Sporting Life

SPORTING LIFE

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Game Time

What’s your favorite part of the squirrel?

By Tom Bryant

“Well, I really do have a question, Mr. Bryant. Do you actually eat all those little animals you kill?”

I knew that question, or one like it, would come when I agreed to speak at a women’s club. Some of my hunting partners that hang out at Slim’s Country Store had warned me when they heard through the grapevine about the speaking commitment. Ritter expressed it best when he said, “Bryant, those ladies gonna skin you like a possum. You know they’s against guns, hunting, fishing or almost any outdoor sport.”

The meeting with the ladies took place several years ago in a small but prestigious town right across the border in Virginia.

“Yes, ma’am. My grandfather was a stickler for eating anything we brought home. He would stress that the Good Lord gave bounty from the streams and fields for us to use and do so responsibly.

“Also, as I mentioned earlier, right after the War Between the States, folks in the South especially, used wild game to supplement food for the table.”

There was a follow-up. “What animals did you cook and eat, and how old were you?”

It looked as if it was going to be a long question and answer period. I sighed inwardly.

“I started hunting the woods on my grandfather’s farm when I was about 9 and fishing maybe 6 or 7. My first wild game was squirrels. I’d clean ’em and Grandma would cook them in a wonderful rice dish.” I could hear the muted groans in the audience of ladies who had just finished a wonderful chicken lunch.

“As a matter of fact,” I continued, “I brought this along.” I held up my well-worn wild game cookbook from L.L. Bean, simply titled The Game & Fish Cookbook. “Unfortunately, it’s out of print but can still be found, if you’re lucky, in usedbook stores. There are probably 10 or 12 great recipes in this book for squirrel, but one of my favorites is Brunswick stew.”

Turning to a well-marked page where the recipe was underlined, I quoted from the lead-in to the ingredients.

“Technically this stew is made from squirrel, but it can be made with other meats: rabbit, muskrat, beaver or combinations.”

I held the book open so the ladies of the highest social order sitting on the front row could see that I wasn’t making it up. There were considerable murmurs from the women sitting in the back rows. I didn’t know if they were accepting my story or getting ready to walk out en masse.

“Speaking of Brunswick stew,” I continued, “I have a couple of friends who, in the Southern vernacular, are good ol’ boys, and they make the best stew I’ve ever eaten. They make one that’s really got some shoulders on it. Edwin Clapp and Bandy Herman are what you think of when you picture hunters and fishermen who live deep in the country far away from tall buildings and sidewalks.”

One of the ladies sitting near the back raised her hand, stood up and said, “Do they use what you call wild game in their cooking?”

“I’m gonna be honest with you,” I replied. “Once, when Edwin invited me up to his farm to participate in the annual Brunswick stew cooking, he told me they would be whipping up their concoction in a 30-gallon stew pot. I told him there’s not enough squirrel in Chatham County to fill a pot that size.

“Edwin said they were giving away most of the stew, and that some of his city friends frowned on eating squirrel in anything, even Brunswick stew. So, on that occasion, just to suit the city folk, they were using grocery store fare.”

I had my iPad with me to show photos of some of the places where we hunted, and I knew there was a good shot of Edwin and Bandy cooking stew, if I could find it. The little computer was new to me — a gift from my bride, Linda — and I had yet to figure out all its intricacies.

It looked as if the ladies were in no hurry to leave, so I directed my next statement to the last questioner. “Ma’am, somewhere in this little machine I’ve got a photo of Edwin and Bandy cooking up one of their big batches of Chatham County Brunswick stew. It shows the huge stainless steel pot they use and the wooden paddle for stirring.”

Not a soul had left, and a couple of the ladies got up from their chairs and edged closer.

“Here it is. Look at the size of that pot,” I said. “And it’s almost filled to the brim.” I passed the iPad around for everyone to see. Several took a closer look before handing it back to me.

A lady on the front row said, “But Mr. Bryant, if you keep killing the animals that you hunt, will they eventually go away? I mean will you deplete the resource?”

“That’s an excellent question,” I replied, and I pulled out my Ducks Unlimited membership card and held it so they could see. “This organization is the world’s leader in wetlands and waterfowl conservation, and yet they value and enjoy the sport of hunting. The beauty of all this is that we hunters, over 700,000 of us, are the supporters of this institution.” I passed my membership card around the nearest row of ladies.

Our host, a small white-haired matron, stood, raised her hand and took over. “I believe we’ve taken enough time from Mr. Bryant,” she said. There was a smattering of applause and the ladies slowly left the room.

I grabbed my stuff, thanked the ladies in charge and exited the building posthaste. I was surprised to find the elderly matron, the one who asked about eating game, on the steps waiting for me.

“Mr. Bryant, I surely would like to get a taste of Mr. Clapp’s Brunswick stew,” she said, to my surprise.

“I’m afraid this year’s batch is probably all gone,” I said.

She handed me her card. “Well, tell him to put me on the list for next year,” she said and turned to go. “Oh,” she paused as she headed down the stairs, “you can also tell him I wouldn’t mind if it had just a taste of squirrel.”

Birdwatch

BIRDWATCH

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Killdeer
Semi-Palmated Plover
Buff-Breasted Sandpiper
Upland Sandpiper

Southbound and Down

Grasspipers forage on farms and fields

By Susan Campbell

As the long days of summer wane here in the Piedmont and Sandhills of North Carolina, we have scores of birds preparing for that long southbound journey we refer to as fall migration. Thousands of birds pass by, both day and night, headed for wintering grounds deep in the Southern Hemisphere. Flocks of medium-bodied shorebirds, dropping down to replenish their reserves, are one seemingly unlikely sight. They may stay a few hours or a few days, depending on the weather and the abundance of food available to them. At first glance, you might think these long-legged birds are lost — far from the coast where a variety of sandpipers are commonplace. But once you take a good look, you will realize these are birds of grassland habitat, not sand flats.

Referred to as “grasspipers” by birders, these species forage on a wide variety of invertebrates found in grassy expanses. They breed in open northern terrain, in some cases all the way up into the Arctic. They are moving through as they migrate to grassland habitat in southern South America. Although some may be seen along our coastline, they are more likely to be found in flocks or loose groups at inland airports, sod farms, playing fields and perhaps even tilled croplands.

Come late August and early September, armed with binoculars or, better yet, a powerful spotting telescope, you can find these cryptically colored birds without having to travel too far from home. They are indeed easy to miss unless you know where to look at the right time. Flocks often include a mix of species, so be ready to sort through each and every bird, lest you overlook one of the rarer individuals. When it comes to shorebirds as a group, many of the dozens of species are tricky to identify so, if you’re relatively new to birding, I suggest you arrange to join a more accomplished birder to start.

The most common and numerous species without a doubt is the killdeer. Its dark upper parts contrast with white underparts, but it’s the double neck ring that gives it away. This spunky bird, whose name is its call, nests (if you can call a rudimentary scrape in the gravel a nest) on disturbed ground such as unpaved roadways and parking lots throughout North Carolina. Flocks of hundreds of birds are not uncommon. Frequently other species are mixed in as well. In the Sandhills, the sod farm in Candor hosts large numbers of killdeer around Labor Day. Check them all and you will likely be rewarded with something different mixed in.

The plover family, to which the killdeer belongs, consists of squat, short-necked and billed birds of several species. The semipalmated plover is a close cousin. This slightly smaller species sports only a single neck ring and curiously, individuals have slightly webbed (or palmate) feet. They can actually swim short distances when in wetter habitat and are thus more versatile foragers.

