Almanac

By Ashley Wahl

November is the sculptor and the stone — ever chiseling away, ever clarifying what has always been, gently unveiling the mystery.

Near-bare branches reveal ash-gray skies, crisp silhouettes in all directions and a panorama so clear you wonder how you never noticed what you’ve never noticed.

The veil is thin. Like trees with lungs, deer stand silent, eyes wide, ears spread like radio antennae. There is nothing and nowhere to hide. Even the last of the leaves have let go — not yet of their branches but of their need for sunlight. No more churning out chlorophyll. No more illusion of green. Only dappled yellow and mottled orange, the brilliant scarlet truth.

November is the last of the apples, zucchini bread warm from the oven and the cold sting of autumn in your eyes and bones.

In a flash, an earful of waxwing ornament the tender branches of the dogwood, pass its red berries from bill to bill like children sharing candies. You heard them before you saw them. And like a dream, the birds have vanished as suddenly as they arrived, the berries gone with them.

November guides you inward.

You are standing in the kitchen now, cradling a hot beverage until your face and fingers thaw. It doesn’t happen all at once, this softening. But sure as the final leaves descend, the grace of the season will become clear: Things fall away to reveal what matters most. And with all this space — this bare-branched view of the brilliant scarlet truth — there is gratitude.

You give thanks for what is here now, the cold sting of aliveness and the warmth within the mystery.

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,
Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Turnip Eater

It’s turnip season, and if that doesn’t thrill you from tongue to root, consider the words of Pliny the Elder, who maintained that the turnip “should be spoken of immediately after corn, or the bean, at all events; for next to these two productions, there is no plant that is of more extensive use.”

In Roman times, the globular roots were hurled at unpopular public figures much in the way disappointed groundlings chucked rotting fruit at Shakespeare’s duds.

There are more practical uses, of course.

During World War I, bread and potato shortages gave birth to the “Turnip Winter” of 1916–1917. German civilians subsisted on them. And in World War II, when biscuits and mutton were scarce, guess what? The turnip was there, best in savory Lord Woolton pie, named for the Minister of Food who popularized the dish in 1940.

Turnips are low in carbs and packed with nutrients.

Roast them in butter. Mash them with sage. Pan-fry their greens with sweet onions and garlic, balancing the bitter with brown sugar, salt and apple cider vinegar.

In 2018, Tasmanian farmer Roger Bignell accidentally grew a world record-breaking turnip that weighed a whopping 18.36 kilograms (that’s over 40 pounds). Imagine unearthing that sucker, a root the size of a border collie! Not so easy to hurl.

If Charles Dickens used the word “turnip” in a novel, he was likely referring to a country bumpkin. But it’s a gift to be simple, and when life gives you turnips, you might just get creative with them.

Quiet Time

The full Beaver Moon rises on Monday, November 30. It’s time now.

The beaver retreats to its lodge, the squirrel to its drey. The bumblebee burrows underground, alone, dreaming of honey and clover.

The creatures lead the way, but we, too, turn inward.

Warm wishes and good health to you and yours this holiday season. May your hearts and cupboards be full.  PS

The Omnivorous Reader

Siberian Odyssey

Exploring the exotic and the desolate

By Stephen E. Smith

“Loss of Travel Causing Americans to Feel Stress and Anxiety” a recent MSN headline blared. If that’s the case, here’s a possible pandemic-proof cure: The Lost Pianos of Siberia, by Sophy Roberts, a beautifully written travelogue/social history that will likely transport the reader to heretofore unknown locales.

You can’t travel much farther afield than Siberia, the wasteland to which tsarist political prisoners were exiled and in which purged Soviet dissidents disappeared into gulags surrounded by ice, swamps, mosquitoes and intellectual sterility. Much of what the average American knows about Siberia — if he or she knows anything at all — is based on the movie Doctor Zhivago, which wasn’t set in Siberia, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was, and that’s unfortunate, since Siberia contains an 11th of the world’s land mass, the largest continuous forest, the longest railroad, the biggest lake, the coldest city, and an exotic ethnic mix that’s bewildering even by American standards.

So why would a British journalist travel to Siberia to find lost pianos? Roberts isn’t an authority on the evolution of the instrument or a connoisseur of the finer points of piano construction or restoration. She isn’t even an accomplished pianist. Although she never overtly states her motivation, the reader is left with the impression that the book, in addition to being immensely entertaining and informative, is a testament to the power of music in the most adverse circumstances man can conjure. Simply stated, Roberts went looking for lost pianos in the most desolate place on the planet and wrote a book about what she found.

The narrative is organized around physical locations, social histories and characters. “The pull of private histories is always present in Siberia,” she writes. “Every face informs the enigmatic texture of a place where legacy of exile lingers, like the smell of incense, or the feeble gleam of traffic lights, with the complexity of Russia’s identity, and the mix of Europe and Asia, evident not just in the jumble of architecture of the Siberian baroque church I stood on top of in a snow-breeze in winter, but in the routes reaching out from every side.”

Typical of Roberts’ happier discoveries is the story of Maria Volkonskaya. When Maria was forced into exile in the 1850s with her Decembrist husband, she took a clavichord, dragging it on a sledge. Once settled in Irkutsk, one of the largest cities in Siberia, she opened a hospital and concert hall, where recitals became a social force in the region. Roberts visits Maria’s home, now a museum, and discovers a pyramid piano shaped like a concert piano turned up against the wall (the original clavichord had long since disappeared into history) and a Lichtenthal owned by Maria.

When played the Lichtenthal “behaved awkwardly,” but the muffled notes lift Roberts into lyricism: “The keys were sticky, like an old typewriter gluey with ink. He struck the keys until the softened notes — muted by layers of dust, perhaps, or felt that had swollen in the damp — started to appear. At first the sound was reed-thin, no louder than the flick of a fingernail on a bell. Inside the piano, the amber wood still gleamed, the strings’ fragile tensions held in place by tiny twists around the heads of golden, round-headed tuning pins.”

Chapter 8, “The Last Tsar’s Piano: The Urals,” is a predictable rehashing of the Russian Revolution and the transport of the Romanovs to Ekaterinburg. The Tsarina played the piano, an ebony instrument, perhaps a Russian made Schröder, which disappeared along with the Romanovs and the Ipatiev House in which they were executed. Ironically, the body of Rasputin, the Tsarina’s personal mystic, was disinterred, stuffed into an old piano and burned.

Maxim Gorky, who knew something about suffering, wrote of the “genuine horrors” of everyday life in his native Russia, and certainly there are examples aplenty in Roberts’ telling. While visiting Kiakhta, a city located on the Russian-Mongolian border, she describes gruesome deaths by bayonet during the tsarist and Soviet eras. Prisoners were poisoned and shoved alive into bakers’ ovens. Many exiles were sprayed with water and frozen to death so as not to waste bullets.

