The Wickedest Town in the West

An OK place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there

By Stephen E. Smith

In the mid-1980s, actor Robert Mitchum appeared on a late-night talk show to promote his latest film. The host asked if the movie was worth the price of admission and Mitchum replied: “If it’s a hot afternoon, the theater is air conditioned, and you’ve got nothing else to do, what the hell, buy a ticket.”

Readers should adopt a similar attitude toward Tom Clavin’s Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West. If you’re not doing anything on one of these hot summer afternoons, what the heck, give it a read.

Dodge City is a 20-year history of the Kansas military post turned cow town that has come down in popular culture as the Sodom of the make-believe Wild West. No doubt Dodge had its share of infamous gunfighters, brothels and saloons, including the Long Branch Saloon of Gunsmoke fame, and there were myriad minor dustups, but nix the Hollywood hyperbole, and Dodge City’s official history is straightforward: Following the Civil War, the Great Western Cattle Trail branched off from the Chisholm Trail and ran smack into Dodge, creating a transitory economic boom. The town grew rapidly in 1883 and 1884 and was a convergence for buffalo hunters and cowboys, and a distribution center for buffalo hides and cattle. But the buffalo were soon gone, and Dodge City had a competitor in the cattle business, the border town of Caldwell. Later cattle drives converged on the railheads at Abilene and Wichita, and by 1890, the cattle business had moved on, and Dodge City’s glory days were over.

Clavin focuses on the city’s rough-and-tumble years from 1870 through the 1880s, explicating pivotal events through the lives and times of the usual suspects — Bat Masterson, the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday et al. He fleshes out his narrative by including notorious personages not directly linked to Dodge City — Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, Wild Bill Hickok, “Big Nose” Kate, Buffalo Bill Cody, Sitting Bull, the Younger brothers, and a slew of lesser characters such as “Dirty Sock” Jack, “Cold Chuck” Johnny and “Dynamite” Sam, all of whom cross paths much in the manner characters interact in Doctorow’s Ragtime. Also included are abbreviated histories of Tombstone — will we ever lose our fascination with the 30-second shootout at the O.K. Corral? — and Deadwood.

If all of this sounds annoyingly familiar, it is. There’s no telling how many Wild West biographies, histories, novels, feature films, TV series, documentaries, etc., have been cranked out in the last 140 years, transforming us all into cowboy junkies. Our brief Western epoch has so permeated world ethea that blue jean-clad dudes in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, might be heard to say, “I’m getting the hell out of Dodge,” in Uzbek, of course.

Clavin offers what amounts to a caveat in his Author’s Note: “. . . Dodge City is an attempt to spin a yarn as entertaining as tales that have been told before but one that is based on the most reliable research. I attempted to follow the example of the Western Writers of America, whose members over the years have found the unique formula of combining strong scholarship with entertaining writing.”

So what we have is a hybrid, a quasi-history not quite up to the standards of popular history, integrated into a series of underdeveloped episodic adventure tales that ultimately fail to entertain. If Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough are your historians of choice, you’ll find that Dodge City falls with a predictable thud. It’s simply more of the same Western hokum. The writing isn’t exceptional, the research is perfunctory, most of the pivotal events are common knowledge, and the characters are so familiar as to breed contempt.

If you have a liking for yarns by writers such as Louis L’Amour, Luke Short and Larry McMurtry, Dodge City isn’t going to make your list of favorite Westerns. Without embellishment, the narrative loses its oomph, and the episodic structure diminishes any possibility of a thematic continuity, which is, of course, that the lawlessness that marked Dodge City’s formative years is a metaphor for the country as a whole, that violence and corruption are a fundamental component of American life.

On a positive note, readers of every persuasion will likely find the book’s final chapter intriguing. Clavin follows his principal characters to the grave. Wyatt, the last surviving Earp brother, ended his days in Los Angeles at the age of 80. Doc Holliday died in Colorado of tuberculosis at 36, his boots off. “Big Nose” Kate, Doc’s paramour, lived until 1940 at the Arizona Pioneers’ Home, dying at the age of 89.

