Tag: Hometown

Hometown

Teach a Man to Fish

Or just get in line at Hoskins

By Bill Fields

In a modest fishing career that produced nothing for the wall and little for the table, I wish I’d caught one flounder, because I sure ate plenty of them.

Other than whatever mystery-from-the-sea comprised the fish sticks in the freezer that would be supper if my working mom had a particularly long, tough day, flounder was the fish of my childhood. It would have made my beach vacation to land a summer flounder, but Paralichthys dentatus was as elusive as winning a large stuffed animal at Skee-Ball in the Ocean Drive arcade.

On a good outing, Dad and I, equipped with the gear we usually took to Moore County ponds in pursuit of bream or bass, would catch our share of tiny spot, croaker and whiting from the Tilghman Pier, trinkets from the surf. But even if I could convince him to splurge on “flounder rigs” that kept the hooks baited with shrimp floating just above the bottom where the species supposedly liked to dine, instead of flush on the ocean floor where the less desirable fish scavenged, we’d come up as empty as the shark-fishing men with heavy-duty tackle at the far end of the pier.

There was no chance of Curt Gowdy reaching out to us to appear on The American Sportsman.

The futility of fishing for flounder went away, though, if our family was going to Hoskins Restaurant that evening. The Ocean Drive eatery had lost a needed apostrophe in its sign sometime between when it opened in 1948 and when we were patronizing the place a couple of decades later but maintained a mastery of fried seafood — particularly flounder.

Hoskins was one of the first things we’d sight when driving into Ocean Drive headed for the rental cottage or motel where we were staying. It wasn’t a matter of if we were going to go there during our stay, but how many times.

No one got out of sorts if there was a wait to get in. We knew the air conditioning would be cranking — at a time when AC still wasn’t commonplace — and we could count on the quality of the food. I went through a fried shrimp phase but always went back to the flounder.

The filets of the mild-tasting flatfish were sizable and the outside golden brown and never heavy. Paired with the can’t-eat-just-one hushpuppies, there was nothing better. Even a midday sno-cone and corn dog from a strand vendor couldn’t compete with a Hoskins’ flounder plate.

Fortunately, we had fried flounder options the other 51 weeks of the year.

Russell’s Fish House on Highway 22 on the outskirts of Southern Pines opened in the mid-1960s offering all-you-can eat fish for $1.50. We went many a Friday or Saturday night, and I eventually worked there, first as a busboy, then in the kitchen. I cooked the hushpuppies for a time and some of the other teenagers working for owners Larry and Mary Russell handled the fries and manned the grill.

The flounder, though, was the purview of an older man named Herbert, who masterfully tended his bubbling fryer of peanut oil and didn’t want the youngsters messing with his fish. We could be a loose bunch, no strangers to horseplay while cleaning up at the end of a long night, but we obeyed Herbert.

Given the volume of fish that was served, the quality of the flounder was consistently good even if some of the fillets weren’t as plump as those we ate on vacation. My appetite for flounder would wane occasionally because I was around it so much for several years, including filling lots of takeout boxes, but there were still times when I savored a plate for my meal at the end of a busy shift.

Our third option for flounder in those years was at my brother-in-law Bill’s restaurant in High Point. Everything was good on the broad menu at Brinwood — fried chicken, country-style steak, spaghetti, meatloaf — but his fried flounder was especially tasty.

After enjoying my brother-in-law’s light, never-greasy fish for several meals, I was convinced the only thing Hoskins had on Brinwood was the beach down the street. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

Hometown

The Boys of Summer

In a league of their own

By Bill Fields

There aren’t too many highlights sprinkled in my sporting life. The enjoyment, perhaps by necessity, has come from playing not winning.

I’ve had a few moments when I flipped the script, most occurring in a small ballpark on Morganton Road in Southern Pines across from the National Guard Armory, where kids still play baseball today. Win or lose, though, on that compact field of dreams the crack of bat on ball and pop of ball in glove was a soundtrack of fun.

The site was home to the Southern Pines Little League field more than a half century ago when the Pirates, Cardinals, Dodgers and Braves duked it out on Monday and Friday evenings from spring into summer, games at 6:00 and 7:45. The lights really kicked in for the second match-up, especially early in the season, making it seem a bigger stage.

We were boys chewing Bazooka bubble gum, savoring the stirrup socks that made us look like major leaguers, hoping some pixie dust would fly out with each pat of the rosin bag, and quenching our thirst with some not-so-cool water from the dugout fountain.

