City on a Hill

The legacy of Jimtown

By Bill Fields   •   Photographs provided by the Moore County Historical Association

Opening photo: Our Lady of Victory School in 1948

Nearly a century ago, a man wrote a letter to the editor of The Moore County News. He was proud of his community, proud of his home, plain proud. The newspaper had included in the previous week’s edition a positive story about “Jimtown,” the African American neighborhood on the sunset side of the tracks in Southern Pines.

“Of course Jimtown is a very peculiar name, and West Southern Pines sounds much better, but Jimtown is alright. We are delighted over your discussion of Jimtown and what we are doing here. We are building our homes and repairing the old ones. … I am building me a home here in Jimtown. When you pass through here look for my beautiful home on Connecticut Avenue, a space of 150×161 feet, overlooking Knollwood.

“It has always been said that a city sitting upon a hill cannot be hidden. So there is too much going on here in Jimtown to be hidden. Of course Jimtown is not a city but you bet your life it sits upon a hill. Jimtown is making wonderful progress this year. We can’t keep up with you white people with money, but our outlook is fine. We know that we can’t go over the top, but we are going to the top.”

A Jimtown Citizen

STEPHEN J. SANDERS

When Sanders wrote those words of pride and hope, it had been only 23 years since the Wilmington coup of 1898 just 135 miles to the east, a violent overthrow of a legitimately elected government, massacre of African Americans and the destruction of their community. The Ku Klux Klan was poised for a resurgence. Racial segregation in the Jim Crow South was decades from its reckoning.

“That event (Wilmington 1898) ripples out for a long time,” says Dr. Katherine Charron, associate professor of history at North Carolina State University. “In terms of the terror, in how Black people had to readjust to disenfranchisement. The Black community probably turns more inward because of disenfranchisement and violence. It is doing institution building and self-governance.”

West Southern Pines School

For African Americans in Southern Pines, community control took a formal turn in 1923 when Jimtown was incorporated as West Southern Pines, a rare development in the South at that time. The town remained a separate entity until 1931, when it was annexed by Southern Pines.

Before, during and after its eight-year period as a separate town in segregated times, West Southern Pines was a community populated with citizens who shared Stephen Sanders’ pride despite the injustice and hardship they faced.

“All of our needs were met and most of our wants,” says Dorothy Brower, a 1969 graduate of West Southern Pines High School, the last class prior to the opening of integrated and consolidated Pinecrest High School that fall. “We grew up with the self-confidence that we can do, that we will do. Our parents never told us we were not as good as white folks. And we had the support of everybody in the community, everybody in the schools. We didn’t have to look outside our homes and communities for our heroes.”

Brower’s father, Hosea, was one such role model. He contracted polio as a baby, which paralyzed his left leg and forced him to use crutches the rest of his life. But he didn’t let his disability govern his ambition. As a young man, he wrote President Franklin Roosevelt a letter asking for assistance in vocational training. Brower went to North Carolina A&T, became a social worker at Morrison Training School, a reformatory for young Black males in Hoffman. In addition to his position at the training school, he prepared taxes and coached baseball. “If you told him he couldn’t do something,” says his daughter, “he surely would. He excelled.”

Brower became an educator after graduating from North Carolina Central, working at Durham Tech until she retired and moved back to West Southern Pines in 2010. Teaching was a popular career for African Americans in Southern Pines, in no small part because of how much education was stressed at home and in the West Southern Pines schools. Many teachers had advanced degrees and inspired their students to achieve.

“You have to acknowledge the daily humiliation of Jim Crow, the indignity of it, but at the same time, the response to it is dignified,” Charron says. “Upon the end of slavery and in Reconstruction, the first thing Black people understand is that if they want to be landowners — whatever they want to do in freedom — it demands an education. Everything they aspire to is tied to education. It’s crucial to their goals and surviving.”

Amos Broadway funeral at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church

The daughter of a merchant, Cynthia McDonald graduated from West Southern Pines High School in 1956. “We had exceptionally good educators,” says McDonald, a retired English professor at Sandhills Community College. “I had one lady, Terry Watkins, who taught French, history, civics and Spanish, and made time to take us on a bus to see plays. I wanted to be like her. I didn’t have time to think about what I was missing. Some books we probably didn’t have like the kids on the East side, but we were blessed with exceptional, dedicated teachers.”

Educators had the support of parents backing them up on the importance of academics. Charles Waddell, a multi-sport star athlete who graduated from Pinecrest in 1971 before going to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — where he is the last person to earn varsity letters in three sports — succeeded in the classroom as well. “I always had the threat from my mom (Emma) if I brought home a ‘B,’ I was off the team,” Waddell says. “That’s what kept me straight.”

While he was achieving excellence in sports and in his studies, Waddell, like generations of African Americans in Southern Pines who came before him, saw people running businesses that served the community. One of his uncles, Joe, operated a barbershop in West Southern Pines, having learned to cut hair as a child.

“In a lot of ways, West Southern Pines was self-sufficient in those days,” Waddell says. “There were two or three barbershops, a dry cleaner, stores where you could get produce and meats. There were brickmasons and plumbers, carpenters and mechanics. West Southern Pines was kind of a hub for Black people living in surrounding areas — Raeford, Montgomery County, Vass. We kind of felt a little special in West Southern Pines.”

In earlier times for Blacks who weren’t business owners or tradesmen, work often was physically demanding in grape vineyards or peach orchards. For those who caddied at Pinehurst Country Club, such as another of Charles Waddell’s uncles, Press, the work meant a 12-mile round trip on foot. He got 50 cents for 18 holes in the 1930s before a caddie strike resulted in a pay bump to a dollar. Caddieing at Mid Pines and Pine Needles resulted in a shorter commute. Other people worked as hotel janitors, stable hands, or as maids and cooks for white families on the East side.

Map of West Southern Pines, 1923

Compared to the back-breaking toil in the cotton or tobacco fields that many Blacks left to relocate in the resort town — sometimes returning to farm work when Northerners went up the seaboard for the summer — domestic employment had an upside. Most workers walked to their jobs. Before Pennsylvania Avenue was completed, there was a path through wooded terrain the locals called “Moccasin Slide.”

“You can’t confuse the work people do with who they are in the Black community,” says Charron. “That is a separate identity. Your work is not who you are.”

Reality of Segregation

Churches and civic organizations buoyed spirits and offered a buffer against white supremacy, but the reality of segregation was present until laws finally changed in the 1960s. While Moore County was largely spared the type of racial violence that took place elsewhere in the South, North Carolina was no haven for moderation. In the early 1960s, more KKK members lived in North Carolina than any other state.

For residents of West Southern Pines, daily life brought daily reminders of discrimination.

“In terms of really bad incidents or situations, no, but it was obvious,” says Waddell, 67, who played professional football prior to a career in business and sports administration. “You knew you weren’t able to do certain things. We had to sit upstairs at the movie theater. Even when we went to the hospital we had to go in the back entrance and sit in a different waiting room, a space that was probably 10-feet by 10-feet. Little things like that just made you feel that you didn’t have everything.”