Of particular interest is Bartholomew William Barclay “Bat” Masterson, Wyatt Earp’s dapper buddy in the “lawing” business. Whereas Earp’s claim to fame ended with his exploits as a Western peace officer and cow town ruffian, Masterson went on to a life of greater achievement. He became an authority on prizefighting and was in attendance at almost every important match fought during his later years. He was friends with John L. Sullivan, Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey. In 1902, he moved to New York City and worked as a columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph. His columns covered boxing and other sporting events, and he produced op-ed pieces on crime, war, politics, and often wrote of his personal life. He became a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and remained a celebrity until his death in 1921.

It promises to be a long, hot, unsettling summer. If you’ve got nothing better to do, turn off cable news, slap down $29.99 and give Dodge City a read. It’s little enough to pay for a few hours of blessed escapism.  PS

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

What’s in a Southern Nickname?

By Susan Kelly

Next to rappers, I’m pretty sure Southerners have the corner on nicknames. I’m not talking “Dukes of Hazzard” or country music Cooters or Scooters or Bubbas or Buds. Ditto Liz-for-Elizabeth or Jack-for-John or Meg-for-Margaret. I’m talking the ones that get acquired or bestowed, usually in high school or college, and then “stuck.”

When it comes to those sorts of monikers, nobody cares about body shaming, ergo my friend Duck, for the way he walks. Or my uncle, known lifelong as Squirrel for his dentist’s-dream buck teeth. An Atlanta pal is known as Dirt because of his grooming, or lack thereof. My frat friend Picture Window, because his hair framed his face just so. Or my square-jawed, bespectacled-since-6 husband, who, innocently brushing his teeth as a new boy sophomore at boarding school, looked up from the communal sink, caught a senior’s eye in the mirror, and has born the nickname Catfish ever since. Because he looks like one.

Nicknames trump passports, birthmarks and bumper stickers for identification purposes, since the origins can be traced like a zip line to character and personality. Hence Zero, for the classmate who had, well, zero personality; somewhat akin to Goober and Simple and Wedge, the latter being the simplest tool known to man, so you can draw your own conclusions about the individuals they were tagged to. Aesop, for the frat bro with a tendency toward lying; Eeyore for the eternally gloomy one; Preacher for the rule-follower. Bullet, which neatly covered both head shape and disposition. (All the references in this article are absolutely authentic. Actual names are omitted to protect myself from libel lawsuits and horn-mad assassins.)

Last-name logic plays into some nicknames, such as Blender, for the last name Waring. You must be of a certain age to understand that one. In fact, you have to be of a certain age to understand that I was called by my last name for a decade because every fourth girl born in the ’50s was named Susan. For a female, it’s sometimes best just to let a name go, without prying for an explanation. Hungry Dog is one. And T-Ball, for example. I just do not want to know. T-Ball’s brother’s name is Re-Ball. That, I get.

The only nickname you legitimately get to select is your grandparent name. (Purists who claim to “wait and see what comes out” get what they deserve.) And when it comes to that category, the hands-down prize belongs to the grandmother friend who dubbed herself Favorite. Wish I’d thought of it first.  PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud new grandmother.

North Carolina State Toast

Here’s to the land of the long leaf pine,

The summer land where the sun doth shine,

Where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great,

Here’s to “Down Home,” the Old North State!

Here’s to the land of the cotton bloom white,

Where the scuppernong perfumes the breeze at night,

Where the soft southern moss and jessamine mate,

’Neath the murmuring pines of the Old North State!

Here’s to the land where the galax grows,

Where the rhododendron’s rosette glows,

Where soars Mount Mitchell’s summit great,

In the “Land of the Sky,” in the Old North State!

Here’s to the land where maidens are fair,

Where friends are true and cold hearts rare,

The near land, the dear land, whatever fate,

The blessed land, the best land, the Old North State!

Photograph by Tim Sayer of the oldest longleaf pine tree

Back at the Pound

Reflections on the Fourth

By Clyde Edgerton

Dog : What was all that shooting last night?

Dog 2: Wasn’t shooting, it was fireworks. July 4th.

It was going until after midnight.

I know.

What is July 4th?

Independence Day.

What does that mean?

It means that America got its freedom from England on July 4th, 1776 — and citizens have been celebrating ever since. Once a year.

Gosh, that was a long time ago.

You bet.

Did anything change for dogs after 1776?

