Crossroads

Up

The wonder that’s above

By Jenna Biter

I haven’t studied Latin, so I often have to consult the internet gods when it comes to etymology. When I thought about the word equinox and contemplated its roots, I looked to Google, and it told me that the word derives from the Latin for equal and night, which makes sense because the equinox occurs biannually when the sun crosses the celestial equator, and day and night are nearly equal in length. In the spring this happens around March 20 and, in the fall, Sept. 22.

This year the vernal equinox takes place on the eve of March 20 at 11:50 p.m. I did not know that off the top of my head; I only started researching the equinox when I couldn’t recall why it’s cold in the winter and hot in the summer. I looked that up, things spiraled and, four hours later, I’m onto the equinox, Lagrange points and protoplanetary disks. Most of what I learned I’ve now forgotten, but, forgive my tangential nature — it’s March, and the spring equinox is near. What a good reason to pause and look up.

I’ve long been fascinated by the cosmos but, until recently, only in a passive way. (I’ve mistaken Orion’s lower half for the Little Dipper my entire life, so I couldn’t have been that interested.) Still, my husband, Drew, and I drove 56 miles through the towering cacti of Saguaro National Park and the open ranges of the Tohono O’odham Reservation up 6,880 feet to participate in the dark sky discovery program at Kitt Peak National Observatory last December.

When we arrived at the peak, it was a little after 4 p.m. and only 30 degrees outside. We parked our Toyota rental and trotted toward the visitor’s center with beanies, neck warmers and an assortment of sweatshirts and coats piled high in our arms. After an hour of check-ins, tour guide introductions, an average turkey sandwich and a documentary I don’t quite remember, it was time to watch the sunset.

Escorted by one of the guides — a shorter woman with dark hair and fuchsia ski pants, Tanya, I think her name was — we weaved through the observatories that dotted the mountain, including one flanked by a garden flamingo. The mascot was a nod to the subtropical universities from which its scientists hailed. Not that the astronomers were physically in the dome. Professional astronomers watch the skies from the comfort of heated offices far away . . . unlike us.

A gap appeared between observatories, and we stopped. The sun, massive on the horizon, was about to dip out of sight and take with it the day. Meanwhile, Tanya explained the nature of light waves and why sunsets are mostly red. An audience member volunteered for a demonstration, and Tanya’s voice reached high and then low as she over enthused about the topic. She was like a lone actress playing all of the characters in a children’s puppet show.

The sun vanished, and we hurried down the hill toward a quieter guide, a middle-aged man of taller stature. He handed us and our six companions red flashlights to navigate the darkened slopes that led to our designated observatory. “No headlights, no phones, no white light of any kind,” he lectured. “It pollutes the viewing experience and scientific results.” (Of course, I was confused when he later shot a commercial grade laser pointer thousands of feet into the sky to circle constellations and planets. When asked about it, he said, “No one has complained.”)

After a five-minute walk, we arrived at our two-story observatory. The top floor housed the telescope and sat directly under the metal dome with a section that rolled back to reveal the night sky; it was unheated. Like white light, heat waves interfere with viewing. The bottom floor was unimpressive (I can’t remember exactly how it looked), but it was lit with red café lights and had a space heater for those who needed to escape the chill of the upper level. Drew and I refused to seek reprieve downstairs — partly because we’re competitive and, in unspoken agreement, wanted to “beat” the other viewers by withstanding the cold but, mostly, because we were mesmerized. I stole Drew’s neck warmer, wrapped it around my right foot and shoved it back into my sneaker. I wouldn’t leave the view from the dome.

Wide and untainted by manmade light, the weight of the heavens pressed down on us with all of its vastness. The stars were a net of twinkling lights cast into the black sea of deep space with the silvery mist of the Milky Way a swordfish tangled in its strands. I tilted my head back, and my lips parted in awe. The telescope purred on and located the first celestial object our guide wanted us to see, Venus. Then, it swung to Cygnus the Swan and binary stars that orbit one another and the Pleiades, an open cluster of stars that are gravitationally bound in Taurus the Bull.

At times, I struggled with the eyepiece — it was more difficult to use than I thought it would be — but Drew had a knack for it, and he helped me reposition so I wouldn’t miss a single sight. We saw the Andromeda galaxy, the farthest celestial body that can be seen without a telescope, Cassiopeia and 10 or 15 other objects before our tour of the universe neared its end.