Each season started the same way. There would be a trip to Tate’s Hardware on N.E. Broad Street to purchase a pair of rubber-cleated baseball shoes. We’d put on our flannel team uniforms and parade through downtown on a Saturday in May, then scatter to sell candy door-to-door to raise money for the Little League.

It was a long time before travel teams or meddlesome parents who want to make the games about them. Our moms and dads didn’t argue with umpires or second-guess coaches. They sat in the bleachers or in their cars beyond the field. They volunteered in the concession stand or as the public address announcer. They cut the grass and chalked the foul lines.

The outfield fence — 180 feet from home plate when I started Little League and lengthened to 200 feet before I was done — was covered with advertisements for local businesses not protective padding. I one-hopped a couple of hard hits off the metal barrier in left center but never hit a dinger in my three years with the Braves. I am a man without a home run or a hole-in-one but still hold out hope for the latter.

My most meaningful at-bat probably came in my first Little League season when I was 10, after moving up from the Minor League Tigers. We were playing the always formidable Pirates coached by Willis Calcutt. Their ace pitcher, a strapping boy who could have passed for a second-year Pony Leaguer, had a no-hitter going deep into the six-inning game. I somehow managed to make contact with one of his fastballs, hitting a blooper just over the second baseman into shallow right field.

I was better with glove than bat, a confident infielder who played second and a little shortstop before settling at third base when I wasn’t pitching. (I threw a knuckleball that, on my good outings, fluttered just enough to keep batters guessing.)

The Braves won the 1970 Southern Pines championship thanks to fellows who could really play like David Smith, Jay Samuels and Ian McPherson. (I’m far right, top row.) It didn’t hurt our chances that two of Coach John Williams’s sons, John Wiley and Mike, were part of the Braves. Coach was a de facto assistant to David Page and always willing to spend extra time working with us.

I made the All-Star team as a 12-year-old third baseman in 1971 when I had the privilege of playing for Jack Barron, whose many years of devoted community service in the Sandhills included being coach of the Dodgers for a long time. Mr. Barron did everything he could to prepare the All-Stars in our practices.

I’m not sure I knew there was a Warsaw, N.C., until we suited up in our blue and white Southern Pines uniforms and packed into a couple of station wagons for the two-hour drive east and our first game. But I’m certain I’d never seen a curveball on Morganton Road like the opposing pitcher threw that afternoon. I struck out in my one hapless at-bat, and my teammates didn’t fare much better. Our post-season didn’t last long.

But our disappointment, I recall, didn’t linger either. There was a stop for supper, at a restaurant that sold Andes Mints for two cents apiece at the cash register. We stocked up. Someone in the backseat figured out if a mint was released just so on top of the car, it would travel such that it would be sucked back into the wagon’s open rear window. The trick amused us for miles. If only we had solved the curve ball problem as proficiently. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2023 Department Hometown

Hometown

Talking Heads

Life in the booth

By Bill Fields

Feature Photo caption: Christine Morgan, Bill Fields and Janet Caldwell

When the PGA Tour turned up in the Sandhills during the early 1970s for the first time in two decades, it was a big deal for a sports-loving kid.

I was excited to attend the U.S. Professional Match Play Championship not only because my golf heroes were going to be in town, but because, on pro-am day at least, so were some of my sports television heroes who were teeing it up as celebrities.

At that point in my life, it probably was a toss-up whether I wanted to be Julius Boros, Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus when I grew up; or Don Shea, Charlie Harville or Woody Durham.

Shea was the sports anchor at WTVD in Durham. Harville delivered the sports for WGWP in High Point. Durham handled sports for WFMY in Greensboro and in 1971 became the “Voice of the Tar Heels” on radio, a role he would have for 40 years.

During the 6 o’clock local news — depending on the preference of my parents and/or the trustiness of the antenna on our roof in Southern Pines — one of those sportscasters came into the house.

I wanted to be them. What could be better than talking sports, and getting paid to do so?

Sooner rather than later, I got to find out — about the “talking” part, at least. During senior year of high school, I hosted a weekly radio show on 990 WEEB, “Pinecrest Sports Spotlight.” One Saturday morning a record might have been set for most interview subjects in one room as most of the state champion girls’ basketball team and coach James Moore crammed into the studio.

