Wrong Number

How I found my way to the deadbeat Scrooge list

By Deborah Salomon

I am the hunted. Help! Please help!

I stand prey to denizens of faceless (though not nameless or voiceless) robots who wait until mealtime, or the evening news, to offer me hearing aids, funeral insurance or, most recently, an extended warranty on a car I traded in three years ago.

What happened to electronic record-keeping?

These robots, obviously, aren’t MIT computer whizzes. They aren’t even smart enough to hack into the DMV.

I am warned of their spiel by a blip when I pick up the receiver followed by a pause while I am plugged into some voiceboard, whatever that is. 

Then the cheery-sounding gal or gent greets me with a generic name like Kate Jordan or Bill Perkins. The voice never has an accent — heaven forbid, that might turn off prospects in a different region. At least I can chat about the weather in Mumbai when I call Dell or Time Warner.

After introducing him/herself the robocaller proceeds to “Howareya’ doin’ today?” at which most prospects hang up. Instead, I answer, “Horrible. An alligator just bit off my foot,” to which the voice replies, “Well, good. Now if you’ll just give me a minute of your time I’ll show you how . . .”

When robocalling and other nuisance telemarketers first raised their ugly heads it was possible to call a central agency to unsubscribe the number they got from — go figure. The last such agency I tried had been disconnected, a recording announced.

I assume AARP provides information to businesses targeting retirees. But really, who would buy insurance for “final expenses” over the phone?

Cells were safe (especially private numbers) until providers started annoying their customers with in-house sales pitches. Caller ID isn’t much help. Sometimes just a city name will pop up, or that same phony moniker.

Similar solicitations now arrive by email where a Jane Doe — more likely a Mike Stevens — appears on the “from” line and something like “a voice from the past” as the subject. Many have attachments, begging you to “see how the gang looks now,” the gang being Sammy Scam, Vera Virus … and Charlie CRASH!

Even worse, a bogus message from your bank or credit card company suggesting a dire circumstance.

The most difficult requests to ignore come from veterans’ and police/ firefighters’ benevolent associations. At least you’re speaking to a real person, which makes saying no harder. Once scammed (by a lightbulbs scheme) always suspicious. So I reply, “Please mail me information about your organization, including its tax-exempt status. You accessed my phone number, so finding my address shouldn’t be difficult. Then I’ll consider a modest donation.”

Never got one single follow-up.

However, I regularly receive hand-addressed envelopes of greeting card or invitation dimensions that do, in fact, contain an invitation to a sales-pitch event.

Then, watch out what you browse online because the products will show up forever on your home page, an annoying reminder that you haven’t purchased them yet. This reveals your choices to whoever uses your computer. Uh-oh.

Door-to-door solicitations have all but disappeared. I’m almost glad to find students with overpriced chocolate bars ringing the bell. At least they’re not selling quinoa or kale.

Suppose I do donate. Practically overnight my mailbox overflows with requests from organizations that have purchased a list with my name on it. Imagine the wasted paper and postage. Must I be hounded by nature groups just because I subscribed to National Geographic, for my grandsons?

What to do? An anonymous donation means no tax receipt, which is better than the alternative. But I experience horrible angst during TV spots about abused animals and sick/starving children with insects crawling across their innocent little faces. I can’t stand it. I want to run to the bank, empty my checking account, cash in my IRA and CDs. Except past donations have triggered impassioned pleas to become a regular contributor, perhaps monthly.

The most disappointing attack occurs after canceling a magazine subscription. This happened with The New Yorker, after more than 50 years. Just too expensive. I even wrote them a letter, explaining why. Big mistake. The deluge of offers and reminders made me feel like I had abandoned a sick parent. But I stood my ground, which seems to have had some effect, since I’m still receiving articles online.

Let this serve as a public statement: I am that ghastly senior citizen living on a pension, Social Security and a good part-time job. My “final expenses” have been pre-paid. I don’t need a hearing aid. I am sympathetic, but wish the government (to whom I still pay considerable tax) would take better care of police and firefighters. I regularly donate to children’s causes and animal relief — I even buy chocolate bars, if the kids have bittersweet.

But that’s it. Hounding won’t help. So please, transfer my name, address, email and phone number to the miserable old deadbeat Scrooge list.

After that, “Have a nice day!”  PS

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

Old Sam Peabody

The song of the white-throated sparrow heralds winter

By Susan Campbell

Here in central North Carolina, the winged harbinger of winter is the white-throated sparrow. After summering in the forests of the far north, this bold little bird breeds across Canada and in northern New England at higher elevations. Then it heads south for the winter, probably stopping off in your backyard. A medium-sized sparrow, it is anything but drab, with brown notes on its upper body and white below. Look for bold markings on the head. Pale stripes on the crown and a white throat patch are set off by gray feathers on the face. And to top it all off, white-throateds sport a yellow spot at the base of their stout bill.

Interestingly there are two color forms of this species: those with heads that are white-striped and those that are tan-striped. Both forms persist. While white-striped individuals are more aggressive during the breeding season, either type will breed with the other. Following courtship, females handle the nest-making, usually in a depression on the ground under a low-growing tree or shrub. However, should it, not surprisingly, fall victim to predators, the second nest may be placed on low branches.

If you have not spotted one of these birds, you almost certainly have heard their distinctive loud “seet” call emanating from thick vegetation. Their song, which can be heard even during cold weather, is a recognizable, liquid “oh sweet Canada.” (Others hear “old Sam Peabody.”) Since they tend to flock together, you are likely to encounter small groups along forest edges, farm fields, parks and suburban areas

These squatty sparrows actually have a broad diet. Although they primarily feed on a range of seeds during the winter months, their preference shifts during the year. In spring, they are more likely to seek out buds and flowers of fresh vegetation. Luckily, white-throateds love feeding stations, often in association with dark-eyed juncos, another bird of the high country.

White-throated sparrows do not walk or run but hop when on the ground. As they forage, they will forcefully scratch backward in leaf litter using both feet and pouncing on tasty bits that they uncover. And if you happen to look out of your window and see leaves taking flight, it is probably white-throated sparrows forcefully flicking aside dead leaves using their bills. In the winter months, pecking orders form within flocks with the more aggressive males dominating.

