Category: Feature

Rising from the Past

The historic town of Badin resolves to survive and thrive again

By Jim Moriarty • Photographs by John Gessner

At the center of Badin village is a confounding five-pointed starfish intersection with a right of way that seems to be ruled by nothing more than neighborliness. Where the post office now sits there was once a grand opera house. Built in 1918, it was dropped to its knees by a wrecking ball 41 years later in the days before historic preservation allowed the soul of a town to outrun its bottom line. The theater was the prime stopping point between Richmond and Atlanta for gypsy vaudevillians whose Pullman cars parked on the railroad tracks by the depot that once stood across Route 740 from a convenience store where now even the baitfish seem to have gone belly up. It was a workingman’s town then, a one-trick aluminum pony that fused the men who spent their days in Alcoa’s hot, hazardous pot rooms with imported fun. Staying sometimes as long as a week, W.C. Fields and Mae West were among the entertainers who performed there. On the same stage chorus girls left little to the imagination and Tom Mix shot up silent movie saloons, fire and brimstone preachers lit up the 650 sinners in the main auditorium, another 150 in the balconies.

Across the highway from the convenience store the hulking, desolate and empty factory buildings are covered with sorrowful rust stains as if their mascara was running. Just behind the store the little, historic village tries to climb back up the prosperity cliff it was thrown over when the company ups and leaves the company town. Badin may be more than a hundred years old, but it still has the will to live, and there is much to admire in the ambition.

A long block but a short walk up Falls Road from the starfish crossroads, pushed away from the street into the shade, an imposing red brick church gives the architectural impression of Baptists swallowing up a wandering band of orthodox Greeks sometime in the 1920s. On one side of the church is the old cemetery. Close by on the other side is the Badin Treehouse Co. It may not have a monopoly on food in Badin but it has, at the very least, cornered what passes for the gourmet market. The menu is country eclectic and the décor something of a cross between Savannah art college kitsch and your dotty old aunt’s attic. There are furs, beads, animal heads, jukeboxes, musical instruments, wild turkey feathers, and Frank Sinatra and Etta James in surround sound.

Jodi Wahab is the reluctant restaurateur, having run headlong into code issues in her original location. The plan was to have a coffee house/art gallery a few doors away in the century-old brick building with the RC Cola advertisement painted on its side where she lives with her husband, James, and her two Chihuahuas, Roxie and Allie. Or Ally. Or Alley. The actual spelling being a matter of casual indifference. Wahab got the building in an old-fashioned swap with the artist Roger Thomas, who lived in it for 13 years. “Everybody sees the potential Badin has, especially with the lake area right there,” says Thomas, who got his Route 740 farm in the deal. “I think Badin is a charming town. It’s a very neat historical town.”

The floor inside the front door of Wahab’s Falls Road building is partially covered with a large mural made mostly out of pennies. Her copper art pieces hang on one wall. The other has an elk head and a leopard — as alive as the parrot in “Monty Python’s Flying Circus’” skit — in a cage. There’s an elegant, idle coffee bar anticipating the return of the espresso machine from down the street; an out of operation waterfall waiting for unfinished oil paintings to decorate either side; and a beach cottage room with a mural of Cape Lookout and a floor covered with river sand. “What I wanted was for you to have your cappuccino and to step into my art, just come and sit,” she says. “I’m fighting to get back here.” Wahab has the U.S. franchise for Massimo Zecchi’s art supplies from Florence, Italy, but selling out of a closed coffee shop in Badin has, well, challenges. “Right now there’s no industry, so the town is just having to survive with what we are,” she says.

The town was the invention of a French company headed by Adrien Badin that came to the Yadkin River Basin early in the 20th century to make aluminum and electricity, not necessarily in that order. World War I brought the French invasion to an abrupt end and the project was taken over by the Aluminum Company of America — Alcoa — which finished construction of the Narrows Dam in 1917, helping to create the body of water that now comprises Badin Lake and Lake Tillery. Until the building of the Hoover Dam, the Narrows was the largest overflow dam in the world and it, along with the buildings of old Badin, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It also happens to be downriver from one of the most significant Paleo-Indian archeological sites in the southeastern United States.

Like the opera house, Badin’s dwellings were built for the aluminum workers, started by the French and finished by Alcoa. Some were small bungalows but mostly it was condo-style apartments in four conjoined units. These quadraplexes had indoor plumbing, three bedrooms upstairs and hot water that circulated through wood-burning stoves. Because people need roofs more than they need vaudeville, the lodging has outlived the tap dancers of the opera house and a handful of other buildings that became too forlorn to justify their existence to an accountant. “They tore down more buildings and destroyed more property that had historical value to it — it just makes you sick,” says Thomas.

Artifacts from the Hardaway archeological site, a Badin timeline, a refurbished quadraplex apartment and even the 1937 Ford American LaFrance fire truck (aluminum colored, of course) are on display in the visitors center and a pair of nearby museums at the starfish intersection. They open twice a week, on Tuesdays and again on Sunday afternoons. Not that there isn’t a lot of foot traffic in Badin, but if Martha Garber sees a strange face walking by during operating hours, she’s as likely as not to snatch the person right off the sidewalk.

Anne Harwood, who taught education at Pfeiffer University, is the mayor of a town with a zombie tax base. “We are a historic town with unique architecture,” says Harwood. “We’re working to keep Badin as preserved as we can.” When the moment of the great unwinding of the inevitable lawsuits arising from the end of business as usual finally arrives, Harwood sees better times. “Alcoa’s going to be generous — not just to us — they’re going to give some land to Morrow Mountain. We will get the property around the lake. That’s huge,” she says. “Then, we have to decide, with our budget, what we can do with it. Our biggest property tax group is no longer here.”

The Badin Inn, built by the French in 1914 as dormitory-style living for staff of the subsidiary of L’Aluminium Française, and its associated golf club are integral to Badin’s hand-over-hand climb back to, if not affluence, at least survivability. Stewardship of the historic structure has fallen into the hands of general manager Mark Eberle from St. Augustine, Florida. He’s partnered this museum piece, a place that’s a little tender loving care and a few investment dollars shy of being adorable, with a nonprofit organization that tries to help kids through golf. The nonprofit is called Music, Art, Literature and Thought and it’s the parent of the faith-based Growing Kids Through Golf. Back in the ’70s Eberle traveled the mini-tours, sleeping in the back of his Dodge utility van, trying to make enough money one week to play again the next. He’s chasing a different goal now. “I started that kids’ program in 1989,” says Eberle. “We’ve always targeted that group of kids that don’t naturally have an opportunity to play golf. Our purpose was never really about creating golfers of the future. We’re just trying to help kids. It was never to create the next Tiger Woods.”

The Inn has some modern suites over the pro shop, but it’s the six rooms on the second floor of the old building with the ghostly footprints of visitors like Sam Snead that are its legacy. The hallway still has a sign that says, “Pull Switch For Air Raid Alarm.” (The aluminum factory would, after all, have been a high value target during WWII.) And, there’s an intercom in the lobby that looks like it could still dial up the ’50s. The third floor remains uninhabitable, almost a metaphor. “This is pretty much Badin,” says Eberle of the Inn and golf course. “It’s a fascinating property, it really is. This is a 100-year-old inn with classic rooms, hardwood floors, furniture to match. Same way with the golf. We spent nine months improving the course, investing in it strongly. The lake is two blocks away. The river is a quarter-mile. Morrow Mountain is right behind us. They didn’t know what they had. This isn’t a resort; it’s a small town, a homey, comfortable, relaxed atmosphere. If you’re looking for a championship golf course, you don’t want to come up here. But, if you want to play golf like it was played in 1924, you’re going to love this place.”

The most famous person from Badin now is the TV personality Star Jones, but that distinction used to be held by Johnny Palmer, the Badin Blaster, who grew up caddying on the old course. A WWII veteran who flew 32 missions over Japan as the side gunner on a B-29, Palmer quit a job as a crane operator at Alcoa to join the tour and won seven times from 1946-54. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, Snead nicknamed him ‘Stone’ because his expression never changed on the golf course. In the finals of the 1949 PGA Championship at Hermitage CC in Richmond, Virginia, Snead took a 2-up lead over Palmer into the last nine holes, bounced his tee shot on the 10th off a transfer truck that kicked it back into play, made a birdie and went on to win, 3 and 2.

After moving to Oklahoma, Palmer spent the last years of his life back in Badin, living in the family apartment in a quadraplex on Spruce Avenue. His son, Jock, lives there still and can be found most days after work at the golf course’s grill. With some prodding Jock recalls a conversation with Gene Littler and Don January on a ferry ride across the Savannah River at a senior tournament. “Your dad was one of the best chippers and putters,” Jock says they told him. “He missed the TV money. He missed the senior tour. They said, hey, never let anybody tell you your dad wasn’t great.”

A lot like Badin. PS

Jim Moriarty is a senior editor at PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com

2016 Feature

The Amazing Summers of Miss Edie Womble

By Jim Dodson • Photographs by John Gessner

“I’ve always loved this table,” says Miss Edie Chatham, smoothing her hand over the weathered surface of the large round table that dominates her expansive kitchen in Pinehurst.

“It’s been in our family for a very long time. My daughter brought it all the way from Louisville when Dick and I built this house 30 years ago. She took it apart and drove all that way here, if you can believe it, attached to the roof of her car. Clever girl. The table was fine, a sign of how well it was made. It just gets better with time.”

Now in her 90s — but don’t tell her we told you so — Miss Edie Chatham knows a thing or two about well-made objects and getting better with time.