Naw. Same old stuff. Good owners; bad owners; some in-between.

What was wrong with England?

They had a king — and since we were part of England, he was our king.

What was wrong with that?

Well, nothing as long as the king was a good king. If he was a bad one, like the 1776 one was — I think his name was Louis the 15th — then bad things happened to people and dogs because they didn’t have a chance to say what they wanted or needed. See, with a bad king, somebody could come into your owner’s house and shoot you and the king wouldn’t do anything about it.

Really?

That’s right, but then when America got free, Americans, under the Founding Fathers, made a lot of rules that were better than the rules in England.

Like what?

Well, if somebody goes into somebody’s house in America and shoots a dog then the police goes and gets the shooter, arrests him and then the justice system makes things right.

Really?

Oh, yes.

Who pays for that?

Well, the dog owner pays for that, of course. The dog owner has to buy property insurance to protect against the unwarranted and surprising destruction of a citizen’s property — like if somebody breaks in a human being’s house or steals a car, all that.

Really?

Oh yes. It’s done with something called “insurance.” Since nobody makes humans buy property they have to pay the policeman — on each policeman visit — a “co-pay.” Somewhere between 15 and 90 dollars. Then insurance, bought by the citizen, pays the rest. Sometimes an employee might pay part of it somehow, something called Propertycaid. But the protection of a human’s property is a human’s responsibility in the end, so they pay for that protection out of their own pocket — it’s not a “right.”

But wouldn’t everybody want to pitch in and help everybody else take care of their property? Like a big community where everybody looks out for everybody else. So that the police could be free? Maybe paid by taxes?

Oh no. Protection of property is not a right, it’s privilege that people must pay for individually — or in groups.

I don’t get it. What about when a germ invades a human’s body — why shouldn’t people have to buy their insurance for that? Something like health insurance.

Humans can’t predict if a germ is going to ruin their health or if cancer will invade their body.  They pay taxes to take care of that kind of stuff — we band together as a community to take care of that since health is more important than property. That’s why health care is free and police protection is not. Or is it the other way around? Hmmmm. Let me think. Surely property is not considered more protectable than health. Oh well, just be happy that since July 4th is over we don’t have to worry about all that human noise until next year. And we don’t have to worry about bad kings anymore either, thank goodness.  PS

Clyde Edgerton is the author of 10 novels, a memoir and most recently, Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers. He is the Thomas S. Kenan III Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UNCW.

The Galloping Stroller

What is it we will tell our toddlers? Don’t run!

By Renee Phile

One Saturday morning a few Julys ago, Kevin, then around 3 years old, and I decided to walk to downtown Southern Pines. By “walk,” I mean I walked and pushed him in his stroller with one wobbly wheel, a stroller I am pretty sure he had outgrown anyway since his head hit the top and his feet scraped the pavement. Still, he insisted on “taking a wide.” We stopped at the farmers market for some cucumbers, green peppers and tomatoes, and then wobbled on over to our main destination, the park.

Kevin played in the sand, while I parked myself on a bench. An hour or so passed and my stomach started growling. Kevin continuously slid down the big metal slide that stung his legs, since it was so hot. Right after he landed with a thump in the sand, he brushed himself off, ran back up the ladder to the scorching hot slide and started again. After watching him go up and down around 37 times, I decided I was starving, but not enough to break out the cucumbers and green peppers I had in the stroller. I told him he had five minutes, which turned into 17 since he had this ritual of saying goodbye to each part of the park he had come in contact with.

“Goodbye swing. Goodbye yellow slide. Goodbye ’nother swing. Goodbye little slide that goes reaw fast.” After every piece of playground equipment and the sand, yes, the sand, heard Kevin’s goodbyes, I loaded him in the stroller and we started back to our house. We lived probably a mile from the park, so it was a good 15-20 minute walk. Usually good.

After about five minutes, my stomach reminded me that I didn’t have much more time before I turned into an evil, hungry human. I decided to jog and push Kevin’s stroller. After all, I had seen other people run while pushing a stroller. Now, I know his stroller had one wall-eyed wheel and was not an officially sanctioned “running/jogging stroller,” but I still decided to give it a shot. I took off in a trot and he scraped his feet on the pavement — a definite drag on our progress. “Put your feet up, Kevin!” He did for a minute, and I ran, er, jogged the best I could. The stroller was hard to maneuver, but would work OK for a minute before a rock or dent in the road hampered our mission.