If you want to attract white-throated sparrows this winter, it is easy and inexpensive. Since they tend to stay low, scattering a seed mix in a cleared spot near shrubs or other thick vegetation is all it may take. White-throats will hop up onto a stump or low platform feeder as well. Easier yet, simply leave a portion of your yard unmowed until Spring and these predictable visitors may well turn up to take advantage of the resulting seeds that remain as the growing season winds down.  PS

Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.

Laid-back Libra

Don’t let October become “Rocktober” under the sign of the scales

By Astrid Stellanova

There just ain’t no pigeon-holing a Libran. Bridgette Bardot is a Libran. So is Simon Cowell, Julie Andrews. Sting. And Jesse Jackson. The Libran likes the better things in life, likes taking to a public stage, likes being given lots of room to develop their fine talents, but doesn’t much care for grunt work. The Librans I know also don’t like for people around them to kick up a lot of dust and make a fuss.  Ad Astra — Astrid

Libra (September 23–October 22)

You got a hand stuck out, being friendly, wanting to make nice with someone who has tested your last nerve — and they think you stuck your hand out for a gimme. They don’t have the class you do, my well-balanced friend, so the first order of business is to keep your hand to yourself and enjoy the jingling of all that silver that is filling your pocket. You have got a lot of prosperity in the stars waiting for you this year.  And you also have more friends than a body could ever need, so square your shoulders and go enjoy a big ole slice of birthday cake.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

There was a time when keeping secrets worked for you. This, however, is not that time. You need a strong shoulder to cry on, and given your natural magnetism, plenty will offer one. The pleasure of a kind word can go further than the deep pleasure you take from maintaining personal mystery—so purge, Honey, and let somebody be a good pal to you.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

A big idea you incubated some time ago is ripe and ready. Don’t hesitate to share it and find the support and dollars you need.  Also, this is a good time to look at all your investments (I call this rooting and hunting under the sofa cushions) and see how much you have on hand to back yourself. Your idea is a good one; you weren’t crazy when you claimed you are this close to Making Good, as Grandpa Hornblower says.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

Summer was discombobulating for you, wasn’t it Sugar?  And the fall is looking a little dicey.  But cheer up; you are just going to love the year end. But first, there are two matters that need to be addressed before you have the personal freedom to move on from something that keeps tripping you up. Darling, they are not going away without you putting down the Fritos bag (and getting up off the sofa) in order to show these two matters the door.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

Whaa-whaa-whaa . . . That, whaa-whaa sound, Honey Child, is your disillusionment when the happy went right out of your red balloon. You have been killing yourself trying to make someone you care for care for you in the same way. There is nothing more you can do. This person is not as giving, generous, nor nearly as much fun as you are.  And they are never going to be as demonstrative. You got invested, for sure, but do you love them?

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

There, there, there. Feel better?  Did you take to your bed after Sugar Booger left your heart busted into two big pieces?  Well, nobody would have blamed you one bit if you had. They seem to have a contractual obligation to darken your world while you are playing Mary Poppins and trying for sweetness and light. Sweet Thing, shake it off and look for a different type.

Aries (March 21–April 19)

You are about two Alka-Seltzers away from driving your friends and families crazy as a bat in the basement. It is true that you can be entertaining and the life of the party, but right now everybody who knows you wishes you could spend at least one day a week boring the crap out of them. Quiet is not a four-letter word. It’s five, Darling.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

Someone close to you is convinced you are having a breakthrough just at the very time you feel you are having a breakdown. The other person is right. You have developed a creative genius for seeing a new way to approach a very old problem. It could bring you closer to a dream if you don’t back away. See it through.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

A mysterious person — somebody you’ve known for some time but never well — has a connection to you that will soon become clear.  This will require you to be open, gentle, pliant and honest in order to enjoy the full benefit of a special revelation. Honey, I know that’s a tall order, but for your own sake, try.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

Thankfully, you took old Astrid’s advice about last month and stopped borrowing money and began making your own. Now, Sugar, I want you to stop thinking you can borrow time. This ain’t a dress rehearsal — it’s your life you have been blowing like you were on the easy credit life extension plan. Do. Not. Waste. One. More. Second. You aren’t about to die but you also won’t get endless chances to take care of business.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

You’ve had a funny feeling about a loved one that actually is your deepest intuition talking to you.  Trust it. Rely upon it. You have considerable intuitive abilities that have been building since early adulthood. This is not lottery winning-type information, and doesn’t require a Ouija board, but it sure is about expanding your world, happiness and friendships with others. That, Dearie, is the real jackpot.

Virgo (August 23–September 22)

Something started for you last month that you might not secretly trust but that you should.  It was an unusual gift — and you were deeply puzzled at first. This gift is going to change you, change your life and even change your mind about who you are. Honey, it is going to be a crazy ride for you but there is no question it is your destiny to follow the Yellow Brick Road. Get hopping.  PS

For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path.

Party Line

Telephones have come a long way — even if our politics and sense of civility haven’t

By Clyde Edgerton

A red rotary phone recently ended up in our house. It had been used in an elementary school talent show. Some of you remember the pre-push button, dial telephone once in many homes. The phone itself, about the size of a brick, but a little taller, usually sat on a table or shelf and was plugged into the wall via a cord. My 13 -year-old son wondered if people used to walk around holding them when they talked — receiver in one hand, phone in the other. I said that early on the cord wasn’t long enough and then later very long cords became fashionable and people could walk around with them if they liked. A phone was about the weight of a laptop, but with significantly fewer functions.

For younger folks: On the front of the phone is a round disc — about the size of a CD (remember those?) with 10 holes in a circle — counting counter-clockwise. Inside each hole is a number, 1 – 9, and then the final number, 0.

A phone number is dialed, one number at a time, by sticking your finger into the correct hole on the dial and pulling around one number at a time until it reaches a little metal stop. The 1 is nearest the stop. Our number in Durham County, North Carolina, when I was a child, was 6-4558.

As I write, I realize that perhaps the 0 should have preceded the 1 rather than follow the 9. That’s off-topic, though.

But to continue off-topic: Back then when you called the operator to say the number of (and ask her to place) a long distance call, you had to dial 0 to get the operator — meaning the dial had to be cranked from the 0 spot all the way around to the stop and then released. The 0 took longer to finish dialing than any other number. An enormous amount of time was wasted over several decades while people waited for the 0 to finish dialing.

