Simple Life

The Stolen Flower Child

Love, loss and living things

By Jim Dodson

On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a clear spring morning in my tiny corner of the planet, I was out early planting a fig tree in the side garden — my primary hideout even before a killer virus came to town — when I witnessed an enchanting scene of discovery.

An elegant gray-haired woman and a toddler on wobbly legs came slowly down the street hand in hand. The woman was about my age. I guessed the little dude might be her grandson. 

They paused at the edge of my garden. The woman pointed to a birdbath and a pair of busy bird feeders hanging over flowering shrub roses. Several finches were at the feeder and two cardinals were taking morning dips in the birdbath. Bees were circulating through blooming sage. Spring was alive and buzzing.

The little dude dropped the woman’s hand and wobbled straight into the garden for a closer look at the action.

The woman followed close behind, keeping a maternal hand ready to catch him if he fell. The birds didn’t appear the slightest bit perturbed by the pair’s intrusion, and neither was the gardener — for what good is a garden if living creatures don’t pay a visit, be it birds, bees or boys?

Indeed, at one point, the little guy tripped and tumbled over. He didn’t cry, however. He pushed himself back to his feet and giggled, holding out a fistful of my good garden dirt to share with his companion.

She made a delighted show of accepting his special Earth Day gift. Together they examined something in the palm of her hand, perhaps a big wiggly earthworm. My garden is full of them.

How wise she was to encourage this new citizen of the Earth to get dirty in a garden. Once upon a time, when people lived much closer to the soil, Nature was regarded as an essential teacher of the young, a maternal presence used in the service of myths, legends and fairy tales to convey important lessons about survival in a wild and unforgiving world. Perhaps the handsome older woman knew this. Perhaps, given the enchantment of the moment, she actually was Little Dude’s fairy grandmother.

In any case, as I watched this tender scene unfold, leaning on a shovel in my side yard, two thoughts came to mind.

One was a line from a poem that I had commited to memory decades ago, “The Stolen Child” by Irish poet William Butler Yeats

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

The other was a powerful flashback to the enchanted young woman who introduced me to this poem and changed my life, 50 years ago to the day.

*   *   *

Her name was Kristin.

We grew up attending the same church and sang together in the youth choir, but she never really looked my way because she was a year older and several lifetimes wiser, a beautiful cheerleader who became a wise and spirited flower child.

During the autumn of my junior year in high school, however, she turned to me after choir practice and wondered if I might give her a ride home. On the way home, she informed me that she’d ditched her college boyfriend and wondered, with a teasing laugh, if we should begin dating. I had a new Chevy Camaro from money I saved up from mowing lawns and teaching guitar. I thought she just liked my car.

What she saw in me at that moment is still hard to say. I was such a straight arrow kid, an Eagle Scout who grew up camping and fishing and was more at home in the woods than the city. Once upon a time, I’d even briefly been a member of the local chapter of Young Republicans and shaken Richard Nixon’s hand, though I didn’t dare let this out until our second or third date.

“That’s OK,” she said with a laugh, “I think the universe sent me to wake you up and save you from the Republicans.” 

Perhaps it was our shared passion for the outdoors that created such a powerful bond. She loved to hunt for wildflowers and visit public gardens where she could sit and read poetry or study her lines for a play. She even walked golf courses with me doing the same. Yeats and Walt Whitman were her favorite poets. Because of her, I fancied Yeats and Whitman too.

I was 17 on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, though I cannot tell you much about the rally we attended in a public park after school that Wednesday. There was a good crowd, lots of posters and energy, a bevy of passionate speakers warning about the dangers of air and water pollution to future generations. Someone had hauled a rusted heap to the rally site, as I recall, and protesters took turns gleefully bashing the gas-guzzler with a sledgehammer — or maybe this was a subsequent protest we attended together. In any case, I was grateful we’d parked my almost-new Camaro well away from the scene.

I recently learned from the earthday.org website that the first Earth Day protest “inspired 20 million Americans” — at the time, 10 percent of the total population of the United States — to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums “to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development that had left a growing legacy of serious human health impacts.”

The site goes on to note that the first Earth Day led to some significant steps by year’s end: the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other environmental firsts including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. Ironically, Richard Nixon signed these pieces of legislation into law. He deserved a handshake for this.

“Two years later,” the website adds, “Congress passed the Clean Water Act, followed by the Endangered Species Act — laws that protected millions of men, women and children from disease and death as well as hundreds of species from extinction.”

In 1990, 200 million people in 141 countries mobilized to make recycling and alternative energy sources primary objectives of Earth Day activism. “Today,” the site concludes, “Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior.” And create a sustainable planet. For me, the best part of that first local rally was when Kristin read Yeats’ “The Stolen Child,” a poem that appeared in his first poetry collection in 1889. The theme plays off loss of childlike innocence against the unmentioned backdrop of a world being turned upside down by the social upheavals of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Yeats grew up in beautiful County Sligo where folklore and legends of fairies stealing children were commonplace, a subject that deeply interested the poet for much of his career.

In the end, the innocent child is lured away from the familiar comforts of home to a world far removed from the one he knows and loves — stolen away, in the end, to a place that is both wild but also faintly sinister.

On some level, the message is an allegorical plea not to abandon the beauty and challenges of real world, seduced by an illusionary longing to leave troubles behind. Over the year and a half we were together, Kristin opened my eyes about so many things in this world — poetry, art, music, the power of an open mind and the spiritual connectedness of every living creature.

Whenever we debated politics — I was still something of a half-hearted Republican — she joked that she might end up becoming my Maud Gonne, the  23-year-old English heiress and ardent Irish Nationalist Yeats met in 1889 and proposed to — without success — at least three times. She became the poet’s unrequited love and lifelong haunting. In a way, Kristin became mine — or at least my Stolen Flower Child.

We agreed to part when she went off to college in the mountains. The separation was my suggestion. I had a cool Camaro and a silly notion that I needed “space” to date around “before I settled down.” The decision was one I soon came to regret.

Two years later, we got back together. For three October weekends in a row, I drove six hours across the state to reconnect with my first love. She was soon to graduate with degrees in social work and drama, and was being considered for an understudy role in London. I was trying to decide between becoming an English teacher or a journalist. She helped convince me that writing was my proper path.

On Sunday night, October 25, 1973, we parted having made a plan to go to England together someday soon and see what life would yield. Kristin went to the steak house where she worked as weekend hostess and I drove six hours back to school. Later that evening, three young teenagers entered the restaurant to rob patrons, held a gun to the head of the hostess and pulled the trigger.

*   *   *

As I watched the wise fairy grandmother and Little Dude resume their walk down the block, hand in dirty hand, I went back to planting my young fig tree, marveling how quickly half a century had passed. I also wondered, on this important day in the life of the planet, what sort of world Little Dude would soon inherit.

Ironically, just days before, a gutted Environmental Protection Agency removed the last regulations on air and water pollution in America, part of a systematic dismantling of the sweeping gains in environmental protection that had taken place over half a century, at a time when the vast majority of scientists warn the Earth is facing perilous consequences due to climate inaction. Among other things, the coronavirus pandemic has been traced to human encroachment into formerly wild places where Ebola, SARS and other killer viruses were born. Experts also warn that the world’s population of insects — the basis of our own food chain — is nearly half what it was the year of the first Earth Day.