“Go faster, Mommy!” the foot-dragger squealed.

At this point, I was feeling pretty good. Confident. Upbeat. I thought I must look really cool to all the cars passing by. Surely they would think, “Wow, there’s a woman running with her son in the stroller . . . in this heat too . . . she must be dedicated . . . wait, why are his feet hanging out like that? Is that a child or a teenager in that stroller? Hmmm . . . awkward.”

Then, I tripped over a rock or maybe a stripe painted on the road, or maybe my own feet. And fell.

HARD.

Face down. On the pavement.

Kevin squealed. The car that just passed us squealed.

“Are you OK?” an extremely handsome military-looking guy yelled out his window.

“Yes, just fine, thank you,” I murmured, utterly embarrassed, avoiding eye contact, pebbles imprinted in my forehead.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The car sped off and I stood up too quickly and blacked out for a few seconds and sat back down on the pavement again.

“Mommy! What’s wrong?” Kevin cried.

I couldn’t answer or get up for a minute or so. I felt like I was going to throw up, and the trees above me were spinning. I had the stroller whirlies.

Finally, the haze diminished enough that Kevin and the stroller and I could wobble the last half mile back to the house. My ankle and face were killing me and sweet 3-year-old Kevin, clearly a bit traumatized, kept asking if I had died and come back to life — which I eventually did, as a cheese quesadilla.

So, do not think you’re cool running in the summer heat, showing off mad skills you don’t possess with a shaky stroller filled with farmers market vegetables and an overgrown 3-year-old. The hot slide is the cooler option.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a mom, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Common Sense Direction

In the age of satellite positioning

By Deborah Salomon

“I don’t have GPS.”

The young woman whom I asked for directions to her house sounded startled, even shocked. I could have announced “I don’t wear underwear,” with less reaction.

GPS is my line in the sand. I don’t have it because I don’t need it. I own a functioning brain — not that getting from point A to point B is rocket science. I have experience. Also what used to be called a “sense of direction,” meaning the most-times ability to point north or south, east or west, by looking up, by memory, or by instinct.

I figure this might come in handy if the Russians or the Martians capture the satellite that tells folks to turn right at McDonald’s.

“So, how do you find places?” she asked.

“A map.”

Not online maps. Paper maps that convey the bigger picture. A map lays out where you start, where you end, everything in between — especially useful when traveling long distances. A map allows selecting alternate routes, or scenic detours. A map doesn’t malfunction, leaving you lost and desperate, especially in an area lacking cell service.

This, like everything else (according to Freud), started in childhood.

New York City is laid out on a grid, with numbered streets. A subway map and a modest sense of direction suffice.

When I was 10 we moved to Asheville and, for the first time, we had a car. Trips were few but before each my job was to pore over maps (free at gas stations, along with windshield washes) to plot the journey. Once underway, while my parents bickered over this and that, I navigated. What fun! I learned that a legend wasn’t necessarily a folk tale, that highways were represented in different colors according to number of lanes and access, and that one inch represented X number of miles so I could estimate distance with a ruler.

How important I felt.

At 16 I became both navigator and driver, often alone, on short trips and long. Before leaving I would plot my course and write the steps on white cardboard with black marker, to prop against the dashboard. I still do, whether the distance be 60 miles or 600. When MapQuest happened, I tried it. You wouldn’t believe how often it’s incomplete or just plain wrong, whereas the stars and planets, on a clear night, aren’t.

I never got that far but gained new appreciation for explorers who sailed uncharted waters with planetary guidance.

Yo, Columbus! Way to go, Marco Polo!

Magnetic compasses weren’t invented until two centuries B.C.; still, you don’t see ancient Egyptians or Greeks wandering around, lost.

Getting back to GPS … seems like certain electronics rob us of actions that develop senses and sensibilities. Nowhere is this more evident than at an airport, where 99 percent of passengers are hooked up to one or more devices, thus missing the world’s greatest people-watching. Security personnel warn “See something, say something.” Fat chance. I’d wager Brangelina and their six kids — let alone a suspicious man wearing hoodie and dark glasses, carrying a rifle case — could waltz through LaGuardia unnoticed.

