Dateline: Carmichael

When good things came in smaller packages

By Bill Fields

I’m not sure how my reading ability stacked up to that of my elementary school classmates, but I’m certain having the sports pages of the Greensboro Daily News at the breakfast table didn’t hurt. There were some big words in there.

The newspaper was very specific about where it was covering an out-of-town contest. After North Carolina moved into its new basketball facility in 1965, the dateline for Tar Heel home games spilled over into a second line of narrow-column type.

CARMICHAEL AUDITORIUM, Chapel Hill—

Occasionally, if the slot man was swamped and the typesetter was sloppy, it looked like this next to my bowl of grits:

CARMICHAEL AUDITORI-
UM, Chapel Hill—

Regardless of how it appeared in the paper, the building’s name stood out because it was where my team played. It was not CAMERON INDOOR STADIUM, Durham; or REYNOLDS COLISEUM, Raleigh; or other Atlantic Coast Conference basketball venues.

We had no family ties to Carolina, notwithstanding a summer school Spanish class my UNC Greensboro sister took there. My other sister went to Wake Forest, and while I proudly wore the black-and-gold sweatshirt she gave me, I was a Carolina kid. It was one of those decisions those of us in ACC country made early, before you were even able to write the name of your favorite basketball player in cursive.

I was in first grade when the Tar Heels played their first game in Carmichael, defeating William & Mary 87-68 on Dec. 4, 1965. Although I didn’t see the place in person until I got to campus as a freshman a dozen years later, I felt I knew it.

Aside from newspaper stories and box scores, there were the radio broadcasts. In the late-1960s — when Carolina won the ACC Tournament and advanced to the Final Four three straight years — play-by-play was handled by Bill Currie, a crazy-uncle type known as the “Mouth of the South” and starting with the 1971-72 season by Woody Durham, who was “The Voice of the Tar Heels” for four decades.

Televised games were rare when I first became a fan. We had to be content when a Carolina contest was on the Wednesday or Saturday C.D. Chesley network. And “The Dean Smith Show” was weekly Sunday morning viewing, with Smith always much more effusive about assists or hustle than how many points someone had scored.

One of my first memories of basketball on television is the NCAA title game on March 23, 1968, when the Tar Heels played UCLA. It was a 7 p.m. tipoff in Los Angeles, which made it a very late night for an 8-year-old in Southern Pines. I stayed awake until early in the second half, when the Bruins were well on their way to a 78-55 victory.

Nine years later Carolina played for another championship but had its heart broken by Marquette. I attended my first game in Carmichael in the second semester of my freshman year, a two-point victory over Wake Forest on Jan. 15, 1978. Working my way up the pecking order of The Daily Tar Heel sports department, I traded a seat in the student section for one on the press row-catwalk above it. When things went well for the team wearing light blue and white, it was deafening either place. After home games, reporters huddled around Smith in a corridor outside the locker room as he smoked a cigarette and looked forward to a Scotch.

My first time on a commercial flight, on Dec. 3, 1979, I sat beside then-assistant coach Roy Williams going from RDU to Tampa-St. Petersburg to cover Carolina vs. South Florida. Prior to the start of the 1980-81 season, I had a 90-minute interview with Smith in his office. I was DTH sports editor at that point, but, needing to mind my grades as a senior, left the job well before Carolina lost to Indiana in the 1981 NCAA championship game.  The following spring, I was back on Franklin Street as a fan — and graduate — enjoying the Tar Heels’ win over Georgetown.

Carolina men’s basketball relocated to the Smith Center in 1986. It has twice the seats of Carmichael, but if one grew up with the latter, not twice the charm. Carmichael Auditorium is no more, having been renamed Carmichael Arena in 2010 following an extensive modernization. They sold small commemorative pieces of the hallowed hardwood from the old building in 1998. I didn’t buy one then, but it might be time to check on eBay.

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

Long Live Loblolly

The halls are alive, with the sound of . . . a new generation

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Ah, the good old days, the Roaring ’20s, when Southern Pines throbbed with urban intelligentsia wintering in cottages and mansions — the most prestigious built by New York architect Aymar Embury II — while they partied with author James Boyd’s coterie. Picture life in the Gatsby era as described by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a Boyd house guest. Perhaps he strolled over to Loblolly. Embury had taken on this second project for James’ aunt, Helen Boyd Dull, in 1918. Auntie Helen, founder of the Southern Pines Civic Club, christened it Loblolly, honoring the indigenous pines which she had lobbied her father to save from the booming turpentine industry.

Nearly a hundred years after Helen Dull’s death in 1924, ghostly echoes of Jazz Age soirees, heated discussions and philosophical musings compete with the barking of five dogs and the laughter of three small children kicking a soccer ball or playing fort in the bamboo grove.

Loblolly, purchased by Erin and Mitch Lancaster in 2011, is once again alive and lively, like a fashionably dressed dowager whirling across the ballroom floor in the arms of John Travolta.

Possible, since Loblolly actually has a ballroom — or so it was called.

“We call it the Big Room,” Erin says. Indeed, at 7,000 square feet total, big is Loblolly’s operative word. The house, including two guest suites with kitchens, sleeps 14  comfortably. The Lancasters have hosted a wedding on the terrace, with reception complete with dance floor in the Big Room.

The stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression silenced the ’20s roar, but Loblolly stands witness to the history that shaped Weymouth Heights.

When James Boyd lured his Princeton classmate, already a “society architect,” to Southern Pines no architectural style prevailed in the nascent enclave.  While Embury developed the Boyd homestead as Classical Revival, he shook, not stirred, Loblolly. Instead of a rectangular footprint the house stretches longitudinally as far as the eye can see.  Sources provided by the Moore County Historical Association describe it as “recognizable but difficult to define, not quite English Norman cottage, or French, not Art Nouveau — with stuccoed clay tile, checkerboard brick, bell-cast and hipped and gabled slate roofs with tile ridges.” Which boils down to a divine mishmash that established prototypes influencing subsequent homes in growing Weymouth Heights.

After Mrs. Dull’s death, Loblolly was sold to the Vale family, who retained ownership until the 1970s. A fire in 1926 caused the Vales to hire Embury to rebuild and add the ballroom wing.

The tennis court is gone, the swimming pool filled in, the acreage divided.  Inside Loblolly seemed dark and imposing by today’s standards, with its hewn beams, teak and walnut floors and miles of built-in bookcases — hardly a tempting project for a young family.

“I didn’t even want to move (to Southern Pines),” Erin Lancaster says. She is from Richmond, Virginia, Mitch from historic Windsor, North Carolina. They met in Raleigh. His parents lived at Woodlake. The young couple, then with a baby and toddler, were looking to relocate — a possibility, since Mitch operates his businesses from home.

“We were visiting friends and loved the idea of walking downtown,” he says. For fun, they looked online. Loblolly popped up. That was on a Sunday. They viewed the property on Tuesday, made an offer on Friday, which was accepted the following Sunday.

“Not much had been done — it needed a few upgrades,” Erin remembers, charitably. “It had that ’80s look, with faux marble.” The Lancasters knew what might be involved from remodeling their Raleigh home. Full speed ahead — systems and big jobs first.

But making a historic property livable and practical goes beyond fresh paint and new carpet. “We wanted it to be comfortable, not stuffy,” Mitch says. In other words, Erin adds, no no-touch zones.

Here, architectural features dictate interior décor: Paned metal casement windows decorate walls like paintings. Sculpted moldings in the dining room channel French chateaux.  Plaster walls hand-rubbed into an undulating pattern throughout were likely the work of craftsmen imported from New York by the builder.  Built-ins dominate public rooms.

