothing pertaining to an A. Stillman, pilot of a B-24 Liberator in the Aleutians and the Pacific. Though dubious that a mere Google search of “Alexander Stillman” would produce any useful information, I went through the motions anyway. On the “Find a Grave” website, I discovered a studio portrait of someone named Alexander Stillman in fully decorated military uniform. The confident-looking, mustachioed officer in the picture bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Ernest Hemingway. The website said this Alexander Stillman was born in 1911 and died in 1984. He would have been 29 to 34 years of age during the period when the Thumbs Up letters were written, a good fit. But was the man in the online photograph and the author of the letters one and the same?

In the pilot’s squadron photo on the first page of Thumbs Up, the man kneeling in the middle of the first row was a smiling mustachioed officer. It was undoubtedly the same man.

Alexander Stillman, it seemed, was the author-pilot, and furthermore, I now had two pictures of him. But, aside from birth and death dates, I knew little else about the man. It was time to chase Alexander Stillman to the end of the internet. Googling on, I located the website of the Stillman Nature Center in South Barrington, Illinois, outside Chicago. The SNC is described as “a private, nonprofit center for environmental education, located on 80 acres of woods, lake, and prairie.” Many birds of prey, including grey owls, populate the preserve. Alexander Stillman, who lived on Penny Road in South Barrington, had donated the land.

The fact that Stillman had the kind of money that would allow him to donate a large tract of valuable acreage to charity suggests a man of independent and rather significant means. And he was. His father, James A. Stillman, it turns out, was the chairman of National City Bank of New York, and the holder of a vast family fortune. In 1901, James married Anne “Fifi” Urquhart Potter. The couple had four children: Anne, Bud, Alexander and Guy (who, like Alexander, was a wartime lieutenant in the Navy). In 1921, James and Fifi became embroiled in a divorce fit for the salacious Page Six of the New York Post — if such a thing existed then — involving charges and countercharges of infidelity. News of the contentious court filings was reported nationwide.

The couple reconciled for a time but the marriage finally ended in 1931. After her divorce was finalized, Fifi again became the subject of national gossip when she married Fowler McCormick, a man 20 years her junior, who was heir to the International Harvester fortune. Fowler had previously been Fifi’s son Bud’s roommate at Princeton University.

A short biography of Stillman on the nature center’s website, researched and written by a one-time student intern named Helen Reinold, praised Stillman’s advocacy for environmental causes, in honor of which he received a Certificate of Life Membership from the National Audubon Society. Though Reinold didn’t, it would seem, have any knowledge of Stillman’s World War II correspondence, she does mention a letter he wrote to his sister-in-law, Guy’s wife, about his grandmother, a famous stage actress named Cora Brown Potter. In the letter Stillman writes of his grandmother that “she had abandoned her only child in order to flee her very dull marriage to Grandfather, going to London to pursue her career as an actress . . . the Toast of London, being so it was inevitable that she should meet the Prince of Wales. The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, had very little to do except change his clothes four times a day, overeat and drink, of which he died of, and court the most beautiful women of his day. Inevitably Grandmother became his mistress of a long line, but she was one of the last three and to whom he was longest faithful.”

   

Reinold goes on to detail Stillman’s penchant for international travel. The countries stamped into his passports included France, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Denmark and the Bahamas. And, of course, she highlights his heroic military service. “Over the course of three attacks in May and June of 1945,” she writes, “Stillman is credited with the sinking of four enemy Merchant Vessels, two large fishing boats, and a Whale Killer. In addition, he tracked an enemy cruiser and warded off attacks by an enemy plane.” She notes that he received a number of medals and commendations, at least one of which Stillman, himself, describes in Thumbs Up.

VPB 102

1 August 1945

Ma, Bow, Meme and Lou

The night before I broke out a clean khaki shirt, a pair of pants, a cap cover. My shoes were mildewed, twisted and sorry. I put a crease in the pants, wiped the dust off my hat and went to town on the shoes.

Coming down at 9.30 a bit rocky (the boys had broken several bottles over my head the night before and they were still rumbling inside) to the Squadron, I find all the PCCs out of their sack, and the pilots, and the men. My men look beautiful in clean work clothes and bran [sic] white hats. God knows where they got them.

The Skipper says “well, come on” and we stream out and straggle up the blazing sunshine between the tens of planes lined up on the white white coral.

We line up. Under the prop of a plane, and the rest wheel, and face us. A Commander comes out and tells us we can smoke a cigarette. Three of us start and then throw them away. It’s very hot.

The Admiral drives up and walks in front of us.

I stand at attention in front of him; I listen to the citation, look at his stars and my gaze wanders over his head and down between the rows of silent planes resting on the coral “and while attacked by a twin-engine fighter’s” tired planes with holes, controls shot out “sinking a third ship”, engines to be changed but we have no engines, fix and fly “and for extraordinary heroism.”

Dismiss.

If Alexander Stillman enjoyed a certain level of comfort after the war, during it he endured the same deprivations as every other soldier, sailor or Marine. In Thumbs Up, which begins with a letter to his mother written on August 1, 1940, and finishes with a letter dated 13 July 1945 from “somewhere in the Pacific” written on an aircraft carrier headed home, Stillman doesn’t exactly complain about the grueling hours, horrible conditions and continual dangers, but he doesn’t sugarcoat them either. In his July 19, 1945 letter to stepfather Fowler McCormick, he writes: 

“One day I fly 13, 14, 15 hours. Next day I work on the planes. And the next we fly. . . . Have you ever done anything where you sang all the time? This is death, destruction, and hell. We have poor food, no heat, no fresh water. We live 30 people to 40 ft; we have air raids, and we average 5 hours sleep a night. Yet, I do.”

In August of 1944, when Stillman was in Kansas training on his Liberator, he writes to a woman who has professed her affection for him, fatalistically cautioning her:

“You have falled [sic] in love with a flyer and it is perhaps not a good thing. We don’t live in the past and now in our third year of war soon to go out again, we are on borrowed time. Do you realize?”

In addition to the photographs and numerous pen and ink drawings, the book includes the occasional bit of verse. To make his point that the flying conditions in the Aleutians are invariably poor and risky, in June of 1943 he cites “an Alaskan nursery jingle”:

There are bold Alaskan pilots

And there are old Alaskan pilots

But there are no old bold Alaskan pilots.

After 69 missions over Japan, flown from Tinian and Iwo Jima, and numerous others in the Aleutians, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought an end to the war with Japan. On an aircraft carrier bound for home Stillman wrote:

All today over the roaring radio we have listened to crowds in New York, Atlanta, Hollywood, Cleveland going wild. It seems to make us more quiet in the wardroom. Perhaps we remember but don’t want to, the rows of white crosses, the burials we had, the useless searches in acres of ocean, the lousy chow, the brass, the impossible flights, coming in on 40 gals. of gas and will. One lieutenant for the second time on good record, all fair, said “Don’t you feel let down?” I agreed.

And he finishes:

Tonight a carrier takes us home, Eve 91, over the blue and bloody waters, eastward, to the dawn of tomorrow.