As for me, it took almost two decades to speak of my own personal tragedy. A final golf trip with my father to England and Scotland when he was dying allowed me to finally open up about that dark October. It proved to be my second great awakening.

Today, I understand that the world is indeed full of sorrows, but thanks to the gifts my stolen flower child gave me, I understand that the power of love is the real magic of life on this planet, not to mention the importance of keeping an open mind while celebrating the spiritual connectedness of every living creature.

I sometimes feel her presence — keeping an eye on my progress, I suspect — especially when I’m in the garden.  PS

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

Hometown

Southern Cornucopia

Out of Clorox but loaded with ketchup

By Bill Fields

Going to the grocery store these days, even in fraught times when being on the lookout for Clorox or coughs can cause a headache, it’s hard not to marvel at what is there.

So many options, so different from the way things used to be.

I was reminiscing with Dianne, one of my older sisters, and recalled a meal she cooked for me when I was 10. I felt as if I’d gone to another country instead of to Winston-Salem. It was my first lasagna.

That layered deliciousness wasn’t the only culinary highlight of my weeklong visit. One night supper was tacos, which weren’t on our household’s menu growing up either.

Oh, we ate well. Mom and Dad cooked tasty, filling meals. But they were predictable and limited, the way mealtime was for most families of the time and place.

I was reminded of this upon finding a grocery list, circa the early 1970s, in Dad’s handwriting — because Mom worked too, he often did the shopping — that he no doubt had tucked into his shirt pocket and set out for the Big Star.

Sugar & Tea. Rolls. Barbeque 2 LBS. Sliced Peaches. Chicken. Ribs. Barbeque Sauce. Roast. Milk. Baking Potatoes. Sausage.

Although Dad liked to cook out in any season, I’m guessing that was a summertime trip to the store. Given that Big Star was across the street from Memorial Field, you had to be alert for foul balls in the parking lot. My friend Alvin Davis’ mom, Marjorie, likely checked us out. Two items that didn’t need to be on a list were bagged up too — a six-pack of Budweiser and a carton of Salems. If it had been a good day for me, I would have slipped some Cokes and potato chips into our cart without pushback.

On another day, the list would have included iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, baked beans, applesauce, fish sticks, instant grits, Taster’s Choice coffee, white bread, bananas and hot dogs. There was one kind of mustard, the bright yellow kind. If it was around Thanksgiving or Christmas, apple rings and olives would make the cut.

Chow mein or pizza out of the store-bought kits were as exotic as we got. The market was sparse with ethnic foods, although there was more variety in the aisles of Big Star than the downtown Colonial Store it supplanted, still the only grocery store I’ve seen shaded by a magnolia tree. We weren’t an A&P family, except for Jane Parker pies during the holidays.

There were variations of cuisine by families, depending on their roots. The kitchen of our neighbors, Italian-Americans from New York, was alive with smells different from ours, of spices and sauces I wouldn’t really get to know for years.

My tastes broadened during college, practically from my first week on campus in Chapel Hill. At one orientation function, there were catered Blimpie sandwiches. I’m not sure if it was the oregano or the oil and vinegar, but it was unlike any sandwich I’d ever had. Two independent places in town, Sadlack’s and Hoagie’s Heroes, had even better offerings. My grilled cheese standard had long been from the buttery skillet of my friend Chuck’s mom, but it didn’t take very long in first semester to discover Hector’s Greek version, on pita bread with tzatziki. To be reminded of home, I only needed to have dinner at the Porthole, where the menu was filled with Southern staples.

Within a few years, I would enjoy my first jalapeño (Lubbock, Texas), lobster (Boston), bagel (New York) and fish-that-wasn’t-fried (Jacksonville Beach, Florida).

Everything is available almost everywhere now, choices we have even if we don’t need them. I don’t miss potted meat or fruit cocktail, to name two canned goods I regularly ate growing up, but we would be just fine without nine flavors of ketchup.  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.

Birdwatch

King of the Forest

Listen for the unmistakable call of the pileated woodpecker

By Susan Campbell

One of the largest and most distinctive birds of the forest, the pileated woodpecker, is unmistakable. Its dark body, white wing patches and red crest make it seem almost regal, and it wouldn’t be wrong to call it the king or queen of the forest.

As with most of our woodpecker species, they are nonmigratory. In search of food, however, they do roam widely, sometimes in a footprint several square miles in size. Pileateds can be found all across our state, anywhere there are large, old trees. Whether you pronounce their name PIE-lee-ated or PILL-ee-ated may depend on what part of the state you come from. Webster’s says either is correct, with PIE-lee-ated being more common. Pileated, by the way, refers to the bird’s bright-red crest from the Latin pileatus meaning “capped.”

However you say it, such a sizable bird is bound to make a loud noise whether foraging or calling. Indeed pileateds do get your attention. You’re most likely, however, to hear the distinctive booming echo that comes when they work on a hollow tree or the thudding that comes as they pound their way through thick bark. Although pileateds do not sing, they make a distinctive piping sound, similar to a flicker, which tends to end in a crescendo. They may also employ a sort of “wuk” call as a way of staying in contact with one another as they move about the forest. Although males are the ones that typically make the most racket, both sexes let intruders know when their territory has been compromised. Pairs are monogamous and raise a set of up to five young in a season.

When nesting, pileateds create oblong cavity openings in trees that are quite distinctive. Males choose a dead or dying tree in late winter and do most of the excavation. Females will help, especially toward the end of the process. The nest is unlined, consisting simply of a layer of wood chips at the bottom of the cavity. Deep holes that pileateds create are not reused once the young fledge. So these openings into dead or dying trees provide key habitat for not only other species of woodpeckers but also for snakes, lizards and mammals that require holes for some part of their life cycle.

Pileateds, of course, tend to thrive when feeding on insects and other invertebrates in dead and dying wood. But they are opportunistic, taking fruits and nuts as well. In the fall, it’s not uncommon to catch a pileated hanging upside down on a dogwood branch, stripping it of berries. Given their large appetites, adults may divide the fledglings for the first several months as they teach the youngsters to forage. It may take six months or more before the young birds are on their own.

If your bird feeder is within a pileated pair’s territory, you may be lucky enough to attract one or more to sunflower seed or (more likely) to a suet feeder or mealworms. As long as they have room to perch or have something to cling onto, they may not be shy about becoming a regular visitor, especially during the late winter or early spring as breeding season gets underway and insects are less abundant.

These big, beautiful birds are, from what we can tell, doing well here in North Carolina. Sadly their extinct cousins, the ivory-billeds, who were more specialized and inhabited only bottomland forest, suffered a sad fate. They did not fare so well with the arrival of Europeans and the associated clear-cutting of their habitat early in the last century. But that is a different story for another month . . .  PS

Susan would love to hear from you. Send wildlife sightings and photos to susan@ncaves.com.

Hooked

A fly-fishing son of Pinehurst reels in mountain adventures

By Ron Rhody

Cape Lookout, that southern tip of North Carolina’s barrier islands, reachable only by boat — remote, rugged, and most appealing of all, unspoiled.

A couple of hours past midnight.

The beach deserted.

The only sounds that of surf breaking on sand. The only light the faint glow the stars provide.

Kneeling in the surf, a man and a boy, father and son.