For participants in the Southern Pines Garden Club Home & Garden Tour on April 14, a walk through the Lancaster-era Loblolly will be a magical mystery tour, beginning with a dark, wide, slightly monastic foyer whose only decoration is Erin’s favorite Biblical verse, from Isaiah, stitched on fabric in the shape of a cross, framed, and hung on the wall — her talisman. To the left, through a paneled round-topped door is the formal living room with beamed ceiling and an entire wall of bookcases, also of dark woods, which convey a library effect.  The Lancasters call this the Christmas Room, perfect for their big tree.

“We wanted traditional (furnishings) to match the house,” Erin says. What they brought from their previous home fit beautifully. High-backed upholstered chairs, a circular upholstered coffee table/ottoman, her desk and side pieces — even a bread trough under a window shelf — are oversized to match the living room’s dimensions. Yet, she reports, the kids have enough space to run laps around the sofa.

Erin’s interior designer, Susan Brown of Raleigh, chose light solids and patterns (some classic Schumacher) for upholstery and drapes to relieve the dark paneling and floors, which are original, gorgeous and sparsely covered by Orientals.

“Susan worked with me on our house in Raleigh,” Erin says. “She knows me so well.”

Nowhere is the scale of Loblolly’s original footprint more evident than in the dining room, which accommodates 12-foot table, a full-sized sofa under the window, an exquisite French china cabinet filled with Minton bunnies (Erin’s trademark) and other pieces without crowding.

Here, Susan and Erin created a wild juxtaposition that works: The tabletop is made from wide, roughly textured planks while the Papa Bear-proportioned chairs have ornate French Provincial frames upholstered in a floral fabric. Under the table, a sisal all-weather rug, in neutral sand because, Erin points out, “The kids run through here on the way to the kitchen.”

The kitchen, of course, required gutting. A small bedroom and pantry behind it were removed to open up space for a family sitting/dining area. The kitchen itself displays an unusual arrangement of two parallel islands, with sink on one and range, ovens, refrigerator against the walls. Carrara marble tops the massive bureau-style walnut cabinetry. A ceramic tile backsplash adds another texture. “Mitch has the good brains about how a kitchen functions,” Erin says, understandable since he’s the family chef.

When it comes to colors, Erin and Mitch part ways. She adores the pale aqua predominant in the dining room and on some fabrics. He likes red. Erin and Susan Brown have softened his bright primary into a rosy rust, which lives peaceably with Erin’s choice throughout the house, but especially in the family dining area.

The Big Room, sunken a half-dozen steps below the main floor, elicits disbelief. Approximately 40-by-25 feet with a high ceiling of the same undulating plaster, built in bookshelves lining two walls, paneling elsewhere, a wood-burning fireplace and two TVs, the space is arranged as the baby grand piano area, the conversation area and the bar added by the Lancasters, where a small kitchen with dated metal cabinets once stood. Beside the bar, a grouping of two pale yellow leather chairs, made in New Zealand, seem lifted from a modern art museum. “We were at a gallery in Las Vegas, looking for paintings,” Erin explains. “Mitch saw the chairs and sat down on one. He said, ‘Oh, these are comfortable.’” Others have noted that Elvis might share his opinion.

Pack ’em up, ship ’em east.

Loblolly has no grand staircase. The elevator has been removed. The second floor remains a maze of wings and narrow hallways, dormer niches with light streaming onto a heirloom slipper chair or table. But the bedrooms (eight, total, including the garage apartment) are enormous, with window seats and sitting areas. Son Milum’s room has two four-poster beds from Mitch’s childhood, while daughter Beverly uses Erin’s small  chests of drawers and plays with her mother’s stuffed bunny collection. The kids have a designated Lego room. One small bedroom has become Erin’s closet/dressing room. At the end of the hallway the master suite with soaring ceiling and windows on three sides looks out over terraces, gardens and two-plus fenced acres bordered by ancient trees — another world, another story

Loblolly represents not only an extinct lifestyle, but materials and workmanship impossible to duplicate. The trick is dressing old bones in new clothes. “We’ve been chipping away at it for seven years,” Erin says. “We’re about halfway done.” During that time, the Lancasters had a third child, adopted several rescue dogs, enticed Erin’s sister and her family to a house down the road. Mitch entered city politics. And a renewed Loblolly is once again the scene of dinner parties, meetings, play dates and social events.

“It’s a God thing that we ended up down here,” Erin concludes. “OK, here’s your path, God told us. So if this is where we’re supposed to be, let the house pass inspection.”

Loblolly is one of six homes featured on the 70th Annual Southern Pines Home & Garden Tour, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 14. Also included, an exhibit at Campbell House recounting how club members shaped the landscape of the community through their projects and initiatives. Proceeds from the tour support local beautification and horticultural scholarships. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 day of tour (at sites). Advance tickets are available at The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines and Pinehurst Woman’s Exchange, or through the club website: www.southernpinesgardenclub.com.

A Generous Voice

The distinguished reign of a poet laureate

By Stephen E. Smith

I have seen the ones I love leave this world as shadows without wings.

The purple martins that come up every year from Somewhere

Leave as easily as they jetted into their gourds in March.

And I have held my father’s hand as he was dying

And my mother’s, lying in her lap like dried peas . . .

From Paul’s Hill

Shelby Stephenson

North Carolina Poet Laureate

With the death of Poet Laureate Sam Ragan in 1996, the office of state laureate ceased being a lifetime appointment, and sitting governors began selecting poets laureate (with recommendations from the state’s writing communities) who would promote an appreciation for an often misapprehended genre. Recent laureates have been chosen for the excellence of their work, their influence on other writers, and “an appreciation for literature in its diversity throughout the state.” The revised guidelines grant tenures ranging from a standard two-year term to five years, depending upon the governor’s readiness to select a new laureate and the willingness of the poet to serve. With the exception of a disquieting hiccup during the McCrory administration, governors have chosen poets laureate who exhibit exceptional talent and generosity — and the process has been, thank God, more or less devoid of politics.

But the job of poet laureate, the physical act of getting behind the wheel of a car and driving to every corner of the state to give readings and workshops, has turned out to be anything but cushy. In fact, it’s full-time work, offering little in the way of compensation and requiring immense dedication. Beginning with Greensboro’s Fred Chappell, who was the first of the new poets laureate and whose Midquest is the finest book (poem) written by a poet of his generation, and continuing with Kathryn Stripling Byer, Cathy Smith Bowers, Joseph Bathanti and Shelby Stephenson, our poets laureate have been barnstorming nonstop for more than 20 years.

From December 2014 to January 2018, Stephenson has given 315 readings, lectures and workshops, traveling from Hatteras to the Tennessee border, twice, and driving more than 25,000 miles within the state. Stephenson, who officially leaves office when a new laureate is appointed later this month, has gently touched the lives of thousands of North Carolinians, and he leaves us with an ambitious 52-part poem, Paul’s Hill: Homage to Whitman (Sir Walter Press), which is the logical and artistic culmination of his past work framed within the hard edges of the perplexing new world in which we find ourselves.

Raised in a large family that farmed in Johnston County, Stephenson is deeply rooted in a rural environment and possessed of a strong sense of longing for a particular time and place that’s never failed to offer the purest vision. His primary subjects, the foundation upon which he’s shaped most of his poems, are family, the natural world, the cycle of life, even the plank house where he was born, and despite a reliance on memory and the intensely personal nature of his poetry, there’s a restrained use of nostalgia in his work. When reading his leapfrogging lyrical lines, the reader is left with an overwhelming appreciation for the life the poet has lived and his eagerness to share his most personal moments.

The light plays shadows where once cordwood readied the woodbox.

