Pleasures of Life Dept.

Reconsidering a White Christmas

Perfection isn’t what it’s cracked up to be

By Tom Allen

The chances of a white Christmas in the Sandhills of North Carolina are slim to none. Even if a few flurries put folks in the holiday spirit, the National Weather Service defines a white Christmas as having at least 1 inch of snow on the ground the morning of December 25. But a couple of inches on December 22 that hang around for a few cold days would make the cut, right? Liturgically speaking, Christmastide is 12 days, so more days equals a greater probability, correct?

Dreaming of a white Christmas, where the treetops glisten? Bing crooned the iconic song, first heard in Irving Berlin’s classic, Holiday Inn, then later in the eponymous motion picture. It continues to be the bestselling Christmas song of all time.

The concept is lovely, but when it actually happens, the dream, more often than not around here, becomes a nightmare — wind, cold, ice, cars off the road, and sundry other unpleasantries. In our part of the world the three French hens wouldn’t have electricity.

Aside from a couple of Christmas day dustings, I’ve only experienced one white Christmas, in Louisville, Kentucky, the winter of 1990. One front after another brought several inches of snow, starting the first week of December, continuing, almost weekly, for the next three months. Snow and a couple of ice storms kept the frozen stuff on the ground until early March.

Western Kentucky is well-equipped for these seasons, unlike the more temperate parts of the South, where a couple of inches brings life to a standstill. Roads and parking lots stayed pretty clear. Even the apartment complex where I lived kept the sidewalks and entryways clean. But dirty, piled-up snow, gray mush and salty slush made for a depressing winter. And even with salt trucks and snowblowers, I often found myself waddling on an icy sidewalk or gingerly taking baby steps, hoping not to fall, which I did on a few occasions, bruising my ego more than other bodily parts.

On Christmas Eve 1990, my then-fiancée, Beverly, and I headed out to a service at the church we attended. The night was cold, raw, with just enough flurries to slow driving. Inside, the setting was beautiful, traditional, candles and crèche, and “Silent Night” to wrap things up. Heading out to my car after the service I noticed a grey Buick sedan had skidded on an icy patch into the front door panel on the passenger side of my red Toyota. Before I could yell, “Hey, hold on,” the car was gone. The dent was minor; I’d like to believe the chap driving the grey Buick had no idea he bumped my car. After all, it was Christmas — peace on Earth, goodwill to men, even the ones who dent your red Toyota. My instinct was to run, to catch the fella’s attention, to wish him a “Merry Christmas” before I pointed out we needed to talk. But another patch of ice brought me down, making me wonder just how merry and bright this Christmas would be.

As I recall, other than the dent — which I never got repaired — and a sore backside, it was a pretty good holiday. Oddly, the fact that our Christmas was white mattered little. I’ll take a chilly morning, clear roads, whatever family is gathered, and a snuggle with my dog. Because the perfect Christmas, like the perfect marriage or kids or job or church, really doesn’t exist.

So, consider letting go of that perfect holiday. Substituting canned biscuits for yeast rolls that failed to rise isn’t the end of the world. What if the recycled Dollar Tree bag you had to use because you forgot that pretty roll of paper had someone else’s name on it? Don’t sweat it. Kids wiggly at Christmas Eve services? Baby starts crying during “Silent Night”? What better night to hear an infant cry?

The probability of a white Christmas here is low. Chances of a 70-degree day are the same as a 40-degree day. So be thankful for whatever’s on your table — and the people around it. Be civil. Be kind. Be glad.

Just watch out for that guy in a grey Buick sedan.  PS

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

Character Study

Broadway on Broad Street

All dressed up and on the go

By Jenna Biter

“Scarves, shawls, black and white for My Fair Lady when they do the Ascot scene.” Mary McKeithen points to one garment, then the next. “And purses from all eras.” Storage bins mound with handbags and clutches. “Black gowns.”

She cruises down the aisle past clothing rack after clothing rack, then stops. “I cover these up to keep the sun from fading them through the window.” She pulls the corner of a cherry-red dress out from beneath a drop cloth. “Right here is more Renaissance. And, of course, shoes, shoes, shoes.” Vintage heels vie for cubby space on a far wall.

She reaches the end of the first aisle, already whirling and grabbing at garments in the next — dresses for Oklahoma!, sequins, and turn-of-the-century chiffons for the song “Shipoopi” in Music Man. “Right here is all of the Jackie Kennedy era. I’ve done shows mostly at colleges with these,” she says, waggling a skirt suit back and forth. “See the Jackie suits? And then here are more sequin things and we start back at the ’50s . . . ” She advances a rack, passing through time as she goes, “ . . . ’40s . . . ” and then “ . . . ’30s.” She points at a group of white and trills, “Here are the angels and ghosts.” Fa la la. A few swollen aisles and hundreds of costumes later, she laughs. “And this is only half.”

Only half of the upstairs! Costume jewelry, wedding dresses, men’s suits and tuxedos in all sizes, and band and military uniforms fill the rest of the upstairs of Showboat Costumes and Collectibles in Southern Pines. For the most part, McKeithen stores all things theater on the second floor of her shop, and the Halloween costumes, Santa suits, mascots — all the stuff that can be rented à la carte — on the first. She ballparks the building: “I think it’s about 11,000 square feet.”