The boy, beaming, unhooking a 46-inch red fish, spreading his arms, lifting it triumphantly.

The man beaming just as broadly. A trophy catch taken on rod and reel in the surf of the Outer Banks early on a morning when less determined men are home in bed.

The man laughs, shakes his head appreciatively. “You’re good at this. If all else fails, you’ve got this to fall back on.”

Patrick Sessoms laughs, too. Though he loves it, has loved it since he first threaded bait on a hook as a grade-schooler and went trying for panfish in the little ponds around Pinehurst, fishing isn’t what he has in mind for a career.

He’s 17, just finishing his senior year at Pinecrest High School. There is a universe of dreams to pick from.

That boy who had a talent to fall back on if all else failed hasn’t fallen back on it. He’s grabbed it. And is in the process of creating one of the most successful fly-fishing guide services in the southern Appalachians.

Fly-fishing? The mountains of the southern Appalachians? 

A guide service — one of the most professionally challenging, physically demanding, hands-down competitive enterprises on the list of ways a man might make a living? 

Alone? Inexperienced?

That’s what a bright, well-educated, ambitious young man at the start of a career that could take him anywhere might choose to do? Go fishing?

Aw, come on.

It’s about an hour before daylight.

Patrick’s driving. We’re on a twisting two-lane road winding through the northern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains on our way from Boone, where Patrick lives now, to the South Holston. I’ve been told the South Holston is one of the finest tailwater trout fisheries east of the Mississippi. Big browns, enormous browns, lots of rainbow. I’m a recent transplant from California. I’m familiar with tailwaters. The world’s best are in the West.

There is a special quality to the dark of a mountain road in the hours before daylight — the blackest of black because all light of any kind has bled away, and all the warmth, and all that’s left is the cold.

We’ve seen no lights at all since clearing Boone, but we’re snug inside Patrick’s truck, and the drift boat trailing behind is riding smoothly, and the coffee in my Yeti mug is hot, and we’re getting acquainted, finding out about each other.

That’s one of the most important elements of this form of fishing, the connect.

We met only a short time ago in the parking lot at Patrick’s fly shop in Boone, where I piled out of my car in the morning dark and into his truck for the run to the river. A hello, a handshake, a let’s go. He has the build of a linebacker and a reassuring smile. We have over an hour’s drive to the South Holston and want to be on the water by first light. We’ll be spending the rest of the day in a drift boat. Two strangers. If the connect is good the day will be a fine one, regardless of how good the fishing is. If it isn’t, well . . . but this is going to be fine. He’s one of that rare breed of instantly likeable people — warm and amiable.

Patrick Sessoms is from Pinehurst.

The village sits on the bed of one of the ancient lakes formed thousands of years ago from Ice Age glacier melt. With a population of a little over 16,000, it is the largest in Moore County, and Moore County is the most affluent in the area, which is called, thanks to the glaciers’ leavings, the Sandhills. America’s premiere golf resort, the Pinehurst Resort and Country Club, home of the world-famous Pinehurst No. 2, is there. It’s rural, pastoral, uncrowded — a comfortably peaceful landscape of rolling meadows, stands of longleaf pines and sawgrass, the sort of place where the enchantments of the natural world can get in your blood.

The Sessoms have been in Moore County since the 1800s, carpenters and builders mostly. There are Sessoms homes and structures all over the county. Patrick’s father, Clay, built my home in Pinehurst. Patrick is fourth generation.

As a boy he roamed the woods, fished the little ponds and streams, learned the bird calls and when the redbuds would bloom. Became addicted to the outdoors. Don’t misapply the word. There are good addictions.

Episcopal Day School, Pinecrest High, National Honor Society, student government, cross-county runner, a winning member of the Sandhills Cycling Club regional competitive team, Eagle Scout.

Underscore Eagle Scout.

Cue serendipity.

The Eagle Scout rank is the highest achievement in the 2.4-million member Boy Scouts of America program. Candidates have to progress through five stages of development and earn 21 merit badges (proof of knowledge and competence in a wide range of life skills) to win it. Less than 4 percent do.

Patrick needed only one more. And chose the one just recently added to the program.

Fly-fishing.

This was an entirely new experience for a flat-country boy. Though he had been fishing since grade school, the implement was either a long cane pole sporting a length of monofilament and a bobber and barbed hook with live bait attached, or a spinning rod that could present either live bait or an artificial lure. Both worked in their place and for their targets. But, as Patrick was to learn, neither had the elegance, or demanded the skills, or generated the adrenalin rush that fly-fishing does.

He was, forgive the pun, hooked.

Not firmly at first. He was only 13 and in the Sandhills, and his options were limited to bass in Lake Pinehurst or panfish in the area’s farm ponds and streams.

The hook doesn’t really get set until he finds himself in Boone . . . his second try at college.

He had thought he would follow the familiar family path into building and construction and had enrolled as a construction engineering student at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

It didn’t take.

He didn’t like living in the city. He missed the outdoors. He found he was more interested in environmental matters than in building things, transferred to Appalachian State University in Boone, enrolled in its sustainable development program, the oldest program of its type in the country. It is focused on ensuring that the planet’s ability to provide the natural resources our societies need to survive and prosper are sustained.

That took. As did Boone.

A vibrant community with the main campus of Appalachian State at its center, Boone was small enough to be livable, had enough action to be cool without being annoying, and was smack in the heart of a Mecca for outdoors recreation — North Carolina’s high country, a seven county stretch of mountains and streams along the border with Tennessee.

There was a year-round smorgasbord of delights on offer there: hunting, skiing, hiking, mountain-biking, camping, kayaking, bird-watching, zip-lining, or just the simple pleasure of sitting and admiring sunsets soothed by bird song and the whisper of water in mountain streams . . . and some of the best trout fishing in the Southeast.

The only thing that did take at N.C. State was Meredith . . . Meredith Duyck, of Asheville.

By the time he made it to Boone, Patrick had mastered the fly rod. He could make the graceful cast, drop the fly gently on the spot of water he’d chosen so as not to startle his quarry, manage a drag-free draft to ensure his lure was moving at the same rate of speed as the current so that it would be seen as something natural, not suspect. Watch for the strike. Set the hook. Savor the fight.

Patrick began guiding while still a student at Appalachian State. He worked on weekends and off-hours from school for one of the local guide services. Found he was good at it. Found he had the personality and patience and the mastery of the skill. He had learned the waters and knew the holds where fish could be found. He could put his clients on fish and bring them home happy — even if they didn’t land anything, though that seldom happened.

He enjoyed it. They enjoyed it.

He began to wonder.

For some, fly-fishing is the apex of the sport-fishing skill. Its canon stretches back to 16th century England, where the art got its start among the English upper class. For years it was a relatively exclusive niche sport. There were ardent participants, but not too many, until Robert Redford put a fly rod in the hand of the young Brad Pitt on one of the most beautiful streams in the country and turned Norman McLean’s classic semi-autobiographical novel into the 1992 Academy Award movie A River Runs Through It.

Remarkably, the film struck a chord in the psyche of large swatches of the American population. It seemed to awaken a latent longing for the peace and beauty of the out-of-doors. All at once, fly-fishing was popular, or at the very least, fashionable. What better way to experience the great outdoors than with the graceful motion of a fly line uncurling over running water in the solitude of a mountain stream, and images of yourself, Brad Pitt-like, thigh-deep in a swift current with a big rainbow on the line?