Near Tomsk, one of the oldest cities in Siberia, she hears stories of a family of “Old Believers,” examples of Slavic civilization before the introduction of Westernizing reforms in the 18th century, who had retreated so far into the snowy taiga of the western Sayan Mountains that they lived in complete isolation until discovered in the late 1970s. They knew nothing of Stalin and the moon landings, which they didn’t believe anyway, and thought cellophane was crumpled glass.

In describing Sakhalin Island near Aleksandrovsk in the North Pacific Ocean, she quotes Chekhov: “A dreadful, hideous place, wretched in every respect, in which only saints or profoundly perverse people could live of their own free will.” Vlas Doroshevick, one of Russia’s most popular and widely read journalists of the 20th century, described Sakhalin as “perhaps the most foul hole as exists on earth.”

On the Yamal Peninsula, Roberts observed abandoned “skeletons of iron, diggers, lorries, and drilling machines stuck in hollows of land from Yamal’s vast natural gas fields” — a desolate place that “felt close to the start of time.” The forsaken landscape of Kolyma “felt like the saddest place on the planet.”

And so it goes: the Altai Mountains, Harbin, Novosibirsk, Akademgorodok, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, etc. — place names so foreign they’re almost unpronounceable.

Roberts spent two years wandering the inhospitable wilderness of Siberia, and her powers of description bring those locales and their histories to life. There may have been pianos yet undiscovered, but Russian authorities eventually became suspicious of her “lost pianos” rationale, and she was ordered out of the country. Riding to the airport, she studied the texture of the skull of a man sitting in front of her. It was “like a brain exposed. The image stayed with me, along with the sight of a handgun in our driver’s glove compartment, the swelling in the land from mass graves, and the statues of Lenin in Kadykchan with half his face shot away.” 

There are disturbing, indelible images in The Lost Pianos of Siberia, visions of what Gorky called the “grotesquely terrible.” But there are also touches of humor and occasional moments of beauty. If Roberts’ descriptions of Siberia don’t magically cure the stress and anxiety of living in pandemic America, thoughtful readers might well find they sleep a little more soundly.  PS

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

Southwords

Don’t Forget to Write

For our family, the mailman was more than just a welcome sight — he was a lifeline

By Ruth Moose

As a child during World War II, I lived with my grandparents on a farm near Cottonville in Stanly County, North Carolina. With gas rationing, there was no traffic and so quiet we could hear the mailman long before we could see the cloud of dust his car made on the unpaved road. In a world turned upside down and torn apart, mail was the only thing we could count on.

We lived for the mail. It meant the world to us. We had the radio and a weekly newspaper, also delivered by the mailman. But letters told us the people we loved were safe.  At least for the time being.  My grandparents’ four children were in four corners of the world: my father stationed in France; my Uncle Tom a navigator with the Army Air Corps in London; my Aunt Pearl, an Army nurse, was with MacArthur’s troops in the Philippines; and my Uncle Edgar, who had just graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a masters in physics was in Washington, D.C., and alternately, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Each of them wrote a letter home every week. You could depend on it.  And my grandparents wrote back.

When two weeks went by without a letter from her daughter, my grandmother was more than worried, fearing the worst. She sent inquiries. Discovered my aunt was in this country, hospitalized with a mental and physical breakdown. But she was alive and recovered.

The mail not only brought letters each week but also a brand new, fresh copy of my grandmother’s favorite reading, The Saturday Evening Post. That was her recreation, her relaxation, her reward at the end of each long, worried day. On special occasions the mailman might bring a box of Whitman’s Sampler, picked up from a PX somewhere I’m sure. We rationed a single chocolate a day as long as it lasted.

The mailman also brought books! My aunt in D.C. was a librarian and regularly mailed me books, books that were read aloud to me until I taught myself to read. Poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses, The Adventures of Peter Rabbit and others. Books were magic doors to a larger world and gave me a lifelong love of the printed word, of learning, of no greater pleasure than reading.

When the war was over, they all came home, wounded in body, mind and spirit, but thankfully alive. They continued the weekly letters home and to each other the rest of their lives.

After my grandfather died, the farm was sold and my grandmother lived three months at a time with her four children: my aunt a school nurse in New Jersey; my uncle on the faculty at N.C. State in Raleigh; Uncle Edgar teaching at Georgia State; and my family in Albemarle. Always letters back and forth, specialty cards for all the occasions. Cards to be kept and displayed on mantels and dressers. Cards to be re-enjoyed for days and weeks following. Not the same as today’s emails, a blink here and gone forever. I remember getting an e-condolence card after my husband’s death and crying in frustration. If the sender really wanted to send some sympathy, they could have bought a card, or written a note, signed, addressed, stamped and mailed it. An e-condolence was a quick click and no more thought than that. Obligation over.

Sadly none of the old letters survived. Tossed in the purging of estates after a death; nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren who saw them as only pieces of paper, not family history.

During the pandemic, I’ve being purging files, boxes from storage and attics. Deep in one box I was amazed to find my letters to my husband, who was then my boyfriend during our four college years. He had somehow, somewhere, kept them and they had survived many moves, packing and unpacking. Don’t tell me emails could do that. Not in a million years. Yellowed and with three-cent stamps, the letters tell the story of a summer romance that lasted over 50 years. I’ve been reading, alternately laughing and crying. We were so young.  So 1950s crazy and scared. The question is: Will my sons want these letters? My grandchildren? I can only hope.  PS

Ruth Moose taught Introduction to Writing Short Fiction at UNC-Chapel Hill for 15 years. Her students have since published New York Times Bestsellers and are getting Netflixed. She recently returned to her roots in the Uwharrie Mountains. 

Golftown Journal

Holly Days

Of presidents and penalty strokes

By Lee Pace

As a lifelong hunter and fisherman, George H.W. Bush had a high regard for the environment and the importance of preserving wetlands. As vice president under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, he saw how wetland protection had become a hot-button political issue. Those areas of land covered by water at least part of the time serve as homes for wildlife, buffers for floodwaters and filters for pollution.

But they can also provide obstacles to those wanting to grow crops and build highways, houses, factories and, yes, even golf courses.

Bush seized on the environment as a key platform issue in his race against Michael Dukakis as the 1988 presidential campaign unfolded. He promised that his administration would set a national goal of “no net loss of wetlands.”

Bush took office in January 1989, and the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers soon had new marching orders on what they would or would not approve in future industrial, residential and agricultural development. A Petri dish of that policy and a crystal clear line-in-the-sand of its effects can be found on the 36 holes of golf at Pinewild Country Club, located just 2 miles west of the village of Pinehurst. 

Architect Gene Hamm designed the Magnolia Course in the mid-1980s, built it through 1988 and opened it a year later. There were no restrictions on which areas of the land could be filled in. At 7,446 yards, the course falls behind only Pinehurst No. 2 (7,588) and Quail Hollow (set at 7,600 yards for the 2017 PGA Championship) in the state of North Carolina in terms of length from the championship tees.