The most curious are the obligate grassland shorebirds, which include the well-camouflaged buff-breasted sandpiper and the upland sandpiper. Both nest in the drier prairies of Canada and spend the winter months mainly in the pampas of Argentina. “Buffies” are a buff-brown all over and have delicate-looking heads, short, thin bills and a distinctive ring around the eye. “Uppies” are brownish and have small heads as well, but with larger eyes and both a longer bill and longer legs. These two species are thought to be declining — most likely due to habitat loss on both continents. If you miss the chance to get out in search of inland shorebirds this fall, don’t fret. They will move through again come spring, although in smaller numbers. Winter will take its toll, but those who do make it back our way will be in vibrant plumage as they wing their way northward to create yet a new generation of grasspipers north of the border.

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

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A Sense of Time and Place

By Stephen E. Smith

Writers have twitches and tics of style and substance that identify them as distinctly as their DNA — and writers of exceptional talent are possessed by obsession, a focus on subject matter that elevates their work to a purity that establishes a commonality with their audience. North Carolina’s Thomas Wolfe was such a writer. So is Bland Simpson.

Simpson has earned a reputation as the chronicler of the North Carolina coast and sound country. His books include North Carolina: Land of Water, Land of Sky, The Great Dismal, and Into Sound Country, books that demonstrate his love of the state and the region where he was raised. He has appeared in numerous PBS (WUNC) documentaries, and his familiar voice graces the soundtrack to travelogues exploring the coastal region. In short, he’s the go-to guy when it comes to the history and evolution of coastal North Carolina. For many years, he’s been the Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In his latest book, Clover Garden: A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir, Simpson remains in familiar territory — he’s writing about the state — but he’s moved his focus west to an area outside Chapel Hill where he’s lived for the last 50 years.

Where is Clover Garden?

Head west out of Carrboro until you hit N.C. 54. Drive northwest into gentle farmland until you pass the old White Oak School. If there’s a sign for Swepsonville, you’ve gone too far. You can try that, but you won’t happen upon the place name that serves as the title of Simpson’s memoir. According to Simpson, Clover Garden is closer to Carrboro than Graham. He describes it as “a small, four-square-mile country community to the old Porter Tract of the low Old Fields, lying beside the Haw River just a few miles west of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. . . .” But in truth,readers will suspect that Clover Garden is anywhere in North Carolina’s vast rolling Piedmont, any plot of land inhabited by neighbors who live harmoniously in tight-knit communities.

“Memoir” in the title is used in the loosest sense. There’s maybe a thread of chronology at work, but Simpson takes an impressionistic approach to his writing, à la Manet (not Monet). Readers who remember their art history will be reminded of the details in Music in the Tuileries and The Café-Concert, images in which all the specifics matter to the whole.

Clover Garden is divided into 45 segments — short narratives, random observations, anecdotes, even gossip — that, when taken together, comprise the “memoir” and give the readers a sense of a particular time and place. These independent segments are skillfully illustrated and enhanced with photographs by Ann Cary Simpson, whose keen eye for specific and illuminating images has enhanced Clover Garden and her husband’s previous books.

If the impressionistic comparison seems a trifle pretentious, the narratives Simpson shares are not. He writes of pool halls, pig pickings, snowstorms, country stores, great horned owls, folklore, boatwrighting, cafes and bars, stars, and riderless horses, all the bits and pieces, practical and impractical, that comprise our daily lives. And if you’ve lived in the Piedmont, there’s a good chance you’ll know a few characters who contribute color to the storytelling. If you don’t recognize any of the characters, you know them well enough at the conclusion of the memoir, or you’ll recognize their counterpart in your circle of friends and acquaintances.

Simpson’s descriptions embody an easy blending of history with a touch of nostalgia as in this sepia-tinged recollection of old friends and poolhalls (one of which was frequented by this reviewer): “In time, Jake Mills showed me his two favorite pool halls, Happy’s on Cotanche Street in Greenville and Wilbur’s on Webb Avenue in Burlington. After school in the 1950s, he and Steve Coley used to play quarter games with the textile mill hands coming off first shift and drifting into Wilbur’s straight from work. The cigarette haze hung low below the green shades, and the cry of ‘Rack!’ was in the air, and the balls clicked and clacked, and, like many a youth before them, Jake and Steve picked up pin money in this Alamance County eight-ball haven.” Even Neville’s, a long established Moore County watering hole, receives a passing mention in Simpson’s narrative explorations.

Above all else, Simpson is a master prose stylist, a poet at heart. His sentences are graceful and well-tuned — thoroughly worked on to get that “worked on” feeling out — and laced with continual surprises to save them from predictability. Simpson is always a pleasure to read, and he can transport the reader to familiar ground as if it’s being seen anew. “. . . alongside dairy cows, beeves and horses in pastures meeting deep forests of white oaks and red oaks and pines, copses of them around country churches, and straight up tulip poplars and high-crown hickories, American beech and always sweet gum, muscadine vines everywhere, willows close to the waterlines of ponds where big blue heron stalk and hunt, ponds full of bass and bream, shellcrackers and pumpkinseed and catfish prowling the bottom . . . .”

Thomas Wolfe would approve.

Focus on Food

FOCUS ON FOOD

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Late Summer Blooms

Cream cheese with a figgy twist

Story and Photograph by Rose Shewey

Many of my childhood summers were spent with my mom’s side of the family on the Adriatic coast in Croatia, where lush Mediterranean gardens grow fig trees taller than a Sandhills dogwood. In the late summer my family would harvest several pounds of figs every day from just a single tree. Those of us visiting from north of the Austrian Alps ate figs until our bellies ached.

Figs are, hands down, my favorite late-summer fruit. Or, to be botanically more accurate, inverted flower. Each seed inside a fig corresponds to one small flower contained in a bulbous stem. Call it what you will, figs, with their sweet, jammy texture and signature crunch, are darn exquisite, whichever way you want to categorize them.

To this day, I am surprised to find pricey, imported plasticcased figs in the produce aisles of food markets in North Carolina when our very own state — our own county, in fact — has proven to be an excellent host for fig trees. A local farm on the outskirts of Aberdeen has been successfully growing an entire fig tree orchard for several years, which begs the question: Why isn’t every farm growing fig trees in Moore County? My family would single-handedly keep them in business.

Even if you can’t get fresh figs, you can still enjoy them in other ways. Dried figs make an excellent addition to a homemade cream cheese. This year, I’ve used everyone’s favorite, pimento cheese, as a basis and inspiration for a cream cheese which holds all it promises — a honey- and fig-sweetened, tangy goat cheese and sharp cheddar blend that melts on your tongue. Spread it on sandwiches and crackers or eat it by the spoonful.

Fig, Honey and Goat Cream Cheese

INGREDIENTS

3-4 fresh or dried figs, minced (see notes)

2 cups freshly grated extra sharp cheddar cheese

4 ounces goat cheese

4 ounces cream cheese, cut into 1-inch cubes, room temperature

1 teaspoon honey

1⁄4 teaspoon garlic powder

1⁄4 teaspoon onion powder

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Salt, to taste

DIRECTIONS

In a large bowl, combine the finely minced figs with cheddar, goat cheese, cream cheese, honey, garlic powder, onion powder, and several twists of black pepper. Beat the mixture together with a hand mixer or by hand with a sturdy wooden spoon until thoroughly combined. Taste, and add more black pepper if desired, and/or salt for more flavor. Transfer the mixture to a serving bowl and serve immediately, or chill it in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. This cheese mixture hardens as it cools; let it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature before spreading it.