Showboat Costumes and Collectibles at 712 S.W. Broad St. in Southern Pines, is McKeithen’s shop and warehouse, but it’s also her studio. “These are all ribbons and bows and cloths and sequins and trims and everything,” she says, fingering the drawers that edge a well-loved worktable. “I have a little room back here, this office, because sometimes about 4 o’clock in the morning, I’ll get an idea.” She points to a full-sized bed in the corner. “I get something in my head, and I’ll get up and come to work and then get tired.”

But not that tired — she’s embellished, reconstructed or made ex nihilo many, if not most, of the costumes in Showboat. For the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences’ production of From the Mountains to the Sea, she magicked up convincing turtle, catfish and salamander costumes. And with the help of her husband, Jere, and a professional upholsterer, she even made Madame Garderobe, the wardrobe in Beauty and the Beast, with a set of fully functional drawers.

“I kind of do more of the design,” McKeithen says. “My daughter Marcie is real meticulous, and she always dots the i’s and crosses the t’s for me. Makes sure everybody’s got shoes, everybody’s got socks, everybody’s got . . . ” She trails off. “I couldn’t do it without her.”

If it weren’t for Marcie, McKeithen wouldn’t even be a costumer. “My daughter was in a Madrigal dinner at Pinecrest High School, and her costume was better than the other kids’,” she says, thinking back to 1993. “They called me and asked if I would embellish some of the other costumes, and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll have a go at it.’ And then they started getting me to do their plays.”

Before that, McKeithen’s only experience with theater was as a high schooler. She grew up in Carthage with her parents and five siblings in the house that used to share property with the jail. “My daddy was the chief of police until I was in my mid-teens,” she explains. McKeithen attended Carthage High, and, as a junior, she got the lead in the school’s production of Mama’s Baby Boy.

“My boyfriend at the time gave me a million-dollar check for a contract to Hollywood when the show was over as a joke,” she adds, laughing. Then, as a senior, she got the lead again, but the school’s auditorium burned down before they could perform the play. “Other than that, I never knew or cared anything about theater at all. I didn’t care about theater until Marcie started. Amazing how one little thing can change everything,” she says.

“Then I got hired by the Temple Theatre — I did them for 12 years  —  and I did Pembroke, Campbell, all the high schools around here. I’ve done shows in Washington, New York. Let’s see, I worked for the Highlands Theatre, and I did an outdoor drama in Kenansville.” McKeithen has been bringing Broadway to the Sandhills and beyond for nearly three decades. She juggles between 12 and 15 shows a year, about eight of them in the spring, and the rest in the fall and winter. When asked how she balances them all, she says, “If I read a book, I have to complete it. I mean, I just can’t wait; I have to read it all. But, when it comes to a project, I’m able to say, ‘OK, I’ll do this a little bit over here and then this a little bit over there.’ I can do projects in stages.”

McKeithen applies her multi-tasking mentality to life writ large — not in a stressed-out-frazzled kind of way, but in a how-much-life-can-I-take-in kind of way. She’s had photography and cross-stitching hobbies and became an auctioneer and appraiser, along with Jere. “He said it was cheaper for me to go to auctioneer school with him than for me to have two weeks to shop,” she says. They collected a whole houseful of colored glass, instruments, copper cookware, opera glasses and dolls for their two granddaughters who live next door.

“Oh, and when we were young, we had a band. We sang music and played up in Greensboro,” she says. “That’s how we earned money to go on vacations.” She still emcees at a bluegrass festival near Raleigh.

McKeithen has been a Moore County commissioner, president of the Moore County Hospital Auxiliary, and served on the FirstHealth Board of Directors. Until recently, she and Jere both had pilot’s licenses — they even have a 900-foot runway on their farm. “We live on a farm that’s not really a farm,” she says. “We’re not trying to raise anything but pine straw.”

She’s a bit of a comedian, too. “But my favorite thing to do,” she admits, “is I have two John Deere tractors, and I mow the farm. Relax on my tractor, mow the grass.”

Mind you, the farm/not-farm is about 175 acres, but she mows in stages, too.  PS

Jenna Biter is a writer, entrepreneur and military wife in the Sandhills. She can be reached at jennabiter@protonmail.com.

Pleasures of Life Dept.

A Southpaw’s Lament

On the wrong side of history

By Scott Sheffield

It’s high time somebody spoke up for us. We have been neglected and marginalized for far too long. We, the people of the left-handed persuasion. Depending on your source, left-handed people comprise roughly 10 percent of the world’s population. Nobody knows the troubles we’ve seen — unless you’re one of us. Try walking a day in our gloves.

It started during the Roman Empire. The Latin word for right was “dexter” and the word for left was “sinister.” As time went on, dexter started taking on the connotation of “proper” and “correct,” while sinister became synonymous with “unlucky” and even “evil.” This perception of the word sinister, and by extension the people who were left-handed, reached a pervasive level during the Middle or Dark Ages, when belief in the existence of sorcery and black magic was at its peak. Abnormalities were viewed as vile, even dangerous. Because only a small percentage of the population was left-handed or “sinistral,” left-handedness was considered an abnormality, and those who exhibited the trait were shunned and vilified.

A negative view of left-handedness persisted into the 20th century. A couple of my elementary school teachers tried to get us left-handed kids to write with our other (wrong, right?) hand by scolding, or worse, a rap on the knuckles. No amount of chastisement was sufficient to compel me, or many of the other brave resisters in my class, to change hands.