Sorry, I just did the math: Every billion long distance calls collectively wasted about 30 years.

The phone had a receiver which rested atop the phone. The receiver, about the size of a banana (actually a sender/receiver because you talked into one end and listened from the other), while resting on the phone, pressed down two buttons which did not work independently. When you pressed one button, they both went down. When you lifted the receiver from its cradle, the buttons came up together and the line was open for you to make a call. There was a dial tone that I’m sure I can’t describe to one who’s not heard it. To one who has: You are probably hearing it in your head now.

While explaining things to my son, I remembered this:

In the early 1950s, our phone was on a party line, shared with seven or eight households, not a private line; and there was a skillful way to secretly listen in on neighbors’ phone conversations. I probably learned the technique from watching my mother, though I can’t be sure.

Usually, if you were talking along and somebody on your party line lifted their receiver off their phone, you would hear a click and then you could hear breathing or whatever was going on in their house, and then they’d hang up since the line was in use. If they continued listening, you could say, “Sorry, I’m using the line.”

But if you wanted to listen in on another conversation, you lifted only one end of the receiver and pressed the exposed button (so that both buttons stayed down), and then kept holding them down as you lifted the receiver to your ear. Next, you slowly lifted the button that was depressed, stopping just before the click. Then you heard the talkers, but they couldn’t tell you were listening in. If you lifted that button too high, a click would sound and your presence would be known. Of course, you couldn’t do something like this in our day and age as you might get banned from the county park system or the courthouse or county school grounds by vigilant officials.

Thinking back on all this led me to what may be a naive realization:

Let’s assume we are in the 1950s and that today’s political climate exists: many people despising fellow citizens because of “political beliefs.”

Let’s assume further that because of your new neighbor’s bumper sticker, you’ve never spoken to her/him. But, you happen to overhear a phone conversation that neighbor is having with a friend on a neighborhood party line.

You hear no political talk, but you learn that your neighbor likes dark roast coffee like you do. I mean, really likes it. His mother has dementia, like your mother. He likes Dr. John’s music, like you do.

When you next see that neighbor in person, the chance for friendship is greater than before. The possibility of being civil, of seeing beyond the spirit of bumper-sticker-like cable news, of showing some Southern hospitality — is not so far-flung.  PS

Clyde Edgerton is the author of 10 novels, a memoir and a new work, Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers. He is the Thomas S. Kenan III Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UNCW.

Focus on Furmint

From Hungary comes a white wine to savor

By Robyn James

Sometimes in the world of wine geeks, the hot new thing on the scene turns out to be the oldest. Such is the case with the dry white wine, furmint, from the ancient Hungarian region of Tokaj. Presented with a sample bottle of Evolúció a few weeks ago, I was fascinated to taste and learn about the furmint grape finished dry. Never an expert in Hungarian wine throughout my career, I always had a vague perception of their incredibly sweet, beautiful dessert wines that came from the region of Tokaj. Louis XIV of France declared the wines “Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum” (Wine of Kings, King of Wines). They were labeled with a number of “puttonyos” measuring the degree of sweetness and quality.

Tokaj is geographically located between two rivers, the Danube and the Tisza. In the fall, the fog influence from the rivers creates the perfect dampness for the “noble rot” to occur on the furmint grapes, resulting in their super sweet famous dessert wines.

However, if you harvest the furmint early, before noble rot occurs, you come up with a delicious mineral-driven white wine that is a fabulous alternative to sauvignon blanc, pinot gris and chardonnay.

Hungarian winemakers in the Furmint Society visited Napa Valley recently, wowing California winemakers who likened the wines to Chablis, stating, “I would put them against the great whites of Friuli, Bordeaux and Burgundy.”

Located on the same latitude as Alsace, France, the Hungarian native grape derives its name from the French word “froment” for the wheat gold color of the wine.

The Evolúció that I tasted is fermented in all stainless steel, and is described by the winery as, “Intense aromas, ripe peach and floral. Elegant, rich and mineral, great balance between (the) intense acidity and discreet residual sugar, it is pleasing and refreshing. Some summer fruits with white pear, citrus and hints of almond.”

Retailing for around $12, Evolúció’s high acidity would pair well with fish and chicken dishes or even beef short ribs.

Furmint also makes a delicious sparkling wine. Affinitas makes a methóde traditionnelle (same painstaking method as French Champagne with the secondary fermentation in the bottle) that sells for around $18, a bargain. Another Hungarian grape, harslevelu, is blended into this sparkler that the winery describes as “clear with a fine mousse. Citrus blossoms, grapefruit and crisp apple. Fresh acidity, it is precise without being austere. Rich backbone, exotic fruits and brioche, great acid and mineral.”

Furmint is grown in other European countries and blends well with other grapes. The Dveri-Pax Winery in Slovenia makes a $15 “Yanez” that is 40 percent furmint, 40 percent pinot gris and 20 percent riesling. Scoring 87 Points from The Wine Advocate, it is described as “fresh, clean and perky, refreshing demeanor and very enticing.” The Boutique Wine Collection out of Philadelphia is one of the main importers of furmint and I love their logo, a little heart on top of a dollar sign with the statement, “Love Over Money.” I guess you won’t get rich importing furmint, but it sure is fun to try.  PS

Robyn James is a certified sommelier and proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at robynajames@gmail.com.

Memories on Wheels

Sometimes there’s nothing basic about transportation

By Bill Fields

I never paid too much attention to four-leaf clovers or cracks in the sidewalk, but once, playing Kreskin’s ESP at a neighbor’s house in 1969, the “mystery pendulum” made a prediction the famous mentalist would have been proud of.

Many years later I’m not sure what I really think about “extra sensitive perception,” as Barney Fife called it. That particular Sunday afternoon, though, gave me a reason to believe.

With a notable exception of stranding us in Tabor City when it broke down returning from the beach one time, our well-traveled Plymouth station wagon — which took my parents to their jobs and my sisters to college — remained reliable transportation. There had been no talk around our kitchen table about getting a new car, no inkling of the possibility. When the board game said otherwise, it seemed as outlandish as forecasting I would be one of the tallest, fastest boys in fifth grade.

In less than two weeks, I was getting into a ’69 Ford Fairlane 500 with my dad as he drove it off the lot at Jackson Motors in Pinedene. At that point, if Kreskin had said Brooks Robinson was going to come to town and spend a week teaching me how to play third base, I would have believed him.