I spoke to two of Alexander’s nieces, Alexandra (“Alex”) Stillman, of Alcata, California, and Sharee Brookhart, of Phoenix, Arizona. They remembered their uncle, whom they called Aleck, as a tall, lanky, handsome man who never married or fathered children. They recalled that their father, Aleck’s brother Guy, once confided that Alexander had flown so many missions during the war that many in his squadron feared going up in the air with him, worried Stillman’s “number” had to be coming up soon.

The two sisters thought that perhaps their uncle’s wartime service in the Pacific may well have been the high point of his interesting life. He chose a military funeral in Honolulu at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His interment was accompanied by a 21-gun salute.

Whether it’s serendipity or destiny, two of Alexandra’s granddaughters attended Chapman University in Orange, California. Chapman is the home of the Center for American War Letters Archive, something that grew out of the “Legacy Project” begun by Andrew Carroll.

“Just about every aspect of World War II has been written about,” says Andrew Harman, the collection’s archivist. “What we’re trying to dive into now is the mundane, the individual aspects, the experiences that people were writing about in the first person at the time. Our mission is to preserve but, being a part of Chapman University and an academic library, we’re very big on access and research. It’s a room full of white pages if no one is looking at them.”

The Given Tufts bookstore has donated Stillman’s collection to the Center for American War Letters.

The mystery of the identity of the author of Thumbs Up has been solved, and Stillman’s letters now reside in an appropriate home. But who had delivered this fascinating volume to a used bookstore in Pinehurst and why? That, we may never know, but we’re glad they did.  PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.

Up, Up and Away

Up, Up and Away

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Chasing dreams across the sky

By Jenna Biter

There’s a staccato chhh, followed by a smell almost like sulfur. Both emanate from a wicker basket sitting on a driveway in suburban Vass. Inside the odd, oversized vessel crouches a man fiddling with the knob of a propane tank. Positioned just so, his polo shirt embroidered with the kaleidoscopic logo Balloons Over America, his shock of pepper-gray hair barely visible over the basket’s rim, it looks as if the man is the elusive first course of a giant’s picnic lunch. As it turns out, Mark Meyer isn’t the protagonist of Jack and the Beanstalk, though he, too, makes trips into the sky. No, Mark is an aeronaut, preparing to demonstrate just how he hornswoggles gravity so that his hot air balloon can fly.

“The reason that the baskets are still made out of wicker is, if you have a propane leak, it sinks to the bottom of the basket and wicks right out,” Mark says, running a hand over the caning, as gaps of light leak between the reeds. “If the basket was plastic, and there was ever a propane leak, it would all sit right here, and then the ignition source . . . it would go boom. Makes for a bad day.”

Lucky for Mark, not even his worst ballooning days have included explosions. Though incidents are rare, the man of the sky has been gored by a cactus; narrowly and simultaneously missed both a barbed wire fence and a nearby interstate; and scuffled with a mulberry tree while a good friend, Jon Hartway, was along for the flight.

  

“I look at Jon and say, ‘This ain’t going to be pretty,’” Mark tells the story with feigned sobriety. “So we gift-wrap this mulberry tree, and we’re stuck up against the trunk. Then the balloon comes down, and there are all these purple mulberries just falling all over us.

“Meanwhile, John is laying in the bottom of the basket about to piss himself, he’s laughing so hard. I ask, ‘What is so funny?’ He says, ‘Mark, we got 1,000 hours of combat. We’ve been shot up, aircraft tore up, and never once have you said, ‘This ain’t going to be pretty.’”

Mark belly laughs and catches his wife, Missy’s, eye as she joins in. Missy has been along for the ride since her aeronaut first took flight, either flying beside Mark in the basket or serving as crew chief in the ground-bound chase vehicle.

The fruit salvo from the mulberry tree left fuchsia welts on the balloon, but the story was worth a few stains. In 2014, Hartway died in an Apache helicopter crash while flying a training mission with the Idaho National Guard, making the memory of the mulberry incident all the more precious. The story — and all the others that the Meyers have collected on their adventures in the sky — have colored the couple’s life with the rosy hue of fond memories, nearly three decades’ worth. Mark first piloted a hot air balloon in the mid-’90s, when his daughters, now grown, were still in the house.

   

“We wanted to buy an aircraft of some sort, but with three daughters, we couldn’t afford a six-seater plane, like a Cherokee Six or something like that,” Mark says matter-of-factly. For nearly 40 years, he served as an Army aviator by day, piloting helicopters — Hueys and Black Hawks — and then fixed-wing turboprops later in his career. Why not share his passion for flight with his family?

“The first balloon, the girls got to pick the color,” Mark says of his daughters Amanda, Morgan and Madison. The Meyers bought their first used setup before their only son, Max, was born. “Never ask three little girls what color balloon they want — because it’s hot pink.”

“When we would go to festivals, little girls would scream, ‘It’s the Barbie balloon!’” Missy says, smiling. In much the same way a new mother insists her baby boy will only be called James but by middle school he’s inevitably Jimmy, the balloon’s official name was Pink Passion, but it was never called anything other than The Barbie Balloon. Though Barbie deflated long ago — for the time being On the Fly is the Meyers’ go-to passenger balloon — the hot pink original flies on in the family house, immortalized in album pages and picture frames on the walls.

   

At first glance, the Meyer house is a shrine to ballooning. In one side room sits a retired basket rimmed with a bar top and wrapped in twinkle lights. In the same room, a second basket, an antique from 1984, serves as top-shelf liquor storage. Together, the baskets make up something of a fantastical pedal pub that tourists might crowd around, exchanging small talk as they cycle through the clouds. Back in the foyer is a painting of Missy with the reflection of a purple balloon in her sunglasses. A game of “I Spy” the hot air balloon could entertain guests for hours, but the stories behind every photo, keepsake and figurine could occupy them for weeks, the odds and ends representing the memories that come with a full life.

Back outside — and still standing in the middle of his basket — Mark reaches for the double metal burner perched overhead. Click. Then he makes another motion. Vooooosh. A hungry flame climbs into the air, rising higher than the roofline. A passing van bucks to a stop. The driver, like most passersby on a regular Wednesday night, is startled by the biblical pillar of fire. Had the balloon been attached, the burner would have warmed the air and inflated the fabric sack until it stood upright. In the next instant, as quickly as the flame appeared, it disappears — perhaps the first genie to go willingly back into its bottle.

Though the fire has gone out, its warmth hasn’t. After an evening of picking through memories, the Meyers seem to be floating up among the clouds, though they hadn’t left the ground.  PS

You can book a hot air balloon ride with Mark and Missy Meyer at balloonsoveramerica.org.

Jenna Biter is a writer and military wife in the Sandhills. She can be reached at jennabiter@protonmail.com.

Poem July 2023

Poem July 2023

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Clay Banks

The creek is old and its banks are steep.

Its flow never stops its work of remaking.

Clay like this wants to keep its form

though scoured by the storm-carried silt,

pitted as by earthbound lightning strikes.

Water is turned by jutting granite,

milky quartz, even soft sandstone,

all of it red with rust going green

as first the ferns unroll their fronds

and vines tease the air with soft thorns

the way childhood returns in old age.