As time went on, the slights piled up. I was dismayed to learn that “left-handed compliment” basically meant an insulting statement disguised as praise. I discovered that many ordinary consumer products were made specifically for righties, or “dextrals.” Scissors, for example. The blades are fiendishly aligned to benefit the right-handed. If you doubt me, trying using your left. How does that make your thumb feel? And what about the common soup ladle? The lip is always on the left side, the way a right-hander would pour. If left-handed folks do that they end with untidy consequences. Manual can openers are right-hand, too. In yet another power move the handle must be held in the left hand while the user turns the crank with the right.

How about clothes? Belts, for example. I once bought a belt with a decorative buckle, but if I slid the belt strap through the pant loops to the right, which is the natural way for a left-hander to put on a belt, when I got around to fastening the belt to the buckle, the design was upside down. The belt was meant to be put on from right to left. And shirts. A standard man’s shirt has its buttons on the right, buttonholes on the left. It’s designed to be buttoned from the right. Trying to button my shirt with my left hand ties my fingers in knots. That goes for suit jackets, too. Yes, yes, standard women’s shirts have their buttons on the left, but that’s not to help out left-handed ladies, it’s just tradition.

Tools, machines and even some weapons are configured for the dextrals. Not long ago, when I was checking out my order at the grocery store and when the payment device asked me to sign my name, my hand bumped into the plastic COVID shield that separates shoppers from the clerk. It was nearly impossible to write my signature. Was this a plot hatched by Apple Pay?

There have been some bright spots for me as a left-hander. On a business trip to San Francisco many years ago, one of my co-workers and I went to Fisherman’s Wharf for a seafood dinner. Afterward, we attempted to walk off our sumptuous meals by strolling around the piers. At Pier 39 I noticed a sign written in bright yellow script that said “Lefty’s.” Below the name, in somewhat smaller, bright purple block print, were the words “San Francisco Left Hand Store.” Everything in the store, EVERYTHING, was left-hand oriented. It was the materialization of Homer Simpson’s neighbor, Ned Flanders’, Leftorium.

I was like a kid in a candy shop. I had to be dragged out of the store by my right-handed friend. While surfing the net recently, I was happy to see that Lefty’s is still there.

Of course, we were thrown a bone with International Left-handers Day. It was originally observed in 1976 to celebrate the uniqueness and differences of left-handed people. You 90-percenters may not celebrate it, but it’s a national holiday in my house.

In fairness, I have to give grudging credit to this right-handed world for one thing — out of necessity I’ve become quasi-ambidextrous. But let’s hope that the only left-handers who are considered vile or dangerous today are the ones who are, well, vile or dangerous.  PS

Scott Sheffield is a contributing writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. He may be reached at ssheff@nc.rr.com.

Pleasures of Life Dept.

The First Time I Saw Paris

A young man’s trip of a lifetime

By Tom Allen

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom

Holiday tables under the trees

April in Paris, this is the feeling

No one can ever reprise

In the spring of 1975, I was there. April, in Paris, though I had never heard Yip Harburg’s lyrics to the hit song composed by Vernon Duke for the 1932 Broadway musical Walk a Little Faster. Wouldn’t have known a chestnut tree if I saw one. But the feeling that “no one can ever reprise?” That, I remember; yet my sojourn to the City of Lights almost didn’t happen.

The only foreign language offered at my high school in the ’70s was French. Not a lotta takers. Why I signed up escapes me. Perhaps I thought a language might look good on a college application. By the time I graduated, after three years studying French, I could conjugate verbs, sing a few Christmas songs, and even read a little Victor Hugo.

During my junior year, Madame Arnold, our teacher whose slow, Southern drawl made the language easier to hear and understand, organized a weeklong trip for members of our French Club. The trip would take place over Easter break. 

I wanted to go. More than anything, more than ever, I wanted to go. My parents’ initial response was “no.” It wasn’t the cost as much as the fact I was 16 and had never been out of North Carolina, much less the country. And I’d never flown. My dad was concerned the plane might crash, a carryover from his Army days in Europe 30 years earlier. My mom worried I might wander off, get lost, be kidnapped. My paternal grandmother, who lived next door, shared Dad’s concern. A farm wife who’d never seen the ocean, she questioned why anyone would want to fly across that ocean to someplace where “you can’t understand a word they say.” My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, thought it was a great opportunity: “You can bring me back a bottle of French wine.”

I recall pleading for days, a form of manipulation that rarely worked in my family. I would help pay my way, I promised. My meager checking account still had money from summer tobacco work. I think I even cried, just like I cried the year my buddy got a motor scooter for Christmas and I didn’t. Those tears, I recall, were wasted.

Eventually, my dad caved. Reluctantly, my mother agreed. One grandmother immediately started praying for safety. The other gave me cash for that bottle of wine.

On Easter Monday, five of us, under the watchful eye of Madame Arnold, departed Raleigh-Durham for New York, then an overnight flight to Paris. I savored every moment of the trip, from the plane ride and its preheated meals to the beauty of Paris by night from atop the Eiffel Tower. I was especially proud that I understood the language and happy the French could understand my Southern accent, even when I had to ask, many times,“Parlez plus lentement, s’il vous plaît.” Please speak slower.

We visited sites seen only in classroom film strips or 16 mm movies — the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées, the beaches of Normandy and Mont Saint-Michel, the Palace of Versailles, and the château of Chambord. I remember the grandeur of Notre Dame, still heavy with the scent of lilies and incense from Easter Masses, and the taste of éclairs and macaroons from hole-in-the-wall pâtisseries.