McDonald recalls how women’s clothing stores in Southern Pines would sell clothing and hats to African Americans but wouldn’t allow them to try on the garments. Around 1960, Mitch Capel, then a young child, was in a dress shop on Broad Street with his mother, Jean. Mitch’s father, Felton Capel, was active in town affairs and, with progressive white citizens, pivotal in integrating public accommodations in Southern Pines.

“I don’t know if it was because my mother was very fair-skinned or because of my father, but she was allowed to try on a dress,” Capel recalls. “An African American friend of my mother’s came in the shop and wanted to try on clothing and wasn’t allowed. That was the first time I saw my mother get upset. It was a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten that day.”

James Hasty, West Southern Pines’ second mayor, 1927

McDonald says of outings to the Sunrise Theater, where Blacks had to enter through a separate door and climb narrow, steep stairs to get to their balcony seats, that “we had a ball upstairs.” Escaping to a movie didn’t erase other slights and insults. “Somebody would call you nigger,” says McDonald, who graduated magna cum laude from N.C. Central in 1960. “Once when we were 9 or 10 years old, a group of us put on our Sunday clothes and decided we’d integrate one of the drugstores. We were tired of going to movies and not being able to get a soda afterward. I can remember the look of confusion on one of the clerks. She told us we could go to the back and she’d get us a Coke. We refused to do that. They wouldn’t serve us up front. But we didn’t let things like that make us bitter. Our teachers motivated us to be the best we can. Most of us did. And quite a few in my class of 23 attended college and finished.”

Growing up, Cicero Carpenter straddled the white and Black worlds of Southern Pines. His mother and father worked for the wealthy Boyd family — his dad was in charge of horses and dogs; his mom was a maid and cook — and resided on the Weymouth estate. Born on that property in 1941, Carpenter lived there until he was 9 years old, when his family moved to a house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Several years later, when the U.S. Highway 1 bypass was being constructed through neighborhoods in Pinedene and West Southern Pines, homes were lost to eminent domain. A handful of houses belonging to Black families near the Carpenter residence was torn down.

“Ours was the only one moved,” says Carpenter, who retired after a long Navy career. “My dad was a home builder in addition to working for the Boyds. They wanted to tear down our house and give him money. He knew it was worth more and protested. Mrs. Boyd got involved, and the state decided they would move it on a truck to New Hampshire Avenue. It’s still there.”

Carpenter followed his father and his uncle, Jesse, into construction, and as a teenager in the late 1950s started building another structure next to his parents’ relocated home.

“The old West Southern Pines jailhouse was behind a lady’s home,” Carpenter says. “I asked her if I could tear down the old jail if I could have the bricks. She told me I could. I used those bricks to build that house on New Hampshire. When I got out of the Navy and built my house in Highland Trails in 1983, I used some of those bricks in the foyer and around the fireplace. Some of the other bricks are around a dogwood in my yard.”

Joe Waddell

No-Man’s-Land

Those bricks are a link to West Southern Pines’ early days. Crime played a role in it becoming an incorporated town and in the annexation by Southern Pines eight years later.

Jimtown — believed to have been named for one of two African American merchants, James Henderson or Jim Bethea — was neglected by area law enforcement, allowing crime to fester.

Sisters Wilman and Bessie Hasty, whose father, James, became West Southern Pines’ second mayor, in 1927, and whose grandfather helped James Patrick survey Southern Pines when he founded it during the 1880s, described the atmosphere in oral history interviews conducted by the Town of Southern Pines in 1982.

“This was no-man’s-land,” Wilma told interviewer Nancy Mason. “The people did as they pleased.”

Bessie recalled, “We couldn’t get a policeman over here. We did all our chores before it got dark because we didn’t dare go out after dark.”

Nightclubs and bootleggers brought in outsiders. “We had a lot of gamblers and different people come through,” George Ross, who moved to West Southern Pines in 1926, told Mason. “After sundown, you stayed home.”

There were assaults and stabbings in the wee hours. Joe Waddell recalled decades later, “I heard some Yankee say that we had the most beautiful part of Southern Pines.” Yet one area of the Black community came to be called “Blood Field” because of a number of stabbings. There were murders, including the killings of a well-known West Southern Pines eatery/juke joint owner, Amos Broadway, and a Black police officer, John Allen. White authorities contended that Black fugitives sought — and found — sanctuary in the community. One published report from the 1920s, though, details how African American residents conducted a house-by-house search in an attempt to find an outlaw.

Willa Mae Harrington and Press Waddell

On March 3, 1931, the charter for West Southern Pines was revoked by the North Carolina state legislature. The news traveled to New York City, where The Dunbar News, a Black newspaper, lamented the development.

“So this town of, for, and by the Negroes is no more,” the periodical editorialized. “Will the actions of the legislature of North Carolina prove an encouragement to its Negro citizenry? Does it stand to the credit of the state? This is not Jim Town’s tragedy alone.”

In a subsequent edition, The Dunbar News published the opinion of a “leading white citizen of Southern Pines” whose name the publication didn’t disclose. According to this man, the process of revoking the charter hadn’t been furtive and had been necessary because of a high crime rate that he attributed mostly to “a large, floating population of Negroes from all over the South. They are to a considerable extent an undesirable and, in some cases, a dangerous element, and it is no small wonder that the Negro administration has not been able to handle them . . . It was felt, perhaps with some exaggeration, that West Southern Pines was a potential menace to the health and general decency of the general community.” In his rebuttal, he didn’t mention what had to have been a key reason for the annexation: Headlines of crime were potentially bad for the bottom line of white-owned businesses and resorts.

Instead of being bordered on three sides by Southern Pines, it was now formally part of the larger town, which still drew tourists and seasonal residents during the Great Depression.

“There were a lot of people still coming in,” Willa Mae Harrington said in the oral history project. “There were still plenty of jobs we could do. Sometimes there would be ads in the paper, ‘I want a chauffeur, a cook and a maid.’ A whole family could go to the same place and work. That’s how most of the people over here got their houses. By working as caddies, maids, cooks, housekeepers and saving their money. You could always get a day’s work. If you got with a good family you could save while you worked for them.”

Small Steps Forward

Three months after West Southern Pines was annexed, The Pilot reported on the paving of streets, and plans for a water main and fire hydrants for “the thickly settled” part of the Black community.

Those infrastructure improvements were small steps forward for Southern Pines’ African American residents living their lives in a still-segregated era. It would be three decades after Southern Pines annexed West Southern Pines until the town added a Black officer to the police force of the larger municipality, before the bowling alley and golf courses welcomed African Americans and they didn’t have to sit in the Sunrise Theater balcony, before Black women could try on a dress in a downtown shop. Into the 1950s, when the Capel family moved to West Southern Pines, the area’s infrastructure had not kept pace with other parts of town.

Felton Capel being sworn in to the Southern Pines Town Council, 1959

Despite the unequal treatment, African Americans persevered. Oliver Hines’ great-uncle, J. Pleasant Hines, was the mayor of West Southern Pines from 1923-27. Oliver, 68, is a community activist who, like fellow native and longtime Black residents, regrets the loss of businesses on the west side that has gone hand-in-hand with a decrease in the tight-knit spirit he knew growing up. “I wrote down 39 places that used to be here in West Southern Pines and all of them were Black-owned,” Hines says. “Now, there is only a handful. We were thriving at one point.”