My mother’s lost in the steam of her kettle.

I rub my face, as if parting curtains,

Wonder if I see myself in the rose-blue feathers smeared on the picture-window.

Bliss fades into pattern I’ll ride later, dross and all.

White moon, hold me in your arms.

Bathe my thoughts so wild onions may climb the cold

Sister Night to say to morning, “Hello, again.”

A mix of spoken language and the rhymes and rhythms, the literary tongue is interspersed with hymns, dogs, goldfinches, tulip poplars, cornstalks, collards and  country music resonating in song titles and country lyrics, even in the irony of a long-forgotten radio advertisement sung by Arthur Smith and the Crackerjacks:

If your snuff’s too strong it’s wrong

Get Tuberose get Tuberose

To make your life one happy song

Get Tuberose get Tuberose.

Stephenson’s early poems took their inspiration from the land, but in the last 25 years he’s dealt critically with the guilt posed by slavery, the destruction of the natural environment, the dangers of romanticism, the relationship of the past to the present, and the twitches and ticks of contemporary life all infused into Paul’s Hill, anchored steadfastly in the present by the inclusion of the mundane elements of daily life and a use of language that dissolves the distinction between precincts of poetry and prose. His is the voice of a man viewing the present with skepticism, occasional distaste and a trace of anxiety.

The flag of the Oklahoma-bombing holds one tiny baby, fire-scarred

And that September, towering out of words, humble beyond relief,

Some hint of lushness — and you among the moon’s heaving night —

listening to whispers . . .

Judged by productivity, Shelby Stephenson has, for 50 years, created poetry of high quality. Beginning with Middle Creek Poems and moving forward through his 10 books to Paul’s Hill, he’s demonstrated continued growth and has perfected a distinctly individual voice cultivated with a single-minded devotion to his vision of a North Carolina in transition. As he’s matured as a writer, he’s stepped out of the tobacco rows, assuming the role of critic, teacher, reviewer, social commentator — and, most importantly, a distinguished and generous poet laureate.

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.

Night Work

Exploring deep space in Jackson Springs

By Jim Moriarty

Celestial Photographs by Jeff Haidet   •   Earthbound Photographs by John Gessner

It’s not necessary to climb a mountain to reach the stars, but sometimes you have to dress like it. During the great January freeze of 2018, when the polar vortex decided to dispatch its nose-hair-freezing temperatures south, Jeff Haidet spent his evenings in the Grande Pines Observatory with the roof open, staring into deep space and a case of frostbite at the same time. Maybe not frostbite. His base camp, well, house is less than a hundred yards away. Nonetheless, here is a man who makes hay when then the sun doesn’t shine. Or the moon. “Everyone he knows, knows he hates the moon,” says Jeff’s wife, Vicki. If your intention is to draw a bead on the Running Man nebula in the constellation Orion, the glow of the moon is nothing more romantic than a bad case of light pollution.

The Grande Pines Observatory is as likely to be mistaken for the Gemini Telescope as Jackson Springs is for the top of Mauna Kea, but it’s surprising what can be seen if you know where to look. Most people have a shed for gardening tools. The Haidets have one for citizen science. The official observatory code of the 10-by-12-foot building is W46, the number associated with the data Haidet voluntarily supplies to the Minor Planet Center, part of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and to the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. One is the worldwide clearinghouse for all things asteroid, the other is Near Earth Objects.

One does not provide data to these institutions by picking up the phone, calling an 800 number and saying, “Dude, write this down.” They won’t talk to you until they know you’re worth listening to. “You have to send them data to prove you can get to the tolerances they want. You’re getting down to an accuracy of less than an arc second,” says Jeff. “An arc second is a dime at 2.4 miles. Put a dime somewhere down in Foxfire, and we can measure it from here with the right techniques and the right equipment. That’s the kind of accuracy you have to get.”

When the Minor Planet Center publishes its astrometric observations in its Circulars, Jeff may have 20 line items in it. The big boys might have 50 pages. “The pros do this a different way,” he says with a smile. The Lunar Planetary Lab is part of a mission that will likely reach its target, the asteroid 101955 Bennu, this August. “They’re going to sample material from the asteroid and bring it back,” says Jeff. “So they had a citizens science program to provide them with data on other possible targets after they’re done with Bennu. They put out a list: We need data on these six this month. They use it in their planning. It was science that I had the equipment and the methodology to do.”

So, back to this unusual shed. For one thing, the sliding garage door is on the top. Then inside, instead of a riding lawnmower, there’s a Losmandy Gemini 2 mount held in place by 700 pounds of concrete pillar poured into the ground. You could jump up and down on the detached plywood floor and the telescope from Guan Sheng Optics, a Taiwanese company, won’t even know you’re in the same state. Jeff’s astronomical camera, acquired just before Christmas last year from QHYCCD, completes the outfit while the Lenovo laptop processes the data.

“I was doing visual observing, which you do until your eyes start to go a little bad,” says Jeff. “Mostly you’re looking at faint galaxies, nebula, so, if you want to stay in astronomy you do imaging. It’s almost all working together now. There’s a lot of moving pieces. When it works it’s kind of fun, but when it doesn’t work, it’s frustrating. It takes patience and time to learn how to do it. The other night I was taking pictures of this one nebula and I’m looking at some of the pictures when I got back in the house, and there’s an airplane going right through it. Throw that away.”

Naturally, no workplace is complete without a few personal touches, like the Grande Pines Observatory sign the Haidets’ son, Brian, an N.C. State University physics and engineering graduate who is working on a Ph.D. at UC-Santa Barbara, made to hang near the observatory’s doorway. Then there’s the tiny homemade heater Jeff rigged up to prevent dew forming on the optics on cool mornings. Addressing the tobacco barn effect of the summer heat is high on the to-do list. And, he’ll eventually replace the weights he has duct-taped to the telescope mount. “The scope and the equipment weighed more than I anticipated. I found some barbell weights and strapped them on there,” he says. Gravity doesn’t seem to resent improvisation. The paper bags suspended beneath the crown of the roof at either end are key pieces of environmental engineering. When the observatory was first built, pre-telescope installation, wasps seemed to be of the opinion the building had been erected as their personal clubhouse. Jeff solicited advice among astronomy bloggers and found the solution — scarecrows for wasps. “Take an empty brown bag, blow it up, tie it off and hang it up there,” he says. “Apparently wasps, the type that would nest in here, are very territorial. So they’ll come in and see it and think that’s a nest. It actually works. I have not had a wasp since.”

There have been a lot of different reasons to move to the Sandhills. Pinehurst’s founder, James Walker Tufts, thought people would come for the cleansing ozone of the pines. The Haidets, however, might be the only people who ever moved to Moore County for the dark. “We were looking for dark skies and warm weather and I’m a golfer,” says Vicki, who plays off a sporty seven handicap. Having horse farms nearby was particularly enticing. Open spaces. No street lights. No floodlights from the neighbors. Five and a half years ago they found the perfect lot in Grande Pines and with the removal of a modest number of trees, created the southern horizon Jeff needed to scan the sky.

Ohioans both, she grew up in Toledo and he in Alliance. Vicki learned to play golf at Inverness Golf Club, another of Donald Ross’ famous courses, and Jeff learned astronomy with the help of Dr. James Rodman, the astronomy professor at Mount Union College who was a friend of his parents — Lavern and LaVerne — and lived a few blocks down the street. “I don’t know how it would have gone without him, but he helped a lot,” says Jeff, who attended Case Western Reserve when it was still the duopoly of Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University. “We had the distinction at Case Western Reserve, when they merged, of having the nation’s two worst football teams,” says Jeff. “We got beat by Carnegie Mellon one year 72-6.” At least they scored — some solace for an institution that has an affiliation, one way or another, with 17 Nobel laureates.