The Gary Player-designed Holly Course followed nearly a decade later and opened in 1996. If Player, his lieutenants and the club’s owner wanted to fill in wetlands, they would have to create them elsewhere on the property — a far too complicated and expensive proposition.

Thus the Holly Course hopscotches wetlands, streams and ponds to some degree on roughly half its holes. Some hazards might not require a full carry to safety, but they’re positioned over enough of the fairway or on a line to the green to give the player considerable pause for thought. The 12th and 13th are routed around a lake and its adjunct wetland area, the former hole a par-3 with a full carry over water and the latter a par-4 turning left-to-right with a drive over the lake, and an approach into the green over a patch of wetlands.

Among clubs in the Sandhills with 36 holes or more, the Magnolia and Holly present perhaps the most interesting set of contrasts.

“The Magnolia is right in front of you; there are no tricks,” says Chris Little, the club’s general manager since 1998. “The length is there; it’s a difficult course. There’s more risk-reward on the Holly. There’s a lot of trouble on the Holly, but if you avoid the water, there’s more chance to make some good scores.”

“The Magnolia is more meat-and-potatoes; the Holly allows a bit more creativity,” adds Gus Ulrich, the club’s director of instruction since 2008. “The Holly demands more precision, but you can make more birdies there. For the low-handicapper playing the back tees, the Magnolia’s a real challenge, among the best in town.”

Add those two regulation courses to the club’s nine-hole par-3 course, a three-hole practice track and a double-sided practice range with Ulrich’s teaching compound at one end, and you’ve got one of the most well-rounded and diversified clubs in the Sandhills. No wonder through September that the club had “for sale” signs on only four of some 900 residences within its 2,100-acre footprint.

Little believes that the coronavirus pandemic has helped the club’s stability beyond having lost all of its outside package business in the spring.

“People are working from home now. They’re moving away from the big cities, and the retirement process is being sped up,” he says. “It’s an hour-and-a-half to the airport from here. I have talked to people who say they’ve got three years until retirement, they can work from here and travel wherever they need for a couple days a month.”

When its gates opened in the late 1980s, Pinewild was mostly seen as a retirement community. Now the club has an active military component and numerous families with children.

“When we first joined in 1992, there was no such thing as children here — unless they were someone’s grandchildren,” says Don Power, a longtime member and resident since 2007. “Now there are five schoolbuses coming through and 150 children living here, last I heard. You see parents taking children to the practice range, to the pool, riding bikes. It gives the club a much more balanced feeling.”

The latest chapter in the Pinewild evolution was added over the summer of 2020 when the club rebuilt the greens on the Holly Course, planting Diamond Zoysia on the putting surfaces. The course was closed for June and July and reopened in August.

“After 25 years, it was time for new greens,” Little says. “The greens had shrunk over the years, we’d lost some pin positions, and with aerification and top-dressing they had sunk in some spots. Some of them weren’t getting good sunlight.

“We’re delighted with the results.”

Over the last decade, many clubs in the Mid-Atlantic “transition zone” have converted their greens from bent grass to one of the new hybrid Bermuda varieties better able to withstand the summer heat. Pinewild officials considered Bermuda but faced an added challenge of having a half-dozen greens sitting in shady areas surrounded by trees located on private property, limiting the club’s ability to thin out the tree cover. They opted for the Diamond Zoysia because it thrives in warm weather and without as much need of sunlight as other warm-weather grasses.

The job was handled in-house with direction from John Robertson, director of golf course maintenance, and Shawn Giordano, course superintendent. The greens were enlarged by approximately 1,700 square feet to a total of 5,500 each, on average, and the original contours re-established. Several bunkers were rebuilt to solve drainage issues. Little says the club plans a similar project on the Magnolia Course in 2021 and will likely convert the greens to hybrid Bermuda.

“The course plays differently now,” Little says. “We have pin positions we didn’t have since the course was constructed.”

“The Diamond Zoysia is perfect for this course,” adds Robertson. “It does well in hot weather and in the shade. It’s used a lot in South Carolina, where you have all the oaks and Spanish moss, and you can’t take the trees down.”

Early returns on the zoysia greens are that they’re healthier than the previous strain of bent but not as firm as Bermuda.

“The zoysia takes the energy out of the ball,” Little says. “It hits the green and absorbs the shock, then rolls just a little. It’s not like bent that hits and spins 30 feet back. It’s very dense grass.”

“There are a lot of forced carries on the Holly, and the greens accept shots better instead of them hitting and flying past, over the green,” adds Robertson.

Power and his wife, Joan, are natives of the Chicago area but lived their adult lives in Orange County, California. They were introduced to the Sandhills through a friend who worked for DuPont and attended regular client outings at Pinehurst. They bought a lot in Pinewild in 1992 and moved permanently in 2007.

Over the years as he’s moved up a set of tees and Power says he’s come to appreciate the appeal of the Holly Course more and more.

“Initially, I was not in love with the Holly,” he says. “The Magnolia is long and difficult. It’s been a U.S. Open qualifying course, so it has to be tough. Over the years, I’ve become more a fan of the Holly. It’s much more playable as you get a little older.

“I love what they’ve done with the Holly. The greens are spectacular. The zoysia has held up beautifully. We are very blessed and pleased. There are few divots and the ball holds. The greens are not extra soft, not extra firm, and they putt very true.”

And during this political season, it’s interesting to muse about how a presidential directive affected the playability of a golf course in Pinehurst. PS

Lee Pace has been writing about golf in the Sandhills since the late 1980s—the very time that Pinewild Country Club was founded.

Birdwatch

The Return of the Bufflehead

The little ducks are back — if only for the winter

By Susan Campbell

For me, late autumn means one of my favorite groups of birds, waterfowl, are on the way south.

As the colder months bring thousands south to spend the winter, the vast majority of ducks, geese and swans touch down along the coast. Still, inland throughout the Sandhills and Piedmont, reservoirs and farm ponds attract a great diversity of these web-footed wonders. Although nonmigratory wood ducks and mallards are common enough, smaller species can be seen, including the bufflehead.

Male and female buffleheads have distinctly different plumage. Males are the showier of the two with lots of white on the head and the body and a splash on the wings. The glossy green “buffle” over the male’s cheeks and crown, though, is the bird’s really distinguishing feature. Also look for dark feathers on the back, and, in flight, a white stripe at the shoulder and a patch across the middle of the wing. 

Females are brown all over with just a white “ear” patch. Juveniles will sport their first set of feathers through most of the winter with young males looking very much like their mothers: having very limited white feathering. Overall, these are small, stout ducks with short, wide bills.