Our last night in Paris, we attended dinner and a show at the Moulin Rouge, its cabaret and can-can dancers immortalized on canvas by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Only after pages of permission slips our parents had to sign, were we allowed to see the possibly provocative performances, accompanied by a half-glass of champagne with dessert. But the night was less risqué than we imagined, a classy and colorful evening of great food and lots of laughter.

When I returned from our grande soirée, I packed the small bottles of perfume and lace handkerchiefs I purchased for my mom and grandmothers, a wallet for my dad, and that bottle of Vouvray for Granny Pate. The only souvenir I bought for myself — my caricature by a street artist in Montmartre.

The next day I bid adieu to what had been the trip of my young lifetime. Others would follow — a summer in England during seminary, a honeymoon in Bermuda, a pilgrimage to Israel. But my taste for travel was sparked by that high school journey to République Française, a taste we encouraged in our daughters, both of whom studied abroad during college.

My own college days included more French because I simply loved the language. Sadly, I’ve had few opportunities to converse since. Like anything else, use it or lose it. Two occasions in ministry afforded me the opportunity to say the Lord’s Prayer in French. One was a small, private wedding for a lovely couple, the bride and her family from Québec. The other, the funeral of a parishioner, also French-Canadian, a friend with whom I occasionally conversed. The prayer, in the language of his childhood, was his request, and one I was honored to fulfill.

Every year, the week before Easter, I visit my parents’ graves. Sometimes I stand in silence, but other times I speak. Words of gratitude are always expressed, for their lives, their love, their generosity. And for the gift of giving into my pleas and sending their only kid to the other side of the world.  PS

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

Pleasures of Life Dept.

How I Learned to Skate

By Nancy Roy Fiorillo

One night not too long ago, I dreamed I was roller skating. The rink was big, and I was all alone except for my dad. He was standing at the railing. I tried a difficult jump and fell, not once but three times. Then my dad said, “Hold your head up — that will help you keep your balance.”

I tried again and mastered the jump. It was a dream that came from long ago, before I really grew up, before high school and boyfriends and life.

I grew up in a small town in New England. Famous for the manufacture of Frye Boots, Marlborough was an unremarkable haven for first generation immigrants — French, Italian, Irish, Greek and more. I was third-generation French Canadien, my antecedents hailing from Prince Edward Island and Toronto. My parents met at a St. Mary’s Catholic Church youth group and later dated as the King and Queen of the Mardi Gras. I was told the priest attended the crowning of the “royalty,” but the dancing could start only after he made his exit.

Our modest two-bedroom house sat on 12 acres with enough room for two parents, one sister, batches and batches of kittens and me. My paternal grandfather lived two houses away, and both he and my dad raised chickens. Often I accompanied my dad to the chicken coop to feed the squawking birds, eagerly plunging both of my hands down into the mash we mixed for their dinner, and more often than not coming up with nothing much more than an itchy nose. Dad always kept one hand out of the feed, free to scratch my little nose for me.

Receiving the fluffy, yellow chicks we called peepers and putting them in the little room with the bright warming light was a cozy act of faith. On Saturdays my dad was the egg man, and I rode the route with him. His regular job was at a General Electric facility called Telecron. When I asked him what he did, he told me he put faces on clocks. And indeed he did, on an assembly line.

My sister and I walked to school and back. Summertime was a flight of imagination in the large woods behind our house. We buddied up with a couple of kids from across the street and built a bike trail, including jumps. One summer we put together a three-room house with bundling sticks and string. We discovered a pond that we named Crystal Lake and told imaginary stories about who drowned there and who drew their drinking water from this little muddy lagoon. We built a 9-hole cement miniature golf course complete with twists and turns and waterfalls. The architect was the boy across the street (who would become an engineer), and we were his crew. We dug holes, moved rocks, poured cement and cleared paths. We made sandwich signs for our bikes and rode all over town advertising a round of miniature golf, 5 cents. We made enough money that summer to go to the finest amusement park in New England — my dad drove four of us as if he were delivering eggs and we stayed all day.

In the winter we’d sling our ice skates over our shoulders and walk to Lake Williams, as frozen as the concrete we poured. We changed into our skates near the warmth of the burn barrel and stayed on the ice until we couldn’t feel our feet, then returned to the barrel to change into our frozen boots and head home.

Just before fourth grade we found out I needed allergy shots and special shoes. My mother was offered the entire vial of medicine for $85, or we could pay $5 per shot. She took the installment plan and then declared she would be going to work at a factory in Sudbury. My sister and I left public school to attend St. Anne’s Academy adjacent to our church. The academy was both a school and a novitiate, run by the Sisters of St. Anne. Most of the students were boarders, and my sister and I joined the ranks of the day students. School started at 8 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. We had a half day of French and religion and the other half of the day was for everything else our nuns knew. We diagrammed sentences ad nauseam but learned little history, geography or science. To fill the full day we had 2 1/2 hours for lunch, time used in the winter for skating on Lake Williams, a group of wobbly young girls led by penguins on ice. Our nuns were strict and unyielding, but they could skate like Boston Bruins, gliding along with their hands behind their backs.

My dad eventually closed down the egg business and, with help, dismantled the chicken coop. I remember them removing the baby chick room, then pulling off sides of the troughs. The roof was still standing when they pulled up the floor. Underneath was beautiful hardwood, perfect for roller skating. Our neighborhood engineer was no skater, so he rigged up a bowling alley, too.

