Tag: Southwords

Southwords

Window Dressing

A remarkable find

By Scott Sheffield

Normally I’m not one to believe in miracles, or the supernatural, or even coincidences, but on that day, in that moment, I could have believed in all three.

It was Thanksgiving and my Maine family had come to visit, as they had several times before. This time there was a difference, a big difference in a small package. In addition to my daughter, her husband and his mother (the usual trio), there was a baby girl — my granddaughter, Alaina, barely more than a year old.

As was our custom on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went to Southern Pines for a stroll up and down Broad Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, admiring the Christmas decorations and popping into stores as we lollygagged. This time our route included The Little Toy Shop. It just so happened I had learned of a visit to this particular store by a certain gentleman from the far North. He was a quirky fellow by reputation, one given to sporting a hoary beard, wearing a bright red suit and exercising a penchant for giving gifts to children.

While my son-in-law waited dutifully in line for my granddaughter’s turn with Santa, the rest of us were fully engaged preventing Alaina, despite her being in a stroller, from “inspecting” (tossing on the floor) the vast array of toys and games on the lower shelves within what seemed like her 10-foot reach. Eventually, Alaina’s turn came with the jolly old elf, though she seemed less interested in him than the candy canes sitting in a jar just beyond her grasp. Requisite photos were taken.

With Alaina off Santa’s lap and fastened into her carriage, we headed back up Broad Street, slowed at times as Alaina tried to pet every dog we passed. Soon after crossing Pennsylvania, I saw the sign for Living on the Bliss, a store owned by the friend of a friend. As we looked in the window and I explained the personal connection, suddenly, I stopped. Inside on a shelf, snuggled into an array of specialty items, one in particular caught my attention — a gray pillow with large pink lettering stitched across the top. I confess, pillows in general are not something that would normally catch my eye. This one was different. The first name on the pillow was the same as my granddaughter’s. I was about to say something when I noticed that in smaller print below “Alaina” were names identical to my granddaughter’s middle name and surname. Sure, sometimes stores put personalized items on display so customers can see what a finished product might look like, but those three names? Not likely.

Then I saw a date and time printed under the name that were also familiar. It was the exact moment of Alaina’s birth, month, day and year. How could this be? While I was standing there dumbfounded, Grandma said she didn’t care how it got there, she was going to buy it. We went inside and she snatched the pillow out of the display and marched over to the check-out counter. Cassie, the daughter of the owner, Cindy Miller, was ready to ring up our purchase. I asked her how in the world my granddaughter’s name and birth information came to be on the pillow. (Her birth weight, length and the town where she was born were also there.) Unbeknown to me, my close friend Deborah — an honorary aunt to Alaina — had decided to make a gift of the pillow to my daughter’s family at Thanksgiving, but Deborah’s schedule prevented her both from being with us on that day and picking up her surprise. On a whim, the Millers decided to put the pillow on display in the window.

It was truly a special delivery. PS

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

Southwords

The Ancient Ways

The primitive art of pumpkin carving

By Jim Moriarty

There are things in the modern world into which far too much thought has been invested. One is pumpkin carving. Search the web long enough and you can find out how to etch T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” into your front doorstep decoration, backlit with electric lights and read by Jeremy Irons.

The array of hand tools necessary for modern pumpkin carving is slightly less complicated than a tray full of surgical instruments used in a heart transplant. Keyhole saw. Fleshing tool. Awl. Drill and interchangeable bits. Melon baller. Petroleum jelly — and I’m not at all sure I even want to know what that’s for.

Apparently in the 21st century, it’s not uncommon to make the initial incision from the back of the pumpkin, or the side, or however you want to describe the part of the pumpkin that is neither top nor bottom. Once you’ve cracked its chest and the outer pumpkin seal has been broken, the modern gourd is subjected to a form of liposuction. After all the icky stuff is removed with scooping devices — melon ballers, it seems, can be obtained in a great variety of sizes and grip options — the inner wall is then thinned to a thickness of no less than 1/2 inch but no greater than 3/4 inch by scraping away the orange flesh with some sort of diabolical loop instrument that looks as though it would have been used in medieval times to remove the tongue of the village heretic.