One surprising feature of the males is their red-orange legs. You may get a glimpse of them as they come in for a landing. But come late winter, as their hormone levels change, they will be more apt to display their colorful shanks in addition to bobbing their handsome heads. Listen for their characteristic croaking calls as they swim around their mate, showing off. Unlike other species of ducks, they mate for life, only spending a little time apart in late summer when they undergo a complete molt.

Bufflehead breed way up north in boreal forests — in close association with northern flickers. They are dependent on the woodpecker; abandoned flicker cavities are just the right size for the diminutive hen to lay her eggs. As with other cavity-nesting waterfowl, as soon as all of the eggs have hatched (and that may take all day since there can be a dozen or more), mom will exit and call the young to her on the ground. The literal “leap of faith” ensues and the fat, downy balls of feathers will, one by one, jump out of the nest hole. It is not unusual for them to bounce a time or two when they hit the leaf litter. But their insulation and soft bones protect them from the impact.  The brood will be led a short distance to water where they are well equipped to spend day and night from there on out.

Inland, the birds have quite a broad diet during the cooler months.  They have legs placed well back on their bodies so they are at ease diving and swimming in all sorts of wet habitats. You may see bufflehead diving not only for invertebrates but small clams, snails and worms in deep water. In shallow bays and around pond edges, they search out seeds and berries.

Quite unexpectedly I came to realize that buffleheads can become regular “yard birds” if you live on a body of water that they frequent. In Whispering Pines, I would throw corn to the ring-necked ducks (yet another small wintering species) that came up to our bulkhead. Not long after the first bufflehead appeared, in about 2010, they not only zeroed in on the free food but quickly drove away the ring-necked fowl. Week after week, these little ducks would arrive at dawn looking for breakfast and provide lots of entertainment, enthusiastically diving to gobble up cracked corn. By the end of February, the flock would disappear, no doubt heading north, back to their breeding grounds. So each fall I would anticipate the return of the buffleheads. I would wait and wait: until one morning in late October, following a good cold front, the first feisty group would show up once again — hungry as ever!  PS

Susan would love to receive your wildlife observations and/or photos at susan@ncaves.com.

In the Spirit

Kettle to the Coil

Wine and heavy metal

By Tony Cross

Six years ago, I was approached by a committee from our local community college asking if I would be interested in creating a cocktail for an event. Bestselling author Tom Wolfe was coming to town, and they wanted a cocktail that had orange(s) in it. Why? One of Wolfe’s more popular books, The Right Stuff, is about astronauts, so I guess the committee thought, “Tang!”

I agreed, but warned them that the orange mix astronauts used to drink (Do they still?) would probably not make the cut.

I remember my thought process being a bit backward when visualizing what I wanted to do. Yes, I was incorporating oranges, but that’s not what I had my eye on. It was September, and the temperature was starting to drop, and I had been toying around with the idea of putting a cocktail on the list with a red wine syrup. I found a recipe I wanted to tinker with, and that’s what I wanted to do with the “orange drink.” So, maybe a wine syrup and oranges? No. How about infusing the wine with oranges? Possible. But no. What about an orange-infused spirit? I believe that’s how it started.

I had an idea in my head of what I wanted my cocktail to taste like, but it rarely happens as planned. At the time I hadn’t worked with Scotch very much when it came to mixing it with other ingredients. So, where the idea for an orangey Scotch came from, well, I just don’t know. But why the hell not? I needed to get the syrup right first, and then work around that. I chose a light and fruity pinot noir for my wine. I figured that since I was going to add fall spices to it, I didn’t want anything too complex. I added quite a bit to the wine: apples, anise, cloves, on and on, and . . . wait for it, oranges! Well, the peels anyway.

The syrup came out pretty yum, so now it was on to the orange-infused Scotch. I chose The Famous Grouse, a blended whisky. It’s not over the top pricewise, and it does a decent job when blending with other ingredients in a shaken cocktail. I had never infused just oranges in a dark liquor before, and my first attempt wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Basically, I had cut out the flesh of the oranges (avoiding pith), and let it sit in a glass jar of Scotch for five days to a week. The result was kind of cloudy and lackluster.

My next go round, I decided to cut the amount of fruit in half and replace the other half with orange peels. I was pleasantly surprised after three to five days of infusing. Oh, and I cut my jar amount in half, too. I took two Mason jars and split the bottle of Scotch up with the flesh and peels. That’s what I should have called the cocktail, “Flesh and Peels.” Instead — and I was notorious for this — I named it after a song. A metal song, “From the Kettle onto the Coil.” Why? Because I was never good at naming a drink, unless it was after a lady or a song. What could go wrong?

The drink turned out great, and the folks that ran the event loved it. However, I don’t recall seeing Mr. Wolfe or his trademark white suit. Oh, well.

Below is the recipe for the wine syrup and cocktail. Feel free to use this syrup in an old-fashioned with Scotch, bourbon or rye whisk(e)y, or however you feel inspired.

Pinot Noir Syrup

750 milliliters pinot noir

3 cups granulated sugar

1 tablespoon whole cloves

1 tablespoon star anise pods

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg

1/2 tablespoon cardamom pods (crushed)

3 cinnamon sticks

1/2 apple (sliced)

Zest of 6 oranges

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to just under a boil. Reduce heat to low and let simmer for 20 minutes or until reduced by half.

Kettle to the Coil

1 1/4 ounces orange-infused Scotch

1/2 ounce Drambuie

1/2 ounce pinot noir syrup

3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice

Add all ingredients to shaker with ice. Shake hard for 10 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Express the oils of an orange peel over the cocktail and discard into glass.

Orange-infused Scotch

Take two 16-ounce Mason jars and put into each of them:

Flesh and peel of one medium-large orange. Half a bottle of The Famous Grouse (or other blended Scotch). Tighten jar, and let sit in a cool, dark room for 3-5 days, each day slightly agitating jars. Pour through strainer when ready, and then filter again through coffee filter. The infusion should last for a few weeks, though every bottle I made rarely survived longer than a day or two.  PS

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

True South

Fabrics of Life

Marking time with tulle

By Susan S. Kelly

For a lot of people, hearing a particular song instantly reminds them of, and transports them to, a particular time, day, or even a particular time of a particular day. I’m no different. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” — first kiss during an eighth-grade dance; I was wearing pink fishnet stockings. “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” — a terrible mixer featuring an inflated parachute at a boys’ boarding school. “Brandy” — freshman year at UNC and the song that blared day and night from the open windows of a frat house across the Granville Towers parking lot. “Toes in the Water”— a family trip to Anguilla one Thanksgiving.

So tunes and lyrics and life’s passages are connected, sure. The same could be said for cars, probably, and slang, and food, and even plants. Remember when spider plants, with their little dangling offspring, were ubiquitous in every dentist’s office?