One day after watching us, my dad announced that we were good enough skaters to go to the real roller rink, named Lyonhurst, up on the hill above Lake Williams. In earlier days the Big Bands, even some famous ones, performed there. When the music died out, a couple bought it and turned it into a skating rink with smooth flooring, organ music, dances and games. My first Saturday afternoon was pretty scary, but Dad stayed close by leaning against the rail to give me confidence. The rented skates were big and heavy on my skinny legs, and I didn’t have a skating skirt like most of the older girls, but I rolled on, weekend after weekend.

Soon my dad presented me with a used pair of excellent skates — Douglass-Snyder’s — with toe stops. My mom knitted skating skirts for me and bought the panties that go underneath. I took lessons and became a real skater. I won some games and learned some jumps and danced, going over the steps before I slept just to make sure I knew every single one.

Then it happened. I woke one Saturday morning to the news that Lyonhurst, my skating rink, had burned to the ground during the night. I was heartbroken! Other skating rinks were too far away to even think about.

We still ice skated on Lake Williams when it froze over in the winter, but as we grew older, the woods held no interest for us. Our backyard rink was gone and high school was ahead. I was forced to give up my skating and learn to do more grown-up things. But sometimes, even now, I dream about mastering a jump with someone standing against the rail with a free hand.  PS

Nancy Roy Fiorillo, a former mayor of Pinehurst, loves reading and occasionally a little writing.

Pleasures of Life Dept.

Flowers for Mama

Beauty floating in a coffee mug

By Katherine Smith

It was 3 a.m. on Mother’s Day. I was 19, driving home from a night walking through Weymouth with a certain boy my parents didn’t know about. On my lap, I balanced a bouquet of sunflowers, picked up from a 24/7 grocery store, hoping that my mom would be so delighted to discover them in the morning that she would forget to ask me where I had been.

I parked a block away from home, tiptoed down the driveway, and carefully pulled on the squeaky kitchen door. It was locked. The noise alerted my mom’s huge German shepherd, who was even more anxious than usual with my dad working out of town. Hoping to quiet Zulu before she woke everyone up, I ran around to the back porch doors, which were indeed open, and met my mom in her camo pajamas, holding a rifle. Despite my shielding myself with her favorite flowers, Mom did indeed ask me where on earth I had been.

These days, while I still often find myself driving to my parents’ house in the middle of the night, Zulu now sleeps in their closed bedroom, and I have a front door key. Somewhere between Interstate 40 and the back roads of Seagrove, I will stop to pick up flowers for my mama. Dogwood twigs, half a dozen daffodils, or a single magnolia blossom float intoxicatingly beside me in an unwashed coffee mug on the console the whole way home.

Beauty is my mom’s love language. We five kids were raised with climbing roses, azalea coves leading to white wicker dreaming chairs, beefsteak tomatoes bursting from their cages and onto our dinner plates, antique furniture refinished from someone’s roadside trash pile, and living room walls revived each year by fresh buckets of goldenrod, sienna and merlot paint. When Mom left her only home in Moore County to follow my dad to his new job in Texas a few years back, it was with wrought-iron hanging baskets of ferns, seed packets of kitchen herbs, and buttercups hand-painted on thrifted plates. We all knew Mom was terribly homesick, but she resolutely held beauty close, and it fed her straight from her senses to her marrow.

Only when I moved thousands of miles away to Alaska did I understand this necessity of homegrown beauty. All winter, I walked in circles around the garden section of Lowe’s Hardware, just for the home smell. I bought a new houseplant nearly every weekend, ordered more seeds than I’d ever be able to plant, built a growshelf from recycled shop lights, and a small greenhouse out of PVC pipe.

In the place where stark independence met the nostalgia of being cared for, I grew my first garden. Along with hardy Swiss chard and kale, I planted the marigolds I grew up with, trained sugar snap peas up willow tepees, and, against all odds, grew a few small tomatoes and jalapeños in my little greenhouse. When my first zucchini bulged from its papery yellow blossom and into my palm, my life was changed. I saw, as my mother must have years ago, that flowers are a necessary beauty, the archetype of potential, the very perpetuation of new, green, life. I saw my mother, just as she must have seen hers, in a pregnant bloom.

This Mother’s Day finds Mom and me both back in our Carolina home soil. In my small garden, I am growing up again, reared by the beauty that is my mother’s literal namesake. Motherwort spreads its bitter calm with blessed mint-family invasiveness. Matricaria chamomilla grows tall and feathery, “the herb for babies of all ages,” as my teacher likes to say. And when I get on the highway in the middle of the night to drive a few short hours into her arms, my mama no longer asks me where I’ve been. She just embraces me, as we have both learned to do with perennials on the first day of summer, and says, “I’m so glad you came.”  PS

Katherine Smith grew up swinging from ivy vines and hunting water lilies in Pinebluff, N.C. She’s returned to North Carolina to study clinical herbalism at the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine in Lowgap, calling Ireland and Alaska home in the interim.

Pleasures of Life Dept.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Chips

Snag a bag on National Potato Chip Day

By Tom Allen

Hold on, St. Patrick. Your day’s coming. But before you pass the corned beef and cabbage, offer a blessing for the Emerald Isle’s favorite veggie — the holy spud. And while you’re at it, give thanks for those crispy, fried, paper-thin rounds, America’s favorite snack, the potato chip.