Those who remember more vibrant times are eager for a revitalization in West Southern Pines — projects that could celebrate its history while offering an economic boost. The Southern Pines Land and Housing Trust is seeking to acquire the former Southern Pines Primary School (where West Southern Pines High School previously existed) and turn it into a cultural and economic hub.

“The creation of this campus will be a state and national model of how community, government, education and business can work to enhance the lives of citizens and stimulate the economy,” Brower says.

West Southern Pines still sits on a hill, still working to catch a favorable wind.  PS

Story of a House: Second Wind

Family house gone artsy

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Location, location, location. Fittingly, this real estate mantra defines the home of broker Kim Stout and her husband, Todd Stout. Almost close enough to smell Vito’s pizza, walk to the post office, bike to the library or skip to the park. Definitely close enough to vibrate as Amtrak coasts by.

A roomy brick house winging out in both directions. A yard big enough for a concrete mini-court with hoop. And, starting at the Creamsicle-colored front door, an interior palette of bright colors: sunroom floor, lime green brick. Master bedroom floor stained deep turquoise. Dining room buffet, tomato red. Kitchen door, chrome yellow. Fabrics and rugs bleed fuchsia, hot pink and serious purple. Folk art à la Grandma Moses progresses to wildly abstract, everywhere: An elongated painting fills the 8-inch strip between kitchen window and cabinet.

Obviously, an artist lives here. A fearless décor maven.

However, the yard was what sold Kim. She and Todd raised three athletic children in the stately manse built during the mid-1920s Southern Pines building boom, occupied in the 1950s by Rev. Maynard Mangum from First Baptist Church across the street. In fact, when the Stouts purchased the house in 1988, urban renewal was still a concept, relegating L-L-L to the ’burbs, not historic district cottages uphill from Broad Street.

Kim, from Monroe, North Carolina, and Todd, from Idaho, were living in Laurinburg, where Todd’s father farmed turkeys. Todd discovered Southern Pines through cycling. “I came up to ride,” he said. “It’s the only place I could find cyclists.”

His discovery happened in spring, with azaleas in bloom. Broad Street was charming, the people, welcoming. “I never saw a place I liked better.”

Todd went home and announced: “We’re moving.”

Kim was pregnant with their second child. They looked at houses. Just inside the front door Kim decided this one was it. “We’ll take it,” she told the Realtor.

Never mind what Kim describes as “ . . . total chaos most people would run from.”

Not to worry. They participated in the initial renovation, with experience gained from working on a 1940s home. “We had also lived in a brand new house that was just . . . a house,” Kim says.

She set about filling their acquisition with a hodgepodge of furnishings and a third child.

Life rushed by. In 2012, with the children mostly grown and gone, Kim and Todd decided on a major upgrade. They pushed out the kitchen, added a screened living room with fireplace, created an open air morning coffee porch and an upstairs master suite.

Or, as Todd puts it, “We went from five people and two bathrooms to two people and four bathrooms.” One of those bathrooms, Todd’s favorite, encores 1950s avocado and black tiles, now fabulous retro chic. The new kitchen — pale gray with mini-bursts of color — is efficiently sized, not cavernous, punctuated with angles and cubbies.

Unlike the current practice of imposing open spaces on a classic cross-hall floorplan, the Stouts left rooms intact, delineated by wide, graceful door and window moldings, a detail (along with textured plaster walls) that adds what real estate professionals call “character.” All the doors and windows are original, Kim notes, also the beveled glass panes in the front door.

Besides that tomato red buffet, the small dining room has a round table with a built-in lazy Susan, like Chinese restaurants of yesteryear, where dishes are placed in the center and families help themselves.

“Lots of stories (happened) around this table,” Kim says wistfully.

Even the tiny foyer coat closet yields a tale. Inside the door, height markers for Lindsey, Matthew and Sean survive in faint pencil.

Todd’s input: “I’ve done one thing.” He holds up a framed matchbook (found on eBay) from Watson’s Resort in Idaho, an outdoorsmen’s paradise, where he spent happy times.

Except for the art — some paintings by Kim herself, others by daughter Lindsey — the living room, especially lamps and plushy upholstered pieces, could be lifted from a ’50s stage set, including the side table made from a cross-cut tree trunk mounted on wrought iron spindles.

Here and elsewhere, Kim’s preference for green fading into turquoise originates with a grandmother, nicknamed Granny Green, for her all-green house.

Upstairs, the children’s bedrooms, hung with sports memorabilia and comic strip art, have been left mostly intact. A baseball bat and an aerial view of the neighborhood painted by a 10-year-old are mounted in the boys’ room, which survived many brotherly rumbles, Kim recalls.

After the proliferation of colorful stuff, the Stouts’ new master suite is a turnaround. Square paned windows, left bare, are set ceiling height over the king-sized bed. The deep turquoise floor appears cottage-y, as do a wicker armchair and ottoman, while three bureaus and a long slatted bench illustrate the post-war Scandinavian-modern genre. “This was our first grown-up furniture,” Kim says.

Other bedroom décor is spare, calm. Ever-practical, she installed a second washer and dryer off the master bathroom.

Unlike similar homes of the period, this one has a full basement, dubbed the swamp. Murky and damp no more, the Stouts’ renovation included shoring up underpinnings, creating a workout room, main laundry room, storage space and the most adorable bathroom with step-down vanity cabinet painted the same tomato red as the dining room buffet.

“I am not a spec home/cookie cutter person. We didn’t want anything formal because we had kids and dogs.” Which explains why Kim’s crewel and splashy-patterned area rugs “are almost disposable.”

When the sun shines on South Ashe Street, the painted brick of this residential jewel appears pearly white. On a cloudy day, however, a bluish-green tint emerges. Weatherproof art decorates the small sitting patio; an ancient Hotel Hampshire sign hangs over the morning porch. The grassy backyard, rimmed with shrubs and flowers, fenced for Toby the dog, echoes shouts of boys shooting hoops. Beadboard ceilings and original floors uncoated with layers of lacquer add dimension.

Throughout, the old shadows the new like a friendly, welcoming ghost.

“We’ve gone through some growing pains with this house,” Kim admits.

Or, as longtime friend Cassie Willis concludes, “This house has a heartbeat.”  PS

Poem

Exulansis

The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it. – The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows 

To my Northern friends: I regret

I can no longer speak with authority

about winter. I’ve forgotten the feeling

of ears ringing with the silence

of fresh snowfall, air so cold it stabs

the lungs. Gone are those Norse names,

the rough wool, heavy boots,

bodies bent against wind so fierce

there must be a name for it in Lakota.

I can’t recall how despair closes in,

a cloud blanket for days, dense, ominous.

Remind me how, in a whiteout,

a person can get lost between car

and house. Tell me about

children in mufflers waiting

for the school bus in handmade huts,

the shush of skis down slushy streets.

Didn’t we find Easter eggs nested

on the icy crust? I do remember

that just when you vow to never

shovel another drive,

the bright flags of daffodils flare. 