Field & Stream magazine estimates there are roughly 10 million flyrodders in this country now, and their number is growing. According to the Outdoor Foundation’s latest report, the growth rate in 2017 was 17 percent. At least 5 million are rated as avid enthusiasts. Committed golfers will recognize the type. They fish as often as they can. Mastering the perfect cast is as technical and demanding as mastering the perfect golf swing. No one does either, but the desire is constant.

The competition for their business is intense. There are eight guide services in the Boone area alone.

So he’s finishing up at Appalachian State on the backside of the punishing recession of ’08-‘09. The economy is still staggering. Jobs are scarce. His graduating buddies are scrambling in a job market with few opportunities and little demand for their degrees. What few jobs are being found aren’t using their skills or paying decent wages. He finds that he’s making more money than many of them.

Guiding. Doing what he likes to do. Doing what he’s good at.

So, with graduation day in sight, in the teeth of that blooming gale, he decides to play the hand he’s holding. He launches Due South Outfitters. In Boone.

By himself.

He’s 21.

He has no experience as a businessman.

A full-fledged guide service is a business. It needs funding, equipment, operating capital. Patrick has little more than a drift boat, a truck, a fly rod and some flies. It needs bookkeeping and marketing. What does he know about that? Where does he find the time? If he’s not on the water, he’s not making money.

As word of mouth spreads among his regulars that he’s gone pro, his trip log starts to grow. His universe of clients expands. And keeps expanding. Satisfied clients are the best advertising.

In that first year after graduation he logs over 300 days on the water, scouting and guiding. He lives in his room, works out of his truck, pumps all he earns back into the business. Frugality becomes a mantra, sleep an ambition.

Fourteen-hour days are normal — eight hours on the water, three hours of preparation on either side getting there and getting back, setting the boat up and cleaning it up after, re-rigging rods and refreshing flies.

Not only are the hours long, the work is hard . . . physically hard. His loaded drift boat weighs 1,500 pounds. The anglers sit at the bow and stern and the guide in the middle with the oars. Not all that much effort is required to keep the boat moving in sync with the current, but when running rapids, or if there is a snag to be loosened, or a hold to be rowed back to against the current for another try at the rainbow that should have taken the fly but didn’t, the strength and skill required are considerable. Try that all day.

Soon, the demand is larger than one man can handle, and he begins to recruit. But he has a different paradigm in mind than the conventional guide service. He wants young men like himself — bright, upbeat, likeable — who he can teach and train in the manners and techniques he thinks makes the consummate guide and who share his commitment to, and respect for, the natural environment . . . a team of enthusiastic young pros who can meet the expectations of accomplished anglers on a quest for trophy fish, or give first-timers a day they’ll remember and want more of.

There are 14 of them now.

They are handpicked and personally trained by Patrick. All are accomplished fly-fishermen. They have the personality and the dependability that are the hallmark of top-flight guides and may be the best-educated team in the country. All are students or recent graduates of Appalachian State. They range in age from 17 to 26. Most are business majors or outdoor recreation majors. A few are in the construction management stream. There is one MBA.

The team specializes in float trips on the South Holston and the Watauga. These are side-by-side tailwaters that are productive year-round and boast fish counts of 4,000 to 6,000 per mile of stream. Only a mountain ridgeline separates the two.

In the spring and early fall, wade trips on the high country’s backwoods streams for native Appalachian brook trout and small-mouth bass become popular.

Whether drift boat or wading, Patrick and his team are enthusiastic teachers. They have first-timers laying casts that take fish after an hour or so of instruction at the start of a trip. Youngsters as young as 8 are increasingly showing up with a dad or an uncle on family outings. Women, too. The simple elegance of the cast and the tranquility of the settings seem to appeal to them.

The client base is broad and growing, ranging over most of the Southeast and edging northward. Much of this is due to the attraction of the high country as a tourist destination, but the adroit use of social media to raise awareness of Due South’s presence and services plays a major role.

Regular Facebook postings highlight catches and report on trips and results. YouTube videos offer advice on techniques and equipment. The website (duesouthoutfitters.com) has up-to- date information on stream conditions and information on how to book trips. There is even a podcast. These are millennials. They understand how to use the tool.

Patrick is expanding into retail now, adding a fly shop to the guide service. The shop is one of the best-stocked in the high country, certainly the best-stocked in Boone. Top-of-the-line stuff in hand to be inspected, tried out, decided on — not just pictures in a catalog. Rods, reels, waders, flies — the universe of gear and gadgets fly-fishermen need, want, or just can’t resist. A businessman’s instincts?

Even so, Patrick is still on the water himself regularly, guiding six to seven days a week, making sure he knows how the waters are fishing and where the action is. But this businessman thing, he’s taking to it.

Oh, about Meredith, Meredith Duyck, of Asheville.

She and Patrick met that freshman year at N.C. State. When he left for Boone, she stayed in Raleigh to finish the degree in business management and marketing she was working on. But the attraction didn’t fade. It was a long-distance romance. He took her fishing. She was smitten. He proposed on the Watauga on a favorite stretch just below the dam. They have a daughter now, Ruth, not quite 2, and Meredith, young mother and homemaker, is fly shop manager and Due South’s principal logistician. She is an ardent conservationist, past president of the local Trout Unlimited chapter, a mentor to women flyrodders, and shapes casts as graceful as the leader of the team.

Due South Outfitters is eight years old now.

Patrick is 29.

The business is thriving — put on hold during the recent COVID-19 lockdown, but back in action. The rivers are running strong and fresh, fish are feeding and growing, and the solace of a day in the arms of nature on a mountain stream has never been more healing.

Fly-fishing?

The mountains of the southern Appalachians? 

A guide service?

Damn right!  PS

Ron Rhody came to Pinehurst after a career as a journalist and corporate public relations executive. He’s writing novels now. His latest is due out in the early spring of 2021.

Southwords

Lost in Translation

And an accidental kidnapping

By Beth MacDonald

Speaking languages other than English has always been a dream of mine. It’s also always been a strong point of failure. I’ve tried. I’d love to put a language other than “Pig Latin” on my LinkedIn profile. I’m curious and love to travel. I’d also love to join the ranks of those people at parties who brag about being fluent in seven actual languages or at least one good dead one like Coptic (not something sarcastic like “Sailor Talk,” “Toddler” or “Dog Whisperer”).

In high school I took French, dreaming of the day I would visit Paris and chicly order a croissant with the perfect accent: “Un qua-san, see-voo-play.” I envisioned myself at a café table looking mysterious, without spilling any crumbs on my haute couture, looking like Brigitte Bardot. I’d elegantly smoke a cigarette with a fashionable long black opera holder. When I eventually made it to Paris I almost sent my high school teacher a postcard that said, “Thanks for nothing.” I couldn’t even order water. I tried. I couldn’t get the accent right or the article in front of it. Desperate, I even tried saying “agua,” remembering an old episode of Sesame Street when I saw a man crawling through a desert repeating that word over and over.

After standing at a café counter/desert for what seemed like an eternity, without a result, the woman waiting on me finally asked me, in English, if I wanted a bottle of sparkling or plain. Le sigh.