With only time enough left for one more object, we studied Orion the Hunter. His right shoulder was flickering and warm, a dying star named Betelgeuse. It resembled a candle about to burn out, only it burns trillions of light years away. Finally, we shifted our eyes to Orion’s Nebula, a stellar nursery, in the middle of his sword. Stars being born into the universe with existences to unfold. I felt so small, so wonderfully small, staring up at the lives of titans. The birth and death of the cosmos, I thought, what a good reason to pause and look up.  PS

Jenna Biter is a fashion designer, entrepreneur and military wife in the Sandhills. She can be reached at jenna.l.knouse@gmail.com.

Crossroads

Morning Oats

A small connection that feeds the soul

By Claudia Watson

It’s an icebound January, and as the morning light leaks through the shutters, I dig in under the down comforter for a few more minutes of warmth as my dog Tilly jumps up for her tummy rub. The thought of breakfast offers motivation to greet the spun-gold dawn.

Tilly’s at the kitchen door watching as the deer meander down the still dark tree line, and in a flash she’s out the door to give them chase. Minutes later, a robust call of “Let’s eat!” and she’s back, tail wagging and at her bowl, while I start the kettle and find the oatmeal pot.

As I warm the water, I can still hear his voice, “Did you put a pinch of salt in the water?”

“No,” I say out loud, barely awake and staring into the pot. “That’s an old wives’ tale. It doesn’t make the water boil any faster.”

“No, babe, but it makes it taste better, and that’s why it’s on the recipe,” the voice insists. I add the pinch of salt to end the too-early tutoring moment.

“A recipe, really?” I playfully ask.

This instruction is from a man. Say no more — and a man who never read a recipe in his life but went on a health kick and became the connoisseur of oatmeal. I add some milk to the heated water and hurriedly dump in the oats.

“Hey, let me take over before you mess it up,” he says, gentling nudging me from the stovetop. “I brought the paper in, so go read. I’ll bring breakfast to you.”

He monitors that darn pot of simmering oats, adjusting the heat and adding a bit more milk or water, as needed. Then, he chops half a ripe banana and sets it aside along with a handful of chopped walnuts. The other portion of banana gets a healthy dollop of peanut butter (a la Elvis) that he happily shares with Tilly. Once they are done, the reserved chopped plain banana and walnuts are added to the creamy oatmeal and gently stirred in.

The first few times he made it I was opposed to the banana flavor, let alone the nuts. As an oatmeal purist, a sprinkle of cinnamon and a drizzle of maple syrup was enough for me, but never a banana! In time, though, I began to enjoy his oats as much as the ritual — it was a simple pleasure of life.

One winter’s day he made his regular weekly trip to pick up goods for a local restaurant and stopped at the historic Old Guilford Mill to get stone-ground grits, a staple of any true Southern breakfast —  unless, of course, you eat oatmeal.

When he returned home and unpacked our supply of grits and flour from the brown paper bag, he held out a bundle wrapped in newspaper. “Here, I got this for you,” he said with a sweet smile.

I carefully unwrapped it to find a hand-turned footed earthenware bowl with the top half glazed in sapphire blue.

“I thought it would be good for your morning oats and it’s a nice blue. You love blue,” he grinned. “I asked the store manager for another, but there was only one left.”

“It’s beautiful, thanks,” I said as I ran my fingers around the bowl’s rustic surface, admiring it and putting it in the dish cupboard.

The next morning he made his banana-infused oatmeal, but this time he made me laugh as he arrived tableside with a kitchen towel draped over his arm, presenting the steaming bowl of oats in the new bowl with a waiter’s grand flourish and followed by the neatly folded newspaper placed just so on the table.

As we finished breakfast, to my annoyance, he started rumbling around in the cupboard. “Hope you don’t mind, but I’m making a spot in here for this bowl,” he said, placing it on a shelf by itself. “Take care of this, babe. Wash it by hand and don’t let anyone else use it. It’s just for you.”

“Will do, babe,” I said, giving him a quick kiss and dashing off for my morning walk with a happy heart.

This morning, my spoon scrapes the last of the oatmeal that clings to ridges of the blue bowl. The sound seems oddly loud and unfamiliar, making me look up to see the sunrise as Tilly rests in her bed by the door. Then I remember the long-ago winter mornings when he asked, “Did you put a pinch of salt in the water?” and Tilly waited for her slab of banana a la Elvis, a small connection that feeds my heart today.  PS

Claudia Watson is a longtime contributor to PineStraw and The Pilot who finds the joy in each day.

CrossRoads

The Dread, Stage Left

Taking a leap into the great unknown

By Joyce Reehling

It was night number 210, a long run for most shows, and there she stood just off the stage waiting for the curtain to go up.

June Talley was used to this moment, a moment just off to the side when her second reality would kick in — she would spend the next two hours going through a piece of a life that must, at the same time, seem unknown and yet highly rehearsed. A life in the theater was both the real and the staged real.

