Bookshelf

November Books

FICTION

Into the Forest, by Christina Henry, edited by Lindy Ryan

Deep in the dark forest, in a cottage that spins on birds’ legs behind a fence topped with human skulls, lives the Baba Yaga. A guardian of the water of life, she lives with her sisters and takes to the skies in a giant mortar and pestle, creating tempests as she goes. Those who come across the Baba Yaga may find help, or hindrance, or horror. She is wild, she is woman, she is witch — and these are her tales. Edited by Lindy Ryan, this collection brings together the voices of Gwendolyn Kiste, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Mercedes M. Yardley, Monique Snyman, Donna Lynch, Lisa Quigley and R. J. Joseph, with an introduction by Christina Henry.

Flight, by Lynn Steger Strong

It’s Dec. 22, and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have traveled with their spouses to Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother and the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.

We Are the Light, by Matthew Quick

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero — everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an 18-year-old man the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’ backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape, and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves. We Are the Light is an unforgettable novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love from the bestselling author of The Silver Linings.

Foster, by Claire Keegan

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household — where everything is so well tended to — and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is available for the first time in the U.S. in a full, stand-alone edition.

 

NONFICTION

Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, by Matthew Perry

The star of Friends takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this candid, funny and revelatory memoir that delivers a powerful message of hope and persistence. “Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.” So begins the riveting story that takes us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was 5-year-old Matthew, who traveled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; 14-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; 24-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us . . . and so much more. Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Unflinchingly honest, moving and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.

 

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Pookie’s Thanksgiving, by Sandra Boynton

Little Pookie loves his mama and his family, but he especially loves pie! This fun celebration of food and family is the perfect Thanksgiving book for little ones. (Ages birth-3.)

How It’s Made: The Creation of Everyday Items, by Thomas Gerencer

From airplanes to basketballs to gummy vitamins, find out how they’re made in this fun tell-all title that’s perfect for any inquisitive budding scientist. (Ages 7-12.)

Terry’s Crew, by Terry Crews and Cory Thomas

Terry’s crew at his new school may not look like the typical friend group but, together, they can do anything they set their minds to! With themes of respect, hard work, school success and commitment to family and friends, this graphic novel is sure to be a hit. Available on Nov. 8. (Ages 9-12.)

Outside Nowhere, by Adam Borba

Parker Kelbrook’s father sends him halfway across the country to work on a farm alongside five other kids who find him less than charming. As Parker learns to roll up his sleeves and keep his head down, strange things start happening. After he awakens one morning to find a 1,700-pound dairy cow on the roof of a barn, he suspects that something magical and mysterious is growing in the farm’s fields. (Ages 10-13.)  PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally.

Golftown Journal

It’s a Beautiful Day

Hot or cold, rain or shine

By Lee Pace

At the opposite end of the phone line, there is flesh and blood. There is a real person — not a computer navigated by a series of keyboard punches.

It’s a beautiful day in Pinehurst.

Ring the main number at The Carolina Hotel and Pinehurst Resort since the mid-1980s and you have found someone like Dib Taylor, Gloria Spencer, Art Roper or one of their fellow phone operators. Dial out to Bandon Dunes or Pebble Beach and you get a recording inviting you to hack your way through the maze.

A Pinehurst member might be calling from McKenzie Road and know for a fact it’s raining cats and dogs, but since the 1980s they would get the “beautiful day” greeting followed by the phone operator’s first name.

“I love to say it,” Dib Taylor once said. “Does it show? I have fun with it. People will tease me. Rain or shine, to me it’s always beautiful in Pinehurst. But if people ask, I’ll tell them the truth.”

“People say I make their day, pump them up a little bit,” added Spencer, who worked the resort phone lines from 1985 through her retirement about a decade ago. “It makes me feel good to say it. Rain or snow, it doesn’t matter, people call and say, ‘I called just to hear you say that.’ It’s a personal touch that’s important.”

Pat Corso was a hotel executive with Club Corporation of America when he was dispatched to Pinehurst in 1987 to run the resort and club. Phone operators at a resort on the Florida Panhandle that was in Corso’s regional domain answered with, “It’s a beautiful day at Sandestin,” and Corso thought that would work well at Pinehurst, too. Ever since, the Pinehurst staff has worked the phones 24/7 and presented a subliminal message to callers that Pinehurst is a better place than any they might be calling from.

“Pinehurst to me means serenity, it’s peace, it’s the people,” Spencer said. “When I first came to work here, I thought I was going on a picnic, it’s such a place of beauty. Pinehurst is such a peaceful, calming place.”

Another signature greeting of Pinehurst is the 300 yards of Carolina Vista, the lane that runs from Highway 2 north to The Carolina Hotel. The stately white building sits grandly in the distance with its copper roof and signature cupola, framed by a canopy of hollies and pines and hundreds of flowers nestled along the street. Travelers often have driven from distant parts or ridden for 90 minutes from the airport in Raleigh and are taken aback as they pass from the here-and-now into antique nirvana.

Jack Kennally worked on the transportation staff at Pinehurst for more than a decade and sometimes heard first-time visitors grouse about the long drive from Raleigh-Durham International.

“They ask, ‘Why’d they build it so far from the airport?’” said Kennally, who then told them Pinehurst was built before the airport. That gives them some perspective and puts them in the proper frame of mind when his shuttle turned off the round-about and wound its way up the Vista.

“They love the architecture of the houses along the lane,” Kennally said. “They say, ‘Oh, it’s lovely.’ They imagine what it looked like back in the ’30s, that kind of thing. The big dome, the copper cupola, are very striking. The drive up the Vista sets a nice tone for the visit.”

During his tenure as Carolina Hotel general manager from 2004-2020, Scott Brewton would drive out of his way each day going to work — eschewing a more direct route into the employee parking lot in back of the hotel in favor of entering via Highway 2 and Carolina Vista and passing by the old world grandeur of Ailsa House, Beacon House, Heartpine House and Little House.

“You swing off the traffic circle and there’s a gentle rise, and it’s like the hotel comes out of the ground,” Brewton said. “There are flowers on your left and right, people walking dogs or carrying tennis rackets. It’s a nice visual to start every day.”

May Wood, a golfer at Vanderbilt University in 2002 and the winner that year of the Women’s North and South Amateur, remembered her first drive along Carolina Vista.

“It was electrifying,” she said. “I almost teared up the first time I saw it. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever been.”