It was a beautiful automatic transmission (Cruise-O-Matic) automobile, a four-door sedan the lightest of blue, the color of the Tar Heels before television demanded a bit darker hue so the uniform numbers would stand out. It had comfortable and roomy bench seats. It had a large trunk. It had seat belts!

The Fairlane carried us to Florida for the first time, and on the way back stopped at Six Flags Over Georgia. It idled in heavy traffic in Atlanta and pulled over for a scenic vista on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

At different times, the Fairlane smelled like Salems, chili dogs, Brut 33, a stringer full of farm-pond bream, Juicy Fruit and the sweat of 36 holes on a July day.

I got my driver’s license in that car in 1975. I picked my mother up at her bank job, in the winter, when the sun set early, tuning in WABC New York while I waited for her in a parking space on Broad Street. I drove it to junior golf tournaments in Henderson and Myrtle Beach, to my senior prom via the JFR Barn, when gas was 69 cents a gallon.

Mom and Dad loaded me and my belongings in August of 1977 and took me to college in Chapel Hill, to my room in Old West. Less than three years later, I was behind the wheel driving south toward home with my tears and my sport coat for Dad’s end game with cancer.

The Fairlane went to Stoneybrook, Carolina Cougars’ games, a Supertramp concert, the GGO, North Carolina Motor Speedway and to Atlantic Beach in the wee hours, when that seemed like the perfect call one spring night senior year in college.

I never got a ticket in the Fairlane, but once, exiting Pinecrest High School in a long line of cars, I had to be at my most persuasive to convince a highway patrolman I was not the idiot tossing firecrackers out the window.

In the summer of 1981, after graduating from Carolina and setting out into the real world, it seemed like the time was right to move on from the Fairlane that had served so well. It was a dozen years old and had about 115,000 miles on it. There were nicks on the back bumper from changing into golf spikes in parking lots. The paint was corroded at the driver-side window, so often did my father rest his arm there.

From the same lot that had been home to the Fairlane before our very unexpected purchase, in what had become Bill Smith Ford, I bought a white Escort that would be mine for a decade. After spritzing the Fairlane and vacuuming the interior at the self-serve car wash, I drove it to the house of man near West End who had answered my classified.

I got $300 from the sale but still felt kind of empty getting rid of a car that had grown old as I grew up.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north 30 years ago but hasn’t lost his accent.

Dark Clowns

By Jim Dodson

I was deep in the country at twilight, heading home with the radio on when I heard about the dark clowns. The BBC presenter sounded skeptical, even amused by reports out of Greenville, South Carolina, where people dressed as clowns were reportedly trying to lure children into the woods with candy and money.

“So . . . is this just a hoax or something people there are really concerned about?” the host asked a local reporter covering the story, his tongue half in cheek.

“I can’t say it’s a hoax,” she replied, “because the police are taking this very seriously. They have warned parents and doubled patrols. This really has a lot of people freaked out.”

So-called “after-dark clowns” have been spooking America quite a bit lately, it turns out, most recently in Winston-Salem and Green Bay, Wisconsin, where a photograph of a dark clown roaming early morning streets carrying black balloons set the Internet on fire. Two Octobers ago residents of Bakersfield, California, were spooked by photographs of “evil after-dark clowns” roaming their streets after hours, showing up under lampposts and frequenting kiddie rides. Since then, reports of dark clowns have cropped up in a dozen other places around the country.

“The police don’t know whether the stories are coming from the imaginations of children or something sinister is afoot, but panicked residents seem to be taking the law into their own hands,” The New York Times noted about this latest outbreak of clowns in South Carolina, adding that shots had been fired into wooded areas where the sightings occurred.

Whatever else may be true, clowns occupy a peculiar space in American popular culture, somewhere between what’s perfectly innocent and downright terrifying. My September issue of Smithsonian notes that clowns have been with us since man’s earliest days in the guise of everything from mythologized tricksters to painted medicine men. Pygmy clowns entertained bored Egyptian pharaohs, and medieval court jesters were entitled to thumb their oversized noses at the king without fear of losing their heads. Ancient Rome had professional clowns whose job it was to pacify unruly crowds at festivals, peacekeepers who kept an eye out for troublemakers. “Well into the 18th and 19th century,” writes Smithsonian’s Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, “the prevailing clown figure of Western Europe and Britain was the pantomime clown, who was sort of a bumbling buffoon.”

Once, standing in a crowd of camera-wielding tourists next to my young daughter on the main drag in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, awaiting a parade of local rodeo riders, I spotted a mime working the crowd and approaching us. My daughter was delighted. But I wasn’t.

Mimes have always made me uncomfortable, a modest phobia I trace to a powerful moment in my early childhood in Mississippi, where my father briefly owned a small newspaper. One evening in the late fall he took my brother and me to a political rally in a cornfield just outside town where a group of strange people showed up wearing white robes and hoods and stood around a bonfire. We didn’t stay long, just long enough for our father to get a quote or two from the mayor and the hooded figures and to frighten the bug juice out of his sons. We asked our dad why those men wore hoods. “Because people who wear masks are weak people often up to no good,” he replied. Our mother gave him holy hell when she found out where he’d taken us just to harvest a quote.

Forty years later, picking up on my post-Klan jitters, the mime paused right in front of us and attempted to make me smile. He made a huge happy face followed by a tragic sad one, rubbing away imaginary tears when I wouldn’t yield. The crowd ate it up.

“Thanks,” I said through gritted teeth. “Feel free to move along now.”

Clowns were everywhere in the America where I grew up. Most were fun-loving and perfectly innocent in those faraway days — Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody and Bozo the Clown with his internationally syndicated show — which according to Smithsonian had a 10-year waiting list for tickets.

There was even a clown I liked on my favorite weeknight TV show, Red Skelton’s alter ego Clem Kadiddlehopper, a bumbling painted-up fool who was tolerable only because he often broke up halfway through his skits. In my bedroom I even had a harlequin desk lamp. I attended Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus about that time, exactly once, on the other hand, feeling bad for the animals and truly bothered by the clowns. Only the acrobats appealed to me.