“When I was about 5, I got a telescope for Christmas, and I forget now what it was — either Saturn or Jupiter — was in the sky that morning,” says Jeff. The oohs and aahs were followed by serious study. He built his own telescope; in fact, he has built several, grinding and polishing the mirrors himself. “When you’re a boy, you have no money but you have time, so you build things,” he says.

It wasn’t as though Jeff could go to YouTube and download a “How to Build a Newtonian Telescope” video onto his smartphone. Think library. Think books. Think Dr. Rodman. “Imagine these two round discs of glass. One is going to be your mirror and one’s called a blank,” he says. For hours at a time, day after day, you apply a heavy grit. “It’s all in the pattern you use,” he says. Eventually, one piece becomes concave, the other convex. When it reaches the curvature you want, you test the focal length. If that’s where you want it, you begin using finer grits for a smooth finish. After that comes the polishing with optical rouge, similar to what jewelers use. “The problem is, you don’t want it to be a perfectly spherical mirror,” says Jeff. “It needs to be parabolic.” Enter the pitch lap. And so on. “Grinding it wasn’t that bad,” says Jeff. “Polishing it would take a lot of time. The tolerances are very tight and it would take weeks to get it right unless you’re really lucky.”

Jeff graduated from Case (he stuck with the old diploma) with a degree in astronomy and physics. When he graduated in ’72, the National Science Foundation budget had mostly dried up, so he left astronomy behind, using his computer proficiency to land a job with Owens Corning. He got a Master’s degree in computer science and engineering from Ohio State and spent his career at Owens integrating the shop floor equipment with the enterprise systems until he retired in 2008. Vicki graduated from Bowling Green State University, met Jeff when they both worked at Owens Corning and, after Brian turned 4, struck out on her own as a marketing consultant until she retired three and a half years ago.

It wasn’t until the late ’90s that Jeff was able to get back into astronomy. But Sylvania, Ohio, hard by Toledo, wasn’t the place for it. Every night session was a road game. “You had to travel about 45 minutes to get to where you had a dark sky. It’s a pain to drag all your equipment out and get all set up and aligned and calibrated,” says Jeff. Wouldn’t a backyard observatory be so much simpler?

Thanks to his “store bought” telescope with the Ritchey-Chretien optical design that matches up well with the big sensors in the new camera, deep space is only a few yards away. Auto-guiding allows him to expose the camera for an hour and be spot on the entire time. “Primarily what I had been doing is precise measuring, but with this camera I can do really good deep sky photography,” he says. “The new cameras, you take a series of exposures through different filters and then you stack those together to make the color image. Those really fancy pictures you see, those aren’t by accident. Those take time. A lot of knowledge, how to get the colors right, get the gradient across the background right, get all the noise out of the picture. It’s a serious thing.”

And best done in the dark.

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

Almanac

Something primal awakens within you on the first day of spring.

You rake the lawn, re-seed bare patches, feed the compost, prune the
fruit trees, repair the wooden trellis, and celebrate the new buds on the heirloom azalea.

Soon, the banksia rose will be a waterfall of fragrant yellow blooms, and foxglove will swoon from the tender kiss of a ruby-throated hummingbird.

Spring is synonymous with life, and each breath is nectar to your soul. As robin exhales mirthful tunes of snowdrop, crocus and daffodil, you find yourself whistling along. Today: songs of iris, thrift and pussy willow. Tomorrow: ballads of blue speckled eggs. 

When the soil is workable, you sow the first of the peas, spinach, lettuce and leeks, sealing each seed with a silent prayer.

Tuesday, March 20, officially marks the vernal equinox. Urban legend has it you can keep an egg balanced upright at the exact moment that the sun crosses the plane of the Earth’s equator. Perhaps. Although you might have a better chance of cutting a deal with the wisteria.

Interview with a Leprechaun

If ever there were an optimal day to spot a leprechaun, surely it would be March 17. That’s what an Irish-blooded friend of mine stands by. As a young girl, Mary would wake with the birds on St. Patrick’s Day morn — the day before her birthday — and lie in the grass in her front yard.

“I thought for sure I would spot a leprechaun there at sunrise,” she recently told me. “I could feel it in my bones.”

Year after year she tried, but on the day before her 11th birthday, she gave up. Perhaps it was silly to believe in the magic of St. Paddy’s Day.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

At sunrise on her 11th birthday, something told her to lie in the yard once more.   

“I saw a quick movement out of the corner of my eye,” she remembers, then ran across the yard to discover a perfect four-leaf clover in the grass.

“I still swear a leprechaun guided me there,” she says.

Flash forward 20-plus years to a Welsh pony farm in western North Carolina where, this time of year, when the weeping cherry is in bloom, Mary finds four- and five-leaf clovers on a daily basis — sometimes by the dozen.

Halloween of 2015, while scanning a favorite field for an hour and a half, she found 117 four- and five-leafers, which she handed out to trick-or-treaters.

“I dressed up as a leprechaun for the occasion.”

How on this clover-loving Earth does she find them?

“Sometimes I see them as movement, and sometimes I hear their vibration,” she explains. “Nature speaks to those who listen.”

If the leprechauns aren’t guiding her, then perhaps the luck is simply in her blood. I’m inclined to believe that both are true.

The best thing about finding clovers?

“Giving them away,” says Mary. “I love seeing the smile on the face of someone who has never seen a four-leaf clover in person.”

The Lunar Report

Two full moons this month. On Thursday, March 1, celebrate the Full Worm Moon by sowing the season’s first root crops and fruiting perennials. Named by the Native Americans who so intimately knew and loved the land, this year’s third full moon signifies a softening Earth and the return of the robin. A second full moon falls on Sunday, March 31. Celebrate by doing that once-in-a-blue-moon something.

Bird Messenger

In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s novel, a cheerful robin helps 10-year-old Mary Lennox unearth a rusty key to a long-abandoned garden.

The Secret Garden isn’t just a story of forgotten roses and the promise of spring. It’s about the healing properties of the Earth, and how, within and without, love can transmute the bleakest and most dismal places. Listen to the robin: The key is in the soil beneath you.

Rush, Rush, Rush

You said you need a what?

By Renee Phile

A few months ago, around 6:50 a.m., the boys and I were on our way to school when David, my 14-year-old, from the backseat says, “I guess I’m not going to my band concert tonight. It’s really not a big deal.”

I nearly swerved off the road. There are only two concerts a year, and they are both quite the events. “What? Of course you’re going. Why would you say you aren’t?”

“My white shirt and the black pants are too small.”

I nearly swerved off the road again. “Really? When were you going to tell me?”

“I forgot.”

“So you decide to tell me on the way to school on the day of the band concert when you know I have to work all day.”

“Sorry. I don’t need to go. It’s not a big deal. My band teacher will understand.”

“Oh, so she has been preparing you for months for this concert and you think she will totally understand if you don’t go because you failed to tell your mom in time that you need new clothes?”

“Maybe.”

I was afraid of anything that might spill out of my mouth and I guess they were, too, because  we drove to school in silence.

After work I rushed to Kohl’s to find the required white dress shirt and black pants and, of course, they weren’t on sale. What choice did I have? I was being held up at the point of a band concert. I bought the clothes and picked up David from wrestling practice 30 minutes before he had to be at the concert.

“You really didn’t need to worry about it Mom. My band teacher would understand. She’s pretty reasonable.”

Um, you’re welcome.