The “beautiful day” theme carries over from the hotel into the village of Pinehurst and, of course, onto the five golf courses emanating from the main clubhouse. Kaye Pierson has worked part time on the Pinehurst golf course maintenance crew since 2008 and, as the quality of cellphone cameras improved, began looking for good images as she mowed grass on the golf courses at dawn each morning. One morning in January 2013, she came to work and told the guys in the maintenance shop, “Watch the sky show this morning.”

She snapped a photo of the Putter Boy statue, the practice putting green, the Padgett Learning Center building and the red, gold and blue palette of the sky in the distance, all of it accented with the early morning mist hanging low to the ground. Nine years later, she captured a shot on the third green of No. 2 looking east along the fifth hole, the sky in a similar dazzling arrangement. Both images were dispensed worldwide via Pinehurst Resort’s social media channels and now are available on prints in gift shops around the resort.

“It’s just magical at that hour,” she says. “For anyone who works on a golf course early in the morning, that’s it. That’s why we’re out there. We are fortunate to be on the course that time of day to see the quiet and the mist and how it changes. Everything just kind of stops for a few seconds and you realize how lucky you are.”

In the village there are no right angles in the roads and no large signs on the shops and you half expect to see Beaver Cleaver or Barney Fife walking down the sidewalk. James Tufts’ New England roots dominate the architecture — the arched doorways, the Colonial Revival façades, the sharply pitched roofs and the gables, the cedar and redwood trim, the white picket fences, the cabins built of juniper logs, the original heart pine columns of the Casino building (now a real-estate agent’s office). Pinehurst has no drive-up windows, but one bank has a “Walk-Up Garden.” And then there are the colors, the two best being the forest green throughout the village and the sepia on the old photographs preserving the history — from the halls of the Carolina Hotel to the file books in the Tufts Archives.

“Each day you spend in Pinehurst, you escape the real world,” said clothier Chris Dalrymple, who owns Gentleman’s Corner. “You mark it off as a day you succeeded.”

Scott Straight has visited Pinehurst frequently from his home in French Lick, Indiana, sometimes as a guest of the gathering hosted each fall by Fluor Corporation and others on a spring golf outing with friends and family. When he first came in the early 2000s, cellular service was spotty in the Sandhills.

“It’s like going back in time, back to a much simpler time,” Straight said. “I couldn’t believe it when I first visited. Here I was in this little village, this golf resort, with no cell service, no email, totally removed from the world.”

He smiled, noting the evolution of technology.

“Unfortunately, somebody went and put a cell tower nearby,” he said.

Pinehurst isn’t immune from technological innovation, but it’s still old school with a voice reminding you it’s in a beautiful world of its own.  PS

Lee Pace’s first book about Pinehurst and its history, Pinehurst Stories—A Celebration of Great Golf and Good Times, was published 30 years ago.

Hometown

Table for One

Thanksgiving on the road less traveled

By Bill Fields

By the fall of 1976, an honest appraisal of my golf game would have resembled that of the used cars my father bought when money was tight and he needed transportation: runs rough, could blow a tire at any time, uncertain future. I was 17 years old, a high school senior. Despite many hours spent playing and practicing through my teens, I was still a handful of strokes from being a scratch golfer. Only at the smallest of colleges would I have a prayer of making the team.

But my enthusiasm hadn’t evaporated, which is why I asked my parents if I could enter the George Holliday Memorial Junior Tournament held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, over Thanksgiving weekend. I would make the 130-mile drive by myself in the family Fairlane, spend two nights at the Howard Johnson’s on North Kings Highway, distinguish myself with a good performance in the boys 16-17 age group, and take some confidence into my final spring of prep golf at Pinecrest High School.

I was a responsible kid, having only an occasional beer when Tuesday teen night at the Castle of Dreams was over. Mom and Dad knew the only damage I might cause in a motel room was scuffing a wall on a practice swing. They said, “Yes.”

Before dawn on Thanksgiving morning, I left Southern Pines for a tune-up round at the tournament site, Myrtle Beach National Golf Club. I had a couple of packs of Nabs on the car’s bench seat and a road map, but having made the ride 15 to 20 times, usually on family beach trips, I knew the route.

After making it to the course, I registered and went out for 18 holes, completing a foursome with boys from Virginia and South Carolina. We were among nearly 200 entrants in the event, played since the early 1970s to honor a Wofford College golfer, George Judson Holliday III of Galivants Ferry, who perished in a 1967 car crash.

By 4 p.m., I had checked into the motel on what was a quiet main drag and called home collect to let my parents know I was settled in. Traveling with my shag bag like pros of yesteryear, I hit some wedge shots on a nearby field. Later, after wiping my clubs clean, I walked into the Howard Johnson’s restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. Given that there were only about a dozen people dining, getting a seat wasn’t a problem.

The excitement of the trip, of my grown-up adventure, gave way to a different emotion after sliding into the booth and watching the waitress remove the other place setting. I got lonesome thinking of my parents at the table back home and the familiar foods — turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, apple rings — they were eating. I was the only solo diner aside from an elderly man drinking coffee at the counter. 

I contemplated ordering a hamburger and French fries but decided I had to get turkey and all the trwimmings, even if it wasn’t going to taste like my mother’s cooking. I ate most of my turkey and the accompanying sides, eschewed one of HoJo’s 28 flavors for a slice of pecan pie, and paid my bill. Once I was back in my room, I chained the door and got a water glass off the bathroom vanity to use as a putting cup. Three-footers, 6-footers, 10-footers — for an hour I tried to groove my stroke. I wished my “make” percentage was higher, but at least I was faring better than John-Boy, who got injured in a sawmill accident during a special Thanksgiving episode of The Waltons.

A poor start Friday morning — bogeys on the first three holes — had me feeling like I’d been hit in the head, and I wasn’t able to reverse the mojo. Far from shooting a score that might have earned an instant’s worth of interest from any of the college golf coaches in attendance, I was in the mid-80s. Saturday’s score was only marginally better. Joey Sadowski of Hickory, North Carolina, finished at one-over-par 145 to beat Mike Cook of Cartersville, Georgia, by a single stroke. Each of them would go on to play collegiately at UNC and the University of Georgia, respectively; I would be in a golf physical education class at Chapel Hill, hitting wiffle balls off a door mat in Woollen Gym. 

I put my clubs in the trunk and pointed my Ford toward home. In 2 1/2 hours there would be leftovers.  PS

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

Focus on Food

Aw, Shucks!

Oysters for breakfast

Story and Photographs by Rose Shewey

If you think oysters are for people in pink polo shirts with designer haircuts, chances are you have not attended an oyster roast in the South. Not only were these mollusks considered poor man’s food at varying times throughout history, oyster roasts have been a celebrated low country tradition in many Southern states for folks of all walks of life.