I moved to Italy in my 20s. I took some college-level Italian courses so I could communicate effectively with my counterparts in country for a job I’d accepted. I went to the same gas station every week, for four years, confidently asking for a pen to sign my NATO gas rations. One day a friend pointed out I wasn’t asking for a pen. I had been asking for an appendage. L’oops! I had to find another gas station after that horrific blunder.

Before my first business trip to Guatemala I tried to learn some basic phrases. Thankfully, I already knew how to ask for agua. My husband, Mason, had taken Spanish in high school and was much more successful with his knowledge of that language than mine of French (or Italian, for that matter). He’d also been to Central America on several occasions. We even had a fluent Spanish speaker on our team going with us; we should have been linguistically set.

Two days into our trip we found ourselves hopelessly lost trying to find a meeting point with colleagues. We stopped and asked a woman on the street for directions. Our interpreter couldn’t understand her; Mason was saying a few words in Spanish that sounded convincing. They even included some interpretive dance moves to help emphasize our urgency. I sat in the van with the rest of our crew, useless and confused.

Finally, after much deliberation regarding the fact that we needed to get to point A, someone said, “Get her in the van!” The woman somehow understood that and jumped in. I frantically checked my purse for candy. To me, that made sense. We had just kidnapped someone — in a van! Aren’t you supposed to give them free candy? We didn’t have an airbrushed wizard and unicorn on the side panel. I didn’t want her experience diminished. 

She sat in the back with me, smiling and pointing, speaking words I didn’t understand at all. The totality of my Spanish equaled “water, bathroom, please, and thank you.” It didn’t include, “Sorry for kidnapping you. We come in peace. Have a lollipop.” She was very good at designating turns and other various recommendations that we all assumed meant “straight” or “bear right.”

After several miles and many more turns I began to suspect we might have been kidnapped. I started nervously eating my own hard candy, chewing loudly to drown out the sound of my inner monologue going over numerous urban legends.

One of our team members was on her GPS app. “Is this right? I think we’re going the wrong way.” 

My wild imagination was overrun by the very real fact that all of this anxiety caused my deodorant to quit working in a warm van full of people. It was only a matter of time until I made that automobile smell like a bus in Bangladesh in July. Dios mio!

Finally we stopped at a mini-mall parking lot. The woman opened the van door, hopped out, and with a grateful and friendly, “Gracias!” held up her candy and waved goodbye. 

Silence shrouded the vehicle. Mason understood what happened. We dropped her off at the grocery store closest to her house, gave her candy, and saved her a bus fare. With a collective sigh of relief that we hadn’t caused an international incident, we looked at each other, looked at the grocery store, and went in. I needed deodorant.  PS

Beth MacDonald is a Southern Pines suburban misadventurer that likes to make words up. She loves to travel with her family, read everything she can, and shop locally for her socks.

Sporting Life

The Truth Is Out There

And so, I guess, is the wild turkey

By Tom Bryant

Ben Franklin once said the American eagle is “a bird of bad moral character, does not get his living honestly, steals food from a fish hawk and is too lazy to fish for himself.”

He described the American turkey as “a much more respectable bird, a true original native of America, a bird of courage.”

Old Ben was pitching the turkey as the nation’s national bird instead of the eagle, a bird with which he must have had an earlier conflict. I don’t know about eagles, since they were in seriously short supply during my years enjoying the great outdoors. But I have had some contact with the wild turkey, at some distance. Not planned by me, all the turkeys’ doing.

I grew up hunting the piney woods of eastern North Carolina, and the swamps and river bottoms of the low country of South Carolina. In my youngster years, when I went hunting, I wasn’t a specialist. If it was in season, it could end up in my hunting vest. I was partial to squirrels, doves, quail and ducks, but turkeys? They were as scarce as, at that time in my school learning, an “A” in algebra.

I heard rumors that they were still around but in short supply. My granddaddy had a turkey tail feather mount hanging in his study in the old plantation house in South Carolina. He often would reminisce about the times when low country swamp turkeys were plentiful enough to fill many a hunter’s Thanksgiving table. “No more today,” he said. “They’ve gone the way of the ivory bill woodpecker.”

As I grew older and became a little more sophisticated in my efforts afield, I leaned more and more toward hunting waterfowl, mainly ducks and geese. Any sportsman can tell you that it’s very easy to go overboard on paraphernalia, especially if you’re a true connoisseur of the sport. And I was. I wanted it all: decoys, shotguns, camouflage clothing, waders, boats. It took me years, but if the gear pertained to duck hunting, I wished for it and usually got it. I was truly at home with the noble art of duck hunting, and I realized that to be practical, the sport was all that I had time for, or the necessary funds.

At the end of January the season for duck hunting is over. It’s too cold for fishing, and summer camping seems to be an interminably long time away. What was I to do in the fields? Bird-watch? Not for me, even though I hear it is a wonderful way to pass the time.

Then I read an article in Sports Afield about turkey hunting, and in the vernacular of salesmen everywhere, I was hooked. I thought, how difficult can it be? I’m familiar with the woods where I can hunt. I have a box call that should work. I think I’ll try out the sport in the morning.

My first effort would have made the Marx Brothers proud.

I was up and at ’em early, as prescribed in the article. Dressed from head to toe in camouflage, I drove out to the farm and found what looked to me like a great place to ambush an unsuspecting gobbler. I propped my dove stool next to an ancient pine, did a few yelps on my box call and waited for some action.

There was a small pond a few yards away that probably helped the mosquito population, which soon discovered they had some fresh meat. They were doing everything, including, I’m sure, making a plan to haul me away and lodge me in the fork of an old cypress to eat later. It was miserable. I quickly learned lesson number one about turkey hunting: Bring mosquito repellent.

The morning passed slowly with me sweating, scratching and slapping at hungry bugs. It seemed that the mosquitoes had sent out an invitation for deer flies to join the fun. Enough food for all.

Mama didn’t raise a fool, so before long I figured there was more to this turkey hunting than being eaten up by insects. I gave one more yelp on my call, decided to wait just a few more minutes, then headed out to breakfast, which seemed to be the only redeeming factor left in the entire morning.

I stepped out of the pine thicket onto a little sand road that led to the Bronco. The road wasn’t much more than a firebreak, and 40 yards away, in the middle of the small lane, stood a giant gobbler. Naturally, I had my shotgun slung over my shoulder. The big bird was like an apparition. I don’t know which of us was more surprised. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared. I stood there with my mouth open looking at where the gobbler had been, now long gone. I walked to where he had stood, muttering to myself. That really couldn’t have been a turkey, but his tracks confirmed he wasn’t a mirage.

It’s been years since I stared down that turkey on that little sand road, and I have been hunting numerous times since. I’ve seen turkeys, heard them gobble, and have followed their tracks to where they dusted. A turkey will roll around in the sand to get rid of mites, and I’ve picked up numerous turkey feathers from those dust baths. But as far as putting a wild turkey on the Thanksgiving table? No luck so far.

One morning at my Rotary Club breakfast, I was lamenting my bad luck in the turkey hunting department to several friends. I had heard that Rich Warters, an individual with quite a reputation afield (he even owns the National Champion of Field Trialing Bird Dogs), was proficient in the turkey hunting sport, having bagged several in upstate New York. Rich, who is also a loyal Rotarian, listened to my turkey complaints and volunteered to show me a few tricks of the trade.