Notes: Dried figs work best; fresh figs can be used but the cheese will be softer overall. In a pinch, you can use 1-2 tablespoons of fig preserve instead of dried or fresh figs.

Dissecting a Cocktail

DISSECTING A COCKTAIL

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The Green Beret

Story and Photograph by Tony Cross

Almost a decade ago, I began piddling around with a cocktail to honor my father. He served 20 years in the Army as a Special Forces medic. I knew before creating the drink that I wanted to call it The Green Beret. My next thought was that it seemed appropriate to include green chartreuse in the mix. And whiskey had to be the base. That was a given, since it’s my dad’s favorite spirit. I decided to create a spin on the Boulevardier using equal parts TOPO’s (a Chapel Hill distillery that is sadly no longer with us) Eight Oak Whiskey, cacao nib-infused Campari, and sweet vermouth, rinsing the inside of the rocks glass with the chartreuse. Even though the drink was a hit on our cocktail menu, I wasn’t completely happy with it — the chartreuse wasn’t adding anything to the cocktail.

So, I decided to revisit The Green Beret. This go-round, I switched a few things up. First, the whiskey. Rittenhouse Rye is a go-to when I need a whiskey with a backbone, but one that will still let other flavors come through. Next was the chocolate. Instead of infusing cacao into Campari, I opted for Angostura’s Cocoa Bitters, which wasn’t available when I originally created the drink. I fat-washed the Angostura with brown butter. This gives the bitters a creamy texture and adds nuttiness to the chocolate. Lastly, I took organic espresso beans — about one barspoon — and added them to my glass vessel when stirring all of the ingredients. That allows the oils from the espresso beans to make an appearance in the drink. I’m happy to report that The Green Beret earned its promotion.

SPECIFICATIONS

1 1/4 ounces Rittenhouse Rye

1 ounce Campari

1 ounce Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth

4 dashes brown butter-washed Angostura Cocoa Bitters*

1 bar spoon organic espresso (or coffee) beans

2 dashes saline

Garnish: orange peel

*Brown butter-washed bitters: You can do this to regular Angostora bitters, too. Pour a 4-ounce bottle of bitters into a small glass container. Place 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter in a pan, bringing to a simmer. Continue to cook the butter until it turns brown. As soon as it does, take it immediately off the heat and pour it into the glass container. Give the bitters/butter mixture a quick stir and let cool. Once cool, seal the container and place it in the freezer. Let it sit overnight. The next day you will notice the butter has solidified. Use a knife to break a hole in the butter and strain the bitters out through a cheesecloth or coffee filter (using a coffee filter will take much longer). Pour butter-washed bitters back into its original bottle.

EXECUTION

Combine all ingredients into a chilled mixing vessel, add ice and stir until your gut tells you that it’s cold enough and properly diluted. Strain into a chilled rocks glass over ice. Express oils from an orange peel over the cocktail and place into drink.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

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Virgo

(August 23 – September 22)

We appreciate your pragmatism. We really do. That said, it’s time to occupy the rooms in your Fifth House of Pleasure. (Note: Reorganizing the Tupperware doesn’t count.) What if there was no one to impress, no one to “fix,” nothing to accomplish? Try not trying so hard for five seconds and experience what can only be described as actual, factual joy. The Tupperware will be the icing on the cake.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Try clicking refresh.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Eat your greens.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

The aftertaste will be complex.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Embrace the imperfection.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

There’s no going back.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Conjure your own plot twist.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

A full-bodied month with a buttery finish.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Hint: The underdog wins.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

No need to spill all your secrets.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

One word: remediation.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Bring some cash. PS

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

All in a Day’s Work

ALL IN A DAY'S WORK

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All in a Day's Work

Shady Maple Farm glows with color

By Claudia Watson

Photographs by John Gessner

On the outskirts of Carthage, a nondescript dirt road leads to a hidden gem. Surrounded by a tapestry of pines, native oaks, vibrant sassafras and fruit-laden persimmons, the landscape is a remarkable sight in late summer. A weathered sign bearing the word “Flowers” hints at the destination: Shady Maple Farm.

Farther down the long road, you get a glimpse of what is ahead — a breathtaking wildflowers-filled space. And in the heart of it all, a woman in a big straw hat tends her flowers. When Jennifer Donovan and her husband, Aloysius, moved to this parcel of land in 2021, it was a blank canvas. The 67-acre farm inspired them to follow their love for the outdoors and simpler times.

Decades ago, the 80-year-old homestead was timbered. Still, it held great promise with two natural ponds and nearby wetlands that drain into Dunham’s Creek. “I didn’t have a grand plan, and so it evolved,” Donovan says. “It started with a small plot that I planted and filled with summer annuals just so I could learn.”

Weeks later, while driving through the country, the couple spied three, “unused,” envy-inducing hoop houses in a distant field. They finally mustered the courage to ask the owner if they could buy them.

“He agreed, but on one condition: We had to dismantle and transport them ourselves. They were a fraction of the original cost and certainly worth it,” says Donovan, recalling the first hurdle in their journey to expand the farm.

It took some effort, but they assembled the largest of the three hoop houses, providing 2,000 square feet of protected growing space for her spring crop for the past three years. “It’s a joy to work there in the winter. It’s warm and full of sunlight, and I can roll the sides down if it gets too cold and still get work done,” she says as she nips a flower stem.

Working in the dirt has always been part of Donovan’s life. A native of Carthage, she graduated from Union Pines High School before attending East Carolina University. During the summers, she’d mow greens and fairways on local golf courses, a job she enjoyed, leading her to transfer to N.C. State University, where she obtained a degree in agronomy.

“I wanted to understand the soil and how it needed to be healthy, so I focused on environmental stewardship classes. That education, and later, earning my N.C. Cooperative Extension Master Gardener certification, gave me a sincere appreciation for our living soil,” she says. “Putting down roots here led to my flower farm dream. I knew when we bought the land that I’d grow something, but I didn’t know what until I saw information online about cut flower production. I love flowers, and they are a product that’s needed year-round.”

So she signed up for an online course in fresh flower production. “I was hooked, obsessed, consumed,” she says. “I couldn’t wait to get started. As soon as I could break ground, I planted that small plot of flowers.”

Donovan never looked back. She started seeds in late fall of 2020 and began selling flowers in the spring of 2021. Despite COVID, she forged ahead, setting up her floriculture business plan and website, and finding novel ways to sell her flowers in a market segment that will generate $52 billion in sales in 2024.

Driven by people’s increased use of flowers and beautiful plants to liven up their homes and businesses, cut flowers dominate the floriculture market. North Carolina is one of the top 10 states in the U.S. in their production, indicating the enduring appeal and demand for floral beauty.

“Flower farming takes a lot of planning and physical work to succeed,” Donovan says. “I reach my market in a variety of ways, including offering flower subscriptions and joining the local farmers markets. During COVID, when there weren’t many farmers markets, we salvaged what we could from the remnants of the old farmhouse and repurposed them to make a self-serve honor system flower stand.” Donovan points to the stand next to the wildflower garden and their home. “People were very happy to come here to buy flowers to brighten their days.”