Which begs the question: Raw or cooked? How do you prefer your oysters? According to M.F.K. Fisher, one of the original food writers of our time, oyster-eaters can be divided into three camps: There are the oyster enthusiasts who will eat oysters any which way as long as mollusks are on the menu; there are the purists who will eat oysters raw and raw only; and lastly, there are those who will eat oysters cooked and no other way.

As for me, I like my bivalves raw as much as I like them cooked but will happily pass on oysters altogether if it’s summertime. As far as I am concerned, oysters are classic cold-weather fare even though the old adage that warns against eating oysters in months without an “r” no longer holds true. Despite good arguments that support safe and tasty oyster feasts year-round, I stand with tradition on this one.

“Oysters are the usual opening to a winter breakfast . . . indeed they are indispensable,” wrote Grimod de la Reynière in the Almanach des Gourmands in 1803. OK, oysters for breakfast might be pushing it a little, but I believe Reynière had it right nonetheless.

Consider this: Oysters are incredibly nutritious with unbelievable amounts of zinc — a trace mineral that will help your body fend off cold season maladies. Winter really does seem to be the perfect time to indulge in oysters.

As a “northern light” who grew up on the same latitude as Montreal, Canada (just a few thousand miles to the east), I cannot in good conscience say that North Carolina is cold during the month of November. However, having attended several Thanksgiving oyster roasts, I am definitely in favor of busting out the old oyster knife and doing some shucking this time of year. Besides, millions of French cannot be wrong — France boasts record sales of fresh oysters from late fall until the new year, every year. So, enjoy plump, briny and succulent oysters whenever you want, but celebrate them during the chilly holiday season.

Raw Oysters with Orange Fig Mignonette      (Makes 4-6 appetizers)

1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

2-3 fresh, ripe figs, peeled and minced

2 shallots, minced

2 teaspoon minced chives

1 teaspoon dried red chili flakes

24 freshly shucked oysters

Add orange juice, vinegar, salt and pepper in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Stir in figs, shallots, chives and chili flakes, and drizzle mignonette over oysters.   PS

German native Rose Shewey is a food stylist and food photographer. To see more of her work visit her website at suessholz.com.

Southwords

Nekked Fighting

The ultimate element of surprise

By Beth MacDonald

Occasionally, I find myself in places where strange things happen so frequently no one bats a silky, fake eyelash at them. New York City, for example. I have never been surprised to see a citizen dressed as Superman directing traffic with ping-pong paddles. Washington, D.C., it seems, isn’t far behind.

I was in D.C. recently to visit some friends and do some work. Mason, my husband, was with me. He can’t hear well, especially when I am near him and ask him to do something. This very specific type of hearing loss is often diagnosed as “Mixed Marital Hearing Loss, Unspecified,” which means he can’t hear requests, plans, demands or the doorbell.

As with most hotel rooms that aren’t presidential suites, the bathroom is directly by the entrance door. It was 9 o’clock in the morning. The Do Not Disturb sign was hanging on the doorknob. I was showering and Mason was on the other side of the room, behind a partition that served as a wall/coffee bar. I knew he was there because he was singing. His voice is deep and buttery, so I usually enjoy his warbling; though given his hearing condition, they could probably hear him in Raleigh.

As I exited the shower, I heard the hotel room door click open. Knowing Mason was oblivious on the other side of the room, I braced myself for it. Nekked fighting. Combat Nu.

Because everything in my life is connected to some eccentric misadventure somewhere else, this one began in Arkansas, sort of. Years ago I had a boss who was from there. He was short, probably because the mosquitoes ate half of him, and his Southern drawl was so thick it could make biscuits. He started every workday with wise advice as he passed my office. One day it was this: “Nekked fighting! You’ll win!” I furrowed my brow and asked what on this glorious green Earth he was talking about. At the time it never occurred to me that this could actually come in handy.

“Think about it,” he stopped, very serious. “Someone comes at ya ready to fight. Git nekked. Then, when they stare at ya, naked and ugly, flabby and weird lookin’, you attack! You have the element of surprise. Use it to your advantage and you win!” With that, he and his cup of coffee moved on.

I kept that little nugget of wisdom in the back of my cap until that hotel door clicked open.

This is it, I thought to myself. This is the day I would become the champion of Combat Nu. It all happened in slow motion, like in The Matrix. Someone was breaking in. I turned toward the door, dripping, naked and weird looking. I came face-to-face with the danger, ready to fight. The blood-curdling scream that came out of the maid as she fled down the hallway convinced me I had won. But I wondered, is it two falls out of three? Am I a black belt, to be feared and respected?

I put on some clothes and went downstairs to inquire at the front desk if they had a moment to hear my testimony about naked fighting. The staff was so unmoved by my experience it was as if this was a common occurrence. Their only response was, “I’m sure she knocked, you just didn’t hear it.”

At that moment, I started to cry in the lobby of a lovely hotel in downtown D.C. while trying to convince the front desk staff that Combat Nu is not a matter to be engaged in lightly. They seemed blissfully unaware of the true severity of the situation.

Mason finally either got to the end of his song or he realized I was missing and came downstairs looking for me. He’s all too aware that I am a living, breathing, walking catastrophe with a certain je ne sais quoi. He put a pair of sunglasses on me, stood me against a wall, said, “Do not move.”

Then he headed over to the Starbucks in the lobby to get me a double caramel macchiato and probably a set of ping-pong paddles.  PS

Beth MacDonald is a Southern Pines suburban misadventurer, author and Combat Nu black belt.

Caught In A Trap

Agatha Christie’s classic turns 70

By Jim Moriarty    Illustration by Miranda Glyder

The world’s longest-running play, written by the world’s most successful female playwright, who also happens to be the world’s bestselling novelist, will celebrate — at least in part — its 70th anniversary on the Owens Auditorium stage of the Bradshaw Performing Arts Center. Dame Agatha Christie’s classic, The Mousetrap, premiered in London’s West End on Nov. 25, 1952. Its BPAC performances on Nov. 17-20 will also serve as an anniversary celebration for the Judson Theatre Company as it closes out its 10th season of bringing live, professional theater to the Sandhills.

“Judson Theatre Company was selected to be one of the theater companies all over the world given the rights to produce a 70th anniversary production of The Mousetrap,” says Morgan Sills, Judson’s co-founder, executive producer and a Sandhills native who assumed the role of BPAC’s executive director last March. “I love it. It will be our third Agatha Christie after And Then There Were None and Witness for the Prosecution, each of which broke our box office record at the time.”