From the beginning, her remarkable life has been one of steady exploration and refinement, beginning with a fearless mother who wished her six children to experience a rapidly changing world to a beautiful house Miss Edie herself sketched out on paper, inspired by 19th century houses from the Carolina low country. The New Jersey architect she and her husband, Dick Chatham, engaged in the early 1980s to draw up the plans for their retirement home, after relocating from Elkins to the Sandhills, had never seen anything quite like the simple two-bedroom “country house” Edie Chatham had in mind. It was modest in scale, in tune with the pragmatism of an earlier age, featuring a simple porte cochère and copper roof that turned elegantly green with the passing seasons, wide and welcoming Dutch front doors equipped with sturdy wooden screens, 12-foot ceilings, and a dramatically wide central hallway running front to back of the house, designed to catch the gentlest breeze and provide a place for Edie’s grandchildren to learn to roller skate and ride bicycles.

“He said it was such a waste of space, but I wanted a house that would stay cool on the hottest summer day,” she explains. “I’d lived in almost every kind of house you can imagine up till then, so I knew exactly what I wanted. We only needed a guest bedroom.”

“Don’t try to talk her out of it,” Dick Chatham advised the architect. “When she gets her mind made up, she never changes it.” The architect obliged though later congratulated her on designing the “perfect dog house” because the windows were large enough for the smallest dog to look out.

A local builder named Clealand Fowler did the work, handcrafting a house that feels as settled and welcoming as any low country home place passed down through generations. “Clealand was terrific,” she remembers. “He built the place a little bit by the seat of his pants, creating as we went along, a real craftsman, making the oversized windows and every door by hand. He did the floors, too. While he worked, I researched.”

It was she who found, for instance, a man in Chapel Hill that had heart pine flooring from Richmond, Virginia’s original railway station when it was demolished to make way for a new station. “The boards were gray and weathered, but Clealand sanded them down and fitted them beautifully together, countersinking the nails and staining them with tung oil. They’ve aged so nicely, don’t you think?”

Everything about the house Miss Edie Chatham built seems to have aged nicely, as a matter of fact, from the bathrooms outfitted with old-fashioned fixtures she found at area thrift shops to a sunroom overlooking a backyard woodland where she keeps an eye out for local wildlife, a peaceful sitting room filled with the works of folk artists and American crafts.

Befitting a family home place, mementos and heirlooms and personal treasures emblematic of the long and notable life Edie Chatham has lived grace every room — favorite books and paintings, family photographs, a refrigerator covered by cards and photographs of her large, loving, scattered clan that includes 11 grandchildren and 13 greats. In 2015, son Richard and his wife, Allison, threw a surprise birthday party for his mother that included a low country boil and four days of paying tribute to their extraordinary matriarch.

“I would have been happy with just a lemon pie,” she allows with a laugh, settling down at the aforementioned pine table to chat — albeit a tad reluctantly — about a life rich in experience and surrounded by family and friends, as mentally vibrant as ever. As she sits, her miniature poodle Susie, 17, appears, curling up at her feet. “But it was so wonderful to have the entire family come from everywhere, some from other countries and very far away.”

She pauses and smiles. “We do seem to be a family that likes to travel a great deal. My brothers and sisters and I all shared that trait — a gift given to us by our parents, who believed the more we saw of the world, the better we would understand others and ourselves.”

She smiles, thinking of something.

“I was just speaking to my older brother Bill last evening on the phone. Bill is 99. His mind’s still so sharp. We were sharing memories of those great summers we had growing up, our travels across America with the Georgia Caravans. Bill was a counselor for the boys on our first trip. That was a very different world back then. I don’t suppose children’s summers are anything like that today. Everyone goes their own way. But, oh, what a grand adventure that was!”

She was Edie Womble then, a precocious 13, the fourth oldest of six children of Bunyon Snipes Womble and his highly independent wife, Edith Willingham Womble, from Macon, Georgia.

Bun Womble, as friends called her father, son of a Methodist minister, was one of Winston-Salem’s most successful lawyers. At age 37, he sat on the board of his alma mater, Duke University, and pushed to integrate the school. He later served in the state legislature and was one of the city’s famous 12 elders who gathered monthly at a private home dressed in formal attire to plan the future of Winston-Salem, planning for the growth of neighborhoods, city government, even the merger of the two neighboring towns. “It was Dad who suggested putting the hyphen between Winston and Salem,” says Miss Edie.

Her mother was also a force to be reckoned with.

“Thanks to our parents, we understood how fortunate we were when so many were suffering due to the Depression. We lived in the same neighborhood as the Hanes and Reynolds families but with six of us all under the age of 8, we all learned to be each other’s best friends very quickly. We made our own beds and straightened our rooms and our father always walked us to school. Our grandmother lived with us, too. It was bliss.”

Edie’s mother had been around the world three times and held strong views about exposing her six children to the realities of life — even, and maybe especially, with the devastation of the Great Depression sweeping over America.

When an enterprising fellow named Clarence Rose came through town promoting a summer-long caravan of buses designed to show children of the affluent South the key sights and landmarks of America, Edith Willingham Womble signed up four of her oldest children for the year 1933, the lowest point of the Depression — Lila, Bill, Olivia and Edie.

“Dad took us to Atlanta on the train to meet the caravan. There were nine buses that had been customized to carry 16 or 17 children. They were called ‘Spirit of Progress’ buses. The boys and girls were segregated by sex and rode on separate buses based on their ages. Each bus had its own counselor, cook and a full kitchen. Tents and cots came out of the roof to camp, and each camper had his or her own canvas bag with clothing and toiletries and spending money. Dad gave us each spending money to last the entire summer, all the way to the West Coast and back,” Miss Edie remembers.

Three fine automobiles — brand new Lincolns, she recalls — took off before the buses bearing the caravan’s campers. “Rose did things first-class, which is why when he ran short of funds we ate a lot of potato salad later,” Miss Edie explains with a prim smile.

Traveling over rough highways and dirt roads, the caravan’s first major stop was the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933. Celebrating the city’s centennial, the theme of the international exposition was America’s emerging technical innovation. Among the highlights, the German Graf Zeppelin landed and Sally Rand performed for one of the last times. Two other things deeply impressed young Edie Womble. “One was that I got to meet the real Aunt Jemima, the pancake lady. She was very nice to us. Clarence Rose allowed us to wander around the fair in groups of three. I was also struck by models of what highways of the future were going to look like. They looked exactly what interstates do today — four lanes, all paved, overpasses and everything.”

The campers stayed on the grounds of a university in Evanston. If a college or university wasn’t available, the caravan buses camped at local fairgrounds, churches and state parks. “In some towns, people turned out to welcome us. The colleges were the best because most of the roads we were traveling were gravel or dirt roads and we could get showers or baths.”

Onward west they pushed — to the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Yellowstone Park, Los Angeles and Santa Monica, where the children spent a full day riding a roller coaster that went out over the ocean and drank themselves silly on milkshakes. In Los Angeles Edie found a stray kitten she decided to bring home with her to North Carolina. During the return trip, at Yosemite National Park, she witnessed the park’s celebrated 300-foot “Firefall” and met the park’s famous Jaybird Man, who could summon at least 50 different kinds of birds with various whistles. She took photographs with her Brownie camera. She also wrote letters home to her grandmother and the family’s cook, whom she was worried about because her bank back in Winston had folded.

“We honestly didn’t see too many signs of the Depression on the road,” she explains. “The crisis was all still unfolding and we kept moving. We knew it was a difficult time for people less fortunate than we were.”

The cat made it home to Winston-Salem, newly named — what else — “L.A.,” and lived out a nice long life at 200 North Stratford.

The second year she joined Clarence Rose’s caravan, Edie saw Glacier National Park, Banff, Lake Louise and the Calgary Stampede. She brought back a petrified rock from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. “There was no air conditioning in the desert, so we wet towels and placed them on our heads. That was our air conditioning,” she remembers.

By then, she notes, Clarence Rose was running out of money and magic. One night he awakened campers in the wee hours and hustled them to the buses in order to outrun local authorities that were demanding he buy special license plates for traveling through their states. A year or so after the Womble children made their final cross-country trip with Georgia Caravan, Rose’s buses were confiscated and sold at auction. The caravan riders had to find their own way home.

“It was a sad end for Rose. We never learned what happened to him. But I think we learned a great deal about being self-sufficient, being unafraid of the world.”

During the summer of 1939, as the shadow of Adolf Hitler crept over western Europe, Edith Womble sent her three middle children on a traditional continental tour of Europe’s cultural capitals. “She knew it might be the last chance to do that before everything dramatically changed — that life would never again be like she remembered it.” Brother Bill had done his European tour in 1935, and older sister Lila actually lived in France for a time.

Edie, a junior at Duke, traveled with her older sister Olivia, a senior, and a group of girls from Duke chaperoned by a campus house mother named Mrs. Pemberton. They landed in Italy, toured ruins and museums before heading for Germany. During a stop in Prague they saw Nazi banners and flags flying everywhere. “And I remembered Bill telling me how when he was there he saw groups of young men in brown uniforms beating up people on the streets. We didn’t see anything like that, though the guide Mrs. Pemberton arranged to give us a tour took us to the Jewish quarter of the city, where we saw many abandoned apartments and empty streets. It was his way of trying to tell us what was really going on in Europe.”

One evening in Munich, a trio of local German boys invited Edie and a couple of friends to a private home to dine. “Mrs, Pemberton let us go because they were very polite and knew English and seemed harmless. The place where they took us was very grand, probably confiscated from wealthy Jewish people we realized later, with a stone courtyard and gate. We had been warned not to ask any questions. After an elegant dinner upstairs, we went down to the basement to play ping-pong and something quite startling happened. Soldiers wearing black uniforms of the SS suddenly appeared, and we were whisked out and held at the front gatehouse while they tried to figure out what to do with us. It turned out that Adolf Hitler and his henchmen had arrived to dine in the club and nobody knew we were downstairs. The Fuhrer was just upstairs! Fortunately, after they debated what to do with us, they decided it was smarter to let us go — telling us to get out of there fast and not look back.”