But the same can be said for me and . . . fabrics. A mere mention of a specific fabric immediately raises a time, place or event. For example, we’ve recently finished the Transitional Dark Cotton phase of every year. This phrase was applied to the proper clothing every early fall when I was growing up, designating post-summer whites but pre-autumn wools. Returning to school required smocked, short-sleeved Transitional Dark Cotton dresses of Black Watch and Royal Stewart plaids. I carried this pounded-in dictate all the way to college, where I’d obediently wear Transitional Dark Cottons to football games in 90-degree heat we combatted with a lot of bourbon poured into a little Coke — the traditional Transitional Dark Drink. I no longer wear the former or drink the latter. But I still know all the words to “Brandy” (see above).

Utter “raw silk,” and I flashback to the late ’60s, when my parents had parties and the de rigueur outfit for women was a floor-length “hostess skirt” made of raw silk — a slubbed, almost rough, stiff textile. You don’t see raw silk much anymore, except on my husband’s tie and cummerbund set, because, of course, it belonged to his father. In the ’60s.

Oilcloth is a horrid name for a fabric; who wants a reference to grease in any name? But oilcloth was what, in Girl Scouts, we stitched together in squares and filled with batting to create “sit-upons,” a primitive cushion we toted to campouts to keep our rear ends dry on wet dirt.

Flannel, of course, was for sleeping bag insides, and Sunday School flannel boards, where donkeys and bulrushes and halos and Jesus himself were rendered in flimsy pieces that the teacher — but never, ever, you yourself — got to arrange and make pictures with. I’m still bitter, yes. But mostly flannel summons up Lanz nightgowns, the yoked, neck-to-toe, beflowered, long-sleeved, anti-sex precursor to snug sacks. But easier to walk in.

Of every fabric out there, only denim demands a bigger claim on my life span than grosgrain. I’d never encountered grosgrain until I went away to boarding school. In my tiny foothills hamlet of Rutherfordton, fake alpaca was about as far up the fabric food chain as one could aspire. But grosgrain ribbons became the first fabric I can remember truly envying someone owning. Striped grosgrain in bright yellows, blues, greens, hot pinks . . . I still go somewhat weak at the knees. I wanted that yardage for bows on ponytails at the nape of the neck, the preppy hair style of the ’70s.

Eventually, I amassed a collection necessitating two coat hangers draped with the limp lengths, not counting the pile on my dresser that I’d iron weekly. And even when I chopped off my hair, there were grosgrain belts and grosgrain pocketbook covers and grosgrain pillows, ridiculous little tufted things covered in grosgrain ribbons woven like children’s potholders. Thankfully, my obsession had waned by then. Madras, another prepster memory textile, had run its course, too, and just as well. Thick, pouchy madras did no favors to guys with a bit extra junk in the trunk.

And then came peau de soie season: weddings. Just as I’d never heard the term “piqué” (graduation white-dress fabric for both eighth grade and high school), peau de soie was a foreign term until you had to have peau de soie pumps that sucked up bridesmaid dress-matching dyes like a sponge. Shame those pretty words have gone by the wayside. Spandex and Lycra can’t hold a candle to the silken sibilant syllables of peau de soie.

So many fabrics on the timeline. Tulle. Eyelet. Calico. Chambray. Cotton batiste. Each with its own indelible hashmark of memory. Surely I’m not alone here. Consider the number of children who can’t part with that soft, worn, torn dreg of a baby blanket. Maybe the spit smell is oddly comforting. Just like hearing “Layla” and remembering that house party on Ocean Drive, where the furniture was bolted to the floor. PS

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

Sporting Life

A Special Calling

Turning ducks on a dime

“In November,” the old man said, “even the
rattlesnakes don’t like to bite people.”

— Robert Ruark, The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older

By Tom Bryant

I’ve lived a bunch of Novembers, and each of them, although different, has carried a smidgen of sameness that has always made that special time of year one of the best.

If you’re an outdoorsman camping, hunting, fishing or just walking through the woods, November is the time that brings the rest of autumn into sharp focus. The sky is bluer, the air more fresh and crisp. All the animals seem more alive and alert. Ducks are in the middle of their migration south; male deer are in rut with necks swollen and antlers all scrubbed free of velvet. They’re prancing around looking for does. And if there are any quail, they’re alert, on the lookout for birddogs and hunters.

When I was a youngster, September meant going back to school, getting new books, and learning. It also meant the beginning of dove season, which made the month more palatable for me. Of course, I’d rather have been in the woods than in a classroom.

September went by in a flash and brought October, opening more hunting seasons and the first really cool weather that improved lake and river fishing.

October was the month to get ready. The older I get, the more getting ready there seems to be. In the long run, the preparation is better than the event itself. Seeing as how I’m a duck hunter more than anything else, in the weeks of October I’m in a dither rounding up all my equipment: waders, decoys, waterproof hunting coats, cold weather gear like wool shirts, socks and real necessities like long underwear. Duck boats have to be checked, canoes need to be updated with fresh camouflage, and duck calls need to be tried and, if necessary, retuned.

Over the years, I’ve collected a plethora of duck calls and have become somewhat proficient in using them. It really is quite an art. I can call a duck with my favorite call, but my call is nothing like that of a duck hunting guide I had the good luck to meet many years ago.

His name is Bill NightSky and he’s a Chippewa Indian who lives on the reservation close to Lake St. Clair in Canada. Bill is tall, about 6 feet, slender and moves with the natural grace of an athlete. He speaks with a slight accent. I think he enjoyed listening to a Southern accent because he smiled a lot when I answered questions about what duck hunting was like in the South. When we were heading out to his duck blind on Lake St. Clair and talking about calling ducks, he said to me, “You know, Tom, I don’t doubt you can call ducks using that special call hanging around your neck, but there isn’t a white man alive who can turn a duck like a Chippewa Indian. I’ll prove it to you this morning.”

And prove it he did. It was a weeklong trip. We flew to Detroit, spent one uneventful hour there, rented a van and drove across the river to Canada. At the border, we were thoroughly questioned by a guard about our guns. When she asked me if we had handguns, I laughed and replied, “Ma’am, I have a hard enough time hitting a duck with a shotgun, much less a handgun.” She didn’t smile or respond. I did get her to grin a little when I told her we were Southerners, had grown up with guns, and didn’t understand all the red tape in crossing the border. She even let us cross without unloading all our stuff from the car.

We had booked our rooms in a small hotel just a few miles from the Chippewa village and met our guide, Bill, early the next morning at an ice skating rink right outside the reservation. It was a real learning experience for me, my first visit to a tribal homeland. They had their own economy and government including game regulations and game wardens, police and, unfortunately, poverty. The destitution we encountered on the reservation was distressing. It was an eye-opening experience made more so by the goodwill we felt from our host and the natives we met when we hunted with them.

Bill split our party of four so that two of us went with another guide to the marsh bordering the lake, and Tom Bobo and I stayed with Bill to hunt from a small island a mile or so into Lake St. Clair.