After you’ve hollowed out and squeegeed the interior to a lustrous sheen, you then apply the stencil to the outer surface using either industrial grade duct tape or T-pins borrowed from your child’s voodoo doll. This is where all right-thinking persons should draw the line. Did Picasso use a template to paint Guernica? Did Michelangelo stencil Adam onto the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Yet, they press on.

Once the stencil is in place, using some kind of needle, puncture the outer skin every 1/8 to 1/4 inch along the outline of the design. Remove stencil, plug in and engage the three-speed electric drill or, if you’re etching, scrape the skin away with linoleum cutters. Work outside to in. This, as it turns out, is where the petroleum jelly comes to the rescue, applied to the bare flesh (the pumpkin’s, that is) the way you apply a poultice to a boil. Soon you’ll have a design more magnificent than, and equally as complex as, the four laws of thermodynamics.

There is, however, another way. You can go old school.

First, get you a pumpkin. Next, get you a knife.

I’m not talking just any knife. Go to the kitchen drawer and pull out the biggest, most dangerous carving knife you can find. Full-on Chucky.

Using a blue Bic, draw two equilateral triangles for the eyes — point up, naturally — and a mouth with two upper teeth and one lower. Then, insert your carving knife into the top of the pumpkin at a slight angle to the perpendicular, cutting all the way around the peduncle. (The stem, I’m told.) Lift the lid, trim the bottom.

Using your bare hands, scrape out the innards until your fingernails turn orange. Go in right up to your elbow if you must, scooping out handfuls of slimy, fibrous pumpkin entrails. Young children pressed into service may get the dry heaves. Pay them no mind. Put the slop into a big pile and begin separating the seeds from the goop. Place the seeds on a greased cookie sheet, sprinkling garlic salt liberally on top. Place the tray in the oven on broil. Cook until they’re turned to ash.

As the odor of burning garlic wafts through the kitchen, plunge the knife into the pumpkin, more or less following the Bic drawing for the eyes and mouth. Freelancing is allowed though not encouraged. When finished, use the butt end of your carving knife — being careful not to put your eye out — and tap the cutouts until they fall into the hollow pumpkin. Remove. Once empty, use the sharp point of the knife, employing the twisting motion of an assassin, to dig a spot in the bottom of the pumpkin’s interior. Take a candle from the dining room table, light it and drip the wax into the wound you’ve carved in the base. Place the bottom of the candle in the pumpkin before the wax hardens. The candle won’t stay upright long but, if you’re lucky, it’ll get you through one night. After that you’re just eating leftover candy anyway. PS

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Fall Follies

By Jim Moriarty

Are you ready for some football? The question is rhetorical, of course. Until February it will be our reality.

I spent roughly two decades working for the Sports Information Department of Clemson University photographing the home football games. It was a lovely change of pace for me every fall, going from the relatively docile game of golf to the kinetic violence of football.

One year I was given permission to bring my son down on the field with me. He was 11 or so at the time, and I promised I’d keep him behind the bench when the game started. It’s easy to get hurt down there if you don’t have your head on a swivel, and few 11-year-olds do.

When the Clemson team came out for warmups, it came in waves. First the kickers; then the speed guys and quarterbacks; then the linebackers. The last guys to leave the locker room were the big uglies, as Hall of Fame broadcaster Keith Jackson liked to call them. At the time Chester McGlockton, who went to four Pro Bowls during his NFL career and would pass away from an enlarged heart at the age of 42, was playing for the Tigers. I told my son to watch for No. 91, the biggest human being I’d ever seen, bigger even than William Perry — though Chester might only nip the Refrigerator by an inch and an ounce. My son and I stood together as the water buffalos plodded down the sideline into Death Valley. McGlockton’s playing weight was somewhere north of a Toyota Land Cruiser, and his thighs looked as big around as 55-gallon drums. My son’s eyes got as large as Moon Pies.