Thanks to being in a television production class at Pinecrest that utilized the school’s closed-circuit television system, I was a TV sports anchor myself. The scripts were handwritten on carbon paper. I sat between Christine Morgan (news) and Janet Caldwell (weather). A high school with a broadcasting class was novel in the 1970s, prompting a reporter from The Sanford Herald to visit one morning.

I mentioned Woody Durham in one of my quotes to the reporter, but what I said was overshadowed by what I was wearing during the show in a photograph run by the Sanford newspaper: garish plaid sport coat paired with perhaps the widest collar ever manufactured showing outside my jacket, wings ready for takeoff. The best I can say about that image now is that I had a nice full head of dark hair.

Although I was in the broadcast sequence of journalism school at UNC, almost all of my experience during college was in print, not on the air. After graduating, there were jobs in newspapers followed by writing and editing positions on magazines.

My TV experiences were limited to occasionally appearing as a golf expert offering perspective on the sport’s history or hot topic of the day. (Over the last couple of decades, that’s usually been Tiger Woods.) But in 2017, I was asked to work as a researcher/statistician for NBC Golf Channel’s golf broadcasts. I’ve worked about a dozen tournaments annually since I first filled in as a replacement for someone who had left the position.

My microphone only allows me to talk to a colleague in the graphics department, but I’m just feet away from the pros who are talking to viewers. It has been quite an education for an ink-stained scribe to be a part of live television in a supporting role as I provide information and otherwise be as helpful as possible to the hosts.

I work most often with Dan Hicks but occasionally other broadcasters such as Terry Gannon, Mike Tirico and Steve Sands. They are as good at their jobs as the athletes they are covering. Without hesitation, I can say the teenager in the loud jacket could not have made his way up the on-air broadcasting ladder regardless of how much effort he put into it. I gravitated toward the media lane I should have been in.

To young dreamers out there who watch today’s top-notch announcers do their thing and imagine being in their headsets one day, work hard. Then work harder. And dress better than I did. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2023 Department Hometown

Hometown

Hitting the Century Mark

Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again

By Bill Fields

For those who haven’t viewed my academic transcripts, a confession: I was not a math all-star. In teacher Juliana White’s advanced class during my senior year at Pinecrest High School, I excelled at reading the problems aloud. Solving them was a different story. I was flirting with failure. Mrs. White’s grading kindness, never forgotten, likely allowed me to get into the college I always wanted to attend.

But simple arithmetic I can handle, which matters this month. Unless I’ve tripled-bogeyed the count, you’re reading my 100th^.PineStraw column, which I began writing in 2014 when then-editor Jim Dodson invited me to become a regular contributor over lunch at a restaurant on West Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the offices of PineStraw and The Pilot.

I had recently lost a longtime job at Golf World magazine when its print edition was eliminated and, after nearly a quarter-century in one place, was cobbling together a new professional existence in my mid-50s. Despite having a good track record in golf journalism, it was an uncertain time. I’m grateful for Jim’s confidence in my telling stories about growing up in the Sandhills and to the magazine’s readers for appreciating them.

Although golf — only occasionally my subject matter in the “Hometown” space — still gets most of my attention elsewhere, writing this column is an unanticipated pleasure of late middle age. The same goes for the longer features I’ve written, including articles about pro wrestler André the Giant, who settled in Ellerbe, or coach John Williams, a giant in the lives of so many of us from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Doing a hundred columns has spurred thousands of memories, significant and trivial, about Southern Pines and the surrounding area. If I ever get a memoir finished, the column will have played an important role.

When Arnold Palmer attended a high school reunion in his native Latrobe, in western Pennsylvania, he told classmates that “your hometown is not where you’re from, it’s who you are.”

The golf icon made a great point. Roots matter, whether you savor where you come from or spend your life running away from it. Even though I’ve lived elsewhere longer than I resided in the Sandhills, this area is a big part of who I am. No doubt my strong connection was boosted by the fact that my mother lived to 95 and remained in her home until a couple of years before she passed away, and that I returned for regular visits.

In revisiting my formative years over the last decade for the purpose of this column, I’ve had to come to grips with how much the place has grown since I was a kid living in what I like to call a “sophisticated Mayberry,” or even as a young adult eager to see new horizons. The extent of change in Moore County over the last couple of decades — particularly in the last five to 10 years — has been astounding as more and more people have chosen to live here because of its distinctive, appealing qualities.