“So the question is,” Smithsonian’s McRobbie wonders, “when did the clown, supposedly a jolly figure of innocuous, kid-friendly entertainment, become so weighed down by fear and sadness? When did clowns become so dark?”

The truest answer is, long ago and far away.

Classical operas and Shakespearean dramas, after all, have long used clown figures as sinister messengers of mystery and intrigue. But in the modern American context it may well have been an evil clown named Pogo who established the motif of the dark clown around town.

His real name was John Wayne Gacy Jr., a friendly chap who entertained children in the Chicago suburbs for years during the middle 1970s before he was arrested, tried and convicted of killing 33 young men. “You know,” he reportedly told investigators, “a clown can get away with murder.” Before Gacy faced execution in 1994, America’s Crown Prince of Killer Clowns spent his time in his cell painting pictures of clowns and self-portraits of himself as Pogo the clown.

After seven years of writing about dark things for my magazine in Atlanta, I officially swore off watching horror films after writing a piece for Boston magazine about a reclusive teen in western Massachusetts whose mother allowed her son to gorge himself on the Friday the 13th films only to have her troubled son don a hockey mask one Halloween night and slash several kids before hanging himself in the woods. The psychologist who’d been treating him for years told me “his identification with Jason seemed pretty harmless.”

A toxic flood of even more ghastly films continues to flow into your local Cineplex, feeding our insatiable desire to terrify ourselves. Heath Ledger’s brilliant if disquieting Joker in the 2008 Batman remake The Dark Knight seemed almost too real and sadly prefigured the gifted actor’s own demons rising to the surface when he shortly died of an accidental drug and alcohol overdose.

I sometimes wonder if we aren’t simply hardwired to value a good harmless scare in a world that appears damaged beyond repair and full of very real dangers, providing new purpose to whatever bogeyman has always lurked beneath the bed. In another age, after all, fairy tales and fables of trolls loitering beneath bridges and witches in the woods were meant to instruct children on the dangers of straying too far beyond the light or down a road of ruin, real or imagined. “Always keep a-hold of Nurse,” goes a famous ditty by a French writer, Hilaire Belloc, “for fear of finding something worse.”

Once upon a time, Madge the beautician and Speedy Alka-Seltzer were icons of commercial television spots. They’ve given way to pharmaceutical companies peddling expensive drugs for maladies whose side effects may kill you, security firms eager to surveil your home against intruders who are just waiting to pounce, identity theft, and internet investment firms that torched your 401-K plan a few years back while reminding you that you haven’t put aside nearly enough for a “happy” retirement.

Perhaps this explains why Americans can’t seem to get enough of Halloween’s faux gore and fright wigs, projected to shell out a record $7 billion or $75 per ghoul among those celebrating the holiday this year — rivaling Christmas retail.

It’s all part of the funhouse ride that thankfully isn’t real, and every town larger than the hips on a snake seems eager to cash in on the phenomenon with its own haunted corn maze or woods of terror peopled by chain saw–wielding psychos and evil clowns, bless their dark little hearts.

In a broader context, all our lives are challenged by Dark Clowns of one kind or another and things that go bump in the night — a sick child, a worrying diagnosis, a lost job. The worry list is endless.

Maybe the way to fight back is to simply make light of such darkness the way John Candy did in the 1989 John Hughes’ classic Uncle Buck. In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, a drunken clown shows up to entertain at a children’s birthday party where Uncle Buck Russell, good-natured loser — played to perfection by the late great Candy — is babysitting his nephew and two nieces. Upon discovering that the clown is drunk from an all-night bachelorette party, Uncle Buck suggests the clown’s behavior is inappropriate for children. Offended, the clown snarls, “In the field of local live home entertainment, I’m a god.” At which Uncle Buck points to the clown’s rodent-eared VW and firmly says, “Get in your mouse and get out of here,” and proceeds to flattens the clown’s big fat rubber nose to drive home the point.

According to Smithsonian, only 2 percent of grown-ups suffer from excessive fear of clowns, technically a phobia called coulrophobia.

But don’t try telling that to the anxious parents of Green Bay, Bakersfield and Greenville anytime soon.

Truthfully, I’m more worried about some of the dark clowns we’ll have to decide between in the voting booth a few days after Halloween. Bottom line, if a dark clown is foolish enough to show up at my door on Halloween night, don’t be surprised if I give him a shot of John Candy to remember me by.  PS

Contact editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

On the Lookout

A fascinating first novel, a talk of ecological disaster

By Gwenyfar Rohler

Upstairs in the UNC Wilmington Creative Writing Department is the publishing laboratory, where the literary magazine Ecotone matured, and a small press, Lookout Books, refines their books into existence like an oyster begetting a pearl. Until recently, Lookout’s carefully curated and award-winning catalog included two collections of short fiction, a memoir and even a book of poetry, but no novel. But now, Lookout and writer Matthew Neill Null have both dipped their proverbial toes in the water of novel-writing by debuting their first novel, Honey From The Lion, last year.

In the book, set in and around a logging camp in West Virginia at the turn of the 20th century, Null brings us characters that many people would cross the street to avoid. He slowly pulls back the curtains and, with a flickering gaslight, breathes life into these unwashed, violent and desperate people who then become the source of great empathy.

Honey From The Lion is not a hymn to strong men who control other people’s destinies, though the first chapter and the title (an allusion to Sampson from the Bible) might hint at that. For Null, the real story is the struggle of the hundreds of working men to realize their own destinies within their private lives and a system with the singular purpose of exploitation of resources — natural and human. He takes a microscope to look as closely as possible at individuals who, in most circumstances, would never be anything more than statistics: ledger columns, payroll, accident reports. These moments, teasing out the backstories of each character, no matter how minor, are reminiscent of David Foster Wallace.

Echoes of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove reverberate as well. The introduction and development of the uber macho world are built around a strict code and the appearance of outsiders unprepared to understand the code. But where McMurtry’s men have developed their own code and live outside the dictates of a world they reject, Null’s are trapped inside the code as the least powerful players in their ecosystem.

The care and adoration lavished on a Lookout book is obvious. The physical product is a beauty to behold in an age where book design and production are sidelined for bargain prices and expedient content delivery. Not at Lookout. French flaps, beautiful graphic design and tailored page layouts are the hallmarks of a book that someone cares about. (On the rare occasions that you see a book this carefully created from a big publisher, you know it was the pet project of someone in the office who went the extra mile.) At Lookout, each book radiates that level of care. Perhaps that is the best argument for smaller presses: Because each book takes so much time and effort, they put out few in a year (Lookout produces only one or two annually), and each book is almost a sacred experience. Any author would swoon to have his or her work treated with such reverence, especially for one’s debut novel.

