PS Profiles January 2024
PS Profiles January 2024
Southwords
Southwords
AI, AI, Oh
Be afraid, be very afraid
By Jim Moriarty
Among the litany of things we have every right to fear in 2024, one that seems to be near the top of everyone’s list is AI. Being a person who believes that existential threats ought to be taken seriously, I’ve searched in vain for someone who can explain to me — admittedly a person of limited scope and ability — why a machine that is already way smarter than I am is going to be a clear and present danger to the human race because it’s going to be way, way, way smarter than I am. And this just when I thought artificial intelligence had arrived in the nick of time.
My pint mate, Tom, and I are gentlemen of a certain age, and when we drone on and on about this and that like Statler and Waldorf in a quiet corner of our pub, The Bitter and Twisted, names, dates, the exact sequence of events and whether or not these things actually happened at all, can be somewhat elusive. We typically award points for being able to retrieve names — first and last elevates you to the bonus situation — but more often than not our response to one another is simply, “How soon do you need to know?”
Just as our minds are failing and our short-term memories have pulled a hamstring, along comes AI to pick up the slack. We’re both longtime marrieds, so the experience of existing in an environment controlled by something infinitely smarter than we are is not something with which we are entirely unfamiliar. I will confess that during a recent unpleasant bout of sobriety, I discovered, much to my surprise, that my wife, the War Department, seems to repeat herself with disturbing frequency. Under ordinary circumstances, I never would have come to this conclusion, since my having heard this thing — whatever it might be — in the first place would have been a matter of dispute. But I digress.
Tom and I both have backgrounds in golf, where AI has existed for something in the neighborhood of 600 of years. I speak, of course, of a player and his caddie. If ever there was a template for artificial intelligence, this would be it. Factoring in all variables — distance, wind, lie — and possible outcomes, if I was to ask my caddie if I could get home with a good 4-iron, the computing power accumulated across the centuries would spit out the answer “eventually.” I’ve been given to understand that if your personal chatbot doesn’t know an answer it may exhibit “a tendency to invent facts in moments of uncertainty.” Peas in pod, if you ask me.
In order to dangle my toes in the AI universe, after downloading the program onto my laptop, I asked my newfound chatbot (who I have named Jeeves) to write me a joke about AI. This was the response:
“Why did the AI break up with its computer?”
“Because it found someone byte-ter.”
I confess, I was impressed. AI has been data mining Henny Youngman. (For the cost of a pint of Smithwick’s Tom will be happy to explain who he was.) And so I pressed on. I say, Jeeves, write me a limerick. I don’t mind telling you, the results were disappointing. Bland doggerel. Perhaps I hadn’t phrased my request with sufficient specificity. And so I asked my chatbuddy to write me a humorous yet salacious limerick. The response I got was:
“I’m sorry I can’t assist you with that request.”
AI apparently has higher standards than I have, which I suppose is the whole point, though I find it peculiar Jeeves has never heard of Nantucket. PS
Poem January 2024
Poem January 2024
ADVENTURE
Because she was fast in her way
And he followed her suit,
They launched horizon’s fruitful gaze
To fortify their fruit.
In short parlance, ahead of him,
She was a gushing bride
Until gray moods turned dark to bend
Their rivers for her tide.
They never had one dissension.
He lived his love the same
Beyond single thought’s contention.
Her body chemistry!
A drinking fountain salutes thirst,
Instant bubble, wet lips.
Then comes what earthly love holds first,
Her muscles fell to slips.
So he slept and woke up alone,
For she was processioned
In Smithfield Manor Nursing Home,
Tenacity, a test.
His eye-lids open every morn.
The bones to him creak rise.
The sun’s obeying crown adorns
Remembrances, her sighs.
— Shelby Stephenson
Shelby Stephenson was North Carolina’s poet laureate from 2014-16. His most recent volume of poetry is Praises.
Golftown Journal
Golftown Journal
The Scottish Invasion
When golf put down roots in the Sandhills
By Lee Pace
There’s the town of Aberdeen right in our midst, the county of Scotland to the south, the village of Dundarrach to the southeast, roads we drive every day named for McDonald, McCaskill, McKenzie and Dundee. The Old Scotch Graveyard is off Bethlehem Church Road west of Carthage.
This area of south central North Carolina has deep Scottish roots dating to the 1700s, when droves of Scottish emigrants fled the Highlands to the shores of North Carolina, and moved up the Cape Fear River and its tributaries to the pine forests of Moore County. They found land for the taking and plentiful game for hunting.
It’s only fitting that in time the ancient game of golf would become the backbone of the Sandhills economy.
Man has enjoyed games of sticks and balls throughout history, and Europeans in the Middle Ages even played from one village to the next by striking an object, finding it and hitting it again toward a pre-determined target. Golf was played in Scotland as early as 1457, when the Scottish parliament of King James II banned the sport (along with football) because it was distracting the men of Edinburgh from their archery training. The first printed reference to golf in Dornoch, a village on the northeast coast of Scotland, came in 1616.