***

A few weeks later Kevin and I were sitting at David’s wrestling match. Now, these matches typically last around three hours or more, so a wrestling match night is a late night. Kevin, my 9-year-old, between bites of popcorn, said in the most nonchalant voice, “Mom, can we stop by Walmart on the way home?”

“Why?”

“I need something for a project.”

“What project?”

“Something about solar systems. It’s due tomorrow.”

“Kevin, please tell me this is a joke.”

“I forgot about it until just now.”

Frantic, I sent a text to his teacher, apologized for bothering her at home, and said Kevin told me he has a project due tomorrow and this is the first time I have heard anything about it. (No smiley face.)

She texted back promptly and said that, yes, there was a discovery project on the solar system due in the morning, and it was also the end of the grading period, so he couldn’t turn it in late.  (Smiley face and a thumbs up.)

That night was spent gluing and coloring Mercury, Venus and Mars. Around and around we go.

The rules are simple: Tell me your due dates; give me notes from school when you get them; let me know what you need for a project a week ahead of time. Nowhere in the rules do the words “last minute” appear. I know they’re genetically capable of advance planning because when a friend is having a birthday party in two weeks, Kevin hands me the invitation right away and reminds me about it five times a day. They can do it, I just know they can.

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

Green with Envy

Doing St. Paddy’s Day the Southern way

By Tom Allen

You are what your ancestors ate. And drank. Sometimes.

Credit English forebears for my fish and chips hankering. Hot tea, too. But a recent Ancestry.com search shows a wee bit o’ green pulsing through my veins. Therefore the Irish branch on my family tree should support corned beef and cabbage. But no. A split decision. I love cabbage. Ditto potatoes and soda bread slathered with Kerrygold butter.  But, even on St. Patrick’s Day, I can’t stomach corned beef. Maybe that’s because nobody in Ireland eats the Americanized permutation, which replaced bacon — too expensive for poor Irish immigrants.

Funny thing is, I’m a deeply rooted Southerner who doesn’t appreciate a thick Better Boy tomato slice on white bread, made mushier with mayo. Duke’s, of course.  “Unheard of,” some folks say.  “Treason,” others sneer.  My reply?  “Sorry, it’s a texture thing.”

Leprechauns aside, March 17 marks the feast day of Ireland’s beloved patron saint.  In Ireland, until later in the 20th century, the day was more religious than raucous.  While family and faith are important to the celebration, pubs and parades now mark the occasion as well.  An estimated 33 million pints of Guinness are downed in that 24-hour period.

In America, St. Patrick’s Day is a one-day deal, but the Emerald Isle spends several days tipping its hat to the good fellow credited with Christianizing the island nation and driving out those legendary snakes.  According to a friend with Irish roots, lots of folks wear green, even live shamrocks, but pinching is purely American.  Pinch an Irishman who’s not wearing green and you’re liable to catch a left hook.

As for Irish food, colcannon, not corned beef, is a St. Patrick’s Day staple.  The mixture of creamy mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale is served with bacon, a combination that makes me smile.  But who whips up colcannon around here?

I’m a foodie traditionalist.  Therein lies the pickle.  Give me Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day, burgers and dogs on July 4, turkey from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  But what’s a Southern boy, with a bit of Irish ancestry, supposed to eat on St. Paddy’s Day?  If not corned beef, perhaps a pork option honoring those frugal Irish immigrants who gave up their pricey bacon?  Try cured and fried.  Make mine country ham, sliced paper thin and seared in an iron skillet.  Perfect, I say, with a plate of steamed cabbage.  Pair with some buttermilk biscuits, spread with Kerrygold butter, of course, and dig into a fine pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Speaking of pickles, St. Patrick’s Day always falls during Lent, a season when some abstain from meat on Fridays.  Last year, the feast fell on a Friday.  Fortunately, some bishops in communities with large Irish-American populations relaxed the rule, granting one-day dispensations, so the faithful didn’t have to choose between sinning and nibbling on their beloved corned beef.

No such pickle this year, since St. Patrick’s Day falls on Saturday.  So simmer a pot of cabbage. Load up that slow cooker with a slab of corned beef brisket, or, if you’re like me, fry up some slices of North Carolina’s WayCo country ham.  Don a bit of green, offer a word of thanks for good souls like Patrick, then sit down to a salty feast that’s sure to keep those Irish eyes smiling.  Erin go bragh!

Tom Allen is minister of education at First Baptist Church, Southern Pines. 

Who’s on First?

In the early years of the 20th century, when hillmen were twirling the white spheroid at swat artists, baseball’s spring training was not the domain of Florida and Arizona as it is today. To sweat out the boilermakers and beef stew consumed over the winter, major leaguers moved all around the United States’ warmer climes. They came to places they could reach by train that had adequate and affordable lodging, a ball field a cut above a pasture, and town elders eager for publicity via all-caps datelines in big-city papers. 

Teams ventured to a score of locations during this time, including Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana; Dallas, Galveston and Marlin Springs, Texas; Charlottesville, Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia; Augusta, Macon, Savannah and Thomasville, Georgia; Charleston, Columbia and Spartanburg, South Carolina; Memphis, Tennessee; French Lick, Indiana; Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama; Hot Springs and Little Rock, Arkansas; Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. (Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run on March 7, 1914, at Fayetteville’s Cape Fear Fairgrounds during an intrasquad game as a member of the then-minor league Baltimore Orioles.) 

For three seasons, the Philadelphia Phillies got down to playing weight, knocked off the rust and otherwise readied for their National League schedule in Southern Pines.

The Phillies held spring training in Southern Pines in 1909, 1910 and 1913. In 1914, when Philadelphia, seduced by a fancy field in Wilmington, moved on, the Baltimore Terrapins came to town in 1914 to prepare for their first season in the short-lived Federal League. Familiarity hadn’t bred contempt for Terrapins player-manager Otto Knabe, who was a second baseman for the Phillies in their three Sandhills springs.

The Phillies had set up camp in Savannah from 1906 to 1908, but in early January 1909 Southern Pines officials wrote to club president Bill Shettsline asking him to visit and consider the town for spring training. “At a meeting of the councilmen and the golf club of Southern Pines last week the plans for taking care of the ball players, should they go there, caused considerable enthusiasm,” the Harrisburg Daily Independent wrote of the bid. “It was decided to improve the baseball grounds and to put in shower baths and a plunge.” Another paper reported that “every accommodation and facility for training were guaranteed.”

When Phillies manager Billy Murray left January 10, 1909, on a scouting trip of Southern camp possibilities, Southern Pines was his first stop. Murray liked what he saw — from the enthusiasm of the populace to the accommodations at the Piney Woods Inn to the quality of the baseball field next to Southern Pines Country Club, which had been established in 1906. 

“The hotels here will be prepared to take care of the crowds, and they are assured of the best of treatment and of the generous hospitality of the townspeople,” The Tourist of Southern Pines boasted. “Mr. C.L. Hayward of the baseball committee has had a force of men at work on the grandstand, and it has been entirely renovated. Three extra tiers of seats have been added, the flooring renewed, and the whole stand braced inside and out. A canopy of canvas will protect the spectators in the grandstand from the direct rays of the sun.”

The Phillies arrived in early March after a 14-hour train trip. Among the traveling party was sports cartoonist and columnist Edgar Wolfe of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Wolfe, who used the pen name “Jim Nasium” and would become nationally known through his drawings in The Sporting News, chronicled each of the Philly team’s sojourns to Southern Pines.

Nasium endorsed the ball field, calling it the finest spring-training surface the Phillies had encountered in a long time, with black loam over sand rolled hard and smooth. “This means much in training the judgment and speed of infielders in early spring practice,” Nasium wrote, “besides greatly reducing the frequency of those delightful moments when an infielder gets plugged in the eye with a hot one that hasn’t any consistency in its action.”

