Hometown

All’s Fair

A ride on the wild side

By Bill Fields

Anticipation is  — or at least, was, in simpler times — a big part of childhood. And there wasn’t much of anything to look forward to more than the Moore County Agricultural Fair.

It was an annual tradition to ride up Highway 15-501 toward Carthage, hang a right and pull into the field that served as the fair’s parking lot.

When I heard that the county fair was being canceled this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it struck me that, even in these much different times when entertainment is on demand instead of on-site, kids would be disappointed their families weren’t making the same trip mine did a long time ago.

This would have been the 74th Moore County Fair, it having been held each year since World War II ended.

I must have attended more than a dozen growing up. We weren’t a “state fair” family. We went to the amusement park at the beach, and took a special trip to Six Flags Over Georgia in the early 1970s — log flume! — but the county event was a staple.

For a small-town boy, the Tilt-A-Whirl was a big deal. For that matter, so was cotton candy, corn dogs, Sno-Cones and candy apples, which, to my memory, were the four main food groups in the years before any vendor had sold his first giant smoked turkey leg or microwaved some nachos.

With a warning from Mom to keep the vast sum of money in my pocket safe, I would be off for an adventure — choosing a rubber duck, riding the carousel and Ferris wheel, shooting at balloons, pitching nickels. I ate applesauce and drank juice from the “china” my nickels settled in.

Even though it wasn’t too far from home, the fair seemed exotic and full of things that didn’t populate our daily lives. These many years later, I still don’t know if it was a “Hoochie Coochie Show” or “Hootchy Kootchy Show” that lurked in the shadows away from the rides and games. Whatever belly dancing or other entertainment happened in the forbidden tent I never knew. But regardless of the spelling, they were five syllables to speak and ponder each fall.

A year ago, when I happened to be in town during the fair, I went for the first time in decades. Many things from childhood seem physically smaller than they used to. Things seemed more spread out, too, as if socially distanced before we knew what that term meant. The rides and games conjured memories, and so did the carnival workers who sold chances or clicked the safety bar down on your waist before the Ferris wheel spun into action. In the exhibition building, blue ribbons spoke of things cooked or sewn well.

I investigated all corners of the grounds for evidence of risqué entertainment, but saw no tent or heard any crowds. The fair seemed to have survived nicely into the 21st century, but the same couldn’t be said for the Hootchy Kootchy Show.

Riders shrieked while spinning through the air on the “Yo Yo.” A little girl carried a large stuffed bunny toward the exit. I did not observe anyone heading for their car with dishes or glasses.

I stayed away from the fried dough but capped the night with a cherry Sno-Cone. There were three places in my world where you could get such a treat: the fair, the beach and the concession stand at the Little League field.

The fair looked and felt a bit different than it had but tasted pretty much the same. A year from now, folks will be eager to return.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

From Otis to Opie

The ultimate Carolina classic

By Bill Fields

I was only 16 months old when the first episode of The Andy Griffith Show aired Oct. 3, 1960. It’s safe to say in the six decades since, I’ve made up for what I missed from Mayberry that Monday evening.

If I had to classify my fandom for the classic situation comedy, I would put the needle somewhere between devoted and rabid.

I don’t have a handmade Mayberry sheriff’s uniform hanging in my closet. My car antenna is not of the whip variety like that on the squad car driven by Andy and Barney. I have never made a pilgrimage to Mount Airy, Andy Griffith’s North Carolina hometown and inspiration for the fictional Mayberry.

However, I have scared a few folks through the years with my TAGS knowledge. I wouldn’t win a trivia contest with a true diehard — someone who can quote everything Ernest T. Bass said in his appearances — but I wouldn’t lose in the first round. A loser wouldn’t know the two characters Allan Melvin played who threatened to beat up Barney (Fred Plummer) and Howard Sprague (Clyde Plaunt). A loser couldn’t recall that the long-sought fish, “Old Sam,” was a silver carp. A loser wouldn’t know, as if quickly recalling a first cousin, that the pen name given to teacher-turned-children’s author Helen Crump was Helene Alexian DuBois.