But this night she was feeling that awful sense of doom, frozen in doubt and fear. The Dread was upon her.

Why now? Why, when I know this woman, this play, better than I know myself? This was not the first time that June tried to untie this knot.

She once feared that the desire to run from this fright, run from the theater and hide in some dark spot, belonged only to her. She talked about it with Danny Stone, her stage husband, only to discover it had happened to him — and to all of the actors she knew. She was not alone.

She laughed one night at dinner after the theater while gathered around a table at Joe Allen’s — the longtime theater bar and home-away-from-home for many actors. They all shared stories of this fright and wondered what would happen if one night, at about 7:59 p.m., The Dread hit each and every actor at the same time. What if they all turned and gave in to the fear and walked away? Thousands of people sitting in dark theaters expecting actors to live out the play but when the curtain went up no one, not a single person, could walk on stage?

Samuel Beckett would love it. The producers would sue and Law & Order would have a new case trying to puzzle out if this was breach of contract or a mystical moment of The Dread claiming all of them, making them all powerless to go on.

The laughter at the table that night was the comrade-in-arms, all-in-the-same-foxhole-together kind of laugh — a sound that was playful but bordered on real fright. Everyone knew what The Dread felt like and how you could sense yourself almost turning to walk away, but then the lights went brighter and the pull of honor kept you there. You somehow went into the awful unknown.

But June did not scare easily, and this Dread had visited her before.

It’s that dark thing that tells you that so far you have been lucky, no one had figured out that you can’t act, that you might forget not one line but ALL your lines. The Dread whispers “fraud” and “imposter” as you speak every line.

The Dread grabbed hold of Sir Laurence Olivier so tightly that for years the poor man performed not because he wanted to but because had he not done so it would have tanked his beloved National Theatre. He could not, would not, make eye contact with any actor, and he had the stage manager tell each new member of the cast that they “must never, at any point, speak directly to him. They must look to one side or the other and never make eye contact.” It may have abated over the years, or maybe it never really left the lord of the theater. He was handsome, famous and lauded and still The Dread found him, so why not June in this slight but funny comedy?

“Five minutes to curtain” is the call to arms for actors, and so it was that June began her walk down the steel stairs from her solo dressing room to the stage level. The prop master, Jim, handed her the book she carried on stage.

“So how’s Tom?” he asked. Tom was her real husband, the one at home.

“Oh, you know, still hates the Yankees and loves the Cubs — what can I say?”

Jim laughed and shook his head; he was a Mets guy.

June glided to her spot, where she waited to enter. She was fine right up to the book and the question from Jim, and then The Dread appeared just to her left. He began to whisper, “You can’t do this. You never could and everyone knows it. You are a fool to go out and fail in front of 750 people. Before you are even home the Times will have it splashed all over tomorrow’s paper: ‘June Talley crashes and burns in front of packed Saturday night crowd — never to work again.’”

A laugh froze in her throat, and she thought, for one split second, that it was all funny, but a chill went up her right side and straight to her heart and worse still, into her brain. The demon was a dark and deepening shadow she felt more than she could see. She silently shouted: “Get out of my head and my theater. Leave me alone.” She meant it, but The Dread paid no heed.

“Places for Act I, ladies and gentleman, places.”

The murmur in the house began to die down as the lights shifted and the curtain began a slow pull up to reveal the lovely drawing room of the play, the sound of a dog barking off in the distance, and the light on the set told us all that it was late spring with a touch of summer in the air. The lovely room was filled with fresh cut flowers and had the promise of a comedic evening.

She walked to the window, set the book on the ledge as she had done for 210 other nights, gently pulled up the window, breathing in the evening air.

She turned and said, “If tonight does not get them to fall in love, nothing will.” And then came the split second when she could not, for the life of her, remember what came next. She could see Danny just off stage and she looked at him with panic in her eyes.

“Whatever am I doing here? What should I be doing to make this go well?” she ad-libbed while looking into the wings. Danny knew what was happening, so on he came, making up a few lines to help get her on track, then off they went — as rehearsed — as they had done for 210 other shows.

“Good God,” she said at the intermission as she and Danny bolted up the stairs to change for Act II, “do you think anyone noticed?”

“Darling, this poor comedy is hung together so loosely that no one would notice if an elephant took to the stage . . . thank God for genius comedic skill or this thing would have closed weeks ago.” They both laughed at how untrue that was. It was a fine comedy and they both were very good in it, but it was lovely of him to obscure the scary feeling of not remembering.

The curtain came down that night to a standing ovation, as it did nightly, whether they deserved it or not — such is the Broadway audience.