Potatoes have been fried up for centuries, a staple in European as well as South American cultures, but the earliest written recipe for “crisps,” the English version of our potato chip, dates back to 1817, to a cookbook written by a British doctor and part-time chef, William Kitchiner. Obviously not a cardiologist, Kitchiner suggested frying thin, round shavings in lard or fat drippings.

You can thank George “Crum” Speck (or urban legend) for inventing the American version, originally referred to as “Saratoga chips.” Crum and his sister, “Aunt Kate,” worked as cooks for the Lake Moon House in Saratoga Springs, New York, until he opened his own restaurant, “Crum’s,” in nearby Malta.

Whether truth or tale, the story goes that a diner (some say Cornelius Vanderbilt) who visited the lake house’s popular restaurant in 1853 complained about his order of fried spuds. The discriminating guest sent the side back several times. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. Striving for quality service, or maybe just aggravated at a picky customer, George fried and salted a batch of thinly sliced potatoes that, evidently, pleased the chap.

Crisps or chips. Call ’em what you will. William and Crum (in my opinion) were geniuses.

When I was a boy, a bag of plain Lay’s always sat next to our breadbox. Barbeque flavor was a special treat, but Sour Cream and Onion made for stinky breath. We were never fans of Ruffles. Probably the ridges. Pringles debuted in the late ’60s but I’m guessing they were too newfangled for my traditionalist mom. Tom’s Chips, still available, were an OK substitute. Tom’s, plus a pack of Nabs, made for a perfect snack for a day of hunting or fishing.

A childhood neighbor, who moved south from Michigan, had Charles Chips delivered to her home. She’d offer me a handful on a paper towel. Pretty good, tasted like Lay’s. And how cool to have chips delivered to your door, just like the Pine State Dairy guy brought milk. The company, named for Charles Street in Baltimore, where Effie Musser started the business out of her kitchen, packaged their chips in gold and brown tins and advertised “free delivery.” Mom loved her neighbor but thought chips in a tin coupled with the convenience of delivery was “too much.” The company ended home delivery in the ’70s, but Charles Chips are still sold in those iconic tins.

Potato chips are my go-to snack. Traditional with burgers and dogs but try them crumbled up in a peanut butter sandwich, on wheat bread, with a glass of milk. Heavenly.

Adulthood brought testing the boundaries outside Lay’s yellow and white bag. A New Orleans friend introduced me to Zapp’s. Packaged in Gramercy, Louisiana, Zapp’s kettle-fried chips are cooked in peanut oil, thick and crispy. Kettle-cooked chips differ from regular in cooking method but in the end, a kettle chip, though darker and more irregular in shape, is still a potato chip. Zapp’s first brand? A spicy Cajun version. If you’re a Zapp’s fan, Wedgies, a sandwich shop off Morganton Road in Southern Pines, carries them.

I didn’t give up Lay’s. Sour Cream and Onion or Barbeque rank as favorites, but Dill Pickle or Salt-N-Vinegar? Pass. And Lay’s, like other snack brands, ventured into boutique flavors like Kettle-Cooked Jalapeño and Simply Sea Salted. For the health-conscious, Lay’s offers Baked or Lightly Salted.

Current favorite? Carolina Kettle — flavorful, crispy kettle chips produced by 1 in 6 Snacks, a company in Raleigh, created by 2017 N.C. State grad Josh Monahan. The company’s name is rooted in America’s food insecurity: the fact that 1 in 6 people aren’t sure where they’ll find their next meal. Motivated to produce a quality product and address hunger, Josh donates to local food banks — 5 cents for every 2-ounce bag and 10 cents for every 5-ounce bag sold. Flavors include Outer Banks Sea Salt, Down East Carolina BBQ, Bee Sting Honey Sriracha, and Sir Walter Cream Cheese and Chive. I’m still noshing on bags my kids gave me for Christmas. Great chips fund a good cause. Buy them locally at Southern Whey in downtown Southern Pines.

So grab a bag of your chip of choice. Toast the day with a glass of milk or a bottle of Mountain Dew. St. Patrick’s Day always falls during Lent, a season when some of the faithful choose to give something up. I’ll pass on corned beef, Fridays or any day, but the good Lord knows, I do love my chips.  PS

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

Pleasures of Life Dept.

White-Knuckle Fists

And how to pry an idea out of them

By Jenna Biter

More often than not, I’m wrong — not about any one thing or even a short list of several things. No, not me. I cut a wide swath. I sprinkle conjecture willy-nilly as if it was fairy dust, speaking too soon and judging too quickly. I find myself nursing a bout of foot in mouth so often I should be vaccinated for it. Luckily, erosion of excessive pride is a by-product of my blunders, so I’ve learned to take jokes at my expense gracefully (ish) and to hold my opinions loosely.

Growing up in rural Pennsylvania with a mile-long driveway seemed dull to a 13-year-old with the dream of becoming a fashion designer in a big city, and, to my 20-year-old self, my Perry County upbringing was merely fodder for comedic storytelling. Tales of my Amish neighbors or the eccentric neighborhood survivalist, Emerson, who had constructed a bomb shelter beneath his garage, were megahits with my city-dwelling college mates. “I’ll never marry a man from home,” says I, after breaking up with my high school sweetheart. Wrong. I’m newly married to a man I met in seventh grade. We settled here in the Sandhills, bought our first house–a modified Cape Cod with navy shutters and a fenced-in backyard–and I began prying some of my dumbest preconceived notions out of my white-knuckle fists.