Fitbit, the latest must-have, may create an obsession, like people who weigh themselves after every meal. Here, gimme your wrist. I’ll take your pulse, and you can too, with a watch that has a second hand and, after a little experience, not even that.

Of course I can’t count your steps, order pizza, spit out text messages or baseball scores.

GPS has also withered another skill: giving directions. Few folks estimate distance correctly. “Go about a mile down the road and turn left at the school bus crossing,” was actually less than half a mile with nothing indicating a school bus which, in that neck of the woods, stops at almost every house. Then, “go right at the church on the corner” in a rural area where every corner has one church, sometimes two.

Traveling snowy, muddy Vermont backroads I was directed to “take the dirt road at the Y and we’re about five minutes from the burned-out barn.”

Five minutes at what speed?

I can’t count the times I’ve been directed to turn the wrong way onto a one-way street. Rotaries are impossible: “It’s the second exit not counting the one you’re at.”

Compared to these, the classic “bridge too far” seems helpful.

“Sense” of direction is different, mostly instinct. Animals travel miles to get home. I once captured a pesky raccoon and relocated him a few miles away, in a lovely wooded area. The next morning, he was, as usual, raiding the bird feeder. Can you retrace your steps, in reverse, in an unfamiliar city? Does your brain automatically absorb and store landmarks? A disturbing study just published indicates that the earliest sign of Alzheimer’s might be disorientation and inability to navigate familiar environs. We are told the importance of keeping the brain alert as we age. Maybe that means besides watching Jeopardy! we shouldn’t delegate common functions to electronic surrogates.

Not that they’re all bad. Heaven knows, without the horn beeper on my car key I’d be walking home from the supermarket just about every day.

But at least I’d know which way to walk.  PS

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

July Books

Kick back reading

By Romey Petite

Fierce Kingdom, by Gin Phillips

While watching her 4-year-old son Lincoln play, Joan’s only care is making sure they both make it out of the zoo before closing time. When she hears a loud bang, Joan tries not to panic, but secretly fears the worst. By the time she and her son spot the bodies and the gunman, it is too late to make a break for the exit gate. Instead, they retreat deeper into the zoo among the animal habitats to stay one step ahead of the danger. Between Joan’s wry wit and love for her son, Phillips brings to life not only a powerful character, but a compelling one, too. Joan will do anything to protect both Lincoln and the fantasies he inhabits — worlds of myths and monsters — with a kind of self-sacrifice that may cost her life. Readers will find Phillips’ Fierce Kingdom nearly impossible to put down and a thrilling ride from beginning to end.

Caesar’s Last Breath, by Sam Kean

The best-selling author of The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist’s Thumb returns with a breathtaking macro and micro look at the very air we breathe. Kean’s sense of wonderment is as infectious as an airborne contagion, taking readers on a delightful stroll down the periodic table, through the chaotic chemical interactions at work in our atmosphere, and delving into some of the strangest theories ever posited — cloud seeding, spontaneous combustion, and Soviet-era weather wars. Inviting us to be conscious of the ever-flowing currents traveling in and out of our bodies, Kean points out the ramifications of the laws of conservation implied in the title Caesar’s Last Breath, postulating that both the past and the future, the living and the dead, are all contained in the very molecules around us.

What We Lose, by Zinzi Clemmons

Thandi’s visit to her father to give him the news that she is pregnant and intends to marry her boyfriend, Peter, becomes the framing device for this debut novel. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi can never know her ancestral home of Johannesburg — not as her late mother did. While her father’s family is from New York, Thandi’s mother’s mixed-race South African heritage remains both inaccessible to her and yet, ubiquitous. Her story is strung together from heartfelt anecdotes, vignettes, dreams and snapshots, creating a kind of map. Readers will appreciate the way Clemmons’ juxtaposition of prose and pictures has a kind of piercing immediacy that seizes readers and brings them along as she searches for closure and awaits her baby’s birth.