In Budapest, the servant of a polished young man appeared at their table and invited Edie to dance with his employer on the hotel’s revolving dance floor. He turned out to be the nephew of Hungary’s highest ranked government official, the country’s embattled regent. His name was Denes Marie Siegfried Joseph, Count of Wenckheim, aka. “Count Sigi.” He took her horseback riding in the royal forest and to see his family’s hunting lodge, where his staff fed them a lavish dinner. He also took Edie to see the airplanes of his country’s modest air force. “It was just a few planes but he was very proud of them. I was eager to see them because I’d taken flying lessons at Duke.

“Sigi was charming. He sent me flowers and lovely notes. For several days before we headed for France, we went to dinner and danced. One night, to Mrs.Pemberton’s dismay, we stayed out till dawn. Sigi wanted to show me Budapest by moonlight. Given all that was happening around us, I suppose it was terribly romantic,” she allows. “But it wouldn’t last.”

Over the next year, Sigi wrote Edie Womble several passionate letters and sent photographs until his country fell under Communist control. Eventually, he was captured and shot by a firing squad. In Paris, shortly before heading to England and on to Scotland for the boat home, Edie and Olivia went on a mission for their mother to track down a well-known seamstress their mother first met in Vienna in 1900. The woman was famous for her needlepoint. “She was living in the Jewish section of Paris, and the taxi driver insisted on waiting for us. We knocked on her door, but there was no answer. Some might have given up, but we were taught by our parents never to give up. Eventually a slit in the door opened, and we told the woman who we were. She let us in and it was incredible, the most beautiful fabrics and needlepoint you can imagine. Her name was Mrs. Joli. She’d fled the Nazis from Vienna. The French foolishly thought the war was over. They were taking paintings and other artwork out of hiding. Olivia and I picked out some patterns for our mother’s two tall Italian chairs and paid Mrs. Joli, who promised to send along the coverings as soon as possible.”

Britain declared war on Germany days later, as the Womble girls steamed for America.

“Because of the outbreak of war, mother thought those coverings would never arrive. But amazingly they did — the very next April. Unfortunately, we never heard from Mrs. Joli again. After the war, I went back to Europe and looked for any trace of her, but she and her family were gone. You don’t have to guess what happened to them, poor things.”

Miss Edie Chatham smoothes her hand over her beloved pine table, sighs and smiles.

“Goodness me. Listen to me, how I’m going on.” She touches a small stack of Sigi’s well preserved letters, each baring a Nazi emblem.

“Nothing of the kind,” assures her captivated her visitor.

There is, after all, something deeply rewarding about sitting in such a peaceful house where the afternoon breeze comes through the open kitchen screen door and a woman of the world recalls the most remarkable summers of her life. Softened by her witness to time and surrounded by her sensible old-fashioned house and large loving family, Miss Edie Womble Chatham seems almost ageless. Some women at 70, observed George Bernard Shaw of Queen Cleopatra, seem younger than most women of 17.

Miss Edie graciously offers her guest another glass of iced tea. Eager to sit and hear more, her visitor happily accepts. PS

2016 Feature

Almanac

The full Harvest Moon — also called the Singing Moon — will rise at approximately 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 16. Owing to its close proximity to the horizon, the moon will appear vast and orange-colored. Don’t be surprised if you get the sudden urge to dance beneath it.

Also, because this month’s harvest includes the first plump grapes, the harvest moon is alternatively known as the Wine Moon. Red wine pairs well with Neil Young’s Harvest (1972) and Harvest Moon (1992). Should you feel inspired to drink from a sterling goblet while dancing on this brilliant night, consider offering a small libation to Dionysus, the Greek god of winemaking and ritual madness.

three violet asters

Asters (also called Italian starwort or Michaelmas Daisy) are the birth flower of September, their daisy-like blooms a talisman of love and symbol of patience. The ancient Greeks burned aster leaves to ward off evil spirits, and the plant was sacred to both Roman and Greek deities. Those familiar with the hidden language of flowers will tell you that a gift of asters reads:

Take care of yourself for me, Love.

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year — the days when summer is changing into autumn — the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” ― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

Plant your garlic now until the first hard freeze — the earlier the better, as large root systems are key. Although it won’t be ready for harvest until next June, growing your own garlic means you’ll be well equipped for cold (and collard) season next fall. Aside from boosting your immune system and enhancing your sautéed greens, garlic, researchers believe, can reduce the risk of various cancers. Roast a head until tender and add it to your rosemary mashed potatoes and squash casseroles.

This month, with the sun entering Libra (the Scales) on the autumnal equinox, we look to Nature and our gardens to remind us of our own need for balance and harmony. On Thursday, September 22, day and night will exist for approximately the same length of time. Mid-morning, when the astrological start of autumn occurs, take a quiet moment for introspection. In the fall, just as kaleidoscopes of monarchs descend for nectar before their mystical pilgrimage to Mexico, we must prepare to journey inward. Breathe in the beauty of this dreamy twilight — this sacred space between abundance and decay. The duality of darkness and light is essential to all of life.

Tolkien fans have double the reason to celebrate the equinox. In 1978, the American Tolkien Society proclaimed the calendar week containing September 22 as Tolkien Week. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic fantasy novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were both said to be born on September 22; Bilbo in the year of 2890, Frodo in 2968 (refer to the Shire calendar of Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth).

This year, since Hobbit Day officially falls on the first day of autumn, consider hosting a grand birthday feast — call it Second Breakfast if you’d like — with a menu showcasing the bounty of the season. Decorate with ornamental corn, squash and gourds. Since no hobbit meal is complete without ale, mead or wine, you’ll want to have plenty. Punctuate the evening with fresh-baked apple pie.

Alternatively, you might celebrate Hobbit Day by walking barefoot on the earth, a simple meditation practice with remarkable health benefits. If you’ve never heard of barefoot healing, check out Clinton Ober’s Earthing (2010) or Warren Grossman’s To Be Healed by the Earth (1999). Think about it: If the average hobbit lives about 100 years, they must be doing something right. PS

2016 Almanac Feature

Hole In the Sky

Nothing, or nearly so,

These thin molecules of air,

Water vapor collected

So high it’s crystallized,

The ice of a cirrus cloud

Lit by reflected light

And the slant of evening sun

Rendering this whole blue nothing

Something.

Then the hand, old, instinctively wise,

Darting across toned paper,

The scratch, scratch of a pastel . . .

There! Do you see it?

A hole in the sky!

Sometimes,

If we push hard

Against the skin of the world,

It will give enough

To allow us a moment, nearly nothing,

Maybe, but something,

Even if it’s just a hole in the sky

That calls us to remember,

Then shows us

Why we do what we do.

—Bob Wickless

2016 Feature Poem

Summer Postcards from The Edge

It’s been such a long, hot summer, we couldn’t resist the temptation to invite ten of our favorite contributing writers to uncage their overheated imaginations and tell us what’s really going on in the original photographs submitted by ten of our favorite photographers. The results, we think, are like fictional summer postcards from the edge . . .

Our Photographers:

When Tim Sayer graduated from the College of Charleston with a theater degree, he did what all promising theater majors do — he waited tables. That was until he took a surfing trip to Costa Rica with some buddies and fell in love with photography. Self-taught, Sayer has had a studio in Southern Pines for twelve years. He captured performer Raquel Reed, kind of a Lady Gaga before Lady Gaga came along, in a New York City apartment.

Andrew Sherman is a freelance photographer specializing in architecture, food and lifestyle. A Maryland native and Wilmingtonian at heart, he moved away to get his MFA in photography at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) but returned after finishing because there’s no place like Wilmington. He believes in the power of collaboration and works closely with his clients to produce clean, graphic, upbeat imagery. Find him roaming the city he loves with camera or cocktail in hand.

A Greensboro native, Lynn Donovan has been a swimmer, coach, actor, singer, dancer, pianist, accordion player, scuba diver and community volunteer. Starting out with a Brownie camera in the 1960s, she graduated to an SLR in the 1970s and continued shooting throughout her 30- year career with Greensboro Parks & Recreation’s City Arts/Community Services, as well as for pleasure. After retiring Donovan opened her own photography business.

Ginny Johnson has been photographing since college and remembers the good old days of developing her own film and printing images in a darkroom. She loves to shoot just about anything but has recently turned her camera lens to storm-chasing. The image used in this feature is from a tour in 2015. A Colorado native, Johnson has lived in North Carolina since 1982 and currently resides in Greensboro with her dog, Blackie, and cat, Rascal, and two horses.

Sam Froelich is a professional photographer and an award-winning independent film producer, whose films, such as Cabin Fever and George Washington, have been distributed worldwide. His best three productions all came in on time but way over budget — son Jake is currently senior at NC State, son Harrison a freshman at UNCC, and daughter Lucy a sophomore at Page High School. Froelich, born and raised in High Point, married a Greensboro girl, who made him move to the “big” city and for that he is eternally grateful.

You might as well say John Gessner got his start in photography on his paper route. Growing up in the Lake Region of upstate New York, one of his customers had been a still photographer during the silent movie era. Helen Hayes had a house down the street. As a boy Gessner met the famed portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. He was hooked. He discovered a fortune-telling machine in one of the ancient arcades in Mrytle Beach.

The Tufts Archives in the Given Memorial Library is the custodian of the rich history of Pinehurst. In addition to original Donald Ross golf course plans and numerous Tufts family artifacts, the archives’ collection includes 80,000 photographic negatives by John G. Hemmer spanning over 40 years of Pinehurst history. Hemmer photographed celebrities, golfers and the unique — and sometimes fanciful — life of a thriving resort, including the occasional aquatic balancing act.

Ned Leary retired from the corporate world in 2003, bought a camera at the local Best Buy and hasn’t looked back. Self-taught, he learned the basics via endless hours of internet tutorials and numerous landscape photography workshops in America’s national parks. His portfolio has evolved from fine art landscapes to include family portraits and most recently videography, where the balance of his time and pension are currently devoted.