It also marks the first time one of Judson Theatre Company’s previous headliners will return. Alison Arngrim, best known for her character Nellie Oleson on the long-running television series Little House on the Prairie, was in Judson’s production of And Then There Were None five years ago. She’s the author of the autobiographical book Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated, which became a one-woman show.

“I get this text from Morgan, just a heads up: ‘I’m on the phone with your agent. You wouldn’t want to come and act in an Agatha Christie again, would you?’ And I’m like, ‘Which one?’ It’s Mousetrap,” says Arngrim, whose character in the play is Mrs. Boyle. “I’m a sucker for a villain role and I’m like, wait, isn’t this the really mean, terrible, remorseless English woman who dies at the end of Act I? I enjoy mean, cruel and remorseless older English ladies who die in Act I. I’m totally there. I love Agatha Christie and I love Judson Theatre. I had an absolute blast the last time I did it.”

After a half-dozen out-of-town shakedown cruises that started at Theatre Royal in Nottingham in October of ’52, The Mousetrap — which began as a radio play that morphed into a short story that evolved into a stage play — has run continuously in London’s West End since it premiered there, with the exception of a brief shutdown from March 2020 to May 2021 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Set in the great hall of Monkswell Manor, “this collection of characters from different backgrounds gets trapped in a snowstorm,” says Sills. “There’s been a murder and you find out whodunnit. It’s got a classic Christie plot and a surprising resolution. I’ve been looking forward to doing it for a while and when the anniversary came up, we knew this was the year to do it.”

By tradition, at the end of the play, the audience is asked not to reveal the killer’s identity to anyone outside the theater to avoid spoiling the surprise for future audiences. That the play has become a London tourist and theater-going staple was a surprise to even Christie herself, who imagined it might enjoy as much as an eight-month run. In 2011, a telegram sent in 1957 from playwright Noël Coward to Christie was discovered in a piece of furniture purchased from the Christie estate. It said, “Dear Agatha Christie. Much as it pains me I really must congratulate you on The Mousetrap breaking the long run record. All My Good Wishes. Noel Coward.”

While a 10-year anniversary can seem insignificant stacked up against the 70-year history of a theatrical institution like Mousetrap, Judson Theatre’s decade of success, including as it does the years when all of Broadway was shut down by the pandemic, is impressive in its own right. Ten years ago Joyce DeWitt starred in Judson’s first production, with the late Tab Hunter. “Love Letters ended up being one of the happiest experiences of my life, doing that play with Tab,” DeWitt says. “He is one of the most underrated actors in the history of Hollywood. He was so good in that role, so powerful, so present, so simple and so nakedly honest that I just fell inside what he was doing.”

After 10 seasons, the number of classic plays and the actors who brought them to life is too long to list. A good sign. “There’s been so much joy,” says Sills, who co-founded Judson with artistic director Daniel Haley. “So many of the stars we’ve had have been wonderful on the stage — because they’re not hired for their celebrity, they’re hired for their talent — but they’ve been wonderful off stage, too. To see our students and interns interact with them, the way the legacy of theater is passed on by working with them, has been beautiful.”

Involvement with the community has been at the heart of Judson’s mission. “Daniel and I are especially proud of the education program,” says Sills. “The Mousetrap will be part of that. The students get a copy of the book. We have a study guide written. They attend the show. We pay for transportation, their ticket, and substitute teachers. They get a field trip and a one-of-a-kind experience.” Combined, there will be something in the neighborhood of 600 students attending from North Moore, Union Pines and Pinecrest high schools.

“I’m grateful that we’ve managed,” says Sills of their first decade. “It’s always been challenging but the challenges change and the joys of doing it change. There hadn’t been true professional theater here in such a long time. The inspiration came from what they used to do in Pinehurst’s Theater Building with stars and plays, everything.”

But it wouldn’t have been possible without Sills’ Sandhills upbringing and connections. “It’s very much to do with Morgan being from there,” says Arngrim. “It’s hard to do any project from a charity to a theater to anything in any community where people think it just blew in from outside and it’s not part of ‘our’ community. If it was just someone coming from New York into Pinehurst, North Carolina and saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to do theater here’ it might not catch on the way that it did.”

And, having worked in theater in nearly every capacity known to man doesn’t hurt. “It really comes down to the fact that Morgan’s just a really fine theater manager,” says DeWitt. “He not only knows and understands the theater but he loves it, so his passion matches his talent. What he and Daniel have done there, it’s really kind of beautiful.”  PS

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

PinePitch

Jealousy, Gambling and Death — What’s Not to Like?

Tragic love takes the stage in high-def at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines, in a live performance of La Traviata by the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday, Nov. 5, at 1 p.m. For more information go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Sunday Serenade

Duke University’s Ciompi Quartet arrives Sunday, Nov. 6, at 2 p.m. to sweep you off your musical feet. In a career that spans five continents and hundreds of concerts, the quartet has acquired a reputation for performances of intelligence and creative programming, mixing the old and new in exciting ways. Join them at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

The Brothers Kossler

Settle into the Bradshaw Performing Art Center’s intimate McPherson Theater from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 22, for an exciting evening of classical guitar artistry with the Kossler Duo. Brothers Adam and John have established themselves as soloists, chamber musicians and educators, and have performed in concerts across the country. Concessions will be available for purchase. McPherson Theater at BPAC, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info and tickets: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Sweet and Powerful

At the age of 22, Japanese native Risa Hokamura is on the short list of the world’s finest violinists. She’ll appear in the second of the four-concert Classical Concert Series at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., on Monday, Nov. 14, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Presented by the Arts Council of Moore County, tickets can be purchased at the Arts Council offices at Campbell House, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines or by calling (910) 692-ARTS. For additional information go to www.mooreart.org.

O Christmas Tree

Join friends new and old from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 26, for the tree lighting celebration up and down the streets of Southern Pines. Santa Claus will be spreading cheer and taking pictures with good boys and girls (please bring your own camera). Downtown Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Photograph By Ted Fitzgerald/The Pilot

Thank You for Your Service

Bring the whole family and support all of Moore County’s troops and veterans at the annual Veterans Day Parade on Saturday, Nov. 5. To all those who served, we want to honor and thank you. If you are a local veteran, please join the parade. Downtown Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Ornaments, Lights, Action!