One only must spend a day driving through eastern North Carolina to see plenty of tiny towns that have dried up, that are sad vestiges of what they used to be. We’re the opposite of those places, with all the positives and negatives that come with it. I still recognize my hometown, but each time I return its evolution can be jarring to the senses.

When I moved to New York in the 1980s, I was eager to experience a world so different from the one where I’d grown up. At that time, there weren’t national chain stores or so many high-rise condos, and there seemed to be a stationery store on every other block. In my mind, I got to live in “old” New York. But people who had lived in the Big Apple of the 1950s likely thought the 1980s didn’t line up with their memories. When I was a kid, getting a Hardee’s — 15-cent hamburgers! — and seeing the Town and Country Shopping Center open on U.S. 1 in Aberdeen were cool, but I’m sure some longtime locals might have viewed those additions as abominations.

I’m glad I grew up where I did, when I did. And it’s fun to remember. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2023 Department Hometown

Hometown

In the Spirit

What’s the Rush?

Slow down and smell the Thai food

By Bill Fields

When I made late plans to travel south by car in January, I did something without hesitation for the first time. More than 35 years since the maiden drive I took along the Eastern Seaboard, I knew I was going to break up the 600-mile trip with an overnight stay going and coming. Thanks to a reservoir of hotel points, I booked a room north of Richmond on the way down and north of Baltimore on the way back — segments of roughly 400 and 200 miles in each direction.

It wasn’t a proud moment because it was an acknowledgement of the personal rather than automotive odometer, of the miles traveled since making a right turn on May Street in my Ford Escort in the fall of 1986, handwritten directions to New York City on the passenger seat. I’m sure I’ll make it in one shot again but also believe that Ashland, Virginia, and Middle River, Maryland, haven’t seen the last of me. (The tasty green curry at a Thai place a short walk from the hotel in the latter location will be a draw.)

I’ve made the drive dozens of times since that first journey north, once or twice a year, in the wake of celebration or sadness, for work and pleasure, alone and with a significant other. The early trips seem medieval. My tiny hatchback didn’t have air conditioning, and there had to be cash in the car for tolls. On the chaotic, traffic-choked approach to the George Washington Bridge during the summer heat, those two factors combined to make things fairly hellish — either sweat like a pig as you inched through the narrowing funnel of cars toward the toll-taker, or be cooler and breathe the fumes along the way.

Despite the predictable jams on Interstate 95, I’ve seldom chosen the longer, calmer, more scenic Interstate 81-U.S. Route 220 path. Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment, but the longer, indirect, more inland trip has never been my preference. Being so groggy that I had to pull over for a few minutes near Asheboro on the home stretch once when I traveled that way might have influenced my thinking.

Going the usual way without an overnight stop, the drive from Connecticut (first Stamford, and for a long time, Fairfield) to Southern Pines or vice versa ranges from 11 to 13 hours: the fastest (9 hours, 15 minutes) and slowest (19 1/2 hours), each beginning at my customary 4 a.m. start time. I recall the first happening with extraordinarily light traffic, only a couple of quick stops and my having an unusual lead foot. The second was a nightmarish wintertime journey heading north, black ice on bridges forcing a lengthy pause before even getting into Virginia. The weather cleared until we reached southern New Jersey, where it began snowing heavily. With no hotel vacancies, we poked along in the near blizzard, stopping only to clear the ice-encrusted wipers, making it home well after midnight, as road weary as I’ve ever been.

I’ve had SiriusXM in my car the last few years, a luxury that helps the time pass on the long rides. Satellite radio and the ability to make hands-free calls are a far cry from the old days, when it took a surgeon’s touch on the dial to get an uncooperative distant station, and it felt like a win when songs outmuscled the static for a while. I fondly remember long-ago trips when I tuned in to C-SPAN Radio around Washington, D.C., for an entertaining two hours of Lyndon Johnson White House telephone recordings. (The Texan was at his earthy best in a conversation with Mr. Haggar about his needs on some custom-tailored slacks.)