June began reading the script nightly before “five minutes” was called, even though she knew every word. The Dread had found its way into the theater and the only defense was preparedness and laughter. Thank God for Danny, thank God for the rest of the cast and crew who made light of it and then lived in fear that they would be next.

As The Dread headed for another theater he paused to tip his hat because she had not broken down and because Danny had been a brick.

The next night someone in Phantom of the Opera forgot the first verse to “Music of the Night” and everyone in June’s show knew he had moved on. The cast laughed at the telling of the ad-libbed lyrics that night as actors gathered at Joe Allen’s bar after all the shows let out. The guy who played The Count told the story with everyone falling about at his impersonation and joking about it all.

No one knows better than an actor how a good laugh can dispel fear and nerves. Should you be in the theater on a night someone seems to be a bit off, or starts stumbling over lines, look just off stage, at the edge of the curtain. You may see a shadow looming, then turning to leave because his work there is done.  PS

Joyce Reehling is a 45-year veteran of the New York stage both on and off Broadway. She is a proud member of Actors Equity and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists. She now resides in Pinehurst. She does not miss The Dread.

Crossroads

Crazy ’bout a Mercury

The perils and pleasures of owning a classic car

By Bill Case

Lord I’m crazy ‘bout a Mercury

I’m gonna buy me a Mercury

And cruise it up and down the road

— From the song “Mercury Blues,” by Alan Jackson

In 2004, my older brother Tom, an inveterate devotee and collector of antique automobiles who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, cajoled me into spending Labor Day weekend with him in Auburn, Indiana, attending that city’s Auburn Fall Collector Car Auction. It’s a massive show with over 1,000 classic cars changing hands across a lightning-paced auction block. My brother was an experienced hand at such affairs, having bought and sold — often at a profit — over a hundred classic cars. My personal interest in aged autos was of decidedly lower wattage, though I harbored a sentimental attachment to the “Detroit iron” cars of the 1950s that proudly roamed the nation’s highways during my youth.

My favorite brand from the era was Mercury. This affinity budded decades ago after I saw star-crossed James Dean behind the wheel of his slick, black-as-night ’49 Merc coupe in the epic flick Rebel Without a Cause. I also liked the Mercury’s distinctive appearance. Eyeing a ’50s Mercury Monterey head-on, the chrome-laden grille scowls back at you with bared teeth — akin to the face an NFL linebacker might make just before obliterating a quarterback.

While attending Saturday night’s furious auctioneering melee, I made the fateful mistake of informing Tom that I was partial to old Mercs. He got all excited. “There’s a ’50 Merc coming up for auction in about an hour!” my brother exclaimed. “You ought to bid on it.”

Yeah, right! I was keenly aware I had no business purchasing an antique car. Those who know me will attest that I don’t know the difference between a transmission and a carburetor and would be next to helpless in dealing with an ancient auto’s inevitable breakdowns. In younger days, I occasionally tried changing a tire or an oil filter, but my ineffectual efforts invariably led to injury to the car or myself. Furthermore, I was uncomfortable with the concept of spending serious money on a vehicle that I would not be driving regularly. There was no way I was going to enter the bidding.

Just then, a cream-colored 1940 Ford DeLuxe convertible came on the block, and Tom was immediately smitten. He decided to enter the fray. As his bids kept getting topped, he would mutter to himself, “Linda (his wife) is gonna kill me,” before gritting his teeth and upping the ante. Ultimately, Tom added the Ford to his burgeoning collection.

A talented auctioneer can create an atmosphere that causes folks to shout out bids they never intended to make. Maybe that was what caused me to grab Tom’s bidding paddle and hold it high a few minutes later after the aforementioned mint-green ’50 Merc entered center stage. Or maybe I wanted to show my big brother that I could play this auction game, too. When there was no response to my bid of $10,500, it was apparent this ancient auto would soon be heading to my then home of Columbus, Ohio. But as my exhilaration subsided, reason quickly took its place along with a cloud of buyer’s remorse.

But, wait. A steward’s challenge! I was off the hook several minutes later when the auctioneer announced that my bid had failed to meet the minimum reserve — no sale. Tom was downcast as he had looked forward to my joining him in classic car collecting. I did not have the heart to convey my relief at dodging a bullet.

The reprieve, however, proved to be short-lived. Several months later, Big Tom (he’s 6 feet, 6 inches, rendering me the shrimp sibling at 6 feet, 1 inch) alerted me he had located a 1954 black Mercury Monterey sedan in Arkansas that I absolutely must buy. “This is a far more drivable Merc than the one at Auburn because it has power steering,” he urged. “It’s in good condition but not so perfect that you’ll be afraid to take it out on the road.” With his typical acumen in such matters, he had negotiated a bargain-basement price of $8,000.