— Debra Kaufman

Debra Kaufman’s most recent book is God Shattered

Bookshelf

November Books

FICTION

Here Is the Beehive, by Sarah Crossan

Ana, an unhappily married lawyer, and Connor have a three-year affair. Ana is happy to leave her family for him but Connor is hesitant. Ana finds out about his death from his wife, who calls Ana, Connor’s lawyer. The cause of death is kept from the reader. In beautiful and sparing language, this book is told in five parts dealing with Ana’s grief, love and loss — all a secret, even as she secretly changes the will so that she is the executor and can keep him close a little longer.

Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic, edited by Alice Quinn

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives. The executive director of the Poetry Society of America, Quinn was also the poetry editor at The New Yorker from 1987 to 2007 and an editor at Alfred A. Knopf for more than 10 years prior to that.

The Archer, by Paulo Coelho

From the bestselling author of The Alchemist comes an inspiring story about a young man seeking wisdom from an elder, and the practical lessons imparted along the way. It’s the story of Tetsuya, a man once famous for his prodigious gift with a bow and arrow, and the boy who comes searching for him. The boy has many questions, and in answering them Tetsuya illustrates the tenets of a meaningful life, how one must take risks, build courage, and embrace the unexpected journey fate has to offer.

NONFICTION

From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West, by Heidi Blake

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad — while Western spies watched in horror as their governments failed to guard against the threat — is now in paperback. Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin’s assassination campaign as part of Putin’s ruthless pursuit of global dominance and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed. The unforgettable story that emerges whisks us from London’s high-end night clubs to Miami’s million-dollar hideouts, and ultimately renders a bone-chilling portrait of money, betrayal and murder, written with the pace and propulsive power of a thriller.

The Science of James Smithson: Discoveries from the Smithsonian Founder, by Steven Turner

By providing scientific and intellectual context to his work, The Science of James Smithson is a comprehensive tribute to Smithson’s contributions to his fields, including chemistry, mineralogy and more. This detailed narrative illuminates Smithson and his quest for knowledge at a time when chemists still debated things as basic as the nature of fire, and struggled to maintain their networks amid the ever-changing conditions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Pancho Villa’s Saddle at the Cadillac Bar: Recipes and Memories, by Wanda Garner Cash

In 1924, Achilles Mehault “Mayo” Bessan and his 18-year-old bride journeyed from New Orleans to Mexico, where he ultimately transformed a dirt-floored cantina in Nuevo Laredo into a bar and restaurant renowned across the United States for its fine seafood and fancy cocktails. Cash writes, “I grew up behind the bar: first child and first grandchild. I spoke Spanish before I spoke English and I learned my numbers counting coins at my grandfather’s desk . . . I rode Pancho Villa’s saddle on a sawhorse in the main dining room, with a toy six-shooter in my holster. I fed the monkeys and parrots my grandfather kept in the Cadillac’s parking lot.” Readers will find themselves drawn to a different, more languid time, when Laredo society matrons passed long afternoons in the bar, sipping Ramos Gin Fizzes; when fraternity miscreants slouched into the Cadillac to recover from adventures “South of the Border”; when tourists waited in long lines for 40-cent tequila sours and plates of chicken envueltos.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Margaret’s Unicorn, by Briony May Smith

When a unicorn is your friend, you wish spring was far away. You wish for long days of feeding your unicorn water warmed by moonlight and flowers from the meadow. You want more first snows, warm fires and days splashing in the waves. But when spring comes and your unicorn rejoins his herd, you’re just glad for the wonderful memories of your amazing friend. The absolute perfect book for unicorn fans. (Ages 4-7.)

The Silver Arrow,
by Lev Grossman

What to do if it’s your 11th birthday and your life is much too boring? Why, write to your long-lost rich uncle and ask for a birthday surprise, of course! So when a full-sized steam engine arrives in Kate’s backyard, she and her brother find themselves rolling right into the middle of an epic adventure in which they must imagine cars for the train (swimming pool car!) and must care for the animals (talking ones!) who are waiting at each station platform with tickets. Perfect for a family read-together. (Ages 8-12.)

Pearl and Squirrel Give Thanks, by Cassie Ehrenberg

“Thanksgiving is when you share what you’re thankful for with family and friends,” Stan tells Pearl and Squirrel. Jump rope, fetch, fountains for swimming, friends and cuddly nap spots are all amazing things, but the thing Pearl and Squirrel are most thankful for is a warm dry place to call home. A break from the traditional Thanksgiving books, this one is sure to be a kid favorite this holiday season. (Ages 3-6.)

The Blue Table, by Chris Raschka

Flowers, apples, pies. There are so many things to be thankful for, but the thing that stands out the most is the family that gathers around the table. Great for Thanksgiving or any day everyone gathers, The Blue Table is a wonderful celebration of the things that matter most. (Ages 3-6.)

Only the Cat Saw,
by Ashley Wolf

As the family busily goes through their daily routine, only the cat sees the sheep grazing, the lightning bugs come out and the shooting star streak across the sky. Only the cat sees the beauty and wonder. A gentle reminder to slow down and appreciate the miracles in every day. (Ages 3-6.)  PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally.

Thanksgiving on the Edge

When a can of cranberry sauce just won’t do

By Jenna Biter   •   Photographs by John Gessner

(L-R): Chef Mark Elliott, Chef Teresa Santiago, Chef Orlando Jinzo, Chef Warren Lewis

Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor and the poet who made the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb famous, also led the charge to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, earning her the nickname the “Mother of Thanksgiving.” She wrote about a Thanksgiving feast in her 1827 novel Northwood, and, after that, it was all-turkey-all-the-time for Hale. She even published editorials, recipes and poems dedicated to the holiday hopeful.

Her appeal didn’t get picked up until Lincoln proclaimed “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise” in 1863, but, ever since (or just about), it’s been stuffing, turkey, pie, repeat. Except for this year. It’s not that we don’t love the traditional lineup — we do — but you already know what that spread looks like. So instead we asked some of our most creative local chefs to whip up a six-course visual feast that will make you wish they were your relatives. It’s not your grandmother’s Thanksgiving, that much we know for certain.

First Course: Butternut Squash Potato Leek Soup

Chef Peter Hamm | Chapman’s Food & Spirits

First up, Chef Peter Hamm of Chapman’s Food & Spirits magic-upped soup for that friend who can never decide between sweet and savory. He combines butternut squash and the classic potato-and-leek duo in a pureed soup that’s topped with a dollop of Chantilly cream and garnished with crispy fried leeks, the sophisticated cousin of onion straws. They give you architectural height that you never knew you wanted in a soup, but now you do. And while it looks too pretty to eat, you’d regret not draining the bowl.

Second Course: Beef Wellington Tartare

Chef Orlando Jinzo | The Leadmine Whiskey Bar and Kitchen

“I usually try to think of something that’s a classic that everyone can relate to and slightly tweak it,” says Chef Orlando Jinzo of The Leadmine Whiskey Bar and Kitchen. And this time, Jinzo deconstructs Beef Wellington and reimagines it as a tartare through a Southeast Asian lens. The result is an off-the-wall appetizer starring Wagyu beef, black garlic pâté and pickled mushroom duxelles. It’s served with a swipe of, and I quote, “verrrrry spicy mustard” and puff pastry crisps for dipping. Jinzo recommends pairing his course with Nikka Coffey Grain Whisky — or, as he prefers to call it, breakfast whiskey.