The show ran eight seasons, a total of 249 episodes — the first 159 filmed in black and white, and the remaining 90 in color. Some devotees dismiss the three seasons of color shows because they lacked Don Knotts as Barney (except for a few guest appearances) and seem stale compared to earlier seasons. The Nielsen Ratings — and I — disagree. The show, never lower than seventh in the ratings, went out in 1967-68 (Season 8) at No. 1. The only other TV shows to bow out on top were I Love Lucy and Seinfeld.

No doubt Knotts as Deputy Fife was the genius character in the series. Knotts played Barney to perfection, a bumbling but lovable character whether he was getting locked in a jail cell or was on a date with Thelma Lou in his salt-and-pepper suit. Griffith knew Knotts was the show’s comedic engine, and after Season 1 the sheriff shelved hayseed ways — including an extreme Southern accent — in order to be a straight man offering counsel and comfort to Knotts’ character when he inevitably screwed up. Barney and the other characters wouldn’t have resonated as much as they do without strong writing either. It was smart.

Anyone my age or younger — I was 8 when the final episode was broadcast — basically knows The Andy Griffith Show through reruns, DVDs and now, streaming services. About 130 hours of TAGS were filmed. It has given me many multiples of that time in pleasure. Beyond the comedic value, North Carolinians always felt pride that the show depicted the Old North State despite being filmed in California. (And a clip of Seattle was used to portray Raleigh in one episode where Andy and Barney visited the state capital.)

Most of the actors who brought Mayberry to life and have made us laugh for so long are gone now. Betty Lynn (Thelma Lou) is in her 90s and lives in Mount Airy. Ron Howard (Opie Taylor) is 66, having grown up from child actor to big-time movie director.

When I was in college at Carolina, Griffith, one of the school’s celebrated alumni, returned to Chapel Hill as University Day speaker. I arrived early at Memorial Hall to make sure I got in. He worked in a couple of Duke jokes and had me laughing, the way his show still does when I watch it on my phone — so many years after the unseen Sarah worked the switchboard in Mayberry.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

The Bellhop

Summer days that weren’t so lazy

By Bill Fields

Mid Pines Club — known now as Mid Pines Inn and Golf Club — wasn’t open during the summer for its first half-century of operation. But when I consider this time of year, Mid Pines is always in my mind.

That’s because, by the mid-1970s, Mid Pines had a new owner and was open year-round. For a golf-loving local teenager (me) who needed a summer job, this was a wonderful development. Some of the club’s longtime staff still migrated north that time of year, to Nantucket, Fire Island or other spots, which created some positions between spring and fall.

I worked a handful of summers at Mid Pines, as a cart attendant during high school and two stints as a bellman while in college. I earned money for gas, golf balls, green fees (when I wasn’t playing at Mid Pines) and expenses going to UNC-Chapel Hill. To be able to get an employee discount on All-Star gloves, Pickering shirts and other pro shop items seemed almost better than a paycheck.

Making me the part-time cart guy was Mid Pines head professional Jim Boros’ generous way of helping along my golf game, for which I had more enthusiasm than skill, or certainly consistency. (I made six birdies at Mid Pines and shot 78.) The cart gig was just a couple of hours each evening, waiting for the later groups after the shop had closed. The fact that I could spend a lot of my time on the practice green when I wasn’t parking a cart or picking the range made it hardly seem like work.

Unless the course was busy with conventioneers, I usually would have played before my shift. Most evenings, after I’d cleaned and plugged in all the carts, I would rush out to join assistant pros Barry and Lloyd Matey — brothers from Connecticut — and Gary Dixon to play as many holes as possible before dark. When I recall that era of persimmon, polyester and possibility, the golden-hour spins around that fine course with those friends simply having fun are hard to beat.

There weren’t many teenage guests, but one girl whose name I can’t remember — and who probably tried to forget mine quickly, as you shall see — was up from Georgia for a short golf trip with her parents. We chatted and ended up going on a date, which took an embarrassing turn when I got sick before I could pull the car over. She was very kind, but I doubt anyone was ever happier when a date was over.