Mark Steelman is a full-time professional photographer and works hard to ensure anyone or anything looks its absolute best. Recalling a recent stop at the convention center, he says he took a photo of a group of women. One was particularly stressed about her photo and pleaded, “You be sure to Photoshop me.” He replied, “Ma’am, I don’t mess with perfection.” Her face beamed and she gave him a kiss right in the middle of the ballroom. What’s not to love?

Laura L. Gingerich is an award-winning freelance photographer. Her talent and gritty spirit have led her to the far corners of the world documenting relief and disaster assistance, and providing images that tell a story when words simply can’t. When she’s not on assignment, Gingerich’s popular photography workshops inspire beginners to advanced enthusiasts. You can contact her by sending an email to stoptime325@gmail.com.

Our Writers:

Virginia Holman writes both feature stories and her column “Excursions” for Salt. Her passions include kayaking, birding, teaching creative writing at UNCW and conjuring the siren songs from our salty marshlands. Her memoir of her mother’s untreated schizophrenia during the 1970s, Rescuing Patty Hearst, won a National Alliance on Mental Illness Outstanding Literature Award. She’s also been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, and a Carter Center Mental Health Journalism Fellowship.

Maggie Dodson is the eldest and wisest child of James Dodson. She’s a reluctant New Yorker, avid biker, terrible photographer, stinky cheese lover, Stevie Nicks enthusiast, and aspiring film writer. Currently, she is copywriting her heart out for a large Manhattan-based PR firm, making short movies in her spare time, and tending to every need and want of her cinnamon-colored beagle, Billie Holiday.

Billy Ingram is OG, Original Greensboro, but spent one of his lifetimes as a movie poster designer in Beverly Hills, California. A frequent contributor to O.Henry, Ingram has written about popular culture, art and Greensboro history. His latest book, Hamburger(squared), is a collection of short essays about the city he grew up in. The volume is available at the Greensboro Historical Museum, Amazon.com and your favorite bookstore.

Ross Howell Jr. published the historical novel Forsaken with NewSouth Books of Montgomery, Alabama, in February 2016. The novel was selected as an “Okra Pick” by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA), was called “superior historical fiction detailing a cruel national past,” in Forward, and noted by Southern Living as “a solid entry into the Southern canon.” Howell is currently at work on a new novel and writes regularly for O.Henry.

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Since the magazine’s founding five years ago, she has written humor columns and feature stories. A native of Kentucky, Johnson moved to North Carolina for a newspaper job in 1983. She has won several state and national awards for her journalism. She and her husband have called Greensboro home for more than 30 years.

Jim Moriarty is the new senior editor at PineStraw and an old golf writer. Author of two golf novels, he traveled the PGA Tour for thirty-five years writing and taking photographs for Golf World and Golf Digest. His most recent book of essays, “Playing Through,” will be released in October. He can be found at his favorite public house, affectionately referred to by at least one patron as the Bitter and Twisted.

Stephen Smith is a retired professor, a current poet and graceful voice from PineStraw’s earliest days to now. His poems, stories, columns and reviews have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies. He is the author of seven previous books of poetry and prose and is the recipient the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry, and four North Carolina Press awards.

Until this summer Serena Brown was living in Southern Pines, where she worked as senior editor of PineStraw magazine. Prior to that she was part of the award-winning team at the BBC’s prestigious arts documentary series Arena. A native Briton, Brown returned recently to the misty shores of her home country. She is now unpacking and trying very hard to remember which box contains an umbrella.

Gwenyfar Rohler is a prolific writer, reader and archivist. Her writing can be found on the pages of Salt in her column“Stagelife / Screenlife” and “Omnivorous Reader.” As a founding member of Luddites United for Preservation, she spends her days managing her family’s bookshop on Wilmington’s Front Street and in her spare time, restoring two pre-computer-age cars. She wrote this bio by lantern and sent it by pigeon.

Mark Holmberg is a writer who splits his time between Wilmington and Richmond, Virginia, where he writes for The Richmond Times-Dispatch and WVTR.com. He enjoys roaming with a camera in hand or surfing and fishing in coastal Carolina. He believes there’s some room for good ol’ printed words about believers and strays and adventurers who know anger and division make us weaker and easier to control, and that love is stronger than fear.

Play Again

Story by Jim Moriarty • Photograph by John Gessner

Vickie Wilkes was a summer girl.

The Smith brothers, Billy and Er-Er, knew when to expect her the way water knows when to boil. She was from Lake City, not Gypsy, where they lived. Just like a lot of people from across the water, she spent the hot months in a cottage on the shore, building fires on the beach and Saturday nights at the amusement park. Every summer Vickie Wilkes got a little taller, a little blonder and a little, well, bigger. This escaped the notice of exactly no one, in particular Billy and Er-Er, a set of twins so similar the only way to tell them apart was because one of them had trouble pulling the starting cord on his sentences and no one liked the name Um-Um.

They watched each other eat cherry sno-cones, biting off the tips at the bottom of the paper holders to suck out the last drops. They rode three abreast on the old wooden roller coaster that moaned so badly it sounded like it was about to die of exhaustion. And they ran for the new attraction, the bumper cars with the tall poles that had floppy metal tongues on top that licked the ceiling and gave off sparks. Billy and Er-Er believed they’d scouted out which cars were the fastest ones and made straight for them the second the gate opened to make sure Vickie Wilkes got trapped in one of the slow jobs they could bang into over and over again.

“Hey,” Billy said when the three of them came stumbling out of the cage of cars. “Look at that.” He pointed at Madam Magian, the fortune telling machine straight across the midway.

Billy and Er-Er traded elbow jabs. They looked at Madam Magian. They looked at Vickie Wilkes. The Madam. The girl. They couldn’t believe they hadn’t seen it before.

“What?” Vickie asked.

“Um, um, you’re just alike,” Er-Er said.

Now, whether Vickie Wilkes had grown into it over the winter or Madam Magian had been refurbished in the off-season, there was no denying the blonde in the glass case looked as close to a dead ringer for the girl from Lake City as Billy looked like Er-Er.

“Do not,” Vickie protested in defense of her humanity.

“Do, too,” Billy said.

“Why, why don’t we ask her?” Er-Er said. They ran to Madam Magian. Billy put a quarter in and cranked the handle, two turns, like a gumball machine. The crystal ball glowed from underneath. Gears meshed deep inside like a gastrointestinal disorder. The fortune-teller’s satin-covered arm hovered above the magic cards in front of her, moving back and forth until it clunked into place. The forefinger of fate with its red nail polish — for that was the color fate always came in — stabbed the Queen of Wands. A small card appeared in the slot below. Vickie used both hands to pinch the corners and pull it out.

The crystal gazer sees a great deal

of happiness in store for you. Twice

as much to look at, twice as much to love.

PLAY AGAIN!

All summer. And maybe, um, um, forever.

The Mother of Invention

Story by Stephen E. Smith • photograph from the Tufts Archives

Lacey Pekerman, Reliable Used Autos’ Salesman of the Month for August 1933, was seeking inner peace. He’d just sold fourteen rusty rattletraps, surpassing his nearest competitor, salesman Inky Chavis, by five clunkers, and achieving an all-time monthly record for the dealership. A drink or two and he’d be free of the karmic guilt that accompanies the sale of a used car of questionable dependability to an unsuspecting rube. Or, in this instance, fourteen unsuspecting rubes. As soon as the whisky buzz hit his prefrontal cortex, he planned on kicking back and doing what he liked to do best — float in cool water and guzzle hooch nonstop.

The Twenty-first Amendment would soon repeal Prohibition and Pekerman would no longer have to do his drinking alone on a scum-covered pond, but for now he was content to lull away the hours without the annoyance of unwanted company or a surprise visit from Eliot Ness and the Untouchables. To that end, his agile mind, always quick to grasp the possible, had conceived a means by which he could avoid leaving the water to refill his glass with moonshine or grab his favorite chaser, a lukewarm Coca-Cola.

A man of greater ambition and lesser intelligence might have constructed a small raft from an inner tube and a few stray boards and placed his drinks and chaser on top. But that option would have required effort, a commodity which Pekerman never expended without discomfort. No, he’d come up with a better plan. If he did not have access to a bar he could belly up to, he would turn his belly into a bar. After all, a man of his bulk was as buoyant as a blimp and could bob effortlessly in calm water for hours on end.

Had Pekerman been familiar with the principles of Archimedes, he might have cried “Eureka!” as he slipped off his clothes, reclined in the cool water and began balancing the first two brimming tumblers on his knobby knees. From there the plan evolved of its own volition. He placed the cola bottle on his forehead, two more glasses balanced themselves nicely on his slightly distended belly, and the remaining tumblers he held in his open palms. Flexing his ample buttocks, he propelled himself gently into the center of the pond where he floated languidly, sunlight reflecting off the glistening glassware — and for a moment, one blessed moment, he achieved a state of Nirvana-like tranquility.

Then he heard a car pull off the road and the driver and passenger scramble down the embankment to the edge of the pond. “Who’s there?” Pekerman asked.

“It’s Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker,” a man’s voice answered. “What the hell are you doing?

“I’m balancing glasses of whisky,” Pekerman yelled back.

“Do what?” Bonnie asked. “Don’t you have a job?”

“Yeah,” Pekerman answered, “I’m a crackerjack used car salesman.”

“Well,” Clyde said, “this calls for a little target practice.”

That’s when Lacey Pekerman recognized the unmistakable click-clack of a pump-action shotgun.

Silence of the Frogs

Story by Serena Brown • Photograph by Ned Leary

“Hello?”

“Oh, Shelby, hi, it’s Beth. Thank goodness you’re there. Will you do me a big favor?”

“Of course. What do you need?”

“Will you run out and look at the end of our drive? We left a load of stuff out there for the trash men, well, anyone really, to pick up. Can you see if we left a white, stuffed dog? If it’s still there?”

