Bookshelf

January Books

FICTION

Nick, by Michael Farris Smith

Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into The Great Gatsby, he was at the center of a very different story — one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. A romantic story of self-discovery, this rich and imaginative novel breathes new life into a character that many know but few have pondered deeply. Nick reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.

The Fortunate Ones, by Ed Tarkington

A teenage boy being raised in a low-income area of Nashville by a single mom receives a mysterious scholarship offer to attend an elite private school for boys. Charlie Boykin is thrust into the midst of the children of billionaires and socialites, and the trajectory of his life is altered forever. But was it all worth it? This is a character-driven novel with a storyline as opulent as the mansions within it.

The Good Doctor of Warsaw, by Elisabeth Gifford

Janusz Korczak ran an orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw, where conditions became increasingly harsh during World War II. Gifford tells his story with moving details of daily life — struggling to find food and to avoid being killed by the Nazis. Over 95 percent of the 350,000 Jews in Warsaw did not survive the war. A story the world must never forget.

The Prophets, by Robert Jones Jr.

A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the comfort they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, The Prophets masterfully reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love.

The Last Garden in England, by Julia Kelly

This is a sweeping novel of five women across three generations whose lives are connected by one very special garden — the Highbury House estate — designed in 1907, cared for during World War II and restored in the present day by Emma Lovett, who begins to uncover secrets that have long been hidden.

The Divines, by Ellie Eaton

Moving between present-day Los Angeles and 1990s Britain, The Divines is a scorching examination of the power of adolescent sexuality, female identity and the destructive class divide. Josephine inexplicably finds herself returning to her old stomping grounds of St. John the Divine, an elite English boarding school. The visit provokes blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. Josephine becomes obsessed with her teenage identity and the forgotten girls of her one-time orbit. But the more she recalls, the further her life unravels, derailing not just her marriage and career, but her entire sense of self.

A Mother’s Promise, by K.D. Alden

In Virginia in 1927, Ruth Ann Riley was poor and unwed when she became pregnant. She was sent to an institution and her child given up for adoption. All the rich and fancy folks may have called her feebleminded, but Ruth Ann was smarter than any of them knew. No matter the odds stacked against her, she was going to overcome the scandals of her past and get her child back. She just never expected her battle to go to the United States Supreme Court, or that she’d find unexpected friendships, even love, along the way. 

The Narrowboat Summer, by Anne Youngson

Eve and Sally are at a crisis in their lives when they each happen upon a narrowboat on a canal owned by Anastasia. Before they realize what they’ve done, Sally and Eve agree to drive Anastasia’s narrowboat on a journey through the canals of England, as she awaits a life-saving operation. The eccentricities and challenges of narrowboat life draw them inexorably together, and a tender and unforgettable story unfolds. At summer’s end, all three women must decide whether to return to the lives they left behind or forge a new path forward.

NONFICTION

Let Me Tell You What I Mean, by Joan Didion

Twelve early pieces never before collected offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and creative process of Didion. Drawn mostly from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, these are subjects Didion has written about often: the press, politics, California robber barons, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive and stunningly prescient.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Winter is Here, by Kevin Henkes and Laura Dronzek

When winter comes, it comes soft like snowfall and hard like leaves frozen in ice. Winter comes white and gray and deep, deep blue. From the husband and wife team of Henkes and Dronzek, Winter is Here is the companion to the lovely When Spring Comes and is the perfect introduction to the seasons for young readers. (Ages 1-3.)

A Busy Year,
by Leo Lionni

Winnie and Willie and Woody are friends. First, as January snow falls on Woody’s branches, later as her branches bloom and even later as her leaves begin to fall, the friends experience all a year has to offer. A fun way to learn about the seasons while also zeroing in on the qualities of a good friend, A Busy Year is a classic that deserves a spot on every child’s bookshelf. Arriving Jan. 12. (Ages 2-3.)

Looking for Smile, by Ellen Tarlow

Once in a while, when you least expect it, life gets you down, and you just lose your smile. But sometimes the quiet song of a good friend can make the world bright again. A great story of friendship and of dealing with the downs. (Ages 3-6.)

Just Our Luck, by Julia Walton

In this moving and absolutely hilarious tale, Leo is a high school boy caught up in his own anxiety. He normally keeps his head down, but a fight with another boy at school starts a chain reaction, entangling Leo in something he never would have been part of by choice. This amazing, touching masterpiece is perfect to the very last page. (Ages 13 and up.) — Review by Kaitlyn Rothlisberger.  PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally.

Sporting Life

Slim’s Place

Guided by a star

By Tom Bryant

The note arrived on a Tuesday. Mail delivery had been sporadic at best, ostensibly due to the pandemic and delivery of voting ballots during the recent elections. The note was brief and to the point. It was a typical Bubba transcript and read, “We’re having a get-together at Slim’s next Saturday. Why don’t you come to the house on Friday. I have some fresh makings of Ritter’s apple brandy. We’ll test it, and I’ll grill a couple of steaks. Judith’s at the beach with some girlfriends, so we’ll have the place to ourselves. We’ll catch up and talk old times. Hope you can make it, Bubba.”