I had one more Mid Pines-related date, much more pleasant, in my bellhop days. Sue was a fellow UNC student, and I think she was impressed when I procured cheesecake from an unlocked kitchen refrigerator — the pastry chef was kind that way — to close the evening.

I was judicious about enjoying those complimentary sweets but probably didn’t need to be given the workouts from carrying suitcases up two or three flights every day. Combined with some running that I had started to do, along with some softball action with the Mid Pines team, I was probably in the best shape of my life. I also mastered driving a stick shift by using the club’s small Toyota pickup to go to the Golfotel near the fourth hole, the rental houses along Midland Road, or when taking the deposit to First Union downtown.

The bell shifts were either 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. or 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. You’d often work late then early, and one honeymooning couple was surprised when I helped them into their room late one night, then brought them room service eight hours later.

I misplaced some keys recently, and it got me thinking about the time that caused the most anxiety during my bellman days. I had gone with my parents to Cherry Grove for a weekend. Back home in Southern Pines, I couldn’t find the ring containing all the Mid Pines master keys. I searched all over the house without success and was just about ready to call the Mid Pines manager, Dick Davenport, to break the news. Then I looked in one more location, a drawer I never used but apparently thought a burglar wouldn’t ransack in our absence. Not long after, I found my first gray hair and believe it was related to this folly.

When Mom died last year, we had lunch after her service on the Mid Pines terrace. Everyone enjoyed the food and drink, but to me, the location meant everything.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

Cheers to Tony D

Where people know people are all the same

By Bill Fields

Everybody didn’t quite know everybody’s name, but Tony D would have told you to take the over.

Even if you had never been to Tony D’s Sports Café, located in the Connecticut town I’ve called home for two decades, you know it. The beer was cold and cheap, served in generous glasses, and tabs were paid in cash.

The regulars at Tony D’s came from all walks of life. There were mechanics and teachers, plumbers and stockbrokers, policemen and fishmongers, sportswriters and realtors, firefighters and town clerks, nurses and soccer coaches, accountants and car salesmen.

The middle of May, regardless of occupation, we were all feeling sad.

Most of us hadn’t seen Tony in two months, since shortly before the bar closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Word got around that Anthony Victor DeLibero, recently diagnosed with several serious health issues, had died in the hospital of a heart attack at age 65.

“His bar and baseball were his whole life,” said his obituary, accompanied by a photo of a young Tony D, sporting a mustache and wearing a tie.

It was a much different image than the Tony I’d known for 15 years or so. I never saw him away from the bar, where, regardless of the season, he was dressed in gym shorts, T-shirt, tennis shoes and a ball cap worn catcher-style even though he’d been a pitcher.

Tony loved the New York Yankees, and so did many of his customers. Come the postseason the place would be packed for a Yankees game, most of the couple of dozen televisions tuned to the baseball and some of the most passionate fans wearing jerseys, everything from Thurman Munson’s 15 to Aaron Judge’s 99. Joe brought his childhood Mickey Mantle signature glove, half a century old, for good luck.

Tony D’s long, narrow space — you could see how it previously housed a hair salon — would get packed during the baseball playoffs or on football afternoons. The last few seasons, Tony opened early on Thanksgiving Saturday so my girlfriend and I could be in position for the noon kickoff of Ohio State-Michigan. Tony made a good Bloody Mary on those occasions, but by the second half his longtime bartender, Laurie, would be there and making her version, perhaps the world’s best.

I loved teasing Tony about that, but I was usually on the receiving end of the barbs. He had long been in the major leagues in that department. Tony could be gruff and profane, but there was something beneath the bluster. If there was an illness or death in the family, his concern was real. Owing to business trips, I might go a few weeks without stopping in for a cold one or two. When I got back, Tony would be glad to see me — as long as I didn’t ask him to put golf on one of the TVs or do an imitation of one of Yankees radio announcer John Sterling’s hokey home-run calls. (“It’s an A-Bomb for A-Rod.”)

Tony passed away May 16, less than 24 hours after one of his longtime customers established a GoFundMe drive to help during what was shaping up as a long recovery. Dozens of folks stepped up quickly and generously, giving nearly $9,000 toward Tony’s business and his medical bills, news that reached him before his death. “He could not believe the outpouring of support from all of you and he appreciated it more than I can express,” reported James, who had launched the fundraiser.