So in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when golf was taking root in the United States, young men from Scotland who knew the game found opportunity in America to foster its growth. Chief among them was Donald Ross, who traveled from Dornoch to Boston in 1899, found work at Oakley Country Club, and a year later moved to Pinehurst, where he ran the golf operation and began building new golf courses for Pinehurst owner James W. Tufts. By 1919, Ross had built seven courses in Pinehurst and Southern Pines as his design career blossomed and would eventually number some 400 courses across the eastern United States.
“Pinehurst was absolutely the pioneer in American golf,” Ross said. “While golf had been played in a few places before Pinehurst was established, it was right here on these Sandhills that the first great national movement in golf was started. Men came here, took a few golf lessons, bought a few clubs and went away determined to organize clubs.”
It’s fitting that the Country Club of North Carolina, one of the premier Sandhills golf clubs, was founded by a man with deep Scottish bona fides. Dick Urquhart’s ancestors evolved from Clan Urquhart, which held power over lands in the northeast of Scotland many hundreds of years ago. Urquhart in the early 1960s ran a prosperous accounting firm in Raleigh and loved the golf-centric environment of Pinehurst. He envisioned a venue for successful North Carolina businessmen and power brokers to gather away from home for long weekends and holidays.
“What could be better than a good club centrally located for nearly all of us, ideally suited for golf, horses, hunting or just plain socializing?” Urquhart asked in a 1962 letter to charter members of his new club.
Richard Tufts, who had traveled to Scotland extensively and made the long trip north to Dornoch several times, suggested to Urquhart that he name the club Royal Dornoch, and in fact the real estate development around the golf course was named Royal Dornoch Golf Village.
Because of the club’s appeal across the state, Urquhart preferred a broader approach and christened it the Country Club of North Carolina. It opened in 1963 with a golf course designed by Ellis Maples and Willard Byrd (it would be named the Dogwood Course when a second course followed in 1981 and was named the Cardinal).
CCNC was one of the original members of Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses and was the site of the PGA Tour’s Liggett & Myers Open Match Play Championship won by Dewitt Weaver in 1971, and recast in ’72 as the U.S. Professional Match Play Championship won by Jack Nicklaus. Hal Sutton won the 1980 U.S. Amateur at CCNC. The Dogwood Course was renowned for its back nine, with seven holes wrapped around Watson’s Lake.
Vestiges of the club’s original Scottish connection have remained for 60 years.
Lake Dornoch sits to the left side of the fourth hole of the Dogwood Course, and the main road through the community is called Lake Dornoch Drive. There is a restaurant in the club called the Dornoch Grille.
What has become a deep and enduring relationship between CCNC and Royal Dornoch Golf Club began in 1971 when a Dornoch member visited and brought a plaque and hole flags to commemorate the friendship. “With this message of greeting goes our hope that Dornoch, Sutherland, and Dornoch, North Carolina, may continue to have close and increasingly friendly relations for many years to come,” reads the plaque signed by Dornoch captain W.B. Alford.
There was an informal series of couples’ visits to both clubs dating to the late 1990s, but the union took on a formal approach when CCNC member Ziggy Zalzneck and Dornoch member Roly Bluck became good friends after meeting during one of Zalzneck’s trips to Dornoch. Bluck was visiting Pinehurst in 2008, and Zalzneck drove him to Raleigh to visit Urquhart, who was failing in health (and not far from his death that October).
“Mr. Urquhart was dressed in pajamas but had his CCNC blazer on. I thought that was fabulous,” Zalzneck says.
They talked about golf, Pinehurst and Scotland, and when it was over, Urquhart put his arm around Zalzneck and said, “Ziggy, I want the club to have matches with these guys. Will you work it out?”
Twelve players from Dornoch traveled to CCNC in 2011, and the matches have been held since, alternating venues (the 2020 and ’21 matches were canceled because of COVID-19). They play a Ryder Cup format, and at stake is an antique wooden putter now named for Bluck, who died in 2014.
“We look forward to the matches every year,” says Dornoch general manager Neil Hampton. “Visiting Pinehurst is lovely. It’s so different for us. He have to adjust our game, the ball doesn’t run and bounce like it does at home.
“Each club seems to have the advantage on their home course. Does somebody win? Yes. But it’s a friendship thing. It’s a social event with golf involved. It’s all about like-minded people enjoying a bit of fun.”
Adds Dornoch club captain David Bell: “Royal Dornoch members relish the annual contest with their friends from Country Club of North Carolina. While they may leave some of that friendship behind in their quest to win the Roly Bluck putter, it is soon restored over one, or several, glasses of whisky in the bar.
“This is a competition which embodies the comradeship and sportsmanship which make golf such a great game.” PS
Golf writer Lee Pace wrote about the Dornoch and Pinehurst connections in his 2012 book, The Golden Age of Pinehurst.
Almanac January 2024
Almanac January 2024
January is a sacred pause, a rite of passage, a miracle in the dark.
As the Earth sleeps, a brown thrasher sweeps through the dormant garden. Gray squirrels skitter across naked gray branches. A grizzled buck disappears into the colorless yonder.
These bitter mornings, you study the critters beyond the window until the kettle calls out. Back and forth, you putter from stovetop to window, marveling at the movement amid the still and desolate landscape.
You open your journal, turn to a fresh page, watch your thoughts wax introspective.
