Prost, Y'all

Feature photo: Ben Lewis, Emily Von Cannon and Warren Henry Lewis at Railhouse Brewery

Remember when we lived in a small town, the kind of place where you gave directions like “if you get to Red’s Exxon you’ve gone too far”? We’ve grown up some since then — a few more roundabouts, which I don’t want to discuss, a few more golf courses, and some great new neighbors up the road — but nothing’s touched the two things that matter most: the pine trees and our unshakable belief that any excuse to gather outside is a good one.

In October, somewhere between the second julep and the third round of “who makes the best pimento cheese,” Moore County goes full Bavaria. So what if Munich’s version begins in the middle of September and runs until the first Sunday in October? At least we’re in the queue. For a few golden weekends, we swap the porch for the biergarten and nobody blinks. Bavaria gave the world lederhosen, oompah bands, and a beer stein you need two hands and a chiropractor to lift. We gave the world the steeplechase, the pine-shaded front porch, and a fierce, decades-long opinion about how to dress a pimento cheese sandwich. Different heritage, same instinct: get dressed up, stand in a field, toast to nothing in particular. By November we’re back to seersucker and sweet tea.

We already gather by the thousands for a golf tournament and treat it like a religious observance. And we’ve been known to put on our finest tweed to watch horses jump over things. Adding a polka band and a plate of bratwurst to the calendar isn’t a stretch. It’s just one more excuse.

None of this is new for us, if I’m honest. I’ve lived here long enough to watch the county become a little bit of everywhere. Retirees roll in chasing sunshine. Military families cycle through Fort Bragg, importing a piece of wherever they’ve come from. Golfers from around the world bring their love of the game and our community. Riders and trainers show up every autumn from as far away as Kentucky and overseas for horse country season. By now, Moore County isn’t really one thing, it’s a lot of things, filtered through tall pines and slow afternoons. A German beer garden is just the latest arrival at the party.

I’ll admit the setting helps the illusion along. Bavaria has its Black Forest, dark and fragrant with fir. We’ve got the longleaf pines, and on a crisp evening at Weymouth Woods, with that turpentine smell in the air, it isn’t hard to squint and think you’re somewhere far grander and colder. Swap the fir for the longleaf, the alpine chill for a Sandhills breeze that still remembers summer, and you’ve got a passable Bavarian backdrop. Minus the yodeling. (Tell the truth, did you hear the Ricola ad in the back of your mind?)

The village of Pinehurst throws its own Oktoberfest at Tufts Memorial Park. Kinderfest opens the evening — a couple of hours of music, crafts, bubble artistry and a nod to Halloween for the kids — before the grownups take over with German music, food and beverages that need no translation. It’s free, it’s friendly, and the crowd is exactly what you’d expect: a few actual dirndls, several ambitious attempts at lederhosen, golf carts neatly parked in rows, and a lot of people who simply came as themselves, beer stein in hand.

There’s something wonderful about watching a man who spent his afternoon in seersucker switch by evening into suspenders and knee socks; or a woman who traded her sundress for a dirndl like she’d been doing it her whole life. The Sandhills needs no excuse to play dress-up.

A bit down the road, Railhouse Brewery has been running an honest-to-goodness Oktoberfest for more than a decade. I go most years for the curry brats and stay for the hammerschlagen, which, if you’ve never seen it, is kinda like cornhole for people who enjoy hitting things with a hammer while a crowd of strangers cheers them on. There’s stein-holding too, which separates the casual reveler from the truly committed, and relay races that end, as most good ideas in the Sandhills do, with everyone a little out of breath and ready for another round.

None of this makes us honest-to-God Bavarians, and I’m not claiming otherwise. What it makes us is a place willing to borrow a good time when we see one — take a festival built for beer halls and mountain villages, and set it down happily among the pines, the ponies and the porch swings. We’ve spent more than a century collecting traditions from elsewhere and making them feel like home: the hunt from England, golf from Scotland, sweet tea from points South, and now, on a crisp weekend each fall, a beer garden from Bavaria. Does life get any better than that?

So pour something cold, find a polka you can stomp along to even if you can’t name it, and raise a glass to the strangest, most delightful thing about Moore County: We’ll find any excuse — horses, hounds or hops — to get dressed up, gather outside, and celebrate together. I hope my lederhosen still fit! Prost, y’all.

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Let’s talk curry brats. Delicious. Pair them with a great stone-ground mustard and my potato salad. Below is a recipe for the brats, but it’s really OK to pick them up in a good supermarket or meat market if you don’t want to make your own.