Third Course: Ripe Mozzarella

Chef Mark Elliott | Elliott’s on Linden

Chef Mark Elliott of Elliott’s on Linden has been reworking the classic tomato-and-mozzarella caprese for years. He’s done mushrooms and cheese in the past, but, for this visual feast, he pays homage to the fall with squash. “It’s roasted butternut squash with burrata, which is basically ripe mozzarella,” says Elliott, “and it’s got coriander olive oil over it, balsamic with an accent of rosemary in that and microgreens on top.” Plump tangerine slices complete the dish — Elliott says he loves the little citrus fruit during the holidays, and, thanks to him, so do we.

Fourth Course: Whole-Roasted Lobster and Butternut Squash Barley Risotto

Chef Warren Lewis | Chef Warren’s

Chef Warren Lewis of his eponymous restaurant redubs turkey day lobster day. He whole-roasts the crustacean and serves it up with a side of butternut squash barley risotto. “It’s a traditional and non-traditional Thanksgiving,” Lewis says. “They probably didn’t have turkey on the first Thanksgiving.” At least, the bird wasn’t the centerpiece of the 1621 feast. We know that the Wampanoag Indians brought venison, and the Pilgrims prepared fowl, but not necessarily turkey. Culinary historians actually believe that seafood made up a lot of the meal; they were in New England. In other words, lobster was just as likely to be eaten on the first Thanksgiving as turkey — so Lewis pays lobster its belated due. He pairs it with a can’t miss bottle of 13 Celsius, a New Zealand sauvignon blanc.

Fifth Course: Cheese Board

Angela Sanchez | Southern Whey

Angela Sanchez of Southern Whey overhauled the traditional cheese board. “I wanted to do something kind of outlandish,” she says, “that was the most decadent things that you could have that you wouldn’t necessarily think about having on Thanksgiving.” Sanchez features two cheeses: Délice de Bourgogne, a triple-cream Brie, and Rogue River Blue Oregon, a blue cheese that ages in grape leaves doused in pear spirits that was recently named best cheese in the world. She pairs the Brie with Caviar Star Hackleback Sturgeon from North Carolina and the blue with Woodford Reserve bourbon-soaked cherries. To top it off, she recommends a trio of wines that you wouldn’t crack open on your average Thursday: a 2009 Domaine Weinbach Gewurztraminer Cuvée Laurence, a 2010 Château de Beaucastel Hommage Jacques Perrin Châteauneuf-du-Pape or 2011 Warre’s Vintage Port — that’s a mouthful.

Sixth Course: Roasted Sweet Potato Mousse

Pastry Chefs Teresa Santiago, Jonathan Rankin and Andrew Huggins | The Bakehouse

Sweet potato pie and Thanksgiving are made for each other, but Pastry Chef Teresa Santiago of The Bakehouse and her teammates Jonathan Rankin and Andrew Huggins dreamt up a drool-worthy update. “We took sweet potatoes, roasted them in the oven and then pureed and sweetened them,” Santiago explains. “Then, it’s layered with a rum-whipped cream and candied pecans and walnuts; it’s essentially a parfait.” The result is a dessert that’s not too sweet but just sweet enough . . . to hit the sweet spot.

Jenna Biter is a fashion designer, entrepreneur and military wife in the Sandhills. She can be reached at jenna.biter@gmail.com.

Weekend Away

Port City Adventure

The Madcap Cottage gents “arrive” in Wilmington, literally

By Jason Oliver Nixon

John and I moved to North Carolina from Brooklyn, New York, six years ago and, egads!, had yet to visit the North Carolina coast. Over the years, Florida friends had invited us to their retreats in Highlands and Blowing Rock, but a trip to the shore kept getting shelved in favor of somewhere more far-flung — say, Sicily.

And then . . . Hello, pandemic!

Living in High Point, our Emerywood nabes escape to the Figure Eights and Bald Heads, but we are a bit less fancy and more “beach-adjacent” people who like to savor the strands for a stroll rather than loll about shoreside all day. John and I enjoy a view of the water but we don’t really swim — unless it’s a pool. We love history. Sidewalks. Charming residential architecture. Cool restaurants. And a hotel with a real personality that welcomes dogs and avoids trough-style breakfast situations.

John and I polled our style-setting friends, and, eureka!, Wilmington seemed to fit the checklist perfectly.

Hence, we piled into the trusty Subaru with the four-pound rescue pups, and the “circus” set sail for the easy three-hour drive to downtown Wilmington. Home base for the long weekend: The supremely relaxed-chic ARRIVE Wilmington Hotel.

“You will love it — very Palm Springs,” said an in-the-know pal. And we did.

ARRIVE Wilmington, a bold charcoal-and-white brick, cobbled-together group of buildings, is part of a mini hotel group that stretches from Phoenix to Austin, from Memphis to, yes, Palm Springs. Easy, breezy, modern and yet steeped in history: The motel-like structure is actually one part circa-1915 dye factory meets one part former nunnery. On the dye factory front, the hotel has a colorful history: The historic marker outside the hotel’s main entrance trumpets the aptly named Topsy, the circus elephant who somehow escaped from her circus in the 1920s and ran amuck at the factory. Whew, we sighed, knowing that our high-strung pups would fit right in — but what did happen to Topsy après le déluge, we wondered.

Within the ARRIVE complex, 36 rooms look onto a stunning, verdant garden kitted out with Adirondack and French bistro-style chairs and gas lanterns amidst a cornhole course, fire pits and cozy tables. Enjoy nibbles such as fried beets with whipped goat cheese and ginger-marinated beef skewers whilst sipping a vodka- and Campari-laced Drunken Monk cocktail, proffered from the super-friendly team working the Gazebo Bar. Our suite — #16 — was largely proportioned with a vaguely nautical theme: beadboard paneling, leather sofa, cozy kitchenette (aka mini fridge) and spacious tiled bathroom with the sign “Head” above the door. In summary: The ARRIVE’s location at the corner of South Second Street and Dock is perfect for exploring. The staff couldn’t be more lovely and accommodating. And the rates — we feel — are wonderfully affordable (rooms start at $109/night for two adults).

Factoid: The hotel’s nunnery annex houses a kooky “confessional,” a performance-like living sculpture accessed via your room key card — the perfect tonic after a night of too much sinning out on the town.

After settling in with the pups, John and I walked to nearby Manna for a wonderful dinner. The meal was pricey — almost $225 for two — but beautifully crafted and paired with a level of intuitive, thoughtful service that we rarely, if ever, find in the Triad. John savored his half chicken with Carolina Gold dirty rice and kale, and I lapped up the Vichyssoise with trout roe and crème fraîche, plus smoked pork loin with radicchio and peaches.

Next morning, we explored downtown Wilmington and popped into a few of the charming shops lining ever-gentrifying Front Street before grabbing potent coffees at Java Dog.

For lunch we walked to Indochine, a good 3-mile stroll. “You walked?’ our chic-ster friend later asked, eyes wide, grasping her Chanel pearls. But, yes, these former New Yorkers can handle our own and had a blast stopping in at the several antiques outposts and a hipster coffee shop en route on up-and-coming Castle Street.