On the second, shorter leg of my most recent trip south, I settled for Morning Edition on a couple of public radio stations as I drove through Virginia and North Carolina. Heading closer to the Sandhills, I was struck by how much new stuff was alongside U.S. Highway 1 near Sanford —MIRO Country Hams long gone now — north of Southern Pines, whose growth is now evident in all directions. As I exited onto Midland Road and presently pulled into Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club eager to walk 18 holes on a sunny and mild afternoon, I could feel my older, middle-age. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2023 Department Hometown

Hometown

In the Spirit

A Hardwood Homily

A gym is no place for badminton

By Bill Fields

I don’t look back on my days in the Southern Pines school gymnasium without angst. There were some miserable moments in physical education class. Activities like boxing, climbing rope, mounting a pommel horse and jumping on a trampoline weren’t my thing, regardless of how they were supposed to help me grow up and become a strong, upstanding citizen. I am not ashamed to have probably performed the lamest seat drops in Moore County history. Daydreaming classmates on the perimeter of the bounce mat didn’t inspire confidence that they would save the day if something went wrong. Nor did the limp of our wonderful teacher, Mr. Wynn, whose disability had been caused by a tumbling accident years earlier.

The pursuits of P.E. period would have been dreaded regardless of where they occurred — the only thing worse was tetherball during a cold recess. That they were forced upon me within those walls, on that shiny maple floor, made them more regrettable. Even badminton and volleyball, which could be fun, seemed miscast there. A gym was for basketball.

This was so because in the winter, in the land of the Atlantic Coast Conference, basketball was my reason for being during a good portion of childhood. Watching it on television. Listening to it on the radio. Playing it, as often as possible.

Most hoops time happened in our backyard on a dirt “court” whose dimensions were decidedly cramped on the left side due to trees and the property line. My first goal was attached to an old swing set. The backboard was just a grade above cardboard, and the rim wobbled after the first week. Then, one day after I got home from school, the old set-up was gone, replaced by a new goal with a backboard of thicker wood mounted on an honest-to-goodness utility pole. Dad didn’t volunteer any details about how such a sturdy support came our way, but I privately theorized that it was paid for with a case of beer or the largest bottle of Canadian Club sold at the ABC store on Connecticut Avenue. Whatever the payment, it was worth it, because the pole survived well beyond the afternoons when I dribbled a ball in its shadow.

But despite the upgrade, it was still outdoors, a far cry from the indoor surfaces played upon by my heroes in college and the pros. Once I got a little older, the hard surface courts at the downtown park were a better substitute, but the chain nets were a long way from the real thing.

Thanks to pictures in yearbooks belonging to my older sisters, I knew what the gym at East Southern Pines High School looked like before I started first grade in 1965. I dreamed of dressing for the Blue Knights in one of those uniforms with the short shorts and satiny material, the kind the players wore in the team pictures and the posed action shots.

I signed up for midget league basketball as soon as I was eligible. We had only colored T-shirts, but those Saturday mornings in the gym weren’t diminished by lack of a complete basketball outfit. With multiple games being played on the three-quarter courts, there was a cacophony of sounds: the thud of basketballs bouncing; referees’ whistles; sneakers squeaking on the hardwood; coaches yelling for a player to pass; a player who wanted to shoot hollering for the ball. When the games were over, stepping outside to walk home was as close to cryotherapy as I’ve experienced, so jolting was the temperature after hours spent in the cozy confines.

A few years later, I made a desultory exit from that building one weekday afternoon after being cut from the junior high team. The only times I would get to shoot at the competition goals on the fiberglass backboards was during half-court games in Mr. Fitch’s ninth-grade P.E. class and later when the gym would be open during Christmas break.

Not having a gymnasium when it opened in 1969, Pinecrest played in the Blue Knights’ former space for half a dozen seasons. The Patriots of Charles Waddell, Ricky Goldston and Dexter Pride rocked the place on their way to the state 3-A title in 1971 and a runner-up finish the following year. Those were great teams and good times. If there had been a home game the evening before us squirts showed for youth play, you could still smell the popcorn. If there was a better building in town, I didn’t know about it. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2023 Department Hometown

Hometown

Toying Around

The oldies but goodies

By Bill Fields

For adults, the first month of the year is a time when we tend to take stock of ourselves and make resolutions on a host of fronts in the name of self-improvement, even though sometimes vows are gone quicker than the crispy tree put by the curb. But when I was a kid — back when a pressing concern was trying to convince my mother to splurge on a half-gallon of name-brand ice cream instead of store-label ice milk — January was perfect for another kind of inventory.

On the heels of Christmas, it was natural to consider the toys and games that you had — not just what a generous Santa Claus might have recently delivered, but diversions that stuck around season after season.

For staying power and hours of enjoyment, my Monopoly game was hard to beat. It brought the family together at the dining room table for years, my relatives tolerating my absurd early desire to be allowed to improve properties before owning all the properties in a color group. (I matured and played by the rules.) After many years of action, we had missing hotels, dog-eared money, Pepsi-stained Chance and Community Chest cards, and my mother, a teller by day, still detested being the banker or being stuck with the iron token.