Sifting through the humus of last year — the upsets, obstacles and lessons — you procure a wealth of nourishment. Glimpses of who you’re becoming. Morsels of wisdom to carry forth.
So much is stirring beneath the surface. Surely the crocus feels this way. Growth isn’t always visible.
At once, the thrasher breaks your focus with spontaneous song.
You put on the kettle, fill up your thermos, step into the freshness of a brand-new year.
The buck has shed his antlers at the forest’s edge. Gray squirrels skitter from cache to cache. Each critter is a holy mirror.
The darkest days are behind us. Within the ancient quiet of winter, a secret world awaits discovery. Those searching for spring will never see it. Those looking within will find the key.
Don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous. — Rumi
Milk Flower
Among the earliest spring bulbs to bloom, the common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) dazzles in large drifts, especially when planted beneath deciduous tree canopies.
A birth flower of January, the snowdrop’s Latin name translates as “milk flower.” Emerging from a cold and sleeping Earth, the delicate flowers are, in fact, sustenance for the winter-weary, symbolizing purity, hope and new beginnings.
Reaching a height of just 3 to 6 inches, the dainty white blossoms of this hardy perennial resemble tiny teardrop chandeliers. German folklore tells that, before snow had a color, it asked the flowers of the Earth if it could borrow one of their radiant shades. When all the other blossoms denied the snow’s request, the humble snowdrop offered its white hue to the snow. Grateful for this kindly gesture, the snow vowed to protect the snowdrop from the icy grip of winter. Thus, snow and snowdrop remain true and lasting friends.
Stone Soup
You’ve heard the old folk story: Everybody gives, everybody wins.
Soup Swap Day is celebrated on the third Saturday of January. Launched in Seattle in the early 2000s, this unofficial holiday has inspired soup enthusiasts across the globe to gather their tribes — and their Tupperware — and get to simmering.
It’s simple.
Pick a soup, any soup:
Vegetable stew served with homemade bread.
Cream of mushroom topped with cracked pepper and fresh thyme.
Roasted cauliflower brightened with a squeeze of lemon.
The possibilities are endless.
Cook a king-size batch, ladle into containers, then distribute to your broth-loving friends. Leave the party with as much soup as you doled out. Everybody gives, everybody wins. PS
Sporting Life
Sporting Life
Small Town Life
A little piece of paradise
By Tom Bryant
The Old Man always used to say that a smart feller knew when he was well off and was a goldarned fool to change it for something he didn’t know about. — Robert Ruark from The Old Man and the Boy
Back in the day, John Mills and I didn’t know we had it so wonderful growing up in Pinebluff. Mr. Eutice Mills, Johnny’s dad, was mayor from 1952 until 1956, and the little village never had it so good.
I recently spent the day with my old friend Johnny, better known by locals in the know as the Pinebluff historian. As boys my home was about a block from his on the same road that we called the “lake road.” It was really New England Avenue. That’s a funny thing about Pinebluff. Most of the avenues are named after Northern cities like Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago, I guess to sort of entice the folks from up North who wanted to relocate to the sunny South. They could do that and still live on an avenue that reminded them of home.
The cross streets are named after a fruit of some sort, like peach, cherry or apple. Yep, Pinebluff in its early planning was aimed at making new residents feel right at home and comfortable.
As a youngster living a block from the Mills family, I got to know them pretty well, as they did me and my family. It was like that all over town. Everybody knew everybody, and their pets’ names. We didn’t have a downtown, just a service station on one corner of the main thoroughfare and a motel across the street. The post office was located on another block, and that was about it as far as the business district was concerned.
The little village didn’t have much commercial success, but for the residents, it was enough. Aberdeen was right down the road. That’s where we went to school and our parents did most of their shopping. Beyond that was Southern Pines, a slightly more sophisticated town. And a little farther down the road was Pinehurst, a location most of us gave no thought to. We knew that it was a destination for rich folks from the North who came to spend part of the winter, play golf and do whatever we thought rich folks did when they came south. It really was of no consequence to us, and we just let that part of our county alone.
In those early years when Johnny and I came along, Pinebluff had a population of maybe 300 residents, a little more if you counted the dogs. Not many families had television. I think I was a freshman in high school when my dad bought our first one. Most of our entertainment was what we could devise, and mostly it took place in the great outdoors.
Every kid had a bicycle, our main mode of transportation. Mine was usually leaning against the front porch of our house, ready for a quick getaway.
In the summer the lake was the destination for all the young folks, and that’s where I learned to swim. It was only five blocks from my house, all downhill. I could jump off our front porch, hop on my bike, push off and coast all the way to the lake without pedaling once. Getting back home was a different story. Usually, I would time it so Dad could pick me up, load the bike in the back of the station wagon and give me a lift to the house. Sometimes this worked, depending on how busy he was at the ice plant. In the summer when peaches were being harvested full blast, Dad hardly had time to come home for lunch. Then I had to muscle my bike back up the hill on my own.
Our telephone system was Mom and Pop Wallace. The Pinebluff phone company was at their house, and the switchboard was located in their living room. When our parents wanted to find out where most of their kids were hanging out, they’d give Mom Wallace a call. She usually had the scoop on what was going on in the neighborhood.