Bubba and I have spent many days afield, hunting, fishing and camping, and we have become great friends. Our paths went in different directions when Linda, my bride, and I moved to Southern Pines. Plus, Bubba started taking more exotic hunting and fishing trips across the world. To be honest, he has deeper pockets than I do. Our friendship remained, though, and we stayed in touch and met from time to time at cocktail parties, friends’ gatherings and such.

Slim’s Place, referred to in Bubba’s note, is an ancient country store, actually begun and operated by Slim’s grandfather. When the grandfather died, the store fell into disrepair and almost rotted away until Slim, after making a fortune out West in the real estate business, restored it to its former glory. For years, he ran the store more as a hobby than a business, often exclaiming, “The only reason I keep this obsolete old store open is so all you reprobates will have a place to go.”

We did go. It was a place, like the theme song played in the TV show Cheers, “where everyone knows your name.” We did know the names and the families and the dogs and the history, good and bad, of all the good old boys who took advantage of Slim’s hospitality. The patrons of the ancient establishment were a diverse collection, from mill owners to mill workers. Every visitor to Slim’s store was on equal footing, except maybe lawyers. They were jokingly treated differently.

We were in between the holiday seasons, Thanksgiving roaring toward Christmas, and it seemed as if everyone wanted the weird year 2020 to be over. The country was still divided, more so than I’d ever seen due to the acrimonious presidential election and the political differences in how to handle the coronavirus. There didn’t seem to be an end to the rancorous conflict throughout the country, and 2021 would soon be upon us. I hoped that a visit to Bubba’s and Slim’s Country Store and a meeting with a group of good old boys would put everything into perspective.

Bubba built his home back in the mid-’80s, and it’s quite a showcase. Pretty much energy-efficient, the home sits on a little rise overlooking a small lake that is consistently teeming with wildlife. Ducks, geese and even at times a pair of otters use the carefully constructed habitat.

I arrived there in the late afternoon, looking forward to a great visit with an old friend. After an appropriate time of good-natured insults to one another, we went through the house to the deck off his study to watch a beautiful evening sunset.

True to his word, as we settled back in chairs overlooking the pond, he said, “OK there, Cooter, let me pour you a little shot of Ritter’s finest.” (He bestowed on me the nickname Cooter years before and it stuck.) On the table between the two chairs was a decanter full of an amber liquid, and as he poured us a little libation into heavy cut glass tumblers, he added, “Ritter wanted you to have a couple quarts. Don’t let me forget to give ’em to you. He told me to tell you Merry Christmas.”

We both sat in comfortable silence and watched the sun slowly sink behind the tree line on the west end of the pond. Several wood ducks soared close over the water, did a hard turn and skidded to rest near the far bank.

“Watch, Tom, those ducks do the same thing every evening. They’ll swim around for a few minutes then fly up to those oak trees and roost for the night. Pretty to see, almost like they have a watch. They come in every sundown at the same time.”

“I love to watch wood ducks,” I responded. “Speaking of ducks, I thought you’d be down in Louisiana duck hunting about now.”

“Nope, this dadgum virus has everything screwed. I’ve canceled two trips already. One fishing and one hunting. I think I’m gonna just stay home until after the first of the year. Things have got to change. The country can’t continue like this. How about you? Y’all still heading to Florida on your annual winter fishing adventure?”

“The plan is still there. We probably won’t go back to Chokoloskee this time, opting for a closer fishing hole, maybe Cedar Key just above Tampa. Last year we were way down South when this virus thing broke and had to hustle back with the snow bird migration. It wasn’t a pleasant trip. How are things at Slim’s? Things at the store getting by in this crazy year?”

“That’s one reason I wanted this get-together, with you especially, and also some of the old crowd.”

After Slim passed away, Bubba had purchased the old country business from Leroy, Slim’s nephew, who had inherited the place. Bubba bought the store on a whim, and as he often said, so he’d have a place to go. Plus he liked the coffee.

“The venture is getting to be more trouble than it’s worth,” he continued. “We closed the first two months of the pandemic and gave all the perishables to local churches. Now we’re open only three days a week. I would have already closed the place, but I’m keeping it open because Leroy has to have a job, and more than that, in memory of Slim. Like I said, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

The sun had fully set but there was still a soft glow on the western horizon. In contrast, early stars began to twinkle in the eastern night sky.

We sat quietly, sipping Ritter’s brandy.

“I don’t know what to say, Bubba. No one would really blame you if you shut it down. I mean thousands of businesses are closing during this virus mess. Slim would probably have already closed the store. And yet I keep remembering that Christmas season years ago when you and Slim and I were sitting on the porch of the old building, also enjoying some of Ritter’s apple brandy, when that bright star showed up in the eastern sky.”

“Yep,” Bubba paused. “Those were good times, good days, Tom. I recollect that night every Christmas, especially about Slim quoting a verse from the Bible, you know, about the star and the birth of Jesus.”

