Category: Feature

Poem February 2024

Onward

Here we are again

on the back porch.

Bluebirds eating mealworms

from the feeder

while the brown-chested

nuthatch takes its time

with the sunflower seeds.

Lili, the pup, is at my feet,

and the sun, my God,

this sun feels so good

on a February afternoon.

There’s coffee and a friend’s

new book of poetry.

Can you hear the saxophone

from the jazz man practicing next door?

A sparrow flies over

lands a foot away

on the edge of the table,

looks at me, as if to say

what more do you want?

— Steve Cushman

Steve Cushman is the author of three novels, including Portisville, winner of the 2004 Novello Literary Award. His poetry collection, How Birds Fly, won the 2018 Lena Shull Book Award and his latest volume, The Last Time, was published by Unicorn Press in 2023.

Poem January 2024

ADVENTURE

Because she was fast in her way

And he followed her suit,

They launched horizon’s fruitful gaze

To fortify their fruit.

In short parlance, ahead of him,

She was a gushing bride

Until gray moods turned dark to bend

Their rivers for her tide.

They never had one dissension.

He lived his love the same

Beyond single thought’s contention.

Her body chemistry!

A drinking fountain salutes thirst,

Instant bubble, wet lips.

Then comes what earthly love holds first,

Her muscles fell to slips.

So he slept and woke up alone,

For she was processioned

In Smithfield Manor Nursing Home,

Tenacity, a test.

His eye-lids open every morn.

The bones to him creak rise.

The sun’s obeying crown adorns

Remembrances, her sighs.

— Shelby Stephenson

Shelby Stephenson was North Carolina’s poet laureate from 2014-16. His most recent volume of poetry is Praises.

2024 Feature Poem

Sister Act

Reimagining an eclectic cottage

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Gessner

Local residences can be relatively easy to classify: Federalist, antebellum, Georgian, ranch, contemporary farmhouse, mid-century modern, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish.

This one — tucked behind tall greenery in the heart of Weymouth — isn’t, unless “surprising, refreshing and personal” is the category. Clad in pecky cypress painted off-white, the cottage stretches longitudinally like a ranch, has bedroom suites anchoring each end in the contemporary mode, and multiple bay windows common to New England saltboxes enhanced by stained glass panels displaying geometric and bird motifs.

Add this shocker: a cathedral ceiling with flying buttresses rising over the sitting/dining area. Built in 1929, a year of financial havoc in the U.S., one legend identifies the builder as a shipmaker from Boston with the buttresses a reminder of the ribs supporting his boats.

Those buttresses are original, not so a covered backyard patio for grilling, eating and watching TV while drying off by the fire after emerging from the 42-inch deep, rectangular plunge pool, with a submerged seating ledge and water kept at 100 degrees year-round.

“We all jumped in at Thanksgiving,” says Cathy, who with her sister, Mary, reimaged this cottage.

Their story is as singular as the results.

Cathy and Mary, a year apart, grew up sharing a room in a Pittsburgh family of eight children — three girls, five boys. Mary became a nurse anesthetist at a women’s hospital. Cathy worked in the wholesale bakery industry. Each married, remained in Pittsburgh and had children, who grew up and moved away. In 2014, the sisters, now single, retired and decided they could live more economically together — but not in Pittsburgh. Too cold.

They heard good things about North Carolina’s retirement havens. Asheville was their first foray. Still too cold. Pinehurst, with a temperate climate and aura aplenty, offered the solution.

“We drove down for a week and hooked up with an agent, just to look around,” Mary says. Seven Lakes seemed promising, or maybe a carriage house in horse country. Then they discovered the charm of downtown Southern Pines, the shops, bistros, railroad station and the interesting people populating them.

Better check availability in Weymouth.

What they discovered seemed almost made-to-order. The walls and ceilings in the living /dining space were wood-paneled and, after moving in, the sisters found the stained wood too dark and painted the walls — themselves — a soft white. The dark wood cabinetry and a natural brick backsplash in the modest but adequate kitchen became creamy vanilla with a pure white island top over a black lacquer base. Cathy cooks. Mary shops and cleans up. A breakfast table for two suggests a Victorian tearoom.

“I don’t want all that granite,” says Cathy. “It’s casual, like, ‘Come on over and let’s share.’”

The sisters’ most formidable challenge was space, given the possibility of visiting children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews and friends — golfers and otherwise. Fortunately the elongated footprint on a prime Weymouth acre allowed them to convert the attached two-car garage into living space with a workroom and a laundry. A new garage was added.

“Over the years we have always attacked projects,’’ Cathy says. In high school she was more interested in mechanical drawing than cooking and sewing. “You just learn that if something doesn’t work, you do it over.”

Furniture is a mixture of hers and hers, with some delightful juxtapositions. In the small TV den a gray wide-wale corduroy sectional overlooks a frilly little bureau painted bright yellow. A dresser in the guest room is made of sanded metal. Nurse Mary explains that before built-in units, hospital rooms attended by nurses in starched white caps were furnished in metal, usually painted white, now antique shop finds.

“We each brought furniture. We didn’t buy new,” Cathy says. Even their area rugs made the trip. The familiar pieces take on fresh life placed in the spacious, airy rooms. And surprises lurk around each corner: A bathroom wall of glass bricks adds retro chic. Rather than reupholster “throne” and other chairs, they discovered a paint for fabric that dries to a nubby texture. An elongated window frames a tall, pruned crape myrtle, its gnarled, spotted trunk and branches resembling a giraffe. A huge Chinese soup tureen sits ready to serve the emperor. They point proudly to an antique transom; their mother’s desk; Granddaddy’s cigar cabinet; Granny’s enormous hope chest; and a framed wedding quilt sewn from silk ties and kept under glass.

The sisters concede that not everyone could pull off this living arrangement. At first, their other siblings’ reaction was, “How dare you leave us!” Cathy recalls. Now, they do family Thanksgiving, and their twin brothers show up for golf. After 10 years the sisters have made friends through pickleball, golf and community activities. Cathy’s latest project: watercolors.

“We live a very simple life,” Cathy says. “We’re content to sit out back or go into town. Both of us worked hard. Now it’s time to relax, to entertain ourselves.” PS

2024 Feature story of a house

Cowboy Junket

Selling books like snake oil

If you want it done right, do it yourself

By Stephen E. Smith

Nancy Rawlinson was a first-grader at Millington Elementary School in New Jersey when she happened upon an intriguing book in the school library. She flipped through the pages and immediately fell in love with the illustrations of horses. The book may have been The Blind Colt or Stolen Pony or Wild Horses of the Red Desert — she has forgotten the title — but she knew what she liked, and that the artist was Glen Rounds. “I was in love with horses at the time,” she recalls, “and I read Glen Rounds’ books over and over again.”

In 1991 Rawlinson moved to Southern Pines and eventually opened Eye Candy Gallery & Framing on Broad Street, but she never had an opportunity to meet the writer and illustrator whose books had brought her so much pleasure in her childhood. Rounds (the appellation assigned to Glen by his many friends) lived almost half his life in Southern Pines, and he was affectionately acknowledged by acquaintances and neighbors as “the literary man about town.” Decked out in his weathered jeans and cowboy vest, he was the craggy, gray-bearded bohemian wandering among the business-clad locals and Yankee snowbirds — a mid-morning regular at the local post office, where he’d buttonhole friends and strangers and regale them with humorous, wisdom-laced tall tales, droll shaggy-dog stories, and the occasional off-color witticism.

If Rounds was a raconteur extraordinaire, he was, first and foremost, an artist/illustrator. He illustrated over 100 books. He studied painting and drawing at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Art Student League of New York, and was close friends with Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton. (Rounds and Pollock were models for Benton’s painting The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley.) And he worked with dogged determination to see that the public could enjoy his talents. When Rounds published a new children’s book, it would garner a mention in Time or Newsweek, and 20 years after his death, his artwork lives on in his books and on the walls of homes and businesses in Southern Pines — and across the country.