When Johnny and I met that day, we reminisced about old times until lunch and then decided to grab a bite at a new restaurant in Aberdeen. On the way back to Pinebluff, we rode by the Aberdeen Railroad Depot, where Harriet Sloan maintains the Aberdeen High School Museum that’s located in one end of the ancient building. It’s amazing the job she has done accumulating all the historical information and artifacts about a school that no longer exists. The depot was closed but we’d already seen it several times, so we drove on by and headed back to Johnny’s house.
Johnny is fortunate to have acquired his family home place, and little has changed since we kids used to eat lunch sitting at the Mills’ kitchen table. Mrs. Mills would fix us sandwiches and listen as we made plans for the rest of the day.
Today was déjà vu all over again as Johnny and I relaxed around the same table remembering Pinebluff as it used to be under the direction of his father, the mayor.
“Think about the folks who used to live here,” he said, and began running down a list of people, some of whom I had forgotten.
“Colonel Cleary. Remember he lived right on the corner with his two boys? He taught math at Aberdeen High. And there was Mrs. Townsend, your neighbor. She was a traveling editor for The Christian Science Monitor. It’s rumored she roamed the world on tramp steamer ships.
“Around the corner and a couple of blocks away was Manly Wade Wellman. A famous author, he wrote the book, The Haunts of Drowning Creek. We should surely remember that because it was about two boys who set out on a canoe trip on the creek to find Confederate gold.” (Maybe the book gave three young Pinebluff boys the idea to take the same trip and float to the ocean. But that’s another story.)
“And there was Glen Rounds, another famous author and illustrator. He lived here for a while before moving to Southern Pines. The village was loaded with famous people in those days, not counting us, of course.” We chuckled a little as Johnny continued to pay homage to past residents who had had such an impact on our lives.
“Mr. Deaton, the town constable. He looked after all the young people and kept us out of trouble. Dot and Nan Brawley, who owned and ran the Village Grocery. How many cold Cokes did we drink from her cooler? Of course, Mom and Pop Wallace and the phone company, and that’s just a few of the folks who made the little town work. Yep, Tom, we grew up in a fantastic place.”
As I sat there at the same kitchen table where I had rested so many years ago, I thought that it’s good that some important things don’t change with age, like this wonderful home and my good friend Johnny Mills. PS
Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.
Birdwatch
Birdwatch
A Winter Visitor
The handsome yellow-bellied sapsucker
By Susan Campbell
Woodpeckers abound in central North Carolina, even more so in the Sandhills. On a given day, you might see up to eight different species. Only one, however, is a winter visitor: the handsome yellow-bellied sapsucker. This medium-sized, black-and-white bird is well camouflaged against the tree trunks where it is typically found. It also sports red plumage on the head, as so many North American species do. The female has only a red crown, whereas the male also sports a red throat. And, as their name implies, both sexes have a yellow tinge to their bellies. However, young of the year arriving in late October to early November are drab, with grayish plumage and lacking the colorful markings of their parents. By the time they head back north in March, they too, will be well-patterned.
There are four sapsucker species found in North America. The yellow-bellied has the largest range and is the only one seen east of the Rockies. Sapsuckers do, in fact, feed on sap year round. They seek out softer hardwood trees and drill holes through the bark into the living tissue. This wound will ooze sap in short order. Not only do the carbohydrates in the liquid provide nourishment to the birds, but insects also get trapped in the sticky substance. Holes made by yellow-bellied sapsuckers form neat rows in the bark of red maples, tulip poplars and even Bradford pears in our area. Pines, however, not only tend to have bark that is too thick for sapsuckers to penetrate but rapidly scab over, rendering only a very brief flow of sap.
The injury caused by sapsuckers is generally not fatal to the tree, as long as it is healthy to begin with. Infection of the wound by fungi or other diseases may occur in older or stressed trees. Although the relationship is not mutually beneficial, sapsuckers need the trees for their survival. It is also interesting to note that others use the wells created by sapsuckers. Birds known to have a “sweet tooth,” such as orioles and hummingbirds, will take advantage of the yellow-bellied sapsucker’s handiwork.
The species breeds in pine forests throughout boreal Canada, the upper Midwest as well as New England. We do have summering populations at elevation in western North Carolina. It is not unusual to find them around Blowing Rock in the warmer months. As is typical for woodpeckers, sapsuckers create cavities in dead trees for nesting purposes. They use calls as well as drumming to advertise their territory. The typical call note is a short, high-pitched, cat-like mewing sound. They use more emphatic squealing and rapid tapping of their bills against dead wood or other suitable resonating surfaces to warn would-be competitors of their presence.
In winter, yellow-bellieds quietly coexist with the other woodpeckers in the area. They will seek out holly and other berries in addition to feeding on sap. These birds will feed on suet, too, and may be attracted to backyard feeding stations. Generally the yellow-bellied does not drink sugar water, since feeders designed for hummingbirds or orioles are not configured for use by clinging species. Of course, as with all birds, it may be lured in by fresh water: another reason to maintain a birdbath or two — even if you live on a lake.
