Green with Envy

Doing St. Paddy’s Day the Southern way

By Tom Allen

You are what your ancestors ate. And drank. Sometimes.

Credit English forebears for my fish and chips hankering. Hot tea, too. But a recent Ancestry.com search shows a wee bit o’ green pulsing through my veins. Therefore the Irish branch on my family tree should support corned beef and cabbage. But no. A split decision. I love cabbage. Ditto potatoes and soda bread slathered with Kerrygold butter.  But, even on St. Patrick’s Day, I can’t stomach corned beef. Maybe that’s because nobody in Ireland eats the Americanized permutation, which replaced bacon — too expensive for poor Irish immigrants.

Funny thing is, I’m a deeply rooted Southerner who doesn’t appreciate a thick Better Boy tomato slice on white bread, made mushier with mayo. Duke’s, of course.  “Unheard of,” some folks say.  “Treason,” others sneer.  My reply?  “Sorry, it’s a texture thing.”

Leprechauns aside, March 17 marks the feast day of Ireland’s beloved patron saint.  In Ireland, until later in the 20th century, the day was more religious than raucous.  While family and faith are important to the celebration, pubs and parades now mark the occasion as well.  An estimated 33 million pints of Guinness are downed in that 24-hour period.

In America, St. Patrick’s Day is a one-day deal, but the Emerald Isle spends several days tipping its hat to the good fellow credited with Christianizing the island nation and driving out those legendary snakes.  According to a friend with Irish roots, lots of folks wear green, even live shamrocks, but pinching is purely American.  Pinch an Irishman who’s not wearing green and you’re liable to catch a left hook.

As for Irish food, colcannon, not corned beef, is a St. Patrick’s Day staple.  The mixture of creamy mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale is served with bacon, a combination that makes me smile.  But who whips up colcannon around here?

I’m a foodie traditionalist.  Therein lies the pickle.  Give me Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day, burgers and dogs on July 4, turkey from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  But what’s a Southern boy, with a bit of Irish ancestry, supposed to eat on St. Paddy’s Day?  If not corned beef, perhaps a pork option honoring those frugal Irish immigrants who gave up their pricey bacon?  Try cured and fried.  Make mine country ham, sliced paper thin and seared in an iron skillet.  Perfect, I say, with a plate of steamed cabbage.  Pair with some buttermilk biscuits, spread with Kerrygold butter, of course, and dig into a fine pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Speaking of pickles, St. Patrick’s Day always falls during Lent, a season when some abstain from meat on Fridays.  Last year, the feast fell on a Friday.  Fortunately, some bishops in communities with large Irish-American populations relaxed the rule, granting one-day dispensations, so the faithful didn’t have to choose between sinning and nibbling on their beloved corned beef.

No such pickle this year, since St. Patrick’s Day falls on Saturday.  So simmer a pot of cabbage. Load up that slow cooker with a slab of corned beef brisket, or, if you’re like me, fry up some slices of North Carolina’s WayCo country ham.  Don a bit of green, offer a word of thanks for good souls like Patrick, then sit down to a salty feast that’s sure to keep those Irish eyes smiling.  Erin go bragh!

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

Sacred Spaces

Across life — and death — the places where we connect

By Tom Allen

What makes a place sacred is often a matter of experience and memory.

Our daughter married this summer, in a historic Raleigh church, repurposed earlier as a bluegrass venue, then restored, once again, as a church. The founding congregation moved to a suburban location in 2001. Religious-themed, Tiffany-styled stained glass windows traveled with them. Simpler patterns remained. When a developer purchased the building, he filled the empty spaces with stained glass fitting a more secular venue — a colonial-era vineyard, a maestro conducting a symphony.

When a new congregation purchased the building, they set out to restore the space to its original intent as a house of worship. Some rooms were left open for artists’ displays. The church also agreed the sanctuary could be used occasionally for concerts. They’ve done an amazing amount of work in a short time — updating antiquated HVAC systems, refinishing hardwood floors, and preserving decades-old pews. Finding a new home for the current windows and replacing them with stained glass depictions of the faith is planned but costly.

So when I walked Hannah down the aisle on August 19, instead of depictions of the Good Shepherd or the Christmas story, a couple, straight out of Colonial Williamsburg, was strolling through a vineyard. Above a wooden cross a conductor raised his baton, ready to give the downbeat. Although some of the visuals seemed to contradict the setting, the day, we all agreed, was a high and holy occasion, a pull-out-all-the-stops celebration with lots of grand memories.