Of all the stories Rounds shared with friends and strangers, there’s one that seldom, if ever, got told: the true story “that needed telling.” Shortly before he died in 2002 at the age of 96, Rounds informed friends that he had a new book underway, the story of the “1938 Trip West.” He never completed the book, but his extensive notes were passed down to his daughter-in-law, Victoria Rounds, and contained within the extensive scribblings are at least four synopses that retell the tale in fits and starts. The Gospel according to Rounds goes as follows:

During the spring and summer of 1938, Rounds was carrying on an “acrimonious” correspondence with Vernon Ives, the publisher and editor of Holiday House, concerning Holiday House’s lackadaisical sales efforts. The publisher had a few independent salesmen who carried Holiday House books as a sideline and they circulated a catalog, but there was no sales coverage west of the Mississippi.

“I had spent some time with folks selling snake oil, Indian remedies and the like,” Rounds writes. “And argued that if they wanted to sell books they should have somebody on the road stirring things up. In the end it came to a case of ‘put up or shut up.’ If I thought books could be sold like snake oil, why didn’t I go on the road myself and show them how it should be done?”

And that’s exactly what Rounds intended to do. He and Margaret Olmsted had married in June 1938, and they were living in Myrtle Beach, where they paid $10 a month in rent. In their spare time, they fixed up a 1937 Studebaker woody station wagon with bunks built over lockers that contained their camping equipment — a bucket, a pan, a coffeepot, blankets, clothes, a Coleman stove, a small icebox, and a canvas to throw over the back of the Studebaker at night.

On September 1, 1938, they loaded a box of Holiday House books into the Studebaker and headed west from Sanford, camping that night in a “nameless field between Knoxville and Nashville.” There were no motels in those days, but they occasionally pulled into a campground or hotel to wash clothes and shower; otherwise, they quit driving each day at sunset and made the best of their surroundings. Once they camped near a city dump, and on another evening, a constable directed them to park behind the town bandstand. “Nice little park,” Rounds recalled. “Just after supper people started drifting into the park. It was band concert night, and while they waited for the concert to start the townspeople inspected and commented on our outfit.”

But Rounds and Margaret weren’t there for the music, and they weren’t on a sightseeing trip. They had compiled a card file listing every elementary school, library, branch library, librarian and bookstore on their route. Margaret had a library science degree from the University of North Carolina and had worked for the New York Public Library System, so she had credibility with the school librarians and teachers. “We were looking for people who dealt in books,” Rounds writes. “Anybody that ever looked like they might buy or sell books got the treatment. We stopped at every small branch library or school, showed books, told a story or drew some pictures and went on, leaving Holiday House catalogs behind.”

And so it went through Kansas City, Omaha, Sioux City, Rapid City, Denver, Boulder, Provo, Logan, Boise, Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Salem, Medford, Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Sierra Blanca, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth, where they put on a “big show” for National Book Week. From there they hit Shreveport, Vicksburg, Montgomery, Atlanta, Greenville, and back to Sanford, arriving on Thanksgiving eve after three months on the road and “tired as hell!”

“We not only showed the Holiday House books but we sold them on commission,” Rounds writes. “Whether we sold enough to pay our gas and expenses, I don’t remember. But by the time we got home a hell of a lot of people had heard about Holiday House books. For years after that, stories about our unconventional selling methods drifted around the country whenever bookstore people and librarians met.”

In the synopses Rounds produced late in life — probably in the late ’80s and early- to mid-’90s, judging by the used computer paper repurposed as cost-effective stationery — the story lacks the details of meetings and confabs Rounds and Margaret experienced. But those moments aren’t lost. As Rounds traveled the country and pitched Holiday House books, he regularly wrote to Vernon Ives, producing 24 lengthy handwritten letters detailing most of his encounters with teachers, administrators, bookstore folk and “anyone interested in books.” Ives saved and returned the letters to Rounds, who arranged them chronologically in a spiral notebook that also contains photographs, maps, two traffic tickets, two typhoid inoculation certificates, and Rounds’ meticulous financial calculations (the Studebaker got about 22 mpg in a great loop from Sanford, North Carolina to the West Coast and back to Sierra Blanca, Texas, a distance of 8,633 miles).

More than an illustrator and writer, Rounds was a keen observer of his fellow human beings — he had a caustic word or two to say about everyone he encountered — and he was especially sharp-eyed when observing the animals he drew. Former North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson once accompanied Rounds on an expedition to observe a family of beavers. “Glen just sat there for two hours and never said a word; never moved,” Stephenson recalled. “He was perfectly still, staring intently at the beavers, never missing a movement they made.” If he wrangled you into a storytelling marathon at the post office or in his side yard on Ridge Street, he’d stare directly into your eyes as his story leisurely unraveled. If your mind happened to wander, he’d notice immediately. “Do you want to hear this story or not?” he’d ask. Of course, you wanted to hear it. There was no escape.

This innate ability to study and narrate is apparent in a beautifully crafted excerpt from a letter written to Ives shortly before the 1938 odyssey. Rounds had been observing those who labored in tobacco production, “one of the last of the really personal industries,” and highlights of the brief passage stand as an example of literary archaeology:

“From the time they go out in the spring with leaf mounds to fill the seed beds, the setting out, which is done by hand, the hoeing, the worming, down to the beginning of ‘priming’ (picking the bottom leaves as they ripen), and the sitting up night and day with the fires in the curing barns, it is all handwork of the hottest kind for the whole family. After it’s cured, the whole family gets busy, usually on the front porch, and goes over it leaf by leaf, grading it before tying it into ‘hands’ for market. The night before market they start coming into the warehouse to get a good position on the floor so as to get a light that will set off the color and texture to the best advantage. They’re proud of their work. Sat all afternoon a while back with an old-timer while he watched his fires. After I’d deserted my cigarettes for a healthy chaw of his Honey-twist, taken with a fine shaving of Black Maria to give it body and color to spit a more satisfying brown, we sat and spit promiscuously round about for a while, exchanged views on horse breeding, and the lack of enterprise and self-reliance in the younger generation and one thing and another . . .” and so forth for two single-spaced typewritten pages.

The 24 letters written to Ives don’t contain the same level of detail as his tobacco observations — there wasn’t enough time to include more than initial impressions — but Rounds’ sharp eye picked up every human shortcoming and attribute, every nuance.

On Sept.12, he wrote from Denver: “Enclosed an order from Dibamels (sic), Rapid City. Think if we can get him started he should move my books. Did some horse trading to get the order, but think it worth it, even if I had to take merchandise for 3 Ol’ Pauls and 3 L.C. Denver Dry Goods no soap. Books too high. Kendrik Bellamy was nice dept, but in basement, Mrs. Cook very nice and liked books but has trouble moving good books. However, may order later.”

On Sept. 15 he wrote from Salt Lake City: “Library (two old maids) no soap. No children librarian. Printed Page, nice shop, typical university bookshop. Trying to start juvenile dept but knows nothing and cares less. N.G. (no good) . . . Snow and sleet in the passes. Ranger stopping cars . . . camping in ballpark . . . Utah Office supply already ordered Baker Taylor, cheap stuff, won’t see sample. High school library — Miss Robinson liked books and checked a number. No money for about 60 days but . . . Ferner Junior High School, Miss Sinor — tough old gal. Doesn’t like small type. Won’t order what she hasn’t seen . . .” And so it goes for seven handwritten pages, passing judgment on the people, libraries and schools in one lengthy intensive missive.

Even more detailed letters follow from Spokane, Seattle and Raywood, where Rounds reports that all the bookstores had gone out of business during the Great Depression. Books are a tough sell, especially during hard times, but Rounds and Margaret remained undeterred by the occasional rejection and were much buoyed by small successes, as in San Diego on Oct. 24: “City Schools, Miss Morgan — They hadn’t seen our books but had heard so much they finally ordered most of the old titles for review. However, they arrived too late to get on this year’s list, L.C. and Ol’ Paul got raves from their reviewers. And most of the others seemed slated for the list also. She should be on list for books ON APPROVAL as soon as they are published . . .”