Seeing a sapsucker at close range is always a treat, so keep an eye out for this unusual woodpecker. PS
Susan Campbell would love to hear from you. Feel free to send questions or wildlife observations to susan@ncaves.com.
Sister Act
Sister Act
Reimagining an eclectic cottage
By Deborah Salomon
Photographs by John Gessner
Local residences can be relatively easy to classify: Federalist, antebellum, Georgian, ranch, contemporary farmhouse, mid-century modern, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish.
This one — tucked behind tall greenery in the heart of Weymouth — isn’t, unless “surprising, refreshing and personal” is the category. Clad in pecky cypress painted off-white, the cottage stretches longitudinally like a ranch, has bedroom suites anchoring each end in the contemporary mode, and multiple bay windows common to New England saltboxes enhanced by stained glass panels displaying geometric and bird motifs.
Add this shocker: a cathedral ceiling with flying buttresses rising over the sitting/dining area. Built in 1929, a year of financial havoc in the U.S., one legend identifies the builder as a shipmaker from Boston with the buttresses a reminder of the ribs supporting his boats.
Those buttresses are original, not so a covered backyard patio for grilling, eating and watching TV while drying off by the fire after emerging from the 42-inch deep, rectangular plunge pool, with a submerged seating ledge and water kept at 100 degrees year-round.
“We all jumped in at Thanksgiving,” says Cathy, who with her sister, Mary, reimaged this cottage.
Their story is as singular as the results.
Cathy and Mary, a year apart, grew up sharing a room in a Pittsburgh family of eight children — three girls, five boys. Mary became a nurse anesthetist at a women’s hospital. Cathy worked in the wholesale bakery industry. Each married, remained in Pittsburgh and had children, who grew up and moved away. In 2014, the sisters, now single, retired and decided they could live more economically together — but not in Pittsburgh. Too cold.
They heard good things about North Carolina’s retirement havens. Asheville was their first foray. Still too cold. Pinehurst, with a temperate climate and aura aplenty, offered the solution.
“We drove down for a week and hooked up with an agent, just to look around,” Mary says. Seven Lakes seemed promising, or maybe a carriage house in horse country. Then they discovered the charm of downtown Southern Pines, the shops, bistros, railroad station and the interesting people populating them.
Better check availability in Weymouth.
What they discovered seemed almost made-to-order. The walls and ceilings in the living /dining space were wood-paneled and, after moving in, the sisters found the stained wood too dark and painted the walls — themselves — a soft white. The dark wood cabinetry and a natural brick backsplash in the modest but adequate kitchen became creamy vanilla with a pure white island top over a black lacquer base. Cathy cooks. Mary shops and cleans up. A breakfast table for two suggests a Victorian tearoom.
“I don’t want all that granite,” says Cathy. “It’s casual, like, ‘Come on over and let’s share.’”
The sisters’ most formidable challenge was space, given the possibility of visiting children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews and friends — golfers and otherwise. Fortunately the elongated footprint on a prime Weymouth acre allowed them to convert the attached two-car garage into living space with a workroom and a laundry. A new garage was added.
“Over the years we have always attacked projects,’’ Cathy says. In high school she was more interested in mechanical drawing than cooking and sewing. “You just learn that if something doesn’t work, you do it over.”
Furniture is a mixture of hers and hers, with some delightful juxtapositions. In the small TV den a gray wide-wale corduroy sectional overlooks a frilly little bureau painted bright yellow. A dresser in the guest room is made of sanded metal. Nurse Mary explains that before built-in units, hospital rooms attended by nurses in starched white caps were furnished in metal, usually painted white, now antique shop finds.
“We each brought furniture. We didn’t buy new,” Cathy says. Even their area rugs made the trip. The familiar pieces take on fresh life placed in the spacious, airy rooms. And surprises lurk around each corner: A bathroom wall of glass bricks adds retro chic. Rather than reupholster “throne” and other chairs, they discovered a paint for fabric that dries to a nubby texture. An elongated window frames a tall, pruned crape myrtle, its gnarled, spotted trunk and branches resembling a giraffe. A huge Chinese soup tureen sits ready to serve the emperor. They point proudly to an antique transom; their mother’s desk; Granddaddy’s cigar cabinet; Granny’s enormous hope chest; and a framed wedding quilt sewn from silk ties and kept under glass.
The sisters concede that not everyone could pull off this living arrangement. At first, their other siblings’ reaction was, “How dare you leave us!” Cathy recalls. Now, they do family Thanksgiving, and their twin brothers show up for golf. After 10 years the sisters have made friends through pickleball, golf and community activities. Cathy’s latest project: watercolors.
“We live a very simple life,” Cathy says. “We’re content to sit out back or go into town. Both of us worked hard. Now it’s time to relax, to entertain ourselves.” PS
Cowboy Junket
Cowboy Junket
Selling books like snake oil
Or
If you want it done right, do it yourself
By Stephen E. Smith
Nancy Rawlinson was a first-grader at Millington Elementary School in New Jersey when she happened upon an intriguing book in the school library. She flipped through the pages and immediately fell in love with the illustrations of horses. The book may have been The Blind Colt or Stolen Pony or Wild Horses of the Red Desert — she has forgotten the title — but she knew what she liked, and that the artist was Glen Rounds. “I was in love with horses at the time,” she recalls, “and I read Glen Rounds’ books over and over again.”