 

A friend told me how his mother, who

is now constantly looking for her home,

who can’t recognize him or his sister,

was happy to play ball with his toddler,

with his new puppy. She tossed the ball

against the brick patio wall with a spin.

The dog and child ran with confused joy.

Sometimes they fell over each other.

His mother always caught the ball.

She was the only one who seemed to know

exactly where the ball would bounce.

— Paul Jones

Paul Jones is a professor emeritus at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His latest collection of poetry is called Something Wonderful.

A Perfect Fit

A Perfect Fit

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Historic bungalow made-to-measure

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Gessner

   

Residentially, Pinehurst is a many splendored thing, from Tudors to Taras, Cape Cod cottages to contemporaries mostly upward of 3,000 square feet. They have long pedigrees, and are furnished in family heirlooms with designer upgrades. Built in the age of maids and cooks, their utilitarian kitchens tucked out back have become appliance/gadgetry showcases and their bathrooms, spas.

Now emerges a separate class that defies classification: modest cottages built for resort support staff in a fringe neighborhood called Power Plant because, of course, that’s where the power plant was. The same applies to Laundry Hill and just plain Community Road. A list of Tufts’ employees reveals names like Shaw, Kelly, Fields and McCaskill, forever memorialized on street signs in toney Old Town.

Once left to graceful decay, these bungalows are on the comeback trail, renovated by retirees fascinated by their history, their ghosts.

In May, PineStraw featured an iteration of the cottage Rassie Wicker built for his family — Wicker being Tufts’ legendary engineer, historian, builder and town planner. Its current owner-renovators, Lisa and Bob Hammond, retired medical professionals who performed much of the labor themselves, are vibrant young grandparents captivated by Wicker and the Pinehurst saga.

   

But before Rassie provided a house for his wife and children, in 1919 he built a tiny cottage for younger brother Roswell Egbert Wicker, known as Bert. Bert installed the area’s first telephones and managed Pinehurst Electric Company. Since Bert and his wife had no children, the size of the home — under 1,000 square feet — was sufficient.

The cottage was named Merrimac. Why, nobody knows.

In 2012, its third owner undertook a major renovation and enlargement with attention to quality and detail, including fabricating a tool to produce moldings that matched the original ones. Heavy paneled doors were refinished; knotty pine floors scraped and stained a rich cherrywood brown; the bathroom modernized and a modestly sized but stunning black and white kitchen installed; screened porch and patio added; ceilings and roof lines modified; and so much more. Then, the owners furnished it with finds of quirky provenance: a Shaker cabinet, an oversized leather sofa beside a coffee table made by shortening the legs of an English kitchen table, a massive hand-hewn Amish dining table, bent-twig chairs, lace café curtains, and Tiffany-esque sconces.

      

Beadboard is lavished on walls and backsplash, even on a vaulted ceiling in the family-room addition.

The fireplace burns wood, not gas.

Merrimac became a rental property, smaller than most, but prettier than many.

 

Lorelei and Paul Milan — outgoing, fit, energetic retirees — met at tiny Elmira College in upstate New York. He was from Massachusetts, she from Buffalo. For 32 years they lived and owned a commercial cleaning business in Raleigh. They raised two children in a 3,500-square-foot house with a pool and horses in the backyard. But for retirement they wanted a small town with less bustle. Pinehurst had been a golf destination. Why not drive down, take a look? Their “look” lasted two years since, like many retirees, they wanted something in the village that had already been renovated, preferably a property retaining a charter membership at the resort.

“Let us know if you find a cottage with character,” Lorelei told the real estate agent.

Four days later she got a call. “We walked in and bought it.” Not just the house. All the furnishings. “I wanted it turnkey.”

 

That meant disposing of their furnishings and settling into a setting more Martha’s Vineyard B&B than Old South. Lorelei extended one kitchen cabinet for drawer space and replaced the stove with a duel fuel model. White walls became fresh pastels. They added two leather chairs and a rug to the family room and a king-sized slated sleigh bed that fills the master bedroom.

By admission, Lorelei is an anti-hoarder, so no clutter. Only her grandmother’s salt and pepper collection on a windowsill and her great-grandmother’s demitasse cups made the cut.

Then, they embarked on a major project: converting a small cart-and-pony shed into an extra bedroom (no bathroom) for visiting children, while also turning a building on the lot line into a three-bay garage, all using materials that matched the house. One bay houses their golf cart, another a giant closet for Lorelei’s outfits and, of primary importance, a third as the “beer fridge.”

About that off-premises closet: Closets had not entirely replaced armoires by the Wicker era. Paul gets the single narrow bedroom closet. He also has custody of the desk facing the front door, which makes this intended sitting room look like an office except for a plaid loveseat.

 

“Paul is a problem-solver,” his wife explains. Solutions, paperwork and his playlist come together easier when seated at a desk. Besides, friends know to enter through the screened porch into the kitchen which, although compact, exemplifies good design. On its wall hangs a framed photograph of Bert Rassie’s original cottage appearing rather drab compared to its update.

Lorelei misses having a pool, but Merrimac offered a new interest: Moore County history. She has researched the Wickers, their professions and properties, with the help of Jill Gooding, Bert’s grand-niece, who provided information from the Wicker family Bible. Lorelei compiled her findings into booklets, part of a submission to the Village Heritage Foundation, which in 2020 awarded this cottage — and Rassie Wicker’s — Pinehurst Historic Plaques.

Whether Bert enjoyed the decade he lived here is not known. Lorelei and Paul Milan’s delight is obvious. They can sit on the terrace and wave to passers-by. They are only a few minutes from world-class golf, a pool and other club amenities. Their home is small enough to be cozy, large enough to entertain. True, they have only one guest room plus the guest cottage, which their daughter reminded them won’t be sufficient for grandchildren. Paul’s eyes twinkle, as he whispers, “Hotel.”

The criteria for historic preservation varies. Nobody disallows air conditioning or WiFi. The best examples retain the ambience of antiquity. Old maps of young Pinehurst decorate the walls of Merrimac. Its paned windows remain wavy glass, and its dimensions, with the exception of the family/living room addition, match the needs of original occupants, who were skilled worker bees, not captains of industry from Pittsburgh, New York and Boston. A century old, this little gem is, above all, serendipity for modern retirees Lorelei and Paul Milan.

“It’s perfect,” Lorelei says, before dashing off to meet an old friend for golf. “We live in every square foot, every day. Aren’t we so lucky?”  PS

Freeze Frame

Freeze Frame

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Art Direction by Brady Gallagher

If J. Geils isn’t available, maybe Paul Simon is. Give us those nice bright colors. Give us the greens of summers. Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day. Oh, yeah. We’ve got a Nikon camera. And we used it to give some classic album covers a special Sandhills spin. As Taylor Swift might say, we’ve got pictures to burn.