In Seattle, Rounds and Margaret made 12 stops and in Denver another 11, talking up Holiday House and pitching Rounds’ books while visiting public libraries, a university bookstore, the state department of education, a school library association and a book department in a general merchandise store, etc. — all of which he reported on at length. But Rounds’ letters weren’t all business. While working a bookstore in San Leon, Texas, he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to describe a fetching female clerk: “She was like a mare in heat every time she sidled close and continually ran her palms of her hands over the front of her tight sweater, down the belly and back around her buttocks. You know the gesture? It is used with the flexing of all the trunk and thigh muscles. Don’t get me wrong — I just report what I see. She’ll make a fine type if I write a book.”

If there was rejection and indifference, there was just enough good news to keep Rounds buoyant. On Nov. 19 he wrote to Ives, alluding to himself in the third person: “Rounds at his best when before an admiring audience of children whose number will be considerably swelled by the attendance of a group of storytelling teachers or some damn thing, who have a special invitation. Immediately after Rounds is worn out, there will be an autograph party in the book department.”

And so it went, stop after stop, for three relentless months, each encounter explicated in the lengthy handwritten letters to Ives. If Rounds and Margaret encountered more failure than success, they never wavered, never despaired. They kept at it, day in and day out, until they pulled into Sanford, exhausted.

Small successes, what he thought of as a “little victory for art,” continued to fuel Rounds’ enthusiasm for the remainder of his long life. He frequently visited classes full of elementary school students, encouraging their art and following up by sending the students postcards with his trademark hound dog Ol’ Boomer, tail curved skyward, prancing into the mystical ether. He never tired of entertaining, never grew weary of inspiring a classroom full of blossoming talent.

If Rounds was the author and illustrator of the books, Margaret Olmsted was remarkable in her own right. Glen Rounds was born in a sod house near the badlands of South Dakota and traveled in a covered wagon to Montana, where he grew up on a ranch. Margaret came from money. Her family owned their own railway car, and she’d graduated from the University of North Carolina. Nevertheless, she endured three months of camping across the country and chatting up librarians, schoolteachers and classrooms full of rowdy children, all without complaint. She was one of the founding members of The Country Bookshop and the Given Memorial Library, and her considerable influence lives on in those Sandhills institutions — and in Rounds’ success as a writer and illustrator.

What were the results of the 1938 trip? In a time when writers didn’t often appear at bookstores to sign and sell books, Rounds was ever present, signing his name, telling his stories and promoting Holiday House. Vernon Ives profited from the documentation Rounds supplied concerning likely outlets and agreeable bookstore owners, information that would hold the publisher in good stead for decades to come. And most importantly, Rounds made himself famous in the world of children’s literature. His books still line bookstore and library shelves and continue to delight young readers.

Not long after his passing, an ad hoc committee of Rounds’ friends convened to consider placing a lifelike statue of the old raconteur in front of the post office, a monument not unlike the one of the rock ’n’ roll dude “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona . . .” but it soon became apparent that such a tribute could never adequately convey Rounds’ charisma and rakish charm. The stories were gone, lost for good, and now Rounds exists only in the memory of his many admirers.

It’s doubtful that Glen Rounds ever visited an elementary school in Millington, New Jersey — a village so obscure that it seems hardly to exist on the map — but when first-grader Nancy Rawlinson fell in love with Rounds’ drawings of horses, the book had not found its place on the library shelf by accident. Glen and Margaret Rounds had, by virtue of their hard work, tenacity and unwavering faith, willed it there. PS

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

2024 Feature

The Adventuresome Chef

Warren Lewis makes art in “stupid cold places”

By Jenna Biter

Sunlight streamed through the coffee shop blinds. Water droplets were condensing on the plastic to-go cup holding an iced mocha latte sitting neglected at the center of a four-top.

Warren Lewis was preoccupied. He wasn’t sipping, he was leading a whip-fast expedition to distant destinations, most of which he classified as “stupid cold places,” many of which were home to magnificent sharp-toothed beasts.

Foxes and walruses, bears and wolves chased each other off the silvery face of Lewis’ MacBook, forever frozen in his photographs but indelibly alive in his mind.

“When the bears come by, the wolves take off,” says Lewis, describing life in the closely watched, middle-of-nowhere border zone between Finland and Russia. Two autumns ago, Lewis traveled to the arctic hinterland on a special permit with a photography tour of four. “We didn’t see a wolverine,” he says, “but if a wolverine had come along, the bears would’ve taken off because wolverines have no sense of humor.”

Lewis readjusts his glasses, then clicks from one image of gray wolves to the next. The frame displays an astonishing blond wolf Lewis identifies as the pack’s alpha. “I saw him one day just for minutes, and that was it,” he says, still in awe more than a year later. The wolf stares from the screen with soft golden eyes that can harden cruelly in an instant.

It was restlessness, fate and the heart of an explorer that landed Lewis and his camera in that frostbitten taiga forest. “I always had to do things with my hands,” he explains, holding them up and open. In the 1970s, a camera came along to occupy his fidgety fingers. At the time, Lewis’ father had taken to photography as a newly divorced, middle-aged man in search of a hobby. Before long, the teenager had a Pentax Spotmatic camera of his own. A week into this new love affair, the kid developed his first photograph with a Willoughby-Peerless darkroom kit in the basement of his childhood home on Long Island, New York.

“The first image I ever developed was of a tree in front of the house,” says Lewis wryly, “because that was the first picture I took.”

He didn’t stick around the house for long. Dad had given him a camera, and with it, the license for a shy teenager to expand and explore his world.

“I never would have gone to a football game by myself,” Lewis says, “but all of a sudden, I had a press pass, and I’m on the sideline.”

Lewis scrolls through his photos, rediscovering Finland with each image frozen in time. Its pied crows are silly, intelligent, and permanently dressed in the full feather of tuxedo. Its ravens are less baroque; nevertheless, they seek attention. Their purply plumes blur more than Lewis would like. The bold birds don’t even flee a brown bear. Then again, neither does Lewis. One lumbered so near his blind he could smell the animal’s breath.

“He’s either going to eat me, or he’s not,” Lewis says with the nonchalance of someone sitting safely in a coffee shop. “I’m thinking, OK, well, I’ve got my camera, and I’ve got a lens I can use like a bat to whack him. I’ll aim for the nose. At the same time, I’m thinking, OK, what’s my aperture? What’s my shutter speed? Is it in focus? Get the eyes in focus.”

Lewis chose not to pursue photography professionally after graduating from high school. Instead, he studied engineering.

“I took a job peeling vegetables because I didn’t belong in engineering,” says Lewis, owner and chef of the eponymous Chef Warren’s, Southern Pines’ beloved turn-of-the-century-style bistro. “It wasn’t tactile enough for me. It just doesn’t suit the way my brain works — which is at 1,000 miles per hour — so I became a chef. And I met my wife that way.”

Lewis was working as a sous chef in a New York hotel when Marianne walked in. “We’ve been together ever since,” he says. That was 35 years ago. Since then, he’s worked kitchens up and down the East Coast and around the globe, from Australia to a few days at an Indian restaurant in Malaysia.

“If you’ve got a set of knives,” says Lewis, “you can work anywhere.”

In 1995, “anywhere” became the Sandhills, and three years later, the Lewises opened Chef Warren’s, whose walls display his original prints.

“You need something besides what you do,” Lewis says, parsing the balance between food and photos. “You need to have something else to focus on.”

He dives back into the laptop screen, reliving a staring contest in a Polish forest. “This is one of my favorites! So, I’m sitting in a hide, and this goshawk is sitting there,” he says, pointing to a dappled bird of prey perched on a mossy log. “A red squirrel is bouncing around doing red squirrelly things. I’m thinking, ‘Finger on the trigger, get ready to go.’ All of a sudden, they stare at each other.” Lewis holds his breath. The Eurasian red squirrel fluffs its tail and perks its fiery ears. “Then they turn and walk away.”

He spares an extra beat to admire the magic of a perfect moment forever accessible via the time machine of photography.

“Before, the photos never drilled into my soul,” Lewis says, preferring the solitary process of the art to the company of finished prints. That was until 2015, when he watched Kingdom of the Ice Bear, a seven-minute web documentary featuring nature photographer Joshua Holko’s journey to polar bear backcountry.