The morning was misty and cold with a heavy frost, but in no time, we were hunkered down in the reeds looking out to open water and watching for ducks. Bill had put out just a few decoys, mostly big ducks like mallards, blacks and a couple of pintails. We were ready and waiting.

“I’m anxious to hear you blow your call,” I said to Bill. “What kind are you using?”

“The most natural one you can find,” he replied. “Watch, there are ducks heading our way.”

About eight or 10 ducks circled high above us, looking as if they were going to continue on down the lake. Bill cupped his hand over his mouth and did some chuckling that sounded exactly like a hungry mallard that had just discovered the mother lode of corn. The ducks put on the air brakes, turned on a dime and headed right back to our decoys. Bill did that same remarkable calling all morning using his mouth. No manufactured call. It was amazing.

As astonishing as it was to watch Bill NightSky call ducks with his mouth and hands, I still have to use a handmade wooden call. Not long ago, I had the opportunity to meet a young fellow from the Raleigh area who carves duck calls. They are more than a functional way to attract ducks. The calls he builds are works of art.

For me, a duck hunter who has lived through many seasons, it’s a pleasure to meet another duck-calling enthusiast, especially one as young as Tom Padden. Tom has turned his hobby into a business. If you’re lucky enough to get on the list for one of his handmade calls, I’m sure it will be a prized addition to your collection.

While we were having lunch, Tom showed me several pictures on his smart phone of duck calls he has made. Each one was remarkable. Looks are one thing, but when I asked him how they sound, he replied good naturedly, “Like a duck.”

I was fortunate several years ago to meet my cousin’s husband’s brother, who is an avid duck hunter and builds his own calls. He is also South Carolina’s duck-calling champion, for what year I don’t remember.  I convinced him to make me three calls. I kept one and gave the other two to good hunting buddies. They are strictly utilitarian in looks, but man, they do the job.

I plan on getting young Padden to make me a call this winter and can’t wait to add it to my collection. By the way, if you’re interested, his business is Birddog Outdoor Inc. in Cary, North Carolina. Get in touch. Probably, you’ll have to be added to the list, right under my name.  PS

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

Murder on Midland

The 1937 hunt for Juney Carraway’s killers

By Bill Case

It was not uncommon for 48-year-old tourist camp operator Juney Carraway to vanish for days without informing wife Leoma, or anyone else, of his whereabouts. On one occasion the wandering Juney had flown the coop for months before reappearing. Thus, it did not particularly alarm Leoma when her husband and two male lodgers did not make it back to Connecticut Camp by nightfall on Friday, Aug. 6, 1937. The men had left the camp at 6:30 that morning in Carraway’s Chevrolet coupe.

Carraway typically carried hundreds of dollars in his bulging billfold — a habit he did not hide. As Sunday dawned and there was still no trace of her husband, Leoma became fearful Juney had become a tempting target for desperate men harboring bad intentions.

The men who left Connecticut Camp with Carraway definitely checked the desperation box. Unkempt, with straggly hair and dirty overalls, they had hitchhiked into the camp the previous Wednesday, arriving from parts unknown. An odd couple, the older of the two was in his late 20s, short, stocky, dark-haired and of swarthy complexion. He spoke with a distinct accent. The younger man, around 20, was a lanky blond string bean.

Connecticut Camp, located on U.S. 1 between the rural hamlets of Pinebluff and Hoffman, was rather lax when it came to the niceties of registration. Though the drifters seemed friendly enough to Leoma, she didn’t even know their names.

Friday wasn’t the first time Carraway had given his two guests a lift. The day before he’d taken them in search of local employment — just the sort of thing that better-off folks did for the downtrodden during the hard times of the Great Depression.

By Sunday afternoon, a frantic Leoma called the Moore County Sheriff’s Office and reported her husband missing. The department promptly posted an all points bulletin urging area law enforcement personnel to be on the lookout for Carraway, his Chevy coupe, and the two drifters.

Like most August days in the Sandhills, temperatures on Sunday, Aug. 8, flared into the 90s. Swan Pond, a local swimming hole that exists to this day, is located approximately a quarter-mile north of Midland Road, and a mile west of downtown Southern Pines. A handful of boys seeking relief from the sweltering heat in its cool water noticed a Chevy coupe parked on the pond’s north shore, far from any road or driveway. At first, the swimmers paid no attention to it, but when the car still had not moved in succeeding days, one of the lads mentioned it to his father, who notified law enforcement.

Sheriff’s deputy Charles Dunlap made his way to the abandoned vehicle during the late afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 10. His search of the auto found Carraway’s personal papers scattered on the car’s floor. Other evidence suggested something more sinister had taken place. There was a bullet hole in the left side window, another in the car’s hood, and a spent .22 caliber bullet rested on the frame of the motor. The whereabouts of Carraway and his two passengers remained unknown.

Dunlap asked Aberdeen mechanic Jim Riley to tow Carraway’s auto from the pond to his garage’s storage lot. On the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 11, Riley carefully maneuvered his tow truck through the dense pines to the abandoned Chevy. When he noticed the car’s right front tire and rim were missing, he went looking for them. He found the tire just off the edge of Midland Road. Venturing deeper into the woods, he saw the rim. Near the rim he saw Juney Carraway’s badly decomposed body with a 5-inch bone-handled knife and a sandbag alongside the dead man.

County coroner Carl Fry hurried to the scene. After examining the body, he concluded that Carraway had been beaten about his head and body, dragged through the woods and knifed through the heart. Fry found no evidence that gunplay had played a role in the attack. The coroner estimated the murder had occurred on Aug. 6, the day Carraway departed his Connecticut Camp for the final time.

Tire marks on Midland Road indicated that Carraway had been driving west toward Pinehurst when he lost control of the car. It veered over the median across the eastbound portion of Midland, careening through shrubbery on the double road’s south side. Still in motion, the Chevy swerved back across the median and the westbound roadway before sideswiping a tree, dislodging the tire from the rim.

One of Carraway’s passengers, it was suspected, had struck him over the head with the sand bag, causing the car to swerve wildly. When the car stopped, it appeared as though the dazed Carraway managed to open the driver-side door and tumble out in an effort to ward off, or flee from, his attackers. Whether they struck him again or not, Carraway must have lost consciousness because the two assailants were able to drag him away from the road into the woods, where he was stabbed to death. The killers managed to move the Chevy through the trees to the edge of Swan Pond. Then they disappeared.

Given a five-day head start, Moore County Sheriff C.J. McDonald knew it would be no easy task to track the killers. The 45-year-old McDonald was a seasoned lawman. A former state highway supervisor, he had been elected sheriff in 1928 and earned a reputation as an indefatigable detective. The Pilot wrote, “Once he (McDonald) catches the scent of an evildoer, he follows it relentlessly no matter where it leads. No detail is too minor, no distance too far when the quarry is at the end of the line.”