I tried to put up roadblocks, but Tom easily knocked them down. I confessed my second thoughts about coughing up money for an antique car, but he rebutted that by pointing out the price was substantially less than I had been willing to spend at the Auburn auction. When I raised a concern about the expense of shipping the car to Columbus from Arkansas, Tom brushed it aside. The seller had agreed to handle the 725-mile transport at his own expense. Tom sought to remove my last bit of resistance with this tantalizing tidbit: “This Mercury,” he revealed, “was on the set of the Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line, and you’ll get a picture of the car when it was on the set!” It seems silly that this information would play any role whatsoever in my decision-making, but my brother knew his mark. I caved.

Once the deal was made, I cast aside my doubts, adopting an attitude of eager anticipation as I awaited the appearance of my new toy. When the Merc arrived (along with the Walk the Line movie set photo), I was delighted. Tom was right; this was the car for me. Though five years newer, this Merc looked a lot like the black James Dean auto that had originally attracted me to the brand. It also sported snazzy red and black upholstered bench seats — the type that enabled guys in the ’50s to woo their dates by putting an arm around a girl and holding her close. The over-sized steering wheel and unusual joystick levers that controlled the heater and vents also appealed to me.

At first, the car ran beautifully, and I took pleasure in returning the appreciative waves of pedestrians and horn beeps of fellow motorists, most of whom smiled broadly when observing this relic of the distant past. Initially a skeptic of the purchase, significant other (now wife) Lisa was now taking to the Merc, enjoying our summer evenings motoring to the Dairy Queen.

Realizing that motorheads would likely be quizzing me about the car, I studied up on the model’s history. I learned that the ’54 Monterey was equipped with a V-8 engine carrying 161 horsepower. An automatic transmission called the “Merc-o-matic” had also been installed by the manufacturer. I thought this info would be enough to bluff my way through encounters with car guys. Not so much. A typical conversation went like this:

Car guy: What’s the engine?

Me: V-8.

Car guy: Is ’54 the year Mercury went to the overhead valve Y block V-8 engine or was it still the flat head V-8?

Me: Ah, it has 161 horsepower. It’s really got some nice acceleration.

Car guy: Oh, then that’s the one with the twin Tornado combustion chambers. Right?

Me: Did I tell you it’s got a Merc-o-matic transmission?

After a couple of like encounters, I abandoned any pretense of expertise, and freely admitted my cluelessness regarding the Merc’s mechanics — I just liked how the Merc looked driving it around. Typically, the auto mavens found this disclosure deeply disappointing as though my lack of ardor for diving under the hood was an admission of a distasteful character flaw. Our conversations ended quickly.

This null set of car knowledge was bound to catch up with me, however, and it did after the Merc began stalling at inopportune times, nearly always when Lisa occupied the passenger seat. Periodically the Merc would resist my restarting efforts and we’d wind up stranded in downtown Columbus. In one unfortunate incident that I have tried to forget, the Monterey sputtered to a halt next to a biker bar in a dodgy part of town a few miles from our home. It took 30 tense minutes, but I finally got the recalcitrant sedan running again. My hope was to nurse the Merc back to the house, where I could exchange it for my regular car and, assuming Lisa would not want to risk being stranded on the interstate, I suggested she remain at the bar. The idea was not greeted with universal gratitude for my thoughtfulness. The words my wife utters to this day ring in my ears, “I can’t believe that you want to ditch me at a biker bar!”

Given that the Mercury’s misbehaviors invariably seemed to occur with Lisa as an eyewitness, she concluded that the car must be waging a personal vendetta against her. She likened the Merc to another ’50s era automobile called “Christine” from the eponymously named 1983 Stephen King horror movie. The evil cherry-red ’58 Plymouth Fury left a path of mayhem and destruction in its wake. The biker bar debacle finally caused Lisa to issue an ultimatum, “Either get the car fixed or I’m not getting in it anymore.”

Unlike the spooky Christine, the Merc was incapable of repairing itself so I cast about for a classic car mechanic who could solve the chronic stalling problem. Someone I knew recommended his neighbor, Shane, who moonlighted performing mechanical miracles on antique cars. Upon meeting him, I confess I was not all that impressed, but Shane assured me he could make the fix. Not presently aware of other alternatives, I consented to have him undertake the job. A week later, Shane pronounced the Merc good as new. And for a week, it was. I persuaded Lisa it was safe to get back inside.