“Marianne was upstairs making dinner. It was noodles and sauce — super delicious dinner. She makes great tomato sauce,” Lewis says in an aside. “I shout to her, ‘Hey, there’s this photographer out of Australia that is doing this tour to the North Pole. Can I go?’”

“Sure, dinner’s almost ready,” Marianne answered.

Just like that, Lewis departed North Carolina the following July and landed, four flights later, on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago far into the Arctic Ocean, near the top of the world. From there, Lewis, Holko and a dozen or so other adventuring photographers boarded a former lighthouse tender called the MS Origo. For three-and-a-half weeks, the explorers endured dive-bombs from overprotective Arctic terns and the putrid odor of hordes of walruses. They tallied a staggering 17 polar bear sightings on Kong Karls Land, the choicest hibernation destination in the far North.

The mug of one of those 17 is immortalized on the patrons’ right as they enter Chef Warren’s restaurant. The bear feels close. “The correct response is too close,” Lewis says, confessing that the bear was only a room’s length away.

“So here’s the gig. I’m going to die, right?” Lewis asks dryly as he eyes the way-too-close closeup of the magnificent sharp-toothed beast. “This is the way to do it. I want a good story, right? I want my son, Ben, to have a great story. ‘How did your dad die?’ ‘Oh, he got eaten by a polar bear.’ Now that’s a great story.”

Lewis grins and clicks on, very much alive.

He breezes through dozens of images of European bison, another pack of gray wolves, and an Arctic fox curled up tightly to warm itself on a frigid day. An hour after setting out for far-flung locales, he’s satisfied. Lewis powers down his whirlwind expedition. Having returned to that four-top in a coffeeshop, he takes a sip of his warm and watery latte.

Jenna Biter is a writer and military wife in the Sandhills. She can be reached at jennabiter@protonmail.com. Explore Chef Warren Lewis’s photography at warrenhenrylewis.com.

2024 Feature

Poem December 2023

Snowbird

The Latin teacher finally did retire. Her balcony now bends toward the sea. She is in a high-rise looking down at birds. Gulls scream and fly north to the next resort. All that’s left now are pigeons on the patio. They scavenge through the purpling decorative cabbage. She hasn’t seen a pelican yet, just the same birds she came here to get away from. They look like feathered cataracts in a kale eyeball. She sees a buried Titan with umbrella pectorals. It struggles to emerge from beneath the sodden November sand, beaten down by so many tenacious dog walkers. He has his eye on her.

— Maura Way

Maura Way’s second collection of poetry, Mummery, was published by Press 53.

2023 Feature

A New Home for the Holidays

Building traditions and contemporary elegance

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

When floral designer Matt Hollyfield meets a prospective client, he predicts her taste by reading her clothing: fine leather tans and browns, deep forest greens, a variety of textures whisper “Ralph Lauren,” a preference Melinda Taylor confirms. Her unusual new home in the Eastlake section of the Country Club of North Carolina won’t tempt Santa. No candy canes, angels or blue-and-silver snowflakes either. Instead, Hollyfield suggests wreaths, swags, tabletop arrangements and two trees featuring reds gone scarlet, blues in a muted navy and burnished golds. A close inspection reveals equestrian details. Melinda doesn’t ride but loves horses as a spectator sport . . . so why not, given the proximity?

This Christmas will be the first in many years when Melinda and her husband, Doug, are the hosts rather than guests, usually of Melinda’s mother. Decorations are in place. Their home is ready.

A new house is like a blank canvas on which to paint Christmas; no outdated traditions, no faded ornaments. But the Taylors’ second home, built for eventual retirement, is perfect on multiple levels, starting with starting afresh. Because their primary residence is still Charleston, West Virginia, all the furnishings, equipment and fixtures are new and in accordance with Melinda’s master plan: a simple but elegant low country contemporary farmhouse wearing cream, sand, leather, smoky gray, green and brown hues sparked with metallic gold in unexpected places — all planned and executed by Melinda, an insurance executive by trade, a designer by avocation, and a details/neat freak by admission.

Her whites glow. Pink azaleas were removed and replaced with white to extend the neutral palette. Even Beau, their yellow Lab, is vanilla. Gold accents pop in the custom-made range hood and the metallic gold kitchen sink with its line-of-sight view of the lake beyond the veranda.

More than a decade ago, Melinda and Doug began thinking about a retirement house, first in Asheville, which proved too chilly for Doug’s year-round golf aspirations. “We wanted it to feel more vacation-y than our two-story Colonial brick (in West Virginia),” Melinda says. Months later they drove to Pinehurst for a look. CCNC checked enough boxes for them to buy a lot and choose a model home. Construction, however, was delayed 10 years while Melinda underwent treatment for cancer, then COVID happened. Once she was declared cancer-free and their twin sons, John Logan and Preston, were off to college, the Taylors broke ground on their 5,000-square-foot, four bedroom, four-and-a-half bathroom vacation home, with dream home specialist Huntley Design Build wearing the hardhats.

Obtaining materials during COVID proved arduous: windows took a year; the refrigerator, 19 months. Melinda was a five-hour drive from the action, which included a ceiling covered in floor tiles. Vinyl grasscloth graced another ceiling, and gold mesh panels in the built-ins flanking the living room fireplace added texture.

She shopped the High Point Furniture Market and Facebook Marketplace but took measurements for drapes to be made in Charleston. That everything came together so well is a credit to Melinda’s vision.

The newly popular “modern farmhouse” architectural style doesn’t comport with denim overalls and hay bales. Main floor living space, casually sophisticated, is open but divided into angles with high kitchen visibility. Clever doors that fold flat, then disappear, render the veranda an overflow living room for entertaining, furnished in fabric, not outdoor upholstery. Retractable screens and a stone fireplace help control temperature.

Golf lockers line a back entrance. Each son has a bedroom and fantasy bathroom. The oversized suspended light fixtures, both Lauren and bell jar, are simply spectacular.

A range of neutrals played out in moderately sized rooms make the large upstairs game room a shocker. Its 800-plus square feet are divided into a pool hall (blue felt on the table), a TV lounge, gaming table and bar. Wideboards the color of coffee grounds cover the floor, walls and ceiling. Man cave doesn’t come close.

Melinda is proud of several chests rescued from inelegant circumstances and repurposed to glory. The fabric covering Beau’s favorite sofa is the same color as his fur, so it doesn’t show.

True, this will be Christmas without a life-sized sleigh in the front yard. No stockings will hang from either mantel. White will replace twinkling colored bulbs on the trees, at least until the family expands. “When the boys get married and have children, this will be their home base,” Melinda says.

Yo, Santa!

In the meantime, on Christmas Eve the Taylors will host an open house for local friends and others coming from West Virginia. Christmas dinner: beef tenderloin, emerging from a kitchen that appears to have sprung from a magazine cover.

“This is a year for establishing new traditions,” Melinda has decided, in a home she created and calls “my pride and joy.” PS

2023 Feature story of a house

Crime at Lark Cottage

Fiction by John Bingham
Illustration by Mariano Santillan

The mystery story that follows was written by John Michael Ward Bingham, the seventh Baron Clanmorris, appearing first in The Illustrated London News around Christmas 1954. Bingham was the author of 17 thrillers, both detective and spy novels. During World War II, and for roughly two decades after, Bingham worked for MI5, the British secret service. He was the inspiration for the master spy George Smiley in John le Carré’s fiction. “He had been one of two men who had gone into the making of George Smiley,” wrote le Carré. “Nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in my first novel.”

The weather was foul. It had been snowing, off and on, for some days, but during the last few hours the temperature had suddenly risen, and with the departure of the cold had come the rain, pitting the smooth snow, causing it to fall with soft rustles and sighs from the branches in the coppice which surrounded the cottage on three sides.

Bradley switched off his engine in the black-velvet shadows of the trees opposite the little gate; and went up to the gate, and saw that it bore the name “Lark Cottage,” saw, too, the soft lamplight gleaming through the chinks in the curtains of the front room.

It had been dark for two hours now. A blustery little wind had arisen, sweeping in chilly rushes across the moors, driving the rain before it, and plunging into the little hollow in which the cottage lay.