He stood, stretched, and looked to the eastern sky that was sprinkled with stars. “I think I’ve made up my mind, Cooter, I’m gonna keep the decrepit old place open. I believe we need a bright star now more than ever. This Christmas, why don’t you come up here one evening and we’ll sit on the porch, drink some more brandy and watch for it. Maybe the visit and our search will bring good tidings in 2021. But right now, what say we grill a couple of steaks?”

I did visit Slim’s venerable old country setting one frosty evening a few days before this past Christmas. Bubba and I pulled up a pair of rockers on the wraparound porch with Slim’s favorite rocker on one side. We looked to the east and waited. The bright star was still there.  PS

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

Home by Design

In the Hotseat at Aunt Ruth’s

I served my time and, frankly, would have preferred the aliens

By Cynthia Adams

Truvy’s Beauty Spot in Steel Magnolias equipped its Natchitoches, La., patrons to meet life with sky-high hair. But the Franklin Beauty Shop in Monroe, N.C., where my aunt delivered hard truths and even harder hair, was a very different place.

My Aunt Ruth’s shop, which opened in the 1950s, was an assault upon all the senses. It possessed the stark ambiance of a morgue. And it taught me this: Beauty is in the eyes, ears and nose of the beholder.

It was as utilitarian as my father’s barber shop: stark, fluorescent lights, pea green walls, Army green vinyl floor, three mirrors, three stations, three chairs outfitted with massive dryers and two manicure tables.

Large windows with open metal Venetian blinds (Why was something so hideous called Venetian?) overlooked Franklin Street. Passersby could peer directly into her place, which, unlike the barber shop, emanated noxious chemical smells.

Incredulously, my aunt made a decent income and won devoted friends. It was ideally situated near the Oasis Sandwich Shop, which served fab sodas, floats, fries and burgers. There, I would idle while my mother got her “do.”

Even as a child, I understood that my mother was not improved by the ministrations of my aunt. Her hairdos might just as well have been created with tongs and barbecue tools.

Any fool could see she looked better going into the Franklin, as we called it, than she did leaving it. The drive home was confirmation as my mother dusted ditches raking a brush through her shellacked hair, “trying to fix this before we get home,” she’d scoff, as the green Olds swayed across lanes.

Mama was never, ever pleased by her sister’s work.

Ruth, a natural beauty, loved the natural world and could have been a botanist. But her school principal father stubbornly steered her into cosmetology, where she studied the darker arts of beauty.

Why oh why? 

He died before I was born or I would have asked.

Her customers’ hair was more often than not dyed or bleached an unnatural shade of blue-black, red or yellow, curled tight, then baked into place beneath oversized dryers suitable for flood recovery operations.

Clients emerged pink faced from the blasting heat of the silvery green stationary dryers and then submitted to the next step: a comb out. This involved teasing with a rat-tail comb before the requisite (lethal) final step: Spray Net.

Hair sprays of this era contained vinyl chloride, a propellant later proven to be carcinogenic. Hard fact.

Another hard fact: My aunt’s clients looked uniformly alike once they climbed out of the sturdy swivel chair.

By Ruth’s hands, my grandmother’s hair became a blue-black hue I rarely observed in nature, apart from a rare beetle specimen at the Natural Science Center.

It puzzled me why anyone paid Aunt Ruth at all.

Speaking of payment, I privately yearned to operate the large green cash register that stood at the entry with the appointments book, watching as customers wrote out checks and waved goodbye “till the next time.”  Instead, I thumbed through worn Photoplay and McCall’s magazines in the waiting area. 

At age 10, when many of my friends were getting a Toni perm in their kitchen, it was decreed: my straight ponytail was inadequate. Aunt Ruth would give me a professional do before my new school year.

She washed my long straight hair, then mixed toxic chemicals in a glass bowl. As they stewed, she clipped and chopped. 

Once the carnage was over, the remaining hair was tightly wound around bright pink perm “rods,” a term co-opted from nuclear physicists. Perm rods are to perms what uranium rods are to nuclear reactors. Either way, they’re volatile.

She applied chemicals to the perm rods. A black hair net held it in lock down.

I was walked to a dryer where this tragic concoction was to “set.”

Under the dryer, my eyes stung from the putrid reaction. When my scalp and ears began burning from the blasting heat, I jumped out. But Aunt Ruth ordered me back, lowering the dryer temp to nearly tolerable.

The timer pinged and I sprang free. As the rods were removed and my head cooled, I studied the clock: it was now half past my childhood.

Ruth swiveled the chair toward the mirror.

The shock caused me to bite my lip so hard it bled. 

I looked precisely like my grandmother.

My mother was tense as she swung onto the highway. A stifling ammonia cloud filled the car. I cracked the window to cool my face, still hot and now overwhelmed with the enormity of my strangeness. “Don’t worry. My hair can’t move,” I said.

Once home, my father took one look and moaned. “Dear Lord. The child’s ruined.”

Devastated, I shuffled out of the house to the barn in search of Trigger, a gentle pony who cocked his head quizzically before accepting a hug. I climbed into the loft, where I did my best thinking, cried a little, then concocted a story owing much to Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone. 