Clemson wasn’t my first experience with big-time football. In the early ’70s, recently graduated from a little hippie college in Ohio, I somehow acquired a job writing sports for the South Bend Tribune. To say that football at my alma mater was not a matter of great significance would be like saying Halloween is something of a lesser holiday in Outer Mongolia.

My sports editor saw fit to have my name added to the list of journalists allowed to watch Notre Dame football practices. Notre Dame had won the national championship the previous year, beating the University of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl 24-23, and I thought I should stick my head in and have a look at what everyone was raving about.

It would be Ara Parseghian’s last year as Notre Dame’s football coach. My boss, Joe Doyle, who I came to love like a father, had a particularly close relationship with Ara. They would have breakfast one-on-one every Monday morning in the fall. Joe liked to tease Ara that he shouldn’t count the four times he beat Notre Dame while he was the coach at Northwestern University among his career victories, to which Ara would respond, “Without those, I’m not here.”

Just as Clemson had a particular way they came out on the field, so did the Irish. Parseghian had a tall tower mounted on the back of an old jalopy pickup truck, and the team began each day by pushing Ara’s tower out to whatever far field they were practicing on.

The first day I cleared customs and was allowed inside the fenced and curtained practice area, the team was on the far field. To get there I had to cross the artificial turf field, obviously used for weeks when they’d be playing on that surface. Fresh from my hippie college, I’d never seen nor touched artificial turf. Any previous knowledge I might have had about it would have echoed Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee’s who, when asked whether he preferred grass or artificial turf, replied, “I don’t know. I never smoked artificial turf.”

Anyway, the feel of it under my feet was a new, and not entirely unpleasant, sensation. When I was about halfway across the plastic grass, the heavens screamed down on me. “Moriarty!!!! What the (profound expletive) are you doing????” It was Ara. And he was not amused. And his voice didn’t need artificial amplification. My first time on carpet and I was called on it. Blood drained from my face. I was trapped. Do I go forward? Do I go back? I elected to press on, getting off the artificial surface as if my feet were on fire.

Unbeknown to me, Notre Dame had a sixth or seventh or eighth string quarterback named Moriarty. It was this distant family member who had somehow invoked the ire of one of Notre Dame’s greatest coaches. I was off the hook that day, but that voice still scares the hell out of me. PS

Jim Moriarty is the editor of PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

Letter to Charlotte

By LuEllen Huntley

She’s cute the last time we shop for groceries, wearing pressed jeans with a sparkle button jean jacket, exactly hemmed. Hair washed, set and combed the way she likes it. After putting almost everything on her “list” into our cart, she needs a restroom break. When she comes out, she’s forgotten it all. I show her our cart, nearly full. She wants to start over with all the things on the list. This is how it goes, sooner or later. Our grocery shopping together ends this day. I take over writing down the grocery items on her notepad at home, but a time comes when even the list doesn’t matter anymore.

Three years before our last shopping trip, during a daily visit, she says, “I’ve written a birthday letter for Charlotte’s second birthday.” Charlotte is her first great-grandchild. She has four grown children, four adult grandchildren, and by the time she writes her letter to Charlotte, three great-grandchildren. She has seen pictures of her two great-grandsons, but Charlotte is the only one she’s held in her arms. She occupies her mind that day. “I want you to keep this and give it to Charlotte’s parents when she’s 11,” she says.

Her mind has not yet betrayed her, but it will. Sooner than we dare to think. She looks me in the eye when giving directives, as she always does. Her commanding codes, spoken and unspoken, reflect her resolve, an attribute refined from teaching elementary school. Her handwriting on the envelope — meticulous as ever — betrays what I know. She’s written this over and over again for perfection.

I’m charmed by my mother’s unquestioning trust in me as her courier. Although it’s been a gradual shift, our roles as mother and daughter have reversed. And here she is, having completed an assignment she has given herself, sharing wisdom with her great-granddaughter, and honoring me to be the messenger. It’s a sacred trust. My father, her high school sweetheart, passed away seven months before and she’s carrying on. In private, I know she suffers. We all do.