Now, it’s not often that a good old Southern boy will take advice from a Yankee, but my back was against the wall, and heck, I had almost converted Rich to my slow way of talking, although his up-North accent does come back when he’s agitated.

We saw turkeys. They came up behind us, in front of us, and one morning sneaked up to us on the side of our blind. But we had no luck.

Unfortunately for me, Rich moved to Connecticut a year or so ago, and I’m on my own in the turkey hunting department again. We stay in touch, and he still offers invaluable advice, which I gladly take.

Last year I didn’t even hunt, and this year I’ve been out a couple of times. I’ve heard them gobble and have seen a couple at a distance, but probably if you get right down to it, I’m not that anxious to kill one.

I still remember the morning Rich and I were coming out of a swamp bottom after seeing a turkey just out of range. The turkey also saw me and was gone in a flash. It was a beautiful early spring sunrise. Dogwoods were in full bloom, and birds were singing and chirping as if they were auditioning for a Walt Disney movie. We stood at our vehicles finishing off leftover coffee and making plans for the next day when a ruby-throated hummingbird flew right between us, hovered for a second, as if he was checking us out, then buzzed away. We were awestruck, neither saying anything, and then laughing at the wonder of it all.

When I remember that morning, that beautiful day afield with a good friend, I realize that’s one of the reasons I make excuses to hunt turkeys. PS

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

Historic Camp Mackall

The secret in the Sandhills

By Bob Curtin   •   Photographs from the Moore County Historical Association

It’s possible to jump on your Harley or crawl into your Subaru and drive from Southern Pines to Laurinburg on U.S. 15-501 as if you’re heading to Myrtle Beach for a game of skee ball and some Calabash seafood and never know you’ve just passed one of the U.S. Army’s more secretive military training installations.

Camp Mackall, built almost overnight during World War II to train paratroopers and glider units to invade France, is today a primary training facility for elite Special Forces, the Green Berets. What’s secretive isn’t so much that they train, it’s how they train, turning seasoned, professional soldiers into highly skilled, well-conditioned and formidable Special Forces soldiers. The modern Camp Mackall encompasses about 8,000 acres of land, composed of eight major training sites, and every Special Forces soldier who earned the right to wear the Green Beret has left his sweat and blood in those forests and fields.

During World War II Camp Mackall trained and tested division-size airborne forces in combat operations. In 1943 it was home to three newly formed units of the 11th, 13th and 17th Airborne divisions. The 82nd and 101st remained garrisoned on Fort Bragg but trained at Mackall. Today, our Green Berets are often referred to as the proverbial “tip of the spear” and operate in the dark of night and well behind enemy lines to perform almost superhero-like missions. During WWII, our newly formed airborne paratroopers would have been considered card-carrying members of the tip of the spear club.

Originally named Hoffman Air Borne Camp, on Feb. 8, 1943, the installation was renamed in honor of Pvt. John Thomas (Tommy) Mackall. During the Allied invasion of North Africa, in the airborne maneuver named Operation Torch, Mackall was mortally wounded during an attack on his aircraft as it landed. Seven paratroopers died at the scene and several more were wounded, including Mackall. He was evacuated to a British hospital, where he died of his wounds on Nov. 12, 1942. Mackall was listed as the first American airborne fatality of WWII.

Training the five airborne divisions in the newly formed United States Army Airborne Command was going to require space, and lots of it, for both parachute and glider operations. The United States Department of War began planning construction of Camp Mackall as early as 1942. The land south of Southern Pines was ideal because the federal government already owned a large parcel of it. Construction plans called for an installation that could house and train up to 35,000 soldiers. By comparison the entire population of Moore County in 1940 was slightly over 30,000.

In just over three months, more than 62,000 acres of game land and leased farmland were transformed into a bustling military city. The camp included 65 miles of paved roads and several hundred miles of hard-packed trails capable of moving both civilian and military vehicles to the 1,750 buildings within the garrison’s north and south cantonment centers. The camp garrison provided housing for camp cadre, airborne trainees, as well as the paratroopers assigned to the airborne divisions. There were barracks, unit headquarter buildings, three libraries, six beer gardens, 10 barracks-style chapels, entertainment, fitness and sports facilities, and a triangular-shaped airfield with three 5,000-foot runways.

Built with wood and tarpaper, the buildings were hot in the summer and cold in the winter. In the worst of the heat, the soldiers propped opened the doors at both ends of their barracks, either praying for the mildest of breezes or requisitioning (legally or by any means necessary) large floor fans. The biting cold of the winter months was more dangerous. The buildings were equipped with pot-bellied, coal-burning stoves, and soldiers had to take special precautions — even attend courses and post a 24/7 guard force — to avoid burning down the wood and tarpaper boxes.

Besides the tarpaper-covered barracks that dotted the landscape, there were some larger and more permanent buildings — movie theaters, churches and headquarters — constructed with brick and mortar. Five theaters showed the latest Hollywood movies. There were 10 wood and tarpaper chapels and two large brick churches, manned by 28 chaplains of many denominations. According to Tom MacCallum and Lowell Stevens, authors of Camp Mackall North Carolina: Its Origin and Time in the Sandhills, “The communities of Southern Pines, Aberdeen, Pinehurst, Rockingham, and Hamlet embraced the paratroopers’ faith based needs.”

The residents of the Sandhills often saw large gliders overhead being towed two at a time by C-47s. Local farmers had gliders that were off course land in the fields around their farms. Using more conventional means, the paratroopers and families who lived on Camp Mackall often visited the towns of Hamlet, Southern Pines, Pinehurst and Aberdeen, and the townspeople opened their hearts and homes to them. The Moore County towns had established USO centers for soldiers to come and enjoy dances, musicals, plays and a variety of other touring shows.

While many local entertainment centers provided activities of morale and fellowship, there were some locations that provided recreation of another sort altogether. For example, in Richmond County, victory girls (or victory belles) were young ladies who followed the paratroopers in and around camp, especially close to payday. These ladies provided comfort and fellowship for a small fee. It was noted by MacCallum and Stevens that at a house in Richmond County, “three women dated 31 soldiers at $5 a date.”

The Southern Pines USO was located in what is now the Southern Pines Civic Club. The town of Pinehurst was the first to partner with the USO and established an exclusive USO for African-American paratroopers, soldiers and their guests. The integration of the African-American troops into the segregated South did not occur without its challenges. Movie theaters, dining halls, recreation centers, dance halls and living facilities on and off Camp Mackall were segregated. According to MacCallum, “The only facilities not segregated were the Army Post Exchange (PX) and the Officer’s Club.”

After a period of time, African-American paratroopers received access to all services and clubs to include their own non-commissioned officers club. Black and white officers shared the same officers club; however, the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers had their own establishments. The need for the African-American USOs subsequently required the Pinehurst location to move to a larger facility in Southern Pines.

The parachute divisions had a profound impact on the Sandhills social scene and none more so than the historic Negro Paratroop Company, nicknamed the Triple Nickel. The Triple Nickel was the first of its kind. In early 1944, the 555th Parachute Infantry Company was stationed at Camp Mackall with 11 officers and 165 enlisted men. On Nov. 4, 1944, the number of paratroopers swelled to more than 400 black paratroopers and was designated the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. Bradley Biggs, author of The Triple Nickels, Americas First All Black Paratroop Unit, wrote that “the men with families often found Southern Pines more open and welcoming for housing compared to other surrounding towns.”