What: Chris Stamey/Winter of Love

Who: John Gessner, local photographer

Where: the Gessner record collection

Photograph: Self-portrait

 

What: Stevie Wonder/Hotter than July

Who: Joseph Hill, local photographer

Photograph: Tim Sayer

 

What: Blur/Leisure

Who: Julia Lattarulo, Realtor Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Pinehurst Realty Group by day, swim coach by night

Where: FirstHealth Aquatic Center

Photograph: John Gessner

 

What: David Bowie/Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Hunky Dory

Who: The Violet Exploit, local band

Where: Create Studio

Photograph: Tim Sayer

 

What: Carlos Santana/Santana’s Greatest Hits, 1974

Who: Jeff Moody II, DC

Where: Pinehurst Chiropractic Center

Photograph: John Gessner

 

What: Culture Club/Colour by Numbers

Who: Alex Weiler, local musician and artist

Where: Swank Coffee Shoppe

Photograph: Tim Sayer

 

What: Bruce Springsteen/Born in the U.S.A.

Who: Tyler Cook, owner of Latitude Builders

Where: current construction site

Photograph: John Gessner

 

What: Michael Jackson/Thriller

Who: Courtney Kilpatrick

Where: Courtney’s Shoes

Photograph: Tim Sayer

     

What: Craig Fuller Eric Kaz

Who: Craig Fuller, then and now

Photograph: John Gessner

 

What: Grease     

Who: Red’s Corner founders, Bill and Rachel

Where: Red’s Corner       

Photograph: Tim Sayer

Reflections at 40

Reflections at 40

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Four decades of photos, art and fun

By David Kiner

What do you feel and visualize when you hear the words solitude, neglect, passion, joy, surprise or isolation? Do you think you could capture each in a photograph? You could. We all have the gift of imagination and creativity and, like all beautiful artwork, photography tells simple stories.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Sandhills Photography Club. Established in 1983, it’s an integral part of this community, attracting photographers of all skill levels, from an amateur with a cellphone to gifted professionals with a trunk full of gear. “We have a wonderful complement of experience and skill levels among our members,” says Jacques Wood, president of SPC. “Regardless of experience level, club members love photography, are ready to learn new techniques, and enjoy sharing and seeing the work of others.”

Brian Osborne, owner of The Photo Classroom and founder of the Professional Photography Group, Charlotte’s largest professional photography team, had this to say about the club: “Over the years, I have spoken to a wide variety of camera and photography clubs but SPC is hands down my favorite. The thing that I love most about this organization is not only the community they share, but their earnest desire to learn and grow.”

Photography has changed dramatically over the past four decades but the principles have remained the same — finding ways to capture moments, stopping time through light, composition, texture and color. In 1983 the Club began with nine members and grew quickly to 25, with many knee-deep in the chemicals found in their darkrooms. Today the club is 100 strong and its members are knee-deep in pixels instead.

Local artist and founding member of the Artists League of the Sandhills and SPC, Betty Hendrix, remembers those early days. “We were still using slides to view our work, or physically bringing photos in for display. And the word Zoom was a children’s TV program,” she says.

Linda Piechota has been a member of the club for 34 of its 40 years. “I recall, way back then, being kind of ambivalent about entering a contest, and showing my first photo. How silly of me. We are more like a family than a club. None of us could have imagined how things have changed with technology. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the passion I see in our members.”

The club is impressively comprehensive with its own website, a monthly newsletter called “In Focus,” workshops, field trips, exhibitions and competitions. The William Stoffel Awards, named after one of the club’s co-founders, are presented annually to members accumulating the greatest number of competition points in each of the competitive tiers. The competitions are held every other month with the themes identified in advance. It’s the job of the photographer to capture what they feel best describes that theme. Submitted photographs are judged by an outside professional who both encourages and provides constructive feedback, an essential part of the growth of the members.

Like a composer who writes musical compositions, photographers don’t simply take snapshots. They can capture distant galaxies or extreme closeups. The heavens are vast and astonishing, but so are the tiniest of details found in the pistil of a flower or the mystery in the face of an insect. To see what others don’t is a common theme among those who fall in love with photography. You become increasingly aware of what’s around you.

“Hard work and staying with it is the key, and not being afraid to shoot, shoot, and shoot more,” says Walter Morris, an early club member and its second president. Once, on a two-week trip to Africa, Morris took over 7,000 photos. He kept “the 20 I liked. What makes a photo great? Well, you know it when you see it.”

Like all artistic endeavors, photographers grow by learning from others and exploring new scenes. “In this club, we learn so much from each other,” says Susan Bailey, coordinator of the club’s outings and a board member. Her love affair with photography started over 40 years ago. She’s in charge of full-day or half-day outings that range from trips to the beautiful gardens in Raleigh or Durham, pontoon excursions on Jordan Lake, or even the marvels of the North Carolina Zoo. “It’s wonderful to go on the club’s group outings,” says Bailey. “There is as much laughter as there is the clicking of our cameras.”

The club is also known for its two- or three-day field trips, headed up by Gary Magee, another long-standing member and a former two-term club president. This past spring the members went to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Other trips have taken members to the North Carolina mountains, its beaches, or even to the marshes and dunes of Amelia Island, Florida. “The idea of traveling in a group is very special,” says Magee. “We can dine together, stay at the same hotel and enjoy the beautiful gifts of living in the South.”

As with most of today’s activities, new technologies have continued to be a driving force for all the members. During the pandemic, the Sandhills Photography Club quickly adopted Zoom. Now its members and guests, far and wide, can participate in the vast number of activities the club offers. “Zoom made such a positive impact on us. At first it was just a means to stay together, to hold our sanity. But to our surprise it has expanded our membership base,” says Jerry Kozel, co-chairman of the club’s competition committee. “We have folks from all over the United States, South Africa and Australia involved.” Zoom also allows the club to reach out to professional photographers from all over the country who serve as judges in its bi-monthly competitions. “These are men and women with enormous experience who give such worthwhile advice,” says Kozel. “We store that information on our website so members who have missed a meeting can watch it at a later date.”

Technological advances extend well beyond communications software. Today’s cameras are getting smaller, more sophisticated, and moving to mirrorless models. Improvements in image sensors and lenses are astronomical. Cameras have more automated features like face and object recognition. Who knows what artificial intelligence software will bring? But one thing never changes — the conversation between the artist and the viewer. In the meantime, the members of the SPC will continue to find solace and joy in their love of photography.  PS

David Kiner is a member of the Sandhills Photo Club and a former faculty member at Syracuse University.  He happily resides in Southern Pines and can be reached at dbkiner@gmail.com.

The Great Unknown

The Great Unknown

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What surprises lurk in Pinehurst’s next U.S. Open?

By Jim Moriarty

Feature Photo Caption: Jason Gore on the fourth tee in the third round of the 2005 U.S. Open.

A U.S. Open is guaranteed to surprise. It’s built into the DNA. Because an Open is just that — open — it is the moon shot destination of every Tin Cup Roy McAvoy, every Caddyshack Carl Spackler, every Goat Hills assistant pro, every whistlestop, RV-driving, 4 o’clock in the morning coffee-drinking golfer with 14 clubs, a rainsuit that doesn’t leak and the most peculiar of ideas: that they can flat-out play this idiotic game. And every U.S. Open will have one of those guys you never heard of up on the leaderboard, posting a low score and a sweet story. In the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst’s No. 2 course, that guy was Jason Gore. And the story was bigger than he was.