My Sister’s Bones, by Nuala Ellwood

A dedicated and decorated foreign correspondent, Kate Rafter has made it her mission to report on the stories of ordinary people who find themselves confronting the ongoing tragedy of war. After receiving news of her mother’s death, Kate is forced to leave the chaos in Syria and return to the vestiges of a home she has avoided. Kate reconnects with her lingering alcoholic sister, Sally — her abusive father’s favorite daughter. She begins experiencing hallucinations, encountering a child in a neighbor’s garden who claims to have died in Aleppo. As Sally continues to contradict Kate’s memories of what did and didn’t happen during their childhood, Kate begins to doubt herself. Uncertain if these visions are related to PTSD from the horrors she’s seen in Syria or if she is actually in contact with a ghost, she begins to question her own objectivity. Readers will find Ellwood’s debut novel calling to them as they attempt to satisfy their craving for a psychological page-turner worthy of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train.

All We Shall Know, by Donal Ryan

The author of The Spinning Heart, winner of the Guardian First Book Award and the EU Prize for Literature returns with a new novel about secrets in a small town. Melody Sheen, a 33-year-old tutor, is pregnant by one of her students, a 17-year-old “traveller” boy named Martin Toppy. Immediately abandoned by her equally unfaithful husband, Pat, Melody’s journey in the months leading up to the baby’s arrival involves dealing with unusual bouts of nausea as well as confronting feelings once-buried that begin to resurface — desolation, vindictiveness and remorse. Worst of all, Melody finds herself haunted not just by the fragments of her fraying marriage, but something far worse, her feelings of guilt over the death of her girlhood best friend, Breedie Flynn. Ryan has crafted All We Shall Know with a dark, dispassionate, premeditated cadence, wrenching readers through each revelation with a knifelike twist.

The Stars in Our Eyes: The Famous, the Infamous, and Why We Care Way Too Much About Them, by Julie Klam

Take a wistful foray into the nature of celebrity, how stars are born, and what our culture chooses to celebrate with the The New York Times best-selling author of You Had Me at Woof, Love at First Bark, Friendkeeping and Please Excuse My Daughter. Klam approaches the topic of celebrity with a restrained fanaticism, acknowledging the absurd way fame and the paparazzi pervert both public and private lives — spinning snapshots of stars into the fantasies of mere mortals. Klam doesn’t stop at the pantheon of old and new Hollywood. She approaches the topic of viral video stars, Vine and Instagram personalities. Self-aware and decidedly droll, The Stars in Our Eyes is filled with Cinderella stories, colorful quotes, hearsay tales, and the near-misses of brushes with fame from Quinn Cummings, Harry Shearer, Ringo Starr, Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Jennifer Aniston, Justin Bieber, Mick Jagger, P. Diddy, George Carlin, and Princess Diana, among others

The Almost Sisters, by Joshilyn Jackson

Leia Birch Briggs is a 38-year-old comic book writer and artist with a brand-new book deal and a baby on the way. Commissioned to write and draw an origin tale for one of her characters, she finds her life in synchronicity, embarking on her own coming home story. Leia has a go-with-the-flow attitude — she met her baby’s father at a comic book convention and doesn’t remember much about him except that he was dressed as Batman. Now, Leia has to make the announcement to her traditional Southern family. Before she can break the news, she receives word of a complication, the dissolution of her stepsister Rachel’s seemingly happy marriage of 16 years. After they are reunited, the pair sets about cleaning the old Victorian house belonging to their Grandmother Birchie, who suffers from dementia. In the attic they find the relics of a ghastly murder — a secret dating back to the Civil War. Throughout The Almost Sisters, the best-selling author of Gods in Alabama displays the chemistry of her word choice, comedic timing and a discerning eavesdropper’s ear.

Children’s Books

By Angie Talley

Refugee, by Alan Gratz

At first seeking to remain invisible to those in power but eventually determined to speak out — to do something — to stand up for human kind, Refugee tells the story of three children: Josef, fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939; Isabel, escaping Castro’s Cuba in 1994; and Mahmoud, seeking refuge from the horrors of Syria is 2015. Alan Gratz, the critically acclaimed author of the N.C. Middle School Battle of the Books title Prisoner B 3087, wildly popular with readers ages 12-16, will be at The Country Bookshop at 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 29. Refugee is available for pre-order and will be published on July 25. Ages 12 and up.