Indochine is pure bliss. Fun, funky, irreverent, no pretense, bustling, no reservations and housed within a former public library that’s ablaze with color and pattern — so very us. Plus, our 6-mile round trip adventure burned off the glorious dumpling sampler, papaya salad and crispy bird-nest noodles washed down with a cool Allagash beer. After lunching and before hiking back, we explored the numerous buildings next door to Indochine that comprise The Ivy Cottage consignment store and trundled home a Tiffany vase, blanc-de-chine Chinoiserie figures and an Italian ceramic basket filed with ornamental apples. Yes, that was us.

We toured moss-dripping Airlie Gardens, strolled postcard-perfect Wrightsville Beach at sundown, sipped margaritas with friends who arrived by boat at Wrightsville’s Tower 7, and explored downtown Wilmington with the pups who love wide sidewalks and abundant greenery. Oh, the amazing architecture and history in this port city! Sadly, the city’s many house museums were closed due to COVID, but they will be top of our list on our next visit.

And the epicurean adventures continued at full gallop . . .

Ah, Brasserie du Soleil out near Wrightsville Beach where we supped on knockout French bistro fare (think tuna tartare, steak frites and Scottish salmon with mint yogurt) as tree frogs serenaded us from the fountain on the bustling patio. We loved the cooking at True Blue Butcher and Table, but the strip-mall setting (read, primo view of a Chicken Salad Chick sign) left us aesthetically challenged. But, oh!, the terrific, buttery New York Strip with divine Béarnaise sauce and side of mac and cheese that we split with a glass of spot-on, $9 Tempranillo red. A little more ambience, s’il-vous plaît, or take advantage of the to-go option.

Breakfast at the long-running, dive-ish White Front Breakfast House was a blast, and we walked and walked and then walked some more. On our final afternoon, we kicked back at the ARRIVE’s Gazebo Bar with the dogs scampering about. We sipped a cool rosé and took stock.

Noted John, “I think this is the new Charleston but without the hordes. And there’s more of a range of restaurants here — I get so tired of the same Gullah fare night after night in the Holy City.”

And my take?

It’s still very affordable and a little rough around the edges and that’s part of the magic.

Final assessment?

Impressed.

John and I definitely need to return — and soon — to this little weekend wonderland called Wilmington.  PS

The Madcap Cottage gents, John Loecke and Jason Oliver Nixon, embrace the new reality of COVID-friendly travel — heaps of road trips.

ARRIVE Wilmington, arrivehotels.com

Simple Life

A Country Made of Clouds

Awakening the dreamer is as simple as slowing down and looking up

By Jim Dodson

Not long ago, an old friend named Macduff Everton sent me a gift that reminded me to look up and take heart.

It was a stunning picture of clouds passing over a clubhouse at Smith Mountain Lake, Va., taken in late August of this year. Set against a dark, rainy sky, a line of bright white clouds that resembled the curling tops of ocean waves tumbled over the horizon, a remarkable cloud formation caused by shearing winds.

Macduff happens to be one of the world’s most honored landscape photographers, an artist whose work hangs in numerous museums around the world.  Art critics have compared him to Ansel Adams for his soulful eye and brilliant portraits of nature, landscape and people. 

Years ago, we traveled the world in each other’s company, photographing and writing about people and places from Ireland to New Zealand. Along with his wife, Mary, an internationally known artist in her own right, we once spent two weeks working in Cuba while Mary lectured at an art school in Havana. His photos from our fortnight on the forbidden island 25 years ago are some of the most soulful and revealing photos you’ve ever laid eyes on.

The amazing photo of clouds at Smith Mountain Lake, a rare formation technically known as a Kelvin-Helmholtz fluctus cloud, however, wasn’t a Macduff Everton jewel.

It was a simple photograph taken by Amy Hunter, member 50,322 of something called the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Macduff knew I would find it fascinating, which explains why his email featured the Society’s “Cloud of the Day” photograph along with a link to the organization’s website.

I clicked on it and spent a dreamy hour looking at a spectacular array of photographs and paintings of clouds posted by the society’s tens of thousands of members across 100 nations around the world, people who find comfort and inspiration in looking up at clouds. I also watched a TED Talk by the society’s founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

His purpose in founding the Cloud Appreciation Society was to simply remind people of the value of looking up at the Earth’s most ephemeral live artwork.

“Clouds are so commonplace, so beautiful, people don’t even notice them unless they get in the way of the sun,” Pretor-Pinney told his TED audience, adding that Aristophanes, the Greek playwright, described passing clouds as “the goddesses of idle fellows” and believed they were, on the contrary, a boon to human imagination.

“Most people will admit to a nostalgic fondness for clouds that reminds them of their youth, finding shapes in the sky when we were masters of daydreams,” he said, pointing out that the digital world we live in today conspires to make us terminally too busy to pause and look up.

The point of cloud-spotting, as he calls it, is simply to slow down life’s swirling pace and observe the ever-changing beauty that is right above you, the perfect everyday meditation. “I think if you live with your head in the clouds it will help you keep your feet on the ground,” he says.

The society’s manifesto is a gem.

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight “blue-sky thinking” wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.

We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save money on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who’ll listen:

Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and always remember to live life with your head in the clouds!

In a year under assault by a killer pandemic, a world suffering from a collapsed economy and a death rate spiraling ever upward, not to mention a presidential election that will offer either a ray of hope or more hopeless chaos, looking up at clouds suddenly struck me a very sensible thing to do.

I signed up right away and within days received my official Cloud Appreciation Society Certificate of Membership, newly minted member number 52,509, plus a nifty “Cloud Selector” designed to help a rookie cloud spotter identify the ephemeral art forever passing overhead.

It felt like 1957 all over.

That year, as a dreamy four-year-old who lived in a house directly across the street from the Gulf of Mexico in Mississippi, I became obsessed with storm clouds over the ocean thanks to a man named Big Earl who ran the printing press at my father’s weekly newspaper in Gulfport. Big Earl informed me that we lived “smack dab in the middle of Hurricane Alley.”

With a kind of ghoulish enthusiasm, he suggested that I keep a sharp eye on storm clouds over the Gulf because they would indicate when a major hurricane was headed our way.

His warning prompted me to write off for an official Hurricane Preparation Kit offered, as I recall, by the National Geographic Society, just to be ready for the big blow. Every day I watched the clouds over the Gulf.

But no hurricane ever came.

Plenty of bone-rattling thunderstorms did, however, which caused the Gulf to cough up spectacular sea shells for my mom and me to collect on our evening walks.  We often sat at the end of the dune boardwalk watching the changing skies over the water — a gorgeous light show of pleated pinks and purples — picking out shapes that looked like faces or animals in the sky.

That autumn, we moved home to Carolina. By then, I was hooked on skywatching.

On my first trip to England in 1977, arriving as dawn broke over the continent, my plane dropped through a thick soup of clouds that always seem to blanket the Blessed Isles when suddenly, just below, a magical green world of hedgerows and winding lanes appeared, a storybook village with a Norman church tower and a herd of sheep on the hill. I was utterly awestruck. Those clouds were a curtain to enchantment.