A refugee from the PGA Tour’s minor league —the Nationwide Tour in those days — with the thick-chested physique of a stevedore and a neon smile as wide as all 88 keys on a baby grand, Gore’s self-deprecating grace quickly earned him favorite son status when he joined two-time U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen and tour veteran Olin Browne (who may be more famous these days as the father of the country/soft rock singer Alexandra Browne) at the top of the leaderboard after 36 holes. Golf World, the ultimate insider’s magazine first published in Pinehurst in 1947, described Gore as a “cross between Cinderella and the Michelin Man.”

It was an apt description, since the tires were among the few things left when Gore’s car was ransacked in Asheville en route to the national championship he would make, in many ways, his own. After getting through second stage qualifying in Atlanta, Gore flew to Knoxville, Tennessee (site of that week’s Nationwide tournament), to pick up his car, a black Ford Expedition with dark tinted windows and fancy chrome wheels. He, wife Megan and their 8-month old son, Jaxson, who was sporting two ear infections, headed east on I-40. “There was a thunderstorm coming through and it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and the walls are starting to close in,” Gore recalls, so they stopped and checked into a hotel.

Exhausted, they left most of their belongings in the car. In the morning Megan went to get a change of clothes and came back in tears. “They’d punched out the keyhole on the driver’s side and popped it open, tore out the dash, the Alpine stereo, took everything except the baby seat,” says Gore. “They cut themselves when they were tearing out the dash and there was blood and wires hanging everywhere.” Missing were all of Megan’s clothes and Jason’s briefcase with his laptop and his U.S. Open credentials. As luck would have it, his clubs had gone ahead of him with his caddie, Lewis Puller.

Gore rolled into Pinehurst in the jerry-rigged SUV version of Apollo 13, talking his way past a phalanx of security guards. “Go ahead,” one uniformed officer finally told him, “we heard about you.” By the weekend, every golf fan in America had.

Gore was the kind of player known to golf’s cognoscenti, if not to the general public. He and his Pepperdine University teammates won the NCAA team championship at Conway Farms Golf Club in Chicago in ’97, with Gore making double bogey on the last hole to lose the individual title to Clemson University’s Charles Warren by a shot. He won the California State Open and California State Amateur that year along with the Pacific Coast Amateur. His accomplishments earned him a spot on the victorious U.S. Walker Cup team at Quaker Ridge Golf Club where he accounted for 2 1/2 points. Then, the morning he was leaving for Boise, Idaho, to play in his first professional event, his mother, Kathy, found his father, Sheldon, on their living room floor dead from a heart attack.

“I had kind of a rough start to my golf career,” Gore told the media in ’05 when speaking about his father. “It’s taken a little while to get over that and try and become myself again.” At the age of 31, Gore had already bounced back and forth between the PGA Tour and its primary satellite twice. That he could play well wasn’t a shock. But could he play well enough to win a U.S. Open?

After his second round of three under par 67, Gore low-keyed it by describing the other time he led the U.S. Open. He was one of the first players on the course at the Olympic Club in ’98, drove it through the fairway into a bunch of “crap” (as he described it) on the opening hole, pitched out and holed a 90-yard wedge shot for a three. There was a leaderboard on the second tee and his name was at the top. Gore with a red -1. “So, this is old hat for me,” he said with that wide grin. His run in ’98 was short-lived. A 77 that day put a quick end to his Olympic feats.

Jason Gore tees off on  the second hole during the final round of the 2005 U.S. Open.

On Friday evening Gore made a foray to fill his car with gas and get a prescription at Eckerd’s for Jaxson’s ear infections. Had he been promoted to recognizable celebrity status? “I got a couple of waves when I was putting gas in the car,” he deadpanned.

Unknown to Gore, on Saturday while he was on the course the Golf Channel had his Expedition cleaned and pressed. “They took my truck, fixed the air conditioning and put a new stereo in. It was so awesome,” he recalls. “They had me up on set on Saturday night after I played and showed me the video. It was Rich Lerner. Rich covered the NCAAs in ’97. We were all kids. It was just the nicest gesture. I’ll never forget that.”

Lerner, golf television’s most gifted essayist, has fuzzy recollections of their good deed. “I do remember that being a part of the J. Gore story that everybody fell in love with — how good-natured he was about all of it,” Lerner says. “He was down on his luck but he didn’t wear it that way. He came across as a guy who had all the good fortune in the world and that’s what I think resonated with so many people.”

Gore’s two-over-par 72 on Saturday put him at level par for the championship and three shots behind the leader Goosen, the odds-on favorite to add Pinehurst to the championship venues he’d collected at Southern Hills Country Club and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. They would be playing together in the final twosome on Sunday. That it was Father’s Day was not lost on Gore.

It didn’t go well for either player. Goosen, the quiet, intense South African who, as a young boy, survived being struck by lightning, didn’t survive Pinehurst’s greens. His 81 dropped him from first to a tie for 11th and opened the door for the eventual champion, New Zealand’s Michael Campbell, to stroll through.

It was worse for Gore, described this way by Golf World: “The solid tee-to-green game Gore had sustained for three days abandoned him, and he hit only four fairways and eight greens. Despite a front nine 40, Gore still was only three off the lead, but four bogeys, a double and a triple coming home — capped off by a sloppy four-putt on the 72nd green — made for a sour end to his dream.”

That four-putt also cost him five bucks. “We hadn’t had much to say to each other all day,” Gore remembers of his Sunday with Retief. “We’re in the final round of the Open so we’re not going to talk about the weather, right?” Then, as they were walking from the 15th green to the 16th tee, both having played themselves out of it, Goosen turned to Gore and said — and here Gore produces a very fine South African accent in his retelling, “Have you ever played cricket?” Gore told him he hadn’t, to which Goosen replied, “We’re having a helluva a day of cricket because we both have so many overs.”

Gore started laughing and asked Goosen if he wanted to play the last three holes for five bucks. Might as well play for something, right? That made Goosen laugh. And so the game within the game was on. They were tied playing the 18th where Gore’s four-putt six lost to Goosen’s par four. Did he pay off? “I saw him at the TaylorMade trailer at Disney. I walked in and handed him five bucks. He laughed and took it,” says Gore. As luck would have it, they were paired together two years later in the final round of The Players Championship. Gore asked if he could get his five bucks back. Goosen said sure. Gore shot 70 and finished T23. Goosen shot 71 and ended up T28. “I still haven’t seen my five bucks,” Gore says with that Cheshire cat grin. “At this point I don’t even want him to pay me because it ruins the story.”

Jason Gore at his condo in Florida

After his final round 84, after Campbell had wrapped his arms around the silver trophy and Tiger Woods’ caddie, Steve Williams, had wrapped his arms around his fellow New Zealander Campbell, after the throngs had fled the village of Pinehurst, Gore stopped in the dark downstairs bar at Dugan’s Pub for a quiet beer and even quieter reflection. “That day was such a blur,” he says. “It’s not that I didn’t play well, I just played incorrectly. I tried to win which, at Pinehurst in a U.S. Open, you don’t do that. You have to stick to your game plan. I learned a lot that day.” After Dugan’s Gore went back to his hotel room at the Pine Needles Lodge. Campbell, joined by a cast of thousands, was in the room directly above Gore’s. “I got to hear him party all night,” he says.