A few years ago, when it looked as if Tony might lose his bar because of landlord issues, I began making a series of photographs of the place and its people. He teased me about that, too, but I think he would be happy about the memories. I know I am.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

Southern Cornucopia

Out of Clorox but loaded with ketchup

By Bill Fields

Going to the grocery store these days, even in fraught times when being on the lookout for Clorox or coughs can cause a headache, it’s hard not to marvel at what is there.

So many options, so different from the way things used to be.

I was reminiscing with Dianne, one of my older sisters, and recalled a meal she cooked for me when I was 10. I felt as if I’d gone to another country instead of to Winston-Salem. It was my first lasagna.

That layered deliciousness wasn’t the only culinary highlight of my weeklong visit. One night supper was tacos, which weren’t on our household’s menu growing up either.

Oh, we ate well. Mom and Dad cooked tasty, filling meals. But they were predictable and limited, the way mealtime was for most families of the time and place.

I was reminded of this upon finding a grocery list, circa the early 1970s, in Dad’s handwriting — because Mom worked too, he often did the shopping — that he no doubt had tucked into his shirt pocket and set out for the Big Star.

Sugar & Tea. Rolls. Barbeque 2 LBS. Sliced Peaches. Chicken. Ribs. Barbeque Sauce. Roast. Milk. Baking Potatoes. Sausage.

Although Dad liked to cook out in any season, I’m guessing that was a summertime trip to the store. Given that Big Star was across the street from Memorial Field, you had to be alert for foul balls in the parking lot. My friend Alvin Davis’ mom, Marjorie, likely checked us out. Two items that didn’t need to be on a list were bagged up too — a six-pack of Budweiser and a carton of Salems. If it had been a good day for me, I would have slipped some Cokes and potato chips into our cart without pushback.

On another day, the list would have included iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, baked beans, applesauce, fish sticks, instant grits, Taster’s Choice coffee, white bread, bananas and hot dogs. There was one kind of mustard, the bright yellow kind. If it was around Thanksgiving or Christmas, apple rings and olives would make the cut.

Chow mein or pizza out of the store-bought kits were as exotic as we got. The market was sparse with ethnic foods, although there was more variety in the aisles of Big Star than the downtown Colonial Store it supplanted, still the only grocery store I’ve seen shaded by a magnolia tree. We weren’t an A&P family, except for Jane Parker pies during the holidays.

There were variations of cuisine by families, depending on their roots. The kitchen of our neighbors, Italian-Americans from New York, was alive with smells different from ours, of spices and sauces I wouldn’t really get to know for years.

My tastes broadened during college, practically from my first week on campus in Chapel Hill. At one orientation function, there were catered Blimpie sandwiches. I’m not sure if it was the oregano or the oil and vinegar, but it was unlike any sandwich I’d ever had. Two independent places in town, Sadlack’s and Hoagie’s Heroes, had even better offerings. My grilled cheese standard had long been from the buttery skillet of my friend Chuck’s mom, but it didn’t take very long in first semester to discover Hector’s Greek version, on pita bread with tzatziki. To be reminded of home, I only needed to have dinner at the Porthole, where the menu was filled with Southern staples.

Within a few years, I would enjoy my first jalapeño (Lubbock, Texas), lobster (Boston), bagel (New York) and fish-that-wasn’t-fried (Jacksonville Beach, Florida).

Everything is available almost everywhere now, choices we have even if we don’t need them. I don’t miss potted meat or fruit cocktail, to name two canned goods I regularly ate growing up, but we would be just fine without nine flavors of ketchup.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

Man on the Run

Life at a different pace

By Bill Fields

Wearing my orange slicker with the hood up, I must have looked like a large buoy that had escaped Long Island Sound. As I lumbered east toward the water on a chilly and rainy afternoon, my short, choppy strides weren’t earning any style points.

It was the last Sunday in March, and the inclement weather meant I had the street to myself. Social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t an issue. Whatever description fit what I was doing — running, jogging, slogging — moving at a pace faster than walking felt good.