The correspondent was less enthusiastic with the sleepy atmosphere in Southern Pines, population approximately 500. “When it comes to wide-awake towns,” Nasium said, “this little old village makes the average group of Southern plantation buildings look like a bustling metropolis in comparison.”

And Nasium rued the difficulty in finding a drink in the area. “Nut-brown is the prevailing style of complexions in this neck of the woods,” he wrote. “But you couldn’t get a nut-brown taste in your mouth here if you were President of the United States with a rattlesnake bite as big as an ostrich egg concealed on your person. This is one of those sections of the Sunny South where you can’t ‘look upon the wine when it is red,’ or any other color, unless you happen to personally be acquainted with some native who keeps a fire extinguisher in the house charged with ‘joy water’ for home consumption and the entertainment of guests.”

A lack of diversions wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for teams attempting to get their charges in shape. During the latter part of the 1800s, when pre-season getaways began (Boss Tweed’s New York Mutuals, an amateur nine, traveled to New Orleans in 1869, with the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Stockings warming up in the Crescent City the following season) and into the 20th century, the focus was on perspiration not strategy.

“ . . . For early camps were more fat farms than baseball camps,” Charles Fountain wrote in Under the March Sun: The Story of Spring Training. “The players of the day were given greatly to off-season dissipation . . . ” In Baseball: The Early Years, Harold Seymour noted that players frequently showed up in the spring “looking like aldermen.”

The Phillies were given every advantage to work off any off-season excesses in Southern Pines. There were many paths through the longleafs for walks to augment baseball drills. The 8-mile round trip to Aberdeen was a frequent training route. Being based near the country club, a majority of the players caught the golf bug and played every chance they got. Sherry Magee, the Phillies stalwart left fielder who in 1910 hit .331 to snap Honus Wagner’s four-year run as National League batting champion, often led the hikes and golf outings.

After a full day, the Phillies could sit on the veranda of the Piney Woods and, as Nasium wrote in the Inquirer, “bite off chunks of balsam-laden ozone that will assay 500 pounds to the bite and make you sweat turpentine every time the sun hits you.”

Because the food coming out of the Piney Woods kitchen was so tasty, the players had to mind their portions in order to keep their hard effort from being for naught. Certainly there were no reports of dissatisfied players such as Philadelphia Athletics catcher Ossee Schreck, who according to Fountain in Under the March Sun, “grew increasingly frustrated with the poor quality of the steak he was served at the team’s hotel and with the hotel’s seeming indifference to his complaints. Somewhere along the way, he secured a hammer and nail, and when another steak displeased him, he rose from his table and nailed the steak to the dining room wall.”

There was discontent about the wind and rain that sometimes marred March in Moore County, the latter a particular concern in 1910. New Philadelphia player-manager Red Dooin — a compact but feisty catcher sometimes called the “singing maskman” because of his off-season vaudeville work — was appalled at the condition of the field when he got to Southern Pines.

“Manager Dooin scared the golf club committee into seven different kinds of fits last night,” Nasium wrote on March 2, “when he threatened to pack up his trunks and take his bunch of ball tossers to some other spot on the Southern map where there was an inch of smooth ground to practice on.”

It turned out to be an idle threat. Dooin calmed down as town officials scurried to make improvements to the diamond. But four players wished the team had decamped.

As the Phillies slept in the Piney Woods Inn on Sunday, March 6, a severe storm rolled in with heavy rain starting at 2:30 a.m. Forty-five minutes later a powerful lightning bolt hit the cupola of the wooden structure. “Suddenly the heavens were lit up with a flash of fire which shot down on the hotel,” the Inquirer reported. “It tore away the big flag-pole on the corner of the roof, burned a big hole through the shingles and went through two floors, splintering the woodwork, shattering many window panes and scattering plaster all over the corridor.”

The worst damage occurred in a room housing Johnny Bates, Lou Schettler, Jim Maroney and Harry Welchonce, where the lightning ripped a hole in the ceiling above Maroney’s bed, sending a chandelier and plaster debris crashing down on them.

“That the big pitcher was not killed,” the Associated Press wrote of Maroney, “was due to the fact that a gaspipe, extending across, acted as a conductor and shunted the lightning away.”

The four players were stunned and shaken — Schettler unable to speak for two hours — but miraculously weren’t injured. For Welchonce, the incident brought back bad memories of a close call from lightning a few years prior and was part of an odyssey of misfortune that limited the highly touted minor leaguer to only play a total of 26 games in the majors. In addition to the lightning-strike scares, Welchonce battled shoulder injuries, was hit in the head by a pitch and contracted tuberculosis.

Surprisingly, despite the litany of problems, he had a long life, dying at 93 in 1977.

Led by Magee’s hitting and the pitching of Earl Moore, who led the league in strikeouts, the Phillies improved slightly on their 74-79 record of 1909, going 80-73 and finishing fourth in the National League in 1910. By that fall, though, they had decided to go elsewhere for spring training. Philadelphia traveled to Birmingham in 1911 and Hot Springs in 1912.

The Arkansas locale, where the Dodgers and Pirates also prepared for the 1912 season, made a push to get the Phillies to return in 1913. But Southern Pines recruited them as well, and with promises of a good practice field and comfortable rooms at the Pine Cone Inn — the Piney Woods Inn had burned down since their last visit — Philadelphia headed to Moore County again.

“Instead of the snow which greeted their vision in 1910,” the Inquirer wrote upon the Phillies’ arrival in North Carolina, “old Mother Earth was just donning her gown of green, the sun was shining bright and getting warmer every minute. It was a glorious sight for a bunch of tired old ball players and it made every one sniff and show new life.”

Dooin, who had suffered a broken ankle in 1910 and a broken leg in 1911, the latter on a vicious collision as he tried to block home plate in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, would be more manager than player in 1913, taking the field in only 55 games. The skipper had players to fill the void, though.

Gavvy Cravath, who joined the Phillies in 1912, had a great year in 1913. Cravath led the National League in hits (179), home runs (19, no tiny number in the Dead-Ball Era) and RBIs (128, setting a National League mark that stood until Rogers Hornsby broke it in 1921). One of baseball’s greatest pitchers, Grover Cleveland “Pete” Alexander, also limbered up for the 1913 season in Southern Pines after opening a pool hall in his native Nebraska over the winter. Alexander went 22-8 in 1913 and won 373 games in his long career, tied for third all-time with Christy Mathewson and trailing Cy Young (511 wins) and Walter Johnson (417).

In their third trip to Southern Pines, the Phillies enjoyed better weather and field conditions than they experienced in 1910. As during their previous visits, they liked being able to play golf on the country club course as well as utilize it for conditioning runs. Yet by the time they departed town at the end of March 1913, it was clear that all was not perfect on the golf-baseball front.

Southern Pines Country Club had expanded to 18 holes and golf had grown in popularity with more visiting golfers. “The country club will not permit a high fence to be built around the outfield so as to protect the players from the strong winds,” a reporter noted, “and some of the golfers object to a ball field being so close to the links.” The club also indicated plans for tennis courts where the diamond was situated, likely meaning that a new field would have to be constructed somewhere else in town.

In writing about the Phillies’ spring training plans in December 1913, Nasium addressed the underlying tension. “The Phillies like to play golf — and the golfers didn’t want their sacred links invaded by a lot of professionals,” he wrote. “As the golf course started back of the ball club’s grandstand, it was very annoying to the golfers to have to dodge foul balls, or to have part of the links walked over every day by a lot of ball fans on their way to see the Phillies play.”