In August 2022, eight years after my mother writes her letter and more than two years after she, herself, has passed away, I send it to Charlotte’s parents. It’s her 10th birthday. It’s written on two notebook pages, front and back. Her voice is in every line. She tells Charlotte she knows what it’s like to be young and to want to be admired but to understand that she already is. Walk proudly, she says, and that when hard times come faith will see her through, just as it did her.

On August 21, 2023, Charlotte will be 11. When she reads the letter from her great-grandmother, her brown eyes will grow wide. Written in the past, it’s delivered in the present to the future, from an old soul to a young one. Ink on paper. A list for life. PS

LuEllen Huntley, associate professor emerita in the UNCW Department of English, lives in Pinehurst. She is originally from Wadesboro, in Anson County.

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

Just Roll With It

By Emilee Phillips

I may have grown up in a small town, but stories of faraway places were as close as a Fourth of July picnic with my well-traveled family members and their extensive passport stamp collections. What a lovely thing it would be to be worldly, I often thought. Someone who knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Imagine the conversations I could have, sitting on the beach with friends and a cooler of White Claws. “Cannes? Oh, dear, it’s simply too crowded this time of year.”

As luck would have it, I have friends who live in Germany. A situation ripe for exploring. This would be my gateway to European sophistication. My plan was simple — an eight-day nonstop odyssey. Joined by my friend Olivia, we would cross more borders than the Mongol hordes. The EU was there for the taking.

I hit foreign soil running. First side trip: France. Oui, these Americans were going to grab some French culture by its breadsticks. Strasbourg was just a high-speed train hop away — if we hadn’t missed the connection. Let’s call it part of the learning curve. Luckily, there were plenty of (much slower) trains to get us there and, in a couple of hours, we were strolling the streets of this storybook city.

Strasbourg, we discovered, is a lovely, confusing border town. Its traditionally German-looking buildings have some very French-sounding names, and the food seemed an odd blend, as if two households were forced to work in one kitchen with neither willing to give up on their own way of doing things. The language situation was no less confusing, so we opted to bounce between French and German, giving ourselves a 50-50 chance of being right. We listened to street performers, window-shopped and, because one can’t go to France without indulging oneself, did a wine tasting at a shop flush with wines from the Alsace region. We relied on a kindly French woman to translate for us and somehow walked out with six bottles that we had to lug around the rest of the day. Worldliness, it turns out, is a process.

So is planning, which we admittedly didn’t do very well. (See high-speed train, above.) In my head, getting back to home base in Germany would be no issue. We were doing things the European way, laissez-faire. Traveling the rails in Europe is as easy as driving a golf cart in Pinehurst . . . right?

Mais, non.

High-speed train? Whoosh. Already gone. Next up, a regional train, which is something of a different beast. Despite trying to purchase tickets hours before departure, the one we wanted was fully booked. No restrooms, no cushioned seats, no bar car for us.

We stood at the ticket machine weighing our options long enough to make us look illiterate. “Désolé,” I said to the clearly annoyed man waiting in line behind us, hoping I chose the right language to apologize in. Our next option was the two-and-a-half-hour journey that included multiple stops and changes.

All Dorothy had to do to get out of Oz was click her heels together three times. We, on the other hand, had multiple delays and two trains announcing, in a language I barely understood, that we needed to switch lines. The last change involved sprinting, along with our fellow travelers, down one set of stairs and up another while hauling our six increasingly heavy bottles of wine. The train we jumped on was full but we squeezed in anyway, because who knew when the next one would be or if there would even be a next one. The learning curve was getting steeper.

Crammed in, I could feel the breath of the person behind me down my neck. By then, it was now close to 1 a.m. We were one stop away from our parked car, and the train came to a halt in the middle of a tunnel. This was it. My final straw. I was completely exhausted and would have laid right down on the floor if I had been able to move an inch.

I let out a pitiful sigh and looked to my left. While the rest of us were packed together like a box of crayons, holding onto whatever piece of train could double as a handrail, two women were sitting in the window seats, unbothered. One was dressed in head-to-toe black and the other in all white — including a white, fur-trimmed coat.