Surprisingly, she had not grown anything from seed until they moved to the farm. Donovan laughs at it, too. “I never thought I’d be a flower farmer, but it makes sense with my love of the outdoors and my interest in caring for the environment. For me, it is a perfect match,” she says.

The small-scale family flower farm is no-spray, no-till, and focused on organic growing practices. “December and January are my two months to try and get the farm straightened out,” she says, anticipating the work ahead. After a harvest and before transplanting or seeding another crop, she cuts back or mows down the stems of the season’s plant material and covers them with silage tarps for two to three weeks. She removes the tarps and adds a layer of heavy compost on top.

Another part of the process is determining the number of flowers needed for each season. Donovan uses succession planting to ensure she grows a specific number of stems to fulfill her subscriptions and customers at the farmers market.

“As a one-woman show, efficiency is key,” she says. “Once the season begins it’s like being a hamster on a wheel.”

Flower farming is a time-sensitive operation, and if planned and executed correctly, all those long days in the dirt bring a steady stream of thousands of fresh flowers for her customers. Spring brings the first flush of colors: David Austin roses and the overwintering veronica, salvia, sedum, yarrow, sweet peas and mountain mint — which gets its own box to keep it manageable.

Her 2 acres of flower fields are a veritable candy shop of colorful choices. Versatile plants, including biennial Canterbury Bells (Campanulas) and snapdragons, provide an informal cottage look when intermixed with other plants.

Elegant Bupleurum ‘Griffithi’ with its bright chartreuse blooms combines well with jewel tones, the simple, clean white, of False Queen Anne’s Lace (Ammi majus), and Bells of Ireland. Highly fragrant stock (Matthiola incana), forget-me-nots, poppies and spiky delphiniums are prized plants that thrive in cooler weather. And magical ranunculus, born from small octopusshaped corms that continue to generate stems after being cut, are among her spring favorites.

Donovan loves tulips, but not standard tulips. “I’m drawn to the unusual types that are showy and make a bouquet stand out, with fringed or pointed petals, and the double-flowered,” she says. “Some are so ruffled and full they’re mistaken for peonies.”

Donovan points to a recently weeded row marked with pink flags in the middle of the flower rows. “I’m cultivating 10 to 12 varieties of herbaceous perennial peonies that are suitable to our climate. There are 100 in that row and 1,000 in the ground. I flag them, so I don’t need to find them each time I use my stirrup hoe to weed. I don’t want to cut off the little eyes on the crowns,” she says, noting those eyes generate a mass of new upright shoots.

For the past two years, she has disbudded the peonies to allow a young plant (aged 1-3 years) to strengthen. The most important part of the disbudding ritual is timing. “As soon as I see a bud, I cut it off,” she says. “It’s a sacrifice, but what’s needed to get those deep tuberous roots to focus on storing moisture and food. That growth will chug out the thick foliage and the large bountiful blooms I’ll have in another year or so.”

Early summer brings the dramatic globes of allium, perennial phlox (Phlox paniculata) and black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia). Once the ground is warm, she plants 600 sunflower seeds every Monday. “Who doesn’t love a sunflower?” she says, spying ladybugs and hovering dragonflies on her healthy crop.

Late summer is usually when a garden runs out of steam. But that’s when the flower harvest at Shady Maple Farm hits its crescendo. It is a breathtaking display of color and abundance, a true testament to the farm’s thriving nature. Zinnias, celosia, amaranth, marigolds, summer snapdragons, heirloom mums and another succession of sunflowers brighten the landscape. But it is the dahlias that elicit a strong emotional response from many.

“Dahlias are so unique, with all shapes, sizes and colors imaginable,” Donovan says. “Plus, one dahlia tuber makes many more tubers in the first season. They never disappoint and are the workhorses.”

Her favorite dahlias include ‘Cafe au Lait’ and ‘Break Out,’ renowned for their creamy blooms in soft pink, beige and peach that make romantic summer bouquets. ‘Lavender Perfection’ is a fully double flower with huge lavender-pink blossoms that can grow 40 inches tall. Dahlia ‘Platinum Blonde’ resembles doubleflowered echinacea with fuzzy buttercream centers surrounded by bright white petals. Pollinators like bees, butterflies and hoverflies are drawn to dahlias’ vibrant colors and diverse forms, finding sustenance from mid-summer to frost.

In May she plants a mass of dahlias to take her through the fall farmers markets, where she sells flowers from her vintage-style bus that she’s named Bloom. “I love this bus,” Donovan shouts while unloading buckets of freshly cut flower stems and wrapped bouquets. “It keeps me efficient. Farming is figuring out how to make it work, understanding where to put the cover crop and get the succession right for smooth transitions.” It requires tough decisions, she notes, adding that the farm’s outdoor capacity has by no means reached its limits. Next year, she will add more rows and 3,900 more plants.

“This farm makes me appreciate the wisdom of farmers who’ve been doing this for a long time. For me, to finally get a system in place feels good,” she says as the sun begins its descent and the flower fields take on a golden glow.

After a long silence, she smiles, grateful for the day. It takes energy, determination and sensitivity to nature’s flora and fauna. Still, for Donovan, it is all in a day’s work — a day that makes her proud.

Golftown Journal

GOLFTOWN JOURNAL

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A Century In Linville

History in the high country

By Lee Pace

Back in the day when the summertime temperatures in the Sandhills inched into the 90s with humidity to match, and before Willis Carrier’s apparatus for cooling air had become mainstream through the handy and affordable window unit, back when you could fire a niblick or a rifle down the fairways of Pinehurst No. 2 in July with no worry of striking golfer or squirrel, the place to be was Linville.

It was 200 cooling miles northwest from the sandy loam, longleaf pines, white clapboard sidings and green trim of Pinehurst to the rocky outcroppings, rhododendron thickets and grayish buildings made of chestnut bark in Linville.

“Spend the week in Linville and make it a real vacation,” Pinehurst proprietor Richard Tufts advised in a 1942 letter to golfers promoting the Carolinas Amateur Championship, set for Linville Golf Club. “You need the rest, and there is no better place than Linville to take it.”

Pinehurst, Linville and Wilmington were three of the earliest bastions of golf in the state of North Carolina, and the names MacRae, Tufts and Ross are threads that tie them all together. In the late 1800s the MacRae family of Wilmington was instrumental in importing golf from its Scottish homeland, and after Donald MacRae Sr. developed extensive mining interests in the mountains, he believed a recreational menu that included golf would work well at the base of majestic Grandfather Mountain. MacRae and a partner named Sam Kelsey were officers in the Linville Land, Manufacturing and Mining Company, a corporation formed in 1888. Soon the company spent $22,000 to build the Eseeola Inn, which debuted amid the fanfare of bagpipe music and oxen races during a lavish grand opening on July 4, 1892.

“The Eden of the United States, a Fairy Land without a peer,” crooned an early advertisement for Linville and the Eseeola.

Linville originally had a 14-hole course that was redesigned and expanded to 18 — beginning in 1924 and reopening in 1926 — by Donald Ross, another Scotsman ensconced at Pinehurst since 1901 as its head golf professional, and who also made a tidy sum on the side in golf course design. The club and lodge were managed at one time by the Tufts family, who sent some of their staff to Linville to work when Pinehurst closed for the summer.

Wilmington native Isaac Grainger, a leading official in the Rules of Golf and USGA president in 1954-55, remembered his first trip from the coast to Linville in the early 1900s.