In contrast to Monopoly’s time-tested appeal that made me love it from Day One, whatever initial excitement that came with receiving Lite-Brite and Etch A Sketch dissipated quickly. As for the former, when you start out with two misspellings in your name, how good can you really be? I would much rather watch Mickey Mouse on television than attempt to create his likeness by punching translucent, colored plastic pegs through a sheet of black paper illuminated from behind. When it came to Etch A Sketch, the detailed scenes said to be possible on the mechanical drawing screen by turning the two knobs weren’t in my wheelhouse. A crappy-looking mountain range was about the best I could muster. It never brought any cheer to realize that Lite-Brite and Etch A Sketch were in the recesses of my closet.

Then there were toys such as Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots and Electric Football that were much loved until fun turned into frustration. The heads of boxers Red Rocker and Blue Bomber were supposed to be knocked off with a powerful pushbutton punch. Over time, though, the heads would develop a mind of their own and occasionally raise from the shoulders without a hit, just from moving around the ring. Electric Football had a lot going for it — I don’t agree with author Bill Bryson’s contention that the game was “possibly the worst toy ever built” — but the vibrating players too often did want to spin around in circles as if drunk around a maypole instead of making forward progress. This was a reality regardless of how much surgery you’d done on their brushes that touched the metal field. And the tiny felt football utilized for passes and kicks was hard not to lose even with the excellent eyesight of youth. It was easy pickings for the Electrolux.

Just as a pet cat can enjoy an empty cardboard box more than an expensive “home” purchased by its owner, so it was with simple toy and game options growing up.

My plastic army soldiers fought multiple battles on hardwood, carpet or dirt, undeterred by bent bayonets or broken bazookas. A yo-yo was fun despite mastering a limited repertoire of tricks. Hot Wheels cars largely performed as advertised. Matchbox vehicles punched above their weight; opening and closing the doors to the ambulance shouldn’t have been fascinating but it was.

And there were the hours playing with things that didn’t cost a dime. While watching the Sunday afternoon NBA game on TV, by the second quarter I would have fashioned an indoor goal out of a clothes hanger on a door frame, convinced that neither Hal Greer nor Jerry West could fill up the hoop with a crumpled ball of tin foil better than I could.

A paper football was the only origami I was interested in, the finished product a much better use of a sheet of loose-leaf paper than multiplication tables. The thrill of having flicked a long touchdown by getting the triangular “ball” to hang over the table’s edge was only slightly less than scoring a TD out in the yard. If no corneas were scratched in the kicking of field goals, everybody was happy until next time. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2023 Department Hometown

Hometown

Cards of Christmas Past

Ode to a lonely address book

By Bill Fields

Amid so many uncertainties in the current world, there is an absolute truth: December is the loneliest month for one of my possessions.

Residing in a drawer where it seldom is disturbed, near some old keys and dull pencils, I’m sure my address book feels left out most of the time. But around the holidays — when the contents on its dog-eared pages used to be as essential as eggnog — it must be forlorn beyond consolation.

The state of my address book this time of year is, of course, related to both habit and technology. I still mail holiday greetings to some friends and relatives, but the list is much smaller than it once was. I know a few addresses from memory; others are in the contacts on my cell phone.

I felt quite mature not long ago when I visited a college communications department and, with time to kill before I spoke to a class, looked around the lobby before going upstairs. A display on the history of journalism included a Rolodex, an artifact of an earlier age.

Right out of college, I purchased a Rolodex at Austin Business Supply, a fancy one with a metal cover that went over the rotating spindle and a lock with one of those tiny keys that would go missing in a month. By the time I abandoned my Rolodex years later, it still had plenty of blank cards and wasn’t even in the same league with the bulging desktop index of a former boss in New York. He called in from the road once and asked me to find a number for someone. In flipping through his cards, I couldn’t help noticing how he handled those no longer with us: * DEAD * written in felt tip by their names.

My address book is nearly 25 years old, purchased not long after the Moleskine notebooks came on the scene. The pages have come free from the binding; the elastic closure has been stretched to where it is like a belt four sizes too long. Inside the black paperboard cover fraying at both ends of its spine are names in and out of my life, relationships that ended and those that endure. If I were so inclined, there could be plenty of asterisks. The book even contains information foreshadowing its obsolescence — a password here, an email there, lines drawn through an old home number in the “H” section that no longer works.