The epitome of chic, they were sipping Champagne brut. Out of real glasses. Where they got the drinks I couldn’t tell you. I do know I was getting a good dose of culture that day. I tried my best not to stare during the 30 minutes we were stuck on the tracks but I was in awe, jealous, and frankly, in desperate need of a drink.

When the train finally began moving, the herd of smooshed commuters began to cheer. All I heard, though, was the polite clink of glasses as the two women toasted. No language barrier got in the way this time. They seemed to say “C’est la vie,” an attitude I plan to carry with me more often. PS

Emilee Phillips is PineStraw’s director of social media and digital content.

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

Home, Sweet Millennial Home

A baby boomer navigates Trader Joe’s

By Tom Allen

Retirement affords me the opportunity to sleep late, cross a few items off my bucket list, and the most joyful gift, “Tuesdays with Ellis,” babysitting my 11-month old grandson while his parents work. My wife isn’t so lucky. While she’s working, I make the morning drive to Raleigh, pick up my little buddy from a mother’s-morning-out program, then listen to Cool Jazz Radio, courtesy of Pandora, on the trip back to his house. After some play time, Ellis settles in with a bottle, a nap, then a book and more play time before Mom gets home.

As a baby boomer hanging out in the home of millennials, I’ve had my trifocalized eyes opened, and my digitally challenged brain stretched. Sound machines, monitors controlled from smartphones, swaddles and sleep sacks weren’t part of our parenting routine 25 years ago. Squeeze-package baby food may have been around, but jars of Gerber sweet potatoes or peas filled our pantry. Funky organic combos like carrots and kale or apples and mango weren’t on our kids’ menus. I was in my 50s before I ever ate hummus or an avocado, some of Ellis’ first foods.

While my grandson naps, I’m welcome to grab a quick bite from his parents’ pantry or fridge. My first Tuesday found me searching for something a little more appealing than Monday evening’s quinoa and roasted veggies. I discovered a box of Honey Nut Cheerio-like cereal. Alas, oat milk was my only option. Can’t a guy get a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and some 2 percent? And I wonder, can you douse a bowl of Lucky Charms with coconut water? I did find some slices of organic oven-roasted turkey breast. Ah, a turkey sandwich on sprouted wheat 7-grain bread. With mayo? Yes. An opened jar of Duke’s. What a good daughter we raised. Later, my son-in-law offered me a Hu Almond Butter + Puffed Quinoa Dark Chocolate bar. Not bad for an energy bar stamped Vegan/Primal. Primal? Isn’t that a scream?

Like lots of millennials, our daughter is a fan of Trader Joe’s, or TJ’s for the hip and enlightened among us. Ellis’ parents introduced me to TJ’s edamame (pretty tasty) olive tapenade with Kalamata and Chalikidiki olives (no thanks), mango nonfat Greek yogurt (I’m hooked), and magical chocolate croissants — magical because you take them out of the freezer and place on a baking sheet before bedtime, and the next morning they’ve tripled in size, ready to bake. Move over, Lay’s Potato Chips. You can’t eat just one.

Millennials do everything on their phones — banking, shopping, even telling their Pura Automated Home Fragrance Device when to let the lavender scent loose. And, as I learned last summer, adjusting the thermostat is as close as your smartphone.

But generations learn from each other. My kids may not be interested in examining my 50 United States quarter collection or hearing stories about what it’s like to “prime” tobacco, but they do ask questions, to which we sometimes have answers. “Ah, no, the plant we gave you at Christmas is an amaryllis, not a camellia. The camellia is that shrub you have in your backyard, with the blooms you thought were roses.” And sometimes, we respond to questions with a question — “What, you haven’t changed your air filters in a year?”

A plethora of newspaper and magazine articles will tell you millennials don’t want your stuff. It’s true. Granny’s cobalt blue fruit dish and matching candlesticks or Mom’s silver-plated serving tray? Donate to a thrift shop that sells stuff to help others. Minimalists though they be, you might hear them ask for Grandma’s tiny blue ginger jar or her potato masher that looks like it might be (and is) handy for mashing an avocado to spread on toasted, sprouted wheat 7-grain bread. Questions like, “Can I have one of Papa’s old shirts? They still smell like his aftershave,” or, “What are those yellow flowers that bloom around my neighbor’s mailbox? Can you tell me how I can grow some?” are welcome inquiries both sentimental and sweet.