Turning a negative into a positive was something Gore had done after losing the NCAA individual title and he did it again after losing the U.S. Open. He won three times on the Nationwide Tour in July and August of ’05 (his seven career wins on the developmental tour are still a record), then won the 84 Lumber Classic in September for the only PGA Tour victory of his career. Though Gore was born and raised in California, his mother was from Monroeville, east of Pittsburgh, not too far from the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, site of the 84 Lumber. Gore visited for a month every summer as a kid, cutting his teeth at nearby Manor Valley Golf Course. He was the favorite son once again.

“After I won, I thought I had to continue to get better and do more stuff and I kinda lost my game,” Gore says. Shoulder and back injuries didn’t help. By 2018, he was in the insurance business. Then the USGA came calling, asking Gore to become its first managing director of player relations, a position he held for three-and-a-half years before taking a similar job — senior vice president, player adviser to the commissioner — at the PGA Tour. People who run championships often don’t see things the way people who play in them do. Gore has helped both organizations clear that hurdle.

“My wife and I were high school sweethearts. We grew up in Southern California, born and raised there,” says Gore, who moved east with Megan, Jaxson and his sister, Olivia, after the USGA hired him. “Until we lived in New Jersey I thought snow came out of those machines.”

Now Gore has temporary digs in Ponte Vedra, Florida, and commutes back and forth to New Jersey. His personal possessions in the condo are sparse: a wooden block with Vin Scully’s farewell line from his last L.A. Dodgers’ game and a few guitars. Musically, Gore refers to himself as a 12-handicap. “I’m the guy who shows up in the pro-am with the $10,000 set of clubs and thinks he’s going to beat the pro. That’s me with guitars. You walk into my house in New Jersey, you’d think Slash lived there. I just think they’re works of art. I love them.”

Gore describes his son, Jaxson — he of the double ear infections who’s almost 19 now — as someone with high-functioning autism. “He writes screenplays. We got him a talk-to-text. He’s super, super sharp but there’s a chance he could live with us for the rest of his life, which is fine. He can’t cook an egg but he makes up for it in so many different areas. He sees life through a different set of glasses and it’s awesome. He’ll sit in the basement and just write and create and I’m, ‘Come on, Jax, let’s go out somewhere and see reality.’ And he goes, ‘Dad, I don’t really like reality.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, me neither.’”

In 12 months, Pinehurst No. 2 will become reality once again for the best players in the world. “It’s the U.S. Open,” said Gore in 2005 with a grin that still refuses to vanish, “crazy things happen.”

If we’re lucky.  PS

Jim Moriarty is the Editor of PineStraw magazine. He can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

It Takes A Village

It Takes A Village

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Geneva McRae, Demus Taylor and Taylortown

By Bill Case

Having been gone so long she couldn’t remember when she left, Geneva McRae decided it was time to come home to Taylortown — the African American community of 650 souls where she had spent her formative years. Decades before, the untimely death of Geneva’s father, Charlie, caused her mother, Lowverta McRae, to relocate from Taylortown to New York City along with her six children. Lowverta sensed her kids stood a better chance of advancing their fortunes up north rather than in the Sandhills, where employment opportunities for Blacks were mostly limited to low-paying service jobs with the Pinehurst resort.

For the energetic and adventurous Geneva, New York proved a godsend. She would thrive there during a remarkable career in public service. First, she served a three-year hitch in the U.S. Army that featured culturally broadening deployments in England, France, and Germany. Following her discharge, McRae attended night school at City College of New York where she received a degree in education. While taking graduate studies in public administration at NYU, she taught at a city elementary school.

After passing a civil service examination she was hired by the New York State Employment Service where she steadily rose through the ranks holding management positions of ever-increasing responsibility, including the supervision of the agency’s first Job Corps unit. Her success caused a sister public entity to come calling. She took a two-year leave of absence to run South Bronx’s “Hunt’s Point” program for job training and health needs.

Shortly thereafter, McRae was recruited to serve as deputy director of New York City’s Model Cities Program. In that role, she helped underprivileged women receive the training necessary to become nurses. She also administered programs providing medical internships for minority candidates. “That’s where I got my education — my baptismal if you will — in community work,” McRae told The Pilot staff writer Huntley Womick in a 1990s interview.

Given her well-developed social network, McRae’s friends assumed she would remain in New York after retiring in 1978 at age 63. But the Sandhills called her home. She owned a tract of land in Taylortown — left to her by Lowverta — who instructed her daughter to never sell it. McRae built a house on the property and, when it was completed in 1982, she moved in. Her roots in Taylortown, however, stretched well beyond her ownership of land.

“Our forefathers, mine included, founded this community in the early 1900s, and built homes and churches,” she told The Pilot. The founders left “a pioneering spirit that continues to live in the hearts of the people.”

Demus Taylor

Taylortown’s strong religious ethos also attracted McRae. She expressed pride that the town’s people are “taught to love God and love the community.” Throughout its history, Taylortown has been home to an array of vibrant, well-attended churches including House of Prayer, Galilee Baptist, Spruill Temple Church of God, and Spaulding Chapel AME Zion. Geneva became a devout member of the latter, serving on its board of trustees.

Spaulding Chapel AME Zion had also been the chosen church of the town’s founder Demus Taylor — at 6 feet 5 inches, a larger than life figure. He was born into slavery, perhaps as early as 1821, though the exact date is unknown. His ancestors were from the West African Ebu tribe. Among Demus’ “owners” was James Taylor, brother of the 12th U.S. President, Zachary Taylor. According to one account, Demus’ ownership changed hands five times before his emancipation. After gaining his freedom — and the ability to trade his labor for wages — he worked in the turpentine trade, notching trees at a nickel apiece. Like Paul Bunyan, the lean, powerful Taylor could do the work of three men, notching hundreds of trees daily with his trademark axe. Apparently Demus was too productive for his own good. His employer determined the per tree stipend was too generous and trimmed Taylor’s compensation to a flat rate of $2 per day plus all the rations the man with the axe could eat.

When James Tufts came to Moore County in 1895 and founded Pinehurst, the aging Demus saw an opportunity for a new gig. With golf emerging as the resort’s primary attraction, Taylor (by then presumably in his mid-70s) decided to try caddying. He became a good one, often looping for Donald Ross. According to Golfdom magazine, Taylor ingratiated himself with the legendary golf professional and budding architect, becoming Ross’ “top Sergeant” at the resort’s caddie shack.

At first, Taylor and numerous Black workers resided at the “Old Settlement” — an area adjacent to what is now the 15th hole of the No. 3 golf course. Around 1905, Taylor bought property from Tufts located across current Route 211. Like a latter-day Moses, he led a migration of Black workers to this land, initially referred to as the “New Settlement.” Eventually, the transplanted residents began calling the area Taylortown, a fitting tribute to Demus.