“Yep. No problem. Let me just pick up a flashlight and I’ll walk down there now. You still on the road?”

“No. We pulled off for the night about an hour ago. Yes, honey, I’m talking to her right now. Mommy will be off the phone in just a minute. No. No Dora now, it’s too late. OK, one episode. Just one. Excuse me, Shelby, yes, we’re in a motel. The Star Mountain one.”

“Which now?”

“Oh, no, sorry Shel, not us. I was talking to Jennifer. Star Mountain’s in her TV show. We’re somewhere in Georgia, I think. Maybe Tennessee. There was a state line we crossed round about dark. Then Jennifer started fussing. It wasn’t but ten minutes ago but it feels like ten hours. Oh, I can hear the frogs at your end. I miss them already.”

“You don’t have frogs there?”

“I don’t know. Not where we are right now anyway. All I can hear is Nickelodeon. Ow!”

“Sorry love, I was whistling for Boyce. Damn dog’s made a break for the Stevens’ trash. Boyce!”

“Did it stop raining?”

“Yeah. Pretty soon after you left. BOYCE!”

“Shel?”

Rustle shuffle rustle. “BOYCE!” Shuffle rustle rustle. “BOYCE! Get your ass back here!”

“Shel. Are you there?”

“Yeah. Hi. The Stevenses throw out a lot of food.”

“Oh.”

“What else do you need?”

“When you get to our house, can you go round to the dog kennel?”

“Did y’all forget the dog?”

“I think we’ve got him. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know why we had a kennel, he never went in there. Anyway, on the tree behind it there’s a birdhouse. There’s a keepsake box inside it. Please, will you take it out and burn it?”

“BOYCE!”

“Shelby? There’s a box in the birdhouse. Please burn it.”

“Surely.”

“Thank you, Shel. Thank you. I’d better go. I need to work out where we’re heading tomorrow.”

“Your stuffed animal’s here. Boyce has got it now. BOYCE! Drop it!”

“It’s OK. He can keep it.”

“Thanks. His tail’s wagging. Boyce, not the animal. But he looks pretty happy too.”

“Good. Thanks, Shel.”

“Anytime. I’ll say goodbye now, but I’m going to hang up back at the house so you can hear the frogs, OK?”

“Yeah. Bye, Shel.”

“Goodbye, Beth. Send a postcard. Here are the frogs.”

Brand New Me

Story by Maggie Dodson • Photograph by Tim Sayer

Dear Rob,

I got your postcard from rehab. It looks like a very restorative location. I suppose it makes sense that sweeping views of the ocean and 24-hour hot yoga have incredible healing properties. I sure do wish you’d send some of those properties my way to repair the hole you punched in my wall.

Gratefully no longer yours,

Penny

Dear Karen,

Operation self-love is in full effect. Yesterday I burned all of Rob’s old shirts and ate not one — but four brownies. They were divine. On Mom’s advice I took up Web therapy and started chatting with a woman named Promise. She seems promising. And expensive.

Later, on a drive through the south side of town, the sun was shining, Jimmy Buffett was on the radio, and I stopped by a garage sale and picked up a box of dumbbells. Maybe my dream of becoming a weightlifting, buff-goddess is in my future after all. Who knew?

Give Jo-Jo a kiss for me.

Penny

Dear Amazon Customer Service,

I wanted to reach out and say “thank you” to Joyce, the woman who answered my phone call on Sunday evening and endured the gruesome details of how my relationship ended in what can only be described as a fiery ball of hell. I didn’t mean to break down over my purchase of bedazzled magenta curtains, but Joyce met my sobs with patience, kindness and wisdom. She offered advice, noting that the healing process takes time, comes in many shapes and forms and that there’s always solace in a big piece of apple pie. Human kindness can be hard to come by these days, especially in the world of online shopping, but Joyce’s sweetness will stick with me. You’ve got a great woman on your
customer-care team.

Also, thank you for the full refund. On further thought, plain white curtains were better suited to my tastes and less glaring.

A satisfied customer,

Penny

Dear Application Manager,

I am writing in relation to the two cats up for adoption on the Furry Friends website, Betty Friedan and Judy Bloom. I’m in the midst a personal journey and though I’ve taken it in stride — new job, new hair color, new mindset — I find nights get lonely when adopting a new world philosophy. I feel two felines are the purrfect pair for my progressive lifestyle.

As I mentioned, I’ve just begun a new job and I’m thriving. Outside of work, I bake, garden, get tattoos I don’t tell my mother about and recite poetry at a coffee shop downtown. I excel at feeding animals on time and letting go of things that aren’t good for me. Some say I’m a force to be reckoned with but my sister says I’ve got a good heart . . . I just need to find a person to nurture it.

So while I’m searching for Mr. Right, Betty and Judy would bring me comfort and provide me with cuddles when I need them most.

Eagerly awaiting your response,

Penny

Black Limbertwig

Story by Virginia Holman • Photograph by Andrew Sherman

Each Sunday, Great Grandmother Zelia, propped in her wingback chair, declared she wished to see one place before she died, her old farm. No one could bear to tell her it was gone, sold by her great nephew soon after she’d moved to assisted living. Her facility was good and the staff generous, but it took a lifetime’s assets and her monthly Social Security check to secure good care. Mother politely entertained the notion of a trip to the farm, so as not to crush Zelia’s spirit, but not for too long, because that would raise her hopes. Zelia was easily distracted, so in that way, the conversation was deferred.

Two years before Zelia died, she offered me her sturdy 1971 Buick Estate station wagon as a sixteenth birthday present. For two decades she’d driven it to the holy trinity: Safeway, the post office, and the Caledonia Methodist Church. 23,000 miles. Mint, except for some rust, and free, or so I thought.

Soon, I was called upon to run small errands. In time, my duties grew. One morning, I was summoned to take Zelia to her cardiology appointment. Patsy, her nurse at assisted living, wheeled her to the wagon, and tucked her into the passenger’s seat.

“See you at supper, Mrs. Woods,” she said and patted her hand flat against the window to say good-bye.

Patsy had sprayed Zelia’s hair a bit, which looked odd, like a fluff of cotton candy. Usually, Zelia wore it parted simply on the side with a tidy row of bangs. Teased up like this, her scalp shone through, pink and alive.

“Thank you for taking me to the farm, dear,” Zelia said with a sigh.

“The farm?” I said. Sly old Zelia. Her face was mapped with creases so deep you had to study her features to see what she used to look like. Her eyes were the color of new leaves. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. Zelia and I were now both too old for my mother’s scoldings. I’d languished that summer, bored to a stupor. I earned some money babysitting for women in Forest View who dressed in silk shantung to play bridge and drink with one another. Absurd. The world was absurd, my new favorite word, and I pronounced the s like a z, which I’d picked up from plump Mrs. Sterling, who’d once lived in Stockholm for an entire year, and seemed impossibly sophisticated.

“All right, Zelia,” I said. What were forty miles and a missed appointment?

As a child, the farm seemed remote, an interminable journey from rolling green field to rolling green field. Now it was traffic and stores and fumes. The farms were gone, subdivided and replaced with houses so close together you could almost pass the sugar from one kitchen window to another.

Along the way to her old farm, Zelia told me of her marriage to Henry Woods, and of their glorious month-long honeymoon across the Southeast. Henry had arranged to stop at successful farms along the way to learn from more experienced farmers. Some gave him seeds, which he labeled and placed in coffee cans. At the end of the final visit, an old farmer and his wife dug up a sapling from their orchard as a wedding gift, a Black Limbertwig apple tree.

Henry, she said, tended that tree as if his success as a farmer depended upon it. He picked a spot somewhat sheltered from the wind, dug the hole, softened the soil, then gently flayed the roots with his thumbnail. Their soil wasn’t rich, so when the limbs seemed to droop as it grew Zelia was concerned, but not Henry. By the second winter, it had fruit buds. The third summer, it fruited. That fall he took a photo: his lovely Zelia with a perfect Black Limbertwig apple, the first ever in Caledonia. Eight months later their first girl, Rose, was born.

I started to tremble as Zelia and I got closer to the old Woods’ farm, until I understood that my mother’s persistent refusals were generous. What good could come from replacing Zelia’s cherished memories with the terrible fact of its ruin? I pretended to be lost, killing time until I became so turned around I had to stop for directions at a small, two-pump general store on the outskirts of town. Beside the store was a field that needed bush-hogging. Orange daylilies ran wild in the ditches. There was a derelict barn, and beyond it, like a blessing, a small orchard, the trees gnarled and blighted, but still fruiting.

“Look, Zelia,” I said. “Limbertwigs.” I couldn’t walk her to the trees, so she waited in the wagon as I trudged through the field, trespassing. I picked as many apples as I could carry in the front of my untucked shirt. Her old Estate smelled of cider the whole drive back.

When I returned to assisted living with Zelia, my mother was waiting outside beside Patsy. She flew out to the parking lot in a purple-lipped fit, but when she saw Zelia dozing with the unripe apples in her lap, she quietly opened the back door and slid in behind me. We shared one of those tart, rough-skinned apples right there, while Zelia snored and the engine ticked in the heat. Tears poured down my mother’s face. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of them.

I saved those seeds and used them over the years to start three separate orchards. Are they Henry’s Black Limbertwigs? Why, they must be, for when I gather those apples and close my eyes, there’s my mother and there’s Zelia — conjured clearer than any memory — almost close enough to touch.

Catamount

Story by Ross Howell Jr. • Photograph by Lynn Donovan

Whit added honey to the chai, tapped the spoon on the sink and carried the mug to the glass doors overlooking the gorge.

His wife sat on the deck in a chair by the railing. She was wearing his wool coat and cap with earflaps from his years at Bowdoin. Her pink bandanna peeked from under the cap.

He cracked the door.

“Robyn?” he said. “Won’t you come in? It’s cold as the bejesus.”

Her face was pale.