From that point forward, whenever work duties placed me in the sky — which was often in those days — I loved flying through and above clouds, watching moving continents of white stretching away to eternity below the wings of the airplane, a visually majestic kingdom where light and weather forever danced together. I came to think of that peaceful, otherworldly place as a “country made of clouds.” 

Several years ago, in fact, I even began writing a novel with that notion in its title, a project that recently morphed into a screenplay about a troupe of pioneering female pilots after World War II that my daughter Maggie — the real writer in the family — is working on, with a little help from her cloud-loving old man.

Here’s a key scene from my unfinished novel, A Country Made of Clouds, in which the protagonist, a famous aviatrix and women’s activist named Dodo Barnes, takes her young son up for his first ride in her old barnstorming biplane for a sunset flight over the Outer Banks. He’s a wispy little kid, not unlike I was in 1957. Dodo speaks into his ear as he perches on her lap, awestruck by the beauty of the shapes in clouds he sees below them.

“You know, Hawk,” says Dodo, “I find such happiness up here. It’s like a beautiful country made of clouds, a place where there are no wars, no turmoil, no sadness of any kind, only endless light and peaceful clouds you could almost walk on to forever. I sometimes think this must be what the way to heaven looks like.”

Somewhere during our many journeys together, I must have told my buddy Macduff Everton about this novel, describing a scene that was inspired by my mother’s own words as we sat on the dunes long ago watching clouds over the Gulf of Mexico.

Or maybe he just sensed that I would find the Cloud Appreciation Society a timely reminder of my days as a master of daydreams, the perfect antidote to a world turned upside down.

Whichever it is, society member 52,509 is thrilled to look up and put his head in the clouds.  PS

Contact founding editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

Out of the Blue

Giving Thanks

From the eye of the beholder

By Deborah Salomon

November opens the Season of Lists. Thankful lists for Thanksgiving. Santa wish lists for December. New Year’s resolutions for January. Except this Thanksgiving will look different. For starters, more than 200,000 tables will have an empty chair. Grace over the turkey may sound a somber note. And commentators’ lists will include revisions, beginning with giving thanks for survival. So far.

This has me looking around for good things, useful things, obscure things. Things that — as the trivial saying goes — we take for granted.

I don’t have to look very far.

I am thankful . . .

. . . that all my systems — plumbing, ventilation, battery, pump — are in working order. I hear, see, sleep, think just fine. If it weren’t for arthritis and lingering orthopedic injuries I’d still be running 3 miles a day. With expiration dates fast approaching, I’m doubly grateful.

. . . for hot water. Often, the best moments of my day are spent in the shower. Clean water, both hot for bathing and cold for drinking, is a huge unsung hero.

. . . for the moon and morning star: I rise before dawn, a lifelong habit. Everything is dark, still. Everything except the barren moon, which reminds me that ours is the only inhabitable planet. Confirming its barrenness in 1969 should have made us eternally grateful for Earth’s habitation. But no, we keep raping and plundering, burning and trashing. Remember, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

. . . for sandwiches. Huh? There is no more convenient and delicious nourishment, whether Spam on mushy white or lobster salad on a Parisian demi-baguette. Quick and easy, too, for breakfast, lunch or supper.

. . . for the internet. No explanation required.

. . . for the professionals who perform scheduled maintenance: an angel dentist, a hairdresser who humors me, and a doctor who smiles and chats awhile. Topping the list, my computer guy who keeps this ancient equipment (the electronic kind) chugging along.

. . . for heat and AC, especially AC, a miracle. Nothing and nobody holds sway over weather. When I open my front door on a steamy July afternoon and feel that blast of cool . . . ahhhh, followed by guilt, remembering conditions in refugee camps in Africa and the Middle East.

. . . for my cats: Animals have always been a part of my life even when I didn’t have any, and pined. Nine years ago I adopted two adult kitties that had been abandoned in the apartment complex where I live. They repay me with affection, diversion, amazement and a few good laughs. Their instincts trump anything innate to humans. I could go on forever.

. . . for my two grandsons. The obnoxious granny is a cliché. I plead special circumstances. The boys’ father — my son — died when they were 5 and 7. Despite the emotional hardship of losing a parent, the older one announced a life plan at 9: travel the world, go to law school, make some money, start a family, go into politics. As of today he has visited 24 countries (including China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, Cuba, and others in both Central America and Eastern Europe) as an exchange student or backpacker. He graduated from law school, passed the bar first try, completed an internship, has a good job and a great girlfriend — a med student, no less. He speaks three languages fluently. He is 23. By age 4 his brother could identify every make of car by its insignia. Since then, he has loved and lived cars. Instead of college, he attended mechanics school, earned a license, got a job at a car dealership but wanted to try sales. The dealership gave him a desk and a chance. He bought a suit and some snazzy shoes and sold five cars his first month. He is 22, speaks two languages, can charm the bark off a tree, or Nanny. They are both exceptionally handsome young men. In these times when young adults face uncertainty I am thankful beyond words.

On a global note, thank (insert name of preferred deity) the election is over, for reasons too numerous to mention. That’s a separate list I cannot bear to undertake. Try Santa.  PS

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

The Kitchen Garden

Sage Advice

It’s for more than just stuffing

By Jan Leitschuh

Sage, common culinary sage, is having a “moment” in creative cookery. Yet most of us still associate this undemanding, wooly gray-green herb with the Thanksgiving feast, as the classic, earthy seasoning for stuffing.

Or, of course, you could just use it to ward off negativity and unwelcome spirits. Long used in Native American and other cultures around the world, a smoky sage smudging is considered a space-purifying ritual. (Though white sage is most common, according to many sources, good old common sage will do the trick, too.)

There are many beautiful sages in the salvia world, with over 900 species in this mint-family member. Some are grown for flowers, texture and bulk in the garden. 

But it’s November. In this season of harvest and feasting, common culinary sage is worth a closer look. 

Or is it common?

Besides the classic evergreen perennial herb with the woolly, grayish leaves, you can also find other, more colorful varieties at some garden centers, such as green-gold, white-edged, curly, purple-leaved and tricolor culinary sages. All add texture and interest to the garden, with an edibility bonus.

There are still more edible sages, such as pineapple sage, whose lovely golden leaves and spiky red flowers are beloved by hummingbirds, butterflies and gardeners late summer to frost. But this sage grows faster and much larger than the common sage, reaching 3-4 feet in a single season. As the name suggests, the scent and flavor are reminiscent of pineapple. Fresh leaves are edible, and can be interesting in salads, or dried for a delicious tea.

Sages like our Sandhills soils, but our humidity? Less so. Air circulation will keep it happy. Sage likes a well-drained soil, preferably with a bit of compost worked in before planting. Attractive spikes of purple flowers appear in mid-summer, which attract birds, bees and butterflies. Prune plants back in the spring just as new growth resumes. Harvest leaves through the season as needed. This will keep the plant bushy. Since this resinous herb is evergreen in most zones, you can harvest sage well into late fall.

But how do we use thee? Let us count the ways . . .

First of all, there’s sage toothpaste. Truly. Google it if you don’t believe me. Apparently, studies show that sage contains over 60 useful compounds, many of which are beneficial to the mouth and gums, significantly decreasing mouth ulcers and inflammation of the gums.