And the sheriff was no stranger to sensational cases. In 1929, he had brought to justice Granville Deitz, the runaway killer of Southern Pines’ police chief, Joseph Kelly. But the finding of Juney Carraway’s murderers would take all the resolve McDonald could summon.

After receiving Fry’s inquest findings, McDonald launched what would eventually morph into an international manhunt. With the help of his most trusted deputies, A.W. Lambert, Herman Grimm and Dunlap, by late Wednesday afternoon (Aug. 11), the officers had inspected the murder scene, interviewed witnesses at Connecticut Camp, and transported evidentiary items to Raleigh for forensic analysis and fingerprinting. Because it had rained in the intervening time between the murder and the discovery of Carraway’s body, fingerprints on the knife and other key articles had been washed away.

News of the murder spread rapidly through the Sandhills. When Pinehurst taxicab driver Joe Hensley learned details of the crime on Thursday, Aug. 12, he contacted the sheriff. He said two men matching the suspects’ descriptions had shown up at his Pinehurst taxi stand around 10 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 6. They inquired whether Hensley could drive them to Raleigh in time to arrive there by noon. The men explained they were picking up two motorcycles that had been shipped to the city, and “they wanted to get there as quickly as possible to pick them up.” The two claimed they were starting new jobs and the cycles were going to serve as their transportation.

Hensley’s fares rarely ventured outside Moore County, so the long-haul request sparked his curiosity. He asked the men why they didn’t take the train. “We don’t like to ride on trains,” was the response. Hensley quoted a $15 fare for the trip. Eyeing the shabby appearance of the duo, the cabbie insisted on payment up front.

On the way to Raleigh, Hensley stopped for food at a filling station in Cameron. When the passengers got out of the cab to stretch their legs, Joe saw the outline of a gun in the hip pocket of one of them.

With alarm bells clanging in his mind, Hensley paid close attention to what the two men said and did. The older, darker complexioned man (Hensley suggested perhaps he was of Italian heritage) talked constantly and with a distinct accent. Joe observed the man was missing part of a forefinger. The younger 6-foot sidekick, with long blond hair combed straight back, said he hailed from Boston. Hensley noticed the tall man’s oversized footwear and wondered whether they were “convict shoes.” Both were defensive about their rough appearance, assuring Hensley they would get cleaned up as soon as they arrived in Raleigh. The lanky blond made mention of having spent time “in Reading.” This aside would become a key — though initially misunderstood — clue. Hensley dropped the men off in Raleigh (not at a motorcycle dealership), and thought nothing further of the matter until learning of Carraway’s murder.

Sheriff McDonald instructed his deputies to contact every motorcycle shop in Raleigh and neighboring counties. A Greensboro dealer reported that a young man answering the lanky blond’s description had entered his shop and bought a motorcycle on Aug. 9. The buyer was tracked down and apprehended on the 15th. After learning that the suspect’s brother-in-law in Albany, New York, matched the description of the darker, fast-talking suspect, it momentarily appeared that the case might be wrapped up. That possibility disappeared when the men provided ironclad alibis. Both had been in Albany on Aug. 6.

By the end of August, the investigation had stalled. McDonald sat for an interview with a reporter from The Pilot on Sept. 1 and was unable to offer much comforting information. He acknowledged that Boston’s police department, contacted thanks to Hensley’s information, had yet to report anything useful. Several other leads had proved to be dead ends. One was a rumor that a woman staying at Connecticut Camp had befriended the suspects. In fact, she’d never laid eyes on them. Another resulted in the arrest of an Italian man in Durham who, after questioning, was quickly released. A promising lead involving two Norfolk, Virginia, suspects also fizzled. Despite McDonald’s distribution of 500 wanted posters to police departments across the eastern United States, the identity and whereabouts of the suspects remained unknown.

In search of a new angle, the sheriff brainstormed with his deputies. They had all assumed the suspects entered the Sandhills on the day they arrived at Connecticut Camp. What if the men had been locked-up in the county jail, an ever-present occupational hazard for train-hopping hoboes? McDonald summoned the jailer to his office. He remembered two New York City guys, friends with one another, matching the suspects’ descriptions. Convicted of hoboing, James DeGruiccio, age 25, and Albert Whitworth, age 22, had served 60-day sentences in the Moore County jail prior to being released from custody on July 4th, a month prior to the Carraway murder.

If the men had indeed killed Carraway, it seemed logical to McDonald they would hightail it back to their hometown. On Sept. 17, he journeyed to New York City to confer with officers in the NYPD’s homicide unit. In the meeting, the police captain in charge agreed to assign undercover plainclothesmen to find DeGruiccio and Whitworth.

After returning to Carthage on Sept. 19, the sheriff complimented the NYPD. “They have a real police force,” he effused, “and if the men can be found I think they will find them.” Reflecting McDonald’s optimism, the Sept. 24 edition of The Pilot carried the headline “Sheriff Confident of Arrests in Murder Case.”

McDonald’s faith in New York City’s finest proved justified. DeGruiccio and Whitworth were identified and arrested. The Oct. 1 edition of The Pilot hailed the news: “Hats off to police authorities of Moore County and New York City in the apprehension of the probable murderers of J.E. Carraway.”

There was one last formality to address before the sheriff could declare the case solved: a positive identification by Joe Hensley that the men in custody were the same men he had transported to Raleigh. Hensley agreed to go to New York with deputies Lambert and Grimm to make the identification.

A lineup including the two suspects was arranged. Hensley did, indeed, pick DeGruiccio and Whitworth out of the grouping, but then the cabdriver added: “They look enough like the men I carried to be their twin brothers, but I’m positive they are not the same men.” When the two suspects later furnished evidence confirming their presence in New York on Aug. 6, they were released. Another dead end.

The news from New York was a bitter pill for McDonald. Remembering that the lanky blond suspect had mentioned “Reading” in the course of the cab ride to Raleigh, McDonald suggested that Lambert and Grimm stop in Reading, Pennsylvania, on their way home. Perhaps that city’s police department could provide a lead. The detour proved just as fruitless, and the deputies returned to Carthage disappointed and empty-handed.

The sheriff was back to square one. McDonald determined there was one more ground ball to run out before suspending his investigation. He wanted to conduct a final, exhaustive inspection of Connecticut Camp, even though two months had passed since the murder, and a search of the premises seemed an exercise in futility. The deputies reexamined every inch, focusing at last on a massive trash heap located behind the camp’s cabins. After hours rummaging through the foul refuse, one of the officers came across a small scrap of paper bearing a smudged and barely legible name and address that read:

Bill Sommers

249 Forest St.

Reading, Mass.

It wasn’t Pennsylvania at all, but Massachusetts, and Reading happened to be a suburb of Boston — the city where the lanky blond told Hensley he once lived. Deputy Grimm was dispatched to Reading, Massachusetts, where he found and interviewed Bill Sommers, who operated a motorcycle store there. Sommers recalled that two men matching the descriptions of the killers had visited his shop and discussed acquiring motorcycles for a trip south, but had left the store without making a purchase.