Taylor died in 1934 and the stories reporting his demise gave a range of his age from 106 to 113. Numerous Taylortown men would follow Demus’ example by caddying at the resort including Hall of Fame loopers Robert “Hardrock” Robinson, Willie McRae (unrelated to Geneva), and Sam Snead’s man, Jimmy Steed. Over the years, the community would become home to scores of other resort employees: maids, laundry workers, masons, and laborers. Robert Taylor, Demus’ son, founded a school for Taylortown children. And, before moving to New York City, Geneva McRae graduated from that institution — the Academy Heights High School.

When McRae returned to Taylortown in 1982, she discovered her New York-honed community service skills were in high demand. In 1984, she joined the five-member board of the Taylortown Sanitary District, an entity founded in 1963 for the purpose of providing the first water service and streetlights for the town. She was elected chairperson of the board in 1985.

In 1981 J.O. Quin and Perry Barrett haul a ladder truck to Taylortown.

The advent of the Sanitary District marked an early step toward self-government for Taylortown’s inhabitants. Its establishment provided the necessary governmental entity to borrow money to construct the water lines and repay the loan. The Pinehurst Community Foundation pitched in to assist its Taylortown neighbors by paying for a legally required engineering study. Prior to the time the district came into being, “only six or eight houses had indoor plumbing,” according to early district board member Floyd Ray. Many residents had been forced to carry water from a pump or neighboring well to their homes for cooking, drinking, and bathing.

The Sanitary District represented real progress but residents of Taylortown hoped the time would come when the community could independently provide other governmental services. The county sheriff was primarily responsible for policing, but deputies patrolled the community sporadically at best. Far flung Moore County Emergency Services provided fire protection with additional assistance from Pinehurst. Periodic attempts to provide such services locally had failed to get off the ground.

In the 1960s, for example, community leaders urged Moore County officials to appoint a part-time deputy sheriff to patrol Taylortown. The sheriff and county commissioners were amenable to the concept but indicated the officers’ compensation would need to be borne by Taylortown residents. Had the community then possessed the status of a municipality with taxing authority, funding for the officer probably could have been arranged. But it was not, and the initiative went no further. 

In 1980, former Taylortown resident Perry Barrett launched a heroic, though ultimately futile, effort to establish a local fire department in his hometown. Barrett, then a head carpenter for the Nassau County (New York) maintenance department, got wind of the fact that New York-based fire departments were jettisoning and junking a couple of their fire trucks. Perry saw an opportunity to create a fire department in Taylortown and persuaded the authorities to give him the trucks. After making repairs, he got behind the wheel of one of the pumpers and began the long journey south. The truck’s engine blew en route and an exasperated Perry was marooned alongside the highway. He eventually managed to get the trucks to North Carolina, an achievement that garnered national publicity. North Carolina governor Jim Hunt awarded Barrett the Order of the Longleaf Pine, but his exploits would go for naught. Absent municipal status, Taylortown was in no position to operate, house, or staff safety forces of any type.

Such disappointments led civic leaders to consider the possibility of incorporating Taylortown as a municipality and momentum in that direction increased after Pinehurst proposed a new planning and zoning ordinance in 1981. As a municipality, Pinehurst under state law could zone unincorporated areas located less than one mile from its boundaries, thus including much of Taylortown.

This situation annoyed town resident Ruth Jackson who expressed the frustration shared by many in her community. “Who is representing Taylortown?” she inquired at the public hearing on the zoning ordinance. “We’ve requested water, sewer, and police services from Pinehurst several times. And every time, we’re told to go to Carthage. Now you come looking for us when it’s something we don’t even want.” Jackson further noted that hearings were being scheduled on weekday afternoons when Taylortown laborers couldn’t leave work to attend.

Given her successful role as Sanitary District chair, Geneva McRae realized she would be expected to take the point in any incorporation campaign at the North Carolina legislature. So she, together with Sanitary District commissioner Micajah Wyatt, took charge. Geneva’s background in community organizing came in handy. “I’ve never worked as hard on any job and put in so many hours,” she told an interviewer. “But it [was] a labor of love.”

She and Wyatt formed the Taylortown Executive Committee which sponsored fundraising activities to pay for a survey of Taylortown’s boundaries. Next, Geneva turned her attention to the churches — familiar ground for her. She asked for and received assistance from the Ministerial Alliance, a group established in the ’70s consisting of Black ministers from Taylortown and other Moore County churches. The alliance members would prove vital to the effort. McRae also met with Raeford mayor J.K. McNeil to prepare a feasibility study to support incorporation.

In June 1986, a petition to incorporate Taylortown was submitted to the North Carolina General Assembly. State Representative James Craven of Pinebluff adopted Taylortown’s incorporation as his personal cause by introducing proposed legislation to make it a reality.

In one meeting on the bill, Pinehurst mayor Charles Grant sought to derail it, claiming that state law did not permit incorporation by a small community located within one mile of a larger one. Craven countered that the cited law only applied when the larger community had a population of at least 5,000, which Pinehurst (at the time) did not. Mayor Grant argued that incorporation would cause problems with overlapping police jurisdictions. The resourceful McRae was prepared to respond. “If police will be a problem, why does Pinehurst tell us this is not in their jurisdiction for police services?” she asked.

Rev. H.C. Johnson, a Ministerial Alliance member, also spoke in support of Taylortown’s bid for municipal status, and did so emphatically. “I don’t want Pinehurst telling us what to do. We poor folks made Pinehurst what it is. We worked for nothing, $40 a week. We made it what it is and want to leave it there.”

First village council members: Jesse Fuller, Frances Johnson, Floyd Ray, Geneva McRae and Daniel Morrison

However, the opposition of Pinehurst, coupled with the fact that the General Assembly was in short session resulted in the bill going nowhere. While frustrated, McRae and other incorporation proponents were not discouraged. “We were so determined to make Taylortown a municipality that we did everything required of us and more,” she told a writer for the Citizen News-Record.

Craven’s bill was finally taken up for consideration by the General Assembly the following year. A series of legislative committee meetings on it necessitated attendance by McRae and members of the Ministerial Alliance. Bishop Larry Brown, minister at Taylortown’s House of Prayer, was among the faithful attendees. Brown estimates he made at least 25 trips to Raleigh. In a recent interview with Pilot reporter Laura Douglass, the bishop indicated that more than one opponent of Craven’s bill questioned whether a town of Black people would be able to govern themselves. But the presence and advocacy of Brown and his fellow men of the cloth gave a spiritual dignity to Taylortown’s presentation, impressing the legislators.

Eventually, Pinehurst dropped its objection to the concept of Taylortown’s incorporation, but the village remained opposed to Craven’s bill when it was amended to include within the proposed municipality three vacant parcels comprising 31 acres located on the north side of Route 211. Pinehurst was itself attempting to annex the parcels, now the Pinecroft Shopping Center that includes the Harris Teeter grocery store.