For many, a church, a synagogue, a temple, is sacred space. The words and rituals echoing there connect people to something beyond themselves, something transcendent, mysterious, yet something very real. Babies are baptized, vows are spoken, the sick are anointed, the dead are remembered. Some spaces house relics and saintly figures. Holy books, altars, and tables become enshrined. Whether an upright piano donated in memory of a dear granny or the tomb of a beloved saint buried for centuries in an undercroft, crypts and crevices enhance the sacredness of these spaces. Westminster Abbey, a simple rural sanctuary or an outdoor chapel canopied by oaks — all places where sacred spaces abound.

But people need not enter a temple or church to feel the holiness. The delivery rooms where my children were born, occasions that took my breath away, became sacred places. The room in a nursing center, where I held my parents’ hands as they breathed their last, was just as sacred as the churches where I embraced a belief that something was beyond those final breaths.

I know a couple in their 80s who have walked the same path, weather permitting, every afternoon since they retired. She is stooped. He holds her hand. The path has grown shorter and the walk takes longer, but that trail is, for them, a sacred and holy space.

Places of horror can be sacred as well. Sites of the unfathomable — Ground Zero in Manhattan, Dachau, Auschwitz, the Killing Fields of Cambodia — these places, where innocents were slaughtered, become shrines to the sanctity of life and the hope that “never again” will prevail.

You probably have personal sacred places, beyond walls and steeples. The space might be the chair where loved ones used to sit, a car they drove, a garden they once tended, a kitchen table where life was shared, or a grave that confirms that they lived and loved and mattered.

Sometimes I fear we’ve lost our capacity to see wonder where true wonder lies, to see the sacred in the everyday, the holy in the mundane. Perhaps the story of the first Christmas — the birth of a baby in a cow stall — reminds us all, whether we embrace the story as our own or not, that beauty and wonder often come to us simply, quietly and in the most unexpected times and places.

For one and all, may these days be merry and bright, blessed with peace and graced with wonder. And may you find a place, a time, or just a moment, that simply takes your breath away.  PS

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

 

Hey, Toss Me a Packa Nabs

Good things can come in small packages

By Tom Allen

Occasionally, my wife’s Georgia family observes Thanksgiving another day that week, depending on when everyone arrives. One year, halfway to Georgia and close to lunchtime, our mini-van pulled up to a gas pump. A memorable and moveable Thanksgiving feast found the four of us, dining in a convenience store. The menu included the contents of our cooler — chicken salad and Dr. Pepper — along with grapes, pretzel sticks and the Southern go-to snack, Nabs.

If the word “nab” conjures peanut butter sandwiched between orange crackers, chances are you’ve lived below the Mason-Dixon line. The Southern snack has become a staple for mill workers and attorneys alike. Throw a pack into a kid’s bookbag. Toss one to a hunting buddy. Nabs travel well in a golf cart. Lunch? Bedtime? Tear open a pack of Nabs with your front teeth. Wash down with a diet Mountain Dew. That’ll tide you over till supper or you’ll sleep guilt free. Be forewarned — orange cracker crumbs leave sticky evidence. Nibble with caution.

Nabisco (short for National Biscuit Company), known for good eats like saltines and Oreos, introduced its Peanut Butter Sandwich Packet in 1924. “Nabs” soon appeared at soda fountains, filling stations, and vending machines. Fifty years later, Nabisco discontinued production but Lance, a Charlotte snack company, had been cranking out its own version of the salty wafer since 1915.

In 1913, Phillip Lance loaned a customer a few bucks. The fellow paid up with 500 pounds of peanuts, which the inventive Lance roasted and sold for a nickel a bag. Those roasted goobers made money for the entrepreneur. Two years later, when Mrs. Lance and her daughters spread peanut butter between two crackers, the Lance “Nab” was birthed.

Speaking of birth, my wife lived off Nabs while pregnant with our first child. When waves of morning sickness rolled in, Lance came to the rescue. A pack of Toast Chee kept things stable until lunch. I can imagine a prescription: “Eat one cracker every hour, for six hours, with sips of ginger ale.”