Even though I’ll only send and receive a handful of cards this year, the tradition evokes lots of memories. Growing up, we often taped the cards above the double door to the dining room, where the scotch tape was certain to fail at least a few times. Sometimes they stood on top of a china closet or sideboard. Occasionally, they rested in a basket.

People tended to be predictable in the Christmas cards they sent. Some families chose one with a religious theme each year. You could count on birds from some and snowy scenes from others. I used to be fascinated by the envelopes that contained more than a card: the typed letters of what had gone on in a life in the preceding 12 months. We used to get missives from a divorced distant cousin that mentioned the activities of “Parents Without Partners.” To a kid, all the PWP updates seemed like TMI, even before there was such an acronym.

Mostly, though, it was a joy when the post office box was filled with cards from friends or family who thought enough to take the time to write them. It was a delight to receive a card from my mother even when she was north of 90, her handwriting nearly as neat as when she was a schoolgirl.

Retrieving my address book from its resting place not long ago, I was reminded that it had an accordion pocket. There were a couple of old business cards and return addresses torn off envelopes. In a pleasant surprise, there also were two partial books of attractive “Holiday Evergreens” Forever stamps. The longleaf pine version looks particularly like home and deserves to ensure passage of something better than a bill. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2022 Department Hometown

Hometown

Table for One

Thanksgiving on the road less traveled

By Bill Fields

By the fall of 1976, an honest appraisal of my golf game would have resembled that of the used cars my father bought when money was tight and he needed transportation: runs rough, could blow a tire at any time, uncertain future. I was 17 years old, a high school senior. Despite many hours spent playing and practicing through my teens, I was still a handful of strokes from being a scratch golfer. Only at the smallest of colleges would I have a prayer of making the team.

But my enthusiasm hadn’t evaporated, which is why I asked my parents if I could enter the George Holliday Memorial Junior Tournament held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, over Thanksgiving weekend. I would make the 130-mile drive by myself in the family Fairlane, spend two nights at the Howard Johnson’s on North Kings Highway, distinguish myself with a good performance in the boys 16-17 age group, and take some confidence into my final spring of prep golf at Pinecrest High School.

I was a responsible kid, having only an occasional beer when Tuesday teen night at the Castle of Dreams was over. Mom and Dad knew the only damage I might cause in a motel room was scuffing a wall on a practice swing. They said, “Yes.”

Before dawn on Thanksgiving morning, I left Southern Pines for a tune-up round at the tournament site, Myrtle Beach National Golf Club. I had a couple of packs of Nabs on the car’s bench seat and a road map, but having made the ride 15 to 20 times, usually on family beach trips, I knew the route.

After making it to the course, I registered and went out for 18 holes, completing a foursome with boys from Virginia and South Carolina. We were among nearly 200 entrants in the event, played since the early 1970s to honor a Wofford College golfer, George Judson Holliday III of Galivants Ferry, who perished in a 1967 car crash.

By 4 p.m., I had checked into the motel on what was a quiet main drag and called home collect to let my parents know I was settled in. Traveling with my shag bag like pros of yesteryear, I hit some wedge shots on a nearby field. Later, after wiping my clubs clean, I walked into the Howard Johnson’s restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. Given that there were only about a dozen people dining, getting a seat wasn’t a problem.

The excitement of the trip, of my grown-up adventure, gave way to a different emotion after sliding into the booth and watching the waitress remove the other place setting. I got lonesome thinking of my parents at the table back home and the familiar foods — turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, apple rings — they were eating. I was the only solo diner aside from an elderly man drinking coffee at the counter.

I contemplated ordering a hamburger and French fries but decided I had to get turkey and all the trwimmings, even if it wasn’t going to taste like my mother’s cooking. I ate most of my turkey and the accompanying sides, eschewed one of HoJo’s 28 flavors for a slice of pecan pie, and paid my bill. Once I was back in my room, I chained the door and got a water glass off the bathroom vanity to use as a putting cup. Three-footers, 6-footers, 10-footers — for an hour I tried to groove my stroke. I wished my “make” percentage was higher, but at least I was faring better than John-Boy, who got injured in a sawmill accident during a special Thanksgiving episode of The Waltons.