In 1991 Rawlinson moved to Southern Pines and eventually opened Eye Candy Gallery & Framing on Broad Street, but she never had an opportunity to meet the writer and illustrator whose books had brought her so much pleasure in her childhood. Rounds (the appellation assigned to Glen by his many friends) lived almost half his life in Southern Pines, and he was affectionately acknowledged by acquaintances and neighbors as “the literary man about town.” Decked out in his weathered jeans and cowboy vest, he was the craggy, gray-bearded bohemian wandering among the business-clad locals and Yankee snowbirds — a mid-morning regular at the local post office, where he’d buttonhole friends and strangers and regale them with humorous, wisdom-laced tall tales, droll shaggy-dog stories, and the occasional off-color witticism.
If Rounds was a raconteur extraordinaire, he was, first and foremost, an artist/illustrator. He illustrated over 100 books. He studied painting and drawing at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Art Student League of New York, and was close friends with Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton. (Rounds and Pollock were models for Benton’s painting The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley.) And he worked with dogged determination to see that the public could enjoy his talents. When Rounds published a new children’s book, it would garner a mention in Time or Newsweek, and 20 years after his death, his artwork lives on in his books and on the walls of homes and businesses in Southern Pines — and across the country.
Of all the stories Rounds shared with friends and strangers, there’s one that seldom, if ever, got told: the true story “that needed telling.” Shortly before he died in 2002 at the age of 96, Rounds informed friends that he had a new book underway, the story of the “1938 Trip West.” He never completed the book, but his extensive notes were passed down to his daughter-in-law, Victoria Rounds, and contained within the extensive scribblings are at least four synopses that retell the tale in fits and starts. The Gospel according to Rounds goes as follows:
During the spring and summer of 1938, Rounds was carrying on an “acrimonious” correspondence with Vernon Ives, the publisher and editor of Holiday House, concerning Holiday House’s lackadaisical sales efforts. The publisher had a few independent salesmen who carried Holiday House books as a sideline and they circulated a catalog, but there was no sales coverage west of the Mississippi.
“I had spent some time with folks selling snake oil, Indian remedies and the like,” Rounds writes. “And argued that if they wanted to sell books they should have somebody on the road stirring things up. In the end it came to a case of ‘put up or shut up.’ If I thought books could be sold like snake oil, why didn’t I go on the road myself and show them how it should be done?”
And that’s exactly what Rounds intended to do. He and Margaret Olmsted had married in June 1938, and they were living in Myrtle Beach, where they paid $10 a month in rent. In their spare time, they fixed up a 1937 Studebaker woody station wagon with bunks built over lockers that contained their camping equipment — a bucket, a pan, a coffeepot, blankets, clothes, a Coleman stove, a small icebox, and a canvas to throw over the back of the Studebaker at night.
On September 1, 1938, they loaded a box of Holiday House books into the Studebaker and headed west from Sanford, camping that night in a “nameless field between Knoxville and Nashville.” There were no motels in those days, but they occasionally pulled into a campground or hotel to wash clothes and shower; otherwise, they quit driving each day at sunset and made the best of their surroundings. Once they camped near a city dump, and on another evening, a constable directed them to park behind the town bandstand. “Nice little park,” Rounds recalled. “Just after supper people started drifting into the park. It was band concert night, and while they waited for the concert to start the townspeople inspected and commented on our outfit.”
But Rounds and Margaret weren’t there for the music, and they weren’t on a sightseeing trip. They had compiled a card file listing every elementary school, library, branch library, librarian and bookstore on their route. Margaret had a library science degree from the University of North Carolina and had worked for the New York Public Library System, so she had credibility with the school librarians and teachers. “We were looking for people who dealt in books,” Rounds writes. “Anybody that ever looked like they might buy or sell books got the treatment. We stopped at every small branch library or school, showed books, told a story or drew some pictures and went on, leaving Holiday House catalogs behind.”
And so it went through Kansas City, Omaha, Sioux City, Rapid City, Denver, Boulder, Provo, Logan, Boise, Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Salem, Medford, Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Sierra Blanca, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth, where they put on a “big show” for National Book Week. From there they hit Shreveport, Vicksburg, Montgomery, Atlanta, Greenville, and back to Sanford, arriving on Thanksgiving eve after three months on the road and “tired as hell!”
“We not only showed the Holiday House books but we sold them on commission,” Rounds writes. “Whether we sold enough to pay our gas and expenses, I don’t remember. But by the time we got home a hell of a lot of people had heard about Holiday House books. For years after that, stories about our unconventional selling methods drifted around the country whenever bookstore people and librarians met.”