Let the twinkling and giving begin at the 26th annual Sandhills Children’s Center Festival of Trees, Nov. 16 – 20, at the Carolina Hotel, 80 Carolina Vista Drive, Pinehurst. The display of Christmas magic is open daily beginning at 10 a.m. Each item is designed or donated by local businesses and residents, and all proceeds go to help children with special developmental needs. Admission is by any monetary donation at the door, with a special “Girls’ Night Out” Nov. 16 with the McKenzie Brothers Band. For more info: www.FestivalofTrees.org.

The Last Waltz

It Makes No Difference what’s happening Up On Cripple Creek, because on Thursday, Nov. 24, at 7 p.m., the Sunrise Theater will present the Thanksgiving tradition like no other — its free screening of The Last Waltz, the Martin Scorsese-filmed tribute to The Band. What’s The Weight? Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

Notes of Nostalgia

The Sandhills Repertory Theatre presents “Judy Norton in Concert” in two shows at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines, on Saturday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m., and on Sunday, Nov. 13, at 3 p.m. Best known as the character Mary Ellen in the hit television series The Waltons, Norton has a long career spanning decades in music, film and television. For tickets and additional information go to www.sandhillsrep.org, sunrisetheater.com or call (910) 692-3611.

Last Dance

Don’t miss your last chance to dance and mingle on Sunrise Square for the final First Friday of 2022. Enjoy food trucks, some Southern Pines Brewery brews, and listen to great music while supporting the local theater on Nov. 4 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Leave the dogs, outside alcohol and rolling coolers home, and make a night of it. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

Man in santa claus costume winking

Santa is Never Overdue

Santa Claus is coming to town on Saturday, Nov. 19, and he’s making a special stop at the Given Memorial Library. Take a photo, make a craft and leave with a special gift bag. There are two time slots, from 9:45 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Library cards not required but space is limited, so Santa’s helpers are taking reservations beginning Nov. 1. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info and reservations: (910) 295-3642.

Remembering Frank Jr.

A tribute to a leader

By Jim Jenkins

Frank Arthur Daniels Jr. died at the age of 90 on June 30, 2022, in his hometown of Raleigh. It was the peaceful conclusion of a life full of professional accomplishment, financial success, and contributions to his community and his state. But for his multitudes of friends and family, Frank Jr. — as just about everybody called him — is remembered for his capacity to give and receive love.

Sitting in the cavernous dining area of her parents’ home on White Oak Road, Julie Daniels, Frank Jr.’s daughter, and her husband, Tom West, scan the many family portraits and mementos. There is one of her father, then 65, in front of a printing press.

Look!” she says. Hes got the little red book in his pocket. He always had that.”

Yes, Frank Jr. always carried a book with the names of his best friends, their phone numbers and their birthdays. When he was younger, hed send cards; as he got older, he found it easier to call them and sing to them (and anyone who was with him would be expected to sing along).

Julie is one of two children of Frank Jr. and his wife, Julia, and her memories are exactly what her father would want them to be. “Oh, they had fun — parties all the time, events at the paper, things like that,” she says. But they always put me and my brother first. I dont remember that they had all kinds of money — and they didnt think of themselves that way. But when you ask me, what was his happiest day, Id say just about every day was his happiest.”

Left: Publisher Frank Daniels Jr. and Raleigh Times Editor A.C. Snow look over the final edition of the Raleigh Times.

Right: Frank Jr. at press with grandfather, Josephus Daniels in 1939.

Frank Daniels Jr. was born at the Old Rex Hospital,” on Sept. 7, 1931. His father, Frank Daniels Sr., was one of four brothers, three of whom were active in running The News & Observer, which was owned by Frank Jr.s grandfather, Josephus Daniels. He attended Woodberry Forest School near Orange, Virginia, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1953. He did two years in the U.S. Air Force in Japan and tried a year of law school but was inevitably drawn back to The N&O, which turned out to be more than his birthright — it was his destiny.

Though he and his sister, Patsy, were raised in comfort and power, Frank Jr. was a righteous man. He had a sense of right and wrong that transcended the views of the generation from which he came, and of the family from which he descended. His son Frank Daniels III recalls going to the ACC basketball tournament with his father in 1968, when he was 12. It was the first varsity year for Charles Scott, a UNC sophomore who was the first Black basketball player for the Tar Heels.

A man behind them began taunting Scott. It was something Franks dad tolerated until he heard the n-word. He turned around and told the guy to shut the hell up and then said, ‘We dont need you here.’ The guy left,” says Frank III. That really took something.”

Frank Jr. worked various jobs in all departments at The N&O and was popular with the other workers at the paper. Sometimes he chafed a bit working for his father (who, as the publisher, ran the business operations) and his uncle Jonathan, the editor, but he stayed the course and, after working his way up, became publisher in 1971.

A big man for his time, Frank Jr. was 6 feet, 3 inches tall and burly. He had huge hands and a booming bass voice that carried through a room, though his eyes possessed a mischievous twinkle and he loved a good joke.

     

Left: Asst. city editor Ted Vaden, editor Claude Sitton, and publisher Frank Daniels Jr.

Right: Frank Jr. and David Woronoff.

Gary Pearce, a longtime political strategist, remembers his boss from his own early days as an assistant city editor at The N&O in the mid-1970s. Hed walk through the newsroom every day about 5 oclock to go talk to Claude Sitton,” says Pearce, referring to the editor of the paper at the time. One day, Franks walking through and theres a phone ringing at an empty desk. No ones there, so Frank — the publisher, now — puts down his briefcase, answers the phone, puts a piece of paper in the typewriter and takes down the item, a minor news brief. Then he sticks it in the basket, gathers his stuff and walks on down the hall, not saying a word to anybody. Most publishers wouldnt have done it. That told me a lot.”

While at The N&O, Frank Jr. took some courageous stands as a fellow who owned a newspaper too liberal for many local business and community swells. He pushed for a merger of the Wake County and Raleigh schools, supporting a controversial change that led to vastly improved, integrated schools. He supported civil rights and womens rights and didnt balk when the newspaper started asking troubling questions about the war in Vietnam.

In addition to leading the paper, Frank Jr. rose to the top of dozens of professional associations. He was chairman of The Associated Press, and part of the leadership of nearly every civic organization in Raleigh — from United Way to school support groups to the YMCA board to chairing the boards of the North Carolina Museums of History and Natural Sciences. His board memberships and chairmanships over nine decades were too numerous to name, but his son says that his favorite post was chairman of the Smithsonian Institutions National Board. He arranged partnerships between the Smithsonian and North Carolinas history and science museums. They reflected his lifelong belief that everyone, at every station in life, deserved to know about art, history and science, and that the knowledge should be free.