“By train from Wilmington to Goldsboro to Hickory to Lenoir and Edgemont, 24 hours, and then a six- or seven-hour drive by horse and buggy over the mountains at night,” he said. “That began a long series of exciting sojourns in the delightful spot which is synonymous with the name MacRae.”

Hugh MacRae II, great-grandson of the Linville founder, remembers seeing Ross as a child of 7 or 8. “He was a fine-looking man with a tweed cap and tweed suit and knickers and long stockings,” MacRae says. “He had a mustache. He was very pleasant and kindly. His Scottish brogue was very thick and difficult for a child to understand. He was very impressive.”

Though Linville is more than 4,000 miles from the western shores of Scotland, there’s more than a passing connection to the homeland of golf. Scots with names like Kirkcaldy served as early professionals. Today you can get a good breakfast or lunch just up the street at the Tartan Restaurant, and the Scottish Highland Games are an annual summertime staple. Sleep in on a Sunday morning at the Eseeola Lodge and you might be roused by the bagpipe music heralding services at the tiny Presbyterian chapel across the street.

“Little has changed at Linville from the early days,” MacRae says. “The first hole and 18th hole look nearly as they did in those days. You can drive back into Linville today and almost turn the clock back to the ’20s and ’30s.”

Today Linville Golf Club and Eseeola Lodge retain much of their Old World charm. There are neat rows of cottages lining the fairways to the first, second and 18th holes, each with the ubiquitous “Linville look” of chestnut bark siding. Grandmother Creek crosses the course a dozen times, and the fifth hole kisses against Lake Kawana, the 7-acre lake built for fishing and recreation.

There are few bunkers on the course (two holes have no sand traps at all), and the greens are small and quite the challenge. The blend of poa annua, bent, clover, blue and other indigenous strains is shaved to lightning-quick speeds in the summer, and the dips and hollows around the putting surfaces make chipping and pitching a mental and physical test of planning the angles and then executing the idea.

“Playing at Linville was always a thrill,” famed amateur Billy Joe Patton once said. “It’s a great course, one of my all-time favorites. Like all Ross designs, it’s a fine test; a wonderful, classic course that everyone can enjoy and appreciate.”

The club held a centennial celebration on June 9, marking the day a century earlier when Hugh MacRae felled the first tree as construction began on the course. Members hit balata balls with hickory shafted clubs from the plaque that rests on the right side of the first fairway.

“The slopes, the streams, with wide skies over all,” the founding MacRae said. “And here, content in pleasant sport, we meet our friends and ‘foes,’ and find them hard to beat.”

The golf course is getting a centennial tweaking at the hands of golf architect Andrew Green, who has become one of the go-to guys in the industry for classic course restorations. Green worked for 15 years in course construction, went off on his own in 2017 and was lauded for unearthing Ross’ architectural features at Oak Hill East in Rochester leading up to the 2023 PGA Championship. In a subsequent project at Scioto Golf Club in Columbus, Ohio, he met director of golf Bill Stines, who moved in 2020 to take the same job at Linville Golf Club.

A year after moving to Linville, Stineswas discussing the issue of the severely canted 10th green with Linville general manager Tom Dale and club officers, and how to solve the problem of too many putts rolling off the front of the green, 40 yards down the fairway.

“I said I would get the best expert in the business, someone who knew design, construction, agronomy and history to take a look,” Stine says. “That would be Andrew Green.”

The club retained Green in the fall of 2021 to start making plans. Working from Ross’ original course plan in 1924, Green identified the features, dimensions and undulations that had been lost over time and could be restored, ever mindful of equipment and maintenance evolution. The work needed to be done in the off-season so as not to close any part of the course during the height of the summer, so Green worked on seven holes from September 2023 to March 2024. The club is going to double-up on the construction crew this fall and knock out 10 more holes this winter. A more extensive restoration of the 17th hole to adjust fairway and green elevations is planned for the 2025-26 offseason.

That will leave the club with a course offering the ideal combination of Ross’ original design tenets paired with modern agronomy and playability in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the conclusion of the great architect’s original work.

“Other places, no matter what age they are, are trying to create history,” Dale says. “That happens on its own. You can’t manufacture it. You just end up with it if you’ve been around long enough.”

Some Kind of Terrific

SOME KIND OF TERRIFIC

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Some Kind of Terrific

The many odysseys of Wiffi Smith

By Bill Case

My compulsion started in the late 1950s, around age 9. I’d spring out of bed and bolt to the front door where our daily newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, awaited. I’d grab the sports section and absorb its contents, especially baseball and golf. When it came to the statistics, no pitcher’s earned run average or touring pro’s also-ran fi nish was too obscure to escape my attention.

I not only studied the results of PGA Tour events, but also those of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Mickey Wright, Betsy Rawls and Marlene Bauer Hagge were among the LPGA stalwarts I became familiar with, all eventually inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

I also recollect Plain Dealer accounts concerning another LPGA player of that era, Wiffi Smith, whose tournament successes from 1957-1960 rivaled those of her legendary contemporaries. She won eight LPGA tournaments before turning 24 — the same number Jack Nicklaus would win on the PGA Tour by that age though, in fairness, Jack’s victories included three major championships. I remember photos of a smiling, and often victorious, Smith. Sturdily built with curly auburn hair, Wiffi ’s friendly freckled face stuck in my memory bank.

Mentions of Smith abruptly disappeared from the sports pages around 1960. She was little more than a distant memory when I began research for a story involving the Moore County Hounds. In the process of delving into the archives of The Pilot, the name Wiffi Smith kept popping up in stories from 1963 to 1981.

A 1976 Pilot story confi rmed the woman in question was golf’s, and my own, missing Wiffi . “Behind the continuing reputation of the Moore County Hounds,” wrote Mildred Allen, “is a champion among champions — Wiffi Smith, who after winning her place in the golfi ng world before permanently damaging her left hand in a minor accident in 1959, found a second love when Mrs. Ginnie Moss invited her to manage the kennels and become Second Whip for MCH.”

Allen’s piece described Smith’s myriad duties at Mile-Away Farm, MCH’s home. Arriving at daybreak, she pitched hay, mucked stalls, personally trained the hounds and, once hunting season was underway, saw to it (as whipper-in) that the hounds, when afield, remembered “what Wiffi Smith . . . has taught them.” Wiffi was quoted as saying, in training the hounds, “Love is basic to discipline. They’ve got to love you enough to do what you ask of them or demand of them.”

Another Pilot article, this time from 1981, reported that Smith was leaving her position as “kennel huntsman” at MCH and returning “to her first love — golf.” She would be offering private lessons and “three-day intensive golfing seminars.” It was not an entirely new gig for Smith. During her tenure at MCH, she moonlighted at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club, giving lessons to women in Peggy Kirk Bell’s Golfaris.

Smith’s segue from championship golfer to foxhunting maven and back to golf teacher had the makings of a fine story, but she was long gone from Moore County. An internet search yielded a 2005 blurb identifying Smith as a golf instructor in Darrington, Washington. Efforts to locate her there were fruitless. Moreover, the commonness of her given name, Margaret C. Smith, rendered directory searches a hopeless endeavor.

Finally, a circuitous route involving the MCH’s current whipper-in, Mel Wyatt — who said Smith is fondly remembered in MCH circles —and a veteran MCH member, Leonard Short, produced a telephone number in Edgewood, New Mexico, where the 87-year-old now resides with her younger brother, Latimer Smith Jr., and his wife.