Then, on a crisp fall night enjoying an outing on Riverside Drive, as we commenced a long, uphill climb, our respective hearts skipped beats when the engine suddenly stalled and the Merc stopped cold on the highway. It was pitch dark and the black car had no flashers. No berm existed alongside the road, just a guardrail about a foot off the edge of the right lane. I feverishly restarted the car. It crept a few yards up the hill and stalled out again. In full panic mode, I begged Lisa to get out and push. This was only marginally better than my biker bar idea. I doubt whether a gym full of heavyweight powerlifters would have possessed the strength to inch the big Merc up the steep incline.

Vehicles whizzing by were being forced to make last-second maneuvers into the oncoming lane to avoid the Merc. Somehow I had to find a way to get it up to the summit of the hill a quarter mile away. Lisa was justifiably scared and so was I.

I will be forever grateful to the cab driver who recognized our predicament and, at some risk to himself, stayed behind as our rear guard, flashing his taxi’s emergency lights while I desperately managed the Merc’s agonizing start-stall-start-stall journey to the hillcrest. We breathed a joint sigh of relief and coasted down to safety.

Lisa was correct. If the car could not be safely operated, it had to go. At a neighborhood party, my sympathetic friend, Sid, recommended I take the car to the local Mercury dealer. “They may have a veteran mechanic still on the payroll who worked on ’50s cars back in the day,” he said. “Or the dealer might refer you to one of their retired mechanics who still works on Mercurys.” Why hadn’t I thought of that? The dealership sent me to Rennie, a 40-year employee who had repaired dozens of vintage Mercs like mine.

Voila! After Rennie worked his magic, the Mercury purred like a kitten. Lisa was satisfied with the car’s improved reliability, and we resumed our runs to the Dairy Queen without fear of sudden calamities. I drove it often in Columbus, recording in excess of 25,000 miles on the odometer over 10 years. Tom says that’s more mileage than he has driven all of his 100 classic cars combined.

The Monterey was running pretty much on all cylinders before Lisa and I moved to Pinehurst in October 2014. Though no longer comparing the Merc to Christine, she nonetheless thought that after a decade of ownership, it was time to get rid of the old boy. Though it remains arguable that I still have no business owning an antique car, I couldn’t bear to give it up. We had too much history together. It found a new home in Pinehurst, too. I was lucky to discover an able mechanic, Dean, at Resto-Euro in Aberdeen, who has the car running smoothly. I obtained “54 MERC” for the car’s license plate from the DMV. If any other 1954 Mercurys are still on the road in North Carolina, I suspect that plate would have been previously snapped up.

I don’t drive it at night anymore, and I wouldn’t dream of motoring it further than Southern Pines, but after 65 years on the road, it endures — a sweet ride. Just wave or beep your horn if you should happen to see me behind the wheel of my scowling ‘54 Merc. Chances are you’ll get the opportunity.  PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.

Crossroads

Of Heat and Hummingbirds

Winged wonders evoke happy memories

By Tom Allen

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest of months. I respectfully beg to differ. August gets my vote. Heat, humidity, and gnats, gnats, gnats. Tomato vines wilt, squash plants squeeze out their last fruits, and summer annuals droop, save the ones tended by those who brave the August oven to deadhead and water for late-season bloom.

Yet after canning your last quart of beans or freezing that final harvest of Silver Queen corn, August has its beauty, its small backyard wonders that, like those gnats, aren’t ready to make an exit. Unlike gnats, they are welcome guests outside our windows. Hummingbirds, those iridescent, winged beauties, just keep hanging around.

My hummingbird memories go back more than 30 years, to a summer evening in 1986, when my dad called my seminary dorm room. Rarely did my father ever call. Mom would call or I would call and Dad might pick up the line but this time, Dad’s voice was on the other end.

“Hey, son, how ya doing?”

“Good, Dad. What’s up?”

“Well, I’m gonna be on television, on Channel Four.” That’s how our family referred to PBS, public television. Someone called UNC-TV, told them about Dad’s newfound retirement hobby — feeding hummingbirds. A reporter was coming to interview him as part of a documentary on nature lovers in North Carolina. My father, a rather stoic fellow, sounded elated.

He crafted an unusual feeding station from an English clothesline — an octagonal-shaped contraption — and hung a dozen or more hummingbird feeders from the lines. My folks, as well as our neighbors, got a real treat watching scores of hummers, in a feeding frenzy, dart back and forth from feeders to trees.

I smiled at his phone call, and recall thinking (in my 20s at that time), how odd, how sort of old man-ish, to spend retirement days feeding hummingbirds. A friend invited you to go duck hunting in Canada, buddies invited you on a fishing trip to the Bahamas, and you’re feeding hummingbirds, playing with old bird dogs, phoning your dermatologist to make an appointment. He, like you, saves heirloom tomato seed. It’s time for a skin and a seed swap. How odd, I thought, some 30 years ago. Not how I’ll spend my retirement.