The Triple Nickel was not the only airborne unit of fame to walk and train in Mackall’s fields and forests. In 1992, Stephen Ambrose wrote the book Band of Brothers, detailing the distinguished history of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. In early 1943, Easy Company, as they were commonly known, conducted intense airborne and infantry training at Camp Mackall in final preparation for combat operations in the European theater. Ambrose’s book, which later gained notoriety as the HBO miniseries of the same name, followed Easy Company from stateside training in Camp Toccoa, Georgia, and Camp Mackall to the parachute assault on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, and their march across Nazi-occupied Europe till the war’s end in 1945.

Before any single paratrooper or airborne unit deployed to the European or Pacific theaters, they were required to pass a series of training exercises to ensure combat readiness. At the Department of War, the training maneuvers were designed to determine the operational feasibility of successfully deploying large airborne divisions. The literal fate of the American airborne divisions lay in the maneuvers conducted at Camp Mackall and across the Sandhills region. The most famous maneuver was conducted by the 11th Airborne Division, code named the “Knollwood Maneuver.” The Knollwood Airport, now Moore County Airport, was the target and the place where the airborne division proved its preparedness and worth as a viable force to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander.

On Dec. 6, 1943, the skies above the Sandhills were filled with a massive parachute and glider assault force launched from four airfields to seize the airport. This air armada was a precursor to the planning, maneuver, execution and logistical preparedness that American troops would execute over France a little more than a year later. It lasted six days and, to ensure realism, consisted of 200 C-47 troop and cargo transports that departed from four local airfields, traveled east to the Atlantic Ocean and 200-plus miles back to Knollwood Airport. The C-47 Skytrain, nicknamed the Gooney Bird, delivered 10,282 men by parachute, glider and air landings. During the maneuver, there were more than 880 landings to fly in supplies and reinforcements. The success of the Knollwood Maneuver convinced Eisenhower of the viability of employing airborne forces in division-sized units.

Compared to modern day airborne operations, the safety measures were often regarded as high risk. One soldier recording the Knollwood Maneuver reported, “These glider pilots seem to be a pretty rugged crew as it is the usual thing for them to step out of a wrecked glider, brush off the splinters, and climb into another glider and try again.”

Despite the incredibly rugged nature of these paratroopers and glider pilots, the Knollwood Maneuver cost four paratroopers their lives, and another 49 soldiers were wounded. The men were treated at Camp Mackall’s 1,200-bed hospital. (Despite the hospital’s focus on injuries sustained during airborne operations, it also took care of family needs such as the delivery of 116 babies in its maternity ward.) The Army medical staff was augmented by the American Red Cross and the all-volunteer Gray Ladies Corps. The Gray Ladies hailed from across Moore, Richmond and Scotland Counties. These amazing women were assigned work days by the Red Cross and would help dress wounds, change bandages, talk to patients, play games, read to the men, and generally do whatever was needed to comfort the wounded paratroopers. MacCallum and Stevens, in their book, provide heartwarming testimonies of the lifelong friendships between the women of the Gray Ladies Corps and the paratroopers.

Camp Mackall was also one of many military installations in the United States that housed enemy prisoners of war. There are estimates that the POW count reached as high as 400,000 across America. Including Camp Mackall, there were 18 POW camps in North Carolina alone. Places in the South were selected for their relative isolation from large populations, ease of security, and the warm climate. As many as 300 POWs performed manual labor tasks and agricultural work off the installation in Aberdeen, Pinehurst and West End. MacCallum says, “The peach farmers were required to pay the government 22.5 cents per hour as a contracted labor force.”

As the war came to an end in 1945, the POW camp at Mackall was closed, and the remaining prisoners were transferred to other locations. Camp Mackall began to atrophy. The airborne training center moved back to Fort Bragg, and the unit colors of the 11th, 13th and the 17th Airborne divisions were officially encased.

But Camp Mackall didn’t experience the same fate as many other WWII Army training camps. Today’s Special Forces training pipeline begins at Mackall with its initial Special Forces Assessment and Selection course. SFAS is a three-week, physically and mentally demanding course where soldiers from across the U.S. Army begin the 18-24 month training program. Every Special Forces soldier who earns the right to wear the Green Beret has passed SFAS and received advanced training at Camp Mackall.

Currently Mackall encompasses about 8,000 acres, and within the camp’s boundary, each Special Forces candidate will be provided advanced training in the practical application of speaking different foreign languages, customs and cultures of foreign lands, hand-to-hand combat, weapons training, land navigation, demolitions, and advanced medical training. These specially selected candidates will undergo intense psychological scrutiny in the Special Forces Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape course (SERE). Living off the land, candidates assembled in small groups are hunted down by seasoned Special Forces operatives across Camp Mackall and the Sandhills. The SERE course is regarded as one of the best courses offered by the U.S. military.

Twenty-one counties, including Moore, Scotland and Richmond, play a vital role in the training of every Special Forces soldier. Hundreds of civilian volunteers, police officers and sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, first responders and soldiers from Fort Bragg come together to form the notional country of Pineland. Each candidate must successfully navigate the Robin Sage’s unconventional warfare exercise and assist in the liberation of Pineland. Once successful, each Special Forces soldier has earned the right to wear the Green Beret and be considered one of the world’s premier special operations soldiers.

Robin Sage is a high-risk venture that prepares each candidate for service in the U.S. Army as an elite member of a Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA). Unfortunately, this challenge is not without risk. Sadly, in 2002, Camp Mackall and the Special Forces community suffered a fatal training tragedy between two candidates, a civilian role-player, and a Moore County sheriff’s deputy. One candidate was killed and another was severely wounded. Safeguards to prevent this from happening again have been put into place between the military, law enforcement and our communities.

Access to Camp Mackall is restricted and primarily closed to the public. It’s monitored and patrolled by security forces and often working dogs in training. The ongoing relationship between Mackall and the Sandhills continues to remind us of a time when the two communities came together in the spirit of cooperation to strengthen the morale and effectiveness of America’s elite fighting forces. The trust and mutual respect between the camp and Sandhills citizens has never been more obvious. The Sandhills remains home to Camp Mackall, and together they produce a world-class training environment for elite soldiers — just as originally designed.  PS

Retired Lt. Col. Robert P. Curtin is an infantry officer who served multiple tours in the Special Operations Forces. He earned his B.A. in history from Hofstra University and his M.A. in military history from Norwich University. He currently is a social studies teacher and the head wrestling coach at Pinecrest High School.

PinePitch

Calling All Druids

On Sunday, June 21, it will be possible to join the summer solstice celebration at Stonehenge from the comfort of your own bed. Ordinarily the annual celebration brings together pagans, druids and just plain folks to watch the sun rise behind Heel Stone in the English countryside. Think of it like breakfast at Wimbledon without all the overhead smashes and grunting. The sunrise will be live streamed on all English Heritage social media accounts. Do allow for the five hour time change. Pip, pip, cheerio and all that rot.