I was playing outside when a space ship landed in the pasture. Aliens zapped me. A lot of my hair burned off right there! I’m just lucky to be alive.

It wasn’t exactly original or believable, but an improvement on the story I invented about how I needed a life-saving operation after peeing myself on the playground.

Bus #15 swung down our road the next morning, where I waited in a plaid skirt and white blouse, holding a new book satchel, bracing myself. Johnny swung the bus door open; there it was — his open-mouthed surprise. But I turned away and searched the aisle for Martha or Kenneth.   

They would totally buy my story about my hair-today, gone-tomorrow alien abduction.  PS

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to PineStraw and O.Henry.

Return of a Classic

The Blind Colt celebrates its 80th anniversary with a new edition

You can’t hurry a Glen Rounds book. You are asked to find a rock and sit for a spell. Listen to the tumbleweed rattle by. Smell the sagebrush. Let the wind chill your hide. If you’re patient, the critters will let you see them, going about the business of living. These are wild animals, so they won’t come when you call. They would not do well in a petting zoo, or in most children’s books. They don’t talk or wear cute outfits. Sometimes they are playful, but never sweet. The Blind Colt is not only hunted by wolves, but gets bitten and kicked in the ribs by other horses. Yet because Rounds shows us the harsher side of life, we are all the more tickled to watch the young colt buck and run for the “pure fun” of it. In the books of Glen Rounds, wild danger always comes with wild fun.

From “Glen Rounds: An Appreciation,” copyright © 2021 by Matt Myers. Reproduced by permission from Holiday House Publishing, Inc.

Glen Rounds Illustrations courtesy Holiday House publishing inc.

Illustration by Matt Myers

Poem

What It Was about that First Marriage

The floors were fine. Gorgeous,

in fact. Blond as sunshine, clean,

polished, alive with the kind of promise

we had dreamed. But oh those two

mismatched tables. Same height,

so we kept trying to line them up

as if they were a unit. One was maple,

right out of somebody’s 1950s Nebraska kitchen, with a scalloped leaf that folded down,

though it was years before we saw it

for what it was. The other, streamlined,

sleek. Once we tried pushing them together

and covering both with a patterned cloth, though dinner guests kept banging their knees. When I look back, I’m amazed

we didn’t toss it, haul it to the curb.

But, no, we struggled for years

to make it work, painting,

and painting again, turning it sideways.

— Dannye Romine Powell

Golftown Journal

Nifty 50

The bare essentials of golf

By Lee Pace

Photo: Teddy Leinbach, Jack Leinbach,  Hayden Swanson, Colin Wilkin

Donald Ross was the son of a Scottish carpenter who began his career in golf wearing overalls and hunched on his hands and knees caring for the turf and bunkers at the course in his hometown of Dornoch. No silver spoons here, which is why Ross, despite the wealth and fame he achieved as an adult designing golf courses in America, always believed, “There is no good reason why the label ‘rich man’s game’ should be hung on golf.”

That yin and yang of the elite vs. the masses, private vs. public, upstairs vs. downstairs has hovered around the sport for more than a century. But the essence of the game remains the same: club, ball, hole, lowest strokes wins.

“I have always believed being able to play golf is not necessarily a right and not necessarily a privilege,” says Karl Kimball, head pro and owner-partner at Hillandale Golf Course in Durham. “It is more of an honor because of all the history the game has wrapped itself around.

“Whether it’s a private club or a daily-fee facility, the common thread is the game of golf. That’s what ties everyone together. Unfortunately, we can get wound up on some of the idiosyncrasies of our clubs, almost like religion.”

Which is why Kimball was delighted to see a young man who grew up playing golf at Hillandale, a public course that dates in its original form to Durham Country Club in 1910, embark on an ambitious project to travel the United States and peer under the hood of golf at a grassroots level.

The idea was simple, yet ambitious: 50 states, 50 rounds of golf, 50 days.

The resulting journey organized by Teddy Leinbach that included his brother, Jack, and friends Colin Wilkins and Hayden Swanson is the subject of a film released in November titled, “50 Over.” The one hour and 20 minutes of run time explores, as Leinbach says, “the tattered fairways and diverse personalities of public courses. We wanted to strip golf of its elitist image and find out what it really means to play golf.”

Leinbach was a self-proclaimed “sports nut” as a kid growing up in Durham, where his father practices internal medicine and psychiatry, and Leinbach played baseball, basketball, soccer and golf, among other sports. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University to study painting and illustration, then pivoted to filmmaking his sophomore year. After graduating in 2016, he created Airball Films to tell stories of things that interested him.

Among them, golf.

“We have a lot of young stars playing golf, but I don’t think they embody enough of the counter-culture movement in golf that is going to get people outside of the golf world interested in playing,” Leinbach says.

All four golfers were in their early 20s in the summer of 2017 when they made their odyssey. The Leinbach brothers had played lots of golf growing up at Hillandale and had single-digit handicaps; the others were essentially beginners.