Cracker competition was fierce, maybe not on the same level as Duke’s and Hellmann’s, but folks definitely had a preference. Tom’s Foods, another Charlotte-based snack company, had their own brand of the salty snack wafer. By acquiring Tom’s in 2005, Lance cornered the market on peanut butter crackers. The most popular brand is marketed as Toast Chee but most folks simply refer to the iconic Southern snack as “Nabs.” Nip Chee, with a cheddar center, is my favorite.

Snack cracker customers want options, so Lance introduced Toasty — real peanut butter (is there any other kind?) spread between two round buttery crackers. Grape jelly eventually entered the mix — a Toasty PB & J. Lance squared up their rectangular soup and salad staple, Captain’s Wafer, and glued it together with a layer of cream cheese and chives. Voilà! A cracker fit for high tea. Today, a Captain’s Choice variety Pack features the cracker with peanut butter and honey, a grilled cheese-flavored spread and jalapeño cheddar.

For a bit more sweetness (and an elegant scalloped edge) consider Nekot, a sugary wafer spread with peanut butter or lemon cream. A buddy who worked as a Lance driver confirmed the correct pronunciation — “knee-cot.” Urban legend has it that Lance approached the maker of a popular cookie, the Token, and asked to make a peanut butter version. The company declined. Lance made the cookie anyway, reversing the spelling. While Toast Chee goes well with a Coke or Dr. Pepper, the more substantial Nekot dunks nicely in a cuppa joe.

In recent years, Lance introduced new bold flavors, something for the not-so-faint of tongue. Smokehouse Cheddar and Buffalo Ranch find their way into everything from quilted lunch bags to tackle boxes. A whole grain snack cracker was produced for the health-conscious. Packaging advertises protein grams and proudly declares “No Trans Fats.” Lance’s newest offering, the PowerBreak, boasts 12 grams of protein, boosted by peanut butter and a granola-based cracker.

Holiday trips to Georgia remain a family tradition. A Ford Explorer replaced the minivan. One daughter is married, the other in college. But the next time we take a road trip, if someone hankers for a nosh, I’ll toss ‘em a pack of Nabs. Thankfully, variety packs offer something for everyone.

Is biscuits and gravy or pumpkin spice latte the next snack cracker coming down the line? I hope not. Let Cracker Barrel do the biscuits and gravy thing. Leave pumpkin spice lattes to Starbucks. In this season of gratitude, give me family and a traditional meal with all the fixin’s. Just don’t be surprised, when the pigskin rivalries begin, if you find me tearing open a pack of Nip Chee, then dozing off with a happy stomach, a content soul . . . and orange, salty fingers.  PS

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

Sunday Lessons

In the loving hands of a remarkable grandmother

By Kathleen Causey

The black cat clock sat directly above the living room chair where my grandmother wove the rag rugs she sold all over the country. Its large eyes clicked back and forth in time with the swishing tail, mesmerizing my little sister with its quirkiness. I watched my grandmother’s hands, bent in strange ways from my own, twisting the multi-colored satin blanket binding with amazing speed and spinning tales in a soft voice without dropping a stitch.

Hattie Mae Cochran wasn’t my blood relative. I inherited her at age 7 when my mother married her son. This would be my mother’s third marriage and his as well. The union brought a boatload of half-brothers and stepsisters, and it was never comfortable explaining the relationships of our family. The best part of the deal was inheriting Grandma Cochran. She didn’t have her mother’s Cherokee dark looks, but was fair-haired, light skinned and small in stature, with the patience to explain why her strong-minded son demanded so much from his children.

After church on Sunday our extended family met at Grandma’s house. We would stop and pick up the bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and she would have the veggies ready, covered and sitting in their bowls on the back of the stove. In the summers, we followed her down the garden rows helping to hold the basket as she picked ripened tomatoes and cukes for our lunch. In the winters when it was too chilly to play outside, I would squeeze in at her feet with my siblings and cousins in her tiny living room and hear the stories of her life — how they built their cabin too close to a rattlesnake den in Wilkes County and the snakes would try to crawl up through the cracks in the floor in the winter; how, come spring, they moved the cabin farther up the ridge; how they used newspaper to fill the cracks to stop the freezing wind from blowing through. Her fingers stopped only to hand us a needle to thread as she filled our imaginations.