I used to avoid Lowe’s. It wasn’t the garish inflatable holiday decorations that offended me but the garage-style concrete floors. The scuff, scuff, scuffing of my shoes against that cold, hard floor pooled in my head like an invasive earworm. Wriggling into five layers of snowsuit in the backseat of a Suburban was more fun. Then, my husband, Drew, and I became homeowners, and now we worship at the altar of Lowe’s. Somehow my newfound interest in orbital sanders, wainscoting and dovetail joints drowned out the sound of shoes on a floor. My re-evaluations didn’t stop at home improvement.

“But, I want to sit beside you,” I whined into Drew’s ear. “I know, I know,” he cooed as he squeezed my hand and pulled me to our two-person table at our favorite breakfast spot. He slid into his seat, and I plopped into the chair across from him with a huff. It was 10 a.m. on a Saturday. The restaurant was slammed. We crossed our fingers for a booth, so we could cozy in beside each other, hold hands and pull up a Monday or Tuesday puzzle in The New York Times crossword app. Finger crossing has a fairly low success rate when the line snakes out the door and halfway to Savannah. Begrudgingly, we accepted the wooden two-top. Drew concentrated on the menu, even though he orders the same thing every time; I’ll cough out my latte the day he orders differently, and I’m not one to waste a coffee. I glared at him from across the table. Then it struck me. You hypocrite, I chuckled to myself. How long ago was it when I rolled my eyes and held back laughter at the Romeo and Juliet feeding each other French fries while snuggled up side-by-side at Applebee’s? “Weirdos,” I muttered back then.

Now, I’m the weirdo. But I’m OK with that. The list of things I once avoided or mocked now sports a new title: Things I Do or Will Do. I married a man from my hometown, shop at Lowe’s, sit beside rather than across at restaurants, and use an electric toothbrush daily, even though its wet grossness still makes me cringe. I live with a big, hairy dog that drops poufs of fur like tumbleweeds on Route 66 and own utility pants from REI Co-op. On the flip side, my husband now likes mushrooms and red onions and wears clothes that aren’t only for utility.

I’m not saying all of my opinions have or will reverse themselves–I’m still too stubborn for that. And, who knows, some may even withstand research and reanalysis. Hell, there’s an off chance I could be right. You know what they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and I think my odds are better than that. Hope springs eternal.  PS

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

Pleasures of Life

Great Discoveries

All happen in good time

By Scott Sheffield

It was December of 1956 and I was 9 years old, turning 10 three days after Christmas. My brother, Steve, was 7. My awareness of the world was just beginning to widen, and I asked my parents and my fourth-grade teacher a lot of questions about what I saw and heard. The questions led to revelations about many things, including a recently acquired knowledge about where my Christmas presents really came from. My brother still believed they came down the chimney.

My new knowledge was conferred upon me by my parents out of frustration from my continuous barrage of questions concerning the matter:

How does Santa get down the chimney? I looked up there and there isn’t enough room for someone that fat.

What if there’s a fire in the fireplace? Won’t he get burned?

How can he carry all the toys for everyone on one sleigh? Does he go back to the North Pole for more when he runs out?

How can he deliver all the toys in one night? Et cetera, et cetera.

My parents surrendered this new information reluctantly with the strict prohibition that I not tell my brother anything that might ruin his belief in the story that, only a short time before, I had shared. Of course, after basking in the glow of having my suspicions confirmed, the first thing I wanted to do was tell my brother everything I had just learned. But, it was also cool that I knew something he didn’t, and, that I shared this secret with Mom and Dad. It made me feel grown up.

I weighed the two options and decided not to say anything about it to my brother. The fact that a different decision most certainly would have carried consequences of an unpleasant nature probably also played a part. It was very difficult, though, not telling him something of such seismic impact.

In the latter days of December, after Christmas and my birthday, Dad took us all out to dinner at the local Howard Johnson’s. Next to McDonald’s, HoJo’s was our favorite place to go. The menu listed food that boys our age loved: chicken pot pies, hot dogs — especially hot dogs. We liked the way they called them “frankforts” and because the buns were exotically sliced open from the top, not from the side like the ones we always had at home. It was a treat to order one of those.

We walked into the restaurant and entered the glass-enclosed vestibule where the checkout counter stood. Dad asked the hostess for a table for four. Then, as the hostess left us to check on seating, he moved, suddenly, across the vestibule to stand by the front glass wall. It seemed strange that he would do that, but by the look on his face something must have alarmed him.

Trying hard not to alert anyone else, Dad stood there until the hostess came back to seat us. He motioned for us to go ahead, and once we were all through the door he followed us in.

Curious, I walked back through the door and looked around. I saw nothing unusual. I looked out through the windows on both sides and saw nothing unusual outside either. Then I noticed a magazine stand sitting in the corner where Dad had positioned himself. I walked over to it and saw that it held copies of the latest issue of The Saturday Evening Post. They were standing on end so they were easy to see, which was obviously the supplier’s objective. I leaned in closer.

On the cover of the magazine was a picture of a boy, about my brother’s age, clad in pajamas, standing in front of a chest of drawers. Wide-eyed, mouth agape, his expression was one of total surprise, if not shock. The bottom drawer of the chest was open, and the boy had apparently pulled some things out of it. In his left hand he held a red coat, and in his right, a white beard attached to a red cap trimmed in white fur. Exploring where he shouldn’t have been, this cover boy had made a discovery, and an unsettling one at that.