In several phone conversations, Smith engagingly reminisced about her life, a mostly fun-loving and joyous ride, from her perspective. “But what about the injury to your hand that derailed what could have been a Hall of Fame golf career?” I asked. “That can’t be a happy memory.”

“I wasn’t happy about it,” Smith said, “but it led to great times in Southern Pines with the hounds, Pappy and Ginnie Moss, and the Bell family. It was a wonderful time to be in Southern Pines. When things happened in my life that sent me in a different direction, it has led to something wonderful.”

Smith’s attitude regarding life’s curveballs is a trait shared with her mother. Mary Decker Smith was a brilliant woman of many talents — architect, librarian, artist, naval navigator and sportswoman. While married to Latimer Smith Sr., and living in Redlands, California, she was employed as a librarian at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Later, she would serve her country in seemingly more clandestine employments in Mexico, England and Spain. Wiffi is uncertain as to her mother’s precise role in these foreign assignments but suspects her stint in Mexico involved keeping tabs on former Third Reich military officers who hurriedly relocated to that country in the aftermath of World War II.

This international woman of mystery was a vagabond whose adventurous avocations took her far from home. While Latimer Sr., employed as a designer of airplane parts, stayed behind at the couple’s home in Redlands, Mary pursued a special interest in ancient Central and South American civilizations, visiting ruins accompanied by archaeologically minded friends who shared the same passion. During a 1936 excursion to a remote village, Mary encountered a tribal healer who, after poking her midsection, exclaimed “Wiffi!” which, in the tribe’s dialect, meant “something is coming.” The healer proved prescient. That “something” was Margaret C. Smith (aka “Wiffi”), who arrived that September.

Latimer and Mary’s marriage ended in divorce when Wiffi was 11. Mary and the children left Redlands and moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, where the pre-teen Wiffi learned Spanish in short order. “At one time, I was fluent in three languages (English, Spanish and French). Now I can’t speak any of them,” she says with a chuckle.

The young Smith relished riding horses, playing piano and taking ballet. She excelled in all sports, and dreamed of emulating the accomplishments of Babe Didrickson Zaharias, one of the greatest female athletes in history. She took up tennis, but it proved frustrating finding competition in Guadalajara. Mary suggested Wiffi try her hand at golf, a game she could always play by herself. Moreover, golf aptitude was in the family genes. Latimer Sr. had once entertained the notion of turning professional. After

Mary joined the Guadalajara Country Club, Wiffi, by then 14, took up the game in earnest.

Within a year she was shooting close to par. She wasn’t just good; she was long. Generating power from her solid 5-foot, 6-inch, 160-pound frame, Wiffi could smash her driver 265 yards. At 16, she entered the 1953 Mexican Women’s Amateur and won going away, routing her opponent, Luz de Lourdes, 7 and 6 in the finals. Later that summer, she won low amateur laurels at the World Championship of Golf in Chicago, where she met her idol Zaharias, then made a major splash by reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur.

Despite this early success, Smith’s short game, by her own admission, lacked finesse. To address this deficiency, she took lessons from renowned teacher and two-time PGA champion Paul Runyan in Pasadena. “He told me to hit some pitch shots to the right side of the green, and make them bounce left toward the pin, and vice-versa,” recalls Smith. “I couldn’t make my pitches bounce the way he wanted so I said, ‘Let me watch you.’” After Runyan hit a few shots, all of which bounced in the desired direction, Smith knew what she needed to do. Mimicking the Hall of Famer’s technique, she quickly had the ball bouncing as requested. “He didn’t need to tell me how to do it, I just did it.”

Smith played several important amateur tournaments in the first quarter of 1954, including Pinehurst’s North & South Championship, but her golf development slowed when, along with her mother and brother, she moved to a small cottage in the village of Wincham, England. There were few opportunities to play competitively, but Smith kept her game in shape at nearby Windwhistle Golf Club, a modest nine-hole layout where sheep grazed on the course. Her brother shagged her practice balls.

While Windwhistle was not a memorable test of golf, it did possess scenic beauty. “The course was high up overlooking the countryside. I watched foxhunts down below,” remembers Smith. “I could see the fox, the hounds and the horses, all in full flight.” It would be a harbinger of things to come. Smith did, in fact, enter the Women’s British Amateur in July 1954 and played creditably, winning two matches before bowing to Canadian finalist Marlene Stewart.

Mary instructed her daughter to choose either golf or college. She could afford to subsidize one or the other, but not both. Smith had arrived at a fork in the road. Gaining admission to college appeared an iffy proposition, since Wiffi had not stayed in one place long enough to earn a high school diploma. Motivated by her desire to win the U.S. Junior Girls Championship — the 1954 championship would be her final opportunity to compete in it — she chose golf.

After sailing to America, the teenager blew away the field. Golf World reported that Wiffi “waltzed through four matches, five or more up in each of them.” The magazine labeled her “the greatest traveler among the teenage starlets,” given the fact that in the previous year alone, she had “moved from her home in Guadalajara, Mexico, through Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, the British Isles and sundry points west, amazing all with her shot-making.”

Among those Smith impressed was Peggy Kirk Bell, who along with husband Warren “Bullet” Bell, the Cosgrove family and Julius Boros, had recently purchased the Pine Needles golf course with the objective of transforming it into a resort property. Peggy Bell provided a helping hand to many talented female golfers, and Smith was among the first beneficiaries. The Bells hired her to work in the office, where her duties left ample time to play with guests and work on her game.

During one practice session at Pine Needles in March 1955, Smith experienced a golfing epiphany that astounds her to this day. “I was hitting 6-iron shots getting ready for the North & South at Pinehurst, when something magical came over me.” Suddenly, it seemed impossible to mishit a shot. “I didn’t exist anymore,” she said. “Somebody else was hitting the ball. It was perfect. Today, they would call it the zone.”

The euphoria carried over to the North & South. Smith played beautifully throughout, beating U.S. Amateur champion Barbara Romack in the semifinal, then cruising to a 3 and 2 victory over Pat Lesser in the championship match. The victory cemented Smith’s status as a top amateur and resulted in her selection to the 1956 United States Curtis Cup team.

The Bells were proud of their 18-year-old protégé and protective of her. They became a second family for the young woman. When the Holden family, owners of the St. Clair Inn in Michigan, hired the Bells to manage their property during the summer of 1955, they brought Smith with them to work in the inn’s office.

During that summer Smith also grew close to the Holden family and babysat for Bob Holden’s children. “Bob was a wonderful man,” she reflects. “His whole family took me in and helped me financially and encouraged me with all my endeavors. I learned to dance in their kitchen.” St. Clair became her new home. Later, when the Holdens sold the inn and built a hotel property in Orange, Texas, Smith moved to the Lone Star State with them.

Playing in the ’56 Curtis Cup proved a godsend. Though the American side was defeated by Great Britain and Ireland at Prince’s Golf Club in County Kent, England, Smith won both of her matches, including a 9 and 8 beatdown of singles opponent Philomena Garvey. The following week she crossed the English Channel to play in the French Amateur and won that, too. Smith capped off her remarkable three-week run by capturing the British Women’s Open Amateur at Sunningdale, dusting her finals opponent Mary Patton Janssen 8 and 7.