A poor start Friday morning — bogeys on the first three holes — had me feeling like I’d been hit in the head, and I wasn’t able to reverse the mojo. Far from shooting a score that might have earned an instant’s worth of interest from any of the college golf coaches in attendance, I was in the mid-80s. Saturday’s score was only marginally better. Joey Sadowski of Hickory, North Carolina, finished at one-over-par 145 to beat Mike Cook of Cartersville, Georgia, by a single stroke. Each of them would go on to play collegiately at UNC and the University of Georgia, respectively; I would be in a golf physical education class at Chapel Hill, hitting wiffle balls off a door mat in Woollen Gym.

I put my clubs in the trunk and pointed my Ford toward home. In 2 1/2 hours there would be leftovers. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2022 Department Hometown

Hometown

My Flying Life

The good, the bad and the pressurized

By Bill Fields

About a decade ago, early on a Saturday morning, I was at New York’s LaGuardia Airport for a flight to RDU. The gate area was mostly empty except for a familiar face in a corner chair. Roy Williams, the UNC men’s basketball coach, had been in the Big Apple for the NBA draft. He was eating a candy bar when I introduced myself.

“You won’t remember this,” I said, truer words having never been spoken, “but you were sitting next to me on my first flight.”

In December 1979, Williams was a graduate assistant for the Tar Heels, among his duties driving copies of “The Dean Smith Show” to television stations around the state each weekend during basketball season. On this Monday, he was flying Piedmont Airlines from RDU to Tampa for Carolina-South Florida that evening at the Bayfront Arena in St. Petersburg. A 20-year-old junior journalism major, I was covering the game for The Daily Tar Heel.

Roy told me how to yawn to keep my ears from hurting on the climb and descent. When the flight attendant arrived with the beverage cart, I told her it was my first flight and was a bit disappointed I wasn’t given a pair of wings.

Perhaps she knew it wasn’t really my first flight. That had been a 15-minute spin above Southern Pines in a single-engine plane two years earlier with an assistant pro I knew who had just gotten his pilot’s license. But the two-hour trip to Florida on a 737 made that brief sightseeing venture seem like a bucket of balls at Knollwood compared to 18 holes on Pinehurst No. 2.

Hearing a friend, now retired, tell me recently that he flew 6 million miles in his sales career got me thinking about how much I’ve flown over more than 40 years. Tallying up the totals in the loyalty programs of the two airlines I’ve flown the most comes to 790,135 miles. Counting the flights before I had frequent flier accounts and all the travel on other airlines that isn’t documented, I must be approaching 1.5 million miles up in the air.

My most memorable air travel (enjoyable division) wasn’t with any of the surviving legacy carriers or airlines such as TWA, Pan Am, Piedmont or Eastern that are no longer with us. Over four days in 1989, while profiling Arnold Palmer as he neared his 60th birthday, I had a seat on his Cessna Citation III, a $7 million business jet, while the golf legend traveled from a senior tournament to various course design projects.

Palmer, in the left seat beside co-pilot Lee Lauderback, flew N1AP into his hometown and to where he had long wintered — Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Orlando, Florida — and then to Kansas City, St. Louis and Greenville, South Carolina. The biggest thrill was the next-to-last leg: Orlando to Moore County, where Palmer and longtime architecture partner Ed Seay were working on Pinehurst Plantation (now Mid South Club).

I was clearly well ahead of the aviation gods after that assignment, but they’ve gotten in their licks since. Just months after traveling with Palmer, I had a hellishly bouncy flight into Málaga, Spain, the last flight before the airport was shut down because of severe weather. Two decades later, flying on a Korean Air charter of senior tour pros from San Francisco to Incheon, about an hour from landing a pocket of clear air turbulence caused the plane to drop dramatically, banging up flight attendants and anyone who wasn’t belted in. The experience sure put into perspective all the windy, nervous approaches into water-guarded LaGuardia — aborted landings notwithstanding — that would follow.

One has no choice but to roll with the punches, especially in today’s chaotic world of airline staffing shortages, delays and cancellations. Edinburgh, Scotland, was a mess this summer as I attempted to begin a journey home, hundreds of travelers lined up outside on the sidewalk because of a technical snarl, missed connections on their minds. It was not, as I found out while getting a short sleep at a ring-road hotel in Amsterdam that evening, an unfounded worry.

But for almost every glitch, armrest hog or man wearing a tank top, there is a stunning sunset at 37,000 feet, or a gate agent more pleasant and patient than most would be. And I’ll always have memories of Air Arnie. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

2022 Department Hometown