Ponies on the Block — Literally and Virtually

The painted ponies that have been parading on the streets of Southern Pines will be sold in a virtual auction from Wednesday, June 17, to Saturday, June 20. Proceeds benefit the Carolina Horse Park, a charitable nonprofit corporation. For further details, visit carolinahorsepark.com.

Get Your Walk On

Weymouth Woods — Sandhills Nature Preserve never did put its woodpeckers, tree frogs or fox squirrels on lockdown, and now all state park trails are officially open so you can commune with them. Another popular option is Morrow Mountain State Park, an hour away in Albemarle, offering some of the best hiking trails this side of the Great Smoky Mountains. Visit www.ncparks.gov for all the details.

Mozart in the House

The Great Composers series continues (resumes, exists — hey, we’re all doing our best with this thing) with In Search of Mozart on June 25 at 10 a.m. at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Co-sponsored by Sandhills Community College, ticket sales will be limited and people oh so socially distanced. Naturally, the screening will be dependent on whether or not North Carolina’s theaters are allowed to reopen by that date. For more information, call (910) 692-3611 or go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Tiffany Lamps Relit

Tickets have gone on sale for “Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light” at the Reynolda House Museum of Art in Winston-Salem, N.C., rescheduled for Friday, Aug. 7, to Sunday, Nov. 29. The exhibition, the first of its kind for Reynolda, includes five windows, 20 lamps (in addition to several forgeries) and displays on how Tiffany glass was manufactured and the lamps assembled. To purchase tickets go to www.reynoldahouse.org.

Wrestling Pixels

If you’re interested in getting some tips on how to make those pictures you’re taking with that new digital camera Amazon left on your doorstep look even better, sign up for “Virtual! 7 Steps to Better Photography.” It’s a fast-paced four-hour workshop on Saturday, June 20, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., with Marian Diop, the founder of Butler & Badou Portraits. For information, go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Float Like a Butterfly

The Native Pollinator Garden in the Pinehurst Village Arboretum is in bloom and attracting butterflies of all shapes and sizes. The garden is a perfect place to take your kids for an outdoor, socially distanced, educational activity learning about Sandhills pollinators. The garden has a covered area with detailed information about the pollinators you might see, as well as the plants that are in bloom. The main entrance to the arboretum is at 395 Magnolia Road, Pinehurst.

Roosterʼs Wife

Grammy winner Mike Farris will be broadcasting live from the listening room of the Poplar Knight Spot on Sunday, June 28. Visit the Rooster’s Wife Facebook page to join in the celebration. Show begins, naturally, at 6:46 p.m.

Poem

We Trade Eggs and Olives

Salads arrive. We wince.

I do not like olives,

black or green, and you know it.

Sliced hardboiled eggs

seem to make you gag.

So we trade them. . . .

Citronella and burlap

both seize my breath.

You resuscitate me

with lilac and silks.

Me the morning person

and you wasting midnight oil.

You buried within books,

me searching for rhetoric.

Fault lines in our wiring,

timelines synchronized tonight.

Common ground tilled,

reseeded in one another’s gasp.

—  Sam Barbee

Crossroads

Five Easy Pieces

The legacy of a humble man

By Julie O. Petrini

My father was a salesman. Of the sample case, cold-call, hail-thee-fellow sort. He drove around the Midwest in a hulking sedan, peddling disposable restaurant supplies: toilet paper, four-ply napkins, plastic cups and cutlery. Humble as such an occupation might sound, he treated it as a calling. An ordained conversationalist, he could talk to anyone about anything. He made gatherings parties, strangers friends, and every restaurant or bar a potential customer. Of all his skills, his ability to win people over, in an instant or over years, was the one I most admired.

He was a kid from Boston, a mediocre student but a dervish of nervy energy, who headed West with his bride to make their way outside the shadow of their large Irish families. With caterpillar eyebrows that seemed to turn blacker as his wiry hair turned whiter, a linebacker build and Jackie Gleason grace, he wore patterned sports coats in bright colors. His smile was a light switch. He was a good talker, no doubt about it, but an even better listener. He’d find a clue about what a person might care about — a logo on a cap, a crest on a ring, a sticker on a notebook, a twang in a vowel — and even the most reticent would soon be telling him a story they hadn’t known they wanted to tell or laughing at something they hadn’t realized was funny.

On the weekdays, he devoted himself to customers, small and large. He lunched, at least once a week, at a diner in a little Wisconsin town several miles out of the way of anything else. It wasn’t a big account, certainly not lucrative enough to justify that investment of time, but it was always worthwhile, he said, to honor an early customer and learn another thing or two about his business. Once a month, he’d trek to St. Louis to call on Anheuser-Busch, the king of breweries. Forty-one afternoons he waited on a stiff plastic chair outside the purchasing department for a chance to pitch his products, not getting past the outer office. On the forty-second visit, he overheard shouts of panic over a rival supplier’s failure to deliver an order for 2 million beer cups for the upcoming festival season. “I can do it,” he called in through the sliding window over the receptionist’s desk. He did, and never had to wait in reception again.

On the weekends, he served the neighborhood. He’d start a Pied Piper project in the yard, gathering every kid in the neighborhood, to make a game out of mowing or cleaning the garage or shoveling snow. Then he’d lead a bike ride across town for ice cream or a toboggan run down the cliffside trail in the park, harnessing himself to the sled to pull the little kids back up the hill. Or he’d conjure coaching clinics, dumping a wheelbarrow of footballs, baseballs, basketballs and soccer balls to teach throwing, batting, shooting, kicking. Then we’d go on treasure hunts, rooting out Snickers bars and quarters that he’d buried earlier. He was a force.

Forces diminish, of course, and not long ago, I sat vigil with him as he succumbed to Parkinson’s. As happens in those dark hours of reflection, I thought of his gifts to me and my siblings. My brothers shared his extroverted ease; I did not and regretted he hadn’t been able to teach it to me. There were other lessons that did take, lessons guiding me in a life different from his. Lessons worth sharing.

Learn how to learn. I wanted to major in English at college but worried about how that would provide. My dad told me to study what interested me, that what l learned wasn’t what mattered. Things change so fast that most of what’s learned today won’t be relevant in five years anyway. Learn how to learn so you can always keep up. And the English romantic poets have held up pretty well.

You only need one good job offer (or school acceptance, or love interest or . . . ). Racking up choices isn’t the point; embracing the right one is.

Finish the job. I was so nervous that the struggling company I was working for would tank and leave me jobless that I was on the brink of taking another job, even though I loved the one I had. He made me rethink quitting and it turned out to be the best decision of my career. Sticking with the sinking ship helped me develop grit and earn lifelong allegiance from many who have since helped me.

Work your hardest the first six months and the last six months of any job. The first is obvious but the second not so much. People will remember you for leaving things in good shape, earning your keep until the end and respecting their mission even as you move on to a different one.

Have funner. Don’t just have fun, have funner. He had more funner than anyone I’ve ever known and so did most of the people around him. He laughed a lot — with glee at good jokes, with humility at himself, with irony at the craziness, and with joy at the chance to do it all again the next day.

Thanks, Dad.  PS

Julie O. Petrini is a lawyer, writer and avid arts consumer. She splits her time between Southern Pines, North Carolina and Wellesley, Massachusetts. She can be reached at jpetrini@petrinilaw.com.