The documentary aired a few months after our phone call. Dad was so proud of his two minutes of fame. UNC-TV sent my father a videotape of the episode. He really wanted me to watch it, but I never did. After my parents died four years ago, and I cleaned out their house, no videos were found. Mom, in one of her spring cleaning modes, perhaps not realizing what she was doing, probably tossed it.

Funny, the odd things we do after a loved one dies, how we try to recapture a moment or a memory we somehow missed. Not long ago someone posted a video on Facebook of an English clothesline with hummingbird feeders and hummers in their feeding frenzy. It sparked a memory, so I emailed UNC-TV and asked about a documentary made in 1986, about nature lovers in North Carolina, and one of those nature lovers was my father, and he had this contraption he used to feed hummingbirds.

“I was wondering if you might be able to locate that clip?” The reply, “I’m sorry, we were unable to locate your request from our archives,” came a few days later. Sadly, I missed that moment of wonder.

But today, I have two hummingbird feeders, a bluebird box and lots of other bird feeders in my backyard, because they remind me of my dad, of how he so easily found wonder, in the world and people around him, and so, like him I seek to keep my eyes and ears open, because I don’t want to miss those moments of wonder . . . again. 

Hummers visit our feeders until the middle of October, then zip away to winter in warmer locales. Until they leave, almost every day I’ll catch a glimpse of one, maybe two ruby-throated wonders, vying for sweet sips before buzzing off to watch and wait. I’ll keep those feeders filled until the last bird is gone, store them until April when they return.

Like lots of folks, I’ll smile when I see my first spring hummer, but I’ll also be grateful for a father who was wise and kind and never, whether in April or August, in any way, ever cruel.  PS

Tom Allen is minister of education at First Baptist Church, Southern Pines.

Crossroads

Ode to a Poet

Easter evokes memories of writers and friends

By Tom Allen

A dear friend died in January, a friend I never met, never conversed with, but through whose words I felt an immediate connection. Mary Oliver, a Pulitzer-prize winning poet, died of cancer at 83.

I credit Helen Byrd, my 10th grade English teacher, with my love of reading and narrative writing. But poetry eluded me, save the text of beloved hymns or the Psalms I grew up reading and hearing in the King’s English. I’m sure Psalm 23, a poetic gift from past millennia, was the first poem I ever memorized, probably around age 10. Others were as foreign as the Hebrew in which they were originally penned. I remember spitting out Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” for a college English project and occasionally thumbing through my mother’s collection from Helen Steiner Rice, the 20th century queen of inspirational iambic pentameter. (A good poem, I would learn years later, doesn’t have to rhyme, nor will the world stop turning if it doesn’t.) But poetry never connected like a good mystery, a spy-thriller, or a page-turner of a biography. Not until Mary Oliver.

“Poetry, to be understood,” Oliver once said, “must be clear. It mustn’t be fancy.” I concur. That’s probably the reason I fell in love with her writing, my first collection a gift from a clergy friend. Most of her poems were deeply spiritual, filled with images from nature, although Oliver never embraced a particular faith tradition. She wasn’t uncomfortable in a church, a temple, a sanctuary. But more often than not, her cathedrals were formed by black oaks or towering pines. Her font, a pond; incense, a patch of violets. The song of a wren was plainsong chant. Her altar was the world.

Oliver’s words were profound, yet not “fancy,” as she would say. In “Sometimes”, she offered these directives:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

She lived by her words, looking out her back door each morning, with notepad and pencil in hand.

Like the Psalms or the words of a comforting hymn from childhood, Oliver’s “I Worried” encouraged me on more than one occasion.

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,

hopeless?

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

In going out into the world, Oliver followed her own directive — pay attention. To say she “communed with nature” was an understatement. All of life was sacred, no creature off-limits. All creatures, great and small, have lessons to teach — the bear, the loon, the turtle, humpbacks, snakes, wild geese.

She writes, in “Crows,”

In Japan, in Seattle, in Indonesia – there they were –

each one loud and hungry,

crossing a field or sitting

above the traffic . . .

they don’t envy anyone or anything . . .

Why should they?

The wind is their friend, the least tree is home.

Nor is melody, they have discovered, necessary . . .

I see them in trees, or on ledges of buildings,

as cheerful as thieves of the small job

who have been, one more night, successful –

and like all successes, it turns my thoughts to myself.

Should I have led a more simple life?

Have my ambitions been worthy?

Has the wind, for years, been talking to me as well?