There was no other habitation in sight.

Bradley unlatched the gate and walked up a narrow path and knocked on the door. For a few seconds he heard nothing. Then came the sound of footsteps, but they did not come to the door. He heard them pass in front of the door, then begin to ascend uncarpeted stairs.

For a few seconds he stood listening, hearing the water drip from the eaves. A sudden gust of wind and rain, stronger than usual, caused him to turn up the collar of his raincoat.

Suddenly, somewhere above him, a window was opened, and the gust of wind died away, and in the silence that followed a woman’s voice said:

“Who is there? What do you want?”

“You don’t know me,” he replied. “I am sorry to trouble you.”

“Who are you?”

“You don’t know me,” he repeated. “My name is John Bradley. It will mean nothing to you, I’m afraid. I got lost, and now I’ve developed car trouble. The clutch is slipping badly. I see there is a telephone line to your cottage. I would be most grateful if I could use it. I’ll naturally pay you for the call.”

He looked up as he spoke. He could see the pale blob of her face in the darkness, peering down at him through the half-opened lattice window. For a second or two she said nothing. Then she said:

“Wait a minute. I’ll come down.”

He heard her close the window, and the sound of her footsteps on the stairs again, and the noise of the door being unbolted.

He followed her into the little hall, and then into the living room. The room was a curious mixture of dark oak furniture, solid and enduring, and cheap modern bric-à-brac.

In a far corner a small Christmas tree, obviously dug from the garden, stood in a red pot. A little girl, aged about 10, was decorating it with bits of silver tinsel. As he came in she held in her hand a small Fairy Queen, made of cardboard, and painted with some silvery, glittering substance.

She was fair-haired and pale, and looked at him gravely, uncertainly; poised, as though prepared to drop everything and run at the first harsh word.

Unhappy, thought Bradley; thin and unhappy, and none too fit. Aloud he said: “That’s a pretty tree you have.”

For a second, warmth crept into the child’s face and lit up the grey eyes, and she seemed about to speak. Then, as the woman spoke, the child thought better of it, and the face assumed again its former cautious expression.

“The phone’s on the windowsill.”

Bradley swung around and looked at the woman. She was about 35, tall and sallow, with dark hair and eyes, the hair brushed back severely from the forehead. Her features were regular and, but for the fact that she was thin, and that her face wore a harsh, embittered expression, he would have considered her handsome for her age.

Bradley said: “I suppose Skandale is the nearest town? Can you recommend a garage there?”

She shook her head. “You won’t get a garage to come out at this time of night.” She paused and added: “I doubt if there’s even a garage open, now, in that dump.”

“You are not from these parts?”

She shook her head again and said: “I come from Brighton.”

Bradley said: “You must find it a bit different up here.” But she was not listening to him. She was standing rigid, her head slightly on one side, as though she were listening. Her neck, her arms, her legs, her whole body was stiff. Bradley, glancing at her hands, saw that they were clenched and pressed to her sides.

But the child was different.

The child’s face was suddenly flushed and eager. She had stopped trying to fix the Fairy Queen to the top of the Christmas tree, and had turned her head towards the window, towards the front of the house and the garden path, and the gate through which a man would normally approach the cottage. She said:

“Did you hear anything, Mummy?”

The question seemed to break the tension. The woman said sharply:

“Julia! Either get on with your tree or go to bed — one or the other.”

The child turned back to her tree, but almost at once turned her head quickly to the window.

Bradley heard the click of the gate, too. So did the woman. The noise came during a momentary lull in the wind, so when the woman said it was the storm blowing the gate nobody believed her, and the child ran to the window and looked out, thrusting the curtains aside, and peering into the night, kneeling on the window seat, nose pressed against the pane. Bradley said:

“You are expecting somebody, perhaps? Well, I won’t bother you any longer. I’ll be on my way. Maybe the clutch will last a mile or two, and I’ll do the last stretch on foot. I take it this road leads to the main road to Skandale?”

The woman was staring towards the window, towards the child. Bradley thought: The child is eager, expectant, but the mother is afraid. At last she said: “It is at least 10 miles to Skandale. You would do better to stay here, Mr. Bradley, and catch the early-morning bus from the end of the lane. I can give you a bed.”

“But if you are expecting somebody — “

“Nobody is coming.”

There was a flurry of movement on the window seat, as the child Julia swung around and cried: “But, Mummy, it said on the wireless — “

“Julia! Come, it’s time for your bed.”

She went to the window and took the child by the hand and jerked her off the window seat and towards the door. At the door she paused a moment and said: “You are quite welcome to stay the night. Julia and I share the same room, and I will make up the bed in the small room for you.”

Bradley caught the strained, almost eager undertone in her voice, and knew that she wanted him to stay; knew that she was afraid and wished for his company in the house; afraid, even though as yet she had not said what she feared — or whom.

“Very well,” he said mildly. “I will gladly stay. It is very kind of you.”

He watched her lead the child out of the room, and heard them mount the stairs, and the sound of voices in an upper room, the woman’s sharp and scolding, the child’s plaintive. Then he went quickly to the window and looked out.

The light from the room was reflected by the snow, so that he could dimly see the garden and path and the gate. But there was no sign of anybody.

He had not expected to see anybody.

He lit a cigarette and wandered slowly round the room, glancing at the books in the bookshelf near the fireplace, at the cheap watercolors on the whitewashed walls.

On a table near the window stood a small silver tray. He picked it up and read the inscription in the middle, written in the impeccable copybook handwriting peculiar to such things:

to fred shaw on his marriage — from his pals at the mill

He replaced the tray and moved to the fireplace, noting the inexpensive china ornaments, the walnut-wood clock. In a light oak frame was a picture of a plump-faced man with fair, receding hair. In the bottom right-hand corner were the words: “To Lucy with love from Leslie.”

He wandered on, looking for something which he somehow knew he would not find; looking for the usual wedding picture, the wedding picture of Fred and Lucy Shaw.

He was not the least surprised not to find it; not in the least surprised to find no trace of Fred Shaw at all, except for the silver tray and that, after all, was worth money.

No trace, that is, until he came to the newspaper lying on the dark oak sideboard, and saw the double-column headlines, and read the text about Frederick Shaw, and how warders and police were scouring the countryside for him.

Frederick Shaw, aged 42. Escaped from Larnforth Prison.

Shaw, the murderer, reprieved because of what Home Secretaries call “just an element of doubt,” and serving a life sentence, with nine-tenths of it still to run.

Shaw, the former overseer, respected in all Skandale, who once or twice a year got a little befuddled with beer; who was known to be on bad terms with his uncle, the Skandale jeweler.

Good-natured old Fred Shaw, who never could explain how his cap and heavy blackthorn stick were found beside the battered body of the jeweler — or even what became of the money they alleged he had stolen.

Bradley put the paper down quickly when he heard the footsteps on the stairs. Too quickly. As he turned away, the big pages slipped over the side of the polished sideboard so that when Lucy Shaw came into the room she saw it lying on the floor and said: “So now you know, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Bradley, “I know all right.”

Now that the need for acting was past, she stood in front of the fireplace, massaging one hand with the other, staring at him with frightened eyes. A tall, gaunt woman, with a wide, sensual mouth. The harsh expression had left her face. He saw her lips quiver.

“What are you scared of, Mrs. Shaw?” asked Bradley.

“I’m not scared, I’m not at all scared. What should I be frightened of?”

“That’s what I was asking,” said Bradley. He moved to the door and said: “I’ll go and get my suitcase out of the car.”

He went into the hall and out of the front door and down the garden path to the car. She heard the sound of the car door being slammed. On the way back, he paused by the front door. Then he came into the hall and put down his suitcase.

When he came into the living room he said: “Come outside a minute, will you?”

She swung round and stared at him.

“Why?”

“Did your husband — did Mr. Shaw use a walking stick much?”

“He always used one — almost always. He was a bit lame from a mill accident. Why?” And when he did not answer, when he only looked at her without saying anything, she repeated loudly, almost shrilly: “Why?”