During 1913 spring training, the Phillies went to Wilmington on March 20 for a game against the Orioles. The Phillies won the game, 5-1, and Wilmington won over the Phillies, local officials turning out in force and hosting a barbecue after the game. In 1914 the Philly club headed to Wilmington to prepare for the season. But it was snowing upon their arrival, and it turned out to be one-and-done for Phillies’ spring training in the Port City. The teams would visit 13 different cities before settling in Clearwater, Florida, in 1947.

The Terrapins were a hit when they trained in Southern Pines in 1914 for the first Federal League season, staying in the Southern Pines Hotel and working out at the Phillies’ old spot by the country club. When the Terrapins left on the train in early April, The Baltimore Sun noted: “Pretty nearly the whole town turned out to say goodbye to the boys, and, as usual, every Terrapin felt just a little sorry he could not take the whole bunch along.”

Despite the support, in 1915 the Baltimore club conducted spring training in Fayetteville. No major league team returned to the Sandhills to tune up for a season.

The only spring training encore came more than three decades later when some of the Detroit Tigers’ minor league squads set up camp in Southern Pines in 1950-51. The Class C Butler (Pennsylvania) Tigers and Class D Jamestown (New York) Falcons trained in ’50, and in ’51 Jamestown was joined by two other Class D squads, the Richmond (Indiana) Tigers and Wausau (Wisconsin) Timberjacks.

“A good many fans have been out to watch the boys at work and report them a good-looking, clean-cut bunch,” The Pilot reported in 1950.

The farm clubs played at Memorial Field, their foul balls no threat to any golfers who by then were taking their shag bags to the grounds that long ago had been home to the Phillies, working on pitches of their own and most likely unaware of Southern Pines’ brief brush with the big leagues.

PinePitch

Our Little Hummingbirds

One of the delights of spring is the return of our hummingbirds, and it’s not too early to start thinking about getting your garden ready for them. Come hear local ornithologist and wildlife ecologist Susan Campbell talk about “Plants that Nurture and Attract Hummingbirds.” Campbell is the North Carolina authority on hummingbirds, and you may have seen her at Weymouth Woods, where she conducts research and bands hummingbirds as they pass through.

Sponsored by the Sandhills Horticultural Society and Sandhills Council of Garden Clubs, the talk takes place Friday, March 16, at 1 p.m. at the Ball Center at Sandhills Community College. Campbell  will describe hummingbirds’ physical attributes and tell you the best ways to attract them. The event is free, but registration is required, so if you are interested, please email landscapegardening@sandhills.edu to reserve your spot. SCC is located at 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. For more information, call (910) 692-6185.

Dining with History at the Shaw House

Back by popular demand, the creamed chicken and waffles luncheon will be served at the Shaw House Tea Room on Monday, March 19. Two years ago, the Moore County Historical Association revived the luncheon, once offered daily at the circa 1821 Shaw House. Chefs Jim Jones, co-president of MCHA, and Roberta Williams will prepare the delicious food on-site. There will be pitchers of maple syrup to drizzle on the waffles for fans of the creamed chicken-waffle-syrup taste combination. The dessert will be the traditional prune cake.

There are two seatings: one at 11:30 a.m. and another at 1 p.m. Lunch will be served in both the Shaw House and the Garner House, an 18th-century cabin behind the Shaw House, both located at corner of Morganton Road and Broad Street in Southern Pines. Take-out service will be available. After lunch, diners are invited to visit the gift shop.

The price per guest is $20. Please call (910) 281-5417 to make a reservation (required). For more information, call (910) 692-2051.

From Rio to Pinehurst

The Tufts Archives and Given Memorial Library will hold its 2018 Spring Colloquium, “Where Is Golf Going?” featuring renowned golf course architect Gil Hanse, on Wednesday, March 21, in the Cardinal Ballroom at the Carolina Hotel. Hanse designed the Olympic Course in Rio de Janeiro — where golf returned as an Olympic sport for the first time in over a century — in addition to creating Pinehurst’s acclaimed short course, The Cradle, and designing the highly praised Castle Stuart Golf Links in Inverness, Scotland. He’s currently working on a redesign of the Pinehurst No. 4 course. Tickets are $100. Cocktails begin at 5:30 p.m. and dinner at 6:30 p.m. The Carolina Hotel is at 80 Carolina Vista Drive in Pinehurst. Tickets are available at the Tufts Archives, 150 Cherokee Road in Pinehurst or at www.giventufts.org. For additional information call (910) 295-3642.

Magic and Mayhem

Dr. Jonathan Drahos and the Uprising Theatre Company invite you to join them on Thursday, March 15, for “Magic and Mayhem,” a benefit sponsored by the village of Pinehurst at the Fair Barn in support of Shakespeare in the Pines Summer Festival’s June presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The festive evening begins with a cocktail reception at 6:30 p.m., followed by a short performance of songs and scenes reflecting the “magic and mayhem” celebrated in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The evening will also include food, a silent auction and music.

Tickets for individuals are $75, $140 for couples, and $650 for tables of 10. You can purchase tickets at the door and online. The Fair Barn is located at 200 Beulah Road South, in Pinehurst. For more information and tickets, visit www.uprisingtheatrecompany.com.

Soup and Bread

Come to “Empty Bowls 2018,” a fundraising event to benefit Sandhills/Moore Coalition for Human Care, a nonprofit corporation that provides food, clothing and emergency resources to our Moore County neighbors in need. The date is Sunday, March 4, from 12 to 2 p.m., at the Country Club of Whispering Pines, where you will enjoy live music and delicious soups and desserts prepared by area restaurants and chefs, including Filly & Colts, Chef Clay White, Wolcott’s and Scott’s Table.

A general admission ticket of $40 also entitles you to a keepsake pottery bowl. A limited number of $20 tickets, without keepsake bowls, are available. Tickets for children ages 10–15 are $8 while children 9 and under can partake for free. Sponsorship opportunities are available. The venue is located at 2 Clubhouse Blvd., Whispering Pines. For tickets and more information, call (910) 693-1600 (option 5) or visit www.sandhillscoalition.org.

BYOT (Bring Your Own Talent)

The Arts Council of Moore County routinely invites all Moore County artists — actors, dancers, graphic designers, musicians, photographers, singers, visual artists, writers and other creative types — to get together for Artists Meetups. On Thursday, March 22, from 6 to 8 p.m., the Trinity Community Outreach Center will host an open mic acoustic event for singers, poets. A house piano, drums and sound system will be provided. Unlimited signups. Photographers, painters and dancers are welcome to capture and interpret the music. Savory and sweet snacks and light beverages provided. This is a free ACMC event. All artists are welcome to come and share their creative passion. The TCOC is located at 972 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. For more information, call (910) 692-2787 or visit www.MooreArt.org/ArtistsMeetup.

The Rooster’s Wife

Friday, March 2: The Kennedys. Now in their 22nd year as recording artists, the Kennedys are continually touring the United States and United Kingdom, playing acoustic folk rock at its finest. $10.

Sunday, March 4: Merlefest on the Road. Andy May, the Barefoot Movement and the Waydown Wanderers mix traditional Appalachian with whatever other styles they are in the mood to play. $20.

Sunday, March 11: Hiroya Tsukamoto and Kyshona Armstrong offer Japanese folk music and poetry through words and music. $15.

Thursday, March 15: Open mic.

Friday, March 16: Ms. Adventure’s Avril Smith, Vickie Vaughn and Kimber Ludiker play fiddle, bass, and guitar and have voices that soar through original and traditional tunes.

Sunday, March 18: Scroggins and Colorado perform a powerful, high mountain bluegrass explosion that features banjo and mandolin, incredible vocals and easy stage banter. $20.