My stepfather, with his Elvis Presley good looks, ran a strict house, demanding perfection and routine, and never spared the rod. Grandma was my savior. I spent weekends with her, bravely following her down into the cellar with my arms filled with Mason jars as she used a stick to clear the spider webs away from our path. She taught me how to make bread and butter pickles; how to put up beans; how to use my fingers to cut in the butter to make biscuits; how to make a flaky crust for her wonderful lemon meringue pie. Grandma made lacy, intricate doilies; crocheted afghans and quilted like a magician. On special weekends, she allowed me to hunt through her private quilt collection she kept in the closet of the guest room. One hangs on a ladder rung in my dining room. The circles of material were from colorful scraps of dresses and shirts. It took months to finish and she couldn’t bear to sell it, or give it away until it became mine.

I overheard my parents say that the year my Grandma gives up her garden will be her last. When that spring came and she said she wouldn’t be planting, my heart was heavy with the grief of what was to be. I am a grandmother now, and though this woman has long left this world, her voice is with me. She is there with each pie crust I make, with each tomato I pick, with each stitch I sew.  As summer comes and the earth starts to warm, I look at my own hands and how they are changing with time, and I hope one day my granddaughters will sit and ask why my fingers are crooked and bent; and perhaps they will listen patiently as the tail of the clock swishes and the eyes click back and forth.  PS

Kathleen Causey lives and golfs in Seven Lakes, North Carolina, volunteers at the Sandhills Woman’s Exchange, and knows way more about cyber security than your average grandmother.

M & M

The sweetness of life

By Joyce Reehling

All people have a little Sesame Street in their lives. The letter M is big for me.

March and May are the birth months of two of my favorite people, nieces born three years apart. Darling Husband and I decided not to become parents, but being an auntie and an uncle is a perfect fit. In March of ’93 my sister, Mandy, gave birth to her first child. Her husband, Scott, was pale as Mandy struggled with a difficult labor and a strange ob/gyn who seemed to think that unlimited hours of hell were a good idea. Sara came into this world after a C-section when both she and Mandy were worn down and close to danger points.

There was this beautiful little girl with a head full of dark hair, destined to go blonde in a blink. She was a big baby and easy to find in the nursery window, gorgeous and delightful. Mandy was exhausted and Scott was amazed by it all. I could not get enough of her, not even when she went into the dreaded colic that lasted eight weeks. The crying was heart-wrenching, as if she was in the tortures of the damned. My mom, who lived nearby, pitched in, helping for days on end, lifting some of the load off the new mommy. March had always been the birthday month of “the twins” — my sister and me — but now it became Sara’s month and my joy.

Three years later the news came that Mandy and Scott were pregnant again, and this time Mandy honored me with a request to be with her at the hospital. Scott traveled a great deal for work and was worried he couldn’t guarantee he’d be there in time for the May delivery. I was overjoyed and arrived several days prior to the expected date.

Mandy went into a tailspin of frenetic nesting, possessed with the notion of washing floors and cleaning gutters and such crazy things. I understand that is not unusual but one does have limits. I said in no uncertain terms that if she wanted a floor scrubbed that I would do it for her and that she was not to drop to her knees on any pretext. Instead, off we went to find a coat for 3-year-old Sara.

While Mandy and Sara prowled the aisles of BonTon I was looking at baby clothes for the fun of it — although I swear by consignment clothes, since no baby wears anything long enough to warrant new clothes for the next one. All of a sudden I hear my name called in a plaintive moan. Mandy had gone down on one knee to button up Sara’s coat-to-be and could not rise again. Like an Amish barn raising, with a little force and a lot of comforting, up she came.

The next morning we got up at 5 a.m. and went to the maternity wing. Thus began a day of walking the halls, Mandy’s grip nearly breaking my arm as I steadied her, to help labor do what labor does.

Monitors were attached to her belly and the wait began. Bless his heart, Scott made it. He walked in around noon, having driven for many hours to get there. Feeling a bit peckish, he decided to go to the hospital dining area and returned a half hour later to announce that they had great burgers and a fantastic view of the Susquehanna River. The only thing missing was the toothpick. I saw a look on Mandy’s face I had never seen before, a quiet kind of rage. A look with a strength of focus that would make a NASA astronaut seem flaky. A look that was the very definition of why handgun legislation is contemplated.

Around 3:30 all hell broke loose, nurses running in, a doctor suddenly breaking the foot of the bed down, and in minutes Emma’s head was visible. With one push out came those little shoulders, followed quickly by her whole self. Scottie and I burst into cartoon tears, the kind that fly straight out of your eyes. All we could say was: “Emma is here. Emma is here.” Joy filled the room.