After returning to the States, Smith entered the Trans-Mississippi Amateur held in October at Monterey Peninsula Country Club in Pebble Beach. She won again in lopsided fashion. The highlight for Smith was having her father by her side throughout the tournament. “I loved my dad, but we didn’t get to see each other much,” she says today. “Having him see me win at Monterey meant a lot.”

But for Smith, the memory of this reunion would turn bittersweet. After his lengthy drive home, Latimer Sr. felt ill. The following morning, the 47 year-old was found dead, the victim of an enlarged heart.

The combination of amateur successes and her dad’s death caused Smith, then 20, to consider turning pro and joining the ranks of LPGA Tour players. She announced her intention to leave the amateur ranks and play the LPGA’s 1957 tour schedule. The Bells hooked Smith up with Spalding’s staff of touring pros. “That got me balls, clubs, bags, tees, shag bags and 3,000 bucks,” says Smith.

While lodging with the Bells during the holiday season, Wiffi prepared for life on tour. A priority was finding a car to drive to the first event, the Sea Island Open in Georgia. She became smitten with an ancient auto on display at the local Ford dealership — a 1928 Model A Ford. Told the car was privately owned and not for sale, Smith refused to take no for an answer. She tracked down the flivver’s owner while he was playing a round of golf at Pinehurst No. 3 and bought the auto for $1,000 before he could add up his scorecard.

On the 400-mile drive to Sea Island, the Model A sputtered to a stop in Sumter, South Carolina. The needed distributor parts to repair the antique couldn’t be found, but a resourceful mechanic managed to handcraft a fix for $17. Smith was back on the road. If trusting the roadworthiness of a 30-year-old auto seemed questionable, the incident did gain Smith (and the LPGA) a splash of publicity in Golf World and other publications. It didn’t hurt that she finished fifth in her debut.

Smith was the only rookie to win on tour in ’57, at both the Dallas Open and the United Volunteer Services Open in San Francisco. And she came close to winning three LPGA major events, finishing second to Patty Berg in the Western Open, second again at the LPGA Championship (won by Louise Suggs) and fourth in the Titleholders Championship (Patty Berg won again) at Augusta Country Club.

While it’s not unheard of for tour pros of either sex to begrudge the success of a rookie, most of Smith’s contemporaries were charmed by her personality and appreciated her go-for-broke style. “She was something you couldn’t imagine,” recalled Polly Riley. “She’d take chances with shots. We’d think, what on earth? But she’d pull them off. It was almost as if she wanted to see how many situations she could escape from. She was something wonderful.”

Smith’s devil-may-care antics off the course brought smiles to her peers and the public alike. “We’d look up and she’d be walking on her hands, or trotting along on someone’s horse, or at a party sliding down a banister,” said LPGA founding member Betty Jameson. “She was everyone’s young hope, but in the form of a mischievous angel.”

In 1958 Smith captured her third LPGA title at the Peach Blossom Open at Spartanburg Country Club in South Carolina in addition to a pair of top seven finishes in majors. She switched to a more conventional automobile — a Volkswagen bus — but that choice proved a bit quirky, too, when she outfitted it with a piano. She could also play the violin and cello. Another Smith gambit involved the acquisition of Flashy Mike, a parade horse she trailered with her on tour. When Wiffi participated in pre-tournament clinics, she would ride up to the tee on Flashy Mike to the delight of the spectators.

Eventually, the hauling of and caring for Flashy Mike became a distraction, and Wiffi needed a stable for her horse. Peggy Kirk Bell suggested her friends, the Mosses, might be willing to take care of the horse at their Mile-Away Farm outside Southern Pines. Ginnie Moss was reluctant to house a parade horse with her foxhunters but, as a favor to Peggy, acquiesced. When not on tour, Smith would frequent the barn at Mile-Away, attending to Flashy Mike and visiting the Mosses. She also befriended numerous MCH members. Smith grew to love the Sandhills horse country, and with recently inherited family money, purchased 82 acres of what Golf World described as “wild tree-covered land,” outside Vass. She envisioned building a cabin and stable on the remote property.

Country life would have to wait because Smith’s golf career was in full swing. Her 1959 LPGA season got off to a rousing start. She won the Sunshine Women’s Open in February, and a month later led the coveted Titleholders’ championship in Augusta with one round to play. But a spontaneous whim would prove costly. Following the third round, Smith spotted a caddie’s motor bike in the Augusta Country Club’s parking lot. She asked if she could take it for a spin. “Sure,” the caddie replied, “but be careful because the brakes work the opposite of a motorcycle.” Once in motion, Smith couldn’t stop. She ran into the back of a car and was thrown over the vehicle’s hood, sustaining a severe injury to her left wrist.

The nagging pain caused Smith to struggle in the final round and she tumbled to third place with a closing 77. Smith continued on tour, despite increased difficulty in setting her wrist at the top of her swing, and generally managed good finishes. In April, she won again at Spartanburg. By then the tournament had been renamed The Betsy Rawls Open.

At the end of ’59, Smith underwent surgery for her wrist in California, but it was still hurting as she embarked on her 1960 LPGA season. Adjusting her grip to alleviate the discomfort, Smith won the Royal Crown Open in March at Columbus, Georgia. Its top prize of $1,330 was the largest purse she would win on tour. In May, she won again at Spartanburg. Remarking on her trifecta, Smith said, “I think I’ll take this course home and put it in my backyard.”

In July, Smith fashioned two good finishes in major events, a fifth place in the LPGA Championship and sixth in the U.S. Women’s Open. In August, she won her eighth and final event on tour, the Waterloo Open, but her wrist was getting worse, not better. After she shot a first round 79 in late September at Memphis, the nagging injury forced her to withdraw from the tournament.

Her announcement one week later was a jaw-dropper. Smith said her hand issues would prevent her from playing competitively “for at least two years” and that she was leaving the tour. “Under these conditions, I can’t play my best and I want an education anyway,” said Smith. “Golf is getting to be hard work, and I love it too much to allow it to affect me in that way.”

Then a further shocker. “I have written to the USGA applying for amateur status. Maybe someday, I’ll be able to play in the national amateur.”

Even as Smith decided to retain her professional status, her wrist worsened. “I couldn’t lift a piece of paper,” she says. Despite two surgeries, it was never the same. Though the wrist eventually improved enough for Smith to play good golf, she was unable to regain the power that allowed her to play great golf. One final sentimental appearance in Spartanburg in 1964 was her last LPGA tournament.

Off the course, Smith pursued her education at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, able to enroll despite her lack of a high school diploma. She studied at WNMU for three years, but left school short of the requirements for graduating. “I got all upset with a boyfriend and a couple of teachers,” she says.

Hoping to land a position at Pine Needles, she reached out to Peggy Kirk Bell in June of 1963. There weren’t any jobs available, but Bell suggested Smith contact the Mosses at MCH. “They said, ‘Come on over. Work in the barn.’ Eventually, they thought I could feed and take care of the hounds,” Smith recalls. She adapted to the job with relative ease. “One of the hardest things was learning each individual hound’s name.”

Though Smith had not previously engaged in foxhunting, the Mosses knew an excellent rider when they saw one. When she was young Smith rode frequently on her cousins’ 10,000-acre ranch in New Mexico. Soon, she advanced up the MCH staff’s pecking order to be the hunt’s second whipper-in. Riding to the hounds and keeping the canines on task proved to be an excellent outlet for Smith’s sporting side.