Friday, March 23: The Steel City Rovers mix Celtic and North American traditions; and offer sophisticated musical arrangements and clever lyrical compositions. $10.

Sunday, March 25: Ameranouche — a rip-roaring ensemble playing hot acoustic, Gypsy-inspired music on traditional French jazz guitars. $15.

Doors open at 6 p.m. and music begins at 6:46 at the Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Prices given above are advance sale. For more information, call (910) 944-7502 or visit www.theroosterswife.org for tickets.

Sounds on the Grounds Fundraiser

On Sunday, March 25, from 4 to 8:30 p.m., come to the Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities for a family-friendly fundraiser in support of the beautiful grounds, historic buildings and Weymouth’s wonderful community programs. Hear music by Momma Molasses, playing with James Villone and Evan Campfield on bass; 80’s Unplugged; Whiskey Pines; and Becca Rae. Enjoy food and beverage provided by Kona Ice, Wildfire Pizza, Swank Coffee, Southern Pines Brewery and Weymouth (wine), among others. Shop at pop-up stores. Tickets are $10 for members, $15 for non-members, $5 for teens (ages 12–15) when accompanied by an adult. No charge for children under 12. This event is hosted by Weymouth Young Affiliates. Weymouth Center is located at 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. For more information, call (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

Back the PAC

Join the Pinecrest Athletics Club at the Fair Barn on Saturday, March 10, in an evening filled with friends, food, dancing and fundraising in support of all student athletes at Pinecrest High School. From 6 to 11:30 p.m., enjoy beer, wine, hors d’oeuvres and music by DJ King Curtis. The evening will also include live and silent auctions. Tickets are $50 for individuals. Tables of eight may be reserved. You can purchase tickets at Cameron and Company, Village of Pinehurst; Knollwood Fairways and Driving Range, Southern Pines; Pinecrest High School; and First Bank, Pinecrest Branch; or by contacting Christa Gilder at (910) 528-1437 or christa.gilder@mzero.com.

Walter’s Saw

Cutting through time

By Jim Dodson

Save for a handsaw, an old pocket wallet and quiet memories, they are all that I have left of him.

The wallet is a fine piece of work, a gentleman’s pebble grain leather breast wallet, beautifully stitched and bearing my grandfather’s initials in gilt lettering: W.W.D.

William Walter Dodson was a skilled carpenter and electrician who helped raise this region’s first electrical transmission towers and worked on the crew that wired Greensboro’s Jefferson Standard Building. During the Second World War, he also made cabinets for PT boats and built bookshelves for local public libraries.

The wallet is in mint condition, lined with fine silk, its state of preservation suggesting it was scarcely used. I think my dad brought it to my grandfather upon returning from military service in England and Normandy, in 1945. My guess is, Walter rarely used it because he was a workingman who rarely, if ever, dressed up. As I remember him, he was a preternaturally quiet but gentle man in rumpled cotton pants who was either fishing or in his woodshop or massive vegetable garden — the three places I spent most of my time with him. There was always the stump of a King Edward cigar in his mouth.

Walter’s handsaw, on the other hand, shows years of steady use, well worn and rusted in places near its simple wooden handle. I suppose it must be 80 years old if a day.

Both wallet and saw came my way decades ago and traveled with me to Georgia and Maine and back to Carolina in order to complete the sacred circle old elephants and most Southerners observe before they translate to a gentler, kinder place.

I inherited the items from my father, who never used the wallet either — too nice, he claimed — but did use that old handsaw for years until power saws showed up in his own woodworking workshop. He made bookshelves and tables for friends and family.

Not surprisingly, I picked up the woodworking bug too, clearly something in the bloodline.  We hail, after all, from a long line of Carolina woodworkers, at least one of whom was a celebrated cabinetmaker.

Walter’s grandfather — my great-great-granddad — was one George Washington Tate, a prominent citizen of Alamance County who helped survey the boundaries of the state’s central counties following the Civil War, but was best known for his grist mill on the Haw River and his skill at crafting fine furniture.

Last summer, while attending a seminar at the Museum of Early Decorative Art (commonly known as MESDA) on the Scots-Irish furniture makers who filtered into the Carolina back country during the 18th century, I heard G.W. Tate’s name mentioned in a tone of near reverence by an expert on Piedmont furniture making, who noted that one of his most notable surviving pieces is a handmade wardrobe displayed in a Williamburg museum of early American furniture. Tate Street in Greensboro is named for this man.

She was delighted when I informed her afterwards that I knew of a second splendid handwork of Tate’s. My second cousin Roger Dodson and his wife, Polly, had recently had us to supper and showed us a handsome old walnut corner cupboard that bore his distinctive mark “G.W. Tate.”

It was his grandson Walter, however, for whom I’m partially named, who first placed a saw in my hand. One Christmas when I was about 6 or 7 years of age, visiting my grandparents in Florida, he gave me a miniature tool box with a small hammer, screw drivers and handsaw.

In his modest workshop, he also showed me how to saw a straight line and hammer a nail — small tasks that seemed almost magical at the time.

Somehow that kid’s toolbox disappeared over the years, probably because I used its tools constantly to build forts in the woods around our house. I recall using them to build my entry for the annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. My car got eliminated early, which was perfectly fine with me. I much preferred building forts and crude furniture.

It wasn’t until I was over 30 and living on the coast of Maine that two abiding passions hit me with a vengeance, both of which I trace to a quiet carpenter and gardener in rumpled pants.

The first struck when my wife and I built a post and beam house on a forested hill in Maine. I helped the housewrights place the structural beams, but did most of the interior finish work myself, learning as I went.

Not only did I lay and peg the 16-inch ancient pine flooring boards salvaged from a 19th-century barn in New Hampshire, I also designed and built the kitchen’s counter and cabinetry from scratch. Ditto the adjoining walls of pine bookshelves in the living room. My distinctly Southern mama, when she first walked into our home, smiled and remarked, “Honey, all this wood is very pretty. But when are you going to finish this house?”

The Canadian hemlock beams and pine floors and cabinets cast a golden glow over everything, especially as the sun shone through our tall south-facing windows. Over nearly two decades that followed, I loved the subtle creaks and moans the beams and floors made as the house settled and the wood aged, especially in the dead of winter when the sun struck the beams and the house emitted out a lovely scent of the forest. I thought of this as the house exhaling in a contented way that my late grandfather would likely have approved.

Walter probably would have liked the rustic farm table and occasional table I made for the living room, too. The table we gave away when my second wife and I moved home to North Carolina. The occasional table went to my first wife’s house, where it’s still in use and quite loved today.

Walter Dodson passed on when he was 64. I was 11, my first funeral, and it was really sad to see him go. He looked remarkably peaceful in his big wooden coffin, dressed in the only suit I ever saw him wear. My grandmother was a serious Southern Baptist, though Walter rarely darkened the doorway of any church. Time on the water or in his workshop or garden were his idea of worship, his way celebrating the gift of life.  Anyone who works intimately with wood or tends a garden through the seasons would completely understand.

As I write, this Walter is also 64 years old and preparing to build a set of ambitious bookshelves for the cozy room my wife and I have decided would make a splendid library in the old house we’ve been slowly redoing over the past 20 or so months.

I have my eye on a fancy new power saw that will do just about anything from the finest trim work to cutting a rough plank flooring. It costs more than my gifted, gentle grandfather probably made in a year.

Proof that you can take the boy out of the woodshop but not the other way around, however, resides in the fact that Walter’s handsaw will be hung somewhere in my new woodshop where those bookshelves will be born, a sweet reminder that the hand that shapes the cut was created long before the saw ever touched wood.

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.