Curious about the selection process for Lookout’s first novel, I reached out to Emily Smith, publisher and co-founder of Lookout. Smith writes, “Null evokes the virgin forest as a fully realized character we grieve deeply by the end of the novel. He implores us to care about the ecological tragedy in West Virginia through story . . . it presented a rare opportunity for our publishing entities to better align our missions and to showcase a book in which place and the natural world feature prominently.”

Ecotone, the sister imprint, place-centric magazine, published Null’s story “The Island in the Gorge of the Great River” in the spring 2014 issue. Null, the then-emerging writer, had not published a book, which appealed to Lookout, whose mission states “seeks out emerging and historically underrepresented voices, as well as overlooked gems by established writers.” In manuscript form, Smith was attracted to this novel’s “nuanced and lyrical descriptions of the natural world, its expansive and cinematic pace.”

Lookout has enjoyed success with previous publications, like their first one, Edith Pearlman’s story collection Binocular Vision, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2011. The following year, Lookout published Steve Almond’s story collection God Bless America: Stories, which won the Paterson Fiction Prize. They know how to pick a winner and how to present one.

I can only imagine the stunned grin that must have spread across Null’s face the moment he received his first novel in Lookout-form. But, from reading Honey From The Lion, I am certain he would recreate the moment in stunning, captivating, undulating prose, drawing the experience out for paragraphs if not pages, intensifying the moment to something epic in contrast to the momentary sensation of pages in hands.

A part of the Creative Writing program at UNC Wilmington, Lookout ensures that the art of bookmaking continues to live hand-in-hand with the art of writing. It may be one of the most valuable lessons to impart on to the next generation of writers. Because, as in Lookout’s new novel, each page holds moments experienced in-depth that draw and enlighten the darkened corners of each character’s soul. Value the written word (and the well-designed book) as something sacred, for it will outlive all of us.  PS

Gwenyfar Rohler spends her days managing her family’s bookstore on Front Street.

Cider House Rules

How David and Ann Marie Thornton transformed an empty ice cream stand into a business with a fringe benefit

By Jim Moriarty     Photographs by Laura Gingerich

If you’re going to grow a business from the ground up, you might as well get a good buzz out of it. When Dr. David Thornton and his wife, Ann Marie, turned some of the same varieties of Southern heirloom apples George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had at Mount Vernon and Monticello into hard ciders of their own creation, the experiment blossomed into a cottage industry that could make your head whirl like Auntie Em’s house.

Crates of ripe Grimes Goldens, a fruit with roots dating back to 1790 and Johnny Appleseed, sit under the open-air shelter beside the cider house that, in a previous life, had been the Ferguson farm produce and ice cream stand on Old U.S. 1. The Thorntons’ F350 Super Duty truck is parked nearby, the door wide open so they can hear Nickel Creek on the sound system. Assisted by Erin Knight, who studied agriculture at the University of Vermont, they slice the apples by hand, carving out the bad spots. They dip them in a tub filled with water and a soupçon of bleach to discourage any natural yeasts, then rinse them off with a hose and feed them rapid fire down the metal throat of a crusher as if they were tossing rocks into a wishing well. Cut. Dip. Rinse. Grind. Repeat. The bluegrass mandolin is drowned out by the heavy metal symphony of grinding. Tiny shards of apple fly about like sweet, sticky shrapnel as a 5-gallon bucket fills with mashed pulp. They pour bucket after bucket into a cylindrical silver hydraulic press that, like a vertical colander, squeezes out the juice.

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“This will be at least a two shirt-crushing,” says Dave. The old ice cream stand, now a constant 60 degrees, is the lab where they test pH, measure sulfites and add the yeast of their choice, maybe English cider or white wine. “Dave is in charge of microbial control,” says Ann Marie of their “picobrewery,” as she laughingly calls it. The pasteurizing is done in a tank behind the building. The old produce stand fronting the orchards the Thorntons now own is where they put the labels on the bottles with a hand crank machine, 10 in a minute, 1,200 on a weekend on the way to bottling a couple thousand gallons for the season. “I really am the chief cook and bottle washer,” says Ann Marie.

It’s the first season the Thorntons have been able to sell their cider commercially. Previously, they stayed under the legal limit and confined themselves to lighting up local happenings like Stoneybrook or the foxhunt and hanging out a shingle or two at the odd farmers market. Now, they’ll be producing two brands of hard cider, James Creek Cider House, made strictly from their own apples, and Stargazer, which will be a more adventurous version of the hard ciders familiar to most consumers’ taste buds.

“Our James Creek will be a very wine-like cider, refined, dry and relatively higher in alcohol content, about 8 or 8 1/2 percent,” says Ann Marie. “Stargazer is a little bit more on the craft beer, inventive side.” It’s where the Thorntons can get their freak on, blending in a hint of peach, blackberry, ginger, pretty much whatever they feel like. “For Stargazer we press our apples, we press apples from other growers, and we also bought juice. The Stargazer is themed with constellations. Prowling Peach is Leo. He’s a summer constellation. A lot of great apples ripen in October when Orion is high in the sky, so it will be Orion the Mighty Hunter. We might do a blend with persimmon for winter. Stinger for Scorpio. Something like that. I think we’ll have blueberry in the spring.”

Two of their ciders have won prizes in the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition. (Yes, there are cider conventions.) Last year they attended CiderCON in Portland, Oregon. “Physician conferences look pretty bleak compared to cider conferences,” says Dave. “I used to think doctors partied. These guys are having fun.”

The Thorntons aren’t trying to become the Angry Orchard of the East. “If we come out with a good quality product that gets people engaged and just keep it local, then we will have met our goals,” says Dave. “We love this land. We love the countryside. Having something we can use the land for and creating something new is part of the challenge.”

So, how did an intensive care unit doctor and his wife with a master’s degree in English wind up as the Moëts of Sandhills cider?