The only requirement in planning the trip was that every course be open to the public. They started in Westbrook, Maine, at a course called Sunset Ridge, and used the condensed geography of New England to knock out 10 courses in five days. From there they ventured down the Mid-Atlantic into the South, then wound their way across the country. The last leg of the trip had them flying from Seattle to Alaska and then hopping another plane to Hawaii.

The young golfers at various times ate canned tuna on crackers, beef jerky and bagels and stopped at Huddle Houses along the way. “I’m still waiting on that Huddle House sponsorship,” Leinbach says with a laugh. Sometimes their attire stretched to gym shorts, tank tops and Converse sneakers; at times they played golf barefoot. (Management at one course asked them to leave, since they didn’t all have collared shirts.) They stopped to play pickup basketball and film the turtles and bison they saw along the way. They slept in the van or in tents pitched along the road.

They pooled their money and bought a 1991 Dodge camper van for the trip, but the vehicle was a lemon and finally caught on fire alongside an interstate in Illinois. The flames engulfed some of their clothes and golf clubs and destroyed Leinbach’s and brother Jack’s driver’s licenses, so Swanson flew back to Durham, picked up another vehicle and drove back to Illinois to resume the trip.

“We were lucky we had banked some days early in the trip,” Leinbach says. “We were on a tight schedule the rest of the way but made the 50th course on the 50th day.”

The themes running through the film are the fresh air, the great out-of-doors, the thrill of that well-struck shot, and the interesting people they meet along the way.

“What’s not to like about golf?” muses one player they found in the Midwest. “It’s the ultimate test of patience and a game that tortures you, but for some reason you keep going.”

Adds another, “No matter where you are in the world, you can generally find a golf course, and it’s the most serene place you can be.”

In Weed, California, they found a man who used to work for ClubCorp managing its portfolio of hundreds of high-end clubs. Now he’s up with the roosters to mow the greens.

“I found this semi-chill job, I live here, work here, have fun here,” he said as he fired up the Toro greens mower. “There is a Volkswagen version of golf, where you can get a great golf experience. It’s a cool message you guys are putting out. Anyone can golf across the country and you don’t have to have a $30,000 club membership.”

They split one day surfing and golfing on the California coast and were joined by a local who compared the two sports: “You can get a dopamine rush in both,” the man said. “Surfing is like that; golf is like that. Out of nowhere, you can hit the best shot of your life, you can catch the best wave of your life, and in both you get that flood of feel-good stuff.”

Leinbach says his foursome set out to explore golf away from the country club and strip the game of its elitist stereotype. While those boilerplates do, of course, exist, it’s wrong to paint the game with that brushstroke alone.

“We saw how a love for a game can bring people together, regardless of background, how golf can inspire, create change and form relationships,” Leinbach says. “We found that money, class, race, gender and other arbitrary distinctions that keep us divided can be broken down with an easy swing of the club.”

The film certainly resonated with Kimball, who’s been at Hillandale since 2007 and grew up playing golf on a nine-hole public facility in New Lexington, Ohio.

“I could play when I was 8 years old and could prove to the owner of the course I could get around in a decent amount of time,” he says. “I watched this film and a lot of it was staring me in the face when I grew up.”

In his next breath, Kimball marvels at how healthy golf is at his facility as 2020 winds down. COVID-19 has been hell; but golf courses have been a socially distanced refuge. His driving range business is beating all records, and more than 40 percent of Hillandale’s rounds are by folks walking the course.

“It’s incredible what’s happening with the game,” he says. “If anything good has come out of COVID, it’s that golf has gotten a shot in the arm. If you play the game and get a little hankering for it, it doesn’t let you go.”

Teddy Leinbach’s foursome has proof of that in all 50 states.  PS

Lee Pace has written about the Sandhills golf scene for more than 30 years. Contact him at leepace7@gmail.com. The film 50 Over is available for viewing at www.fiftyoverfilm.com at a cost of $10.

Hometown

How Southern Am I?

The latitude changes, the attitude doesn’t

By Bill Fields

I can hear traffic on Interstate 95 from where I live. The cars and trucks are far enough away that the noise usually doesn’t annoy — you hear it, but you don’t. I became part of the automotive Muzak not long ago, heading down South, as I’ve done many times over decades, 620 miles from home to home, even if the latter doesn’t have four walls and a roof.

Thanks to cataract surgery I was seeing great — I would have been a formidable foe in the license plate game if there had been someone in the passenger seat — but my vision of who I am felt clouded.

After almost 35 years in New England, how Southern am I?

I’ve asked myself this question before, yet it seemed more acute during this journey. Near the tail end of a year when so many considered so much, it was natural to ponder the reach of one’s roots. Spending nearly two weeks in the South without having a bite of barbecue made it essential.

I sound no different than childhood friends who stayed put. Syllables can still glide together as if there is WD-40 between them, same as when a college roommate from New Jersey made me the front man when we were subletting our apartment in Chapel Hill one summer. Yet I never called my parents “Momma and Daddy,” nor a store a “bidness.”