She was passed to Mandy, then Scott and then me. May joined March. Twenty-one years later we are attending her college graduation. In May.  PS

Joyce Reehling is a frequent contributor and good friend of PineStraw.

Pieces that Speak

There are real stories in stuff

By Joyce Reehling

I walk around our house and hear stories quietly recounting themselves. Everything we own can tell a tale, and we should remember and share it around the dinner table. The real story.

Sometimes we dress up the story about how our “beloved” aunt left us this bowl when, in fact, she was a grouchy old thing that no one liked being around and the best part was the bowl. Tell that story.

Or the rickety, reassembled chair that once collapsed into laughter and pieces under the weight of a friend nicknamed Porky. Tell that story.

Or my little pine, drop leaf table. It sits in our den where it looks as if it doesn’t belong because it is so plain, casual and seldom used. It was the first piece of real furniture that I bought in New York for my very small apartment. I also bought two chairs which are long gone (not, however, casualties of Porky), but I can’t part with this table. I remember seeing it in a small shop on the Upper West Side one Saturday morning. I wasn’t in a show at the time so I had a Saturday to myself. I bought this table and managed to wrestle it home on my own once they had taped it up so it wouldn’t flop open every other step. Most of my life in New York I lived on the fourth floor of a walk-up but luckily, then, I Iived in an elevator building. Instant dining area! A real table and chairs.

I imagined dinners with a friend or, perhaps, a man who would be madly in love with me eating my snappy dinners. But that almost never happened because I worked in the theater and no one else wants to eat at 4:30 in the afternoon to be settled by show time. But I love that table. I look at it and feel younger. I am still, under the drop leafs, that 20-something girl walking excitedly down the street building a real life with a table.

I hang on with great joy to a funny little pitcher and sugar bowl that my maternal grandfather bought when he was quite young and forced to go to work to support his mom and sisters after his father died. He bought this silver-plated set to give to his mother — a true young Southern gentleman living in Richmond, making a gesture meant to uplift a sad and grieving soul. Their de minimis value means nothing. It is the thought of this boy, my grandfather, doing without to give this gift. His love resides with me each and every day. When I polish these pieces my heart glows from his generosity. O’Henry could not have done better.

We buy houses around a dining table. Ours is from Darling Husband’s side of the family. His maternal grandfather, Ferruccio Vitale, an Italian immigrant and a renowned landscape architect until the crash of ‘29, brought with him some amazing furniture. The table is the one D.H. ate family dinners around as a boy. And his mother sat at it when she was a child, too.

It is almost one plank of wood, some trim and some inlay; the legs are two large pedestals with deep acanthus leaf carvings. It takes a basketball team to move it. We believe it to be Florentine, unquestionably unique. Its eight regal chairs match it the way the planets match the sun. Dinners, debates, tears and laughs have spilled over this wood. Great food, great wine and culinary failures have flowed across it. It tells all those stories. Ferruccio must know how we love it so. It defines our house.

I have, among our many paintings, one by our friend Chipp Well, of the moon setting over a pond. It not only keeps Chipp alive in our hearts but on any day when the world is too hard to bear, the news too sad to take, that moon shining on the pond can bring my blood pressure right down. Even a melancholy moon promises another day.

The cups from the Orient Express are crying out for some tea so that I might see the Alps and feel the crisp air. Ask and I will tell the story.  PS

Joyce Reehling is a frequent contributor and good friend of PineStraw.

The Santini Brothers Gene

If you have to ask, you probably don’t have it

By Joyce Reehling

Most people will look at a space, say a living room, and either like it or not. If they like it the way it is, it stays that way . . . forever or nearly forever. I, however, come from a line of women on both sides of my family who have what I call the Santini Brothers gene. When we were growing up there was a moving company called the Santini Brothers, so my dad used that name to refer to my mother’s never-ending desire to change things around in the house. One day the living room was arranged in one way, come home from school and it was another way altogether. The dining room became the den and then flipped back again. Don’t even get me started on curtains.

Science has not been able to isolate this gene but the anecdotal evidence supplied almost entirely by wives, mothers or female lab partners is overwhelming. Though not unheard of, men seldom have it unless they are very lucky and very arts minded. Those of us with the Santini Brothers gene walk through a space and just “feel” something is off, something is not right. Could it be the placement of the lamp? The chair? Maybe if I just switch those two paintings. Most men walk through a space and see the kitchen door.