Frank III says that his fathers seemingly natural capacity for leadership always put him in charge of whatever organization he had been asked to join. Every group he was in, he rose to the top,” Frank III says. I think it was his capacity for empathy. He could see what people needed, and it was important for him to help them.”

The Daniels family sold The News & Observer to the McClatchy newspaper company in California in 1995, and Frank Jr. remained as publisher until he retired in 1996.

In retirement, he became busier than ever, continuing his board memberships, staying active particularly in Democratic Party politics. Virtually every governor paid him a call. No one is sure if he ever gave a campaign contribution to a Republican. During his tenure, as with his grandfather and father, The N&O never endorsed a Republican candidate for office.

Frank Jr. bought a building on Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh and established an office on the sixth floor, where he entertained movers and shakers and fellow board members and politicians. Through his membership in social and golf clubs he influenced another two generations of businesspeople, candidates and entrepreneurs. Until the very last month of life, he rarely had an empty lunch date or an evening without some kind of activity.

     

Left: Frank Jr. and David Woronoff.

Right: Frank IV, Frank Jr., Frank III

Even after his departure from The N&O, Frank Jr. supported new ventures and publications. Shortly after his retirement, he and four others bought The Pilot in Southern Pines, then owned by Sam Ragan. Why did he do it? It just gets in your blood,” was all he ever said.

One of the other owners is David Woronoff, Frank Jr.s nephew. Woronoff, who runs the business for the partnership, was young at the beginning, confident but willing to ask his uncles advice. Hed never let me call up and say, ‘This happened, what should I do?’” Woronoff laughs. But hed give advice — not that he expected you to take it.”

In one case, a prominent Pinehurst businessman called Woronoff, the publisher of The Pilot, after the newspaper was critical of a venture in which the businessman was involved. He was screaming at me,” says Woronoff, really rough stuff.” Woronoff called his uncle and the advice Frank Jr. gave him was unequivocal. He said, ‘David, you never go wrong punching the biggest bully in town in the nose. What would be wrong would be if you didnt give the person in need a hand up.’”

Frank Jr. stayed involved in the publishing group until his death, as it added The Country Bookshop, another community paper and five magazines — Business North Carolina, PineStraw, WALTER, O.Henry and SouthPark — to its stable.

Frank Jr. built friendships from childhood that lasted him a lifetime, but what he enjoyed most about all his associations was just learning. His granddaughter, Kimberly Daniels Taws, who runs The Country Bookshop, remembers visiting the beach with her grandfather when she was young. She joined him on the deck, where he was sitting next to a foot-tall stack of unusual reading material: clippings, folders, magazines, books. I said, ‘What are you doing?’” she says. And he said, ‘Well, Im trying to figure out how I feel about nuclear power.’”

Many years ago, Frank Jr. hired attorney Wade Smith to help with some legal issues involving the newspaper. That led to a deep, lifelong friendship. To me, Frank was larger than life, but Frank was real,” Smith says. “There was no putting on airs about him. He would be straight with you in all ways, and I liked that about him.”

Communications consultant Joyce Fitzpatrick met Frank Jr. when she rented space in a downtown building he owned some 20 years ago. She began regular lunches with him and Smith once or twice a month. He was a hyper-social person,” she says. He loved to have his lunches planned. We always typed out an agenda. It covered everything — politics, world events. People would come over to sit with us, wanting to know the latest.”

One thing he didnt seem to have was inhibition. Oh,” Fitzpatrick says, wed switch from politics to golf to what happens when we die. In the last few lunches, Wade would give comfort: Well see each other again.”

Perhaps, in the end, Frank Arthur Daniels Jr. is proof that a man can be great without being perfect. Frank Jr. was the first to laugh at his own flaws; he enjoyed off-color humor, indulged in profanity and played practical jokes. But if he felt hed been too rough on someone, hed apologize.

From him I learned the beauty of friendship and being with other people. The importance of generosity. And that sense of humor!” says his daughter Julie. Sometimes you dont realize the great gifts.”

In a eulogy at his father’s funeral at White Memorial Presbyterian Church, his son, Frank III, shared a note that Frank Jr.’s longtime personal assistant, Julie Wood, found on his desk after he passed: Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Forgive the guilty. Welcome the stranger and the unwanted child. Care for the ill. Love your enemies.

Its a list of what he thought religion — and we — should teach,” says Frank III, who closed the eulogy with: Well do our best.”  PS

Jim Jenkins is an award-winning writer who has received North Carolina’s highest honor, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He retired from The News & Observer in 2018 after 31 years as an editor, columnist and chief editorial writer.

Sporting Life

Traveling the Blue Ridge

A solemn stop on a road trip

By Tom Bryant

It was early fall, summer was gone and I was at loose ends. It always seems to happen to me during the change of seasons. It’s still too hot to do any serious fishing, hunting season is in — dove season, that is — but after the opening-day hunt there’s not much to do here in my neck of the woods. The local doves have moved on, and the migratory ones aren’t here yet. The same with ducks. With the mild weather, they’re still lounging around somewhere up north.

Linda, my bride, and I finished our last trip to the beach in the little Airstream. Nothing to do now but winterize and park it until February, when we head to Florida for winter fishing. But right now, like I said, I’m at loose ends.

Trying to write a little on my never-finished novel, I was up in the roost, what we call the small apartment over our garage, waiting on the muse to arrive. While plundering through some papers in an unused drawer of my desk, I ran across a brochure I’d saved about the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s amazing how things come together, I thought. Next step, convincing Linda we needed a road trip.

The parkway has always been one of my favorite destinations, I guess because it’s beautiful and seems never-ending. It’s the longest linear national park in the country and runs 469 miles through Virginia and North Carolina. I’ve never driven from one end to the other, but someday I hope to.

Actually, there’s another reason for my interest in this monumental project constructed during the Great Depression. I closed out my newspaper career working for the descendants of Josephus Daniels, the early owner and publisher of The News & Observer in Raleigh. Without Josephus, the parkway probably would not have come through North Carolina at all.

My mind went back to early American history classes that I waded through while pursuing an education. If I remember correctly, back around 1917 during the World War I, the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, offered the job of secretary of the Navy to a loyal Democrat, Josephus Daniels, owner and publisher of The News & Observer, which was, at that time, the largest newspaper in the state of North Carolina. Daniels, in turn and needing help, offered the job of assistant to the secretary to another up-and-coming Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Over time they became good friends.