There’s still a tree on the Walthour-Moss Foundation known simply as “Wiffi’s Tree,” the scene of an accident involving her. “During hunts on the foundation, I kept running into branches of this tree with my hat,” says Smith. “I decided to cut it down.” Perched on the back of a truck, she sawed off an offending limb but, when it fell, it hit the side of the truck and Wiffi, too. She managed to heave the whirring chainsaw away from her body but the falling branch broke her wrist — the left one, of course.

With the assistance of her co-workers and milled floorboards from trees on the Moss property, Smith built her dream cabin on her 82-acre parcel. Her friends relished their visits to the pastoral retreat she called Faraway. “They’d get so relaxed, they’d all fall asleep,” she says.

And the Bells still called on Smith to help out at Pine Needles, sometimes at the oddest of hours. “I remember Peggy calling me at 2 a.m. and pleading with me to show up at 8 a.m. the next morning to help with a group,” says Wiffi. “I told her I couldn’t because of having to do my morning chores at the farm. She said, ‘Can’t you do your chores earlier?’”

Smith continued in her roles at Mile-Away and with the hunt through the 1970s. After Pappy Moss died in 1976, wife Ginnie took over his role as MCH’s Huntsman. Within a few years, Mrs. Moss decided to leave that post and thus MCH looked for a new “Huntsman” to replace her. Smith hoped she would be considered for the position, but MCH instead chose a veteran professional who personally took charge of kennel operations, thus replacing Wiffi. Though she continued to perform other farm-related work for Mrs. Moss at Mile-Away, Smith’s reduced workload enabled her to devote more time teaching at Pine Needles alongside other noted golf instructors including Sally Austin and Ellen Griffin. Wiffi made teaching visits at Ben Sutton’s Golf School in Ruskin, Florida, and also served as a golf teacher at St. Mary’s school in Raleigh.

Then, in 1987, Smith encountered a group of visiting women golfers from Port Townsend, Washington, a small village on a peninsula jutting out into the Pacific Ocean. The more the women raved about Port Townsend, the more Smith became intrigued. “I had mountains and the Pacific coast on my mind,” she says.

Smith and a friend decided to check out Port Townsend but instead found themselves in Darrington, Washington — an inland, rural locale, and hardly a golf hotspot. There was one nine-hole course. Smith was enamored with Darrington’s ambience, however, and elected to move there. She gave lessons at the local driving range and became a traveling instructor at various Penny Zavichas Golf Schools throughout the West. She lived in Darrington until her move to Albuquerque to join her brother and his wife.

One cannot help but wonder what Smith might have achieved in golf absent her injury. “She was going to be a fantastic player,” said Hall of Famer Marilyn Smith. Peggy Kirk Bell said Wiffi “had one of the greatest golf swings and was longer than Mickey Wright.” Despite her extroverted, playful personality, Smith retreated from public view, happily living in remote areas, surrounded by pastoral beauty.

Having heard much about her cabin in Vass, I wanted to see it for myself but the property didn’t have a street address when Smith owned it. Frustrated in my efforts to locate it on my own, I called Smith from my car while driving slowly west on Youngs Road. I read off the names of the intersecting roads.

“That’s it. Turn left!” she finally urged.

I made my way to the front door of a log home where I was greeted by the owner, Bonnie Caie. “Did this cabin once belong to Wiffi Smith?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, and for the 25 years we’ve owned this place I’ve always hoped she might stop by and tell us about her time here,” said Caie.

“Well, I’ve got Wiffi right here on the phone. Talk to her.”

The two women chatted until my cellphone nearly ran out of juice. As they talked, I gazed around the property, mesmerized by the shimmering pond, the well-tended paddock, and towering pines. It was clear what a wonderful, restful retreat Wiffi had built. When later I mentioned this to her, she asked me, “Did you fall asleep?”

PinePitch September 2024

PINEPITCH

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Where There Are Sparks…

The Country Bookshop welcomes bestselling author Nicholas Sparks to discuss his latest novel, Counting Miracles, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 30, at Lee Auditorium, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Tanner Hughes, an Army Ranger, is the proverbial rolling stone: happiest when off on his next adventure, zero desire to settle down. But when his grandmother passes away, her last words to him are find where you belong. She also drops a bombshell, telling him the name of the father he never knew — and where to find him. You can learn the rest of the story by going to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Maybe buy the book, too?

Wildflowers of the Sandhills

Sponsored by the Council of Gardens and the Sandhills Horticultural Society, Bruce A. Sorrie, the author of Wildfl owers of the Sandhills Region, will talk about the wildflowers, shrubs and vines in their natural Sandhills habitats in a free event Friday, Sept. 13, at 1 p.m. in the Burlingame Room of the Ball Visitor’s Center, Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, at Sandhills Community College, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. For additional information and to register go to www.sandhills.edu/horticultural-gardens/upcoming-events.html.

They’ll Huff and They’ll Puff

Take a tour of the golden age of jazz with Peter Lamb and the Wolves, who bring the spirit of classic cinema to life on Sunday, Sept. 15, at the Fair Barn, 200 Beulah Hill Road S., Pinehurst. The sultry sounds of a saxophone, the soft glow of candlelight and the inviting expanse of a dance fl oor promise an evening of nostalgia and entertainment, all in support of the Linden Lodge Foundation. Call (910) 365-9890 to reserve your table of six or more or go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Once Around the Solar System

Elementary-aged kiddos and their caregivers can listen to Jon Caruthers, NASA’s Solar System Ambassador, give his talk “Robots in Space!” at the Southern Pines Public Library 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, on Sunday, Sept. 8 from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. For more information on this STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art and math — lecture call (910) 692-8235 or contact kbroughey@sppl.net

Magic in Pairs

Local artists Pat McBride and Jenay Jarvis are co-hosts of an exhibit at the Campbell House Gallery, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, titled “Strange Magic.” The exhibit of their work opens with a reception and chance to meet and speak with the artists on Sept. 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. The showing concludes on Sept. 26. For more information call (910) 692-2787 or go to www.mooreart.org/upcoming-art-exhibits.

 

It’s Baaaack!

Housed in the historic 1823 cabin at 15 Azalea Road smack in the middle of the village of Pinehurst, the Sandhills Woman’s Exchange reopens for the fall season on Wednesday, Sept. 4. Hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, with lunches served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The gift shop will be stocked with new and unusual items for a bit of early Christmas shopping. For more information call (910) 295-4677 or go to www.sandhillswe.org.

 

Take a Chance on Me

Mamma Mia, the Swedish band ARRIVAL performs an ABBA tribute — see what we did with the all-caps? — at BPAC’s (yeah, OK, that’s all-caps, too. And so is OK. Oh, dear.) Owen’s Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst, on Tuesday, Sept. 10. Knowing me and knowing you, tickets and information can be had at www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Flutter Up, Buttercup

Celebrate butterflies and other pollinators with a day of family fun at the Flutterby Festival at the Village Arboretum, 375 Magnolia Road, Pinehurst, on Saturday, Sept. 28, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be live music, activities and food, plus lots of learning about monarch butterflies, birds and insects. Programs include an opportunity to interact with and feed hundreds of newly emerged monarchs in the Magical Monarch Tents. For information go to www.vopnc.org or www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Jocularity, Jocularity

Join the “Entitled Housewife,” Becky Robinson, for a comedy special at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst, from 7 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 6. Robinson’s explosively unique character antics and viral videos have racked up millions of views and fans across social media. For information and ticketing go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.