Raymond, by Yann and Gwendal LeBec

Raymond the dog is just your regular family pet until, one day, he thinks, couldn’t he just … sit at the table, go to the movies, get a job, go out for a cappuccino? Soon Raymond begins to leave all his canine ways behind, and so do all the other dogs in town. But is Raymond’s new gig all work and no play? He doesn’t even have time for family dinner! Maybe, just maybe, Raymond misses the dog’s life. Comedic and genuine, this tale about appreciating the simpler things in life reminds us all that work can wait — after all, there are more important things (like getting your ears scratched in just the right place). Ages 3-6.

Summer of Lost and Found, by Rebecca Behrens

When city girl Nell is forced to spend her summer in North Carolina, she becomes involved with the centuries-old mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Her “boring” vacation turns into an adventure she never could have imagined. Ages 10-12.

Saturday with Daddy, by Dan Andreasen

For little elephant, Saturday with Daddy is the best day of the week.  With a trip to the hardware store, a cookout in the backyard, Frisbee tossing and an end-of-day nap in the hammock, what could be a better way to spend a day? Ages 2-4.  PS

Party Like It’s 1548

Weymouth Woods is home to the oldest longleaf pine in America — heck, maybe the entire world. Oh, the history that big ol’ pine tree has witnessed.

Photographs by Tim Sayer

So, what do you get someone who just turned 469? It’s not as simple as when Robert Wuhl walks to the mound in Bull Durham and advises his players that “well, uh . . . candlesticks always make a nice gift.” At 469 it’s probably time to downsize, not accumulate more stuff. Besides, when the oldest longleaf pine started growing in the back 40 of Weymouth Woods, baseball hadn’t even been invented. OK, it may not be the oldest longleaf pine anywhere but it’s the oldest one that’s been measured and it’s right here and, well, 469 is still 469 no, matter how you, excuse the expression, cut it.

When this thing started growing Shakespeare wasn’t even a twinkle in Falstaff’s eye. It started sprouting 39 years before the Lost Colony got lost and has hung around long enough to have its own GPS coordinates. It was hail and hearty 170 years before Blackbeard got blown out of the water; 225 years before the ladies of Edenton threw their own revolutionary tea party; 317 years before Sherman marched through; 355 years before the Wright brothers got airborne on the Outer Banks; 366 years before Babe Ruth got his nickname in Fayetteville; and 447 years before the Carolina Panthers got beat in their very first game by the Atlanta Falcons, in overtime, of course. In lieu of gifts, we arranged a small, intimate gathering. These are just a few of the invited guests this ancient tree could have impacted over the centuries, if only it had the chance.

17th Century

Sir Isaac Newton

Who says Newton was inspired by an apple falling in his mother’s garden in their home in Lincolnshire, England? The mathematical genius never wrote about it, though accounts of him mentioning apples and trees and whatnot to a friend do exist. As the cantankerous old boy aged, it seems the apple anecdote was polished just a bit more with each successive telling. We, however, think it’s just as likely one of the most famous eureka moments in science could have been inspired by a falling pine cone. Eddie Meacham, who has been dealing in the laws of man for 33 years rather than the laws of physics, took a lunch break from Van Camp, Meacham & Newman PLLC to get hit on the head.

18th Century

Betsy Ross

Legend has it the young, beautiful, widowed seamstress convinced General George Washington that the five-pointed star was easier to cut and stitch than the six-pointed one the powdered wig set had in mind. However, there’s nothing in the historical record to indicate that the pine cone had been definitively ruled out. Betsy was just one of several Philadelphia flag makers but, thanks to her grandson about 100 years after the Declaration of Independence, she grabbed all the old glory. Melissa Murphy, a local seamstress whose business, Banana Peels, makes hooded towels, burp rags, bibs, etc., provided a stitch in time for us. We’ll leave it to her grandson to embellish the tale in a century or so.

19th Century

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

For those who haven’t had their fill of Russian fiddling just yet, Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer, a card-carrying member of The Mighty Handful (Russian composers known as The Five) and the creator of the “Flight of the Bumblebee,” which is the fastest minute in music on the 19th century side of Prince. Mac Wood, a Scotland County native who had a distinguished seven-and-a-half year military career of his own and is a massage therapist at Sandhills Therapeutic Effects, managed to keep his bow from setting his beard on fire when we slowed the pace just a little to the Flight of Pine Beetle. Or maybe it should be Pine Beatle.