In the synopses Rounds produced late in life — probably in the late ’80s and early- to mid-’90s, judging by the used computer paper repurposed as cost-effective stationery — the story lacks the details of meetings and confabs Rounds and Margaret experienced. But those moments aren’t lost. As Rounds traveled the country and pitched Holiday House books, he regularly wrote to Vernon Ives, producing 24 lengthy handwritten letters detailing most of his encounters with teachers, administrators, bookstore folk and “anyone interested in books.” Ives saved and returned the letters to Rounds, who arranged them chronologically in a spiral notebook that also contains photographs, maps, two traffic tickets, two typhoid inoculation certificates, and Rounds’ meticulous financial calculations (the Studebaker got about 22 mpg in a great loop from Sanford, North Carolina to the West Coast and back to Sierra Blanca, Texas, a distance of 8,633 miles).
More than an illustrator and writer, Rounds was a keen observer of his fellow human beings — he had a caustic word or two to say about everyone he encountered — and he was especially sharp-eyed when observing the animals he drew. Former North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson once accompanied Rounds on an expedition to observe a family of beavers. “Glen just sat there for two hours and never said a word; never moved,” Stephenson recalled. “He was perfectly still, staring intently at the beavers, never missing a movement they made.” If he wrangled you into a storytelling marathon at the post office or in his side yard on Ridge Street, he’d stare directly into your eyes as his story leisurely unraveled. If your mind happened to wander, he’d notice immediately. “Do you want to hear this story or not?” he’d ask. Of course, you wanted to hear it. There was no escape.
This innate ability to study and narrate is apparent in a beautifully crafted excerpt from a letter written to Ives shortly before the 1938 odyssey. Rounds had been observing those who labored in tobacco production, “one of the last of the really personal industries,” and highlights of the brief passage stand as an example of literary archaeology:
“From the time they go out in the spring with leaf mounds to fill the seed beds, the setting out, which is done by hand, the hoeing, the worming, down to the beginning of ‘priming’ (picking the bottom leaves as they ripen), and the sitting up night and day with the fires in the curing barns, it is all handwork of the hottest kind for the whole family. After it’s cured, the whole family gets busy, usually on the front porch, and goes over it leaf by leaf, grading it before tying it into ‘hands’ for market. The night before market they start coming into the warehouse to get a good position on the floor so as to get a light that will set off the color and texture to the best advantage. They’re proud of their work. Sat all afternoon a while back with an old-timer while he watched his fires. After I’d deserted my cigarettes for a healthy chaw of his Honey-twist, taken with a fine shaving of Black Maria to give it body and color to spit a more satisfying brown, we sat and spit promiscuously round about for a while, exchanged views on horse breeding, and the lack of enterprise and self-reliance in the younger generation and one thing and another . . .” and so forth for two single-spaced typewritten pages.
The 24 letters written to Ives don’t contain the same level of detail as his tobacco observations — there wasn’t enough time to include more than initial impressions — but Rounds’ sharp eye picked up every human shortcoming and attribute, every nuance.
On Sept.12, he wrote from Denver: “Enclosed an order from Dibamels (sic), Rapid City. Think if we can get him started he should move my books. Did some horse trading to get the order, but think it worth it, even if I had to take merchandise for 3 Ol’ Pauls and 3 L.C. Denver Dry Goods no soap. Books too high. Kendrik Bellamy was nice dept, but in basement, Mrs. Cook very nice and liked books but has trouble moving good books. However, may order later.”
On Sept. 15 he wrote from Salt Lake City: “Library (two old maids) no soap. No children librarian. Printed Page, nice shop, typical university bookshop. Trying to start juvenile dept but knows nothing and cares less. N.G. (no good) . . . Snow and sleet in the passes. Ranger stopping cars . . . camping in ballpark . . . Utah Office supply already ordered Baker Taylor, cheap stuff, won’t see sample. High school library — Miss Robinson liked books and checked a number. No money for about 60 days but . . . Ferner Junior High School, Miss Sinor — tough old gal. Doesn’t like small type. Won’t order what she hasn’t seen . . .” And so it goes for seven handwritten pages, passing judgment on the people, libraries and schools in one lengthy intensive missive.
Even more detailed letters follow from Spokane, Seattle and Raywood, where Rounds reports that all the bookstores had gone out of business during the Great Depression. Books are a tough sell, especially during hard times, but Rounds and Margaret remained undeterred by the occasional rejection and were much buoyed by small successes, as in San Diego on Oct. 24: “City Schools, Miss Morgan — They hadn’t seen our books but had heard so much they finally ordered most of the old titles for review. However, they arrived too late to get on this year’s list, L.C. and Ol’ Paul got raves from their reviewers. And most of the others seemed slated for the list also. She should be on list for books ON APPROVAL as soon as they are published . . .”
In Seattle, Rounds and Margaret made 12 stops and in Denver another 11, talking up Holiday House and pitching Rounds’ books while visiting public libraries, a university bookstore, the state department of education, a school library association and a book department in a general merchandise store, etc. — all of which he reported on at length. But Rounds’ letters weren’t all business. While working a bookstore in San Leon, Texas, he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to describe a fetching female clerk: “She was like a mare in heat every time she sidled close and continually ran her palms of her hands over the front of her tight sweater, down the belly and back around her buttocks. You know the gesture? It is used with the flexing of all the trunk and thigh muscles. Don’t get me wrong — I just report what I see. She’ll make a fine type if I write a book.”