“Well, come outside a minute,” repeated Bradley, and groped in his trench coat pocket for his torch. She walked into the hall, and when she hesitated by the front door he said: “Come on, it’s all right. I’m with you and I’m six foot tall and quite strong.”

The wind had dropped now, but the rain still fell; but softly, soundlessly, more in the nature of a moorland mist.

The snow was becoming soft on the surface but was still deep, so that the footprints round the house showed up very distinctly in the light of the torch; so did the small ferrule-holes in the snow on the left-hand side of the prints.

“I suppose he was left-handed,” said Bradley, more to himself than to Lucy Shaw, and saw her nod almost imperceptibly. He raised the torch beam a trifle and said: “See how he turned aside to look into the room? I suppose he saw me in there with you and Julia. I suppose he is waiting for me to go. Then he will come in and spend a few short hours with you, and perhaps take some clothes and money and go.”

He heard a movement by his side, and looked round, and found she had gone back into the house.

When he joined her in the living room she was sitting crouched in a chair by the fire. Her sallow face had turned white. She was trembling violently.

Bradley said: “I think I had better go, after all. I’m keeping him out in the night rain. It’s the police job to catch escaped convicts, not mine. I was a prisoner of war once. I’ve got a sneaking sympathy for them. Poor devil!” he added softly.

But she jumped to her feet, and clutched him by both arms, and said shrilly: “You mustn’t go! Please don’t go!” A thought struck her, and she added, almost in a whisper: “Before the gate clicked — you remember? — the child and I heard a sound. I think it was his hand, perhaps his fingernail on the windowpane, as he looked in through a chink in the curtains.”

Bradley said: “I’m going, unless you tell me why you are afraid.”

He pushed her from him, and she went and stood by the fireplace. After a while she said: “He thought I should have done more for him when he had his trial. He said he was with me at the time of the murder, and I should have said so too.

“But he wasn’t, so I couldn’t say it, could I? After all, you’re on oath, aren’t you, Mr. Bradley?”

“You’re on oath all right.”

“So I couldn’t go and perjure myself, could I? I mean, could I?”

“Men don’t kill women for not doing something, Mrs. Shaw.” He glanced at the gate. “The fire is dying, and there is no more wood. Where is it kept?”

She looked up at him fear in her eyes, and said:

“In the shed near the back door. I can’t go out there and fetch it. I’m not going out there alone.”

“I’ll fetch it. Just come with me and show me where it is. Just come to the kitchen door with me.”

He opened the kitchen door, and she stood with him, and pointed to the shed, a few yards away. The rain still fell, still soundlessly. Somewhere some water was running, gurgling down a drain. Otherwise there was no noise, either in the trees which pressed down upon the cottage or in the glistening bushes which edged their way to within a few feet of the back door.

He shone his torch, first on the shed then on the bushes, and took a step forward, and suddenly stopped as the bushes shook violently and snow cascaded from them.

Behind him he heard Lucy Shaw gasp and sob twice.

“It’s probably only a rabbit,” said Bradley, and walked towards the bushes. For a second he shown his torch at them, then made his way to the shed and gathered a trugful of sawn logs and came back towards the kitchen.

Lucy Shaw stood watching him, afraid to go back into the house alone, afraid to go out into the night with him. She kept passing her hand over her smooth hair, nervously, restlessly, staring out into the night at him with her black, dilated eyes.

The crash of the broken window, the broken living-room window, made her turn and scream; caused Bradley to break into a run; and woke up the child. Bradley heard her calling: “Mummy! Mummy! What’s that?”

Bradley carried the trug with one hand and with the other pushed Lucy Shaw into the house and whispered fiercely:

“Tell her I dropped a vase! Go on, tell her that!”

When the woman had done so, they went into the living-room and saw the stone with the piece of paper wrapped around it lying among the shattered fragments of windowpane. Bradley picked it up and smoothed out the paper, and saw, in capital letters, the word, ADULTRESS. He handed it to Lucy Shaw and said: “He doesn’t seem to think an awful lot of you, does he?”

The curtains were stirring in front of the jagged hole in the window. Bradley flung the logs down by the side of the fire and said abruptly: “I’ve had enough of this! I’m going. You can sort it out yourself with your husband. It’s no affair of mine.”

She flung herself at the door, ashen-faced, and stood in front of it, barring his way. “You can’t leave me here — alone!”

“Who can’t?” asked Bradley tonelessly and watched the curtains billowing into the room as a sudden gust of wind struck them.

“Where are the police?” gasped Lucy Shaw. “Surely the first thing they do is to send men to watch an escaped convict’s home?”

Bradley point to the telephone. “Ring ’em up and tell ’em so. Ask them where they are,” he said. “Go on — ring them up.”

She ran to the telephone and lifted the receiver and listened. When a few seconds had gone by, Bradley said:

“Perhaps the wire is down with the snow. Perhaps he’s cut it — you never know. They do it in books.”

After a minute, the operator answered. Lucy Shaw held her breath for a few seconds to control her voice, to try to restrain the tremor. Then she said: “I want the police! Tell the police to come! This is Mrs. Shaw, Lark Cottage, Oak Lane, off the Skandale-Tollbrook road. Tell them it’s — it’s very urgent! My life is in danger! My — there’s an escaped convict — a murderer — trying to get in!”

She replaced the receiver and stared at Bradley. He glanced at his watch and said:

“They’ll probably be here in half an hour. Three-quarters, at the most. You’ll be all right till then, I expect.”

He moved towards the door.

She did not move, unable to believe that he was really going.

“It’s no business of mine,” he pointed out for the second time. And when she clung to him and began to whimper, he said: “Don’t be daft. He won’t kill you for not perjuring yourself at his trial. He won’t even kill you for carrying on with this podgy-faced blonde brute.” He waved towards the picture on the chimney piece. “Once he’s in the house, you can appeal to him.”

But she clung to the doorhandle, gaunt and unlovely, her black hair now in disarray, and when he tried to move her hands she suddenly flung herself against him, temporarily forcing him away from the door, and said:

“It’s worse than that. He knew Leslie and I were in love, long before his uncle was killed.”

“So what?” said Bradley and moved again towards the door.

“You fool!” gasped Lucy Shaw. “Don’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? Leslie — Leslie Bond — traveler for Fred’s firm, killed the old man, and stole the money, and planted the evidence against my husband, Fred Shaw — and I knew he had done it!”

“Did you now?” said Bradley mildly. “What’s that to me?”

“And I let Fred go on trial for it, and I’d have let him die for it, too — and he knows it, and that’s why he’ll kill me if you go before the police arrive!”

“Fancy!” said Bradley staring at her. “And your friend, where is he?”

“He left the country, saying he would come back when the case had blown over.”

“And will he?”

“No!” said Lucy Shaw bitterly.

“Not voluntarily!”

As she spoke, her voice rose almost to a scream, and Bradley, watching the hatred flush her sallow face and stretch her mouth into a thin, straight line, knew that the end was at hand.

“Where is he?” he asked abruptly.

“In Melbourne, Australia, and I’ll damn well tell the police when they arrive!”

“You may be charged as an accomplice after the fact.”

“What the hell do I care!” shouted Lucy Shaw. “I’m not going to be done-in tonight, nor 20 years hence, to save Leslie Bond, and I don’t care who knows it!”

Bradley said, woodenly: “If that’s the way you feel, and since you wish to make a statement, I don’t mind telling you now that the police are here already.”

Lucy Shaw looked round. “Where?”

“Here,” said Bradley, and put his hand in his raincoat pocket and produced his warrant card. Almost automatically his voice reverted to a routine drone as he continued: “I am Superintendent Bradley, of Scotland Yard. Sergeant Wood, I believe, has been listening outside that broken window. If you wish to make a written statement, I have some foolscap sheets of paper and a pen.

“I must, however, warn you that you are not obliged to do so, and that anything you say, or any written statement you make from now onwards, may be used in evidence against you. I should perhaps add that your husband was recaptured some three hours ago within a few miles of the prison.”

“What with you skylarking around, trespassing, making footprints, and breaking windows,” said Superintendent Bradley later to Sergeant Wood, “and me extorting confessions through fear and subterfuge, there’s been enough crime committed at Lark Cottage tonight to fill a sheaf of charge sheets.