For now, I’ll continue my weekly hangouts with Ellis. Quinoa and roasted veggies are starting to taste pretty good. Oat milk matched with my homemade granola ain’t bad. But grandparenting, ah, that’s still my cup of organic, de-caffeinated, rooibos herbal tea. PS

Tom Allen is a retired minister. He lives in Whispering Pines.

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

The Pinch Hitters

Now you see them, now you don’t

By Jim Moriarty

The year was 1959. I know this because my father, who was largely estranged from our family, took me to see the sensational new movie Al Capone, starring Rod Steiger. What 8-year-old kid can’t wait to see a gangster get his brains beaten in with a brick in dramatic black and white?

I was in my father’s charge that first week in May because my mother and both of my older brothers were off scouting colleges. It was a thing, even back in those days. My presence, under duress I’m sure, was not about to dissuade my father from his usual pursuits. The good news for me was that one of those pursuits involved watching the Chicago White Sox play the Boston Red Sox at Comiskey Park. Late in the game, a pinch hitter was announced. Ted Williams. My father leaned over to me and said, “Watch everything No. 9 does because one day you’re going to want to tell your children you saw him play.” I don’t remember a damn thing about what Williams did. I’m going to guess it wasn’t much, since 1959 was the only year of his career when he didn’t hit over .300. We were both in a slump, I guess.

Skip forward, if you’ll indulge me, to early May of 1974. A college friend of mine who was living in northern Michigan came south to visit, carrying a brown paper bag full of smoked chubs, and we bought tickets to watch the Atlanta Braves play the Chicago Cubs in Wrigley Field. The sky was pewter gray, and the low that day was 32 degrees. If it got over 50 in the afternoon, it couldn’t have been by much. The wind was howling off Lake Michigan, and attendance at the game was beyond meager. As the afternoon wore on — Wrigley didn’t have lights in those days — like an advancing glacier, folks just naturally inched closer and closer to the field. The ushers didn’t care. They were freezing, too.

My friend, his bag of smoked fish, and I finished the second half of the ball game in lovely seats right behind the first base dugout. Being a generous soul, he was passing his chubs up and down the row, sharing with anyone who wanted to sample this freshwater delicacy. Sitting next to us was an older man and a young girl, about the same age I had been that day long ago at Comiskey, who I took to be his granddaughter. Having skipped school in the middle of the week, she was a devout and vocal fan of the home team with a spanking new Cubs hat to prove it. Grandpa was equally enamored of smoked fish. It was a genial grouping of box seat interlopers.

Late in the day, the seventh or eighth inning, a pinch hitter was announced. It was Henry Aaron. Roughly a month before, Aaron had broken Babe Ruth’s home run record. When he came out of the dugout, swinging a bat to loosen up those old muscles, I leaned over toward the little girl and said, “Watch everything No. 44 does because one day, you’re going to want to tell your children you saw him play.”

I confess, recycling this bit of generational guidance made me feel rather fine and noble.

As swiftly as that bit of wisdom tumbled from my windchilled lips, that sweet little girl turned to me and, in language so colorful it would have made a tugboat captain faint, reinforced her undying love of the Cubs and her utter and complete disdain for anyone, including me, who might get in the way of a complete and total Chicago victory.

Fifteen years had passed and I was still in a slump. PS

Jim Moriarty is the Editor of PineStraw and can be reached at
jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

A Happy Discovery

The Google machine reveals all

By Tony Rothwell

Our son Max, down from Washington, D.C., for a visit, pointed to a large portrait in a gorgeous gold frame hanging near the fireplace and asked, “Who is that anyway?” I said we had no idea, that we just liked it when we saw it in an antique show years ago and bought it. When people ask, we usually say it’s the Fifth Earl of Rothwell. With this he took out his phone, went to Google and took a picture.