This exercise was rooted in a hot afternoon last fall when I was walking near Southern Pines Golf Club on a route I used to run. A high school cross-country team appeared on my left, where they were beginning practice on the fallow Little Nine. I passed them as they stretched, but a minute later the teenagers — some in singlets, others in T-shirts but all as skinny as a young slash pine — glided past, their laughter and chatter receding as they crested a hill, leaving me to make a much slower, solitary climb.

As I continued a long walk through the Weymouth neighborhood and back to my rental car parked by Downtown Park, I surveyed my running life, meager at its apex and missing for a decade, replaced by workouts on the treadmill, climber or stationary bike at the gym.

I never was fast nor did I possess notable endurance, which explains why for many years a tiny red ribbon signifying second place in a first-grade race shared space in an envelope of Turkey Trot numbers accumulated as an adult.  I never entered anything longer than a 10K — and only a few of those to go with a larger number of the Thanksgiving Day 5-milers — and never exceeded 8 miles in a workout. Career highlight: finishing one of the Turkey Trots in 43:50 when I was in my early 40s.

But “having run” was still satisfying, a feeling of accomplishment. This was so whether the journey was from my Old West dormitory room to Gimghoul Castle in Chapel Hill to clear the head before a long night of studying; through a Georgia neighborhood on sticky summer evenings; along a windy seafront in England, wishing I’d worn another layer.

My most purposeful trips took place in the late-1990s when I set out to lose weight by running multiple laps on a nearly traffic-free perimeter road at a city park near my home. I kept at it each evening after work for months regardless of the weather, shedding pounds through my plodding routine, motivated by a fellow jogger who did his many laps wearing a headlamp at dusk and told me he had dropped 50 pounds after several years of running there.

While on a 45-minute walk in mid-March, after my gym had shut down, I remembered that guy. I turned my stroll into something more for a block or so, resumed walking, then jogged a bit more. I did this for most of a week before stepping out with a different goal — to go for a run.

I began at a shuttered restaurant that in a previous iteration had a tiny bar packed with folks after work. Later on, it was a sports-themed place with 25-cent wings on Tuesday nights, which ensured a big crowd.

It was dark, the parking lot empty as I began the first of three round-trips up a stretch of Riverside Drive, over Ash Creek and between the marsh. Others also had escaped the indoors, and we made our way giving each other a wide berth. There were as many paces as faces, some slow and some fast. I was solidly in the middle but exerting enough energy that after 25 minutes I was sweaty and winded.

On my calendar, over two weeks of canceled out-of-town work the second half of March, are times and distances denoting my new daily habit. As one month melted into the next, I was sure of very little, only that I would try to keep putting one foot in front of the other, running both for and from something.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

Creature Discomfort

Not all pets are created equal

By Bill Fields

Among the sounds of a North Carolina childhood that linger many years later and hundreds of miles from where I heard them: sausage frying on a weekend morning; a lawnmower starting up and piercing the late afternoon quiet; a neighbor mom calling her daughters home at dark; the pop of ball in glove, over and over, once my arm got strong enough to make it happen.

But sometimes, out of nowhere, this one: Dad in the backyard at the end of the day, shaking a bag of cat chow like he was keeping rhythm in a swing band. It was the felines’ dinner bell, and they ran toward my father as if it had been a month since their last meal. That he diluted their milk with water from the hose mattered not.

Lucy and Linus arrived first, about the time I started school, kitten siblings from a litter belonging to one of Dad’s co-workers. Lucy was black and white; Linus was a gray tabby. It being the 1960s, and pet ethics not being what they are today, Lucy grew up to have a lot of kittens herself, her maternity ward usually a cardboard box from the ABC store. The stars of her offspring were Tuffy and Fluffy, each white with black accents. Fluffy’s fur was softer than a baby blanket, but she gave no quarter when wrestling Tuffy on my parents’ double bed, the cats’ favorite daytime playground.