“No,” she said. “I like it.” The mug steamed the glass.

He stepped outside and handed her the tea.

“See if it’s all right,” he said.

She took the mug and sipped, then smiled and nodded.

“Perfect,” she said. She pointed to the sky. Her mitten looked like a big paw.

“See the belt?” she asked.

He saw three stars in a row.

“Yes,” he said. “Orion, the hunter.”

She sipped, cradling the mug with her mittens.

“I heard it again,” she said. “Just now.”

“Maybe it was the windmill,” he said. “Thing’s rusty as hell.”

“No wind,” she said. “Still as the grave. I’m just telling you.”

“Sweetie, there haven’t been panthers in these mountains for generations.”

His ears stung. He rubbed his hands together.

“I’m freezing,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

“In a little,” she said.

She turned as he opened the door. Her eyes were bright.

“Funny how it can come back,” she said.

“You’re doing great,” he said. “All the doctors say so. Don’t freeze out here.”

She smiled.

“All right,” she said.

He went to the sink and rinsed the spoon. He put the chai and honey in the cabinet. He went to the fireplace, poked the embers, and added two split pieces of oak. Splinters crackled. Sparks glittered as they rose from the hearth.

He looked out the glass doors. The mug was sitting on the rail. The chair was empty.

“Jesus,” he said. He grabbed a wool cap and threw on his down vest. He flung open the door.

“Robyn?” he called. “Robyn?”

He trotted down the stairs of the deck, stumbled on a root at the base of the steps. He’d forgotten the damn flashlight.

“Robyn?”

Then he heard it. In the gorge, the mewling of a child.

“Jesus,” he said. He started to run. Briars tore at his fingers and vest. Branches whipped his face. He burst through a thicket into a clearing.

Robyn stood in the middle, her back to him. She clutched his cap and the bandanna in a mitten. Her bare pate undulated in the moonlight.

Beyond her, he saw darkness crouched. The evanescence of breath. Pure white fangs.

“Robyn!” he shouted.

The big cat vanished.

She turned to him, her face the one he’d fallen in love with when she was a girl.

“Did you see, Whit?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“I wasn’t afraid,” she said. “I wasn’t afraid at all.”

Come Saturday Morning

Story by Billy Ingram • Photograph by Ginny Johnson

They say before death, life passes before your eyes. So it was for William Binder Batson II as he dismissed well-meaning hospice workers in order to leave this world on his own terms.

Breathing reduced to a death rattle, William reflected on what had been a hardscrabble existence from the very beginning. Orphaned as a toddler, he went to work while still in elementary school, hawking newspapers on one of Manhattan’s busiest intersections. Hardly his fault when the naive youngster was lured by a shadowy figure into a dark, deserted portion of the nearby subway station where he was met by six wise and powerful men who were well-meaning in their generosity but the out-of-body experience left him confounded and conflicted.

The incident that followed left the boy with what might charitably be called the most severe case of split personality imaginable. He escaped into a world where jungle cats spoke to him in aristocratic English; a warped consciousness in which even a tiny earthworm was perceived as a dire threat with malevolent intent.

It wasn’t until he turned 15 that William’s life took a turn for the better after he met a kindly older gentleman who offered the troubled teen his tutorage, teaching him how to trust again. They spent the better part of the 1970s traveling country backroads in a custom Winnebago; at each stop they found a way to enrich the lives of strangers. This impressed the young man who also appreciated that this unlikely patron called him by his boyhood nickname, “Billy.” Anthropomorphic animals and insects no longer plagued his mind.

The two eventually settled into a farmhouse outside a small town in Kansas, the older man tilling soil while William took a job at a family-owned hardware store. Townfolk admired the clean-cut lad who, they noticed, never cursed; closest he ever came was referring to “the ‘S’ word,” one that will never pass from his lips again. How respectful, everyone thought. Why, then, was it he never found the right girl or never managed to have any close relationships? Almost as if there was a secret held close, one so awesome he dare not share it with anyone other than the elderly man that took him in and accepted, without judgment, what he was capable of.

It was barely six months ago that William (nobody had called him Billy since his mentor passed away) was given the terrible diagnosis: terminal cancer of the liver. With health rapidly deteriorating, he began to confront the reality of his tenuous mortality and consider what life after death might entail.

So it came to be that, with no more than a few breaths remaining, William Batson spoke that word he had avoided since his teen years. In an instant, thunder rumbled the floorboards beneath his bed, a bolt of lightning sent down by the gods pierced the ceiling and the dying man vanished, in his place stood a virile collegiate athlete in a bright red bodysuit.

Ironically, this revitalized individual can never speak “the ‘S’ word” William ended his life with. For if Captain Marvel ever utters the word “Shazam” he’ll revert back to Billy Batson and Billy Batson is dead.

Soup’s On

Story by Maria Johnson • Photograph by Sam Froelich

Clear down to the river, Ashe could hear the public radio talk show wafting from the mountain cabin that his family rented every summer.

A radio-show caller was talking about how she’d a picked a peck of peaches, which was more than she bargained for. She wanted the show’s host, a lady with a rich deep voice that reminded Ashe of his pillar-like Aunt Terry, to tell her what to do with the remainders.

“Do you know what would be really good?” the Aunt Terry
soundalike said.

“What?” said the caller.

“Peach soup,” said Aunt Terry.

“Peach soup?” said the caller. “I’ve never heard of peach soup.”

“THAT’S BECAUSE NO ONE EATS PEACH SOUP!” hollered Ashe’s mother, who was up in the cabin. The Aunt Terry impostor went on about the peach soup.

“You don’t see it very much. But I once had it in Savannah, and it was out of this world,” she said. “So go to your refrigerator and get some coconut water and some fresh ginger, then take your food processor and . . .”

“OH! OH! COCONUT WATER AND FRESH GINGER! WELL, JUST LET ME LOOK IN THE CRISPER! HONEST TO GOD. . .” hollered Ashe’s mother.

Ashe knew that, as much as she protested, his mom would be asking if they had any coconut water and fresh ginger when she went down to the Food King this afternoon. He smiled to himself. His chin rested on his knees. His knees rested over his spongy green Crocs, which had taken on the funky metallic smell of the lake.

He and his older brother Hoke had crewed their new rubber raft all along the shore until two days ago, when a neighbor’s Fourth of July bottle rocket had landed, still glowing, on the raft while it was dry-docked on a picnic table.

The boys’ father was determined to mend the wound. He and Hoke had gone to the marina store in search of a patch kit. Ashe took the opportunity to go fishing by himself at the river that hooked around the cabin and emptied into the lake.

Folded up on a concrete finger that had braced a long-gone pier, Ashe cradled his grandfather’s old Zebco rod and reel in front of him. A ragged mound of mosquito bite itched the back of his left hand. He scratched it with his right hand and waved off a fly.

Presently, his thoughts stilled, and particles of the present sifted down to the bedrock of memory. Cicadas thrummed the rhythm of summer. In the river’s still places, Jesus bugs walked on the water. A swarm of gnats hovered over ripples. Minnows huddled on the shady side of the concrete bar. A breeze slid through the leaves. Even the air had a distinct character.

A voice popped the bubble.

“Catch anything?”

“No,” said Ashe.

“Toldya,” said Hoke. “C’mon, we found a patch. You can blow up the raft.”

Ashe stood to reel in his line. The wet cricket at the end had stopped kicking. Ashe gently removed it from the hook.

The cricket would not die in vain, Ashe decided. It would find new life when Hoke unearthed it in a bowl of peach soup tonight.

Spinnin’ Platters

Story by Gwenyfar Rohler • Photograph by Mark Steelman

“I’m worried about your father.” My mother didn’t even let me get inside the kitchen door before she rounded on me with a spatula in her hand. The unmistakable rhythm of the opening chords of “Peggy Sue” vibrated through the walls. Mom flipped a pancake in the cast iron skillet. It was breakfast-for-dinner-night — which meant she was really worried about Daddy. “He’s been playing those records all day.” Buddy Holly’s guitar was turned up at top volume, a shock in a house where one could pinpoint each family member by the sound of their footsteps. Her normally domineering voice was almost drowned out, and I wondered if part of her annoyance wasn’t just that for the first time in my memory she wasn’t the most powerful sound at home. She shook her head again, this time with a jerk of impatience. “This has something to do with his ex-girlfriends.” She picked up a paring knife and began slicing peaches to go on top of the pancakes.

“Haven’t you guys been married for like forty years?” I asked. “What do his ex-girlfriends have to do with this?” I snagged a piece of bacon from the plate on the center of the stove. “Are they even still alive?”

“Go check on your father.” She swatted my hand away from the plate. “Go.” She gestured with the knife down the hallway.

One does not argue with a well-armed matriarch.

I went.

In the living room my father was sprawled across his favorite upholstered chair with the carelessness of late adolescence: limbs floppy and akimbo, still-shod feet up on the coffee table. His eyes were closed singing along with the music, periodically directing part of the band with one hand in the air. Two speakers, like obese standard poodles, had been hauled down from the attic. They were still covered in dust — except for his handprints — and connected by huge loops of new speaker cord to the record player and amplifier that had materialized from some place of hiding.

“Hi Daddy . . .” I ventured. Somehow this didn’t look like something that I should interrupt.

“Hi Kitty.” He hit a few drumbeats in the air. “Have you met Buddy? Buddy, this is my daughter, Kitty.” He opened his eyes and looked straight at me. “Do not ever get on a non-commercial flight in an ice storm.” He stared at me intensely and with deep meaning. “Do you hear me? Not ever.” He underscored this last point with a finger slash through the air.

“OK . . . I promise.”

“Good.” He closed his eyes again. I backed out of the room feeling that I was somehow intruding on a world that I could never understand.

Back in the kitchen Mom asked me what I had learned. Were the ex-girlfriends, in fact, at the root of this?