The week before Easter, I will visit two cemeteries, to mourn and give thanks for family and friends who rest beneath the shade of pines and cedars. And I will pay attention. Not to years lived but to the silence and sacredness of those places, to the cardinal who graces a branch with his color or the lone, late daffodil that will not be overpowered by grey granite. I will look, and listen, and give thanks.

I can hear Mary Oliver saying to those women who came early, that first Easter, with oils and spices, to care for the body of their entombed Lord, “pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.” They were, and they did. 

And though distanced by millennia, the final couplet from one of her most popular poems, “The Summer Day,” could well be her departing words to those women, and to us:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

May Easter, and spring’s rebirth, cause us to be attentive, to ponder our stories, and to ask those questions that matter most.  PS

Tom Allen is minister of education at First Baptist Church, Southern Pines.

Crossroads

Mistletoe Tree

A tradition of transition

By Claudia Watson

Strapped high up in a tupelo gum tree that was obviously more native than I was, the tree-trimmer set his pruning saw against a limb and said, “So, how’d ya get here?”

“Well, it’s the tree you’re in,” I said.

He looked down through the limbs. “This tree?”

“Yep,” I said.  “That’s why I take good care of it.”

My husband, Roger, and I were tidying up the house he was selling in Fayetteville —  his home for nearly 30 years with the Special Forces — and he suggested we take a ride to Southern Pines for my birthday lunch and to look at some property.   

I jumped at the chance for a day trip but wasn’t interested in settling any place other than Virginia. For the better part of 25 years, I’d been building a life and business there. But as we traveled the back roads from Fort Bragg to Southern Pines, the desolate beauty spellbound me. Just as we arrived in Southern Pines, a CSX train blasted its horn and crawled down the center of town. As we waited for our lunch, fluffy snowflakes began to fall.

“So, it snows in North Carolina?” I teased. Roger’s eyes flashed over the rim of his glass of sweet tea. He detested the winters and the traffic in northern Virginia. Afterward, we walked down Broad Street enjoying the sound of new fallen snow, as soft as the train whistle was loud. That’s when I saw an old, dented red pickup truck with a cardboard sign leaned against its fender and the hand-scrawled words, “Mistletoe $5.”

I thought the sign was a scam. Mistletoe comes in little white boxes tied with a red ribbon. It’s in the produce section in the grocery stores in northern Virginia during the holidays. 

“What is this?” I asked the owner of the truck as I eyed the clumps of greenery that looked more like the remains of a lousy pruning job.

The man shifted his eyes to my husband.

“It’s mistletoe,” he said.

“No way,” I challenged. “Where are the berries?”

He looked me up and down, reassuring himself that I was not from the South, pulled out a clump and showed me the waxy berries.

“Where’s it from?” I asked.

“Treetops,” the mistletoe man said.

“What do you mean, treetops?” I asked.

“We shoot it out.”

“Huh?” I groaned.

“With a shotgun,” he said, whirling away from me and raising his eyes and hands to the sky.

I looked at Roger, the North Carolinian, holding back laughter. He handed the man a five, and we walked away with a clump of mistletoe and headed back to Fayetteville.

Weeks later, Roger asked me to go back to look at the property he’d been researching while on work trips from Virginia to Fort Bragg. Over dinner, he eased a map toward me. Three lots were circled, accompanied by cryptic notes I took to be some sort of indecipherable Special Forces code.

He insisted we go back to Pinehurst. The drive down I-95 was unbearable as I sat glumly in the truck while he told me about the pros — no cons, of course — of each lot and of his home state.

We looked at all three sites. At the last one, he sprinted to the back edge of the property line and waved his arms, pointing to the golf course view, and then where the sun would rise. He pointed out the abundance of dogwoods, the old-growth longleaf pine, the sassafras, native blueberry plants, inkberry and the red-tailed hawks in the sky. I was not impressed.

While he used red string to plot out a home site, I dug in my heels under the shade of a nearby tree. It was one of the few that looked like a real tree to me.

I thought, “How did this happen?” I don’t want this. I want our home in Virginia. I looked up through the canopy of the tree. Then, I saw it, not in the top of the tree, but jutting out from the trunk only inches from my head. I saw the glossy dark green leaves and the palest berries.

If the ancient Druids thought it possessed mystical powers, warded off evil spirits and brought good luck to the household, it was good enough for me.

We moved to Pinehurst a year later, built our home, and for 14 holiday seasons, I clipped a sprig of real mistletoe for our doorway from that tree.

“You know,” my tree-trimmer said, picking up his saw, “it’s interesting you saved this tree being it’s so close to your house. It’s a tupelo gum, a native tree. Most folks rip ’em out.”

Instead, its roots grew deeper.  PS

Claudia Watson is a Pinehurst resident and a longtime contributor to PineStraw and The Pilot.