And then there is the advanced case of the gene when nothing will do but everything in the room must go. No, not out and buy more, but out of this space and into another. I recently switched my living room for the dinning room. No longer as young as I once was, I hired two wonderful guys to come and help me — my Southern Santinis, gentlemen who have a keen eye for how to move things and how to place them correctly. These were no “wham-bam-you’re-moved-ma’am” laborers. Rugs were centered. A 200-year-old dining table from my husband’s grandfather — with six heavy chairs and a sideboard — all got shifted seamlessly and safely, proof that there is art in all trades.

For the cost of a glass of wine, two pals came over that night and we re-hung all the art from the picture molding. We had to restring some of the paintings to adjust for different hanging heights but we accomplished in a little under two bottles what would normally take one person three days.

The odd little tweak here and there can make your space seem new without all the bother of picking up and moving to a new house. Our eyes get so used to what we have that we stop seeing our own world. By switching a few things around we start to see all of it in a new light.

Moving the paintings highlighted what I loved but no longer really saw. Some of them were not hung to their best advantage. Others just needed a little more space around them or to be paired with an aesthetic pal, something that highlighted both.

The next part is where my husband comes home from a trip and sees the change. We had discussed the possibility of trying this but I know he needs to see the deed done before he can relax with it. My husband would hot glue the world in place if left unsupervised. He has no Santini Brothers gene at all.

Many years ago, I devised a rule that saves our sanity in the face of change. It is called the Three Day Rule. Either of us can change anything we want and the other person has to live with it for three days before saying, “put it back.” It has saved us from icy glances, bitten tongues and ill humor and to tell you the truth the “put it back” option has yet to be exercised.

The Santini Brothers gene can give everyone a new lease on life. Change. Try it.  PS

Joyce Reehling is a frequent contributor and good friend of PineStraw.

A Christmas Tale

By Sam Walker

Before Chaptico, Maryland, became a quaint village amid old manor houses and rich farmland, it was a gathering spot for Native Americans to hunt and fish the waters of a tributary of the great river that flows southeast from what would become the nation’s capital.

On high ground beyond the water a church was built in 1640. Fields were cleared and planted as stalwart people began to work the land and waters. They still do. This tract of Lord Proprietary acreage was overseen by High Sheriff Sir Philip Key, great-grandfather of Francis Scott Key, who emigrated from England in 1726. Ten years later the “old” church was replaced with a handsome brick structure designed by Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul’s in London, or so the story goes. The front porch beneath the steeple and belfry led to high arched 10-inch-thick doors that opened to reveal rows of boxed pews and a raised altar at the east end. The bell tolled each Sunday calling folks to worship. It still does.

The churchyard holds the remains of both gentry and scoundrels, including the pirate Gilbert Ireland, who was buried according to his wishes in the upright position. A wrought iron chair rests beside a family headstone awaiting the ghost of a woman who comes to keep watch. The British savaged the town on their way to burn the capital during the War of 1812, stabling their horses inside the church. During the Civil War a Confederate spy was granted sanctuary there by a church lady from a nearby manor.

Gradually, homes framed the village side roads, a post office opened, and later a country doctor began his practice. The village market, a way station for locals and travelers, justifiably boasted about its fried chicken. One year the doctor organized a way to mark the holiday season by lighting a large evergreen at the main crossroads. Folks gathered for carols and to swap stories, but none better than the time the little church decided to revive the Christmas pageant.

Costumes were sewn. Children cast for parts — though some balked at their assigned role. Rehearsals commenced. The simple design of a narrative accompanying the Nativity tableau, with the organ leading familiar carols, promised all would come off without a hitch.

The steeple bell rang out the Sunday welcome and the church was jam-packed. Lights dimmed and quiet settled in. “O Come, All Ye Faithful” boomed forth. Heads turned and necks craned as angels in white holding tobacco sticks affixed with large glittering stars crowded into the altar area.

Another carol welcomed all sizes of shepherds. The disgruntled one, who had wanted to be Mary, chose that moment to express creative differences and walked out in a huff. While angels and shepherds jostled for position during yet another carol and some reverent narration, the audience beamed as Mary and Joseph arrived. She cradled a swaddled doll to be gently laid in a straw-filled milk crate set between two chairs that ordinarily held the posteriors of clergy, or a visiting bishop.