When the idea of the parkway came up years later as a way to alleviate some of the unemployment during the Great Depression, Roosevelt was president. Tennessee was first in line to get the important revenue-producing project. Their idea was that the parkway was to run along the spine of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Naturally, the folks in the know in North Carolina wanted the parkway to run along the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and they had one great ally in Josephus Daniels, friend of the president. Josephus and his group of state promoters made several overtures to FDR, and he agreed to let the parkway come through Virginia and North Carolina. The Blue Ridge Parkway was born.

It’s ironic that I ended my newspaper career working for David Woronoff and Frank Daniels Jr., direct descendants of Josephus, the man who helped bring one of my favorite national parks to our state.

I explained to Linda that it was my duty to honor the legacy of my boss of several generations ago and visit the parkway. She laughed and said, “Any excuse for a road trip.” We planned to venture out the following week.

We were sitting around the kitchen table. “I say we head up to Virginia and hit the parkway there. We haven’t done any of the Virginia stretches yet,” I said. Linda had her atlas and I was scrolling through my iPad.

“How about the Peaks of Otter?” she said.

“The who of what?” I replied.

“The Peaks of Otter. I read somewhere that’s the Cherokee word for high places or maybe the area is just named after the nearby headwaters of the Otter River, whatever. It sounds beautiful.”

“And,” I replied showing Linda pictures on my iPad, “here is where we can stay, the Peaks of Otter Lodge.”

The following Monday found us on the road heading north, up through Greensboro on Highway 29. After an uneventful three-hour trip, we entered the picturesque little town of Bedford, Virginia, only about 20 miles from our destination right on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Peaks of Otter Lodge stretches out over 56 rooms with incredible views of Lake Abbott and the peaks beyond. There are several hiking trails geared to the expertise of the hiker, or you can do what I did most of the time we were not out exploring, and that’s kick back with a good book while relaxing in an Adirondack chair right next to the lake.

One thing on our must-do list was to visit the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford. The next morning we were up and at ’em early.

The memorial sits majestically right outside town at the base of the Blue Ridge and encompasses more than 50 acres. When we drove up to the entrance — a 44-foot-tall arch embellished by the code name “Overlord” — a feeling came over me, sort of like the one you get in church when a special hymn touches your heart. That day it did the same to us as we walked around the site. We were silent, hushed as if at a funeral.

These 50 acres in the small town of Bedford, Virginia, serve as a remembrance of over 2,500 young men and the dedication of a nation that owes everything to the heroes who would never see past that day, June 6, 1944, on the French shore.

Why Bedford? Given the population of the town, they lost the most. By the day’s end, 19 of their young men had died. I found the following quote in a brochure: “Recognizing Bedford as emblematic of all communities, large and small, whose citizen-soldiers served on D-Day, Congress warranted the establishment of the National D-Day Memorial here.”

That war, the second war to end all wars, is long gone. Without movies like Saving Private Ryan, there would likely be folks who don’t know what D-Day means or what happened or the sacrifices that took place on that amazing day. It seems that every generation has its own particular war. For me, it was Vietnam, for others the Gulf War, and others, Afghanistan. The list grows, seemingly interminable.

But looking back, I think about those true citizen-soldiers who fought in World War II: my dad in the Navy, my uncle Tommy in the Marines, and my uncle Hubert in the Army. They volunteered, knowing that they were in for the duration and this was the only way to help save the greatest nation, and perhaps the world, for the generations to come. The boys who gave all on D-Day were part of that group. It was indeed, I believe, the Greatest Generation.

The drive back up the mountain was subdued. Neither of us wanted to break the spell the D-Day Memorial had on us, but when we got back to the lodge we decided to celebrate our last day at the Peaks with dinner and a bottle of wine at the lodge restaurant.

The next morning we drove south on the parkway heading to Boone, pulling over at every overlook. The views were remarkable. The morning sun reflected off the russet-colored leaves of hickory and oak trees down in the valley.

At one overlook, Linda said, “This is really the greatest country in the world. Just look at this remarkable view. And think of all the people who made the parkway happen.”

“Yep,” I replied. “We have a lot of folks to thank for that.”

We loaded up and headed on south to Boone for a visit with our son, Tommy.  PS

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

The Creators of N.C.

Renaissance Bartender

Joel Finsel mixes books and bourbon

By Wiley Cash

Photographs By Mallory Cash

When you sidle up to the bar before ordering a beer or cocktail, you probably don’t expect your bartender to have authored two books and numerous articles, have a graduate degree in liberal studies, or to be a leading advocate in the movement for historical justice. But if you know Joel Finsel and he is the one behind the bar, then that’s exactly what you would expect. You would also expect a very, very good drink.

One crisp day in early fall I spent an hour or so with Joel in downtown Wilmington at the Brooklyn Arts Center, a gorgeous, deconsecrated church that was built in 1888 and passed through the hands of numerous congregations before falling into disrepair and being saved by a public and private partnership in the late 1990s. Over the past decade, the Brooklyn Arts Center has hosted countless weddings, community events and concerts by musicians like Art Garfunkel, Brandi Carlile and Old Crow Medicine Show. The sprawling complex, which features the event space, a bridal suite, an annex that once served as an old schoolhouse, a courtyard and the Bell Tower Tasting Room, is now a busy hub of art, culture and celebration. It was in the Bell Tower Tasting Room where I found Joel, ready and waiting to mix up a few cocktails that are perfect for the upcoming holiday season.

As Joel mixes our first cocktail — a mulled apple cider — I ask him how he’s been able to build a career as a bartender with one foot in the literary world, another in modern art and another (apparently Joel has three feet) in bartending. He smiles. “I think I’ve always been attracted to chaos,” he says, which surprises me. Joel is one of the most measured people I’ve ever met, and to watch him work behind the bar is to witness a seemingly effortless precision.

The steaming hot apple cider is poured with bourbon and garnished with star anise, lemon and a cinnamon stick stirrer. It tastes like a winter evening, presents wrapped under the tree and the kids blessedly asleep before the chaos of Christmas morning.

I ask Joel about his childhood growing up in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, a small blue collar town on the banks of the Lehigh River about an hour and a half northwest of Philadelphia.

“Until I was 5, my family lived in a trailer on a dirt road, 2 miles up along the side of a mountain. It was awesome because there were bears and deer, and you could just pick up rocks and there were orange salamanders everywhere,” he says. “And then my great-grandmother passed away and we moved into her house in town, which changed everything for me. I was suddenly in the middle of a small town and I could walk to high school and there were girls there. And there was a basketball court nearby, which I pretty much lived at.”