Linus was a handsome boy, strong and athletic, until the big ice storm in the late 1960s, when he scaled a longleaf pine next door and was frightened to return to terra firma, choosing to howl a desperate howl overnight to the dismay of every house on the block. Once the sun was up Dad climbed a ladder, its rungs coated slick, to rescue him. Linus thawed out in front of a heat duct and thereafter seemed particularly grateful for the crunchy grub distributed daily at dusk.

If a boy didn’t have a pet dolphin in that era he surely had a dog, yet my canine experiences weren’t happy — certainly not like one nearby family who possessed an assembly line of dachshunds or another with a beloved beagle. We got Skippy, a midnight-black cocker spaniel, when I was in first grade but gave him away not long after we got the pet, when he kept nipping at passersby on Ridge Street.

I loved Peanuts, a Chihuahua puppy acquired when I was still in elementary school. Peanuts could well have been with me until I graduated from Pinecrest, if not for his early and unfortunate demise. My father created a flap in the little dog’s cardboard-box residence, but it got caught in the entryway one day while I was at school. I found Peanuts when I returned home from classes. He was trapped in the flap, his fate already clear.

Years later, as a grown man, I would have temporary co-guardianship of a couple of dogs, friendly cocker spaniels in one case and sweet but undisciplined Labradors in the other. The Labs were amazingly determined and creative when it came to anything involving food, to the point where they could even chew through a tin can. They forced us to tape shut the refrigerator door, lest we come home to a royal mess. With the bigger, stronger Lab on a leash one evening, it nearly dislocated my right shoulder when a squirrel suddenly appeared.

In the last couple of decades of my mother’s life — when she lived alone and could have, by any measure, used some company — I occasionally told her I had a cat or dog coming her way for a Christmas present. These teasings were not something that made her smile; her pet-managing days were long over.

I now wonder if mine aren’t, too. Occasionally my partner and I wish there were such as thing as Rent-a-Corgi, where one could enjoy a dog (the breed her family had when she was a child and that I have also liked from afar) for a couple of hours, then return it before any dog bites, bathroom accidents or vet bills.

If I were to ever own a cat, I am certain its cuisine would resemble that of my childhood felines rather than of the pets owned by a woman for whom a friend of mine cat-sat a decade ago. There were three dozen cats in a big house, and each got its individual can of wet food in its preferred flavor. The feeding stations were as long as the serving line at a K&W Cafeteria.

I helped with the horde one evening. I confess, without remorse, to not being worried if a cat that was supposed to receive tuna primavera instead dined on shredded wild salmon. And I walked out into the winter night thinking perhaps the only creatures in my house should be on Animal Planet.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

A Rose is a Rose

No matter what the cable guy says

By Bill Fields

In the early stages of my seventh decade of being called something, I know I am not “will.i.am.” And the singer William James Adams Jr. need not fear that I will encroach on his lower-case and punctuated stage moniker.

Beyond that, though, all bets are off as I deal with an identity crisis.

My name game was simple for a long time. As with many folks, there were family reasons my birth certificate says what it says. William was the first name of my father and of the man who, with his wife, adopted him. Henderson, my mother’s maiden name, was chosen for the middle of mine. Both sides had a stake in how I would turn out.

From as early as I can remember, people called me Bill, never the two-syllable variant of the nickname. This was obviously a choice, for whatever reason, by my parents. As a child, I had no reason to argue with them. Neither Billy the Kid nor Billy Graham had something I needed.

Once I started school, I began to see how the world’s male Williams — or at least those in my classroom — were divided into Bills and Billys. The Duncan boy was a Billy. The Perham boy, like me, was a Bill. Folks seemed as likely to switch up their nicknames as to mistake the Blue Knights for the Red Devils. I was Bill on my lesson papers and my report cards. I also was Bill on my Little League team, although if someone had labeled me Willie, same as one of my baseball heroes, Willie Mays, I would have taken it in a heartbeat.

This “rule” followed me to the barbershop, where I never heard anyone voice the first name of my favorite haircutter, Billie Joyce Hill, with fewer than two syllables. The same was true for a longtime teacher in Southern Pines, Billie Bowen, although in the hallways she received an alliterative addition, “Bat Cave” Billie Bowen, because of her roots in that tiny western North Carolina community.