Even before the three kings finished their march, things began to unravel. It seems Mary had been up all night with a fever and was now falling asleep at her post, nearly dropping the unraveling baby. Ever alert, Joseph snatched the child by one arm then poked Mary with the other to wake her up. She, at that point, simply left. Dismayed, Joseph took this as his cue to follow her, leaving the baby face down in the bishop’s chair.

When the tiniest shepherd loudly appealed — “Daddy, I’ve got to pee!” — all the heavenly host and abiding shepherds came undone and so did the audience.

Everyone stood for a heartfelt “Joy to the World.” The narrator wished all a Merry Christmas, and the little church exploded into thunderous applause with hugs all around as Santa arrived at the top of a ladder on a firetruck. PS

Sam Walker, a retired minister, maintains a curiosity about life and is an old friend of PineStraw.

Wish I Could Find the Words

The joy of a good read

By Sam Walker

On my first ever plane ride from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, I became the star attraction. “So you’re going there to ask this guy you’ve never met if you can marry his daughter? Are you nuts, just in love or both?” asked my aisle seat companion. Cheers followed. Right then I promised myself never to fly without a book again.

It would take a few years before my romance with reading and the power of words would begin. Books for me were to be studied. They were assignments written by experts in various academic fields. Reading was a responsibility, an often tedious chore to be done in library nooks.

Even on family vacations my beach or lakeside reading was “heavy,” as my wife surmised. One day she offered, “How about reading something just for fun?” Sometimes a person suggests you need to do something even before you know you need to. That afternoon I rode my bike to the summer library in a quaint clapboard cottage and entered a new world. The romance began with a small volume by Anne Morrow Lindberg called Gift from the Sea, and I displayed it proudly after dinner. I was hooked.

I would discover that, if stuck at a social gathering or caught in an awkward silence, you can ask, “What are you reading?” The conversation may surprise you. Book clubs are everywhere. The team from The Country Bookshop has guided me to folks I never would have met — Sue Monk Kidd, Laura Hillenbrand, Barbara Shapiro, Louise Penny, Khaled Hosseini and in a deeper way, Richard Rohr. Books can be wonderful companions. You can close a book, mark your place, and pick it up later. Dogs and people, wonderful as they are, don’t have a pause button.

Written or spoken, words are powerful. They can inspire, encourage and heal. They can also do deep and lasting harm. In these days of parties, promises and pundits, words can overwhelm and numb us. Sometimes mute is the better choice. Words on social media can be dangerous. Words can be walls to hide behind or invitations to breakthroughs. Words are part of relationships, part of simply being human.

Consider renowned photographer Ansel Adams, some of whose works were recently displayed at Reynolda House in Winston-Salem. The interplay of black and white, essential to the portrayal, was inspiring. But it was Adams’ words framed at the exhibit’s entrance that drew me in and spoke to me:  “I hope these pictures will rekindle an appreciation of the marvelous.” True of landscapes and, more so, of people.

Consider the images of some of our planet’s humanity unfolding from the opening ceremonies and throughout the summer’s Olympics. Inspiring and full of hope for the best of our world. But it was the poet Maya Angelou’s words as a lyrical accompaniment to a diversity of faces on the only commercial worth watching that drew me in and spoke to my heart: “We are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike.” True of our own community right here.

Consider a bookmark I grabbed on leaving a bookshop in San Francisco for the return flight to North Carolina following a friend’s wedding. It was strictly utilitarian. After takeoff I saw its odd design of sun, moon and stars set in purple shading with a small line of words around the perimeter. It would be these that really drew me in and spoke to me: “Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point of intelligence at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future cease to be perceived as opposites.” True, and a way to look through artificial stereotypes. The bookmark guides my reading of daily meditations today.

Why have these few simple words of a photographer, a poet and an unknown author spoken to me? Why have I shared them? Because, I suspect, I needed to hear them. Because sometimes words suggest something you need to know before you know you need to. May you take time to seek and listen to those intriguing, peaceful and true words that speak to you.  PS

Sam Walker, a retired minister, maintains a curiosity about life and is an old friend of PineStraw. 

Tobacco Road Home

An ode to Nabs, gnats and gummy leaves that stir memories

By Tom Allen

The hardest work I’ve ever done. That’s how I described “barning tobacco” to a young relative who knew little of the history behind harvesting North Carolina’s infamous bright leaf. The heat and humidity extracted plenty of sweat. Mingle that with dirt and tobacco gum, throw in a hoard of gnats and a day’s labor sounds miserable. It was. And I loved it.