“Um, no, apparently this is about non-commercial aviation and ice storms,” I reflected. “So I think this is about Howard Hughes.”

“Alan Fried, you mean. And no, don’t be fooled by that. This is about more than just an isolated incident.” She cocked her head to listen to the sudden silence. Daddy’s shaking hand scratched the record a bit when he tried to drop the needle on the next disc, then a groovy guitar pierced the air with a slight cymbal and the unmistakable wail of Janis Joplin.

“Oh, no, he didn’t!” Mom looked toward the living room. You know you got it, oooh wooaaoh if it makes you feel . . . Janis crooned. Mom ran a hand through her hair, then turned back to me. “You should go spend the night at a friend’s house tonight.”

Connected

Story by Mark Holmberg • Photograph by Laura Gingerich

It was a short, hand-written letter that marched right into Margie’s soul with each neatly penned word.

I was on Bus 28, it said. It was me who was with you that day, who left you the note with the ring at the hospital. I read of your husband’s death last year, and I hoped you might meet me so I can share something that has long been on my heart.

The letter was signed Tony Pyanoe, and listed a date, time and, surprisingly, she and her late husband’s favorite Italian restaurant.

Margie knew right where that old mysterious note was. She found her J.T. Hoggard class of ’71 yearbook filled with heartfelt and tearful messages written by virtually all of her classmates.The folded note slid easily out from under the cover. It had come to her hospital room forty-five years earlier in an anonymous envelope with a simple, wedding band-like ring.

I have long admired you and am so glad you survived. We had nothing in common at school, but our blood mixed on the bus that day. I wish you a long life and I will always love you.

She put down the strange note and thumbed to the Ps in her yearbook.

Ahh, that Tony, she thought, looking at the stamp-sized photo.

They had shared a few classes. He was a quiet, awkward boy, his hair already thinning. One of the nerds, she recalled. He was the son of Italian immigrants — working class. Far from rich, unlike her family, who owned big chunks of Wilmington real estate. And Margie had been as beautiful and popular as she had been rich. She had been the Homecoming Queen. Her boyfriend was the star of the lacrosse and football teams. Her boyfriend . . .

He had been sitting next to her on Bus 28 during a senior field trip when the bus driver apparently suffered a heart attack and drove through the College Road intersection. They were T-boned by a tractor-trailer.

Her boyfriend was killed instantly, along with three other students. It was the worst school bus crash in North Carolina history.

She woke up in the hospital with no idea what had happened. Along with several broken bones she had suffered a deep laceration to her neck that left a long, high-ridged scar that she looked at every day.

Her doctors had told her one of her fellow students apparently kept her from bleeding to death, but the rescue scene was so chaotic, no one really knew exactly what had happened.

Margie went to her jewelry box and found the ring. She had worn it for years, imagining a hero student and remembering how lucky she was. When she got married, she took the ring off, but noticed it frequently while getting dressed.

She slid it on her right ring finger and decided to go.

Tony had gone to Vietnam a year after the crash and had eventually become an engineer, he told Margie at the restaurant. He had married and raised a family. His wife had died of cancer two years earlier.

He looked like a much-older version of the nondescript boy in the yearbook. But there was kindness and strength in his eyes.

“I never forgot you,” he told her as they ate their entrees.

Like many boys at Hoggard, he had idolized her, he said, not because she was beautiful, but because she was kind.

“When the bus crashed, my first thought was of you,” he told her, his brown eyes gazing into hers.

“Both my arms were broken,” he said. “I couldn’t feel my hands. But I crawled over to you and blood was pumping out of your beautiful neck.”

Subconsciously, she lifted her hand and felt her scar — something she did a dozen times a day.

“So I lay down beside you and kissed your neck. I used my lips to draw the wound together and put enough pressure to keep the blood from spurting until the medics came.”

He reached out his hand and Margie took her hand from her neck and put it in his.

“I know how crazy this sounds,” he continued, “but in the midst of that crazy disaster, all I could think about was how beautiful you smelled, how wonderful it was to be that close.”

Margie could hardly believe what she was hearing.

“Why didn’t you tell me this back then?” Margie asked. “Why the anonymous note?”

“I knew you were destined for better things,” Tony said. “By the time I got my engineering degree and a decent job, you were already married.”

She looked at the simple ring — it still fit nicely — as the waitress brought their dessert. Such an odd thing, the way this virtual stranger was making her feel. So comfortable, so protected, so cherished. And so not alone. And there was this powerful feeling of an old, nagging mystery being solved at last.

“All these years I’ve dreamed of being this close to you again,” he said, leaning across the table.

“I’ve seen your face, smelled your hair in a thousand dreams. For so long I desperately wanted to kiss you again, even if for just one moment.”

Margie found herself leaning across her coffee. His fingers gently touched that scar on her neck, and then they were in her hair as he pulled her close for the kiss that would change the rest of their lives — forever.

2016 Feature Postcards

Comfort Zone

How a classic Pinehurst cottage brought a globe-trotting couple home at last

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

Anyone who doubts a couple in midlife prime can radically change careers, continents, lifestyles and homes needs to look in on Kirk and Victoria Adkins at Red Gables, a 107-year-old, one-of-a-kind Pinehurst cottage that flouts the luxury revamps shared by contemporaries.

No paneled Sub-Zero, spa bathroom or sound system. One TV, zero chandeliers. Master bedroom barely wide enough to accommodate a king-sized bed. A garden filled with homey zinnias. A far cry from the Adkins’ British country manse, their London muse (row house) with pink exterior, an iron-gated farmhouse in a Parisian suburb or the glass-walled Hong Kong condo fifty-two stories above the harbor.

Not to say this restraint implemented by soothing hues and minimal furnishings isn’t gorgeous. Or that Kirk and Victoria miss the opulence.

“It feels good to get back to ‘comfortable,’” Victoria says. “Possessions don’t make you who you are. I’m happier now working (in real estate) than I was going to museums and social events.”

Kirk, glows with pride over how impossible engineering feats like air conditioning were engineered: “Every inch is usable — not a spare space, even behind walls, that we didn’t make into cupboards.” Besides, Victoria adds, “The village is a happy place.” Kirk finds its residents interesting and worldly, retired from careers in finance, medicine, law, management.

Kirk belonged in the corporate column. After an MBA from Wake Forest University, the Indiana native was posted internationally for twenty years as an executive at the Sara Lee consumer goods division, then Hanes. He and Victoria, a special education teacher, dated in high school, reconnected at a friend’s wedding. As a “corporate wife” she became an expert at moving — nineteen times, covering four continents. To keep their two sons and adopted daughter from Siberia rooted in America, they rented a house on the Jersey Shore for summer vacations.

When Hanes discontinued operations in Hong Kong, Kirk was still young enough to chase a dream: “I wanted to get into golf,” not as a pro, or an equipment retailer. “I wanted a degree in agronomy.” In other words, he wanted to arrive at the course before dawn, plan for and supervise crews who kept the terrain in optimum condition. Adieu Savile Row suits and leather briefcases and business class flights. Bring on the rain jackets, sunscreen and golf hats.

Kirk applied to Purdue University and North Carolina State University, only to be advised that what he needed was the kind of hands-on program offered by Mike Ventola at Sandhills Community College. In 2012 Kirk and Victoria rented a house in Pinehurst while he attended SCC and interned at Forest Creek.

“We didn’t plan to stay after that,” Kirk says. But, Victoria adds, “We met people and fell in love with the village.” Kirk currently serves as assistant superintendent of world-famous Pinehurst No. 2.

Rank that alongside Kate Middleton’s aesthetician or Stephen Curry’s physical therapist. Obviously, Europe had refined their housing requirements: something with history, character and a unique feature. Something close to the action, like twenty-five yards from the Carolina Hotel driveway.

The Carolina Hotel, along with the village, was nouveau-chic when, in 1909, Bostonian Emma Jane Sinclair commissioned architect W.W. Dinsmore to design a winter home with satellite cottages for her married daughters. The Pinehurst Outlook of that year called it “A little gem, in mission style, with bright red rows of tile and stucco walls . . . which adds tremendously to the attractiveness of the outlook from the hotel.”

In truth, the Southwestern exterior probably raised a few eyebrows among residents who chose the more familiar white clapboard/black shutter New England motif.

In 1918, the property was sold to coal baron Henry B. Swoope of Pennsylvania — a descendant of one of George Washington’s Revolutionary War colleagues. Swoope’s letters to tradesmen on file at Tufts Archives show his displeasure at the milkman for running out of cream — also arrangements to have unloaded an entire railway car of “egg” (large lump) coal for his and other furnaces. Poor Mr. Swoope died in 1927, at 46, leaving a wife and nine children. The house later passed to L.L. Biddle II of the prominent Philadelphia family, later intermarried with the Dukes of Durham.

When the Adkinses discovered Red Gables, barely used by Canadian owners, the property stood neglected and sad. “We asked people about it and they said, ‘Run, don’t walk away! You’d be crazy to buy that house!’” Victoria recalls.

But Victoria and Kirk saw only the unique features: a vaulted ceiling over the living room; beadboard walls and terra cotta tile floors; original three-over-three square windows with wavy glass; an attic that could be opened up as a master suite.

They hired a contractor, a designer — and dug in.

First, the AC. The stucco exterior and painted beadboard walls made conventional ductwork impossible. A space was created over the kitchen ceiling and behind the attic knee wall for the new system. Victoria moved the front entrance to an existing patio door and converted the vestibule to a pantry. The hopelessly dated kitchen was opened up with an island separating it from the dining area, which replaces a formal dining room and flows into the living room. The window removed to make room for a refrigerator was re-installed elsewhere. Light was a priority; the living-dining area has only one lamp, but Victoria increased recessed spotlights from 28 to 90. An entire wall of windows in addition to French doors further brightens the main floor. Although modest in size, the practical kitchen suits Victoria and Kirk, who both cook.