I was a plain, boring Bill until encountering golf professionals at Mid Pines for whom I worked as a teen golf cart attendant. I was Billy to them just as sure as there were longleaf pines along the fairways.

As I got older, outside of passports, bank statements and driver licenses that utilized my legal name, I was Bill — to friends and family, in bylines and, most of the time, to co-workers. The difference between the nickname’s versions was as different as Billy Crystal and Bill Kristol.

The last couple of years, one of my freelance assignments finds me on the road a dozen times a year working long days with a great bunch of people, some of whom like to call me Billy. Although I still don’t see myself as a Billy, I answer to it and have come to see it as the term of endearment that it is. I am the same person, after all, with or without a “y.”

I wish a phone agent had been as understanding a year ago when I was attempting to close a cable television account for the service in my mother’s room in an assisted living facility.

“This is William Fields,” I said, identifying the account and explaining why I had called.”

The voice on the other end of the line was helpful at first, collecting salient information to allow him to retrieve the account from the virtual vault of cable TV land. Just when I thought we were close to finishing the conversation, a snag appeared.

“What did you say your name was?” he asked.

“William Fields,” I answered.

“This account was opened by Bill Fields.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Bill is short for William. It’s a nickname. It’s my name. That was me — it is me.”

“But the account was opened with a different name. I can’t do this over the phone. You’re going to have to go to an office.”

After a couple of more tries weren’t able to inject any common sense into the conversation, I gave up and hung up.

As the steam dissipated, Bill v. Billy seemed way down the list of the world’s woes.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.  Bill can be reached at williamhfields@gmail.com.

Hometown

Untold Stories

A simple man’s jump into history

By Bill Fields

To my memory, still keen though he has been gone 40 years, Dad wasn’t big on sit-down discussions of serious matters. If, in the early 1970s, we had been wearing Fitbits instead of Timexes, they would have shown considerable steps taken during our “Facts of Life” conversation as we paced around the house one afternoon, each doing his best to speak of anything but the birds and the bees.

We got through that talk, fragmented though it might have been, despite our mutual reluctance. That was not the case when it came to my father’s military service, memories of which were as off limits to me as the bottle of Canadian Club stashed in the far reaches of a kitchen cabinet.

The hard stuff of war had come years earlier as my father, a corporal in the 161st Parachute Engineer Company, fought in the Pacific theater in 1944-45. Like so many others, William E. Fields had been plucked from an ordinary life — in his case, a long-haul truck driver transporting produce from his hometown of Jackson Springs to locales along the Eastern Seaboard — to do extraordinary things in the Allied war effort.

In 2020, the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, plenty of stories will be told about men and women who never wanted to talk about themselves or what they went through.

Dad was inducted Oct. 15, 1942, in Fort Bragg. By the spring of ’44, he had his wings, a wife and a will. My parents’ first child was due that November, by which time Dad was about 9,000 miles from home. An assistant unit foreman, second in command of a squad of parachute engineers, my father directed combat and demolitions work, and helped erect barriers and traps against the enemy.

His unit of airborne engineers was attached to the 503rd Parachute Regimental Combat Team. After fighting in the New Guinea and Luzon campaigns, Corregidor was next as the United States sought to reclaim the rocky island in Manila Bay overtaken by Japanese forces in 1942.

“The airborne landing was one of the most — if not the most — daring, unusual and successful in the history of airborne operations,” authors James and William Belote wrote in Corregidor: Saga of a Fortress, of the Feb. 16, 1945 operation involving 2,065 paratroopers descending from C-47s only 400 feet above a tiny landing zone on a windy morning. The first time I watched a Pathé newsreel film of the jump, the jeopardy of the troops became very real.

I’ve wondered if my mother, in North Carolina with her infant daughter, Dianne, read this Associated Press account published Feb. 18 in the Charlotte Observer and papers across the country: “Plane after plane dropped 10-man teams, some beyond the cliffs, some in rocky ravines but the majority on the ‘topside’ where they were to the rear of enemy guns pointing out to the China Sea. The ’chutists carried full equipment.”