Grimm passed the new information on to Reading’s police department. An officer there thought the tall blond who had visited Sommer’s shop might be 19-year-old Robert Svendsen, who he believed resided in the neighboring town of Somerville with his mother, Lily Svendsen. The Reading police visited Lily, who said her son had recently moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where his father lived.

With Svendsen in Canada, Grimm confronted matters involving international law and extradition. It would require complicated paperwork to arrest Svendsen for a crime committed in the United States and, afraid the young man might flee, Grimm convinced Hamilton police to arrest him for vagrancy and hold him on that charge until the deputy was able to obtain authority for an arrest for the U.S. murder.

During the second week of January 1938, Grimm left Boston, crossed the border into Canada, and headed for Hamilton to interrogate Svendsen. The young man admitted involvement in the crime, and seemed relieved to do so, but maintained it was his confederate, “Griffith,” a Canadian of French and Native American descent (not Italian), who had smashed Carraway over the head and knifed him.

Svendsen said he had been totally stunned by the unexpected violence. He claimed to have had no inkling that Griffith intended to either hurt or rob Carraway. The killing made no sense to him, especially, he said, since Carraway had been doing the two a favor by giving them a lift to Pinehurst. Svendsen confessed he helped cover up the crime by dragging Carraway into the woods, but only did so because Griffith pointed his pistol at him. Svendsen did not turn down the $75 Griffith gave him, a small portion of the loot removed from Carraway’s billfold.

Svendsen said he and Griffith separated after the cab ride to Raleigh and, with his share of the money, bought new clothes, shoes and a motorcycle, then headed north. In Baltimore, the gangling youth collided with a streetcar and sustained a knee injury that laid him up in the hospital for several weeks. Following his recovery, he continued on to Somerville to visit his mother before heading for Canada, where he had been scheduled to start a new job in Hamilton on, as it turned out, the day after his arrest.

The young man also provided details regarding his association with Griffith. They had known each other for only a week before journeying together to Springfield, Massachusetts, where they spent a night at the house of Griffith’s family. Afterward, the two made their way south by various means: in an old jalopy (which they sold in Baltimore), riding a train and hitchhiking.

Svendsen waived extradition and Grimm transported him to Carthage to await trial. When Springfield police were unable to locate Griffith’s family residence — let alone Griffith himself — Svendsen was asked whether he would be able to find the house where they’d spent the night. He thought he could. In fact, he was eager to assist the police, since Griffith had brought him nothing but trouble. With Svendsen in tow, Grimm and Dunlap made yet another trip to New England.

It took an entire day of meandering through the streets of Springfield, but Svendsen finally pointed out the house. Griffith’s family no longer resided there, however, having moved to Canada. In checking with neighbors, the officers discovered that the family’s name wasn’t, in fact, Griffith at all — it was Caron. The neighbors were familiar with Svendsen’s swarthy accomplice. His real name was Jean Baptiste Caron, an erstwhile circus roustabout and tailor. Svendsen was flabbergasted that Caron had used an alias but there was a plausible reason for the deception — Jean Baptiste Caron had a lengthy criminal record.

Now that the police knew Caron’s actual identity, he became easier to track. Soon, an array of Canadian law enforcement entities, including the Northwest Mounted Police, were nipping at his heels. Caron presumably sensed law enforcement was catching up to him because he hopped a freight train in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and rode it 750 miles before getting off in Waterloo, Quebec. Word of Caron’s crime traveled faster than the train did, however, and provincial police were waiting to apprehend him.

After receiving a telegram from Montreal advising of Caron’s capture, McDonald and Grimm made ready for a trip to Canada to escort the prisoner, who had waived extradition, back to Moore County. They reached Montreal on Saturday, Feb. 26, and returned with a handcuffed Caron to Carthage, a little more than six months after Carraway’s murder.

Charged with first-degree murder, there was a distinct possibility Caron could receive the death penalty. His involvement in the brutal crime could not be seriously disputed, and his cohort had identified him as the actual killer. Caron could try avoiding the gas chamber by pointing the finger at Svendsen, but sweet-talking a jury into believing that the 19-year-old had masterminded the plot would have been a tall order for Clarence Darrow, let alone the local lawyer defending Caron. Besides, Svendsen simply did not look the part. The Moore County News described the gangly youth as having “anything but a killer’s face.”

Nonetheless, Caron accused Svendsen of having done the knifing that finished Carraway. But other statements he offered tended to tighten the noose around his own neck. By claiming that Svendsen was in on the plan to kill Carraway, Caron essentially acknowledged his own conspiratorial role. He said that the younger man had prepared the sandbag for the attack, but then admitted being the one who struck Carraway with it. During the period leading up to the trial, it became obvious that Caron had little confidence he could avoid a death sentence. The Pilot reported he was busy negotiating the sale of his body for medical research.

The trial began the last week of May. Caron did not take the stand, but Svendsen did. While the jury members acknowledged that the defendants had committed a dastardly homicide, they were unable to agree on the specific charges upon which to convict them. Accordingly, the judge declared a mistrial. The breakdown of the jury’s split votes indicated that Caron had narrowly escaped a first-degree murder conviction that would have exposed him to the death penalty. Several jurors viewed Svendsen’s role more leniently. Two had been willing to let him off with a charge of manslaughter.

The defendants were tried again in August. This time Judge E.C. Bivens empanelled a special “blue ribbon” jury to hear the case. The presentation of evidence mirrored the first trial and on Aug. 18 the jurors returned a verdict of second-degree murder for both men. Surely, Caron breathed a sigh of relief; Svendsen not so much. Judge Bivens issued the maximum sentence available to both men: 30 years imprisonment at hard labor.

Sheriff McDonald and his deputies received high praise for their perseverance and ingenuity in bringing Carraway’s killers to justice. Without benefit of closed-circuit cameras, social media tip-offs, DNA or 21st century forensics, they had painstakingly solved an intractable murder case. The investigation had weathered a multitude of disheartening false leads before the long-shot trash bin search produced a paper scrap that cracked the case. Daring Detective magazine carried a feature story detailing it all in its February 1939 issue.

Charlie McDonald’s illustrious career as Moore County sheriff would continue for another 20 years. Deputy Lambert served under the sheriff for that entire tenure. Herman Grimm did not stay long, moving on to a position with the state ABC. Ironically, Grimm would later run for sheriff against his old boss. Like all Charlie’s challengers for the office, Herman lost. When McDonald finally removed his shield in 1958, his 30-year tenure matched the longest of any sheriff in North Carolina’s history. Two months after retiring, he died.

Juney E. Carraway’s body lies in Northam Cemetery, a pastoral graveyard on the outer reaches of Richmond County, his good deed on a hot August day tragically punished.  PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.