A work colleague said I was driving “soft” two years ago in downtown Atlanta when I was less than aggressive making a left turn. That critique notwithstanding, I contend anyone who negotiated the toll area of the George Washington Bridge at rush hour in the days when you had to give money to a person is forever hardened behind the wheel.

Commuting up North was no picnic either, in particular those days when a lot of drivers seemed angry at the world not just their boss. Sometimes they were. In the mid-1980s, the first time my mother rode in a New York City taxi, not far from Penn Station after getting off Amtrak’s Silver Star, the cabbie jumped out and ran after a driver who had cut him off.

I associate the South with good manners while acknowledging they sometimes are like one coat applied to an old house that needs more. Others can judge whether I’ve grown more blunt as I’ve grayed, but I’d like to think being nice endures. And I know, after many years as a transplant above the Mason-Dixon Line, that the South has no monopoly on kindness or treating others the right way.

I’m proud of where I’m from, but during a time when there is heightened awareness about racial injustice, it’s jarring to be less than an hour from my hometown and drive past several Confederate flags flying in front yards a couple of curves down the road from the former North Carolina Motor Speedway. The symbols used to be plentiful at the track on race days; they wouldn’t be allowed were it still a NASCAR venue.

I know folks who, for one reason or another, don’t ever go back, don’t long for a taste of the familiar, don’t enjoy a reunion with a place or its people. There are often good reasons for such judgments, but I don’t think I will ever feel that way.

There was a distinct pace where I grew up, and that speed, or more to the point, lack of it, was related to the room we had. Much of what I recall — relish — as Southern simply was small-town. Much has changed, a point reinforced when I visited the Southern Pines cemetery where my parents are buried. It was a warm, clear morning in early November, and Boy Scouts were placing small American flags on the graves of veterans such as my father. As the teenagers did their service, I was alone with my thoughts and the sound of cars on Morganton Road, a noise not of memory but of now, that I heard but didn’t hear.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

In The Spirit

So Appalled

A duck walks into a bar and orders a diluted drink

By Tony Cross

Last year my company launched a little promotion on social media letting folks know about our bottled cocktails. Previously, we dealt in and delivered growlers of carbonated cocktails, but now we’re offering stirred cocktails such as old fashioneds, Sazeracs and Manhattans, in addition to a few signature drinks of our own.

We’ve done a couple of different promotions, but the very first one got the most buzz in the comment sections. Everyone was kind and excited, tagging their friends and loved ones. A month after the first promo, I received a notification on my phone that we had a new comment. I pulled it up, and it read like this: “Why diluted? Never go into a bar and order diluted drinks.”

This is interesting on a few levels, but first I need to explain this in context. In the promo, we listed the ingredients of the cocktails we were bottling and added that “Each bottle yields nine cocktails and is diluted with distilled water.”

Dilute? What? Yes. Dilute. Why? Easy. When you order a cocktail — let’s say an old fashioned — the bartender will most likely create it with the following steps: She or he will take an aromatic bitters and add a few dashes to a chilled mixing vessel (perhaps with a dash or so of an orange or other bitters); then take sugar, in the form of either syrup or cube, muddle for a moment to break the sugar down to mix with the bitters (if it’s cubed) or use a spoon to mix (if it’s a syrup); then add a couple of ounces of whiskey (bourbon, rye or whatever is on the menu/house whiskey). Finally, the bartender will add ice and stir.

Now, this is important. Why? Because ice is just as much an ingredient as the others. Some might argue it’s even a more crucial ingredient than the others. When the bartender feels that the cocktail is ready, he or she will stop stirring, possibly taste a small thimble of the drink to ensure it’s right, and then strain the old fashioned over a large cube of ice in a rocks glass. Next comes the garnish, and it’s done.

How does the bartender know when the drink is ready to strain and serve? Temperature and dilution. Oh, snap! The bartender stirs the cocktail to make sure that it gets cold, but at the same time, the ice that’s spinning round and round like a carousel has another job: to melt. That’s right, water is an ingredient in the old fashioned. If the bartender simply mixed all of the ingredients together (without ice) and put it in the freezer for a couple of minutes, the cocktail would be cold, but it would also be unbalanced. Without the dilution, the old fashioned would taste hot, or too boozy. 

The very first cocktail book I read started off explaining that ice is as much an ingredient, if not the most important ingredient, as all the others in a cocktail. Admittedly, I was unsure if what I was reading was overly dramatic. It wasn’t. It was spot on. You want your ice made with water that you would enjoy drinking. Sulphur-rich town water ain’t it. Ice that’s been in your freezer with that half-opened box of frozen shrimp ain’t it either. Clean ice. You can have a great rye whiskey, a nice organic cane sugar syrup, and the perfect pairing of bitters, but once you add that old, cloudy ice to stir it with, none of those other ingredients hold as much weight.

I mentioned earlier that the bartender might extract a touch of the old fashioned from the stirring vessel to taste. Many bartenders do this to make sure the cocktail is diluted enough. If it’s not, they’ll stir until it is.