“Funny, how I always had an uneasy feeling about that case, even though I did collect the evidence which put Frederick Shaw in the dock. Lucky she didn’t attend the trial and know my face.”

He filled his pipe and added: “The kid’ll be glad to be back with her father for Christmas. I reckon she hated her mother. So did I, if it comes to that,” he said, striking a match.

“And so did I,” said Sergeant Wood. “I was frozen stiff.” PS

Crime at Lark Cottage by John Bingham reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of John Bingham. Lightly edited for space and style.

2023 Feature

Cherish the Thought

Illlustrations by Harry Blair

’Tis the season for making memories. That act of remembering gives us pause. It makes us laugh. Sometimes it makes us cry. What follows are a few precious moments. If nothing else, each and every one of these recollections is a reminder to us all to hold those most dear as closely as we can.

Let There Be Light

December 1971 was cold and wintry. But then, it was always frigid in my small Midwestern hometown that time of year. Light poles on the main street were festooned with glowing decorations, the ground was blanketed in white, and a humongous fir tree was in its usual place on the square.

Christmas trees were a big deal in our town. August Imgard, a German immigrant and local resident until his death in 1904, brought the first Christmas tree to America. He held that distinction for nearly a century until he was demoted like Pluto by some scholarly researcher who found evidence of an earlier tree’s appearance in another municipality — but it was still a big deal to us.

It was a simpler time, the early ’70s. Families seemed closer; neighbors knew each other. I was the youngest of five siblings, and the oldest, Ken, was our undisputed leader. From making meals when our parents were at work, to organizing pickup games in the neighborhood, to finding the best hills for sledding, my brother was always in charge. He delivered newspapers and shoveled sidewalks to make a few dollars, which he shared. I looked up to him, literally and figuratively.

With Christmas right around the corner, schools were out for the holiday, and the local stores were buzzing with last-minute shoppers, their red-cheeked, buttoned-up kids in tow. Hallmark-quality stuff.

But something was missing. The tree on the square was dark, its wires having been cut by vandals. For weeks, it seemed, the blackout continued. The town’s head honchos were unwilling — or unable — to fix the damage to restore the lights. It was upsetting, to say the least, to my 7-year-old self. Where was the Christmas spirit? The kindness, the joy?

Three days before Christmas, two teenaged boys worked outside for hours in below-freezing temperatures splicing together the wires on that huge tree. Ken and his friend John lit up the square in our little town just in time to light the way for Santa’s arrival on Christmas Eve.

A reporter took a picture of those boys, and it was on the front page of the newspaper the next day. One of my sisters found it for me recently. For the record, I still look up to my big brother.

‒ Pam Phillips

A Special Lesson from my Orthodox Jewish Grandmother

This story takes place in Chicago, Christmas Eve 1948. My religious Jewish family was getting ready to celebrate Hanukkah.

My mother had received a phone call that my grandmother’s dentures were ready to be picked up. Rather than waiting for the Christmas holiday to be over, my mother went to downtown Chicago to the dentist’s office. She returned by late afternoon and placed the white box containing the dentures on the hallway table.

I do not know what got into me, at age 12, and my sister, age 14, but we felt the Christmas Eve spirit surrounding us. Perhaps it was the lightly falling snow.

With that we decided to go to the Kresge Five and Dime store and buy some little flocked Christmas trees. For 10 cents you could get a 2-inch snow-flocked tree with either a green or red stand. We bought two — one in each color.

We took the dentures from the hallway table, wrapped the box in some tissue paper and put it on the mantel above the fireplace in the living room. Standing on the box were the two small Christmas trees.

My sister and I invited my grandmother to come into the living room and get her dentures. When she saw the Christmas trees, she began her tirade in how disappointed she was with her granddaughters, Vivian and Charlotte. We were making a mockery of the Christian religion. To this day I can see her standing in front of us in her beige dress, covered in a large apron, her voice summoning the memories of the antisemitism she lived through in Lodz, Poland, before coming to America in 1904. Her granddaughters had made a joke about the Christian religion. The Christians let the Jewish people live in peace in the United States. On and on she lectured us.

Every Christmas Eve, no matter where I am, I think of my Grandmother Peshe Epstein and her words of wisdom. My Hanukkah and Christmas wish for all would be that the world could hear and practice the lesson she taught us. May the memory of this wonderful woman be a blessing forever.

‒ Vivian R. Jacobson

Grandmother’s House

The year I turned 7, Christmas fell on a Sunday. For most families, that’s not a big deal. For my family, the weekend was the only time off from work for my parents and grandparents. My sister and I knew our parents would pack us up on Friday and “to Grandmother’s house we go” so that we’d all be together on the holiday.

Because we would not be in our own home on Christmas Day — “the most wonderful time of the year” — I’m sure my parents grew tired of us asking, “How will Santa know where to bring our presents?”

“When what to my wondering eyes did appear” on that Friday morning before we left — Santa had made an early trip to our house. In addition to the presents under the tree, he left a letter saying he heard about our dilemma, checked his “Naughty or Nice” list to see that we were in the correct column, and he and Rudolph delivered our presents two days early.

Now in my 50s, I still believe in the magic of Santa. I was lucky enough to live it as a child and again through the eyes of my son. My wish for all children everywhere is for them to experience the same magic all year. “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

‒ Chris Dunn

A Gift in Layers

Every year my father would stay up late on Christmas Eve to bake his special coconut cake. He’d start early in the day with his secret recipe printed on blue copy paper. I don’t know where the recipe originated. He’d have all the ingredients spread out in the kitchen along with the double-boiler pot he pulled out once a year to get the frosting just right. I’d stick around to make sure I could get the leftover crumbs in the pans and have the chance to lick the spatula and scrape what I could from the pot as he patted as much coconut as possible on the frosting of each layer, then around the sides when all the layers were in place. He’d smile and admire his masterpiece and leave it on the dining room table for Christmas Day, tempting the whole house with the sight and smells. I’d be just as eager to get my first piece of that cake on Christmas Day as I was to open presents. I’m sure I have the recipe tucked away somewhere, but I’ve never used it. It wouldn’t be the same. One Christmas after our father was gone, my brother — who inherited the cooking genes — surprised me with the cake. It will forever be one of my favorite memories.

‒ Fallon McIver Brewington

My Personal Playlist

I’d taken up the snare drum in the fourth grade. Dad was a drummer, so there was never any question what instrument I would choose. The next year, on Christmas morning, I remember seeing the red bow on my very own drum set by the tree. My parents worked hard to find it, and getting it was a sacrifice.

But that was only the beginning. I played the drums in my room, one wall away from the living room. Night after night. My mother would tell you it never bothered her. Mothers are like that. Drumming became more than a hobby. It was like teenage therapy. And it was loud.

I played that drum set in my first band in the eighth grade. That same set of drums can be heard on songs from Nathan Davis’ album Out of My Skin. Nathan was at the top of the music scene in Southern Pines and, somehow, I got to record with him when I was 15.

The guitar is my primary instrument now, and it’s how I make my living these days playing with Whiskey Pines, and I am extremely grateful. I never really stopped drumming, though I sure can’t play like I used to. But every once in a while I can still feel the beat of a Christmas morning.

‒Tim Stelmat

Gran’s Chimney Folk

I only knew one grandparent – Gran, my father’s mum. A great lady. At Christmas she would sing The Messiah while ironing, and tell stories, one of which was about the “chimney folk.” She told my brother Bill and me that they lived up the chimney and were always there at Christmastime waiting to find out what we hoped Santa Claus would bring us. She helped us make messages out of tiny bits of paper and, as they were carried up the chimney by the heat and smoke, she used her ventriloquist skills to squeak — a sound she assured us meant that the message had been received! It took a year or two after I stopped “believing” for me to give up on the chimney folk. After all, I had heard them. I even once got into an impassioned argument with my school chums over them, insisting they were real. How could they not know about them?