Vincent Van Gogh

Oh, sure, he’s done wheat fields and crows and starry nights and sunflowers, but we’re pretty sure, hidden away in someone’s basement, are his masterful series of pine tree paintings, every bit as hauntingly aching and tortured as a bunch of irises. This bit of pulp fiction would be grist for the mill of the anguished artistic soul. Our photographer Tim Sayer has stepped into the role for us. We could tell you how he managed to both take the picture and be in the picture but, then, we’d have to cut your ear off.

20th Century

The Embers

As a card-carrying senior member of a forest of longleaf pine that once covered 90 million acres from Sandhills to Coastal Plain, why wouldn’t there be a place for a little beach music and some shagging at a summer party? Michael Gibson, Adam Smith, Sam Schneiderman and Reed Taws stand in as The Embers to give us a controlled burn.

21st Century

Steve Jobs

Because he was on an all-fruit diet? That’s why a company worth something in the neighborhood of $750 billion — started in a garage by three guys, one of whom was a notoriously difficult human being who wore black mock turtlenecks, Levi 501s and New Balance jogging shoes — is named for a fruit? Surely, Pine cone would have been an equally good option. Brady Beck, North Carolina’s Southern Piedmont management biologist and a nature photographer, shows why there is absolutely no reason we’re not all talking on our iCones today.  PS

Cheap and Cheerful

Vinho Verde for cool summer sipping

By Robyn James

When the thermostat goes off the chart in the summer what is the top adult refresher to reach for in the wine world? The Portuguese have a lock on it — Vinho Verde!

Vinho Verde, translating to “green wine” or “young wine,” is Portugal’s day drinking low alcohol quaffer. It can be red, white or rosé, but the majority of what’s sold is the white, and it definitely needs to be consumed in its youth.

Vinho Verde is a grape growing region in Portugal with proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the inland Mediterranean region giving the grapes a lip-smacking saline influence.

Practically the entire population grows alvarinho grapes (same as Spanish Albariño) and they are a beautiful and unusual sight to see. The vines are trained to grow in trees or pergolas as a cover crop for vegetables on the ground underneath, protected by the grapes from the pounding sun. Pickers have to mount ladders when it’s time for harvest, and the grapes are usually rushed to a large community cooperative to go through fermentation and get a shot of CO2.

There are no oak barrels, no secondary fermentations and no aging. It’s so cheap to grow and produce you will be hard pressed to find a bottle over $11. Generally, they are priced between $7 and $11.

This is the wine industry’s gin and tonic for hot weather. With high acidity the wines are fresh, crisp and fizzy, with great minerality. They are perfectly refreshing on their own, but also make a great food pairing with seafood, especially cold shrimp or seafood salads.

Octave Vinho Verde is a new favorite on the market. At about $8, this wine is a tongue tickler with citrus and green apple notes. The bubbles give a great punch, and the color is practically crystal clear. With only 9 percent alcohol, you can treat yourself to a number of glasses.

Arca Nova is a rare player in the Vinho Verde region. A family-owned winery, all the grapes are estate grown and picked. There’s a little more going on texturally here and the wine is crisp, fresh and effervescent, with notes of newly cut grass. It’s at the top of the line, selling for about $11, so indulge yourself.

Vinhas Altas makes a delicious, pale rosé Vinho Verde from espadeiro grapes. Only 10.5 percent alcohol, this fizzy treat has light notes of strawberries and a pleasant floral quality. At about $8, this is a great match for Asian cuisine and summer salads.

Casal Garcia does make a Vinho Verde that goes through a secondary natural fermentation to give it lots of bubbles. Casal Garcia Sparkling Meio Seco is produced from loureiro and avinto grapes. Super refreshing on its own, it’s also the perfect low-cost mixer for a mimosa, coming in at about $7.

So, grab the picnic basket, head to the pool or the beach, but don’t forget the cooler of Vinho Verde — it’s a must have summer beverage.  PS

Robyn James is a certified sommelier and proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at robynajames@gmail.com.