    

The abstract expressionist painter Franz Kline also moved to Lehighton in his youth in the second decade of the 20th century. Joel’s mother had grown up in the area hearing stories about Kline and his work, and her interest led her to become one of the country’s pre-eminent specialists on everything from Kline’s paintings to his career and biography. When Joel was young, his mother began working on a biography of Kline, but it wasn’t until Joel graduated from college and was teaching school in Philadelphia that he asked for a look at the manuscript.

“I was home for Christmas, and I said, ‘Mom, what’s up with that book?’ I asked her if I could take a look at it. And then I realized what she had was a huge document of notes, but no structure.” Mother and son began working on the project together, and they would do so for over 20 years before Franz Kline in Coal Country was published in 2019, the first biography to examine this major American artist’s formative years in Pennsylvania, Boston and London before he became one of the founding members of the New York School.

The next cocktail Joel prepares is called the Cat’s Whiskers, a tipple of rye whiskey, honey syrup, fresh lemon juice and Angostura bitters that tastes like a party thrown by Jay Gatsby. If I were to turn and look over the balcony here at the Brooklyn Arts Center, I would almost expect to see a jazz band taking the stage, the audience filled with men in smart suits and women in flapper dresses, snow pounding against the stained glass windows as the hour tips past midnight.

The book on Kline was not the first Joel had published. During a long career as a bartender — one that began in college and would lead to reviews and spots in publications like Bartender Magazine, Cosmopolitan and a profile in Playboy as one of the country’s Top 10 Mixologists — Joel had accumulated countless stories from co-workers and patrons, many of which he recounted in his 2009 book Cocktails & Conversations, which expertly mixes barroom lore with the histories of mixology and cocktail recipes.

One bar customer who had an enormous influence on Joel’s life was the abstract expressionist Edward Meneeley, a contemporary and friend of artists like Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol. Joel and Meneeley met while Joel was in college at Kutztown University and working at a bar across the street from Meneeley’s art studio.

“Ed introduced me to mixing things like Campari and soda back in the day when everyone drank Captain and Coke, circa 1998,” Joel says. “Ed would come into the bar and throw his old copies of The New Yorker at me and tell me I needed to educate myself out of this town, so I got to know the work of the magazine’s art critic Peter Schjeldahl pretty well. I wasn’t even 21 yet. I started tending bar at 18, which was legal.”

The next cocktail Joel makes is called Lavender 75, and while it doesn’t include Campari, the West Indian orange bitters combine with gin, fresh lemon, lavender syrup and a splash of dry Champagne to give the drink an incredibly complex and layered taste, both dry and deeply flavorful.

When Joel and his wife, Jess James (who owns a vintage clothing boutique in Wilmington that is a habitual stop for Hollywood actors when they’re in town filming movies), moved to town in 2005, Joel brought his two main interests south with him: mixology and contemporary art. He took a job as the bartender of Café Phoenix in downtown Wilmington and designed one of the first craft cocktail menus in the city. He also curated the art on the restaurant’s walls, hosting artists like his friend Meneeley and Leon Schenker. Suddenly work by internationally known artists valued at tens of thousands of dollars was hanging where local art had once dominated the walls.

It was after a few years in Wilmington, where he eventually earned an MA in liberal studies from UNC Wilmington, that Joel first learned about the 1898 race massacre, the only successful coup in American history that saw white supremacists murder untold numbers of Black citizens while overthrowing the duly elected local government. He was shocked to learn that something so horrible had happened in a city he had quickly grown to love.

After researching the events surrounding 1898, Joel co-founded the nonprofit Third Person Project, which is dedicated to uncovering and preserving history. One of the group’s first projects was gathering and digitizing copies of The Daily Record, which was the only daily Black newspaper in North Carolina before it was destroyed by a mob during the events of 1898. Since then, the organization has gone on to host musicians like Rhiannon Giddens, who came to Wilmington to perform the “Songs of 1898” at a 2018 event with Joel’s Third Person co-founder, writer John Jeremiah Sullivan. Third Person has gone on to lead Wilmington in efforts to save historic buildings, mark burial places, and uncover lost histories, often by partnering with local institutions like UNC Wilmington’s Equity Institute.

On a smaller scale, Joel is also contributing to local history with the impact he’s had on its cocktail scene. The final drink he mixes — the True Blue — is a good example. He created it years ago when he designed the cocktail menu for the Wilmington restaurant True Blue Butcher and Table. The cocktail remains a fixture and, with its mix of pear-infused vodka, elderflower liqueur, lemon and a splash of dry Champagne, I understand why.

Our interview is over and, as Joel cleans up behind the bar, he tells me he plans to spend the rest of the afternoon working on an essay about 1898. Cocktails, conversation, curating art, correcting history. It’s all in a day’s work.

True Blue

Fresh, clean, bright. Designed after research into ancient Greek formulas for the “nectar of the gods.”

1 ounce Grey Goose La Poire vodka

1 ounce St. Elder elderflower liqueur

1/2 ounce fresh lemon (or about half a lemon)

Splash dry Champagne

Splash sparkling mineral water

Pre-chill cocktail coupe and set aside. Mix vodka, elderflower liqueur and fresh lemon over ice in a mixing glass. Shake hard for at least 12 seconds. Discard ice from pre-chilled coupe back into ice bin. Strain mixture into coupe. Float Champagne and soda. Garnish by dropping in 3 blueberries or thin slice of pear.

 

The Cat’s Whiskers

Substitute gin and it becomes The Bees Knees. Both are Roaring ’20s slang for the height of excellence.

1 3/4 ounces favorite bourbon or rye whisky

1 ounce honey syrup (1:1 ratio of hot water to honey)

3-4 fresh mint leaves

1/2 ounce fresh lemon

2 dashes Angostura bitters (optional)

Splash sparkling water 

Pre-chill cocktail coupe and set aside. Combine all of the ingredients over ice and shake for 12 seconds. Discard ice from pre-chilled coupe back into ice bin. Double strain into coupe (make sure no green flecks of mint end up in anyone’s teeth). Garnish with fresh mint top.

 

Lavender 75

The classic French 75 cocktail was named after a cannon. This places a flower in the barrel.

1 1/2  ounces Botany Gin

1/2 ounce fresh lemon

1 ounce lavender syrup (steep dried lavender flowers like a tea in hot water, then add sugar, 1:1 ratio)

3 dashes West Indies Orange Bitters

Splash dry Champagne

Splash sparkling mineral water

Pre-chill a cocktail coupe and set aside. Combine all of the ingredients over ice and shake for at least 12 seconds. Discard ice from pre-chilled coupe back into ice bin. Strain the chilled mixture into the coupe. Garnish with 3-4 dried lavender buds.  PS

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.