It all became clear to me. Dad had moved in front of that display to hide it from my brother! He was obviously concerned that Steve would see it and start questioning his belief the way I had but, in his case, much too early in the learning curve.

I hurried to catch up with the family and sat down. Steve and I had our frankforts, as usual, and drank the cream that came in the little glass vials with our parents’ coffee, as usual. When it was time to leave, I walked ahead of everyone and stationed myself in front of the magazine stand. When Dad came through the door, he looked over at me, gave me a smile and turned to pay the bill.

Steve, being only 7, might have noticed The Saturday Evening Post, or maybe he wouldn’t have. He may not have understood what he was seeing even if he had. But I thought at the time that what Dad did was neat. And, just as we shared the secret, I felt that I had shared the experience of sparing Steve from enduring this element of growing up a little too soon. In the fullness of time since that night, as I have become a parent and a grandparent, I appreciate that what Dad did was far beyond neat.

We never spoke about what took place that night, Dad and I, and I never told Steve about it. He probably doesn’t know to this day. He learned the truth about Santa right when he should have.  PS

Scott Sheffield moved to the Sandhills from Northern Virginia in 2004. He feels like a native but understands he can never be one.

The Pleasures of Life Dept.

The Heat is On

The journey from Alaska to the Appalachians

By Katherine Smith

It’s nice to be hot again. That’s what I tell people when they ask how it was living in Alaska, and how it is to be back home. This time last year, and the previous year, and the one before that, I was living and working deep in the boreal woods of the Chugach, the second largest national forest in the country.

Each summer, our five-person trail crew lived in tents for eight consecutive days every two weeks as we built the forest’s newest trail in an area accessible once a day by train — that is, if the tracks weren’t flooded. The Chugach is where, during my first hitch, a bear clawed through my tent and stole my only clean clothes. It’s where I learned to fell big trees with a big chain saw and little ones with an ax; where I learned to shoot a rifle; and where I competed with the guys to carry the most tools, hiking miles with a sledgehammer on one shoulder and a steel rockbar on the other.

It’s where I grappled with scoliosis, hypothermia and trench foot, and learned the hard way that my worth is not defined by what I can do. It’s where I learned that my four fellow trail workers eat even more than my four siblings, and became known as Mama Kate for Southern-size group dinners of jambalaya, biscuits and gravy, cornbread and collards. I’ve spent solid eight, 12-hour days inside long sleeves, high socks and a bug net as protection against every kind of winged, blood-sucking bug imaginable, and hitches inside fishing-grade rubber raingear and Xtra-Tuff rubber boots, falling asleep and waking each day to the sound of hammering, unending rain.

My favorite hitches were the ones that should have been hardest, redeemed always by my jolly crew family. We’d belt out Irish drinking songs in hailstorms, make doughnuts from canned biscuit dough, carry 600-pound trees together for a primitive turnpike, laugh until we cried, and play games of bocce ball, cribbage and dice long into the night.  

July in the Chugach brought a cacophony of flowering salmonberry bushes, an Independence Day tradition of exploring Bartlett Glacier, and buying a second freezer for all the salmon we caught. July is sunlight by midnight, bears by day, wolverines by night, and lynx prints in the mud. July brought my first wildland firefighting assignment when I was flown out to Colorado and Wyoming for 18 days of adrenaline and exhaustion digging line, laying hose, sawing, protecting cabins when the fire grew closer and, hardest of all, eating MREs. July is Alaska’s warmest, driest month, shooing my crew and me skinnydipping into sun-baked kettle pools and, after long days, into the numbing glacial creeks where we gathered drinking water. One July, the heat climbed to nearly 80 degrees.

Now, back in the 100s, I am exactly where Alaska shepherded me. For the last three summers, I spent my days off gathering the plants that healed my chronic urinary tract, bladder and kidney infections. Now I am in the Appalachian Mountains, deep in a clinical study of the herbal medicine that redeemed my health. I am learning how to read bloodwork and walk barefoot; the chemistry of polyphenols and my body with 500 acres of quiet, virgin land.

There is vastly more plant diversity here, the woods reverenced for their endangered medicinal gems like bloodroot, black and blue cohosh, goldenseal, ladies slipper and American ginseng. The ancient plant healing tradition has been kept vividly alive by the sharing of medicines from native peoples to Irish and Scottish immigrants and African-Americans, whose poverty passed down the knowledge by necessity. And while I am learning textbook assignments of isolated botanical constituents to illness, it’s framed by the Western tradition of herbalism that hails back to Hippocrates — the assessment of imbalance of the individual’s hot, cold, damp, dry, tense and lax energetics.

Here, I’m learning the science of my granny’s medicine.

July in the Appalachians is the sweet scratch of blackberry and briar-draped bushes, peaches for sale in old truck beds, and sunshine as the crow flies. It’s just now here, on the proverbially flying time, and yet we find it just the same as we remember it in our young hearts. It’s good to be home in the first mountains I loved, in dusks wet with locust song, fingers purple with mulberry juice, bluegrass on the front porch, an accent growing familiar again on my prodigal tongue, and, slow and honeyed as the South, the sweet, heavy heat.  PS

Katherine Smith is a wild-prone witness who grew up swinging from ivy vines and hunting water lilies in Pinebluff, North Carolina. She’s returned to North Carolina to study clinical herbalism at the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine in Lowgap, calling Ireland and Alaska home in the interim.