Early 19th century innovation introduced a tobacco variety that thrived in the coastal plain’s sandy soil. When leaves turned a yellow-green, the sugar content had reached its peak. The flavor of this quick-cured leaf became popular with smokers; soon North Carolina led the nation in tobacco production.

For decades, tobacco was picked by hand. Migrant workers harvested leaves for larger operations, but on small farms, for a boy willing to work, tobacco offered summer income and poignant memories.

For me, growing up in rural Carolina during the 1970s, barning tobacco meant rising early, sticky leaves dripping with dew, and long days of humid heat.

The farmer I worked for was kind and easygoing. “Mr. Gerald” would make the rounds in our community, picking up teenage boys eager to work. He knew us and we knew each other. We played together, attended school together, worshipped together. Harvesting tobacco, also known as priming, was an extension of community.

Our dress code was far from summer casual. Clothes protected us from the blistering sun and sticky sap. Everything was old or worn — tennis shoes, faded jeans, dad’s long-sleeved shirt, a dirty ball cap. After the final harvest, we pitched the rags.

Those first primings were the hardest. Harvesting sand lugs, bottom leaves that hugged the soil, nearly broke our backs. As summer burned into fall, we worked our way down the rows and up the stalks, snapping leaves with one hand, cradling them under the other arm. Each harvest brought less bending. As stalks became leafless, ventilation improved. In a tobacco field, you welcome any whiff of a breeze.

Mr. Gerald, out of kindness, gave younger boys rows closest to the tractor-pulled trailer. Kids hardly ever quit. A few steps and they could slap their harvest on the “drag,” a name recalling days when mules pulled harvesting sleds through the fields. Three rows harvested, then a break. Water-filled coolers were always on the drag. Mr. Gerald took us home for lunch and maybe a quick rest before the afternoon stint. He provided twice-daily snacks, mostly Honey Buns, Twinkies and Lance cheese Nabs. We poured down Dixie cups filled with crushed ice and Pepsi. Breaks were also for laughing, horseplay, and listening to our boss expound on politics or religion.

In the afternoon, with harvesting finished for the day, we stopped by the barn where women piled leaves on an electric contraption that strung primings onto wooden sticks. Mr. Gerald’s older sons hoisted those heavy sticks, straddled the barn’s tier poles and hung the leaves to cure. A rite of passage (and a real test of strength) came when an older boy was allowed to straddle the poles and “hang.” One day of straddling was enough for me.

On Friday, Mr. Gerald came to my home and handed me a small manila envelope marked with my name and the amount — $66.37 or $72.81 or $52.95. I have no idea why he didn’t round those numbers. I never calculated or knew my hourly wage. What mattered was hard work, mixed with a little fun, paid off.

North Carolina remains number one in tobacco production, although that production has declined substantially. The tobacco barns of my youth, if still standing at all, are dilapidated icons from another era. Automation and galvanized bulk barns replaced hand-harvesting and flue-curing. Tobacco warehouses have become condos and boutique malls; stained boards, reclaimed and refinished, are prized as flooring in pricey homes.

The ethics of growing tobacco have changed. Tobacco has always been a strange bedfellow in the Bible Belt. While the bright leaf fueled the state’s economy for decades, providing income to small family farms and resources that built colleges, hospitals, even churches, pulpit-pounding preachers (many of them paid from the tithes of tobacco farmers) railed against the evils of cigarettes. The evidence that smoking was deadly continued to mount. Some farmers still wrestle with growing a crop that, when processed, lit and inhaled, can cause debilitation or death. Those tensions endure.

Sometimes, on a humid late summer night, if the wind is blowing just right, I catch a whiff of curing leaves, from a farm near our house in Whispering Pines. Every day I drive past tobacco fields. Occasionally, I see workers snapping off flowering tips or mechanical harvesters stripping ripened leaves. Though I have no desire to experience the heat and gnats and gummy leaves, I’m grateful for the work ethic, the rhythm of labor and leisure, of rest and recreation, those fields instilled. And sometimes, when I see a field of ripened leaves, I want to stop, spread out under a shady oak tree, and wash down a pack of Nabs with Pepsi from a Dixie cup, all the while pondering how tobacco roads still lead me home.  PS

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