The question of which town should wind up with the 31 acres constituted the last roadblock for McRae and the other proponents of incorporation. A key Moore County state senator, Wanda Hunt, also the chairwoman of the Senate’s local government committee, was feeling pressure from both sides. She wanted to vote for Taylortown’s incorporation, but because a property owner in the disputed area (who happened to be a Hunt supporter) preferred that his property remain in Pinehurst, her vote was up in the air. Moreover, the North Carolina League of Municipalities was siding with Pinehurst. After what Craven would describe as “a lot of lobbying,” he convinced both the League and Hunt to support his bill. With them on board, the state senate unanimously approved Craven’s bill 40-0. The inclusion of the three valuable parcels within Taylortown’s corporate limits would furnish a welcome boon to the new municipality’s tax base.

On July 13, 1987, Taylortown became a municipality. As was her style, McRae gave credit to everyone but herself for the achievement but, absent her organizational skills and tenacity, incorporation likely would have remained a pipedream.

As a result of incorporation, the Sanitary District was disbanded. To run the municipality’s affairs, a five member village council was established, initially consisting of McRae, Floyd Ray, Jesse Fuller, Frances Johnson, and Daniel Morrison. The new council selected McRae to be the town’s first mayor. Described by one writer as “a willowish wisp of a woman who, nevertheless, packs a wallop,” McRae would serve two terms in the post.

Her tenure was an active one. Under her leadership, Taylortown entered into a formal fire protection agreement with Pinehurst. That arrangement continues to this day. A police department was established after the council figured it could pay an officer of its own less than it would pay in a contract for law enforcement with the county. McRae would persuade county officials to establish a voting precinct inside Taylortown. Olmsted Village was annexed into the village. The council authorized new recreational facilities and, with financial assistance from the Sandhills Garden Club (arranged by McRae), beautification of the community became a priority.

Over the years following McRae’s departure from municipal government, many other improvements have taken place within the community. A new village hall was completed in 2000. Pinecroft and Harris Teeter occupied the once heavily contested 31 acres. Government funding was obtained to update the water system and additional streetlights were installed. Today, Taylortown Museum honors Demus Taylor and other community founders like the remarkable McRae who passed away in 2008 at the age of 93. And another gain to the community occurred when Perry Barrett, once the young man who brought fire engines to Taylortown and is now in his 90s, moved — like Geneva — from New York back home, an echo of McRae’s own words: “I love Taylortown and I love its people. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. This is home.”  PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.

Pretty as a Picture

Pretty as a Picture

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Hospitality in gracious surroundings

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Gessner

The Country Club of North Carolina residential enclave reads like an architectural history of North Carolina, from elongated ranches to mid-century modern, a 1950s genre developed at N.C. State. Showplace homes speak A-frame chalet to antebellum frilly, New England saltbox to French chateaux, log cabins to painted brick with interiors ranging from formal to fun.

Not surprisingly, some homes display multiple styles, defying or at least resisting classification. Jane and Paul Whit Howard boast just such a home, built in 1991 on 1.7 acres. It’s refreshing, spacious, light, practical, retro, inventive, livable and, most of all, beautiful. Its kitchen may be modest in size and its bathrooms not quite spa but colors and fabric designs vibrate with the intensity of the jungle paintings of Henri Rousseau. The living room is sunken and hardwood floors have a whitewash. Deep tray ceilings speak to quality and detail. 

      

The grey exterior offers few clues but a portrait of well-worn golf bags between foyer and living room does. The Howards are both from eastern North Carolina, now retired. For decades their primary residence was Raleigh, with regular treks from beach to mountains. They brought their penchant for Southern hospitality with them to Pinehurst.

“I love to entertain,” Jane says. “I’m more of a Southern cook than a Julia Child. This kitchen is very adequate. It has everything I need.” Everything included shifting space to create a butler’s pantry for storage and another for food.

Instead of glamorizing the kitchen, the Howards poured resources into a defining feature, a covered veranda comprising living room, dining/cooking area, wood-burning fireplace and an uncovered conversation pit with fountain. Its square footage approaches a two-bedroom apartment. This addition earned its keep during the pandemic, when friends gathered once a week en plein air for casual dinners and COVID-talk.

A third outdoor space resembling an English tea garden, in place before the Howards’ acquisition, is ideal for morning coffee.

    With retirement looming and a son, Witt, who was an avid junior golfer at the time, the Howards were ready to leave their red brick ranch in Raleigh behind. They ruled out the beach. “Too much sun, heat, crowds,” Jane says. They knew Pinehurst from renting a weekend retreat. After visiting friends at Eastlake — “It felt so good to be here,” Jane recalls — she began looking at properties “on the QT.”

In 2017 they found the one at CCNC with a modified, elongated ranch layout. “I knew this was a party house from the beginning,” Jane says. It had been on the market for three years. She recognized its “good bones” required only bathroom upgrades and cosmetic work.

No problem. “We love to do that, the designing and creating,” Jane says. “My husband is a mechanical engineer — and a frustrated architect.” Her flair for interior design, fueled by a career as a worldwide travel consultant/tour leader, is evident, beginning at the front door where a wide pane of beveled glass with no covering allows maximum light to flood the entranceway.

Since they are only the second owners, the house hadn’t been put through interim, perhaps unwise, remodels.

      

The “designing and creating” part involved a trade-off: Jane craves green and pink, long a favorite in gracious Southern homes of the mid-to-late 1900s. Paul Whit was ready for change. Jane retained her favorite color combination in the dining room, as background for a magnificent breakfront and other family antiques in dark woods, with a table set in silver napkin holders and gleaming crystal. In contrast, instead of sedate florals, for the dining room and elsewhere Jane chose bold fabrics featuring a green that trended more avocado-olive than lettuce. A pair of small, upholstered chairs brings her trademark green into the kitchen-family room, brightened by blue and white pottery.

In return for color concessions, “I got my rose garden,” Jane beams — 16 bushes in a raised bed on its own patio, with space to sit and admire.

   

Paul Whit had another request: A comfortable/casual atmosphere where men could put their feet up. That relaxed, hospitable vibe explains the informal living room with simple navy blue sofas, built-ins filled with books and family photos, a games table for bridge and Jane’s baby grand piano. On the veranda maintenance is simplified by chairs and sofas with cushions enclosed in wicker lattice.

No amount of outdoor dining or green accents are preparation for the guest bedroom used most often by the Howards’ son and his wife, Hadley. “Mom, I want dark walls and blackout shades,” he said. Mom’s response — breathtaking: navy blue walls and white carpet complemented by a geometric modern painting. Walls in the master suite glow a Caribbean aquamarine, also surprising. In a few months Jane and Paul Whit will repurpose an office adjoining the master suite as a nursery for their first grandchild and trade sleep space with the new parents.

      

Now, if only Jane knew for sure why one bathroom had a door opening onto the yard. Probably in preparation for a pool, which never materialized. Nor do the Howards plan to add one. “We’re over that,” Jane says.

At a time in life when most couples think condo or cottage the Howards — active and outgoing — still require more than elbow room. Jane plays pickleball, Paul Whit loves golf. They both enjoy yard work. The entire property is fenced for two lucky Lab-retrievers. Their house welcomes a crowd. And as the day winds down, fans whir on the veranda, ice tinkles in the glass, the dogs stretch out on the cool floor . . . and life looks good.  PS