When Gran first came to live with us, she produced an old, battered kitchen spoon which, from then on, seemed to be used to make everything, including brandy sauce for the Christmas pudding. The spoon had two jobs: first, stirring the sauce; and then the annual ritual of heating it over a match, filling its bowl with brandy and setting it alight while pouring it over the pud, which was then carried into the dining room, everyone cheering.

The years went by and my wife, Camilla, and I made several moves, the last one leaving England for the U.S. in 1987, and the spoon came, too. It now does what it does best here in America, including, very soon, the ritual of brandy sauce and flaming pudding, bringing back all those precious memories of Christmas past, of Gran, and the chimney folk, too.

‒ Tony Rothwell

Always in Our Hearts

My husband, Trent, loved Disney World, Christmas and family. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Why would he be? He earned a Green Beret and already proved he was an intelligent and capable badass. A Disney affliction wouldn’t take him down a notch at all. We both loved the bubble of the resort; it gave us an opportunity to pretend our lives weren’t filled with war.

In 2011 he decided he wanted his parents and mine to join us for Christmas at Disney — a large family vacation with all of us staying in one giant villa suite overlooking the Magic Kingdom. Every day at 5 p.m. the Magic Kingdom has a small and often overlooked ceremony when they play retreat and fold the U.S. flag that flies over the park. A family is chosen at the beginning of the day to assist with the task. It is random, but they look for a family wearing military affiliated hats or T-shirts. I decided that Christmas it would be us.

I got up early and waited patiently at the City Hall building until I could ask for the gentleman who makes the selection. They told me it was random, but I begged my point. I was told to go wait at The Bakery on Main Street. After an hour and half I was approached by a gentleman who very kindly explained he didn’t normally do this. I told him this was going to be my husband’s seventh deployment. Trent didn’t have a good feeling about it. He brought our parents on this trip so our daughter could celebrate Christmas at Disney with her grandparents. He would have all his favorite things in one place, at one time.

I explained that being honored as the veteran of the day was on his bucket list. His father was a Marine vet; my father was a Navy vet. The gentleman was moved, and he allowed us to retrieve the flag at 5 o’clock. As a family, we stood proudly for a tradition that Walt Disney long respected. My husband held that flag with pride. Someone took a picture of us all together, which we keep on a wall to remind us of that day.

Two weeks later Trent went on his last deployment. He arrived home earlier than his battalion, to Walter Reed Hospital, where his whole family stood beside him one last time as took his last breath. We all went back to Disney the following Christmas, on a vacation he had planned. We brought a unit hat for the kind gentleman who had given Trent one of his last wishes and thanked him for the memory that will always be in hearts.

‒ Beth MacDonald

Gather Together

This will be the first year that my mother, my sister and I will be able to celebrate all the holidays in the same place. Growing up in Norfolk, we would spend Thanksgiving with our extended family, then Christmas together with our own families. Marriage moved my sister to North Carolina, and work moved me to southwest Virginia. For over 25 years, we have had to choose which holiday to celebrate, and where. Do we get together on Thanksgiving or Christmas? My place or yours? My mother moved to Moore County in 2021, and my sister moved here earlier this year. Now the three of us are able to be together without having to rush to get back to our own homes, our jobs and our responsibilities in three separate cities. My sister and I have already planned a holiday schedule of events that includes everything from ice skating (or watching from the sideline) to baking cookies. No doubt, one weekend will be devoted to binge watching holiday movies with our mother, who watches them year-round! Tree lightings, local shopping, pumpkin picking . . . the moments today that will become our memories tomorrow are the most precious of all.

‒ Sandra Dales

2023 Feature

The Curated Estate

History rules in Homewood

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

The first quarter of the 20th century saw Pinehurst emerge as the “in” winter watering hole for the big city, big money crowd. They hired architects to build elaborate cottages and mini-estates from the village outward. Meanwhile, another group selected the rolling hills surrounding Southern Pines. Setting the standard, in 1918 Pennsylvania iron and steel tycoon W.C. Fownes commissioned a magnificent house on the corner of Crest and Midland — 10,000 square feet, surrounded by terraced gardens designed by no less than Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm.

The enclave would be known as Knollwood.

Just as the Great Depression took hold, a group of residents appointed a committee to build a showplace with hotel-worthy amenities, on spec, without regard to cost, next door to Fownes’ house. Hopefully, a family that had survived the stock market crash in ’29 might be tempted. Fine craftsmen needed work, and the best materials abounded. Bricks were hand-made to resemble those imported from England, pre-Revolutionary War, in payment for cotton and tobacco.

The result, with tennis court, goldfish pond and pool, became known as Homewood at Knollwood Heights. The mansion was first occupied by the Beckwiths, who were responsible for the original gardens designed by the visionary landscape architect E.S. Draper. They were followed by Dennison and Kaye Bullens and, in 1977, Homewood became the residence of renowned ophthalmologist Dr. Gale Martin, co-founder of Carolina Eye Associates.

“It needed considerable fixin’ up,” Martin, who would die at home in 2008, told friends.

Martin’s daughter married in the gazebo where, decades later, present owner Ted Owens and his bride, Dr. Queeney Tang, exchanged rings.

The estate, fronted by eagles atop brick columns framing the circular drive, remains rivaled in scope and presence only by Hollycrest, built on Linden Road in 1916 for U.S. Ambassador William Hines Page. The modern Homewood integrates the architecture of Westover of Byrd dynasty in Virginia while staying faithful to the original Homewood — the Maryland ancestral home of the Carrolls, a family that includes Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The result is both massive and intimidating. Some areas, like the stretch kitchen, have been modernized. The former three-room servants’ apartment (the chauffeur slept in the basement) has been combined into a media room with projection TV and computer central. The living room, off the patterned marble foyer, memorializes the past. But it is to this parlor that Owens, a retired attorney and self-described European and Chinese history buff, gravitates with Queeney, his cardiologist wife.

Owens discovered Southern Pines when he visited his parents, who retired to the Sandhills in 1981 for golf. He had grown up in Pittsburgh, in what he calls a middle-income neighborhood. “I loved the air, the blue sky here,” he says. “You only get that four or five days a year in Pittsburgh.”

He decided to move in 2018 but wasn’t looking for an estate. “My wife grew up in one room. I grew up in a nice house,” he says — but nothing like Homewood. Once inside the front door, the hidden historian prevailed.

“Welcome to the Oval Office,” Owens beams, opening doors encrusted with moldings as elaborate as icing on a wedding cake.

Creating an homage to the Oval was an ambition, with period-original furniture and reproductions in place during the George W. Bush administration. The oval shape could not be duplicated, but Owens researched and commissioned chairs upholstered in the correct fabric by the Kittinger Furniture Co. of Buffalo, New York, founded in 1866 — a longtime supplier to the White House. Tables, lamps, paintings — originals and otherwise — are the result of similar research. A white sofa reappears, as does a made-to-order rectangular carpet in the same colors as the oval one found at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

At one end, a grand piano is reserved for Queeney’s son, a concert pianist. Her other son, a restaurant chef, commandeers the kitchen during visits. Among its appliances is the largest side-by-side refrigerator made for residential use.

Off the marble foyer, the study/office displays a panel of hand-blocked wallpaper depicting New York harbor by Jean Zuber, a renowned French wallpaper artist, circa 1824. A sunny gallery connects the core building to space repurposed as the master suite, den and a giant dressing room for two with furniture-grade fittings. Throughout, ceilings approach 10 feet.

A long, steep stairway ascends from the marble hallway to the second floor, where the original master suite and family bedrooms are located, each with a bathroom. Dominating the stairwell is a weighty lighting fixture enclosed in beveled glass panels. Think space capsule circa Louis XIV. Owens believes only two exist, worldwide.

The third floor open space with dormer windows is a perfect rainy day playground for small grandchildren.

Homewood was fortunate to have been curated into another century by owners who have not imposed “great rooms” on the great rooms. On a quiet summer night, the voices of now-famous authors can almost be heard drifting out of nearby Weymouth. The horses whinny in their stalls. And at residences like Homewood, money is spent on things that endure beyond rainforest shower heads and kabobs sizzling on a grill bigger than a Volkswagen. PS

2023 Feature