Sage also has potent antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and antimicrobial properties that help destroy cavity-causing bacteria and neutralize microbes that promote dental plaque. Sage also contains healing compounds that ease coughs and accelerate the healing of wounds, helping to soothe sore, swollen or bleeding gums.

Who knew?

A tea made from two tablespoons of dried or fresh sage is said to provide relief from teeth- and gum-related problems such as toothache and sore or swollen gums. (Brew the sage for a few minutes in boiling water, cool for 10 minutes. Swish in the mouth for 30 seconds and spit. Or, enjoy a cuppa.) A sage tea bag can also be placed on the gums to soothe the aching or inflamed area.

But it is the foodie aspects we wish to look at in this season of eating.

First off, meat. Sage was traditionally added to fatty meats. Sage is what makes breakfast sausage so unique in its taste. You can make your own breakfast patties and control the quality, adding a tablespoon of minced sage to a pound of ground pork sausage, also working in some red pepper flakes to taste, a teaspoon each of salt and brown sugar, half a teaspoon of black pepper, perhaps a pinch of cloves or marjoram.

Grilling out? Chicken bathed in an olive oil marinade with chopped sage, lemon balm, oregano, garlic, onion and thyme can lend a flavor similar to lemon herb chicken, say fans. The leftovers can be almost better!

A crusty Parmesan-sage pork chop with a dollop of homemade spicy applesauce on the side can warm up a fall supper. There are a number of such recipes on the internet.

I put sage in with roasts and most of my stews and simmer-dishes, along with other garden herbs like oregano, thyme, rosemary, celery and basil. Why wait for stuffing the whole turkey? I love cooking sage with ground turkey for quiche, or you could use in shepherd’s pie. Or just go ahead and make some dressing — comfort food for a late fall evening. 

Foodies favor their sage leaves fried in brown butter until crispy. Garlic is a common addition. From there, they might toss the buttery mix in with ravioli, in a white wine cream sauce, with pierogi or boiled cheese tortellini.

Others use the fried leaves on top of butternut squash soup — or any soup, for that matter. Another seasonal pairing is oven-baked sweet potatoes, or better yet, baked sweet potatoes and apples. Still others enjoy the fried sage leaves with a beet and goat cheese salad with balsamic vinegar.

A chicken or veal saltimbocca is common in Italian trattorias. The meat is enveloped in a tasty wrap of fresh sage leaves and thin slices of prosciutto. Again, recipes abound online.

Or, to cure what ails you, nothing is better on chilly days than homemade chicken noodle/rice soup with fresh sage. Others go the sweet-savory route, infusing honey with sage and adding to teas.

A sage chimichurri — a green Argentinean pesto-like sauce traditionally made with parsley — can be used as an accompaniment to spinach-stuffed mushrooms, fish, meats or pork sausages. (See recipe below.)

For all its culinary and medicinal properties, common sage should not be ingested in large amounts for a prolonged period of time, say, as essential oils or large quantities of tea. Sage contains small amounts of thujone, a neurotoxin also found in the notorious 19th century liqueur absinthe, thanks to the wormwood used in the recipe. Oregano also contains minute amounts of thujone.

Apparently, thujone is mildly psychoactive. Van Gogh and Picasso were big fans back in the day, claiming inspiration from absinthe. Thujone is actually found in many plants used in cultural spiritual rituals to enhance intuition. (So, back to the whole smudging thing.)

But the amounts ingested in seasonings, flavorings and smudgings are quite minute. Studies have shown three or four cups of sage tea do no harm, although if you have an existing condition that affects the kidneys or liver, or you’re taking some medications that may interact with thujone, you may wish to proceed with some caution and awareness.

If you wish to deploy the culinary benefits of this simple garden herb, perhaps start with the classic dinner sauce chimichurri, adapted for sage. Smudging optional.

Sage Chimichurri

1/4 cup sage leaves and stems, minced finely

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed or minced

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon water

3 tablespoons oil

Mix ingredients well and use as a marinade, or serve in a bowl as an accompaniment to spoon over pan-seared fish, sliced flank steak, stuffed mushrooms, grilled meats or pork loin.  PS

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

Hometown

Hooked on Office

Supplies — not Dunder Mifflin

By Bill Fields

I realized I might have a problem last year during a business trip to South Korea. My hosts were showing me around a shopping mall outside Seoul, and after seeing an array of high-fashion boutiques and stores with the latest tech, I had one request: Take me to the pens and pencils.

I was on the hunt for Korean-made writing tools unavailable back home. The tour guides were helpful, my interpreter, Chris, touting a popular, inexpensive, smooth-writing ballpoint stick pen favored by many Korean students and office workers. In a few minutes, I was checking out of a variety store with a couple of packs of Monami 153s, blue ink with a 1.0 tip. The purchase wasn’t the highlight of a full week in a foreign land but, for an office-supply geek, flying home with those pens certainly was satisfying.

Not that I loiter in my local Staples — weekly visits aren’t over the top, are they? — but I’ve been smitten with stationery for a long time, even before I secured my first pencil case in a loose-leaf notebook with the audible cinching of the three rings.

When the Swingline “Tot,” a tiny version of a desk stapler, appeared in stores, I saved my allowance to buy one. It didn’t take long for me to pop one of the staples into the pad of my left thumb.

That didn’t scare me away from office supplies. Nor did a pencil accident. I was at the time too short and not possessing enough hop to touch the top of the doorframe leading into our dining room. I was only inches away from my goal and figured, correctly as it turned out, that I could touch it while holding a pencil. But I carried it eraser-up, and the point gouged my right palm. More than a half century later, that speck of lead remains just below my middle finger.

Who didn’t love the retractable, push-button splendor of a Bic Clic? The different Flair colors for drawing up football plays? The bold letters that Magic Markers could make on poster projects? When my mother purchased a gross of pencils for me through her bank job and we attached a sharpener to my bedroom wall, it felt better than the Tar Heels winning a big game.

As I got older and into journalism, pens and notebooks were a perk of the profession. I got $150 a week to intern one summer at the afternoon newspaper in Winston-Salem. Being able to procure supplies from an office closet — all you wanted — was a life I could get used to.

My notebook tastes grew more refined. In the 1990s, fellow golf writer Michael Bamberger and I discovered we shared an affinity for a certain model of Boorum & Pease notebook with 48 sewn-in pages. They were small enough to fit in your pocket but large enough for good note-taking and cost only a dollar or so. Michael and I each hoarded a stash, but they don’t make them anymore.

Even during this “Everyday Carry” era with lots of fancy notebooks on the market, I lament that cheap and functional B&P style isn’t available anymore — they’re as extinct as the many little stationery stores in New York City that used to sell them. The Japanese-made Muji brand has some good offerings, about as close as you can get to my old favorite.

I’ve splurged on nice pens from time to time in recent years — mostly rollerballs and ballpoints, having figured out I am not a person for fountain pens no matter how much I admire their beauty. Whether on a legal pad or in a quality journal, putting pen to paper is its own pleasure in this digital age.

Not long ago I retrieved an Aurora rollerball from my desk caddy, a pen I bought not long after I moved to New York decades ago. It’s not old enough to be “vintage” as classified by the collecting world, but using it sure takes me back. For now — this might be as fleeting as April snow — it’s my favorite.  PS

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