Dad wasn’t in the majority and became one of hundreds of casualties when he landed on uneven terrain, shattering his right ankle. After a long recuperation, he would recover to walk without a limp but was plagued the rest of his life by tropical ulcer or “jungle rot” on the joint and varicose veins in his right calf.

As I found out just recently from an older cousin to whom Dad once confided a decade after the war, getting badly hurt was only part of his Corregidor story. Wounded and alone after being blown off course, he had to hide in a crater covered by his parachute to avoid being seen by Japanese troops before eventually being rescued and evacuated by comrades. It would be two months before he returned to the United States, and September until he was discharged from a convalescent hospital in Virginia with $144.14 and a Purple Heart that cost much more than that.

On Feb. 16, I will be thinking a lot about an ordinary man and the stories he wouldn’t share.  PS

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

Hometown

Period Pieces

Vintage cameras can yield vintage shots

By Bill Fields

I’ve decided I’m going to start a new decade with an old camera.

In fact, multiple vintage cameras. I’ve had them for a while as the only thing I really collect aside from a meager stash of old signature golf balls bearing the names of pros you probably haven’t heard of.

But, after a couple of false starts the last few years, I’ve made a commitment to use them regularly in 2020, the challenges of airport X-rays and film loading be damned. (I’m writing this with a view of some stray bits of film leader, the end game of a practice run with a bottom-loading screw-mount Leica.)

Still, it was great fun to take my 1937 Leica IId to the top of the Arc de Triomphe on a trip to Paris in late 2018, where it stood out in a sea of selfie sticks and smartphones. I’ve shot film sporadically over the last two decades, from an 85-year-old leatherette Kodak Brownie to a brand-new plastic Holga and any number of models in between.

An image I made with that Brownie about a decade ago on a beach not far from home is one my favorites. A handheld exposure at dusk, it includes two swimmers, one appearing as a sea serpentlike apparition, the mood enhanced by a bit of motion and the late hour of the day. My satisfaction with the photo is no doubt also influenced by the vagaries of the camera itself, a basic design that wasn’t foolproof in its heyday, much less now. I sure didn’t know what I had when I looked through the cloudy viewfinder and clicked the shutter that evening.

I thought about a one-camera/one-lens approach to 2020, a popular method for simplifying one’s photographic mission. One of my very old Leicas with a collapsible Elmar 50mm f/3.5 lens will likely see the most duty, but I’m going to mix things up by utilizing an Olympus OM-1n from the 1970s and probably the box camera as well. I noticed recently that a couple of places even still sell 110-format film, meaning that I could put my first camera, a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 20 model, in the rotation. What I’m sure of, though, is my vow to have a film camera with me.

I don’t know my way around a darkroom, so I won’t be souping my own film or making my own prints, yet I am energized by the prospects of the photographs I will be producing. Budget alone will force me to pick my spots and compose carefully. I may develop specific themes or it could turn out more random. It will be fun — I think — to experience the hopeful anxiety between shooting and having the film developed as I experienced in shooting golf professionally for more than a decade in the 1980s and 1990s.

One of the most vivid memories of my work life is picking up my slides at a New York City lab on the Monday after the 1987 Masters and quickly going through boxes to find the one containing Larry Mize’s winning shot and celebration. Dinner tasted a lot better once I realized I had the moment in focus and it was properly exposed, no gimme in a less-automated era.

My career won’t depend on what I shoot on film in 2020. In a way, it’s akin to playing golf with hickory shafts or persimmon clubheads — a different game than today’s way. Vintage cameras can be beautiful objects even if they’re just sitting on a shelf. Using them can be rewarding. To consider who before me might have shot with them — and where — is a fascination, and there is romance in film that isn’t in a memory card.

My friend Martin Axon has printed for many renowned photographers and is a master of the platinum process. In 2013, I did an essay about Hy Peskin’s famous image of Ben Hogan at the 1950 U.S. Open. Axon has printed the iconic shot.

“When you hold someone’s negative,” Axon told me then, “you go, ‘This was the actual moment,’ because you know the film was there at that moment in time.”

Here’s hoping negatives will be a positive in 2020.  PS

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