Now, in defense of the person that posed the question, we should agree that an over-diluted cocktail isn’t acceptable. I have never bellied up to any bar and ordered a diluted drink and, to my knowledge, I have never imbibed with any friend or date that has. It would not be a good thing if the bartender stirred your old fashioned for five minutes straight. No thanks. We add distilled water to our bottled cocktails so they’re ready to go — properly diluted with no stirring required. Pour it over ice (or neat), stay calm, carry on, and cheers.  PS

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

Character Study

Joe Being Joe

The intersection of golf and politics

By Jim Moriarty

Politics has been brushing up against golf since William Howard Taft, our first overweight, presidential, high handicapper, left office the same year Francis Ouimet beat Harry Vardon and Ted Ray at The Country Club. Barack Obama and Donald Trump are as far apart as Jupiter and Mars but feel the gravitational pull of the game equally. I’ve never met Joe Biden, who also plays, but I do know one thing about him, and I wouldn’t know it if it hadn’t been for golf.

It begins with Ben Wright.

With the impish grin of a pixie and a CV that included writing for the London Sunday Times, Wright was the British voice imported by CBS at the very time the magnificent Henry Longhurst’s was waning. “Mr. Longhurst excoriated me on my first day at the Masters,” Wright told me. “He said this immortal phrase: ‘We’re nothing but caption writers in a picture business, and if you can’t improve the quality of the picture, keep your f***ing mouth shut.’”

Wright was a quick study. “To this day,” the late Frank Chirkinian, the Hall of Fame CBS director, told me, “the 1975 Masters was the greatest Masters of all time — as a telecast. The dialogue between Ben Wright and Henry Longhurst was priceless. Wieskopf and Jack Nicklaus are tied for the lead. Nicklaus is standing on the 16th green waiting for Tom Watson to go back and re-tee because he put his ball in the water. Weiskopf is on the 15th green, and he makes a birdie putt to go into the lead by one. The crowd erupts. Take a close-up of Jack Nicklaus for a reaction shot. Over the roar of the crowd Ben Wright says, ‘Ah, evil music for Mr. Nicklaus’ ears.’ Weiskopf goes to the tee just in time to watch Jack make that historic 40-foot putt. For the first time the stoic Jack Nicklaus rushes off the green with a putter raised over his head and Henry, over the crowd, says, ‘My, my, my, never before have I seen such a thing.’ Cut back to Weiskopf on the tee to get his reaction. And Henry says, ‘And now Weiskopf must take it as he dished it out.’ Now, is that any good?”

Ben no doubt wishes he’d been as succinct in 1995 at the LPGA’s McDonald’s Championship in Wilmington, Delaware. It was there that he gave an interview to a feature reporter for the News Journal, Valerie Helmbreck. It’s impossible to go into all the details here. Let’s just say Wright said some things about breasts, in one context, and lesbians in another. Helmbreck, who preferred not to use a tape recorder in her work but took notes as scrupulously as a monk writing in the Book of Kells, did follow-up interviews. CBS got wind of the story and tried to convince her not to write it. She wrote it anyway.

Furor ensued. Wright was summoned to New York. There, either Wright or the suits hatched a plan to deny he had said what he said. Helmbreck was pilloried as having published lies spiced with innuendo. It wasn’t Wright’s or CBS’s finest hour. All manner of insidious motives were attributed to Helmbreck, who knew so little about golf that when Chirkinian called to try to convince her not to write the story, she had to ask him how to spell his name and what his job was. He called her “honey,” and she hung up on him.

Months after the firestorm was lit, Sports Illustrated’s Michael Bamberger found someone who had overheard the interview. Helmbreck’s version was confirmed. But that’s not the end of it.

Wright was thrown out of golf. Period. There was to be no forgiveness, no absolution, no pardon, no redemption. He became a “pariah” — that’s his word. Had Ben, who was 63 at the time, simply told the truth, he’d have had his wrist slapped and been in the booth, brilliantly no doubt, for another decade at least. Instead, he eventually did time in the Betty Ford Clinic; and Helmbreck, disenchanted with the way she was treated by friends and foes alike, quit the newspaper 18 months later.

Helmbreck and Wright spoke again in 1998. It was on her daughter’s birthday. “He and I talked on the phone for an hour. It was kind of like two people who had been in a train wreck together sort of comparing notes,” she told me in ’05.

But, I promised you Joe Biden, didn’t I? When Helmbreck agreed to meet me at a restaurant in Wilmington, she was walking with a cane. She apologized even before we began to talk, saying she tired easily. In January of that year, standing in her kitchen washing out a coffee cup, she experienced a sudden, crushing headache. An artery in her brain stem had burst. Her husband, Al Mascitti, an editor at the News Journal, had left the house 15 minutes earlier to attend the governor’s inauguration. A friend got her to a nearby hospital, and she was helicoptered to the Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. She had less than a 20 percent chance of survival. When I saw her, she still had a stent in her head, draining blood. “It’s made by Rolex,” she said.