Dave Thornton grew up in Cincinnati in the Ohio River Valley, where his family was in the produce business, the Castellini Co., still headquartered in Wilder, Kentucky. “The produce warehouses were all down on the waterfront,” he says. “So, I grew up down on the river carrying boxes around and driving forklifts full of fruits and receiving them on the docks. I was surrounded by fruits and vegetables when I was a kid, but I really wanted the farm side.”

Ann Marie grew up in Pelham, New York, a New York City suburb, and the pair met at the University of Notre Dame. They spent a semester in London in the fall of their junior year, simultaneously cultivating one another and a taste for hard cider. After Notre Dame, the Air Force put Dave through medical school. He was on active duty during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “I used to teach medicine at the Air Force’s residency hospital in San Antonio, but I also worked with Air Force Special Operations Command and ran a team that did light combat search and rescue, took care of the operators if they had problems,” he says. He was in the first task force to Afghanistan. “I wasn’t kicking down doors. The minute somebody found out I was a physician, my street cred went way down.”

San Antonio eventually led the Thorntons and their two daughters, Katheryn and Maura, to Southern Pines, where they found a house and some land bordering James Creek on the outer environs of Horse Country. There was a small, hidden glade, invisible from the house. “We called it a secret field. We thought, well, this would be a lovely place to put some apple trees,” says Dave, who wanted to plant something he could ferment, a boyhood enthusiasm. When he was growing up, he actually had a still in the basement. “I took a still to the university science fair when I was in grade school,” he says, and took a blue ribbon back to the basement. “It was pure science, with a fringe benefit.”

They began reading up on Southern heirloom apples. “Everyone was teasing us. This is peach country. You’re planting apples?” says Ann Marie. “We said, well, it seems like they grew on people’s farms a hundred years ago.”

They did soil preparation in ’08 and began planting trees the next year. “Apple trees are all traditionally done by grafting, so you take a branch cutting from an existing tree and you place it onto a rootstock,” says Ann Marie. The rootstock determines the size of the tree and how soon it produces. The grafting is the genetic material that determines the type of fruit. Sounds simple enough, except for a few things. They weren’t farmers. They weren’t growers. They weren’t pruners or pickers. They weren’t cider makers. They weren’t bottlers. They weren’t marketers. It’s a good thing they each possess a finely tuned sense of humor because the learning curve they were staring at was hysterical.

“They’re highly intelligent people, they really are,” says Taylor Williams, the Agricultural Extension Agent at Moore County’s N.C. Cooperative Extension. “They didn’t grow up in this area. The soils and climate here are quite unique. Ann Marie went through our Farm School Program, where you can sit down and look at the numbers for a business plan related to a farm. Here’s your production costs. Here are your marketing costs. Here’s your likely market. This is what you’re going to have to do to access that. Let me put it this way, for me to take a tobacco farmer who knows all about handling soil and handling the crop and get him geared up toward growing complicated produce crops, that’s a big transition. The Thorntons have had to learn all of that plus some of the soil and fertility managements, then carrying it through to adding value — processing the apples into cider. At every stage there’s a learning curve, plus a regulatory curve, figuring out how to negotiate with the alcohol and beverage control people. Just everything to get a saleable crop and do it legally.” Which is why Ann Marie now has a 60-hour-a-week job.

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The Thorntons’ research began with Old Southern Apples, a book by Creighton Lee Calhoun Jr., a Pittsboro native described as the man who built the Noah’s ark of Southern heirloom apples. He criss-crossed the South taking cuttings of apple tree varieties to, in many cases, keep them in existence. Calhoun’s banner, to a considerable degree, has been passed to David C. Vernon, an advance placement chemistry and physics teacher at Western Alamance High School, who grows roughly 500 different varieties of mostly Southern heirloom apple trees on his farm, Century Farm Orchards, where the Thorntons bought their first trees.

Along with advice from Williams, the Thorntons got input from Dr. David Ritchie and Dr. Mike Parker from N.C. State University, the former a plant pathologist and the latter a horticulturalist who advised them on plant spacing and pruning. “It’s amazing what a resource we have in those folks,” says Dave. “One of them will come out and I’ll say, ‘Hey, what’s going on with my tree?’ He’ll pick some grass and say, ‘Oh, yeah, you don’t have enough of this.’ I’m looking at the tree. He’s looking at the grass. He knows what’s going on before he even looks at the tree. It’s been a fairly humbling experience.”

The secret field morphed into the Thorntons’ genesis orchard that now has more than 60 heirloom varieties among its 600 or so trees. “Those down there are American Golden Russets,” says Dave as he walks between the rows of their “test” orchard. “This tree is from the 1600s. It’s a Roxbury Russet. It was in Monticello and Mount Vernon.”

“This is a Hewes Crab,” says Ann Marie. “Jefferson said it was his favorite apple. That yellow apple is a Grimes Golden.”

“This is an old Southern apple called a King David,” says Dave. “It was such a heavy crop this year we had to hold the branches up or they’d break right off the tree.” Arkansas Blacks. Johnson Keeper. Summer Bananas. Terry Winter. Limbertwig. “The two of us can get our geek on over this, in no uncertain terms,” says Dave.

In addition to their cider business, Ann Marie takes fruit to the Carrboro Farmers Market, where she’s been doing an “heirloom of the week.” It’s a Peter and Paul dynamic. To ferment or not to ferment, that is the question. “I usually say those apples are for cider,” says Dave. “But the truth is, where cash flow is concerned, Ann Marie wins.”

On her latest trip to Carrboro, a French couple sampled one of the Thorntons’ ciders. “A woman from Normandy told her husband, in French, it tasted like her grandmother’s cider,” says Ann Marie with a smile.

“Right now we’re having a blast,” says Dave. “Fermenting these in groups either by harvest date or by variety and then making hard cider out of them and tasting what each different variety is like. Then what we can do is blend them together to make something that’s very interesting and palatable. The blending at the cider house is pretty cool.”

So are the days in the field. “We keep some German shepherds and they’ll come out on the hillside with us and hang out while we prune away on the trees. You can get a real Zen going about it. The time can just fly by,” he says.