“Looks like it’s William Pitt the Younger,” he said, in the blink of a facial recognition app.

“You must be joking,” I said. “Let me have a look.”

Sure enough, there was “our” portrait with the William Pitt caption, going on to detail his years, 1759-1806. The portrait was practically identical to one by George Romney, who painted many contemporary notables.

We were amazed to suddenly find ourselves in the presence of one of Britain’s most famous prime ministers. Comparing the two pictures, the facial expression of quiet confidence, the hair, the stock at the neck, the high-collared coat, yellow waistcoat and buttons were all virtually identical, but the Romney was a little more finished and showed more of the body.

This, however, did not lessen our excitement. William Pitt the Younger was so-called because his father was also named William Pitt and had been prime minister in the 1760s. The Younger became prime minister of Great Britain at the age of 24, the youngest ever to do so, before or since.

He was an outstanding administrator and surrounded himself with competent ministers. In all, he held the position for 18 years (38 percent of his life!), during which time he reformed the Tory Party, dealt with the war against Napoleon and the French, re-established trade with America after independence, and reduced the national debt. Although somewhat colorless, he was seen as a minister who was determined to cut out corruption in politics and was nicknamed “Honest Billy” by the general public. He worked extremely hard but found solace in port wine. Indeed, he became known as “a three bottle man,” but the combination of port and hard work did little for his health, and he died in office at the age of 47.

The irony of finding out who was in the painting was that for years it had been hanging over our large book of 18th century prints by the famous English caricaturist James Gillray, over 80 of which featured the self-same William Pitt. We didn’t tie them together, probably because Romney was kind to his sitter when he painted him. Pitt had a long, sharp nose which, while blunted in the portrait, was a signature feature exaggerated — as caricaturists are wont to do — in Gillray’s prints.

Was our portrait a trial run by Romney or a copy by another artist done in his style? We may never know. But the painting, still hovering over Gillray, has taken on a whole new meaning. So much for the Fifth Earl of Rothwell. Alas, we hardly knew ye. PS

Tony Rothwell, a Brit, moved to Pinehurst in 2017, exchanging the mind-numbing traffic of Washington, D.C., for better weather and the vagaries of golf. He writes short stories, collects caricatures, sings in the Moore County Choral Society, and with his wife, Camilla, enjoys their many friends in the Sandhills.

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

Chocoholics Beware

Lemon might be gaining on you

By Ruth Moose

A chocoholic I am not. On a desserts table with lots of chocolate and other dark delights I can take or leave the chocolate stuff. I leave it for those who would kill their own mother for a bite of anything chocolate. Not me. I don’t even, forgive me friends, like Oreos. No. Never. I must be in the minority everywhere.

A friend told me that once in the ditch of despair during a diet, and dying for chocolate, she had not trusted herself to have even the least bit of chocolate of any kind in her house. Then, in sheer desperation, she climbed high and hunted deep in every corner of every cabinet and finally hidden behind rusted tins of Old Bay and boxes of baking soda, she laid her hands on a long forgotten and now dusty can of pure cocoa. She pried off the lid and dug in, eating every smidge with her bare hand then licking her fingers. That’s desperation. That, my friends, is a chocoholic!

I grew up with good Scottish people who, if it came to the last crumb on the plate, would fight over a caramel layer cake or, even better, a brown sugar pound cake with burnt sugar icing. I’ve seen it happen at church picnics and potluck dinners.

In a show of support for anything other than chocolate I once entered a cupcake contest sponsored by the Chapel Hill Historical Society. First prize, $100. I wanted to see if something, anything, could beat chocolate.

So I spent some weeks developing a lemon cupcake. Not just any old lemon cupcake but an over-the-top and knock-your-senses-to-the-moon lemon cupcake. I mixed. I baked. I tasted. I added. I subtracted. Until I finally ended up with marinating some mango and embedding it in the middle. I made a lemon icing, fluffy and tart, and in a flourish, sprinkled on shredded coconut. It even looked prize winning.