If there was rejection and indifference, there was just enough good news to keep Rounds buoyant. On Nov. 19 he wrote to Ives, alluding to himself in the third person: “Rounds at his best when before an admiring audience of children whose number will be considerably swelled by the attendance of a group of storytelling teachers or some damn thing, who have a special invitation. Immediately after Rounds is worn out, there will be an autograph party in the book department.”
And so it went, stop after stop, for three relentless months, each encounter explicated in the lengthy handwritten letters to Ives. If Rounds and Margaret encountered more failure than success, they never wavered, never despaired. They kept at it, day in and day out, until they pulled into Sanford, exhausted.
Small successes, what he thought of as a “little victory for art,” continued to fuel Rounds’ enthusiasm for the remainder of his long life. He frequently visited classes full of elementary school students, encouraging their art and following up by sending the students postcards with his trademark hound dog Ol’ Boomer, tail curved skyward, prancing into the mystical ether. He never tired of entertaining, never grew weary of inspiring a classroom full of blossoming talent.
If Rounds was the author and illustrator of the books, Margaret Olmsted was remarkable in her own right. Glen Rounds was born in a sod house near the badlands of South Dakota and traveled in a covered wagon to Montana, where he grew up on a ranch. Margaret came from money. Her family owned their own railway car, and she’d graduated from the University of North Carolina. Nevertheless, she endured three months of camping across the country and chatting up librarians, schoolteachers and classrooms full of rowdy children, all without complaint. She was one of the founding members of The Country Bookshop and the Given Memorial Library, and her considerable influence lives on in those Sandhills institutions — and in Rounds’ success as a writer and illustrator.
What were the results of the 1938 trip? In a time when writers didn’t often appear at bookstores to sign and sell books, Rounds was ever present, signing his name, telling his stories and promoting Holiday House. Vernon Ives profited from the documentation Rounds supplied concerning likely outlets and agreeable bookstore owners, information that would hold the publisher in good stead for decades to come. And most importantly, Rounds made himself famous in the world of children’s literature. His books still line bookstore and library shelves and continue to delight young readers.
Not long after his passing, an ad hoc committee of Rounds’ friends convened to consider placing a lifelike statue of the old raconteur in front of the post office, a monument not unlike the one of the rock ’n’ roll dude “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona . . .” but it soon became apparent that such a tribute could never adequately convey Rounds’ charisma and rakish charm. The stories were gone, lost for good, and now Rounds exists only in the memory of his many admirers.
It’s doubtful that Glen Rounds ever visited an elementary school in Millington, New Jersey — a village so obscure that it seems hardly to exist on the map — but when first-grader Nancy Rawlinson fell in love with Rounds’ drawings of horses, the book had not found its place on the library shelf by accident. Glen and Margaret Rounds had, by virtue of their hard work, tenacity and unwavering faith, willed it there. PS
Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press Awards.
Out of the Blue
Out of the Blue
Makin’ a List
And what it says about you
By Deborah Salomon
We are a nation of lists. January is the logical time to make them: new year, fresh resolve, second chances. Remember, this is the month when Medicare supplement ads give way to weight-loss schemes.
Lists, sometimes in the form of resolutions, reveal much about their authors. Long ago and far away I wrote a column after finding a list scribbled on an envelope crumpled in a shopping cart. The list was long, barely legible, full of abbreviations. Yet from it I reconstructed the life of the writer: She had young children (silly cereals, milk by the gallon, Popsicles), attempted health-consciousness (both mushy white bread and 100 percent whole wheat), braved unpopular veggies (frozen Brussels sprouts), and had at least one cat — a finicky eater, to boot. Her husband, I surmised, worked in an office (pick up shirts at dry cleaner). She paid a premium for real Coke and Peter Pan Peanut Butter — not store brands. Wine wasn’t her forte. I was disappointed to learn she succumbed to frozen pizza.
Certain items were coded “c.” A coupon, I guessed.
Remember coupons?
And on and on. By the time my analysis was done I could have picked her out of a lineup.
Something else besides coupons has changed. Today, the wrinkled envelope has been replaced by a cell phone. Not me, not a chance. I can’t afford to donate one hand to holding the slippery thing. Then, suppose I accidentally leave it at home and forget the peanut butter?
Serious lists deserve more than the back of an envelope, maybe a printout to dignify the effort.
Here goes . . .
Clean up my desk. I am neither overly organized nor a neat freak. My desk, flanked with baskets, wooden boxes et al. is, uh, unruly. However, every January I undertake a purge.
On second thought, ditch this list, since I might be held accountable. Safer to compose lists for others.
Taylor Swift needs a new boyfriend. She’s not helping the ballclub. Find yourself a shy accountant, honey.
Joe Biden needs a different barber, to eradicate that rear-view mullet.
The Donald needs a legal secretary.
Mick Jagger needs a rocking chair for his 16-gig tour, sponsored by AARP. Really.
Elon Musk needs to buy a vowel, not an X.
Harry and Meghan need a new publicist. Where have all the tabloids gone?
Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Franklin all need a smile — a rare event in portraiture before orthodontics, implants and crowns.
Yes, we are a nation of lists. An entire book series is devoted to the genre. Just don’t leave yours in a shopping cart. PS
Deborah Salomon is a contributing writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She can be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.