A narrow hallway leads to two small bedrooms joined by a double bath, Kirk’s office and, at the end, a sun porch, now Victoria’s office with adjacent laundry room.

Bathrooms were renovated but not enlarged. One clawfoot tub remains.

The major new construction was the master suite overlooking the living room, accessed by a narrow staircase original to the house.

“I like the way the boards creak,” Victoria says.

Creating the loft sitting area, bedroom and, especially, the bathroom presented a second challenge. “They said we’d never fit a shower in there,” Kirk smiles, pointing to the large glass-enclosed installation. Fitting a mirror over the sink was another puzzle that failed several times before succeeding. Finally, the master bedroom, as planned, proved too narrow to accommodate a king-sized bed. Victoria wouldn’t budge. The dimensions were altered. Still, the sleeping space is smaller than dressing rooms in most luxury homes.

Victoria and Kirk think differently. “What more do you need than a bed and nightstand?” she says. “Our first night was so much fun, like sleeping in a treehouse.”

Above the bed buzzes a triple ceiling fan resembling airplane propellers encased in wire frames . . . just mesmerizing.

The Adkinses’ frequent moves were not conducive to amassing furniture. Even so, to prevent any sense of clutter, Victoria refined her collection to one or two antiques per room. The palette of dusky turquoise, soft green, beige and vanilla unite and soothe, from area rugs to dog-friendly leather upholstery. A credenza from France fills an entire wall in Kirk’s office, while his desk is British. Kitchen shelves and counters display Victoria’s collection of blue pottery jugs and canisters. Tiny lights illuminate glass-front cabinets.

One tall, non-functioning radiator holds potted plants. Dark-stained beams in the vaulted ceiling, beadboard walls painted cream, pine flooring found in the attic satisfy Victoria and Kirk’s love for wood. Art reflects Kirk’s golf involvement. Just inside the front door hangs their signature piece. The nine-by-four-foot painting, done in photo realism, depicts Kirk and Victoria, their children and dogs, playing in Kensington Gardens adjoining the Albert Memorial in London. The artist tricks the eye by repeating the same family members in different sections of the park.

The wall, prominent and perfectly sized for this treasure, helped convince Victoria to take on Red Gables, at 2,450 square feet by far the smallest of their homes. Converting the free-standing garage into guest quarters is always an option.

The house stands on half an acre, about one-third of the original parcel. Much of it was overgrown with vines, home to snakes and varmints. A backhoe was brought in to clear the front yard. Victoria decided on simple groundcover and a clear view of the hotel beyond the lighting kiosks that flank the driveway entrance. The red tile roof had been replaced but otherwise, Red Gables exterior remains much as it was during Pinehurst’s Golden Age.

“For us, (the house) is magical,” Victoria says.

“We got rid of a lot of baggage, which has taken stress out of our lives,” Kirk continues. “We have what we need and need what we have.”

Or, as Victoria sighs, “What a relief!” PS

2016 Feature House

Old Sol and Johnny Sunflower Seed

One man’s love affair with summer’s essential flower

By Ross Howell Jr.

Last summer a neighbor got me thinking about sunflowers, and I put in my first seeds ever.

He was notorious for planting sunflowers near street signs, by sidewalks, or next to abandoned brick piles. He planted anywhere he discovered a patch of open ground, sometimes surreptitiously in the dead of night, earning the nickname the “Sunflower Bandit.”

My neighbor prefers to think of himself as “Johnny Sunflower Seed,” playing on the name of our American hero of childhood lore. And I’d say he’s earned the right. Scion of an old North Carolina family whose ancestors include a legend in the hunt for Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, a state senator, and a respected judge, he has served in the U.S. Navy, navigated a sailboat across the Gulf of Mexico, earned a commercial pilot’s license, and was once homeless, while struggling with addiction. Now, he tends brick-edged flower beds he’s fashioned with owners’ permission in front of businesses and apartments along a nearby street.

He says his mother, a Louisiana girl, was the person who first got him interested in sunflowers.

“There were beds along a stone walkway at our house,” he recalls. “And one spring, I think I was about 14, my mother brought me these seed packets. She said if I planted them along the walkway, they’d grow into enormous flowers.” His face brightens as he recounts the event. “Well, I planted those seeds, and I’ll bet I checked them every half hour to see if they’d sprouted. I watered and watered. And here grew these giant plants, eight, nine feet tall, with big yellow flowers, and everybody commented on how beautiful they were.” He smiled.

“When you’re a kid, things like that make an impression on you. Sunflowers are spiritual, you know?” he says. “They reach toward the sun, like they’re reaching to God, and they turn their faces, following the sun, like they’re following God.”

I remembered, listening, that it was my mother who first got me interested in sunflowers, too. She favored the giant ones, saving their seeds for the winter feeder by her window — cardinals, chickadees, titmice and evening grosbeaks sampling the buffet as big snowflakes fell, dusting their feathers. Her sunflowers grew ten, even twelve feet tall, with seed heads so broad it seemed miraculous the plants could support them.

“Add soil as they grow,” my neighbor suggests. “Say you add six inches of topsoil? That root is going to spread another ten inches.”

He favors the tall, broad-shouldered yellow sunflowers. I go for the modest sizes myself, heights of five, six feet, because I like to cut flowers for my wife, Mary Leigh. This year I planted two varieties of yellow, and a red. The red sunflowers have faces of red, orange and ocher. They’re more finicky than the yellow, and want more care. The reds don’t stand the heat as well as the yellows, either, even if carefully watered. Still, I like working with them, and maybe I’ll get better at understanding their needs.

But give the big yellow sunflowers a little water and plenty of soil, and they can take pretty much anything old Mr. Sol can beam down. And their stalks support burdens that sometimes seem impossible.

In late summer they stand tall and regal, resilient and undaunted, among flowers frumpy and withered by circumstance. That’s what I like about them.

I bet that’s what my neighbor likes, too. PS

Ross Howell Jr. is catching up on his reading, starting a new novel, and anxious to hear from readers about favorite fall or winterplants, shrubs and trees.

2016 Feature Sunflower

Almanac

By Ash Alder

Welcoming the Harvest

August is a poem you can taste. Swollen fruit beckons us to the garden, the orchard, the roadside stand, and for some of us, the trailing vines that wind along the woodland path. The air intoxicates us with notes of wild honey and dandelion. Damselflies dance between milkweed and goldenrod, fiery sunsets fade into star-studded twilight, and come nightfall, the crickets and katydids gift us with song. Nothing gold can stay, they lament.

And so we savor each delicious moment.

The Wheel of the Year, an annual cycle of eight seasonal festivals (or sabbats) observed by modern pagans, includes a grain harvest celebration called Lammas (loaf mass) on August 1. Also called August Eve, the first harvest festival of the year includes a feast of thanksgiving, the first sheaf of wheat ritually baked into a sacred loaf said to embody the spirit of the grain. Regardless of which seasonal festivals you choose to observe, now’s as good a time as any to consider the abundance of the season, especially when you’re slicing that thick Cherokee Purple for the perfect ’mater sandwich. And as you sow your autumn garden — beets, carrots, peas and greens — try whispering a little song of thanks into the soil and see what follows: a new delicious season of magic, no doubt. Another harvest. But for now, listen to the katydids.

“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.” — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Starry Eyed

The gladiolus, or ‘sword lily,’ is the birth flower of August. Bright and showy, they symbolize a heart “pierced with love.”

Astronomically speaking, there’s a lot to pierce the heart with love this month: the Perseid meteor shower, for instance, which happens August 11–13 and is visible worldwide. Predawn is the best time to see it, and since the quarter moon will have set by 1 a.m., the dark sky should be an ideal canvas for this (pardon) stellar show.

Native Americans called the full moon of August the “Sturgeon” or “Green Corn” moon. On August 18, see what you’re inspired to call it. And if you’re prone to set intentions, the full moon is prime time. It’s also a good night for onion braiding, an ancient way to store bulbs pulled from the garden in late July. Some believe that onion braids offer protection, but they’re simply lovely. You need no reason more.

Taste of Summer

National Peach Month is here. A fun fact: True wild peaches (small and sour) are only found in China, where the fruit is said to have mystical properties and grant longevity to those who eat them. Our peaches (plump and sugary) have magical qualities, too. Don’t believe it? Sink your teeth into a just-picked one and see if you don’t grin like a sweet-toothed squirrel.

Also, August 3 marks National Watermelon Day. Slice one for a picnic in the backyard, where the kids can make a sport of seed spitting. Since watermelons are more than 90 percent water, they’re a tasty way to help stay hydrated on hot summer days. Slip them into salads and salsas, or treat yourself to something even sweeter, like a mint and watermelon soda float. The following recipe (and a delicious homegrown watermelon) came from a friend:

Fresh Mint and Watermelon Float

2 1/2 cups fresh watermelon chunks

12–15 fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped

12 oz club soda or carbonated water

Vanilla ice cream

In a blender, combine watermelon, mint and water. Blend and pulse quickly for 30–60 seconds (or until watermelon breaks down). The blending will “de-carbonate” the water, but it should still have some fizz. Pour mixture through a fine mesh strainer into a large bowl to remove seeds. Fill two glasses with vanilla ice cream and pour watermelon soda over top. Garnish with additional fresh mint. Serves two. PS

2016 Almanac Feature

When Honeybees Were Everywhere

Once, honeybees covered the clover-carpeted

ground, their steady hum linked so closely

with the clovers’ heavy heads and thread-like

stems it could have been, instead, the language

of these fragrant flowers — perhaps what they

whispered to one another in the early morning

light on a summer day as the barefoot children

burst from their houses and the dogs began

to bark and the milkman with his thick-soled

boots tromped through the yards, and mothers

dragged their laundry baskets across the grass

while bees scattered and the clover, briefly

trampled, rose again — their pale, dew-damp

faces poised to receive the bees’ next kiss.

– Terri Kirby Erickson

2016 Feature Poem