“The one person in Delaware who had what I had and called my husband was Joe Biden,” she said. Biden was a U.S. senator then. It was no big deal, she tried to explain, “It’s a small state. Everybody knows everybody else.”

Biden filled her husband in on what the stages of her recovery would look and feel like. “Honestly, the stuff that he told my husband was the most helpful because you’re never sure if what you’re feeling is normal,” she said. The last I knew, Helmbreck was living in France and writing again.

It’s peculiar, this game of golf. Sometimes it reveals character without ever hitting a shot.  PS

Jim Moriarty is the editor of PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

The Kitchen Garden

It’s Not Easy Being Green

But a patch of parsley will do the trick

By Jan Leitschuh

If January finds you craving a little green, plant parsley.

Parsley’s kitchen presence ain’t what it used to be, when the culinary herb was ubiquitous. The classic lazy chef’s garnish — an afterthought to a side dish, an expected spot of green on the plate — parsley is not the first herb cooks reach for these days when tossing together a quick meal.

And that’s a shame, because parsley is simple to grow and surprisingly nutritious for a bit of verdant fluff.

That “spot of green” on the plate does equally well as a welcome spot of green in the garden in most Sandhills’ winters. Parsley is simple to grow. And in the old Simon and Garfunkel folk ballad “Scarborough Fair,” what gets first billing in parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme?

As a mildly bitter culinary herb, parsley’s clean and peppery taste can offer folks weary of rich holiday fare a fresh, healthy switch-up.

My friend Teresa’s introduction to parsley is probably typical. When she was traveling as a kid, her family would always stop at a roadside chain breakfast place on the interstate. “Seems like a sprig of parsley came on every plate as decoration,” she recalls. “I tried it and I liked it. To me, it was somewhat minty. My family would offer me theirs. My dad would always tease, ‘You want my rabbit food?’”

Because its deep taproot tolerates our winters, some local gardeners like to interplant the green herb with pansies and flowering kales. During warm spells, it grows vigorously. In cold weather, it can hold its own. I have brushed snow off a patch and harvested it. Some of the lushest outer sprigs may freeze, but the crown and core persist.

My friend Elaine grows parsley for the kitchen. “It’s in a big pot on my back porch,” she says. “I’ll probably bring it in tonight because the temperature is going down into the mid-20s, and I have a lot of it I want to use.”

Elaine, a retired nurse, likes to use it fresh in recipes. “There are some things that just taste better with fresh parsley rather than dried . . . a chicken dish, potatoes. I like tabbouleh,” she says. “The best thing I use it in, though, is a recipe for lemon-garlic roasted cauliflower rice that I got from our Jazzercize teacher, Debby Higginbotham.” Elaine shares that recipe below.

To plant, pick up a few pots of parsley at a local garden center. If you can’t find parsley for sale now, it will be available in the earliest spring, when you really need a hit of green.

Planting and care are easy. Pick a sunny spot, plant the crown at soil level, water during dry spells in winter.

Parsley is a biennial, which means it will last two years, but I treat it like an annual. The leaves are still edible the second year but can get a little bitter sometimes if it bolts — grows a seed stalk — in its second spring.

Wash fresh parsley right before using, since this tough-growing plant is fragile. Clean it just as you would spinach. Place it in a bowl of cold water and swish it around with your hands, allowing any sand to dislodge. 

Unwashed parsley stays fresh for up to two weeks, whereas dried parsley may last up to a year. To freeze, chop and layer in a plastic bag about a 1/2-inch thick. Press as much air out of the bag as possible, and freeze. Break off flat pieces as needed.

Rich in antioxidants and nutrients like vitamins A, K, and C, parsley may improve blood sugar and support heart, kidney and bone health. Also a diuretic, parsley can help increase urine output and flush bacteria from the urinary system.

It’s a superfood, but probably best not to juice in great bunches — a little goes a long way. Your tasty Argentinian chimichurri aside, WebMD says very large quantities of parsley are possibly unsafe, especially for those with kidney disease. Parsley is high in oxalates, which can contribute to kidney stones in some.

Many tasty dishes sparkle with a teaspoon or two of fresh parsley. Couscous with red onion, feta, cucumbers and parsley is a classic. Whip up a chimichurri for skirt steak. Toss your zucchini noodle salad with a parsley-pistachio pesto, instead of basil and pine nuts. Tabbouleh with tomatoes, lemon juice and parsley is a great way to use up a bunch.

Or enjoy the clean, winter eating of Elaine and Debby’s recipe:

Lemon-Garlic Roasted Cauliflower with Fresh Parsley

Preheat oven to 425. Spray the bottom of a sheet pan or cookie sheet with olive oil.

Combine about 16 ounces, (or a pre-riced bag) of riced cauliflower with a tablespoon of olive oil, 3 chopped or pressed garlic cloves and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix and spread on pan. Roast for 25 minutes. Halfway through, stir to prevent burning.

Transfer to a bowl, mix with a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice and 2 teaspoons of freshly chopped parsley. 

Spoon over roasted chicken, salmon or another fish. Enough for two.  PS

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