“We recognize the apples from this place may taste differently than they do somewhere else,” says Ann Marie. “That’s OK. We just want to know what they taste like here. What kind of cider can you make here?” It’s a traditional Southern cider to complement traditional Southern foods, fried chicken, barbecue, oysters. Just a couple of Golden Domers at home with their Grimes Goldens.  PS

Jim Moriarty is Senior Editor of PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

The Cruds

The sacred golf buddy trip reaches 100

By Lee Pace

There’s nothing quite like the golf buddy trip: escape, golf, drinking, golf, gambling, golf, cigars, merciless razzing and needling, hangovers, golf and a special brand of childishness among grown men that few other venues can generate. Some guys are skilled players with deep pockets who play the British Open courses from the tips with a trip concierge. Others are 18-handicappers in cargo shorts who make a beeline from the 18th green to a Myrtle Beach honky-tonk.

In February 1967 a group of eight members at Hope Valley Country Club in Durham discovered that particular elixir of adventure and camaraderie that is the golf buddy trip. They ventured to Myrtle Beach when it was a sleepy town with three golf courses, enjoyed the occasion and decided to take another in the fall. Two more, spring and fall, followed in 1968. Ditto 1969, ad infinitum, and since the sixth trip, each has been a 54-hole weekend.

And so this October, this same group of men, certainly with some additions and subtractions over half a century, will travel to The Dunes Club for another 54-hole event — its 100th trip.

“This piece of paper goes back to the very beginning,” Russell Barringer Jr. is saying in his office at his Durham building supply company as he looks at a faded ledger pad. Across it are pencil notations with names, dates, hotels and golf courses dating back to that first trip when LBJ was president and the Super Bowl had just one Roman numeral.

“If you do the math, we’ve played 307 rounds of golf, with three of them on a special trip we made to Scotland in 1974. That’s 304 days of golf in Myrtle Beach, and we’ve missed eight days to weather. That’s remarkable — only eight of 304 rained out.”

He continues.

“Two hundred and twenty-five rounds have been at The Dunes Club.

“Forty-four men have been in our group. Eleven are dead. Three have resigned. Nine are inactive. That leaves 21 active Cruds left.”

Cruds? What’s a Crud?

Barringer relishes telling the story. The original eight golfers — all of them with handicaps of seven or less — enjoyed the trip so much they decided to expand the group and were talking the trip up to other Hope Valley members. The wife of one prospective member overheard a conversation and interjected: “Who’s going on this trip?”

The names were rattled off — all of them up-and-coming businessmen, doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers in their early 30s — and the woman sniffed, “My husband’s not going out of town with those cruds.”

“The name stuck. We’ve been the Cruds ever since,” Barringer says.

Barringer missed the first trip because he and his wife had a previously scheduled trip to Jamaica planned, but he was on the second trip and has not missed one since. The trip to the beach Oct. 13-16 will be his 99th consecutive, longest by a large margin over Bob Baker’s 80-some straight trips.

“Mr. Barringer’s been talking about number 100 for several years now,” says Dennis Nichol, director of golf at The Dunes Club. “That seemed to be his finish line. He’d say, ‘I’m hanging on for a hundred.’

“This is quite a remarkable group. I’ve known of groups coming to the beach for 20, 25 years, but nothing as long as this group. He runs a tight ship. Some groups are a cluster. They’re hung over, no one’s in charge, and sometimes they’re not even at the right golf course. Mr. Barringer is a stickler for the details, and his guys have such a good time and enjoy each other’s company.”

The Cruds did their share of barhopping in the early days, but no one ever got into serious trouble. One Crud was convinced he was beaten up in the bathroom on the back nine at The Dunes, when in truth he was so hungover his cleats tripped him entering the building and he took a nasty fall. And there was an over-served Crud who one year threw some furniture off the second floor balcony of the motel and resorted to putting the damage charge of $365 on his company credit card. That prompted one member to pen a poem by the next trip that opened:

Twas the second of October at Myrtle Beach shore;

The Cruds were assembled for a weekend galore.

Graciously received by the St. John’s Inn;

If only they’d known of the forthcoming din.

“There’s been a lot of teasing and razzing going back and forth,” Barringer says. “Guys will jump your ass over the smallest thing, but it’s never hateful or serious.”

Barringer assumed the role of secretary/treasurer from that fall trip in 1967 and since then has juggled raising three children, running his business and myriad other commitments with operating a taut Cruds ship. He spent 12 years in active Reserve, and eight others of the early Cruds had some military or service background, so it’s no surprise letters to the members might begin, “You will report to the Thunderbird Motel, 73rd Avenue North, no later than 2300 hours,” and “Officers” were appointed for such responsibilities as handicaps, Bloody Marys and even “regrets & remorses.”

The Cruds stayed mostly at the St. John’s Inn in the early days, sometimes at the Thunderbird, and the charge per man in 1968 was $14 per person per day, including room, breakfast and golf. Barringer joined The Dunes Club in 1974 and later bought a condominium and then a single-family home in the neighborhood, so now eight golfers each year can stay in his homes, and several other members have second homes at the beach as well. Most of their golf has been played at The Dunes, but in the early days they ventured out to courses like The Surf Club. Barringer says none of the Cruds have been heavy gamblers, so they put up $25 per man per day for various competitions.

The Saturday night dinner this October promises to be an emotional one. They’ll take a group photo on the 13th hole at The Dunes, each Crud wearing a navy blazer, off-white slacks and the matching shirts that Barringer has custom-ordered every five trips. The usual table will be set in the dining room for the 11 deceased members, with a photo of each golfer at his place setting, and after the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance, each fallen Crud will be recognized and toasted. It will pain Barringer to see two Cruds with medical attendants nearby, one having suffered a stroke and another needing dialysis four days a week.

“I’m going to make a prediction,” Barringer says. “This 100th trip will be the last by the Cruds as we know them. Four or five years ago, I proposed the idea that we think of turning the group over to our sons. I think the group will go in that direction after 100.

“We’ve really been bonded by golf. The Cruds have been such a part of my life, I don’t want to just let it go. That’s one of the reasons I want to perpetuate the group. I want my kids, now grown adults, to enjoy what I’ve had for so many years.”

Enjoy, indeed: the elegance of The Dunes Club and Robert Trent Jones’ 1948 masterpiece. The scent of the salty air off the Atlantic. A Bloody Mary at the turn. A crisp 7-iron and a good pal ready to giggle if you catch it the slightest bit fat.  PS

Lee Pace’s first book on Pinehurst, Pinehurst Stories, was released just weeks before the 1991 Tour Championship.