On the day of judging the downtown historic house had three rooms filled with tables full of cupcakes. Rows, double and triple deep, with cupcakes. Every kind of chocolate. It was chocolate heaven. The air felt heavy with the scent of chocolate, so heavy you could taste it when you breathed in.

I felt very small, greatly outnumbered, and wished I had never in a million years decided to take on the world of chocolate. I was a very small David in a room filled with cocoa Goliaths. Until, out in the front yard, filled with cupcake lovers who paid $10 for as many as they could eat, the judges announced their decisions. Third went, of course, to one of the many, many chocolate cupcakes. No surprise.

I held my breath and hugged the tiny amount of hope I still had left. Second went to . . . Shaggy Lemon Cupcakes with Marinated Mango in the Middle. Mine! I got a fancy, official award certificate and a $25 gift card from a local stationery shop. Later, one of the losers said to me out of the corner of her mouth, “Your title’s what won it.”

I didn’t care. Lemon had placed. Lemon had beaten out chocolate.

The first prize, the big prize winning cupcake — when it was announced and the 13-year-old girl went up to claim her award and get her $100 check — was a plain-Jane vanilla cupcake with plain vanilla icing. After gasping, the applause was wide and astonished. Not only had lemon beaten out chocolate, vanilla had, too. The judges praised the texture of the vanilla cupcake and, of course, the delicate but absolutely perfect flavor of vanilla.

So there you go, chocoholics. You may outnumber those of us of other persuasions, but we still sometimes win a prize or two. Sometimes. PS

Ruth Moose taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for 15 years and tacked on 10 more at Carolina Central Community College.

2023 Department Southwords

Southwords

Eau d’Adventure

A little spritz goes a long way

By: Emilee Phillips

They say smells are the strongest links to memory. A whiff of something can transport you instantly through the years. Perfumes are like people, each complex and unique. One may sing a melancholy song but you can’t help but love her voice. Another might wrap you up in a big hug and hold you there no matter how long it’s been. A third can pull you into a hallway you haven’t dared walk down in years.

A new year is a chance to try on new versions of yourself as simply as changing your scent. You can have a signature perfume, or you can have the world at your door with the touch of an atomizer. I could smell like a girl who spends her days arranging flowers, drinking afternoon tea and wearing a pearl necklace. Or I could have a sultry scent and create mystery in the air as if, just walking past, it is possible to imagine being inside a luxurious yacht.

And I adore fragrance bottles. While many may be ornate, uniquely shaped vessels with ridiculous names on their labels, they’re my prized little possessions.

I have a round glass bottle of Chanel I got my senior year of high school. I use it sparingly, mostly on special occasions. Every pink spritz takes me back to seeing the world as an adult for the first time. Back to prom, my cap and gown, and first dates.

I have a bottle that’s yellow and cylindrical and reminds me of a trip I took to Ohio one winter, my white boots in the snow and my cousin, Maddy. We walked all around Cleveland, shivering with coffees in hand, finding unique storefronts and taking dramatic photos we dubbed “album covers.” A whiff brings us back together again.

People associate red roses with Valentine’s Day, as do I, though I prefer the look of peonies or carnations. Still, I opt for rose-scented spray on the 14th. Once, on my way out for dinner, I sprayed so much of it my coat held onto the scent deep into spring. My date rolled the car windows down, terrified, I suppose, that no automobile air freshener could ever put it right.

I secretly love walking through department stores with beauty bars and fragrance counters. The haze that hangs between the door and the shoe department is a fog bank I welcome. Even though most perfumes are overpriced and overly pungent, I enjoy over-sampling them all, sniffing test papers until my nose can no longer distinguish patchouli from pine.

I even keep a small gold metal bottle my mother bought in Paris back in the ’80s. It’s never been opened. She wanted to save it for a special occasion. Maybe one day I’ll test it out and cross my fingers that it doesn’t smell terrible. Maybe we’ll even wear it out together to create an aromatic memory all our own. PS

Emilee Phillips is PineStraw’s director of social media and digital content.

2023 Department Southwords